Page 16 of Aïdes the Unseen
“I know.” His shadow-kissed eyes flicked to the field, where new shoots curled toward light. “That’s why I came.”
He looked back at me then. His expression wasn’t cruel, or claiming, or even particularly bold.
It wascurious.
Had he come to see what grew without him? Did he know how beautiful it was in the first throes of spring?
“You’re different,” he said after a moment.
I shrugged. “I’m always changing. That’s what growing means.” Mother didn’t care for it. More often, she preferred that I endured as she did, ever the same, unyielding to time or experience. That it was not my nature baffled her. Often, it was easier to just pretend.
For her, anyway.
I grew tired of trying to be what I wasn’t.
“I don’t change,” he said. “But I notice more. Since you.”
My breath caught. I didn’t step closer. Not yet. Instead, I let the rain fall between us like a veil. Like a question.
“What do you want, Aïdes?” I asked, more curious at his presence than anything else. Not afraid.
He tilted his head slightly. A raven might have done the same. “To see you. As you are. Not below. Not in memory.Now.”
Something in me wanted to bloom at that. At the same time, something else within me wanted to flee. The competing reactions threatened to strangle me. Instead, I said, “What if my mother returns?”
He stepped forward, just once. The earth stilled beneath him. Not died—stilled. A reverence. “Then she will find me here.” His voice held no fear.
Just acceptance. My mother didn’t frighten him. Nor make him wary. So many avoided her wrath, for her temper was legendary. I was one of them. Aïdes, though? He just waited for me, utterly serene. Pleasure sparked inside of me. The rain fell heavier, more like a shield around us now, rather than a barrier between.
Still, I stayed.
Why? While I didn’t need a reason beyond, I wanted to stay, I recognized it was so much more. I had planted my seeds, the underworld had come to watch them grow. At my continued silence, he took a step forward and I met him halfway. The rain didn’t stop, but cloaked us as though it wanted to walk with us. Without a word, I turned and began to walk. Not away, not ahead, butwithhim.
We moved through the wet fields in silence, our footsteps light against the softening earth. The new shoots didn’t recoil at his nearness, just bowed slightly, as if they knew he was not their end, only their witness.
I led him first to the grove where the almond trees had begun to flower again. They were always first, their hurry much like my own. Their petals clung like blush to the branches, so delicate they looked like breath.
“This is where I first learned joy,” I said softly. “Not because of the trees. Though, they are truly lovely. No, I learned joy because I once saw a fawn take its first steps here.”
He glanced at me, then back to the trees. “Did it stay?”
“No. It ran. Not because it was afraid, but because it could run.” Stumbling feet, gangly legs, and a nose that quivered, yet there was something inescapably beautiful in the way it threw itself at whatever came next.
He nodded, as though he understood.
Next, the orchard. The bees were still quiet this early in the season and the rain would keep them dormant for a bit, but the blossoms were beginning, pale pink and white, soft as sighs.
“They say spring smells sweet,” I said. “But it’s not sweetness, really. It’s hunger. The hunger of things just beginning. The world stretching back toward life.”
He paused near one of the trees, laying a hand,carefully, I’d say almost reluctantly, against the bark. “It welcomes you.”
“It’s mine,” I said. “I don’t rule it. Iamit.”
The wind shifted, carrying the faint scent of hyacinth from farther down the path.
“Do you miss it?” I asked.
“Miss what?”
