by Allyse Near
‘Don’t say that,’ muttered Isola, turning away. Christobelle had been saying such cruel things of late; Isola wondered if she was angry with her for bringing Florence upon them, like she was at herself.
Isola found what she was looking for – Father’s razor, which she inspected intently. Mother’s initial manic burst of happiness had gone the way of the others; she continued attending weekly meetings, but moved sluggishly upon her return. The few short showers she’d managed to take turned back quickly into long, languid baths, and Isola felt nervous about the next impending breakdown. The short-lived high told her, like an omen, that the low would be harsh.
‘I’m sorry, Isola.’ The mermaid held out her arms, beckoning her closer. ‘Please, come here.’
Isola slipped the razor behind the magic mirror, which made a frowning face in steam at her, as though it had felt the sting of it.
‘Sorry,’ said Isola. She rearranged the bottles in front of it and then went to sit on the rim of the tub.
Christobelle leaned forward and took Isola’s chin in her cold hands. ‘Look at those bright eyes,’ she sighed, her single red eye searching Isola’s face. ‘You know, I used to be beautiful.’
‘You are beautiful,’ said Isola, slightly embarrassed as she wriggled free. ‘Now get going, Mum’s coming up any minute.’
The mermaid’s long fingers curled around the slippery rim of the tub, her shell-pink fingernails tapping the ceramic. ‘Isola,’ Christobelle said slowly, letting the beats drop in dollops from her tongue.
‘Christobelle,’ mimicked Isola, rolling her eyes. ‘C’mon, I haven’t got time for this.’
The mermaid reached out and gently brushed Isola’s hair back. Her red eye was huge and unblinking. She smiled, and said her name again.
‘I
so
la.’
Bullet-quick, Christobelle seized Isola and slammed her into the bathtub, flipping and pinning her to the bottom with all her cold weight.
Isola opened her eyes underwater and panicked. She lashed out with her knees, her elbows, her nails; she fumbled for the surface, but the water ceiling didn’t break. She seized a fistful of Christobelle’s hair, and the red mass immediately reacted, weaving itself around Isola’s throat. She tried to scream for Alejandro and the word came garbled. She thrashed and the bathwater sloshed, but she couldn’t break the mermaid’s grip. Now her mouth was full of seaweedy red hair, which snaked down her throat towards her lungs . . .
Finally Isola’s nails caught the heart-shaped shell over Christobelle’s missing eye; she prised it off. Through the soapy water Isola saw the looming hollow, the place where Christobelle’s beloved sailor might well have cut out her heart.
Christobelle’s remaining eye blazed wide and redder than fire. Furious, then something else. The mermaid raised her hand, her fingers brushing the gaping hole, and with a look of terrible shock Christobelle wrenched herself away, her weight lifting, and Isola followed. The bathwater roiled tsunami-like and Isola vomited water over the tiles. She crouched in the shallow end, gasping for air.
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, hearing a whispered, ‘Princess, I’m so sorry,’ Isola lashed out, shoving Christobelle away. The mermaid dissolved into instant bubbles as Isola’s palms hit the bottom of the tub and the bathroom door swung open.
‘Oh, you’ve run my bath, thank you,’ said Mother in a tired voice. ‘But – oh, Isola! What happened?’
‘I fell,’ she choked out, unable to resist sweeping her hands through the water, as though checking to see whether the mermaid had hidden herself in the shallows. Shakily, she climbed out of the tub.
Mother kissed her hair. ‘Silly thing,’ she said, unable to distinguish between the bathwater and the tears that flowed hot and unchecked down her daughter’s cheeks.
Summons didn’t work. Like Grandpa Furlong and Rosekin before her, Christobelle didn’t answer the one call that always got through – her name. Isola, a towel wrapped over her wet clothes, still shaking with the fear of their last encounter – and the fear there’d never be another – called her name in every room of the house. She turned on all the taps and plugged every sink, trekking endless wet footprints, and still the mermaid did not answer.
Isola called the only person she could.
She tumbled from the car before James had even killed the engine and ran down the dunes, kicking up whirlwinds of sand, stubbing her toes on broken shells and the burnt-out campfires left by drunks and partying teenagers.
