Of Love and Other Demons

He avoided her as much as he could in the following months. It was easy enough seeing as she followed the same weekly schedule, still he found himself running into her entirely to often. It unnerved him.

Every time he felt the urge to grab a book from the library, she was rounding the corner on her way to the sunroom. Her pink mouth would form a surprised little “o” as she stumbled back bringing her arms up protectively against her chest. He scoffed as they skirted around each other and he most assuredly did not notice the way his heart fluttered when they momentarily made eye contact. Nor did he notice or admire that her wide dark eyes were frame thickly by feathered lashes.

“Mr. Riddle.” She would say as she passed him, tipping her delicate head in acknowledgement.

“Miss Gaunt.” He would reply as he briskly brushed passed her maddening form. She said his name as if she were referring to a fly.

There was an undeniable tension between the two of them. Tom couldn’t tell whether it was hatred, lust, or curiosity, but he figured it didn’t matter. None of their interactions seemed to go well enough for him to parcel it out.

Tom caught her the library more than once with a duster in one hand (clearly pretending to clean) and book in the other. In moments like that he found her utterly unrecognizable. Her straight and slender form bleached by the streaming light of day. The gentle slope of her nose as noble as any sculpted figure he’d ever seen. The moments are over as quickly as they begin. She’d snap the book shut as she spotted him across the room. Her pretty face pinched sour at the interruption.

“Perhaps you ought to pay attention to where you place your novels once you are done with them, Mr. Riddle, seeing as they are so often out of place.” Her gaze was contemptuous as if he were trespassing on her. Tom grit his teeth in absolute annoyance.

“I would hate to make your job obsolete, Miss Gaunt. Whatever would we do without our little Princess Pauper loitering the halls?” He hoped his derision was communicated clear enough in the glare he leveled at her as she shoved the book back into place.

She met his heated gaze with a hateful look of her own. Merope said nothing as she breezed past him, but Tom had enough experiences of his own to recognize the feeling she radiated. Do you know who I am?

The ribbon at the end of her long braid brushed the exposed skin on his wrist and he cursed Merope Gaunt and the unnatural breeze that seemed to follow her everywhere.

Tom walked over to the bookcase she had been reading beside and yanked out the novel he saw her put away. It was a deep navy blue with gold leaf letters on the front cover with the title written in a swirling script: The Book of Days.

“When the night has passed, and the sky has just begun to blush, and dew-besprinkled birds are twittering plaintively, and the wayfarer, who all night long has waked, lays down his half-burnt torch, and the swain goes forth to his accustomed toil, the Pleiades will commence to…”

He rolled his eyes without any real feeling as he sat down and began reading on the nearby window seat. Despite knowing it was impossible, Tom could feel the warmth of her fingers lingering on the pages.

“…the seventh, Merope, was married to a mortal man, to Sisyphus, and she repents of it, and from shame at the deed she alone of the sisters hides herself.”

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For as much as Tom saw Merope, she was rarely ever cleaning. Yet, the quarters she was assigned to remained spotless. At times it felt as though they were cleaning themselves.

Without a word she exited rooms leaving every corner dusted, all the windows crystal clear, and each line of books neater than the next. Merope herself had even improved day-by-day since her family had been sent away. The shadows under her eyes lightened and color bloomed in the apples of her cheeks. Her hair, once dull and mousey, seemed to grow thicker and brighter each time Tom caught a glance of it in the sun.

She wasn’t pretty like Cecilia. Nobody was. Yet, Tom couldn’t help but feel…glad for her healthier gait. Silent as she was, Merope’s presence spoke volumes.

“She’s like a little ghost floating about her duties.” His mother sighed over her steaming cup. She liked to take her tea in the garden as often as possible and Tom often found himself beside her amongst the butterflies and begonias.

“Yes, she is oddly quiet.” He replied, trying his best to seem as utterly bored as possible by the subject of her. He took a violet from the center bouquet and began rubbing the tips of his fingers softly against the delicate purple skin.

“Perhaps we should get her a little bell.” Mary suggested distractedly as she stirred a splash of milk into her honey colored brew. Merope did not turn out to be as fascinating as Mary had hoped, but she did her job well enough and kept entirely to herself, so Mrs. Riddle found herself without complaint.

“That’s hardly very dignified, mother.” Tom said as he began plucking petals off the violet he held in his hand.

“I suppose not. Darling, what have you done to that poor flower?” Mary asked as he discarded the stem onto the grass leaving the pile of petals in front of him. His mother took on her lecturing tone as she began to lightly berate him.

“My dearest love, I have always tried to instill gentleness into your brutish boyish ways. You must be kind to soft things, darling. Treat them with a light hand.” Her teasing tone became readily apparent as she handed him another flower. “There now, Thomas, treat her tenderly.”

“Yes, mother.” Tom took the flower and could not help but smile back at the childish way her blue eyes lit up. Moments later he crushed the violet in his palm and tossed it over the table as his mother laughed.

“You rotten boy.” She smiled as she sipped her tea. “Oh, before I forget to ask, how is Miss Cecilia? I’ve noticed she hasn’t come for a visit in a while. Shall I send her an invitation? Or have you…lost interest.”

“She’s been rather bothersome recently. Always talking about the cut of diamonds or the colors of lace.” Truthfully, he had found the golden-haired girl rather insufferable recently.

“Ah, yes, well you are of that age. A bit young, I suppose, but she has always been a precocious girl.”

“I figure I’ll marry her eventually if she’ll just shut up about it.” He grumbled petulantly.

“How terribly romantic.” As his mother changed the subject to how his father proposed marriage to her, Tom spotted Merope leaving for the day from the corner of his eye.

