Fairytales for Wilde Girls

by Allyse Near

  ‘D’you think you could drive me to school today?’

  Father picked toast crumbs out of his sand-coloured beard. ‘You love walking in those woods, though.’

  ‘Not at the moment. I don’t feel safe there. Besides, both Mum and Ale–’ She clamped her hands over her mouth, but the damage had been done.

  Father’s eyebrows crushed all the warmth from his eyes. His bushy beard twisted to form a scowl. ‘What have I told you?’ he roared. ‘Isola, you are too old for imaginary friends!’

  Death Wears Curls

  Isola was never alone for a moment. The brother-princes had been taking shifts to watch over her, like clockwork companions. The others searched all over for signs of Grandpa Furlong, but not a single Child of Nimue had seen him or so much as smelled his distinct cigar smoke or heard a mandolin note.

  Isola was still surrounded by death.

  When Isola was nine, the Wildes had gone to London to see a new doctor, a new offer of hope. They’d driven past the house where the poet Sylvia Plath had plugged the under-gaps of doorways with soaked towels to keep the invisible tendrils from reaching her sleeping children – both the gas from the oven and the death that lived in her blood. The desire that would surely jump hosts if it had half the chance; a possession.

  Isola had been certain, for some time, that Sylvia Plath was a girl like her. That her eyes saw through to the next dimension like her own, like Mama Sinclair’s had, like Lileo Pardieu.

  ‘Hello, Sylvia Plath.’

  ‘Hello, Isola Wilde.’

  Sylvia Plath had a perfectly curled fringe even in death. She’d smoothed the wrinkles in her dress, her anxious forehead.

  They’d sat for awhile on a bench outside the clinic while Father had read the newspaper and picked scabs around his worry-bitten fingernails. Isola and Sylvia had whispered about where it came from, this thing they shared. Mama Sinclair had said it emanated from the place where the Lake lapped against the Tree. Isola had thought of it as that place before turning four years old – that place where all stories came from.

  Sylvia Plath had said she could never quite pinpoint its origin, but it had fed her writing, her freewheeling thoughts, and her appetite for self-destruction.

  Her suffering-turned-philandering husband had called it her ‘cosmic circus’ – that majestic inner world, the Nimue world, the neon marrow she needle-drew from her bones and sculpted, as it hardened, into poetry.

  Sylvia Plath was a girl like Isola. Sometimes it worried Isola that all her heroines were dead.

  Isola was convinced that her other role model, Lileo Pardieu, was a Child of Nimue – how else could her stories be full of such truths?

  Summoning a ghost she didn’t personally know was akin to shaking awake a sleepwalker – it could never be foretold how they would react, if they would see Isola and her coven of the supernatural as a threat. But she couldn’t help herself, the idea clouded her brain like a fugue until, at the end of last summer, before Edgar, before Florence, she had tried to conjure Lileo Pardieu in a séance. She’d roped in James to help her, and although he’d kept saying, ‘no, no, no,’ he’d never taken his finger off the glass. Isola had seen his eyes reflected, looming doe-wide, as if the glass had been the rifle eyeing him for his pelt.

  She’d chosen to call for Lileo after Mother had tried to burn Isola’s favourite book. Isola had swooped down and had pulled the book away before the chimney’s kindling caught the attention of the dragon, who had already been stirring at the delicious flicker of flame. Tears had collected as question marks on Isola’s cheeks. Mother couldn’t explain why she had done it.

  The guest of honour had never shown up. The cake had gone soggy and the tea had turned cold. She had a lonely party over the crumb-sprinkled Ouija board and Isola had read the fables aloud in her own voice again that night.

  Horrorshow

  Nights were a constant battle now. She couldn’t sleep with the singing, even with Alejandro murmuring Spanish in her ear. What he recited she didn’t know – a story, a secret, a grocery list – but it soothed her nevertheless, and sometimes she plucked out familiar words from the tangle like princesa, querida, bella . . . synonyms he used for ‘Isola’.

  After Rosekin’s pronouncement, they’d taken to calling her Florence – ‘the dead girl’ was starting to sound rather informal, considering how hard she’d scratched at the bubble round their lives, how viciously she fought to get in.

  All night Florence sang, and to Isola it was the howl of an air-raid siren.

