The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

by Davina Bell

  ‘So is this what love is?’ I asked them.

  ‘It is more,’ said the stars. ‘But that is the start. Oh, Winter, you wait.’

  Summer

  We didn’t have any books that, like, specifically advised what to do when your identical twin sister falls in love with a bear with Real Murderous Potential. But as I was looking through the piles for one, I came across Matilda, that short, minxy genius, and thought to myself, well, her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, isn’t too far off some kind of unpredictable, bloodthirsty grizzly, and I took myself and that book to the bottom of the bell tower stairs, and suddenly I was eight again in our bedroom in Tokyo and desperately trying to move things with my eyes, and getting a headache with all that staring and straining, but never quite giving up the hope that there was a Matilda tucked in me, and that my little could defeat all the evils and injustices of big.

  We had guns. Of course we did—duh, my father was a wanted fugitive. We had guns, and I’m not talking BB guns or antique rifles—I’m talking about the kind that could have split the rib cage of a bear, or popped his head into unstrained raspberry jam. The trouble was that I had seen Pops shoot one of those guns, and I knew that the kickback in them was enough to break the shoulder of a pretty weedy fifteen-year-old girl who hadn’t been on the yoghurt regularly.

  I had some serious doubts about lassoing that bear in a noose, given that he was now almost twice my height and I’d seen him arm wrestle. And then there were the traps. We had all kinds of traps—Pops had flown them in with us, and some were deer-sized and some were squirrel-sized and some were somewhere in the middle, and truth be told I hadn’t thought about them much till now, but I pulled them out and polished them up. And of course the biggest were the bear traps, two of them, and the reason I wasn’t so crash hot about using them was that, boy, they looked mean, concrete-munching mean, and, let’s face it, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that I could end up mashing myself, even though Pops had showed us seventy-seven times how to set them safely, but it was usually Winter who paid attention to those boring sorts of details.

  And so I chose The Knife—I had to, and don’t think I didn’t feel sick as I took it out of its leather-pouch home, because it wasn’t too far from what a sushi chef uses to gut those fish that are poisonous unless you slice and dice them in a certain way with a blade that is made of, like, diamonds, and, to be honest with you, it made me feel a little queasy, the damage it could do, and had done already to some poor someone, maybe a few someones, and perhaps that is why I was so weird about the forest, if I’m being really honest, which I swear I’m trying to be.

  I planned it, drew diagrams in the dirt with my toe of how I’d plunge the blade—like so—into his giant lung. I imagined how it would whistle like a dropped bomb as the air whooshed out. And through and through his chest and out the other side, if the blade would even reach that far, because by now, of course, that bear’s trunk was a big old wine barrel and, good grief, how did I even think I could? How does anyone? And how, how could I do that to Winter—literally slice through the one thing she had ever had all to herself?

  But every time I faltered, I just had to think of all the things I’d lost, and the only things I had left, which were basically Winter and the memories of our childhood, and how I couldn’t lose either of them without dying myself. In my defence, I hope it’s crossed your mind that there is a lot of meat on a bear, and I’ll have you know I was quite the dab hand with chipotle and our Little House in the Big Woods smokehouse. But how I’d ever get Winter on board with that, with chewing on his big old ribs, well, that was a challenge I was still working on when the world stopped spinning. The fortnight I’d promised Winter was almost up, and Edward hadn’t caught anything except her heart—not a squirrel or a tiny forest bird or any woodlands creature you could skewer and roast on a flame till it was crunchy. Boy, was I sick of drinking broth and watching Winter eat nothing but air. Of seeing Edward grow broader each day on her rations. Of fading into a skulking shadow girl, so brittle with envy I could have snapped myself into pieces. I was Oliver-Twist hungry, Dickensian mean.

  For almost two weeks I followed them everywhere, chased the ribbons of rainbow that swirled behind them, a trail of love. I watched as they floated each evening in the beaded light of that glowing ocean pool; I shivered on the shore in the hard cold of midnight. Wilting and hungry. Lonely and sad. I was everywhere they were, hidden round corners, flat under bushes, trailing behind them at dawn and at moonrise, trying to be silent and frantically watching. It’s only now, from up here, I can see the irony: after all that we’d run from, I had turned into a spy.

