The Curiosities Read online

  On most days, I visit. I swim out to the middle and dive right down to the bottom. There in the gloom I am closer to our past, running my fingers through silt and slime, reaching for a world that used to be ours, all lawns and carports, leaning garden sheds. Avett girls can hold their breath forever. I wind my way between rotting stumps where trees supported tire swings. We used to live here. I would live here again if I could.

  This is not a story about coming home.

  . . .

  Asher runs what used to be his daddy’s bait shop, only now I guess it’s his. The shop was there when people used to go fishing in the creek, and now that the lake has taken over, the shop stands farther up the slope, just off a pair of barbecue pits and a rickety picnic area.

  During the slow hours, Asher sits out on one of the broken-down picnic tables, waiting for sunset, for closing time. The girls from town come twitching around to see him, smiling cherry-red smiles and flirting with their eyelashes. They all want him to take and marry them, if only to have that triumph, to prove they each are fine enough that he’ll love them. If they can make him love them, then anyone will love them. His eyes are always somewhere off in the middle distance, and tragedy has a glamour to it, if you only wear it right.

  This is not a story about sorrow.

  . . .

  It’s a slow, hot evening in August, and when I come trudging up from the lake, I’m not startled to see a herd of girls gathered around Asher.

  He looks up, looks past Annalee Marquart and Callie McCloud, to where I stand with my dripping hair and sopping canvas shoes.

  “Viv,” he says, and his voice sounds cracked and rusty. Just my name. Nothing else.

  Callie glances over her shoulder. She’s younger than me, but aggressively put together, with curled hair and heavy lipstick. When Asher stands up and pushes past her, she looks stricken, then furious.

  He comes across to me, eyes fixed on my face. In the trees, seven-year cicadas are crying clear to Colvern County. “Viv,” he says, “can you tell me something? Just tell me what it’s like when you dive?”

  And I don’t say anything, because it’s not the kind of thing you can say. I know what he’s asking, but that’s not the same as knowing how to answer.

  I would comfort him, console him for his loss, if I were still his friend. But was I ever?

  This is not a story about loneliness.

  . . .

  How can a person ever know the true, honest heart of another?

  This is what I’m thinking as we stomp and thrash our way through the canebrake with blackflies and no-see-ums whining around our heads. This is what makes the goose pimples come out on my arms and the shudders run through me. Not the chill of my wet clothes, not anticipation of the crisp, authoritative splash when I break the surface. But this, this certainty that Asher is too far from me now to ever know me again, and yet he wants an antidote, expects me to cure him of his pain. At the bottom of the lake there are the gloomy shipwrecks of memory, but no answers.

  [2]Fools like to talk about the little town church. They say it wasn’t dismantled, but only left behind. They claim the steeple stands even to this day, dark and ghostly, just visible when the water gets low. That’s nothing but a tale. I’ve been down a hundred times and never seen it.

  This is not a story about God.

  . . .

  Asher wades out first. Just stumbles forward and plunges in. If it were me, I’d have walked farther down the shore, to where the bank slopes off and the ground is all bare gravel and fine sand.

  He goes deeper, water churning up around him, and I’m struck by how badly I want to comfort him, fix it all if I could. I raised him half his life, but that was years ago, and it’s taken me this long just to uncover the mysteries of the place I grew up. I don’t know him any more than he knows himself.

  From the bank, I watch him flail away from me, toward a world he can’t survive and can never understand. The world on the bottom is mine alone, not because I conspire to keep it, but because no one else in the history of our incurious little town has taken the time to explore it.

  “Asher,” I call and then start after him. “Asher, wait. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you’re the only other person who knows what it’s like,” he says, looking back over his shoulder. “Because you know how it is to wish and wish for something you can’t ever have back.”

  “It was never like that.” And now I’m splashing after him, shaking my head. I say it unashamedly and right out loud. “I never loved our town until they sunk it.”

  He stops.

  He nods but won’t look at me, standing hip-deep in the artificial lake, run through on the realization that I’m not broken. That he is wholly alone in his sadness, when all this time he’s been so desperately sure it was the two of us.

  His eyes are a pure, moody ice-grey, like swimming out to the center. Like going under.

  [3]This is not a love story.

  THE WIND TAKES OUR CRIES

  by Maggie Stiefvater

  There are two things going on with this story. No, three. First of all, it is about Arthur, and [1]I love Arthur. I just do. I like him in pretty much all of his forms, although I think Lancelot is a douche and I don’t know why Arthur hangs out with him. I think I prefer the older Arthurs, before they came up with the concept of courtly love and sketchy Sir Lancelot. So, there’s that. [2]And then the second thing is that I am trying to be Tessa in this story. She does historical voice so well that I of course had to try my hand at it (I won’t tell you how much longer it took for me to be Tessa than if Tessa had been Tessa). And then, the final thing that’s going on here is I was trying to write a sort of narrator that I’d never attempted before: a sort of person I have often met but never been. —Maggie

  I love the smell of intestines in the morning. Why have I never ended a story with a dinnertime evisceration?—Tessa

  My Eoin was sixteen years when they rode through. Eoin, I loved him; he was my seventh, and the others nearly killed me coming out, but not him. He slid out like a fish through a fisherman’s hands, and like a fish, he never did cry, just twisted in the good-wife’s arms. Later, when he was older, [3]my husband and master did his part to beat a tear from Eoin’s blue eyes, but he wouldn’t cry for him either. I did the weeping for him, while I listened from the other room, and the wind took my cries away. My husband beat the others as well, but when he beat them it was a steady, methodical, rhythmic sound, like weaving, or intercourse, or raking up hay. When he beat Eoin, it was the unpredictable scrabbling of a foal standing for the first time, or the chaotic crashing of the ocean on cliffs. The beating would stop whenever Eoin stopped getting up, but Eoin never seemed to learn to stay down, any more than he learned to cry.

