The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

by Davina Bell

  But I did it, zigzagged down towards the settlement that I still couldn’t quite believe was actually there, careful not to bump about too much because of that howling-dog pain that was living in Winter now. We got nearer to the lights and the square buildings with their flat-topped roofs and the empty roads that were hardly roads, and it struck me that this was a town—a real town. We passed a warehouse kind of building on the outskirts, and through the half-light I could read the sign—Rod’s Roller Rink—and I had to try so hard not to start crying again, I almost bit a crater into my own tongue. All those years, we had been living across from a gosh-darn rollerskating rink, and shops, and probably a movie theatre that sold hot, buttered popcorn, and other children, other hearts, other stories that could have rescued us from the tight clamp of our little lives.

  I started to whisper to Winter to distract myself from the full horror of that thought, and because, after all this time, the idea of interacting with another human was actually pretty terrifying, even for a Talker like me, and I felt like I needed to practise.

  ‘Look at that moon,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss all those moons we’ve got coming. And the sunsets. It’s worth staying just for those, isn’t it? All peaches and orange and berry and plum.

  ‘If I just keep talking and you just keep breathing, that’s a fair deal, isn’t it. In and out, just like that. You should be proud, how well you’re doing. I’ll be here. You just sleep.’

  It wasn’t hard to find it, a sign on a building with a cross in red. Someone opened the door below it, which I took as a very good omen. It was a lady, full-masked, everything covered and gloved, and only her eyes showing, but I could see straight away the ‘sorry but no’ on that tiny bit of face, even as she took in Winter’s sad grey skin in the light that spilled from her doorway and automatically looked to her back for the rectangular slit that wasn’t there, for the bloom of a bruise. She was gentle but firm in a way that made me want to tell her everything.

  ‘We’re not taking anyone, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We just can’t. Our medical supplies here are virtually non-existent now. I’d love to help, but—’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Just my sister.’

  ‘She has…?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But look here.’

  I lifted my knee and propped Winter up a little so I could reach, gently, gently, into the pouch around her neck. ‘This here—see this vial? This is the cure for The Greying. My father was…He was captured, but he left this. He was the scientist who…He made it. Take it—there’s enough for two doses. Give one to Winter and use the other one to make more. For everyone else. You can clone it, but promise me—promise me you will give one to my sister first.’

  The lady’s eyebrows frowned at the vial glowing green in my hand, so bright and merry against the gloom.

  But she didn’t take it.

  She didn’t believe me, I could tell, and suddenly Winter felt so heavy, so hot against my chest, that precious little bundle of bones.

  My tears dripped down onto her hair and shimmered there like globs of mercury. After everything, it hurt so much to love her, but of course I couldn’t help it.

  I swallowed and licked the corners of my lips, wet and salty. I breathed as deep as I could. ‘Please. You might remember my mother. She was on the radio. Her name was Katherine King.’

  The lady’s hand flew up to her mouth, and there it was, that pain, that horror, even in the slim gap of her eyes through the mask. I knew what she’d seen.

  ‘Oh, child, child,’ she said. ‘Oh, child.’ She held out her arms then, and took Winter as if she were only cotton, and hugged her close. She said, ‘And with your father gone, too. Oh, child, I’m so sorry. How did you survive out there so long?’

  Our mother’s books. Bartleby. Half a lifetime’s worth of Bonne Maman. The silver fishhooks of our love.

  ‘We had hazelnut praline,’ I whispered. ‘For a while.’

  She took the vial between the thumb and forefinger of the hand that was cradling Winter’s head. It looked so fragile there, and yet I knew she wouldn’t drop it. This lady radiated strength. Like a lion. Like a bear.

  ‘Is there anyone left?’ I asked her. ‘Out there? Is there anyone who cares?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ she asked, her eyebrows raised.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Your mother,’ she said, then paused. ‘What they wrote on her chest…’

  ‘Speak no more,’ I whispered.

  She nodded. She smiled. ‘Well, believe you me, they’re speaking now.’

  Winter

  Up on Our Mountain, I turned away from Summer.

  ‘Come,’ she had said. ‘Come back to the cave with Doc and with me. Our bones will make crystals. They’ll be there for always. Solidified light.’

  But I already knew it, that story’s sad end.

  So I walked to the edge and I dropped right over. I blocked my ears from Summer’s gasp.

  Summer

  Turns out Mama was the spark of something huge—a big old match on a haystack of hope. Apparently, people loved her even more fiercely once she was gone. Took to the streets in red reading glasses. Rose up and kicked back with her warm, kind words tattooed on their hearts. Formed chains of their own around the globe, lassoed it in a ring of light.

  There was a branch right here in the settlement. They met at Rod’s Roller Rink.

  They’d been there the whole time.

  Who knew if the world would start turning again—who ever really knows anything? But if it did, at least now there’d still be people to throw up their hats and cheer and fight on. And Winter would be one of them.

  So that was it. My work was done.

  ‘And not you? What about you?’ said the lady in the mask. ‘You could stay—we could find a place for you here. They would make an exception, I’m sure of it.’

