The Heartsong of Wonder Quinn

by Kate Gordon

  Georgiana ran away.

  Wonder held Mabel’s hand again, as she breathed in and out, in and out, more and more quickly.

  ‘Not enough air,’ gasped Mabel.

  Wonder sat with Hollowbeak on the wall by the school gate.

  All the other girls had filed into the hall already.

  Mabel was not there.

  Mabel was late.

  Mabel was not coming.

  The afternoon before, when Georgiana pushed her, when she fell, when she couldn’t get air, Ms Gallow had come running. She had pulled Mabel away from Wonder without a word and carried her off down the hallway.

  Wonder had watched as Mabel’s parents ran in through the gate.

  Mabel’s father had cradled her in his arms, like she was a baby, and Wonder realised, for the first time since that first day, how small Mabel really was. She seemed so big when she was awake, when she was talking and laughing and making jokes.

  An ambulance had arrived moments later, and Mabel and her dad had disappeared inside.

  I told you she would leave, Hollowbeak said to Wonder.

  Wonder did not reply.

  She knew the truth. She felt it. Mabel was gone but Mabel would come back. She knew and felt it, deep in her bones. Mabel was still there, still tethered to her – her heart tied to Wonder’s with an iron chain.

  Hollowbeak stroked her cheek with his feathers. It felt nice. But not as nice as when Mabel held her hand.

  Wonder sat in her room.

  The candle was burning down, down, and the shadows made pictures on the wall that looked like hand puppets acting out memories.

  Of Wonder. Of her mother. Of both of them, here, in this room, in this very spot, watching shadows on the wall by candlelight.

  Holding hands.

  Wonder could still remember the last time they did that. It was always the time she felt the safest – when her mother was holding her hand. As if all was right with the world. As if no bad things could ever happen.

  As if nobody could ever die …

  Wonder didn’t see her mother die.

  It was too bright in the room. It blinded her. And then it was too dark, from all the smoke.

  It was loud, too, but she heard her mother over the noise. She didn’t scream and she didn’t cry.

  She sang.

  ‘My small, precious hatchling,

  In your nest, tucked in tight,

  Flutter down your eyelids

  And bid the stars goodnight …’

  And she sang it again and again and again, until she …

  Stopped.

  Wonder didn’t see her mother die. She only heard it when she stopped.

  She didn’t scream and she didn’t cry.

  She felt heavy. The ceiling fell down around her and she was so heavy she couldn’t move.

  She was heavy, still, after all this time.

  And she thought, at the time, If only I could cry. My tears would put out this fire and we would all be saved.

  But she could not cry and she could not put out the fire.

  She couldn’t save anyone.

  Wonder walked the corridors of Direleafe Hall. She sat on its rooftop and on its emerald grass. She sat in her chair in Ms Gallow’s classroom and she lay in her attic bed, and hours passed and then days and none of it felt real.

  Mabel was gone. Mabel was gone.

  Wonder did not sleep.

  Wonder did not smile.

  Wonder barely listened when Hollowbeak spoke to her.

  She lost herself in books, in the back of the library. They were her only comfort.

  The Silver-eyed Girl

  The Winged Heart

  And she found a new one, about a girl who was a warrior, who saved the entire world. Wonder tried to imagine what that would be like. To be able to change things like that. To be brave like that. She tried to imagine herself dressed in armour – roaring, fighting.

  When she was with Mabel, it felt possible. She felt possible.

  Her mother had always told her that she should find her own power within herself, that she should love herself first, and that no other human should make her feel lesser or more.

  But Wonder imagined herself as a sputtering candle – years and dust and greyness had nearly put her out. Her power and love for herself had dimmed.

  But then a girl with sparks in her eyes had come and she had touched her, and Wonder had felt it – for the first time in many years – the possibility of light.

  When Mabel was with her, she did feel infinite. She felt like she could roar.

  But Mabel was not here, now.

  Could Wonder still roar, without her?

  Maybe.

  Maybe she would try, soon.

  But in the meantime, she read about girls who could, and about all manner of other things: dragons and monsters and demons and angels and all of the world.

  She read for Mabel, who wanted to read everything. She read in the archives room, while her candle flickered. She even read in her lessons.

  She only stopped, sometimes, to watch Ms Gallow’s writing waft across the blackboard like smoke. She copied some of the quotes into her workbook, with Mabel’s blunt pencil.

  Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

  ’Tis the wind and nothing more!

  That’s from Poe’s ‘The Raven’, Hollowbeak whispered. He was hiding below Wonder’s desk.

  ‘I know,’ said Wonder, and she thought of Mabel and her riddle about the writing desk.

  Stop thinking about her, said Hollowbeak. She isn’t coming back.

  But Hollowbeak was wrong and Wonder was right, because Mabel did come back.

  She came back after an entire week.

  And she brought with her a large mince pie.

  Georgiana Kinch sat with Alice and Jemima and Amelia and Eloise in the most coveted spot in the schoolyard.

  The steps that led to the main entrance were out of bounds to all but Georgiana’s group before school, at morning break and at lunchtime.

  Everyone knew that.

