Shadow Girl

by Mael d'Armor

  ‘What about them?’ begs Jenny, gesturing at the showgirls still floating above the attic floor. ‘You’re leaving them here to die? They didn’t deserve this!’

  Yaouen looks back.

  ‘Didn’t deserve?’ He smiles. ‘No one, my dear, is truly innocent.’

  Jenny is kneeling by the bondage horse, wet from the sea drizzle. She lowers her head and closes her eyes, perhaps in a silent prayer. There might be tears on her cheeks but they cannot be seen. Yaouen takes a last look at her, at the girls in stasis, at the stones losing their glow. Then he murmurs something inaudible and snaps his fingers.

  ‘Take us out of here, Morvarc’h.’

  They power out of the giant funnel and soar into the night sky like a comet, seconds before the ocean crashes upon the cromlech to drown it in turbulences.

  For a while, the sea under them is a cauldron of gurgling tumult.

  Then, little by little, the foamy waters lose their bounce and everything returns to dark quiescence. Far below the surface, invisible to all but the fish, now lies the spectral form of a tavern. And right above its shattered roof, a tangle of eery silhouettes gleams in the last light of ancient stones.

  40

  ‘Say something.’

  She is reluctant to open her mouth. Her recent attempts were not exactly shining successes. But she and Yaouen have just spent the last hour in the dunes, locked in amorous commerce, and she feels splendidly centred.

  He tread so softly on her ground this time, as if afraid she might break. It took her some time to find her pace but she was full of soft warmth, and in the end she peaked in one delightful blur. Smooth yet uncontrolled, uplifting, beautifully unfocused. Nothing like the addictive pleasure-ache she vaguely remembers. Nothing like the insatiable hunger. The hollowness that could not be filled. No, a strong, blissful swell that carried her to the crest of the surf, and then, in a single, powerful sweep, flushed her up a sunny strip of sand, breathless and renewed.

  She is lying on her back, gazing at the sky. She could almost purr. She tries. Purr. Purr. At least she can purr.

  He rolls on his side then wraps a leg around her to straddle her waist. Bends over and kisses her. She has closed her eyes.

  His lips melt away.

  ‘Come on, scaredy cat. Repeat after me: the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.’

  She looks into his eyes. Damn him. Damn him for having such unforgivably hot eyes. She is drowning in his light. She does not know why she has fallen head over heels like this. She feels like a teenager with her first crush. She used to have a much better grip on herself. She used to be in control of this relationship. Aeons ago. She was so skilled at getting what she wanted from him. She had done so for so long, back before the jump.

  But now . . . She is so completely in his thrall. She could lie here forever draped in his aura. Enjoying the sumptuous glow inside her. No heartache. No desire. Just a deep sense of wellbeing. This is new. And slightly surreal. Did — by some twist of fate — her Sandra side soften something in her? Open a door to new, hazy fields?

  ‘Viviane?’

  ‘Oui, pardon. Here goes then. The rain in Spain,’ she ventures, putting on her bravest Eliza Doolittle face.

  ‘Excellent! Falls mainly in the plain.’

  ‘Falls mainly . . . in the plain.’

  ‘Beautiful! Perfect vowels, immaculate diphthongs, not a trace of metaphorical incongruence. Something a bit trickier maybe: If two witches would watch two watches, which witch would watch which watch?’

  ‘Non, vraiment? Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  She takes a deep breath and delivers a flawless performance.

  ‘I’m thoroughly impressed. Top marks. Now the clincher. If you get this right, I declare you officially cured.’

  ‘That’s too kind.’

  ‘Picky possums and bossy bears adore gorging on plums and pears but too many purple plums give picky possums big ballooning bums and too many bitter pears give bossy bears bitter nightmares!’

  She stifles a giggle.

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘I’m not saying that even if you threaten to turn me into a jabuticaba tree. Or a cassabanana.’

  ‘Great uvula! Perfectly pronounced. You pass.’

