by Allyse Near
It was spattering a light rain. She’d left her umbrella inside, and the rain stained her hair a darker shade of blonde; all her unnatural colours seemed as though they were streaming down her head and curling into the gutters.
‘No, I’m not. Because you’re just going to tell me you’re leaving, too. Don’t try and be a gentleman about it, Ale.’
He ducked down as they passed the grave of the plum tree, and he bundled something in his arms. ‘Believe me, I do not wish for this, and I am not trying to be noble. I am trying to protect you in the only way I –’
She wheeled to face him and saw Alejandro’s cradled arms. There was something fuzzy nestled there, something rain-dappled and deep black.
‘Is – is that a rabbit?’
The creature, which looked mightily like a rabbit, lifted its head, wrinkled its whiskery nose at her and announced, ‘Fooly girl! I is a gargoyle.’
Bunny Batman
A gargoyle was rolling on the floor in Isola’s bedroom; a slick black oil stain against the pink carpet.
‘I have been looking for him for some time now,’ explained Alejandro. ‘They are a rare species – garden-variety gargoyles. I have heard they like sweets.’ Opening the music box, where Isola kept hidden candies, he selected a caramel, unwrapped it and tossed it to the floor.
The creature sniffed at it, stuck out its tiny black tongue for a taste, and then gobbled it up. He rolled on his back and sucked contentedly, his stubby legs in the air.
‘What the hell is a garden-variety gargoyle?’
Alejandro cringed at her language. ‘It is a Child of Nimue.’
‘We is protectors, girly and ghostie,’ the gargoyle grunted. ‘We is guardians. We keep the bad ones far, far away.’
‘Exactly like the stone gargoyles that watch over cathedrals,’ Alejandro added. He made to pass her the music box, but she didn’t take it. The melody wove through her hair.
Gargoyles on cathedrals, Isola thought. Like Batman over Gotham.
‘One problem, Alejandro,’ she said out loud. ‘This is a house, not a church – no matter how much incense I burn.’
He rattled the box. ‘I am not asking him to protect the house, Isola. I want him to protect you.’
‘What from?’
‘You know what.’
She tugged the hem of her skirt down and wished her tights weren’t so sheer. The bruises were too obvious now: twelve black rings, six on each leg.
‘I think you were right about the others being under her control. And I do not believe she wants to kill you,’ said Alejandro heavily. ‘Rather, I believe she wants to take your life as her own . . . to possess you.’
Stunned into compliance, Isola placed a chunk of watermelon rock candy on the floor by the dark creature.
The gargoyle was fluffy and perfectly rabbit-like, bar his luminous red eyes and solid black teeth, which made him look as if he had a mouthful of licorice. He was still pretty cute, though. The gargoyle couldn’t wrap his tiny tongue around the syllables in her name; he repeated after Alejandro until he reached something that sounded like ‘Solawile.’
‘Just try “Isola”,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Not “Isola Wilde”.’
‘I–I–Iso–’ he muttered, his beady red eyes squinting with effort. ‘Too hard. I call girl little fool.’
‘And I’ll call you vermin,’ responded Isola, earning her a pointed look from Alejandro. Be nice, his eyes said in Spanish.
Alejandro knelt down to give the creature his terms and conditions. ‘We shall keep you fed and housed, and in return, I ask that you keep a particular Nimue spirit away from Isola. She is female, in her mid-to-late teens. She has dark hair and wears a black dress. We have been referring to her as Florence for the sake of convenience.’
‘Florey the ghostie girl, make stay far away,’ grumbled the gargoyle.
The gargoyle’s voice was both squeaky and gruff. He sounded bothered all the time, and his English was oddly composed, like a baby Mozart’s first banged-out tune.
‘Do you have a name?’ asked Isola.
He gave her a withering look. ‘I is garden-variety gargoyle, idiot.’
‘No, not a species, a name. Like how we gave Florence a name.’
‘No name. No need.’
‘What should I call you, then?’
The little creature puffed out his furry chest. ‘Garden-variety gargoyle!’
‘We’ll work on the name later,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Ale, could I have a word with you?’
