by Liz Williams
“I knew it!”
“Have you got a lighter?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Give me the lighter,” Stella said. She snatched it from her bewildered sister’s hand and wriggled onto the floor and under the bed.
“Stella! Be careful! What are you doing?”
“I’m sick of this shit!” Stella shouted, muffled by the bed. There was a click and then the smell of burning.
“Don’t set the house on fire!”
“Wait there. Don’t look,” Stella commanded. In a flurry she was on her feet and out of the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Going to get something!”
Silence, then footsteps coming back up the stairs. Stella had returned, carrying an umbrella.
“What –”
“Normally,” her sister remarked, “In these situations, I find that I prefer a golf club.” She threw herself flat on the parquet boards and hoicked about beneath the bed with the handle of the umbrella. She pulled out a smouldering bundle of twigs, which she beat energetically into ashes, leaving a stain on the pale wood.
“What the hell was that,” Serena said.
“Right.” Stella sat back on her heels, tapping the umbrella against the floor. “You know that thing I didn’t tell you about?”
Some time later, they sat around the kitchen table, drinking mugs of tea. Serena had considered opening another bottle of wine but they decided that clearer heads might be called for.
“After all,” Stella said, “We don’t know if there might be something on its heels.”
“And you found this thing hanging in Ben’s bedroom window?” Serena said. She was conscious of a hollow sense of dismay. “Are you sure it’s the same thing?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t get a good enough look. I salted that one at your – at Ben’s. Fire and running water for this.” They had scooped up the ashes and dumped them in a bathroom sink, leaving the tap on. Its distant trickle could be heard moving through the pipes. “It’s some sort of bad charm. I’m sure it’s Dana.”
“But you don’t actually know?”
“No,” Stella admitted. “Maybe I’ve misjudged her.” But from the look on her face, she did not think so, and neither did Serena.
“We’ve got to do something about Ben,” she went on. “I don’t think he’s in his right mind. I think that girl’s done something to him.”
“I need to be cool about it,” Serena muttered.
“Why? Because you don’t want to be the mad stalker ex, I get that. But if Dana Stare has done something to Ben, we need to know. We need to rescue him. And we need to find a way of doing that without involving you directly.”
“Ward’s come back from the States.” She didn’t know why she had suddenly said this, but it was too late.
Stella stared at her. “Bee said. And?”
“And what? We’re still friends.”
“Hmm,” said Stella. “This could be really useful.”
“How?”
“Think about it. Ben dumps you, even if he’s now bloody gaslighting you in absentia by telling people it was mutual.”
“I’m not sure that’s gaslighting. I think it’s just plain old lying.”
“Well, whatever. Anyway. Ben dumps you, and you? Do you go all Fatal Attraction and boil his bunny? No, you do not. You sail serenely on, Serena Swan, and with great grace take up with a man whom half of England, if not the world, would like to shag and who is, moreover, Ben’s cousin. What is that going to do to Ben when he finds out?”
“But we’re not. Shagging, that is.”
“La la la, didn’t hear that, doesn’t matter. What matters is what people think. Do you think Ward would mind if people thought you were an item?”
Serena considered this.
“He might, actually. I don’t know that he’s actually that keen to rekindle things, although… Well, he has been calling me quite a bit, in fact. He’s on the rebound from Miranda.”
“Again? That’s not a rebound, it’s a yoyo.”
“But he probably wouldn’t mind that much if people thought we were sleeping together.” Serena was aware she was blushing. “He always quite liked showing me off, I think. Even if I do look a bit like a horse.”
“You do not – well, never mind that now. This is very useful. We need a plan.”
“But, look – I don’t want Ben to think I’m serious about someone else. I really like Ward, but… Loyalty means a lot to me, Stella. I don’t like playing around. It feels wrong.”
“As long as you’re honest with people, though?”
Serena forced a smile. “I know there’s this thing, that Fallow women are supposed not to get attached. But I do, you see. I know it’s different for you.”