She has a messenger bag slung over her shoulder and her hair had come undone, spilling over her shoulders and down her dark green coat. Something stirred deep within him. Merope pulled the air along with her as she walked, flowers bob their heads and trees swayed their branches as she passed them by. For a moment he felt the urge to follow after her. To see her home safe and offer her his arm so that he could prevent her from stumbling on any uneven ground she might encounter.

“There goes our little ghost.” His mother disrupted his thoughts. There was something curious in her gaze has she looked at him. Tom swallowed nervously.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t even need a bell to hear her coming.” Tom was quiet as he frowned at his mother. She kept her face suspiciously free from any emotion, but he knew her interest was piqued which was never good news for anyone.

“We should retire to the drawing room and see what sort of mood your father will be in for dinner.” She said dismissively. Mary took the napkin from her lap and placed it on the table as Tom did the same hoping that the matter of Merope had been dropped and forgotten.

“I’m sure he is flustering over that Joyce novel once again.” He held his hand out to her as she rose from her seat.

“When will he give up on finishing that dreadful story? It reads like the ramblings of a madman.” His mother continued her critique as they headed up the main stone pathways back towards the manner.

Tom had to fight off the urge to look back at the road as they entered their home and felt uncharacteristically empty the rest of the night.

The following day he found himself once again interrupting a familiar scene. Merope was standing on a footstool and leaning against the shelves with her nose buried deep inside a familiar blue book. Her dark green dress had a girlish cut and long sleeves and a sage colored pattern of vines that grew across the sturdy cotton fabric. Her apron was perfectly white. There were sprigs of lavender sticking out of her pocket, and she was tapping her shoes together in a restless rhythm.

He found himself wanting to be the epicenter of her focus—to be the book between her hands. Tom felt a familiar curling in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling he got whenever he and Cecelia snuck away to a concealed corner or empty bedroom.

Part of him was loath to interrupt her seeing as she was completely enraptured in her current task. He knew she would react with her typical abrasiveness and barely concealed contempt. Tom wanted to snatch up the book, push her up against the shelves, and kiss her soundly until she was soft.

Despite having Merope’s blushing face vividly pictured in his mind, his eyes settled upon her stony glare as she spotted him at the threshold of the room.

“Don’t you have a teatime with Miss Cecelia to attend to? Or perhaps some frivolous equestrian hobby to peruse?”

“Frivolous?” His voice incredulous as he responded to her biting comment. “That’s rather rich coming from a girl who spends her time studying stories about ancient revelries and silly stars.”

“Only an arrogant boy like you would refer to the work of ancient philosophers as silly.” She gave a rather indignant stomp down the stepping stool and pursed her lips in a maddening sneer.

“Forgive me for lacking your vagabond refinement.” His voice seeped with sarcasm. “Some churlish old fairy stories are hardly the allegory of the cave, Miss Gaunt.”

She tilted her head up at him with thinly veiled anger, her face growing pink and blotchy with emotion. His face fell a bit in regret and the faint echo of his mother calling him a rotten boy played inside of his head.

“Unsurprisingly, you haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about, Tom cat. Though it’s not surprising at all seeing as your mind's only preoccupations seem to be obsessive grooming and rats.” She started off towards the door to make a huffing exit, but Tom hadn’t had enough of her yet.

Taking a cue from Miss Gaunt, Tom went after her name as well, recalling the passages from The Book of Days.

“Merope is the lost Pleiades, isn’t she? She disappears from time to time and vanishes from the constellation--to dim to be seen by the naked eye. Her light the faintest of the them all because she hides her face in shame.”

She ceased her movements as his comment settled into the tension between them. Tom took her stillness as an opportunity to continue.

“You’re quite like your namesake, aren’t you? Dim and diminished. Always hiding in the shadows, silent as a bug, desperate not to draw attention to yourself, or your worthless, criminal family, or your bad blood.”

Tom could have sworn the light began to leave the room as if a cloud had obscured the sky. The pages of an open book began to turn on their own as he felt an unnatural breeze blow through the room. The glass rattled in the windowsill. He felt his body tense and refuse to move.

Merope turned quickly back to face him. They were so close now he could see the deep grey of her irises.

“A man stole her light because she loved him. She loved him and he stole from her.” A deep hurt bloomed in the recesses of her pond dark eyes.

No longer red and blotchy, her face became utterly ethereal in the shadowy room.

“It is the nature of the world to erode and consume until there is nothing left. Eating light--it is what men do.” Her voiced felt heavy in the air.

As quickly as it came, the dark left. All of the sudden the sunlight surged back into the library and Merope diminished. Pink and perpetually cold. Meek as a field mouse sleeping inside a tulip.

“I—” Tom began once he found his voice.

“Please…accept my apologies, Mr. Riddle. That was inappropriately forward of me.” Her posture quickly followed the change of atmosphere. She folded her hands in front of her stomach and stared adamantly at her shoes. He wanted to life her chin.

Still feeling quite dumbfounded by the sudden shifts in atmosphere, Tom found himself struggling to reply. He wanted to apologize, to take back their heated exchange and replace it with something kinder. But nothing came out.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the sunroom.” She said after what felt like an eternity of silence.

“Yes.” He said softly. “Of course.”

As she passed by him, Tom had to still his hand as it reached out to stop her from leaving.

The next morning, he found himself wandering into his mother’s garden alone. Bees buzzed and butterflies fluttered around him as he bent down beside a colorful flowerbed. He picked a violet and headed back in the direction of his library with a single mindedness unusual for the easily distractible boy.

He went straight for Merope’s favorite spot in the library and took out the collection of mythologies. Carefully, he tucked the violet into the chapter that told the stories of the Pleiades and pressed it firmly into place as he returned the book back to its proper position, hoping she might find the flower cushioned between the pages.