Valentine

by Jodi McAlister

  ‘That sounds like you’re on a bad acid trip,’ I say. ‘I can’t hear anything, Finn.’

  ‘I know this,’ Finn whispers. ‘How do I know this?’

  I don’t reply.

  ‘I have to go to it,’ he says.

  ‘No, Finn!’ I remember Julian last night, head cocked like he was listening for some call I couldn’t hear. Is Finn hearing it now? ‘That would be a really, really dumb idea!’

  ‘I have to!’

  ‘Finn, it could be, I don’t know, the Pied Piper of Hamelin or something, setting up camp near my house to lure me out!’

  ‘No. It’s not.’

  ‘How do you know?!’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘It has trap written all over it!’

  ‘It’s not.’ His eyes have taken on a faraway, dreamy quality that doesn’t belong on his face. I seriously consider whacking him one to bring him back to his senses. ‘They’re . . . this is Seelie, Pearlie. This is my people.’

  ‘Do you really think they’re going to sing “la la la la come here little Valentine this is not a trap”?’ I demand.

  ‘I have to go.’

  I grab his wrist. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  ‘Don’t you dare pull that macho bullcrap on me, Blacklin.’

  ‘I have to go, Pearl. Don’t you understand? I have to! This is where I come from!’

  ‘Your mum,’ I say sharply. ‘Your dad. Your brother. School. Haylesford. Playing soccer. Hitting on girls. Picking on me. That is where you come from, Finn. Not this.’

  He screws up his face as if he’s about to cry. ‘I have to go to it.’

  I press my iron pendant firmly against his skin.

  ‘Ow!’ he says, jumping away. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘To snap you out of it.’

  ‘That hurt! Are you crazy?’

  ‘You’re the one that wants to follow the mystery music into the night!’

  ‘You are a complete bitch sometimes!’

  ‘You are a complete moron sometimes!’

  ‘Screw you, Linford.’ He marches towards the window. ‘I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t.’

  ‘I’m not letting you go out there,’ I say. ‘No way in hell.’

  ‘Stop me.’ He opens the window and swings himself out.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, and clamber out after him.

  He turns back, a look of total incredulity in his eyes. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What does it look like?’ I say, crossing my arms and trying to look as menacing as I can in my flannelette pyjamas and fluffy slippers. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  We don’t have a prayer of being silent as we beat our way through the bush. Finn goes first. It seems like the trees and the scrub magically part before him and then flick back and smack me in the face. If any fairy could see us now I don’t think they’d be so quick to point at me and yell out ‘fairy princess’.

  A thousand lectures about bush safety and people who have got lost and died from exposure and hypothermia and been bitten by snakes and giant spiders and eaten by crocodiles dance through my mind, but I keep my mouth shut. I’ve never seen this kind of determination on Finn’s face before, and it scares me. He looks like a cross between bloodhound on a scent and a – a – a lemming. No amount of ‘this is stupid’ or ‘are we there yet?’ is going to be able to deter him. He’d walk through the trees if he couldn’t go around, or up into the night sky and over the tree tops if it would help him see better.

  ‘The music’s getting louder,’ he says. ‘We’re close.’

  I have no idea where we are. I still can’t hear this music he’s talking about, and that terrifies me more than all the snakes and crocodiles in the world. All sensors on my fight-or-flight instinct have been flicked onto flight mode, full throttle.

  But I keep following him.

  Something screeches overhead and flaps away into the night. I grab reflexively at Finn as I imagine the black birds gathering above us ready to pounce, swooping down like they did on Holly-Anne that day in Sydney. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at me, just folds his fingers around mine and pulls me along with him. His skin is warm even though the night is freezing. I wonder if he can feel my heart racing.

  We stop.

  ‘You’re hurting my hand,’ I whisper.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Look over there. Can you see light?’

  I squint, trying to make out anything, but all I can see is the faint outline of trees in the moonlight. ‘No.’

  He shakes his head as if he’s trying to shake his thoughts back into place. ‘But you can hear it, right?’

