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Chapter twenty-six

Fixing It

S omething was broken inside Rai, and he did not know how to fix it.

It was not Poppy’s fault. He knew that. She was everything that was kind, witty and delightful, and she laughed and teased and made love to him with abandon.

He knew she still had pain, that she grieved for her father, her friends, all she had lost at the hands of that fucking pollution , as Rai had taken to calling her former husband in his head.

And he knew, though it irked him to acknowledge it, that she even grieved for her husband—not as he truly was, the deepest of foul betrayers, but as she had believed him to be.

She did not speak of him often, and Rai did not ask about him, but he could see from her occasional wistfulness that there were things she mourned. Things she regretted.

But he understood that, or had come to understand it, much to his chagrin.

He had long known the word regret, of course, but he had not considered it something he himself would ever feel, in his decades of traveling.

He had indeed never regretted anything before.

He had never needed to regret. Yet now, he had found himself ruminating darkly on more than one occasion, pondering the destruction he had left in his wake .

He had reveled when his floods had swept away cars, had smashed them himself with abandon…

but now he wondered how Poppy would feel had it been her car he had smashed, her car she had just spent many dollars to have repaired, and that thought had led to one even more unwelcome, that there might be another human, not Poppy but perhaps like her in some way, who would be ruined by the destruction of their vehicle.

Humans were but as ants, he’d told himself fiercely. But he knew it was a lie. Because Poppy was not an ant to him now. Jen was not an ant. Even Brendan, upon whom he wished to rain hailstorms and tornadoes and the fiercest of tempests, he did not hate as an ant but as a despicable man .

There was Heather, who was kind to Poppy and gave warnings to him.

There was the orange-haired man at the store who now recognized and greeted him each time they visited.

There was the group of men and women who slept outside in the nearby park, under blankets that were surely no protection against the monsoon storms, that always made Poppy’s face grow pensive for long minutes after they had passed.

The round sweet woman Poppy had purchased tamales from in the grocery store parking lot, so like the fae abuelas in the lands to the south, had she only wings.

The tamales had been delicious. That had broken something, too.

He had thought of the houses he had flung trees at or encouraged mudslides upon.

The roads he had gleefully washed out, leaving people stranded.

Even the smaller things. Poppy had been devastated by the loss of a package of toilet paper and a few bags of food.

How many others had lost possessions they could not afford to lose?

How many lives had been devastated by his rains?

How many humans had died at his hand?

It was shameful that he did not even know the answer. And that shame was as fissures in his heart, small at first but worn deeper and wider the more he considered them, eroding his substance bit by bit.

And of course the deepest crack was the one he had caused himself.

When Poppy had last taken her drawings to the café to sell, he had waited for her to depart for the bathroom and immediately gone to Heather with four hundred-dollar bills in his hands.

She’d stared at them for a moment instead of taking them. “You can’t keep doing this,” she’d said at last.

“They are for sale,” he’d said firmly. “And I wish to buy them. I must have them.”

After a moment, she’d sighed and taken the money. “Okay, but… ”

“But?”

“Let them hang on the wall for a week,” Heather had said, her face serious. “Let some other people at least see them. I’ll take your money, and I’ll mark them as sold, but it’s not fair to Poppy to not get to show them off.”

“You are right,” he had said begrudgingly.

Though he truly could not complain, as he could not very well admire his collection of Poppy’s drawings in her presence, and now that she knew the secret of his identity, he was in her presence almost all the time.

He had already put the other drawings he’d purchased in his faerie hoard, that they might be easily accessed if he wished to admire them.

What did it matter that these were here on the wall instead of squirreled away in faerie?

They were his. That was what mattered. “I will encourage her to make more, so that she may replace these in a week’s time. ”

“Are you going to buy those, too?”

“Of course.”

Heather had opened her mouth to say more, but then her eyes had flickered to the side and she’d fallen silent. Rai had turned and seen Poppy returning to their booth.

“I would like another coffee,” he’d said loudly. “And a scone, the flavor Poppy prefers.”

“Let me get your change,” Heather had said politely, taking the four bills from his hand as if he’d handed her a twenty, though she had given him a subtle glower that plainly said Poppy is not going to like this.

He did not care, he told himself. He did not care that day, and he did not care a week later when he collected those drawings, feigned surprise at Poppy’s good news, and accompanied her to deliver more drawings that he then purchased the first instant he could, and he did not care when he’d collected those drawings a week after that. He simply did not care.

Except he did care.

Because it was a lie. A secret. A secret lie of exactly the kind he had promised Poppy he would not speak, a crevasse in his heart, in him, deeper than the deepest ocean trench.

And he knew she would be angry. He knew she would be hurt.

He knew he was being selfish, a feckless puddle, a rock-brained dunce, all the true things Ofelia had ever called him. But he could not help himself.

He coveted every work of Poppy’s magical hands, and he wished Poppy to never worry for money ever again. He wanted to shower her with money so that when he left her, he could rest easy knowing she was safe, free of worry.

That she could live as she was meant to .

But even that was a lie. It was not what he truly wanted most of all. And that thought made his fractured heart shatter even more, at his own selfish desires.

Rai had spoken to Ofelia many times about the end of the monsoon, calling her when he was alone in his hotel room so as not to worry Poppy.

Each time she had said the same thing. And when she answered the phone today, as he was coiled in his motel tub desperately absorbing water after another exhilarating, dangerous flight with Poppy, she did not even bother with a greeting.

“The answer will not change,” she said instead. “It does not matter how many times you ask.”

“I know it will not change,” he grumbled. “I merely wish to ask if you have sensed any changes in the air that might provide clearer guidance.”

“You know better than that,” she chided, though her voice was now kind.

“The weather will do what it will. Humans are fond of dates and deadlines, but that is not what matters to you, is it? If you wait until the last day of September to leave, it will be too late. The storms are already beginning to slow. They will grow fewer and fewer, and then there will be none, not until the rains of winter arrive, and they are weak and thin compared to these. There may be months with no rain at all. You must leave, and soon.”

“The painting is not finished.”

“Then she must paint faster, or you must return for it next year.”

Next year was a thousand years away. “I do not wish to leave Poppy. And I know I am a fool,” he added before she could say it.

Ofelia was silent for a long moment. “Yes,” she said at last. “You are. If you were my child, I’d—”

“But I am not,” Rai said, more weary than annoyed. “Not a child, at least, though I depend on your advice.”

“You ignore my advice,” she said, sounding just as weary as he felt.

“I swear I will leave,” he said. “But I need not leave today. The weather app tells me there are storms to come tomorrow, and the next day.” He did not say that the next four days were less promising. Those forecasts could change. He would will them to change.

“And the weather app is never wrong?” Ofelia asked sardonically.

He gripped the phone more tightly, the glittering stones of his case digging into his skin. “The rains are not over. Not yet.”

“You do not have long. These rains may be the last.”

He knew it .

And he knew the only solution he would accept, the only way to fix what he had broken.

But Ofelia would not like it. So he did not say it now.

“I promise,” he said instead, “that if one day I open the weather app and it says there will be no rain for an entire week, I will prepare to depart that very day.”

Ofelia snorted. “Tell me, do you lie to your flower as poorly as that? I wonder that she ever believed you for a moment.”

“I am not lying,” he said. And he was not. He was merely omitting details. “But I must go. I have promised Poppy and her mother that I would return before the hour of three.”

“Well, then. You must keep your promises.” Her voice darkened. “All of them.”

“I shall,” he said. That might be a lie, or might not. He would have to consider it.

He was still considering it hours later, when he was sitting with Poppy and Jen at their kitchen table following dinner.