by Alison Evans
Saltkin flits over and sits in front of me on the table. They’ll never be able to see him if they can’t already. He gazes up at me and nods.
Clover looks at me like she knows what I’m going to say. She probably just wants the scars to be anything but what she thinks they are.
‘He’s real,’ I say. ‘And everything else I told you. All of it. Everything happened. They love your garden, Clover. And the plants tell me how much they love you.’
She blushes deep, but I can tell Moss isn’t sure how to react. She watches Clover.
‘So this has been going on the whole time?’ Clover says. ‘No wonder you would always know how to look after the plants without me ever telling you anything.’
Moss nods and looks thoughtful. ‘Sometimes I would see you outside – I thought you were talking to yourself.’
‘And you love to go into the forest. I always knew you’d be safe, somehow.’
‘So you,’ I play with my ear, not sure what to do with my hands or where to look, ‘so you believe me?’
‘Of course we do,’ Clover says, and a weight drops off me. I knew they would, but somehow I thought that perhaps they wouldn’t. ‘So tell us more about this magic book.’
‘Saltkin always said I wouldn’t be able to do much magic, and this book has changed that. It’s got lots of spells in it, but the pages have to be revealed. I’ve –’
‘Where did the book come from?’ Moss asks. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’
‘I found it in a box at the op shop in town.’ It might be dangerous, but I don’t want to tell them that.
‘It was just there?’ Moss asks.
‘I think it made sure I was nearby. Somehow. It was humming, I could hear it from where I was standing.’
‘And how does the scar come into everything?’ Moss says.
‘I was reading these words out loud when the sigil appeared on the page. And then when the spell was done, it appeared on my skin.’
‘This one looks different, though,’ Moss says. ‘It’s like a stick. That one on your arm looks like a flower almost.’
‘Oh.’ I briefly wonder if I could lie, just tell them it was like that. But I decide to trust them, since they haven’t let me down yet. ‘There’s another one.’
‘How many in total?’ Clover asks, face creasing up with worry.
‘Just two,’ I say.
‘Well, there’s a whole book here,’ she says, flicking through it. ‘Does this mean you’ll have this many scars?’
Moss puts a hand on Clover’s arm.
‘I don’t know if they’re all sigils.’ I show them the twig on my thigh. ‘See, this one’s a lot more faded already. I don’t think they’re going to be too obtrusive.’
‘Do they hurt?’ Clover asks.
‘When they came up they smarted a bit, but not really.’
Saltkin flitters his wings. ‘Can you tell Clover thank you for the garden?’
‘Er, also, Saltkin is here at the moment.’
They both look around the room.
‘How big is he?’ Clover asks.
‘Can we see him?’ Moss asks at the same time.
‘No, if you could you would see him already. He’s small, a bit bigger than a sparrow. Maybe a mudlark. He says thank you for the garden, Clover. It’s home to a lot of his friends. They love it. He says no one else could take better care of it.’
‘Thanks,’ Saltkin says to me, pleased by my additions.
Clover blushes rose-red. ‘He’s very welcome.’ She’s quite flustered as she puts on the kettle. ‘This is all a lot to take in,’ she says, laughing. ‘They’re all out there, are they?’ She looks through the window while the kettle starts to boil.
‘Iris, you didn’t answer one of my questions. This isn’t dangerous, is it?’ Moss asks again, tapping the book.
It could be, but I don’t want to tell them. I lock eyes with Saltkin, and he knows I’m not going to say everything, but I don’t see any judgement in his expression. ‘No,’ I say.
At lunch the next day, the boy brings his stick-and-poke gear from his locker. We sit behind one of the portables where there are lots of cigarette butts on the ground. People don’t smoke as much as they used to, back when my mothers were kids, but when they do they go behind the gym because that part has cover if it’s raining.
The sky is full with the promise of rain but I don’t think it will fall. So no one should interrupt us.
‘We gotta make sure everything is clean,’ the boy says, laying down a little clear plastic sheet. He puts on some gloves, wipes something astringent on my arm to sterilise it.