‘CHRISTOBELLE! COME BACK!’
Isola ran along the dark beach, cupping her hands around her mouth, shouting to her fourth prince: ‘BELLE! PLEASE! I’M SORRY! COME BACK!’
Only the west wind answered, and maybe a whale somewhere, a creaking shipwreck, a skeleton bolted to the floor of an underwater cave.
James sought Isola out in the rock pools, where she stood knee-deep in water, clutching the hem of her dress. Luminescent jellyfish bobbed past in a night-time parade. He pulled a pack from the inner lining of his jacket. His fingers danced over the cigarettes in their casket, and each stick quivered from the sudden gust of cold air and fear of their impending demise. Selecting the lucky sacrifice, he struck a match and martyred it between frozen lips.
‘Did you lose something?’ he muttered, and it was so true Isola burst into tears, and James didn’t hug her, his eyes instead on his cigarette’s lit tip, as though wary of burning her if he got any closer.
The Seventh Princess: An Instalment
‘The third dragon was Cruelty.’
Fists of rain beat the window, and the foundations of the house shook fitfully.
‘The fifth brother, the kindest, wandered while searching thickets for wildberries, when he came across the third dragon. It was splayed across the field, nursing its foreleg and moaning in pain.’
Lightning knocked out a cloud stone-cold; the night sky was a boxing ring. Mother continued.
‘The dragon begged for assistance in his hour of need. Because of his innate kindness, the prince went cautiously to his aid. He reached out to touch the dragon’s bloodied scales, muttering soothing words, and the prince never did a kind deed again in this world.’
Betrayal
Ruslana and Alejandro eyed each other across the bedroom, tersely listening through the walls, waiting for something to happen – to Isola, to one another, to themselves. The Fury’s hand rested constantly on the sword at her waist now, and Alejandro often stared at the walls, as though trying to discern patterns in the ornaments and posters, the strips of naked wall.
‘The window was open,’ said Alejandro quietly.
Ruslana snapped her head towards him. ‘What?’
‘That night when Furlong was meant to be watching over her,’ Alejandro said, addressing the wall. ‘He had already gone, and the window was unlocked and opened just enough for her to get in.’
Ruslana said coldly, ‘Then Furlong betrayed us, just like Rosekin and Christobelle did.’
Isola jumped up from the beanbag. ‘They didn’t!’ she yelled. ‘They wouldn’t do that! I-I don’t know how, but she’s been making them act like that!’
A strange relief flooded her when neither argued back – she felt more reassured that it hadn’t been because her beloved princes had acted of their own free will.
The two princes each strode to the centre of the room, regarding the other warily.
‘Can I trust you?’
‘Only as much as I can trust you.’
‘Are you intending to harm her?’ asked Alejandro forthrightly.
‘I have no intention of allowing anyone to lay a hand on her,’ growled Ruslana. ‘Florence . . . or otherwise.’
They all heard the threat ringing, and although neither had raised their hands or even their voices, Isola leapt between them, hands raised to disperse the seemingly inevitable fight.
In the tense silence, they heard the ghost girl singing in a distorted language, nursery rhymes and curses, her broken voice splatter
ing the front of the house like paint.
Still eyeing each other, Ruslana and Alejandro reached around Isola and shook hands, swift and business-like.
‘I’ll take first watch,’ said Ruslana authoritatively. ‘You go find out everything you can about that girl.’
The starry sky stretched over the house, God’s screensaver. Despite Winsor’s appallingly bad behaviour recently – even for her – Isola had grudgingly allowed her to sleep in Rosekin’s old nest in the music box. Winsor deigned to wait in Rosekin’s most familiar place for her inevitable return.
As such, it was Winsor who saw it. The faintest pink glittering on the lawn: the feeble sputter of an unwell fairy. It woke the small fairy from her usual dreams of rose-munching; she jumped out of the small nest of feathers and thimbles, and gave a loud, excited squeak.
‘Rosey! Rosey! It’s Rosekin!’
