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She goes from stall to stall, eying the pastries and the cakes, the hats and the dresses and the dolls, but in the end, she settles on a journal, parchment bound with waxy thread. It is the blankness of the paper that excites her, the idea that she might fill the space with anything she likes.
There was no danger in it, no reproach, not when she was young. All girls are prone to dreaming. She will grow out of it, her parents say—but instead, Adeline feels herself growing in, holding tighter to the stubborn hope of something more.
There is a rhythm to moving through the world alone. You discover what you can and cannot live without, the simple necessities and small joys that define a life. Not food, not shelter, not the basic things a body needs—those are, for her, a luxury—but the things that keep you sane. That bring you joy. That make life bearable.
What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Never pray to the gods who answer after dark.
there will be no freedom, only a marriage bed and a deathbed and perhaps a childbed between, and when she dies it will be as though she never lived.
Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.
The sky outside is a static gray, a thin mist of rain blurring the buildings. It is the kind of day designed for wood fires, and mugs of tea, and well-loved books.
Henry wonders, as they wait in the queue, if some people have natural style, or if they simply have the discipline to curate themselves every day.
Every day is amber, and she is the fly trapped inside. No way to think in days or weeks when she lives in moments. Time begins to lose its meaning—and yet, she has not lost track of time.
But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
“I suppose I prefer my freedom to my reputation.”
She was laughing at something—he never found out what—and it was like someone went and turned on all the lights in the room.
They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don’t exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want … Because they don’t see you at all.
“You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
It is such a grand word, soul. Like god, like time, like space, and when she’s tried to picture it, she’s conjured images of lightning, or sunbeams through dust, of storms in the shapes of human forms, of vast and edgeless white.
“You want me as a prize,” she says. “You want me as a meal, or a glass of wine. Just another thing to be consumed.” He dips his head, presses his lips to her collarbone. “Is that so wrong?” She fights back a shiver as he kisses her throat. “Is it such a bad thing…” His mouth trails along her jaw. “… to be savored?” His breath brushes her ear. “To be relished?”
She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat. She missed the sound of his voice, the knowing in his touch, the flint-on-stone friction of their conversations, the way they fit together.
“Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”
Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”