  She draws him down to her and her lips seek his again. A drug, but so sweet. So fulfilling.

  He breaks the kiss.

  ‘You can have too much of a good thing,’ he says. ‘Besides, you can speak flawless English. I’m done here. I’ve fulfilled my contract.’

  ‘Contract?’

  ‘You may remember that you yourself insisted we keep our relationship on a strict business footing.’

  ‘You beast!’ she laughs, pushing him off her and throwing the towel at him. ‘You can’t quote me on that. That’s not fair. It was only Sandra speaking. My ghostly half.’

  ‘While your more substantial half was busy plotting my downfall, among other things!’

  She turns to the swathe of turquoise water before her.

  ‘I’ve changed, Yaouen. Or you changed something in me. The need has gone. To rule. Control everything. The things I wanted — power, prestige — they’ve all dissolved in this inner haze. I feel so mellow, so unlike what I’ve been.’

  She brushes some sand off her knees.

  ‘And I think I’ve lost my magic. Some of it. All the black stuff. No, not lost perhaps. Like I’ve misplaced it and have no desire to find it.’

  She meets his gaze.

  ‘What did you do to me? I should be terrified, or angry maybe. But all I have inside is this absurd glow. You didn’t just bewitch me, did you? I would be devastated if this was only a charm.’

  ‘Who knows?’ He smiles cryptically. ‘Let’s just say I smoothed out a few kinks. Realigned a few tangles. Or rather the triskele did.’

  She rests her head against his shoulder.

  ‘What do you think is happening in Karnag? They must be going nuts.’

  ‘They are. I checked this morning on my tele-conch — that’s a small widget I put together while you were asleep, by the way. Picks up the vibes of anything and anyone anywhere in the world and turns them into holographic images. Very handy.’

  He grabs the large shell next to the towel and holds it up to her, looking rather pleased with himself.

  ‘They can’t get over that big hole at Le Manec. Sent the cops to investigate, even the army and a flock of scientists. There are a few theories floating around already. The usual stuff. One old geezer with most of his teeth missing is blaming the Martians. He swears he saw a giant spaceship moving towards the sea. Wonder where he got that idea from. Some geeks are talking about spontaneous earth subsidence. They’ve started digging up the site but can’t explain why there’s no trace of the tavern. And there’s this quantum physicist who’s convinced it’s all to do with how energy is made of waves and you can’t pinpoint the precise position of an atom. The cromlech and café are still there, he says, but they cannot be seen because their atomic waves have started vibrating too much. He is too clever a bugger by half, if you ask me.’

  He waves the conch shell happily, like some juicy fruit found on a long desert trek.

  ‘No one is thinking of good old magic.’

  ‘Silly them.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I think too. And they haven’t got a clue why a bunch of bare-bummed girls with wolf tatts have begun trailing the tourists. A few arrests have been made for lewd behaviour in public. “The stalkers are starkers”, one headline put it.’

  ‘Please don’t rub my nose in it. It wasn’t the best plan I ever came up with.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘But don’t judge me too harshly. It was only the crazy half of me that concocted this. Besides, the girls have no leaders now, so they have no strategy. They were supposed to get busy at night.’

  ‘Things got more heated in Paris.’

  He scans the beach, to chec
k that they are alone. But this neck of the West Australian coastline is almost entirely people-free. Only Morvarc’h is prancing in the distance.

  ‘Look.’

  He blows into the conch and images bounce out of it. They are glowing in the low sun, taking on a sepia, old-fashioned polish. A whole mosaic of them, as on a digital news board, twenty feet by ten, but in high relief.

  The vignettes are showing scenes of sultry mayhem all over the French capital — people in various stages of undress, heaving and humping in public squares and outdoor cafés; on street corners, bridges, barges and bateaux mouches, on balconies and building tops, in museums and railway stations, on the steps of churches and the doorways of shopping arcades. Everywhere, the dense Parisian traffic has come to a standstill. Cars are swaying to the tempo of passion. Entwined legs are poking out of open van windows. Buttocks are pumping on the backseats of SUVs.

