by Amy Wilson
“Come on, come in,” she says. “I got cinnamon rolls . . . Do you like them?”
I look at her; my heart is in my throat. I like cinnamon rolls. Who doesn’t like cinnamon rolls?
But what if she does them wrong?
“Can I ice them?” I ask.
She grins. She has a kind face. Brown eyes, round cheeks, curly hair.
“Yes!”
Up in my room, cinnamon roll disaster neatly averted by yours truly, who knows how to wield a butter knife. Dinner was OK too. Pete was out, and somehow it was easier, just Mary and me, the TV on in the background. It was OK. I even saw the cat, Mika, for a moment or two before he showed me his bottom and left for better things. I didn’t blame him.
I took his lead and told Mary I needed to do homework, and she made me help with the dishes, which was criminally boring, but after that I managed to escape to my room, and I’ve lit the candle in the skull and got my math book out and I’d sort of planned on ignoring everything that happened today, but I can’t stop thinking about Bavar, and that warp in the air when he got me away from Grace today.
“Something’s going on,” I murmur.
Something . . . Dad’s voice, all intrigued, like when he was in the middle of researching a new legend and all passionate about it, flinging his arms out with descriptions of things I thought lived only in his imagination.
Bavar must be connected, somehow, with what happened to my parents that night.
I spent so much time being told it was all in my head. After it happened, when every night was a nightmare and every day was just the gray in-between. Dad always talked about what we didn’t know; all the things we told ourselves weren’t really out there, because we were too afraid to see the truth. Mom and I would listen and nod and wink at each other, because it lit a fire in his eyes and we loved him for it, but we knew it was all just a myth, really. Like chasing ghost stories.
And then it happened, and they were gone, and I couldn’t just laugh it off. I felt so bad for not believing him, and I didn’t want the rest of the world to do that anymore, I had to wake everybody up. I was full of it, couldn’t stop talking about it. What I’d seen, what they were all too stupid to realize. Of course nobody believed me, they thought it was grief making me sick. But even when I’d given up on them and stopped talking, still it wouldn’t leave me alone. Not in my dreams.
I’ve tried being normal, I really have. But it’s awful, because sometimes, when I miss them with an ache that might swallow me up, when my throat is howling with no sound because it’s so tight with all the want of it, sometimes there is nothing that makes sense. Nothing for tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. It’s just silent. And nothing gets through that—not school, not Mary, not Pete. Not the other kids or the teachers, they’ve got no chance.
But now there’s Bavar, and he just shouts questions in my face with all his own silence and his hiding. And so I don’t care about normal anymore. I care about this. I need to know what it is with him and the monsters. I need to know more than I need anything else right now.
I sit on my hands. I should sit here and do my homework, steer well clear of Bavar, and whatever is going on. I’ve seen enough. Been through enough. Mary and Pete won’t like it if I go out wandering in the dark alone. Bavar won’t like it. And I’m not even sure what it is I want to find. I mean, monsters, and boys who can move like lightning? It’s films and books and TV shows, not actual feet-on-the-ground truth. Right?
I stare at the skull. Its eyes flicker.
“Right?”
Wrong.
I close the math book with a sigh. I’m going to have to do it, even if it’s not the right thing. I need to.
I wait until I hear Pete get in, and then I call down to say good night, and I put some things in my backpack: gloves, a cereal bar, some water. The catapult I made with Dad, when I was about seven. And then I sit on the bed, breathing through my fingers, and listen to the sounds of them using the bathroom, going to bed. It’s awful. They don’t do things the right way. The sounds aren’t quite as they should be; they’re too quiet, too measured. There are no heated discussions between them, no bickering about who should go back down because the kitchen light is still on. Just the muted sounds of people getting into bed, picking up a book.
I sit for longer, longer, longer than I think I possibly can, and then, when even the muted sounds are gone and all I can hear is the creak of radiators cooling, I creep down the stairs and out into the street.
