by Allyse Near
‘Talk about attention-seeking,’ muttered Bridget as she passed in the hallway, and Bunny’s claws contracted into Isola’s skull. She hissed in pain; Bridget shot her a filthy look.
Bunny muttered evilly whenever the girls at school so much as wafted their perfumed auras in Isola’s direction, so she stuck a fuchsia pinwheel in her Bride of Frankenstein beehive. Colours and movement distracted him. Isola was a matador, rippling silk banners in the Spanish wind. Bunny was as bull-headed as ever.
It was strange, but it was working. Her ribs remained like steel bars, but her skin felt thicker daily. She was still bruised; her neck still burned; her voice still cracked. But with Bunny so close, whispering to her all day, she felt lighter; occasionally, she even felt human again. Like a gargoyle over a church, he offered protection from on high; his spirit-repellant abilities enclosed her like her very own invisible golden cage – Isola very quickly pushed that image from her mind. She didn’t want to link her thoughts to Florence, for fear of unwittingly summoning said devil.
In exchange for his increased protection, Isola extended her search for Bunny’s food, with no less self-hatred for the task but a renewed sense of gratitude towards the small rabbit-creature who was fulfilling Alejandro’s last promise. She started sweeping through strangers’ gardens on her way home from school. She captured more faeries and a straw-man imp, which Bunny wolfed down and promptly asked for more.
Mama Sinclair’s old garden was particularly thriving. The faeries that used to live in the Wilde garden gathered there, whispering amongst themselves, frightened of being gobbled by the ghost girl. They didn’t know to be afraid of Isola, and smiled when her shadow fell upon them.
Weeks passed. She tried to live as averagely as possible. Father was as gruff as ever. Mother seemed perplexed by Isola’s distance, but she didn’t mention it. Isola saw Edgar nearly every evening, first forcing Bunny to stay home; he watched with glowing eyes as she crossed the street. Isola didn’t know how he kept Florence at bay – but he certainly seemed stronger now, his system juicy with other creatures’ blood, and he exuded a slight aura, radiating secret strength.
‘Maybe the so-called wood witch is Vivien,’ she wondered aloud, after Father had dropped her at the school gates. It had been so long since she’d visited those woods she’d roamed since she could walk. She could hardly recall the exact shades of the fairy-ring mushrooms, the sound of birdcall tangling in the canopies, the initials her once-romantic parents had carved in the Vigour Mortis tree.
Bunny flexed his paws, securing his grip on her hair as she walked. ‘What?’ he said gruffly.
‘You know. Nimue.’ Isola plucked a newly bloomed jonquil from the garden, brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply. ‘Maybe she’s the one behind all this. The forest is named for her, after all – maybe she realised I didn’t deserve them, so she took my brothers away.’
‘Don’t believe,’ snorted Bunny. ‘Nimue is story. Like human God. Everyone want magic origin tale.’
‘And I shouldn’t believe it or you don’t?’
‘Both.’
Isola twirled the flower absentmindedly. When she remembered with a pang that she had no faerie at home to feed, she stuck it over her ear instead of in her pocket.
‘Then where did you come from?’
Bunny leaned down and nipped the tip of her ear as he pulled the flower free and spat it to the ground, in what he evidently thought an affectionate gesture. His teeth were syringe-sharp.
‘Came when fool girl needed me.’
Water and Stone
The Spring Swimming Carnival had rolled round at last. Isola tried to pin up her hair into the usual puffed-up Antoinette crown, but something was lodged at the roots. Reaching into the mass, Isola pulled out what had been tangled there – clumps of pearls, gathered on a string like the Bloodpearl Mermaid’s symbolic kills. Isola gave a great start of fright and the pearls fell into the bathroom sink, rattling down the drain like echoes of drowned calls for help.
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Isola, then louder, in the steadiest voice she could manage, ‘I’m not. Not of you.’
The princes had been reappearing in her life in the same order they’d vanished – the reverse order they’d first entered her life. Unbidden in her mind came the image of the mermaid rising up like some oceanic spirit, bloody and calling her six-year-old self down to the shore with a gentle smile, a beckoning hand. That was her Christobelle. But what of the Bloodpearl Mermaid – the seasalt-blooded serial killer who hunted along the caves and the docks, who had killed countless people out of some misguided hatred and had, inexplicably, decided to love her?
