Chapter 5

We walked through The Garden together for my first time. When we came to a red door, attached to a huge Victorian-styled house, Cage turned to look at me for the first time since I began to follow him.

“You have a title?” he asked me.

“Just Jet.” I looked into his foggy eyes, convinced that I had probably made a mistake in following him to an isolated area where no one could hear me scream in a place where no one knew I was missing.

“Just Jet...” he repeated, mulling this over. “I am Cage. And you are about to meet my mother. Our mother...” he trailed off.

“What?” Now I was nervous. Was he about to kill me? Seriously? Was “mother” another word for “maker”?

But for some reason I swallowed my panic and waited outside the red door when he asked me to. I was glancing around for some sort of weapon (you know, just in case) when he poked his head back out and said in this super cryptic way, “She'll see you, lost one.”

I wished he would quit talking like that but I came to discover that's just how he is, melodramatic and caged inside his own mind, however expanded by drugs it happened to be. Not even Madame Rook, the woman he affectionately dubbed as his “Mother” could change him. I guess that was for the best.

I followed him through some sort of parlor. The floor was checkered black and white, and the walls were a deep, rich purple. We arrived in a luxuriously furnished, well, living room, I guess you could call it. The floors were wooden and expensive looking and the walls were painted a vibrant red. The antique furniture glinted with gold and wood polish, full of exquisite designs I've only seen the likes of on television.

The woman lounging on one of the antique couches was dressed in a top as red as the walls. She was wearing a black and white plaid skirt that reached her knees, and tall black leather boots that hugged her skinny legs closely. They looked like they'd cut off the circulation if she wore them too long, but she didn't seem worried about that. She eyed me with glassy eyes from behind a large clear glass hookah that she was nursing lazily. As she studied me, waiting for someone to speak, she swept a well-manicured hand through her jet-black pixie-cut hair.

Finally Cage said, “Little sister is in need. She found us. Her sky has no stars.”

I found it off-putting that he didn't question my gender the way the rest of humanity did.

The woman cleared her throat and motioned me beside her. She removed my grey fedora with a type of slow, clumsy grace, and her eyes grew wide when she realized that I had no hair. She composed herself and, in a heavy Russian accent, she spoke.

“Skin and bones. Bald-headed. In my home. Darling, you have not fled chemo have you?” She stared at me with expressionless brown eyes.

“All I've fled are my circumstances.” I answered uneasily.

“What a futile trek then, child. There is no escaping your circumstances. You're bound to have them in one form or another.” She let out a brief, unkind laugh. I didn't answer, only took my hat back from her well-manicured hand.

“Cage, fix our guest a drink.” she barked.

“Our guest is Just Jet.” Cage informed her as he disappeared stage-left. Madame Rook nodded.

“He calls me mother,” she mumbled more to herself than to me. “I may be.”

She gestured towards her hookah as though to offer me a hit, seemingly lost in her own thoughts but wanting to keep me entertained nonetheless. I refused it politely, which seemed to shock her, however she recovered quickly and went back to nursing it herself.

Cage returned, his hands full. One had a steaming cup in it, the other, a fifth of whiskey.

“I wasn't sure which...” he said, kind of embarrassed. “I'll take what you don't. The cup is hot chocolate.”

He offered both hands out to me and I grabbed the bottle, ingesting it gratefully. Madame Rook watched this, another brief moment of surprise flickering on her face. She cast a sidelong look at Cage, who seemed oblivious as he watched me down the whiskey. I sat the bottle loudly beside the Madame's hookah, letting the warm buzz welcome me into any possible situation.

Too late, again, I considered that they might have slipped me some sort of drug or poison and made a note to watch Cage to see if he drank any of the supposed “hot cocoa”. However, I stopped worrying once the whiskey did its job to my liver and my inhibitions.

“She doesn't smoke, Cage. Why did you bring her here?” the Madame asked curtly after another short silence.

“I suspect, Mother, that she may be climbing into the tree.” Cage looked at the floor as he said this, then turned his glassy eyes on my hands. “She just doesn't know it yet.”

“What tree?” I asked indignantly. “And what makes you so sure that I want-” I trailed off, realizing that any wrong step could get me kicked back out into the cold, when I was just starting to notice how nice the warmth of the house was.

“The tree, little sister, the family tree!” Cage said this as though I were incredibly dense. I just stared at him, the whiskey tempting me to prod further while at the same time convincing me the effort would be futile.

“The test then!” the Madame exclaimed. With startling speed, she grabbed my pants leg and yanked it up, exposing my sock less-freezing-feet and the thickening hair on my filthy leg. I watched her expression change from impartiality to thinly veiled disgust. Or maybe pity.

“Take her upstairs. First time's free.” she ordered Cage.

Cage nodded and looked at me expectantly. I rose and followed him up a long winding staircase into a long hall and through a dark wooden door frame. We were in a bedroom and-again- I was instantly suspicious. What was this? My mind ran a hundred places at once as I watched Cage, with his glass ice-blue eyes and stubbled face, fling open a closet door and step aside. He motioned me over and I went, hesitantly.

“Pick something. It's all clean, all warm. You should be warm.” he paused before adding “And take a bath.”

I almost laughed out loud but instead turned my head to hide my unkind smile.

“Come down when you're done.” Cage said. “Mother and I will be waiting.”
Then he disappeared out the door and down the stairs.