Now that she was closer, she could see the chairs properly. There weren’t two, as she had thought: there was a large plain wooden chair, a folding chair with a faded fabric seat, and another, so small she hadn’t noticed it; this last was a stool, so tiny it could only have been meant for a child. Each had a bowl set upon it.
Alice couldn’t take her eyes from them. She couldn’t move. She knew what they meant, what it all meant. What had she been thinking? The chairs must have been placed here for her. She should get out, get as far away from here as she could. She whirled and stepped towards the entrance, distantly noticing as she did so a narrow slot that was cut into the canvas. She knew what it was, remembered seeing it from the outside, only now it was light instead of dark; perfect for watching without being seen.
There was a small sound and the light from the doorway dimmed. Someone had stepped in front of it and was silhouetted, their eyes nothing but pale ovals. Whoever it was shifted, took a step forward. The pale shapes resolved into a pair of glasses on a smiling face.
Alice stared. Then she swallowed, and forced herself to smile back. The expression felt strange on her face.
He took another step forward. He was still blocking the entrance; it was too narrow for her to slip past him. He was still smiling, and now she could see it was not a good smile.
She tried to take steady breaths. It was a coincidence, that was all. It was only the birdwatcher, he had built a new hide and she had stumbled over it. If he’d meant to hurt her he could have done so before.
Be bold, she thought, but she found herself taking a step back anyway, away from him.
Bernard Levitt nodded, a genial expression, a friendly greeting, as if finding her there was the most natural thing in the world. He gestured with his arms and she realised he was carrying something that was folded and draped across them. She stared at it.
He smiled again more broadly, freed one of his hands. He picked up the bowl from the middle chair and put it on the floor, then carefully placed the thing he carried upon it.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Everything just right.’
She didn’t reply.
Levitt turned to her and stretched out his hand; he couldn’t quite reach her, but he motioned anyway, as if he were stroking her hair. He was wearing leather gloves. ‘Just right,’ he said again. He went to the wooden chair, moved the bowl and set it on the floor beneath, and did the same with the stool. Each bowl had a dried, viscous mess inside, like the residue of porridge.
Alice edged away and felt the wall pressing at her back. ‘This is not a story,’ she said. ‘I’m not Goldilocks; it’s not a fairy tale.’
He looked at her with surprise. ‘But of course it is.’ He threw his head back and grinned, revealing yellowed teeth.
‘If it is, you have to let me go. Nothing happened to Goldilocks; it wasn’t like that. She didn’t— She ran away, and the bears let her go.’
‘She was a nasty little thief,’ said Levitt. ‘Are you a nasty little thief, or just a nasty little liar?’
‘A liar?’
‘I know you saw it.’
Alice didn’t know what he meant, couldn’t think; she was looking at Levitt, his solid build, wondering if she could push him out of the way and run all the way back to the house. It struck her that the police might already be coming after her, that they might have seen her heading into the woods. They could be following her now, bringing help with them.
Levitt looked amused, as if he knew what she was thinking. He tilted his head and sing-songed: ‘I hope it comes to you, Mr Levitt.’
Alice realised he was impersonating her, though she hadn’t actually spoken those words.
‘Oh yes, I hope so, Mr Levitt. Because I haven’t seen it, no, I never saw it, not at all.’ He paused. ‘Now you stand here and tell me you’re not a liar. That’s funny. That’s very funny.’ Levitt abruptly sat down in the largest chair, reached over and grabbed the stool. He placed it in front of his own seat, slapped his hand down on top of it. He eyed her, waiting.
Alice’s gaze went to the entrance. He wasn’t blocking it any longer; she could run, get past him. Then he moved, faster than she expected, and drew his chair back so that it barred the way. ‘Sit down,’ he snapped. ‘You can stay or go later, as I choose. For now, I have a story to tell. So sit down.’
