She places her hand beneath her chin. A thin breath of air gusts from her lips, scented with metal and salt. The boat begins to move.
‘One more thing,’ she calls as they gaily float away. ‘If you see any normal fish, eat them. Take them straight from the water.’ She beams. ‘They’re delicious.’
Kira opens her mouth to say thank you, but when she looks back at the beach, the ragged Romy has vanished. In its place is a mirror image of Callum, and as the words shrivel up, it’s gone.
Where are they?’ Carol asks. Downstairs, the twins chatter, playing a game that may end in tears. Jay is next door, fighting robots or trekking through mystical kingdoms. Life is normal.
Except it isn’t. On the river. The voice sighs. Carol shuts her eyes. Alive.
The anchor in her chest is raised, just a little. She’s felt too heavy to move, too heavy to speak since Lena left. ‘And you can’t just…’ she flounders, thinning her mouth. Her leg jigs, up and down, as annoying as Callum’s tapping. Right now, she couldn’t stop if she tried. ‘Force them out?’
The voice is a rustle around her throat. Can your God force you?
Carol flinches and tenses. ‘You’re not gods,’ she says tightly. ‘Even you don’t believe you are.’
A laugh slithers softly down her spine. Precisely. Flitting across her shoulders, it lifts the hair at the base of her neck. There are no gods, and no such control. All we have, we fought for.
Omnipotence, another murmurs, does not exist.
If it did…the first voice is a writhing smile. Dread drips through Carol like oil. We might have saved her.
The oil oozes, tarring her lungs. The anchor pulls down, down, down. ‘Saved who?’
Sighing together, the Whispers lift. Goodbye, Carol. The chalet creaks. Anneliese is getting close.
If his watch is honest, after ten minutes, the beach has merged with the forest. After twenty, the horizon-spanning forest is a horizon-spanning blur. After thirty, there’s only blue.
He’s never been so glad to see the back of anything. Sofia may have said to be paranoid, but as his lazy, blistered fingers trail, cooling in the ripples from the boat, he can’t help but relax. The heat is a haze, the water clear and cold, the air as salty as the sea. It’s a summer holiday.
Reclining against the reeds, Callum closes his eyes. A holiday with sirens and religious fish, but a holiday nonetheless.
Sirens and religious fish. His stomach growls like a dungeon door. If they’ll give him food, let them come; a puny squirrel a day is not enough. He’d murder for raclette. Raclette, and some caramelised vin cuit, and beer. Hell, if it’s summer, why not a barbecue? Chicken wings, pork chops, the burgers they show on Food Network at three o’clock in the morning.
His stomach gears up from a growl to a howl. At his feet, Kira laughs. ‘I take it you’re hungry.’
Callum rubs a hand over his face. His nose clicks. ‘Like you’re not.’ He yawns and stretches wide. His stomach feels like a cavern, filled with flittering bats. ‘If you could eat anything right now, what would it be? Anything.’
Kira rests her cheek on her hand, curled against the side of the boat. ‘Hmm.’ She smiles at him sleepily, but something about it is staged. No wonder; Sofia dropped the mother of bombs. ‘Sticky toffee pudding.’
Callum groans. ‘Oh, British food.’ He slaps his stomach and groans some more. ‘Oh. Toad-in-the-hole. Haggis.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘Cullen skink.’
‘Now you’re just making up words.’
‘I’m not!’ Callum grins. If he’s not mistaken, she looks a tad happier. ‘It’s some kind of Scottish soup. Maybe fish.’
Kira wrinkles her nose. Still smushed against her hand, her face is adorable, turning pink in the sun. ‘I think I’ll pass. What about bread and butter pudding?’
Callum’s stomach crashes like thunder. ‘Okay.’ He pats it tenderly. ‘Okay. This guy’s headed for certain death if we keep going on about food. There must be something else to do.’ He squints at the blinding sky. ‘We’re floating on a river, in a driverless boat, in the middle of an adult Narnia. It’s not possible there’s nothing to do.’
There’s plenty. Callum drags his eyes away from Kira, awkwardly shifting his jeans. Sadly, they’d end in a capsized ship.
Pulling away from her mother-shaped monkey, Kira shuffles around to face him. ‘What do people usually do when they’re stuck in tiny boats?’
Yawning, Callum shifts again. ‘Think? Philosophise?’
