“Does he make your insides quiver low in the belly?” Mary glanced at her out of the side of her eye. “Is that why you can’t stop thinking about him?”
Edwina turned her head away, embarrassed that her thoughts were so plain on her face. She shook the trinkets in her palm, sifting them to test their weight and value, as if she hadn’t been thinking of Ian at all. “None of that matters anymore.” To prove she had more pressing things on her mind, she held up the locket. “I might have the perfect chain for this back at the shop.”
Mary retreated from the edge and caught Edwina’s eye. “Lie to the rest of the world if you like, but not to me.” Not waiting for a rejoinder, Mary climbed on top of the crenellations. Slanted like a roof, the capstones were slick with mist. Anyone else would slip from the stone and fall to the earth below, where the queenly ladies pranced in deathly shadows. Yet Mary skipped along the ancient battlements like a girl playing at hopscotch. “He lopped their heads off as if they were dandelions,” she said, speaking of the old king with the sharp ax. “Out with the old wife, in with the new. Men can be fickle fiends.”
“I need to get back,” Edwina said. “The tide’s receding, and I’d like to skim over the shore once before the shop opens.”
Mary looked over her shoulder at her. “Suit yourself. I’m going to stretch a little more.”
There had been a time they’d done everything in twin-esque syncopation, but ever since the move to the city, the tiniest of fissures had begun fragmenting between them into verifiable cracks. Perhaps it was a matter of course for two young women forced to find their wings in the world. They couldn’t cling to their childhood inclinations forever. Even so, the tiny places where their differences had found space to splinter apart had worried Edwina of late. The freedom they felt in the middle of the night above the rest of the world was one thing, but too much independence in a young woman on the ground could lead to unspeakable trouble. She hoped Mary had enough sense to recognize her limits as she waved and said she would meet Edwina back home.
Two hours later, Edwina stood alone on the foreshore. The river, as ever, slithered by on its stomach in search of more shoreline to consume. The constant flow of water churned up pieces of the past as easily as it swallowed down chunks of the present, burying everything in layers of mud and sludge. Everything eventually fell to the river in the end.
Edwina half-heartedly dug a finger in the mud where a sharp point stuck out at an interesting angle, but it was only an old door hinge rusted through in the middle. Beside it were several bent nails and a watery strip of leather that may have once been a belt or apron. She could barely find anything worth the effort of picking up. Her vision was off. Blurred by the distraction of the growing yet inevitable rift between she and Mary and of falling out with Ian until nothing would shine for her.
She decided to pace the shore nearer to the bridge, exploring the sand and rocks that pushed up against the buttress. The low clouds and leftover chill in the air from the night’s mist made for a morning sky heavy with the portent of ill luck. Knowing she stood in the same place she had the day before with Ian, she scanned the wall for the nook where she’d wedged the skull between stones. It was gone, of course. Taken by the river. But if the water swallowed her offering, it had also swallowed her blessing. She hoped it might fend off the oppressive mood that lingered inside her from some vague yet persistent warning.
The fishing boat was back, lying on its side awaiting the rising water. Low tide had come an hour later than the morning two days ago when they’d found Ian unconscious on the shore. Two days ago, in the last twinkling hour before the dawn, the sky had still been a cloak of midnight blue. If the sky had been lighter, as it was now, she wondered if they’d have left him be. Without the darkness to keep their secret hidden, they might have simply alerted a policeman to the body and been done with the whole affair. No stolen memory, no pulsating guilt, no exposure to the frailty of human emotions burnished by hope. But even she was beginning to suspect life would not have gone on as normal no matter whether the sun or moon had ruled the sky that morning.
“You’re a Gloomy Gus when left on your own.” Mary had crept up beside her as silent as morning fog.
Edwina lifted her head and nearly laughed at her sister’s oblique observation. Hadn’t her whole life been spent in the gloom? What had changed now to cause Mary to notice such a thing? But, of course, she knew. The hairline cracks that had formed between them had also let a sliver of light in, if only for a brief afternoon. Falling out with Ian must have doused the brief spark of light from her aura once again.