  The little sleep she did manage was cut up with nightmares – doors opening, bright light instantly evaporated; she was blind, with Spanish coins for eyes; the seacave was flooding with the rising of the tide; the hand she gripped in panic was fleshless.

  When the dawn-heralding birds started squawking, before their terrified voices were cut off by a noose of cold hands and silver links, Isola found that, for the first time, even Alejandro’s words – like Lileo Pardieu’s – failed to bring her comfort.

  Edgar Allan Poe and the Zombie Mona Lisa

  Edgar had a collection of death masks, which included Mozart, Beethoven, the famous fake Robespierre and L’Inconnue de la Seine – a drowned French girl with the most knowing smile. He saw the recognition in Isola’s eyes, painted on every squarish tooth as she smiled up at L’Inconnue mounted on the wall, bodiless, deathless, beautiful.

  They tried on masks, ate microwaved popcorn, watched a Marx Brothers movie, threw darts at the dotted ceiling.

  ‘Listen,’ said Edgar, bullseyeing the samurai poster in the ceiling corner, ‘it’s my birthday on Friday.’

  ‘Congrats,’ she said. ‘You’re barely an Aquarius, by the way. More on the cusp of Pisces.’

  ‘Well, I just found out I’m having a party. The family’s getting out of the house and everything.’

  ‘What kind? A clown-and-cake party? A dinner party? A Communist party?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jella’s planning it. She’s getting some glow-in-the-dark paint or something. No-one believes that there’s electricity this far out of town.’

  Isola’s misaimed dart hit the far wall. She pulled off the L’Inconnue mask. ‘They’ll stay out of the woods, right?’

  He chuckled. ‘I can’t make any promises on behalf of thirty or so drunks, but –’

  ‘I am not joking, Edgar Allan Poe!’ she snapped. ‘Tell them to stay out of the damn woods!’

  The curl in her snarl sagged, and she ran an anxious hand through her hair, her knuckles and chunky rings snagging in the knots. ‘Sorry. I’m not myself lately. I haven’t been sleeping well.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, slightly startled by her rapid change in mood. ‘What’s keeping you up? Good telly? Bad dreams?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  She dropped the mask on the carpet and scattered the last of the unpopped kernels from her lap before she left. L’Inconnue smiled ruefully up at Edgar.

  He glared at her dead French face. ‘What’re you smiling at?’

  ‘Folie’ Is French for ‘Mad’

  ‘Mental health,’ snapped Sister K in her usual brutish manner. ‘One in five of you will suffer from some form of mental disorder, and I’ll bet the rest of you will know someone who has.’

  ‘I know one,’ whispered Bridget in a singsong voice.

  Six months after the freckle-faced boy in the leather jacket had died at a travelling fair, youth mental health was still the hot topic. Counsellors toured schools and new hotlines had sprung up, as had the list of possible reasons why he’d done it: girlfriend/boyfriend troubles, bullies, problems at home, medication, brain chemistry, family history, friendships and enemies and school issues all coming together in the perfect stew of the wrong decision.

  ‘Jesus H. Cricket,’ said Grape as they streamed from the classroom. ‘Adolescents these days! How many problems have we got?’ She started ticking them off on her fingers. ‘If you’re not fat, you’re depressed. If you’re not depre
ssed, you’ve got an eating disorder. And if you’ve got an eating disorder – well, at least you’re not fat.’

  Isola goggled at her. ‘Grape! There’s black humour, then there’s nihilism. You’re starting to sound like Jamie.’

  ‘Ooh, what a compliment,’ said Grape with a short bow of acknowledgement. ‘What’s old Sommerwell up to these days? I haven’t seen him in ages.’

  Isola shrugged.

  ‘You should invite him to Eddie’s party. You know, for your plus-one.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a plus-one party,’ said Isola dubiously.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ snickered Grape. ‘He probably should’ve written that on my invite.’

  ‘But he didn’t send out invites.’

  Grape just winked. ‘Happy birthday, Eddie!’

  She knew James wouldn’t say yes, even if he didn’t have plans. Still, she was somehow relieved when he said he couldn’t make it.

  ‘What did you get the guy for his birthday?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said Isola, feeling the phone grow hot as a tumour against her ear. ‘Grape thinks I should jump out of a giant cake.’

  Jamie chuckled down the line. ‘I guess the pleasure of your company will have to do, princess.’

  Princess. It made her heart ache to hear James call her that. James, who should still be her Jamie – the second prince, the passionate brother.

