Terribly Twisted Tales

by RABE, JEAN

  She listened very intently for the boy’s reply, but none ever came. Sadness welled up. She needed an English friend so desperately—someone to play with, someone to take her mind off the . . . trouble.

  Even now, her parents were downstairs fighting. During their first week in England, Amber had covered her head with her pillow and tried not to hear. For the second week, she’d put her fingers in her ears and sang songs from Sunday school. That didn’t work any better than the pillow had.

  It seemed no matter what the family did during the day, no matter how many lovely castles they saw or how many wonderful zoos and parks they visited, no matter how many presents they bought in expensive stores or how many carriage rides they took, the night always returned, and with it came the fighting.

  After two nearly sleepless weeks, Amber knew she had to do something. She didn’t know what to do, but anything would be better than listening to the endless shouts. Even having them yell at her, rather than at each other, would be better.

  Amber crawled out of her warm bed with the pink pillows and the fluffy comforter. She walked through the gilded bedroom doors and into the cool, dark corridor beyond. Winston went with her. Amber knew he would keep her brave enough to do what had to be done—whatever that might be. Winston stared at her with his big button eyes and a friendly smile on his fuzzy brown face. Even if Amber didn’t have any real friends in this strange, noisy country, at least she had her bear.

  The shouts grew louder as the two of them crept down the hallway toward the long, winding stairway that led to the first floor. The carpet felt cold under her bare feet, and the patterns—so colorful and intricate during the daylight—looked like crawling snakes and insects. Light from the full moon streamed through the high windows at the corridor’s end, painting the staircase in zebra-striped shadows. The pattern reminded Amber of the bars of a cage.

  Her windows back home had bars on them. She didn’t like that; it was the only part of home that she didn’t like. Her parents said the bars were to keep bad people out, but Amber didn’t believe that. They were to keep her in—like a precious bird in a large and lovely cage.

  Her parents had lied to her about England, too. They’d said this would be a fun family time. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” her mom had told her. “You’ll love it,” her dad agreed. They’d been wrong, though. England was just a bigger, noisier cage.

  Amber crept down the stairs and through the darkened hallway to the door of the study. Brilliant light blazed from within the room. The crystal chandeliers glittered, and a small fire—to ward off the chill of the summer evening—crackled in the fireplace. Amber paused at the doorway, caught between fear and the desire to end it. The big double doors were cracked open—none of the manor doors shut correctly—and inside, her parents were shouting.

  “For Christ’s sake, Gwen . . . !” her father’s voice boomed. “What more do you want from me? We have the biggest house in Travis County. We have a swimming pool. We have a Lexus, a Jaguar, and a BMW convertible. We pay more in taxes than most of our friends make in a year, and your wardrobe allowance could feed a small country. Plus, I’ve spent a fortune on this vacation. How on God’s green earth is that not enough?”

  Amber peeked through the crack in the doors. Inside the big room, her father paced angrily, furiously puffing on his cigarette. Her mother stood stock still in the center of the room, her fists clenched at her sides, her face pale, her eyes dewy.

  “A little compassion might be nice,” her mother hissed. “Or maybe some actual understanding. I’m not one of your possessions, Shawn. I have a good job, too, and I make a good salary. Maybe I don’t earn as much as you do, but I contribute plenty to my so-called ‘wardrobe allowance.’ I’ve paid for a few of your midlife-crisismobiles, too.”

  Her father glared. For a moment, Amber feared he might hit her mother, but then he turned his back to her.

  “Don’t turn away, dammit!” her mother snarled. “Listen to me!” She stepped forward, reached toward his shoulder. Then she changed her mind, stopped, and backed away.

  “I am listening, Gwendolyn!” He kept his back to her, kept smoking. “I’ve been doing nothing but listening ever since we came to this absurdly expensive place.”

  “The hell you have! You’re still off in your own world, worried about finances and promotions and God knows what else. I don’t know why I thought this vacation would make any difference, because, clearly, it hasn’t!”

