by Tayte, Megan
The window. We had to move. Which way was the window?
I tightened my grip on her and began shuffling-dragging-sliding us across the floor, which was wet and – hot, was it hot?
‘Blue,’ rasped Grannie between coughs. ‘Blue will get us out.’
I just had time to desperately hope I could live up to her fantasy before I realised she wasn’t talking about me at all.
There was an arm around me, and another snaking around Grannie, and my first instinct was to struggle, but then my stinging eyes made out a line of Latin text on a thick forearm and I knew we were saved.
‘Hold on,’ said a deep voice in my ear, so I did.
*
When I opened my eyes I expected to find myself back in the car park, the hub of the rescue operation. But we were in a copse of trees at the edge of the grounds. It was darker here, further from the flames, but the night air was lit with a soft blue glow.
I struggled upright and leaned over Grannie Cavendish, who was lying at my side, staring up. For one terrible moment I thought the stare was vacant, but then she blinked.
‘Oooo, pretty,’ she said. ‘All the stars.’
‘Is she okay?’ I croaked, focusing on the hands, pressed to her shoulders: the source of the light.
‘Yes,’ said the man beside me. ‘She’ll be fine.’
I let out the breath I’d been holding. It emerged as a hacking cough. Leaning forward, I tried to drag in some air.
‘Now you,’ said the man.
I felt his hands on my shoulders, and then the blissful warmth of his light, and then... the tightness in my chest, the burning in my throat, the throbbing in my head – gone.
‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up. Then: ‘Oh! It’s you!’
The man from the boat. The man from the graveyard. The Cerulean. Part of the team here tonight.
‘Michael told me you’d gone in,’ he began, but then he broke off to help Grannie, who was struggling to sit up.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, patting down her thin cotton nightdress, ‘I need a handkerchief.’
‘I don’t have one,’ he said. ‘But you can use my shirt.’
‘Gracious, no!’
I rummaged in my back pocket. Earlier tonight, when I’d changed out of the wedding dress, I’d still had that napkin layer on me and I’d shoved it in my jeans. I could hardly leave it about for Mum to find; she’d have known at once what it was because the ink had leaked through and on the wispy ply was a perfect copy of the picture. I retrieved the flimsy tissue now and held it out to Grannie.
But just as she was about to take it from me, a hand – a big hand – closed over mine and the man said, ‘Wait – let me see that,’ and I was so shocked by his touch that I let go.
He took the napkin from me and tilted the picture towards the light cast by far-off flames and he drew in a ragged breath. ‘She kept it,’ he said. ‘All this time. She kept it.’
‘Such pretty stars,’ chirped Grannie, pointing upwards. ‘Look, see.’
But I didn’t look at the stars. I looked at him.
Him.
‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘You’re him.’
His head snapped up, but then stilled. He waited, watching me intently, distant flames reflected in his eyes. The man from the boat. The man from the graveyard. And the man from my mother’s memory wall.
‘You’re Rafe,’ I said.
His lips quirked, and then curved into a smile.
‘Hello, baby girl,’ said my father.
24: SAFE
Grannie and I huddled together in a corner of the village hall, out of the way of all the comings and goings. Having been designated a makeshift shelter, the hall was thronging with people: paramedics, firefighters on a break, residents and staff of the home who hadn’t required hospitalisation, and an army of locals who’d turned up to help.
The medics had finally finished treating us. Given the smoke-blackened state of us both, they seemed sure we’d have breathing problems and insisted we both take oxygen for some time. But eventually they had to concede that we were fighting fit – albeit perhaps not mentally, given that one of us was crooning ‘He’s a Tramp’ from Lady and the Tramp and the other was conspicuously white-faced and quiet. Muttering about shock, they’d left us with a cup of tea each, a packet of cookies and a large blanket, which we soon made good use of. But even the warmth of the cover and the rush of sugar in my bloodstream and the cheery Disney sing-a-long couldn’t stave off the turmoil in my mind.
My father. Here.
‘Scarlett?’
