The Tearsmith: A Novel

Dressed in sorrow, she was still the most

beautiful and radiant thing in all the world.

‘They want to adopt you.’

These were words I never thought I would hear.

I wanted it so much, had wanted it ever since I was a little girl, so for a moment I thought I must have fallen asleep and be dreaming. Again.

But this wasn’t the voice from my dreams.

It was the gruff bark of Mrs Fridge, her voice infused with the usual contempt.

‘Me?’ I gasped incredulously.

She sneered at me with a curled upper lip.

‘You.’

‘You’re sure?’

She gripped her pen with her pudgy fingers, and I flinched under her glare.

‘Have you gone deaf?’ she snapped. ‘Did all that fresh air block your ears?’

I hurried to shake my head, my eyes wide in disbelief.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

No one wanted teenagers. No one wanted older children, never, not under any circumstances…It was a proven fact. It was like in the dog shelter – everyone wanted a puppy, because they were cute, innocent, and easy to train. No one wanted a dog that had been there its whole life.

This had been a difficult truth for me to accept, having grown up under that roof.

When you were little, they would at least look at you. But gradually, as you grew up, those looks would become fleeting glances, and their pity would carve you into those four walls forever.

But now…now…

‘Mrs Milligan wants to have a little chat. She’s downstairs waiting for you. Show her round the institute and try not to ruin everything. Keep your head out of the clouds and with a bit of luck you’ll be out of here.’

—

My head was spinning.

The skirt of my good dress fluttered against my knees as I climbed down the stairs, and again, I wondered if this was just another of my daydreams.

Surely, it was a dream. At the bottom of the stairs, I was greeted by the kind face of a mature woman, clutching an overcoat in her arms.

‘Hi,’ she smiled, and I noticed that she was looking me directly in the eyes. That hadn’t happened in a very long time.

‘Hello…’ I exhaled.

She told me that she’d noticed me in the garden earlier, as she was coming in through the institute’s wrought-iron gates. She had seen me in the long grass, lit by the shafts of sunlight filtering through the tree leaves.

‘I’m Anna,’ she introduced herself as we started to walk.

Her voice was velvety, mellowed by age. I gazed at her, enraptured, wondering if it was possible to be electrocuted by sound, or to be so enamoured by something you’d only just heard.

‘What about you? What’s your name?’

‘Nica,’ I answered, trying to contain my emotion. ‘My name is Nica.’

She looked at me curiously, and I was so keen to hold her gaze that I didn’t even look where I was stepping.

‘That’s a very unusual name. I’ve never heard it before.’

‘Yes…’ My gaze became evasive and shy. ‘My parents named me. They…well, they were both biologists. Nica is a type of butterfly.’

I remembered very little of my mom and dad, and what I could remember was hazy, as if I was looking at them through a dirty window. If I closed my eyes and sat silently, I could just about make out their faces looking down at me.

I was five years old when they died.

Their tenderness was one of the few things that I could remember – and what I most sorely missed.

‘It’s a really lovely name, “Nica”…’ Her lips rolled around my name as if she wanted to taste how it sounded. ‘Nica,’ she repeated decisively, with a graceful nod.

She looked into my face, and it felt like a warm light was beaming down on me. It seemed as if my skin was glowing under her gaze, as if a single glance from her could make me shine. This was a big deal for me.

Slowly, we wandered around the grounds of the institute. She asked me if I’d been there long, and I replied that I’d basically grown up there. The sun was bright as we strolled past the climbing ivy.

‘What were you doing before…when I saw you over there?’ she asked during a lull in the conversation, pointing towards the shoots of wild heather in a distant corner of the grounds.

I quickly turned to look where she was pointing, and without knowing why, I felt the urge to hide my hands.

Keep your head out of the clouds. Mrs Fridge’s warning flashed through my mind.

‘I like being outside,’ I said slowly. ‘I like…the creatures living here.’

‘Are there animals here?’ she asked, a little naïvely, but I knew I hadn’t explained myself very clearly.

‘Little ones, yes…’ I replied vaguely, taking care not to step on a cricket. ‘Often, we don’t even see them…’

I blushed a little as we caught each other’s eyes, but she didn’t ask me any more questions. Instead, we shared a gentle silence, listening to the jays chirping and children whispering as they spied on us through the windows.

She told me that her husband would arrive at any moment. To get to know me, she implied, and my heart felt so light I felt like I could fly. As we went back inside, I wondered if I could pour those feelings into a bottle and keep them forever. Hide them under my pillow and bring them out to watch them shine like a pearl in the darkness of the night.

I hadn’t felt so happy in a long time.

‘Jin, Ross, no running,’ I said good-naturedly as two children rushed past, jostling my dress. They snickered and ran up the creaky stairs.

I turned to look at Mrs Milligan and realised that she had been watching me. She was gazing deep into my eyes with a touch of something that seemed almost like…admiration.

‘You’ve got really beautiful eyes, Nica,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Do you know that?’

Embarrassment gnawed at me. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Everyone must tell you that all the time,’ she prompted tactfully. But the truth was that no, no one at The Grave had ever told me anything of the sort.

