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There is only one thought in Apo’s mind as she makes her way through the forest. I need to go home.
She stumbles through the woods, keeping a brutal pace as she pushes past dead branches and ferns. They’re afraid to venture onto the main path, somewhere they might be seen or noticed. Still, they stay just a little ways off the wide dirt road, close enough to know where they’re going. Not that she needs a road to guide her home. She would know it anywhere.
At last, the trees part, and a tidy little town comes into view. Thatched roofs, cobbled paths, flowers on the side of the road. There’s a watchtower near the town square, so similar to the old beacons that it makes Apo’s chest seize up before she remembers she’s safe now. She’s home.
She quickens her pace, still staying out of sight around the outskirts of town, making her way to the little orchard that she and Cherri had kept. Over the roofs of houses, they can see the tall branches of fruit trees and blossoms.
Their hands tighten around the red poppy they clutch to their chest, the petals already begun to wilt and decay from the few days that Apo has spent traveling.
When she reaches the little cottage at last, it takes her breath away. The pink-flowered tree in the front lawn scattered petals across the grass, the curtains drawn back with ribbons. They still remember when they and Cherri had first moved in, squabbling over each other’s choices in furniture and how Apo never remembered to take her shoes off by the front door. Home.
It is noon, the sun high in the sky; Cherri almost certainly isn’t home. When Apo left, Cherri had been working at a tailor’s shop near the town square, though Apo isn’t sure if she still works there now.
Apo sinks back into the shadows and waits. She hadn’t had any plans for when she got home. They only knew that they needed to see Cherri again.
Shadows crawl too-slowly across the town. The flower in Apo’s hands is beginning to wilt. She needs to be back with her love. She doesn’t know if Cherri will want her back. They can’t lie to Cherri about this, can’t go up to her and look her in the eye and tell her It’s really me because it isn’t, is it? The girl that Cherri had waved goodbye to from the front porch until she was out of view, that Apo is gone now. Dead in a crypt, or in a castle, or in a basement. Cherri’s Apo is gone.
My love, how do I tell you about any of this?
At last, the sun goes down. The sunset is like spilled blood on the horizon (hungry, Apo is hungry, but she can’t think of that now) and Cherri appears on the pathway leading up to their home.
She carries a bag overflowing with fabrics and loose threads, her fingers bandaged from a dozen tiny needle-pricks. Their hair is loose around their face, free from its usual ribbon. There is a hollowness in their eyes that Apo doesn’t remember seeing before she left.
Apo would’ve lost her breath, if she still could.
She’s running down the path before she knows it, towards her love. “Cherri,” she calls, and then again, “Cherri.”
Cherri doesn’t turn, doesn’t give any sign of reaction. Only keeps walking, that same grief in her face.
“Cherri?”
When Cherri walks up to Apo, she doesn’t bother stepping around her, only keeps walking. Apo reaches after her, clasps her wrist, tries to get her to slow down.
Look at me. My love, please just look at me.
Their fingers don’t make contact. Instead, her hands slip right past Cherri’s. There is a strange feeling, a familiar feeling.
Apo’s stomach drops.
“Cherri, please,” she says again, pleading, but Cherri doesn’t hear her, doesn’t even look. They step neatly up the porch and past the front door, vanishing inside.
This can’t–
Apo runs, again, but this time it’s desperate. Skipping all three porch steps, her footsteps heavy, real, solid. She’s real. This is real.
The door is still open, swinging wide as Cherri unlaces her boots by the front, and Apo tries to slip through.
She can’t.
An invisible border springs up, a wall over the threshold.
They thought it wouldn’t be there. This was her home, wasn’t it? She had permission to enter it as a human, so—
Maybe that’s precisely the thing. Because she isn’t human anymore.
Apo is hovering there, stricken, on the threshold into the house that should’ve been her home, when the door swings shut in her face.
“Cherri,” they whisper, already knowing that she can’t hear them. “My love. Please.”