Bunny was perched on her schoolbag, his small red eyes pinning her in place like a butterfly.
‘Mermy girl. She tried bad to hurt you?’
‘Yes. She hurt me.’
‘Not fear,’ Bunny assured her. ‘Florey has realised Solawile is protected again, and is trying to use ghosties ’gainst her. But I is here. I is staying.’
In the change rooms Isola saw Grape stretching out her shoulder blades. Grape waved, but Isola could hardly find the strength to smile back.
Isola wasn’t competing. She’d forged Father’s signature on an excuse note, and Bunny had breathed a sigh of relief. She’d got changed anyway, into her Mordred House costume – her Guinevere gown simply dyed black. She wanted something funny to tell Edgar. He’d laugh at the thought of her, sitting poolside in a mourning dress, pretending to have school spirit.
Half the things she did these days were story fodder for him.
Poolside, Isola watched as Grape mounted the starting block, representing Arthur in the four-hundred-metre freestyle. She’d win easily, but as always, the tacky ribbon didn’t matter to Grape; she only wanted to improve her previous time.
Sister K blew a whistle; the girls dived and the audience stamped their feet, cheering wildly. The girl from Guinevere House was already falling behind.
Grape reached the wall and turned, and out of habit Isola clapped and called, ‘Go, Grape!’
It might have been her imagination, but it seemed as if Grape began swimming faster, her arms cutting like saws through the smooth water. In her wake were her competitors, their techniques flailing in comparison, the Guinevere girl trailing a full pool-length behind, and something dark blooming.
A red cloud was spreading steadily through the water.
‘What is that?’
Her words were drowned in the cheers to all but Bunny. He scrambled to see through her fringe. ‘What?’
Shockingly red, the cloud drifted after the swimmers.
‘It looks like blood,’ said Isola confusedly. Has someone hit their head on the wall?
And then the blood curled, rose to the surface, a sentient creature.
‘No,’ breathed Isola.
‘What?’
‘Christobelle.’
‘Listen now,’ said Bunny, low and urgent. ‘Solawile is safe. Mermy can’t hurt. Not here.’
But the Bloodpearl Mermaid was heading towards Grape.
Isola hadn’t moved yet, but perhaps, warming herself over her heated brain, he felt the cogs turn first, the unconscious decision as it was made.
‘NO!’ Bunny shrieked as Isola stood, took a running leap and threw herself into the pool.
The cheers of the crowd turned to white noise underwater, like the kind between radio stations, the crackle between thunderbolts. She sank straight to the bottom with her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them a beautiful reflection stared back at her.
The mermaid smiled at Isola. Twin clouds of hair bled out around their faces: one Mars-red, one moon-blonde. Christobelle looked towards the far end of the pool, where Grape was winning a one-girl race, and Isola seized her wrist, desperately shaking her head.
There was no air in Christobelle’s skin.
Christobelle, what has she done to you? Isola wanted to ask, but all that translated through her face was hatred for Florence, for this mermaid dopp
elganger, for the wood witch who was ruining two girls’ lives.
Christobelle took Isola’s free hand, keeping her effortlessly at the bottom of the pool. Her hair began to weave around Isola, forming manacles on her wrist, binding her shoulders close to the mermaid. One lock flicked gently across her face, a loving touch.
Christobelle grinned, a wicked toothy smile that was blue underwater, while Isola felt the pressure around her neck and couldn’t think of what to do but die. As long as Grape’s okay, she thought. The mermaid raised her hands, and instead of scale-like nails, she had ten black hooks – fishing hooks for fingernails. The red beauty mark on her cheek seemed moon-shaped now.
They were nose to nose, and Isola wasn’t struggling anymore. The seaweedy hair curled sickeningly down her throat, and just as Christobelle raised her hooked fingers to Isola’s right eye Bunny rocketed from the depths of her hair, roaring mutely. His black claws veered towards the blood-red marble of Christobelle’s remaining eye.
