by Allyse Near
Isola’s first day of nun-infested single-sex pro-abstinence anti-Darwin anti-Isola school had gone like this:
The school: a converted nunnery with secret bomb shelters from the Second World War and heritage-listed staircases that led nowhere; a funhouse of stained-glass windows and asbestos under the floorboards.
In the well-manicured front gardens stood a stunning fountain dedicated to the memory of the cruellest of the nuns, who Mother Wilde had remembered as a teacher when she was a student there.
‘And horrible she was too. She bruised my knuckles on my very first day,’ she’d whispered, when Isola had come into Mother’s permanently darkened bedroom to say her goodbyes before school and ended up cocooned under the sheets with her.
‘How come?’
Mother’s eyes, bruised with sleep, had widened slightly. ‘You know, it could have been any number of things.’
Beyond the magical man-repelling gate, in the convent gardens, three princes had been waiting to wish good lucks and goodbyes. Of course, this was a one-time-only allowance, given Alejandro’s usual stance on Isola’s non-Nimuean world, but he recognised that she needed someone fairer-sexed to squeeze her clammy hand goodbye.
Ruslana stood by the fountain, her silver breastplate glinting in the sun and her braided hair roiling down her back.
A bubble of pink light, Rosekin, hovered at her shoulder; Christobelle’s golden scales glimmered in the water of the fountain, tye-dyed pink at the tail’s fringe.
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Ruslana, bending to tug the pleats in Isola’s plaid skirt straight.
‘Stomp on anyone who’s mean to you!’ squeaked Rosekin. Stomping was her answer to all Big Problems; she had always assumed that anything bothersome could be squished underfoot by such large creatures as humans.
‘Good luck, my darling,’ cooed Christobelle, blowing a kiss inside a bubble out of the fountain. Isola reached out to catch it and it popped wet and lovely in her palm.
Dramatis Personae
CHRISTOBELLE: The fourth prince. A beautiful mermaid and possible serial killer obsessed with romance, despite the consequences of her own tragic love story.
Rosekin flew a loop-de-loop around Isola’s head, and Ruslana gave her school tie a final nervous tug.
‘And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ warned Ruslana.
Isola looked quizzically up at the towering woman. ‘But there’s nothing you wouldn’t do.’
A grin split Ruslana’s black lips. ‘Exactly.’
Isola had never learnt to call them sisters – a sister was a wicked nun who smacked Mother’s hands, and a sister in a fairytale was almost always evil. And so, Ruslana, Christobelle and Rosekin had remained brother-princes to Isola. Protectors who watched with proud wet eyes as their little sister-princess shouldered her schoolbag and assimilated into the steady stream of uniformed girls.
Isola’s first encounter with authority went predictably. In one long breath a brick-shaped nun – Sister Katherine Vincent, later Sister K to Isola – commented on the state of her hair, the length of her skirt, and the height of her socks, which are mismatched by the way, young lady, do you want detention on your very first day you are a representative of this school what a terrible first impression you make.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Regan,’ said Isola sweetly. ‘You know, like the girl in The Exorcist.’
Isola couldn’t stand horror films – they always seemed to find a way into her dreams whenever she dared watch them through her fingers – and she had never even seen The Exorcist, but was wily enough to employ a little pop-culture Satanism when threatened by one of Christ’s wrinkly brides.
Unlocked Hearts
Isola waited in her usual spot on High Street for Grape’s bus to arrive so they could walk the last ten minutes to school together.
The bus stop was in a sleazy part of town, and was situated in front of an industrial-looking club called The G Spot. They rarely checked IDs here, and it was a commonly held belief that the only number that mattered to the doorman was not your age, but your bra size.
Next to the club was a dingy old town hall that now masqueraded as a holy place; the neon sign over the doorway, reminiscent of a sleazy hotel, announced it as the ‘Church of the Unlocked Heart’.
A lone man with gelled-down hair and an armful of paper fixed her in his sharky gaze just before the bus drove up. The pin on his collar showed the church’s symbol – a red heart with a golden keyhole in the centre. No sooner had they locked eyes than a pamphlet was being pressed into her hands, and Isola resisted the urge to chuck it into the gutter.
