The Tearsmith: A Novel

Sensitivity is a refinement of the soul.

The sun wove threads of light through the trees. It was an afternoon in spring and the fragrance of flowers filled the air.

The Grave loomed like a colossus behind me. Lying in the grass, I watched the sky with my arms spread wide as if to embrace it. My cheek was puffy and painful, but I didn’t want to keep crying, so I gazed up at the vastness above me, letting myself be cradled by the clouds.

Would I ever be free?

A little noise caught my attention. I looked round and glimpsed something moving in the grass. I got up and decided to carefully approach it, nervously twisting a lock of hair around my fingers.

It was a sparrow. He was scratching the dust with his spindly feet and his eyes shone like black marbles, but one of his wings was stretched out at an unnatural angle and he seemed unable to fly.

When I knelt down, he let out an extremely high-pitched, alarmed chirp, and I sensed that I’d scared him.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered, as if he could understand me. I didn’t want to hurt him – the opposite, I wanted to help him. I felt his desperation as if it was my own. I was also unable to fly, I also wanted to escape, I was also fragile and powerless.

We were the same. Small and defenceless against the world.

I stretched out my hand, wanting to do something to save him. I was just a little girl, but I wanted to give him his freedom back, as if that would somehow bring mine back to me.

‘Don’t be scared…’ I reassured him. I was young enough to believe that he really could understand me. What should I do? Could I help him? As he withdrew, terrified, I felt something resurfacing in my memory.

‘Tenderness, Nica,’ my mother’s voice whispered. ‘Tenderness, always…Remember that.’ Her soft eyes were imprinted in my memory.

I gently took the sparrow in my hands, careful not to hurt him. I didn’t let him go, not even when he pecked my fingers, not even when his little legs scratched my fingertips.

I held him close to my chest and promised him that one of us, at least, would get our freedom back.

I returned to the institute and immediately asked Adeline, an older girl, for help, praying that the matron wouldn’t discover what I’d found – I feared her cruelty more than anything else.

Together, Adeline and I took a popsicle stick from the garbage to use as a splint, and for the next few days I smuggled crumbs from our meals to the hiding place I had found for him.

He pecked at my fingers many times, but I never gave up.

‘I’ll make you better, you’ll see,’ I promised him, my fingers red and painful. He ruffled his breast feathers. ‘Don’t you worry…’

I spent hours watching him, a little distance away so as not to scare him.

‘And you’ll fly,’ I whispered. ‘One day, you’ll fly, and you’ll be free. Just a little longer…just wait a little longer…’

He pecked me when I tried to check on his wing. He tried to stay away from me. But every time, I persisted with tenderness. I made him a bed out of grass and leaves and whispered to him to be patient.

And the day he got better, the day he flew away from my hands, was the first time in my life I felt a little less dirty and dull. I felt a little more alive.

A little freer.

As if I could breathe again.

I found within me the colours I didn’t think I had. The colours of hope.

And with my fingers covered in multicoloured Band-Aids, not even my life felt quite so grey.

—

Slowly, I pulled off the blue Band-Aid. My index finger was still a bit swollen and red.

I had managed to free a wasp from a spiderweb a few days ago. I had been careful not to break the fragile weaving, but I hadn’t been quick enough, and she’d stung me.

‘Nica and her creatures,’ the other children would say when we were younger. ‘She’s there with them all the time, among the flowers.’ They were used to my peculiarities, maybe because in the institute, oddness was more common than normality.

I felt a strange empathy with everything that was small and misunderstood. The instinct to protect creatures of all shapes and sizes had been with me since I was a little girl. It had coloured my strange little world and made me feel free, alive and light.

I remembered Anna’s words from the first day, when she had asked me what I was doing in the garden. What must she have thought? Did she think I was strange?

Distractedly, I sensed a presence behind me. I opened my eyes wide and with a start, jumped away.

Rigel’s hair swished as he turned to see me jerk away. I stared up at him, still frightened after our last meeting.

He was unphased by my reaction. On the contrary, his mouth sharpened into a crooked sneer.

He stepped past me into the kitchen. I heard Anna greet him, and my shoulders shuddered. Whenever he was near, I got the shivers, though this time there was an obvious cause. I had spent all day replaying what had happened the night before, but the more I thought about those indecipherable words, the more they tormented me.

What did he mean by ‘I won’t hold myself back’? Won’t hold himself back from…what?

‘There you are, Nica!’ Anna greeted me as I cautiously entered the kitchen. I was still lost in thought when an explosion of colour, a fiery violet, flooded my eyes.

An enormous bunch of flowers was on display in the middle of the table, their soft buds springing from a crystal vase. I gazed at them, entranced, overcome by their beauty.