  Eoin was like a stubborn green willow wand: he would bend but never break. I was proud of all my sons, but I was proudest of Eoin, partly because I was the only one who was. And love means more if it is hard to do.

  The day they came in on their horses was summer at its end, ripe and crisp as an apple, the sort of day that makes lords long to be chasing foxes to ground and maidens to bed. There was no mistaking them. Who else had chargers like they, their coats every color of oak leaves? Who else, in this season, had brilliant caparisons draped round their horses’ shoulders and cloaks pinned on their own? Who else rode with the faerie-woman on her chestnut palfrey, her face proud as a man’s?

  My sons all watched the knights process along the edge of our fields, their horses pressing up against each other and then dancing away, restless with their own strength. My daughters watched them too, but like me, they were not fair of face, so I told them to keep their eyes to themselves. That the knights of the table would not want to be ogled by maidens without flowered cheeks and bee-stung lips, by my daughters with hog-chins and hair fine as an old man’s. They paid me no mind, and all labor ceased while everyone waited for a glimpse of Arthur.

  Here he came then, on a mighty dapple-gray stallion
draped in green, a faerie’s color, and he was more splendid than they had said. His bearing—proud! His face—kind! His mouth behind its trimmed ginger beard was set with both good humor and the weight of responsibility, a face every mother should wear. I was in love with him at once, but everyone is. It is easy to love Arthur. Still, I flattened my skirt and pressed my hands to my girl-flushed cheeks and was glad that my husband was not about to see me undone so by the heroes.

  I barely had time for this first glance when I realized they were coming this way. My son [4]Aodhan was pelting toward the house, fast as a hound, and his voice carried well to me, full of terror and adulation. “The king wants a drink. The king wants water.”

  My heart leapt inside me as I began to weigh the request—the king could not have water, the king needed wine, did we have wine fit for Arthur, we had the mead that the Deutscher had brought—and then, as the dapple-gray horse approached, I realized with sinking heart that I could hear the uneven thunder of a beating from the house behind me. Though [5]Eoin, as ever, didn’t cry out, my husband made up for it with grunts and bellows, insults and crowing, loud enough to hear outside the threshold. Oh! Eoin was never his son, not with eyes like that, oh, did he think that a king would want to look at him, a boy finer than a maiden, oh! a surlier son he hadn’t bred.

  The shame stole my words as Arthur’s shadow fell across me and my doorstep. For a long moment there was silence, the king and I listening to the crashing inside. My husband had fallen quiet as well, and now there was only the sound of a beating in earnest.

  “Lady,” Arthur said after a space. His face was hidden in shadow, the afternoon sun a nimbus behind him and his commander beside him, tall as gods on their horses. No one had ever called me Lady. “Could I trouble you for water for our mounts?”

  No one could say that we did not do well by him. Once I had stopped the boys’ mouths catching flies and dragged the girls out of Launcelot’s gaze, we watered those horses and we watered those men, and I have to say that watching the knights drink, their hands young and unlined, their eyes grateful, I realized that they were just boys like my own.

  Arthur thanked me then, but instead of giving a coin in return, he said, “I am needing someone to tend my hounds, Lady. I would ask you if you could spare one of your sons. We will be back through here again, in good time, and I would return him again.”

  And here I had given all our mead to his men, and he wanted my sons as well? What kind of deed was that in return, this king who was so known for his benevolence? I said, “I would be hard-pressed to survive the harvest without my sons, my lord.”

  The king’s eyes followed the vines up the side of our house, and he did not look at me as he said, “The hounds are skittish this year. They have given us trouble, staying with us as we travel.” His eyes returned to me. “I need someone quiet.”

  And I understood the bargain he meant to make, the kindness he meant to offer. That is how Eoin came to join the knights that year.

  Oh, I missed him. I missed him as we harvested and rolled hay. When the frost lightened the fields. When the snow covered the branches of the trees that edged the lane. When spring came and the thawed world smelled of animals rutting, flowers budding, carcasses rotting. I missed him every time I heard one of my other sons gasp in pain under my husband’s hand. I cried for him, too, and the wind took my cries and brought him back to me in summer.

  There were fewer knights with Arthur this time, but they were no less splendid. His smile was magnificent in its benevolence. “Lady,” he said as I wiped my eyes, “Did I not promise you I would return your son? I daresay he has refined his silence in our service.”

