The cats were back on the pizza shop’s windowsills. They gave me identical looks of disgust as though to say, ‘Your kind never brings fish bits.’
I landed on the footpath, changed to human size and quickly pulled my hoodie over my wings. Was I doing the right thing?
And even if it was right, would Gaela forgive me?
I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of hot pizza crust and anchovies, and opened the door.
Gaela was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing patterns with her finger on the tomato sauce-stained cloth. From here the sauce looked like blood. Her face was as blank as a concrete wall. She didn’t even look up as I walked in.
I shivered: she’d let the oven go out and the dawn breeze was cool. I shut the door, then pulled up a chair next to her. This was going to be hard.
‘Gaela . . .’
‘That’s my name,’ she agreed.
‘I followed Guyye after he left here tonight. I . . . I’m sorry, but I was worried for you.’ I gulped at the hard blank look on her face. ‘He and his friends were talking —’
‘About using my magic to enchant real-estate developers, public servants, politicians — whoever they want to influence to get power or money, or just for the fun of playing with humans. I’m not a fool, Pete,’ she added flatly.
I looked at her then. Really looked at her. Her selkie enchantment had never touched me, but I’d still seen her beauty, her joy in making pizzas and being in the sea. Now I saw far more. I saw courage. Gaela still loved Guyye. How could she help it when he’d used his glamour on her? But she hadn’t let that stop her from seeing what was happening around her. Even now, she fought against the glamour. And she’d won.
‘No,’ I said softly. ‘You’re not a fool.’
‘Guyye doesn’t even like pizza.’ A tear crept down her cheek. Suddenly her face looked like it might crumple. ‘I . . . I just wanted to believe he did. He doesn’t love me either. I watched those two banshees last night — their whole world was each other. And even when that first kind of love fades, an even stronger, deeper love will still be there.’ She took a breath, then said, ‘I don’t love Guyye. I’ve realised that too. If he walked in right now, I’d feel his enchantment again — I wouldn’t be able to help it. But enchantment isn’t love.’
‘But enchantment can make you love,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean you should put up with Guyye,’ I added quickly. ‘You need to be rid of him forever. But love is . . . love . . . no matter whether it comes naturally or from magic.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ she said quietly. ‘I think love comes in a million flavours. Enchantment is one of those flavours, but not the one I want.’
I took her firm and slightly floury hand. ‘What are you going to do?’
She shrugged, but her hand grasped mine as if it gave her comfort. ‘The only thing I can do. Shut the café down today, before Guyye wakes up. And swim away.’
She looked longingly around the kitchen, at the giant pizza oven, at the shining stainless-steel benches, the neat bowls of ingredients, the mounds of rising dough.
‘I . . . I should have left already. I’ve just been trying to find the will and the energy to leave. Guyye won’t find me underwater.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘He wouldn’t even recognise me in seal shape. If I stay here, he’ll keep using my selkie enchantment and pizza to attract people he wants to influence, even if I don’t marry him.’
‘But this café is your dream,’ I said.
‘Yes, just a dream. I’ll go back to the sea where I belong.’
‘But what about pizza?’
Her smile this time held a lifetime of regret. A long lifetime, for she and I were both immortal. ‘Whoever heard of a selkie making pizza?’
‘Whoever heard of a sea serpent eating pizza? Or a fairy or a pair of banshees? Look,’ I took her hand again, then dropped it quickly because it felt too . . . too right, ‘I’ve sort of tricked the vampires.’
She stared at me. ‘What?’
‘I filled their living room with garlic. It’ll keep them away for at least a night, maybe longer. But you’ve got more time to escape Guyye than you thought. Swim away where he’ll never find you and start again. You can open another pizza shop.’
‘I . . . I don’t know if I’ve got the courage to do that. Not again.’ She drooped in her chair, like seaweed washed too far up the beach by the tide.
‘Of course you can! You’ve seen through vampire glamour! You can do anything.’
She looked at me as if she hoped I would say something more, do something more. But what else could I say or do?
