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Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke? Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.
this is the moment when none of it feels fair, the only time she feels the wave of frustration threatening to break. Because she has spent weeks getting to know him. And he has spent hours forgetting her. “Slow down.”
I remember, says the darkness in her ear.
“The old gods are everywhere,” she says. “They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under the saplings in spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk.”
If only you could see it, he says. I would give anything, she answers. One day, he promises. One day, I’ll show you. You’ll see it all.
“A dreamer,” scorns her mother. “A dreamer,” mourns her father. “A dreamer,” warns Estele. Still, it does not seem such a bad word. Until Adeline wakes up.
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
The darkness whispers in her ear, arms wrapped like a scarf around her throat. I am always with you.
“You ask for time without limit. You want freedom without rule. You want to be untethered. You want to live exactly as you please.”
“I am not some genie, bound to your whim.” He pushes off the tree. “Nor am I some petty forest spirit, content with granting favors for mortal trinkets. I am stronger than your god and older than your devil. I am the darkness between stars, and the roots beneath the earth. I am promise, and potential, and when it comes to playing games, I divine the rules, I set the pieces, and I choose when to play. And tonight, I say no.”
“You want an ending,” she says. “Then take my life when I am done with it. You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore.”
A smile—just like the smile in her drawings, askance, and full of secrets—crosses his mouth. And then he pulls her to him. A lover’s embrace. He is smoke and skin, air and bone, and when his mouth presses against hers, the first thing she tastes is the turning of the seasons, the moment when dusk gives way to night. And then his kiss deepens. His teeth skim her bottom lip, and there is pain in the pleasure, followed by the copper taste of blood on her tongue. “Done,” whispers the god against her lips. And then the world goes black, and she is falling.
When everything slips through your fingers, you learn to savor the feel of nice things against your palm.
Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.
It hurts too much, watching them forget her.
My name is Addie LaRue …
it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.
I remember, whispers the darkness, almost kindly, as if he’s not the one who cursed her.
How do you walk to the end of the world? she once asked. And when Addie didn’t know, the old woman smiled that wrinkled grin, and answered. One step at a time.
Henry would rather be a storykeeper than a storyteller.
Toward the end of the play there is a scene that will press itself into the dark of Henry’s mind, exposed like light on film. Robbie, the Bowery king, rises from his throne as rain falls in a single sheet across the stage, and even though, moments earlier, it was crowded with people, now, somehow, there is only Robbie. He reaches out, hand skimming the curtain of rain, and it parts around his fingers, his wrist, his arm as he moves forward inch by inch until his whole body is beneath the wave. He tips his head back, the rain rinsing gold and glitter from his skin, flattening the perfect wave
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His parents meant well, of course, but they always told him things like Cheer up, or It will get better, or worse, It’s not that bad, which is easy to say when you’ve never had a day of rain.
she longs for the mornings, but she settles for the nights, and if it cannot be love, well, then, at least it is not lonely.
“You think it was a girl?” “Yeah. I do. It just had this energy.” “Maybe you dreamed her.” “Maybe,” says Sam. “I’ve never been good at remembering dreams. But you know…” She trails off, staring at Addie the way she did that night in bed, beginning to glow. “You remind me of that piece.”
“You think it will get easier,” he says. “It will not. You are as good as gone, and every year you live will feel a lifetime, and in every lifetime, you will be forgotten. Your pain is meaningless. Your life is meaningless. The years will be like weights around your ankles. They will crush you, bit by bit, and when you cannot stand it, you will beg me to put you from your misery.”
“I remember you.” Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.
“What do you see,” he says, “when you look at me?”
“I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.”
It will take Addie years to learn the language of those eyes. To know that amusement renders them the shade of summer ivy, while annoyance lightens them to sour apple, and pleasure, pleasure darkens them to the almost-black of the woods at night, only the edges still discernible as green.
“I want to see you again,” says Henry. The hope fills her chest until it hurts. She’s heard those words a hundred times, but for the first time, they feel real. Possible. “I want you to see me again, too.”
The night has passed, the first threads of daylight creeping into the sky, and it is tomorrow now, and their anniversary is over, and five years have become six without his presence, without his face, without his asking if she’s had enough, and the world slips, because it is unfair, it is cheating, it is wrong.
Even rocks wear away to nothing.
This is where the thinkers are. This is where the dreamers live. This is the heart of the world, and the head, and it is changing.”
there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”
I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.
“Déjà vu,” says Bea, shaking her head. “You ever meet someone for the first time, but you’re sure you’ve seen them before?” Addie almost laughs. “Yes.”
They sit beneath a stained-glass window of an angel lifting his cup, and Champagne breaks across her tongue, and the darkness smiles against her skin, and draws her onto a floor to dance, and it is the beginning and the end of everything.
“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 would see you again,” he says, “in daylight, or in darkness. As a woman, or a man. Please, let me see you again.”
she decides to become a palimpsest, to let Remy write over the other lines.
“Addie,” he breathes, and the sound sends sparks across her skin, and when he kisses her, he tastes like salt, and summer. But it feels too much like a punctuation mark, and she isn’t ready for the night to end, so she kisses him back, deeper, turns the period into a question, into an answer.
And then they are on the bed, and for an instant, only an instant, she is somewhere else, somewhen else, the darkness folding itself around her. A name whispered against bare skin. But to him she was Adeline, only Adeline. His Adeline. My Adeline.
“Don’t forget,” she says softly, the words half prayer, half plea. Henry’s arms tighten, a body surfacing from sleep. “Forget what?” he murmurs, already sinking again. And Addie waits for his breath to steady before she whispers the word to the dark. “Me.”
“I know your heart, my dear. I feel when it falters.”
I am all you have. All you will ever have. The only one who will remember.
“I don’t think he remembered me.” Henry squints, clearly confused. “How could he not?”
“My name is Addie LaRue. I was born in Villon in the year 1691, my parents were Jean and Marthe, and we lived in a stone house just beyond an old yew tree…”
Addie knows, as she walks away, that she will never see her mother again.
What I want, what I’ve always truly wanted, is for someone to remember me. That’s why you can say my name. That’s why you can go away, and come back, and still know who I am. And that’s why I can look at you, and see you as you are. And it is enough. It will always be enough.”
Addie is so many things, thinks Henry. But she is not forgettable.