  And there was Eoin, dismounting and making his way through the others towards us. He had become a willow tree rather than a wand, my Eoin, that year.

  “Thank you for returning him, my lord,” I said.

  Arthur merely smiled and turned his horse. Launcelot, however, remained, his horse half-turned away as he looked over his armored shoulder at Eoin. “Do not forget what I told you,” Launcelot said. [6]And then he spat on my husband’s doorstep. “My apologies, Lady, no insult meant to you.”

  Then they were gone, with nothing to prove that they had been there but this new Eoin. He was quiet as a churchman, steady as rain on the roof, and when night came, he cut my husband’s liver out at the dinner table. My husband made no sound, gutted like an animal. Eoin twisted the knife, however, and we both wept, as the wind took our cries away.

  ON OUR CRITIQUE RELATIONSHIP

  [1]I’ve decided I must really like the sound of my own voice. Because really, when a critique session is going well, when we’re really into the spirit of it, Brenna or Tessa give me suggestions that sound like something I would’ve said. I mean, that I would’ve said if I had even a scrap of objectivity left. Because that’s really when I need them. When I’ve had my head down working on a novel for months and I’m basically breathing, eating, sleeping, dreaming this thing, that’s when I need them. I’ll be cooking eggs and thinking: a skillet might be a good weapon for chapter four. I’ll wake up with a headache and I’ll think: if I describe my character’s head as “filmy,” would that get this feeling across? Every moment will be this book, and as such I won’t have any distance from it at all. I can’t tell if I’ve written gold or garbage. This is when I need someone else to step in and share her thoughts. And don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy with every suggestion that Tessa or Brenna makes, even if I don’t agree with it — it’s always thought-provoking. But my absolute favorite moments are those when I think: That’s what I would’ve said, if I was just seeing this book for the first time. Of course that’s right. You can never get objectivity back. Not really, truly. But with Brenna or Tessa, it feels like I do. —Maggie

  [2]I try to write as if I’m the best writer in the world. As if I’m always confident, know what I’m doing, and have perfect instincts. The obvious truth is that the moment I climb out of my own imagination, I’m not the best, and that’s what I need Brenna and Maggie for. I need them to be better than me at some things. Preferably at things I need to work on. In the time I call “Before Merry Fates,” [3]I went through scads of readers, hunting for my writing soul mates, but I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking for. The moment I began working with the two of them, I knew what it was: complementary talent. It isn’t that we’re all good at the same things, or all on a level, or all trying to learn the same skills at the same time. What matters is that we complement each other. We shore each other up, one of us with glue, one with duct tape, and one with drywall. Or, when it’s needed, a good old-fashioned battering ram. —Tessa

  [4]I’m a big fan of thinking of stories as giant, fancy snowflakes with lots of intricate little stars and flowers and spirals. This is nice, because it’s whimsical and fun and better than thinking of stories as giant, angry monsters that want to eat your brain. It can also be bad though, because a lot of times it turns out that I’m easily confused by the intricacies.

  So when the snowflake gets too big and too fancy and the story starts to spiral wildly out of control, Tess and Maggie are always there to set me back on the path of Making Sense. When I get overwhelmed by all the bits, having another voice (or two) helps me see where the real meat of the story is, what needs to be strengthened and expanded upon, and what is just a very small, very complicated spiral. —Brenna

  AUBURN

  by Brenna Yovanoff

  I think this might be the first time I wrote a story about a jaded girl facing down a bad, bad man. [1]It is, however, definitely not the last. —Brenna

  My hair was the brittle color of drying blood.

  Lola had done it in her mother’s kitchen. She said we needed to be more glamorous. She said, “I dare you,” and the next thing I knew I was standing at the sink with my head under the faucet while a flood of vivid water ran down the drain.

  It wasn’t glamorous, but red like desperation. The kind that says look at me look at me please p
lease tell me I’m pretty! It was a Lola color, is what I’m saying. When I pictured my own face wearing it, I could taste it in my mouth like metal.

  We were the only girls in the pit. Onstage, Mason Tyler was humping his guitar, crooning in his signature rasp. He was the official love-mascot of Lola’s life. She wrote poems about his hands. She dove into the crush, where boys made plunging circles and didn’t care about the bruises. Their arms thrashed like branches, a forest of bodies, and Lola was the gleaming fairytale tower at the center of it. I was no one. Redheaded cipher. Zero.

  The guy in the hunting jacket wasn’t punkrock. He didn’t bic his head or bleach his hair or wrestle it into a prissy double-hawk. He didn’t look like Henry Rollins or Jimmy Urine or Johnny Rotten, is what I’m saying. He didn’t look like anything.

  Lola didn’t see him coming. Her fist beat time to the bassline, and when he smacked her with his shoulder she didn’t even flinch. He hit her again, harder, slamming her against the rail. The look on her face when she turned was close to magical. She punched him in the back of the head and everything got slow.

  For a second I thought he’d grab her by the throat. His teeth were sharp, crowded in the front, and I was in hard, sudden love with the set of his shoulders. By love, I mean terror. I mean, in awe.

  He caught her by the collar of her shirt and yanked her up on her toes while the rager boys thrashed around us.