  I gazed down at Winter, who looked so like my mother when she slept. And suddenly I could see it all so clearly.

  How she had moved a whole mountain, all on her own. How, when she was better, she would need space to run. How you can’t put a butterfly back in a chrysalis.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be fine out there,’ I said. ‘I have strong mountaineering instincts. Please, please, just remember the vial. Please hurry.’

  I kissed Winter’s forehead, buried my face in her hair and breathed in.

  She smelled the same as always, like sun after rain.

  ‘Winter, it wasn’t your fault,’ I whispered next to her ear. ‘They wouldn’t want you to blame yourself. They forgive you, Mama and Pops—Walter, too. They never stopped loving you. Neither will I. Cross my gosh-darn heart.’

  Winter

  I crouched on a ledge, like Edward had showed me. He had showed me so many wonderful things. Whoever he was, whatever he was, couldn’t change how I’d changed just being with him.

  From there, I can see the tiny church my father built.

  Saint Katherine’s, it’s called. After my mother.

  I can see the shadow of our seaplane, sunk off the coast.

  The forest where my father died.

  The misty lights of another life.

  The breeze is cool as the night falls slowly.

  My stomach rumbles.

  ‘Pops?’ I whisper. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The whole world rustles.

  I stand in the wind.

  I smile. I feel pure.

  Summer

  I walked back up the mountain for who knows how long, because my mind felt like a big puff of fairy floss and I couldn’t tell if an hour had passed or a hot second.

  ‘Is this real?’ I asked myself. ‘Is anything real?’

  And of course that made me think of The Velveteen Rabbit, who is basically the biggest sweetheart who ever was, and his conversation with the Skin Horse, which I guess is a horse with no hair, and that is not something I’d like to meet in a shady alley on a rainy Sunday, but the rest of it is A-plus.

  The Skin Horse
tells the Rabbit that being Real (capital R) isn’t about how you start out. How it’s what happens when a kid loves you—cuddles-you-to-death-a-bunch-of-times loves you. REALLY loves you. That’s when you’re finally Real.

  And then the Rabbit asks if it hurts, which I think is a very good question, coming from a rabbit.

  ‘Sometimes,’ says the Skin Horse. But then he says that you don’t mind being hurt if you’re Real. It’s kind of part of the package.

  As I started climbing back up that mountain, all weary, I wondered, Was I Real now? Had I become Real?

  Because every part of me hurt for Winter, Hurt (capital H), and yet somehow I didn’t mind, not one bit, because now she was free.

  ‘Is velveteen the same as velvet?’ I once asked my mother.

  ‘I think it’s a velvet-sateen blend,’ she said seriously, but I could hear the wink in her voice. ‘I would advise a cold wash only for that kind of fabric hybrid.’

  ‘You’re tricking,’ I said. ‘You don’t really know, do you?’

  ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘First one to heaven gets to ask the author.’

  As I hiked alone back the way we’d come, they bubbled up hard, those memories I’d pushed down these past years. Her reading glasses with the red frames. Crosswords at breakfast. Honey crumpets. Christmas-tree ornaments. Her palms on my cheeks. A brush through my hair.

  It felt so nice to remember. Like leaning back onto the wind.

  ‘Why did I do that?’ I asked the stars. ‘Why did I make myself forget?’

  I was trying to get back to the cave, the cave with the ice crystals, but every now and then I stopped mid-step with the thought that it was a dream, that cave, or something from a book. I don’t mean Doc and Peekay and The Power of One. I mean another story. Had Winter written it?

  I felt her all around me, Winter; felt her in my breath and on my back. How it hurt from carrying her all that way, my back. How it ached tightly.

  And then I was sitting on the ground, and because I couldn’t remember how I got there, I laughed, and because I couldn’t remember why I was laughing, boy, I laughed some more. And then I ate an apple, and that apple was the moon.

  That was when Mikie came to the party, gliding on his belly through the snow, pulling up beside me with an impressive powdery swish.

  ‘Hey, Summer,’ he said gently, ‘may I look at your skin?’

  I went right up close to his big old eye, but he shook his head because my face was covered in frozen tears that made it hard for him to look me over properly. So I wriggled my arm out of the coat I wasn’t wearing, but wasn’t the light too gloomy to really tell what colour it was?

  ‘Everything off,’ he said.

  So I pulled my clothes over my head. And though all around me was snow, my naked little self was in flames. I put up my arms and wiggled my fingers, watching orange fire shooting out against the orange-purple sky.

  ‘Look, Mikie!’ I said, and turned a cartwheel. Over and over I turned, a burning tumbleweed against the plains of crinkly white.

  And when I had finished, I sank to my knees. My dragon breath was tiny clouds.

  I put my hands slowly up onto my back and that was where the fire was.

  I gulped back the pain.

  I felt the tender web of bruises there.

  I stood up and walked over to that gorgeous whale. It took so much longer than cartwheeling. Was I ever weary.

  ‘Mikie?’ I whispered. ‘I’m trying to get back to that cave.’

  ‘Couldn’t be easier, kid,’ he said. ‘Jump on my back.’

