Page 58 of This Vicious Hunger
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Iwatch Olea sleep. It is not a peaceful sleep, not smooth skin and gently fluttering eyelashes like in the old ballads. No, Olea’s is the sleep of the damned. She tosses and turns, waking in agony and then crashing back into the land of nightmares once more. When she wakes properly next, I’m not even sure she will remember our last conversation—but it is not one I will ever be able to forget.
Olea killed Leonardo’s wife.
She might not have meant to, but she did. I do not know what to do with this information. Should I go to him right now? Should I tell him what I know? Is it what he already suspects? Isthatthe true reason behind his warnings? I don’t have the words for how I would explain it if not. The garden, the poison, the danger in the girl’s touch, it all sounds like some kind of tale of terrors. I can’t work out if he shouldeverknow the truth if he doesn’t suspect already. What good would it do? And more: What harm?
Clara meant something to Olea, that much is clear. Did they have the same something between them as Olea and I? This is a thought that makes me sick, a roiling squirmy jealousy. And howwould I tell Leo that his wife was…withanother woman? One she could not even touch. How would this have hurt him, when it’s so clear he was committed to Clara despite his own confused feelings? He loved her—maybe not in the way a husband loves a wife, but in the way that matters.
I think of Aurelio’s face in the library the last time we spoke before he died. The anger, the barely disguised disgust. I’m not sure if Leo understands how he feels even now. What if I tell him outright, and that’s the way he looks at me, with that same disgust? Is it better than the not knowing? I curl inwards, pulling my knees to my chest, feeling the scab stretch on the back of my leg and the skin of my arm stinging like a healing burn.
I sit on the chair by Olea’s bedside, too frightened to leave but too frozen to do much more than watch as she writhes in this torture of her own making. There are many more questions and I turn them over and over in my mind. Olea was born this way, so what caused her affinity for the garden? Is it simply because they have grown together that they are now tied so closely? Perhaps without the plants and the isolation she would have weakened and succumbed to the toxins in her blood as a youngster. Perhaps, then, Petaccia’s insistence on her lonely existence is half the reason she is even alive now.
I wonder if she will die. She looks very much like she might. Her skin is paler, if possible, except for her cheeks, which blaze pinkish red. Her eyes are sunken, her breathing laboured.Oleawantsto die, I think.That’s why she was asking about grief. Why she talked about ending it all.Maybe that was always her intent in coming here with me. I allow myself a few tears, but still I remain and watch. What would happen if she were to die? Would Petaccia’s research halt?
How would I feel?
Night comes and I finally move from my vigil by Olea’s bedside to open the shutters in both the bedroom and the study. I gaze down across the garden, breathing the cooler air. Then I notice the difference. Where before the garden was wild but artfully cultivated, now it appears in the shadows like a jungle untamed. The weeds have grown leggy, taking over everything in their path; the black flowers I have often admired are wilting, their blooms drooping, petals scattered like wedding favours.
This, more than anything else, is what decides it for me.
“Olea,” I say.
She peels her eyes open blearily, coughing. It is a wet, rattling sound.
“Can you walk?”
She murmurs something unintelligible but does her best to prop herself up on her elbows. Pain lances across her face. I feel a twinge of guilt but I double down, helping her sit upright and then beginning to dress her. I breathe through my mouth, avoiding the bitter garden scent the best I can; still, being this close to her makes me dizzy.
“Leave me alone,” Olea mumbles. She tries to fight me off but there’s no malice in it, and it is only moments before she relents and allows me to dress her like a child. “Let me die. Please, Thora.”
“No,” I say firmly. “I’m taking you back to the garden.”
It costs us the better part of the night. The sun is beginning its pearly ascent by the time we reach the garden gate. Olea is near crawling, though I do my best to carry her weight where I can. She hasn’t stopped crying since we left my rooms, though whether sheis mourning for the future neither of us will have or because she knows I will not let her suffering end, I’m not sure.
She doesn’t speak at all, the walk too tiring and taking all her energy. It takes all of mine too. Every second I’m this close to Olea I can feel my body’s resistance weakening. Already I am hungry, so hungry I could eat three meals in one and still need more. And the sickness, oh, that intense, ravenous sickness. I want to tear with my teeth, bread or cheese or great bloody steaks—anything that might fill me up.
I won’t let it stop us. The alternative is Olea’s death—and, no matter what she has done, I simply can’t let her die. I can’t allowmyinaction to be the reason for her death. She has lied to me from the moment we met, about her health and the garden andClara, and still… Still I feel the thunder of my heart when she is near and I want nothing more than to wrap her in blankets, put her into the safety of her bed, kiss her and soothe her andsave her.
And, whispers part of me.Perhaps she does not deserve death.The mercy of it, the finality. She is as much involved in all this as Petaccia is, as I now am. This experiment has become a monstrous thing, if it wasn’t one from the start. We all have to play our role.
We reach Olea’s tower as the sun crests the treetops. The garden is a mess. It has been barely a week and so much of Olea’s hard work has been undone. The philodendron are ragged and weak; the coyotillo next to them are bulging with black fruits. I fight the urge to grab handfuls as we pass and smash them into my mouth, knowing what will happen if I do but longing for the taste anyway.
“In here?” I ask urgently, pushing at the door of the tower. I have never paid attention before, but it is old and wooden, though it doesn’t creak as I push it open. Together we stumble across thethreshold, past a stairwell that goes down into the basement and into a room that is filled withthings. Books and pamphlets, figurines of ballerinas and mythical beasts made from pottery and plaster, and tapestries of scenes from the ballads—I instantly recognise Pollenides and Marta, the wounded couple in golden armour dragging each other off their battlefield at Clyde, the great dragon slain and bloody swords at their feet.
Olea is barely conscious. There is a work desk on the far side of this room, and a chaise by the window. I half carry her to it, letting her body fall unceremoniously, then I light a candle and slam the shutters tight, drawing the room in pure darkness. Olea lets out a sigh that might be relief, or perhaps simply more pain, her head lolling.
I carry the candle around the room, dancing between shadows, studying the collection of trinkets and tapestries. This is a life’s work. The art is accomplished but a little messy—self-taught, no doubt. The tapestries range in size, but I notice one thing immediately: the smaller ones are all of plants. I spotAtropa belladonna, nightshade, with its black berries and purplish tubular flowers, and the clusters of starry flowers of the death camas—I don’t recall their true name. There is a piece about the size of my torso featuring the stinging tree,Dendrocnide moroides, its large leaves and reddish berries drawn in the muted shades of moonlight. All the plants she has captured, every one, are caught in these same muted shades, silvers and greys, seen through the eyes of a woman who has barely seen them by light.
The larger tapestries are all from poems, ballads, old plays by the ancients. These stories Olea has cast in grand swathes of colour, reds and golds, orange and chartreuse, every scene highlighted in the unrelenting brightness of a midday sun. The effect isgaudy, near offensive, the whole tower room a rainbow cacophony thanks to its walls.
It hits me, all at once. The reality of Olea’s existence.
I turn and stare at her, watching the steadying rise and fall of her chest, the sweat drying on her brow. This is a cage. Aprison. She truly is just another one of Petaccia’s little pets, waiting for her antidotes, for her chance at a free life. This is what it felt like when I was in Aurelio’s home, the walls adorned with high-class art, statues, and scent diffusers. Gold-leaf everything. A library, an army of cooks and maids and valets. More human comforts than I had ever known. And yet…
Olea opens her eyes, sees me in her tower room, and her expression is one of open love. She throws her arm towards me, half beckoning, half begging. She pats the chaise, then her knee.
“Stay,” she whispers. “Will you stay with me?”
