Stardust

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?

—English nursery rhyme

     Aranea loved to watch fencing practice. She liked the smooth arcs the foils cut through the air, the gentle circular ripples every footstep sent swirling outward—the coordination of a dance and the discipline of a duel. The blank mesh masks smoothed out all the troublesome pieces of interacting with others, the parts where she was expected to know everyone by sight and watch the muscles of their face for unspoken communication, and left her with the bliss of interpreting ritualized movements by interchangeable figures.

     She especially loved to watch June practice. Even dressed up like a blank-faced little doll, she could recognize June in an instant—the feeling of blood dripping into a still pool, the cloying scent of roses in hot, wet air, the cool sting of a blade against skin. It also helped that June was the only student, of course.

     As she and her mentor danced around the studio, reflected infinitely in the surrounding mirrors, feet tapping gently against the shiny-smooth hardwood floor, Aranea sat, enraptured, on her bench, hands clasped and eyes moon-big. June lunged, drew back, parried, danced with a lightness that often seemed totally at odds with her nature.

     This was reconciled, as it so often was, by her mentor lunging in and pressing the tip of his foil to her chest; June shouted “Fucking Christ!” and threw her foil to the floor.

     Aranea clapped with genuine enthusiasm.

     June was occupied by a spirited discussion with her fencing tutor across the room; after a couple of minutes, she withdrew and began walking over to Aranea, pulling her mask off as she went.

     “Don’t your hands hurt?” June said as soon as she was in earshot.

     Oh, right. Aranea was still clapping. She stopped and shot to her feet, throwing her arms around June’s neck. “You did great!”

     June laughed, giving Aranea a quick squeeze and a kiss on the shoulder (the most appropriate part of Aranea currently at eye level). “I fucked up real bad. Clint says I’m uncontrollable.” She wrinkled her cute little button of a nose on that last word, which made Aranea want to lean down and kiss it.

     She didn’t have the chance. June grabbed her hand and pulled her along to the locker room, chatting animatedly the entire way.

     Aranea let the waves of her voice wash over her, rolling and breaking over her head pleasantly as June stripped her uniform off and shoved it in her locker. The locker room always made her feel as though she was in a swimming pool—all cool tile and damp echoes bouncing back from every corner.

     “Oh, hey, Nea.” June was wiggling into a pair of white high-waisted pants as she spoke, bouncing slightly in place to pull them over her hips. “Daddy gave me the credit card today, do you want to grab lunch?”

     “Sushi,” Aranea said decisively, her eyes fixed on the triangle of folds June’s pants formed over her pelvic girdle.

     “Again?” June huffed, now pulling on her sleek, tailored wool coat. She slid the palms of her hands over the lapels to flatten them. “Yeah, okay, sure. I don’t care as long as we’re out of the house. Daddy’s been a fucking nightmare for the past few days.”

     Humming softly, Aranea twirled in place, watching her skirts twirl over her thick-soled boots. “I asked the spiders, and they said everyone is angry with Taner.”

     “Some pundits got pissed about the New York stuff.” June began unpinning the intricate web of braids that kept her hair pinned close against her scalp during practice, dropping every hair elastic and bobby pin into her locker one-by-one. “So I’ve been treated to three-hour-long vents about his fucking job for the past three days. Mary, it’s like they want the terrorists to win. Mary, the EU is threatening sanctions. Mary, fix me a drink, I need you to edit this press release for me. Eugh!”

     With that exclamation of pure disgust, June pulled the last few pins out of her hair and sent the entire shimmering sheet of gold tumbling down to her waist. She made a kissy-face at herself in the mirror hanging on the inside of her locker before slamming the door shut with a loud bang, withdrawing her customary aviators from her coat pocket and perching them on her nose.

     After digging a mask out of her opposite pocket and hooking it over her ears, June held a hand out to Aranea, who gladly clasped it and let herself be led through the now-empty facility and out into the streets of DC.

     The city was loud, overwhelmingly so, and bright. Crisp rays of sun speared through the omnipresent low-hanging dust cover and struck Aranea directly in the eyes; she hastily closed them, allowing June to lead her blindly to the car waiting outside.

     Even though all their vans had tinted windows, Aranea kept her eyes shut through the entire trip. It disagreed with her just to hear June chatting with the chauffeur; she’d jump out of the moving car if she had to speak, or even worse, to make eye contact with him.

     Thankfully, the ride was brief, and Aranea was shepherded quickly into one of her favorite locations in the city; a small, dimly-lit restaurant lit by blue and purple neon lights, populated by shiny white plastic tables that reflected back the blues and purples in beautiful iridescent patterns. In the center, a large buffet table contained all kinds of delicacies; Aranea didn’t pay much attention to that, since handling food was June’s purview. Instead, she zeroed in on what made this spot her favorite in the city: the fish tank packed with beautiful orange and gold fish, flitting through the water, muscles rippling underneath their scales, their lips slowly gaping and closing in circular motions.

