The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

This is the diary of Shelley Anne Arkle. Secret! DO NOT READ – or you will be Forever Cursed. This means YOU, Mark.

  JUNE25TH -

  Today I am 13!!! Yay! I am now officially a teenager! I’m definitely not going to do those dishes.

  Last nite had the weirdest dream. I dreamt I woke up and wished I was in another world, and then I really was. I was flying over rows and rows of knights in silver armour in a big cave glowing with blue light. They were all perfectly still as if they were fast asleep. Then I saw a bridge over nothing – like just blackness – no, there were stars, and the knights woke up and slowly walked single file across the bridge. Then I saw the most beautiful place, with a lake and a waterfall and a rainbow. That’s when I saw HER. She was the most beautiful lady. I wish I could look like her one day. She seemed to be reaching out to me. I tried to call out to her. Then a purply darkness came over everything and there were huge thorns everywhere, and horrible stick men like praying mantises, that looked like the thorns. I was still flying, but then one of the Thornmen looked up and smiled a horrible smile–I knew he smiled, though his face was covered by sharp, pointy armour. He pointed at me with his skinny finger and I started falling, falling straight towards him. I struggled as hard as I could to wake up and I think I did. I sat up in bed in a panic, and noticed my piece of Kauri gum on the shelf by the bed was glowing! And right there next to it so close I felt its breath, was a silvery white pony, sooo beautiful with silky hair and lovely eyes. It laid its head on my lap. I reached out to stroke it. I got a fright – I felt the point of a sharp little horn on its forehead – and two others, smaller, one on each side. I thought, is It a goat? But as soon as I touched it, the creature jumped up, and went to the open window, looking at me all the time. It seemed to be trying to get me to follow it. “Do you really want to go?” I heard its voice in my head. Then it just leaped straight out the window and flew into the sky. I’m sure I was awake, or else it’s the most awake dream I’ve ever had. I went to the window and cried cos I wanted to follow it, and ride away with it into the night. Why can’t humans fly??! It seemed to be growing bigger as it flew away, until it looked to me like a huge white unicorn. Then it disappeared into the clouds.

  Was it real?? Did it want to take me to that lady?? I feel homesick for that lovely place, but I’m terrified of those dark travellers – why did I just call them that? Am I going crazy now I’m 13? That brat Mark must never find out or he’ll try to get dad to have me taken to the loony bin.

  This was the beginning of the adventures of Shelley Arkle, for her dream was not from her imagination, or from this world at all, but was a message from across the depths of space, from a world that was waiting for her.

  Right now, though, she was mainly thinking about the dishes, as she dressed and reluctantly descended the narrow staircase with the green wrought-iron handrail which she had to hold in case she tripped on the steep stairs. It was Saturday morning, and the big Saturday edition of the Herald (open at the Garage Sales section) was already on the big golden kauri-wood kitchen table with the turned legs. Mark must still be in bed, thank goodness. Mum was fretting over something. Dad looked up from the paper and said, ‘Well Shelley, I guess it’s “happy birthday” – but you’re still doing those dishes, straight after breakfast.’ Shelley glared at him and pushed past to the bathroom, slamming the door. Dad called out, ‘That’s enough of that, young lady!’

  Shelley ignored him. She was thinking about the dream again, and feeling happy in spite of the dishes. She decided to have a bath. As the water ran, mum called out ‘Don’t use too much hot water – your brother needs a shower before we leave.’

  ‘It’s my birthday, get off my case!’ Shelley shouted through the locked door. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you! Anyway, when are we going to get a bigger hot water cylinder?’ She sank further into the hot depths. The bathroom filled with steam – it was a fairly chilly morning – and she drifted off into dreams of her perfect house, how it would have a spa pool, and central heating, and a huge water heater, and a bathroom of her own… ‘An ensuite,’ she thought dreamily. It would have a tower, looking out over a beautiful lake… ‘Just like in the dream,’ she murmured, smiling to herself.

  Mark was pounding on the door. ‘Time’s up, get out!’ he snarled in that whining yet imperious voice. But Shelley ignored him.

