Yesterwary

Bastian awoke, wrapped in his own trench coat, amongst the jumble of clothes. Looking around, his gut sank as he found that the library rooftop was lacking the girl with whom he’d spent the night. He knew she wasn’t scheduled to work, and his cheeks burned as the thought suddenly set in that, maybe, he’d scared off the only person to whom he’d ever given himself. But his ears perked at the sound of a distant, breathy hum. Pulling up his trousers as he rose to his feet, his jaw dropped at the sight that separated the library from the fog.

The once brown and barren field had transformed, overnight, into the second-most magnificent thing Bastian had ever seen. The ground was covered in beautiful, white-gray flowers, illuminated by rare beams of sunlight. And there, in the middle of the field, Demi sat and hummed while she fiddled with the ground.

Bastian clambered down through the library, stopping only for a brief moment to inspect the piled carcasses of books that had been emptied of their innards.

“What is this?” he whispered, trying to find his voice as he reached down to pluck a flower from the ground.

Demi turned to him, face glowing as she twisted torn book pages to resemble petals. Bastian dropped the flower and fell to his knees, grasping Demi’s face in his hands.

“You’re…”

“Smiling,” she said, leaning forward to give him a kiss.

“And this is…” he said, speechless as he gazed around the field.

“Come with me,” she said, standing to take his hand. “The beauty is in the distance.”

She led him all the way back to the library rooftop to gaze out over the ground. Bastian hadn’t noticed it, at first, but in looking closer, he could see; the flowers formed the shape of a giant heart, and the light danced through the passing clouds in just a way that made it look almost as if the heart were beating.

“Since mine doesn’t seem to be working properly, let’s say this is my heart,” Demi said, weaving her arm through his as they looked out over the field of paper flowers. “And I’d like you to have it.”

“I…” Bastian stammered. “I don’t think it’ll fit in the house,” he joked, leaning his head down onto hers. “It’s incredible.” For a brief, unbelievable moment, Bastian returned the smile that was gleaming across Demi’s face. A million lifetimes wouldn’t have led him to believe that the only person in Yesterwary to ever make him wish he could smile would actually be capable of doing so. “I wish I had something to give to you.”

“You’ve already given me something,” she said. “Hope.”

“Hope? For what?”

“You got out of here, once. It could happen again.

“Demi,” he said, shaking his head as he looked down at her, “that was a fluke. There’s no way out from inside, and… You’re in a coma, in the old world.”

“You don’t know that there isn’t a way out. The fog could—”

“The fog is a death sentence,” he said, voice turning dark. “And you already promised me you would stay away from it.”

“But—”

“There is no way out. I thought you’d accepted that.”

“I will never accept it,” she huffed. “I won’t allow myself to believe that I’m stuck in this place for the rest of my life.”

“Is it really so terrible?”

Demi’s eyes narrowed as she examined his face. “You’re not even afraid that the fog might lead to death. You’re afraid it might actually lead to a way back.”

Bastian glared at her, then looked back out over the field, focusing in at the edge of Yesterwary. “Of course I’m afraid. I’m terrified. I wouldn’t know what to do in the old world. I’m good at existing here. And now, with you—”

“I don’t want to stay here, Bastian. I don’t want to be broken for the rest of my life.”

“You’d rather risk dying than stay here with me?” Bastian waited for an answer—for anything.

Demi couldn’t find the words. His accusation stabbed somewhere deep in her gut. Of course she wanted to be with him, but she also wanted to be able to love him. And she knew this could never happen in Yesterwary.

“Broken things never break into the same shapes and sizes, you know,” he said. “Your defect is unique. It may be sad, but it’s a beautiful sort of sadness.”

“Our edges might be different, but we’re all broken for the same reason. That’s not beautiful,” Demi accused. “That’s depressing.”

Bastian was quiet for a long time, before finally saying, “I want you to meet someone.”

“Now? We’ve just had our first fight. Shouldn’t we talk about this?”

“Just… come on.” Bastian led her away from the library, toward a part of town she’d never been to. Of course, Yesterwary was quite large, and there were many parts of town she had never been to, but this part seemed even more lost and forgotten than the library. A large, gray building stood out on its own, much like the orphanage, but without the added comfort of rusted swings and splintered seesaws.

She followed him inside, and instantly recognized the smell that tends to accompany the later parts of life. It didn’t look much different from the retirement home where she’d once visited her grandmother. There were a lot of old folks sitting around, doing little, and being paid no attention by the workers. It was stagnant and stale and hopeless, and Demi couldn’t figure out why Bastian would want to take her to such a place. Toward the end of the hall, at a door marked ‘52951’ he knocked a few times, then opened it at the sound of a raspy grunt.

“Em?” an old man asked from a dilapidated chair in the corner of the room, eyes muted by cataracts.

