histoires...

The humidity is hovering around ninety-one per cent. Virginia’s not used to this climate; it’s like the air itself is too heavy and supersaturated to breathe in, to move in, to live in. She feels as though she’s fallen into an alien landscape from one of the episodes of Star Trek she used to watch every day while getting ready for school. There are no aliens here though, only small lizards, odd trees with pink and white blossoms, sticky blue skies.

She can only swoon on the sofa while Edmund, a man conditioned to this climate, cheerfully cleans up the kitchen.

The two friends sit on the wooden floor, soaking up the sunlight in the woman’s tiny uncurtained house. Linden’s reading a volume from her bookshelves with yellowing pages and a torn paper cover. Robbie Ross is making sketches on recycled paper with coloured pencils that are nicer than anything from art class at school.

Celestia watches the two of them, proud as if she was their own mother, not just their babysitter. They’re getting older every day. Linden’s a teenager now, and Robbie Ross is close behind him. Soon they’ll have outgrown this place, she realises, with a touch of sadness.

There’s someone knocking at the door, and Stephen gets up to answer it. He’s not expecting anyone. Most everyone he knows would have called first.

“Oh,” he says, seeing who’s waiting for him on the stoop. “Oh,” which is ridiculous, but what else to say?

“I fucked up,” says Saffi, without any preamble. “I was stupid and I was scared and I fucked up.” He’s pale and plain, looking absurdly vulnerable: no nail polish, no eyeliner, but he’s carrying his guitar.

Stephen just nods. “Yeah. I guess you did.”

A wavery sort of smile from Saffi. “Can I come in, then?”

The kiss is unexpected.

He tastes of saccharine, sickening sweet, and for a moment all Emmeline can think of is a mess of discarded pink packets, slick sticky chemical wrongness.

“I was wrong, you know,” he says conversationally. “At first I thought it was a mistake, that we shouldn’t have done. But then, people think like virgins aren’t even human. I was tired of not being a human. I came to apologise for that, taking your virtue, only the thing of it is, I’m not sorry. But I’m still seeking forgiveness. Forgive me?” His hands shake as he lights another cigarette.

“So,” he says, shattering the silence. “What happens now? What are we now?”

“Now?”

(He nods.)

A shrug. “What were we before? What happens now? We go to this wedding, and then we’ll go home.”

“Back to the way things were before?”

Another nod.

“I…” his voice is shaky, uncertain, “I don’t know if I can do that. Go back to the way things were, as if nothing…as if we hadn’t…I miss you, Marc.”

“I know.”

A moment of bitter laughter. “Is that really all you can say?”

Marc turns sharply away, because all his secrets are apparent in his eyes.

Bean had almost stopped believing in faerie tales.

And then in the butterfly gardens, he stumbles across the most beautiful person he’d ever met - with short green curls, an emerald nose-ring, pinstripe trousers and tall heeled boots. He (or she) has a piece of fruit in one hand, is using the other hand to fiddle with a medallion on a necklace.

“St Bridget,” murmurs Bean.

“Used to be my namesake,” says Bas, in a surprisingly light, feminine voice. “Hello. I’m Basil.”

Bean hesitates, considering Fabien and Fabienne. “Bean,” he compromises, holding out one hand towards Bas.

“Lovely to meet you.”

Calgary’s beautiful in autumn.

Co-eds are playing ultimate Frisbee on the green, and the young professor stops to look at them for a moment before continuing down the sidewalk. It’s funny, familiar yet alien. Linden’s spent all his life in university towns – was the son of a professor, went to university and then graduate school.

He keeps glimpsing people out of the corner of his eye, turning his head to realize they’re never the people he’s expecting – Calliope, Prem, the Geologist.

Linden’s lost count of the number of times he’s regretted taking this job.

Calgary’s beautiful in autumn, but it’s empty.

“I’m sorry, you know? I’m sorry I’m not good enough. I’m sorry I’ve never been good enough. I don’t suppose my father was good enough either. I don’t think anyone could be good enough for you.” His expression is uncertain; his posture indicates that dangerous area somewhere between sad and angry. “The dorms are closed until the holiday is over, but I’m sure Anthony or the Loftings will let me stay with them.” He takes three decisive steps, grabs up the cordless phone and glares at her for another moment before storming out of the room.

(She watches her grandson leave.)

Virginia looks up at the gold-leafed coat of arms shining in the midday sun, then her gaze drops to the Latin inscription beneath it. She wonders what it means.

“Semper eadem. Always constant. Always the same,” says the man standing next to her.

“I’m sorry?”

“You asked what it meant. I’m assuming you meant the Latin? It’s Queen Anne’s royal motto.”

The woman blushes. “I’m sorry…didn’t realize I said it aloud.”

“It’s all right. I always found it ironic. Women are never constant. They’re always changing. It’s in their nature. One of the things I love about women, really.”

She smiles.

Calliope finally finds the courage to visit the gallery.

It’s not difficult to find her portrait. She recognizes herself almost immediately amongst the other pastel watercolor women – the roundness of her shoulders, the far-off look in her eyes. It’s as if her portrait-self is staring through the viewer, but Calliope’s pretty sure she never looked at the artist that way. (She hopes she never looked at the artist that way.)

