What was going on with the Crystal Consciousness owner?
‘I had no idea it was that bad. Caz, I’m so sorry to hear this. No, no, no, I understand. You had no other choice.’
Rosetta’s silhouette, a faded grey through the flyscreen door, was folding forward. Her voice had become raspy. ‘Hey, I’ve still got my other job. And Jack Barnaby always has extra hours...No, really. I’ll be fine.’
Crystal Consciousness must have been going broke. Izzie crept back across the verandah. Rosetta turned to her. Smiled bravely. ‘You don’t want to miss your bus, Iz,’ she whispered.
The sound of Caroline’s sobs on the other end of the line filtered into the hallway. Rosetta slapped the phone back to her ear and spoke in reassuring tones. ‘We’re funny, you and I,’ she said into the receiver. Her attempt at a chuckle didn’t quite work. ‘Each of us is worried about the other.’
The bus was now creeping towards the middle of Ashbury Avenue. Keeping her fingers crossed that she’d catch it in time, Izzie waited for the call to end. At last Rosetta wished Caroline well and put down the phone. Before Izzie had a chance to say anything, Rosetta snatched the phone up again and dialled the voicemail of Jack Barnaby, her cleaning boss, to request additional shifts.
Izzie opened the door a fraction. ‘I was thinking, Mum, it’s about time I chip in for rent and food. The bakery wants a junior to work weekends. If I get the job, I could keep the bowling alley earnings for school stuff and clothes, and then I could put the rest towards board.’
Rosetta did not respond immediately. She was standing by the phone table with her head bowed. When she swivelled round to face Izzie, her expression was unnaturally cheerful. ‘That’s not for you to worry about. Now you go and enjoy your birthday! Go on. Aw, look! Your bus is just about here.’
Izzie hurried down the steps. Remembering something she’d meant to tell Rosetta on Friday, she called, ‘By the way, Mum, there’s some mail from the letterbox in the wheelbarrow. Two envelopes. I put them there when I answered my phone and ended up forgetting about them.’
‘Thanks, hon. If they’re bills, they’re worth forgetting about.’ Rosetta gave a roll of her eyes. ‘Have a fantastic time. And don’t come home without a boyfriend. I mean not with one as such, but with the knowledge of having won the heart of a super-hunk.’
Super-hunk! Eeek! Her mother was really showing her age.
* * * *
While Izzie was at her birthday picnic, Rosetta baked a trayful of baklava, weeded the fernery by the driveway and swizzled a mop across the hallway floorboards. Just the laundering left to do. ‘Bummer,’ she said when she opened the cupboard. ‘Out of laundry detergent.’
The gas-lighter on the stove had seen its last flicker, there were no matches in the house, and her craving for a hot cup of tea was increasing by the minute. The corner shop was in walking distance but a flexi-teller was not. While the fifteen cents in her purse might have bought a small box of Redheads in 1968, unless there’d been a forty year inflation standstill, the three silver discs—with their engravings of the Queen on one side and an echidna on the other—would remain where they were. In obscurity.
A trip out to an auto bank in the next suburb? Jack Barnaby probably wouldn’t call back until the evening and there was nothing much left to do at home. Excited at the thought of going somewhere, she snatched up her handbag and hurtled out to the driveway.
At the front lawn she slapped a hand against her forehead. The car was still at the garage awaiting a generator replacement. Despite being wheel-less for the past three days, she still hadn’t beaten the automatic reaction of reaching for her keys. Eadie wanted help that afternoon with browsing over colours and prices for a patio she hoped to afford the following year.
With a shrug, she thought: I’ll top up on supplies at the mall.
The freeway freeze—resulting in her car being towed away after sputtering to a stop in peak-hour traffic—had occurred the day after she’d taken Izzie to the dentist. A bill for two fillings was never especially welcome, even less so now that Rosetta’s sole mode of transport had performed that spectacularly costly dummy-spit.
And now Crystal Consciousness, a workplace she’d cherished, had folded under the pressure of February’s slumping sales figures. She would need to work full-time in her cleaning job now, a demanding job physically, but a good hourly rate all the same.
