Chapter 12
Viola looks into the mirror.
No, that sounds wrong.
That’s the name, that’s the right name, it is the right name, it rings true from the tips of your fingers to the ends of your toes and feels warm in the very core of you, that is definitely the right name, that isyour name, and yet a part of you still does not feel right calling you that.
Viola looks into the mirror because you look into the mirror and you look into the mirror and see Viola and she looks into the mirror and sees you.
You can’t get a headache, but you feel like this sort of circular thinking would give you a headache if you could get one.
It has been so long since you have heard the name, since you have heard your name, that you feel disconnected from it. Someone could call for you, and you do not know that you would respond.
No.
That is not true.
You did respond.
She didn’t use your name.
You take a deep breath and you knead your forehead and you take another deep breath and you look into the mirror again.
Well.
You have a face.
….
You always had a face, it’s just that for the past several months that you’ve been avoiding this mirror it hasn’t really looked like a face so much as it looked like a sculpture that some artist had started crafting and then decided to give up on before giving eyes or a sharp nose or a mouth—
I have no mouth and I must scream.
You had a mouth. You had a mouth and you definitely did scream. No. You yelled. There’s a difference. Screaming is high-pitched and terrified where yelling is low-pitched and angry. You didn’t scream. You didn’t need to scream. You yelled.
You press your fingers against your face. There are cheekbones now – sharper ones – and you have lips – nice ones, you think, if they can be called that when you are, in fact, a corpse – and you have a shapely nose with a shape and you have eyes and you can see. Well, you could see before, obviously, you had to have been able to see before, but you can see much more clearly now. You can see the individual threads in the pattern of your nightgown. You can see the individual strands of your wavy dark hair. You can see that the pink of your lips is a different shade than the ivory of your skin is a different shade than the way your cheeks can hold a blush if you are ashamed – you think perhaps you have never been ashamed, but you could once fake a blush if you wanted or needed to do so – and all of this, again, is different than the sharp, sharp, sharp bright growing green of your eyes, the same as the leaves on an apple tree, the same as the skin of the apples that grow on the trees on your side of the gate, the same as the one that you fed to the brunette before you shoved the blonde back into her spot.
Her spot.
You stare into the mirror and you stare into the mirror and you mouth your name and you mouth it again and you think you could probably put voice to it if you wanted but you are being given so many specifics about yourself and the world around you is now so sharp and clean and crystal clear that you are not sure you could stand hearing the voice you have been given on the recalling of your name.
Eventually, you grow tired of standing in front of the mirror, and you sit on the edge of the bed, your fingers clenching on the mattress, the comforter soft between your fingers, and you keep staring into the mirror, trying to match you to Viola and Viola to you.
This could take some time.
Dani expects that the next morning she will wake in a different position than she fell asleep in. A different position, a different location – she expects that while she sleeps, the creature will have tucked her away so that it can curl up on the couch and devour the Shakespearean books in the way that it has not been allowed to devour her.
But Dani awakes in her bed, in the same position she fell asleep in, with Jamie’s arm wrapped around her waist, with Jamie’s face pressed into her back, with Jamie’s warm body against hers, and she feels well rested. It has been too long since she felt well rested. She’s felt so tired for so long, even when she’s felt as though she got enough rest, and today….
She closes her eyes, and she tries to feel the creature anywhere in her head. There is no pressure in the back of her head, none at the top, none at her forehead, none between her eyes – and, even more, there is no feeling as though something is stretched taut like a second skin beneath her own. If she focuses hard enough, she can almost imagine a door in a hallway in what looks almost like Bly, and the door she sees looks a lot like the one into her own bedroom when she stayed there, and she knows if she tries the door, she will find it locked.
The creature is on the other side of the door.
Dani takes a deep breath. She looks at the door, stares at it, really, as though waiting for it to open abruptly, for the creature to notice – to feel her staring and come out, its face that melted misshapen wax of nothingness, and its jaw unhinging to yell, yell, yell at her until Dani jumps and finds herself back in herself, with pressure building at the back of her skull.
