‘The name is...er...it is difficult to recall.’
‘Take another sip of Remembrance Essence, Pieter.’
Pieter did so. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Det.’
‘Det,’ repeated Maleika.
‘Ah...’
‘Take another sip, Pieter.’
Pieter did so. ‘Wise...’
Maleika nodded encouragingly. ‘Wise.’
‘La!’ said Pieter finally.
‘Well done, Pieter.’ Maleika clasped her hands together. ‘You have been shown someone who will one day restore this world to its former beauty. And we now know the sonic signature of this wonderful sprite. Det-ah-Wise-la!’
At that moment, they heard a rustling in the leaves.
Maleika and Pieter turned. Behind the oak tree, which arched across the Brumlynds’ camp, silver-tipped and calm, hovered the silhouette of a tall, thin figure in a hooded cloak: a body king sorcerer eavesdropping on their Dream Sphere recollections!
Maleika rose to her feet. ‘Away with you,’ she cried. ‘Away with you now, or I shall cast a spell so that you are no longer handsome!’
The silhouette fluttered off into the darkness. Pieter and Maleika chuckled at the idea of sprite magic used with nasty intent: a thoroughly amusing presumption. All that they wielded was for the benefit of nature, and nature was inherently kind. That sprites were meddlesome spell-casters was only a rumour amongst those of the royal court.
‘I do not think, Maleika,’ said Pieter, ‘that this golden-skinned pryer will bother us further.’
‘His pride will keep us safe,’ said Maleika with a satisfied nod. ‘And what is handsome or ugly anyway when it is little more than opinion?’
‘And yet body kings believe their opinions to be truth.’
‘Indeed they do, Pieter, indeed they do. I implore you, though, do remember to refer to them by their proper name. They like to be known as gold-skins.’
Wistful now, Pieter smiled at the memory of his conversation with his mother, the Clan Watcher. He would find a way soon to return to her.
Somehow he would return.
Chapter Eight
The Friday Fortnight evenings were always a bore for Izzie because the house then belonged to her mother.
Izzie and her friends wouldn’t usually catch up until Sunday. While other kids whooped around the streets to celebrate the weekend’s approach, Izzie’s group conserved their energy so that Saturday mornings meant feeling fresh enough to get up before noon.
And so the lamps were traditionally Friday-Fortnight low, and the glass doors of the cabinets sparkled after Izzie had Windexed them. A platter of pretzels was placed on the coffee table, six wine goblets were set out on the kitchen counter, and the verandah light was flicked on so that it blazed like a persistent star through the gap in the sitting-room curtains.
Taking in the cosy scene, Izzie imagined capturing it in pastels and decided she’d have to use reds, golds and ambers to recreate that glimmery, forties-movie effect. ‘This is what peace is,’ she told herself, feeling proud of the house her mother had secured for them. The home’s interior no longer seemed fuddy-duddy formal. Izzie had grown to regard it as gently elegant, with its patches of stained glass and whirly-curly ceiling cornices.
The doorbell chimed. ‘See ya round, Peace,’ Izzie groaned to herself. ‘Hello, screech-fest.’
Her mother, reeking of patchouli aromatic essence, sprinted past her to the door looking embarrassingly like a teenager eager to go on a date. While Rosetta’s hair looked shiny that evening, like a flat sheet of polished rosewood, normally it was dull, dark and boring. She opened the door and screamed, ‘Royston!’
‘Rosetta!’ Royston screamed back. ‘Your hair looks fabulous. Blow-drying it with that chia-seed serum makes it sooo much glossier! And I really dig the reddish highlights.’
‘Well, I had to make an effort for you guys.’
From where she stood in the hallway Izzie could see a finger wagging. The finger belonged to Royston. ‘But you don’t always make that sort of effort for us, do you now? Still, I appreciate the fact that you’ve turned over a new leaf. Now all I have left to do is persuade you to get it slashed off and styled into an elfin bob.’ He scissored his fingers.
Rosetta bunched the lengths of her hair protectively and gave Royston’s shoulder an affectionate shove. She steered him inside, then turned to the man who had trailed in behind him. ‘And I think I know who this is!’
‘Rosetta, meet Darren. Darren, this is my dear, dear friend Rosetta. How many years has it been, sweets?’