  ‘Let’s enlarge one or two. Take your pick.’

  She points to a frame slightly left of centre. He snaps his fingers and it pops out in 3D. A chubby man in a grey suit is perched halfway up a flagpole, inches beyond the reach of two admirers with large bosoms and expansive backsides. Curiously, he is clinging to a piece of soap.

  ‘The Health Minister, I believe. He has been stuck up there for the past hour. Luckily for him, he’s found a way to grease up the pole and so far, has evaded direct contact with his P.A. and chief of staff.’

  He returns the hologram to its frame and enlarges a new one. This time, women in red Phrygian hats, with dresses pushed up to their breasts, are sixty-nining each other zealously. Around them, a group of men wearing Gavroche caps look on in shock, their drums idle and their French flags frozen.

  ‘This was a nationalist march against gay marriage. But as you can see, there were some anomalies in the way the flux rippled out from the nude. Those girls couldn’t care less about the males.’

  Viviane turns to him, worried.

  ‘You’re not going to hate me forever for this, are you?’

  ‘Paris has seen worse. Uprisings, revolutions, spates of gruesome decapitations. One more piece of bangarang won’t make much difference. Besides, the effect will wear off soon enough. The telluric flow was severed before any lasting damage could be done. People will wake up tomorrow with sore cocks and aching pussies and the worst hangovers of their lives.’

  He gives a small chuckle.

  ‘The press will go wild of course. There are a few film crews in helicopters already recording all this.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘This will do nothing to dispel the reputation of the French as a libertine nation,’ he goes on blithely. ‘But I’m sure they can survive the exposure. The spin doctors will get busy. They’ll find a way to explain this mayhem away. Come up with some clever bullshit. I can see the official statements: First Parisian Attempt to Break World Record for Longest Simultaneous Sex; or Orgasmic Channelling of Collective Grief over Disappearance of Eiffel Tower.’

  ‘Please Yaouen, tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘You won’t hold this against me forever, will you?’

  ‘We’ve just made love in the dunes.’

  ‘We fucked many times before. That does not mean you don’t hate me.’

  ‘Well, your remorse is much appreciated, thanks.’

  He is playing hard to get, she can see. But she deserves this. She has been less than an ideal lover. God, that’s the understatement of all time.

  ‘Please look me in the eyes,’ she says, slipping a languid hand into his shorts, ‘and tell me you’ll forgive me one day. Really forgive.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ he protests, appraising the wrist sticking out of his shorts. ‘This is like bribing the jury. But sure, everyone deserves a second chance. Especially if they have been realigned.’

  ‘Realigned? Ouch,’ she says, stopping whatever she was doing. ‘It sounded sexier the first time you said it.’

  ‘Don’t stop. I was willing to be bribed.’

  ‘You cheeky man! You really have to work on your romantic skills!’

  She throws herself upon him and they have another long tussle on the sand. With lots of kissing and probing and gasping and more probing — too varied and intricate in nature for any words to capture faithfully.

  41

  A rather hazy amount of time later, she is lying in disarray on a crumpled-up towel, her hair dripping sand and still heaving hard. He has just rolled off her, leaving her with that warm, deep, satisfied glow.

  She stares at a wispy cloud, her lips curled into a dreamy smile. She is beginning to see — to feel — the upside of a mutually beneficial relationship. One in which she can take it slow. Follow the curve. Relinquish control without fear of entrapment. Without fear of her own desires. The time jump thwarted her plans, skewed her ambition, exacerbated the best and worst in her — and almost destroyed her in the end. But she survived, in no small measure thanks to the man beside her.

  Her eyes trail a trio of pelicans through the azure.

  She’ll have to tie up a few loose ends. Sandra’s loose ends. Go back to Sydney, hand in her resignation, find a replacement for the Toulouse deal — though that shouldn’t be too hard with a little help from Yaouen. The irony is she always had perfect command of French, though Sandra couldn’t know. She was always the ideal woman for the job. But you can’t keep leading a double life, can you? Nope. Been there done that.

