Mona sat on the roof, on the wall of a terrace situated between the slope of the gable next to her and its twin thirty feet away, legs hanging off the edge and occasionally swaying inside the dress that fluttered, light blue and white, in the gentle late afternoon breeze. Staring at the colors rippling below her, she thought back to one of the few times she had managed to draw a genuine, unprovoked compliment out of Asa.
She was pretty sure that they were eleven at the time. Or rather, she had just turned eleven and he was soon to turn twelve, so for about a month they were the same age. They had always just been best friends, feeling almost like brother and sister; but she was just beginning to every once in a while put more stock in his opinion of her, or to see him in a new light that would make her heart flutter in unfamiliar ways.
She had always delighted in pampering and primping herself, to fully look her part as a princess, and somehow she always knew, like she saw it in his eyes, even on such occasions as he teased her for her efforts, that he enjoyed seeing her look her best.
But that day, when she entered the room where he was waiting to run off into the city with her and they would find some sort of trouble to get in together – that day, when he turned and saw her, and the only thing he said was "Wow" –
And the way he said it, like just for a moment he wasn't eleven going on twelve, but… older….
Even now, five years later, her heart skipped a beat, blood rushed to her face, and she had to grab the edge of the roof to convince her stomach that she wasn't falling.
Her dress had been blue, a light blue, not far off from the shade she was wearing now, and as she thought back over the years, took a mental walk through her closet, it occurred to her to wonder how much of her fashion sense since then had stemmed from that moment.
Mona shivered as the first breeze hinting at evening blew in, carrying a hint of salt and fish from the sea, then angled her head slightly backwards as she heard slow, muted footsteps behind her.
She took a deep breath and let it out before speaking. "I'm so sorry to disturb you," she said as she turned. "I'll be off your roof–"
It was not, as she had assumed, the merchant – what was his name again? – standing in the terrace whose wall she was perched on, but –
"Adrian," she said, startled. "What are you doing here?"
Adrian came to stand about ten feet from her, and looked over the edge of the terrace. "Looking for you," he said. "Wow, it's so much higher once you're up here."
Mona shrugged. "You get used to it."
"What gets me is how you manage to climb in that getup."
Mona chuckled wryly. "Asa used to say the same thing." A slight hesitation, and then, "Now it's Aadhira who says it. When she condescends to hang back with me, instead of running ahead into derring-do that would make Asa think twice."
Adrian frowned. "I was as surprised to see her with you last night as I was to see you. I would have expected her to be a little more… coddled, after what happened."
Mona let out another wry chuckle. "Yeah, that would have gone over well. Even when Asa was still with us, she was headstrong. No, our protection of her extended as far as not letting her know what happened that night. Never mention Asa's name. I kind of wonder if she even remembers Asa at all.
"But I suppose I might have gotten a little selfish with her. She kind of became my new Asa, only this time I was taking the lead. Until one day I woke up and realized that I wasn't. And hadn't been for a while."
She kicked idly at the inside of the dress flowing beneath her, watching the wave of fabric flow down the side of the house. "I thought I was being the careful big sister, making sure she wouldn't get hurt while living just a little bit on the edge. But it seems that while I was sitting on the rooftop moping, she was off meeting real street rats, getting into the kind of trouble Asa and I only dreamed of.
"And out of it." Mona turned to look Adrian in the eye. "Asa had the gift, in ways I was only pretending at. He just got unlucky. But Aadhira –" her gaze dipped into memory, staring at faraway things only she could see. "Aadhira is a prodigy. I mean, she still probably falls on her face twice as often as Asa ever did. You saw that bungle of a con job last night. But that's only because Asa stopped at running through the rooftops.
"Aadhira chases the stars."
She looked down at the courtyard below her. "I wonder what would have happened if Aadhira had been there instead of Asa. Or instead of me."
Adrian took another leery look over the edge of the terrace, and then carefully, very carefully, put one leg and then the other over the edge, sitting a few hand breaths away from Mona.
"Would you like to talk about that night?" When she looked at him quizzically, he said, "I only know the general outline of what happened. Yours is the closest I think I can get to what Asa's story would have been."
Mona looked back down at the courtyard, mouth working soundlessly, jaw tensing and relaxing. Adrian was beginning to wonder if she was going to respond when she finally spoke.
