The Mark of a Death Eater : Sequel

Chapter Twenty Four

Six years ago

"No flowers."
"Yes flowers."
"Please not flowers."
"Zay-ayn," twelve year old me complained.
"Em-ma," Zayn teased back.
I crossed my arms. "What do you have against flowers?"
"Think of it this way," Zayn presented, "when we paint your ceiling next week, you're going to want flowers. Do you really want us to have the same thing?"

I considered the outcome and realized he was correct, as always.

"Well, what are you going to paint if you won't paint flowers?" I asked, throwing myself onto his bed. Paintbrushes bounced off the mattress and scattered onto the floor. Zayn bent down to retrieve them. "Anything else."
"You could paint the big-oak-outside," I suggested.
"I could," he said, thinking, "but if I have to paint the tree in my yard on my ceiling you have to paint an evergreen tree on yours."

I wrinkled my nose. I had never liked the dark and gloomy trees that lined our property.

"Well, we have to think of something."
We were interrupted by a soft knock on the open door. Sophia and Rigel, who'd spent the previous day together in the Osman's kitchen, making ice creams with the most outrageous flavors, walked in with wafer cones.

"Pomegranate and sour berry for you," Sophia said, handing Zayn a cone topped with red-speckled blue ice cream, "and lemon and green tea for you," she said, handing me a pale green one.
"What did you get?" I asked Rigel, studying the small leaf atop my dessert.
My brother held up an ordinary brown cone. "Chocolate," he said with a grin.
"I have vanilla myself," Sophia said. She laughed as a I pulled a face.

Rigel pushed his brown hair off his forehead to look up at the ceiling.
"Haven't you two started already?" he asked, studying it.
I sighed in response. "We still don't know what to paint."
"Weren't you going to do flowers?" Sophia asked.
I burst into laughter as Zayn let out his most exasperated sound yet.

"Well," Rigel said, his very-green eyes twinkling, as they always did when he had an idea, "you do love star gazing. Why don't you paint the night sky?"
Zayn and I turned to each other and twin smiles spread across our faces.

We got to work that afternoon.
Sophia, (who had mended the deep gash on her fathers head with little effort, but had no artistic talent), painted the ceiling a terrifying black. Rigel and I, (who could both draw well enough to not be considered useless), added large clouds of blues and greens in any shade Zayn asked for. And Zayn, (who at twelve, could sketch beautiful, living pictures of the meadow with a tiny bit of charcoal and any clean surface) covered the ceiling in brilliant waves and whorls and streams and ripples of gold.

The stars beat as though they were alive, the clouds swept across the surface with every breath you took, and when the lights were out, the entire room was bathed in the most beautiful golden glow.

I lay on my back, six years later, staring up at those stars.

Zayn had painted them 'straight from his head', and so the stars didn't match any constellation that were real. But over the years, I had come to know this new sky. I'd memorized the patterns they took and made up names for the shapes that danced across them. Right now, the heart of a great dragon beat in time to my mine, its wings and breath blowing gold dust and blue clouds into the corners.

"Magic," Zayn said softly, his voice in awe. "I never get tired of looking at it."

I turned my head to smile at him. He was lingering in the doorway, head tilted up, arms crossed loosely over his chest. The light from the ceiling danced over his face, as if he was under a pool of sunlit water.

I made to sit up, but Zayn walked over to his bed and lay down beside me, head inches away from my own. He lifted his hand, palm twisted towards me. I took it, intertwining my fingers with his. His hands were warm, as always.

We lay in silence for a few golden minutes.

I could almost forget that everything else was happening. I closed my eyes. There was no war, I did not have to leave, all our families were safe.

Zayn was humming a familiar tune. I couldn't remember the words or the name of it, but I knew it was about a woman named Ava.

Sophia and Rigel were chasing each other in the kitchen downstairs. Rose was painting on a canvas in the sunroom. Jasmine and Alia were in the attic, quietly testing a potion. There was nothing but me and the most important person in the whole world, and his unsteady pulse beating against my wrist.

I counted his heartbeats, the way Sophia had showed me all those years ago. My eyes were slowly closing. I could lay there forever.

I felt Zayn turned his head, and I heard the smile in his voice when he said, "let's get you to sleep."

The spell broke.

Zayn walked me to the spare room, our still-joined hands swinging. He waved an arm towards the boxes and baskets stacked against the walls. "All that might fit you," he said. His face held an expression that was new to me. I thought I liked it, but in my still-sleepy haze, I couldn't identify it.

"Thank you."

He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "You'll come find me when you're done." His small inflection at the end made it a question.
I nodded. He let go of my hand.

As I watched him walk away, I saw the aura of the blue-marked map that hid in the shed outside. I shook my head, hoping that would shake out my bad thoughts.

Not yet, I promised myself. Not yet.

I walked over to a basket of items Rose had intended for goodwill. So many of them seemed familiar to me, not because I'd seen them all, but because I could see the stories in all of them. I could see the collared robes of Alia's, the sequined ones of Jasmines and the clean colors of Rose's. I held up a watch with a scratched face and a catch shiny from years of use. It had been a while since the tiny planets and stars that used to dance along the edge of it had moved. There were story books with tales of hopping pots, potion bottles dusty from years of neglect, and cracked glass globes with yellowing snow.

But it was a faded sleep shirt that stirred the nostalgia in me. I held it up to the light so I could see it better. The paint was barely visible on the surface. If I closed my eyes, I could see Rose Osman pulling it over her head after Zayn and I had covered just about every inch of it with our small handprints.

Rose's shirt was too big for me and Alia's shorts were just a bit small, but they would do.

I found Zayn in his room, dusting out his bedsheets before he slept. An old habit. I knew that sweep of his hand by heart.

"Will you sleep here?" he asked, not looking up.
I understood, in all the things he left unsaid, that he wasn't offering his place to me, he was asking if I would share it with him. He asked it so casually, as if we hadn't been absent in each other's lives for the last year, as if I hadn't run away from my family to another, terrible one. The way he said it, as if there wasn't any reason for me not to curl up next to him, it was too much for me. In all the things he left unsaid, I knew he was not only asking me if I would sleep there for the night. He was asking me to stay.

I couldn't stay. But I could make him happy for one more day.

"Always," I lied.