Acting on a hunch, she picked the avoid all the boys and go off on your own route. Previously that had always been the shortcut to an early game over, either because your character had an accident (who’d have thought that spraining your ankle could be so fatal?) or because you didn’t build up any emotional bonds and everyone died of starvation.
But this time there was a new option.
[X] Follow the path into the forest
“Annie!” her mother called through the closed door. “Are you ready for bed?”
Annie saved the game, and went to sleep grinning.
*
It was another dinner-with-guests, but this time Annie wasn’t quite as bored. Mrs Hawkins was talking about what she called ‘the selfish meme’, which was interesting even in its gruesomeness, or more likely because it was so gruesome; so icky that it wasn’t actually real. She was talking about sorts of evil character who kept on coming up in fiction again and again without any real link between the books or films or whatever, and then people doing the same thing (which Mrs Hawkins called imitative behaviour showed up in the real world too. Like in the gangs.
Annie was torn between wanting to ask questions and keeping her mouth shut so that Mum wouldn’t start worrying about Annie listening to all this. Though it wasn’t really any worse than some of the stuff on television.
“Of course, the Jekyll/Hyde dichotomy goes back to werewolf legends,” Mrs Hawkins said. “And the Dracula issue – well, vampires. It’s the more human sort of evil that I’m putting forward as the subject here.”
“Dracula was originally human,” one of the other guests said. “Vlad Drakul, wasn’t it? Or however you’re supposed to pronounce it? Voivode of Transylvania, whatever. The Impaler, you know. The whole nailing hats to the heads of envoys and brutal punishment and all that. If we’re talking about human evil, do you really need to go sourcing in fiction when you’ve got that for an origin?”
“Is this about the Bean cults?” the quiet man at the far end of the table – Annie couldn’t remember his name – said, and the whole table went silent.
“It is,” Mrs Hawkins answered. Her face was pinched and thin. (Everyone looked thin these days. Even Mum looked thin.) “No linking factor that we’ve been able to discover, no common ground, but they’ve been springing up across Britain and we keep on finding the same common imagery. And it all goes back to Bean by way of Sweeney Todd. The cave, the hanging tree, the –” she looked at Annie, and cut herself off, mouth closing like a trap.
“But you have the Wendigo myth before that,” the quiet man said, filling in the hole in the conversation. “That’s a clear mythological source for the cannibalism concept.”
“But you can trace the Wendigo myth back to human action,” Mrs Hawkins counter-argued. “In the stories it’s the action of eating which opens the victims up to possession. If you –”
“I’ll just clear the dishes so we can have dessert,” Mum announced, stopping the conversation before it could get really interesting. Even if it was probably about to also get really gross.
Annie did some Googling that night. Yup. Really gross. Cannibalism wasn’t sexy or cute, and she stopped half the searches before she could even finish loading the pages; seeing the description text was enough.
Besides, the game was much more interesting. There was a tenth boy on the island. He lived in a hideout down the forest path, and Annie had to keep on rejecting all the dialogue options with the other boys in order to get him to talk with her.
The character was very secretive. She wondered what his background was. Hidden spy? Lifelong outcast? Grown up on the island after being left there as a baby? He wouldn’t even tell her his name. Maybe that was the end point of his character quest?
The other characters were having difficulty finding food in the game, but she was refusing all interactions with them, so it didn’t really matter. They just stood around at the campsite saying things like we’re all going to starve, with their character models looking prettily gaunt and haggard. Maybe the tenth boy knew where there was a food store? Then the endgame might be her getting together with him and saving everyone, and them all leaving the island together. That’d be neat.
*
Nicola wasn’t on the bus the next morning.
Thomas wanted to talk about it, but Annie turned her back on him and put her earbuds in, and listened to the game’s soundtrack, and thought about endings.
There was nothing worth looking at outside the bus windows.
*
“Do we have to have rice again for supper?” Annie asked.