There is quite a lot of skin, of course, a window out to fields of wheat, and in a forgotten corner of the room that surrounds, a pair of ruby slippers.

“Word on the street is that the creative powers responsible for Cuyahoga and Clownin’ Around are working both to bring their second series to a graceful close and to bring a new offering for fall’s television season. I wonder if the they might be better off quitting while they’re ahead,” Robbie snorts, tosses the paper away with clear disgust.

“Quit while we’re ahead of what?” Cyril wonders archly.

Dio laughs. “I’m more determined than ever to make this work.”

“And you think we aren’t?” says Robbie, a little more harshly than he meant to. (All this togetherness is making him crazy.)

A chance meeting: The older man, at a loss for words, somehow manages to stammer: “What happened to you?”

“Half a decade away from religious instruction?” Christopher quips in a low, soft voice. Taking another drag of his cigarette, he calls attention to the gauze swathing his wrists.

The older man flinches. “The world almost lost you, then?” He reaches out, brushes his fingertips against the bandaging.

“Wouldn’t have been much of a loss.”

MacNeil just stares; there’s very little of the falling angel schoolboy he once knew remaining here, but the pathos is similar and he finds himself (again) enthralled.

The thing of it was, Kal wasn’t planning on any of this.

He’d had a failed experiment with love and romance – married his high-school sweetheart, discovered three years later it didn’t work, got divorced and moved on. He inherited his uncle’s farm and moved out there, where he could be alone with his thoughts, where he could plot out a new life.

And then he meets her, right in the middle of winter, where everything else is dead, but she’s so alive, perfect. He falls in love with her all at once, but doesn’t think he can tell her before spring.

Their whole lives, it’s always been the three of them: Galillee-Dio-Saffi, a trio of siblings – but more than that, they were friends.

Only now, it’s changed.

Dio’s not talking to Saffi, which makes Saffi furious with Dio, and they’re both picking and pulling at Galilee, trying to get her to take a side. And the thing of it is, Galilee believes in justice like most people believe in God, and Galilee can’t decide which side she’d pick, even if she could.

It’s all the fault of one Stephen Weiss, and somehow it’s on his shoulders that Galilee places all the blame.

She spends her unemployment cheques on cheap white wine and vintage lingeré. There’s no point in spending it on designer fashions or anything, because the only time she leaves the house is when she replenishes the wine, or when she wanders through trendy boutiques and buys fair trade merino wool. She knits, and when she’s not knitting, she’s circling her apartment, drinking wine, working on her novel.

It’s almost her twenty-second birthday. She’s been in a decline since the age of nine when her child prodigy years were over, and looking forward brings nothing but years that stretch, pointless, like clutter.

Midnight.

The Kansas highway stretches out in front of her, illuminated in the moonlight, and it seems both the road and the prairies are infinite. She could follow this road west through Belpre and on through Dodge City before heading all the way to Sacramento.

Celestia wants to follow that road until she reaches Californian faerie tale cities, but instead she stoops to touch the small wood cross at the side of the road. “Damn you, Kal,” she whispers, “Damn you for leaving me alone here.”

Not quite alone, someone thinks, and Celestia’s not sure if it’s her or the baby.

Parvati increases her newspapers every year; the money it costs her to get papers mailed from far corners of the country (far corners of the globe, even) is astonishing. Luckily, she’s married a man who makes enough money not to notice exorbitant costs.

It breaks Manini’s heart. Manini notices what’s happening to her daughter. She longs to tell her you don’t have to worry, the futures you see, note, obsess over, are the ones that will never happen, but even if she dared, what are the chances Parvati would listen to her mother?

She hopes the same won’t happen to Jaya.

Another pointless date at the same stupid coffee shop, and Miranda’s trying desperately to feign interest as this one chatters on and on about politics.

She brings all her dates here. Not for a lack of imagination on her part, it’s because this place is safe. The wait-staff seem to like her; moreover, she’d thinks they’d protect her and call 911 if she ever has a lapse of judgment and picks a weapon-wielding homicidal maniac.

It’s another day and another date as Miranda tries desperately to forget the one she just might be in love with.

(So far it hasn’t worked.)

Stephen’s preoccupied with Dio, with sitting there all cuddled up to his girl, in cooing words to her in a secret couple language only the two of them share, in forming an impenetrable bubble of togetherness around the pair of them that shuts the rest of the world out.

And there’s Mallorie, forgotten in a corner of the room, absently flipping through the tv listings, because what else is there to do? She fishes through the pockets of her sweatshirt for her phone, manages to dial half of Honoria’s phone number before realizing what she’s doing and snapping the phone shut.

Perrin hesitates, arms full of marigolds, because there’s a strange man just ahead – stooped, picking dead leaves and the remains of flowers off of the headstone. He watches, silently.

The older man sets his bouquet (rosemary, violets, honeysuckle) reverently down on the grave. His lips flutter in prayer for a moment, and then he stands. Only then does he notice Perrin; he freezes and his eyes widen.

“You must be him,” whispers Bastian. “His son. Frank’s son.”

Perrin nods. “But I’ve no idea who you are,” he admits in a whisper, almost embarrassed to reveal this.

“That’s as it should be.”