Isola awoke at once; half-surprised she’d even managed to get to sleep in the first place. She staggered upright, hurrying to the window ledge where Winsor perched, and as the words registered, a bubble of warm hope rose up inside her.
‘It’s Rosekin, Isola!’ Winsor yelled, already impatient, and with a great heave, the tiny fairy scraped the window open.
The opening was barely enough for a fairy to squeeze through – but that was all Florence needed.
A pale hand snatched through the gap and knocked Winsor aside with the suddenness of a viper rearing in long grass. It plunged its fang-fingernails deep into Isola’s neck, flooding her with toxins – terror, shock and, oddly, rage.
Isola tried to scream – but the choked sound she made was strangely reminiscent of Florence’s speaking voice as the dead girl hauled herself up the side of the house.
‘Lovely songs he played, that man on the roof.’ Blood foamed around the dead girl’s mouth.
‘Where – is – he?’ Isola snarled between gulping breaths.
The girl grabbed a fistful of her hair, trying to pull her over the sill. ‘He’s gone the same way as those little birds that bothered me with their awful songs!’ she shrieked, rabid-eyed. ‘And you will too, you and your horrible heart-music, because you won’t be quiet and you won’t stay out of my woods!’
Then a swoop, a slit, a spurt of blood; Ruslana had materialised in the shadows of the bedroom, slashing at the ghost’s forearm with a long crooked dagger. Abruptly released, Isola fell back on the floor; Alejandro was standing over her, and he slammed the window shut, but that didn’t block the noise of the dead girl’s screeches as she scrabbled at the latch, lost her grip and vanished down the wall again.
Ruslana rounded on Winsor.
‘What were you doing?’ she snarled, and even Alejandro cringed away at her devastatingly angry voice.
Winsor squeaked and ducked down behind the music box she’d flown to. ‘I just – I thought I saw . . . Rosey was outside –’
‘Rosekin’s dead,’ said Ruslana harshly.
Isola couldn’t help herself – a horrified yelp escaped her, and Alejandro’s arms pulled her close.
‘And you’ll go the same way if you try anything like that again!’
‘Ruslana –’ Alejandro began, but the Fury rounded on him now, shadow-cloak billowing, eyes turning black.
When he didn’t speak, she shifted her gaze to the quivering faerie. ‘Get out,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t stand the sight of you.’
‘But –’
‘GET OUT!’
Winsor hiccupped and sped under the door in a flutter of green faerie-glitter.
All night, the dead girl stood barefoot on the frosted lawn, her nails scraping at the walls, her black-hole mouth wide open as she sang indecipherable lyrics.
Isola curled up on her bed with her hands over her ears, shuddering violently. Alejandro clamped his hands over hers as he whispered Spanish lullabies. Ruslana stood guard at the window, her dagger raised in tireless hands, blood trickling steadily down the hilt.
Isola didn’t think she would manage it, but she slept.
It was nearing dawn, the world blue-rinsed, when she was startled awake by Ruslana’s cry.
‘NO!’
Once again the window was scraped open; Isola jerked upright; Alejandro had already left her side, and she sprang to the window after him.
What Isola saw on the grass below made her blood turn thick in her veins.
The ghost girl had indeed caught a pink-glowing faerie, pinching her by her cellophane wings. The faerie seemed to flicker feebly, and her glow was almost the colour of Rosekin’s – but not quite.
The dead girl smiled up at them, relishing their gazes as she lifted the squealing faerie to her mouth – and bit her in half.
Ruslana began trembling.
‘Ruslana, don’t!’ yelled Isola, but the reaction was immediate. The Fury’s whole body shook as her hair snapped free of its braid, whipping around her as if caught in a storm of her supernatural rage. Her cape of swirling dark changed consistency; now it was feathers, and it seemed to flow from her shoulder blades like great black wings. Her talons elongated, and she curled her hands, showing her blood-coloured palms. The whites of her eyes vanished completely into black. She opened her razor-mouth and gave an unearthly howl.
Below, the dead girl had swallowed the whole faerie and was licking blood from her lips. She had triggered this on purpose, Isola was sure, and this was Ruslana at her most Furious – terrible, beautiful, and driven by vengeance, the only emotion she ever felt filled by, the fuel that powered her endless life.