Bavar
It’s getting harder to ignore them when they come through the rift and strike at the barrier, trying to get through to the world outside. The thing inside me wants to fight them. I have to remind myself that I want to hide and keep the barrier intact. That’s all. The idea is that if I stay hidden, they won’t have anything to get hold of. No fear, no humanity, no smell of blood to tempt them further. They’ll come, and the barrier around the estate will hold, and they’ll go back again, thwarted.
Eva wants me to fight. To show them what they should be afraid of, to send them fleeing with no doubt about who is in charge. She thinks I can be a master as Grandfather was, strong and wise. She never saw the way my parents fought them, beast against beast, tooth and claw, to the death. They were terrifying.
I never wanted to fight.
“Fighting is in the spirit,” Grandfather says, looming over me as I sit on the library floor, poring over his old diaries—what he calls Wisdom on the Art of the Master. Nothing ever got past him in his day. He kept the barrier intact, fought every monster down, and somehow never let it change him. It all went wrong when he died. He says it was his fault, he didn’t teach Mom properly, and that’s why she neglected the barrier. She let the magic build inside her instead, used it just for the fight and the glory, and it corrupted her. So now he’s determined to get it right with me. “Your body was made to fight, Bavar, but it cannot do it alone. You need to put your spirit into it.”
“I’m doing OK.”
“Worlds were not saved by boys doing OK. Battles cannot be won without a little passion, a little pride, Bavar! You are the master of this house, connected to all of its magic! You cannot keep on hiding away like this, and now that they have scented this girl they will be more bloodthirsty than ever. You must fight to turn them back, before they come in force!”
If he had hands, they would be gesticulating wildly. As it is he has to content himself with rocking on his pedestal for emphasis.
“Do you wish they’d made more of you?” I ask.
“What?”
I wonder if his ears are malformed. I’ve wondered it before—sometimes he shouts at random and it makes me jump. Actually, maybe that’s why he does it.
“Arms. Legs. You could have done more,” I say.
“Arms and legs!” he splutters. “It is not my job to have arms and legs! Not my job to do more, Bavar—it is yours! You have arms and legs, and what do you use them for? Writing, and walking to that school of yours.”
“School’s OK.”
“Why?” He narrows his eyes.
I shrug. “I like geography.”
“Geography! I’ll tell you about geography! If you want geography, there are atlases, globes.” A large amber globe on the reading table starts to whirl, the silver lines of continents gleaming as it goes. “There are books,” he barks, as they start to leap from the shelves, “all about the world. You do not need school for that!”
“They’re all about two hundred years old!” I shout, ducking as they thud to the floor all around me, pages speckled brown with age.
“What’s wrong with that?” he simmers.
“I’m living now. In the now, Grandfather.”
“Well, and so you are. With Eva and that little husband of hers. And this school that they have insisted upon.” He blows out his bronze cheeks. “Which is apparently now teaching you to be rather impertinent. Let us turn to the real things. This world that you’re living in—this now of yours—is
all very well, but it won’t count for anything if you cannot protect it from the raksasa that crave its possession!”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“This is your job; this is what you are,” he says, sighing at the familiar words. “The world is relying on you. Your parents are relying on you . . .”
“My parents!” I burst. Like it means anything, like I owe them anything. I take a breath as he stares at me. “We don’t even know if they’re alive.”
“We’d know,” he says firmly. “We’d know if they were dead. They’re out there somewhere, fighting.”
It was all about the fight for them. The fight, and the parties afterward. They enjoyed it too much, and others paid the price when the raksasa broke free. The death of innocents on their hands, they weren’t prepared for that. They were too slow—by the time they caught up with the escaped monster, the damage was already done. No magic could undo it. So they slew the creature, flung their magic into the barrier, and then left to fight on the other side of the world.
