The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  ‘They were going to burn it,’ she said, finally.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you know who burns books?’ She plucked a beetle from her sock, and held it up at eye level. It shook out its wings, preparing to fly; she flicked it, a lazy arc into the sand. ‘The Nazis, that’s who.’

  She said it with such conviction that I laughed. She glared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t compare Alex and Grace to the Nazis.’

  She turned away, angrily, but I saw the hint of a smile curling the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Vee are zee evil Nazi lesbians, and vee come to burn zee books,’ I said, wondering even as I spoke why I was the one appeasing her. Given the circumstances, it seemed a little off.

  She snorted, and the tension broke, the air cooling between us. ‘You are such an idiot.’

  ‘So where’s the book now?’ I said, after a pause.

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll tell Alex,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Sorry, Vivi. Not a risk I’m willing to take.’ She grinned. ‘Unless you want to … you know.’

  I said nothing, pretended to examine a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

  ‘You do – you totally do!’ Two girls passing looked in our direction, sensing gossip.

  ‘Shhhh,’ I said. ‘I do not,’ I added, though the words seemed false, even to me.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Come on, Vi. Be honest. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Fun like last time?’ I said. ‘When you stabbed me, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t stab you,’ she said, laughing. ‘It was an expression of friendship, bonding us together forever.’

  ‘I’d have preferred a bracelet.’

  ‘Stick around long enough, I’ll get you one of those too, oh yin to my yang,’ she said, loosening her hair from a thick knot and shaking it out. ‘Look, have a think about it. But just so you know—’ She scooped up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘I’m going to pick up supplies on Saturday. I’ll be here at eleven if you decide you want to … have some fun.’

  ‘Supplies for what?’ I said after her, but she walked away without a word.

  ‘And so the beautiful Medusa was punished by Poseidon, and transformed into a monstrous thing – a creature who, for her sacrilege, was doomed to turn to stone all those who looked upon her.’ I turned the page, rapt. ‘Thus, she provides the most fertile subject for da Vinci, Caravaggio, and numerous others throughout the history of art: the glint in her eyes the prey turned predator, and back once again. The woman who escapes her place, and is returned to it: her severed head a warning to us all.’

  I ran my fingers across the glossy print, Annabel’s words reflecting the lamps in the reception hall, where I’d been called to collect – so I was told – some attendance-related paperwork on which I would forge my mother’s signature once again.

  ‘Violet – a word, if I may.’ The Dean stood smiling in the office doorway, clubbed fingers wrapped around the door frame like shells: an unwelcome surprise. I’d intercepted the letters sent home, the Elm Hollow crest on the envelope giving their contents away. ‘We have some concerns’, they would begin, and would end with an invitation to a ‘conference’, between my mum and the Dean.

  One becomes used to pointless meetings as an adult: endless sit-downs and talking-tos, each party going through the motions and walking away unchanged. But then, as seems to be the case for my own students, now, a meeting between parents and teachers seemed the ultimate indignity – a shame I wouldn’t shake.

  The Dean, meeting my mum, stained sweatshirt over filthy jeans, stinking faintly, would be embarrassment enough. But if Annabel saw her – saw what I was from, and thus what I might become – I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t stand it, the pitching realization, the flush on Annabel’s pale cheeks as she turned and walked away. It was an encounter I would do anything to prevent.

  I sat on the edge of the old armchair, watching as the Dean settled himself, his fleshy skin visible through his shirt, thin patches of sweat at the seams of his elbows. He smiled, warmly, a practised openness I’d seen before, in the eyes of paramedics, doctors, police: the hollow empathy of people trained to care. There was something unsettling about it. It seemed a little unfair, given the circumstances: before the winter break my grades had been good, though not great. My attendance, admittedly, had been a little haphazard, the temptations of wandering the streets with Robin too much to turn down. Still, it seemed to me I was doing well – or at least, I had been, until recently.

  ‘How are you doing, Violet?’

  ‘Fine, sir,’ I said, flatly, peering down at my hands crossed on my lap.

