He looks down at them, like maggots in the palm of his good hand. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth, the corners of his mouth curling up like Magpie’s nose. “I—” He shakes his head, surprises Naomi by laughing a little. His curls bounce. “I’m right-handed anyway.”

Naomi gets the ankles of her trousers wet crossing the river, soaks through her socks. She wonders what it was like for Vincent to walk back this way barefoot, when he lost those nice shoes. Will those be waiting for him at home, wherever home is, or have the fair folk technically cheated her over a pair of leather slippers?

She is trembling, and she is singing to herself, a venting of nervous energy. Naomi has always liked music. She has a lovely voice now, sweet and clear as anything. “Comfort for the comfortless, and honey for the bee. Comfort for the comfortless, but there’s none but you for me.” The song comes easily to her, melody tucked fresh and neat into her mind.

Ari pauses, halfway over the river, with the toe of his boot in the water. “I don’t know that one.”

Naomi sighs, a long exhale that feels as if it has been trapped in her throat for many years, and offers him her elbow. “No. You wouldn’t,” she says. And she helps him across.

Is This You?

Is This You?

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you get up and find yourself already in the kitchen, seated at the table and eating Cheerios. The you at the kitchen table is thirteen, and she’s eating the Cheerios straight out of the box by the fistful. Try to call her Maura. You are also Maura. Two people can have the same name, but two people cannot be the same person. A few Cheerios fall from Maura’s hand and roll pinwheels across the tile. You tap your foot.

Maura doesn’t look up, hiding behind the grease slick of her hair. Your hygiene at thirteen was awful—how often did you shower? Once a week? “Are you going to clean up after yourself?”

She rolls her eyes, slides off her chair, and swipes the mess up with a napkin. “Good morning.”

If Maura is here it means your mother has published an essay. You ask Maura where it is this time, but she ignores you, licks her fingers, and then reaches back into the cereal box. The teenage iterations of you are the worst, though thirteen is not as bad as the years that followed it; angst-ridden, messy, uncooperative. There’s a minor foam of acne bubbling on Maura’s left cheek.