‘Maybe,’ she said at last. ‘Or maybe I should just do what I was born to do — be a selkie.’
I tried frantically to think of a way to make it better. ‘Perhaps you’ll fall in love with one of those enchanted fishermen.’
Her sea-deep eyes met mine. ‘But what if I fell out of love with him? I’d either vanish into the waves, or stay with him for his poor short human life pretending I wasn’t bored. Selkies don’t fall in love with humans forever,’ she added softly. ‘That’s always been our tragedy. And theirs.’
‘There’s a flower,’ I said slowly. ‘Having its essence dropped in your eyes makes you love the first person you see afterwards for always. It’s what Flossie and I will be given at our wedding. If you did find a fisherman, I could put the drops in your eyes. You’d love him his whole life then.’
‘No.’
Suddenly it seemed desperately urgent that I make her understand. ‘You’re choosing to be lonely?’
Once again she looked at me for so long I felt uncomfortable. What was she waiting for me to say?
‘I know what true love is now,’ she said at last, her voice as quiet as the sea’s ripples on the sand. ‘Now I’ve seen it, I can’t live with less.’
‘You mean the banshees? Yes, that’s true love. I don’t think they’ll ever bicker or play tricks on each other.’
Her expression was impossible to read. ‘Yes, the banshees. I’ll miss them.’ She managed another smile, one of courage, wistfulness and determination but with a hint of anguish that made me want to cry. ‘Maybe I’ll find another selkie who wants to make pizza. Though I haven’t met one in four hundred years.’
I pushed away the cold thought of Gaela with another selkie.
‘But what if you love each other but make each other unhappy?’ I asked. ‘What if you get angry at each other? Or feel anguished if they get hurt? Even if you were to find a selkie who loves pizza, you could still let me put the potion in your eyes and your partner’s too. Then you’ll never know unhappiness, anguish or anger.’
She met my eyes. ‘I choose it all. The unhappiness, the anger and the anguish.’ Her voice took on a new strength. ‘Maybe it’s the certainty of eventual pain and loss that makes true love so deep. There has to be a price for something as profound as love. But thank you for the offer.’
‘Really, it’s no trouble.’ Except it might be. An unlicensed enchantment could get me demoted to Third Assistant Firefly. ‘It’s what friends do for each other,’ I added.
Gaela took my hand. ‘And you are my friend.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Because you’re my friend — my only friend, my dearest friend — will you swim with me?’
I couldn’t do it. If I went for a swim now, it would take at least an hour for my wings to dry. I had to get back in time for the Midsummer’s Eve preparations, and I’d already spent so many hours here I’d have to slice time into micro-micro-microseconds to manage it. And what if the glow-worms had the sniffles? Or the fireflies were allergic to this year’s vintage Dew Brew? Trust me, you didn’t want sneezing fireflies lighting up your enchanted glade.
But no matter how long I lived, I would never get a chance to swim with Gaela again. Never follow her through the bright water. I knew this was goodbye, and I couldn’t bear for it to end just yet.
I didn’t hesitate; I kept hold of her hand and let her lead me through the back door.
When she shut it, I knew that she would never enter the Leaning Tower of Pizza again.
The sun sat like a tomato on the horizon, turning the sky pink around it. We walked down the sand to the froth bubbling at the edges of the waves. Gaela threw off the velvet dress she must have worn especially for Guyye’s guests, and the shoes that must have pinched her webbed feet.
I pulled off my jeans and underpants and hoodie, and Gaela took my hand again as we walked into the water. Her hand was slightly webbed and cooler than a fairy or human hand.
I had felt water before. Fairies washed in babbling brooks; and I’d even been drenched by a few thunderstorms till I learned how to avoid them. But I had never felt water like this. The sea was alive and filled with living creatures. With Gaela’s hand in mine, I could sense them all.
Waves nibbled my toes, then washed about my ankles. We walked until the water was waist high, then she pulled me under a wave and kept swimming, heading down.