She had written to Cherri every week – until it happened, but she wouldn’t think about that unless she had to – and she had promised, in every letter, that she would be home soon.
How had this happened?
(Ravens with their necks snapped near the border, before they could fly home. Their bones sinking like anchors into the loam. The letters in their canisters gone brittle, the ink blurred. The promises that never came home.)
They knock on the door. Again. And again. Until they’re practically hammering on the painted wood. “Cherri,” she calls, knuckles beginning to bruise, shoulders beginning to tremble. “Cherri.”
She stops and waits, hoping for a response, knowing it won’t come, not sure what’s happening, wishing so desperately that none of this is real. Or perhaps that’s what she fears more, that she doesn’t know what is real.
The sky darkens and the constellations come into view, the moon’s watchful gaze pushed away by thick clouds, and Cherri does not answer.
Apo wraps her arms around herself, trying to stop shaking. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. They thought they were done with this, all of this, they thought it was over the moment they stepped out of Oakhurst.
Why?
She slumps down against the door and hugs her knees, and though she can’t sleep anymore, she closes her eyes and hopes that in the morning everything will be better.
By the time the sun rises, there is a crick in Apo’s neck and the sinking feeling in her stomach hasn’t gone away. The flower in her hands has fully wilted, the petals shrunken and dark, the stem curled over on itself.
They haven’t slept, not properly. She rises to her feet, shaky, casts out a hand to steady herself. Her hands touch wood. A splinter snags at her skin.
I’m real. This is real.
Apo just – Apo just doesn’t know anymore.
The door swings open, and Cherri walks out, still carrying her basket of sewing supplies. She looks as if she hasn’t slept properly, but her hair is brushed and her shoes tied neatly. Like yesterday, they do not wear the hair ribbon that Apo gave her.
They brush right past Apo on their way back into town, their shoulder going straight through Apo’s arm. Apo flinches, that same unnatural feeling sinking into her marrow.
“Cherri,” she says quietly. “Will you look at me?”
They aren’t expecting Cherri to turn around, and she doesn’t. Only keeps walking away.
Is this eternity?
Days pass.
The flower has rotted by now, ash-gray crawling over its soft petals and swallowing it whole. The seventh morning, Apo sets it down on the porch and lets it decay, lets it go.
Mold spreads over the dead flower and onto the wood. A few days later when Cherri goes outside, she sees the rotting wood of her porch and makes a face. They return with a broom and a vinegar soak, and after a few minutes of vigorous scrubbing, the poppy has vanished completely. As if it was never there.
“Cherri, do you remember me?” Apo whispers, as Cherri, oblivious, washes the last thing Apo wanted to give her away.
Cherri’s right hand catches the light as she dusts away the remains of the flower. A pink ribbon tied around the fourth finger, the hair ribbon Apo had given her, what must’ve been a lifetime ago.
Apo thinks she might be sick.
You know me, Cherri. You loved me, didn’t you? Why won’t you look at me? Why can’t you look at me?
“I gave everything to return to you,” Apo says, quietly, though she knows Cherri won’t hear her anyway. “I wish I could finally come home.”
There isn’t any use. Cherri doesn’t hear it, doesn’t receive the silent promises that Apo makes. Instead, she only goes about her day, and Apo is left there to sit in solitude.
If this is death, then it is cruel indeed.
She stays, though. For days, and then months, and then so long that she loses count.
She could wander. They could find pathways to other lands, other cities, but she would rather be a spirit at home than anywhere else.
They have forgotten what it’s like to have a heartbeat. They wonder if they’re just another form of dead, now.
Each day Apo watches Cherri live her life, the life they were supposed to have together. She perches on the porch fencing or the tree branches, waves good morning to Cherri even though she knows they cannot see her.
This might be hell, they think, so close to the only thing she’s wanted for so long, and knowing it’s impossible to do anything more than watch.
But Cherri is here, and that’s enough to make Apo stay.