A hand waved in front of my face, breaking my bleary-eyed stare.
‘I’m fine,’ I assured Michael again in a voice that didn’t sound like my own.
It was Michael who’d brought us here. Michael who’d found us in our secluded spot; who’d told Rafe that the home’s manager had ticked off the full register of staff and residents now, and that everyone who could be helped had been helped.
‘You should go now,’ he’d told Rafe.
I’d thought Rafe would dismiss Michael then. Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he told Michael he wasn’t ready to leave yet? Why, after dropping a kiss on Grannie’s cheek, had he simply murmured to me ‘I’ll see you soon’ and then disappeared?
‘Why did he go, Michael?’ I said now over Grannie’s chorus.
‘Who?’
‘The other Cerulean. Rafe.’
Michael frowned. ‘The man who brought you out of the fire?’
‘Yes,’ I said impatiently. ‘Why did he go?’
‘His work was done.’
But it wasn’t! I wanted to yell. Turning up like that, saving the day, allowing me to connect the dots and know at last who he was – he couldn’t just run out on me like that.
‘I’m going now,’ said Michael. ‘It’s been a long night.’
I nodded. After all the healing he’d done this evening, he must be drained. Oh – that was it. That was why Rafe had gone so suddenly. He’d healed Grannie and me and who knew how many others before that. He was wiped out. The hurt little girl inside calmed a little. He said he’d see me soon. He’d be back.
My father.
It was unimaginable.
Michael was still staring at me. There was something wrong with his eyes. His pupils were drowning out all but a sliver of muddy iris.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, but he was already saying:
‘Good night, Mrs Cavendish.’
Grannie broke off her humming and reached out a wizened hand to pat Michael. ‘Nighty-night, Ryan,’ she said.
Michael looked at me and I shook my head a little.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for coming to get me tonight.’
But he was already walking away, and in moments he was swallowed up by the crowd.
‘Dear, dear,’ said Grannie. ‘If I’ve told my son once, I’ve told him a hundred times – broodiness is not an attractive quality in a lad.’
Broody. It was a good word to describe Michael. Clearly, he wasn’t on best form tonight. But then who could blame him? I’d overheard a firefighter tell a medic that ten residents so far hadn’t survived the fire – rescued but swept away by the shock. I wouldn’t be the only Cerulean haunted by nightmares tonight.
But at least Michael was safe. I hadn’t seen Jude since I’d gone into the home, and I was worried – why hadn’t he found me? He must know where I’d be: at Grannie’s side, at least until her family arrived.
I studied the door across the hall, willing it to open and cursing whenever it did and a stranger walked through. Grannie warned me ‘a watched pot never boils’ and, randomly, that I should ‘just keep swimming’, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that door. Until, finally, it was flung open with such force that it crashed loudly against the inner wall and a familiar figure rushed into the hall.
Luke was as panicked as I’d ever seen him and even from a distance I could see his chest heaving as he scoured the room.
‘Here!’ I called t
o him, and his head turned at once.
He darted across the room, and before Grannie could get out the words, ‘Luke, darling! I’m out and about in my nightie!’ he’d dropped to his knees in front of us and grabbed a hand each.
‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded, looking from Grannie to me, back and forth. ‘Where are you hurt?’
‘We’re fine,’ I assured him.
‘You’re filthy!’
‘But fine.’ I squeezed his hand, hard. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t call. I couldn’t remember your number, and my phone died in the fire.’
‘In the fire?’ Luke fell back on his heels. ‘What happened?’
‘It was nothing – we’re safe now,’ I attempted, but Grannie wasn’t going to pass up this chance to tell a good tale.
‘Fire in the home, Luke!’ she declared with all the aplomb of a melodrama actress. ‘Scarlett woke me up, and then we had a bit of a cough together, and then we fell over, and then we did some more coughing, and then the blue angel turned up and swooooshed us out of there. Then we stopped coughing and had some cookies. And tea. Though there was too much sugar in mine.’
‘Grannie!’