  The water was cooling down and the hot tap was running lukewarm when she finally got out and wrapped herself in warm fluffy towels. She wiped the fogged-up mirror, and looked at her reflection, gazing into her own eyes, very determined-looking eyes – beautiful almond eyes too, that boys noticed, if she had known it – and whispered to herself,

  ‘You’re grown up now, as good as! You’re a teenager! So don’t let them push you round any more, OK? You are your own person. You have rights. Pity you don’t look so pretty… If only I was tall and pretty like Anna…’ (Anna was fair-haired and tall, six months older than Shelley, and of course had contact lenses.)

  She dressed and unlocked the door. Immediately Mark pushed in, glaring at her. As he passed he put two fingers to her head and screeched, ‘POW, POW! You’re dead.’ He slammed the door shut before Shelley could hit him. ‘Four-eyes!’ he yelled from the safety of the locked bathroom.

  Lately he had been getting worse, she was sure. ‘I put it down to those bully boys he’s been getting round with,’ she said to anyone who might be listening. She turned off Mark’s heavy metal music, put on her favourite female singer, and got some Weetbix. Dad had been poring over the garage sales and marked the ones that were nearby and looked interesting. Now he was onto the ‘weekender’ section, reading about the life and works of the eccentric Austrian architect Hundertwasser, who used to have a retreat up north. He turned Shelley’s music off, and said, ‘Well, Shell, since it’s your birthday, your mother was saying you shouldn’t have to do the dishes. I disagree, but I’m past the stage where I care, if she wants to do them for you and spoil you. Also, I’m sorry, but time got away on us, and we’re low on money, as you know, so we haven’t got you your birthday present yet. We were going to look for something at the garage sales last week.’

  ‘Typical!’ retorted Shelley. From the kitchen came the welcome sound of someone else doing the dishes – mum. She smiled in spite of herself. Dad went on, ‘Anyway, we’ve got to get going very soon, straight after a couple of garage sales and a coffee, if we want to get to granddad’s before dark.’

  ‘What? I’m not going anywhere with you guys. It’s my birthday!’ Dad ignored this and said, ‘By the way, you might be interested in this.’ He showed her the picture of Hundertwasser’s whimsical curvaceous buildings. She grabbed the paper and began reading. Something about the look of the man, bearded and contented like an old hippy, and his outlandish colourful structures, sparked a longing in Shelley for an altogether better world, where adults were not boring and people built interesting houses and had adventures. Her mood softening in spite of herself, she sighed, ‘Can’t I at least go round to Anna’s first? At least she will have got me a present.’

  ‘No, definitely not. You know how granddad gets if we’re late.’

  ‘I think you’re scared of him. Anyway, I don’t like him. Why do we have to have my birthday up there anyway? It’s too far, and I’m going to get carsick, and it’s not fair that I’m going to miss seeing my friends on my thirteenth birthday!’

  But she did always like it once they got there, in spite of the distance, and in spite of granddad. His farm was several hours drive away, up in the Far North, on the other side of Waipoua forest where they say there is a ruined stone city, and where the biggest Kauri tree still stands, Tane Mahuta, god of the forest. His farm was at the very top of a steep valley, near the west coast with its deserted beaches, and there were virgin Kauri forests where kiwis still lived, and sometimes pieces of kauri gum, golden like amber when you scraped them clean, and very valuable. Mark had tried to steal the piece she had on her bedroom shelf, where it glowed in the light as
if it came from some other, more beautiful world. She had spent a long time polishing it with finer and finer grades of wet and dry sandpaper, then with brasso and a soft cloth. He had got into big trouble; dad had taken it very seriously – for once.

  At granddad’s there was also a waterfall with a deep swimming hole, and from the open window of his rambling house which looked out over the deep forested valley you could hear it at night, and the cries of the morepork and the kiwi. There was even a placid little pony to ride. Funnily enough, considering he had no time for the Bible, he had called his farm ‘New Eden’ – although it certainly was like paradise to Shelley. And everyone said how fast things grew there – the sheep, the longhorned cattle, and especially the kauri trees that surrounded the farm on three sides. These were so huge now granddad was grumbling about how they blocked his light and ‘They ought to let a man mill his own timber.’ The forest was covenanted and could not be touched. Shelley was glad, and had said so. She loved the trees and the quiet bush with its cool streams and secret glades and leafy smells. She had read with indignation the story of the settlers’ burning and milling almost all the giant kauri in the north, then when that was gone, digging over the land looking for the buried gum. There were once great forests lining the harbours, which stopped erosion and kept them clear and deep. Now most of the trees were gone, the land was eroding and the harbours were silting up.