  It’s odd enough having two sets of memories to draw from. For Sandra wasn’t squashed away, as her other half wanted. She is still there, with all she went through, all she lived, twined in the weave of Viviane’s mind. Though strangely, both her past lives feel less than fully real — like dreams within a dream.

  The pelicans have veered to the south. Three dots, close to the horizon.

  And then there’s Mark. She’ll have to break the news to him — some sort of news. As gently as possible. That’s going to be tricky. She can visualise the trickiness. Sorry Mark, I can’t go on with you because I’m me again, and a better me, but you should be glad really for one half of me never knew you anyway and the other half wanted to turn you into a Pekingese. And by the way, I’m also Viviane Le Fae, keeper of Excalibur, who time-leaped and has been in a complicated relationship with a wizard, though that relationship seems to have magically de-complicated itself.

  Yes, she can visualise the trickiness all right. Perhaps the gentle approach might not be a wise choice. The bitchy option then? Hi boyo, got a better offer, so start updating your Facebook status and lose the gut. Mm . . . Tempting, for that would keep things simple. But after all, not her style.

  She turns to Yaouen. He has conjured up two Kir Royales from thin air and is busy sipping one.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ he asks, holding up a glass.

  ‘Thanks.’ She downs half of it, licks her lips and sticks the glass in the sand next to her. As she does so, her eyes stray to her breasts.

  ‘The triskele had no effect on my boobs.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Don’t you think they’re too big? I look like a Playboy bunny. Without the fluffy ears.’

  She cups her breasts in her hands and lifts them tentatively. They are firm for their size, and boldly determined to lead the way forward — without the slightest aid of a bra. She imagines herself in a business suit, with male colleagues’ and clients’ eyes alike nailed to her cleavage. The kind of thing that, in Sydney not so long ago, might have worked to her advantage after all. Might have opened a few more doors if used in judicious alliance with her intellect. She smiles at the thought — at how it would have appalled the old Sandra — and then dismisses it. Business fantasies seem irrelevant.

  ‘Seriously, don’t you think this is over the top? Literally?’

  ‘Nonsense. I think you’re perfectly proportioned.’

  ‘I was perfectly proportioned before.’

  ‘You were ideally proportioned. Now you’re perfect
ly so.’

  She gives him a blank stare.

  ‘I fail to see the difference.’

  ‘There is none. You look terrific both ways.’

  ‘But there will be a difference to my clothes. A big one. I won’t be able to fit in any of them. Perhaps you could . . .’

  ‘Perhaps I could?’

  ‘Make me smaller again.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’

  ‘This was grey magic. I’ve lost the connection to that too. I’m a do-gooder. Strictly protector. But it would be a cinch for you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare. I have no knowledge of mammary spells.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He is looking innocently at a passing gull.

  ‘Fine. You win for now,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to get a new wardrobe.’

  ‘Not a problem. Just say the word and I’ll snap my fingers.’

  ‘And how exactly can you do that when your fingers are on my nipples?’

  ‘Just making sure they are still sensitive. Breast size may affect that side of things.’

  Shit. His caresses feel heavenly. Whorls of pleasure have spiralled deep into her, reawakening her appetite.

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘Has it what?’ she half moans, suddenly much less concerned by the size of her breasts.

  ‘Made you less sensitive?’

  ‘Bastard.’

  She is dissolving and offers her lips. ‘I thought you cured my addiction.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then how come I want you again? Badly.’

  ‘Let’s put it down to the aftershocks.’

  ‘Please,’ she says, letting her hand float to his shorts. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  Something is brushing against her fingers. Something far too small and mobile to be his cock.

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ she says, bringing up her palm to take a close look at the gecko nestled in it. ‘Another one of your tricks?’

  ‘More like a good field operative. This is Agent Gerald.’ He presents his own cupped hand to the gecko, which crawls into it.