‘Hey, have you heard about our church?’ the man said, his smile seemingly stickered-on. ‘You, miss, look like you could use a little saving.’
‘I’m happy with my bank, thanks,’ said Isola, sidestepping the man as Grape hopped off the bus amidst the sea of blue-plaid dresses.
He fastened his white fingers around her wrist, shocking her, and said, ‘You need to be saved, witch.’
‘Gertrude!’ Grape called in a put-upon accent. ‘Darling! It’s me, Millicent! Oh, what have I told you about your wild church-joining habit?’ She snatched the pamphlet, tsking as she looked down her nose at its contents. ‘Gertrude, Gertrude – fifth one this week, dear! Restrain yourself – remember your twelve-step program!’ Crushing the pamphlet in her fist and tossing it towards the public dustbin, Grape linked her arm with Isola’s and pulled her away, telling the man quite sternly over her shoulder, ‘And you, sir, are an enabler!’
Cake, Grass, Glasses: An Interlude
Unlike most people in Avalon, Mieko Grace Tomoyaki wasn’t christened at birth. For one, her parents were Shinto Buddhists, and for another, she received her name at the age of eight.
A fortnight after she’d first moved into the village, an inexplicable letter with hyperactive font arrived in the mail – it was an invitation to some girl’s eighth birthday party. Her name was Isola Wilde.
Mother Wilde had turned Mother Goose and invited the lonely new girl on her daughter’s behalf. Grace clutched Father Tomoyaki’s hand nervously as a woman and young girl greeted her at the gate.
‘Hi!’ said the birthday girl, bouncing on the balls of her feet. ‘I’m Alice Liddell!’
‘No, you’re not, Isola. Hello, Grace, I’m so glad you could come!’ Mother motioned Grace’s father towards a lawn chair. ‘Mr Tomoyaki, please, sit down –’
‘I’m kidding, I’m Isola.’ The birthday girl beamed at the Japanese wallflower. ‘I love your glasses.’
Grace tugged self-consciously at her newly fitted spectacles and didn’t answer, as though the little glass circles were walls, not windows.
‘Do you like purple, too?’ Isola’s saucer eyes grew rounder. ‘Oh! They’re grape-coloured! Like your name, Grape!’
‘It’s not Grape,’ corrected Mother Wilde. ‘It’s Grace.’
Grace giggled, and from that moment on it was Grape. Grape, the new girl from Japan with the glasses and the shyness. Now she was Grape Tomoyaki with the motor mouth and sleek black bob. She still had purple-framed glasses and she was still Isola Wilde’s best friend, and the name had stuck so steadfastly that even the essays she got back from teachers were marked with a red X, exasperated corrections and scrawled notes saying, ‘GRAPE, SEE ME AFTER CLASS.’
The Children of Nimue
Growing up, Mother Wilde had never been allowed a birthday party. Her own devout mother insisted the only person special and sinless enough to deserve an annual celebration was the baby Jesus. As an adult, Mother Wilde became famous in Avalon for throwing beautiful birthday parties for her only daughter – green lawns in high summer and sumptuous cakes frosted with Isola’s newly achieved age. Mother Wilde invited everyone.
Isola’s last birthday party had been her tenth. Mother was too sickly afterwards – after what happened.
But, in Isola’s memory, the parties raged on. One of her favourites was her fifth. It was faerie-t
hemed – the traditional kind, with traditional spelling – and all the girls wore floral crowns handcrafted by Mother, and the boys held kingly corsages and brandished Oberon sceptres.
Isola was busy greeting guests at the letterbox while Mother was ferrying the gifts to an ever-growing pile on a trestle table.
Mama Sinclair, the rotund Scottish nurse who lived at Number Thirty-nine, arrived wearing a floral sundress and a grin as wide as a loch. She had an enormous bosom and gave vigorous hugs, and that day she squashed Isola against her breasts even tighter than usual.
After the initial panic of torn paper and shredded ribbons, when all Isola’s gifts were laid out on the grass for the other children to examine and play with, Isola noticed Mama Sinclair in a chair. She was sitting in the generous shade of the then-thriving plum tree, fanning herself with one chubby hand and cradling a small pink box in the other.
‘Come, look what I have here for you!’ she called, and Isola tottered over, plopping down at Mama Sinclair’s feet expectantly.