  “You got that right,” he snapped. “We travel five thousand miles, and still it’s the same old thing: nag nag nag, bitch bitch bitch.”

  “Are you calling me a bitch?”

  Amber didn’t know what that word meant, but her mother’s face turned red with fury.

  Her father almost smiled. “If the shoe fits.”

  “Bastard!” Her mother hurled the word like a rock.

  Her father turned, slowly, and flicked the smoldering remains of his cigarette at her mother. The butt struck the neckline of her mom’s blouse, just above the breast, and tumbled to the floor, trailing sparks.

  Her mother’s mouth formed a silent, shocked O, and she stared at her husband for a moment. Then tears welled in her eyes, and she cried, “I wish to God we’d never come to England!”

  Her father blew a long trail of smoke and lit another cigarette. “We can stop in Haiti and get a divorce on the way home.”

  Amber felt as if someone had hit her hard in the chest. Divorce!

  Her mother remained frozen, fists clenched at her sides. “If only it were that easy,” she muttered.

  Her father chuckled nastily. “Easy?” he hissed back. “You think it’s been easy putting up with your whining for the last few years? Getting divorced has to be easier than that. Besides, what’s the big deal? We’ve already got his and hers property: my work, your work; my car, your car; my wardrobe, your wardrobe. You have your life, I have mine. How hard can divorce be? Everybody does it.”

  Tears streamed down her mother’s face. Her voice was barely a whisper. “What about Amber?”

  “Grow up, Gwen. Parents get divorced all the time.”

  “Not us.”

  “Yes, us. Of course, us. Who the hell else are we talking about?”

  “Keep your voice down.” Her mother smeared the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “You’ll wake her.”

  Her father laughed, a short hurtful burst. “She’s slept through louder fights than this.”

  Amber pressed herself back against the wall, out of the light.

  Divorce.

  She understood what that meant. She had friends back home whose parents were divorced. Divorce meant that you moved from one house to another—shared like a doll at a daycare center.

  Amber knew what divorce felt like, too. She’d seen the sadness in the eyes of her friends. Some pretended to be happy. They told her about all the toys they got—a new present every time they switched homes, it seemed like.

  Every time.

  Switched homes.

  Her friends weren’t fooling her. The presents didn’t matter. They weren’t happy; they were never happy.

  And she wouldn’t be happy either. No happier than she was now. Their family was broken.

  Amber wanted to rush inside the study. She wanted to tell her parents to stop yelling. She wanted to tell them not to get divorced. But despite Winston’s warm furry paw clutched tightly in her hand, she couldn’t find the courage.

  Her parents didn’t want to be a family any more. They didn’t want each other, and they didn’t want her, either. She would never be able to stop their shouting. Even the divorce probably wouldn’t stop that. She’d watched divorced parents at the daycare center—watched them carefully, as though they were strange animals at the zoo. They never came to pick up their kids together, and if they met accidentally, they usually looked angry. Sometimes they shouted.

  Clutching Winston close to her breast, Amber backed away from the study doorway. At the far end of the corridor
, moonlight shone through the glass-paned front door. In the glade beyond, blue fireflies danced in the summer night. It looked so lovely outside.

  Her father continued his rant. “Besides,” he said, “what does it matter if I wake her? What if she does hear, Gwen?”

  The fury in his voice stabbed at Amber. The anger seemed directed at her. She remembered the sadness in her friends’ eyes at the daycare center. Suddenly, she understood something new—her friends were part of the problem. Parents got divorced because of their children.

  “Amber isn’t stupid, Shawn,” her mother hissed. “I’m sure she knows we’re this far away from divorce.”

  Far away.

  That’s where Amber wanted to be. Maybe if she were far away, her parents would stop fighting.

  The moonlit doorway beckoned. Outside, merry shadows whirled across the lawn.

  Amber dashed across the hall and out the door. The echoes of her parents’ angry voices chased her out into the night.

  The cool air raised goose bumps on her pale skin. The dew-soaked lawn felt chilly beneath her bare feet.