     They headed straight to their customary table right beside the tank, which had a small, permanent reservation notice on it (something June had sweet-talked Daddy into organizing years ago). Aranea carefully arranged her skirts around her after sitting down, then folded her hands in her lap and waited primly, gazing into the fish tank. The fish gaped and burbled at her; if she listened just right, she could almost hear them through the glass.

     It only took a moment for June to return, bearing two plates, one heaping and one sparse. On arrival, she put the fuller one at her spot, and the other in front of Aranea, who wiggled slightly in her seat at the sight of her customary order: three pieces of shrimp tempura, three vegetable dumplings, and three pieces of salmon sushi. She liked to eat them in order, one at a time, making sure to carefully count her bites and chew evenly on each side of her mouth.      One of the best parts about going out with June was that she didn’t give Aranea any grief about this process, unlike the aids Aranea had as a child.

     As Aranea began the lengthy process of unbuttoning the tight, lacy cuffs of her blouse and folding them up to her elbows, June dug into her own plate, eating with characteristic untidiness. Even behind the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, Aranea could tell June was watching her closely, so she gave June a small, thankful smile.

     “What do you wanna do after this?” June said around a mouthful of sushi, one elbow propped up on the table as she gestured with her chopsticks.

     That was quite a lot to consider. Aranea picked up one piece of tempura in her chopsticks and rotated it slowly, examining it from every direction as she thought. She took two small bites, one for each half of her mouth, and chewed deliberately.

     “We could go to the harbor,” June said.

     Aranea swallowed and perked up. “Can we go on the Ferris wheel?” She loved the harbor at night—and the sun would be going down in no more than a couple of hours—but she especially loved it from above, where the glowing neon and glittering gold of the waterfront attractions refracted off the black waters, scintillating and glimmering until Aranea felt giddy looking at it.

     “Sure.” June shoved an entire dumpling in her mouth, dabbed with a napkin at a trickle of sauce on the corner of her lips, and added “I just wanna stay out as long as we can.”

     That wouldn’t help anything, but it wouldn’t be very kind to tell June that. Sometimes, when nothing would change the course of a stream, it was best to let everyone else be carried along by the current unknowingly. Besides, she’d already said she didn’t want to talk about Daddy anymore.

     The two turned their attention fully back to their food, Aranea taking dainty, measured bites and June wolfing sushi down at an inadvisable rate; after she’d cleared her plate, June sat back and pointed one of her chopsticks at a fish in the tank. “Tell me about him.”

     Aranea giggled. This was one of her favorite games. She looked at the fish in question; it was one of the fatter ones, its globular body rippling with opalescent light as it swam around the artificial reef, and she felt its eyes bugged out of its head in a rather pronounced fashion. “His name is Darius,” she decided. “He used to be a cat.”

     “A cat?”

     “Yes, and he hated the water.” Darius-the-former-cat looked profoundly anxious, in her opinion. “He was cursed by a witch.”

     June snickered. “Want me to tell you why?”

     “No, I can come up with something.” Aranea watched Darius swim around for a few moments, considering. “Maybe he ate her favorite fish right out of her tank.”

     June scanned the restaurant around them quickly; the surrounding tables were empty, and there were no servers nearby. Seemingly satisfied, she leaned over the table and looked over the upper rim of her sunglasses, letting Aranea catch a glimpse of her coal-black sclerea. “Actually, I think he puked on her bed during a hookup. Major cockblock.”

     Aranea dissolved into peals of laughter. Smugly, June sat back, returning her aviators to their proper position, and blew a kiss toward Aranea; she caught it and pressed it to her cheek, grinning ear-to-ear.

###

     The rest of their date was lovely. It was overwhelmingly wonderful to stroll through the harbor holding June’s hand, letting the sounds of the busy street wash over her (much less distressing after a meal and a couple hours in a dim room); she rode the merry-go-round no less than four times, each time choosing her favorite pure-white horse who was frozen mid-prance in a way she found extremely pretty. Riding the Ferris wheel after dark, feeling the brisk winter air blowing through her hair and staring out over the glimmering Potomac, she felt totally at peace and brimming with love.

     When they finally got home, the door of their suite shuttering loudly closed, she immediately pounced on June, pressing her back against the front door and urgently kissing from the shell of her ear down to the curve of her jawline.

     “Nea,” June murmured warningly, the unspoken threat of discovery lurking just under her words (Daddy’s home), but her fingertips danced at Aranea’s hips nevertheless, tracing the ruffles along the seam between her bodice and skirt. Aranea answered this by lightly nipping at the curve of June’s throat, eliciting a soft gasp.

     Making June melt under her fingers, playing her body like a well-tuned instrument, provoking a symphony of whines and sighs, it all grounded Aranea like nothing else. She hummed in satisfaction, feeling herself grow half-hard under her skirts as she carded her fingers through June’s endless brassy locks, nails softly scraping the skin of her scalp on each pass. She pressed herself against June’s thigh to make sure she felt it.

     “Fuck,” June breathed, tilting her head back. The exposed sweep of her pale neck made Aranea feel terribly hungry.

     It took a herculean amount of willpower to stop herself from diving in right there, clamping down on June’s neck and bruising it a tender purple while she squirmed and moaned, but Aranea restrained herself. She released June and stepped back, smiling sweetly as she adjusted her skirts.

