by Melody John
Dmitri smiled. ‘That’s nice. To hear, I mean. I’ve tried to… well, be nice, I suppose, but there’s always been that…’ He shrugged. ‘That bit where you told me to behave, or else.’
‘Or else.’ I laughed bitterly. ‘Me and my fabulous super powers.’
‘They are pretty fabulous,’ he said gently. ‘They helped save Laura. And, well, I think you know how powerful they are. That’s why you’re scared of them.’
‘I’m not scared of them,’ I said.
‘Yes you are,’ he returned, so firmly that I didn’t even follow up with more argument. ‘That’s why you don’t practise enough, why you leave them alone.’
‘It’s not just that,’ I said.
He cocked his head. ‘What is it, then?’
I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment. Then I said, ‘I only discovered my powers through Liam. Being around him—kind of woke them up, I think. That’s what he said.’
‘Using them reminds you of him,’ Dmitri said.
I nodded.
‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘But—if you can—you should try and push on through that. Despite that. Because you do have real power. Much more than levitating pencils.’
‘Full on Phoenix,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
There was a little silence. I think we were both thinking about David, because when Dmitri finally spoke, he said, ‘They probably won’t hurt me. I’m assuming that. But they will take me away.’
‘For how long?’
He gave half a smile, a bitter crook of his mouth. ‘Forever.’
I stared at him. ‘What do you—forever forever?’
‘Yeah. Leaving the crags, coming to live here, it’s a privilege.’ He made a wry face, and I got the sense that he was quoting someone. ‘A privilege only granted to a few, and a privilege that they will have no qualms about revoking at the slightest hint of misdemeanour.’
‘Oh,’ I said bleakly. ‘Right.’
‘Yeah.’ He gave that bitter half-smile again. ‘I suppose it’s like a banishment. Reverse banishment? I don’t know.’
‘When are they coming?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Soon. Very soon.’
‘Like, today?’
‘Yes.’
‘But…’ That feeling of drowning was back. ‘But what about uni, what about your room key, what about the stuff in your fridge… you’ve got like half an avocado, and loads of tins of baked beans and…’
‘You can have them,’ he said. ‘Let David have the avocado. He needs to eat something healthy for a change.’ His face suddenly changed with those last words, and he made an odd gasping sound, and looked down, and put his hand to his mouth.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, knowing what a stupid, ineffectual thing that was to say.
‘I really don’t want to go,’ he said. The words were muffled through his fingers. ‘I just—oh god.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said uselessly. ‘I really, really am.’
‘Not your fault,’ he said.
‘What are you going to tell David?’ I said, knowing helplessly that that wasn’t the kindest thing to say, and that it would only make him feel worse. ‘And Laura?’
He took a deep breath and looked up again. His lips were grey. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how I could explain to David about this without explaining—everything. And—he might hate me if I did that.’
‘He won’t understand if you just up and leave without a word,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘You’ve got to tell him something.’
‘I know.’
The curtain was pulled aside, and I jumped.
‘Everyone all right?’ David asked cheerfully. He came in and sat down on one of the chairs, and started dividing up brown McDonald’s bags. ‘Okay, so Lizzie, you’ve got a burger and chips—it’s a new thing with like shedloads of bacon, so I thought you’d like it—and a Coke.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, gathering it all onto my lap. ‘My delicious children,’ I said rather weakly, trying to make a joke of it.
‘Here’s your pie,’ David said to Dmitri.
‘Oh,’ said Dmitri, and I had the feeling that he’d forgotten all about it. ‘Thanks, man.’ He reached out his hand.
‘Now, what do you owe me for it?’ David asked. His voice was light, teasing, but there was an odd expression on his face. He didn’t let go of the pie packet.
‘Um.’ Dmitri looked at him distractedly. ‘I don’t know. You’ll think of something.’
‘I will.’ David held onto the pie for a moment longer. A moment too long. I was about to say something, but then he let go of it, and grinned and said, ‘Oh, I definitely will.’
Dmitri bit into his pie, and I opened my burger. It tasted like the best thing I’d ever eaten—tender chicken, crispy bacon and lettuce, and a bun so soft it was practically a pillow. For a few moments, that was all I concentrated on, glad to have a respite from everything else, with just a few moments where everything made sense and was comfortable. Then I looked up, reaching for a napkin, and saw that David was leaning back in his chair, watching both of us. His leg was jigging up and down.
‘You all right?’ I asked, with my mouth full.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m fine.’
I glanced at Dmitri. I felt a sudden nasty flick of apprehension. ‘David, did you meet anyone while you were out?’
‘No.’ He was still smiling, but it was starting to look very fixed. ‘No one at all.’
