Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

Author:Katrina Leno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

Flood

My mother’s coffee had made me sleepy, but not in a tired way, in a sad way, a mournful way. I wanted to lie down, to close my eyes, to try and forget about Annabella for a while, only my room seemed too empty and lonely, so I went to check on Mary. I found her floating at least a foot off her bed, which proved my theory about why her mattress was so much more comfortable than mine (less use) and also seemed a bit dangerous to me; surely her freshman roommate wouldn’t be as understanding about a floating girl?

But now that I was up here I realized I wasn’t tired anyway, I just didn’t want to be alone. I tugged on Mary’s arm until she woke up and fell back on the bed.

“Is it tomorrow yet?” she said, sitting up.

I unbraided her hair, still damp and now falling curly down her back. “It’s the morning,” I said.

Mary stretched her arms out and said, “I had a dream I was flying.”

“That’s not a bad dream to have,” I said, still unbraiding. “Peter came by to see you.”

She sat up straighter in bed. “Is there coffee made?”

“Yeah, but I’d make your own pot.”

“Tainted?”

“Definitely tainted.”

Mary swung her legs over the side of the bed but didn’t make any immediate move to stand. Instead, she looked at her feet and the floor beneath them, a good six inches away.

“Mary?”

She shook her head, smiled, looked at me, and gingerly put her feet on the ground. I saw an unmistakable wince on her face, the slightest giveaway of discomfort.

“I’m just a little sore,” she said. She used my shoulder to lift herself up and then swayed gently, as if caught in a breeze.

She really did look smaller, and like her features had resized themselves appropriately.

“You’re still floating,” I said.

She looked down at her feet and laughed gently, a laugh not unlike the trill of birdsong.

“What would I do without you?” she said.

“Be burned at the stake.”

“Or crushed to death with rocks.”

I tried to smile, but really I was thinking about Mary’s college roommate again, and about how my sister was no closer to being able to control her powers than she was when she was a kid, getting stuck on the ceiling in the living room or tangled up in the branches of a tree.

Then she winked, and she was Mary again, no longer something more fragile and lost than the sister I’d grown up with. She left me alone in her room, and I sat on the bed, feeling the coolness of the blankets that hadn’t been slept in. I lay down, folding my arms behind my head, shutting my eyes, and taking a deep breath of rose-filled air.

The roses were out of control this year. Peter trimmed them, cut them back, but they just kept persisting. They were thriving in this rain; if we weren’t careful, they’d take over the entire house. You wouldn’t be able to see anything of the Fernweh Inn except bloodred blooms and dark-green vines and sharp little thorns.

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