She flipped on a CD, ‘Serene Lunacy’, a hit made famous in 1967 by New Zealand vocalist, Danna Nolan, and strolled out to the back garden to open the two letters received Friday that were lying, crumpled at the corners, in the wheelbarrow where Izzie had left them. They were sprinkled with petals from the nearby daisy bush and soggy from Saturday’s rain. From the sitting room, the chorus rose up in a whirl of soprano splendour. Humming along, Rosetta peeled open the damp windowed envelope. The words Eviction Notice in bold, angry lettering sprang out.
Shock prickled over her spine.
The home that she and Izzie loved was no longer theirs! According to the letter that shook in her hands, the developers had brought the demolition date forward. A month to pack up and be out of there.
She checked and re-checked the real estate agent’s letter while the reality of it seeped into her heart. One month! Sinking down onto the lawn, she stared at the shadows.
Finding a modestly priced home in an area close to Izzie’s school would take nothing short of a miracle. Double income families were almost always given precedence as tenants. Understandable, Rosetta supposed. A single mother, a Jill of all Trades with no career, no work that could be considered permanent and a continually changing address, was often viewed as a potential rent-dodger.
Evicted!
And then there was the pregnancy. To top it all off, she had a pregnancy to deal with.
Lena, an expert on cats, confirmed a week ago that Sidelta’s kittens could arrive any day.
‘I love kittens,’ Rosetta had said mournfully. ‘From a distance though, when they’re owned by other people...’ and Lena had warned that finding homes for six or more kittens was not an easy task.
The clouds had begun to gather when Rosetta returned inside. She scanned the accommodation section of the local paper, mouth agape at the ludicrously high rental prices, and groaned at the idea of having to put Izzie through yet another locational change.
She had to consider the positives. It wasn’t as though Punchbowl—or its surrounds—was so terrible. She and Izzie might be luckier this time, with a neighbourhood free of intruders.
She filled her glass at the kitchen tap, checking the clouds from the window. The temperature had dropped a few degrees in the past hour. Had she reminded Izzie to take a jacket? Had Izzie remembered to grab an umbrella?
She surveyed the back lawn. ‘I’ll miss that jacaranda tree,’ she said. ‘And the two citruses.’
Her gaze moved to the clothesline. She froze.
The scene before her snatched the air from her lungs.
‘Can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘No.’
Someone was out there, crouching on the path. A figure made shadowy by the darkening sky. A man in a trailing black coat.
She slipped to one side of the window. She would phone the police, but first she would need to watch him to make sure he didn’t approach the door. She would need to lock it. Now. And she would need to lock the front door too.
She fled to the indoor laundry. The images crashed through her thoughts…crazed eyes, curling talons. Her only barrier against the stranger was a flimsy flyscreen, a small flight of concrete steps and a distance of five or six metres. She reached for the heavier door to close it, all the while watching him, anxiety rising in her chest like a wave.
He had not moved from where he was crouching. His head, veiled in the jacaranda’s shade, was bowed. He was inspecting something on the ground.
‘God, no,’ Rosetta breathed.
He was watching Sidelta. Grasping at her. Sidelta raised a paw in defence. The stranger collected h
er up in his arms and stood.
Without pausing to consider the consequences, Rosetta flung open the screen door and stepped out. In a shout, she said, ‘Put that cat down!’
The man dropped his arms in fright and stepped sideways into the sun. Sidelta sprang out and sought shelter under the wheelbarrow.
‘Oh.’ Rosetta stared at him, at the face now visible in the sunshine, a face conveying shock and embarrassment. Eyes of light blue observed her warily.
‘Dominic!’ Rosetta’s fear turned to anger. ‘What were you doing with Sidelta?’
‘We were having a cuddle,’ Dominic said. ‘But I think you might have startled her.’
It was feasible of course. Dominic had no reason to kidnap her cat. On the rare occasions he’d dropped Izzie off, he’d only been kind to Sidelta.
‘You scared the bejeezus out of me! Why didn’t you knock?’
‘I did. You weren’t hearing me out the front, so I thought I’d try your other door.’ Dominic’s thick lips curled into an apologetic grin.
