Episode 20: Home (Emily)

There was no magic in any realm that surprised Emily. Not the magic she was born with nor the ability to open a door with a thought. It was ordinary to come across a prophet or a fortune teller, to have someone tell her that if she didn’t go to Ms. Anney’s house that day she would regret it.

Her students, among most of the people she associated with, were also extraordinary. Cy had the courage and determination of someone who not only knew failure, but knew what failure meant. He could draw upon his downfalls and turn them into lessons. She never had to remind him; he was four and he knew. Oscar was a child prodigy that she knew better than to ask where he came from. He wasn’t born there, she knew. He could look at anything and assemble it from chaos to beauty. From broken to something new and wonderful. And then there was Max, who preferred to be called Orpheus. He sat in a corner with his with his dark hair and eyes that had seen too much already. He knew who he was and he knew where he had been before; gripping onto the memories of his past.

Emily adored them all, in their own ways and for their own strengths.

What she didn’t expect was Max to lean over, at the end of the day, and whisper, “Go see Ms. Anney.”

She hadn’t been home in months.

He also didn’t know who Ms. Anney was, she was certain, except from some derivative of his own mind.

Along with his suggestion, he handed her a bag and a dial. She asked him where he got the dial, and he told her both things had washed up on the shore.

A few days prior, someone had tried to escape by sea. Most people on the island weren’t permitted to leave.

Emily took both items and tucked them inside her jacket.

With her students off for the day, she fixed her dial to Sylem and in a moment she was there, standing in front of her cousin Antoine’s bakery. Home.

She let the sea breeze lift her honey blonde hair off her back as it whispered the secrets of her misery-laden seaport home. The streets were the same: blackened scribbles filled cracks in the grey washed out cement down the rows of houses that were an endless connection of one family to the next. She couldn’t even see where the line ended, from where she stood, just that her cousin’s bakery had changed in her absence. She tried to think how long it had been for him. It was about two months, she suspected.

The new face of Antoine’s Bakery had deep purpley pink bricks underneath the windows and along the edges. Big white windows and white framing with a metal, maroon, roof filled the remaining space. Pink writing filled the windows and elegant black script wrote his name above the door on a hanging sign.

She could smell the doughnuts wafting through the air. Just stepping into the doors she was transported to a place Antoine had created – not of the poor neighborhood they lived in but of a place where everyone was welcome and everything was affordable. He knew all the kids in the neighborhood, and if they couldn’t afford something he would slip them a sample.

Emily scanned the line of workers behind the rounded counters that displayed doughnuts covered in chocolate and maple and various shades of sprinkles. Her favorites lay in the center of the display – a slightly pink doughnut with a hint of strawberry in the dough topped with pink strawberry frosting.

Frank handed her one from the display as she passed behind the counter, headed toward the steel rimmed kitchen that houses more equipment than Emily could keep up with.

She bit into the soft, still warm, donut. She had spent the time she had growing up in this kitchen, before it was rebuilt, underneath equipment scraping things clean and making sure all the belts lined up for the donuts and everything was running well. Mechanics hadn’t come easy to Emily, but she had learned and she had utilized spells she would never have been taught otherwise to become proficient at cleaning and maintaining everything.

Antoine lay in a spot she was familiar with; he was tucked in the space between an empty donut rack and a long three compartment sink. His legs hunt out from his cove and she could hear the sound of metal on metal and his frustration at whatever valve had begun leaking. Towels wadded up in sopping water covered the floor below the sinks.

“Good morning,” Emily said, a smile in her tone at how much she missed even the putrid smell of sewers running into the ocean.

Antoine peered out from the sink and a grin exploded across his face as he dropped the wrench and pushed himself out. Emily offered her hand and he used it to hoist himself into an embrace. His darker skin, like a latte Emily had always joked, and his near black hair completed everything that she had missed. He was the brother she had always wished for.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Not too bad, just working away. No bad news.”

He let out a laugh of approval, his voice humming in satisfaction as he shook his head, “Ms. Emily you’re the strongest of us all. You’re making Ms. Anney proud. All of us proud. You know that?”

“Oh I know, it’s such a challenge to babysit boys in a different realm.”

“You know there’s risk,” Antoine retorted as he brushed his hands along his apron, leaving grease stains among the various other colors from his early morning shift.

Emily had taken a job with a group that promised to protect her from the cult, before Antoine had told her about Ms. Anney and the alternative escape. In Sylem, you joined one of three cults. In her neighborhood, you usually joined a smaller one. The international cult had lost its stronghold when their heir and region manager defected. A few failures later and some girl had come to run the cult. She had no personality and was linked to Emily’s newfound group, though most didn’t know of the connection.

