‘It’s that Tippi bitch, isn’t it? You love her, don’t you?’
Victor stays quiet. Says nothing.
Sienna sinks her drink, wipes her nose. ‘Don’t you?’ she roars. Her humiliation spitting feathers. Victor knows better than to reply.
Sienna shrugs, pretending not to be hurt. Sucking herself up, zipping her feelings in.
‘Well, she doesn’t love you,’ she spews. ‘Aurabel was not her friend. You know that, don’t you? That Aurabel –’ she says her name as though it is a joke – ‘was not her friend at all. She was her mate.’
Her spite does not stab. Victor, seeing Sienna in a new light, just observes as she crumbles. Barricades himself from her viciousness. But his silence revs her up another notch. ‘She doesn’t want you. You don’t have the body for it. You are weak. You are tiny. You are not a she.’
And Sienna storms out of the room, drunkenly bashing into the stone walls. A bruise. To mark the moment she punished herself.
LITTLE CREATURES
‘There you go.’ I release the lobster out of my hands now that Aurabel has fixed her up; she looks stronger than ever with her new metal body parts. More scorpion. A flicking hinged tail that is made of the mini loops of a bicycle chain, forks for pincers, the edge of a nutcracker/toenail clipper for a claw. This is how we pass the time. Saving the glorious freaks whose bodies have fallen apart or stopped working. Taking a break for my breathing.
I’ve learnt now that we are all creatures and can outlive our bodies through our minds and souls; bodies can get tired, break and let us down, just like machines. We slow down, we stop, but that doesn’t make us dead.
It was a joint decision to wait. To bide our time. I wanted to plan my return and not just bulldoze my way into the palace. Sienna had wanted me dead, enough to drag me down here, just like she wanted Aurabel dead. And there must have been a reason for that – no matter how tough I find that pill to swallow, it is the truth. But first I have to find Rory.
Besides, I am still regaining my strength. Although my breathing has recovered, I still can’t go for more than a couple of hours without fixing onto the mill wheel to pump more air into my lungs. And even when I feel fit and strong and full of breath, ready to fight my way back to the palace, I know that the performance of my breath is hidden in that giant metal hoop shadowing over me. It is like Iris’s inhaler for his asthma, constantly topping me up. It won’t be too long until I can go without it completely.
Aurabel and I reach the top of the Big Dipper. I swim and Aurabel climbs. Everything has to be a challenge for Aurabel. The rusty clanking runners scream as she hauls a cart up to the top and we sit inside the carriage waiting for a break in the water to send us sleighing towards the ground. We try to float like spacemen but inevitably sink like bricks from our metal organs. But we hold hands. Eyes closed. Drifting in the weirdness of our belonging in this strange environment, to this even stranger friendship. This union. I am angry at how sheltered the Whirl is; how it treats Tips with its monstrous class divide. The friendship I’ve found inside Aurabel is more genuine and equal than any of the relationships I’ve found in the Whirl before. She is my friend. My real friend. A girl. Who likes me rather than laughs at me on the street.
Endless days of laughter and joy in the fallen fairground are healing. We revolve and worm our way around the industrial scraps. There is always something new to explore or invent. We eat sea-sap and drink ourselves numb on the heady toxic sugar syrup of the old canned drinks from the vending machines – the gas has flattened, and the film coats our teeth like sludge and makes us dizzy. We swap and dance and roll and talk and smile until we wear ourselves out, and then sleep under the canopy of fairy moss, in the clutch of a broken trampoline. Spread out like a starfish in the House of Fun, catching coloured balls from a ball pool as they bob away like particles of a polka-dot rainbow.
It is peaceful. Making happiness from sadness, our will to fix what is broken, in every sense. Aurabel trains and trains; even in the water I see the sweat drip. And I breathe in and out. I’m learning to breathe all over again. There is so much freedom for us, because of course this heavy life of rusty metal and bone is a struggle but it is an afterlife. A hideout. Because everybody thinks we are dead whilst we are so far from death.
We are immortal.