They went into the bathroom and turned the lock. Isola didn’t waste a moment. She folded her arms and demanded, ‘What are you planning?’
‘To protect you, as I promised.’
‘How’s he supposed to help?’ she hissed. ‘He’s a bloody bunny!’
‘Gargoyle!’ yelled the creature in the other room.
‘Remember, Isola, to always be kind to the smallest,’ Alejandro said softly, his voice quivering on the wet tiles. A candle flame flickered in his presence. ‘Everything will be all right. I promise.’
‘So,’ said Isola conversationally when they returned to her bedroom, ‘I was born in the year of the rabbit, you know.’
‘I is not a rabbit!’ snarled the gargoyle. ‘Solawile born in year of fool!’
The gargoyle lay on her bedroom floor over the next few days. Isola wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do, and when it would begin doing it. She had taken to simply calling him Bunny, which he couldn’t stand, but which stuck to him, an invisible name-tag.
‘I just want you to try,’ whispered Alejandro while Isola aggressively brushed her teeth. ‘Just try to get to know him. And while we are on the subject, I think it is about time you spoke with Grape. She’s clearly concerned for your welfare. She does not mean any harm.’
Isola spat into the sink. ‘All right, all right. Enough with the relationship advice, Saint Pip!’
Chapel Blitz
‘Oh, I’m so sorry about everything,’ Grape was saying with relief. ‘I thought you were really upset with me, you seemed so distant. It was like –’
‘Hold on.’ Pink smoke drifted lazily down the corridor, up near the light fixtures. ‘Is the school on fire?’
‘I wish,’ said Grape. ‘Isola?’ she added uncertainly.
Isola only had eyes for the smoke; it wove and spider-webbed, like oil in water. No-one else noticed it. It passed over her head and Isola could smell honey, tar and cherry blossoms.
She could smell Grandpa Furlong’s magic pipe.
Ignoring Grape’s calls, Isola ran and followed the smoke, hardly watching where she was going. Several girls yelled after her as she swerved to avoid collisions, but they passed by with barely a register of hurt; she was immune as long as those strange scents wafted around her head.
‘Grandpa?’ she yelled down the empty chapel, her voice bouncing off the bowed heads of saint statues and eyes-skyward cherub faces. ‘Grandpa Furlong?’
Lit candlesticks dribbled over the altar, and a stone Jesus flexed his abdomen on the cross overlooking the pews. Dusty sunlight beamed coloured spotlights through the high windows. Painted gold stars pinwheeled on the ceiling. Books of psalms and hymns were scattered throughout the wooden pews. There was an air-raid shelter further down the chapel’s aisle – a remnant of the Second World War; an old adage that God offered sanctuary.
The pink smoke trail above was shifting to a bright blue, and despite the silence, excitement bubbled up inside Isola. She knew that pipe like a childhood doll; its shifting colours and smells so different and yet always the same, always recognisable. St Dymphna’s was the one place Alejandro insisted the brothers never go – whatever had happened on Aurora Court must be preventing Grandpa Furlong from returning there, so this was the next best thing.
The door to the shelter at the rear of the chapel creaked open, exposing stairs that led down into darkness. The pipe smoke drifted up from underground.
‘Grandpa Furlong?’ she called, tentative now.
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The cold floor creaked as she took a step forward.
The chapel entrance burst open, and in flew the half-ghost of Sister Marie Benedict. She stumbled on the hem of her habit, wax from the candle she carried dripping down her arthritic-curled hands.
‘Get down, child!’ shrieked Sister Marie. ‘Hurry! The bombs are falling!’ She chivvied Isola towards the shelter, but Isola ducked around her and retreated to the altar. ‘The bombs, the bombs!’ the nun continued to yell. ‘What are you doing? Can’t you hear the sirens?’
At her last word, a great shadow seemed to pass over the sun, and the light shining through the faces of the window-apostles went out. Then a low caterwauling cut through the air – so loud Isola slammed her hands over her ears, so awful her blood ran reptilian-cold.
An air-raid siren.
Then the chapel roof began to crack – dust fell, colouring Isola like an antique statue, and the painted starry sky began to split.
