by Ben J Henry
‘I think Rainn’s training her to defend the portals,’ said Alicia as they reached the back of the vegetable patch. She scanned the rows of crops—bulbous pods of broad beans wet with dew—and fixed her eyes on the farmhouse. The windows were black in the daylight shadows. ‘Is she up? Amira? Did you see—’
‘I couldn’t find him anywhere,’ said Melissa.
‘You broke in?’
She marched Alicia through the outer trees until they stood in line with Amira’s bedroom window.
‘It’s my house. I know the weak spots. Ryan is not here.’ A quick glance left and right, and Melissa left the trees. ‘But look.’
She nodded at the window and Alicia’s heart did a somersault: the bed by the door was no longer empty. A block of morning light fell through the open doorway and upon a mound of covers that stretched across the pillow, concealing the figure beneath. Whoever lay within appeared to have curled into a ball with no hands or feet protruding from the white duvet. Alicia’s fingers found the cool glass of the window and her breath spilled on the pane. Amira remained on her back with her eyes closed, and Alicia was torn between a desire to launch a rock through the glass, and to drop to the ground and return to Vivador, where David might be fighting in the crater.
‘One phone call,’ Melissa warned.
‘And we’ll be dead in minutes,’ said Alicia.
The block of light was disturbed as a man walked past the doorway. Melissa dropped to a crouch and Alicia followed her along the wall to the bushes at the back of the house. Not daring to disturb the leaves, they peered through the kitchen window. Peter Lawson stood beside the sink, regarding a bottle of champagne on the work surface.
Ryan’s father did not match the image in Alicia’s mind. Unlike his wife and son, Peter was dark-haired, with a short beard around a prominent jaw. While Melissa wore dry-cleaned suits, Peter’s leather jacket was cracked with age, stretched across the broad shoulders that Ryan had inherited. Tugging his hooked nose, he glared at a tag about the bottle’s neck: Rainn, Happy Birthday, Peter.
With quick, angry movements, Peter tore at the label, tossed it to the floor and stamped on it twice. He rested his hands either side of the sink, lowered his head, and then turned abruptly to walk back through the doorway. A second later, he reappeared, snatched the bottle from the work surface and unlocked the back door. Behind the bushes, Alicia and Melissa held their breath. Peter stood in the doorway and raised the bottle over his head, preparing to launch it at the vegetable patch. His shoulders sagged and he stepped inside, planting the bottle beside the sink and exiting the kitchen.
Alicia released her breath. ‘Does he have a weapon?’
Melissa watched the kitchen doorway, waiting for Peter to return, her concentration so intense that she had not noticed the fly crawling along her temple.
‘No. Rainn has the gun.’
Alicia’s eyes flicked from the open back door to the champagne bottle.
‘I have an idea.’ She leaned to whisper into Melissa’s ear: ‘We go through that door and take the bottle, shake it, loosen the cork…wait until he rounds the corner and then release it.’
‘Destroying Rainn’s birthday present may seem like poetic justice, but—’
‘It’s a distraction. I’ll release the cork, you go for his pockets, take his phone…Melissa?’
Melissa had left the bushes. With swift and silent steps, Alicia followed her through the back door. Rainn’s lullaby was no longer playing and the silence thickened as they trod muddy footprints across the slate tiles. With her shoe on the discarded label, Melissa reached for the bottle of champagne.
‘Just loosen—’ Alicia whispered, but Melissa passed into the corridor. Alicia cursed under her breath and drew a kitchen knife from a wooden block beside the fridge before following her headmistress. Her eyes snapped feverishly between the foot of the stairs to their left, the entrance hallway ahead and the front door. Melissa paused before the doorway to the right, peering into Amira’s bedroom. Alicia crept up behind her and reached for her shoulder, but her fingers grasped the air as Melissa entered the room. With a crash, she brought the bottle down on the corner of a bedpost.
Alicia stepped into the doorway as Melissa ran at Peter. The man was standing by Amira’s beside, cradling a brass bowl in his left arm and holding a small wooden mallet in his right. His lips parted as the woman crossed the floor, brandishing the broken neck of the bottle. The bowl struck the lid of the terrarium with a clang and the mallet rolled beneath Amira’s bed. Melissa lifted the dripping green shard to Peter’s throat and a thin smile broke his sombre face.