  Even though Mabel was new, she knew that.

  That’s why, on the morning she arrived back at Direleafe Hall, she went straight there.

  Her parents waved her goodbye from the school gates. They watched as she marched into the schoolyard and made sure she was safe. They called out to her, ‘We love you.’

  Mabel waved at them and called back, ‘Go now. I mean it. I’m fine.’

  As they walked back to their car, Wonder saw they never took their eyes off Mabel. Wonder didn’t, either. She stared, unblinking, down at her friend, and her smile was as big as the sky.

  Mabel’s shoulders were back. Her chin was high. She looked straight ahead. Straight at the steps to Direleafe Hall.

  ‘You were wrong,’ Wonder told Hollowbeak.

  I wasn’t wrong, he replied. It’s only that I wasn’t right, yet.

  As Hollowbeak huffed and flounced away, Wonder watched as Mabel walked up to Georgiana. She watched as Mabel reached into her leather knapsack. She watched as Mabel extracted the pie.

  Wonder’s heart stopped as she remembered the line that Mabel had written:

  Throw a pie.

  She watched as the smirk on Georgiana’s face slowly melted away.

  And she remembered how Mabel had picked the lock and taken the letter, and Wonder knew that Mabel could be bad, that Mabel could throw a pie in a mean girl’s face, and that maybe Georgiana deserved it, but …

  She found that she didn’t want Mabel to do it. Because Mabel wasn’t nasty and throwing a pie was.

  And Mabel held the pie high.

  And Georgiana flinched.

  And Mabel drew her arm back …

  And Wonder could not breathe.
>
  And then …

  Then, Mabel looked up at Wonder and Wonder shook her head. No!

  And Mabel … stopped.

  She stopped and said something to Georgiana that Wonder could not hear, then she threw the pie down so it smashed on the grey cobblestones.

  And then she walked away towards Direleafe Hall, towards Wonder.

  Wonder skittered down the shingles. She leaped through the sky – so wide and vast and intensely, stubbornly grey – into the tree that Hollowbeak loved. She skipped through the branches onto the soft, dewy grass, and she ran, faster than she ever had before, all the way over to her friend. She wrapped her arms around her and she whispered in her ear, ‘I missed you, I missed you, I missed you.’

  ‘I did the pie,’ said Mabel. ‘I threw the pie.’

  ‘But not at Georgiana,’ Wonder pointed out.

  ‘No,’ said Mabel. ‘But I could have. And she knew it. And she fears me now.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Wonder asked Mabel. ‘What did you say?’

  Mabel lifted a shoulder. ‘I said I didn’t care. I didn’t care what Georgiana thought because I am infinite and she is small. And she will always be small, but very soon I will have the whole universe.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Wonder, but Mabel didn’t reply.

  Instead, Mabel took Wonder’s hand and they walked together into Direleafe Hall. They walked together into Ms Gallow’s classroom and they sat together, side by side, holding hands, waiting for their punishment.

  Because Mabel had not thrown the pie at Georgiana, but she knew she would be punished, still, and that was almost the point.

  And they were both perfectly happy.

  Ms Gallow sat behind her desk, like a magistrate, presiding. She shook her head at Mabel. ‘What were you thinking?’ she asked.

  Mabel stared back, smiling, calm. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘that Georgiana Kinch deserved a pie in her face.’

  ‘For what crime?’ asked Ms Gallow. ‘I know she pushed you … but she didn’t know, Mabel.’

  ‘I know that. And I probably deserved the push. But I wanted … I just so wanted to do the pie. I tried to think, while I was lying in my bed, bored out of my mind, what person here would recover best from a pie in her face. And Georgiana Kinch … she has so many friends. I knew her friends would wipe her clean.

  ‘I knew that she would probably cry and they would probably hold her and brush away her tears and tell her how very sorry they were that this had happened, and they would, perhaps, maybe, even buy her chocolates. They would do all they could to make me a villain and Georgiana a hero and, so, it would turn out so much better for Georgiana, in the end.’

  ‘But you did not throw the pie at Georgiana, in the end.’

  ‘She didn’t deserve to be a hero,’ said Mabel, simply.

  She took a breath, finally, and it was a jagged, wavering thing, but somehow brave.

  Wonder brushed her hand down her friend’s arm. Mabel, she thought, was a superhero. An avenger. A brave, brilliant creature who could throw pies at girls like Georgiana Kinch but didn’t.

  Mabel lifted her chin. She looked right in Ms Gallow’s eyes and said, ‘I’m sorry about the pie mess on the cobblestones, though. Sorrier, perhaps, than I would have been about Georgiana’s face. I’ll clean them. But there should be more. More punishment. What is my punishment, Ms Gallow?’

  Ms Gallow stared at Mabel for the longest time, for a stretched-elastic moment.

  Wonder did not breathe.

  Then, Ms Gallow sighed. And she said, ‘I used to go to this school, did you know? I was so afraid when I was here, all the time. Especially of girls like Georgiana Kinch.’

  She lifted one corner of her mouth. ‘There was one girl, in particular. Her name was Abigail. I would have liked to put a pie in her face. I think I would have chosen a blueberry one. And maybe I wouldn’t have been as good as you. Maybe I would have done it.’