‘Ooh ’bout fifteen?’
‘No, it’d be longer than that...wait a minnie...’ Royston, having balded considerably in the past year, had grown a layer of facial hair to compensate for the loss of his Liberace curls. He rested his fingertips on the stubble and stroked his lower lip in an effort to recall. Hovering tentatively by Royston’s side was a man of fine-boned proportions with a habit of smiling and nodding in a series of quivery bursts. The man was clutching a cake laden with strawberries, which Izzie knew would obliterate Rosetta’s dieters’ willpower. ‘Yeah, has to be fifteen. I thought it could have been more.’
‘It just seems like more,’ said Rosetta laughing, ‘because of all I’ve put you through! I’ve put him through a lot, Darren. It’s a wonder he’s still speaking to me, but then that’s the person he is. He’s a really, really beautiful man.’
Just great, thought Izzie. The screech-fest turns into a love-fest.
In theme with Izzie’s supposings, Royston, who had spotted her doing the last of the dusting at the telephone foyer table, ran towards her with arms outstretched. ‘And how’s my little Izzie-Whizzy?’ he said in a tone so filled with fondness it made Izzie chuckle.
‘Not so bad, Roystie,’ she said, allowing herself to sink into his hug. ‘That aftershave: it’s legendary.’
‘This girlie’s got excellent taste, Rosetta,’ Royston hollered with a bulging-eyed nod, but Rosetta and Darren had already disappeared into the kitchen to prepare drinks.
In his left hand was a faded edition of Our True Ancient History. ‘Except it’s cologne, darlin’. Cologne for men. Simmering Pine it’s called.’
‘Cool!’
‘So has this pretty little gal got herself a boyfriend yet?’
‘I’m too young for a boyfriend,’ Izzie protested, not adding that if that boyfriend happened to be Glorion Osterhoudt, she was way, way old enough.
‘That’s what you say,’ said Royston, giving her ponytail an indulgent ruffle. ‘But I can’t see our Izzie staying solo for long. Mark my words. Some fella’s gonna sweep you off your feet in the next six months or so, and you’ll be like: “Hey I’m not so young after all!” ’
‘That a prediction Royst?’
Royston, sensitively intuitive and known for his accuracy in foretelling occurrences, tilted his head to the side, adopted a more sober expression and said, ‘It wasn’t at the time, but now I think it is. It really is.’
Intrigued to know whether this might mean getting to go out with the boy she idolised, Izzie’s voice became an excited whisper. ‘Do you think he’s Australian though...or would he be from overseas?’
‘Got your eye on someone already, Iz?’
‘No, no, no!’ Dammit, the man was psychic. Or maybe she’d just been too obvious. Why did she have to bring up Glorion’s nationality? Royston would detect her denial was a lie.
Luckily for Izzie, Royston did not look sceptical. Instead, he seemed to be locked in a contemplative state, judging by the liquidity of his faraway gaze. ‘He’s certainly not from here.’
Izzie wanted to clap her hands and leap about the hallway.
‘But then again, I don’t even feel he’s from...anywhere. It’s like there’s this emptiness...this void.’
‘Yes?’ Izzie was desperate to hear more. ‘What do you mean by that? What else do you see? What—’
‘Royston bay-bee,’ her mother trilled from the kitchen in a witchy squawk. ‘Are
you going to help us get these snacks prepared, or will I have to do something threatening?’
As though he really were a smidgen scared, Royston gave Izzie an apologetic smile and hurried to the kitchen.
Muffled, now that the walls acted as barriers, Royston said: ‘I was giving Izzie a reading.’
And just as muffled from Rosetta: ‘Oh, you were giving Izzie a reading! That’s okay, keep going, I’ll bring you out your drink. Do you want claret or...?’
Listening intently in the hope that she’d soon see a wineglass-in-hand Royston returning to the hallway, Izzie grimaced once she heard: ‘Nah, that’s fine, love. I’m sure Izzie would rather be phoning friends than getting a psychic reading from an old fogey like moi.’
Izzie trudged up the hallway towards her room.
‘She’s really blossoming, that girl,’ Royston’s voice echoed. ‘Turning into quite the fatale.’
‘Well she takes after her mother...’ Mumble, mumble, mumble.
