by Allyse Near
Upstairs, Mother had welcomed her into the big crumpled bed and said, ‘Sola, if you really don’t want to, then you don’t have to go back to Saint D’s. After all –’
Mother’s Other Best Advice
‘You can’t draw champagne from a storm-water drain.’
Isola sniffed pitifully and dried her eyes on the cuff of her jumper. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you can’t get anything good from an entirely bad experience.’ Mother had wrapped her arm around Isola’s middle, pulling her closer. ‘If you want,’ she muttered sleepily, ‘you can stay right here with me.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Isola had said, snuggling down, and it’d been true – at least she had Grape. Besides, Bridget was twice as bad to Grape; what right did she have to hide out?
Since then Isola had stopped responding to Bridget and her friends’ taunts, stopped hiding in the chapel or the third-floor bathroom during classes, and had learned to ignore it, to recarve her feelings from ice.
But still, life was far from champagne, and she forced herself to swallow back the day as though it were a medicine she had to take, like Mother did.
As Sister K continued to give her contemptuous dismissal – ‘And take your hem down, that skirt’s far too short!’ – Sister Marie Benedict in her old-fashioned habit passed by. The nun, who had crossed herself upon meeting Isola in the chapel, whispered, ‘I’m praying to the Virgin and Saint Dominic for you, my dear.’
Isola never paid much attention to Sister Marie, who was St Dymphna’s sole haunting. Being a time-warped split, she didn’t make much for conversation.
Right afterwards, in Religious Education, Grape flipped through a book that listed all saint patronage. Her finger tickled down the Ds.
‘Dominic . . . Dom . . . Was it St Dominic Savio?’
‘Maybe. What’s he cover?’
‘He’s the patron saint of juvenile delinquents. That sounds about right.’
Isola swatted her with a Bible.
‘He died at fifteen,’ Grape went on. ‘Bummer. And look, it has his dying words: “What beautiful things I see!”’
Sharps
There was stirring in the grass below Isola’s window as the rabbits ate her mother’s thyme, paws squishing softly on the wet lawn.
Isola woke up savouring the salty taste of rain. She sat up in the darkness and rubbed the sockets of her sleep-crusted eyes.
The window was half open, the black grass rippling like the sea. She took a long breath through her nose, smelling the delicious air blown in from the bay. She couldn’t figure out what had woken her. It took her a moment to realise what was odd – the quietness.
No hymns from the roof.
She switched on her bedside lamp, pulse twitching like a snake bite in her neck. ‘Hey! Heartbeat girl!’
A resounding crash – the ghost girl had slammed herself against the window, almost bursting it off its hinges; Isola couldn’t stifle a cry of fright. The girl was crouched on the sill like a cat prepared to pounce. The reddish lamplight was sucked deep into the aching hole of her eye socket.
‘Shut it UP!’ the dead girl roared, a thick line of sticky red dripping down her chin. Her fists pounded on the window that separated them.
Isola leaped out of bed. ‘What?’
‘Your heart!’ The dead girl threw her hands over her ears, her expression tormented. ‘It’s so LOUD!’
As her cry crescendoed, the window shattered and glass exploded across the room. Isola felt strong arms encircle her, turn her away; a body blocking her own. She threw back her head, her gaze meeting that of her protector. Grandpa Furlong. His arms nearly crushed her, and in that moment he didn’t seem like a widower ghost, a blues musician, a spider enthusiast, a gentle old man. His eyes were blazing with fury.
He released Isola. Turning, he sprung across the bedroom, colliding with the girl in the window, who shrieked and laughed in one terrible sound. They fell away into the darkness, and Isola followed, throwing her weight against the windowsill.
‘Grandpa!’ she screamed, but the two figures had vanished, swallowed up by the shadows, and Isola had leaned too far. She felt herself slip, and would have toppled from the second storey if the arms hadn’t grabbed her, hauled her backwards off her feet and dropped her heavily on the bed. She realised, as she lifted the pressure from them, that her feet were peppered with glass from when she’d crossed the room. Grandpa had protected her from the worst of it, and slivers of fabric from his grey overcoat littered the floor, between the shards, the ruby dribbles.
