All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders Page 0,69
hell,” Patricia said before Ernesto could greet her. “When were you going to tell me about this plan to send me to Portland?” She almost knocked over the bookcase of Ideas Too Good To Be True.
“Please sit.” Ernesto gestured at a clamshell armchair. Patricia tried to rebel for a moment, then gave up and sat. “We do not wish to send you away, but we have spoken about it. You make it difficult for us to watch over you. People want to care about you, and you will not let them.”
“I’ve been trying.” She shuffled in her chair. This was the worst day. “I’ve tried and tried. Everybody gives me grief about Aggrandizement, but I’ve tried so hard. I’ve been so careful.”
“You are hearing the wrong thing,” Ernesto rose and stood close to her, so she could feel his unnatural warmth. “People warn you about Aggrandizement, and you keep hearing the opposite of what they are saying.”
Nobody knew why Ernesto was the way he was, but there were rumors. Like he’d cast a huge spell that had backfired. Or there’d been an endangered species, a rhino or something, and all the surviving animals had poured their life essence into one massive creature, which swelled with the lost potential of future generations. Maybe this towering gestalt stomped across the countryside, and everything it touched rotted. Blood bubbled from its eyes, ears, and stumpy toes, and it gave off an overripe stench. The creature, the story went, threatened a town full of innocent people until Ernesto took on its burden of excess life. Ernesto was so old, he’d gone to school back when Eltisley Academy and The Maze were still two separate schools.
“Everybody thinks Siberia was my fault,” Patricia said. “Because I was too proud or whatever. Too reckless.” In her mind, Patricia saw before-and-after images of Toby, first alive then dead, like a GIF from Hell. “They think I’m still too arrogant now. I’m just trying to help.”
“Listen harder,” Ernesto said. Most of the time, the thick eyeliner made his eyes appear lively, unfocused. But now, he seemed to see into the grungiest corners of Patricia’s psyche.
Ernesto went back to his chaise, and Patricia was left trying to figure this out. It was one of those annoying tests: both a dirty trick and a healing exercise. She was pretty sure she’d been listening just fine. She was ready to throw foodstuffs again.
“Fine,” Patricia said after she decided she wasn’t going to crack this tonight. “I will listen harder. And I will try to be less self-absorbed, and more humble. I will let people in, if anybody even wants to be my friend after tonight.”
“I spent thirty bitter years trying to find a way to leave this place,” Ernesto said so quietly, she had to lean perilously close. He gestured at the room full of books, with his eyes. “Until at last, I accepted that this imprisonment was a price that I had chosen to pay. Now, I enjoy my situation as much as I can. But you have not yet begun to experience the pain of being a witch. The mistakes. All the regrets. The only thing that will make such power bearable is to remember how small you are.”
He went back to William Blake, and Patricia couldn’t tell if this meant their conversation was over.
“So does this mean I’m not going to Portland?”
“Listen harder,” was all Ernesto said from behind the book. “We do not want to send you away. Do not make us.”
“Okay.” Patricia still felt raw and desperate inside. She realized she ought to leave before Ernesto offered to make her a cocktail next door, because she did not want to get falling-upwards drunk right now.
As soon as she got out of Danger, she saw her phone was full of texts and voicemails. She called Kevin, who was worried, and she was like, “I’m fine, except I need a drink.”
Half an hour later, she leaned on Kevin’s crushed-velvet frock coat and pounded a Corona in the swampy back room of the art bar on 16th, with fresh graffiti on the wall and a DJ spinning classic hip-hop. Kevin was drinking Pimm’s with a fat cucumber slice and not asking her what that scene at dinner had been about. He looked amazing in the bar’s golden light, sideburns setting off the smooth planes of his face.
“I’m fine,” Patricia kept saying. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m fine. I sorted it out.”