Stella pointed to her own bosom, on which the word ‘Trollop’ was proudly displayed. “To be honest, Serena, I’m not sure it’s in me to stick to one person. Male or female. I was with Mel for what, nearly two years, and if anyone could have made it work, she could have, but we were a bit young. It’s just how it is, how I am, and I’m not going to apologise for it. But everyone’s different. I haven’t noticed Bee or Luna exactly slutting about, you know.”
“Bee’s going out with a ghost, though.”
“Yes. That is a bit different. But Mum never stuck to one bloke. Told me once that she just couldn’t do it.”
“I did wonder, when she disappeared –” Serena stopped.
“What, that she’d run off with Mr Right Now?”
“Actually, that she might have been strangled by Mr Wrong and ended up in a shallow grave. God knows it happens.”
“Yes, it does,” Stella said. She spread her hands on the kitchen table and looked down at them. “But it doesn’t look like that’s what happened here.”
Luna
Luna walked on, following the path of ice, with the life inside her. She was very conscious of a need to be careful, take extra caution, hole up in hibernation until the baby was safe. But combined with that was a kind of recklessness, too. For you never could be safe, could you? Whatever you did, whatever precautions you might take. Something could come and break you, snap you out of your body and the world and into somewhere new. She had always believed that there was somewhere beyond the material plane – how could you not, walking as she did beside a ghost? – and now she had additional evidence. How might it affect a baby inside you, breathing this different air, seeing those unknown stars? She remembered reading a story about a Welsh folktale, the belief that a dog with silver eyes could see the wind. Would her child be silver eyed, far-sighted? In this icy, monochrome country, with only the thorn brakes as shelter from the cold, anything seemed possible.
She stole a look at Dark and Bee. They walked side by side, heads down. Bee’s hand clasped her own, firmly. She was glad they were there. The brakes were blackthorn: she could see its long iron spines sharp against the frost. If the tip of one of those thorns broke off under your skin, it would fester, but sloes were a purgative and Luna wondered if that was happening now: that the presence of the thorn trees somehow was a token of the time, of all the petty constraints and resentments against her family starting to be sloughed gently away to leave a clean clear space for the newcomer.
Luna stopped. Bee turned to her, a question in her face.
“She’ll be my child’s grandmother,” Luna said aloud.
“She’s already a grandmother,” Bee said. Both of these remarks were wholly obvious and yet to Luna they carried the ring of a ritual exchange. She looked around her. There, on the rise of a small round hill, was a ring of frost-crowned stones and around that stood a crescent of thorn. As Luna watched, her mother’s crouching figure shimmered into view. Her hair was blood-red against the white and the black, and her bound wrists extended in front of her, snared and tied into the blackthorn by a mass of twigs.
“Mum!” Luna cried. But Bee’s hand was like an iron band gripping hers, and on the other side she saw
Dark’s shadowy fingers grasping Bee’s other hand.
“Don’t let go!” Bee hissed. And Luna did not. They stumbled up the slope towards Alys, who turned her head and stared at them blankly.
“Mum, can you see us?” Bee called and after a moment, Alys nodded. Her mouth worked.
“Told you…when the comet comes.” Now Luna could see the sparkly smudge in this sky, too. They arrived at the blackthorn. Luna reached out and grabbed her mother’s hand, but the mass of twigs writhed nettlestinging beneath the edge of her woollen mitten, setting her hand on fire. Her instinct was to jerk it back but somehow she found that she was holding her mother’s fingers more tightly.
“Pull!” she shouted to Bee, as though it was a tug of war. “Pull!” Her eyes watered with pain. The touch of the twigs was like acid and there was a heart stopping lurch as she thought of her baby within. But Bee hauled on her other hand and Alys stood and stepped from the brake. Something moved out of the shadow of the kingstone, quick and long and dark, pouring down the hill. There were two of them and then more and then the stone itself shuddered and rose and its head turned and looked at them. Its gaze was a weight. Luna’s knees buckled but she held on and pulled – and the air was filled with a sweet distant clanging at the church bells sounded. Overhead, the stars shivered as if heat had swept invisibly over them and then Orion, the winter hunter, was striding up the eastern sky with the comet burning at his shoulder. Luna’s tingling hand was empty. The church tower reared above them, ringing in the hour.