“It’s just me,” Bastian said sympathetically. “I want you to meet someone, Asthore.”

The old man grumbled and hunched himself further into his chair.

“Hello,” Demi said, confused as to why Bastian would take her to meet a random old man. Still, she reached her hand toward him in greeting.

“He can’t see you,” Bastian whispered.

“I can see her just fine,” Asthore huffed, obviously thinking he was looking directly at Bastian, but staring off to the side and giving no sign that he could see Demi’s out-stretched hand.

“Asthore, this is Demi.”

“You have a lady-friend, do you? Well, isn’t that somethin’,” Asthore said in a tone that suggested it wasn’t quite somethin’.

Through his reddened cheeks, Bastian said, “I want you to tell her about Emily.”

The old man’s entire demeanor changed in a fraction of a second. His dull eyes gleamed, and he hoisted himself up in his chair, and he pulled his lips back over his toothless mouth.

“My Emily,” Asthore sighed, mind travelling somewhere far away. “Thirteen years old, I was, when I saw her.”

Bastian nodded to Demi, and they took a seat on the freshly-made bed.

“I was working with my da’, transportin’ goods to Dublin. The most beautiful thing I ever seen, workin’ at a little pastry shop. An entire year, it took me. Every week, I’d go into the shop, and spend all my money on bread,” he shook his head at himself. “I didn’t even like bread. I just wanted to talk to her. Every week for an entire year, before I could even get up the nerve to ask her name... Emily.” It was as if Asthore were reliving the story, and telling it only for himself. “She agreed to let me take her to dinner. Told me she knew early on that I wasn’t just comin’ in for the bread. And that was us, for another two years. We would see each other when I went into town with my da’. I’d spend all week waiting to see her for only a couple hours, and then do it all over again. ‘Course, I was able to start saving money again, now that I wasn’t spending it all on bread. And we ran off together when we were sixteen. Did what we needed to do to get by, but we were always happy, always adventurin’, always together.” A heaviness swept over the man. “Until the cancer took her. But you know,” he said, eyes, through their apparent blindness, landing on Demi, “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I’m going to die in this god-forsaken place. But it’s worth it to know that I spent all my love on her. On my Emily.”

Demi sighed, understanding exactly what Bastian had been trying to accomplish. “That’s… beautiful, Asthore,” she said, hoping she sounded sweet. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“I appreciate the effort, but—” she began, following Bastian back to their house.

“We’re not all broken for the same reason, Demi. Maybe we all ran out, but we weren’t all careless with our hearts. If anything, some of us were too careful.”

“But we are broken,” she said, looking up to him with pleading eyes. “And there’s no way to fix it if we stay here. But we might be able to, if we can find a way out.”

“If Asthore can be happy here—” he began.

“There’s a difference between you and me, and Asthore and Emily. They actually got the chance to love each other. We will never have that chance, not if we stay in Yesterwary.”

“It’s possible to exist without love.”

“I don’t want to just exist! I want to live. I want to be happy. I want to be Emily, and go on adventures, and do what I need to do to get by, and I want to love. I want to be loved,” she cried, throwing her hands in the air, wishing he could just understand. “I want an Asthore, and I will always wish that it could be you… but that’s all it will ever be, here; a wish. And wishes aren’t real.”

“A lot of people say the same thing about love in the old world,” he said, sitting on the top step of the porch.

“I know,” she whispered, situating herself next to him and wondering how this night could end so differently from the one that preceded it. She took his hand into her own and leaned her head onto his shoulder. “I’m not going to go into the fog. And I do want to be with you. I just wish it could be… real.”

“We just have to make our own kind of love,” Bastian assured, wrapping his arm around her. “It’ll be different from the old world, but it will be as real as we make it. It might even be better, because we won’t ever run out. No one can take it away from us.”

Seeing the hope in his eyes, Demi grinned reassuringly, but she had no true faith in his words. She just didn’t want to fight anymore.

“Demetria?” Mr. Harper said from the door behind them.

Demi sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What, dad?” She turned to find him staring curiously at them.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t realize—” he began.

“What is it? What do you want?” she snapped.

“I just-I wanted to apologize for earlier,” he said, pointing in the vague direction of the bathroom. “I panicked, and—”

“You got drunk. Not a big shocker,” she said shortly.

“Look, I want to try to make things right between us.”

The air around them grew colder with Demi’s glare. “That’s not going to happen. Tomorrow, Bastian will take you to get placed and to get an apartment. Yesterwary is big. I fully expect to go the rest of my life without ever seeing you again.”

Mr. Harper looked as if he wanted to say something, but only nodded. He glanced to his watch as a tear fell to his boot, and sulked himself back inside the house.

“Maybe you should give him another chance,” Bastian whispered.

“He ran out of chances a long time ago,” she said.