Aware of the tautness in her shoulders, Rosetta breathed out. ‘I see.’
Sidelta, recovered now from her initial alarm, crept up to Dominic and leaned dreamily against him, grey fur tipped with silver in the afternoon glare. Dominic stooped and glided a hand over her back. Definitely not a cat thief. Definitely not the lizard eater. ‘I was wanting to have a chat with you about this gem of a place of yours.’ Dominic flourished his hand outward and smiled benignly at the yard.
‘You want to talk about this property?’
Dominic flickered his eyelids, dark lashes trembling delicately. ‘And a great little property it is too. Cal Bungs are going like hotcakes lately. Reminds nostalgic forty-somethings of the homes their grandparents once had. Feels comforting. Secure. You probably already know that their high demand has pushed the prices up?’
‘Ye-es.’
Dominic strode towards her and produced a business card from his coat pocket. ‘If ever you’re looking at selling, Rosetta, I’d be delighted to oblige. In fact, I insist.’ He raised an eyebrow and imitated his TV-commercial self. ‘Call us at Wallace...as the ugly guy on the idiot-box says.’ He chuckled at his last comment, at what he considered to be an irony.
‘Thank you, Dominic.’ Should she tell him the grim truth? That in one month’s time her cosy California Bungalow would be reduced to a rubble heap? No point in admitting to being a renter. Diondra already had enough ammunition.
‘I recommend you meet me for a drink, Rosetta, to discuss values.’
‘That won’t be happening.’ She placed her hands behind her back, the card crushing in her fist. ‘I won’t be selling anything, but if I were, I’d talk to one of your staff members.’
Despite her non-committal response, Dominic appeared to be encouraged. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Good, nice, girl!’
The patronising choice of words made her seethe. Until she realised Dominic had been addressing Sidelta. The indiscriminate feline was lying shamelessly at his feet, pregnant abdomen poised upwards in readiness for a belly-rub.
Dominic murmured a few more terms of endearment to the expectant mother, examined his watch, mentioned needing to pack his suitcase for an 11 p.m. flight to Port Vila in the South Pacific, and said goodbye to Rosetta with a smile that wasn’t sincere.
Once he’d exited through the side gate, Rosetta escaped inside and flopped on the couch. She was safe. Sidelta was safe. But something still bothered her. What was it? Dominic’s manner? His appearance?
The eyes. They were different. A shadow at the rims that hadn’t been there before.
Rosetta sat upright.
The corners of Dominic’s eyes had looked bruised, as though charcoal had been smudged into the corners and then haphazardly wiped away.
She tried to recall the man in the unlit laundry at Punchbowl. His mouth would have been painted. Its redness had been too bright. And his eyes? They’d been pale, almost glassy, yet darkly sinister. Lined with kohl? She couldn’t remember. If only she could remember!
Sidelta, now settled on the edge of the rug, watched her with sedate amusement.
‘I’m getting paranoid,’ Rosetta said.
Sidelta launched into a food-demanding, ‘Yeee-ow!’
‘And you’re getting hungry. Now, how would you and your unborn catkins feel about another can of tuna and a big saucer of milk?’
<><> XXXV <><>
Back in the past timeframe, the
Devic Pre-Destruction Century
Or ‘The Pre-Glory Century’ to
those of the Empire
THE TIMEFRAME IN WHICH
THEIR PALACE RESIDES
‘Tell us!’ The command was screamed at Eidred.
‘I do not know.’
‘Tell us!’
‘I cannot tell you. I do not know!’
‘Then you will have to suffer the sorrowful consequences. Who do you harbour in your room? Who is living in your dressing-quarter? Who are we to imprison at the sun’s twenty-fourth degree?’
Eidred glared at the spindly creatures whose eyes—piercing, unfeeling, eager for the sight of blood—burned holes of terror in her heart.
‘You are mistaken, good minders. There is no elf and no rabbit stowed away in my room.’ At that, she sank her teeth into her lip and knew she could never forgive herself for this utterance, a disastrous error made in the name of fear.
‘An elf?’ they screamed. ‘A rabbit? This is news we are yet to hear.’