She had joined the group to avoid the local one, which had terrorized many members of the community. Antoine had joined Ms. Anney, though he had a rough few years hiding under houses to avoid being caught. He always said if they couldn’t find him, he couldn’t join. It had worked out, and he had been able to fund the bakery eventually. She hadn’t sorted out where the funds came from, but she trusted him.

“I need to see Ms. Anney,” Emily told him. She wasn’t sure what Max thought she would be able to give or take from a meeting, but it was worthwhile to get it done with before she got trapped in being home and how much she wanted to visit everyone.

“Sure thing, Em,” he replied. He poked his head into the front of the bakery and told Frank he was heading out.

Ms. Anney’s house was just down the street. They turned onto Endicott street and walked.

When they got there, Antoine knocked and Ms. Anney, with her dark skin and wide body that reminded Emily of a barge, answered the door and squeezed her in a tight hug.

She had always been a large woman. Ms. Anney was someone any of the cult would mess with. Her cousin had latched onto her, though Emily wasn’t sure why.

Ms. Anney shut the door behind them and led them into her living room, where she lifted a tray of snickerdoodle cookies and bright orange carrots, each filling half of the space.

“We’ve missed you,” Ms. Anney said.

Antoine went to sit on one of the oversized chairs that filled her living room.

“Thank you,” Emily said as she took a carrot. “I’ve missed you too.”

“Ms. Anney’s been working on a community garden,” Antoine said.

“In the old park?” Emily asked.

Ms. Anney set the tray down and peered at Antoine, then refocused on her.

“It’s nothing but hard ground now. We’ll work the soil this year and plant in the fall,” Ms. Anney said.

The park had been one of Emily’s childhood projects – she had mowed the land once a week most of the year. She used spells to stay safe and had her familiar, a little fox named Tate. She kept Tate in a bound spell most of the time, because he wasn’t allowed at work. She had forgotten that she could let him out here; he could wander beside her.

In many ways, Tate didn’t even feel like he was a familiar anymore but just part of her again.

Ms. Anney was looking at her.

“I needed to give you something,” Emily said, unsure of what she had missed in the conversation. She pulled out the bag from Max and handed it to Ms. Anney.

She watched as Ms. Anney pulled out the dial and the vial, covered in some magically goo that was keeping it safe but you could see through.

“This. What is it?” Ms. Anney asked.

“A fertlized egg,” Emily replied. “That someone tried to steal from my work.” She almsot laughed, because now she had stolen it, but she hadn’t even bothered to look inside the bag. Max had closed it and stapled it and she opted not to find out what kind of trouble he was getting her into.

“Why do I need it?” Ms. Anney asked. “I’m already pregnant.”

“He didn’t say,” Emily replied. Thoguh she suspected Max jsut wanted to give someone a chance at a better life. Anyone. Even a little lonely egg.

“Congratulations,” she added.

“Thank you,” Ms. Anney replied. She walked toward the kitchen with both items. While she did, Emily glanced at Antoine and they both shared a I didn’t know she was dating anyone look.

“Why don’t you two watch a movie or something while I take care of these?” Ms. Anney suggested.

“Dice?” Emily asked Antoine.

Antoine shifted and faced his chair; Ms. Anney left.

Emily pulled out the dice, a pad of paper, and a pen.

“No cheating,” Antoine warned her.

It was almost an hour later when Ms. Anney returned. Emily had eighty-nine points and Antoine had sixty-four. With a goal of one-hundred, she knew she was going to win. Antoine must have caught onto the same conclusion because he was moving in his chair and more antsy with each turn. He had never been good at losing games, but he was a fierce competitor to play against.

She let the dice roll when Ms. Anney shuffled toward the door; someone had knocked but she had missed it in favor of the sound of dice banging against a cup as she shook it. They finished the round – she had added six more points to her total, when Ms. Anney and Rhyss walked into the room.

“I’ll just call Bertrand,” Ms. Anney said. She moved through the room, around furniture into the kitchen, as though she wasn’t a massive person. It wasn’t just that she was overweight, but that her natural features were large. It was impressive that she had set up her narrow rowhouse in such a way that she had tons of furniture and nothing ever got knocked over, by her at least. Kids from the neighborhood were more prone to incidents within the confines of the pathways Ms. Anney had set up.

“You know Emily and Antoine?” Ms. Anney continued.

Rhyss stood behind the couch. Emily hadn’t seen him in years, but growing up she had harbored the biggest crush on him.

When he was about eight, the same age as her, he had been given his sister’s pink bicycle with yellow lightning bolts on it and pink and yellow lemonade tassels. It had a white wicker basket that had been removed, but otherwise Rhyss tried to ride the bike like it wasn’t the girliest thing on the block.

