“I know who she reminds me of,” Kirsty said. “Remember in one of the X-Men movies there was a woman with an adamantine skeleton, like Wolverine? They fought. Wolverine won. Wolverine will always win, because he’s the perfect man.” Kirsty gave a wistful sigh as she pointed at Rachel’s back. “That’s who she is. She’s the evil version of Wolverine.”
Magenta stared at her friend for a moment. “Does your fiancé know about this unhealthy obsession you have with a superhero?”
Kirsty smiled. “You’re not going to do what she told you to, are you? She warned you off. Isn’t that like your version of a red flag to a bull? Shouldn’t you charge out there to spend time with Harry purely to defy her ultimatum?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I am an adult. I’m not going to do something I don’t want to do in order to spite a crazy stranger. She’s Harry’s problem. I don’t want anything to do with either of them.”
“She is right about one thing,” Kirsty said. “Harry is very stubborn. If he wants to spend time with you, he’ll make it happen.”
“He can try.” Magenta stormed back to the rack she was cleaning.
“What is your problem, anyway? Why are you so set against Harry? You two used to be close. What did he do that’s so unforgivable?”
Magenta felt her stomach clench. “It wasn’t him. It was me. I said things that were unforgivable.”
“Harry seems to have gotten over it.”
“Maybe, but the reasons I said those things haven’t changed. Harry is better off far away from me. And I’m sure I’m better off without him in my life. If we try to reboot our friendship, we’ll only get hurt. It’s smarter to stop it before it starts.”
Kirsty eyed her keenly. “He hurt you.”
“No.” Magenta turned away from her friend. “But he could have. I stopped it before it got that far.”
She felt Kirsty’s hand on her shoulder, her touch gentle. “You loved him.”
Magenta stopped breathing. Kirsty Campbell was far too perceptive for her own good.
“Of course I loved him,” Magenta scoffed. “We were best friends.”
“No.” Kirsty shook her head. “You were in love with him.”
For a minute the pain of the past overwhelmed Magenta. She closed her eyes and reminded herself to breathe. When she opened them, she shook Kirsty’s hand off.
“A stupid teenage crush. I grew up. I got over it. It’s time Harry got over the past too.” With that, she walked away from Kirsty. She was done talking about Harry.
After a long day at work, Magenta entered the flat she shared with her twin best friends to find the phone ringing.
“Don’t answer it,” she shouted, but it was too late. She could already hear Claire tell Magenta’s mother that she’d just come through the door. Great. The icing on the cake of death that was her day. She slipped off her boots, dropping in height by several inches, before holding out her hand for the phone.
“Sorry,” Claire, one half of her twin roommates, whispered as she handed it to Magenta.
Magenta pursed her lips. They paid extra for caller ID so that they would know who was calling before picking up. They paid extra so that Magenta could avoid her mother. Right now it was money wasted. She took a deep breath as Claire tiptoed away. Why she was tiptoeing was anyone’s guess.
“Mum.” Magenta felt her stomach tighten as the word came out of her mouth.
“Maggie, honey, I wouldn’t bother you, but I need a wee favour.” Her mother’s soft whine made Magenta cringe. As did being called Maggie.
“What do you want, Mum?” Magenta had to work hard to stop from biting out the words. Since leaving home when she was sixteen, her mother had called at least twice a day to “not bother” Magenta.
“I wouldn’t ask, but…” Her voice faded to a pathetic nothingness.
“What is it?” Magenta squeezed the words through clenched teeth.
“Mr Morrison put a note through my door about the hedge. He’s complaining about my side of it again. I don’t have the strength to deal with the hedge. It’s so much work trimming it. I’ve been meaning to find a teenager to come cut it for me, but I haven’t been well enough to get to it yet. I wondered if you would have a word with him.”
Magenta closed her eyes and tried to think of something calming. Anything calming. It didn’t work. Her mind was blank. Mainly she wanted to kick old man Morrison’s backside for leaving a note instead of waiting until her mother was home and dealing with her in person.
