Elegy

THIRTY Inland

The farther they got from the ocean, the more intense Gemma’s headache became. Harper sat in the window seat, flipping through the book on Roman mythology Gemma had brought, because Gemma’s head hurt too much to concentrate. She’d had to read the same sentence over and over, and she still didn’t even really understand what it was about.

The morning sun only made her migraine worse, so Gemma reached over and closed the shade.

“Your head’s really bothering you?” Harper asked quietly.

“Not too bad,” Gemma lied, and forced a smile.

And then, as if to somehow prove she wasn’t in agonizing pain or maybe to distract herself, she decided to make conversation. Marcy and Lydia were sitting across the aisle of the plane from her, so she looked over at them.

For most of the flight, none of them had spoken much. Harper was reading the book, Gemma was trying futilely to sleep, Lydia had some of Audra’s notes laid out on the tray and was going through them, and Marcy was typing feverishly on her phone.

“Are you texting someone?” Gemma asked.

“No, I’m using Twitter.”

“You paid, like, twenty dollars for in-flight Internet so you could tweet?” Gemma asked, and for a second, she was too stunned to notice that it felt like a swarm of mosquitoes was trapped inside her brain.

“Wait.” Harper looked up from her book. “You have Twitter?”

Marcy shook her head. “There’s so much you don’t know about me.”

“What’s so important that you have to tweet en route to Charleston?” Gemma asked.

“I’m just talking to Kirby,” Marcy replied noncommittally.

“Kirby Logan?” Harper closed the book and leaned forward in her seat, so it was easier for her to see Marcy. “Are you guys like dating now?”

“What are you doing?” Marcy looked over at them, narrowing her eyes behind her glasses. “Why are you interrogating me about my love life? I never do that to you.”

Harper scoffed. “You ask me about my love life all the time!”

“Yeah, but I just do that to be polite,” Marcy said. “I don’t actually care.”

“That makes it so much better.” Harper rolled her eyes.

“Doesn’t it?” Marcy asked.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend, Marcy?” Gemma asked, since keeping this conversation going really did seem to take her mind off the pain. At least a little bit. “I’ve never heard you even talk about going on dates.”

“Ladies don’t kiss and tell.” Marcy turned her attention back to her phone. “And I’m a lady in the streets and a freak with the beats.”

“It’s a ‘freak in the sheets,’” Gemma corrected her.

“What?” Marcy shook her head. “No. I play the steel drums. I don’t do anything with sheets.”

“Marcy has had boyfriends,” Lydia said. She rubbed her neck and looked up from the notes. “She was really serious with this guy in high school. Keith.”

Lydia and Marcy were both nine years older than Gemma, so neither she nor Harper had known them in school. But Lydia had graduated with Marcy and had been really good friends with her, and Gemma just realized that Lydia might have all kinds of fun dirt on her.

“Keith?” Harper sounded dubious. “That’s such a normal name.”

“Yeah, I thought you would only date guys named Bram or Xavier or Frodo,” Gemma agreed.

Marcy rested her head against the seat and sighed. “Okay, first of all, I’m not gonna date a hobbit. And secondly, obviously those names would be way cooler, but I don’t get to pick my boyfriends’ names.” She paused, thinking. “Actually, I wonder how committed Kirby is to his name. He’s always looked like a Stanley to me.”

“How is Stanley better than Kirby?” Gemma asked.

Lydia leaned forward, resting her arms on the tray table, and gave Gemma and Harper an impish smirk. “Oh, and Keith was a football player.”

“He was third-string and benched the whole season,” Marcy said in an exasperated way, like she’d explained this a hundred times before. “He was also on the math league and a founding member of the paranormal society. It’s that last fact that attracted me to him, and I was willing to overlook the whole ‘jock’ thing to be with him.”

“Wow.” Gemma shook her head. “I just can’t picture you like going on dates or kissing or anything.”

“You shouldn’t picture me kissing. That’s gross and weird,” Marcy said.

“They even went to prom together,” Lydia added.