There were rocks, and a long band of bright coral, and a thousand tiny fish that moved as one but with a thousand colours, while larger fish wandered among them.
The increasing sunlight filtered down through the water in a thousand tiny spears, turning the sand white or gold or green.
Gaela swam more strongly now, as if she was taking me somewhere. I didn’t try to think where it might be, or why. I just let the water flow over my skin, and watched the sunbeams ripple and shiver all around us, and felt Gaela’s hand holding mine, warm even though we were underwater, her body moving as if she was the waves themselves.
I had been a master of time since I was small, but I forgot time now. There was only the sea and Gaela and me.
Dimly I heard singing, far away but all around me too. No human voices sang like that, not even Elvis, and certainly not fairy instruments. I let the music wash around me. No words can describe the million songs the sea can sing to you when you swim with a selkie’s hand holding yours.
At last we burst up through the surface. The sunlight embraced us, turning our skins to gold. All around there was only sea and sky and us.
Gaela held both my hands now as I trod water, my wings limp and useless behind me.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘The sea.’
She looked at me with those blue-green eyes, then leaned closer. Her lips tasted of waves and anchovies.
At last she pulled back and watched me silently as the sea crashed froth around our bodies.
Finally I knew what Gaela wanted me to say. I wanted to say it, I longed to say it, but I couldn’t. I was a fairy and must do a fairy’s duty. Gaela had a choice, but I didn’t.
‘What was that song?’ I asked instead.
She nodded slightly, as if she’d realised at last that I could never say what she wanted to hear. ‘That was whales singing. They call to each other across the ocean.’
‘What did that song mean?’
‘It was a kind of love song. It means welcome.’
‘They were singing to you?’
‘And you, maybe.’
I had to say it. ‘I can’t stay with you, Gaela. I have a job to do. And I’m getting married.’ Neither explanation seemed enough, even to me. ‘Fairies don’t leave Fairyland,’ I added. ‘It isn’t allowed.’
‘You’re here now.’
‘I split a moment of time into an instant. If I stay too long, they’ll notice. I . . . we have to go back.’
‘Pete . . . that poet I rescued . . . I’ll never forget the last line of his poem.’
I loved how my name sounded in her mouth. I never wanted to be called Peaseblossom again.
‘What was it?’ I managed to ask.
‘The poem ends like this,’ she said quietly.
‘Singing: “There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she,
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.”’
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I saw her love now. She let me see it. It had all the beauty of waves rolling forever, from one ocean to another, never-ending like true love never ended. It held the song of the whales, the sea serpent, the tiny fish that flashed through the coral.
At last I said, ‘I have to go back to the land.’
I feared . . . hoped . . . she’d refuse. Without her, I’d never make it to shore. And stuck here in the water with wet wings, I could never leave. But then I realised Gaela would never do that. That would trap me as much as an enchantment would.
Instead, she kissed me again. I tasted the salt of the waves, or her tears.
Or maybe they were my tears.
CHAPTER 11
Gaela didn’t come out of the sea with me this time. As soon as I felt my feet touch sand, she let go of my hand and swam away, so fast I couldn’t even make out her seal shape among the ripples.
I turned and walked up onto the sand dunes. I sat there, letting my wings dry, and thought about all kinds of things.
How if I’d used the love potion more often I could have prevented so many wars and arguments among humankind.
About Gaela’s smile.
About how just a bit of magic could give humanity peace and plenty, and they’d never know they’d been enchanted.
About Gaela’s tears, more salty than the sea.
The waves retreated with the tide, leaving seaweed draped on the sand, its scent reminding me of her. She was out there, somewhere. Free.
The wind whirled next to me and I smelled choc-chip muffins.
Moth appeared. ‘Peaseblossom! Thank goodness!’ he breathed. ‘Ow!’ he yelped as he trod on a bit of coral.
‘What is it?’ I asked, suddenly realising I’d forgotten to keep control of time since . . . I wasn’t sure since when. But time had passed, here and in Fairyland too.