‘Rosetta, we know you’re a femme fatale, no need to brag about it. Sheesh! Can’t tell you, Darren, how many budding romances and make-ups and break-ups I’ve endured hearing about with this fly-about woman...’ Mumble, mumble, mumble.
‘...Am not a...’ Mumble.
‘Yes you...’ Mumble.
‘Fake arguments beginning and the others aren’t even here yet,’ Izzie said to herself. She straightened the vase of homegrown Easter daisies on the foyer table facing the bathroom and dawdled to her bedroom.
The door was answered twice more. Curly haired, lanky Craig, a chilled kind of guy with a law firm in Surry Hills, was next to follow Royston and boyfriend. Craig at this stage was encouraging her mum to finish the law degree she’d resumed when Izzie began high school. Way back in the mid ’90s when he was a Legal Aid solicitor, Rosetta had been his client. She’d gone to him about child maintenance when trying to locate Izzie’s father, a man who had left Australia with a new wife and seemed to have never existed.
When Izzie was little, she often heard her mother telling people that her father had ‘done a disappearing act’. In Izzie’s child’s mind, he was a fascinating mystery. By the time she lined up for show-and-tell in her first year of primary school, she’d concluded he was a magician who had ‘just vanished’ and considered it newsworthy enough to share with her fellow finger-painters.
Mrs Priestley hadn’t been so entertained by the revelation. Years later, Rosetta related the parent-teacher interview when she’d been asked if she knew that Izzie ‘sometimes made up stories’ and ‘might have been compensating for the absence of her father by purporting he was “magical” and able to “disappear”.’
Rosetta had confided she wasn’t the least bit concerned. ‘You were being creative, Izzie,’ she’d said emphatically. ‘And logical too. In a literal way. I went home from that interview full of pride for my imaginative little five-year-old.’
Craig’s floorboard-creaking strides made a rhythmic accompaniment to Rosetta’s ribbings about his ‘secret project’, some kind of cash cow that Craig wasn’t prepared to talk about until its official launch. ‘I don’t think he’s going to reveal anything tonight,’ Rosetta said in a mock whine to Royston and Darren.
Next to shout greetings in the hallway was Lena the fair-haired health food shop owner, a friend of Rosetta’s from first-year mature-age uni. The two always reminisced about that year as though everything in it had been nothing short of hilarious. The year after the hilarious one hadn’t been as much fun. Whenever Rosetta mentioned it, she would gaze out at the backyard and shrug. Probably the year had been less full of laughs because the vanishing man she’d married demanded she drop uni to help out in his accounting firm. He’d left her soon after, for another woman. Left her holding the baby, and the baby had been Izzie. Rosetta’s hopes of gaining a degree had then ‘gone out the window’ as she’d put it. Izzie supposed this was the reason her mother always stared out of windows when recalling those years. To subconsciously search for lost opportunities.
‘Okay, Lena lovey,’ Royston’s voice echoed from the sitting room. ‘You were busy with your shop last fortnight, so you can be first to read. Next two chapters please.’
‘Two chapters? Oh, good!’ Lena’s voice lifted in volume. ‘I like getting to be reader.’
<><> XXVII <><>
When Pieter became used to the home of a prisoner, he almost began to enjoy the role cast upon him. He and Fripso had become confidantes, just like soldiers of a later time united by unjust conditions.
He’d resolved to view this restriction as a learning opportunity. While dwelling within a royal residence, he would find out all he could about gold-skins and their mysterious rituals. At every meeting with Eidred, he asked about her family and her early life, at the same time noticing her auric-field shrink and darken as storm clouds do. Gold-skin auras were rarely pretty. They exuded basic hues, nothing of the gentler, illuminated ones that graced those of devic heritage, although Eidred’s colours softened whenever she spoke to her captives.
Fripso was eager to hear Pieter’s findings. Explaining them allowed Pieter to better remember the accounts Eidred had given him, of the Norwegian invasion not so many season-cycles ago that had robbed so many of the chance to complete their soul-fulfilling assignments.
From whence they had come, no-one could fathom. That they were from a universe which opposed the one they had infiltrated was understood. Where exactly this topsy-turvy location marked its existence had little bearing on the work devas had set out to complete: the advancement of all things goodly so that beauty-creation—the only honourable brand of magic—could flourish.