     “Fuck you,” June grumbled, but there was no real sting to it. She finished pulling her coat off and hung it up by the door.

     “Daddy’s waiting,” Aranea reminded her.

     “Yeah, yeah.” The pink in June’s cheeks was not going down; Aranea felt as though, if she crossed her eyes just right, she could see steam rising from June where the river evaporated as it met her skin. It made Aranea feel pleasantly wicked.

     She kept close to June’s heels as they made their way through the suite, trotting just behind her like a friendly cat. When June made a still-flustered, half-mumbled comment about Daddy’s mood stressing her out, Aranea virtuously said “I’ll come with you!” prompting June’s face to, just for a flicker of a moment, collapse into a tender expression of pure agonized thankfulness before returning to its customary smirk.

     As soon as June cracked open the heavy wooden door of their father’s study, a wash of chilly water crashed over Aranea’s head and rushed around her feet, arresting her in a black, freezing flood. It ached deep in her bones; still, she forced herself to walk forward normally, one trembling step at a time. Dark water blurred the edges of Daddy’s furniture, turning the entire room into a vague gesture at an office, writhing masses and long appendages lurking behind the bookshelves, under the massive cherry-wood desk, inside the opulent fireplace.

     Aranea forced herself to cross her eyes until the afterimage of the office slid across the river, an ever-so-slightly out-of-sync double exposure. The edges of everything in the room vibrated, angry at her intrusion. She clenched her jaw until it screamed in agony, cold currents flowing over her back.

     “Mary.” Daddy’s voice was soft; it flowed like water, it seeped into her bones like ice. “Good to see you’re finally home.”

     June trotted up to him, her gait peppy, and leaned over the breadth of the desk to plant a kiss on his cheek. “It’s not that late.”

     “It’s later than I’d like.” Through the furious vibrating of her vision, Aranea made out a tendril coiling itself around his—no—two of his fingers pressed to his forehead, as if rubbing out a nasty headache. “With everything going on, I’d feel better if Annabel—“

     “Am I my sister’s keeper?” June said, a snide edge to her voice. She was perched in a coquettish pose on the desk, her legs crossed primly over the edge, her torso leaning in toward Daddy, propped up by her hands on the desk surface.

     “Yes.” His voice turned dry, but still dark. “Anna, sit down, would you?”

     Aranea obediently placed herself in one of the luxurious, thickly-padded armchairs on their side of the desk; almost immediately, tension began draining out of her shoulders and spine, leaving her feeling like a wet wrung-out rag.

     The darkness slowly began to lighten, tendrils withdrawing, and she realized that there was, in fact, a fire currently crackling and snapping cheerfully in the fireplace to her side. Warmth began to creep back into her blood. Jellyfish floated out from underneath the armchair and gently stroked her hands; she gave them a tired smile.

     Meanwhile, June was at the small counter behind Daddy’s desk, fixing him something with an awful lot of liquor. The rattle-clack of the cocktail shaker was pleasant to Aranea’s overworked ears; the fizz-clink when June poured the concoction over ice, even more so.

     June turned back around, tossing her sleek blonde mane over her shoulder with impressive grace given its length, and placed the glass on the desk in front of Daddy, who looked at her with the barest hint of a smile. Now that the monsters were retreating, Aranea could make out bags under his eyes; his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, his shirt rumpled and half-unbuttoned, his movements stiff and thick.

     He scooted his desk chair back slightly and opened his arms; June compliantly sat in his lap and allowed him to wrap an arm around her as he scooted the two of them back to his desk.

     “Hard day?” she said, voice dripping with sincerity.

     “Remus canceled a press interview,” he said, taking a hearty sip with his free hand. “Mm. Good job.” He pressed a kiss to June’s cheek before moving on; the pink in her cheeks had never quite left since Aranea’s teasing, but it flared up again notably at this. “It was the right decision of course, he’s in no shape to be interviewed, but it’s left me with a mess to clean up.”

     “Sorry, Daddy,” June said contritely, looping her arms around his neck.

     “I’m used to late nights.” His smile was forced, even to Aranea’s eyes. “Besides—I have you two to keep me company now, don’t I?”

     As June and Daddy continued chatting, Aranea decided she was going to check out of the conversation. Daddy’s job was relentlessly boring. She didn’t understand how June could stand participating in all those dry, political conversations, much less how she could understand all of that enough to offer her own contributions. Aranea enjoyed seeing June bent over Daddy’s papers, red pen in hand, hair falling over her face and shoulders as she scribbled and annotated and made the occasional verbal comment, but she’d never go so far as to try to understand what she was doing.

     Aranea leaned back in the armchair, listening instead to the warm crackle of the fire and letting the jellyfish slowly pet her hands and her hair. Later, after she went to sleep, she’d visit the garden with June, and make good on the unspoken promise she’d made earlier—to make June whine and scream and cry, and to take her mind off Daddy’s problems, or possibly his attentions.

     At the moment, though, she could let her mind drift, let herself be carried away on the currents of the river, and that was enough to get her through the night.