Kira huffs. ‘Since when?’ Her gaze lands on his T-shirt, and her lips slide to the side. Dark blue, white emblazoned: Am I Alive?
Catching her scrutiny, Callum plucks at the words. ‘I know. The irony. And I get the impression’—slotting his hands behind his head, he neatly crosses his ankles—‘that that’s what people do. From films? Books? Old books? They philosophise all the time in old books. Tea and biscuits? Philosophy. Death of a rabbit? Philosophy. Or maybe’—he wags a finger—‘we should be bonding. Maybe that’s the reason for the extended boat-trip. Maybe this is the moment for us, as this epic tale’s protagonists, to work out our differences, stare in realisation, and figure out we get on.’
Kira narrows her eyes through the silent sky. ‘Didn’t we already do that? You shouted at me in a car park, I ran away, you shouted at me again. We were huffy for a while, then we kissed and made up. Not literally.’ She looks at him slyly, with a jolt of confidence. ‘The literal part came later.’
Callum’s eyes linger on her, briefly intense. ‘Aye, lassie.’ He stretches out his arms. ‘So if we can’t work out our differences, I guess we’re stuck philosophising.’ He claps the reeds on either side, two underwhelming thuds. ‘Fabulous. Where do we start? Questioning how we know that this strange world is real? Questioning how we know that either world is real? Maybe I’m a figment of your imagination; maybe you’re a figment of mine. Or maybe’—he leans forward, placing a solemn hand on her knee—‘we’re a figment of someone else’s. Take your pick. We can work through them in order, or at random.’ He sits back. ‘We appear to have all the time in the world.’
Kira picks at her vest. It sticks to her side. ‘I’d rather not pick any.’ Perish the thought. ‘Philosophy was the one thing I ran from at A Level. Well.’ She frowns. ‘And maths. And biology. And geography. Whatever.’ She wriggles around, aligning her arms on the rim of the boat. ‘Point being, philosophy can die.’
Resting her chin on her hands, she peers down at her reflection. Rippled though it is, she can tell it’s undesirable, undercut by a pure, roiling abyss. She looks away again. There could be far worse things down there than two unwashed, ripe-smelling youths.
‘What if we were made up by someone else?’ Callum slides his hands back behind his head. ‘How would we know? How would we even start to know? Have you ever had a dream you were convinced was real?’
Kira draws out a stage-groan, topped off with a slump. ‘Yes,’ she replies. An uneasy stab of longing pierces her chest. The beach. Sun. Home. ‘Everyone has. But sooner or later, we realise they’re dreams. There’s always something not quite real.’
Silence. She feels it coming in the pressure on the heat-hazed air. Quietly, Callum asks, ‘What about yesterday?’
I do not want to talk about yesterday. The words are almost out when Kira traps them in their cage. If it’s that or working into an existential crisis…
‘I did realise that some of it wasn’t real.’ She settles against the boat with a sigh. It feels like a game from a Shreddies box, sliding plastic pieces around to try and make a picture. ‘But when I woke up, I only remembered the last part. Since then, I’ve had these sprinkled scenes, and I think there were three. Three dreams. Either a dream in a dream in a dream’—she walks her fingers along the reeds—‘or a dream conveyor belt.’
Callum scratches the back of his neck. ‘And what happened?’
And now you’re going to see. An image swims up of her as an
ostrich, burying her head in the sand.
‘I’m still not sure,’ she says. ‘It’s in bits.’ She touches her fingertips together, a photo. There’s sadly no sand to speak of. ‘Waking up in the forest, seeing Mum with a tail, hearing the Kyo whisper that I had to watch. I think there was a cabin, too.’ She wrinkles her forehead. ‘That was the first dream. In the second, I woke up in the forest and saw my dad. He was leaving Whiteland with a woman, I think?’
She shakes her head and shrugs. ‘I don’t know. It made even less sense than the first, but I’d guess they were both there to convince me that the last part, when I was home, was real. Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, relief.’
She watches her fingers trot back along the reeds. What she doesn’t want to think—and can’t stand to say—is that they felt like a snapshot of truth. Both her mum and dad involved in Whiteland, in different ways and times. Lies, seduction, magic, murder. Someone escaping, ecstatic to be out.
‘We can go back to being fictional,’ Callum says. Kira looks up. He’s also watching her fingers, their ever more fractious march. ‘Seeing as I brought up something you’re unhappy about, we might now have some differences.’