Wolfishly, Isola tore at the package Mama Sinclair handed her to reveal a tarnished silver jewellery box.
‘Oh, that’s beautiful!’ said Mother Wilde, standing over Isola, a silhouette in the strong sunlight. ‘Say thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ parroted Isola.
‘It plays music, too,’ beamed Mama Sinclair. ‘Go on, Isola.’
Isola opened the box, and what drifted out wasn’t mechanised music, but a tiny globe of furious pink. It zoomed right up to the tip of her nose, poked a freckle and said loudly, ‘Gosh, you’re big, too. You’re almost as big as Mama Sinclair!’
‘Here,’ said Mother, lifting the music box from Isola’s slack grasp, ‘you’ve got to wind it . . . Oh, how lovely!’
The mechanism ground out a cog-and-clinkers lullaby – an unfamiliar tune that they all intrinsically knew somehow, as if it had soundtracked their dreams – and a tiny girl with diaphanous wings fluttered round and round Isola’s head, inspecting her. Isola watched speechlessly. She’d never seen a creature like it.
‘I’ll take it inside, Isola, it’s too precious,’ said Mother as the tinkling refrain repeated. ‘It’s wonderful, Mama Sinclair.’
The moment she left, Mama Sinclair gave a great boom of laughter, her bosom wobbling generously. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘The look on your face, Isola Wilde! I’m never wrong about these things. You’re one o’ Nimue’s bairn, all right.’
Isola didn’t understand the phrasing, but the intent was as plain as the winged girl between her eyes.
‘How . . . How did you –?’
Mama Sinclair tapped her nose. ‘I’ve seen ’em gatherin’, the Children floatin’ in an’ out o’ your window . . .’
‘You mean the princes?’ said Isola, before clamping her hands over her mouth, an involuntary reaction; Father always grew angry when she mentioned them.
‘Princes, you say? You call ’em that? We call ’em Children o’ Nimue.’
Isola shifted into a kneel. ‘Children of who?’
‘Nimue! You haven’t heard o’ Nimue? You live right by her beautiful woodland.’
‘But that’s Vivien’s Wood.’
‘She’s had many names, ol’ Nimue.’ Mama Sinclair slapped her creaking knee and leaned forward. ‘Nimue and Vivien are one an’ the same. The old legends called her the Lady o’ the Lake, a creature o’ magic an’ mystery. Merlin loved her, and Vivien – Nimue – made the ol’ wizard teach her all his trickery, and then she lured him to an enchanted forest, and trapped him in an ancient oak tree.’
‘In that forest?’ Isola pointed to the woodland, eyes wide.
‘Perhaps,’ said Mama Sinclair, her eyes twinkling. ‘You never know. It’s said her Children spring from the place where the Lake meets the Tree. Creatures of magic, nevertheless, and they may tell you they’re ghosts or fae or pixies or goblins or sirens or what ’ave you. And sometimes, they’re people – people like me an’ you, pet. This wee Child o’ Nimue –’ she held out her finger, which the pink bubble alighted upon, resuming its girl-shape ‘– is Rosekin. She’s o’ the fae-kind.’
‘Fay-kind?’
‘A faerie, dear.’
Rosekin curtsied her little leaf-skirt, her pointed features grinning at Isola, her toes and ears and eyes included.
‘I like you,’ said the faerie loudly. ‘Do you like me?’
‘Um . . . yes.’
‘You have a lovely garden.’
‘Thanks. My mum –’
‘Yes,’ said Rosekin dreamily, ‘it looks so delicious.’ She fluttered off Mama Sinclair’s hand and landed on Isola’s knee, where she promptly curled up and began biting her own toenails.
‘Rosekin has kept me company these many years – and I’ve been keepin’ her belly full.’ Mama Sinclair chuckled. ‘But I’ll be goin’ soon, an’ I thought you could use another – what did you call it? Ah, a prince.’
Isola looked nervously down at the grubby faerie girl. Rosekin removed her big toe from her mouth and announced, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘What do you eat?’
‘My favourite’s honeysuckle.’
Isola looked at Mama Sinclair.
