The Graces

by Laure Eve

  ‘It was supposed to do the opposite,’ Thalia said, her voice wispy and small.

  ‘River’s right.’ Summer glared around. ‘I’m going to wash this horrible shit off my hands. And then we’re going to fix it.’

  CHAPTER 22

  When the day stretched into early evening, we gathered in the garden.

  Wolf had turned up late in the afternoon, back from a day trip he’d taken into the city with his father. He was enigmatic at the best of times, but tonight it felt like he was trying to disappear into himself, barely raising his voice over a grunt. Someone had evidently filled him in on the day’s events, and he didn’t seem happy about it – it looked like he and Fenrin had fallen out. They kept circling each other like angry cats and now sat on opposite sides of our ragged, five-pointed circle.

  I’d spent the afternoon at the cove with Summer, but no one else had wanted to come, and it hadn’t been carefree and fun the way I’d imagined it. She’d scrubbed them clean, but every time I looked at her, I flashed back to her dirt-streaked hands and the heart they had held.

  We gathered, and at first no one talked. Thalia was draped in a wicker chair next to Summer, silent. Summer was staring off into the distance, her fingers tapping out a rhythm on the grass only she could hear. Wolf was fiddling with the cork in a bottle of wine. Fenrin seemed lost in thought.

  I had a role to fulfil. I was the disruptor. The outsider. The one forcing them out of the comfortable rut of secrets and silence they were accustomed to, and into action.

  Be brave.

  ‘So what magic needs a fox heart?’ I said. ‘I mean, what does it do, exactly?’

  ‘It’s an old way of doing things,’ Wolf said, unexpectedly. ‘You offer an exchange, a sacrifice, instead of using your will. You offer up something else instead of using yourself.’

  ‘Bad magic,’ Summer said, gloomily.

  Thalia was very still and small.

  Bad magic?

  I didn’t think magic could be bad. It depended on the person doing it, not the thing itself. It was like a knife. Inert until someone forced their will on it, driving it into action. It could be used to cut someone free or kill them. It was all things, and no things, given purpose by an outside force.

  Magic was only bad if you were, too.

  ‘Well, come on,’ said Fenrin to me. ‘The spell in the woods was your idea. What do you think we should do to fix it?’

  Wolf raised his head to look at me. And then they all did.

  I felt myself start to melt under their collective staring. I searched, stumbling around half-formed thoughts. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Fenrin folded his arms. ‘You must have a plan of action. You said we had to take off the spell on Marcus, so let’s hear it.’

  ‘I don’t have a plan,’ I said, uncomfortable. ‘I’m not an expert on magic. I was just …’ I faltered.

  But his stare was hard. He was challenging me.

  Be the disruptor. Be brave.

  So I said, ‘I was just thinking about bad magic. I don’t think that’s the problem here. I think it’s to do with intention.’

  Summer was frowning.

  ‘I think when we did the spell in the woods, our intentions weren’t pure,’ I carried on. I wouldn’t look at Fenrin for his reaction, not until I’d finished.

  Maybe he didn’t even remember what he’d said to me, anyway.

  ‘We all wanted to break the curse,’ Summer said. ‘That was the intention. Why would anyone want something different?’

  ‘Maybe someone wanted to punish her.’

  ‘Who? Thalia?’ Summer was mystified. ‘Why?’

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say it.

  It didn’t matter, though, because Fenrin said it for me. ‘Maybe I thought she deserved it for being a coward.’

  There was a shocked silence.

  His eyes fell on mine.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, clearly. ‘Very sweet of you to let everyone know.’

  He stood up and walked off down the path towards the grove.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wolf twitch as if to go after him, but then he stayed still.

  ‘What is he talking about?’ Summer said.

  I didn’t dare look at Thalia.

  ‘River, just tell us.’ Summer’s voice was urgent. ‘We can’t do a spell without knowing everything. We could screw it up again.’

  It felt like a betrayal. He’d confessed it to me – you didn’t tell other people’s confessions. But god, there were all these knotted, tangled secrets, strangling us. We were choking to death. I wanted to save us.

  ‘He told me something,’ I said. ‘That night in the woods. He said he wanted to punish Thalia, not help her.’

  Thalia laughed, only it sounded more like a gasp.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry,’ she echoed, her voice flat, and laughed again.

  ‘So you’re saying it’s Fenrin’s fault.’ It was Wolf.

  I eyed him. ‘I’m not saying anything like that. People can’t help what they really feel inside.’

  Wolf shifted, folded his arms. ‘No, but it is his fault, then – whether he wants it to be or not.’

  Fenrin felt guilty. He remembered what he’d told me and thought the same as I did – that this was all going wrong because of him.

  ‘I’ll go and talk to him.’ Summer shifted.

  ‘No, I’ll go.’ I got up and walked down the stone path to the grove. I could see him in the half-dusk, just beyond the apple tree. As I contemplated his outline, alone and stark against the tree trunks, I made a decision. In the spirit of the evening, I would finally tell him the truth about the way I felt.

  He was leaning back with his arms folded, facing away. He heard me approach and sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I offered.

  He said nothing. I waited a moment, but a nervous energy was sparking in me, and I walked round to stand right in front of him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated.

