by Tayte, Megan
‘Thanks in part to Jude.’
‘Wow.’
He fell silent, and I gave him some time to think, then gently probed: ‘What were you going to say, about if Jude had come last night?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘just that I’d have made an effort. For you.’
I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead. ‘Thank you.’
‘So will you ask him to help?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ll feel better if he’s looking out for you. He does it pretty well; I have to give the bloke that much.’
‘Maybe one day you’ll even decide he’s a mate?’ I ventured.
‘Steady on,’ said Luke. ‘We blokes don’t forgive and forget easily, you know.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Don’t I know it.’
He gave me a poke in the ribs, and I gave him one back, and then he said, ‘Right, it’s on,’ and tickled me relentlessly until I was a shrieking, squirming mess on the sand begging for mercy. Which he granted, in the form of a kiss. Which I returned. Which led to a long period of being so wrapped up in each other that we didn’t even notice the seagull steal the second sandwich.
Afterwards, when we’d settled down to devour the now rather melted Jaffa Cakes, Luke said, ‘Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay?’
‘Luke!’ I protested. ‘Not this again.’
‘I know, I know. It’s just… I can’t shake this feeling that something bad is coming. That I’m going to lose you somehow.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ I said, reaching up to wipe a chocolate-orange smear from the corner of his mouth.
He caught my hand and held it still, and his eyes searched mine. ‘Promise me,’ he said. ‘Please.’
‘I promise,’ I told him solemnly.
8: ALONE
The first time I went to the hospital, I’d been in a right old state having killed a deer, healed a deer and then collapsed in a bloody mess. The second time, I’d been in a right old state having realised my sister had been dying of a brain tumour. The third time, I’d been in a right old state having collapsed in Luke’s arms thanks to the fact that I was now dying of a brain tumour.
Is it any wonder, then, that when I arrived at the hospital on Monday morning, I was in a right old state?
But of course when – after watching silently for a while as I struggled to fit my Mini into a parking space in the far corner of the car park – Jude asked whether I was okay, I said brightly, ‘Great!’ And then, ‘Hang on… seriously, this cannot be a standard-sized space.’
‘Plenty of room on my side,’ Jude pointed out.
‘Thanks,’ I said through gritted teeth as I reversed out for another try – straight into a concrete pillar.
Jude cringed as I said some very unladylike words under my breath. ‘Er, Scarlett, do you want me to…’
‘No!’ I snapped. ‘You can’t even drive!’
He was kind enough not to retort, ‘Neither can you, by the look of it.’ Instead he started telling me about an article he’d read on the history of the Mini. ‘… and it played a big part in women’s lib in the 1960s, because suddenly loads of women were getting their own cars, and the Mini was stylish and affordable and easy to park due to it being the smallest car…’
‘Actually,’ I spat as I ground the gear stick into first and made another attempt to centre the vehicle in the space, ‘it’s really not the smallest car at all. When I went to Amsterdam with my parents a few years back, I saw teeny cars. Like toy cars.’
Jude was laughing. I tugged on the handbrake and turned to glare at him.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘Sorry.’ He tried – and failed – to lose the grin. ‘It’s just, you and your parents in Amsterdam?’
‘What’s up with that? It’s a beautiful city. Canals. Bicycles. Green parks. Museums like the Van Gogh and the Anne Frank…’
‘Infamous red-light district, stag parties in their hundreds, those ever-so-special coffee shops…’
‘Jude! We went there for culture, not to smoke weed!’
Then I had to smirk at the thought of my parents sitting in the corner of some smoky coffee shop puffing away on a joint. My father: stiff, straight-laced, dull as ditch water. And my mother… well, come to think of it, since their separation my mum had proved to be more jeans-and-jaunts than twinsets-and-pursed-lips, so perhaps she’d have given it a go.
‘Feel better now?’ asked Jude.
‘Oh! I see what you did there. Nicely done.’
‘Come on then. Let’s go.’