‘Just flowers, lass. The prettier the better. She doesn’t eat much. Just make sure no-one mistakes her for a pest and sprays poisons!’ She got up out of the plastic chair, stretched and paused to watch the dappled shade shifting over her hands for a moment. ‘Be good, Rosekin, my little pest,’ she said, smiling. ‘And happy birthday, Isola Wilde.’ She patted Rosekin’s tiny head with her fingertip, Isola’s head with her hand, and then turned to leave.
‘Where are you going, Mama Sinclair?’ Isola called. ‘I mean, so you can’t be with Rosekin anymore?’
The rotund lady from Number Thirty-nine turned back and chuckled. ‘Oh bless, my wee Child o’ Nimue – I’m going home!’
A fortnight later Mama Sinclair was buried in the High Cemetery, on a bald hill overlooking the village. She wore her orthopaedic nursing shoes and her Florence Nightingale portrait-pin on her bosom. At her funeral, her husband, the future Boo Radley, spoke at length about her struggle with illness. ‘They always call it a battle, a fight against cancer, but my beautiful wife didn’t believe in war.’ He described her garden, the dirt ingrained in her wrinkles and how she somehow kept flowers blooming year-round. He spoke about her earthy spirituality and her love for animals and children, for hugging and gift-giving, for Vivien’s Wood.
In the third pew from the back, Isola thought of her huge squashing breasts and a music box with a secret faerie inside. A human Child of Nimue gone from lake to tree to earth again.
Rosekin was sobbing tiny pink tears in Isola’s dress pocket.
Isola had only been to one other funeral before – her grandmother’s, when she was four.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mother had said thickly at that occasion, tears trickling over the ridge of her lips as she’d rubbed Isola’s back consolingly, ‘she died in her sleep.’
Mother had only meant that Grandmother hadn’t passed in pain, but that night, Isola had lain awake, too frightened to close her eyes. Her blankets had been drawn up to her chin, and shadows had played puppet theatre on the walls.
‘Ale,’ Isola had said in a Mother-proof whisper, ‘what happens if I die in my sleep?’
The summoned spectre had come when called, but couldn’t reassure her that he wouldn’t let that happen. Before she could upset herself any further, he’d reached into his breast pocket and withdrew two strange, golden coins.
‘To pay the ferryman, querida,’ he’d said simply, placing them on her bedside table. ‘In case you die in your sleep.’
The funeral had been grand and stoney, with impassive Jesus in the window, his face broken into coloured glass. Grandmother had looked so strange in the casket, her make-up painted far too thickly. Grandmother herself would have sneered and said she looked like one of those street-corner unfortunates.
Isola had slipped Father’s wallet into the
casket before the lid had closed, hoping that paper money would be enough to buy a one-way boat ride.
Mama’s Sinclair’s funeral was earthy and sweet-smelling, and under their black coats people wore vibrant colours. At the burial, Isola fingered the cool coins in her pocket that Alejandro had given her all those years ago. She hadn’t realised, not for years and years, what precious things these were – the last gift from his own small sisters. Isola tossed a snippet of honeysuckle into Mama Sinclair’s deep grave, two coins from her own piggybank hidden in the blossom.
Tick Tock
A shriek. A thud in the earth.
‘They’re eating my time!’
Isola shouldered her schoolbag and hurried out the front door. ‘What is it?’
‘My thyme! Those pesky rabbits!’ cried Mother Wilde, rubbing her forehead with a gloved hand. ‘They’ll be into the rosemary next, just you watch.’
She slammed a garden hoe into the dirt again, raging against the creatures that nibbled up her herbs. Isola caught sight of dusty bobtails vanishing into the scrub. One pure black rabbit dived recklessly under the porch of Edgar Allan Poe’s new house. She hadn’t seen the boy in a while; she left for school much earlier than him, and didn’t emerge from the woods until the sky had darkened.
‘Ooh, those rabbits! I know you love them, Isola, but I swear, if I catch them –’ she throttled the air ‘– I’ll wring their adorable little necks and make adorable bunny soup!’
Isola kissed Mother on her way down the garden path. When she reached the front gate her smile wilted – as the garden did at its edges these days. She was both pleased and despairing to see Mother this way. On one hand, it was wonderful to see her out of the house, working on her long-abandoned project. The unwalled secret garden was not the Eden it once was.