Something knocked her forcefully off her feet. Isola rolled over, looking wildly for her attacker, but there was no-one but the nun, who was already hurrying towards the shelter. Isola hugged the base of the altar, as one by one the long-stemmed candles blew out. She screamed as the shelter doors blew wide and she went whooshing down the aisle, dragged feet-first on some invisible rope. She tumbled down the stairs, and Sister Marie slammed the door behind her.
Isola, in the dark with her heartbeat. Live, live, live, it commanded her with every thrash.
After Isola’s first day at St Dymphna’s, she’d sat on the end of Mother’s bed and asked, ‘Why did they make a fountain for that nun? The one who was so mean to you?’
‘Sister Marie?’ Mother had replied, poking her dozy head out from under the blankets. ‘Well, she was a wonderful woman before, from what I understand.’
‘Before what?’
‘Before she went a little mad, darling. She was in London during the Blitz, and she never got over it – in fact, she probably got worse. When she was my teacher, she hated noise, movement, and children especially – and children as you know cannot be anything but whorls of noise and movement. She hated anything out of the ordinary. She hated the stories we told one another. She went on an absolute crusade against what she called “the demonic supernatural” – she started burning Enid Blyton books behind the library before they forced her to retire!’
A self-hating Nimue, Isola had thought at the time. Now, a split. And so she’d avoided Sister Marie’s spectre as it wandered the school in her old-fashioned habit, stuck in a long-finished battle, ears always cocked for sirens.
The whole shelter was shaking now. Tectonic plates shifted below. Isola imagined the sky slashed in two, solidified blood pouring down as rain and ash.
There were voices in the shelter with her – girls crying, whispering prayers, asking each other whether they’ll survive the night. Someone clutched her hand and amongst the whimpering she heard Florence’s voice repeating, ‘You brought her here . . . You brought her here . . .’ and Sister Marie was rattling down her rosaries, spewing rapid prayers in the same language Florence sang in.
Isola screamed and screamed, pounding on the door, until the world shook apart beneath her.
Isola opened her eyes. Her ears were ringing. She lay flat on her back on the chapel floor, staring up at the spokes of pinwheeling stars on the uncracked ceiling. Someone had put their rolled-up blazer under her head. She turned and saw she was at the top of the stairs, and the space below the shelter was stocked with brooms and bottles of window cleaner. Bony fingers jabbed at her neck pulse.
‘I’m all right,’ murmured Isola, dazedly trying to swat the hands away.
‘Like hell,’ grunted Sister K, picking up her cane with one hand and Isola with the other. Isola must have been even skinnier than she’d thought.
Girls had gathered at the chapel entrance. Gasps and stares were shared when Sister K supported her out. Bridget was snickering somewhere. Isola saw Grape in the crowd. She looked afraid – but was she afraid of Isola, or for her?
‘Don’t undy-stand.’
Isola groaned and kneaded her forehead with her knuckles. Explaining things to Bunny was not at all like explaining things to Alejandro. Where was he, anyway?
‘Florence. Was at. My school,’ she growled, kneeling on the pink carpet to speak to the gargoyle directly. ‘And so was Grandpa Furlong. I didn’t see him, but –’
‘Didn’t see,’ repeated Bunny sarcastically. ‘You are fool. You are easy to catch by little ghostie girl!’
‘Maybe I didn’t see him, but I know he was there!’ said Isola defensively. ‘He has this pipe –’
‘What attracts fishies, little fool?’ He peered at her with a beady eye. ‘A lure.’
‘But this was different!’ cried Isola, exasperated. ‘It’s not just the princes now. She’s turning the world against me. The woods, the school – I’ll go mad if it keeps happening. I have to do it!’
‘Have to what?’
‘Kill the cosmic circus. Like Ted Hughes said. I have to kill this connection she has with me before – I don’t know, before I pull a Sylvia Plath!’
One of Bunny’s ears flopped up. ‘Don’t undy-stand.’
Suddenly Isola was weeping; she couldn’t help it. After a moment, the gruff gargoyle put one paw on her knee. The first sign of kindness he’d given.
She flattened his fluffy ear under her hand and planted a kiss on his forehead, a seed of compassion. ‘Please, Bunny. Help me.’