  They had been so close, and they mimicked it well now. The earthquake – the most major fault line in their relationship – had happened just weeks before the dead girl in the cage, before the boy who leapt from the Ferris wheel. The folly of touching lips.

  The scene: the memory flickers like old film; burns and cracks in the reel. In a dark bedroom, a movie plays. Pulp Fiction’s diner scene. Warped Chuck Berry pipes out of the speakers. The faux-blonde and the lanky boy dance along in slow motion, acting out the scene on the television. He grabs her hand; she twirls, laughs.

  A close-up: the girl smiles and the boy leans in. His lips touch hers before she flinches away.

  A reaction shot: The reel shudders. Hitchcockian violins screech. It’s a horror movie now, low budget, big impact. The girl’s eyes are as big as twin planet earths. There is life and death on the continents inside them.

  At last the boy turns away. His face is a death mask. The film plays on behind them.

  Fade to black before the reel burns up.

  A Shroud of Songbirds

  On the morning of Edgar’s eighteenth birthday, thirty dead birds had been arranged in a line from Isola’s window to Edgar’s front door. A hysterically excited Rosekin woke her at dawn, and Isola ran out into the morning mist, her bedsheets billowing cape-like behind her, a meowing Morris at her heels. Using the sheets, she collected up the birds – each noodle-necked, with wide blank eyes and lolling tongues – and went to bury them where the plum tree once stood. But that crypt was full, and so she snuck into the backyard of Number Thirty-seven, bundling the birds, sheets and all, in the crater dug for the apple tree, still unfilled these months later.

  Edgar and Isola and a Party – Part Deux

  The moon sat alone in the transparent sky, a lonely plastic bride on a blueberry wedding cake. A moon without stars was a princess without courtiers, and not for the first time, Isola pitied Her.

  Aurora Court had never been so noisy. The cracks in the asphalt street were plugged with sound, music she was sure would echo down to the underworld. The guests had been instructed to wear white for ‘optimum effect’, whatever that meant, in a sternly worded group text from Majella Lavery.

  The bride wore white, Isola reminded herself, and to mark the occasion she bought a third-hand wedding dress and slashed it short, unravelling the eighties puff sleeves and snipping loose the beading detail stained with ancient wedding cake. She skipped the veil but kept the matching wreath of dried pink roses, which she tried to dye deep red to match her shoes (she would never completely comply with any dress code) but which came out rather purplish-black like funeral flowers.

  Alejandro and Ruslana checked the entire court for signs of Florence while Isola checked her make-up in the bathroom mirror, which cheekily told her that she looked ‘FAIR ENOUGH’, as she scribbled her initials on it in whore-red lipstick.

  By the time she’d reached Number Thirty-seven, Isola Wilde was late.

  ‘Traffic?’ Edgar grinned, silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘The worst,’ sighed Isola.

  Patches of him shone, as though his body was riddled with glow-in-the-dark tumours. It was actually ultraviolet paint, swirls of phosphorescent colour like his washable tattoos. Someone with bad handwriting had painted ‘EDDIE’ in his thick curly hair as well as ‘18!!!’ on his cheek.

  By the front door were buckets dribbling neon goo down the sides: a rainbow of paints, glow-worm drool.

  ‘It’s non-toxic,’ said Edgar reassuringly. ‘At least, I’m pretty sure.’

  Grape darted from behind him, with exaggerated eyelashes and blue hearts on her cheeks. She was joined by Jella, who was orange polka-dotted from head to toe, as though she’d swallowed fireflies, and they squealed and converged on Isola, marbling her skin and clothes. Jella gave her shining blue geisha lips. Grape liberally coated her hair in neon pink.

  ‘You look like a tragic bride,’ teased Edgar, examining the wreath on her head. ‘Waiting for your . . . gloom.’ He chuckled at his own pun.

  Deemed acceptable at last, they led Isola into the house. Black lights had been arranged on the walls, and the glow was stronger inside, where party-goers with intricate swirls on their forearms marked each other with tribal handprints. They shone in the darkness like jungle-born angels.

  Edgar led her through the crowd, the intoxicating pulse of paint and bodies, while pints were pushed into their hands. Mirrors and windows were draped in black fabric to hide the disorientating reflections. Grape seemed to be laughing raucously in every room Isola passed through, her mouth wide and exposing her tongue, which was poisoned green from drinking shots.