  I watched Edward watch over Winter as she slept, my heart in my throat as he bent over her, his muzzle so close to the line of her neck. Then he would nose her so gently she’d hardly even wake, just reach out her arms towards him in sleepy love. I would breathe again, feel the pump of hot stress rush down to my toes.

  All day my body was taut like a spring, straining for the chance to swoop in to the rescue. But each time I was sure there’d be blood and murder and animal lust, there was nothing. Honeyed, ursine tenderness. Hours, days lost in manic surveillance. Things buzzing round the edges of my vision, small gnats of exhaustion—locusts, maybe. One night I fell asleep in a bush of brambles on the edge of the meadow. I woke up. They were gone. I was shredded and aching.

  The next morning I chased them right into the forest. A golden-green cave. Dappled light and no sky. The trunks of the trees dark and sombre, like a field of huge crosses. Quiet on quiet.

  Edward and Winter strode out with no path. They flitted so easily into the distance. My sprint was their lope and my breath was a rasp. I ran just long enough to lose the way out.

  ‘Hey, guys!’ I called, but they didn’t stop.

  Now every direction was trees upon trees. My heart sped up. Each shadow was a man hanging from a noose. I spun round and round, searching for a trace of myself—of who I had been a minute ago. I stopped when I realised my eyes were still shut. I struck out in one direction, ran, tried another. There was nothing to show me I wasn’t just going in circles. The view was the same whichever way I turned. The spots in my eyes. I would die here—or worse, I would live forever in this infinite cage.

  ‘Mama!’ I cried as I sank to my knees. ‘Mama,’ I sobbed—truly pitiful sobs. I lay down in a ball.

  ‘Not like you to be so glum,’ said someone old, and gruff, and kind.

  I looked up and there was Walter, blue eyes and white whiskers.

  ‘Come, young banshee,’ he said so gently. ‘Quit your wailing and follow me.’

  He led me out, all the way home. Boy oh boy, did I talk up a storm. As I trotted behind him, I told the whole story: the bear and the love and the starving and me.

  ‘Now listen here,’ he said as we came to the river, crossed over the stones. ‘You quit all that gawking. Do you hear me? That’s nobody’s business ’cept him and hers. Chop some wood. Stretch your legs on the beach. Count up your rations. Make a plan. Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.’

  ‘But that bear, he’s—’

  ‘No buts, no nothing,’ Walter said firmly. ‘And have another look out the back of that church—a proper look, not just flitting about. I know you and your slapdash ways. There’ll be snacks to be had, for sure.’ He reached out to ruffle my hair.

  ‘Are you real?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you?’ he asked back.

  I smiled. ‘Good question. Hey—thanks for…you know.’

  ‘See you, kid.’ He turned and strode to the ocean, right into the mist of the pretty old sea. He disappeared like the just-waking wisp of a dream.

  Winter

  Edward built a glass-bottomed boat. In less than two days. Wooden seats. A set of oars. He could build anything out of anything. How did he know? He could do so many things. He just shrugged when I asked.

  He lugged the boat halfway up Our Mountain.

  I met him there m
id-morning, up high where the river split in half. Pete came too. It didn’t seem right to leave him behind.

  Edward said we’d go rollerskating. ‘You’ll see,’ he told me. ‘There’s so much you don’t know about the other side of the mountain.’

  I ran the whole way. I had brought nothing with me. Only fireflies in my rib cage, buzzing. I had expected to be ripped down the middle, like a sheet, from leaving. But here I was, more whole than I had ever been.

  ‘Free,’ the stars whispered from where they hid behind the day. ‘You are free.’

  ‘Hush,’ I said back. ‘She will hear.’

  The river was cold and the day was bright. Edward carried me across the water on his shoulders. I was lighter now. Like feathers, like dust.

  He steadied the boat. I stepped onto the glass that I don’t think was glass. ‘Will it break?’ I asked, then wished I hadn’t.

  ‘As if I’d ever risk that,’ he said. ‘As if I’d ever risk you.’

