Lips Touch: Three Times(22)
Author: Laini Taylor

During Anamique’s tenure in Hell, he ground his teeth down to stubs in his frustration, but he still appeared each morning like clockwork at the little table, carrying a fresh pot of tea and a flask of tonic. He still dreamed up curses to inflict upon humanity, but they fluttered right out of his mind the moment Anamique released her voice from its cage. Though she herself had always thought of it as a songbird, to Vasudev it was a bird of prey, devouring his will, and the worst of it was the knowledge that he himself had dreamed up its awful power.

Yama often hovered near to hear Anamique sing, and she brought down new songs for as long as she lived. For decades this particular byway of Hell rang with music, and in that time many children lived, their souls returned gladly in trade for those of ruthless men and joyless, grasping women, slave traffickers and opium dealers, sepoy traitors and brutal tribesmen, corrupt nawabs and great white hunters, and every other species of villain that made its way onto Pranjivan’s list.

The wicked in this part of the world endured rueful decades of early death, and the Fire burned hot and bright and remade them all, and they were all in their turn born back into the world as carp and macaques and salamanders and mosquitoes with no recollection of their human lives or the Fire that followed, but only faint memories of music, like wisps of a dream, from their last glimmering moments in Hell.

[ILLUSTRATION: A bird flying out of his cage.]

[ILLUSTRATION: a woman holding a baby.]

HATCHLING

[ILLUSTRATION: A woman standing on a rock.]

[ILLUSTRATION: A woman in the bird cage.]

[ILLUSTRATION: A tree trunk.]

[ILLUSTRATION: A woman and a girl.]

[ILLUSTRATION: A woman and goats.]

[ILLUSTRATION: Woman drawing on anther

[ILLUSTRATION: A woman with drawings on her.]

[ILLUSTRATION: The woman with drawings on her and other woman.]

[ILLUSTRATION: Men and Woman.]

HATCHLING

Six days before Esme’s fourteenth birthday, her left eye turned from brown to blue. It happened in the night. She went to sleep with brown eyes, and when she woke at dawn to the howling of wolves, her left eye was blue. She had just slipped out of bed when she noticed it. She was headed to the window to look for the wolves — wolves in London, of all impossible things! But she didn’t make it to the window. Her eye flashed at her in the mirror, pale as the wink of a ghost, and she forgot all about the wolves and just stared at herself.

It was no trick of the light. Her eye was an eerie white-blue, the color of ancient ice in a place that never thaws, and as startling as it was, there was something profoundly familiar about it too. Esme’s blood quickened as a shock of memories pulsed through her: a world of snow and spires; a milky mirror framed in jewels; the touch of warm lips on hers.

Esme swayed on her feet. These weren’t her memories. This wasn’t her eye. She clamped a hand over it and ran to wake her mother.

One Blue Eye

Esme climbed up onto her mother’s high bed and perched beside her on her knees. Mab’s hair was woven into a single long braid and coiled around her neck like a pet serpent, and she was asleep, her white eyelids fluttering in some deep dream. Esme reached for her shoulder but hesitated. She hated to wake her mother if she wasn’t having one of her nightmares — Mab was plagued by nightmares and found little enough rest in sleep. So many nights, so many mornings, she woke screaming and Esme soothed her as if she were the mother and Mab the child.

Indeed, now that Esme was nearly grown, it was hard to tell them apart at a glance. They were so alike, and Mab was so young. They were both small and beautiful with long, long hair as red as persimmons. They laughed alike and moved alike, and they thought the same thoughts as completely as if a butterfly traveled back and forth between their minds, bearing ideas on its legs like pollen. But they didn’t share nightmares. Esme didn’t know what her mother dreamed about. Mab would never tell, just as she would never talk about her life before Esme was born.

She said only that she was an orphan. Esme didn’t even know what language her mother had spoken before, just that she had learned English when Esme was a baby. Mab’s accent was like spice, and out at the shops and the theaters, whenever she had to speak to men, they seemed to Esme to want to taste the words right off her mother’s lips. The way they looked at her! But the way Mab looked back could freeze the saliva in their mouths. There was no room in her life for men, or for anyone but Esme. It was just the two of them. It always had been.

Softly Esme touched her mother’s shoulder and whispered, "Mama …"

Mab woke with a gasp and came upright, wild-eyed, in an instant.

"It’s just me," said Esme gently.

"Esme," said Mab, collapsing back into her pillows. "I … I was dreaming."

"I know, Mama."

"Is it late? Have I slept late?"

"No, it’s only dawn."

"Oh. What is it, darling?" Mab murmured. "Is something the matter?"

In a small voice, Esme said, "It’s my eye, Mama. Something’s the matter with my eye."

Mab drew herself up on one elbow and turned Esme toward the window to see her better. She was smiling sleepily and her fingers were gentle on Esme’s cheek, but when the dull light glittered over the blue of her daughter’s eye, she recoiled in horror and let out a strangled cry. "Ayaozhdya!" The word flew from her lips and her lovely face twisted into a snarl.

Esme reeled back, shocked. She tumbled off the high bed and plunged down to the floor, landing hard on her elbow. Mab leapt down beside her and Esme felt the sting of her mother’s braid as it snapped at her cheek like a whip. "Mama!" she cried, flinching away.

Her mother caught her by the shoulders, her nails cutting into Esme’s skin like talons. White-faced and ferocious, she stared into Esme’s blue eye and hissed in a jagged language that seemed made for cursing. "Druj dregvantem! Tbaeshavant en uthem nil" She spat the words out like poison and Esme could only wilt in her grasp, stunned to see her mother so transformed.

"What’s wrong?" she gasped.

"Druj ayaozhdya! ”Mab cried. Esme tried to turn her head aside but her mother grabbed her chin and held her fast. Her face was so close to Esme’s face. Her own brown eyes appeared entirely black from her enlarged pupils as she stared into Esme’s blue eye and, with a guttural sob, broke into English. "Beast bastards! Get out of her!"

Esme began to sob too. She pleaded, "Mama! Wake up, please!" thinking her mother must still be mired in her nightmares. "It’s me!" She said it again and again. "It’s me. It’s me!"

Mab blinked. She stared at Esme. She was still wild-eyed but the savagery slowly left her face and her fingers loosened on Esme’s shoulder and chin. Her chest heaving, she whispered thickly, "Esme? Is it really only you? Are you certain?"