Marcy groaned. “Oh, my god. This is the longest flight of my entire life. When are we getting there?”

“Marcy went to prom? Seriously?” Harper snickered.

“I know!” Gemma agreed. “I couldn’t believe it when Marcy told me last week.”

“Right?” Lydia sounded as shocked as they were. “For a little bit, I was afraid that it might be some trick, and the football team was gonna go all Carrie on her. But nope. She didn’t win prom queen, and Keith really liked her.”

“That prom was horrible, though. Pig’s blood would’ve been an improvement,” Marcy muttered, and began typing on her phone again.

“There really is so much I don’t know about you, Marcy,” Harper said.

“What are you tweeting now?” Gemma leaned into the aisle, trying to read it.

“I’m not tweeting anything. I’m Googling to see if anyone has developed teleportation technology so that I never have to go through this again.”

The flight did feel long, like Marcy had said, but landing didn’t make things much better. In fact, being on solid ground only seemed to make the headache intensify. Gemma bought overpriced aspirin and a bottle of water at the airport and guzzled it down before they even went to the car rental.

Since Harper and Gemma were under twenty-five, Marcy rented the car in her name, and that meant they had to put it on her credit card.

“Thank you,” Gemma told Marcy for the twentieth time as they walked out to pick up their rented sedan.

“As long as I get to see some kind of all-knowing, all-powerful, magical being on this trip, then we’ll call it even,” Marcy said.

“This trip is really racking up,” Gemma said, and she felt guilty just thinking about it. “As soon as this is all over, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life paying people back and trying to make up for the hell that everyone is going through.”

“Getting back is the only repayment we need,” Harper assured her.

Marcy drove, while Harper navigated in the passenger seat using the GPS and the directions that Lydia had conjured up from Audra’s notes. Gemma was in too much pain to be as much help as she’d like, and she rested her forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.

“So when we get there, I think you should let me do the talking first,” Lydia said, as they got closer.

“How will we know it’s Diana?” Harper glanced back in the backseat at Lydia. “Do you know what she looks like?”

Lydia shook her head. “No, Audra was careful not to have pictures or to describe her. But I usually just know.”

“How? Do you have like a divining rod for supernatural elements or something?” Harper asked.

“No. Audra and my gramma were really great about being able to sense things, but with me, it comes from experience.” Lydia shrugged. “When you’re around something enough, you eventually pick it up.”

“Do you know what kind of goddess she is? Is she gonna hurt us or be violent?” Marcy asked.

“She helped Audra and Thalia,” Lydia said. “But I can’t make any guarantees on how she’ll react.”

“She might kill us,” Marcy said.

Lydia sighed. “She probably won’t.”

“But she might,” Marcy persisted, but strangely, she didn’t sound that upset about the prospect.

“How are you holding up, Gemma?” Harper turned around fully so she could really get a look at her.

“Okay. But those aspirin I took are doing nothing for my headache,” she admitted.

“Because it’s not real pain. It’s supernatural,” Lydia explained. “Pills won’t do anything for it.”

“Then hopefully this won’t take too long,” Gemma said.

“And … here we are,” Marcy said, and Gemma looked out at the window.

Marcy had pulled up in front of a sage green building that would’ve looked like a warehouse if it weren’t for all the plants. A large faded sign across the front read Floral Essence, written in a lovely scroll. Skylights on the pitched roof gave it more of a greenhouse feel, and nearly every inch of surrounding land was covered in flowers or bushes.

“This is a flower shop,” Harper said as she gazed up at it.

“Yeah. That’s how Audra found her.” Lydia pointed to it. “At this flower shop.”

Harper turned back to Lydia, and so far, nobody had made any move to get out of the car. “But she doesn’t live here.”

“She might.” Marcy leaned forward, trying to get a better look at it. “It looks like a big place. There could be an apartment in the back.”

“So, according to Audra, Diana worked at this place fifty years ago. Fifty.” Harper was sounding increasingly irritated. “She can’t possibly still work here, not if she’s trying to be incognito and not set off alarms as some weird, ageless lady living in a store.”