‘A bold move, Melissa. Desperate times?’
Champagne bubbles popped on her trembling hand as she waved the sharp corner of the bottle’s neck before her husband’s jugular.
‘I gave you David,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘And now—’ still brandishing the bottle, she thumbed over her shoulder to the figure in the doorway. ‘Now her. Now give me my son!’
Peter’s predatory eyes left Melissa’s and locked upon Alicia. His lips fell, his languid gaze was penetrated by a fascination so intense that it bordered on fear. Alicia squeezed the handle of the kitchen knife and Peter’s curious smile returned, the cleft in his lip revealing a canine.
‘Alicia Crow,’ he nodded slowly, reverently, his voice a low rumble. ‘I was about to wake Amira here, so that we might arrange a meeting. Thanks to my loving wife, that won’t be necessary.’ He spoke genially while his loving wife held broken glass to his neck. ‘Rainn tells me you have been cooperative. That you have shown patience, passing each of our tests. No doubt, you will be relieved to hear there is just one more. And then we can make an exchange.’
Alicia eyed the bed to her left and Peter drew a hand to his mouth, barely concealing a smile that would take up permanent residence in her memory banks.
‘Oh, you didn’t think…?’
Alicia tore the bedcovers aside to reveal a large teddy bear. She blinked, as if to close her eyes might change the world around her. But nothing changed. She watched Melissa avert her eyes, unable to meet her gaze. She watched Melissa sneak into her former home and slip a bear beneath the covers, baiting her trap. Her final bid.
The knife slipped through Alicia’s fingers and the strength left her legs. She slumped onto the bed, gripping the shoulder of the bear and looking at Peter through blurred eyes.
‘Where is he?’
‘David is in Portugal with Aldous. And Morna. Under lock and key.’ Peter brushed the glass at his throat aside, as if it were a bouquet of flowers, and tucked a hand down the top of his shirt to withdraw a long iron key at the end of a silver chain. ‘A key that I am prepared to part with, if you do as you are told.’
Kill the lamb.
The glistening shard of the broken bottle reminded Alicia of the glass blade of a dagger. Ryan was built like his father. Built by his father. Engineered to murder. Warped to a point where his mother had no option but to hand him over to be fixed. Ryan believed himself a simulacrum, spared the horror of his past. In that moment, Alicia envied him.
Kill him, she thought, urging Melissa to drive the glass into Peter’s neck so she might break that chain and take the key. With both hands, she gripped the bear, breathing through her nostrils. No sound escaped her lips.
Melissa’s resolve appeared to have softened, and she lifted a hand to steady the heavy broken bottle.
‘And Ryan?’
Peter returned his pale eyes to Melissa, remembering that she was there. He tucked the key under his shirt and placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘In the Pagoda. Come.’ He pushed past her. Melissa’s eyes lingered on the terrarium, as if fearful that whatever lurked inside had been woken by the clamour. Her expression was resigned as she trod the carpet behind her husband, holding the bottle awkwardly at her side.
Peter stopped at the foot of the bed upon which Alicia sat. She considered reaching for the knife on the floor, but lacked the stren
gth to move. Peter followed her eyeline and nudged the blade with the toe of his shoe.
‘We won’t be long,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Eyes open. When I’m back, I’ll show you where your grandmother died. And what she left behind.’
He kicked the knife under the bed and Melissa followed him from the room.
Piñata
She was a piñata. Strung up to be beaten until she broke. She could attempt to hold herself together, strengthening the unseen bonds that kept her whole for as long as possible, but to what end? Was it not in the best interests of the piñata to let itself fall apart? To let greedy hands take what they want and to endure as little suffering as possible?
Alicia sat on the bed and clutched the bear in her arms, its soft white fur reminiscent of the lamb. The bear had been designed, manufactured and purchased to bring comfort. She ran a finger around the loop of the tartan ribbon about its neck. The fabric was frayed and she considered its age. Loose stitching around the left shoulder suggested that the arm had once been reattached. Had Ryan held the bear as she did now, in lieu of someone to love? Had Melissa snuck into her son’s bedroom higher in the house, found nothing but this bear in his bed and decided to put it to a new use? The bear was designed to be hugged; she was designed to be—
Enough.
