by Allyse Near
‘Yes, Miss Wilde?’ She wasn’t querida in those days – he didn’t even yet dare call her Isola.
‘Alehan-doh –’ she, in turn, had mispronounced his name ‘– what’s a brother? Is it the same as a prince?’
‘In a way, yes. A brother is someone who protects,’ said Alejandro, sitting at the end of her bed.
‘And a sister?’
‘A little princess who needs protecting. A girl like you.’
She rolled over and jutted out her chin. ‘I don’t need protecting!’
‘No.’ Alejandro shook his head then smoothed her blankets like Mother had done. ‘But you deserve it.’
Before the Wildes had moved in, Alejandro had long been there, haunting the addicts who’d lived in Number Thirty-six. The Sid-and-Nancy lovers were the most recent in a long line of people he’d decided to scare away from the same thing that had killed him. When Sid overdosed and Nancy ran screaming into the pitch-black woods, Alejandro had taken it as a sign and had hidden in the attic, curled up like a foetus in a dusty womb, waiting for sleep or rot to set in, for heaven or hell, for judgement.
For Isola.
For that was the purpose of his (after)life, he had decided later – to protect his sister-princess from all the dragons in the world. He had performed his self-imposed duty admirably for over twelve years. Isola had hair and sand and sun and flowers.
But Alejandro couldn’t protect her from the kingdom itself.
Next, there came Ruslana. She had been dragged around the globe by the anguish of women, strangers’ emotions catching her lips like fish-hooks, bruising them forever black. And now she had slunk her way to the Wilde house under the cover of a particularly inky night. She had sensed the uneasiness about Mother, who was even then wearying of the daily trek across the battlefield raging in her mind.
Upon spying her at the window, Isola, ever-trusting to Alejandro’s brotherly despair, had invited the strange woman to stay for Mother’s bedtime instalment of The Seventh Princess. Ruslana, stunned at being noticed, had not come into the room, but instead listened invisibly from the windowsill as Mother had described the brothers six valiantly traversing harsh crags of land, swamps and jungles as they searched for their golden-haired treasure.
And what a strange woman she was. Ruslana was more solid than Alejandro, could be seen when she wanted, unlike the ghosts that drifted through the walls of most people’s perceptions. Sometimes her great cloak, alive as the witching hour, would reach out and ensnare Isola, wrap her up in the pulsing black comfort, soothing her with a grazing touch of her shadows.
Ruslana would never tell Isola her age or origin. She shook her head and pressed her blackcurrant lips together when asked, and said she would stay, if only to hear the remainder of the story Mother recited. Twelve years later she would still be there. Ruslana was hooked from the word ‘hero’, she had later admitted to Isola, for she encountered them so rarely in the real world. Besides, Alejandro’s mission to watch over Isola appealed to her naturally protective nature, and Ruslana became the second constant invisible in Isola’s life.
One night, as Mother left and Ruslana drifted into reality to tuck her in, Isola voiced what had been playing on her mind for some time.
‘Mothers and fathers take care of you,’ she muttered sleepily, ‘but brothers protect you.’
‘Is that so?’
Isola liked the sound of Ruslana’s low, calm voice, her perfect English but strange accent, a hybrid of cultures and peoples.
‘Alejandro is my brother. That’s why he’s here. And so’s Jamie.’ A minute passed. She broke her own sleepy silence with a tentative request. ‘Will you be my brother too, Ruslana?’
A militant chuckle. ‘I’m a woman, Isola Wilde.’
‘Does that mean you won’t?’
Like Mother, like Alejandro, Ruslana smoothed the blankets that Isola’s restless limbs were so intent on tangling. Ruslana leaned close, as though she wanted to kiss her cheek goodnight, but instead pursed her Morticia-black lips. Isola didn’t know it then, but Ruslana seduced the men who killed women and kissed them with those very lips, cutting them open, revenging a death by taking a life.
‘Nothing would give me greater honour, little princess.’
With twice the paranormal guardians, Isola seemed twice as strange. Father often thought his only daughter, his Wilde Child, was mad; the ‘brothers’ she constantly described might be split personalities. And how, he wondered, at four, five, six years old, did she know about opium dens? How could she identify spider breeds and edible flowers and the distant origins of seaweeds floating like dumped bodies in the sea?
