The Listeners

by Maggie Stiefvater

This was the nature of the average Avallon guest: people

so high on the social ladder they had to duck for the sun to go overhead.

What was luxury? Nimble. In a drought, it was a glass of water; in a flood, a dry place to stand. Whatever made the Avallon

luxurious a year ago would not be what made it luxurious now.

June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that

were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury. June had become a good listener.

When you believed in one intangible thing, why not a second, why not a third. If God, then why not the listeners in the water, if the listeners in the water, why

not ghosts, if ghosts, why not unicorns—

The Avallon had never been for those who deserved it. The Avallon had to present itself the same to everyone who came, or the entire illusion collapsed.

To have achieved notability but not be asked to perform it: that was a kind of luxury, too.

“Everything,” he replied. “I want to be what makes you smile when we come home to each other and I want to be what makes you settle under a full moon and I want to be what makes you wild when I’m

gone and I want to be what makes you laugh when I’m inside you and I want to be what makes you weep when I die and I want to be everything else in between and I want to take you out into the world and see it with you, but if it has to be here, then here is where I land.”