Stella
Stella and Serena were heading west. The dual carriageway was surprisingly and thankfully clear, all the way to the Podimore roundabout and the turn-off to Shepton Mallet. Stella had put her foot down, occasioning instances of her sister clutching the edge of the seat and squeaking; Serena was a more cautious driver and it was her car.
“At least,” Stella said, as they shot past Stonehenge, “You don’t get sick.”
“Luna used to.”
“Bee used to. But they grew out of it. I never did. Or seasick. Or airsick.”
“It is a matter of your inner ear.”
“I didn’t mean it was a virtue,” Stella said, overtaking an Audi which had not been competently driven ever since Andover. “Ha! Take that, asshole. This has a bit of poke, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. I wasn’t sure about a hybrid but it’s surprisingly nippy.”
The car conversation lasted until the Shaftesbury turn. They were staying away from the subject of Ben. Between them, they had come up with a number of plans, but chosen none and then all of those plans had been blasted out of the water when Serena had phoned Caro Amberley and discovered that Ben was now definitely coming to the Apple Day.
“Is he playing?” Stella had mouthed, when it had become clear that this was the topic of conversation. Serena nodded. “And the band. In the evening.”
It made sense, Stella thought sourly, that if you had a musician in the family, to make use of him. And they had known this was on the cards. Pity about the timing, though. “Does Caro know that you’ve split up from Ben?” she’d asked, when the call had ended.
“Yes, I think so, by now.”
And Stella thought, but did not say, “I wonder if he’ll be bringing Dana?”
Now they were heading west, into the sun, with a carload of dresses draped over the back seat in their protective plastic bags: Stella had not yet found a suitable environmentally sound alternative. The clocks had gone back by now and darkness was not far away. The sunset was fierce, a blazing gold, and Stella had to keep sitting up in the driver’s seat to get the benefit of the windscreen shade. The whole countryside, the rolling downs of Wiltshire and the more compact landscape over the Somerset border, was suffused with light. It made Stella feel insubstantial. She loved light, the sun – Ibiza should have been the ideal place for her, really, and yet, and yet.
“Which do you prefer?” she said aloud, filling up the silence. “Light or dark?”
“I don’t know, really,” Serena said. “You know I like mornings. I’m a lark. Bee prefers it when the nights start drawing in. No idea about Luna. Mum liked the light.”
“Yes, she loved India. Surprised she didn’t go and live there, to be honest.”
“She loved Ibiza, too,” Stella said, nostalgic. “It’s partly why I went – following in her footsteps. She loved Eivissa – she used to tell me stories about it when I was a kid. She said it was like a city made of light and when I got out there this bloke took me on a boat out into the harbour and it was exactly like that.”
“It’s not a city, though.” Serena shaded her eyes, looking ahead. “But I know what you mean. I thought it was lovely, that time I came out, remember? And Mum always told all of us different stories.”
Stella laughed. “Different fathers, different stories.”
“She used to tell me stories about princesses. I thought the Behenian stars were princesses. I thought everyone had magical princesses in their house.”
Stella, who had heard this story before, smiled. “I know you got into trouble in school over it.”
“She and grandfather did say, don’t tell a soul. I think I was too little to really get that. I was nearly packed off to the school shrink.”
“‘Too much imagination’.”
“If only they knew.”
“Do you think our characters were set, by the time we left school? I was thinking about this the other day. Getting into trouble in school, I mean, like you and your imagination. You daydreamed and cried. I was cheeky. Luna sulked and brooded and still holds grudges years later whereas I apparently took seventeen kinds of shit from Miss Pursage which I can’t even remember. Bee – Bee never got into trouble, which is indicative in itself. And we’re still all sort of doing that.”
