Love Hurts

by Malorie Blackman

  BY

  PHILIP PULLMAN

  ‘How long do witches live, Serafina Pekkala? Farder Coram says hundreds of years. But you don’t look old at all.’

  ‘I am three hundred years or more. Our oldest witch mother is nearly a thousand. One day, Yambe-Akka will come for her. One day she’ll come for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.’

  ‘Are there men witches? Or only women?’

  ‘There are men who serve us, like the Consul at Trollesund. And there are men we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you’ll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn’t. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches’ lives are as brief as men’s are to us.’

  ‘Did you love Farder Coram?’

  ‘Yes. Does he know that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I know he loves you.’

  ‘When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride and beauty. I loved him at once. I would have changed my nature, I would have forsaken the star-tingle and the music of the Aurora; I would never have flown again – I would have given all that up in a moment, without a thought, to be a gyptian boat-wife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you cannot change what you are, only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human. I stayed with him for long enough to bear him a child . . .’

  ‘He never said! Was it a girl? A witch?’

  ‘No. A boy, and he died in the great epidemic of forty years ago, the sickness that came out of the East. Poor little child; he flickered into life and out of it like a mayfly. And it tore pieces out of my heart, as it always does. It broke Coram’s. And then the call came for me to return to my own people, because Yambe-Akka had taken my mother, and I was clan-queen. So I left, as I had to.’

  ‘Did you never see Farder Coram again?’

  ‘Never. I heard of his deeds; I heard how he was wounded by the Skraelings, with a poisoned arrow, and I sent herbs and spells to help him recover, but I wasn’t strong enough to see him. I heard how broken he was after that, and how his wisdom grew, how much he studied and read, and I was proud of him and his goodness. But I stayed away, for they were dangerous times for my clan, and witch-wars were threatening, and besides, I thought he would forget me and find a human wife . . .’

  ‘He never would,’ said Lyra stoutly. ‘You oughter go and see him. He still loves you, I know he does.’

  ‘But he would be ashamed of his own age, and I wouldn’t want to make him feel that.’

  ‘Perhaps he would. But you ought to send a message to him, at least. That’s what I think.’

  Serafina Pekkala said nothing for a long time. Pantalaimon became a tern and flew to her branch for a second, to acknowledge that perhaps they had been insolent.

  Then Lyra said, ‘Why do people have dæmons, Serafina Pekkala?’

  ‘Everyone asks that, and no one knows the answer. As long as there have been human beings, they have had dæmons. It’s what makes us different from animals.’

  FROM

  WE WERE LIARS

  BY

  E LOCKHART

  Summer fifteen I arrived a week later than the others. Dad had left us, and Mummy and I had all that shopping to do, consulting the decorator and everything.

  Johnny and Mirren met us at the dock, pink in the cheeks and full of summer plans. They were staging a family tennis tournament and had bookmarked ice-cream recipes. We would go sailing, build bonfires.

  The littles swarmed and yelled like always. The aunts smiled chilly smiles. After the bustle of arrival, everyone went to Clairmont for cocktail hour.

  I went to Red Gate, looking for Gat. Red Gate is a much smaller house than Clairmont, but it still has four bedrooms up top. It’s where Johnny, Gat, and Will lived with Aunt Carrie – plus Ed, when he was there, which wasn’t often.

  I walked to the kitchen door and looked through the screen. Gat didn’t see me at first. He was standing at the counter wearing a worn gray T-shirt and jeans. His shoulders were broader than I remembered.

  He untied a dried flower from where it hung upside down on a ribbon in the window over the sink. The flower was a beach rose, pink and loosely constructed, the kind that grows along the Beechwood perimeter.

  Gat, my Gat. He had picked me a rose from our favorite walking place. He had hung it to dry and waited for me to arrive on the island so he could give it to me.

  I had kissed an unimportant boy or three by now.

  I had lost my dad.

  I had come here to this island from a house of tears and falsehood

  and I saw Gat,

  and I saw that rose in his hand,

  and in that one moment, with the sunlight from the windows shining in on him,

  the apples on the kitchen counter,

  the smell of wood and ocean in the air,

  I did call it love.

  It was love, and it hit me so hard I leaned against the screen door that still stood between us, just to stay vertical. I wanted to touch him like he was a bunny, a kitten, something so special and soft your fingertips can’t leave it alone. The universe was good because he was in it. I loved the hole in his jeans and the dirt on his bare feet and the scab on his elbow and the scar that laced through one eyebrow. Gat, my Gat.

  As I stood there, staring, he put the rose in an envelope. He searched for a pen, banging drawers open and shut, found one in his own pocket, and wrote.

  I didn’t realize he was writing an address until he pulled a roll of stamps from a kitchen drawer.

  Gat stamped the envelope. Wrote a return address.

  It wasn’t for me.

  I left the Red Gate door before he saw me and ran down to the perimeter. I watched the darkening sky, alone.

  I tore all the roses off a single sad bush and threw them, one after the other, into the angry sea.