The thing about life in the rowhouses was you made do with what you had. Just because he was a boy didn’t mean he got a blue or green or other colored bike. It said something about his personality that he never cut the tassels off. She wasn’t sure if it was that he was thinking of the next owner; a girl that might want tassels or if he was just thinking that there was no way to redeem the bike from girly and it was better left alone.

When he was fourteen, the community came together to help him buy braces. She had contributed over half of the money by mowing lawns. She took a job working for the parks and recreation center and maintained the small park in their neighborhood, and for a few weekends one summer she even pushed her lawn mower up the big hill to some of the lower houses in the more prosperous parts of Sylem.

She smiled at him, with his short brown hair and too tall body that he still didn’t seem to have settled into, and remembered just how huge that crush was.

His eyes were a matching chocolate brown. To most, he would seem ordinary. Light skin, tattered clothes, and an uncertainty that she knew was masking someone strong and confident. She took a deep breath and smiled, “Hi. Do you want to join us?”

“Don’t do it,” Antoine cautioned as he vacated his worn down blue striped arm chair. “She makes all these rules up. You’ll never win.”

Emily laughed, “I explain the rules you make a habit of forgetting,” she reminded him. She pushed her hair off her shoulders, pretending to be offended by his comment.

Rhyss gave her a small smile in return.

“That’s okay, I make up rules all the time.”

Her cheeks hurt, because she couldn’t stop smiling as he sat down beside her. She was normally a smiley person but she was sure anyone watching would know that her heart was fluttering in excitement and her stomach had done two backflips.

It was absurd. Maybe Max sent her here to mess with her. Not in a vindictive way, but to give her a taste of what life could be and a push to leave. She knew she had to leave her job at some point, that it wasn’t safe to her there. Working with a prophet had a way of convincing her she would know the right timing.

“Tell him where you learned to play,” Antoine goaded. She broke her attention from Rhyss and saw Antoine leaning against the counter with an apple in his mouth. Ms. Anney stood nearby with the phone in her hand; she was watching the interaction with interest. Ms. Anney started dialing a number into the phone and turned away as she went into the adjacent room.

Emily grinned at Rhyss, “I made the game up.” She handed him the cup of dice.

“See what I mean?” Antoine added.

She laughed, he really hated losing. It wasn’t a complicated game.

“I make up games all the time. Our cards are missing a king, so I made up a kind of solitaire where the goal is to not play any spades on the missing king column.”

She didn’t want to look too far into things, because of the crush issue and seven year old girl feelings rearing their head, but she felt like he was defending her from Antoine’s badgering; like he was protecting her.

“That sounds like fun,” she replied with intent to try his version of solitaire in her room that night. “This one, the goal is to roll one hundred points by guessing the total when you roll. If you guess too high you get no points. If you guess too low you get the points you guessed. If you guess exactly right…”

“You get the points on the dice,” Antoine mocked. “She makes everything sound like you might win, but watch out.”

“If you guess exactly right you should get double the points on the dice,” Rhyss suggested.

She smiled again, his idea was genius. “Yes! Double the points.”

“Okay,” Rhyss said as he motioned toward the dice and cup, “you can go first.”

Emily let her fingers brush against his skin, and felt like a fool for letting her emotions carry her away into a daydream, before she pulled the cup up and covered the top with her hand. She shook the dice. “Seventeen,” she guessed then let them tumble onto the table.

She counted them up, and the total was twenty-two. She had won the points.

Rhyss gathered the pieces up and guessed fifteen, and got nineteen points.

She called out six, and rolled a twelve.

“How is your mom?” she asked Rhyss.

“What about her?” he asked, defensive and alarmed.

“Is she still doing okay?” she asked.

His mom had a mental illness that cost Rhyss most of his free time growing. It was probably why he was homeschooled even though there was a school available for free.

“Yeah, she’s great. She’s really doing well.”

She doubted that was true because he had stopped playing the game, but she was happy to just talk to him instead of play. She had never had time like this just sitting down with him.

“That’s good. I think about you both, sometimes. I haven’t been around much for a few years.”

He looked at her, his eyes almost glaring in a squint as he sorted something out.

“You’re the girl who broke the hydrant, right?”

Emily laughed and pulled her hair into pigtails, “Yes.” She let her hair fall naturally down to her shoulders.

“That was a fun summer,” he replied with a grin, “until they fixed it. Do you still help your mom out in the daycare thing?”

“No, I nanny for three boys right now.”

Rhyss picked up the dice again and rolled. “Twenty,” he called out. He only rolled fourteen.

