Wrath of Aten

by S. A. Ashdown

  I think that’s a big, fat lie. I’m angry but then I forget when he magicks up a huge knickerbocker glory for me and Ava to share with two spoons.

  ‘Where’s mine?’ Mum says.

  Father comes back with three bowls for all the grown-ups. ‘Eton Mess,’ he says.

  Ava wrinkles her nose even though we’ve both eaten it before. We finish our dessert super-quick. ‘Can we get down?’ I ask.

  Mum rolls her eyes. ‘Sure.’

  When we go to play in the garden we somehow end up at the edge of the woods again, overlooking the sea. Ava has that sad look. ‘What do you see?’

  She shrugs. ‘I see nighttime and unhappy spirits,’ she says. ‘I see a woman who looks like your mum but isn’t and a little baby all alone crying. I’m not sure what has happened and what is meant to happen.’ Ava is holding her arms again, shoulders hunched. It makes me scared. I feel like she knows more but she’s not telling and I don’t want it to be real so I don’t ask. But we play in the woods anyway and pretend to fight the unhappy spirits and rescue the woman who looks like Mum but isn’t, and look after the crying baby and feed it bottles made out of sticks and make it a bed of leaves.

  Lolita comes to get Ava and we say goodbye.

  That night, when Mum tucks me into bed, I ask her to leave the door open and I keep my side light on all night. I almost fall asleep until I hear arguing downstairs. Father is shouting something about Ava. I wanted to tell him about Ava’s visions but now I’m too scared in case he won’t let me play with her anymore.

  The next day at breakfast Mum looks very tired. ‘Can I play with Ava today?’ She nibbles on her toast like a mouse and Father just drinks three coffees in a row. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Ava has a cold,’ Father says but I didn’t hear the phone ring this morning so I wonder how he knows. ‘And anyway, I think we should go and visit your grandparents. Farfar isn’t well.’

  I push my bowl of cereal away and fold my arms. ‘You said Ava could come with us to Norway this year,’ I said. ‘If she’s sick like Grandad why can’t she come?’

  ‘Farfar isn’t going to get better,’ Father says, sitting next to Mum at the table. ‘This is time for family.’

  Ava is family. ‘Can’t magic make him better?’

  ‘He doesn’t want that.’ He looks at Mum really hard and she frowns. ‘It’s not for us to get involved with nature. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.’

  ‘From who?’

  Father says nothing, just finishes his coffee. ‘From the wrong kind of people,’ he says at last, looking at Mum again.

  ’Stop it,’ Mum says, ‘you’re going to frighten him.’

  ‘At least he has the sense to feel scared.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  I’m not used to her shouting. I stare at her. ‘Mum, can’t you use your herbs? I don’t want Farfar to die.’ A tear prickles. ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was sick?’

  ‘We didn’t want you to worry at school,’ Mum explains but I don’t like secrets so I run out of the room.

  I want to call Ava but as soon as I get to the phone, Father snatches it out of my hand. ‘Go and pack your things, Theodore.’ He puts the phone back on the wall and walks away.

  ‘Can I ring her when we get to Norway?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  I go to my room and get out my suitcase from the wardrobe and throw it on the bed, ripping clothes off hangers and stuffing them in. I stomp to the window and stare at my ash tree.

  This isn’t fair. Ava, can you hear me? I have to go. I wish you were here.

  The sun shines brighter for a moment and the glare hurts my eyes.

  Theo, Theo, I’m coming for you.

  ‘Who was that?’ I whisper to the grown-up voice I just heard and when I turn around and see my suitcase I feel very strange, like I just hit rewind on a video tape and played it over again, except I don’t remember watching it the first time. My stomach flips and I’m so dizzy I have to sit down. I should call for Mum. She’s waiting for me.

  I know I am meant to go downstairs with my suitcase and it’s important I go now but instead I climb out of my window, down the trellis and onto the lawn. My bike is in the garage. I ride like the wind in case Father catches me but no one comes and the gates are open. I ride all the way to Ava’s house next to Oakley Park, but the closer I get the worse I feel, like my head is about to explode. Maybe I am getting sick too. That’s if Ava really is sick. Why do I think Father is lying? He never lies to me.