FLYNN
At the kitchen table. Flynn waits.
Sent home from the hospital to get some rest.
He doesn’t know if he’s waiting to be told that his granddad has died.
Or if he’s waiting for Lorali to burst through the door like always:
Eyes glinting, cheeky smile on her face, coins in her hand … to send him to the bakery to pick up cake.
But the doorknob doesn’t twist. His phone doesn’t ring. And sleep seems like it will never come again.
VICTOR AND THE TIPS
‘Well, obviously it’s a moon counter!’ Victor grins as he stands by the grandfather clock in the centre of Tippi Square. ‘Do you see the hands? Every time it goes dark and we see the moon we can flick the little hand round to the right. Each mark scores a moon … When the big hand is all the way back at twelve again it will mean that twelve moons have passed and we can mark the occasion.’
‘Yes! With a party?’ one of the Merbies suggests.
‘Well, why not? Now we have a concept of time here in Tippi we can party right through from one moon to the next!’ he jokes, and the Mer giggle.
‘It’s genius!’ an older, gruffer Mer shouts out, pinning her hair into a mound.
‘He’s the genius! Can’t he be queen?’ another adds.
‘We all know what happened the last time we put a male in charge!’
‘Now, now, folks! Come on. Zar has done his best,’ he sbrushes them off gently. ‘I’m happy just to be here with the Tips.’
‘Who’s gonna move the hands on this bloody moon clock then?’
‘Good point.’ Victor stands, hand on hip. He is a handsome thing now that he has grown into himself: chiselled jawline, groomed brows, his tapestry slinky yet strong, almost feminine. The Tips take in one another. It will be a big responsibility … who is responsible and dedicated enough to be in charge of the clock?
‘Can’t you do it, Victor?’ a Merby asks, unsure how the question will go down with the others. Murray laughs. Victor is quite the favourite here, slotting into the town of Tippi as though he has always belonged, quite like the moon itself. Aurabel would’ve liked him.
‘Yes, Victor. Come on, you can do it!’ Murray claps. ‘It has to be you.’
And before Victor knows it the Tips are chanting his name and he is trying to calm them down, but it is no use, it is decided. He can’t help but blush, the way he always does. That same shade of pink he goes whenever Murray looks his way. She is everything the night before was not. He wants to escape the sickening trap of that memory. Caught in the deathly web of a black widow with a taste for fresh meat. He just has to keep his head down and continue with the campaign; Sienna said it herself – once she is queen, she will be occupied. And that couldn’t come too soon.
I pick up speed for the serpent-pulled chariot. On the ride back from Tippi to the Whirl the pair pass the fields. Wild herbs, tangles of mangled shrubbery and dusty pom-pom heads shaking in the currents. Murray has an idea.
‘Have you ever tried seaweed before?’
‘Errr. I think you’ll find it’s pretty much a staple ingredient in the diet of any underwater specimen,’ Victor replies cheekily.
‘No, smoking it.’
At the peak of the Dreng, a dip in my break, the two sit before the emptiness, puffing seaweed, with a view of the overgrown field, home to jellyfish. Swanning in and out like carrier bags, like boneless umbrellas. The serpents, still chained to the chariot, graze on greenery and plump morsels buried deep in the chalky bed. Grateful for a break.
Victor passes the seaweed back to Murray; she takes a toke and breathes acidic green apple haze into my quarters.
‘Not really. I mean, I’m looking forward to having more independence … but I always feel like I’ve been myself.’
‘Do you think you’ll still come back to Tippi?’
‘What do you mean, Murray? Of course I’ll come back. I love it there.’
‘OK. Good.’
Victor repositions himself. Leaning on his elbow, he scratches the back of his neck. Fiddles with some grassy knot screwed into the mound beneath them.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you … on the morning of the resolution, do you think you could come to the tower? Sienna says there is a parade … I would love for you to be by my side – you know, only if you want to. At the white rock.’
