The Wilful Eye

by Isobelle Carmody

  ‘No money,’ she whispered, cursing her own stupidity. Hyacinth was wrong – there was no one to trust on this road. ‘I’ve already been robbed.’

  ‘Idiot bitch! Imbecile!’ the girl said, smacking her hand to her head. She had mousy hair and seemed nondescript until you looked into her eyes, which were hazel and flinty and dangerous.

  She wore a trench coat and looked to be a head shorter than Gerda. She hadn’t seemed threatening at all.

  ‘Moron!’ the girl yelled, and Gerda jumped. One dog let out a chilling howl. Gerda’s mind raced.

  ‘You got robbed already, loser? So early in the day?’ the girl spat.

  Gerda noticed the way she fidgeted – her move- ments were elastic and her body never truly still. A rubber girl.

  Eyes on the dogs, Gerda inched her way upright. the rubber girl snapped her fingers, and the dogs went quiet. The one that had howled dropped its head and thrust its nose at Gerda, who stiffened. But the dog nudged at her hand: it wanted a pat!

  For an instant, relief made her laugh.

  The rubber girl yelled at the Shepherd, eyes flicking from Gerda to the dog.

  ‘Useless mongrel!’ the girl screeched. ‘Here! Now!’

  But the dog didn’t move. The girl aimed a kick at it, and, as Gerda flinched, the dog snarled in a way that made her head prickle.

  ‘Useless mutt likes you,’ the girl said. ‘Two of a bloody kind.’

  Gerda rubbed the dog’s head, sensing something had turned.

  ‘Don’t pat it!’ the girl snarled. ‘Ruins ’em. Should slit your throat, stupid bitch.’

  Cruel monster, Gerda thought. But somehow the danger seemed to be leaking away. She was wrong.

  ‘Right. You got no money, you can help me get breakfast another way,’ the girl said, grabbing Gerda by the throat. ‘Pick up your stuff. I got your precious diary here, so don’t even think about taking off.’

  Gerda felt her face glowing. Someone else seeing all her angst about Kai, her pathetic gush of feelings for Art . . . she’d rather have her heart cut out with a rusty knife. She followed, feet dragging, eyes down. The dogs – even the friendly one – seemed to herd her.

  The rubber girl stationed her in cosmetics. No matter how many times she did it, Gerda felt shame shrinking her. She was studying the most expensive mascara on display. She was picking it up, testing it, slipping it into her pocket, mumbling to herself, putting it back on the shelf again. Putting on some Sunnigloss, pulling faces for the security camera, doing her best to look deranged. Finally an enormous, bored assistant only a couple of years older than Gerda came up and grabbed her by the arm.

  ‘What you doing, sweetie pie? Time to move on. Go piss ’em off in MegaMart.’

  ‘But I want to buy some Sunnigloss,’ Gerda whined, shaking her shoulder out of the girl’s grip. ‘I could have you for assault. Go read up on customer relations, lovey, and get your hands off me.’

  She deserved an acting award from Hollywood.

  The girl mumbled into her headset: something about another fruit’n’nut bar.

  Just about time to go, Gerda judged.

  The porker grabbed her arm again, and another uniformed figure advanced down the aisle, reminding Gerda of a Dalek.

  ‘I’d be careful the way you’re handling me. I think you should know my mother is a barrister. What did you say your name was?’ Gerda ranted.

  In her mind’s eye she saw the rubber girl in action – fingers snaking out for cheese, yoghurt, chocolate mousse and caramel sundaes, nuts, canned peaches, apples and popcorn. Her mouth watered. While Gerda staged the diversion, she’d be loading up her trench coat. Even dog food. If Gerda kept their attention long enough to satisfy the rubber girl, she’d let Gerda eat as well. Gerda’s stomach rumbled all the time – she was getting very good at this.

  They were sitting in a dumpster for warmth, on a groundsheet stolen from Great Outdoors. She must have done a good job – today the rubber girl was letting her eat whatever she wanted. Even the smell of stinking rubbish didn’t put her off the food. The girl entertained herself lobbing empty cans down at the dogs, not caring that they might cut their tongues trying to lick them out. Kurt was stationed near rubber girl, Rudolph sitting directly below Gerda. Gerda’s stomach felt full and the girl seemed relaxed. But this was a serrated calm.