  ‘Look,’ said Edgar, stopping to pluck a grubby slip of paper from a coffee table. ‘Boo Radley sent me a birthday card.’

  Written crookedly in charcoal: Exodus 22:18.

  Isola felt something creeping along her shoulder. She looked down to see a crazy straw passing around her, slowly finding its way into the drink in her hand, like a curious curly-beaked bird.

  ‘Pip!’ cried Edgar.

  A lanky boy appeared between them, the straw protrouding from the corner of his grin. ‘Needs more chartreuse,’ he told Edgar. ‘Get the lady a decent drink, go on.’

  The sickly sweet scent of dope wafted about Pip like hippy cologne. He had long, untidy hair and his face was painted as a neon-green skull, so stunning it couldn’t have been done by anyone but Edgar.

  Edgar was laughing as he snatched away Pip’s dripping straw and threw it into the crowd of dancing legs. He gestured to Isola. ‘Pip, this is –’

  ‘Isola Wilde.’ Pip folded to one knee, grabbed her hand and kissed the plastic stone of her mood ring. He said her name like a detective unmasking the face of the culprit he’d suspected all along. ‘The face that launched a thousand ifs . . .’ His skull-mouth beamed at her. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from Ed – really, more than is becoming, he’s such a gossip – and I’m delighted to announce that you are no less than the exquisite vision conjured up in Edgar’s mellifluous – and somewhat interminable – odes to your beauty.’

  So, thought Isola, a particularly charming and verbose stoner.

  ‘Isola – Saint Philip Sutcliffe, or just plain Pip,’ said Edgar, as Pip stood. ‘I’m sorry he’s an arse. If he bothers you, go tell Jella.’

  ‘I’m not bothering her,’ said Pip, looking wounded. ‘When do I ever bother people?’

  ‘You’re doing it right now. Look, the ring’s turned black,’ said Edgar, indicating her hand.

  Pip considered this for a moment. He scratched his blond chin-scruff. ‘Fair point,’ he co
nceded. He turned and pulled a fizzing sparkler out of someone’s hand, then put it, lit-end down, into Edgar’s beer. Then, like a scruffy magician, he conjured a little paper umbrella from about his person and offered it for Isola’s cocktail glass. ‘Lovers – adieu.’ Pip tipped an imaginary hat at them before vanishing into the blur.

  Just before midnight, Saint Pip climbed on the table and lifted his plastic cup of spiked punch.

  A Toast by Saint Pip

  ‘Now, it may have been eighteen years since Edgar Llewellyn was last inside a vagina –’ a rash of good-natured boos punctuated the crowd ‘– but as pathetic as that is, he’s still cooler than everyone in this room, excluding me!’

  More cheers, of course.

  The grungy and effortlessly cool Ellie Blythe Nettle appeared bearing a gift of ‘a steak instead of a cake’, since it was well-known that Mother Poe never allowed meat in the house. Ellie Blythe, with her ginger dreadlocks, constellations of freckles and silver ring in her eyebrow, was cute with a hard edge, like rock candy. To Ellie Blythe it was still the nineties and Kurt Cobain was merely between records, not gravestones. She was also openly lesbian – while her greatest admirer, Grape, was still finding her footing in her fluid sexuality. Now, emboldened by liquor, Grape dissolved into spasmic giggles when Ellie Blythe twisted a dreadlock in her direction, and almost immediately Isola lost her in the swell of the crowd.

  The guests lit a bonfire out back, in the rabbit-burrow hollow, burning wet wood from lemon trees that were never planted. The flames belched blue. Isola hovered tensely over it but the birds burned unnoticed in their shroud. She watched their ashes float upwards and decided cremation was the best thing for them. They belonged to the sky, not the earth.

  Drinks were spilling, voices were rising excitedly. Two of Grape’s plus-ones, Shinji Honda and Miranda Lenkic, were splitting a slice of the steak cake in a corner and holding hands with faint embarrassment, their mouths too full to kiss. The paint buckets were nicked and Isola couldn’t turn a corner without a glowing party guest trying to splatter her with greenish firefly blood, molten-red muscle. It got more difficult to distinguish friends from strangers as the intricate patterns on the guests’ bodies melted into techno blurs. A shirtless boy jumped out at her from under the stairs, wearing Beethoven’s death mask.