“She’s a god,” Lydia reminded her patiently. “She can change her appearance. If she wants to age, she can. If she wants to be a tall, blond, twenty-year-old woman or a short, elderly, black man or a goat, she can be.”

“She can be a goat?” Marcy was intrigued.

“Yeah. Didn’t you ever read mythology?” Lydia asked. “Gods were always turning into animals. Zeus was pretending to be a bull or something when he impregnated Hercules’ mom.”

“Why did he pretend to be a bull?” Marcy asked. “How does being a bull make it easier for him to get laid instead of being a friggin’ god?”

Harper turned away from them and stared back out at the flower shop. “So you’re sure this is the place?”

“Yeah,” Lydia said decisively. “If Diana is still alive, then this is where we’ll find her.”

“Harper. Look at that bush,” Gemma said, and got out of the car to inspect it.

It was a huge bush growing up alongside the building and nearly as tall. Each of the blossoms were bright, vibrant purple, and they had to be twice the size of Gemma’s fist. As soon as she stepped out of the car, she’d been able to smell it—the strong fragrance overpowering the other plants and the city around them.

“This is just like the one behind Bernie’s house,” Gemma said when she heard Harper come up behind her. “Thalia planted it in the yard.”

“Do you think she got it from here?” Marcy asked, as she and Lydia joined them.

“She must’ve,” Harper said. “I’ve never seen roses like this anywhere else.”

“Look at this one.” Lydia had moved a few feet away and pointed to a fern with large pink flowers in the shape of a corkscrew. Then she looked around, gesturing to the cornucopia of vivid, exotic plant life. “The flowers and plants here all seem really beautiful and unique. She might be the goddess of nature.”

“I thought Diana was the goddess of hunting,” Harper said.

“The Roman goddess. But Demeter was the goddess of nature.” Gemma couldn’t breathe for a moment. “You don’t think…”

Lydia shrugged. “Audra only ever referred to her as Diana.”

“It could be her, though,” Gemma insisted.

They were all standing outside, and a mixture of terror and hope left Gemma frozen in place. Marcy had apparently grown impatient, because she went inside, and the door chimed loudly as she entered.

“Marcy,” Harper hissed, and hurried after her. “Wait for us.”

Inside, the store somehow felt even more vast than it had on the outside. It was like stepping into a jungle. Vines and flowers hung from the ceiling, cucumber and zucchini were growing over crates into the aisles. It had been warm outside, but the heat and humidity were so strong indoors that Marcy’s glasses fogged up, and she wiped them on her shirt.

“I’ll be right out!” A woman shouted from the far end of the store. “Look around while you wait.”

Gemma and Harper exchanged a look, and Gemma shrugged. The four of them started wandering toward the other end of the store, where the woman had shouted from, but it was impossible not to get sidetracked by the plants.

Gemma stepped away from the main aisle and investigated a wall of vines, strange tangles that completely covered an old, wired fence. The flowers were small, like violets, and a deep, rich blue. But it was the scent that called her in. It was intoxicating, and for a second, her head even stopped hurting.

“Hello there,” the woman said again, sounding closer this time. Gemma heard the jangle of her jewelry as she walked over to the other girls. “What can I help you all with today?”

“Are you Diana?” Lydia asked, and Gemma tried to peer in through the vines to get a peek at her, but all she could see was drapey beige fabric.

“Yes, I am,” the woman said cheerily.

Gemma finally came out from behind the vines where she saw a woman in her late fifties standing with Harper, Lydia, and Marcy. She looked exactly the way Gemma imagined an art history teacher or the leader of a co-op whole-foods store would look.

She wore a long dress with billowy sleeves and some kind of Indian pattern that went down to her feet. Beaded necklaces and bracelets adorned her, though none of them appeared to be that fancy or expensive. Her blond hair was a bit frizzy and pulled away from her face. When she saw Gemma, she adjusted her small, tortoiseshell glasses, then she exhaled deeply.

“Oh,” Diana said, looking past the other girls and staring right at Gemma. “So you’ve come to kill me then?”