Murray is taken aback. It is a big ask. Mer only have their family and mates by their side at the rock … For Victor to ask her to come to the tower in the morning would mean them arriving together. That she is unified.
Does she want that? What would Aurabel think? What would the Tips think about her and Victor? They would assume something is going on between them … so soon after Aurabel too. But what was this sting between her and Victor? Should she ignore it? She knows she feels something towards him … Is she stupid not to join the Whirl? Be loved, protected, powerful? She can’t decide if Aurabel would be proud of her for surviving … or disgusted. Backstabbed, even.
‘Wow, don’t seem too eager.’ Victor elbows Murray in the ribs sarcastically. ‘You don’t have to, really. I just thought you might want to.’
‘Sorry. Yes. I would. I would love that. I do want to, but I just …’
‘But?’
‘I don’t have anything to wear,’ she jokes to soften the tension. ‘You need to have the best outfit in the whole Whirl to be up at the rock like that. You’ve seen how I dress; it’s hardly the –’
‘Murray. Shut up. Please. It should be everybody else worried about how they’ll look next to you! They all need to up their game!’
‘I look weird.’
‘You’ve got character. It’s nice. I like it.’
‘OK. OK. I want to come with you.’ Her eyes light up like planets. Victor smiles. He can’t help it; he wants to hold her.
‘Sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘That’s made me so happy.’
He thinks about touching her now, but no. He feels the warmth in his hands would burn her with his obvious desperation. He plays it cool, takes a toke instead. His cheekbones draw in, his brows coming together in concentration as he inhales.
‘I can’t believe I’m sharing my resolution with someone I’ve never even met before.’ Green smoke teases out with his words. ‘Who even is this Kai?’
‘I met him once – only briefly.’
‘Did he seem OK?’
‘Yeah. As nice as you can be for a prince.’
‘Watch it!’ Victor jokes. ‘I’ll have you know that could be me one day!’
‘Oh apologies, Your Majesty!’ Murray laughs. ‘Mad that both of you have the chance of being royalty.’
‘Nah. Don’t say that.’
Victor passes the seaweed back; she takes it. Murray’s hair softly fans through my ripples. Her tapestry shows flowering blooming hoops; dilating psychedelic pupils. She touches her pin from Sienna.
‘I don’t want you to feel trapped in any way.’
‘I don’t feel trapped, Victor.’
‘Good. I know … But Sienna … she can be quite overpowering. I want you to do whatever you want to do.’
‘I am doing what I want to do.’
Are you? Are you doing what you want to do, Murray? Let’s find out.
Murray’s heart stutters awake. Victor holds her gently, trying not to show too much in case she steals herself away. The result of the inevitable, irresistible electric fuse crackling between them is both of their lips locking together in sweet seam. So, for now, it’s innocence bound inside the mutual niceness, the raw natural simplicity of when you just really actually like somebody, and they just really actually like you back. That makes a good kiss. That makes a really good kiss.
But Murray feels the peering eyes of Sienna’s serpents glaring at them. Guilt prising its way into the gaps. She sobers from the moment.
‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I like you. I just can’t …’ She breaks away, stealing herself from the shot. Leaving Victor to dull in the fading, muted frame.
But he grabs her hand.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he says. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for.’ He too feels the drilling eyes of the serpents; their escort back to the Whirl comes with eyes and ears and judgement. ‘Come on, let’s get back, Sienna will be worried about us.’ Murray nods and he prisons her eyes inside his. ‘Everything is going to be OK.’ He clenches his jaw. ‘I promise.’
HUNTING
‘That’s it.’ Lorali throws a handful of multicoloured soggy rice grains to the ground. ‘I can’t eat these bloody Rainbow Drops any more. I need some real food.’