  ‘Good. That’s good.’ He clicked his tongue three times and leaned forward. ‘Violet, I’m a little concerned. I’ve been looking at your recent grades, and it seems as though you’re falling a little short of our expectations.’ He paused, waiting for me to meet his eye. ‘I know you’re used to a rather less conventional teaching method, so I wanted to check in. Are you finding it hard to keep up?’

  I felt my pride, bruised, swell in my chest, and looked up. ‘No, sir.’

  He licked his lip, tongue poking dry, like a cat. ‘So you’re capable of understanding the work?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I gave a weak smile, a grimace.

  He sighed. ‘Then, Violet, if I may ask … Is there perhaps something else going on that’s preventing you from making the best of your situation?’

  I said nothing, staring him in the eye, hoping wilfulness alone might make him drop the subject. He stared back; I felt a chill, a flash of fear I couldn’t place. My heart picked up its rhythm, rolling in my chest.

  ‘Sir,’ I began, weakly. ‘If I’m in trouble …’

  ‘You’re not in trouble,’ he said, leaning back, chair creaking beneath. ‘I just wanted us to have a little talk, to see what we can do about getting things moving back in the right direction. I assume you want to go to university?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ This wasn’t quite the truth, but nor was it entirely a lie. I’d put little thought into it, though I’d absorbed snippets of conversation from the girls, and from the rest of the school. University, for the students of Elm Hollow, was an inevitability: the goal towards which all of us were to strive. Which made sense, I suppose. For when the end of school came, who in their right mind would choose to stay in the confines of our miserable little town?

  ‘That’s good. Very good. But I’ll be honest, Violet: the best universities will start opening for applications in October. They’ll be looking for a copy of your transcripts and, quite frankly, at the moment you don’t have much to show them.’ He sighed, a little roll of flesh pushing over the edge of his belt. ‘I know it seems dull, but you need to start planning ahead, and get those grades up, if you’re going to apply to any of the top-tier universities. Which, based on your scores before this semester, I believe you’d be more than capable of.’

  I felt a sting in my throat, heat rising in my cheeks. He placed a tentative hand on mine, and I looked away. I was angry at myself for crying, especially in front of a teacher – especially the Dean, with his penchant for rescue well-known. We’d all heard the stories of how he ‘did everything he could’ for Emily, how he’d taken a week of personal leave to help with the search. I didn’t want to be another charity case. Once the first tear fell, however, more followed, until my shoulders shook with sobs.

  He handed me a tissue. ‘Violet, it’s okay to have a wobble from time to time. Everybody does. You’re in a position, now, where you can recover, and nobody has to know.’ I felt the hot dampness of a large hand pressed over mine, the calluses rope-like on his palm. I looked up. ‘Between you and me, we can come up with a plan to get you back on track in no time.’

  I gave a weak shrug, unsure how to respond to this small kindness, afraid I’d cry more if I tried to speak. Get off me, I thought, thi
nking of Tom, loathing the touch of his flesh on mine, the sickening creep of sweat. At last, he let go. I wiped my hand roughly on my skirt.

  ‘So, what can we do?’ he said, pretending not to notice, flicking slowly through a thick book of university codes and courses. ‘Some of our students take on additional projects to prove how committed they are to their studies. Are you doing any extra-curriculars?’

  ‘No,’ I said. He waited. ‘Sports aren’t really my thing.’

  ‘What about music? Band, perhaps?’

  I sighed. ‘I can’t play anything.’

  He leaned back in his chair, tapping his foot against the edge of the desk. ‘Well, how about … Hmmm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I’m working on a book, and I could use a research assistant. It’s not a conventional extra-curricular, mind. But I could write you a glowing reference come admissions time – assuming you’d earned it, that is.’

  I paused. ‘What kind of book?’

  ‘A history of Elm Hollow – or at least, the myths that surround it.’ He tapped a pen on the edge of the desk. ‘Of course, if it’s not of interest, that’s fine. I’m sure we can find something else for you to—’

  I didn’t wait for him to finish. ‘No – no. That sounds perfect,’ I said, dabbing the crumbling tissue around my eyes.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet here on Tuesday evenings – provided your mother won’t mind you being late?’

