Aurabel

by Laura Dockrill

  I’d be thinking about freedom.

  And before I know it I am scrambling around the ground, trying to find whatever tools I can.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for something to undo that bolt with.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m gonna unscrew this beast. I’m gonna set Nevermind free.’

  I try to ignore Lorali’s shouts as she tells me to stop.

  ‘Aurabel, she will eat us. Eat us all! She will destroy the Whirl; she’ll destroy Tippi. She’s on a chain for a reason! Think about Murray.’

  ‘I am thinking about Murray – that’s why I’m freeing her!’

  Hands working hard, bloody and sore, and the metal of the chain is so old it’s rusted, slicing into my open, gammy, gory wounds and stinging like hell. The rings of metal so stubborn, refusing to come away. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Come on. Come on,’ I curse.

  But she’s heard me. The metal chain, moving – she senses it. Nevermind revolves her body round to face me. She is coming closer. My hands can’t turn any faster.

  ‘Lorali, Lorali, help!’ She’s reluctant but joins me anyway, trusting me enough to help me work the metal, loosening a screw.

  ‘Aurabel …’ she snarls through gritted teeth as she begins to help me unpick the links chaining this beast. ‘You’re the one with the screw loose!’

  Quite funny for her.

  But the beast is snarling, growling, moving; more metal gripping onto her body. Her breath alone could rip your hair off. Lucky I don’t have any!

  Still, turning, turning; working the screw. Nevermind bends up, like she’s about to stomp on us, barking in our faces. I feel her rancid rotting body up against me, so close I can feel the hairs of her nostrils, the warmth of her tongue, the … smell is … bleugh – turn, turn, turn, quick, quick, quick – and the heavy chain comes apart, crustily breaking away from its armour of caked mud, slinking to the ground.

  Nevermind grunts, freezes, her whole expression releasing. Everything changes. Silence. She frowns. She steps away, backwards, footing the broken chain to see if it’s real. If what she thinks has really happened is true.

  ‘What’s she reckon?’ I whisper to Lorali. My head’s so light I could pass out. Nevermind stops the silence with a cry. So desperate, I can’t tell if it’s anger or annoyance or sadness. Maybe it’s fear. Sometimes captured prisoners don’t want to be freed. They don’t know what freedom is like.

  But then she does the oddest thing. Nevermind slowly slides forward, tipping onto all fours, like a building collapsing. We leap back as she drops. Buckling onto her knees, she squats. Then she lies down. Submitting to us. She is grateful. In gratitude. She doesn’t want to hurt us. She wants to disappear. She wants to be invisible.

  Then, she comes up again, moaning, on all fours, crying with relief, shaking her body, heavy, hard. As the chain unravels, so do all the mounds of rubble strapped to her, peeling off from the connecting ties.

  ‘Watch it!’ I scream, and Lorali and I have to cover our heads, running and hiding as the chain peels away from her sides, objects spinning off her and firing through the water. And she pounds softly away, bits slipping off her gently as she is, at last, liberated.

  PART IV

  GATHERING SLOWLY, OLD MOONSHINE

  At Zar’s palace a humble celebration is happening. It is custom, in Mer culture, that the family of the resolved should celebrate the night before a resolution, especially with royal resolutions. Usually this is a lavish spectacle of a party that invites all to rejoice and bless the new child of the waters. But the royals decided against a decadent party. A colossal banquet didn’t seem appropriate with the loss of their daughter last time. And of course, with tomorrow being the day that Zar steps down from the throne, it seems a sad affair – the turn of a chapter.

  Instead, watch how a small family of three quietly sip chilled watercress and smacked sea-cucumber jelly soup from giant seashells. Lobster tail and samphire salad, steaks of fish, fermented whale bread broken. Of course there are cocktails: fizzy honeysuckle from waxy palm-leaf flutes and squid-ink liquor and walrus-milk Martinis to dull the aches. Dessert is bite-sized tiles of sea-salt fudge. A cake too, made from honey from the petrified forest (which is terribly hard to come by; Zar had to hunt for it himself) and rose-petal shrubbery. Bingo, playing butler, welcomes the guests inside the palace. Just Myrtle and Carmine, paying their respects. They bring gifts.