The mermaid shrieked and Isola was released from her wicked locks. Christobelle turned, but Bunny managed to stab his claw right through the beauty spot on her cheek where the sailor had tried to silence her. Christobelle screamed again and dissolved into boiling hot bubbles as the gargoyle went limp. Isola reached out to grab him and arms looped round her middle.
Suddenly she was cannoning towards the surface, cutting through the glass that separated the worlds with a birth-like gush, and she could hear panicked nuns and girls yelling, and her rescuer, a breathless Grape, shouted in her ear, ‘I would’ve got a personal best, ya idiot!’
Isola grabbed desperately around her. She couldn’t feel him. Her hand went automatically to her ring necklace for comfort and there was Bunny, slumped on her chest, curled over her heart.
She stared up at the ring of worried faces. She listened to her heart, her bagpipe lungs wheezing.
Her heart drummed a solo. Louder than ever.
Weaknesses
Bunny was weak but not dead. When he came to he wheezed half-hearted insults at her, mostly ‘fool girl’ and variants of, but she hushed and cradled him on the long walk home, stroking his fur and his shivering whiskers. Her hand brushed his front paw and she realised why water harmed him.
Like a real gargoyle, his little body was turning to stone.
Leftovers. Isola dug up a purple faerie she’d buried in the flowerbed, ripped it apart and poked the pieces down his throat. He coughed and choked but swallowed, and she took him to the attic, swaddled him in her old baby blankets and swayed with him in the rocking chair.
‘Say goodbye to boy,’ whispered Bunny, as they rocked in the dusty sunlight.
‘To who?’
‘To boy you like. Boy you visit every day.’
‘Edgar?’
He wrinkled his pink nose; he didn’t like Edgar’s name any more than he liked Isola’s. ‘He no safe no more. Not with no Bunny to protect him.’
Isola’s sharp exhale caught on her teeth. ‘Bunny – you’ve been protecting Edgar, too?’
‘I is good gargoyle,’ he sighed, the old pride echoing in his voice.
Isola hugged him even closer to her chest. ‘Thank you.’
‘But now fool girl needs to say bye to boy,’ Bunny went on slowly. ‘Boy not safe when Bunny is weak. Ghostie will get him.’
‘Yes, I know. I will.’
‘And ghostie girl will try get to Solawile now. But Solawile strong. Solawile protect herself.’
Isola nodded, even though his red eyes had closed. He was getting heavy in her arms. ‘I will,’ she repeated. ‘You’ll be fine, Bunny, I promise.’
‘Bunny,’ sighed the little gargoyle. ‘No-one give name before. I like name Bunny.’
When Bunny had settled himself, Isola brought down her old cot from the attic and placed him by her bed. Then she stooped to lace up her combat boots as slowly as possible.
If Isola had married Edgar she would have run up the aisle towards him, before the band even had a chance to start playing, trailing lace and a honey-gold veil. The guests would have eaten frozen lilacs for dessert, the wedding cake would be made of plum liquor and cream, dinner would be served with fish filleted from Christobelle’s tail, and afterwards they could have lived in a tree in Vivien’s Wood for all she cared, haunting the secret passageways of St Dymphna’s.
She crossed the street for the last time.
Champagne Gone Sour
‘Oh, hey!’ he exclaimed as he opened the door. Isola Wilde stood on his porch, beautiful as always, a tad wilder than usual.
Her hair was a great wet nest of braids and knots, the unnatural colours faded to ice-creamy pastels, with beads tied like good-luck charms. Her floaty Guinevere dress was dyed black. She was soaked.
‘You can’t see me anymore,’ she whispered.
Edgar held open the door, but she didn’t enter the house. He stepped out on the porch and said, with a tiny laugh, ‘Well, you’re not invisible, so –’
‘I mean,’ she said, a little louder, ‘I can’t see you, either. We’re done.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t want to do this anymore, Edgar!’ She caught her hair in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, as though she longed to pull her head off. ‘You deserve better!’
‘What’s wrong?’
Isola opened her eyes, looking startled. ‘Nothing.’
‘Something’s wrong. Something’s happened. What is it?’