I gaped at him. ‘Go? Just like that? We’re going to walk in there – the epicentre of suffering – and just go for it? Not quite what I had in mind when I asked you to teach me, Jude.’
‘What, you thought I’d sit you down and give you theoretical lessons like the kids get at Kikorangi? Do you want to go buy an exercise book and some colouring pencils and I’ll set you an activity on the theme of ethics?’
‘Funny ha ha.’
He smiled at me. ‘First, let’s get out of this seriously cramped car. Look, there’s a bench over there. We’ll sit and talk. Then we’ll go in.’
The bench in question was on a grassy verge a good distance from the hospital.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’ll do that.’
Jude got out of the car and held his door open while I slid across and exited (no hope of opening the driver’s door, which was mere centimetres from a concrete wall), and then I locked up and followed him to the bench.
‘You ready?’ he said in a serious tone that indicated the banter was over.
I nodded, and my ‘Ceruleans 101’ lesson began:
‘Right, then. I’ve given it a lot of thought. And I got advice. Someone who was never brought up on Cerulea being out in mainstream society and using their gift – well, it’s new territory for us. But we think the best – the safest – approach is to keep it really, really simple.’
‘We?’ I queried.
He ignored me and carried on, speaking slowly and carefully as if reciting words learned by heart.
‘Here’s what you’ll do. You’ll find people who need low-level healing. Who are in discomfort, but not agony. Who are a little hurt or uncomfortable, but nowhere near dying. You’ll heal them – one or two a day; that’ll be enough.
‘You’ll be careful at all times not to be discovered. Because you’re healing at a low level, the light from your hands will be subtle. But still, you must find discreet ways to make contact. Like you did with that young mother in the clothes shop in Newquay – remember? You told me you pretended you were brushing something off her back so you had the excuse to touch her.
‘Today, you can shadow me and I’ll show you techniques. I’ll also check you’re picking the right people to heal – those who should be healed, who we’re supposed to heal, but who aren’t too damaged.
‘I picked here because it’s the easiest place to access plenty of options. But I wouldn’t expect you to come here yourself. You’re best operating within small communities – in doctor’s surgeries, libraries, community centres, shops.’
Jude sat back and waited expectantly for my response.
‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘You want me to be the school nurse of Ceruleans, Miss Ice Pack and a Sticking Plaster, while the rest of you march around being the life-saving paramedics and surgeons?’
His lips quirked. ‘If you want to see it like that.’
My gut reaction was to bawl him out. I had the power to save lives, right here in my fingertips! To wander about healing a grazed knee here, an upset stomach there, that wasn’t enough – surely that wasn’t enough!
As if reading my mind, Jude said gently, ‘Scarlett, it’s the best option available to you. This way, you’re doing good, real good, and you’re helping others, but you won’t go too far and risk yourself. And this way, you can lead a semi-normal life with your friends in Twycombe, and with Luke.’
He was right, I knew that. And yet I couldn’t let g
o so easily.
‘But the rest of you do so much…’
‘Yes, but you have to understand, Scarlett: we’re not alone in it like you are. We’ve been brought up to heal, trained slowly and carefully over many years. And we have the support of the rest of our kind. If there’s a difficult decision to make, or if healing is becoming too much, we call for help and others come. If we’re struggling to cope in the aftermath of a healing, people are there to get us through. That support – it’s essential. Or I think many of us would have lost control long ago.’
‘I guess I never thought of that,’ I said. ‘Is it… can it be very difficult then?’
Jude nodded soberly, and as I looked in his eyes I found myself thinking of a picture I’d seen at Kikorangi: Jude as a schoolboy, before he began healing. He looked so blissfully innocent in that picture. Now, there was always some shadow lurking in his eyes, some untold pain. Like Michael, I thought – like his eyes.
‘Do you remember,’ said Jude, ‘what Sienna wrote in her diary, the example I gave her of how we Ceruleans heal?’
‘Of course,’ I said at once. ‘It was Luke and his family.’