  And just before Kai takes himself to bed he watches his tiny family in the garden from his wonderful view above. Not knowing what to say or how to be. Wanting to put his arms out and say sorry. Sorry that she is gone and I am here. Maybe, Sorry that I am not her – but really wanting to put his arms out and say, What about me? Am I not enough for you to love?

  Nervously he prepares for tomorrow, fantasising about the Whirl outside. What he will be and who he will meet. But for now, it’s just him, his thoughts and the groove of the scar on his chest. An unexplainable circular hole. One that nobody ever mentions. But, funny, nobody else seems to have one. A perfect shiny round scar like his. Just like the wounds on the fish that return home from his father’s scavenger hunts.

  A little way away in my shoulders, beacon moonlight glows inside the Sabre Tower. Sienna raps on the walls of her salvaged’s room before entering with a smile.

  ‘It’s here.’ She comes towards him. She is dressed. The china-white of her shawl clashes against the cream of her hair. ‘Innocence’ today. A good look when resolving a salvaged; an even better one when trying to become a queen. Her tapestry quakes a foggy mist. She looks like a rolling marble, gliding along Victor’s bedroom. ‘Are you ready?’ she hisses softly, when Victor wants to ask the same question to her but thought it out of turn. He has not slept soundly in his room since she pressed herself on his mouth like a gag.

  He stretches his arms. ‘I cannot believe it.’ His ripe muscles, plunging biceps. Just tight, youthful skin wrapped around warm, red natural tissue. Thumping with blood. Alive. He hides himself, plays his body down.

  ‘It’s come so quick.’ Victor cricks his jaw.

  Sienna nods, feasting on his chest, his hip bones poking out like the fins of sharks, heading for the pelvic muscle, thrusting into a perfect V before his tapestry begins. Her crown will live there. She thinks, Let me leave that crown just there, every night, like a cushion to rest my head upon. She plays with her ivory-coloured hair. ‘Just a year ago you were in my arms and now look at you. All grown, ready for your colours, ready to be a merman.’

  Victor sits up from his bed of sponge reef. Yawning. She strokes his arms. ‘My handsome child.’ She kisses him on the head. Her hands grope his neck like she is force-feeding him. She leaves the kiss to linger, hoping the invitation will engage them in a little more, but Victor shuffles out of her grasp. It feels wrong. He doesn’t want it.

  ‘I must get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day, what with the vote.’

  ‘I don’t want you to worry about the vote,’ Sienna feigns. ‘It’s your day tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s our day.’ He smiles politely, not wanting to rile her. Playing nice. How strange it is that she looks so young but appears so old now. Cringing. So out of touch. Sometimes he is afraid of her; sometimes he feels sorry for her.

  ‘It is our day. You’re right.’ She worms a tongue around a filed tooth. ‘The resolution is also our bind. You and I.’ She wants to lick his body. Drink it up. Snort it. ‘And not anybody else. Just us.’ Her gravelly voice hangs in the air like old-lady perfume. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Victor nods. He feels unsettled, unsafe. Something is amiss but he lets a, ‘Yes, just us,’ escape from his pink lips.

  The moon, a golf ball wrapped up in gold paper, falls up, takes a bow and overturns, ruffling my diamonds with yellow.

  A GOOD DAY FOR A GOOD DAY

  Today is a good day for a good day, isn’t it? A parade first; the Mer must rejoice. The whole of the Whirl are invited
to celebrate. Mer dress up with coloured hair: blood red, coin silver, dolphin blue, treasure gold, coral orange, sunshine yellow, weedy green. Tattoos spiral up arms, garish designs of happiness, freedom, union, harmony, gratitude, peace. Jewellery hangs from belly buttons, rocks and ice studs pierce ear lobes, chains and ropes hang from hips, and spikes made of metal and tusks of wood jut through noses.

  ‘I’m surprised they are even waving at us,’ Zar says through a gritted-teeth grin to Keppel.