“It’s no good,” my mother said that day in a low whisper, her eyes on the ground, holding my father’s hand, knuckles white, ancient, misshapen bags at their feet, the engine of the car rumbling outside. The bright sun shining through the door, and the portraits all deathly silent, watching us fall apart. “We cannot change now, Bavar. We are fit for the fight, and nothing else.” My father just stood there by her side, no words, only dark, glittering eyes full of torment. “Eva was always wiser than me, she will care for you better, and we will find our fight somewhere else, somewhere remote, where humanity is not so close.”
I watched them leave. Watched the car wind through the streets of the town, getting smaller and smaller. Watched my whole life just drive away.
“You don’t know they’re fighting,” I say to Grand-father now, pushing it all away with an effort. “You don’t have any idea what they’re up to, do you?” I look at him as I ask it, and for a second imagine that he does know, and he’s about to tell me that it’s all OK, and they’re different now, softer, like they were sometimes when I was small.
“Does it make it better, to constantly scratch at it?” He sighs, his bronze eyes shining. “You cannot change it, and neither can I. Here we are, you and I. Now, can we proceed? How will you fight the raksasa, Bavar? Show me!”
I stand, and the shadows swing as my head hits the chandelier. There’s that feeling inside, where the magic lies, where the fighter in me lives. I reach in and pull on that feeling, and that’s when the Bavar they all want comes out. I show him a few moves, feel the stretch in my limbs, and then I close my eyes and imagine I really was facing one of the raksasa, with its burning eyes and blood-red skin, its enormous batwings battering at the sky above, and suddenly Angel is there, and it all gets a bit confused in my head.
There’s a clatter, a muffled curse, and then a great crash.
“There’s a bit of spirit!” says Grandfather, facedown on the hearth rug. “Bit of work needed at direction, unless”—he grimaces as I pick him up—“unless that’s what you were intending?”
“Uh, no,” I say, putting him back on the pedestal. “Sorry.”
“Good thing I’m not made of clay,” he rumbles. But he’s pleased. I can tell from the extra wrinkles around his eyes. He is pleased, and I am one step closer to being just what he wants me to be.
Even when I was small, I never really wanted any of this. My parents would talk to me about it, and their eyes would gleam, and their smiles would get sharp with a kind of hunger I never understood, and I think they thought it would be exciting. A fairy tale, and I was the hero. But it never felt like that. It felt like nightmares knocking at the windows. It felt like they weren’t my parents when they fought. They were something else entirely, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way they shone with it, so I swore to myself I would never fight like that. I would find another way. But the thing inside is awake now, and it wants to reach out and send them fleeing, terrified, back to their own world. So tonight when the raksasa breaks free of the rift and screeches in the sky above the house, I head out onto the roof, just to see. Just to know for myself what it feels like to face one.
Angel
Wow, it’s cold. And I’m not afraid, but it’s creepy being out at night. It’s such a quiet town, seems like everyone’s in bed already. The streets are empty, dark but for the rounds of orange beneath the lamps, everything rimed in frost.
I look up at the moon, trapped behind shifting clouds.
It’s lonely.
I did have friends, before. I mean, not that many; I wasn’t exactly Miss Popular. But I had a couple. Liv was the one who tried the hardest afterward. We used to spend evenings together when her mom was working, she’d come over and we’d do stuff, listen to music, paint our nails. Watch scary TV when Mom was distracted with grading. She called a few times, when I was in the other place. But I wasn’t me then. I was deep down inside myself, hiding.
Couldn’t go back to that school. Skipped a bit, refused to go to class.
So they moved me here, to the nearest town. New start.
Now here I am, chasing boys who smell of monsters.
“That’s about right,” I say out loud.
I wonder what Mom and Dad would make of it. I mean, they wouldn’t be big fans of me being out at night on my own, obviously, but I wonder what they’d think of Bavar. Dad would be all over him with curiosity, and Mom would like him, I think. She likes everyone. Even the ones a bit hard to like, she likes them especially.
Liked.
My nose starts to prickle.