‘They’re wonderful…’

‘Do you like them?’

I nodded in response, and Anna smiled. ‘I brought them back this afternoon. They’re from the store.’

‘The store?’

‘My store.’

I looked at her genuine smile. I was still struggling to get used to it.

‘You…sell flowers? Are you a florist?’

What a stupid question! I blushed slightly, but she nodded, simply and sincerely.

I loved flowers almost as much as I loved the creatures that lived in them. I stroked a petal with the tip of my index finger and it was like touching cool velvet.

‘My store is a few blocks away from here. It’s a bit old and out of the way, but I still get customers. It’s nice to see that people still like to buy flowers.’

Anna and I were made for each other. I wondered if she had seen something in me, when she noticed me that day at The Grave, that linked us together even before our eyes first met. I wanted to believe it…in that moment, as she looked at me through that jubilant bouquet, I really wanted to believe it.

‘Evening!’

Mr Milligan entered the kitchen dressed in a peculiar outfit. He was wearing a dusty blue uniform with heavy-duty gloves sticking out of his pocket. Various contraptions dangled from his leather belt.

‘Just in time for dinner!’ Anna said. ‘How was your day?’

Norman must have been a gardener. Everything about his outfit seemed to suggest it, even the shears dangling from his belt. I thought that they couldn’t be a more perfect couple, until Anna put her hands on his shoulders and announced: ‘Norman works in pest control.’

I choked on my saliva.

Mr Milligan put on his cap, and I saw the emblem above the visor. A graphic of a massive, stiffened bug was ostentatiously overlaid with a no-entry symbol. I stared at it with icy eyes, my nostrils unnaturally flared.

‘Pest control?’ I bleated after a moment.

‘Oh, yes,’ Anna stroked his shoulders. ‘You’ve got no idea just how many critters infest the gardens around here! Our neighbour found a couple of mice in her basement last week. Norman had to go and prevent an infestation…’

Those shears weren’t quite so appealing any more.

I stared at the image of the beetle with its legs folded like it had swallowed something poisonous. It was only when they both looked at me that I made an effort to somehow move my lips, feeling again the urge to hide my hands.

Beyond the vase of flowers, from the other side of the room, I was sure I could feel Rigel’s eyes on me.

After a few minutes, all four of us were sitting around the table. I was uncomfortable hearing Norman talk about his work. I tried to mask my discomfort, but having Rigel sitting next to me didn’t calm me down at all. He towered over me even sitting down, and I wasn’t used to being that close to him.

‘Seeing as we’re getting to know each other a little…why don’t you tell us a bit about yourselves?’ Anna smiled. ‘Have you known each other for long? The matron didn’t tell us anything…Did you get on well at Sunnycreek?’

A piece of bread fell off my spoon into the soup.

Next to me, Rigel had also frozen.

Was there a worse question she could have asked?

Anna met my eyes and suddenly, the fear that she could see the truth made my stomach turn. How would she react if she knew that I struggled to even be near him? Our relationship was sinister and unclear, the furthest thing possible from a family. What if they decided it wouldn’t work out? What if they changed their minds?

Panic took me over. Before Rigel could say anything, I blurted out something stupid.

‘Of course.’ I felt the lie sticking on my tongue and hurried to smile. ‘Me and Rigel…we’ve always got on very well. We’re pretty much…like brother and sister.’

‘Seriously?’ Anna asked, surprised, and I swallowed, as if I’d just fallen victim to my own lie. I was sure that he would do all he could to contradict me.

I understood my mistake only too late, when I turned and saw his tense jaw.

I had called him my brother again. If there had ever been a way to make the situation worse, to make the situation with him worse, it had just come out my own mouth.

With an unnatural calm, Rigel looked up and his gaze crossed with Mr Milligan’s. Then, with an artful smile, he announced, ‘Oh, absolutely. Me and Nica get on fantastically. We’re close, I’d even dare say.’

‘How wonderful!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘That is really just amazing news. You must be happy to be living here together then! Such good luck, isn’t it, Norman? That they get on so well?’

As they exchanged satisfied remarks, I noticed that my napkin had fallen into my lap.

It was only after a moment that I realised that my napkin was actually still on the table.

The one in my lap was Rigel’s, and his hand had landed on my thigh to retrieve it. He squeezed my knee and his touch had a staggering effect on me. It felt like I could feel it on my bare flesh.

My chair scraped along the floor. I found myself on my feet, with my heart in my throat and Mr and Mrs Milligan staring at me, flabbergasted. I wasn’t breathing.

‘I…I’ve got to go to the bathroom.’

I slunk away with my head lowered.