  “Be brave, Winston,” Amber whispered, hugging the bear tight. Behind her, the many-paned windows of the manor house glowed merrily in the darkness—almost begging her to return.

  It was a trap, though. She knew that. The house was a pretty cage in the larger cage of England. Every house would be a cage as long as her parents continued fighting. That was why she had to go. If she went away, maybe they would stop.

  A great forest lay beyond the manor’s carefully manicured lawn. The woods silently patrolled the edge of the grass, as if awaiting permission to move closer to the house. By day, the forest was a bright green place, filled with tall trees, soft moss, and gentle ferns. The moonlight made the woodland dark and foreboding, though fireflies still flitted among the shadowed bows. To Amber, the lightning bugs looked like friendly lanterns beckoning her onward.

  The forest was the only part of England that Amber liked. Playing in the woods got her out of the house, and she knew the landscape well. Surely the forest had to be the same at night.

  “Nothing to be scared of,” she told Winston as they ducked into the trees. “We’ll just find a quiet place to rest a while.”

  The forest floor wasn’t as soft under her feet as the grass had been, and the leaves and twigs seemed even wetter and colder. Amber wished that she had brought her shoes, or even her slippers, but it was too late now. She didn’t want to go back. This was the first night in weeks that she couldn’t hear the yelling; she had to keep going.

  Despite her brave words to Winston, the nighttime forest seemed strange and menacing. Frightening shadows flitted beneath the dark boughs. As she stumbled further into the woods, it became harder to see—especially when, one by one, the fireflies flickered out. Soon only a single bug remained, its blue light dancing into the distance.

  Amber wanted to call to the insect, wanted to ask it to wait, but she knew it was useless. Fireflies couldn’t understand human talk.

  Amber’s lips trembled at the idea of being alone in the darkness. She clutched Winston tight and kept going. Fingerlike branches clawed at her nightgown as the last firefly vanished into the foliage. As the bug disappeared, darkness closed in around her.

  “Don’t worry. I know where we are,” Amber told the bear, but that was only for his benefit. She didn’t know where they were. The forest looked very different in the night, and she felt completely lost.

  She stumbled, skinned her knee, got up and looked around, trying to regain her bearings. Returning home was starting to seem like a good idea, despite the shouting. Unfortunately, she was no longer sure in which direction the manor house lay.

  “Help!” she gasped, though she knew there was no one to hear. Even if she yelled as loudly as she could, her parents’ own shouting would drown out her cries.

  “I will keep walking,” she told Winston as they went. “I will keep walking until I recognize something and figure out where we are.” She didn’t want to scare Winston by crying, but tears streamed down her face nonetheless. Perhaps running away hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  A branch snagged Amber’s nightgown, jerking her to a sudden halt. With a great heave, she pulled the fabric free, but the action sent her tumbling. She rolled downhill over twigs and bracken before finally thudding to a halt beside a small pool. She looked around, disoriented. Winston lay sprawled on the damp ground next to her. Amber picked him up, hugged him, and began to cry in earnest. The moonlight streaming through an opening in the canopy set her teardrops sparkling.

  Amber smeared the tears from her face with the back of her hand—a motion she’d seen her mother repeat many times. The six-year-old looked at the pool; it was clear and beautiful in the silvery light. She leaned down, cupped her hands, and splashed the chilly water on her face. Her reflection gazed sadly back at her. Then something moved in the tree branches overhead.

  “H-hello!” Amber gasped, frightened.

  “Hullo,” replied an unfamiliar voice.

  Amber looked up and saw the face of a boy not much older than she was. He was sitting in the bough of a tree, smiling. A leafy tunic covered his pale body and a tiny blue firefly circled around his head. He looked just like the imaginary boy Amber had seen at her window.

  “My name’s Pan,” the boy said jovially, “but you can call me Perry—all my friends do. What’s your name?”

  “A-Amber.”

  Perry hopped off his tree branch, drifting lazily to the ground. The firefly continued circling him, as though it were some kind of trained pet.

  Amber clutched Winston to her chest, hoping he might protect her. She kept her eyes fixed on the boy. Perry seemed friendly, but there was something strange about him—and not just the fact that he was wearing leaves for clothing.