  ‘I read your diary,’ said the rubber girl, whose name Gerda still didn’t know. As always, her voice dripped scorn.

  ‘Didn’t know you could read,’ Gerda snapped, instantly hating herself.

  The rubber girl’s eyes went wide: she was rocked.

  Gerda had learned never to argue, because the girl had a sadistic, wild streak, and she vented her anger wherever she could, but especially on the dogs. Kurt just yelped and took it, but poor Rudolph cowered and whined. She drew the razor-sharp hunting knife she often traced across Gerda’s throat. Gerda knew a major dose of humiliation was coming.

  ‘Couldn’t keep your boyfriend, you useless dolt,’ the girl said in her nasty singsong voice.

  ‘I left him,’ Gerda said, despising the girl. She anticipated the sting of the knife across her neck. ‘He stole from me.’

  ‘Why?’ the girl asked, cocking her head.

  ‘You read it. Buy more drugs, I guess,’ Gerda said. She’d played it repeatedly in her mind. Surprisingly, it hurt a little less each time.

  ‘So what about the other one . . . that Kai?’ Gerda flinched as the girl said his name. Somehow she had to get away, get back on the road.

  ‘Why’d he shoot through, then?’

  Gerda hung her head, this time less sure. ‘Dunno, really. Drugs too, I guess. But maybe he just went out into the world.’

  Could it really be that simple? All the hours she’d spent thinking had done nothing to solve the puzzle.

  ‘Nah, I don’t reckon he went exploring. I know about that blonde bitch,’ the rubber girl said. Gerda stared, mouth full of doughnut.

  ‘She sucks people in. She gets ’em hooked on this party drug and makes ’em into her little pawns. You catch her name?’

  ‘Anya.’

  ‘Anya! That’s it! Tried it on me.’

  Gerda was shocked at the long speech from the rubber girl, but also that this spiky creature had herself been trapped by the ice queen.

  Then she understood – no one would burn the rubber girl again.

  The girl’s eyes had gone cloudy, remembering. ‘You should go now. Might be too late,’ she said, half to herself.

  Gerda grabbed at the glimmer of hope. ‘So. You know where to find her?’

  ‘Somewhere in Melbourne. Still got the address, but it must be two years old. She’d be long gone by now.’ She unzipped one of her pockets and took out a dirty scrap of paper.

  ‘I’ll take it anyway,’ Gerda said. She jumped up and grabbed her backpack, snatched back the diary and said: ‘I want half the food.’

  ‘Take it,’ the rubber girl said. ‘You’re okay, Gerda. Take Rudolph too – he likes you. Won’t do nothing for me. But watch out. That bitch is crazy . . . you get her angry, she’s somehow . . . supernatural.’

  ‘So . . . how can I . . .?’ Gerda asked, hope plummeting.

  The rubber girl just shrugged. ‘Dunno. Dunno how I got out, really. I don’t remember it much. My brain is still fogged from then. All I know is, before you freeze, you burn.’

  The girl frowned, concentrating. Gerda waited.

  ‘And hot fights cold.’

  Gerda hugged the girl, and was surprised to feel her tremble. It sounded ridiculous. Before you freeze, you burn. How could she solve the riddle of those words?

  It was difficult getting a ride with Rudolph, but at last a dog lover stopped for them: a woman originally from Lapland. The storms continued all the way down the coast, and when the Lapp woman let them out in an industrial suburb, the gusting air chilled Gerda to her bones. She unwrapped the crumpled piece of paper from the rubber girl for the millionth time.

  ‘Twenty-seven Mawson Lan
e, Cranbourne,’ she read aloud to Rudolph. The woman had said to follow the road they were on for a few ks. She’d written down the rest of the instructions. As Gerda left the vehicle, the flat-faced woman smiled.

  ‘Few understand cold like Lapps. A single snowflake is a wonder, but beware. Many snowflakes wrap you in their blanket. You will sleep and fail to wake. I hope you may find your friend. Good luck, little Gerda.’ As she waved, Gerda’s throat felt full.

  They plodded on, fighting snow flurries that seemed harsher and bleaker than before. Gerda shivered at the huge task ahead. It seemed weeks since she’d seen Kai – and if he wasn’t at the address she’d been given, how would she ever find him? And if he was there, how would she ever free him? It was either the ice queen’s drug factory, or her own home. Would it be guarded like a fortress? All she had was Rudolph, and she didn’t want to put the dog in any danger. He nuzzled her hand, demanding a pat. When everything seemed hopeless, the dog still made her smile. She was the luckiest person in the world, and her luck would hold. It must.

