Paper Confines

xxvii. The House That Holds Every Part of You

PAPER CONFINES.
27. / The House That Holds
Every Part of You

✶

       It might have been August, humid and aching, with sunshine wasted on a world made up of two people who didn't care to spend any time in it.

Amoret was positive at this point that she'd read every single book in Tom's library, and a few of them twice. There wasn't anything worthwhile: advanced Potions theoretics, mythological histories of the Deathly Hallows and their supposed keepers, renditions of the Bible with cursive addendums.

Their lessons had halted for a few weeks after the day in the meadow, and routine had dissipated even they resumed. There was no schedule to it anymore. They taught each other only at the impromptu behest of the other, and never in any particular order—mostly Amoret taught Tom, and only occasionally asked for his teachings in return. He'd come to her on dark, hot mornings, and she'd come to him on afternoons when the castle felt too big and beautiful to be in alone.

Amoret had nothing anymore but useless books and the plague of Tom's absence, which might have been worse than the plague of him.

She'd see him by the lake and the big oak tree, close her eyes and part through his mind until she hit a wall. She'd twist beyond it, serpentine, and he would catch her each time. Coil around her and constrict, and she'd pull back like a knife thrust into an animal that could not bleed.

Amoret knew dragons had inviolable scales. She wondered if certain snakes did too.

Tom's lessons were different than they were before. Tinged in terrifying softness. He would find her before sunrise with flowers, while she was jackknifed over one of his books reading about nothing and feeling everything, and somehow then she'd feel even more. He would break the stems, hold them, piece them together until he couldn't anymore, and when they fell first by the petals he'd pick up another and try again.

He'd leave with petals in a halo around her desk, and by the next morning they'd trickle away into specks of light.

It would begin again. Tom was getting desperate.

"You're not sleeping."

He had pushed his chair out and placed it closer to hers. His gaze was appraising.

Amoret was, in fact, sleeping. She slept nowadays more than she read—probably more than she did anything else. The trouble was that it never made her feel rested.

"What do you care?"

Amoret laid the array of flowers on the desk. (Primrose, snowdrop, wood anemone.)

Tom didn't answer.

"Start wherever you want," she said, crossing her legs and leaning back.

"Have you seen the light?"

"Excuse me?"

"The light past the Forbidden Forest."

"Oh." She laughed weakly. "I thought you were—never mind, no, I haven't been in a while. Start with the primrose."

"You thought what?"

"I thought you were going on about religion again; 'Have you seen the light?'"

The corner of his lip twitched. He took the primrose. "I'm not so devout, Amoret. I enjoy the fiction."

"Sacrilege."

"That should be the least of my concerns if any of it is true."

"Oh, yes, you're damned to hell no matter what."