Isola grabbed Ruslana’s shaking arm. Alejandro immediately broke her grip, pulling her away from the avenging angel. Ruslana was insensible, screaming bloody murder as she launched herself through the window.
‘Alejandro! Get her back!’ Isola pleaded.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that Ruslana might not return to her; her eyes mightn’t pale and her claws mightn’t retract and she might be nothing more than the Fury, and she might scour the globe for every faint echo of a girl unavenged, forgetting Isola, forgetting what it was to be a brother-prince.
But Alejandro seemed at a loss; they both hurried back to the window, and saw Ruslana crouch, her murderous gaze fixed on the dead girl; the girl merely licked her stained lips again and laughed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to avenge girls like me, Fury?’ she said mockingly. ‘Where were you when I was screaming for help?’
Ruslana roared and lunged, forgetting her weapons, using her talons instead. She slashed at the girl, her red hands dripping.
Isola felt coldness like a physical presence, a hand gripping hers, caressing her neck. Part of her thought the girl would run or dissolve in the shadows. Instead the girl took each wound and danced around, laughing all the while. How would they be rid of this dead-caged-witch-girl? How could they kill a ghost?
‘Ruslana!’
‘RUSLANA!’ Alejandro bellowed over Isola’s plaintive cry, and both she and the Fury froze – they’d never heard him shout before. ‘YOU CANNOT LEAVE ISOLA!’
And that was all it took; feathers moulted, wings melted back into the cloak. Ruslana blinked, standing human on the lawn, and the lily-white was there in her eyes again.
But the ghost girl was gone.
True Nature
Vivien’s Wood was suffering the same fate as the plum tree and Sylvia Plath before it.
It was a slow and noxious death, the smell of it wafting miles down the valley, making vaporous SOS patterns in the sky.
Ruslana had gone to lick her wounds; Alejandro said she had been embarrassed to lose control like that, especially in front of her. Isola, while admittedly a little frightened by the transformation she’d seen in her brother-prince, could never be leery of Ruslana, her willowy warrior, with her stretching, pale legs and secretly soft centre.
After a week, and after quite a bit of wheedling and begging, Alejandro took Isola to the woods. They only managed a few steps in before the thorn thickets grew too thick, and he stood silently while Isola dragged her
hands over the forest floor, catching clumps of dead flowers and grass; a cancer patient’s chemo-hair. The leaves that had shrivelled in wintertime were unravelling blackened in the spring. Some trees were birthing toxic fruits and berries, and she found more dead rabbits, foam bubbling along their lolling mouths, their babies starved in lonely burrows.
Not one bird sang in the woods these days.
Everywhere were empty nests, rotting beehives. A dead forest.
All because of one dead girl.
Dame Furlong was in her usual place, curled in the heart of one of the potted rosebushes standing guard by the door. Mother had never got around to planting them – the illness had struck her down before she could, but the plants had thrived in captivity nevertheless.
‘I’m glad you’re still here,’ Isola told Dame Furlong, plopping moodily down on the step. ‘Otherwise I’d start thinking I dreamed Grandpa up entirely.’
Dame Furlong said nothing, as was her way. She twisted in the web, making a sticky-thread ‘?’.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Isola guessed she had said. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
The spider knitted again, tugging her wiry body this way and that. She revealed a crescent-moon shape.
‘Oh, this?’ Isola rubbed a hand along her neck, over the red mark that had not faded since Christobelle first pointed it out. ‘Just another trick of that dead girl, I hope. Don’t worry about me.’
Dame Furlong peered at her with eight blinking eyes for a long moment. Then, she wove one last symbol – a heart.
‘Thank you. I love you, too.’
Madame Guillotine
Isola had not slept.
‘Don’t you dare move,’ hissed the voice that hung over her in the darkness like a mushroom cloud, rousing her from her semi-conscious slumbering.
‘Ruslana?’
Isola’s blue eyes were reflected in the blade – wide and terrified. The Fury’s coarse black hair tickled her forehead. She could hear her stilted breathing from above.
It didn’t sound much like Ruslana.