  I took my cue to stand. ‘She won’t notice, I’m sure.’

  He narrowed his eyes, briefly, chose to ignore the comment.

  ‘One thing I would ask, Violet,’ he said, walking me to the door. ‘If you wouldn’t mind keeping this between us, I’d be very much obliged.’

  ‘No problem, sir,’ I said. He smiled, gums showing, a thread of spit between his lips, and closed the door. I shuddered, shaking off the way he’d looked at me – the gooey, cosy concern, as though he might somehow understand, if I let him simply try – and walked away, books thumping, bruising, in my bag.

  I found Alex and Grace in the smoking shelter, wrapped in thick coats, bare legs turning shades of blue in the winter air. While I’d been in the office, it had started to rain, great drops slapping on the glass roof as I slid in beside them.

  From the moment I said hello, I knew I’d interrupted something, some private conversation of which I was not a part, unless, I thought, with ever-present teenage self-absorption, I was the topic – the thought immediately chilling, sick. The girls said nothing; Grace smiled, while Alex looked down at her knees, one scraped and bruised from a fall.

  ‘What happened?’ I said, pointing to the graze.

  ‘Hockey.’ She shrugged. ‘The usual. Nicky’s a psycho in attack.’

  ‘You look …’ Grace began, gently. ‘You look kind of tired. Are you okay?’

  I wondered, for a moment, whether to tell them what had happened with Tom. To admit that, yes, I’d barely slept, couldn’t eat, was on what seemed something like academic probation. They looked at me, warmly.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Thank you, though.’

  ‘If you ever … Well, you know …’

  We fell silent again, a fog gathering around the Campanile outside, clinging to the gleaming tower clocks. Grace squinted, before looking at her watch. ‘Have you done your Aesthetics homework?’

  I grimaced. ‘I can’t remember what it was. Annabel’s going to kill me.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘She loves you. Lucky thing.’

  ‘Nah,’ I said, though I felt a rush of pleasure at the suggestion, tailed by a knot of shame at the fact that in a couple of hours I’d no doubt disappoint. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘You can have a look at mine, if you want.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  The silence fell again.

  Without Robin – who seemed incapable of allowing a silence, or, more accurately, of allowing one not placed there by design, a dramatic pause for emphasis. I imagined our friendship, the three of us: quiet, calm, and – I supposed, ruefully – pleasantly dull.

  ‘Do you know what Robin’s up to?’ Alex said, finally. I wondered whether she’d been thinking the same thing.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She laughed. ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.’ She peeled open a packet of gum, rolling the stick into a careful loop before placing it on the tip of her tongue. Grace leaned in as though about to bite it away; I blushed, then blushed at the blush itself, ashamed to have been caught looking. ‘I didn’t think you’d tell me, anyway,’ Alex said, a kindness, here, in the absence of a comment – I suppose they were used to it, the only couple in school or, at least, the only one to admit it. ‘But you really don’t know, do you?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to tell me everything,’ I said, flatly.

  ‘Be nice, though, wouldn’t it?’ She stuck her tongue out, white-tipped with gum stretched, veined pink and blue.

  Grace thrust a sheet of paper between us, whipping in the breeze. ‘Homework.’ We stared at her, blankly. ‘For Aesthetics. If you want it.’ I took the paper, tried to make sense of her tiny, creeping hand. ‘And you,’ she said, nudging Alex on the shoulder with two fingers, needling what I imagined was a bruise. ‘Stop interrogating Violet. If she knew, she’d tell us. Wouldn’t you, Vi?’

  The truth was, I wasn’t sure. But I smiled, brightly, and nodded. ‘Yeah. Of course.’ I tucked the homework in my bag, carefully, and turned to leave. ‘I’ll see you in class,’ I said, cheerfully; wondered whether they could hear the hollowness in my tone.

  The wind howled around the mermaid, and Robin, as usual, was late. I fought to light a cigarette against the breeze, my umbrella tucked under my arm, skin damp through my thin jacket. In the grey drizzle, the town seemed even further removed from the lushness of Elm Hollow, this sad, forgotten seaside town, with its dirty beaches, shards of glass, and plastic bags washed up in the muddy sand.