  Dad interrupted her dreaming. ‘We have to go, it can’t be avoided. I have problems with the old man too, you know… but he refuses to travel, and we have to sort this out. Anyway, he’s promised you a birthday party.’

  ‘Oh yeah, right, like he knows how to bake a cake… Anyway, sort what out?’

  ‘Your grandfather is convinced ‘they’ are after him, that ‘they’re’ closing in on him, ever since he got on the internet. He claims his emails get intercepted, his phone is tapped, and there are grey hitmen in grey cars looking for him. They work for aliens, of course! Now a crony of his has handed me an urgent message from the old codger telling me to come to his place immediately. He says… he wants to give me something. And he says bring the kids.’

  ‘Maybe he’s rich and he’s going to give us all his money before ‘they’ get him!’ said Shelley sarcastically, but her interest was kindled at the thought of a dangerous mystery, and at all the things they could do with money. Maybe she could go to America and study to become an astronaut, and maybe she would be the first woman on Mars, and they would find signs of a civilisation like the Vulcans, and she’d meet someone like Spock and they would fall in love… Visions of splendid things tumbled through her mind in one of those vivid split-seconds that were more important to her than hours of ordinary time.

  She had a piece of thick plate-glass in her room which she had laboriously chipped into a six-inch circle to make a telescope mirror out of one day. She had been dreaming of ‘Space, the final frontier’ more and more lately. Mostly this was because she had just two weeks ago met an old man, a friend of her father, an amateur astrophysicist. ‘I’m called Loopy Loftus’ by some,’ he had warned her when they were introduced, but Shelley was not deterred. Her father had told her how he made big telescopes in his garden shed, grinding the parabolic mirrors out of disks of greenish porthole glass thick as the Arkles’ kauri tabletop, polishing and testing them with home-made equipment, silvering them and fitting them into simple square plywood tubes, with eyepieces made from old binoculars.

  While dad went ‘garage saling’ she had stayed to learn all she could. After a tour of his shambolic but scientific sheds, they had talked for hours over cups of tea and pancakes (his staple food) At times he grew angry and paced the threadbare carpet of his living room as he explained how ‘the experts’ were all wrong about the Big Bang and wouldn’t listen to reason. At other times he grew tearful, as he told her about the universe.

  ‘One look through a big telescope and you’ll be hooked,’ he said, ‘See a globular cluster, or the Pleiades, or Jupiter and its moons’ – he waved his arms as if to encompass the heavens – ‘and you’ll never be the same again. It’s beautiful out there, awesomely vast, and best of all it’s real, not like the damned TV… It’s so far beyond us puny humans you’ll want to weep when you see it… It’s worth everything I’ve been through just to see the look on people’s faces when they climb down after their first glimpse through one of my telescopes.’

  She had gone away determined to go to the next viewing night, and to take him up on his offer to help her make her first mirror, ‘Just a baby one at first,’ he’d said, ‘six or seven inch, and if you’ve polished it right – just to within a wavelength of light’ll do – you’ll be able to see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter, and it’ll blow you away.’

  Then he had shown her how he tested the mirrors for the parabola shape, and she looked past the razorblade at the reflection of the pinhole light and saw the surface of the mirror like a moon-crater, where every bump and hollow stood out as if by magic. ‘And those great humps and hollows you see are thinner than a piece of tinfoil, but when I polish them smooth and silver it, through this mirror I’ll be able to see the universe!’ he’d said, and Shelley had longed to have a go for herself.

