The Beauty of the End

by Debbie Howells

  The first I saw of our new home was as we slowed down and turned up a wide, quiet road, and my father pulled up at the roadside. It wasn’t unattractive, a red brick Victorian house surrounded by others that were similar, and after the modest, terraced street we’d left behind, it was big.

  The first thing I did was run round the back to look at the garden, which disappointingly wasn’t big at all but long and narrow, with a massive tree right at the end, which made up for it. But as I stared into its branches, so high they almost tangled with the clouds in the faintest hint of a breeze, I felt myself shiver.

  What tortured me most was the thought of school. If only I could have changed my name—to reference someone important, perhaps, or a meaning that I could wear, like strength or slayer of dragons. But, I mean, Noah . . . What were my parents thinking? My mother said that they had liked its biblical connotations and that it meant rest or comfort, which was nice, she told me. Nice and solid and reassuring, which was no good at all when it made you a figure of fun.

  Over the years, I’d lost count of the number of times so-called friends turned up in their waterproofs on my doorstep—even when the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Crapping themselves laughing, while I was forced to endure yet another episode of ritual humiliation. I knew here it would be no different.

  The first morning, I was so nervous I ate my breakfast then threw it all up. Inside, I was silently crying out for my parents to leave Musgrove and move back to our old house, for my father to give up the new car and return to his old job, to take me back to my old school because I knew from experience that the devil you knew was a whole lot easier to live with than the devil you didn’t.

  But in my heavy heart, I knew also it wasn’t going to happen and instead somehow found myself keeping my eyes down and staying out of everyone’s way, as I shuffled along the corridor to my classroom.

  Being teenaged and awkward, with an odd name and old-fashioned hair to boot, my expectations were at an all-time low. Being a nerd further handicapped me. I was as incapable of not handing homework in as I was of keeping my arm from springing up whenever the teacher posed a question.

  Today was no exception. It was my first math class here and short of nailing my hand to the desk, there was no stopping it.

  “Yes? Your name, boy . . .”

  “Noah. Calaway. Sir,” Pulling my arm down and waiting for the titter. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Noah, eh? Don’t think we’ve had one of those before,” boomed Mr. Matthews. Completely unnecessarily, I remember thinking. “Well, speak up, boy. Better still, get up here and write it on the board.”

  How I hated that arm. I hated feeling everyone’s eyes boring into me. I’m sure I detected a sadistic gleam in the teacher’s eyes as he relished my discomfort. As I scrawled scratchily on the board, my hands clammy, my heart thumping in my chest, the piece of chalk snapped in two. I reached down to pick it up, completely mortified, but as I stood up again, something extraordinary happened.

  The classroom door opened and a girl walked in. She was slender, with this way of walking, her head held high, her long, red hair falling in heavy waves down her back. I felt my jaw drop open as I stared at her.

  “Boy!” roared Mr. Matthews, completely ignoring her. “In your own time . . .”

  I felt my cheeks turn scarlet as the sniggers and mutterings behind me started up, but I didn’t care. Suddenly my head was filled with the image of that girl. I’d never seen anyone like her. Quite simply, she was a goddess.

  3

  2016

  I don’t notice the silence, or the past as it creeps ever closer. Instead, I’m thinking that even now April can still do this, exert an invisible pull across hundreds of miles.

  After throwing another log on the fire and closing the curtains, I walk along the narrow hallway to the kitchen, wondering why Will really called me, because it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart. His heart is rotten. But if he’s right, if April’s a murder suspect, there’s no question she needs a lawyer.

  I float the idea of leaving April at the mercy of a system that will assign her a lawyer when she comes round. Maybe a good one, who’ll believe in her—or maybe not, because I know the system. I’d come to hate the complicated game playing of both defense and prosecution, with their twisted words and questionable rights and wrongs that should have been black and white, but were in fact every shade of grey; the lines that seemed to blur and move every time your back was turned.

  But the more I think of Will’s words, heavy with the weight of his cynicism, and then of April, unconscious, the more the memories creep back, of the girl who was my first love, now defenseless, needing a voice to speak for her. I sweep my reluctance to one side because I know she needs someone who absolutely believes in her.

  My heart sinks slightly as I realize what this means, because it would be so much easier not to get involved. To stay here, in Devon, and let the legal system run its course. To leave the past silenced under the multiple layers of years. To never speak to Will again.

  4

  1991

  I glimpsed the goddess after school again, outside in the stifling heat as we blinked in the sunlight. She was with two other girls, one with fair hair, the other mousy brown with a bleached streak in it, their socks rolled down and skirts hitched up, whispering to each other before pointing and giggling loudly.

  “Oy! Tosser!” yelled the brown-haired one above the general level of chitchat. Across the road, a group of boys turned round, terrified. “Yeah, that’s right, you! ’As it dropped off yet? Yer cock . . .”

  Everyone must have heard. Though I stared in awe at the girls, at the red-haired one, who looked astonished, I couldn’t help my heart going out to Tosser, who’d turned a shade of beetroot, wondering what he’d done to deserve such a public lashing. The girls, meanwhile, were teetering up the road on their wedge-heeled shoes, still giggling.