I tried to raise my eyebrows as unobviously as I could at Dmitri. Dmitri glanced at me, then said to David, ‘You sure you’re all right? You look a bit wired.’
‘Oh yeah, no, well, I suppose I am a bit. Everything kind of happening on top of each other, and—’ David gave a little laugh. ‘And I’ve got to catch my train tomorrow morning. Kinda insane, really. All this that’s happened, and I’m just going to go home, and hope that we all end up in one piece when the holidays are over, and we’re all back at uni and…’
Dmitri said, ‘David—’
‘Or what?’ David asked, his voice rising. ‘Or maybe not. Maybe none of us will be back there, maybe we’ll all have super powers by then, maybe Jamie will be our best friend by then, and we’ll all hang out and smoke weed in Ted’s van while we talk about the good old days and how bright our futures are going to be—’
‘David,’ Dmitri said loudly, and David’s words ran dry.
There was a pause where the only sound was David’s rapid breathing. I swallowed a mouthful of fries, even though they were too hot.
‘Are you leaving?’ David’s voice was hoarse. He stared directly at Dmitri, and I thought distantly how like David that was, to look someone straight in the eye, even when he was feeling like this. David always looked people in the eyes. David was like that.
Dmitri’s face turned a few shades paler. He said, ‘Yes.’
David flinched as though Dmitri had slapped him. He rocked back a little in the chair. He said, ‘Oh,’ and it was such a sad, broken little sound that I felt my own tears start to gather again. Then David said with a kind of forced lightness, ‘Was it something I did wrong?’
‘No!’ Dmitri looked up quickly.He scooted his chair closer to David’s, and the calm that he’d been using as a kind of shield dropped away from him, and I saw the panic and the misery boiling behind it. ‘No, David, please, you mustn’t think that.’ He grabbed David’s hands and held them in a white-knuckled grip. ‘David, you’re—oh my god, you’re wonderful. You really are. You’re—I never—I honestly never thought I would meet anyone like you.’
I swallowed hard. I wanted to burst into unrestrained tears, but it was already awkward enough just by my being here; I felt as though I were horribly intruding on what should have been a really private moment. So I kept as quiet as I could, and wiped my greasy fingers inconspicuously on the napkin.
‘That’s nice,’ David said in a choked voice. ‘Nice to know that you think
so highly of me.’
‘Please,’ Dmitri said. ‘I don’t want to leave. You must believe that. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave you.’
‘Then don’t!’
‘I have to—’
‘Why!’
Dmitri hesitated, and David said bitterly, ‘You don’t have to worry about me hating you because of the explanation. I would have thought you would have known me better than that.’
This was going horribly. I wanted to butt in and try and help, but this wasn’t my relationship ending in pieces. I had to keep quiet.
Dmitri glanced at me. He inhaled deeply, then said, ‘We explained about Lizzie. She has power. She’s psychic, kind of, and telekinetic.’
‘Yeah…’
‘I’m—different like that as well. I’m not—human. Lizzie’s human, but…’
David looked at me rather wildly. ‘You don’t seem very surprised by all this.’
‘No,’ I said, feeling guilty without knowing properly why. ‘I, well, I knew.’
‘So you told Lizzie? But you didn’t tell me?’ David laughed, a high and awful sound. ‘I suppose that’s understandable. I’m only your boyfriend, after all.’
‘No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t like that. He didn’t tell me, I just knew. I saw him. That’s because of the—my being psychic thing. I can see—things. People. I can see Dmitri’s—’ I floundered, looked to Dmitri for guidance about whether I should continue or not.
Dmitri said, ‘I’m a sylph. I have wings. Lizzie can see my wings. It was me who mesmered Jamie into telling us where Laura is, because that’s the power that I have.’
‘Like Angel,’ I said. ‘In X-Men. I’m Jean Grey. Dmitri is Angel. With a bit of Professor Xavier as well, I suppose… Not that we’re, you know, actually them… and it kind of feels a bit pretentious to actually compare ourselves directly, but…’
David said, ‘Prove it.’
I blinked. I think I’d somehow expected him to faff about more, and show more disbelief. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, prove it.’ He looked squarely at Dmitri. ‘I can accept Lizzie’s power because I saw it right before my eyes. But right now you just look like a regular guy.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said, ‘it’s a—glamour, I think it’s called?—like a shield or…’ My voice trailed away.
Dmitri stood up. He closed his eyes.
I felt something, a kind of prickling in the air that stabbed at my skin like the feeling of pins and needles. I felt—a kind of itch, a rash—and then the air shimmered a little, as though a heat haze were rippling up from the ground. And Dmitri’s wings, which had been folded against his back like usual, spread out and unfolded upwards, free of the glamour, wide open and clear to human eyes.