Another familiar figure had burst through the door, this one similarly out of breath but half-blind with tears.
Pandemonium ensued as Cara threw herself at Grannie, hugging her and sobbing wildly, and Si appeared and attempted to calm his hysterical girlfriend.
Luke slumped on the seat beside me and crushed me to him. ‘I was so scared,’ he said. ‘I was so scared.’ He took in a shuddering breath, and it came out as a cough. Pulling back, he said, ‘Scarlett, you absolutely reek of smoke! What happened? How confused is Gran?’
‘She’s not,’ I admitted.
He balked. ‘You went in there, into the fire, to get her?’
‘Well, yes. But we weren’t right in the fire – it hadn’t reached her room.’
‘But you didn’t know that before you Travelled!’
Luke’s fingers on my waist were digging in painfully, and I squirmed and he loosened his hold, but he didn’t let me go – he pressed me closer to him.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said. ‘You must have been so frightened.’
‘A bit.’
‘A lot!’
‘Okay, a lot. But there was no choice to make, you know that.’
We looked at Grannie. She was stroking Cara’s hair and reprising ‘He’s a Tramp’ in a soothing, lullaby tone.
‘I thought, as I was driving... but she’s okay,’ said Luke. ‘She’s here and she’s okay. Thanks to you. Scarlett, I –’
‘No,’ I cut in. ‘Not thanks to me. I didn’t get us out, Luke. I couldn’t work out how – how to Travel with her.’
He looked confused, and then he remembered his grandmother’s tale. ‘The blue angel?’
I nodded.
‘Jude?’
‘No.’
‘Jude,’ said Si from somewhere beside me, and I turned to put him right too. But then I realised he was looking past me, towards the door.
I spun around and saw Jude loping across the room. He looked completely exhausted, but he was whole – intact – unhurt – here. The knot of anxiety in my stomach unravelled at last.
‘Hey,’ he said, stopping to stand before me and Luke. He eyed Cara and Si and Grannie beside us, who were locked in a group hug. ‘Everyone okay?’ he asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You?’
He nodded.
‘Where have you been?’
He gave me a strange look. ‘Healing. Where else?’
‘I thought all the healing was done.’
‘We’re just done.’
‘But Michael said it was all over ages ago.’
‘Did he now.’
Jude looked behind him, found a spare chair, pulled it over and slumped down.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Luke.
‘There is in my book,’ said Jude. ‘Michael went to Scarlett though I explicitly told him not to.’
‘Why?’
‘He thought she should know about the fire, given the connection to you. I thought if he told her she’d come rushing here and put herself in danger.’
Luke nodded. ‘I appreciate you trying to protect her.’
I had an out-of-body moment as I watched the two guys talking – well, normally. This was a first.
But then Jude turned to me and his fierce glare snapped me right back into the moment. ‘I didn’t want Scarlett doing something stupid,’ he said. ‘Like Travelling into a raging inferno! I told her not to go in there. She knew I couldn’t follow her.’
‘You saw her before?’ said Luke.
As Jude explained his version of events to Luke, I sat quietly and tried to work out what it was in Jude’s words that had set off an alarm bell in my head. But trying to pin down a logical train of thought in my fuzzy mind was like trying to catch a frantic moth in a room full of lights.
Luke and Jude were deep in conversation now about the motives for Michael’s interfering, and I found myself less impressed by their ability to talk to each other and more irritated by the fact they seemed to have forgotten I existed. I wasn’t interested in their verdict on Michael – as far as I was concerned, he’d done what he believed was best in the circumstances, and at least he didn’t treat me like some fragile little girl who needed protection.
I didn’t need protection. I needed answers. Right now.
And so, interrupting rudely, I demanded of Jude: ‘Who’s Rafe?’
25: THE BLUE ANGEL
‘What?’ said Luke and Jude simultaneously: Luke because he knew well what the name Rafe meant to me, and Jude because he hadn’t a clue what the name Rafe meant to me.
‘Rafe,’ I said. ‘Cerulean.’