  But dad still hadn’t got round to taking her back to get the carborundum grits so she could start grinding her mirror, her own little window on the stars…

  ‘I don’t think it’s money or anything like that, knowing your grandfather,’ said dad, bringing Shelley back to earth again. ‘But you never know,’ he added hopefully, just to cheer her up.

  At this point Mark burst out of the bathroom, complaining that Shelley had turned his music off. And dad had to explain all over again why they had to go away. By then it was time to leave, no ‘garage saling’ this weekend. And mum, who had been getting the sandwiches ready, was sighing at the talk of granddad, and thinking about all the gardening she was not going to get done.

  I’m sick of this, I’m not going! Not with Mark. It’s my birthday, you can’t make me!’ Shelley announced, and ran into the back garden. She went through the gap in the stone wall which led to the fairy garden, intending to lock herself in the dome and brood. A yellow leaf fluttered out of the arch of tangled briar rose branches and fell at her feet. She stopped and picked it up; it seemed to glow in the half-light under the roses and the loquat trees. Its veins were the colour of dark amber, in the shape of a tree. A tree that seemed to glow. Then she felt a chill up her back; among the branches of the tree a white stain on the leaf resolved into an image of a face. She had seen that face before. In the dream which now came back to her with full clarity. She almost dropped the leaf. ‘This is getting really weird,’ she said to herself. Now the fairy garden felt eerie, as if it had become part of the dream. She ran back to the house a little shakily, holding the leaf, wondering if she should tell dad. ‘Or maybe mum,’ she thought.

  But Mark grabbed at the leaf. ‘What are you looking at that stupid leaf for? We’re meant to be going!’ She started fighting with him over the leaf, and he kept jumping up and trying to rip it out of her hand, until dad said, ‘Enough of that! Out! Get in the car!’

  They were almost out the door when the phone rang. ‘Leave it!’ said dad, but mum frowned at him and Shelley said, ‘It could be Anna wishing me happy birthday. At least she takes birthdays seriously.’ Sure enough, it was Anna, and when she heard they were leaving she said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m coming round, I’ve got you a present. It’ll come in handy if you’re going away.’

  When she arrived she gave Shelley a little parcel covered with hearts and butterflies. ‘Open it!’ she said, breathlessly. Mark crowded in to look. Shelley pocketed the leaf, shouldered him aside and opened the present. Inside was a cute cellphone – purple, her favourite colour – and two prepay cards for it. Dad looked over her shoulder and said, ‘Nice toy, I suppose. But what about the effect on your brain? They give out microwaves. I don’t trust them.’

  ‘What do you care about my brain?’ sa
id Shelley, bitterly. ‘You didn’t even buy me that cheap encyclopaedia at the garage sale.’ Mum sighed and said, ‘Don’t be so hard on your father, Shelley. You know his condition…’

  ‘Why doesn’t he “heal himself” like his books say?’

  ‘I told you not to read those books in the attic, Shelley, they’re dangerous and don’t solve anything,’ said dad.

  ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t have an aspirin now?’ asked mum, alarmed at the direction the discussion was going.

  ‘I’m all right, it’s just the thought of seeing the old man – it’s bringing up all the old stuff. OK, let’s get this over with!’

  He told Anna they had to go, ‘And thanks anyway for the present, it’s a nice thought.’ Shelley rolled her eyes and snorted.

  Anna, offended, made an attempt at a smile and said, ‘Text me, Shelley.’ She ran back down the front path, her golden hair shining in the wintry sun. Shelley turned on dad after she was gone, and there was a row, which threatened to turn into a full-scale fight when Mark took dad’s side.

  Finally they all piled grumpily into the car, an old white Japanese import with air conditioning that didn’t work. But apart from that it was reliable, and they headed off through the Saturday morning city traffic. ‘Where the heck they’re all going to I don’t know,’ said dad impatiently at the fifth red light.

  ‘Escaping from their boring homes I suppose,’ said Shelley.

  At last they were onto the motorway and over the harbour bridge. Big spots of rain dashed against the windscreen, and the sun disappeared behind black clouds. Mark was in the front with dad, as he was the one who always got carsick, and Shelley was in the back with mum. ‘Turn the heater on, Mark!’ said Shelley several times, kicking the back of his seat when he didn’t respond. So he put it on high, and the fan whirred loudly. Dad reached over and turned it back down. ‘Damned noise!’ he growled.