These questions were always asked by Father, and always came out hewn into spear-shapes and hurled at Mother as accusations no matter what tone he tried to take, as though trying to sandpaper the points into a less painful shape. It’s got to be those stories you tell her. You’re twisting her imagination with those bloody fairytales!
On one of these occasions, Ruslana had felt the incessant pull deep in her belly – the heart of a girl in distress. It was only a mild pain compared to others she’d felt, but its proximity made it more forceful, and she felt it on both floors of the Wilde house.
Isola was standing at the top of the stairs in her pale pyjamas, her padded footsteps and watchful presence going unnoticed.
The shouts were moving upwards, like heat and smoke. The husband had found the hospital records of the wife’s secret operation, and there would be no son now, not ever.
Wordlessly, Ruslana picked Isola up, cuddling the small sighing creature; her swirling cloak latched its tendrils around her limbs. The small girl was bundled into the shadows, and she would never fear the dark.
Of her eventual six collected brothers – the same number the Seventh Princess had – two were ghosts, one was a mermaid, one a faerie, one a Fury, and one a living boy. They came and went in her life, disappearing for weeks, sometimes for entire seasons, as was their nature.
Jealous, Isola had suspected they had secret sister-princesses elsewhere to protect, but they assured her that wasn’t the case. They were also brothers to tombstones, they explained, to secret gardens, to murderers and gutters, to the sea – they had other places to haunt.
She knew it would be frighteningly easy for the princes to forget about her – after all, they didn’t feel in quite the same way she did. Ghosts slowly strangled in their timeloops; childish faeries were too small to feel remorse for leaving; mermaids would go mad if they ignored the sea call; Ruslana was of the Furies, and so had girls to avenge every day for all of days, and who would never ever get her own chance to rest.
The princes didn’t owe her anything. Their connection was of red string, not blood.
Maybe Isola had truly needed them when she was small. But now she was older, Isola didn’t need them, she wanted them, and therein lay the difference. Did she deserve so large and warm a coterie? She was selfish, she knew; she fastened them to herself like charms on a bracelet, and froze her heart while in the company of other people, not allowing herself to get too attached. She had decided a long time ago that it was preferable to be frozen than exposed to the elements – even the pleasant ones.
The brother-princes loved her so ruthlessly, and Isola, like all children who were raised in the glow of it, did not question why. Privately, they wondered, not understanding themselves: What was it about Isola? What had she given them that her death wouldn’t one day take away?
They had sought out the little fragile human girl themselves, seeking, in reality, a warm-blooded, air-breathing, still-living second chance. But there was something there now, something that had grown almost immediately.
She had two loving parents, but they’d sensed it, even then. Isola needed them. The Father was weak – he didn’t have the capacity to handle either his daughter or his wife. And the Mother, she was worse – she ticked audibly, and they all knew it would only get louder and scarier as she ticked faster over time.
; Since the moment they met her gaze, each of the princes had a responsibility, and even though Christobelle was as free as sea-froth, and Ruslana had her solemn duties, and Alejandro had already loved sisters of his own, and Grandpa Furlong grew closer to the crossing every day, and to Rosekin she was a carer and to James a friend-and-maybe-future-something-else, their stakes in her future were impossibly high.
Her happiness was theirs, and that made all the difference.
Guinevere’s Rabbits
The sky was the burnt sepia of autumn; a paper-lantern moon hung aloft and the palette of the forest was bitten and bloody.
Edgar saw her often in the front yard of Number Thirty-six, her hair twisted up in Sailor Moon-style odango and pigtails. Sometimes she was reading or scuffing over anthills or doing both at once; her eyes on that large book while her clomping boots sent ant sergeants, brigadier generals and lowly soldiers rushing to man the sniper towers, the barracks and the trenches. Sometimes she was peeling open stillborn flowers, as though hunting for Thumbelinas.
There was something familiar but strange about her – Snow White with a suntan. Cinderella in biker boots. Tough and delicate and magical and real all at once.
One afternoon, there was a second person in her garden. Isola and a girl with blunt black hair were kneeling with their heads almost bumping together as they peered into the shrubbery.
