Page 35 of This Vicious Hunger
I mutter a string of choice expletives, but I don’t move. I watch as the rest of the vine continues to curl, to shrink, to thin and twist in on itself until it slithers, lifeless, off the desk and back into its pot. There it remains sitting atop the soil, stained dark like ink in places and so translucent in others it might as well be made of air. Its leaves and flowers are gone—just like that. It is nothing.
I stare, my mouth agape, my notes scattered across the desk and the floor. The air smells rotten, like matter turned to mulch, like soggy leaves and forgotten compost. The stench assaults mynostrils, lines my throat. I gag once. Then, beneath the badness, all that decay, there is another smell—faintly bitter and floral, like old perfume.
Petaccia’s vine is dead, and somehow, though it must be impossible, I could swear it is entirely my fault.
Chapter Nineteen
Irun straight from the laboratory to the garden. My hands are sticky with the vine’s ashes, my fingertips stained grey. I scrub them against my trousers but only succeed in smearing the ash across my palms, mixing it with my sweat.
Relief floods me as I reach the garden. It is only when I see the way the sun catches on the dull iron, the way the shadows dance against the wall, that I realise: it is day and I have no idea where Olea spends her days, or if she’s anywhere close enough to hear me.
“Olea!” I scream. I don’t care if anybodyelsecan hear me. Let them chalk it up to some kind of female hysteria, or the shriek of long-extinct wolves. I smash my hands against the bars of the gate, feeling the clatter of the metal in my rattling teeth, in my bones. “Olea!”
She is a vision in white, a scarf pulled up over her dark head, the tasselled edging flying behind her as she darts down her well-worn paths. Her hands are filthy, her feet black to the ankles, but with ink or mud I can’t tell.
This is the first time I have ever seen her in daylight, but I can’teven enjoy it. I’m going to be sick and my nose won’t stop running; tears streak my cheeks.
“Olea, let me in, please, please,” I sob.
She throws open the gate and stands on the other side panting. I am breathless, too, but I’ve long stopped noting the feeling as unusual.
“What?” she demands, urgency making her voice high and sharp. “What is it? What happened?”
I fall into the safety of the garden as if its walls are a mother holding out her arms. I inhale deeply, drawing in its familiarly bitter scent. It smells less strongly than it does in the night, and many of the flowers closest to the walls are closed against the glare of the sun. Olea holds her hand up to her eyes, which are narrowed—perhaps sleepily?
“Did I wake you up?” I say, sniffling. I reach up to wipe my nose and then remember the ash on my hands and use my sleeve instead.
“No,” Olea says, but her voice is thick with suspicion. “It’s just… bright. I have to be very careful in the sun. It—hurts.”
We walk together into the shade of the trees just beyond the tower. It is cooler here and I can think much better in the dimness. Olea drapes herself over the low bough of a tree with succulent-looking peach-like fruits and I sink onto the remains of a stone pillar or bench, now just a round, uneven block of pale stone that digs into the soft flesh at the back of my legs through my trousers.
“What happened?” Olea asks again, this time with more gentleness. “I’ve never seen you so distraught. Do you need to… togrieve?” She says the word as though it is secret, leaning closer. Her hair falls over her shoulders, the shawl over it slipping down to rest in the crook of each elbow.
“I…” It occurs to me that this is exactly what I need. I need the cool Silence of my father’s sepulchre on the day before a funeral, the sooty incense to wipe away the memories of the vine’s death, to shear myself and absolve myself of my guilt—
“Thora?” Olea prompts. “You can tell me. Even if it’s a secret.”
“It isn’t a secret.” I wipe my hands once more on the legs of my trousers, feeling the material bunch beneath my fingers and almost missing the freedom of my skirts, to wipe away my sins and hide them amongst their folds. “You know about my work with Dr. Petaccia…?”
Olea stills. Almost as if she’s waiting for me to reprimand her again. We have not talked about why she didn’t tell me of her relationship with the doctor, but I’m not raising it now because I’m angry. I have more important things to worry about.
“You know her science,” I clarify. “The work she’s doing in the lab with the drought and dry-living plants?”
Olea relaxes a little and nods. I pick at my nails awkwardly, still feeling the dusty ash beneath them, wanting nothing more than to boil my skin and get rid of the sensation forever.
“She left something in my care. A plant. She wanted me to take care of it—it’s… it was very tactile and liked to be held.”
Olea’s expression shifts as she realises what I’m getting at. “What happened to it?”
“I don’t know. One minute I was holding it—only exactly like I’ve done before—and the next it was like…” What was it like? “It was like it turned to ash before my very eyes.”
“You burned it?” Olea’s dark eyes widen.
“No! I didn’tdoanything to it at all. It was fine and then all of a sudden it went completely still and began to sort of melt inwards and go all brown and white. And the leaves and buds just fell offand turned to dust. Have you—please tell me you’ve seen something like that happen before?”
Olea’s face has changed, but I can’t read it; I’m not sure whether she’s horrified or intrigued, and I suspect she isn’t sure either. Curiosity wins. She sucks her teeth thoughtfully, and she looks nearly like Petaccia, her brow furrowing as she considers everything.
“All right,” she says slowly. “First off: don’t panic. I’m sure there are a lot of things—okay, not a lot of things, butsomethings that could cause a reaction like that.”