  Mark hadn’t been reminded to go to the toilet before they left. Now he demanded in his most whining tones, ‘I need to go to the toilet! Stop the car!’ Shelley, wrapped in her own bitter thoughts, and trying to text Anna on her new cellphone, for once didn’t give him a hard time.

  U OK? SORRY DADS SUCH A D@#$K

  XOXO SHELL

  ‘Not now, Mark, for goodness’ sake!’ said dad.

  ‘Make sure you don’t turn off… along here… won’t you?’ said mum, as if she didn’t want to say the words. They had just passed the first sign for the Silverwood turnoff.

  ‘Of course, Ellen. Why would I?’ Through clenched teeth he muttered, ‘As if I’d want to bring all that drama up again!’ Shelley noticed a look of near-panic on her mother’s beautiful but sad face as they passed the Silverwood sign.

  Shelley knew her dad had married her mother for her haunting beauty – she was like a fairy that might inhabit one of his more idealistic structures which nobody bought. So there was bitterness; she could not live up to the romantic ideal he had of her, and he could not afford to buy her beautiful things or take her to beautiful places – or even do up the house. ‘He’s such a loser,’ thought Shelley, bitterly. ‘Maybe I really am adopted. I bet my real father would be brave and romantic, not a nerd like him. And my mother would be independent and happy. And Mark would NOT be my brother – yay!’

  Her cellphone beeped. She worked out how to look at the text after a few curses at dumb software.

  DATS OK WHERE R U?

  The rain was pelting down now. Ahead, flashing red and orange lights and the piercing blue lights of police cars filled the watery windscreen. A man waving a light stick signalled for them to slow down. The car skidded as dad slowed to a crawl and was directed past the mangled wrecks of several cars and an articulated truck, off the motorway and onto an offramp. Shelley saw the sign gleaming cold and wet in the headlights: Silverwood.

  In pioneer days the town had been the end of the line, before the Great North Road was built, and cut it in two. Later it had been by-passed altogether by the new motorway. Now it was a backwater. Its name sounded romantic to Shelley, but when they had driven through once, years ago, she had been disappointed: it was just a little valley with a huddle of shops and factories, a muddy tidal stream at the bottom and the noisy motorway running through the middle. Still, she held onto the belief that with a name like that there must be something special there, just hidden, like buried treasure.

  And there was something there all right, something the locals did not like to talk about. There had been several disappearances of young children from the town over the years, and none of them had ever been found. And in certain weathers the silvery mist which gave the town its name would blanket the valley, and over the Fairyhill Reserve it was thickest of all.

  They said the Fairyhill Reserve was the centre of the strangeness. There were certainly some strange folk living in the town and in the hills round the Fairyhill Reserve. Some of these folk were openly interested in the disappearances and talked of Silverwood as a portal, like the Bermuda Triangle, and they searched for standing stones and the like, seeking the remains of ancient magical civilisations. The Maori had tales, too, of the People of the Mist, the patupaiarehe, dangerous fairy folk.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ellen, I had no choice,’ said dad. Mum was looking out the window, as if resigned to whatever fate was up to. They drove slowly towards the town.

  Shelley texted back:

  SILVERWD – DETOR! THIS IS DA TRIP FROM HEL

  Mark’s high-pitched, harsh voice broke the silence. ‘Hey, what a dump! Isn’t this where you and granddad used to live, when you were a boy?’ Dad muttered, ‘Dragged me round the countryside, damn selfish old codger,’ and Shelley looking up from clicking the letters into her cellphone, commented sarcastically, ‘Funny place to settle, wasn’t it dad? For once I agree with Mark – sort of the middle of nowhere isn’t it? A dead-end dump, really.’ She said it to get at dad. She knew he had a thing about his old hometown and didn’t like talking about it – let alone visiting it.

  ‘Don’t tease your father!’ said mum. ‘He doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s tense enough as it is.’ Shelley noticed that mum, too, looked pale and nervous, and a flutter of something like fear went through her stomach.