They were wearing odd costumes: Isola had on a long blue dress and the other girl had a red paper crown perched atop her head. Edgar wondered briefly whether there was another costume party on, but before he considered wandering over to ask them Portia skipped right out the front door and crossed the street. She had become quite taken with the girl at Number Thirty-six, and Edgar hurried after her, embarrassed but slightly pleased.
‘Sola!’ Portia yelled.
Isola turned and lifted her gaze, squinting in the crisp sunlight. ‘Portia, look here,’ she said, seemingly unruffled by their sudden appearance. She held out her pale hands, which were clasped as though in prayer, then shifted her thumbs to make a peephole. Portia peered in.
‘Ew!’ Portia hopped up and down on the spot. ‘It’s an ugly bug!’
‘A grasshopper,’ corrected Isola, and dumped the creature in the small girl’s palm.
Portia squealed in pretend fright; her flushed cheeks gave away her excitement. ‘It’s moving! Cass!’ she shrieked, dashing suddenly across the street, her hands clasped tightly against any escape attempts. ‘Cassio! It’s moving!’
‘So you’re the new neighbour.’ The Asian girl rubbed her dirty palms on her bare legs, then offered her hand. ‘I’m Grape.’
‘I’m Edgar.’
‘I know.’ Grape grinned, showing all her teeth. There was a knowing sparkle behind her glasses, and Edgar suddenly remembered where he’d seen her before.
‘How’s the wrist?’ he asked innocently, and she cackled with laughter.
‘See, Sola? It was the highlight of the night,’ said Grape, to which Isola gave a pinched smile. ‘So –’ Grape turned back to Edgar ‘– how do you know Jella?’
‘She’s dating my best mate, Phillip.’
‘Oh my God, Pip? He’s a legend, he keeps trying to give me advice on picking up girls. It’s hilarious.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘You’re good at gardening, yeah?’
He shrugged. ‘My mum’s pregnant, she needs the help. Most things I plant die. I’ve got, like, an evil touch.’
‘The accursed black thumb,’ said Grape solemnly. ‘Well, that’s all right, because we’re trying to solve a rabbit infestation.’
As if on cue, a black lump bounded from the bushes, past them and towards the woodland. Edgar noticed that Isola watched it with a curious gaze.
‘I mean, yeah, it’s the cutest plague ever, but they’re destroying the veggie patch,’ Grape continued.
He could see their odd costumes better now, but they still didn’t make sense. They were both in school sports uniforms, but over hers, Isola wore a blue, ankle-length diaphanous nightgown, like the slightly moth-eaten dress of a Camelot drowning.
‘And you left the prince’s ball for this?’
Isola suddenly seemed aware of the odd see-through dress, and swished the sleeves awkwardly. ‘Autumn Athletics Carnival, actually. It’s a costume for my house. I’m in Guinevere, the blue house,’ she added unnecessarily.
‘Are you any good?’
Grape laugh. ‘Geez, no! They’re terrible. They’re our little stragglers, bless ’em.’
‘Yeah, they’re terrible. I don’t compete,’ said Isola, slightly defensively.
‘The dress gives the illusion of house pride,’ Grape told Edgar. She gestured rather smugly to the ribbons pinned to her chest. ‘Arthur house. Red team. Undisputed conquerors.’
‘Hey, I did compete in something,’ said Isola, as if only just remembering. She lifted the hem of the dress to show Edgar the mud flung up her legs and flashed her shiny raw palms. ‘Tug of war.’
‘Sister K threatened her,’ said Grape, quirking one eyebrow. ‘‘‘Maybe you’ll find your house pride in detention, Miss Wilde!’’’ She mimicked a deep voice, then laughed an infectious spurt of giggles that seemed to vibrate through her whole body.
The three of them began ferreting through the shrubbery, combing the long grass with their fingers. The disturbed bushes rustled; more rabbits slipped out, followed by a gecko, which was scooped up by Grape’s waiting hands and deposited on Portia’s shoulder, who had returned to shriek happily at the wildlife.