“I’m going to start job-hunting soon. Do you like the nanny job?” Rhyss asked her.

The conversation began to flow easier, and she picked the dice up and rolled too, “I love it and being around kids. They’re so much fun. What kind of job are you thinking of?”

“The grocery store’s hiring. That’s about it. It’s a bad year to need a job, unless you have connections.”

Every year was a bad year to need a job in Sylem, unless you had connections.

“Are you hiring?” She asked Antoine.

There was a long silence as Antoine finished chewing his most recent chip.

“I might be,” Antoine said.

“Like kitchens? Or registers?” Emily asked.

“I could do that kind of stuff,” Rhyss replied. “I’m reliable too,” he told Antoine.

“How about you come down tomorrow morning to check the place out,” Antoine suggested. It wasn’t a guarantee but she knew Antoine would give Rhyss a job. He hired everyone who needed help.

“Yeah? What time?”

“Does five work for you?”

“Yeah, sure. Thank you so much.”

“Or you can apply for the grocery store, but Antoine’s a fair boss,” Emily suggested. Hands down, Antoine would be the best job for anyone who wanted fair pay and reasonable hours and some understanding if life got in the way.

“I bet at least five hundred people apply for the grocery store job,” Rhyss said.

“I bet you’d get it though. You have the perfect body for a grocery store,” she said before she realized it. It was a bad habit – to observe and talk about it. She tried not to be embarrassed, she hadn’t said anything too bad and it was true. He was tall and could reach higher shelves, he had a body that wanted to be built up even if it wasn’t being used that way. He would be easy to find in a crowd too.

“Is there a body type?” Rhyss asked.

“You know, tall, capable of lifting things, easy to find…” she felt warm as she looked at his hands and remembered all the jokes girls made about hands growing up, so instead of saying big hands she simply added, “hands.”

There were people without both hands, she defended in her mind. Hands were a good quality for a job that involved using your hands.

“What do you do when you aren’t working?” he asked.

Maybe her hands comment had worked, to get his attention at least.

Before she could respond, Ms. Anney came over and stood blocking her view of Rhyss.

“Bertrand Gable will fix your water heater, but you have to help him catch that possum,” Ms. Anney informed Rhyss.

“Oh okay. I can help,” Rhyss replied.

“Thank you, Ms. Anney,” Ms. Anney mocked.

Emily leaned to her left so she could see Rhyss.“I can meet you for donuts after your meeting,” Emily suggested while she had the courage to push for a date.

“Yeah? Like tomorrow for breakfast?”

Ms. Anney’s voice rose, “Thank you, Ms. Anney.” She turned to look at Antoine, “Don’t you want to hire someone more polite?”

“Thank you, Ms. Anney,” Emily said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Rhyss replied.

Emily smiled at him, because he was still looking at her with his soft brown eyes.

“Not if he’s in back,” Antoine said in the distance. He kept talking but Emily slid her fingers on to the table to reach for the dice, while no one was watching, and Rhyss slid his and she let her fingertips touch his, the cup beside their hands.

Emily pulled her hand back, “Can I help with anything? I could make you and your mom dinner sometime.”

“That would be cool, yeah. I can be free on Sunday night, if you want,” Rhyss said.

“Me too,” Emily replied.

They both smiled until Ms. Anney frowned down upon them and informed Rhyss that Bertrand may need Rhyss that night.

“We can make plans tomorrow if it is? Do you like enchiladas?” she asked. She loved enchiladas. She hoped he would too.

“I’ve never had them. Are they good?”

“Delicious. Gooey and cheesy.”

“Come on, Em,” Antoine interrupted. He walked over and took his jacket off the back of Rhyss’ chair.

“Hold on, we’re still playing,” She replied.

Rhyss laughed, “ I think it was your turn.”

“Out! Fat women need more sleep than you do,” Ms. Anney demanded.

“Okay,” Emily said as she got up from her seat. “We’re going.”

At the end of the short walk to the street, Emily looked at Rhyss.

Rhyss looked back, and she was almost certain he didn’t want to leave. She, unfortunately, had work as Antoine reminded her.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, donut…. Date?”

Rhyss smiled, “Yes. See you tomorrow, Em.”

Every girly feeling rushed forward and she tried to brush it off as she pulled her dial out to transport to work.

“You can’t date him,” Antoine suggested.

Emily smiled, “I think it will be more than dating.”

Antoine rolled his eyes, “be there at six. No earlier.”

“Okay,” Emily replied. She set the dial and in a moment she was in her bedroom – sterile and white and so different from home. She missed home already, but she did have a job to do and three boys to go read to.

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