  I hide my bike in the bushes and creep around the back of Ava’s pink house and throw a pebble at her window. No one answers. I throw another pebble and almost crack the glass.

  ‘Ava!’ I call. ‘Ava!’

  She sticks her head out of the window and frowns. ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ she says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just aren’t.’ Ava doesn’t look sick to me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

  ‘Are you okay, Theo? You’re shivering.’

  I look at my hands. They are covered in ice even though it’s a sunny day. You’re not supposed to be here.

  Ava is calling me but it’s not Ava, it’s a grown-up with hair all different colours and she’s shouting; she’s saying I’m doing it wrong. I need to go back home and do what I’m supposed to do. I’m doing it wrong. I’m doing everything wrong.

  But somehow it feels right.

  ‘Pass me the wreath,’ Mum says. I pass it over and she hangs it on the front door.

  ‘There, we’re done.’

  I love this part – when we go back inside like we’re visiting Hellingstead Hall for the very first time, awed by the grand staircase, decorated with holly and ivy, twirling around the banisters. And the life-sized nativity scene, donkey and crib and fake baby and everything. It doesn’t matter that we’re not Christian, Mum says, as long as we keep Yule itself pagan. I don’t argue that it seems silly to celebrate the birth of somebody when you don’t even worship them because it means I get more presents.

  And Ava isn’t allowed over on Yule but she always comes on Christmas Day.

  I run into the library. Father is hovering in the air, placing the angel on the very top of the Christmas tree that almost reaches the rafters, which Uncle Nikolaj sent us from Elf Land.

  ‘Espen, you’ve made a mess of the tinsel again!’ Mum tuts. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that magic isn’t precise enough?’

  Father looks down at me and rolls his eyes. Every year they have the same argument and I think it makes them happy for some reason. Mum and I spend the rest of the afternoon in the library fixing Father’s mistakes and rehanging most of the baubles.

  Then we drink hot chocolate by the fire and eat the gingerbread Mum and I had baked that morning. ‘Theodore, you’re yawning,’ Father says from the armchair, and opens his arms. I climb onto his lap. The rise and fall of his chest and the sound of him and Mum talking lulls me to sleep. Father carries me upstairs just as the phone is ringing, and I think I hear Mum mention Ava to whoever it is on the phone. A spike of panic almost wakes me up.

  ‘Go back to sleep, Theodore,’ Father says.

  ‘But something is wrong.’

  ‘It was just a dream.’ He tucks me into bed and kisses my forehead. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘Is Ava okay? Is she having the dreams again?’

  Father stares at me. ‘What dreams?’

  ‘The bad ones. About the woman who looks like Mum but isn’t, and the baby?’

  He seems pale in the moonlight. ‘Theodore, she’s seen something that happened a long time ago. It’s finished with. Nothing to worry about. Now go back to sleep like a good boy, eh?’

  I nod. He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘Goodnight, Teddy,’ he says.

  ‘I want Mum.’

  ‘I’ll make sure she checks on you before we go to bed.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  He leaves me alone in the d
arkness.

  But you break that promise, don’t you, Father?

  I sit up, startled by the thought that I didn’t choose to think. Then my birthday flashes in my mind and I’m blowing out the candles with Ava again. I wish it could always be like this.

  This is where it ends. This is when I lost her.

  I’m crying.

  Ava knew this was going to happen. Ava tried to warn us but she was just a child.

  I look around. No one else is in my bedroom. Father will be angry if I get up. Then someone is pulling my bed cover and I’m staring at myself on the other side of the bed, rolling over and going to sleep. That’s what is meant to happen. How do I know that? How am I staring at myself?

  I shoot out of bed and run downstairs, not caring if Father shouts at me.

  But he is already shouting by the time I get to the library. I creep inside and hide behind one of the bookcases.

  ‘We have to take action now,’ Mum shouts. ‘Ava’s seen our downfall. If we don’t act to protect Theo, who’ll be there for him if we fail?’

  ‘Isobel, Ava is a child. Her visions are unreliable, you know this!’