  He looked at me. ‘Are you the type to bring out people’s secrets when it suits you, like a good card hand?’

  ‘What? No. I didn’t tell them to hurt you. I just … we shouldn’t let everyone think it’s all going wrong because of bad magic, when it might not be. We should all know everything between us. Shouldn’t we?’ I hated how my voice sounded, like I was pleading with him. Pleading didn’t sound like I was right. I tried to change my face, my stance.

  ‘Was it really up to you to tell them?’

  ‘Well, were you going to tell them?’

  He was silent.

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ he exploded. ‘It’s bullshit. We didn’t do anything that night in the woods. Nothing.’

  ‘Will you just stop lying to yourself? You believe, Fen. Why else would you be acting so weird about this?’

  He laughed, raising his hands helplessly. ‘Jesus, another zealot. You’re really starting to fit in well, aren’t you?’

  I wanted to hit him.

  ‘Why do you use that as a put-down with me, as if it’s just so pathetic to like you?’ I stopped. ‘All of you,’ I amended. I bit the inside of my cheek hard, to replace the emotion with pain. To regain my control.

  He was turning away from me. Don’t turn away from me.

  ‘It’s not because I met you guys and then suddenly decided magic was real, okay? I’ve always believed, before you came along. Maybe not in magic, but in something.’

  Fenrin stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

  I’d gone too far without even realising. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No,’ he said, renewed. ‘You’re so damn mysterious. You never talk about yourself, you just let us go on and on about our own unimportant crap. You sit there like a mirror, and all you do is magnify all of us. You have to tell us your secrets too, River.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell!’

  ‘Come on. There’s always something.’

  ‘No! I�
�m the most boring person in the world! Okay? Is that what you want to hear? That I hang around with you because I want to be interesting, to be loved.’ I spat the word out. ‘Loved and adored, like you are. That’s what I want. You happy now? I’m just as pathetic as you think I am.’

  I stopped, shocked at myself. How had this happened? How had I let so much out when I’d worked so hard to keep it all in?

  ‘You’re not,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve never thought that, River. Not once.’

  My heart moved, stirred. It was the confirmation I’d been looking for from him all this time. I felt tears trying to leak out of me, and I just panicked. I did it badly as well, kind of gulping in a breath like I was about to take a dive, and moving up to him, trying to concentrate on his mouth.

  I leaned in. This was it. The moment I had been thinking about for months.

  But I didn’t even get close enough to touch. His hands were on my shoulders, stopping me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. He sounded alarmed.

  I could see a sickly realisation creeping across his face. He wasn’t happy.

  He wasn’t happy at all.

  ‘River, I—’

  I tried to laugh. Bad, bad mistake. It came out stuttering. ‘It was just a joke. You should see your face.’

  He dragged in a deep breath, fighting for words. ‘This is … I didn’t even realise.’

  It was a compliment, of sorts. A testament to how good I was at hiding my true self.

  I was looking at the trunk past his face, tracing the bark cracks with my eyes. ‘We should get back, okay?’

  He said nothing. So I walked away.

  As I walked I heard rustling, and he came up beside me. ‘Don’t just walk off,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’ I replied, offhand.

  He breathed a short, sharp sigh. ‘I like you, I do. But—’

  But. There was a but.

  ‘I get it, okay?’ I interrupted. ‘Just fucking drop it.’ I turned my face from him as if I didn’t care at all.

  ‘Fine,’ he said sharply, and walked on ahead.

  I stopped. I had to. My chest was shrinking, pushing inward and squeezing all my air out. I leaned against the nearest tree and took in a deep breath, counting to ten. Let it go, counting to ten.

  I would not cry here.

  I would go back to them, and I would be perfectly easy. I would be the River they knew. I would be their equal. The only way to be what you wanted to be was to pretend that you already were. One day you would stop feeling like you were acting. One day there would be no need, and finally, oh finally, you would be able to relax.

  What if Fenrin tells them?

  I ignored the voice.

  He will.

  He wouldn’t.

  I reached the garden. Fenrin was laughing, and for an awful screeching moment, I thought it was at me, but it was at something Summer had said. She lashed out, kicking his ankle, and he staggered dramatically.

  I walked up, and nothing more was said about spells and magic at all that night. But it hung over us, stretching and straining our time together.

  He hadn’t told them. But what about tomorrow? Summer would be so disappointed in me. I was half convinced the reason she had liked me in the first place was because I had seemed so uninterested in her brother. Because it meant I wasn’t going to try and use her to get to him.

  I hadn’t. I hadn’t done that. But it would look like I had.

  Thalia was silent in her chair, sunken into the bright, brittle chatter around her. I felt Wolf’s eyes on me more than once, but I acted as if I didn’t. Fenrin laughed like his usual self. Summer suggested music, and a stereo was dragged out on the end of an extension cord. Twilight rose all around us, and we switched the garden lights on – fairy twinkles strung through the trees, solar lamps round the edges of the lawn, fat candles lining the patio stones. I watched the light fall across their faces, as it must have fallen across mine. Did that make us seem the same, somehow?