‘Puck’s drunk too much Dew Brew. Or he’s going senile. It’s all gone wrong! You have to come back.’
I reached into time and twisted it gently. ‘Slow down. We’ll get back the moment you came to find me. Tell me what’s happened.’
Moth stopped hopping around and sat down beside me.
‘Puck gave His Majesty the love potion,’ he said breathlessly. ‘The King squeezed some into Her Majesty’s eyes as she lay sleeping, and told Puck to put some into Demetrius’s eyes so he’d love Helena.’
‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘I saw His Majesty do it.’
‘But Puck made a mistake and put the potion in Lysander’s eyes instead,’ wailed Moth. ‘And now Lysander’s in love with Helena instead of Hermia. And then Puck gave the human actor called Bottom the head of a donkey, and Her Majesty woke up . . .’ He gulped. ‘And fell in love with Bottom, donkey head and all. She’s called us all to serve him. You too. Now! You have to fix it, Peaseblossom! Her Majesty’s going to turn us all into slugs when she finds out!’
Suddenly all my doubts fell away. This was what I had been born for, trained for. There was a lot to put right, but I could do it — and when I had, I’d have Puck’s job, or my name wasn’t Peaseblossom. But the Queen’s orders came first.
‘Right, come on. Time to TAP,’ I informed Moth.
‘There’s worse,’ he said miserably, not moving.
I stared at him. ‘What could be worse?’
‘Oberon was pleased about the donkey head and Her Majesty looking,’ he lowered his voice, ‘er, foolish. But he was angry about Demetrius loving the wrong woman. So he called for more potion and now Demetrius loves Helena too, just like Lysander does.’
And Hermia, that good, loyal and determined girl, was now loved by no one, not even her father. She must be in anguish. This had to be put right.
I gathered up the strings of time and twisted them about Moth too. The scent of salt vanished. I smelled dark chocolate fudge with a hint of macadamia nuts.
Then we were in the Athenian glade again, about eight thousand years away from the Leaning Tower of Pizza, from any pizza, and from Gaela.
Time to get to work, and then live happily ever after.
I could hardly bear it.
The glade was just as I’d left it, except now, as well as Her Majesty, it held a large hairy weaver/actor with a donkey’s head. The Queen of the Fairies looked as besotted as a two-year-old who’s discovered ice cream.
Her arms were twisted about Bottom’s thick donkey neck as she whispered into his furry ears, ‘Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.’
Bottom looked uneasy. I had a feeling he wasn’t used to the most beautiful woman in the world throwing her arms around him. Or even any beautiful woman. Plus he must be feeling a bit woozy suddenly having only a donkey’s brain to think with.
‘Not so, neither,’ he muttered. ‘But if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.’
I tried to work out what he meant. One thing was clear: he didn’t want to be here, and he especially didn’t want to be here with Titania.
Titania smiled seductively. ‘Out of this wood do not desire to go,’ she murmured, and there was magic in her voice now. ‘You shall remain here, whether you will or no.’
Bottom tried to edge away. Titania wriggled onto his lap. He stopped, either because of her weight or her enchantment.
‘I am a spirit of no common rate,’ the Queen said, a tone of command in her voice now. ‘The summer still tends upon my state. And I do love thee. Therefore, go with me.’
That was Titania all over. She might love a man, but she was still going to get her own way, no matter what he wanted.
‘I’ll give you fairies to attend you,’ she whispered, her voice rich with promise.
Bottom didn’t look impressed.
‘And they shall fetch you jewels from the deep,’ she continued, stroking his long ears.
He looked a bit more interested.
‘And sing while you sleep on pressed flowers. And I will get rid of your mortal grossness so that you can go like an airy spirit. Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed!’
I sighed and tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘Ready.’
‘And I,’ said Cobweb valiantly.
‘And I,’ said Moth. He seemed relieved that I was back and he didn’t have to make any decisions.
My Name is Not Peaseblossom Page 8