Jude screwed up his face. ‘Don’t know him.’
‘Cerulean. Tall guy. Dark hair. Serviam tattoo on his arm.’
‘That describes loads of Ceruleans, Scarlett.’
‘Why are you –?’ began Luke, but I ignored him.
‘Rafe,’ I said. ‘Rafe. Big. Built. Forty, maybe. Or late thirties?’
Jude and Luke regarded me silently. I realised a hush had fallen all around, and I looked over to see Si and Cara staring at me.
‘She means the blue angel,’ said Grannie helpfully. ‘He’s a decent chap, you know. Such lovely warm hands.’
Cara gaped at her. ‘You know a blue angel, Grannie?’
‘Well, of course, dear,’ she said. ‘I knew him way back when. He’s aged well – still a heartbreaker.’
A memory stirred – weeks ago, visiting Grannie at the home, she’d spoken of another Cerulean, a young one, ‘as blue as Cinderella’s dress’. What was it she’d said?
‘Peter didn’t like him, of course. Not a jot. Perhaps that’s why the Cinderella boy left the village. Still, quite a kerfuffle he caused when he did... taking her with him like that. For all that time she was gone, Peter was beside himself. But then she came back...’
And at the cafe opening, I’d overheard Grannie talking to Mum about ‘that chap of yours that Peter got all het up about’. ‘That’s angels for you,’ she’d told Mum. ‘Flighty.’
Grannie was lucid. She had known Rafe ‘way back when’. And she’d known that he and my grandfather had been at war. But why, when they were fellow Ceruleans?
‘I don’t understand,’ Luke was saying. ‘Grannie, you knew this man?’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘But who is he?’
‘Elizabeth’s chap,’ she said. ‘The blue angel. Do keep up, pet.’
‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ said Jude. ‘Who is this Rafe?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ I said.
‘Argh!’ He threw up his hands in frustration. ‘Look, it’s been a long night – you’re all safe – whatever this is, surely it can wait until –’
‘It can’t wait, Jude. Please, think: who is Rafe?’
‘I told you, I don’t k
now any Rafe!’
‘None?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know all the Ceruleans?’
‘Yes.’
‘All the ones on the island? All the ones at the school?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And none of them are called Rafe?’
‘No.’
Cara spoke up: ‘What about Ralph? Or Raphael? Perhaps it’s a shortened name.’
But Jude shook his head. ‘I don’t know the name. Scarlett, what’s going on? You’re starting to weird me out.’
‘And me,’ said Luke. ‘What’s with the sudden obsession with Rafe again?’
With all eyes on me, I took a deep breath and blurted it out: ‘He was here. Tonight. It was Rafe who brought Grannie and me out of the home and healed us.’
‘Healed you! You didn’t tell me –’
But Cara drowned out her brother: ‘Your FATHER saved you and Grannie?’
‘Woah!’ said Jude, holding up a hand. ‘Your what?’
‘Scarlett’s mum had a relationship with some Cerulean called Rafe,’ explained Cara. ‘Sienna and Scarlett were the result.’
‘What!’
Shocked didn’t even begin to describe Jude’s expression.
To my surprise it was Luke who took over next, explaining the background carefully. Jude looked like a captured fish floundering on a fishing jetty as he listened, and I began to wish I’d told him about Rafe from the outset. But I’d agreed with Luke to let it go. And I had, at least outwardly. I hadn’t gone looking for my father. But apparently he’d come looking for me.
‘So what was it like?’ said Cara, leaning across Grannie to get close to me. ‘Did you talk – what did he say – was it like a massive reunion scene in a film – did you fall into each other’s arms – ooo, did he cry?’
‘It was a moment, that’s all,’ I told her. ‘Then Michael turned up and said Rafe should go, and he did.’
‘Wait!’ said Jude, and there was an edge in his voice that made us all hush. ‘Did you say Michael told Rafe to go?’
I nodded, confused. Why was that a big deal?
Jude swore.
‘Young man!’ scolded Grannie, and he apologised at once.
