Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

Author:Anna-Marie McLemore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

TWENTY-TWO

He left her alone, keeping his distance from the door she shared with Dalia.

He dreamed of the wooden horses, of tiny bursts of fire swallowing them. Wisps of green showed under each small flame. When he looked closer he saw that it was not fire, but red starflowers. They grew between the horse figurines. Petals brushed their painted flanks. The blooms, gold at the center but edged in bright red, looked like a fire’s embers. They were lit wood chips, live and glowing.

He woke up with his hands already throwing the sheet aside. He blinked to clear the salt of his own sweat, dried on his eyelashes.

Floorboards creaked in the hall, the give of old wood under footsteps. Not her. He could almost tell her walk from each of her cousins’. The rhythm of their feet on the worn wood was like their voices, similar but with enough difference between them to tell apart.

He still slept in his pants, an instinct that felt like a habit, though he didn’t know why. Now he pulled on his shirt and opened the door.

Dalia paused, not quite putting her weight down with her next step.

They spoke at the same time, Dalia whispering, “She’s with you, isn’t she?” in the same moment Fel asked, “She’s not with you?”

So Estrella was still out there, hiding under the star-salted sky. She hid from Dalia because of the lies she’d told, and Fel because he had been too stupid and afraid to let her kiss him, and her cousins because she could not lie to them.

All the things he’d imagined as Estrella led him through the dark. The fear of her hands breaking into petals. The worry that her heart might forget it was the thing keeping her alive. All that he could not help imagining, because the older Nomeolvides women would not say what became of girls who ran.

What if, now, the land didn’t know what Estrella was so sure it would? Or worse, what if she was one of the running-away girls, and the gardens could feel it in the distant echo of her steps?

He went for the stairs, and Dalia’s voice brushed his back. “Fel,” she said, as loudly as she could without breaking a whisper. It sounded half like a question, and half like a warning.

“If she comes back, don’t let her leave,” he said over his shoulder.

“You really think she’ll listen to me?” Dalia asked.

Fel turned around. He read in Dalia’s face the way she was unfolding tonight like a crumpled piece of paper, imagining all the awful things Estrella thought.

“She loves you,” Fel said. “No matter how angry she is now, she loves you. You know that.”

Outside the stone house, the air smelled like winter-bare branches, as though the leaves and flowers had all left at once. Fel wondered if Estrella’s path off La Pradera would light up like the trailing glow of stars, so the land could always find her.

But beyond the garden lamps, there was no light. There was no sign or star leading to her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.