She always asked.
“No,” I said. I always declined. “Thank you, though.”
“As you wish.” She laid her hand on my arm, her white bell sleeve shimmering with silver threads. “I miss him, too.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, wondering when it would become less hard.
She let me go.
I turned toward the path that led to the Vale of Amethysts, where they had all gone that day I was too busy to stay and journey with them.
The forest opened up to a rock formation with a narrow opening in the middle, just big enough for a person to slip through. Plenty of space for a mini poodle.
How many times had I replayed what I had missed that day? Berron, my mother, Poppy, and the Princess squeezing through the gap, their laughter echoing. Jester dashing ahead. Emerging breathless on the other side, to see…
This:
A trail paved with tiny crystals shading from purple to white to clear. Scoop up a handful and they sparkle in the sun. The amethyst cliffs and boulders look slick, are slick, but what looks like wetness is in fact a gemstone’s reflection, so dark it could be black, until the light hits it and it glows purple from the inside.
Little wildflowers all around, white and purple as if planted on purpose to match. Green vines, twin to the ones in Gramercy Park, climbing over and around everything.
The whole place smelled like minerals and candied pansies; like a flower-strewn cake on a slate platter.
Jester surged forward so hard I stumbled and kicked up a hail of amethysts.
“Hang on, bud!”
He didn’t listen. On a downward slope I was helpless to do anything but slip and slide until we reached the lowest point of the valley.
At the bottom, you can look up and see nothing but amethyst walls and sky.
On the right side of the path, a tree split itself over a rock formation. Two great gnarls of roots twisted downward and gripped the amethysts. The trunk rose like a wishbone handle to support sweeping branches covered in brown leaves that rattled in the wind.
Berron took them here. To crunch along the gemstone path. To smell the sugary flowers. To nestle in the roots of the split-root tree and gaze up at the passing clouds, while he handed around odd Gentry snacks and flasks of sapphire-berry juice and floral tea.
I clambered up the rocks and lowered myself into my usual nook in the roots, shifting into a comfortable-enough position.
Jester sniffed the base of the tree with far too much interest.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said.
He sat down and huffed—a doggy half-sneeze of frustration—before climbing into my lap. His nose twitched at the cold breeze.
I placed one hand on Jester’s back, one hand on a tree root, and sighed. He came here to think. To rest. And now, so did I.
“Hey, Berron,” I said.
I’d been coming here for a month and I hardly knew why. Of all the places I’d been with Berron—the restaurant, the parks, the Fortress, the orchard, the bar where he drank too much—the place I came back to was the place I’d never been with him. Maybe it was self-torture for everything I hadn’t said or done that I should have.
“It’s Christmastime in the city,” I continued. “Lights. Holiday foods at the food carts. Everybody suddenly getting into hot cocoa and apple cider even though it’s been cold for months.” I chuckled to myself. “And now that the barrier is down, the Christmas shopping is out ofhand. I’ve never seen so many vampires excited to go to some mall in New Jersey.”
I rummaged in my coat pocket. “I did a little shopping myself. Got you something.” I pulled out a crinkly vacuum-sealed package of coffee beans from a hipster shop in Brooklyn, then tore open the seal. The scent of coffee overwhelmed the smell of the flowers. I scooped up a handful of roasted beans and scattered them over the roots.
Jester lunged, but when he took an experimental coffee bean lick, he made a face and flopped back on my lap.
“You never got to have that Coney Island vegetarian hot dog,” I said, sprinkling more coffee beans, “but I figured it might be kind of messy. Didn’t want to mustard your tree.” I brushed a few coffee skins off my hands. We had talked, once, about going to Florida, before I knew who and what he truly was. Someday I would bring beach sand back, and add it to the little amethysts at the base of the tree.
“I’m just…” I paused, trying to think of what to say. “I don’t know.”
