by Leanne Hall
Iris knelt for a closer look. It had to be a trick. The feet parts of the boots were so realistic they even had toes and toenails. Whoever made them had done a really good job.
She reached out. The toes twitched. Like they were alive. She jumped away with a bouncing heart.
When she dared, Iris crept up to the boots again. The leather was soft and old and wrinkled. Compared with the shimmery wonder of the ants, and the passing oddness of the leafy banister, the boots were solid and most definitely there. Their tongues hung open; some of the toenails bore traces of nail polish.
An idea slipped into Iris’s mind. They might be comfortable. Maybe they even wanted to be worn.
Iris kicked off her sneakers and slipped her left foot into a boot. It was warm and snug. Her toes lined up neatly inside the boot’s toes. Iris put on the other boot and tied the laces.
She walked up and down. The leather felt like it had merged with her skin, as if she wasn’t wearing anything on her feet at all. It was the most pleasing feeling in the world.
‘Where will we go?’
Iris remembered the vast gardens viewed from the guestroom window and wandered further from the house with choppy strides. It was so easy to take big steps in the boots.
Almost as if they’re doing the walking for me, thought Iris.
When she glanced back, she saw Aunt Ursula in the kitchen window, working at a bench. Iris tried to reverse direction, but the feet-boots wouldn’t cooperate. A chill ran through her.
The boots marched her down the grassy garden slope. Perhaps Iris was reading too much into it, but the boots seemed bossy. The sun was high and bright in the sky. Iris’s forehead grew damp. She grabbed at a low-hanging branch to stop herself moving forward but couldn’t keep a grip. The branch whipped back into place.
A towering hedge wall loomed. Iris’s thighs already ached from trying to change direction, so she adopted a new theory: give in to the boots.
They took her around the hedge and into an enclosed garden. The garden was beautiful but neglected. Past a fountain and a sundial and straggly rose bushes lining the gravel paths.
At the centre of the garden was a statue of a nude woman who pointed up at the sky.
The feet-boots moved relentlessly towards an arch cut into the far hedge. Iris cricked her neck turning to look at the statue on the tall pedestal. From this angle Iris saw horns curling from a spot behind her ears. Creepy.
The statue’s finger had moved to point in the direction they were travelling. Iris blinked. Sunrays sparkled across her vision and she felt tingly all over. She began to feel quite, quite strange—and not in a fun way.
She passed under the arch and into a field with waist-high grass. The sky was a piercing blue. The jagged line of forest was much closer now.
‘I don’t want to go in there,’ she said out loud, in case the feet-boots could hear.
If they could, they didn’t listen.
She was taken right to the edge of the forest. Even seeing how ordinary it all was—black trunks, tangled branches, ferny undergrowth—didn’t make Iris feel any better. A trickle of sweat made its way down her spine. It was all too clear now that it had been a big mistake to put the boots on.
They followed a dirt path leading to a wire fence. When Iris realised that the fence made an enclosure, she dug her heels in. It made no difference. The feet-boots took her through a door and into the wire cage.
Dandelions and weeds pushed through the green lawn. Ghostly white lines still marked the boundaries. Across the middle was a net that sagged to the ground. The umpire’s high chair was equally bedraggled. Iris was standing on a tennis court.
She took a few steps forward and realised that the feet-boots were no longer walking for her. Behind her, something cut through the air with a whoosh, followed by the definite thwack of a tennis ball hitting racket strings.
Iris whirled to stare at the empty court, then crouched, expecting to feel the sting of a ball thumping into her at any second.
It never happened. Another thwack at the opposite end of the court. Iris lifted her head and stood up.
A sunflower sprouted in the end zone. It was tall, taller than Iris. The flower raised a paddle-shaped leaf and a scrap of yellow flew above Iris’s head. It reached the other end of the court, where another even bigger sunflower was waiting with two leaves raised, its yellow head bobbing.
Iris stumbled to the sidelines.
‘Okay, okay, okay!’ she whispered to herself.
Giant flowers. Playing tennis. Sure.
The ball whizzed back and forth until, eventually, it slammed into the net. The taller sunflower raised both leaves to its face in dismay, while the other punched the air in triumph.
The tennis ball rolled to Iris’s feet. When she reached down to throw it back, it just bounced and dribbled along the ground. The sunflowers now stood motionless and blank-faced and their leaves hung by their sides. The landscape was even parts of green lawn and blue sky, almost as if it had been designed that way.
Iris blinked.
She looked down at the feet-boots. They didn’t feel warm anymore.
She moved towards the gate and the boots didn’t stop her.
At first Iris only dared to walk. But the feet-boots let her go, so she broke into a run, away from the forest’s edge. Only the grass minded, catching on her ankles as she raced past.
Iris slept on the unfamiliar bed, buried under the heavy quilt. She woke in the late afternoon, when the light slanting through the lace curtains had begun to pale.
The remains of a dream flickered at the edges of her mind. Something about being late for a test, and everyone in her class laughing at her because her head had inflated to the size of a large beach ball.
