Nyx (ON HOLD)

Aislingate, Part I

For a moment Zoë pressed her lips into a bloodless line, and as she stared at me, her hazel eyes unblinking, hope crested in my stomach that she'd actually say yes. It wasn't until that exact moment I realized the depths of the anxiety and terror that were roiling in my gut at being shipped off someplace without so much as a say in the matter - until, for the first time, I thought I might not have to go.

Then Zoë's forest of curls shifted, tendrils bouncing against her cheeks as she shook her head. "Sorry, kiddo - your mom's will was clear about that. You've gotta go live with your grandmother."

A knot of fury tightened in my throat, and I stared down at the picture again, wishing I could glare the thing into a twisted mass of plastic. "She never took me there - never even talked about the place, but suddenly it's the only place in the world I'm allowed to go? Tell me how that's fair!"

She didn't even hesitate: "It isn't, Mel. But your gran's the only family you have left."

"Pretty sure my dad's dad is still alive somewhere," I muttered sullenly.

"Correction: the only family who'll take you."

I snorted derisively. "Thanks for making me sound like such a prize."

Zoë leaned back against the wall and sighed, watching me coolly. "You know I'd take you in a heartbeat, kiddo. But even I can't argue with your family - your actual flesh and blood."

"Both of which are overrated." I looked back at the photograph again, not sure whether to be angry at myself or stubbornly proud of the finger-shaped creases it now sported. "Mom went most of my life without talking about these people - even when I begged her - so why didn't she even tell me this was gonna happen if she..." I trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence. Like saying it would make the pandora box of the last week unfold all over again.

Zoë jerked one shoulder up in an instinctive shrug. "She probably thought she was gonna have more time."

Whatever lava-hot gates had been creeping closed in my throat sealed up entirely at her words; it was like a ball of molten iron was choking me from within. More time...I would've bled for that. Killed for it. In that moment I would've done anything for Mom to be alive again, puttering around in this room herself instead of lying in a meat locker waiting to be burned into dust.

Zoë's slow footsteps drew near, and the mattress sagged, springs squeaking faintly as she sat beside me with a faint huff. "Your mom loved you more than anything, but she wasn't perfect, kid. You can't demand that of anyone, even her."

"Especially her," I amended, bitterness souring the words on my tongue.

Zoë simply sat there and waited.

I knew Mom wasn't perfect - hadn't been perfect, I corrected myself. I still couldn't seem to get the tense right. One minute she'd been there in all her zany, spontaneous, air-brained glory, hauling me out of school to drive to the Grand Canyon or staying up all night to watch a meteor shower, and the next she was gone, wiped out of existence by a rogue minivan.

One minute. One single, stupid minute, and all this was the result. Mom wasn't the greatest driver, I'd given her holy heck about that for as long as I could remember - but she hadn't been the one who crossed the center line. Just that once, she had been perfect, but it hadn't mattered anyway. It wasn't fair.

"You can cry if you want," Zoë offered quietly, but I only shook my head. I still couldn't speak, but I knew no tears would fall.

She cried - not then, but later, when the apartment's contents had been poured into cardboard boxes and shiny trash bags, after we'd cleaned and scrubbed from top to bottom and the place stood empty like a socket without a tooth. Mom always liked the fresh, clean look of a new apartment, ready to be colonized, but this was the part I always hated. The part when, save for a few more dings in the walls or scuffs on the floor, it felt like we had never been here at all. Like the last year of my life had been just another dream - no, a nightmare. One that ended with me alone.

Orphan. It felt stupid to call myself that, as though I would be expected to wander soot-grimed streets with my possessions wrapped in a bundle, tied to a stick that I slung over my shoulder. Yet as I climbed out of the taxi and stood before Aislingate for the first time, cradling the soft cardboard box that held most of my earthly possessions as the straps of my backpack bit into my shoulders, I knew it was true. I was alone.

Terror burned inside me like a scream I wouldn't voice as the car pulled away, its motor snarling and then gradually decrescendoing to a purr and then silence as it headed back south, toward civilization. Marblehead was so far off the beaten track that I couldn't hear a single other vehicle as I stood there staring up at the crooked old house, just the wind through the grass that swooned against my jeans, and the muffled thunder of the ocean.

For a moment I had the curious sensation that the building was staring back at me, the spiky black fence at the house's apex like an obsidian crown, the cloud-silvered windows regarding me as a queen might a peasant. But was it glaring or simply watching me? -that I couldn't say. Yet in those first moments I was blind to all else around me, senseless to everything but the eldritch house; my new home, if only for a year. Then I would turn eighteen, and I could go wherever I wanted - to live with Zoë, or wherever else I decided.

All I needed to do was the one thing Mom hadn't managed to do here: stick it out and survive.

There wasn't any point in waiting; the briny air was cold, and the sun hung low behind over my shoulder, poised to sink behind the landward mountains and be lost to sight. It would only get colder the longer I stood here dreading what came next - meeting the grandmother that Mom so loathed that she hadn't even spoken of the other woman in a decade and a half.

Adaline. It didn't sound so terrifying, but surely Mom had her reasons.

The flagstone path was inlaid in the front lawn like gemstones, and my sneakers sounded too loud as I forced myself to traverse them, walk up the creaking front steps and shift the box to my left hip. Time to stop delaying the inevitable.

I put my hand on the filigreed brass knob, and opened the door.

💙

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NEXT TIME: Mel encounters a curious feline outside Aislingate, and follows the sound of mysterious fiddling to a secret beach - and an old friend she can't quite recall.