He looked away from me now, across to the hospital. This was where Luke and Cara and their parents had been brought the night of their car accident: Ryan and Anne Cavendish, cold and lifeless; Cara screaming in agony; and Luke – Luke devastated but walking wounded, with little more than a broken arm and a cut on his nose.
‘What I never told Sienna, what you couldn’t have learned from her diary,’ said Jude quietly, ‘was that Luke was my first. Oh, I’d healed before – a twisted ankle, a broken wrist – but I’d never been faced with such pain. It was the pain that drew me there; I wasn’t far away, just down the road, and I felt it. I was the first on the scene. All the suffering. I froze, Scarlett. I didn’t know what to do.’
His hands were gripping the edge of the bench tightly.
‘But you did act,’ I said. ‘You told Sienna – you knew you weren’t meant to heal Cara and her parents. But Luke... you were there for him that night. He had that chunk of glass in his face. And you pulled it out. And you healed him. Jude, you saved his life.’
‘Yes,’ he said, turning to me. ‘But the point is, Scarlett, I didn’t do that all by myself. I was alone when I found them. All alone. I couldn’t cope. So I called for help – it’s what we’re all instructed to do.
‘Barnabas, my teacher, came from Kikorangi. He helped me understand what to do. He watched me as I worked, advised me. And then, when the emergency services arrived, he stood with me on the roadside until they’d taken each of them away, and he talked me through all the feelings I was wrestling with. I was so angry, so angry, that I couldn’t heal them all. To leave Cara and Luke orphans – it was horrific. And Cara’s legs – why not heal them? I felt so guilty, and so helpless, and so damn furious with God or whatever it is that controls life and death, that shows us who to save and who to leave. If I hadn’t had Barnabas there that night and in the weeks that followed, I don’t know what I would have done.’
‘Oh, Jude.’
I slid over and threw my arms around him and tried to hug all the compassion I felt right into him. He let me hold him for a little while, then he leaned away and I pulled myself together and shifted back along the bench.
‘Thank you for telling me that,’ I said. ‘It can’t have been easy. I wish you would tell Cara and Luke.’
‘No,’ said Jude sharply.
‘But –’
‘No, Scarlett. And this isn’t the time for that conversation in any case. The point I was making is that healing the seriously injured and the dying is not something you can do alone.’
‘I see that. I don’t suppose there’s any chance…’
He shook his head. ‘Evangeline isn’t going to let you work alongside us. I’m sorry, but you chose to go it alone.’
I sighed. ‘Thought not. Still, it was worth a try.’
‘You know that if you ever come across someone in real trouble you can call me, though,’ said Jude. ‘I’ll always be there.’
‘Good to know.’
Jude looked over at the hospital and then back to me. ‘So, I think you’re clear on the rules now.’
‘Just one question.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Travelling. Are you going to finish teaching me that?’
‘What do you mean? You can Travel.’
‘Yes, but I can’t do that not-quite-appearing thing that means you can be invisible.’
‘Invisible?’
‘Well, not quite invisible – kind of blurry. Must be a useful skill for healing people unnoticed.’
‘Yes, well, that kind of skill isn’t something you need for low-key healing. And it’s unbelievably draining, so not something I’d teach you in any case.’
‘Dang.’ I stuck my bottom lip out. ‘Cara will be most disappointed.’
Jude snorted.
‘What about the Travelling with people in tow thing? Can you teach me that?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, what if I came across someone trapped, in mortal danger? Then I could just whisk them away.’
‘No need. You’d just call me.’
‘Right. Well. That’s that then.’
‘Yep,’ said Jude cheerily.
I sighed. Was it so terrible that I wanted to maximise the benefits of being a Cerulean? My gift had come at a cost: I could no longer be close to the people I loved. So I figured in return I was entitled to some compensatory perks.