Still, some hint as to where they were from might help his fellow sprites better comprehend the powers they were doing their best to deflect. And so the question evolved one starless night when clouds crowded an inky sky.
‘Here I am, lovelies,’ sang Eidred. Her dish, which still held bones of marsh birds, disgusted Pieter and Fripso. ‘Oh I am sorry. Let me rid my platter of these. I know how much it vexes the two of you to see the animal carcasses we ingest, yet you must understand we need this.’
‘But you don’t,’ grumbled Fripso. The rabbit was newly accustomed to conversing with a gold-skin. Faunal parents warned their young against trusting gold-skins enough to speak to them, and Fripso doggedly observed this rule, but Pieter’s arrival had changed all that. The elf encouraged him to communicate with the girl as the pretence of being mute would mean he might only speak to Pieter, and then that he might only speak to Pieter outside of the girl’s presence. ‘Rabbits graze on the grass the land offers,’ Fripso continued. ‘And Pieter and his family only ingest liquids. You would never see them eat at all, Eidred. They are mostly spirit.’
‘How you maintain your weight, elf, is beyond me,’ said Eidred with a sigh. ‘And you have grown so much taller! You were little over my height when you first arrived here. Still, your species is made of more transparent stuff than ours. Your atoms are lighter, as you said. You are non-dependent on nourishment.’
‘Not non-dependent,’ Pieter said. ‘We still require nourishment as you know. The only reason I’ve survived here as long as I have is the water that you conscientiously bring for me. That is my sustenance. But preying on something living...Hurting it! Ending it! Ingesting it! This is something our species cannot imagine.’
Eidred pushed through the bars of her clothing quarter a plateful of Wakkel-Weed for Fripso and a cup filled with stream water from the dell for Pieter. ‘I wish I could be noble like you, and kinder to animals.’
Pieter watched her pityingly. ‘What stops you, Eidred?’
The girl bowed her head, and Pieter thought he heard a sob from behind her veil of hair.
‘Baff-Daaaahmly,’ she said.
‘What did you say?’ said Pieter and Fripso in unison.
‘My family,’ said Eidred. ‘I said “my family”,’ and with that she broke into a cascade of sobs.
‘Poor Eidred,’ said Frips
o. ‘’Tis not your fault you were born into such a grotesque genetic code.’
‘Perhaps there was a mistake,’ murmured Eidred. She gazed up at the grizzly clouds that filled the stone vista. ‘Perhaps under the rubble...Nay, forget I made mention of it.’
The rubble! Hadn’t this been a thought of Pieter’s? Surely not. Of all things they were, gold-skins were certainly not intuitive. And yet a princess from the Grudellan Palace had echoed his sentiments about a gem lost in rubble. Coincidence, he supposed; little more than that. He had been encaged for too long, was making somethings out of little nothings that were best left alone.
He became aware of the girl regarding him. A small crinkle had formed on her forehead. ‘Uncanny,’ she said, mostly to herself.
‘What is uncanny, Eidred?’ asked Fripso.
‘The resemblance,’ she said. ‘Pieter looks very much like a boy in a painting of ours.’
‘No-one would ever paint him,’ said the rabbit. With a chuckle he added. ‘He’s far from remarkable, this elf.’
At the thought of vainly posing for an artist who might think him worthy of replication, Pieter laughed too.
Eidred placed her hands on her hips. In a flurry of passion, she said, ‘The boy in the painting I tell you of is in no way unremarkable!’
‘He is not?’ said Fripso pretending surprise.
‘No. In fact he is very fine to look at.’
In an effort to explain this, Fripso said, ‘Ah well. I suppose by gold-skin standards our friend Pieter might be considered fine. I imagine his features and proportions would agree with the golden mean.’
‘Indeed they do,’ said Eidred nodding importantly.
‘What is the golden mean?’ Pieter wanted to know. Whatever it was, it sounded intriguing.
‘You must have been dozing through one of our conversations Pieter,’ said Fripso. ‘The golden mean is a measurement of architecture and, among other things, facial features and bodily proportions that these people’s gods insist is the formula for beauty. As you know, Eidred’s relatives are obsessed with measuring. Measuring, measuring! Always measuring.’
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