The younger children would sometimes innocently ask me if I saw colours like everyone else did. They said my eyes were ‘the colour of a crying sky’ because they were a strikingly light, speckled grey. I knew that many people thought they were unusual, but no one had ever told me they were beautiful.

At the compliment, my hands began to tremble.

‘I…no…but thank you,’ I stammered awkwardly, making her smile. I discreetly pinched the back of my hand and felt the slight pain with an infinite joy.

It was real. It was all real.

That woman was really there.

A family, for me…A new life, away from all of this, away from The Grave…

I had thought that I would be trapped inside those walls for much longer. For another two years, until I turned nineteen – that’s when you legally become an adult in Alabama.

But now, perhaps I wouldn’t have to wait to come of age. I had given up praying that somebody would come and take me away, but now…perhaps…

‘What’s that?’ Mrs Milligan asked suddenly.

She was looking around, captivated.

Then I heard it too. A beautiful melody. Deep, harmonious music was reverberating through the cracks and flaking plaster of the institute’s walls.

An angelic sound floated through The Grave, as bewitching as a siren’s call. I felt my skin crawl.

Mrs Milligan wandered towards the sound, entranced. There was nothing for me to do but follow her. She reached the arched doorway into the living room and came to a stop.

She stood, bewitched, staring at the source of this invisible wonder. The upright piano was old, clunky and a bit out of tune, but despite all of that, it still sang sweetly.

And, of course, those hands…those pale hands and those sculpted wrists, flying fluidly over the keys.

‘Who is he…?’ Mrs Milligan breathed after a moment. ‘Who is that boy?’

I clenched the skirt of my dress in my fists. I hesitated, and at the other end of the room, the boy paused.

His hands came to a gradual stop. His squared shoulders were a stark silhouette against the wall.

Then, gradually, as if he had been expecting it, as if he already knew, he turned around.

His hair was a dark halo, as black as a crow’s wings. His face was pale, with a sharp jawline and two narrow eyes that were darker than coal.

There it was, that fatal charm. The seductive beauty of his pale lips and finely chiselled features made Mrs Milligan fall silent at my side.

He looked over his shoulder at us and his hair flopped over his lowered, shining eyes and high cheekbones. Trembling, I was certain I saw him smile.

‘That’s Rigel.’

—

I had always wanted a family, more than anything else in the world.

I had prayed that there was someone out there for me, ready to come and take me away with them, to give me the chances that I had never had.

It was too good to be true.

If I stopped to think about it, I still couldn’t believe it. Or maybe…I didn’t want to believe it.

‘Is everything all right?’ Mrs Milligan asked me.

She was sitting next to me in the back seat.

‘Yes…’ I made myself say, forcing a smile. ‘Everything’s…great.’

I clenched my fists in my lap, but she didn’t notice. She turned back around to look out the window, and every now and then would point out a feature in the landscape rushing past.

But I was hardly listening to her.

Slowly, I turned to look at the reflection in the mirror in front of us. In the passenger seat next to Mr Milligan there was a shock of black hair brushing against the headrest.

He was staring indifferently out the window, his elbow propped against the car door and his head leaning on his fist.

‘That’s the river down there,’ Mrs Milligan said, but his dark eyes did not look at where she was pointing. Through his black eyelashes, he blandly observed the landscape.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, his eyes suddenly met mine in the mirror.

His gaze was piercing, and I quickly looked away.

I refocused on what Anna was saying, blinking, nodding and smiling, but I felt his eyes burning into me, holding me captive.

After a couple of hours, the car slowed down and we pulled into a leafy neighbourhood.

The Milligans lived in a small brick house, identical to the others on the street. It had a white picket fence, a mailbox, and an ornamental windmill amongst the gardenias.

I glimpsed an apricot tree in the back garden and strained my neck to get a look at it, genuinely curious about that little patch of green.

‘Is it heavy?’ Mr Milligan asked, as I picked up the cardboard box containing my few belongings. ‘Do you need a hand?’

I shook my head, touched by his kindness, and he led us inside.

‘Come on, this way. Oh, the path is a little worse for wear…watch out for that slab, it sticks up a bit. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?’

‘Let them get settled in first,’ said Anna softly, and he pushed his glasses up his nose.

‘Oh, yes, of course…You must be tired, right? Come.’

He opened the front door. I saw ‘Home’ written on a doormat on the threshold and felt my heart racing.

Anna tilted her head. ‘Come in, Nica.’

I took a step forward and found myself in a narrow entrance hall.

The smell was the first thing that struck me.

It didn’t smell like the mouldy walls or damp ceilings of The Grave.

It was an unusual smell, deep, almost…intimate. There was something special about it. I realised suddenly that it was Anna’s smell.

I looked around with shining eyes. The wallpaper was a bit shabby in places. There were a few picture frames dotted about on the walls, and a doily on the table, next to the key bowl. It all felt so lived-in and personal that I was frozen in the doorway, unable to move a muscle.

‘It’s quite small,’ Mr Milligan said, scratching his head in embarrassment, but I didn’t even register his words.