Edgar tried to take her hand; she flinched away as though burned, a vampire to his holy hands, and began backing down the porch. ‘Just stay away! Please, just stay away!’
His feet couldn’t help but mirror hers as though they were waltzing at a distance. ‘Isola, what’s wrong? Tell me what happened, please!’
‘I don’t want to see you anymore!’ she shrieked, tripping backwards down the yard. Her voice was cracked clean in half, tears welled in her eyes and blood flushed her cheeks. ‘It’s over!’
‘Why?
‘Because you can’t draw champagne from a storm-water drain!’
‘What?’
‘It means you can’t salvage something good from something evil! You can’t save me from her!’
Edgar stopped at the end of the driveway, and Isola dashed in tears towards Number Thirty-six.
The asphalt she crossed was the River Styx. He rattled empty pockets; he had no coins to pay the ferryman with.
‘From her?’ he repeated, his gaze zeroing in on the second storey of the house across the road.
The Seventh Princess: An Instalment
‘Sensing the presence of gold – her gold-flax hair – the great dragon awoke. Seeing the seventh princess there, armed with the weapon she’d made from her brothers’ bones, he grave a great roar, which turned swiftly into a booming laugh. People in villages far from the mountain ran for cover, fearing thunder, earthquakes.
‘“You cannot trap me here any longer,” she announced boldly. “I am the Seventh Princess – and you are alone!”
‘“But you are also alone,” said the Seventh Dragon, snorting great storm clouds of mirth. “And I am Loneliness. How can you hope to defeat me?’’
Two Isolas
Edgar sat at the kitchen table, feeling dazed. What had just happened? He felt a decision had been made for him; an invisible pressure on his shoulders had turned him in a circle and steered him down a path he hadn’t chosen.
He rocked Puck’s cradle on the floor with one foot, and found himself with his pencils and sketchbook. Still feeling somewhat glazed over, he began drawing – then, finding himself thickening the lash line on a portrait of Isola Wilde, he ripped the page from the sketchbook, balled it up and lobbed it towards the bin. It missed and hit Cassio instead, who called him all the names in a ten-year-old’s repertoire and kicked the bin over as he stomped upstairs, which set Puck off on a crying jag.
Edgar picked up the baby before Lotus Blossom could admonish him, then threw the entire sketchbook in the bin.
/> He nodded numbly when Lotus Blossom asked him to run some errands for her, his mind wandering somewhere far away – somewhere thorny, dark and overgrown.
After purchasing cloth nappies for Puck and plant seeds for Lotus Blossom on High Street, Edgar stopped in at the public library. He searched, but couldn’t find a single book in the system under any spelling variant he could think of for ‘Pardieu, Lileo’.
He wasn’t even sure why he was searching for a copy of her storybook. It wasn’t as if Isola would start caring for him again if he recited a few lines from her favourite book of fairytales. Against his better judgement, he took a moment to Google ‘Isola Wilde’. This search bore fruit; he found a recent picture of her from a local newspaper. She was holding a bouquet of candy floss with James Sommerwell by her side; the glittering dark of a fair behind them. James was smiling but Isola was taken by surprise, mouth agape, as the local press photographer clicked the shutter.
At the end of High Street, he saw the red moustachioed car and thumped on its window.
James rolled it down and hung his arm out, the cigarette between his fingers dribbling ash. ‘What?’
‘James? It’s Edgar, remember?’
James took a long lazy drag, seeming to size him up, and Edgar shifted the groceries in his arms.
‘Yeah,’ he said finally.
‘Can – can I ask you something?’
Are you in love with Isola? The question shouted in his brain, echoing round the chambers of his mind. And more importantly, he thought – Is she in love with you?
‘Let me guess,’ the other boy growled, ‘Isola’s giving you the run-around, yeah?’
Edgar didn’t answer, and James laughed rather harshly, lighting a fresh cigarette. James took a deep, slightly grizzled breath and continued, ‘Listen, it’s probably nothing against you. That’s just her. She does something, then the opposite. Like she’s trying to be two Isolas.’ His expression grew colder. ‘I hope you’re what she’s looking for.’