I do too but I don’t feel quite ready to leave the funfair. I have become used to snacking on bits here and there. But I know I am just avoiding the outside water. I’ve really softened since I met Lorali and I have to keep my grit about me. Can’t lose my intention now. But it is hard not to like Lorali. Hard to keep to my regime when I’d rather just sit and while away the day with her. All her stories of what life was like as a Walker blow my mind; it never gets boring. Hearing about the people, the animals, the air, the temperature, nature – and course I have so many questions about cars. I knew I was right about roads. She told me all about this Rory and when he first found her and the lighthouse and the smoking huts. The good bits and the bad bits too. And I even told her about my mate, Murray, a bit. And that is rare for me as I don’t like to talk about things that are too close to my heart. I always used to worry that every time you speak about something that is precious to you with somebody else, you are giving away a bit of that preciousness. And I never wanted to share Murray with anybody. Now I have no choice.
‘Hellooooooooo? Are we going then?’
Lorali is right. We need a feed. We need real meat. Can’t be doing with nibbling on this fish food when I am training, and now we have to split and share it.
‘All right.’ I talk myself into it. ‘It will give me a chance to finally test out my net again.’ I gather up my recycled hair and bunch it under my arm.
‘Gosh it looks heavy! I didn’t realise how big it was.’
‘My hair was all the way down there. It’s a LOT of hair.’
‘Must’ve taken you ages to make.’
It did. I was so excited to finish it. I’ve been waiting for ages to use it, so why am I now putting it off?
‘I can’t imagine you with long hair.’ She smiles. ‘Or any hair, for that matter.’ I feel stronger with her around me; she buffers the loud, scary voice in my head, behaves as a constant tonic that keeps me in neutral.
I look back at our adventure land. Seeing our little fixtures and inventions to make life easier, our beds made out of the stretched canopy of marquee tents and trampoline skin where we sleep side by side. Why do I feel like I never want to leave?
Suddenly I have my doubts.
The water is rushing and dipping all on its own. I have a wary, terrible feeling in my guts that today isn’t the right time, like something bad is going to happen. I try to anchor myself.
‘It’s quite foggy; why don’t we go out tomorrow instead?’
‘We can’t live on just rays and strawberry laces for ever, Aurabel. We’re only going to the edge to practise using the net. We’re only going to catch a fish and then we’ll come back.’
‘’K.’ I nod but I feel unsure. I feel limp and a bit sick.
‘You don’t have to be afraid,’ she tells me. ‘I’m here, OK? You’re not on your own; nothing is going to hurt you.’
She takes my hand and we swim towards the edge,
away from the metal world, away from what I know.
‘Just remember, we can’t be gone long. We don’t know how long you can be away from the wheel before you need a reboot,’ I remind her, hoping she will change her mind, but she keeps swimming ahead.
‘I’m like an old rusty machine!’
‘Oi! Don’t you knock old rusty machines!’ I joke.
‘It’s true!’ she giggles. ‘I’m completely reliant on them now! Who’d have thought I’d need a fairground to keep me alive!’
‘Neither of us ever really liked the easy route though, did we?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
We swim out, further and further, where the water is colder, thick and almost white.
‘Gosh! The water really is foggy!’ Lorali admits and we curl through the current.
‘Told you!’
‘All right, it’s my fault, sorry.’
‘Don’t suffer! I’m glad to be out – I was the one being a shy hermit crab.’ I feel more in my comfort zone reassuring her than her reassuring me. Still, I don’t feel any better about the whole thing.
‘Sing it again …’ I ask as my tail cranks and parts the water – I am proud that it swims so smoothly. Lorali’s organs drum along musically next to me, her chest thumping with its jagged heartbeat. We sound so loud out in the open, away from our machine friends. Bash. Bosh. Bish.
‘The same song again?’ she asks. And I nod. I love hearing Walker music, so different to ours. She sings this light, delicate song that’s so happy and human and tender. So comforting. I want to sing along but even though I can imagine how to make the sound, my mouth can’t do it. Anyway, it calms my nerves listening to her sing …
My eyes, in the density, start to naturally search for fish. My confidence grows. Game-face on. I feel so pleased to be out in the streaming corridors of the ocean again, thrashing my way around. And just when things couldn’t get any better I see some kill. Beasts that’d be fit for a meal – no, wait …
Aurabel Page 15