God, it was…perfect.

‘Your bedrooms are upstairs.’ Anna started climbing the narrow staircase, and I took the opportunity to steal a furtive look at Rigel.

He was holding his box under one arm and looking around with lowered eyes. His gaze swept swiftly from side to side. His expression gave nothing away.

‘Klaus?’ Mr Milligan called, looking for someone. ‘Where’s he got to…’ I heard him bustling away as we headed upstairs.

We each settled into our own rooms.

‘This used to be another little living room,’ Anna told me, opening the door to my new bedroom. ‘Then it became the guest bedroom. You know, if we had a visit from a friend of…’ she hesitated, freezing for a moment. Then she blinked and forced a smile. ‘It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it’s yours now. Do you like it? If there’s something you’d like to change, or move, I don’t know…’

‘No,’ I whispered, standing in the doorway of a room that, finally, I could call all mine.

No more shared bedrooms, or roller blinds that let the morning sun through. No more freezing, dusty floors, or dreary, mouse-grey walls.

It was a lovely room, with wooden floorboards and a long, wrought-iron mirror in the far corner. There was a breeze coming in through the open window, softly fluttering the linen curtains, and the clean bedsheets gleamed white in contrast to the warm, vermillion bedcover. I found my fingers brushing the snow-white corner of the sheets as I approached the bed with my cardboard box still under my arm. I checked that Mrs Milligan had gone, then hurried to bend over and smell them. The fragrance of fresh laundry flooded my nostrils and I closed my eyes, taking deep, inebriating breaths of it.

It smelt so good…

I looked around, unable to believe that all this space was just for me. I put the box on the nightstand, opened it and reached inside. I took out my little caterpillar plushie and placed him on the middle of the pillow. He was a bit grey and tattered, the only memento I still had of Mom and Dad.

I looked at the pillow with shining eyes.

Mine…

I took my time sorting out my few belongings. One by one, I hung up my shirts, my lumpy sweater and my pants. I checked all my socks and shoved the ones with more holes to the back of the drawer, hoping they’d go unnoticed back there.

Before I headed back downstairs, I took a final look at my room from the doorway and wondered with anticipation if the smell of it would soon start clinging to me, too.

—

‘You’re sure you don’t want anything to eat?’ Anna asked later, looking at us with concern. ‘Not even a quick bite…?’

I declined, thanking her. We had stopped for fast food on the way, and I still felt full.

She seemed uncertain. She gazed at me for a moment, then looked over my shoulder.

‘What about you, Rigel?’ She hesitated. ‘Am I pronouncing it right? Rigel?’ she repeated, pronouncing it as it was written.

He nodded and, as I had, declined.

‘Okay…’ she gave in. ‘There are cookies, and the milk’s in the fridge. Anyway, if you want to go and get some rest…Oh! Our bedroom’s the one at the end of the hallway, if you need anything, anything at all.’

She was worrying.

She was worrying, I realised, with a light fluttering in my chest. She was worrying about me, if I’d eaten, if I hadn’t eaten, if I needed anything…

She really cared, and not just about passing inspections like Mrs Fridge had, on the occasions when Child Protection came to tick off that we were all clean and had full stomachs.

No. She genuinely cared…

As I went back upstairs, trailing my hand along the banister, I toyed with the idea of coming back down in the middle of the night and eating cookies at the kitchen counter. It could be like the movies we used to steal glimpses of through the crack in the door when Mrs Fridge fell asleep in the armchair in front of the television.

As I reached my bedroom door, the sound of footsteps made me turn around.

Rigel appeared at the top of the stairs. He turned away from me, but I was sure that he’d seen me.

I suddenly remembered that he was also a part of this beautifully embroidered tapestry. That this new reality, however precious and coveted, was not all sweetness and light, warmth and wonder. No, it was tinged with darkness around the edges, like a burn, like the scorch mark from a cigarette.

‘Rigel,’ I whispered, and I heard his name as if it had leapt spontaneously out of my mouth. He was standing still in the middle of the empty hallway, and I wavered, uncertain.

‘Now…now that we’re…’

‘Now that we’re what?’ he asked in a harsh, venomous way that made me flinch.

‘Now that we’re here, together,’ I went on, looking at his back. ‘I…want it to work out.’

I wanted all of it to work out and there was nothing I could do about it. The tapestry included him, that sooty stain. In a burst of desperation, I prayed that he wouldn’t destroy the delicate stitching of this lacy dream, that it wouldn’t all unravel before my eyes.

He paused for a moment, then, without a word, started walking away towards his room. My shoulders slumped.

‘Rigel…’

‘Don’t come into my room,’ he spat. ‘Not now, not ever.’

I looked at him anxiously, feeling my hope melt away.

‘Is that a threat?’ I asked quietly, as he turned the door handle.

I saw him opening the door, but at the last moment he hesitated. With a jerk of his sharp jaw, he turned to glare at me over his shoulder, and just before he closed the door, I saw his lips viciously curling into a sneer of condemnation.

‘It’s advice, little moth.’