“Mum, he’s your neighbour. He’s right next door. I’m on the other side of town. I think you should talk to him.”
“Oh, no, I can’t do that. You know how he gets. It would be best if you came over and dealt with it. You know I wouldn’t impose if I was feeling better.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I’ve been feeling so faint this past week. I nearly passed out in the supermarket. Lorraine Buchanan had to fetch me a chair from the staff room. They made me a cup of tea, and Lorraine sat patting my hand until the dizzy spell passed. She’s such a lovely girl. I told her all about you taking care of me.”
Magenta almost choked on the words she wanted to say. There was nothing wrong with her mother. The woman made almost daily trips to the doctor and they’d never found anything wrong with her. Ever since their father had left when Magenta was nine, her mother had been “ill.” Sometimes it was hard to remember that the woman was barely fifty.
“Why don’t you phone Mr. Morrison? If you’re too weak to walk next door, you can make a call. You had enough energy to call me.”
There was a long sigh. “Aye, you’re right, sweetheart. I could probably call, but this has taken a lot out of me and I’ll need to lie down when I hang up.” She made that pathetic little mewing noise that made Magenta cringe.
“If you had enough energy to make one call, why did you make it to me instead of to your neighbour?”
She knew the answer already—she couldn’t make Mr. Morrison dance like a puppet on a string, but with a few master manipulations she could manage it with her daughter.
Her mother let out a little moan. The kind people make when feeling weak. The kind she’d spent years perfecting. “You are so much better at dealing with conflict than I am.” That whining voice went right through Magenta. “You’ve always been so good at standing up for yourself. Ever since you were a wee lassie and the kids in school made fun of you because you weren’t as smart as they were. I feel terrible that I was never well enough to help you with that, but you dealt with it great on your own. You may not be as clever as other folk, but you’re so good at dealing with people. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
It was amazing how her mother could slice into her self-esteem at the same time as praising her. Magenta rubbed her temple to ward off the headache that was creeping up on her. Immediately she snapped up straight. She was doing it. She was manufacturing symptoms. She was turning into her mother. She let her hand drop to her lap.
“Fine,” Magenta said through clenched teeth. “I’ll come talk to the neighbour.”
“You’re a good girl. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re nothing like Grace; she doesn’t spare a thought for her mother. So selfish. But I can always rely on you. Your older sister may have the brains in the family, but you have other gifts.”
As usual, she never mentioned what those other gifts might be.
“I need to go,” Magenta said. “I’ll be over later.”
“Use your key. I’ll probably be lying down.”
Like that was something new. “Sure.”
“Love you, sweetie,” her mother said.
Magenta mumbled something and hung up. If her mother loved her, then she sure as hell didn’t like the way love felt. It was a nasty emotion. Like slime oozing through her veins.
“Sorry,” Claire said from the stove, where she was cooking dinner. “I didn’t think before I answered the phone.”
“Never mind,” Magenta told her. It wasn’t her fr
iend’s fault that her mother drove her mad.
“I printed out those forms for you.” Claire used her wooden spoon to point to the papers on the tiny dining table. “You keep putting it off, but we both know you’d love to become a caving instructor. It’s time to get on with it and get that qualification.”
Magenta forced a smile as she reached for the paperwork. “You know me. Procrastination is my middle name.”
“That’s why you need friends like us.”
“I’ll take these to my room and I’ll fill them out after I deal with my mum.”
“Don’t forget. I’ll be checking. You’ve been dreaming about running a caving business for years. It’s time you turned that dream into reality. If you don’t get your bum in gear you’ll be working for Kirsty until you’re ninety.”
Magenta faked a laugh as she headed to her room at the front of the house. Once inside, she shut the door and leaned against it. She looked at the forms in her hand. The words jumped and wobbled, as they usually did. She smothered a frustrated scream. She didn’t need to be able to read the form to know the requirement. Her caving mentors had told her about the written exam.