  A seagull landed on the pavement, mere yards away, and looked towards me, eyes dead and yellow. Robin ran towards it, and it flew away, wings beating with soft claps.

  ‘I don’t know if you noticed, but I just saved your life,’ she said. ‘Those things are monsters.’ I laughed, and she grinned. ‘I’m really glad you came.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, awkwardly. ‘I’m … I’m glad too.’

  We wandered along the tattered promenade, past children waving pinwheels and old men eating chips with dirty fingers, the air salty and coarse. We walked by head shops, butchers, and shabby arcades, machines ringing, coins clattering to the sound of whirling, woozy songs; smelled fried doughnuts and the dried-beer tang of boarded-up pubs; down a narrow cobbled street lined with black-and-white buildings, which leaned conspiratorially inwards, creaking with the weight of gravity and decline.

  Two men sat silently on a park bench, sharing a quart of whisky straight from the bottle; a mother pleaded with a screaming child to just, for a moment, just a single second, please stop crying.

  ‘Here it is,’ she said, pausing at a dusty window, a blue, faded door. The wooden sign creaked in the breeze, shaped like a crescent moon. Lunar Rune, it read, in curled, peeling letters. ‘Come on.’ She grabbed my hand, and led me inside.

  As the door closed, the bell’s chime fading, the suffocating haze of incense, sandalwood and lavender, was overwhelming. From the low beams hung knotted dream-catchers and wind chimes, brought to life by our entrance.

  Shelves on every wall were filled with candles, toys, and stones, a faded card by each one explaining its unique mystic qualities. Some hidden speaker hissed with a combination of whale song and monkish chants whose rhythms seemed to rattle my teeth.

  ‘Ladies,’ a voice said.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Robin said, staring at the figure behind me. I spun around. ‘I mean – sorry. Hi, Annabel. Didn’t expect to see you here.’

  She smiled, dimly. ‘I could say the same to you.’


  Robin gave her usual smile, and rocked back and forth on her heels. ‘What are you shopping for, miss?’

  ‘You know I prefer “Annabel”.’ She held out her hand, teasing the wick of a long, white taper. ‘It’s so hard to find candles that last more than a night.’ She looked at me as she spoke; then turned to Robin, who stiffened, following her gaze. I felt a brief, momentary thrill at being first; at being seen, for once, before her. ‘And what brings you girls here?’

  ‘Just browsing,’ Robin said. I wondered if I was imagining the flicker in her voice. She wasn’t usually fazed by Annabel, visibly, at least; yet now, in the moment, she seemed unsure, as though forgetting herself. She rocked backwards again, and turned away.

  Annabel watched, a slow smile appearing on her face, before turning back to me. ‘Well, I shall see you girls on Monday. Enjoy your weekend.’

  She turned from us, abruptly, in the way I remembered from my first conversation with her in the art studio. It was impressive, the way she could end a conversation with a simple gesture, making you feel as though you were barely even there. Making you feel, too, a painful desire to be noticed, for her to turn back again and fix you in her sights: to take you in.

  We walked the store in silence, listening to the rhythmic clang of the old till, the hushed words and rustle of brown paper bags. Finally, the doorbell rang to signal Annabel had left; Robin laughed.

  ‘So weird seeing teachers out of school, isn’t it?’

  ‘Especially in a place like this.’ I closed the book I’d been staring blindly down at, thin pages filled with sketches of women dancing, trees pulling at their hair.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  From the outside, the shop had looked small, unassuming, but the musty front opened on to a wide chamber filled with books, a mezzanine floor above. I passed shelves dedicated to Celtic Myth and Folklore, an entire wall given over to Lore of Creatures (broken down into subcategories for Faeries, Unicorns, Animals, and Beasts (General).)

  In Norse Gods, tan leather books were held in place by rearing wolves carved in stone, and a section devoted to Herbalism grew thick with ranging plants whose sticky leaves left imprints on the spines of every book.