Iris lay still. Memories of the flight and her arrival and the ants returned. When she recalled the feet-boots, she leant out of bed to check if they were on the floor where she’d left them.
Nothing.
Iris didn’t take much comfort from their absence. Deep down she knew that the boots and the man-sized sunflowers were only the start of it— Bosque de Nubes was hiding more surprises. She just didn’t know what they were.
Before she straightened, Iris spied three letters gouged into the wooden bed leg. J—E—N. Her mum had used a sharp tool—a compass point or a Stanley knife—to scrape the beginning of her name, Jennifer. It was a good thing Mum kept her maiden name, thought Iris, because otherwise she would have become ‘Jen Chen’.
The more she looked at the etching, the more Iris filled with irritation. Her parents hadn’t prepared her for this trip at all. They’d given her confusing and conflicting instructions and, most importantly, they had not prepared her for what could really happen at Bosque de Nubes.
She found her phone in her backpack and waited for her messages to ping through, but there was nothing. Nothing from her parents, and nothing from Violet. That’s funny, she thought, and then realised she had no reception.
Iris was pretty sure she’d seen an old-fashioned phone in the corridor, just outside her door.
‘Hello, Mum,’ she said as she walked there, in a far more sarcastic tone than she would dare to use in real life. ‘I wonder if you forgot to tell me that the normal laws of nature don’t apply at Aunt Ursula’s house?’
The phone sat on a small table with a sunken seat, and instead of buttons it had a wheel. Iris lifted the receiver to her ear but the line was silent—no dial tone at all. A closer examination revealed that the phone wasn’t plugged into the wall; its cord had been chewed, ending in a frayed, wiry mess.
Iris sat on the sunken seat and felt her irritation melt away. What was the point? They were too far away to help her, anyway.
To her left was the roped-off corridor, still pitch dark. It was newly sinister after the kidnapping-by-shoes.
Maybe it leads to a black hole, thought Iris. A black hole where all the children who wandered off into the mists live.
It was obvious that her mum had been del
iberately keeping secrets from her about Bosque de Nubes, perhaps guessing correctly she would have been too chicken to come here if she’d known more beforehand.
Returning to her guestroom, Iris noticed a trail of paper arrows arranged on the carpet. After five arrows was a notice written in Aunt Ursula’s elegant hand: All Your Costume Supplies This Way.
The arrows continued around the next corner to a small, disorderly space full of clothes. Pants hung next to skirts crammed next to dresses stuffed next to scarves. There were men’s clothes and women’s clothes, and a seething pile of shoes. In dim corners were shoeboxes, handbags, fairy lights and several broken tennis racquets.
Iris looked at the mess, already feeling tired. What was the theme again? Aunt Ursula wanted her to make a costume out of this stuff? She’d rather go back to bed.
A gong sounded in the distance downstairs. It struck again and again.
Iris left the wardrobe and went to the landing. Señor Garcia stood below in the lobby, dinner gong in hand. He was still wearing his navy uniform.
Aunt Ursula posed halfway up the stairs, her hand on her hip like a fashion model. Her long black dress trailed over the red carpet.
‘Iris, are you ready?’ she called out. ‘Our guests will be here soon.’
Iris fell away before she could be spotted. It hadn’t occurred to her there would be other guests coming to the party.
‘I know you’re there, dear! Iris?’
Reluctantly, Iris crept up again and looked through the balcony bars. When Aunt Ursula saw her she threw her arms up dramatically. The chandelier cast fragments of light upon her stricken face. What was that under her nose?
‘Oh, Iris!’ she cried, and sank into her pooling black dress. ‘I’m melting, I’m melting!’
Iris couldn’t see Aunt Ursula’s legs. It’s a trick, she told herself. Don’t fall for it.
‘Help me, oh, ohhh…’
Aunt Ursula tilted sideways and collapsed into a puddle of silk, her arms still held high. Her expression settled into a look of peace, eyes shut.
Iris stood up, mildly concerned.
Aunt Ursula opened one eye, then the other. She leapt to her very solid, unmelted feet, and squinted up at the balcony.
‘Are you not dressed for dinner yet? Whatever is taking you so long?’
The ground-floor dining room was huge, not that Iris could see much of it with her head encased in an orb of white tissue paper. After drawing two eyes and a grinning mouth on the Chinese lantern, she’d poked some eyeholes as well, but they weren’t much use once her head was inside. A pair of plain leggings and a striped poncho completed her outfit.
From the little Iris could see, she made out at least ten people seated at the long dining table.
‘You are all a great disappointment to me, I must say. Except for young Iris, of course.’
Aunt Ursula’s voice cut through the terrible music that was playing. It was worse than the jazz-rock fusion Iris’s dad liked, which was saying something.
If you were only listening to Aunt Ursula talk, Iris thought distractedly, you could imagine you were talking to a much younger woman.
‘When I was living in Paris,’ continued Aunt Ursula, ‘we used to have surreal dinner parties all the time, and the costumes were of a verrryy high standard. Iris will now give a speech about her artistic statement.’
‘What?’