His tone is only half-joking. When Kira huffs a tiny laugh, she’s only half-amused. ‘Ah.’ She shakes her head wryly. ‘Disagreeing, making up again, and philosophising, all while forced into each other’s company. Aren’t we the perfect story.’
A thought strikes, and she leaps upon it. Oh, how distracting. Oh, how wondrous.
‘Actually, we are.’ Awkwardly, she twists around. Sure, this may be a magic boat, but magic boats capsize. Right?
Of all the things to worry about.
‘If we were a story’—Kira boots this from her mind—‘I think we’d be a fairy tale.’ She lengthens the words, a façade of reflection, testing them for taste. ‘Therefore, we don’t need to disagree and then make up. We can just disagree. We’re both foregone conclusions.’
Digging in Erik’s coat, Callum stops. ‘That’—he looks up at her—‘is depressing.’
‘No, no.’ Kira lifts a finger. ‘It’s literary analysis.’
‘Oh.’ With a huff, Callum carries on digging. ‘Because that’s so much better.’
‘It is.’
Surfacing with the water, Callum drinks and passes it over. ‘Really.’
‘Yes.’ Gratefully, she gulps. ‘Thanks.’ She passes it back. ‘I wouldn’t question me on this, Callum. I would not.’
It’s a challenge. She knows it. He knows it, too, because he pauses in his swig, raising his eyebrows as slowly as any eyebrows have ever moved. ‘Oh, come on.’ He wipes his mouth. ‘You know I won’t just let that go. You know I won’t.’
‘I do.’ The half-amusement creeps into a three-quarter smile. Kira clings to it, as ardent as someone half asleep avoiding errant thoughts. ‘If you let me carry on, though, I’m in danger of becoming one of your, what’s the word? Fogies.’
He doesn’t rise to it. He doesn’t call her dramatic, either, which is great because she is. Of course she is. Look at where she is. In a magic land, in a magic river, sailing along in a magic boat with nothing but a hologram’s wisdom.
After this, she’s buying him beer. For life.
‘I,’ Callum says, almost lazily, ‘would very much find that fun.’
She looks at him. He looks at her. Kira smiles.
‘You, male lead, are on.’ Crossing her legs, she sits forward. The boat creaks. She ignores it. ‘So, my reasoning.’ She frames it like a photo. ‘Fairy tales don’t do character development.’
She waits. Most obliging, Callum looks inquisitive.
‘Okay.’ She wriggles, getting comfortable, as much as she can in a vessel made of reeds. ‘Think about it: the wolf wants Little Red Riding Hood, and then, the wolf gets her. The version of the story you read doesn’t matter. You never—’
‘But,’ Callum says, interrupting her suddenly, straightening up from his slump. ‘Sorry.’ He shuts his mouth. ‘Carry on.’
‘No.’ Kira’s three-quarter smile becomes nearly full. He’s engaging with this? Really? ‘You go.’
He smirks, but as though it’s more at himself. ‘Well, I just thought the wolf got butchered.’ He mimes an axe, or Maxwell’s hammer. ‘Does that not count?’
‘Oh.’ Kira laces her fingers together, so fast it almost hurts. ‘I’m sorry, but that was such a trapdoor. Sure, the wolf is sometimes butchered, but you never, ever see him think oops, guess I’m a bad person.’
She keeps her fingers laced, tapping on her knuckles. Callum is watching her, almost oddly, but odd in a way that’s…good? As if he can’t compute her or doesn’t think she’s real.
If she thinks about that, she’ll lose her thread, and this thread is keeping her sane.
‘Okay.’ She frames the scene again, stamping out fifty emotions gunning to shoot her down. ‘Figure two: Sleeping Beauty. A princess goes to sleep for a hundred years. Yes?’
With the same pleased bemusement, Callum nods.
‘Yes.’ Kira swats at a fly. ‘And Maleficent, who put her to sleep, never regrets what she’s done. Sure, she dies, but she dies like a villain.’
Callum mimes a dagger throw.
‘See, you know what I’m talking about.’ Kira spreads her hands. ‘Also, neither Aurora nor the prince come out of it with any sort of arc. He wanders in all’—she deepens her voice and furrows her forehead—‘“Hey, I’m amazing, give me a princess.”’
Callum snorts. ‘Like that.’