“I didn’t always cry! I wasn’t that much of a drip.”
“No, but you mainly did, even if you hadn’t actually done the deed.”
“You might be right.” Serena muttered. She stared out of the window. Then she said, after a pause, “I don’t like to think of Mum – trapped.”
“I know they saw her. I know they couldn’t bring her back. Bee wouldn’t say any more on the phone because Nell came in. We’ll have to wait until we get there, which isn’t going to be very long now.”
“You know,” Serena remarked, “Someone is going to have to say something to Nell before too long. What’s the worst that can happen? She thinks we’re all bonkers and goes to stay in a hotel.”
“She’s really nice,” Stella said. “I don’t want her put in any danger, that’s the thing.”
“I know. But – and this is only my personal opinion, mind – I think she’s in more danger if she’s kept in ignorance.”
The familiar signs whizzed by. “Podimore!” Stella said. “Thank fuck. North, out of the sun.” She swung the Toyota around the roundabout, putting the glare to her left, but it would not last for much longer, she thought. For some reason, she wanted to get in before dark. They followed the snake of the road towards Shepton, then off, along, down, across and then with a sense of mixed anticipation and relief, Stella saw the tower of Hornmoon church and the weathercock catching the light, a bird of gold.
“Good! Nearly home.”
“I want a cup of tea,” her sister said.
“I want a glass of wine.”
She pulled into the drive and turned off the engine. Serena’s car ran quietly, but the silence took her by surprise. Everything seemed in order: the tidy flower beds, the apples in their sacks, waiting to go to the cider farm or the small house press. Down in the paddock, Sam’s piebalds grazed peaceably.
“We’ll be able to see it clearly from here,” Serena said. “The comet, I mean. No light pollution.”
“When the comet comes,” Stella echoed. “Well. It’s here now and I saw it first from the churchyard, so there. Come on. Let’s get all these frocks in the house before it gets too dark to see.”
Luna and Sam came into the kitchen as
they were sitting around the table, dissecting the journey. By tacit consent, Bee was waiting until they were all there before discussing recent events. Nell was over at the Amberley’s. Luna had changed, was Stella’s immediate thought. She looked older – pregnancy, presumably, and one wrist was bandaged.
“Oh no! What did you do – did you have a fall?”
“No.” Luna looked her straight in the face. “It was Mum. We found Mum. But something attacked me and then the church bell rang and I couldn’t –” Luna’s amber eyes filled with tears “- I couldn’t hold her.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Bee said quietly. “We would have pulled her out, I know we would, except something was holding onto her. You should see Luna’s wrist. She was very brave. It looks like someone chucked acid over it.”
“She’ll bear the scars for a long time,” Sam said.
“Jesus! When you say, something was holding onto Mum, what sort of ‘something’?”
“It didn’t look like anything, really. Just a bundle of twigs.”
At this, both Stella and Serena sat up.
“Really? Just twigs, or other stuff, too?”
“Like what?”
“Wool, or moss?”
“I don’t know,” Luna said, slowly. “It was too dark to see. It was – that other place. The cold place. Like a winter kingdom.”
“There were things there,” Bee went on. “Animals – like polecats, and a standing stone that stood up and moved. I think it might have been the thing you and I saw, Stella.”
“I saw a thing like a polecat when I was down here last,” Stella said. “Sliding into the hedge. Where Dana Stare had been standing.”
“What was Dana Stare doing in a hedge?”
“Like what was she doing at Amberley when Serena had just seen her in Covent Garden, you mean? We worked out the timing. She couldn’t be in two places at once. Could she?”
“Apparently she was,” Serena said. “Stella found something at Ben’s place.”
“You went to see Ben?”
“Yes, and he said he and Serena split up by mutual consent and everything was all hunky dory.”