  She shook her head, smiling, as if imagining her old foe, face stained with indigo juice and anger. And then she gave a little snort that sounded not unlike Hollowbeak.

  She wiped at the corner of one of her eyes with her index finger and then tapped on the board with her chalk. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Punishment.’ She shook her head. ‘Life is too short for punishment, isn’t it?’ She smiled at Mabel, and Wonder knew that she knew about Mabel’s list. ‘But you like writing, don’t you?’

  Mabel nodded. ‘Amongst other things.’

  ‘Write me something, then,’ said Ms Gallow. ‘Just a few lines. About whatever you like.’

  ‘Do I have to show it to you?’ asked Mabel.

  Ms Gallow seemed to consider it. Finally, she shook her head. ‘No. You don’t have to show me.’

  Wonder turned to Mabel when Ms Gallow had turned to her reading. ‘Will you show me?’ she asked.

  Mabel nodded. ‘I will show you.’

  Wonder felt as if Mabel had agreed to show her soul.

  ‘Should I write something, too?’ she asked Mabel.

  ‘I would love that,’ said Mabel.

  This is what Mabel wrote:

  Life is too tiny

  For lines,

  For boxes,

  For smallness …

  Life is too enormous

  For small people like me

  To make even a tiny mark on it.

  But a bird, flying through the clouds,

  Makes no mark on the earth and yet,

  Is happy,

  Is free,

  And it looks, when you see it next to a star,

  The very same size.

  I am a bird.

  I am happy now.

  I am free.

  This is what Wonder wrote:

  I have a friend.

  She came from the stars.

  She is bigger than the universe.

  But she wants to sit beside me

  Even though I am grey.

  She likes me

  Even though I am not one tiny bit

  As bright as she is.

  She is my friend

  And it is the very best thing.

  Wonder sat beneath her blanket in the archives room. Her candle was still alight, but she had put her book down on the dusty floor beside her perhaps an hour before.

  She watched as the candlelight made shadows, again, in the labyrinth of cracks in the ceiling above her. They looked like people, navigating the maze. As she let her eyes lose focus, she imagined they were people she knew.

  There was Ms Gallow, tall and bony, her nose like a raven’s beak.

  Georgiana was there, as well, her face stormy, her eyes lightning bolts.

  There were other girls, too, from this year and the ones before. Some she had liked. Some she had wished were her friends.

  There was Genevieve, who had hair she wore in braids all the way down to her waist, who sounded like Snow White when she sang, who only ever ate marmalade sandwiches for lunch.

  There was Evangeline, whose father was a vicar, who could recite whole pages from the Bible, who drew naughty pictures in the back cover of her workbook.

  Then, last year, there was Lily, who looked like a Christmas angel, who sang to herself, who always stuck her tongue out when she used scissors, who liked to read in the library, too.

  Sometimes, Wonder sat beside her and they read together, but Lily never looked at her or said a single word.

  All of them were wished-for friends, but they weren’t real ones. Not like Mabel.

  Wonder saw her now, a candlelight shadow wandering into the maze. She was slower than the others, and smaller. She didn’t run. Sometimes, she had to stop for a rest.

  But that was all right, because Wonder was in the maze with her, walking by her side. The bigger shadows that looked scary n
ever came near the two friends because Wonder protected Mabel from all the darkness.

  In the middle of the labyrinth, Wonder saw a woman. She was small and still, watching her. On the woman’s shoulder there sat a crow.

  Wonder closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the shadow-people were gone.

  She let her eyes rest on the locked filing cabinet in the corner of the archives.

  A dagger scraped across her chest as she remembered that file and the tiny story contained within it. The one that ended so suddenly, without so much as a line or two to make an epilogue.

  With a shiver, she used the palm of her hand to put out the candle. She didn’t feel any burning.

  As she closed her eyes again, she was sure she could hear a faint rustling in the ceiling above her. She imagined it was the shadow-people still searching for the centre of the maze.

  Wonder and Mabel sat with Hollowbeak on the roof again. Wonder stared at Hollowbeak, intently, and Hollowbeak made a show of ignoring her.

  Don’t do that, said Hollowbeak, finally giving in. I’m not helping.

  ‘Please, Hollowbeak?’ Wonder asked.

  The crow glowered at Mabel, and Mabel looked at Wonder with very wide eyes. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.

  ‘You see him, too?’ Wonder asked, inclining her head to one side. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he’s even there at all. Nobody else can talk to birds.’

  Not birds, Hollowbeak reminded her. Bird. You can talk only to me.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Wonder said. ‘I’ve never tried talking to another bird. I could,’ she said, bravely, ‘if you’re not nice to me.’

  ‘I see him,’ said Mabel. ‘I see both of you, clear as day. What’s he saying?’

  Wonder looked at Hollowbeak, one eyebrow raised. A moment later, she looked at Mabel with a smile. ‘He says he will help. He says he knows where to go.’

  They followed Hollowbeak through one of the upper windows of Direleafe Hall.

  ‘Inside?’ asked Mabel.