  ‘You are not a terrible merman, Zar, you’re just a terrible king.’ Zar nods and even manages a smile. Truth is, the Mer feel sorry for him after the death of Lorali. Things, perhaps, will not be quite so bad for him in the aftermath of his leadership. His fall from grace not quite so bumpy. Beard groomed, hair combed, he waves. Proud. If only Lorali were here. It is frowned upon to speak of the dead so he holds her in his heart, where she makes the beats play on time.

  Keppel has wrapped her hair into a long plait. It reaches the bed of me, a twist of yellow golden straw, a spill of honey. The grey bags under her eyes have lifted. The redness is back in her cheeks; the missing sparkle from her eye has returned. They could have done this a lot sooner if only they had worked together. Then again, ‘if only’ is a bloody harpoon of a phrase that only leads to a slow dead end.

  Inside the Sabre Tower, Sienna has a costume change, into a dramatic black netted veil, her neck decorated in black onyx. Black opals and diamonds shroud her fingers and wrists; so heavy with jewellery, this beady-eyed witch, that she would drown again if she were a Walker. Her cream hair is locked up, strung into a face-lifting ponytail. Her eyes are smeared charcoal-black, her cheekbones hollowed in theatrical contour. Her poison mouth is tainted a skull-like black in a heart-shaped kiss. Still, as oil-black and sticky tar-like as her tapestry is this morning, she is a strikingly attractive, ferocious force of a woman that would make the most beautiful of Walkers piss themselves with embarrassment. What can I say – it’s the work of the water.

  Back in Tippi, Murray is getting ready too. ‘Shit.’ She knocks over one of Aurabel’s instruments. A small harp. Its arch crumbles away in her hands, the wood is so rotten. With Victor, feeding power to Sienna, her whole town is behind her, on her side, fighting for Aurabel … so why does it feel like the opposite? As though she is undoing all of Aurabel’s rights? She pulled away from the kiss but she can’t stop the feelings. Or the fact that it happened. And that a bit of her wanted it to. As she finishes sticking stones above her brows, she can almost hear Aurabel’s musical little voice yelling at her to change the mind of the Tips. They thought they were being loyal to Aurabel by sticking Sienna on a throne, but really … Murray isn’t quite so sure that it is loyal. Then again … Murray isn’t even sure if she knows what loyalty is any more.

  But as soon as Murray soaks up the spirit of the Whirl her tune instantly changes. Seeing her folk in delight evaporates her hunch. This is good. This is what the Whirl needs. Yes, Sienna is a force, yes, she is outspoken and fearless and tortured and, yes … a bit scary too – but isn’t that what they need in a queen? Yes, she sees it in the faces of the Tips. That this is exactly what they need. Besides, as much as it hurts her to admit it, Aurabel isn’t around any more. She doesn’t have to live with guilt on her shoulders. She has to move on.

  Murray snakes up to the Whirl with the others in the parade, laughing, rejoicing. Past the palace where she thinks for a moment of that odd quiet thing, Kai. She has never forgotten that day when they spoke through the palace gates. Now he will be getting ready for his big moment, nervously preparing to be exposed and realised. Maybe then he will be able to hang with Murray and Victor and the others. Maybe then he’ll be able to step out of the shadow of his princess sister who he never got the chance to meet. Zar waves at them through the palace window. He throws tiny shells out as tokens of thanks.

  As the parade moves on past the palace, Murray breathes in the relief of change. She is excited to see Victor. She has thought about him a lot; she isn’t exactly sure how she feels about moving forward with him yet … she isn’t ready for that with anybody yet. Especially not a male. Eugh! But he makes her feel good for now. And there is nothing wrong with that. He will be waiting to see her smile from his window as he prepares for the day ahead. And she wants to be there, of course, smiling back. Blessing his resolution, blessing the tower of Sienna …

  Oh, and about that tower of Sienna’s …

  The ground outside Sienna’s tower … it’s not a garden fit for a queen but a graveyard for a heinous villain. Hundreds of silver Selkie skins lie like rolled-up unwanted rugs, their soft skins heaped up like dead bodies in dramatic protest and theatrical, angry rebellion. Murray, staggering at the sight can only clench her teeth and try to swallow the stone of denial down her throat. The Selkies are right. Sienna would make the worst queen.

  Horrified, Murray is in shock. Has Sienna seen this? She rings the great bell of the tower and is granted entry. She is here to accompany her friend to his resolution.