After one last look at the paperwork, she ripped it into tiny pieces before putting it in the bin. She should never have mentioned her dream to the twins, because that’s just what it was—a dream. It would never be reality. Not for her. Not for a woman who was too stupid to even finish school. A woman who struggled to read a simple form. No. She wiped her eyes and sniffed. Dreams were for other people.
With a heavy sigh, she changed into jeans and boots before heading off to deal with her mother.
3
Harry should never have listened to Betty. She was evil incarnate. Entertaining evil. But evil nonetheless. His big brain had failed him. Betty had hacked his IQ and uploaded a virus. A virus called hope.
Which was how he’d found himself trapped in an abandoned mine outside of Invertary, waiting to be rescued and praying that the hill wouldn’t collapse on his head.
“You’re a bloody idiot, you know that?” his cousin Matt Donaldson, the sole police presence in Invertary, shouted through the air vent next to the door. The door that Betty had jammed shut.
Yes. He was that much of an idiot. He’d been trapped in a mine by a tartan-clad geriatric. It didn’t get much more stupid than that.
“Are you there, moron?” Matt’s voice echoed through the cavernous room where Harry was currently trapped.
“Where else would I be, dumbass?” Harry called back.
He heard laughter. No doubt Matt had already texted Harry’s older brother Flynn to fill him in. Growing up in the shadow of “the testosterone twins” had been no easy task for a certified geek. The fact the three boys had managed to stay close friends was a miracle. But then, they’d had to unite at an early age to defend themselves against Matt’s younger twin sisters.
“Flynn says I’ve to take pictures,” Matt said.
Harry hung his head. Yep. He wasn’t going to live this down anytime soon.
“Seriously,” Matt said. “You okay in there? Don’t go wandering off. Stay near the door so we know where you are.”
Harry surveyed his surroundings, which were dim in the faint sliver of light that seeped in from around the door. Without his flashlight on, he could make out shadows and shapes for a couple of feet in front of him, then it all turned to inky blackness. At least it wasn’t damp. He sat on the floor, leaning against the wall beside the door, his legs stretched out in front of him. According to the clock on his phone, he’d been in the mine about an hour. It felt longer.
“I’m fine. I’m great. I’m waiting on a megaton of rock and dirt to fall on my head and crush my brain like a grape, but apart from that I’m hunky-dory. When are you going to get me out of here?”
At least Betty had called for help after she’d locked him in.
“Hunky-dory? Is that what all the cool kids are saying these days?” Matt was laughing at him. Seven years older than Harry, his cousin found every opportunity he could to call him a kid.
Harry worked to stop grinding his teeth to dust. “When this kid gets out of here, he’s going to kick your backside for taking the piss.”
There was laughter. “You might be good at that fancy martial arts stuff, Harry boy, but I can still take you in a fight.”
Yeah. Right. “What’s happening? What are you doing to get me out of here?”
“Well, here’s the thing.” Matt sounded like he was grinning. “The door is seriously warped. There’s a warning sign on it so that no one will shut it. Its spring-loaded, and about ten inches thick. Every time it slams shut, it shakes things loose above it. We need to make sure it’s possible to open it without causing the entrance to weaken. Last time this happened, it took two days to get it open.”
Harry shot to his feet. “Two days?”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared,” Matt mocked.
Harry’s super brain calculated the chances of a cave-in. He didn’t like the odds he came up with. The mine was over 150 years old. When was the last time there was a collapse? He needed more data. He reached for his phone, ready to do an internet search, but remembered he had no connection.
“I need more data. When was the last time this mine collapsed?” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice.
“Not since I’ve been the police in town.”
That was what? Seven years. That wasn’t long. Harry wasn’t reassured. He was going to die trapped underground. It was not the way he thought he would go. He assumed he’d die of unrequited love.