  Johnny told me about the New York girlfriend that evening. Her name was Raquel. Johnny had even met her. He lives in New York, like Gat does, but downtown with Carrie and Ed, while Gat lives uptown with his mom. Johnny said Raquel was a modern dancer and wore black clothes.

  Mirren’s brother, Taft, told me Raquel had sent Gat a package of homemade brownies. Liberty and Bonnie told me Gat had pictures of her on his phone.

  Gat didn’t mention her at all, but he had trouble meeting my eyes.

  That first night, I cried and bit my fingers and drank wine I snuck from the Clairmont pantry. I spun violently into the sky, raging and banging stars from their moorings, swirling and vomiting.

  I hit my fist into the wall of the shower. I washed off the shame and anger in cold, cold water. Then I shivered in my bed like the abandoned dog that I was, my skin shaking over my bones.

  The next morning, and every day thereafter, I acted normal. I tilted my square chin high.

  We sailed and made bonfires. I won the tennis tournament.

  We made vats of ice cream and lay in the sun.

  One night, the four of us ate a picnic down on the tiny beach. Steamed clams, potatoes, and sweet corn. The staff made it. I didn’t know their names.

  Johnny and Mirren carried the food down in metal roasting pans. We ate around the flames of our bonfire, dripping butter onto the sand. Then Gat made triple-decker s’mores for all of us. I looked at his hands in the firelight, sliding marshmallows onto a long stick. Where once he’d had our names written, now he had taken to writing the titles
of books he wanted to read.

  That night, on the left: Being and. On the right: Nothingness.

  I had writing on my hands, too. A quotation I liked. On the left: Live in. On the right: today.

  ‘Want to know what I’m thinking about?’ Gat asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I’m wondering how we can say your granddad owns this island. Not legally but actually.’

  ‘Please don’t get started on the evils of the Pilgrims,’ moaned Johnny.

  ‘No. I’m asking, how can we say land belongs to anyone?’ Gat waved at the sand, the ocean, the sky.

  Mirren shrugged. ‘People buy and sell land all the time.’

  ‘Can’t we talk about sex or murder?’ asked Johnny.

  Gat ignored him. ‘Maybe land shouldn’t belong to people at all. Or maybe there should be limits on what they can own.’ He leaned forward. ‘When I went to India this winter, on that volunteer trip, we were building toilets. Building them because people there, in this one village, didn’t have them.’

  ‘We all know you went to India,’ said Johnny. You told us like forty-seven times.’

  Here is something I love about Gat: he is so enthusiastic, so relentlessly interested in the world, that he has trouble imagining the possibility that other people will be bored by what he’s saying. Even when they tell him outright. But also, he doesn’t like to let us off easy. He wants to make us think – even when we don’t feel like thinking.

  He poked a stick into the embers. ‘I’m saying we should talk about it. Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don’t have work. Some don’t have food.’

  ‘Stop talking, now,’ said Mirren.

  ‘Stop talking, forever,’ said Johnny.

  ‘We have a warped view of humanity on Beech-wood,’ Gat said. ‘I don’t think you see that.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you more chocolate if you shut up.’

  And Gat did shut up, but his face contorted. He stood abruptly, picked up a rock from the sand, and threw it with all his force. He pulled off his sweatshirt and kicked off his shoes. Then he walked into the sea in his jeans.

  Angry.

  I watched the muscles of his shoulders in the moonlight, the spray kicking up as he splashed in. He dove and I thought: If I don’t follow him now, that girl Raquel’s got him. If I don’t follow him now, he’ll go away. From the Liars, from the island, from our family, from me.

  I threw off my sweater and followed Gat into the sea in my dress. I crashed into the water, swimming out to where he lay on his back. His wet hair was slicked off his face, showing the thin scar through one eyebrow.

  I reached for his arm. ‘Gat.’

  He startled. Stood in the waist-high sea.

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t tell you to shut up, Cady,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever say that to you.’

  ‘I know.’

  He was silent.

  ‘Please don’t shut up,’ I said.

  I felt his eyes go over my body in my wet dress. ‘I talk too much,’ he said. ‘I politicize everything.’

  ‘I like it when you talk,’ I said, because it was true. When I stopped to listen, I did like it.

  ‘It’s that everything makes me . . .’ He paused. ‘Things are messed up in the world, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Maybe I should’ – Gat took my hands, turned them over to look at the words written on the backs – ‘I should live for today and not be agitating all the time.’

  My hand was in his wet hand.

  I shivered. His arms were bare and wet. We used to hold hands all the time, but he hadn’t touched me all summer.

  ‘It’s good that you look at the world the way you do,’ I told him.

  Gat let go of me and leaned back into the water. ‘Johnny wants me to shut up. I’m boring you and Mirren.’

  I looked at his profile. He wasn’t just Gat. He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. All that was there, in the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth skin, his lower lip pushed out. There was coiled energy inside.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ I whispered.

  ‘What?’

  I reached out and touched his arm again. He didn’t pull away. ‘When we say Shut up, Gat, that isn’t what we mean at all.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘What we mean is, we love you. You remind us that we’re selfish bastards. You’re not one of us, that way.’

