by Amy Wilson
‘Angel!’ She reaches out and squeezes my arm, her eyes glittering. ‘None of this was down to you; none of it except for the better! I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry if I was a little distracted, when I came in. I never thought I’d see the day we’d all be free of it!’
‘But he’s going to miss them all,’ I say, biting my lip, my mind going to his grandfather, up in the library, silent now. ‘Was it really the right thing to do?’
‘It was Bavar’s choice,’ she says. ‘And yours. You did it together. I don’t know how.’ She shakes her head with a pale smile, looking me up and down. ‘You’re such a small thing. Such a wisp of a girl. But you changed everything, Angel. You were his catalyst – he needed you as much as you needed him. And I don’t think anyone could have done better.’
When I wake, my back is agony.
It’s been a while, apparently. Aoife flits about the bed, tidying and cajoling, trying to fill the silence in the house with conversation, but it falls flat, and I can’t lift my head.
Sal comes and goes. Sometimes he shouts at me to get out and get on, and stop with all my fussing. Sometimes he sits on the bed and stares at me. Sometimes he just comes in to bicker with Aoife.
‘Where’s Angel?’ I ask finally, when the heat has gone out of me and dust motes spin in the sunlight that streams through the window. It’s so bright now in here. Without the magic.
‘She came, a couple of times,’ Aoife says, pausing in her rearrangement of the cushions on the settee below the window. ‘She’s adjusting.’
‘To what?’ I stare out at the fields beyond the house. There’s a low mist and it adds to the silence that seems to gather tight around us now.
I can’t believe I’ll never hear that noise again. That shriek that tore the night in two; the flurry of wings in the air above the house.
Aoife sits, fingering the embroidery on the settee.
‘It wasn’t just your mission, Bavar,’ she says slowly. ‘She put herself into it too. She put herself into it, when there was nothing else she had the heart for. What’s she going to do now?’
‘Live!’ I say, sitting up. ‘She’s going to live!’
‘Well,’ Aoife says, getting up and smoothing her dress with a tricksy little smile. ‘What wonderful advice.’ She fixes her eyes on mine. ‘Now get up. Get up and go visit your friend – show her what that looks like.’
I bluster and scowl, and make a bit of a fuss about it all, but nobody’s really taking much notice any more, so in the end I do. I get up, and dressed, and when it’s dark and the stars are shining bright in the December sky, I go to her. And every step of the way I’m arguing with myself, because it’s over now, and she won’t want to see me. She won’t want to be reminded of it all now that it’s done and she’s free. Why will she want that?
‘She won’t,’ I tell myself.
‘Yes, she will,’ I reply, surprising myself, stomping down the hill.
Such a weird feeling. After all the adrenaline, the life or deathness of it all, just to go home – a bit pale and bloodless, but essentially whole and well – and have Mary give me a lecture, and to listen, nodding, just like I have a thousand times before, and know that it’s all over.
What now?
‘Angel!’ Mary shakes her head, her eyes bright. ‘I have never known a girl like you – and I’ve raised two, and worked with a hundred more. You’re like a little spirit, slipping between my fingers. Stop it! Come away from that window and listen to what I’m saying!’
‘What is it?’ I ask, flinging myself down next to her. It can’t really be another lecture, can it? I’ve just been mooching around the house all weekend, in between visits to Bavar. I didn’t stay long, when I went. The house felt weird, all big and echoey, and he never really seemed to notice I was there anyway.
Would he even want to see me now?
Mary scooches closer. I think about moving away, but I don’t.
‘You’re such a bright thing,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘And I don’t mean in the school way, especially – I think there’s probably a little work to do there – but . . . we haven’t spoken much, and I don’t want you to think I haven’t noticed.’
‘Noticed?’ I look down at myself. Does it show, what happened the other day? Am I different now? ‘Noticed what?’
‘How hard you’re trying,’ she says. ‘Some days are better than others, I know that, and maybe something happened with Bavar. I don’t know – you’ve been so restless this weekend. You don’t have to tell me, but I wanted you to know that I see it anyway. I see you, Angel. I see how you never stopped trying. I have no idea, with what you’ve been through, how that feels, but I wanted to tell you . . .’
She hesitates, her eyes glittering.
‘What?’
‘You’re wonderful,’ she says, looking me square in the eye. ‘Just as you are. Whatever you do. Good days, bad days, always.’
There’s a long silence. I can’t look away from her. She sounds so sure. Her whole self is so sure of it.
‘Do you really think that?’ My voice wobbles, and I wish it wouldn’t, and I wish I didn’t need to ask, didn’t need to hear it, but I do, so badly. After what happened, I felt so lost. I knew we’d done the right thing, but it didn’t make everything right. And the cost to Bavar was more than I wanted him to pay, and so I felt like maybe I’d got it all wrong. That I was all wrong. That I always would be, after that night when I lost Mum and Dad.
‘I know it,’ she says. ‘I know it, and so does Pete. And so did your parents.’
I stare at her. I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.
‘There’s work to do,’ she says with a smile, as if she knows I can’t bear the intensity of her love just there like that, so open, for a second longer. ‘But I wanted you to know that, first.’
I look away.
Breathe.
Breathe.
And I can. I can breathe. I wrap my fingers around the edge of the settee. Here I am, sitting next to nice Mary, in the vanilla house, breathing.
I guess vanilla isn’t the worst thing to be stuck with.
‘OK.’
‘OK?’
‘OK.’