  The wood was warm to lie on. The spray flew up like sparks. We watched it slip by below us, that secret world of the riverbed. Then we lay on our backs. My head fitted his shoulder as if they’d been carved. The sun on my eyelids. My hand on his stomach. I slept.

  When I woke, his fingers were circled around my wrist. His pointer and his thumb.

  He looked at it, that circle, and in his face was pain. Like he’d hooked a beautiful silver fish and didn’t know how he could throw it back.

  He looked straight into my eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I whispered.

  He swallowed. ‘I thought…I thought I could predict anything. And then there was you.’

  He kissed the patch of skin between the side of my eyebrow and the line of my hair. I had never thought about it, that small patch. But now it was a desert in moonlight, a landscape.

  In time he sat up.

  ‘Is it really glass?’ I asked. ‘The bottom of the boat?’

  ‘No, I think it might be a type of plastic. Your dad had heaps of incredible building supplies out the back—stone cutters and all sorts. Really great stuff. What was he making, anyway? What…What are you guys even doing here?’

  The words came up through my throat like a puff of bees. When I finished, I wondered how I’d kept them down so long.

  As the river carried us, I told him about our lives before. The church with the tiny tower. The whole truth of our father. I told why and how. The things we were guarding, the things we had hidden.

  He listened—with his whole face. Tucked it all safe away so I didn’t have to carry it. And it felt so nice. Like leaning back onto the wind.

  I told him this.

  When Summer and I were eleven, my mother died. We had to leave Tokyo quickly.

  We didn’t get the chance to find a white coffin. My mother loved white.

  Edward didn’t say anything. But he looked over at me and whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Winter.’

  I knew what he was thinking: The Greying. The back bruises. The sick skin. The pits. The bulldozers that bent people up, like plasticine. The huge bags of powdered lime. I knew what he was thinking because of how I’d said it: Summer and I were eleven. My mother died. We had to leave Tokyo quickly. He thought that my mother was sick. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t how.

  My mother had a radio show. It was on each weekday at noon.

  Her voice was warm. Like she cared what you liked in your sandwich.

  She interviewed someone each lunch hour. A celebrity, an everyday person. A president one day, a postman the next.

  They ended up loving her. You could hear, and we did.

  They would tell her things—even the rock stars. The shape of their mother’s jewellery box. A particular bowl of macaroni as the sun set.

  In the supermarket, people stopped her. They would hear her ask us about cheese, and recognise her voice. They would say she made things better. That the hour with her was their only comfort. That the words she spoke were the only truth left.

  She was always kind. You knew they’d go home and feel proud as they told.

  As I ate my sandwich each weekday at school, I’d imagine the whole world was pausing to listen. I felt proud that she knew the fillings I liked.

  ‘Wait a sec, Pretty.’ Edward sat up, his face intent. He leaned forwards. ‘Wait wait wait. Your mother…’ He whispered, ‘You don’t mean she was…?’

  And I felt that I could. I said, ‘Yes, that was her.’ I said, ‘Yes.’

  His eyes filled up and shimmered. Pete leapt up to lick his cheeks clean. Edward patted his head. He started to cry.

  Because he had seen my mother die. The whole world had seen her die. I had seen it too, and Summer.

  I had thought that I wanted to talk about it. For so long that was all I had wanted. Summer would never.

  But now I felt my chest start to ache that hot, sick ache. Lights prickled round the edge of my sight. I started to shake.

  ‘Please?’ I said. ‘Please forget I told you. Please don’t ever bring it up. Please don’t say anything to Summer. She doesn’t…She can’t. Please.’

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, but there were tears in his voice. ‘I won’t mention it. But I can’t forget it. I’m so sorry, Winter. I’m so very, very sorry.’

  We didn’t talk much after that.

  ‘Here,’ he said after a while as we turned into a cove. ‘Here is good.’

  He jumped out to drag us up onto the bank. Pete leapt out to snap at some flies.

  ‘Summer will hate that I told you all that,’ I said. I could feel cotton in my mouth. Her foot between my shoulderblades, crushing.

  Edward stopped pulling and leaned his forearms on the edge of the boat, right up close to me, his feet on the stony bottom.