None of this happens. The creature doesn’t open the door. Dani doesn’t knock. She simply takes another deep breath and, feeling that the creature must be preoccupied with something (and, in part, wishing she knew what that something is so that she can distract it at some point in the future), returns to herself with the opening of her eyes.
She turns in Jamie’s arms and presses a kiss to the tip of her love’s nose. Jamie scrunches her nose a bit and one eye peeps open. “Poppins? What time is it?” She groans and starts to push herself up, rubbing a hand across her eyes. “It’s not late, is it? Didn’t miss my alarm?”
“No.” Dani leans forward and kisses her more properly. “I’m early. You’re early. We have time.”
Jamie meets her eyes. “Time?” she asks, lips curling into a grin. “What’re you suggesting?”
Dani wraps her arms around Jamie’s and pulls her closer to her. “Why don’t I show you?”
You sleep.
You wake.
You walk.
You do not forget.
Your face maintains its shape – sharp cheekbones, pert nose, full lips, brilliantly green eyes – and as time, such as it is, passes, you become accustomed to the heightened appearance of everything around you. Before, you were looking at everything through a foggy mirror, glazed with mist and hazed with dusk. Now you can see the veins in the bark of the trees growing on your side of the gate, now you can see the little brown or yellow speckles on the skin of your apples, now you can see the thin veins in the plums you have so carefully tried to cultivate on your side, given that they have completely disappeared from the other.
You have yet to try the new fruit that has grown on the other side of the gate. Not because it doesn’t make your mouth water – it does – but because you are settled with your own fruit. But there is only so much sweetness that you can take without wanting something more. You ache for more of the soup that Owen offered you, more of the savory, meaty, salty food that is not in abundance here.
Something tells you that you will have to learn to cook your own food, but you have no idea how to do that. Your little room does not have space for a stovetop or oven, and it certainly does not have near enough room to become its own kitchen. What little room that remained has been taken over with bookshelves full of books that you have read what feels like thousands of times, with the exception of one cabinet that holds your bowls and your knives, which you have started to clean in the moat now that your stream has dried up entirely.
At least, if you were given a kitchen, you wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally killing yourself with undercooked food.
Every now and again, when you wake, you stare in the mirror at your face and you mouth your name again, pressing your fingers against your smooth flesh. It is still there. You still remember. The more you say your name, the more it feels right, but perhaps it will take being said by someone who isn’t you before you can quite claim it as your own.
That seems like a fruitless, hopeless endeavor.
But as time goes on, you return to your patterns. You sleep, you wake, and you walk – but you do not forget.
You do not forget.
“Dani?”
“Hm?” Her face scrunches up, and she opens her eyes to find herself curled up against the arm of their sofa, one of the Shakespearean books open just under her arms. Dani yawns, covering her mouth with one hand, and sits up straight, rubbing her eyes. “Sorry. I must have dozed off.” She swipes a receipt paper from the side table to mark her place. “There are a lot of notes in here. A lot of people cared an awful lot about these. It’s fascinating.”
Jamie sits down on the couch next to her and tucks strands of her blonde hair behind one ear. “I’m glad you’re fascinated, Poppins, but you’re sure that was you in there? Last I remember, you were in bed with me.”
Dani nods once, slow. “I was having trouble sleeping,” she says, pressing her lips together. “I got up, made myself a cup of tea—”
“Tried to make yourself a cuppa—”
“I made myself tea, doesn’t matter if no one else likes it or not.” Dani gives Jamie a look, and if she were a little more awake or a little less sleepy, she would stick her tongue out at her. She gestures to the empty teacup next to her. “And then I curled up in here to read. It used to be Shakespeare’s histories could put me out just like that.” She snaps. “But all of the commentary kept me awake longer than I thought.” She leans forward and gives Jamie a quick kiss. “Sorry for not being there when you woke up.”