“Yes,” Mum said. “It’s supposed to be good for you, and I’m sure I could do with losing some weight.” Her smile looked pinned on to her face, and if there had been background music, it would have been ominous.
Annie decided to pick the best possible option. She just hugged her Mum, and stopped arguing. Sometimes there wasn’t a really good game route, there was just a least bad choice.
Mum was so thin these days.
Options:
[X] Talk to Ken about hunting
[X] Talk to Louis about picking vegetables and fruit
[X] Talk to Jean-Paul about setting traps
[X] Ask how people are
[X] Go and see the boy in the forest
Annie clicked on Go and see the boy in the forest.
*
“They’re going to put us all in mass boarding schools,” Thomas said. He wouldn’t stop going on at her, even though she made it absolutely clear that she did not want to talk. “My dad says that it’s because of the gangs and the food supplies. And they’re talking about conscription.”
“Wasn’t that what they did during the Second World War?” Annie regretted saying that a moment later, because it meant that Thomas thought she was actually interested in the conversation.
Thomas nodded. “They had a food shortage then too. But they didn’t have such bad pollution. And the police are already armed...”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Annie said. “They’ve been armed since before we were born. It’s only our mums and dads who go round being weird about that. And why put us into boarding schools?”
“Because then they can centralise the food supply. And then they’ll have us all in one place. No more families going missing...”
Annie tuned him out. It didn’t stop him talking, but at least if she wasn’t listening she didn’t have to think about what he was saying.
*
The game music played in her head as the boy in the forest talked to her about ethics and religion and reality, and she tried to guess the right answers to progress the game.
She had to go back to previous saves more than once, but each time she remembered more of what he wanted to hear, and she got a little further.
*
She was tired of rice for supper. She was still hungry.
The woman across the table looked at her with weary eyes. “I’m sorry, love,” she said. “There’s nothing in the shops these days. Tell you what, why don’t you go and play on your game for a bit? You look too tired for homework.”
Annie heard the word game. It cut through the music in her head. She nodded, and bared her teeth in a smile.
*
The other boys on the island had been vanishing. She was the only one left. She fled to her boyfriend in the forest for comfort and safety, and this time he gave her meat from his stewpot.
“You’re one of us now,” he said.
“But you still haven’t told me who you are,” she complained.
“I’m Sunny,” he whispered. His voice was in the headphones and it was in her head and she nodded along with it, listening to the music. “I’ll be waiting for you. We all will.”
*
Annie went down the stairs on silent feet, as quiet as a mouse. The carving knife was in its block in the kitchen.
Later, after she had eaten, she set fire to the house, and went away to find the island, and
to find Sunny and all the others.
Women’s Christmas
Ian McDonald
Eleven days of rain and on the twelfth, on Women’s Christmas, it broke. I took Rosh down to the hotel in sharp low winter sun. We were half-blinded and sun-dizzy by the time we arrived at the Slieve Donard. It was a good thing the car was doing the driving. We left early to get as much spa time as possible in before dinner but Sara had beaten us. She waved to us from the whirlpool. She was the only one in it. Women’s Christmas was an odd lull between New Year and the Christmas present discount voucher weekend breaks. We had the old Victorian pile almost to ourselves and we liked it.
We sat neck-deep on the long tiled bench and let the spritzed water play with us. The big picture window looked out over the beach and the mountains. The low sun was setting. The sea was a deep indigo and the lights were coming on along the curve of the bay. The rain had washed the air clean, the twilight was huge and clear and we could almost smell the day ending. Those eleven days of rain had been eleven days of snow, up at the height of mountain tops. They glowed cold blue in the gloaming, paler blue on dark.
“It’ll be up soon,” Rosh said. Then Dervla appeared in her swimmers and we turned away from the window and waved and whooped.
“Did someone remember to bring them?” Dervla asked, as one of us asks every year.
“They’re in the back of the car,” I said. Every year someone asks, every year Rosh picks them up from the airport, every year I sling them in the back of the car.