  ‘MURRAY!’ Sienna shrieks when she sees the Tip. ‘How lovely of you to come.’

  Has she not seen the seal skins? Is she not worried?

  ‘I’m sure you’ve seen the Selkie drama outside. Mass suicide. Good riddance, I say. Can’t imagine much of a life for them as Walkers. Still, some never learn.’ She smiles.

  But Murray does not smile back. She tastes a rancid sourness in her throat. ‘Where’s Victor?’

  ‘He’s getting ready, of course. If you don’t mind I’d rather he doesn’t see anybody before his resolution. As you know, it’s a big day. I want him to stay focused on task – no distractions.’

  ‘He asked me to come.’

  ‘Oh, did he? Well, he should know he has to get ready.’

  Murray looks disappointed, annoyed even. She wants to see Victor once more as he is. In case he changes. Murray wants to talk to Victor about the Selkie skins – has he seen them? Are they just going to ignore them?

  Sienna smiles at Murray but it is false. This day is meant to be between Victor and her. Why is this Tip muscling her way in on their big moment? Three is one too many. Sienna looks Murray up and down; she can see she is sickened by the Selkie leathers. She has to fix this.

  ‘Ah, yes, forgive my memory – I have so much going on, what with the ceremony and the campaign. Victor did tell you to come by,’ she lies. ‘He thought you might like to borrow something to wear for the ceremony.’

  ‘He did?’ Murray seems a little unsure; she thought Victor liked the way she dresses.

  ‘I think he thought it would be nice if we all wore the same colours … Come on, don’t be embarrassed. You don’t have to wear Tippi rags.’

  Rags? Rags?

  But it is Victor’s day; if this is what he wants. And Sienna’s clothes are quite a big deal. She has the best accessories and jewellery in the Whirl. It would be pretty amazing to wear her possessions …

  But what if it makes Murray look like one of Sienna’s possessions herself?

  Murray follows Sienna into her chamber. She feels as though she is being knighted as Sienna opens up the door for her, which is usually bolted shut with an iron claw. Inside: designs and fabrics of lace, silk, satin, crushed velvet … beads, bangles, headdresses, veils, materials and textiles, pouring out of the open mouths of trunks and chests. Gawping shells stuffed, dripping like overly iced cakes with elaborate costumes. It is Murray’s dream.

  Sienna lays a shoulder wrap of stones over Murray’s naked shoulders, just to break the ice, to show her that she is free to touch whatever she wants.

  ‘Wear what you like.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ Sienna cracks a grin. ‘Stay in here all day, if you like.’

  Murray is stunned, overwhelmed; she’s never seen such beautiful findings, ever.

  ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll go and finish getting Victor ready and you find something to wear.’

  Murray likes the sound of that. She i
mmediately feels better. Sienna is so misunderstood; all the Mer have to do is get used to her.

  And Murray is left in the chamber of the soon-to-be queen to play dress-up.

  As Murray rummages through the accessories, she wraps in borrowed beads and netting, rope and twining, icicles and jewels. Pins and clasps. Capes and shawls. In Sienna’s many mirrors, Murray can’t help but steal a squeal of excitement as she catches a glimpse of herself, as someone. Dressing, changing, thinking of Victor resolving and what could be. What can she wear for him? What will he think of her? The more she dresses, the more she realises how much she does actually care what Victor thinks about her. She needs to look wonderful. Just like Sienna. But there is so much to choose from, every colour and fabric … the ruffled cuff sleeves and drapes and finger-loop wings …

  And what is this …? Something catches her eye … This most dazzling, beautiful thing from the back of a trunk, shining, pink, blue, illuminating, almost smiling at Murray from the deep … It reminds her of something; she feels an affection towards it, like she’s seen it before, like she has admired it from afar … but more than that, maybe … more like it belonged to her? As she reaches down to touch it she knows as soon as her fingers meet the fabric, immediately, that this is not fabric.

  This is a tapestry.

  It is slashed with scars, sewn up like patchwork. Still twinkling in a sad, faded way, like the eyes of an old lady.

  This is no ordinary tapestry.

  This is Aurabel’s.