  I listen in terror to their argument, and names I’ve never heard fly about the library: Elspeth, Menelaus, Julian. Then Mum does something to Father and makes him go to sleep. She tears out of the library and I chase after her, losing her into the night.

  ‘Mummy!’ I call into the woods but I get tangled up in a plant I don’t recognise and crash into walls I cannot see. ‘Mummy?’

  Screaming. I can taste the magic oozing out of the trees. It’s so dark.

  I’m not meant to be here. I was never here. Wasn’t I?

  Theo, turn back. This is wrong.

  Then I see her. The woman with colourful hair I saw at Ava’s house before I’d gone to Norway. She is here and not here and not looking at me but the dark, inky space in front of her.

  Then the man appears from nowhere and he’s shouting at Mum, and me and Ava-not-Ava watch frozen as they fight, and the man is racing after Mum and I’m running too. No nightmare has ever scared me this much.

  I pause. Maybe I’m asleep. Maybe this isn’t real.

  But what if it is?

  ‘Mum! Mum!’ I yell even louder, scrambling over fallen trees and ignoring the thorns cutting at my face, the salty tears stinging my cheeks. Where is the grown-up Ava? What magic brought her here?

  I see the cliffs in the moonlight. Mum standing on the ledge, backing away from the man. She’s standing on the thinnest bit of rock, the place where Ava had sat near on my birthday and cried.

  Mum sees me. ‘Theo!’ she screams. ‘Theo! Run!’

  I don’t understand.

  She falls.

  ‘No! No!’ The man and I both roar the same thing.

  But I have magic. I fling out my hands and send it like a lasso over the cliff, and it almost yanks me over the side as it snaps around her waist.

  The man catches me before I fall too, clutching me tight under one arm and heaving on the magical rope with the other, pulling Mum back onto the cliff. She stares at us with big, wild eyes like a wolf, untangling herself from my magic rope and snatching me from the man’s grip. I wonder how she is so strong as she flings me over her shoulder and races back through the woods into the safety of the house.

  She carries me upstairs and places me gently on the bed. ‘You must never speak of what happened tonight. Especially not to your father. Do you understand? You were asleep here all night.’

  I reach out and smooth her hair. It looks like a snake nest. Her eyes sparkle with fear and excitement – with magic. ‘Yes, Mummy. Who was that man?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll deal with him. Promise me you won’t say a word.’

  ‘It’s a secret?’

  She nods.

  ‘Okay.’

  She hugs me tight. Her heart is beating like a drum. ‘Thank you, Teddy, for saving my life.’

  I don’t know how to reply. What else would I have done?

  ‘I hope graduation will be less embarrassing then our high-school prom,’ Ava says, slamming her textbook shut.

  I don’t answer. ‘What’s with you, Theo?’ She moves from my desk and dives onto my four-poster bed, just as she has done since she was a small child. I smile, those perfect summers flashing through my mind. Her sixteenth birthday was my favourite; we’d gone to the cliff where I’d almost lost Mum, and gave her that birthday kiss Ava had hinted at the whole day.

  And maybe a few days before that. The first kiss of many. I am still thrilled she’d never referred to me as ‘basically her brother’.

  ‘Theo?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, smiling, as she pushes my sketchbook off my lap. ‘I’m still trying to forget that prom,’ I add. ‘How is it you didn’t foresee me tripping over Grace’s handbag and tipping over the punch bowl?’

  ‘Who said I didn’t foresee it?’ Ava grins at me. ‘What? Some opportunities are just too good to pass up.’

  ‘Ava! You little witch! I ruined Uncle Nik’s Armani suit.’

  ‘Well, never a borrower or lender be.’ She pinches her lips together, suppressing a laugh. ‘Oh, Theo. I’m joking. It was mortifying for both of us.’

  ‘So you didn’t foresee it?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish a vision from plain, old-fashioned fear.’

  I curl my arm around her neck and press my nose against hers. ‘If you see me messing up my final art exam, let me know.’

  ‘I can’t see anything past your birthday, Theo.’ Her previously light tone turns serious.

  ‘Because I’m going to die.’

  ‘Temporarily.’