“I don’t mind, really.” Jamie grins and kisses her back. “’Specially when I get this kind of welcome. Could get used to this sort of thing.” She stops, head tilting to one side, and starts to say something only for her lips to press together more firmly.
“What?” Dani asks, searching her eyes.
Jamie keeps her lips pressed together, then gives a little nod before tapping just to the side of Dani’s left eye. “The color’s changed.”
“I know. We’ve talked about this.” Dani crosses her arms and leans back against the couch with a soft thwump. “The beast turned it brown. I look like a cat with heterochromia.” She pouts. “Why are you bringing it up?”
Jamie taps the same spot again. “It’s not brown anymore, Poppins. It’s green.” She tilts her head to the side. “A really pretty green, actually. Like leaves in spring. Harder to tell the difference from farther away, so I think you won’t get as many people staring at you.”
Green?
Dani swallows. She can’t imagine why it would have changed again, and given the metaphorical context of green in stories – new growth, spring, hope, envy, money – there isn’t any reason to apply tropes of literature and stories to the change of her eye color because life doesn’t rely on those sorts of things, but given the time she was just spending in literary analysis, she can’t help but think of that first. The symbolic reason before the actual reason, which she can’t guess at. She reaches up, placing her hand over Jamie’s, and presses her lips together. “I can’t think of any reason why it would do that. I can’t—”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Jamie kisses Dani’s forehead, hand flattening to cup her cheek. “I know why you would, but you’ve been more you since Christmas and less her. I’m not sure it’s that.”
Dani nods into her hand. Don’t worry about it. Right. That’s easier to say – to think – than it is to do, though. She turns just enough to press a kiss to Jamie’s palm. “You are the best person I have ever met.”
“Quite doubt that.” Jamie rubs her thumb along Dani’s cheekbone. “Have you given any thought to what Flora said? Giving your beastie a face and a story?”
Dani shakes her head. She hasn’t thought about it. She hasn’t wanted to think about it. What sort of face would she give to the creature? What sort of story?
And yet, somewhere, in the back of her mind, jiggling just slightly, she faintly remembers seeing a face on it – a real face – once, a long time ago. Dani’s eyes narrow, trying to remember where that happened. She couldn’t—
“Maybe,” Jamie continues, leaning back, “you should think on that. I don’t need you at the shop. Mostly getting things ready for Valentine’s, but orders won’t come in for another week or so.” She crosses one leg over the other and leans back against the couch. “Especially if you’ve had trouble sleeping. Flora only wants to help, and I think she might know a little bit about this.”
No, Dani wants to say, she doesn’t. The only other person she knows of who has dealt with precisely what she is dealing with is Miles, and even then, it had been quite different. Her beast in the jungle hasn’t taken her over so completely as Peter Quint took over him. Whether that is because Dani has a stronger will than Miles – or Peter – is debatable; she’s certain she doesn’t have one much stronger than the creature within her, considering that its own stubborn sense of will must have been what has kept it going all this time – but this is entirely new territory.
Still.
Giving the creature a face and a story is only good if she plans to live with it. She is being forced to live with it to contain it, and she feels like she has to fight it. Personalizing the creature will only make it harder to fight.
But Dani doesn’t say any of that. Instead, she only nods. “Okay,” she says, and it is a lie, and she hates that it is a lie that she is telling to the love of her life, but she says it anyway. “Okay.”
Jamie lets out a deep breath and smiles before leaving, and Dani hates that she’s lied. The lie sits in the center of her chest with the same pressure that the creature creates when it rears its head, and she hates the feeling so much that she decides, fine, she won’t have lied. She’ll try to give the creature a face and a story.
The story might not be a particularly good one, but perhaps she can come up with something.
Dani closes her eyes and tries to imagine the creature’s face first. That should be easier. If any of this could be said to be easy. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, and brings up what she has seen of the creature’s face – that melted wax statue image. Immediately, she flinches away and opens her eyes, grabbing the arm of the sofa to steady herself.