  ‘Listen here, Winter. If I only give you one thing in life, let it be this. You need to move out from under that rock or I swear to God, you won’t survive. You won’t.’

  I could feel the truth of his words as they landed, scrunched-up paper arcing across the room straight into a bin, first try.

  ‘But I love Summer,’ I said, and that was true, too. ‘Without her, I’m…’

  ‘Don’t you even fucking say it,’ said Edward loudly. ‘You are everything, all on your own.’

  I felt tears in my eyes. The bridge of my nose tingled. ‘Don’t swear at me,’ I whispered.

  Edward sighed, but it was not a mean sigh.

  Or maybe that’s how I remember it now.

  I slipped off the boat. He dragged it onto the shore in rough, sharp pulls. I heard the not-glass scrape the stones. The riverbed pressed against my feet. ‘Toughen up, princess,’ I heard Summer say into my ear. ‘Those wacky guys in India walk across burning coals barefoot all the time, no big deal. You’ll be fine—just use your big old brain. And FYI, I’m still mad at you, but I’ve got so much to tell you, you wouldn’t believe. Get back here already. I’m lonely. I miss you.’

  The water was freezing. My calves started to burn with the cold.

  ‘Edward?’ I whispered. ‘I don’t know how to rollerskate. Please… Will you take me back home?’

  Summer

  The after-sunset sky was all plum jam and marmalade. The first sprinkling of stars was out, and I’d been back a while from gathering kindling and was mooching on a pew reading The Graveyard Book, thinking about ghosts and dreaming of a giant steak sandwich in that way you do when you’ve had limp leaves for lunch. I hadn’t been to the back of the Emporium yet. ‘Coward,’ Walter said to me with a wink and a smile, and I wondered for the zillionth time if I had somehow conjured him up to lead me out of the forest. Or if he truly was a ghost now—if that was actually, like, a thing.

  At the opposite end of the long church seat, Winter read, too—the book by Obama about love. Boy, did the whole world cry after that caper with him being strapped to the tanks. Us especially. What a guy and what an end.

  Our feet were almost touching in the middle, and the air between us was a big old cloud o
f politeness, both of us doing our best to pretend that there had only ever been peace. Two weeks was up—it had been for a while—but I didn’t mention the salmon. The winter settled in.

  And now that I had stopped chasing after Winter, she came back to me from time to time, like a baby bird not quite done with the nest. Honestly? It was kind of a relief not to have to follow them everywhere—to trust that if that bear was really up for snacking on my sister, he would have put her on crackers and got it over with by now. And if his love was true, well, I guess it would have happened sometime, and better that she fell in love with a beast than some mansplainer who was deep in love with his own opinions and made her attend all his basketball games, even the lame ones at pre-season training.

  They were out in the forest more than ever these days, but they always came back, and I guess I just had to trust in that or I’d go properly crazy. I had to trust in Walter. Calm down. Make a plan.

  It was triply lucky that Winter wasn’t out running with Edward today, because who knows if she would have survived out there—even tucked inside we barely made it through the jolt when the Earth stopped spinning. Yes, I mean literally.

  When the world stopped turning, we were thrown into the air like frisbees. The howl as it ground down was so loud and desperate and long that I thought it had come from the part of me that had missed Winter all these weeks she’d been off with Edward, curling through the trees like steam. It was a shriek like gears stuck and crunching, an arm in a woodchipper, suddenly all pulp and bone. As we lay on the church floor, curled up like commas and sore from the bang, it went on and on, and then we could hear a wind whipping up—slowly at first, but it spiralled into a gale that would have ripped a toupee off a school principal’s head as he was walking through the Science-block car park, even one that had been stuck on with ultra-strong superglue because he was so paranoid about slippage. Boy, was it loud.

  When eventually the howling stopped and the wind died down a little and we could stand up without fear of being flung against the altar, Winter didn’t run off to find that bear, who I guess was having one of his luxurious seasonal naps. She just rubbed her elbow where it had been slammed against the pew and looked at me with knowing in her face, and we didn’t need words. We had a vague clue what had just happened, and we were probably the only two living people in the world who did—three, if you included our father, but who knew if he was even in the world anymore?