Page 30 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Nineteen

I run 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 anybody else can 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’t even 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… to grieve ?” 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’t do anything 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 off and 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, but some things that could cause a reaction like that.”

“Like what?” I throw up my hands uselessly. “Cosmic intervention?”

“Amongst other things.” Olea’s amused smile is almost worth the pain.

It lights up her whole face, her dark lips standing stark.

It is only now that I notice them, how purple-red and plump they are.

I have always assumed they only looked that way in the moonlight, a trick of the shadows, but she is even more beautiful by this hazy light of early evening.

“Other… things?”

“Like acid, I suppose,” Olea continues. If she notices me staring at her lips she doesn’t say anything, but she must be able to see me—I can’t stop myself. “Vinegar maybe? Did you have anything on your hands?”

I think back. I’d eaten lunch not long before, but I doubt the rye bread and soft cheese could have caused such a reaction. I shake my head.

“What about sweat?” Olea tries then. “Perhaps your sweat was salty and when you touched the plant it transferred.”

“Salty enough that the Paruulum virtually caught fire?” I scoff, trying to punctuate my words with a laugh. It comes out as more of a grimace and Olea’s expression flickers in response.

“How about… something from the garden, then?”

“Like what?” I repeat my earlier question. If it was obvious, surely I’d have thought of it by now.

“You’ve not taken anything out of the garden, have you? Any blooms or pollen?”

I recoil at the suggestion. “No! I wouldn’t do that. You said—”

“All right, all right,” Olea soothes. “I was only asking.”

“Wait.” My stomach lurches. “Do you remember… the flower you gave me as a token?”

Olea stills. “You took that with you?”

“I thought—since you gave it to me… I thought that would be okay. I wanted…” I trail off. Would Olea understand if I told her why I took it? “Do you think that could have done this?”

“Did you touch it?” Olea asks. Her expression is a mixture of worry and again that same open curiosity. Her gaze flicks from my face to my hands, then her face melts to a softness I can’t pinpoint.

“No, never,” I swear. “I carried it with my clothes and it’s been on my desk ever since. I haven’t even been back to my rooms since this morning.”

“It’s—it’s okay. It was only an Ophelia. They’re a little troublesome, can cause some nasty stings, but they’re only risky with prolonged contact.” Olea’s shoulders bunch and then relax as she smiles. “I’m surprised you took it, though.”

“How could I not? It was a gift—from you.” I tremble as I say it. It’s the closest I’ve come yet to telling Olea how I feel, and even this is dangerous. What if she doesn’t feel the same way? Worse: What if she tells Petaccia, and she thinks I’m some sort of pervert?

“I…” Olea’s smile falters and then widens—and it’s like the moon between clouds, bright and cool and good. “I’m glad it made you happy.”

I rub my hands over my face, cheeks burning, exhaustion threading through me. “What am I going to do?”

“I would say try not to worry about it. There’s a lot you haven’t told me, and I assume, given—Florencia—there’s a lot you likely don’t know. Maybe it had a life cycle, or maybe it was all part of her thesis.”

“Wouldn’t she have told me, though?”

“Maybe.” Olea shrugs. “Maybe not. She’s… difficult, sometimes. Anyway, there’s no use bolting the door after the horse has left the stable. Isn’t that what they say? You might as well wait for her to return before you panic.”

“I’m already panicking.”

“I know you are. I know.” She smiles. “But all I’m saying is try not to.

And maybe…” She trails off. I wait for her to speak, but it’s a long minute.

I breathe in the greenery around us, feel the blood singing in my ears slowly reduce to a gentle flow.

“Maybe this is a good thing,” she says finally.

“Good?” I can’t help the crack in my voice. “How can this be good? You sound like Petaccia. She’s always on about how science is about learning from mistakes and failures. Does anybody ever stop to consider if we shouldn’t be making these mistakes in the first place?”

Olea doesn’t answer. Instead she begins to pace.

The shadows from the tree branches flicker across her face, one way and then another, and I stare.

Everything seems farther away here. As the moments trickle past, the laboratory seems so hazy and distant I could almost forget about it.

Olea is right: Here in the garden, what does it matter if I fail?

What does it matter about anything at all? Anything except her—

“Come with me,” Olea says suddenly.

“What?” I blink. Olea has pulled the shawl up over her head once more, its fringe framing her face. Her dark lips curl, her cheeks rounded and tinged with faint pink.

“I want to show you something.” She pauses breathlessly, and when I don’t immediately get to my feet she flaps her hands at me. “Come on ,” she insists. “I promise it will help you see that this isn’t the end of the world.”