‘Alejandro,’ she gasped, as the familiar concerned face swam above her. She drew a deep gulp of air, feeling as though she was breathing through a straw. ‘The girl, Grandpa –’
‘Hush, querida, hush,’ said Alejandro soothingly as he leaned over her.
Isola looked past him, to the gaping space where her window was, the violent cuts of glass, mostly dust and diamonds, but one long shard remained in the frame, shaped like a dagger or a crucifix, and spotted with Grandpa’s blood . . .
‘ISOLA!’ bellowed Father from the bottom of the stairs. Isola almost jumped up but Alejandro placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘What are you doing? It’s four in the morning!’
‘Nothing! Sorry!’ she shouted, but it wasn’t nothing, and she wasn’t sorry.
And the music from the roof was silenced.
The Seventh Princess: An Instalment
‘The first dragon,’ said young Mother Wilde, ‘was Silence.’
Isola listened, eyes like awed Plutos.
‘The brothers travelled on foot and set up camp before nightfall, unaware that the band of dragons was watching them from afar, that plans were being hatched to prevent them reaching their precious quarry.
‘The first dragon waited, his shining blue scales submerged in the deep river the brothers had avoided crossing.
‘As they began their preparations for the night, the sixth brother, the youngest, musical and talkative, went to collect water from the stream. There he met the First Dragon, who spoke intelligently and claimed a want to discuss the terms of the princess’s release. The dragon lured the prince to the water’s edge, and the prince’s sweet voice was not heard again in this world.’
Sleepless Beauty
When Isola told her bed-bound mother that her broken window had allowed the frost in, Mother smiled and tossed back the sheets.
What little sleep she’d managed was exhausting in itself; it seemed to creep up and surprise her, holding her as tightly as Grandpa had in that last, terrifying moment. She woke up with the sun, gasping, and went back to her room. She sat on her bed and stared out the window at the white dawn while the cold wind tossed back her gauzy curtains and her hair, the glass shards rolling towards her. She faintly realised that they were there, too, watching her sadly. Alejandro, Ruslana . . .
Isola blinked, startled at the sight.
‘Rosekin, you’re back early. Winter’s not quite passed.’
‘It’s all right,’ squeaked the faerie, and Isola wondered, with a flare of irritation, whether she’d returned from warmer climates just to catch the unfolding drama.
Isola rubbed her eyes, suddenly noticing Christobelle’s presence, too. The mermaid had been placed on the desk chair, and was dribbling water from a glass down her chest and tail, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
‘Christobelle,’ said Isola with a tiny smile. ‘Are you okay?’
Rosekin was now helpfully dipping the ends of the mermaid’s blood-coloured hair in the jug on the desk.
‘I’ll be fine, sea child,’ said Christobelle, sounding as tired as Isola felt.
They were all there, except James. Except Grandpa. She felt her ribs tighten, as if a screw had been applied to a secret keyhole in her spine.
Alejandro broached the subject first. ‘I apologise, my friends. I have underestimated her.’
‘She’s kept Isola up all night again,’ said Ruslana in a low voice, looking fiercely at Alej
andro as though this was his fault. ‘This can’t go on.’
‘I can cope with a bit of insomnia,’ said Isola, sinking down on her bed. Alejandro moved to join her.
‘When I was alive,’ he said softly, ‘the fortune-tellers claimed that a person cursed with insomnia was being watched in their bed by a nightingale.’
She looked up at her eldest prince, while the others whispered furtively. ‘Why a nightingale?’
‘Victorians believed that the nightingale was a creature that never slept, simply because it sang all night.’
Isola frowned. ‘The Victorians were weird.’
‘Winsor says she saw her just before the sun came up – the Florence Nightingale!’ Rosekin was insisting squeakily as she fluttered over to Isola’s lap, and Isola looked down, her brows drawing together in confusion.
‘How do you know who Florence Nightingale is?’
‘Mama taught me,’ said Rosekin proudly.
‘Right.’