  “Amber . . .” Perry said, grinning, “a precious gem if ever there was. Did your parents name you that?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then they must treasure you very much.”

  The words hurt. “I . . . They’re always fighting.”

  Perry cocked his head, like a bird examining a bug. “I’m stunned to hear that,” he said. “Stunned . . . and sorry.” To Amber he didn’t look either stunned or sorry; he looked full of mischief.

  “Where’s your home, Amber?”

  For an instant, her eyes sought the manor home. Then she remembered herself and said, “ ’Merica.”

  The strange boy nodded. “A long way off, then,” he said. “A far, strange country there, and a far strange country here. Are you lost, Amber my jewel? I have a shadow that gets lost sometimes. Right now, for instance.” He looked down at his feet, and Amber noticed for the first time that Perry had no shadow.

  She checked her own feet; the moonlight made her shadow stand out plainly atop the cold moss. Could this be some kind of trick? She looked back at Perry and, sure enough, his feet rested on the ground with not a trace of darkness beneath them. It was almost as if he wasn’t really there at all.

  “Belle and me were just looking for my shadow, in fact, when we ran into you,” Perry said. “You haven’t seen it, have you, Amber Amber bright as gems?” The blue firefly circled Perry’s head twice and then zipped into the woods nearby.

  “How can you lose a shadow?” Amber asked, curious. The boy seemed less frightening now, despite his lack of shadow. Amber had lost a few things during her life—she’d lost her mother’s keys once—but she’d never heard of anyone losing a shadow.

  “I’m not sure,” Perry said, “but it seems to get away from me most every full moon.”

  In the woods nearby, the firefly glowed more brightly. In the glow, Amber thought she saw a struggling figure—a shadow! A shadow moving on its own!

  She pointed. “P-Perry!”

  As Perry turned, a tall, slender woman stepped from the woods. She was very pale and nearly naked. Scraps of translucent cloth, not quite rags but not clothing in the traditional sense, covered her bod
y. Her flowing silver hair cascaded down over her smooth shoulders, and a crown of white flowers adorned her forehead. A soft blue glow surrounded the woman’s entire body. In her slender hands, she held a struggling figure.

  The figure looked almost like a boy. But it wasn’t a boy; it was flat—or nearly flat anyway—like a long scrap of black cloth that you could almost see through.

  “Who’s that?” Amber asked, gaping at the woman. She’d never seen anyone quite so beautiful in her life. Yet, there was something frightening about the woman, too. The dark, thrashing figure was scary as well.

  Perry leaned close to Amber, as though he feared someone might overhear him. “Who? Her? That’s just my friend Belle,” he said. “You saw her before.”

  “Did not!”

  “Sure you did, unless you’re blind! Belle goes everywhere with me. She was circlin’ ’round my head when we first met.”

  “That was a firefly,” Amber said, worried. Perry seemed very strange once again. Could he be crazy? “Can’t you tell the difference between a woman and a firefly?” she asked.

  “Can’t you tell the difference between a firefly and a faerie?” Perry replied. “That was Belle. And, look! She’s found my shadow!”

  The glowing woman held out the struggling transparent figure, and Perry took it by the shoulders. He held it in front of him, like someone trying on new clothes. The shadow struggled.

  “I s’pose we could sew it back on,” Perry mused. “Got any thread, Amber?”

  Amber shook her head; the whole idea of a shadow that could run away scared her. And it definitely didn’t like being caught. She wondered if Perry and Belle ever shouted at the shadow. Was that why it had run away?

  “Ah, well,” Perry said cheerfully. “If you’ve got no thread, I’ll just have to stuff it in my pocket, then.”

  Amber didn’t see how the shadow, which was even taller and more grown-up looking than Perry, could fit in his pocket, but Perry didn’t seem to notice this problem. The shadow wiggled and flailed—clearly not wanting to go—as the strange boy balled it up. In just a few moments, Perry had the entire thing tucked away within a pouch in his leafy coat.