David took a quick, sharp breath. I was used to seeing Dmitri’s wings, but tucked up quietly on his back. Not like this, stretched wide and magnificent. There wasn’t enough room for them in this tiny cubicle; they were stretching out the curtains, and the tip of the left one was arched over my head and pressing into the wall behind the bed. The dull hospital lights made shadows under the hard ridge of bone extending from his shoulders. The feathers were dark tawny, without the reddish gleam that they had in proper sunlight, spangled with chocolate-dark freckles.
They were beautiful, and, looking at David’s wide eyes, I felt almost as though I were seeing them for the first time. They were beautiful. And it was horrible that Dmitri was only showing them to David now, when everything was coming tumbling down.
David swallowed. He licked his lips. ‘Okay,’ he said rather faintly. ‘Okay. That’s, um, yeah that’s proof.’
Dmitri folded his wings up again. The air tingled, and I saw the haze again, and knew that he must have raised his glamour once more.
David was breathing heavily, as though he’d just run a marathon. ‘They’ve gone.’
‘Yeah.’ Dmitri sat down again in the chair. David looked at him as though he might suddenly explode. ‘I fold them up onto my back so they don’t bump into things. And I have the glamour, so nobody can see even that.’
‘But…’ David looked at me. ‘You can see them.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s not fair,’ David said, quietly, miserably. ‘She can see them, and I can’t. And she’s known all this time, and I’ve just found out, and you’re…’
‘David,’ Dmitri said, putting his hands on David’s shoulders. ‘David, listen. The power that I used on Jamie to make him tell us where Laura was, it’s called the mesmer. It’s illegal to use it on humans, it’s the oldest of our laws, and no one—no one ever—is allowed to use it. But I couldn’t think how else to save Laura, so I used it on Jamie. It was only for a few minutes, and I thought—I suppose maybe I thought that it would be too short a time for anyone to notice. But they did notice. My people. And they’re coming for me. They’re coming to take me back. That’s why I’ve got to leave, but it is the only reason why I would ever leave you. David. David, do you believe me?’
David swallowed. He nodded. ‘Yeah. I believe you.’
‘Good. Okay.’
‘But when will you be back?’
Dmitri flinched. ‘Never. I can’t come back.’
‘Why?’ David’s voice wasn’t high and angry as it had been before; now it was small and broken and hopeless.
‘Because that is the law. That is how it always is, how it always has been. Only a few of us are allowed to live among humans. And if we break any of the laws, we’re always brought back.’
‘But can’t you explain? Can’t you explain about what happened with Jamie, why you did it, make them see that it was necessary—’
Dmitri shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. That just isn’t how it works. It’s the law.’
‘Damn the law,’ David choked.
‘I know,’ Dmitri said. ‘But it’s what’s going to happen.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Today, I think. Maybe in a couple of hours.’
David put his face in his hands.
No one spoke for a long, long time. I realised that my burger was growing cold in my hand, and automatically made as though to take a mouthful. But that seemed so inappropriate. I shouldn’t be hungry with this happening, with David’s heart being broken right in front of my eyes. But I was hungry, and my burger was getting soggy, so I took a bite. Even though I was miserable, and I could taste the tears in my mouth, the burger still tasted good.
‘Finish your food,’ I said.
David and Dmitri both looked at me as though I was mad.
‘You might as well,’ I said. ‘It’s just going to get cold and spoil. We might as well… you know.’
‘Enjoy our last meal together,’ Dmitri said.
David made a small noise. I looked away and stared into my fries as Dmitri put his arm around David’s shoulders. ‘Hey, come on,’ Dmitri said, and I could hear the strain in his voice. ‘It’ll be just like in that film.’
‘Which one?’ David asked in a muffled voice.
‘I can’t remember. Black and white, I think? Some guy was doing some thing, and—was he writing something? About the stuff he’d done in the rest of the film?’
‘You’re so delightfully vague,’ David said, giving half a watery smile.
‘Sorry. I don’t think I actually watched all of it.’ He grinned. ‘There was popcorn, and then I think I fell asleep…. And when I woke up, there was just a guy sitting in a cell.’
‘Oh well, that’s super helpful.’ David stole one of my fries. And we sat there, eating our last meal together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After a while, just as I was finishing my fries, the nurse popped her head in through the curtains. She smiled. ‘Everyone all right in here?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.
She saw the empty food packets and takeaway bag, and smiled. ‘Very good, lots of grease and salt and sugar, just what you need to get your strength back. Your frie
nd’s finished being patched up. They’re just about to bring her back in.’
‘Oh awesome!’ I said. David reached over and pulled back the curtain on the right-hand side, and we watched as two nurses wheeled in another hospital bed. Laura’s face was almost the same white as the pillowcase, and her hair lay in a bright tumble around her shoulders.