Melissa had seen Alicia at her weakest, dissolving in self-pity. She was an adult now, and would not allow herself to wallow. She had allowed herself to hope and now she must suffer the consequences. Hope was a drug, designed by wanting minds to make things feel temporarily better and then infinitely worse. For two years, she had drugged herself with hope and it had brought nothing but pain.
She rose from the mattress with the bear in her arms and studied the glass terrarium at Amira’s beside. It was too deep for the pine chest of drawers, hanging half an inch over the front and back, such that the chest did not lie flush against the wall. A sheet of cardboard—the back of a cereal box—had been leaned against it on Amira’s side, covered in a scribbled rota for cooking, cleaning and tending to the vegetables. Should Amira look up from her pillow, the cardboard would obscure anything that pressed itself against the glass. Melissa had glanced at the terrarium with what Alicia had believed to be trepidation, perhaps fearing that whatever lurked within had been disturbed when the mallet struck the lid. Yet the snake that lay across the red soil was made of rubber.
This was not the first time that Alicia had misread Melissa’s emotions. Crying in the snow with the poster in her fingers, she had mistaken guilt for empathy; perhaps it was with guilt that Melissa had regarded the terrarium, eyeing the object used to torment the girl she had forsaken. She had told Alicia the experiments were Peter’s, but how complicit had Melissa been?
One hour and I will tell you everything. Those had been Anna’s parting words. If Alicia’s mother had asked to be driven to Burnflower, she would not have been back within an hour. What had she wanted from Melissa? Alicia’s finger slipped between the bear’s neck and the tartan ribbon as she considered the lies used to bait her.
She pulled her attention from the tightness in her chest to the wooden mallet on the floor by Amira’s bedpost. Beside it lay the upended brass bowl that Peter had planned to use to wake Amira, so that he might arrange a meeting with Alicia. But why not ask Rainn? She thought of Peter tearing the label from Rainn’s birthday present and wondered what she had done to upset him. As his wife had buried her guilt, he had swallowed his rage, wearing an insidious smile as he brandished the key to a door in Portugal. Fixating on that silver chain, Alicia’s finger tightened against the tartan collar. Had she come so far and waited so long only to find that David was in—
Five. She silenced the thought.
Four. She steadied her breathing.
Three. Rainn had offered to take her to Aldous and Morna when she defeated Amira.
Two. She had defeated Amira; she did not have to wait.
One. Peter would lead Melissa to Ryan, and Ryan would—
Snap. The ribbon broke beneath her finger. Ryan would retrieve the key and Gus the letters that led to a locked door. With a soft smile, Alicia carried the bear to the empty bed and closed her eyes.
Will and expectation: her world was not built on hope.
Down the well, Alicia blinked to Psarnox. Eddies of wind lifted strands of hair from her forehead as she gazed over the edge of the crater. Amira rode a burning wave around the platform, on a board identical to the one Rainn had conjured. What was surely a simulacrum stood in the centre of the obsidian disc—how else to explain the image of Winter? Rainn had dressed her in a white linen shirt and black trousers, with a broad leather belt about her waist. Her face was the picture of disdain.
Alicia scanned the peaks, the rim, the shelves and tunnel entrances, but could not see the puppeteer. Armed only with that hostile glare, Winter’s simulacrum lowered her palms to her sides, and from them issued a white vapour. The heavy mist drifted across the obsidian, which crackled like cubes of ice dropped into a cold drink. Rolling outward and beyond the platform, the mist cooled the lava from red to grey and the molten lake solidified, each bubble on its surface trapped as a crisp hissing filled the crater. The platform ground to a halt and Amira met the simulacrum’s eyes as the lava around her board froze solid, the wood trapped and crushed as the ice expanded. The mist continued to emanate from those down-facing palms, driving the heat from the volcano as Alicia had driven the red from the petals of the orchid.
This was no simulacrum. Alicia had seen that expression on Winter’s face a dozen times before, when overconfident girls in junior years had the audacity to approach her in the school canteen. Desperate to seek the approval of the larger ego, they had broken ranks, only to be playfully dismissed. Alicia gazed upon a crystal wasteland with Winter at its frozen heart. Had Rainn found someone else to pull the wings off her flies?