And then the doorbell rings, and I get up to answer it, and a seven-foot-tall boy walks in, looking all pale and about as out of place as I feel most of the time. And Mary shakes her head at both of us as we stand there all awkward and silent, and goes to fetch biscuits.
‘OK?’ I whisper eventually.
‘OK,’ he says.
There’s a shadow of a smile on his face. I think there’s probably one on mine too, as we head into the sitting room and ruin its vanilla perfection just by being there.
The house is heavy with silence. Like it doesn’t know what to do now, without the rift screaming at its heart.
At mine.
I guess I’ll get used to it.
I miss Grandfather, the rumble and the grumble of him. I miss that tension in the air, the feeling that you could just weave your fingers and make magic of nothing. I miss all of them, even the teasing gargoyles. I kind of wish I’d taken the time to hear all their stories, before they stopped telling them. I miss all of that, but I don’t miss the monsters. I don’t miss the shock of their call, the score of their claws upon the walls, latching deep within my skin. I don’t miss that at all.
‘Bavar!’ Aoife’s voice rings out, and I tramp down the stairs. She’s standing there in the hallway with Angel, who looks like she’s about to burst with restrained laughter, just at the sight of me. ‘Your lunch!’ She hands me a picnic rucksack thing, and I suppose it’s an improvement on the basket, at least on the outside. She still makes the most awful, oozing cakes. Actually they’re worse now. I wonder if she used the magic to make them better, before.
‘You have a uniform!’ Angel crows, looking me up and down, her eyes dancing.
I frown. Aoife made it for me. The usual ones didn’t fit. It’s pretty atrocious, to be honest. The material is too shiny, the coll
ar on the shirt is about twice as big as it should be, and the trousers are like shapeless bags. But she meant it well.
‘You reckon they’ll see me now?’ I ask.
‘Oh, they’ll definitely see you!’ she says.
It doesn’t sound very reassuring, somehow. I dart into the drawing room to have a quick look in the mirror. I know it doesn’t really matter, what you look like, all the wise words say that. But it does sort of matter, when it sets you apart. Still too tall. Still with the beaky nose, and the ridiculous hair. But the shadows don’t cling so tight now; that warp in the air is no longer there. It’s a little bit brighter. A little bit more normal.
A little bit like hope.
‘Ready for your first real day at school?’ Angel chimes, joining me at the mirror. I can only see the top of her head reflected, she’s so small.
‘Not really,’ I grumble, pulling at my tie.
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ she says, peering up and smoothing her hair. ‘You wanted normal. This is normal. Worrying about what other people think of you – normal. Not fitting in – normal. Being different – normal.’
‘We’re both just normal then?’ I demand.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘About as normal as extraordinary can do, anyway . . .’
There’s a little shiver in the air as she says it, the chime of a piano note. The mirror mists over, just for a second, and there’s a flutter of bright wings that sparkle in the morning sun.
My heart thumps. I turn to Angel. She grins back at me.
‘It’s still here!’ she whispers.
‘Not very much.’
‘But a little bit.’
And then it’s school.
Being normal.
Not normal.
Angel and I walk in together, and people stare. Boy do they stare.
We stare back.
The end.
Author’s Note
The idea of Bavar was born the day I saw a boy come out of my local secondary school alone with his head bent and shoulders hunched, hiding behind his hair. The image has stayed with me ever since, and it’s powerful. It reminds me of how alone we can feel, and how invisible. I wanted that boy to know I saw him. I saw him and I thought he was beautiful. I hope he isn’t still hiding now, and whoever he is, whatever he’s doing, I owe him a huge debt of gratitude – without him, there would be no Bavar. And as for Angel, she just came hurtling into the story, fully formed, hiding her own demons, ready for action. Without her, I suspect Bavar and I would still be feeling a bit lost. I love them both dearly.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agent, Amber Caraveo, for loving this story from the very start, and for all your belief in me as a writer. And thank you to my editor, Lucy Pearse, for taking such great care of Bavar and Angel, and of me too! Thank you to everybody at Macmillan Children’s for everything, especially to Catherine, and to Kat, and Rachel, and to Helen Crawford-White. You are dream makers, all of you, and I am ever grateful for your faith in what I’m doing.
A very big thank you to all of my family, especially to Lee, Theia, Aubrey and Sasha, and to all of my dear friends. And thank you to the readers, authors, bloggers, reviewers, booksellers and teachers who have helped to make the last year such an incredible journey. You’re all awesome.
About the Author
Amy Wilson has a background in journalism and lives in Bristol with her young family. She is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Creative Writing and is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel A Girl Called Owl, which was nominated for the 2018 CILIP Carnegie medal.
Praise for A Girl Called Owl
‘A sparkling, frosty read, full of feisty characters, myth and mystery’ Daily Mail
‘A winter treat full of frosty magic’ Katherine Woodfine, bestselling author of The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow
‘A magical debut’ Bookseller
‘Deftly integrates figures from folklore and ancient mythology into the wider narrative of family, friendship and identity’ Primary Times
‘A perfect read for those who love wintry magic and a strong female character proving her place in the world’ BookTrust
‘An impressive coming-of-age debut novel, A Girl Called Owl combines elements of mystery, adventure, romance, fantasy and folklore’ SLA
Books by Amy Wilson
A Girl Called Owl
A Far Away Magic
First published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-3776-2
Text copyright © Amy Wilson 2018
Illustrations copyright © Helen Crawford-White 2018
Cover illustration by Helen Crawford-White
The right of Amy Wilson and Helen Crawford-White to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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