"Asa was getting tired of picking pockets and stealing fruit. He wanted to get into more daring stuff. Burglaries." Her nod took in the entirety of the house they were sitting on.
"Someone taught him how to pick locks, and he had me working on it. We never actually entered, only broke. But he was getting antsy for more.
"And then one day he comes to me, all excited like. Master Lythe here had just come into possession of a–" She cocked her head. "You know what? I don't even remember what it was."
She looked back down at the courtyard, lost in thought. "This was to be our first big adventure. He planned everything meticulously. He pushed me to finally get my lock picking figured out. We did some last minute training on climbing buildings."
She hesitated. "He told me to wear black."
Mona held her arms out, twisting towards Adrian to show off her dress. "Me. Black. Can you imagine?"
A deep breath, then, "I should have listened to him."
Mona waved toward the door Adrian had come through to join her on the terrace. "This was supposed to be an easy job, with this terrace here. Even with me dressed in silk, he decided I could just pick the lock – it was important to him that I had something I would be able to do myself – and he would go inside by himself, while I waited for him to get the… get the thing."
Swinging her feet back over the wall, she got up and walked over to the door. "I waited for all of maybe a minute before my excitement got the better of me. And then once I get inside, and down the stairs, I'm like, moonless night, which way did he go?"
Mona leaned her head on one arm against the doorframe, the other hand extended to brush against the door. "And then I see the moonlight shining through an open door. And I'm like, oh, well that must be where he is. And then I'm halfway through the door before I see the bed, and I must have made some noise because he's waking up, and he looks at me, and I don't know who screams first, but he's screaming, and I'm screaming, and then Asa is there, and he's dragging me away…."
Mona trailed off as her memories jumped through the frantic scramble back to the stairs.
"Somehow we made it back up here. And Asa–" She looked back at Adrian. "I don't know how he managed to stay so calm. And he made sure I was safe first."
Walking back to where she had been sitting earlier, she gestured to the wall below the eaves. "There was a drainpipe here, then. He got me started down it, and then – I don't know, I was halfway down, I couldn't see nothing, but I hear fighting up here, and then suddenly Asa is zooming above me like a dragon in flight, and he hits–" she pointed to the corner where this wing met the main body of the house "–and to this day I don't know how he did it, but somehow he manages to just glide down four stories, holding himself between the two walls like it was nothing."
Mona shuddered as she recalled the cursing from above, and the shudder as something hit the gable above her, dislodging the drainpipe she clung to, until it was angling out over the courtyard, barely doing anything to arrest her descent to the flagstones below.
Her eyes started to glaze over as she stared down at the courtyard, remembered images superimposing over the stillness defining it in the here and now.
A spectre of a lone city guard rushed into the courtyard, drawn by the commotion yet not looking up to see the girl hanging on for dear life above him. Instead his eyes were fixed on the black figure scuttling its way down the whitewashed walls of the mansion. Even now Asa kicked off from the corner and perfectly executed a shoulder roll on the ground that brought him to his feet.
Asa's ghost looked up at the girl rapidly approaching the hard, stony ground of the courtyard, and down at the constable drawing his sword and calling out for him to stop, and he didn't hesitate a moment. Forward he ran, desperate to ease Mona's meeting with the courtyard, as the guard, seeing only a suspect rushing at him with unknown intentions, thrust with his sword.
Mona watched as her ghost fell, landing in Asa's arms, just after the guard's sword found its target in Asa's side.
"He threw himself onto the guard's sword," she whispered, "to save me."
Events continued below her just the way she remembered them: the guard, suddenly finding a familiar face in front of him, whispering "Princess" as his face drained of blood; his partner, arriving on scene moments too late, being sent for a healer; her own tears, already flowing even though she hadn't yet fully grasped what was happening consciously.
And Asa's last words. "Mona," he whispered, his words reaching her ears as if he was standing beside her now, "I'm sorry. I don't tell you enough how beautiful you are. How much I love… getting into trouble with you." He coughed, ghostly blood spattering Mona's spectral double. "Please… hold me. I feel… cold…."
Mona didn't know how the side of her face arrived on Adrian's chest, but she clung to him desperately as she watched the scene fade until only the boy and girl remained, and then the boy, and then nothing.