It wasn’t really there. Not really. She was just thinking about it. She can’t feel it at the base of her skull, she can’t feel the pressure of it at all, and yet she still presses her fingertips to that spot as if she could. It calms her. It does.
Maybe Dani is lying to herself now, too.
Okay, Dani. Get a grip on yourself. You’re giving her a face. Maybe you won’t be so scared of her after you give her a face.
Another deep breath.
Dani closes her eyes again and pulls forth the image of that face again. She still flinches – it’s impossible not to, she thinks, considering what that thing is to her – but she forces herself to stay in the moment, to hold the image of the creature’s face in her mind.
Okay. So. Give her a face. A real face, not whatever this is.
Dani can feel her breathing growing faster, and she forces herself to take a third deep breath, to hold it, and then to let it out through her nose, counting as she did so. Calm down. You have to calm down. Her lips press together in a thin little line so tight that she feels as though she might bite through her lower lip. Not a great idea.
Jamie runs a thumb over her split lip. “You want me to kiss it and make it better, Poppins?”
Dani shakes her head. Nope, nope, not going there. Focusing on giving the faceless creature a face. That’s what she is doing. She is focusing.
Trying to, anyway. Not very hard. Which is probably why she isn’t succeeding as much as she would like.
You can do this. Just give her a face, Dani. Don’t even worry about the story right now. Just the face.
You see her appear before you with eyes closed and hands outstretched.
If you weren’t, well, you, then you might have been intimidated. But your host, whatever else she may be, is not intimidating to you in the slightest, no matter how hard she tries. A zoo keeper is not intimidating to its animals, and if that is the spot she wishes to hold, then you will not fight her on it. Let her have it.
But if she expects you to act like an animal, then you may very well learn to act the part.
The girl steps forward, and her hands find your face, and she flinches away, fingers twitching.
You keep track of her curiously, stepping back from her. There is something unsettling about someone running into you, fingers first, right at your face. It’s a good way to poke someone’s eyes out, if yours can even be poked out. (You aren’t sure they can.)
This time, when she takes a deep breath and forces herself forward again, you step into her touch.
You do not know why, exactly, she is trying to touch your face with her eyes closed, but you can be accommodating.
When she begins to poke and prod, you cover her hands with your own. Your brush your thumb along the backs of them to still their ceaseless wandering, and you hold them in place. When she opens her mouth as though to speak, you listen.
Give her a face, she says.
Well. You already have a face. She can’t give you what you already have. She can’t make a face for you. Her fingers are not those of an artist, and her hands aren’t those of a sculptor – and even if they were, you are not a block of marble to be sculpted in whatever way or fashion she would like you to look.
But if she wants to know what your face looks like – and if she refuses to open her eyes to look at you – then you can train her hands and what she sees. You hold her hands to your face and you allow them to trace the shape of you. Sharp cheekbones, pert nose, the angles of your jaw, the slope of your chin.
You have a face now. If she wishes to see it without seeing, this is the best way.
When Dani brings the creature’s image before her again, she immediately begins trying to reconstruct a better shape from the nothing that is there before her. Okay, now that she’s looking at it more like a sculptor and less like a person, it’s not nothing. There is a very distinct nose line. If she pushes away the wax-like feel, it’s a little more distinguished. It’s an actual nose. That tip probably comes out a little bit more. Her lips probably look like actual lips and not just this faded skin thing. She should have eyebrows.
This is where Dani pauses again. She has always seen the creature as having black hair, but maybe that’s because she has always seen her hair as wet. Maybe it isn’t black at all. Maybe it’s just a really dark brown. Darker than Jamie’s, but not nearly as dark as Owen’s. Maybe, if it isn’t wet, it’s soft. Maybe it’s frizzy. It has waves like Jamie’s does, but they’re a little more spread apart than Jamie’s, which is probably more curly and less wavy. Jamie’s hair has frizz sometimes, so it’s likely – if the creature’s hair was dry – that it would be a little frizzy, too.