I’d had this idea to surprise Luke with a romantic break away somewhere. Maybe St Ives, a popular port on the north coast of Cornwall. I’d have preferred jet-setting off to some exotic destination – maybe Italy or Spain; Luke longed to travel and I loved to. But supposedly we Ceruleans couldn’t venture beyond the boundaries of Devon and Cornwall. I say supposedly, because this was one of those Cerulean ‘facts’ that I found rather strange. Like the ‘fact’ that women couldn’t Travel, which turned out to be a lie put about by the Cerulean leader Evangeline to keep women nicely contained on the island.
‘Evangeline,’ I said. I was having a light-bulb moment.
Jude tensed beside me. ‘What about her?’
‘You asked for advice, you said. “We think this”, “you’ll do that”... her words. This, all this, it’s coming from her.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was Evangeline’s idea that you limit your healing. But don’t let your feelings towards her put you off. It’s a good plan.’
‘My feelings towards her – what do you mean?’
‘Well, you turned your back on her as the Mother.’
‘I already have a mother, remember, Jude? As for my feelings, I don’t know what they are, to be honest. I don’t trust her, I’ll admit that. But I’m not on some kind of anti-Evangeline crusade. After all, she may be…’
‘Your great-grandmother?’
‘Has she admitted that to you?’
‘No. I’ve told her nothing of what Sienna said in that alley. I didn’t want to upset her.’
‘You wanted her to forgive you for leaving the island with me. Has she?’
‘I think so, yes. Mainly, she’s just relieved that I came back. And very sad that you didn’t.’
‘Well, you can’t please everyone.’
‘Scarlett.’ Jude leaned a little closer. ‘I think she’d like to see you. Would you go back to the island? Talk to her?’
‘Has she asked for this? Are you her messenger today?’
‘No! She knows I’m here, and she’s glad I’m here, to guide you. She doesn’t like to think of you alone, I think. But she hasn’t asked to see you. Maybe she’s too proud. Or maybe she just thinks you want nothing to do with her now.’
I turned the idea over in my mind. Go back? Back to the island that had been my prison for months, that represented being kept apart from those I loved? And yet…
I thought of the fields of wild grasses and flowers, and the cherry blo
ssom tree on the cliff, and the shell-strewn beach where we surfed, and the quiet and the calm and the beauty. It was no use pretending that the place meant nothing to me, that I hadn’t had good times there too. That I didn’t miss it, just a little.
And Estelle, my friend – I’d abandoned her in Cerulea without so much as a goodbye. I could check on her, and her baby, April.
And talking to Evangeline could help me learn more about my grandfather. Had he been a Cerulean? If so, how had he come to be living in Twycombe for all those years? And, most importantly, how had he made it work living with my grandmother, a human?
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said finally.
The smile that eased across Jude’s face told me he knew I wanted to say yes, but he was sensible enough not to push. He simply nodded and then stood. I followed suit, and together we gazed at the hospital.
‘Shall we?’ said Jude.
I slipped my arm through his. ‘Lead the way to the nearest minorly injured person,’ I told him.
9: ALL GREEK TO ME
The certificate was printed on a sheet of thick yellow card. Around the edges a border had been created out of brightly coloured clipart images: bandage rolls and sticking plasters and pill bottles and spiky comic-style ‘Kerpow!’ bubbles. In the centre, in a dramatic font, was typed:
This is to certify that Scarlett Blake is officially awesome, having healed:
a broken arm, a broken ankle, a broken hip, a broken nose, a broken rib, a backache, a headache, a toothache, a neck ache, a stomach ache, a knee ache, a lacerated arm, a lacerated scalp, a grazed knee, a grazed palm, an ear infection, a throat infection, a cough, a cold, a boil, a bunion, a verruca and a varicose vein
… and she is hereby granted the title – da, da, DA! – Healer Extraordinaire!!!!!!
At the bottom were scrawled three signatures: Luke, Cara and Si.
I looked up from the certificate at the three grinning faces around the patio table.
‘I made it!’ declared Cara. ‘To commemorate how much amazing stuff you’ve done already!’
‘Really, that’s sweet of you, but –’