‘Like that.’ Kira nods. ‘And then, he doesn’t change. Well.’ She turns her mouth down. ‘I guess he goes all, “Hey, I’m amazing, I stabbed some trees and was rewarded with a princess.”’
Callum grins. ‘Not the worst way to be. Also, I have a question.’ He wipes a trail of sweat from his temple. ‘Don’t fairy tales have morals?’
Oh, no. Despite the need for distraction, she didn’t really want philosophy. Kira eyes him with suspicion. ‘Yes…?’
Callum looks at her like he’s just solved the mystery of who put Bella in the wych elm. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘wouldn’t they count as character development?’
Oh, no. She really didn’t want philosophy.
‘The wolf gets butchered.’ Callum mimes his axe. ‘And Maleficent is thwarted. I can’t remember how, but I like thwarted.’ He links his middle finger and thumb. ‘Thwarted.’ He nods to himself. ‘Yeah. Either way, the theme is that evil folk lose.’
Shifting her face toward the breeze, Kira lifts her hair. ‘True.’ She smiles, unable to stop it. Hopefully, it comes across as cooling down. Out on the water, the heat is more bearable, but still her skin is speckled with sweat. ‘But morals aren’t character development. Getting killed or outwitted—’
‘Thwarted.’
‘Thwarted.’ Kira flicks water at him. ‘That word’s going to turn into banister. By which,’ she adds before he can comment, ‘I mean you’ll say it so many times it loses all its meaning.’
He holds up his hands in mock surrender.
‘My point is,’ she says, making sure he’s listening, ‘getting thwarted doesn’t change the characters.’
‘Beyond death.’
Kira resists mime-killing him. Again, look at where they are. Anything could happen.
Stop.
‘Beyond death.’ She rubs her heat-chapped lips. Just—don’t. ‘They don’t express remorse, and if they survive, they don’t try to better themselves. They just’—she twirls her hand, slowly, gracefully, thoughtfully—‘lose.’
Callum lifts his shoulders and drops them. ‘Good?’
Kira opens her mouth and shuts it. ‘Don’t’—she taps the side of the boat—‘play devil’s, um, advocate.’
His eyes flick left again. ‘Who says I am?’
Good point. Not, however, acknowledged. Kira decides against declaring it. On under-nourishing sleep, under-nourishing food, and new hormonal boob pains, she could see anything as a good point, or equally, a bad one.
‘I guess I’ll play both roles.’ Kira resists the urge to poke her boob to see if it still is tender. ‘You know, good guys still win. On the whole, they don’t learn anything. You’re meant to find their inherent goodness, cheer their victory, and go home.’
Callum nods, again, again, in the way guys do when they see a girl they like. ‘What about a sequel?’
Kira stalls. Her brain just stops. ‘What?’
‘Or a prequel?’ He folds his arms. ‘A back story?’
Slowly, Kira frowns. ‘You’re…’ In a blink, all she sees is Disney. Frozen. ‘Oh. Oh, no.’
‘Some of that would be covered then, I’m sure. They can’t just leave us hanging.’
‘No.’ Lifting her hands, she shuts her eyes. ‘No. Please. I am not doing Disney. Okay? Please don’t tell me you’re—’
‘What’s wrong with Frozen 2?’
Eyes closed, Kira clenches her fists. ‘Nothing,’ she manages. Everything, really, bar the sisters. ‘But…but fairy tales are what they are. Fairy tales should be what they are.’
‘I haven’t read the Grimm tales, but I gather they’re gruesome.’
‘Exactly.’ Kira opens her eyes. ‘So—’
‘It’s fine.’ Callum winks at her with something more than a wink. ‘But if this malarkey’s a fairy tale, is philosophy a go?’
Kira ducks her head. ‘Um.’ Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. ‘No. Not a chance.’
‘Fair enough.’ Callum hands her the water. Gratefully, she drinks. ‘From now on, we’ll be a philosophy-less, simpleton-worthy tale. Although’—he fans his T-shirt over his stomach—‘it does mean there’ll be some changes around here. What would you say if I renamed myself Richard Parker, transformed into a tiger, and ate you because I thought you were a monkey?’
‘Much better.’ Kira lifts her hair, angling toward the breeze. Out on the water, the heat is more bearable, but her skin is still dewy with sweat. ‘But you’re dating yourself with that reference.’ She taps the side of her head. ‘Got to keep it modern. Get down with the cool—’
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