  He dropped his eyes. Smiled. ‘Is that what you mean, Cady?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. I let my fingers trail down his floating, outstretched arm.

  ‘I can’t believe you are in that water!’ Johnny was standing ankle-deep in the ocean, his jeans rolled up. ‘It’s the Arctic. My toes are freezing off.’

  ‘It’s nice once you get in,’ Gat called back.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Don’t be weak!’ yelled Gat. ‘Be manly and get in the stupid water.’

  Johnny laughed and charged in. Mirren followed.

  And it was – exquisite.

  The night looming above us. The hum of the ocean. The bark of gulls.

  That night I had trouble sleeping.

  After midnight, he called my name.

  I looked out my window. Gat was lying on his back on the wooden walkway that leads to Windemere. The golden retrievers were lying near him, all five: Bosh, Grendel, Poppy, Prince Philip, and Fatima. Their tails thumped gently.

  The moonlight made them all look blue.

  ‘Come down,’ he called.

  I did.

  Mummy’s light was out. The rest of the island was dark. We were alone, except for all the dogs.

  ‘Scoot,’ I told him. The walkway wasn’t wide. When I lay down next to him, our arms touched, mine bare and his in an olive-green hunting jacket.

  We looked at the sky. So many stars, it seemed like a celebration, a grand, illicit party the galaxy was holding after the humans had been put to bed.

  I was glad Gat didn’t try to sound knowledgeable about constellations or say stupid stuff about wishing on stars. But I didn’t know what to make of his silence, either.

  ‘Can I hold your hand?’ he asked.

  I put mine in his.

  ‘The universe is seeming really huge right now,’ he told me. ‘I need something to hold on to.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  His thumb rubbed the center of my palm. All my nerves concentrated there, alive to every movement of his skin on mine. ‘I am not sure I’m a good person,’ he said after a while.

  ‘I’m not sure I am, either,’ I said. ‘I’m winging it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gat was silent for a moment. ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Halfway.’ I tried to think about it seriously. I knew Gat wouldn’t settle for a flippant answer. ‘When things are bad, I’ll pray or imagine someone watching over me, listening. Like the first few days after my dad left, I thought about God. For protection. But the rest of the time, I’m trudging along in my everyday life. It’s not even slightly spiritual.’

  ‘I don’t believe anymore,’ Gat said. ‘That trip to India, the poverty. No God I can imagine would let that happen. Then I came home and started noticing it on the streets of New York. People sick and starving in one of the richest nations in the world. I just – I can’t think anyone’s watching over those people. Which means no one is watching over me, either.’

  ‘That doesn’t make you a bad person.’

  ‘My mother believes. She was raised Buddhist but goes to Methodist church now. She’s not very happy with me.’ Gat hardly ever talked about his mother.

  ‘You can’t believe just because she tells you to,’ I said.

  ‘No. The question is: how to be a good person if I don’t believe anymore.’

  We stared at the sky. The dogs went into Windemere via the dog flap.

  ‘You’re cold,’ G
at said. ‘Let me give you my jacket.’

  I wasn’t cold but I sat up. He sat up, too. Unbuttoned his olive hunting jacket and shrugged it off. Handed it to me.

  It was warm from his body. Much too wide across the shoulders. His arms were bare now.

  I wanted to kiss him there while I was wearing his hunting jacket. But I didn’t.

  Maybe he loved Raquel. Those photos on his phone. That dried beach rose in an envelope.

  At breakfast the next morning, Mummy asked me to go through Dad’s things in the Windemere attic and take what I wanted. She would get rid of the rest.

  Windemere is gabled and angular. Two of the five bedrooms have slanted roofs, and it’s the only house on the island with a full attic. There’s a big porch and a modern kitchen, updated with marble countertops that look a little out of place. The rooms are airy and filled with dogs.

  Gat and I climbed up to the attic with glass bottles of iced tea and sat on the floor. The room smelled like wood. A square of light glowed through from the window.

  We had been in the attic before.

  Also, we had never been in the attic before.

  The books were Dad’s vacation reading. All sports memoirs, cozy mysteries, and rock star tell-alls by old people I’d never heard of. Gat wasn’t really looking. He was sorting the books by color. A red pile, a blue, brown, white, yellow.

  ‘Don’t you want anything to read?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How about First Base and Way Beyond?’

  Gat laughed. Shook his head. Straightened his blue pile.

  ‘Rock On with My Bad Self? Hero of the Dance Floor?’

  He was laughing again. Then serious. ‘Cadence?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  I let myself look at him a long time. Every curve of his face was familiar, and also, I had never seen him before.

  Gat smiled. Shining. Bashful. He got to his knees, kicking over his colourful book piles in the process. He reached out and stroked my hair. ‘I love you, Cady. I mean it.’

  I leaned in and kissed him.

  He touched my face. Ran his hand down my neck and along my collarbone. The light from the attic window shone down on us. Our kiss was electric and soft,