  “I’d stay out of their way if I were you.” The voice, friendly, came from beside me.

  Surprised, I turned to see that he was talking to me.

  “Farrington,” said the boy. Slightly shorter than me, he had ginger hair and freckles. I’d noticed him in my English class. “William. You can call me Will. Those are scary chicks, believe me. There’s this rumor they’re witches—well, except for the long-haired one. She’s new. But the others meet on Reynard’s Hill after dark and cast spells and shit. I’ve seen them.”

  I was even more enthralled. Spells and shit sounded awesome, and as I walked home, already I’d conjured up this picture of the three of them sitting in the woods, lit by an eerie, greenish light as they stirred a cauldron and muttered incantations, unleashing their mighty powers across the whole of Musgrove. Of course, the goddess with hair the color of autumn leaves, she’d turn out to be the chief witch. I could tell she was no ordinary mortal. Already I was under her spell.

  “You can come and swim in our pool, if you like,” he continued cheerfully. “I’ll get my mum to phone yours. What’s your number?”

  I scribbled it on a scrap of paper, hardly believing my luck. This was turning out way better than I’d expected.

  With a new friend and a major crush to take my mind off things, I settled in quite quickly after that. Will and I started hanging out and I was thrown into a whole other world, where money was plentiful and success seemingly effortless. Will’s parents held flawlessly orchestrated parties in their large, elegant home. There was the lure, too, of their pool, with its crystalline depths, into which we’d plummet to the bottom, holding our breath, the blood rushing in our ears, until one of us raced to the surface gasping for air.

  It was a world I wanted a piece of. And meanwhile, each day I lived in hope of catching another glimpse of that living, breathing deity with the long red hair, though she proved somewhat elusive. I would go several, desolate days without seeing her, and then suddenly, she’d be there, round every corner.

  In my head I’d constructed her
entire life story. On the downside, I was sure she hadn’t even noticed me; there wasn’t really anything that set me apart. Until one extraordinary, magical day the following week, she walked into my chemistry class and looked directly at me—or so it seemed at the time.

  “Good of you to join us, Miss Moon,” our teacher, Dr. Jones, said dryly. “For your information, class started five minutes ago. Kindly take a seat over there.”

  At last . . . I had her name. Her surname, at least. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her as she arranged herself on a chair, as I breathed in the alien spicy scent that seemed to come from her general direction as if it were the most sublime perfume on this earth.

  “You got a cold or something?” Will muttered at me. “Your breathing’s gone funny.”

  I shook my head and tried my hardest to concentrate on the lesson. When Dr. Jones finished and a low-level, general mumbling started up, Will stared at me.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “What do you mean?” I could feel my cheeks growing hot under his scrutiny.

  “Usually,” said Will, who, unlike me, was completely unabashed at being in the presence of a goddess, “you’re, like, jumping up and getting shit organized before I’ve even worked out what we’re doing. Something’s weird.”

  ‘It’s not,’ I said hastily, leaping up to prove him wrong and promptly knocking over a tripod, which clattered noisily to the floor. Picking it up, I tried to pull myself together.

  But as Will titrated sodium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid, for the first time I let him get on with it, instead eavesdropping shamelessly on the conversation going on behind me. As I listened to the goddess’s soft voice, finally I learned her name. April. Her friends were Beatrice and Emily.

  By now, I was totally in awe, not just of her beauty, but her confidence, which was surely yet another manifestation of her otherworldly status. And as for her name . . . It seemed the most exotic, most beautiful name I could imagine. April Moon.

  And as I whispered it over and over, I knew I was madly, irrevocably in love.

  5

  April Moon, April Moon, April Moon . . . Over and over I silently repeated her name, in time with my footsteps as I walked home after school, not caring about the rain that was soaking into me, nor almost getting knocked over by a car.

  After that, she appeared in more of my classes, near enough for the spicy scent of her to torture me, but always with others seated between us, and so I learned to be content to worship her from afar. Such was the lot of lowly creatures like myself, I decided, wallowing in my misery. It was enough to know she was there.

  I was wildly curious to see what April and her friends did in the woods. It made perfect sense that April was a witch—a good one, of course. I knew they existed, but when I pushed Will on the subject, I got nowhere.

  “You’ve seen what they’re like,” he said, looking at me as though I was mad. “What if they put a curse on you?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I’d been under April’s spell since the first day I saw her. That was a secret, even from Will. In the end I took matters into my own hands.

  It was autumn, dusk falling earlier by the day, the air rich with the scent of wood smoke, when I decided to follow them. Just as Will had told me, they were headed toward the woods below Reynard’s Hill.

  Staying far enough back to remain unnoticed by them, I didn’t see how it happened, just that a car sped past, too fast, sending a cloud of feathers into the air as something somersaulted onto the pavement. I heard April’s cry, saw her run, then crouch slowly, reaching toward a small bird.

  Careful not to move its awkwardly outstretched wing, she picked it up. After that, their pace slowed and the chatter became quiet. Suddenly I realized what they were doing, and that as witches, they were taking the little bird to their magical place, where they’d weave a spell and heal it. I knew also this was something I had to see.