‘But you must understand. They are not here of their own accord, they—’
‘Oh but they are, they are.’
‘They are not!’
‘We shall kill them! We shall offer them to our gods! We shall rob the elf of its magic!’
‘I have imprisoned them for myself. Therefore I shall kill them.’
‘You?’
‘I, as Princess of Grudella, possess the powers to do so. ’Tis written in our laws. Have you not seen Law Seven-Six-Eight in the Book of Rightitude, good minders? Are you willing to go against the Solen’s decrees?’
A nod was given to one of the servants, and Eidred, despising the stillness that followed, waited wordlessly for the Book of Rightitude’s retrieval.
Silence enveloped the room, a silence that allowed Eidred to remember she hadn’t dared to breathe until now. Her hands, clenched into fists, were beginning to shake forcefully to match the state of her shivering shoulders.
The delay caused by the troopers’ errand allowed her greater time, although not enough. Very soon they would find her claim to be a fallacy. Very soon, Pieter and Fripso, and possibly Eidred as well, would be flung into dungeons.
May the gods have pity on me, Eidred inwardly pleaded, and allow me to go with them. May they allow me to die with my beloved friends. May they remove me from my life as a princess!
Life might as well be death, with the demise of her only companions. Waking to each sun in a state of mourning, with the memory of her failure to protect them, would be far worse than a torturous end.
And yet, events had wound to such an extent that she could not reverse them. The pterodactyls scanned the Book and sniggered at Eidred.
Her arms were clamped into chains.
Two troopers exited the hexagonal room in search of an elf and a rabbit, both of whom would be cowering in the princess’s chamber.
‘You cannot do this,’ Eidred shrieked. ‘I demand to see the Solen! I demand to see the man who is my father...I demand...’
A sack was thrown over her head. An ugly scent of toadstools and other hallucinogens enveloped her.
Eidred slumped to the floor.
Chapter Thirteen
<><> XXXVI <><>
‘Eidred?’
The princess awoke to the memory of troopers hauling her down flights of stairs and into a prison beneath the palace.
‘Are you conscious, Eidred?’
‘Fripso? Is that you speaking?’
‘Yes, Eidred, only me.’
‘So dark! It is so dark I can’t see anything! Where are you, Fripso?’
‘Eidred! Tell us you are all right. Tell us you are not unwell. You have been screaming in your unconsciousness, and Pieter and I are concerned.’
‘My dears,’ squealed Eidred, still trying to make out shapes before her in the darkness. ‘It is I who should be concerned, I who have given you such misery. Oh my poor, poor darlings. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.’
‘Eidred,’ a familiar voice said, and it might as well have been music because it belonged to Pieter. ‘Do not berate yourself, friend. We are not so badly off in here.’
‘But what will happen next?’
‘A question we might well ask of you,’ Fripso said. ‘It is you, Eidred, who knows the ways of the palace.’
Eidred noted she was lying on something soft … something as soft as the mattress of her chamber. Her tear-wet eyes adjusted to the darkness. She could see a window over yonder, one just like her own, and a little pool of starlight on the floor. ‘’Tis my room,’ she exclaimed.
‘Of course it is,’ Pieter’s voice rang out, and Eidred heard a soft chuckle. ‘Did you travel in the Nightmare Realms? Did you travel somewhere especially awful?’
‘The shouts, indeed, were almighty,’ added Fripso.
‘Oh! Only a nightmare!’ Eidred hurried to light a candle. Her heart, only moments ago aching with petrifaction, was now bubbling over with joy.
After ensuring a flame had materialised upon the wick, Eidred leapt from her bed and across to her captive guests. She unlocked and opened the dressing-quarter door, scooped up Fripso, kissed his ears wildly, then with motherly tenderness set him back down.
Eidred turned to gaze at Pieter, her beautiful friend Pieter, and stepped towards him. She reached up to touch the side of his neck, felt the keen stretch of jawline above it, and the slope of his face—a face that was even more handsome by moonlight—and searched his dark eyes, which at first had become wide in surprise yet were now dreamily heavy-lidded.
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