  ‘No, Finn,’ I say. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Keep quiet,’ he whispers. ‘Stay close to me.’

  No argument there.

  I keep my left hand in his as we start walking again, my right hand clutched tight round my iron pendant. Everything is dark. The bush around us is quiet, as if all the animals are asleep, or spellbound, or dead.

  And then I hear it. I’m good at music. Like, really good at it. But this . . . this is like nothing else in the world.

  Everything is the music, sweet and sinister, beautiful and terrible, twining through my limbs and making my fingers shake and my feet tremble and pounding through my veins like poison.

  Run Pearl run Pearlie run away home not for you you don’t belong run away run away fast you don’t belong run run run RUN RUN RUN RUN –

  ‘Whoa, whoa,’ Finn says, catching me and holding me tight to him with both his arms. ‘Don’t be an idiot. I’m not letting you run off into the bush by yourself.’

  ‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘I have to go. I have to get away. You don’t understand. I can’t be here. I can’t hear this.’

  I put my hands over my ears to try and block it out but the music is in my blood now, and – and – and –

  And I see them.

  In my experience, when the mind is overloaded, it tends to retreat to the trivial. All I can think about, for some reason, is The Hobbit, when Bilbo and the dwarves are lost in Mirkwood and they see the elves dancing and they step into the circle and poof! everyone is gone, and they’re left in the darkness and nearly get eaten by giant spiders. These things – these people – these – these – these fairies – are too impossibly beautiful to be real. Any second they’re going to see me or smell me or sense me and poof! they’ll disappear and the spiders will come out of the night . . .

  I can’t look at them at them to count them. That would be like trying to count sunbeams by staring into the sun. They’re dancing and whirling and twirling, a whirligig of beauty and starlight, but it’s not like Club H with its pounding music and throbbing beats. They dance like blades of grass, like trees in the wind, like the waves and the woods and the clouds in a storm. They are shadows and starshine and summer and they soar and leap and laugh and my heart aches from all the beauty.

  I can’t be here. I can’t look at this. I can’t stand it.

  But I can’t move, can’t walk, can’t run, can’t flee. When did I fall to my knees? Have I been here a second or a year or forever? My face is in the dirt but my eyes are still fixed on them. I am grovelling on the ground, too insignificant for their notice.

  There is a hand on my back, a voice in my ear. ‘Pearl – Pearl – you’ve got to wake up – come on!’

  My eyes turn to him, looming above me like a mountain. He shines.

  ‘Pearl!’ he says insistently, but I hear him like I’m underwater, just below the surface of a still, clear lake, and he is the sun shining upon me.

  The sun takes me in his arms. He is glorious, too glorious to bear, and I am going to burn, burn, burn.

  His fingers brush my face like tongues of flame. He presses something between my eyes, and –

  ‘Finn?’ I ask, as he drops me.

  ‘Shut up!’ he whispers, sucking his fingers. ‘And pick up that goddamn pie
ce of iron before you go under again.’

  I fish the iron pendant out of my cleavage and clutch it tight between both hands. ‘What –’ I begin.

  ‘Not now. Don’t look at them. Close your eyes. Block your ears.’

  I shut my eyes immediately and put my fingers in my ears. Even the memory of what I saw fills me with a horror like a terrible nightmare. The music pounds in my head like a migraine, fainter now, but still there. I want to run away. I want to die.

  I bury my face in Finn’s chest. He tightens his arm around me. The smell of his sweat is gross, which is weirdly comforting.

  I know exactly how long we stand there. I count the seconds to stop from thinking of the terrible beauty dancing round and round like shooting stars just behind my back. Eleven minutes and forty-two seconds pass when Finn pulls my right hand away from my ear. ‘I need you to look at something,’ he whispers, his lips so close they’re brushing my skin. Like I needed something else to overload my senses.

  I shake my head vigorously.

  ‘Just for a second,’ he whispers insistently. ‘One second, that’s all, and then I’ll put my hand over your eyes.’

  The thought of looking at them again, of their terrible beauty overwhelming me, makes me feel nauseous. I tremble.