If her hair is a dark brown, then her eyebrows – where they should be, of course – are a dark brown, too.
No, she doesn’t have a unibrow, although if Dani wants to make herself laugh, she can imagine one there. She won’t, but a part of her wants to. Flora hadn’t said it had to be a good face.
Fine, fine, no unibrow.
Ruin her fun.
Dani looks at the face, and it looks…incomplete. Of course, it’s incomplete, she hasn’t done anything with the eyes yet. But she looks…nice. Really nice, actually. Not Dani’s type – ugh, no, she’s the creature who lives in the lake, she is a beast who wants to – is waiting to – devour her – so, no, not Dani’s type at all, thank you very much – but she does look…nice.
She’ll look better with eyes.
After a few moments, you let her hands continue their exploration without your help. She seems to acknowledge that you don’t like the picking or the poking or the prodding or the attempts to press your skin smooth. Her touch is more tentative. Soft, even, as her fingers sweep across your skin, finding the slope of your brows, pushing back through your hair and feeling its waves.
It isn’t a too terribly unpleasant feeling.
In fact, you might say it was perfectly splendid.
No.
Those words don’t sound right from you.
It is just….
It has been so long since you have been touched by anyone. You can’t know how long. Time is inconsistent in here at best, and from what you can tell, it has been longer than decades since you first moved beneath the waves. No one touched you during your time there – you might have touched a lot of people, and you might have had a child curled up against you twice, which is closer – but that isn’t the same. In fact, it is entirely possible that you have not been touched – really, truly touched – since you were alive.
This isn’t what you want. Not really. That would require her knowing exactly what she was doing. And yet, you can’t help but curl into the touch of her fingers along your skin. Just because it isn’t what you want doesn’t mean it isn’t something.
The ache within you thrums with abject need.
Then she steps back and stares at you, her lips pressed together in a firm little line. She hasn’t run her fingers along your eyes yet – and a good thing, too, because you think she might have hurt them if she tried. The thing is, without looking, how can she tell the color of your hair, the color of your eyes? Would she just guess? That seems like an inexact science to you.
You wait.
Dani takes another deep breath and notices that her tongue has just started to poke through her lips the way it sometimes does when she’s particularly focused on something important. Well, she hadn’t considered this important, but apparently it is once she gets to it.
Eyes. What do the creature’s eyes look like?
But Dani knows that. She’s seen one of them in her face ever since Bly. She—
Wait.
Dani gets up and moves to the bathroom. At first, she thought she would give the creature eyes of the same muddy brown color that she’d had in one of her own, but Jamie said earlier that eye’s color had shifted recently from brown to green. She presses her lips together and stares at her own reflection in the mirror. It doesn’t shift or change – it’s really her on the other side – but Jamie is right, that eye has changed from its unclear brown to a sharp, startling green.
Okay.
Dani closes her eyes again, and when she does, the face of the creature – the face she has constructed – stares back at her with eyes of that same startling, brilliant green.
She takes a deep breath and steps back, opening her eyes and clinching her hands into fists. She did recognize her. She had seen that face – or something like it – that time so long ago. But she had forgotten.
Well, now the creature has a face.
The right face.
She can mess with the story later. Not right now. She has had more than enough for now.
Jamie will proud of her for making it this far, at least. She will tell her about the face when she gets back.
For a moment, the girl flicks out of place. She takes a deep breath, tongue sticking between her lips, and just disappears.
It isn’t unsettling – not really – but you would like a bit of warning before she intrudes on your space and another one before she poofs away entirely. Of course, she isn’t gone long before she reappears again, eyes still closed, but still looking as though she is staring at you.
There is no use to this. No use to staring without opening her eyes.