She sat. The stool was meant for a child and it was unsteady under her, rocking on the uneven ground. She had to spread her feet to brace herself; now she couldn’t move quickly at all.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Levitt said confidentially. He leaned in towards her so she could feel his breath stir the air, smell the slow rot in his mouth. ‘But first you can listen. You like stories, don’t you, Alice? Well I’m going to tell you the story that is me. Would you like to hear it?’
Slowly, she nodded.
Levitt straightened in his chair, delighted, patting both knees with the flat of his hands. He looked for a moment like a delighted grandpa. ‘That’s lovely. Well, my dear, then I’ll begin.
‘Once upon a time, I had a sister. She died when I was young. My sister, little Marlene.’
Alice opened her mouth to say that wasn’t her name, couldn’t have been her name, that he’d only stolen it from another story; but his gaze had lost focus, as if looking at something far away, and she knew she didn’t want to call him back.
‘My mother loved little Marlene. It was just like in the stories. The younger sister is always the most loved, don’t you find? The youngest and the most beautiful. Age, growing up – they’re nothing in fairy tales. My sister knew this because my mother told her so every day in her tales, and oh, how they loved them. They had row upon row of books with pink covers and blue covers and green covers, and they read them over and over, always together.’
Suddenly Alice thought of her own mother. She wished she could see her, now, just for a moment. Why hadn’t she seen her in so long? Her mother had once read her stories too, and Alice had told her stories in return, though not so magical, not invented: everyday stories of their lives together. Now she would forget, everything would fade, if Alice wasn’t there to tell them.
Levitt grimaced. ‘Little Marlene would sit on my mother’s lap and my mother would hold the book in front of her so that she could see and I couldn’t. It was like the book and her arms and my sister and my mother – they were a little circle and I couldn’t get in. I tried, more than once, but they said it wasn’t for me: I was too old and too male, and they had all the power, you see, because they owned all the stories, the good ones and the bad, the ones about the princesses and towers and birds and the kingdom.
‘It was always the younger sister who gained a kingdom.’ Levitt sighed, lowered his gaze. His expression was resigned. ‘Who has the kingdom now, do you think? Now she’s in her grave, now there’s nothing left of her but her teeth?’
Alice caught her breath and Levitt smiled as if she’d applauded. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Yes, quite!’ And he leaned in. ‘Did you know cats are the only creatures that torture their prey before killing them – except one?’
Alice couldn’t answer, but he continued as if he’d never asked the question, ‘Ah, the youngest. Always the youngest. Not surprising perhaps, when the oldest is the book of all the mistakes you made, too late to put them right. She could have tried, you know? But she wasn’t interested in boys, not really. She always wanted a girl, and when little Marlene came along – well, you know the line, don’t you, dear? So refreshing to talk to someone who knows. “The devil got into her so that she began to hate the little boy.”’
Levitt looked up, waiting, and after a moment she nodded.
‘All right, so picture the scene: younger sister adored; father left, long before anyone could remember – God knows what she did to him. It could have been so different, don’t you think? But it wouldn’t be a good story if there were no loss, no death. No devil.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t push her.’
His mouth worked; his lips were damp. ‘I
didn’t push her and I didn’t tell her what to do. I only suggested, you know. Anyone can suggest. And she didn’t do anything, not really, she never did. I’d always be the one doing everything, and she’d just sit there singing her little songs, or pretending to be a princess, preening and spreading her pretend skirts out on the ground.’
He was breathing heavily. ‘I was supposed to look after her, and I did. I did. We went into the woods. Mother had one of her headaches, and I hadn’t helped, she said, what with my building blocks and my cars and my games. They weren’t things she liked, and by then, I don’t think I was something she liked either. But this time she didn’t like little Marlene, so she told us to go out and play.
‘There was a place we went, where I went. Marlene just followed me – she didn’t do anything, you know? It was always for me to decide. And I liked this place. There was a rope hanging from a tree, a faded old blue rope. It hung out over a long drop and you could swing high, way out, and see it beneath you, everything solid and not, at the same time. It was something magic, like in their stories, not that I thought about that at the time. No, I was a boy, and all I wanted to do was swing. But even that grew dull after a while, and so I decided I wanted to see her swing.