  ‘One second, I promise,’ he says. He turns me around with his hands. I keep my eyes shut tight. My back is pressed against his chest. If he lets go of me, I am going to fall face-first into the sun.

  ‘I want you to look right in the centre of the circle,’ he says. ‘There’s a girl. Dancing. I need you to tell me if it is who I think it is.’

  I’m about to protest because how could I have ever met anyone this perfect and lived to tell the tale when he says, ‘Now!’ and I open my eyes.

  I look. I see her. She is not like the others. She doesn’t shine, doesn’t burn. Her face registers less than a second before the beauty overwhelms me again and my knees buckle and Finn’s hand slams down over my eyes.

  ‘Holly-Anne,’ I whisper.

  ‘She’s not dancing,’ he says fiercely. ‘They’re making her dance.’

  ‘On coals,’ I say. ‘On hot coals.’

  ‘Go,’ Finn says shortly, bundling me back in my bed­room window.

  ‘Go where?’ I ask, confused.

  ‘Go shower. You’re filthy.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I’ll shower at home.’

  ‘Oh no, you won’t,’ I say firmly. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Not with what lurks outside my window at night. How do I know you won’t go gallivanting back and try to take them all on so you can save Holly.’

  ‘Has anyone ever told you that you are a stunningly sensitive person?’ he says. ‘Because if they did, they were lying to you.’

  ‘Finn, you can’t save her,’ I say. ‘Not now. Not tonight. Not by yourself.’

  I’m right. I know I’m right. But I would have said it even if I wasn’t. I’ll say anything to make him stay. I can’t be alone.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. But –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I really am.’

  I can feel my feet itching. My palms are sweaty. When I close my eyes, their lithe, lissom figures are burned on the insides of my eyelids. The music that had repelled me before I saw them – run Pearl run away Pearl RUN RUN RUN RUN – now invites me. I can’t unhear it. It’s a constant thrum in my veins. I want to sit down at my keyboard for an hour or a day or forever and try and make it myself.

  I would gladly dance on hot coals if it meant I could look at them again.

  ‘Get inside before something else gets in through the window,’ I say.

  ‘I –’

  ‘Get in.’

  If I listen hard enough, I can still hear the faint strains of the music. If I dove outside now and ran as fast as my legs would carry me, he probably wouldn’t catch me.

  ‘I said get in, Finn.’

  He clambers in. ‘You’re real bossy, you know that, Linford?’

  ‘It has been brought to my attention. Now come on.’

  ‘Come where?’

  ‘We both need to shower.’

  He raises an eyebrow suggestively. ‘Together?’

  ‘No!’ I say, face flaming bright red.

  He’s one of them. One of the shining beings. Too beautiful to be true. One of those sinuous, shadowy, starshine dancers is in my room with me right now.

  My knees go weak.

  I dig my fingernails into my leg. No, Pearl. NO. This is not what you want.

  I let him shower first while I sneak into Shad’s room and grab some old clothes for him. Shad is tap-tapping away at his keyboard in his study. Disey’s room is dark and empty, the door open. She must still be at the office.

  For one moment, I feel desperately unhappy. I wish she was here. I wish things were the way they were before my coma, when Disey wasn’t trying to shut me away in the house like some nineteenth century invalid. I want Disey. I want Shad. I want our funny little family. I want –

  That is what I want. I don’t want moonlit glades or limpid pools or strange beings of starlight. I clutch the iron at my neck reflexively and cling to Disey and Shad’s faces in my mind like a talisman, using them to shade my eyes from the sun.

  ‘Pearl?’ Finn whispers, looming up in front of me suddenly. ‘These for me?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ I say. His skin is damp and he’s only wearing a towel and oh God oh God they were so beautiful he is so beautiful and I want to run my no no no no no bad Pearl bad Pearl bad. ‘Go into my room. Wait for me there.’

  I shut myself into the bathroom before I make some gargantuan Freudian slip.

  Disey. Shad. Disey. Shad. Phil. Phil is good, solid Phil, who probably wouldn’t have been affected one tiny bit by the dazzling dancers in the clearing. This is what I want. This is who I am. Come back down to earth, Pearl. Come down.