Mama Sinclair, Rosekin’s beloved carer, had been a nurse her whole life – she used to take Rosekin in her pocket around the hospital, letting her nibble on the endless floral bouquets that visitors brought to their patients. Mama Sinclair always wore a pin with Florence Nightingale’s portrait on her collar.
Isola frowned down at the faerie. ‘Rosey, a nightingale is a kind of bird. That’s what we were talking about.’
‘Right – a Florence Nightingale!’ the faerie said insistently, and Isola felt a smile curl her lips, which promptly vanished when Rosekin continued on in her beaming voice, ‘The Florence Nightingale from outside took Grandpa Furlong away!’
Isola swallowed her anger, reminding herself that Rosekin was probably still overexcited by all the action – she couldn’t feel much at one time, at her size, after all.
Isola looked at the room at large. ‘Where is he?’
Nobody spoke for a tense moment. Isola looked at her eldest brother, who had stood up. ‘Alejandro?’
He shook his head. ‘We do not know, querida.’
Ruslana, who had been leaning moodily against the wall, chewing the razor edge of her lower lip, snarled, ‘Good riddance! I’m glad to see the back of that coward!’
‘Ruslana –’
‘He abandoned her, Alejandro, don’t try to sugar-coat it!’ She drew her crooked dagger, a natural reflex. ‘I don’t know where he went, or why he didn’t call us when he saw her out there – frankly, I don’t care. If he ever comes back, he’ll have me to answer to!’
Rosekin fluttered atop Ruslana’s hand and inspected her reflection in the blade. ‘Maybe he got scared? And went away?’
‘Wouldn’t have had the guts to tell us if he had,’ snorted Ruslana.
Isola knew above else that all ghosts faded eventually, their colours running, like paintings left out in the rain, fading beyond even the sight of the Nimue-eyed. Even splits, those stains of violence left after death, were delible. But Grandpa Furlong? Would he choose to leave now, of all times?
‘It is true he was not a man for mawkishness or long farewells,’ Alejandro admitted, quickly adding, ‘but he would never have done so without informing Isola, at the very least.’
Ruslana put Rosekin on her shoulder and sheathed her sword, looking angrily away from him. ‘Could she have hurt him?’ Christobelle mused. She flicked water droplets down her golden scales, looking pensive. ‘I’ll admit, I don’t understand everything about you spirits, but I mean, he was already dead.’
Alejandro looked frustrated. ‘I do not know.’
They fell silent as Isola wrote the date and Grandpa’s name on the diary-wall behind her bed. Beneath it she scrawled a mantra:
SLEEP IS FOR THE WICKED
‘I believe the saying is “No rest for the wicked”, querida.’
‘I like my version better,’ said Isola, her voice as shaky as her handwriting. ‘Besides, you reckon I could get any sleep with that thing prowling around?’
‘Winsor’s always been out there,’ said Ruslana, a slight quiver of humour in her voice.
Rosekin buzzed around indignantly at this slight on her cousin.
Isola hugged her face to her knees. ‘What do I do? I’ve never had to deal with a violent ghost before.’ She felt the mattress sink as Alejandro sat at the end of the bed.
‘Luckily you did not know me when I had first died,’ he muttered.
Isola looked up. As if a secret code word had been uttered, Ruslana snatched Rosekin from the air by her translucent wings (the faerie squealed with displeasure). Pausing, she turned back and picked up Christobelle, who heaved exhaustedly, ‘Bless you, Ruslana. May your seas always be salted . . .’ and the three of them vanished tactfully through the wall.
‘Seeing your lifeless body . . . it does things to you,’ said Alejandro quietly. ‘Querida, please understand. The people who become ghosts have gone through a great trauma. So it was with me, and I did not die violently. I died in a selfish act of pleasure. I did not think of my mama or papa, or my little sisters, Lucía, Jacinta, sweet Francesca –’
‘Alejandro, I . . .’ Isola didn’t know what to say. She had never heard such bitterness in Alejandro’s voice. She briefly touched his sleeve, to show that she understood.
‘There is one more thing you must remember,’ he said quietly. ‘That girl in the woods did not die. She was killed, and it is a very distinct demise, querida. It hurts more. It is unnatural. Unwelcome. And she was betrayed by her mother, someone she should have been able to trust with the safekeeping of both her body and heart.’