But no. This is my adventure. This is me, getting the truth, and then it will all make sense, somehow. It will all be OK. That’s what they say, isn’t it, when they run out of words? “It will be OK.”
A shriek tears the world apart, and I stagger to the nearest lamppost and hang on, and for a second I’m caught, I’m stuck in that cupboard again, but I force myself to move. I stretch my legs like they’re spaghetti, I plow through the air, pushing against gravity, running up the road, running up the hill, and there’s the house, and every window blazing, and the sky above is boiling amber clouds and up on the roof the shape of a boy, and the enormous dark, winged shape of something from my nightmares.
And they’re fighting.
They’re fighting.
And I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything. I try to push myself forward—I want to climb the gate and climb the house and get up there and fight with him, but my body isn’t listening, and then I realize the boy on the roof isn’t fighting, he’s just crouching there, defending himself as the monster attacks with claws and wings and that shriek that should wake the whole town. Over and over the creature darts at the huddled shape, its great jaws wide, serrated teeth catching that strange orange light, steam rolling off its sinewy bat-like body. Over and over, darting, and wheeling away again, its blood-red wings great booming sails that catch at the boy’s cloak, so that he is constantly shifting just to stay alive.
But he doesn’t fight.
Why doesn’t he fight?
“Bavar!”
My voice is small, it’s a tiny embarrassing husk, there’s no way it can be heard above the flap of those monstrous wings, and the shriek of the monster-call.
But the boy-shape turns toward me and thrusts out an arm as he does, and the monster is knocked away. It spins, howling, and heads for the burning sky, and Bavar watches it go, his fists clenched by his sides, and then he turns back to me and roars, lion-deep and furious.
I run back down the hill and back to the nice house, my breath tearing in my chest, and I was right there, I even had the catapult, and everything, and I just ran away.
I can barely look at myself in the mirror when dawn finally takes over the skies and it’s time to face another day. I swore I’d fight, the first chance I got, and I didn’t.
And neither did Bavar.
I open the bedroom door, mainly to get away from myself, and Mi
ka’s there, black coat gleaming in the early morning sun.
“Hi,” I whisper, crouching down. “How are you?”
He butts his face up against my knee and starts to purr.
“Life treating you well then,” I say, running my hand over his back. He drops to the floor and shows me his belly, rubbing his head against the carpet. Black hair, vanilla carpet. “Naughty.” I smile, reaching out and stroking him. He purrs. If only people were so simple. I mean, you’d think Bavar would want a friend. Stuck away in that massive house, hiding from monsters.
Why does he hide, anyway? He looks like he could hold his own, even against those things. I shudder, remembering the almost-human shape of the creature’s body, its enormous wings and that sulfurous smell that took me right back to that night. I’m not going to hide away, though, not again. I’m going to get to the bottom of it all. I’m going to find out how Bavar is connected with what happened to my parents, and I’m going to fight. The catapult is a child’s toy, but I don’t care. I’ll fight with everything I have, if I get another chance. After I’ve got through the school day, that is.
“Hey, Angel!”
I start, and turn to see Grace coming toward me, long hair swinging, bag flapping against her side.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” I keep on walking, and she falls in next to me.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” she says. “I didn’t realize.”
“Realize what?”
“About your parents, that it was true. Mom said you were living with the Frazers because . . . well. You know.”
I carry on walking. It’s cold, and I didn’t bring that much winter stuff with me. Mary made me borrow a scarf, and it’s itchy, and it smells of her, which I’m not quite sure I’m one hundred percent enjoying.
“So what happened to them?” Grace asks.
I stop, turn to her. “What?”
“Your parents. I just wondered,” she says quickly, catching the look on my face. “That’s all.”
“Burglary,” I say, turning and marching on toward school. The sidewalk sparkles with frost, and my boots crunch. Big black boots, to keep my feet on the ground. Mom always laughed at my boots. She said they made my legs look like golf clubs.