  I focus on breathing. In. And out. In. Out. In. Out.

  Seelie. Finn’s people. That was them. The feeling you get when you wake up and it’s the first day of summer holidays and every day of your life is going to be the first day of summer holidays forever and ever and ever. The good guys.

  No! Not the good guys! I scrub at my muddy skin so hard it turns red. They want to take you away, Pearl – remember that?

  Though would that be so bad? Summer holidays, forever and ever and ever –

  Disey. Shad.

  In. Out.

  Come back down.

  The coma made me feel like I was drowning, being crushed in the vicelike grip of the black ocean. This – those dancers of cobwebs and moonlight, twining around each other like ivy – this is like flying.

  And flying is just as bad as drowning. Because one day, you’re going to crash.

  Shad. Disey. Phil.

  In. Out. In.

  ‘Summer holidays aren’t that great anyway,’ I mutter to myself.

  I’ve been reading fairytales on the internet. In some of them, people go insane after seeing a fairy just once. They pine away for the rest of their lives.

  Out. In. Out.

  You are not one of those people, Pearl Linford. You have known a fairy your whole life and you are completely sane and you are going to stay that way. Your mind is stronger than this. Your mind is steel. No. Your mind is iron.

  The water cascades over my skin like a caress.

  I’ve dreamed about him in this shower with me. Skin on skin. Open mouth on flesh. Slick, wet bodies pressing together, his hands my hands his lips on my shoulders my throat my lips oh God oh Finn –

  I grit my teeth.

  Touch me kiss me hold me God Linford you’re so bossy I love it hands moonlight starlight flesh dancing skin Finn Finn FINN –

  I wrench the hot water off, and the icy shock is so sudden it almost makes me jump.

  Calm down, Pearl. Breathe. Breathe.

  I breathe.

  Lust. That’s all it is. Looking at him, looking at them: it’s exactly the same thing. And I can bea
t it. I can beat it. I can beat anything, if I just put my mind to it –

  I swear quietly under my breath.

  All I have is a towel. All my clean clothes are in my room.

  With Finn.

  No. Nonononononono. There is an obvious solution to this, Pearl, if only you would stop to think. Thinking is what you do, remember? Be the smart one.

  I pull Disey’s bathrobe off the hook and pad into her room. Third drawer down, that’s where she keeps her pyjamas –

  ‘Pearl?’

  I nearly scream as the room is suddenly filled with light. Disey is framed in the doorway, hair standing on end, dark circles under her eyes. ‘You look tired,’ I say automatically.

  ‘I am. What are you doing in here?’

  ‘Some of my pyjamas went, um, missing in the wash. I thought Shad might have put them in here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There’s a long awkward silence.

  ‘Want a cup of tea?’ I ask, saying the first thing that comes into my mind.

  ‘I’ve already put the kettle on.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Go to bed, Pearl.’

  ‘Yes, Disey,’ I say, and slip out of the room.

  I want her to call out after me, to grab me by the arm and shout at me for coming to her office, for leaving the house, for wandering around at night in Sydney, anything. But she just shuts the door behind her with a soft snick.

  She’s tired, Pearl. That’s all. She’s tired and needs to sleep and doesn’t have the energy and she can’t just stop being your sister and stop being hysterical and calm down.

  Finn’s looking at my bookshelves when I come back into my room, stooped low to read the titles on the bottom shelf. ‘I never would have picked it, Linford,’ he says, not looking up. ‘You read a lot of trash.’

  ‘Um, yeah, light relief,’ I say, pulling another pair of pyjamas out of my drawer. ‘Don’t turn around.’

  He turns around immediately. A slow, languorous smile drifts across his face. ‘Forget your clothes?’ he says, his lips curving, nonononono do not think about his lips, Pearl.

  ‘Shut up. Turn around.’

  He turns. I pull the pyjama pants on and go to untie the robe when I realise I can see his mocking grin in my mirror. ‘Close your eyes,’ I order him.