"It took you fourteen years to grow this," he said. "And you just left it hanging from a chandelier? Careless."
"I'm not," she protested. "My mother --"
"I know. And if you turn around, I'll put it back."
"Really?" she asked, looking up at him.
Mihai smiled and nodded. Esme sat forward and turned her back to him. She heard him whisper, felt the gentlest stirring at the nape of her neck, and then, all at once, the weight of her hair was restored so her head tilted back with the suddenness of it, like a scale at the market when apples are dropped in. She reached back and there was her braid as if it had never been cut. "I already forgot how heavy it is," she said, unamazed by this small gift of magic.
She had recently been told she would live for hundreds of years. She would be difficult to amaze from now on.
She asked, "Are you going to put my mother's back too?"
Mihai shook his head, letting his gaze drift out the window. "She doesn't want me to touch her," he said.
Esme was quiet, watching him. She realized she still saw him through the Druj Queen's memories. She remembered the wintery kiss as if her own lips had touched his, and she remembered other things too, much less pleasant things, like the feeling of trespassing in her mother's soul. Yazad was going to help her misplace those memories. Hypnotism, he had said, holding up a crystal on a silver chain and smiling in the twinkling way he had that made everything seem like a grand adventure.
"Well, thanks," she said, running her fingers down the braid that was now draped over her shoulder.
"You're welcome," Mihai replied. He turned to go.
"Mihai?" Esme asked.
"Yes?"
"All the other Druj with their souls scattered," she said slowly. "Will you ... help them ... too?"
"Help them? I don't know," he said. The thought overwhelmed him. Among all the citadels there were hundreds of Druj. As for "helping them," he didn't see how he could. Mahzarin could, certainly, if she ever came to him and learned the ways of hathra. He couldn't think beyond that hope. Weeks had passed and now the fear of what she might do to him had subsided entirely and been replaced by the fear that she would do nothing, that she would rebuild Tajbel and remain there, ignoring the humanity that he had given her. That Esme had given her. Esme was waiting for her too. Hathra was a strange thing; she might hate the Druj Queen who had done such terrible things to her mother, but she still felt her absence like a rift in her soul.
Mihai touched Esme lightly on the top of her head and walked out. He left Yazad's and wandered through the city, smelling the density of humans all around him, feeling their jostling shoulders in the crowds. When he felt saturated with humanity, he scaled lizardlike the side of a church and perched on the spire so the sky lay open all around him.
And he went on with his waiting.
Mab and Esme returned to their flat and to their pretty little lives, though of course, things would never be the same for them. Mab watched her beloved daughter warily now, as if she didn't really know her. The thought that all along, while she had believed them safe, Esme had carried Mab's tormentor within herself... it was a shock that would not easily fade. It was all the horrors of her youth unveiled anew, compounded by betrayal. That betrayal and shock became the backdrop and stage dressing of her mind; any other thought she might have was as a transient actor treading past. Always, the betrayal was there behind it. Always, after any other thought, her mind reverted to it, and it had the power to leave her breathless and gasping in an instant, like a punch to the gut.
Yazad had explained that Esme and the Druj Queen were connected now by a bond Mab would never understand, a bond that would live on long after she herself was dead. Her daughter and her enemy shared a soul, and some day, Yazad warned her, Mahzarin would come. Mab leapt at every sound, scarcely slept for the crowd of nightmares, and watched the street through a slit in the curtains, dreading that day, but it didn't come, and gradually they returned to some semblance of a normal life -- more normal, indeed, than their life had been before.
Their saltshaker of diamonds had been lost on the ship in Marseilles, but Yazad gave them more. It had always been he who sent them. He also persuaded Esme to enroll in a small private school not far from her neighborhood, and she began spending her days with other girls. She was shy among them at first, but they were mostly shy and bookish girls themselves, and for the first time in her life, she made friends. She was discovered to be a gifted violinist, surpassing the music teacher's skill, and so a private instructor was engaged for her. She went to tea with the other girls, and to a birthday party. She brought a wrapped gift, ate a slice of cake, and even danced with a boy -- but only once. She didn't enjoy the feeling of his hands heavy at her waist. She thought of another touch, a light, furtive one: the way the flower shop boy had held her braid in his hand when he stood behind her in line at the bakery. It seemed like such a long time ago. The memory of it curved Esme's lips into a secret smile as she stepped abruptly away from her dance partner and retreated.
A few days later she stopped to buy her mother some flowers on the way home from school. The boy was behind the counter and when he saw her come in, he blushed. He was blond and his eyes were blue, but dark like the deep sea, not icy like Druj blue, and he was fair, with long pale lashes and rosy color in his cheeks as if they'd been pinched pink by aunts and grannies until they stayed that way. He stammered when he helped Esme gather together a bouquet from the buckets of flowers around the shop. "Cosmos?" he asked her.
She nodded, adding softly, "And maybe some lilies."
"A bit of lupine?" he said, holding up a blue spike of blossoms.
They could think of nothing to say but the names of flowers, and it seemed a sort of language of its own. Mums, zinnias, delphinium, a lacy frond of baby's breath.
As she handed him her money, Esme blurted her name and then bit her lip.
"Em Tom," said the boy, blushing anew.
And that was all. Esme left with her flowers clutched to her chest and her braid swinging in her haste, but by the time she got to the corner, she was smiling. Perhaps, she thought, she would buy her mother flowers again next week.
And she did.
Time passed. Esme thought often of the ash of ancient souls blowing ever around the world, sifting and mixing with the ash of forest fires and wars and the dust of deserts and pollen and bones. The ache of absence within her eased some with time; she filled it with music and schoolwork and friends, trips to the ballet with her mother, and walks in St. James's Park with Tom.