We soaked in the pool and steamed in the sauna and tried the new spa devices in the pool, which pummelled you and tormented you and beat you down with powerful jets of water.
“I’m not sure about those,” Dervla said. This was our tenth Women’s Christmas in the Slieve Donard.
*
It’s not a northern thing, Women’s Christmas. It’s a thing from Cork and Kerry, where the feast is still strongly observed. January 6th is the day: the Feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night, the night you have to have your decorations down or face bad luck the whole year. It’s sometimes called Little Christmas, or Old Christmas Day, a name I find spooky, like something sleeping deep and long that you don’t want to wake. It’s to do with different calendars, I believe. If Christmas is turkey and sprouts and meaty, wintry stuff, Women’s Christmas is about wine and cake and sweet things. Eat sweet and talk sweet, Alia in work says. She’s Syrian – well, her family came from Syria. And we talk. Five sisters scattered all over the island have a lot to talk about. Afternoon tea and cakes and cocktail help, but the talk’s not always sweet.
Men traditionally look after the house and make a fuss of the women at Women’s Christmas, but luck with that from the men in our lives. The hotel provides reliable pampering and it has the spa and decent cocktails. We didn’t even have a name for this little family gathering until Sinead mentioned our Epiphany sojourns to a five star hotel to a neighbour down in Cork and she said that sounds like Women’s Christmas. We took the name but it was our own thing: these women’s Christmas. The Corcoran sisters.
*
Sinead came cursing in from Cork. The good weather had stalled somewhere in Kildare; she had driven through one hundred and fifty kilometres of rain and flood, maintenance was overrunning and road speeds were down to sixty. She was pissed off at having missed the spa. It part of the ritual.
“Tell me I’m in time for the cocktails.”
“You’re in time for cocktails.”
Sinead would always be in time for cocktails.
There was a new thing, from up there: a cocktail everyone was drinking. Blue Moon. I liked the sound of that, so Rosh told us what was in it: gin and blue Curacao. We asked the barman to show us blue Curacao and Sinead screwed up her face and said, Oh I don’t fancy that very much. We stuck what we knew and liked. Fruit and straws. Non-alcoholic for Dervla. She’s been three years off the drink and looking better for it.
“First thing,” Dervla said. She was the oldest – twelve years older than me, the baby, and assumed she was the natural leader of the Corcoran sisters. We raised our glasses and drank to Laine.
*
I forget that not every family has an aunt who went to the moon. I was twelve when Laine left. I told everyone at school that an aunt of mine was going to work on the moon. They weren’t as impressed as I wanted them to be. When Laine launched, I imagined it would be on every screen in the country. I still thought space and the moon were big, unusual things. We got private feed from the launch company and had to pay for it. Dervla brought prosecco to cheer Laine up into space. Dervla would have celebrated the opening of a letter with prosecco back then. We had hardly a glass down us before the smoke was blowing away on the wind. The thing I remember most was that I was allowed a glass of fizz. My excitement had become embarrassing and when I went to look at the Moon, trying to imagine anyone up there, let alone Aunt Laine, I made sure no one saw me. It’s easier now there are lights, and the big dick they stamped out on the surface, but twelve years on, at the new moon I can see the lights but I can’t remember clearly what Aunt Laine looks like. She wasn’t that much older than Sara, a good sight younger than Dervla. More a cousin than an aunt. Ma never really approved of Da’s side of the family. That’s not really her name, she said on those rare times when Laine came to stay. Her name’s really Elaine. I tried playing with her, but she was into outdoor stuff like bikes and building dams in streams and getting muddy. That’s ironic seeing as she’s permanently indoors now.
Then the money came.
*
The food really isn’t so great here but we had the old dining room almost entirely to ourselves. In keeping with the traditions of Women’s Christmas, we took a late afternoon tea. Sandwiches with the crusts cut off and mushroom vol au vents, sausage rolls, cake and fruit loaf. Fondant fancies. Tea, or light German wines, not too dry. We ate while the staff took down the decorations. We were glowing from the spa and the cocktails.