  Fenrin was right, about everything. I did act like a mirror. I told him there was nothing to see inside me that was worth seeing. Sometimes I thought that was true. Sometimes I thought it was better if all I did was reflect.

  After the fourth bottle of wine, they started playing games – hopscotch, dares. The promise of more magic lay forgotten between us as the moon came out. I stayed where I was, chasing that nothingness I had felt during the spell in the woods. Chasing the life of a star.

  At some point, I was passed a different bottle, something homemade. It tasted like spiced honey. Summer pulled me to my feet with a wild grin. The others were chanting nursery rhymes, over and over. It should have felt stupid, but it didn’t.

  Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s.

  Summer was spinning me. We weaved and swayed. I fell over twice. It was loud. The garden was black outside our circle of light. The endless night stretched all around us, so we told each other that we had to be close together, together in the dark.

  I remember only images, snapshots burned into me, bleeding into each other until I no longer knew the order in which they had happened. The flash of my bare arms as I stripped off my sweater. Thalia standing up and shrugging off her long skirt, peeling it down until it pooled at her feet. Cool grass tickling my back when I lay down and looked at the stars, Summer’s hand in mine. Thalia’s long hair wrapped round my fist as I played with the strands. Thalia’s or Summer’s, all the same colour in the dark.

  That night I think we were trying to fight against death, against boredom and banality, against everything that made us cry and stare at our futures full in the face with dread. We drank and played games to be in the now, to be in each moment as hard as we could, because the moment was all that mattered, at the end of it all. I remember I felt intoxicated on life and darkness. I felt powerful. It was the most natural thing in the world. This was why we were alive – to be powerful and free.

  It was only in mornings that spells were broken. In mornings, reality always came back in a sick, rolling wave, and the glittering black night before had become something grey and wrong in the daylight.

  *

  The next thing I remembered was a sound like a rusting jackhammer. Then another overlapping it. And another. Magpies calling to each other in the dawn light.

  I opened my eyes and was immediately sliced with pain.

  Greyish light. My skin was cold.

  I managed to roll over. My head was surging.

  The fruit trees whirled and rustled, whispering. I knew what they were saying.

  We saw what happened.

  I was in the grove, and I was alone.

  Then I heard voices, calling my name.

  Then: ‘Fen!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  They were coming closer. I tucked my bare arms round myself, huddling in a thin sleeveless T-shirt that wasn’t mine. Maybe it was Summer’s. God, it was cold. Dry leaves pricked my skin, scraping against my jeans.

  ‘Fen! River! Where the hell has everyone gone?’

  Find me, I thought. It was all I could think, and I thought it with everything I had.

  They found me. Thalia and Summer came through the trees. I heard their voices, but I could only stare at the ground.

  ‘River! What are you doing?’ Relief, then nerves creeping their spidery legs into that voice. Summer’s voice.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m cold,’ I said.

  Summer crouched down next to me, her eyes full of concern.

  ‘I thought we all fell asleep on the garden chaise longues. When I woke up, it was just Thalia and me, and you weren’t in the house. How come you came out to the grove by yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen Wolf and Fen?’

  I shook my head.

  Thalia sounded strange. ‘Sum, I think something’s happened.’

  ‘Don’t freak out,’ snapped Summer’s voice. An arm came around
my shoulders. ‘We should go back.’

  ‘Maybe they went down to the cove.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  ‘It’s like five minutes away. Shall we just check?’

  ‘Okay – but let’s do it quickly. If they come back to the house and find us gone, they’ll do the same thing we’re doing and we’ll be here all day.’

  They were using matter-of-fact tones. I knew what those tones meant. They were pretending that everything was fine.

  It wasn’t.

  Summer helped me to my feet and we walked. The grove came to an abrupt halt. Beyond was a worn dirt track that led into the dunes, sandy hills covered in long windswept heather, rolling away from us and curving down to the sea. It was going to be sunny again. The sky was pink and gold. Summer was murmuring in my ear, but I couldn’t really concentrate on anything she said. She wanted answers I couldn’t give to questions like ‘What happened?’ and ‘Are you okay?’

  The closer we got to the cove, the more wrong everything felt, as if while we’d slept, we’d slipped into another version of this world, almost the same as ours but made of black glass, distorted and dark. They must have felt it, too, because when we got down to the cove and saw something slumped on the sand near the shoreline, none of us broke into a run, as if we weren’t even surprised.

  It was Fenrin.

  He didn’t move when they called, but when they rolled him over he woke, his eyes slitting against the light. He looked at us like he had no idea who we were, and for a moment everything dislocated because I was convinced, right then, that we had slipped into an alternate reality. But then he blinked.

  ‘What?’ he said, his voice rasping. He coughed, and his brow furrowed as if he couldn’t remember why his voice would do that.

  ‘Where’s Wolf?’ said Thalia.

  He looked around, bemused. Then shook his head.

  ‘Ah. My throat hurts.’

  ‘What are you even doing down here?’

  Fenrin sat up. He had his jeans on, at least, but the top button and zip were undone.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What d’you mean, you don’t know?’

  His face screwed up. ‘Stop,’ he said, irritated. ‘I just woke up. I don’t remember last night very well.’