‘Good place to do it then,’ Babs says with a smile and raised eyebrow, gesturing to the cigarette butts.
‘That’s a good point,’ he says. ‘Like, I’ve done it to myself in places like this, but I don’t know if I should do it here.’
‘It’ll be fine, right?’ I ask.
‘The tattoo is basically an open wound when it’s done, so I dunno if this is right. I’d feel awful if it got infected, if I got you sick.’
‘Hm.’ My desire to have something pricked into my skin forever is overwhelming. I love the rose on the back of his arm. I’m going to get a moon rose on my shoulder, so it’s hidden by the sleeve of my uniform.
‘We could go somewhere,’ Babs says. ‘Like . . . somewhere.’ At this she waggles her eyebrows up and down.
That could be ace, but I wonder if we’ll accidentally find the witch flowers again. ‘I don’t know, it could be dangerous.’
‘We could just like, go to my house,’ says the boy. ‘No one’s home.’ He pauses for a moment, packing everything back into the bag. ‘Well, no one except Lunchbox.’
‘D’you need the book to do the spell?’ Babs asks. She’s drawn up a geometric pattern she wants on her thigh, but that will take more than a lunchtime to do.
‘I’m not sure.’ I run my fingers over the scar flower. ‘Let’s try.’ Each of them takes one of my hands, and I close my eyes and picture the sigil.
When I open my eyes, I see my feet still surrounded by cigarette butts.
‘Maybe not?’ I say.
‘One more time?’ Babs says. She squeezes my hand. ‘I reckon you can do it.’
‘Okay.’ I close my eyes again. I can’t remember the words on the page of the book, but I trace the sigil in my mind and think about the boy’s house. The deck, where we dyed his hair. There was rain, there might be rain today. I concentrate on the feeling of Babs’s and the boy’s hands in mine.
When I open my eyes it’s raining, and we’re on the deck, safe and dry. Lunchbox looks over from where he’s curled up on a chair, then goes back to sleep.
‘Holy shit!’ Babs says, letting go of my hand to jump up and down. ‘You did it!’
‘That’s so cool,’ the boy says before starting to set up his tools. ‘This is much safer.’ He puts gloves on, wipes my skin down again to make sure it’s clean, and then unwraps a needle from a packet. He squeezes out some ink into a little container and then dips in the needle. ‘If you want me to stop, tell me,’ he says. ‘And just relax – it’ll hurt, but it’s like a cat scratch. Not too bad.’ He takes my arm in a gloved hand, and I’m surprised by the warmth of his fingers. He’s holding my arm gently but firmly, so I don’t move with the needle. The first prick startles me, but I tell him to keep going. It’s strange, thinking about how this is going to be on my skin forever.
I wonder what Clover and Moss will say when they find out. I think they’ll appreciate it – he’s a good artist – but they’ll say I’m too young. It’s not like I’m getting something ugly. It’s a flower; it’s my flower, from our garden. And after the larger revelation about magic, maybe my mothers can handle this.
I feel the needle pricking in a curve, and I wonder which bit of the flower he’s doing. He
showed me the sketch but he does everything freehand on the skin. I wonder how many other people he’s done this to. He clears his throat and shifts a bit; I realise how close he is. I slow my breathing, matching it to his. Closing my eyes, I feel the needle go in and out, quick, brief, it doesn’t really hurt at all. At times he adjusts his hold on my arm, always making sure the skin isn’t too tight. ‘How are you going?’ he asks.
I open my eyes, and he’s even closer than I thought. ‘It’s fine,’ I say, for the first time noticing just how long his eyelashes are.
When he lets go of my arm, I miss the warmth of him. He takes a photo on his phone and shows me. ‘What do you think?’
It’s perfect, the thin outline of one of my moon roses. The skin around the lines is slightly red, but I was expecting more. More pain. ‘I love it,’ I say. I want to touch it, feel the lines that will be there forever.
‘I have to go over it a couple more times, just to make sure it’ll look good. Need a break?’