Amira’s dark eyes were wide and uncertain as she took tentative steps across the frozen lava, her bare feet leaving misty footprints. She stepped onto the platform and vanished immediately, not for fear of Winter, but because Alicia had blinked to its edge. Evidently, only two were permitted to fight at once.
‘What are you doing here?’ Alicia fired. To Winter’s credit, it took no more than a second for her to compose herself, her shock returning to disdain. A scathing tone resonated between Alicia’s ears, as Winter replied: ‘Distracting her.’
Rainn leaned against the entrance to a tunnel, beneath where Alicia had stood on the rim.
‘I won’t let you kill me,’ Winter seethed aloud, an edge of panic in her voice. She lifted a bare foot from the platform and a single blade rose lengthways through the skin of her sole.
‘Threaten me, you idiot,’ said Winter. ‘Tell me you hate me.’
Alicia forced a scowl. ‘I won’t let you torture that girl. It’s time you got what you deserved.’
‘This isn’t a drama class,’ projected Winter.
Not taking her eyes off Alicia, Winter began to skate across the ice. A cheer echoed around the Playground. The shelves were filled with translucent facsimiles of Winter in short black dresses and gold belts.
‘Really?’ said Alicia.
‘That wasn’t me,’ said Winter. ‘That was her. Would you actually do something, please?’
Winter’s words thronged with impatience, stinging Alicia’s skull as if she had swallowed a chunk of ice. With leather skating boots tight on her feet, Alicia joined her. The pair circled the edge of the platform, eyes locked across the distance as they continued their private exchange.
Winter began, ‘She told me you’re here to kill me. She wants me to prove myself, so you’d better—’
Rainn’s words drowned out Winter’s, filling Alicia’s mind: ‘They’re watching you, Alicia. Aldous and Morna. Amira is weak; they see no triumph in her defeat. But Winter…she considers your mother responsible for the death of the only boy who knew her secrets. She will never let you beat her. Wake her up, and you will prove your value.’
<
br /> When Rainn had finished speaking, Alicia did not search the onion-skin audience for her great-grandparents. She did not hunt for hidden eyes, but relayed Rainn’s message to Winter as they circled the platform. The fury in Winter’s chestnut eyes was genuine as she spoke aloud: ‘We’ll see if you’re as pathetic as you look.’
‘What are you doing here? Why are you distracting her?’ asked Alicia.
‘She kidnapped me and Gus. We’re in Portugal, I think. He’s—’
‘Kidnapped? How?’
‘Yes, shut up. Say something!’
‘You’re all talk,’ said Alicia, gliding across the ice. ‘You’ll need more than words to burn me here.’
‘Terrifying,’ Winter projected through a scowl. ‘Gus is looking for a phone. I’m keeping her here while he finds it. She told me if I can wake you up—’
The connection broke, and Alicia was alone in her head as Rainn projected words to Winter. The pair continued to skate, carving circles around the edge of the disc, like grooves in a vinyl record. Alicia waited, not daring to continue their exchange, in case her words travelled to Rainn’s ears.
‘She’s getting impatient,’ projected Winter. ‘She’s asked me to attack.’
‘Do it. They’re watching me, and if I beat you, she’ll take me to David. But you need to put up a fight. Make it real. Guns, and bombs, and—’
‘This is for Jack,’ said Winter aloud. Captivated by that hateful expression, Alicia did not see the storm clouds materialise overhead. Droplets hit the frozen platform with a sizzle and Alicia glanced up at the dark clouds. The rain fell harder and she felt it burn.
Tibetan bowl
The white bear rose and fell on Alicia’s chest, and Amira tightened her grip on the kitchen knife. Waking to find a stranger in her bedroom, she had reached for a long shard of glass on the damp carpet and saw the blade poking out from beneath the bed. She had assumed it was Rainn who had blinked into combat, embarrassed by her failure, forcing her to wake when she stepped onto the platform. Now she knew who had taken her place on the obsidian disc. The young woman slept with one arm around the bear’s throat. The tartan ribbon, torn from its neck, lay crumpled on the floor.