‘So I told her,’ he said. ‘I told her she should swing high, and that she would be like a bird, a silly bird from one of her tales. Just like that. And she believed me.’ The light faded from his eyes and he looked away, so that Alice thought he had finished, that he wasn’t going to finish.
He drew a long breath and went on, ‘I didn’t want her to fall. I only wanted to see her fly, see the feathers.’ He fell silent, barely conscious of Alice’s presence. Then he spoke again, chanting the words so that they sounded like a song or a rhyme he’d once heard: ‘She fell and broke her pretty neck. Tore and soiled her pretty dress. Snapped her bones. Then she was all, all gone, and Mummy was so sad. So very, very sad.’ He looked up, but his gaze was somewhere far distant. ‘Her scream was the cry of a bird. I heard it, after. Her voice, crying in the night. In the dark.’
Alice’s mouth was dry. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she tried.
He whipped his head around. ‘That’s not what my mother said. She made me know it, my mother dear. She blamed me every day. She made me feel it, too. She made me bury her with my own hands, just where she said little Marlene would have wanted to be: under the juniper tree in the wood. It was a young thing then, nothing to it at all.
‘We went away after that, for a long time; they said she was ill, but it took a long time for her to die. After she did I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had to come back here, where I knew I belonged. And Marlene – oh, she was just the same, don’t you see? She’d always be young, always be beautiful. Like Snow White in her glass coffin – frozen in time, always lovely and admired, never to grow old and become the crone or the witch or the wicked stepmother, never to disappoint—
‘Was she beautiful, do you think? In her grave, with worms threading through her skin? Do you think the maggots ate her eyes?’
Alice didn’t answer.
‘And my mother had always told me that one day my sister would come back. She would come back for revenge.’ Levitt looked at Alice. ‘All the stories that were my sister’s became mine. My mother read them to me, but oh, how she read them: they became terrible things: fierce and terrible.
‘Most of all, though, she read the story of the juniper tree. And she told me my sister was coming, just like in the story, creeping up through the ground, clawing her way out to take her revenge on her worthless brother. And I learned to be afraid.
‘But I learned something else too. All the time she grieved – all the time she cried – she was a false mother, an unnatural thing; because she wasn’t sorry, not underneath. Not in her heart. No. I don’t believe she was.
‘I think it was her, all the time. She must have hated my sister. She saw how she was growing more lovely and further away from her every day, and she wanted to keep her the way she was for ever. That’s why she sent us to the woods: she wanted us to leave the path. She was tired of us. She wanted me to make little Marlene go on the rope, she wanted it all.’
He looked up and his voice grew faint. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘Not my fault.’
Alice’s eyes widened.
‘You know this, Alice, you understand. You know the stories say they’re stepmothers, the wicked ones, but they’re not; they never were. The true stories, the old stories, they knew: it was the real mothers who grew bad, who had the canker inside them. It’s the thing they tried to hide, isn’t it? The story they don’t like to tell.
‘I was just the one she wanted to blame, that was all. All those tears – I shouldn’t have cried them. I was innocent. It wasn’t my wrong, it was hers.’ Levitt parted his lips in the semblance of a smile. ‘Innocent,’ he said. ‘I did what I was supposed to do, what she’d planned for me to do. That’s all I’m doing now.
‘And all the time, the stories went on. Oh, how she loved those stories. She made me suffer. She said they always have their revenge, that good little girls never really go away. Sometimes I’d wet the bed, she was so—But inside I knew what I knew: and it was the story of the juniper tree, most of all, which taught me. Two children, one the mother hates, one she loves. She kills the one she hates – cuts his head off with the lid of the trunk, you know this, Alice – and then lets the other child think she killed her brother. That’s what my sister’s death was. My mother was the playwright; I was merely the player.
