Page 43 of Into Ember

I plop down on the rock. Not gracefully. There is no graceful left.

“It can’t be,” I tell nobody. “It can’t— that’s not. No.”

Solid start. Very convincing.

A laugh comes out of me because none of this can be remotely real.

“What are they even talking about? Mates. That’s not a real thing. That’s a book thing. That happens in my books, to fictional women, with fictional men, where it’s safe, and nobody actually kneels on a kitchen floor and tells you—”

I can’t even finish it.

He said mates aren’t real. Those were his words. His opening words. And then he took it all back with my hands in his and a straight face, and I—

Nope. Circle back. Start over.

“It can’t be real.”

I look up, and the trees go on in every direction, and I watch the sunlight through them for a minute. None of them are trees I know, but this place feels familiar. That’s weird, right?

“Where the fuck am I?”

Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

I get up and walk a slow circle around the rock, because sitting still clearly isn’t an option right now. I crouch and grab a handful of dirt like the dirt is going to explain everything. It’s dark and soft. It smells alive like I remember from my childhood. My mom’s garden always smelled like this and I always loved digging my fingers into it.

I don’t recognize half of these plants. Plants, by the way. Just plants — we haven’t seen a single animal since we got here, not one, which is its own kind of—

Something skirts along the edge of the clearing. Squirrel-shaped. Chipmunk-striped.

Lavender.

“Oh, come on.”

It’s gone before I can get a good look at it but I know what I saw. “Lavender. Sure. Why not? Everything else is messed up today. What’s one more thing?”

I press my hand flat to the nearest tree trunk. The bark is rough and warm from the sun, and for one second it feels exactly like home. I close my eyes and just let that seep in. Let myself pretend for just a little while.

But it’s not home.

I let out a breath and open my eyes, and that’s when I see him.

Gerald.

Five feet away, sitting on the forest floor, leaves out, pot and all, like this is a completely normal place for a pothos to spend his morning.

“How did you get out here?” I ask him. “What is going on with you?”

Gerald says nothing, because obviously. But right now I really wish he would. Wouldn’t be the strangest thing today.

Somebody must have carried him out here. One of them. Quietly. For reasons. I’m not examining it, because I have hit my limit on impossible things before breakfast, and he’s here now, and honestly, he’s the only one I want to talk to.

“Mates, Gerald. Fated mates. Me.” I turn to face him. “Can you believe that? Because I can’t. Mates come with fated bonds and brooding and ungodly attractive men who chop wood shirtless for no reason and always — always — have big dicks. Let’s be real, Gerald. And they live in books. Where the authors put them. On purpose. Because that’s where they belong.”

Gerald’s leaves don’t so much as twitch.

“Exactly. Thank you.”

“And dragons. Can we talk about the dragons? They think I’m a dragon. Me. I’m a journalist from Chicago. I can’t be a dragon. A metaphor, absolutely — I’d accept dragon as a metaphor, I’d put it in a headline — but no. They mean the actual thing.”