Matt’s voice cut through his anxiety. “We’ve got an expert coming to rescue you. They’ll come in from another entrance and lead you back out with them. You should be out of there in a few hours.”
Harry glared in the direction of his cousin’s voice. “You couldn’t have started with that instead of letting me think I’d be in here for days?”
All he heard was laughter. Harry plopped back to the ground.
“It gets better.” Matt’s delight at Harry’s predicament was beyond wearing thin. “Guess who the resident mine expert is?”
There was so much glee in Matt’s voice that Harry knew the answer. He closed his eyes and gave in to the wave of resignation that hit him. “Magenta’s coming to save me.”
“This is turning out to be the best laugh I’ve had since Flynn joined the school musical to impress a girl,” Matt said.
Harry resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall as he listened to his cousin laugh at his expense. For the first time since he’d made the decision to relocate to Invertary, Harry wondered at the wisdom of coming home.
4
Magenta arrived at the north-facing entrance of the mine to find a crowd had started to gather. She wasn’t surprised. The folk of Invertary were bred nosey. She dumped her backpack with her spelunking gear at her feet and sighed. This was not how she’d planned to spend her Saturday afternoon.
“Who’s the idiot who ignored the signs?” she asked Matt.
Apart from the huge red one that said, Danger—do not enter, there were at least half a dozen that told people not to shut the door.
Invertary’s entire police force grinned. “Listen.”
Magenta frowned but did as she was told. Her heart actually stopped cold in her chest as her jaw fell. A very familiar voice was echoing out of the mine. “Is that Harry?”
Matt nodded. The same stupid grin on his face. “I think he’s calculating the mass above his head and the probability of it falling on him before his rescue. He used to mutter like this when he was a kid. He doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. For years he thought Flynn and I had psychic powers because we knew everything he was thinking.”
Magenta frowned at him. She remembered Harry’s quirk—one of them—she just hadn’t realised that his cousin had used it to tease him. If she’d been younger, if she’d still been Harry’s friend, she would have taken issue with Matt.
“Harry’s to
o smart to get trapped in there.” She pointed at the old metal door and the many signs around it. “He can read, for a start. What happened?”
Matt cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s what happened.”
She peered around him to find a gleeful Betty. Magenta wasn’t convinced. The woman was under five feet tall, built like a cube and older than dirt. “How did she manage to shut the door? There was a huge rock propping it open.”
Betty flexed her puny white arms. “Thor there isn’t the only one with muscles.”
Matt shrugged his broad shoulders. “Don’t make me get a magnifying glass to verify that claim.”
Betty cackled at him. Magenta sighed. This was exactly what she didn’t need. An afternoon rescuing the man she’d spent the past few weeks avoiding. She narrowed her eyes at Betty. “This was no accident. You planned this.”
The old woman was delighted. “I couldn’t stand his pathetic attempts at getting your attention. So I helped.” She rubbed her hands together. “This should be good.”
Before Magenta could take a step towards the woman, Matt’s hand shot out to stop her. “Get in line. If I let you at her, I have to let everyone else with prior claim get at her too. I don’t have the resources to police that.”
“Fine.” Magenta pointed at Betty. “I’ll deal with you later.”
“Bring it on, lassie. I eat children like you for breakfast.” She turned her back on Magenta, pulled a smartphone out of her pocket and started to text. No doubt spreading the word of entertainment at the mine.
“I’ll go in the northern tunnels,” Magenta told Matt. She pointed up into the hills around the town. “It’s not far, but the route through the mine is winding. It should take me a couple of hours to get to him. Have you called the council surveyor? The whole entrance needs to be checked before we even try to open the door.”
Matt nodded. He ran a hand over his face. “I’m thinking we leave the door shut. The mines aren’t safe. People who want a look around can negotiate with the Andersons and go in through their business. I’m sure they won’t mind as long as it’s not all the time and doesn’t affect mushroom production. The people who know what they’re doing, like you, can go in through the tunnels.”
Magenta Mine: An Invertary Novella Page 2