‘After that it was better. I learned from the stories, grew to know more and more of them. She didn’t like it. She started to mock me for it, laughed at me, but I didn’t care; I knew it was only because she was afraid. There was magic in the stories, I had seen that. All I had to do was bide my time, to learn from them, until I found a way to take it – to use it.’
His eyes flashed. ‘And then I saw the bird and I knew I was right. I knew my sister at once, I would have known her anywhere. She had come back, just as my mother said.’
‘What do you mean? You can’t think your sister became the blue bird – and anyway, you never saw it.’
‘Ah, but I did see her – of course I did, you silly girl. I saw her long before any of you, before anyone else. When I saw those feathers – she was always something special, my sister.’ He looked around as if the bird would be there, inside the hut. ‘You know from the tales that birds are never what they seem. The blue bird is a glamour, a trickster; birds in the stories – they could be anything, anyone. And I have to know.’
‘You have to know what?’
He grimaced. ‘I have to know if she blames me.’ His eyes were weak now, watery. ‘I have to know if she listened to my mother’s stories too, if she was twisted by them, tainted. I sometimes think, perhaps she came for revenge after all. But I don’t think so.’ He shook himself. ‘The youngest,’ he said, ‘the most beautiful – it’s always about them, isn’t it? I hear her song, you know; day and night, ever and ever in my head.’ He batted his hands at his ears.
‘But it’s not your sister,’ Alice said. ‘It’s only a bird, don’t you see?’ And as she spoke she remembered the way she’d followed it. Why had she done that? Her hand went to her pocket, to the feather she kept there.
Levitt followed her movement with his eyes. He smiled. ‘I know you carry it with you,’ he said. ‘I saw you, walking through the wood. The way you took it out and looked at it. You knew. You knew.’
Alice shook her head. ‘It’s not real, any of it. You’re crazy. You need help: none of this is real. It’s just – it’s stories, nothing but fairy tales.’
‘Oh, but it is real, little Alice.’ He smiled. ‘The stories are real. I made them real, don’t you see?’
Alice remembered a princess, thrown into a ditch. A dead girl’s face hidden by a crimson hood. A beauty in a photograph, lying dead under the trees, her eyes open. And she found she could not answer.
‘Their lives were
forfeit,’ Levitt said, ‘to something greater than themselves.’ His voice grew soft. ‘It was always going to happen, don’t you see? This way, it meant something. They never had to grow old, never had to lose their beauty. They’ll always be that way now. They became part of something bigger, something more important. They became part of the story.
‘That was why I gave them my sister’s gifts: the looking-glass, the christening bracelet, even her milk teeth. My mother used to say she was the tooth fairy, back then; she kept them in a jar for years and years, until she forgot them – but I remembered.’
He sighed. ‘I needed their power, Alice. Little Red, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White. And I need yours.’ He paused. ‘I think she knew,’ he whispered. ‘The first one, she’d been drinking, but I think she knew anyway, don’t you? Later she said she didn’t, but by then it was too late. The second went with me as if it was what she’d been waiting for all her life. And the third: so potent – I could feel the life in her, you know. The lives.’
‘You knew she was pregnant.’ Alice stumbled over the words.
‘Not me, not then. But I knew where to find her. I knew what story she would fit.’
Alice shook her head. ‘How? How did you know?’
He smiled. ‘She showed me,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean? Who showed you?’
‘The bird, of course – my sister. She showed me who to take. She sang their songs in my ear.’
‘The bird?’
‘She came to you, didn’t she, Alice? She led me to you. She delivered you here.’
‘But—’
‘The bird is my sister, Alice. Did you think it your friend? Well, it is not. She is not. She wants me to come to her, Alice, and I am.’ He picked up the thing he had placed on the chair, ran his fingers over it. It was covered in feathers, and some of them fell from it and drifted to the ground. He unfolded it and spread it in front of him: it was a cloak.
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