I shake my head. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’
Babs is reading in a seat in the corner. She’s got a cup of tea in one hand, the steam curling up to the deck’s plastic roof while the rain falls nearby, not touching her.
‘Maybe some tea, though,’ I say. ‘Do you want one?’
He smiles, small and certain. ‘Sure.’
In the kitchen I boil the kettle and catch myself going to touch the tattoo too many times, so I put my hands flat on the bench until the kettle flicks off. I choose two cute matching teacups with a delicate floral pattern, make the tea, watch the milk swirl around like a storm. I stir seven times clockwise, trying to put some goodwill into the liquid. I think it shimmers a bit, but it’s so fleeting I don’t know.
When I sit back down on the deck, I hear the boy sip his tea and sigh, maybe a little more content than he normally would be. ‘Ready?’ he asks, loading the needle with some ink.
‘Ready.’
I could almost fall asleep to it, the rhythm of the needle. The sound of the rain. The quiet contentment of Babs, the hush of the boy’s breathing, so close.
When he’s done, I don’t want it to be over. He pats the tattoo down with an alcohol wipe, smears a cream on it, and then puts cling wrap around my arm. It’s high enough that my shirt can cover it, but I put my jumper back on anyway.
The boy says it will take about two weeks for the lines to heal, and I have to buy a special cream at the supermarket to put on it. ‘Babs, we’ll do you next week,’ he tells her. ‘Should we go back to school? Lunch is over soon.’
Babs and the boy hold my hands again. They finally get me up after four tries. I don’t really want to return. We have to split up to go to our classes. Through my last period of the day, maths, I can feel the moon rose on my skin, not because it’s painful but because it was put there by the boy. I run a hand through the hair on my head, cut by Babs.
That night while I’m going to sleep, I look out the window and see a few stars peeking between clouds.
Saltkin flits into the room and sees the rose, sparkly peach clouds bursting in the air around him. ‘I thought you said you were too young!’ he says, hovering above the skin. ‘It’s lovely, Iris. Very powerful.’
‘Powerful?’
‘It’s been infused with a lot of friendship, a lot of love. He must’ve been thinking about that when he was doing it.’
I crane my neck to get a glimpse. It looks like it’s glowing a little under the moonlight, just like the moon roses.
Chapter Eighteen
The Rose Tattoo
I think remembering that me and my body are the same thing is helping, because the teachers keep telling ‘us three’ to stop talking and do some work. Art class is the worst for me still, which is a shame because Miranda is the best teacher.
I draw the witch flowers. I put on my headphones and listen to the song I was going to do my art project on, the one with the swooping electric noise and the crystal voice of a girl. The flowers aren’t always purple and red, sometimes just greylead, sometimes in spidery fineliner, sometimes gone over with watercolours in blue and purple and green, aliens sprouting through the page.
Iris and the boy can’t see me, though I’m sitting at their table. They’re talking about the project and I want to say something, but I can’t. I leave my headphones on and draw flowers.
I spend the rest of the day in the library, just drawing the flowers, going over and over the lines.
When it’s time to get the bus to go to the boy’s house, I still feel like I’m clouded in fog, but I run to the stop and make it just in time. The others see me, and I breathe a sigh.
Mahmoud is in the kitchen; he waves when he sees us. ‘Does anyone want anything?’ he asks after gathering the boy into a big hug.
‘Thanks, Dad, but it’s okay, we’re going to go upstairs,’ the boy says all in one breath and basically pushes us up the steps.
Me and Iris haven’t seen his room yet. I don’t know what to expect – I’ve never been in a boy’s room before.
‘Your dad’s really nice,’ I say as we climb the stairs.
‘Yeah, he’s good.’ The boy smiles when we reach the landing. ‘Ready for your rose?’
At first I wanted something else, then I thought I should probably get one matching Iris’s and the boy’s. It’s going to be on my thigh. High enough that my school dress will hide it, though other dresses and skirts will show it. I don’t think Mum will be mad.