  The wind rocked them back on their heels and gusted in their faces no matter which way they turned. Though her eyes watered and her cheeks stung, Gerda sweated from pushing through the biting sleet. Did people really live here? The further they walked, the fewer people they saw, except vagrants and hollow-eyed factory workers. Rudolph growled chillingly at a man attacking a stop sign, swinging a sledgehammer, screaming. They hurried on, passing factories spewing out black smoke. As she took in the maze of towers and ducts and pipes, the chimneys and vats and storage drums, Gerda knew the whole world was wrong, but she hoped like hell she could fix one tiny piece.

  Cloud plumes changed colour in the west as they reached a battered street sign and turned into Mawson Lane. The high industrial fencing continued, unbroken. Gerda touched the dog’s head and they trudged on. The cutting winds whipped harder and an army of snowflakes wrapped girl and dog in a vortex.

  The storm was so fierce that Gerda walked smack into a high white wall with the texture of iceblocks. Groping along it, she found a set of tall steel gates. Spy cameras were mounted high along the walls and near the gate, set to scan from about three metres out, not at the base of the wall. She knew a thing or two about spy cameras from working with the rubber girl. Gerda felt Kai’s presence keenly. Perhaps the storm might be their friend, cloaking them from watchers.

  The gates were clamped shut, so Gerda considered climbing the wall, shrugging off her backpack and burying it in the snow. But she might as well try to scale an ice cliff. She searched for hand-holds, but there were none on the sheer, slippery surface. Gerda sucked her numb fingers, thinking furiously.

  ‘Okay. We’ll have to walk along the fence line and try to find a gap,’ she told Rudolph. She groped along the perimeter, almost certain the whole compound was enclosed by the wall of giant iceblocks. Then Gerda heard a heavy scraping sound – the gates were grinding open! It could be her only chance.

  ‘Drop!’ she hissed to the dog. Running low and close to the wall, she sank into the snow as close to the gates as she dared. A cloud-white sports car in snow chains throbbed through the gates. Gerda’s breath caught in her throat – the ice girl sat at the wheel. Supremely confident, apparently careless of anything in her way, she looked neither left nor right. As the car cleared the gates they began lurching closed. Gerda dived between them, just as they snapped shut. Poor Rudolph nosed and whined on the other side of the bars.

  No. That was good. He was her sentry, although she wished desperately the dog was beside her.

  Her stomach growled and her nose ran, and she tried to remember when she or the dog had last eaten or drunk. She approached the grand entrance, suddenly weary.

  It must be a trick. The door was creaking open, slamming shut, the plaything of angry gusts. She must hurry: the ice queen had gone, but for how long? Steeling herself, Gerda slipped into the entry hall. She waited and listened, pulse thudding in the sudden quiet. The interior was vast and blinding white, the floors slick and slippery as a skating rink, opaque ice-blue. Gerda’s senses screamed, begging her back, but she was compelled to go on. It was risky, it was illegal, this breaking and entering into what must be the stronghold of criminals. The vast space offered no cover, but Gerda spotted a side door and eased through it.

  She was grabbed and shoved to the floor. Just like that. Blindfolded, she felt eager fingers pawing her, then a sharp pain in her neck. The cold made her whole body rattle. Just as abruptly, they were gone, ripping away the blindfold. She had no idea who they were, or what they’d done.

  Then she was caught in a kaleidoscope of shapes and colours and sounds, textures and smells, assaulting every organ, blinding her brain, massaging her body and making her heart whirr. Colours, at first soft and glowing and luminous, grew fiery and fierce. Gerda looked around her wildly, but knew she couldn’t identify any danger because her brain was being tricked. Sights and sounds shrieked too loudly for attention, and her plan to find her way out again was slipping from her grasp. She was a prisoner inside this room of sublime torture forever. She felt herself churning down a waterslide, body being flung through crazy twists and turns. She thought fleetingly of Kai and fell through another doorway that narrowed into a tunnel, leading down a darkened hallway decorated in the colours of futility, greys and fawns and black, with sharp red daubs. Nowhere led out and nothing gave hope. Needing a candle or a torch to see by, Gerda groped her way forward, trying to remember where she’d been going, and why. She hung suspended in elongated time, and struggled to remember what her dream was: to ever leave this room, or just to take another step? At last she was ejected, back onto the freezing floor, dumped with the miserable knowledge that they knew she was here, so she must have failed already. Gerda felt snowflakes settling over her and welcomed their cuddling warmth. They kissed her face and hugged her neck and wrapped her arms, gradually heating her body. She dozed and drifted, longing to travel down a tunnel into sleep. Then she jerked awake – it was a snow blanket. She remembered the Lapp woman’s warning, and knew she had to stir.