Isola started. ‘What?’
‘Because a mother who carried and birthed you –’
‘No, what mother?’ She turned and traced the words wood witch on the diary-wall, written after she’d first heard the story from Ruslana. ‘Ruslana said that this girl – Florence, or whatever you want to call her – was killed by her mother, but I know every Child of Nimue that’s passed through that forest, and I’ve never met this witch.’
There were no dead birds on the lawn the next day. But something else.
A rabbit, salt-and-pepper grey like Grandpa Furlong’s wiry eyebrows. Strangled. Some kind of wire was looped around its throat. Isola unknotted it, stroking the rabbit’s head all the while, as though it still needed comforting, wherever it was.
She inspected the murder weapon. A mandolin string.
She buried the rabbit corpse in the hole left by the plum tree and didn’t tell her brothers.
Girls and Unicorns
In bed Isola reread Lady of the Unicorns by red lamplight, her new window firmly double-bolted. Enter Mother, who did not look much better than the plum tree had in its last days. She’d somehow gotten thinner. Her cheeks were like shallow graves.
‘What are you reading?’ Mother asked, even though she surely knew the answer; Isola read it constantly and there was no mistaking that dark binding, the golden glaze on the pages’ edge.
‘“Les Fables et les Contes de Fées de Pardieu”,’ Isola recited, and Mother chewed her lower lip, looking upset.
‘You should take a break from her,’ Mother muttered, scrunching up her freckles in worry. ‘Madness like hers is catching.’
Isola quirked her eyebrow at this. She was sounding like Father when he’d railed against ‘those bloody fairytales!’
‘Lucky I’m immune.’ Isola shifted generously, and Mother climbed into her bed. They tangled their limbs and their fingers and hair.
There was one story in the Pardieu book that Isola hated. Wolverine Queen – a treatise on mothers and daughters, with nothing but unhappy endings on each page, sometimes at the end of each paragraph. Mother had said that the story had come from the author’s ‘blue period, like the one Picasso had’. On those pages the women cut each other until they were ribbons, thinned into fragile streams. Isola had hated that story, partially because it was the only one that she read brand new in the book, the only one Mother had never told her as a bedtime story. Maybe without the sheen of nostalgi
a it was just a bitter love letter a Frenchwoman wrote to another, and it made something in Isola’s skin tingle and twitch. Sometimes she resented her mother but she never hated her, never dreamt of such a thing. She pitied those who did hate their own mothers. Not having a mother would be like losing six brothers at once. Who would look out for you then?
‘I don’t want you walking through the woods anymore,’ Mother whispered.
Isola’s stomach tightened. So Mother sensed it too: the evil below the window, the girl in the dark.
‘I just have a feeling,’ Mother went on anxiously. ‘It’s not safe right now. Please, Sola.’
Isola promised and shushed and soothed her.
It had been different, once. Like twins they’d felt each other’s pain and shared nonsensical dreams. Mother would cry whenever Isola got an injection or a scraped knee. Sometimes she’d even felt it before it happened.
But Mother didn’t seem to feel it anymore. If Isola had fallen and come home to show Mother the bloodied tears in her stockings, Mother wouldn’t be peering out the window in waiting or anxiously clutching her knee. She’d be in bed or in the cakey bubbles of the bath. Sometimes she’d be crying, but it had nothing to do with her daughter.
Isola’s bloody knees and needle-punctured arm crooks were trivial now, submerged in a pain too deep to fathom. Even now, snug under the feather quilt, Isola could feel the bed tilting, the deck of a ship at sea, as Mother puddled into the mattress, vanishing into herself.
‘Tell me a story,’ said Mother huskily, and Isola began, not a Pardieu or a Grimm or an Anderson or a Perrault, but another Isola Wilde original, with Spanish dandies and eye-gouging sailors and boys named after Shakespearean plays. The tapestry spun from the wheel; they watched the ceiling as the coloured threads webbed, the words came together, and the invented universe breathed in for the first time.
