Chapter 19: 22. Mixing Paints

Pak

(After the Incident)

 

The evening would be quiet, but Kano’s mind is noisy. I hear its whirring in the way he rubs his forehead, scratches his hair, shifts his feet. The way he smokes, fast, thin bursts, like steam from a kettle. The way he leans on the windowsill, bent like a snapped twig. The way he glances towards me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. I keep my nose buried in my book, reading and re-reading passages, weaving in and out of focus.

“So…”

His voice tugs my ear.

“What’s your dad like?”

A chill gallops down my spine, bristling the hairs on my neck. A long silence passes. He doesn’t withdraw the question. I sigh and steady my tongue.

“My grandmother said he was a demon,” I say with a scoff. It sounds so ridiculous, saying it out loud.

“So you never knew him?”

I roll my eyes. “Of course not,” I say. He exhales, filling the room with smoke, and flicks the ash from his cigarette. I find the paragraph I left off on.

“Do you think it’s true?”

I slam the book shut. Cabbage springs off my lap with an irritated coo. Kano stares out the window, stiff. He knows he’s disturbed a wasps’ nest. Venomous words collect behind my lips. I swallow them. Steady my tongue…

“I don’t have horns or a pointy tail, so if I had to make an educated guess, I’d say probably not.”

Kano chuckles, and his shoulders relax.

“I never knew mine, either,” he says, smoke trailing from the stub between his fingers. “I don’t even know what kind of elf he is. My mom never talked about him. She’d get all sad when I asked, so I stopped asking.”

“Well, what color was she?”

I blurt without thinking. My mind grabs at the mystery, as though it were my duty to solve it. Kano gives me an incredulous look.

“She was… human,” he says slowly, as if he thinks I’m stupid.

“Obviously,” I say, mimicking his tempo. “But humans have colors too, even if it’s just shades of brown and pink. So, what color was she?”

I face him fully, calculating the tint of his skin. He pauses, brow furrowed, like he’s struggling to remember.

“Tan, I guess?” He looks back out the window, cheeks subtly flushing that funny orange.

“Okay. Well, you’re sort of a… toasted peanut color,” I start. He snorts, an oddly distant shimmer in his eyes.

“It’s like mixing paints. If your mother was tan, to turn that into toasted peanut, your father would have to be some shade of yellow. So you’ve got two possibilities, a forest elf or a gold elf, but I doubt he’s a gold elf since you’re not shiny.”

He scrunches up his face and opens his mouth to speak, but only manages a chuckle. “I never thought of it like that,” he says.

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“And,” I continue, confident in my assessment, “your eyes are green, so, unless you got those from your mother, I’d say he’s most likely from a forest. Maybe one of the refugees from Belethlian, or Yelind, probably. We didn’t get too many from Belethlian…”

My voice trails off as I notice him nodding, his subtle smirk spreading to a grin.

“Maybe I’ll try reading minds, then.”

He glances up with a roguish glint in his eye. My heart skips, flops, flutters, and freezes the blood in my veins.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a myth,” I say.

“Well, let me try it on you, and we’ll find out.”

“I’d rather not…”

“Come on,” he presses. “Like you said, it’s probably a myth.”

A wave of tension washes over me. Cabbage gives me a knowing look.

“It’s a bad idea,” I grumble. “Waste of time.”

“What, are you hiding something?”

“Everyone is,” I snap. “Anyway, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“But—”

“Stop.”

I glare.

He stops.

His eyes flit to my hand. It’s empty.

“It’s getting late,” I say, scooting under the covers. My book falls to the floor. I don’t pick it up. Cabbage flutters up to the bed and curls up in the bend of my knees.

“Right… okay.”

He shuffles to his bed. The frame creaks under his weight, and the covers swish while he fumbles to get comfortable. He puffs into his palm to snuff out the candle. His breathing becomes all I can hear.

“Sorry,” he mumbles after a little while. He rolls over. Creeee.

I pretend I’m already asleep.

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