  Gradually Gerda made out shapes.

  Yes. This was the drug laboratory she’d expected. She heard a broadcast game in a distant room, the noise competing with music. The dazzling white of the room clashed with its dirty apparatus – filthy trestle tables and glass tubing, bunsen burners and cutting boards, more grey-stained than white. Drumloads of chemicals. Yellow anthills of powder with the glow of fake jewels or coarse crystals. Ugly sparkling bling. Yes. She had found the lair of the ice queen, and it was deserted. She hadn’t expected that.

  Gerda caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Gor- illas with guns? Lethal semiautomatics? She crouched and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, warding off bedtime monsters. Perhaps they wouldn’t see her if she couldn’t see them. But nobody came. She crept on. Gerda found the room where the game was blaring, saw three goons asleep on couches, snoring, scrawled with tattoos. The room was thick with smoke or fog. Then, from a distant corner of the drug lab, came a movement faint as a flutter of wings. This time she knew by instinct – Kai. She crept towards it, picking her way through the trestles and drums and tubing.

  But it wasn’t Kai. Gerda gasped. A strange, shrivelled creature cowered there, covering its head with its hands. It looked like an underweight gnome or a hairless monkey, and its skin was grizzled and dull. It peered up from under its hands out of eyes that were dead tree hollows. Transparent blood vessels crisscrossed its chicken-bone arms, and its lips and fingers were blue. Its forehead wrinkled as it grimaced and she saw its receding gums. Gerda held her breath – was it going to raise the alarm? But it stayed mute. It watched her through empty eyes that would haunt her for ever after, eyes she’d seen somewhere before, but dead of hope. The same eyes as Grandma’s, after Kai had left home. Gerda felt her heart convulse in her chest – it was Kai. She reached down to help him to his feet, and he flinched away from her, his skin as cold as stone.

  His fingers closed on a
long, sharp icicle, and Gerda stepped back: was he so much the ice queen’s plaything that he might try to kill her? But his fingers only quivered. Perhaps it would be kinder to kill him.

  ‘Ugly,’ he cackled.

  Gerda felt the wobbling jelly of her heart go sliding down a crevasse. She studied the icicles clustered in front of Kai. Strangely, they seemed to shape letters.

  eter . . .

  Was he trying to make a message?

  Tears rolled down Gerda’s cheeks and the creature that was Kai stared up at her, bewildered and detached.

  A tear plopped onto his face. In disbelief, she saw one eye widen and glisten, then the other. In those eyes where hope had died, a light was slowly kindling. Something glittered and echoed as it fell to the floor – a tiny shard of glass, ejected from his eye. The shattered mirror from the party! Gerda picked up the fragment and saw her own face, shockingly distorted. She caught the reflection of Kai, the well-built friend she remembered. But the same wrinkled creature stared up at her. Now she knew why her friend had hated her and fled. Lodged in his eye, that shard of mirror had distorted the way Kai saw the world. Everything beautiful had seemed ugly, and everything crooked, true.

  The eyes gleamed huge. At last Gerda glimpsed the Kai she’d missed, and as her tears fell, fresh blood bloomed on his chest. His skin was mottled marble and his lips were ink-stained blue. How to warm him? Fight cold with heat. Impulsively, Gerda gathered the bird-wing shoulders and kissed Kai full on the lips. They were cold as steel.

  A thin glass dagger ejected itself from his chest and fell, the sound a spoon might make. Another shard of the mirror! It had frozen all feelings from his heart.

  A long sigh of recognition escaped Kai, and rosy pink crept from his lips across his face.

  ‘Gerda,’ he breathed.

  Gradually the fragile body grew warm. A smile spread over Kai’s face, lighting it in the way that sunrise warms the world. He was testing his arms like pulleys, struggling to move the icicles, to shape the word that obsessed him.