Edgar reeled off his mother’s usual tricks: wire fences, natural border-walls of nettles, kindly worded requests to the animals whether they’d please not eat certain plants, hot sauce mixed with water to spray over the garden. The last option sounded the most straightforward, and in the more unkempt shrubs they uncovered a crop of old butterfly cocoons, the husks of mummified houseflies, old spider-snacks. When they were certain the wildlife had been cleared, they gathered spray bottles and mixed water and hot sauce, spraying their brew over the plant stems and leaves, a fine red mist like diluted blood. The rabbits might still come, of course, but one taste of this and they wouldn’t be back in a hurry.
When Isola took Portia around the corner of the house to find the best spot to release the little gecko back into the wild, Grape sat back on her heels and said abruptly to Edgar, ‘So – what are your intentions, punk?’
‘Huh?’
She pitched her voice roughly, eyebrows drawn together in an impression of someone unknown. ‘Are you gonna marry my daughter, Mr Edgar?’
‘Uh, what? I –’
Grape snapped her fingers, the serious expression vanishing. ‘Sorry! I’m just trying to prep you for Mr Wilde’s inevitable speech. He only ever plays “bad cop”, so don’t take it personally.’
‘Oh,’ said Edgar, feeling his cheeks heat up.
‘Of course, my question still stands.’ She gave that same raucous laugh at his embarrassment. ‘Hey, don’t look so worried! I’m just looking out for my best friend! I love her to a million stinkin’ bits, I swear. It hasn’t been easy, though, not since . . .’ She jerked her head meaningfully towards the upper floor of the Wilde house. Edgar craned his neck to see the latticed windows, the firmly closed curtains. ‘That’s not to say I’ve been the easiest friend, either. And she’s always stuck by me. When the girls at school found me out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it’s hard enough being “the foreign girl”,’ she said, with a smile that crinkled up her whole face and suddenly wet eyes, ‘without being “the only gay kid in school” too.’
Friendship: An Interlude
Years ago, when they were small, Grape remembered Mrs Wilde walking her and Isola down High Street, towards the bus that would take them all to Bloodpearl Beach for the day. As they waited at the road crossing for the lights to change, Mrs Wilde took her daughter’s hand and nodded at Grape, to whom Isola held out her hand and intoned, ‘Hold my hand so we don’t float away
!’
Looking back, Grape realised that it was a simple trick to train them in road safety, that the asphalt wasn’t really anti-gravity like Mrs Wilde claimed, and small girls couldn’t anchor each other to the ground no matter how tightly they grasped. Years passed and Grape grew out of the habit, even if she sometimes felt, as her feet left the pavement, the phantom swoop in her belly she imagined weightlessness to feel like.
When they were thirteen, Isola ripped a crucifix off the wall and threw it ninja-star-style at Bridget McKayde, after Bridget had hissed dyke when Grape passed by, when Grape’s barely there sexuality was suddenly her defining characteristic in those oppressive halls.
Isola had been her best friend for five years already; the past three had been a tearful miasma, as the Wilde family imploded behind the screen of trees and Isola stopped being so clever and funny and loud, became mute and shadowy like a stitch-lipped flower shuttered indoors, where it could neither grow nor die, in stasis. She stopped meeting people’s gazes, stopped wanting to be touched; she withheld hugs and ceased braiding little worms with ribbon through Grape’s hair as she sat behind her during class.
But that was the moment, while Bridget howled and grasped her black eye, Grape knew she would always always always love Isola Wilde, and vowed to do better to show it.
They shared the tiniest of smiles before Sister K hauled Isola roughly from the room. Grape waited after school outside the headmistress’s office, listening to the muted shouting like an underwater ruckus. Grape picked at the rips in the cracked vinyl chair, her eyes fixed on a portrait of Dymphna over the coffee table, remembering that every saintess was once just a gawky and heavy-hipped girl with oily skin and uncertainty of self like the rest of them. Grape watched the portrait for a wink, a shadow of a grin – an acknowledgement of the saintless girls of the future.
But Dymphna ignored her, and on the quiet walk up High Street a half-hour later, under the neon sign of the Church of the Unlocked Heart, Grape reached out to grasp Isola’s hand, briefly and wordlessly, looking both ways as they crossed the road.