When the boy opens his bedroom door, warmth floods out. He’s got a desk with two big computer monitors on it, his bed is messy with dark sheets, and he has lots of books on his shelves. I go over and look at some of the spines – they’re sci-fi and fantasy. ‘I didn’t know you read so much.’
He blushes. ‘Kids at my old school teased me for it.’
‘Have you read all these books?’ Iris asks. There’s so many, all well-worn like they’ve been read heaps of times.
He nods.
‘Maybe next time can you put an alien head on me?’ I point to the Let’s be friends patch on my jacket. ‘That’d be rad.’
‘Oh!’ says the boy. ‘Sure.’
‘You should get a spaceship,’ I tell him, and he smiles. I got a new patch the other day, My girlfriend is the moon, and it’s got a crescent moon on it. It’s covered in glitter.
His bed is a double, and we sit on top while he gets out the stick-and-poke things. He hands me the razor, and I start shaving the patch of skin that’ll get the rose on it. I don’t shave my legs a lot, and as I run my fingers over the hairless skin, it’s so soft I think I might do it a bit more sometimes.
I watch as the boy sanitises everything, then a look of absolute concentration comes over his face, the point of his tongue sticking out between his teeth.
‘I’ve been thinking about how to get around my pact with Saltkin,’ Iris says as I stare at the needle. ‘But I still don’t know. I can’t go looking for the witch, that’s what I promised.’
‘There must be something else,’ I say. There has to be. ‘A way you can be safe but still come with us.’
‘Maybe if you just . . . follow us,’ the boy says to Iris. ‘If we go, and you don’t come with us straight away. But then you follow after a bit.’
Iris frowns. ‘I wonder if that would work?’
‘You could ask Vada or Nova,’ I say.
‘Ready?’ the boy asks me. I nod.
Then I wince. I knew it would hurt – it’s just like the boy said, like a cat scratch.
‘Sorry,’ the boy says. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, all good.’
He slowly dots out the flower, not the witch’s rose but our own. Like Iris’s moon rose, like the boy’s original rose. No more witch flowers. I decide not to draw them anymore.
Soon the dots start t
o look like an actual rose, soft petals curling over each other. I lean against the wall, and we all sit in silence while the first outline is done. ‘How’s that?’ the boy asks as he wipes away extra ink with a cool wet cloth.
‘Looks good.’ The outline is perfect, exactly how I wanted it to be. ‘Hey, look – it’s in the same place as your sigil, Iris.’
‘You should get your spaceship there,’ they tell the boy.
‘That would be cool.’ He smiles. ‘But Babs, what are we going to do about your witch?’
I sigh. ‘I don’t know. Supposing there’s a way around the pact, I reckon we should just set out. Leave notes for our parents? I don’t know how long this will take.’
‘We should bring supplies, food and stuff.’ Iris traces something through their skirt. ‘My protection sigil should come in handy. And I’ll see if I can find Vada tomorrow after school – maybe they can help in some way.’ Iris sighs. ‘I wish I could ask Saltkin.’
The boy finishes cleaning, then dips the needle in the ink. ‘Does anyone want a tea before we start again?’
‘I’ll make it,’ Iris says, and they go downstairs.
‘They’re pretty upset,’ the boy says as he starts to prick the rose again.
‘I would be, too.’
Blood dots my skin and the boy wipes it away, quick as it came. ‘We’ll figure something out.’
A few minutes later, Iris comes up with a tray. They make us all tea while the boy keeps going with the rose. I take a sip of mine, just the right temperature. Perfect. And the rest of the night is the same. Once my tattoo’s finished and wrapped up, we sit on the boy’s bed and read some of his sci-fi books. I’ve got one about a giant bear, all about taking care of a strange creature. We sit like this till it’s time to sleep, and we curl up in his bed.
Today the forest is bursting with bellbirds, pinging through the trees. I didn’t tell Mum I was going into the national park; she was sleeping when I left. I’m in my school dress, and I was planning on going to school – but then, well, I hadn’t seen the trees in so long. And maybe I can find Vada or Nova and ask them about Iris’s bond.