  ‘I’m not wearing any clothes,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Mikie.

  As I lay there, at the mouth of that big old crystal cave, I thought about Charlotte, the dear old spider in Charlotte’s Web.

  How, when her work is done, when she’s weaved the magic that will save dear Wilbur the pig from being made into bacon, her time on earth is over.

  And though it’s Sad (capital S), perhaps that’s the beauty of the world: to have lived, however long or short, and weaved some magic for someone else.

  But what was the magic I’d weaved for Winter? My love? Her freedom? A future? Our past?

  ‘Don’t overthink it, kid,’ was Mikie’s advice from outside the opening.

  ‘But isn’t this the time to nail down the point of my existence?’

  ‘Nah. Plenty of time for that where you’re going.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Yup,’ he said.

  ‘Say, Mikie?’ I asked. ‘The ending isn’t the story, is it.’

  ‘Nope,’ he agreed. ‘There’s so much more to it than that.’

  ‘Mikie?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Pretty?’

  ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘It’s okay, kid. Just scooch on over. Rest in me.’

  Winter

  From there I rolled and I slid and I scrambled.

  I woke up with skinned knees not that far from the bottom.

  The sky was navy, the blue mist had gone.

  I started to run. Down the mountain, over rocks. I ran until there was nothing but me and my breath—no Edward, no Summer, no mother, no father, no Pete and no Walter. No future. No past.

  Someone found me on a path. My feet had no soles. My heels bled trails of crimson dots.

  They carried me, that someone. They said it wasn’t hard. I was thin with the hurt that it took me to live.

  I woke up. Time had passed. A drip in my arm. No part of me was still a child.

  Summer

  Not to get too whimsical about my demise, but I pretty much ended up just like Judy in Seven Little Australians.

  We both slipped away just after sundown. And, sure, she had seen the sun that same day, whereas ours had been gone for a while by then. And yes, she had people all around her—all those little Australians kissing her lips and caressing her hair.

  But I was not alone.

  As I climbed into a floating hammock made of stars, Mikie was there. He swam alongside me—the whole way he was with me as I rose up and above and away. Boy, was that journey long. And arched above my head was a sign made of lights, flashing slowly, slowly, like a big old lighthouse: GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!

  When I got here, I yawned so deep I sucked in the whole sky and breathed it out again, but nobody seemed to mind.

  And then, I’m not kidding, they gave me wings, actual wings, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that they are Huge (capital H). ‘Proportionate to the love you gave on earth,’ they told me when I asked about the sizing, and they sounded kind of bored with the question, truth be told. At the start I could hardly lift my arms but, hoo boy, you should see me now. Perhaps you already have.

  Now I bet, I just bet you can’t wait to hear what it’s like, this place, and I don’t blame you. Not one bit.

  But lately I’ve realised there are some things that don’t need to be crushed with all the world’s words.

  Which is why I like it here, where it’s quiet and still and cool and white. Like winter.

  Winter

  I’m here now, and safe. The sheets are white. They feed me sugar water. I drift and grow bigger. I write all this down. At night time, the bed rails glow, silver as fish.

  They talk about coping, survival, our choices. When they think I am sleeping, they read it, this journal. ‘How real was Summer,’ they ask, ‘to you?’

  Edward hasn’t been. I still dream that he is coming.

  And Summer isn’t with me.

  Perhaps she never was.

  Summer

  Now I have finished this story, I will go looking.

  For my mother and my father—and for Ponyboy Curtis.

  Perhaps I’ll introduce them if the moment’s right.

  When I’ve found him, I will tell him, ‘Just FYI, Ponyboy, if I were you I’d think about cutting your hair sometime in the next century. Because one day, some day, my sister is coming to meet you and she isn’t into ponytails. But I kid you
not, by the time she gets here she will have saved the world and, hoo boy, she is all you’ve ever ached for.’

  Winter

  Today I asked for a scone with jam.

  The jam was bright peach, like the beat before sunrise.

  I looked at that jam and I thought, Yes, I will.

  As I ate that scone, my stomach was sore with the newness of it. I closed my eyes. My hands shook. I fought with my breath. But the end of the world wasn’t bigger than love. At least, not for me.

  So I chewed. And I turned my face to the stars. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ they replied in the voice of a man.

  I opened my eyes.We looked at each other with wonder.With love.

  ‘Walter?’ I asked. ‘Is that you? Are you real?’

  ‘Are you?’ he asked back with crinkled-up eyes.

  I smiled. ‘I guess. Hey—Walter?’ I asked. ‘How do I do this?’

  He leaned across to the window, pulled open the curtain. Pink dawn spilled over the turning world. ‘You just keep on living,’ he said to me kindly. ‘You just keep on living till you learn to live again.’

  ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger—something better, pushing right back.’

  Albert Camus

  With special Thanks (capital T)…

  To the whole smart team at Text, and most especially to my talented and ever-patient editor, Alaina Gougoulis, for taking a gamble on this very strange book and making it the best it could possibly be. Alaina, what a gift it has been to work with you.