  ‘So Father says.’ I sigh. How the hell was I meant to concentrate on my last term of university after Father had dropped that bombshell on me at Yule? Of course, I’d known for years that I was destined to become the Gatekeeper – a secret I’d quickly given up to Ava – but he’d left the dying part out of his narrative until recently, in case it caused me any ‘undue stress.’ ‘But if that’s true, then why can’t you foresee my future?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘maybe the magic involved is interfering with my gift.’

  ‘Can you see anyone else? Yourself?’

  She nods. ‘Just not you.’ Ava hesitates. ‘Except…a lot of ice and snow.’

  ‘In the middle of the summer. That makes perfect sense.’ Then again, Father’s coming-of-age had caused an avalanche.

  Lorenzo charges into my bedroom without knocking, as always. He chucks his latest dissertation draft at me. ‘Ugh, your bloody cousin! He’s such a hard-arse. He’s ripped my thesis to shreds again!’

  ‘He’s your professor,’ I say, looking at the squiggly red lines, arrows, and comments Menelaus has drawn on every page. Maybe if this was a Praetoriani assignment, I could help you.

  ‘I can’t tell what he wants from me,’ Lorenzo says, stalking over to the window. ‘He keeps saying I’m missing the bigger picture.’

  Ava takes Lorenzo’s thesis from me and casts her third eye over it. ‘I’ll help, Lorenzo.’ He grins. ‘But in return you’ve got to help drum up a crowd for me and Grace. We’re touring the West Country this summer. You and Jean-Ashley up for it?’

  ‘Are you asking me to come road-tripping?’

  Ava smiles. Lorenzo cartwheels across the floorboards, reminding of me of how we’d met – he’d been the only student ballsy enough to take on the reigning university Sport’s Day champion – me. We’d been buddies ever since.

  ‘Is violin Stu coming? I love that guy.’

  ‘Yup,’ Ava said. ‘I don’t think he could unstick himself from Grace if he tried.’

  ‘I hope we can come. But Jean-Ashley might want us to stay with her Mum. Although, those herbal remedies Isobel gave her seem to have slowed the cancer’s progression down.’

  ‘My mum’s family were healers for generations,’ I said, wishing for a millionth time I could tell him we were a family of witches and w
arlocks. Once I am the Gatekeeper, Father won’t have the power to stop me. Lying to Lorenzo isn’t my idea of fun. ’They had to use what they could grow in the Highlands.’

  Lorenzo nods, accepting the story.

  But I can’t. Not quite. Because I haven’t even told Ava about the nightmares, the ones where I didn’t save Mum from plunging to her death, where Menelaus never found out his true identity, and Ava and I had been parted.

  And in those dreams, I had saved Anna from death. It all seemed so real.

  A shiver, cold as a blade of ice, shoots down the back of my neck.

  Ava touches my cheek. ‘Theo, are you alright?’ I look into her eyes. She hadn’t been able to explain those visions I’d had of her as an adult on the night Mum nearly died, and that woman I’d seen was now gazing at me with concern. ‘Theo, you’re as cold as death.’

  I touch the tops of swaying wheat at the perimeter of the field, igniting magic which spreads across the golden seeds for no other reason than that I am happy.

  Ava catches my hand in hers and we slip through the high stalks of wheat, soon lost in the field. I don’t care; midnight seems years away, my imminent death a blot on a very distant horizon while Ava and I steal kisses and hide from the blazing sky. When has May been this warm?

  This has become the birthday ritual. We run away. Together. At end of the day, we return to Hellingstead Hall, hand-in-hand and happy.

  We rest in each other’s arms in the centre of the field. I play Sting’s version of Fields of Gold on my phone.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ she asks me.

  With any other girl, I’d put on a brave face, but there’s no point with the girl who sees the truth hovering like a cloud every time she closes her eyes.

  ‘Utterly terrified. I asked Father if it would hurt.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That the collision between the Gatekeeper and my soul would obliterate my sanity and rethread my Vital Essence so violently that it would stop my heart.’

  ‘No offence, Theo,’ she says, ‘but sometimes your father is—’

  ‘Blunt as a piece of sea-tossed glass, I know. But I guess I’m glad he isn’t sugar-coating it. It can’t be any worse than childbirth, right? And women worldwide handle that every day.’