Bunny looked steadily at her with his ruby eyes and for once didn’t snarl at the nickname. ‘The split never done that before?’ he asked after a minute.
Isola shook her head. ‘No, Sister Marie’s always been harmless.’
‘Then ghostie girl affect her too,’ concluded Bunny, and he twitched his nose, his disgruntled expression almost softening. She smiled too, and Alejandro entered the room in time to see it, and if she’d known what would happen next, she would never have let the gargoyle in.
A World without Treasure
‘I’ll haunt you,’ Isola said, lying blankly on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The gargoyle emerged from under the bed and sat up on his hind legs, haughty nose sniffing the air.
She had done her begging, her shouting, her guilt-tripping – she was down to wounding. She had shown her ugliest side and Alejandro was leaving anyway, and these would be his last memories of her.
‘I’ll haunt you forever, and you probably won’t even mind.’
How deep did she have to dig her nails in before he caved? She didn’t care. If someone had to tear this world of lovely flesh away from her – from Edgar and James and Grape and Mother and Father – then it could be him, not Florence.
‘Please, Isola.’ He sounded hurt.
She turned her head slightly to look at him. Alejandro didn’t owe her anything – not his protection, or his kindness, or even his presence. He was wreathed in the rosy light from her bedside lamp, and that wide black window was propped open, ready to swallow him whole.
‘You will not be alone.’ Alejandro smiled fondly, but his eyes glittered wet. He twisted the diamond pins on his cuff. ‘The gargoyle will protect you – I have made him swear. And you will have Edgar and your family. Please remember that Grape is not your enemy. And neither is James,’ he added, his restless fingers stilling. ‘You may have deigned him a prince, but he is not like us, Isola Wilde. He is, after all, only human.’
He was standing close to the window now, and Isola didn’t remember him stepping back. She jumped up, knocking the Pardieu book from the nightstand, as she seized his hand and tried to drag him back. ‘Ale, listen! I trust you, I know you won’t hurt me. Last night was just an accident –’ He winced but she ploughed on. ‘I’m okay, so why are you leaving? Are you tired of me? Are you scared of her?’
‘Stop.’ His voice was gentle, but she felt herself fall back on the bed with the force of it, hunching over.
Slowly, Alejandro crouched down and
retrieved The Pardieu Fables and Fairytales. She wanted to leave it where it was, draw a crime-scene chalk outline around its splayed pages, keep everything as it was before Alejandro left.
He set it gently on her knee, the pages open, and her hands trembled over the story Wolverine Queen. So terrible the things that people who loved each other could do to one another, like she and Alejandro were doing now – and she flipped past the pages, pausing, when she read the word ‘dragon’. And though Alejandro was still there and she still had a chance to change his mind, she remembered Mother speaking . . .
The Seventh Princess: An Instalment
‘The sixth dragon,’ intoned Mother. ‘Desertion.
‘At last there was only one. The first-born prince. The bravest one who had promised the King and Queen the safe return of all their children. His brothers were gone; his sister seemed beyond reach. And the sixth dragon came for him that night, in his thoughts, as he lay by the dying embers of his small campfire. Desertion teased and needled him from afar. The first prince despaired, and his steadfast heart began to fail him. His loyalty to his quest, to the lost remnants of his royal siblings, vanished like the last hot ash on the wind, and there the prince lay and moved no more, and he was never there to rescue anyone else again in this world.’
‘Isola Lileo Wilde. Listen to me.’ Alejandro had placed his hands on her shoulders, holding her at a slight distance. ‘To answer your first question: I will not stay, because I fear for you while I remain a presence. What has overcome my brothers-in-arms could just as easily ensnare me. I have already proven that.’
She couldn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the words that Mother had read aloud so long ago, and six tears dripped down Isola’s cheek in succession, thickly splattering the crinkled pages. Each drop shone a different colour for a lost prince. Yellow like Grandpa Furlong’s mandolin. Pink for Rosekin’s glow. Red for Christobelle’s tangled hair. Black for Ruslana’s lips. Brown for James’s eyes.
‘Two: I would sooner tire of sunlight.’