  I followed in the shadows, as far behind as I dared without risking losing them, trying not to think about the rumors that for centuries Reynard’s woods had been grassland, until a tragedy had befallen the village, wiping out most of the children with a terrible disease. It was then the woods were said to have sprung up. It was said also that those trees were the spirits of the dead.

  Now, darting among their shadows, I shivered, wondering if it was true, imagining wraith-like beings that I couldn’t see, hearing the wind catch the leaves, keeping April and her friends in my sight, until in a split-second moment of distraction, they slipped down a path and disappeared.

  In a panic, I ran. I couldn’t come this far and not see what they did here. But just as suddenly, I heard their voices again, close by; felt myself freeze. Then through some bushes, in the last glimmer of daylight, I saw them.

  Edging closer, I crouched under a bush, listening to the hiss and crackle of twigs as they lit a small fire. On the other side of it, I could make out April’s face, the bird still cupped in her hands. Her voice was gentle, as with one finger she stroked it. Then resting its head in her other hand, she closed her fingers around it. I held my breath. This was what I’d come to see. The moment she’d weave a spell and heal the wounded creature. I waited, my heart thudding in my chest, for the extraordinary magic that was about to happen here.

  There was a brief pause in which none of them spoke. Then the birds’ wings fluttered and I gasped. From across the fire April looked up, seeming to look straight at me, before she turned her attention back to the bird, laying it carefully on the ground in front of her. Then the three of them started chanting, a soft, eerie sound, and as I watched, transfixed, it soared up toward the sky.

  * * *

  That night, in my bed, I worked out I’d seen a miracle. That April had healed a mortally wounded bird. I wondered how many others there’d been, that the trees had been witness to, thrilled that it was proof of what before I’d only guessed at. I now inhabited a world where anything could happen, where April had a power, a magical connection with the universe that most people didn’t have. And my fantasies intensified. Away from her, I dreamed of the day she’d open her eyes and for the first time see beyond my name to the real Noah Calaway, fellow slayer of dragons. She’d hold her hand out to me and together we’d save the world or whatever our higher purpose was. And once it was done, we’d share a kiss, as myriad stars swooped down on us to take us with them, together for all eternity.

  It didn’t happen, of course. Several times after that, I crept back to the same part of the woods, but I never saw them. The last time, however, a murky afternoon that cast the woods in a persistent state of twilight, something nearby caught my eye.

  As I turned, my eyes were drawn to a young tree set on its own. It was about twice as tall as I was, and even in the half darkness, a strange movement I couldn’t identify drew me closer.

  As my eyes started to focus, I heard myself gasp, unable to believe what I was looking at, feeling my eyes widen, fixed on the slow rotation of a squirrel, hung from a branch by the length of ribbon around its neck.

  Horrified, I stepped back, my shock intensifying as the more I looked, the more tiny, desiccated bodies strung there came into focus. There were birds, the leg of what I guessed had been a rabbit, and butterflies, too, as if they’d settled on the branches and never again moved.

  It was gruesome. A kind of hangman’s Christmas tree, especially when a feather fluttered down in front of me, followed by another. Looking up, I spotted a magpie hanging from wire looped around its neck.

  I stood there, transfixed, then out of the corner of my eye saw the body of a kitten, its eyes fixed open in death, as they had been in life.

  The silence was broken by the squawk from a nearby crow, followed by the crashing of its wings through branches. I turned and ran, not wanting to imagine how they’d all got there, banishing unwanted images from my head. It was only much later, when the initial horror had receded, that I worked out that the death tree, as I thought of it, had to be a monument. It
was the only reasonable explanation. A place where April and the others could bring innocent victims of the carelessness of man, to finally rest.

  * * *

  In the way these things do, over time it had grown less shocking, eventually melting into the background of my mind. Meanwhile, I was thrust back into the mundanity of everyday life, where it rained perpetually that autumn, day in and day out. The land became saturated, the roads flooded, until under the cover of darkness one night, the brown, swollen river invaded the town.

  I awoke one morning to a watery hinterland. In my imagination, it was yet another manifestation of the universe’s power, unleashed against some nameless victim—I’d no idea who. I wondered if this, too, was connected to April, but I didn’t have a chance to find out.

  An impromptu holiday was forced upon us, as school was forgotten, but my joy was fleeting as this break presented also an insurmountable barrier between me and April. Just as the excitement of the flood died down, winter blew in. Then before I knew it, Christmas loomed.

  As the term drew to a close, I faced a new problem, finding myself reduced to a nervous, jabbering wreck as I endeavored to find the courage to give April the present I’d made.

  It was a tape. One I’d poured every last, tortured drop of my teenage angst into. There were Madonna tracks, Berlin, the Human League, interspersed with emotive strains of Puccini and Debussy. It was a desperate, hopeless attempt to touch her heart and reveal my true self to her.

  But however much I wanted to, I couldn’t do it. I racked my brains for a way to give it to her anonymously, but found none. As the last chemistry lesson on the last morning came to an end, and with just minutes before the final bell of the term, I simply pretended to pick it up off the floor and, with my heart hammering in my chest, walked over to her.