I was swallowed by the dark of the hallway, and carried on until I turned the corner, where I leant against the wall. I tried to calm my racing heart, to contain myself, but I had never been good at hiding my emotions. I could still feel the imprint of his fingers as if he had scorched me. I could still feel him on my skin…

‘You shouldn’t run away like that,’ a voice behind me said. ‘You’ll make our so-called parents worry.’

In the end, Rigel was the one spinning this tale, he was the spider of this web. I saw him there, leaning against the wall. His venomous charm was infectious. He was infectious.

‘Is this a game for you?’ I burst out, shaking. ‘Is this all just a game?’

‘It was all your doing, little moth,’ he replied, tilting his head. ‘Is that how you think you’ll win their approval? With lies?’

‘Stay away from me.’ I pulled away with a shiver, increasing the distance between us. His black eyes were like bottomless pits, they had an indescribable, frightening power over me.

Rigel looked down at me inscrutably, taking in my reaction.

‘That’s what our relationship’s really like…’ he muttered harshly.

‘You’ve got to leave me alone!’ I burst out, quivering. I directed all the bitterness I could find within me at him, and an unfathomable shadow passed behind his eyes. ‘If Anna and Norman saw…if they saw…if they saw how much you despise me…that you just run away from me…that it’s not as perfect as they think…they could change their minds, couldn’t they?’

I stared at him, wide-eyed. It was as if he could read my thoughts. I felt incredibly exposed. Rigel knew me so well, understood my simple soul, saw in me the sincerity that he’d never had.

All I wanted was a chance, but if they knew the truth, if they saw that it was impossible for us to live together…they could take us back there. Or maybe just one of us. The doubt nagged at me, gnawed at my thoughts – which one of us would they choose?

I tried to tell myself my doubts were not reality, but it was useless. As if I hadn’t noticed the adoring way that Anna and Norman looked at him. Or the wonderful piano in the living room, polished with incredible care.

As if I didn’t know that they would always choose him.

I pressed myself against the wall. Stay away from me, I wanted to scream at him, but my doubts crushed me and my heart started racing faster.

I’ll be good, drummed in my throat, I’ll be good, I’ll be good. Nothing on this earth would have convinced me to return to The Grave. I remembered the echoing screams and still felt trapped there. I needed their smiles, their looks, the fact that for once in my life I had been chosen. I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t, no, no, no…

‘One day they’ll see who you really are,’ I whispered feebly.

‘Oh yeah?’ he asked, unable to hide his amusement. ‘And who am I really?’

I clenched my fists and glared up at him accusingly. Quaking with anger, I looked him straight in the eyes and spat out, ‘You’re the Tearsmith.’

There was a long silence.

Then Rigel threw his head back and burst out laughing.

His laughter made his shoulders shake alarmingly, and I knew that he’d understood.

He was laughing at me, the Tearsmith was laughing at me, with his bewitching lips and gleaming teeth. The sound of his laughter pursued me as I walked down the landing. Even once I’d shut myself in my room, alone, with walls between us.

And there, my memories started flooding in…

—

‘Adeline…have you been crying?’

Her blonde hair stood out against the cracks in the plaster. She was curled up on her back, small and hunched – the position she always assumed when she was sad.

‘No,’ she replied, but her eyes were still red.

‘Don’t lie, or the Tearsmith will take you away.’

She hugged her knees to her chest. ‘That’s just a story they tell to scare us…’

‘You don’t believe in it?’ I whispered. Everyone at The Grave believed in it. Adeline threw me a worried look and I understood that she was no exception. She was only two years older, and she was like a sort of older sister to me, but some things never stop scaring you.

‘I told a boy at school about him today,’ she confessed. ‘He’s not here at The Grave with us. He told a lie so I said to him, “You can’t lie to the Tearsmith.” But he didn’t understand. He’d never heard of the Tearsmith. But he knows something similar…he calls him the Bogeyman.’

I watched her, not understanding. We had both been at The Grave since we were tiny, and I was sure that not even she knew what this meant.

‘And this Bogeyman – he makes you cry? He makes you upset?’ I asked.

‘No…but he scares you, he said. He also takes children away. He’s terrifying.’

I thought about what scared me. And a dark basement came to mind.

I thought about what terrified me. And She came to mind.

And so, I understood. She was the Bogeyman for me, and Adeline, and many of us. But if a child outside of the institute spoke of it too, it meant that there were others like Her roaming about the world.

‘There are lots of bogeymen,’ I said. ‘But there’s only one Tearsmith.’

—

I had always believed in fairy tales.

I had always wanted to live in one.

And now…I was inside one.

I walked through the pages, following the paper paths.

But the ink had spilt.

And I’d ended up in the wrong fairy tale.