Dervla’s oldest was in a show in Las Vegas, middle Jake was rolling along in his middling way and the only thing Eoin would have was GAA all day every day. The laundry was ferocious, but, in these days when qualifications count for nothing, football was as valid a career path as any.
Sinead’s Donal was settled in San Francisco now. The company had moved him into the materials development section already. He’ll be the next one off to the moon, Rosh said and we all looked at her. Three Cosmopolitans or no, a Corcoran woman is expected to follow the rules. He’s found himself a nice girl, Sinead said and the mood lifted like the Christmas weather.
Sara would have gone on all night about the divorce but Women’s Christmas was about eating sweet and talking sweet and no matter the settlement it was better than Bry.
Rosh’s news was old news to me because I saw her every other day it seemed. New house new man. Again. New job maybe. It was new and exciting to the others. Dervla gave the company report. Corcoran Construction was in better shape. The losses from the previous two years had been reversed. Her talk was of finance I didn’t understand. I never had a head for business, and I mistrusted Michael around all that money so I asked the rest of them to buy me out. Wisely as it transpired with that gobshite Michael. Sinead was a silent partner but Sara positively revelled in the boardroom battles and corporate politics. I put the money in safe investments, let the rest of them run the empire and saw them once a year, at Women’s Christmas.
Aunt Laine sent us money from the moon. She was making a fortune, something in mining. That was what she had studied. The idea had always been to get to the Moon; that was where the work was, that was where the opportunities were. Make your fortune, send it back. The streets of the moon were paved with gold, except I heard once that gold has no value up there. Send home the money; buy the slates for the cottage and a decent headstone. The Irish way. Laine set up her brother and her parents, and then looked around for others whose lives she could transform with her money: her cousins, the five Corcoran sisters. She w
anted us to use it to encourage women in science and engineering. We did: we set up Corcoran Construction.
The money still came down from the moon, quarterly. We hadn’t needed it in years. Corcoran Construction had made us safe. Aunt Laine was our indulgence fund: West End musicals, weekend breaks, shopping sprees, family holidays and every year we blew a whack of it on our Women’s Christmas.
*
The Baileys was on the second bottle, and Sara had an audience now. I didn’t want to hear about the bastardry and the fuckery. Michael was five years back but certain times, certain places bring him close. Like angels, he stooped close to Earth at Christmas.
I went out for a smoke. The sudden cold took my breath away; the air was so clean and clear it seemed as brittle and sharp as glass. I lit up and sat on one of the smoker’s benches, listening to the night. Sound carried huge distances on the still air. The sea was a murmur in the dead calm. Car engines, someone revving. Shouts from down on the promenade. I tracked the course of an ambulance siren through the town and up the main road behind the hotel. I heard a fox shriek, a sound that spooked and excited me in equal parts. The wild things were out and closer than I had thought. I shivered hard and deep; the alcohol heat was evaporating and I was in party frock and shoes. There would be frost on the lawns in the morning and ice where yesterday’s rain lingered. I was glad the car would be driving us back up north.
The air was so clear I could see lawns, car park, beach lit by a pale glow, the light of the three-quarter moon. There were artificial lights up there, machinery and trains and stuff, but the moonlight outshone them. Half a million people lived on the moon, building a new world. Laine went there. Someone I know went there, and was there, and would remain there for the rest of her life. Everyone knows the rule. If you don’t come back after two years you don’t come back at all. She’ll be back, we said, before even the smoke from the launch had cleared. She didn’t come back. Maybe that was where the damage was done.
I opened the car. The gifts were in an Ikea bag. The money was not Laine’s only largess: every year for ten years she sent gifts from the moon. We held Women’s Christmas because that was how long it took her gifts to arrive. It was complex process; tethers and orbiters and shuttles. Names I didn’t understand. Every year we would pick up the gifts from the airport and bring them down to the hotel.
Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press Page 2