Starling House

by Alix E. Harrow

People like me have to make two lists: what they need and what they want. You keep the first list short, if you’re smart, and you burn the second one.

Starling House makes me think of an underfed pet or a broken doll, a thing unloved by the person who promised to love it best.

He was a liar, but the best liars are the ones that stick closest to the truth, so I believe it.

He should look like a fool—a boy standing in his own yard long after midnight, his shirt misbuttoned, one sock missing, wielding a sword against nothing at all—and he does, but the kind of fool that breaks your heart. I don’t know what he’s fighting or why, but I know he’s losing.

It occurs to me that this lonely, beastly, bleeding boy is the only person who has ever fought for me, ever stood between me and the dark and told me to save myself. I feel like laughing, or maybe screaming.

I think dizzily that I know exactly why Icarus flew so high: when you’ve spent too long in the dark, you’ll melt your own wings just to feel the sun on your skin.

Her hands are fisted in the collar of his shirt and she is so vital, so furiously alive that Arthur understands for the first time why Hades stole Persephone, why a man who has spent his life in winter might do anything at all for a taste of spring.

“Are you really going to kick me out again?” God, he doesn’t want to. He wants to push up her shirt and press his lips to the hollow place between the wings of her ribs. He wants to make her spine arch against the couch. He wants her to stay, and stay.

“Home is wherever you’re loved, Opal.”

That the only name worth having is the one you choose.

He reminds himself firmly that there’s no room for wishes or wants in his life, that every time he’s caved to his own childish desires it’s come at a terrible cost. That he has what he needs, and it’s enough. It’s just that, sometimes, God help him, he wants more.

There’s no beauty to his movements, no grace. He doesn’t look like a dancer. He looks like a boy who wanted to grow flowers but was handed a sword instead. He looks like a man who gave up on hope a long time ago, but who keeps fighting anyway, on and on. He looks like a Warden of Starling House, gone to war.

But there are still the dreams, sometimes. You should be afraid—there are stories about this house, and you’ve heard all of them—but in the dream you don’t hesitate. In the dream, you’re home.