You step forward, mouth opening as though to say something, although you have still said nothing, although you have made no vocalizations other than that low, guttural yell that you made when you wanted her to leave you alone – and it is not that which springs to your lips now, more than almost anything you want to say, Look. Look at me! I am real and human and flesh and blood just like you are! I am not a monster that you need to run and hide from in terror! I am just me!
Whoever me is.
(The name Viola thrums in your chest. That’s a start. You know it’s a start. But you don’t know what it starts.)
Then her eyes open.
You stare into her blue eyes and you know that, as much as she is staring at you, she does not really know that she is there with you. She is too focused on what you look like, on what you might look like, her eyes going over your face as though checking her work, as though she had been taking a test when she ran her fingers along your skin and now she is making sure that she is right.
Your lips – thin but there all the same – press into a firm little line.
She might be looking at you, but she is not looking at you. She is looking at what she thinks she has created.
Her head tilts to one side, as though considering the look of you, and her lips twitch into something almost like a smile. But not at you, though. No, never at you. Only at that imagination of you, at the face she thinks—
You stare at her smiling, and you have the faintest sensation that she thinks you look nice, and you do not know what to think about that. Of course, you look nice. You would look nicer if you wore something other than a nightgown, but that might be too much to ask for at this point from a woman who only allows you fruit and water – and really wouldn’t allow you either of those at all if you hadn’t stolen the fruit from them. Perhaps she would allow you water. You hadn’t asked for that. Of course, she had also redirected it to make her moat, so really—
When she flickers away, you are not sure how to feel. It’s better, isn’t it, that she came here and tried to figure out what you looked like? That’s something, isn’t it?
But it isn’t enough.
You curl up cross-legged on your bed and you interlace your fingers and you sigh.
You’re not sure she will ever be enough. Not as long as she refuses to acknowledge you as an actual person.
You are a person. You know that you are. You had been so certain she would see you as one.
The void gnaws in the center of your chest, and you feel raw in a way that you didn’t when she wasn’t here at all.
This, perhaps, is worse.
You are so tired of being lonely.
“Blimey, she sounds a bit like wish fulfillment.”
Dani almost bites her nose off – her mouth definitely drops open, followed by, “She is absolutely not! Why would you think that she’s—” – before she sees the mischievous spark in Jamie’s eyes, notices the way one corner of her mouth is just slightly upturned, and then her eyes narrow, her arms crossing. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
Jamie shakes her head. “Nah, Poppins. Why ever would I do that?”
Dani sticks her tongue out at her. “You’re right, though,” she says, her arms still crossed as she considers. “If she really looked like that, she wouldn’t be near as intimidating.” Her lips press together, and she shakes her head. “I think she’d still be intimidating. She has the sort of face that says she could do one of those wry, charismatic smiles – like being one of those super intelligent people who’s really good at getting people to do what she wants.”
“Sounds like someone I know.” Jamie nudges Dani with her elbow.
Dani raises one eyebrow. “Me? I’m nothing like that.”
“No, I meant me.” Jamie sticks her tongue out just as Dani pushes her away from her. “No, in all seriousness, she sounds an awful lot like Peter Quint.” Her teeth grit together just as soon as his name slips through her lips. “Smarmy, no good, son of a bitch who deserved what he got.”
Dani stares blankly at Jamie. “The creature killed him. You know that, right?”
“So you’ve told me.” Jamie shrugs. “Still wish she had left a piece of him for the rest of us.” She looks Dani in the eye – in the green eye, in particular. “You hear that? You should’ve left a piece of him for me.”
There’s a rumbling of something in the back of her head, but the pressure doesn’t start at the base of her skull and the creature doesn’t come out proper. Dani rolls her eyes. “I don’t think she appreciated that.” Her eyes narrow. “I think she expects you to be grateful.”
She doesn’t know why she thinks that. She doesn’t know why she’s giving the creature human emotions.
Oh wait. Yes, she does. Giving her a face made her seem more human.
Maybe this was a very, very bad idea.