Iris was fast becoming claustrophobic inside the lantern.
Someone that sounded suspiciously like Jordi snorted from the end of the table.
‘Stand up straight, dear, we can’t hear you. Project your voice!’
‘I don’t have a speech prepared, and I don’t even know what sorr…surry…whatever means,’ Iris said. If she tried to stand again in this stupid lantern, she would surely fall over. ‘I HAD A DREAM ABOUT HAVING A DISGUSTING GIANT HEAD. THAT’S ALL.’
‘And that is an important lesson for everyone present, wouldn’t you say?’ pronounced Aunt Ursula. ‘Disgust is my favourite emotion. I will explain what surreal means later, but dinner is now served. Iris, you may want to remove your head.’
The living guests were only seven in number, and the remaining ‘guests’ turned out to be mannequins. There were mannequins between Jordi and Marcel, and next to Señor Garcia. Aunt Ursula had glued a moustache on her lip. The room had been lit by dozens of lamps dotted here and there. There was a starched napkin folded into a swan shape and three plates in front of Iris, and more pieces of silver cutlery than seemed necessary.
Jordi waved discreetly from the far end of the table. His hair had been neatly parted and combed.
Iris waved back, relieved that he was there.
Her attention was then drawn towards the man and woman flanking Aunt Ursula.
‘You look amazing, sweetie. Just a treat,’ the woman said in a nasal American accent. She was cheerful and plump and middle-aged, with waves of unmoving shiny red hair. Her costume was a homemade placard around her neck that read Nightmare. ‘Puts us to shame, that’s for sure.’
Iris flushed.
‘I’m Shirley Dangercroft.’ The red-haired woman extended her hand until Iris shook it, then pointed to her right. ‘My husband, Zeke. We’re the neighbours. A mile west. Hard to believe that qualifies us as neighbours.’
She turned to Aunt Ursula.
‘And I believe I know what surreal means, Mizz Freer. It means “painting with a real sense of imagination”, like your brother did. And it means “unexpected things”, like your moustache.’
Aunt Ursula snorted and looked unimpressed.
Shirley’s husband (grey suit, pink tie, no discernible costume at all) ripped apart a bread roll. He had a shiny face and head.
‘I got no imagination at all, young lady, I’ll admit that,’ he said. ‘Zero creativity too. Numbers, that’s more my thing. Do you like maths?’
Iris shook her head. Charcoal paper streamers flew up as Elna stomped into the room, carrying a silver serving tray and wearing a pair of pantaloons made from brown feathers. A necklet of similar feathers, a hessian tunic and an owl mask pushed above her forehead completed her look. As if on cue, the cats-playing-violins music transformed into a series of cymbal clashes.
‘Your help is as pretty as a painting!’ exclaimed Shirley Dangercroft.
Elna scowled, but Shirley was not cowed in the slightest.
‘I swear she belongs in one of your brother’s paintings! I always wanted to own a real James Freer painting. Did I ever tell you that, Mizz Freer? It’s been a dream of mine for a real long time.’
Aunt Ursula narrowed her eyes. She’d added a bowler hat to her formal black gown, and even with her fake moustache she was dignified.
‘Dreams are not wants, Mrs Dangercroft,’ she said. ‘They are not objects or comforts. Dreams are the sneaky messengers of your mind. Dreams are the squirming pit of worms you refuse to look at when you’re awake. Dreams show you everything you’re hiding from.’
Zeke Dangercroft nearly choked on a piece of bread. ‘Hiding? What would we be hiding from? Ha ha!’ He poured himself more wine.
If it wasn’t already obvious, it soon become very apparent from the sloppy way Elna delivered their soup bowls that she was in a filthy mood.
‘Gracias,’ Iris said when she received hers, copying Jordi. Elna glared at Iris as if she were to blame for the feathered pants.
The soup was lumpy and radioactive blue. Steam rose from the bowl.
Ursula took a mouthful. ‘Dreams do not behave, my friends. And sometimes reality does not behave, either.’
Shirley Dangercroft forgot her shock and applauded.
‘You’re all so artistic, I swear. I feel so boring. There’s so much—colour at Biscuit Der News.’
Shirley was right. The dining room walls and most of the furniture had also been draped in swathes of the charcoal-coloured paper. A random collection of objects hung from the roof, strung up with wool: silk roses, a wooden skittle, a toy dinosaur, a fish skeleton, a magn
ifying glass.
Marcel ate his soup and talked rapidly in Spanish to Señor Garcia, who was as silent as ever. Iris still felt wary around Marcel. He seemed as nice as Jordi, really—he also smiled a lot and used his hands when he talked—but she still remembered how furious he’d been on the phone.
Who, or what, could have made him so angry?
Iris could not convince herself to taste the blue soup, but Shirley Dangercroft had no such qualms.
‘It tastes normal,’ she babbled. ‘Or I’m almost sure it tastes normal. But my eyes are telling me that it doesn’t.’
Iris leant towards Aunt Ursula and spoke in a low voice.
‘Aunt Ursula, is there a phone I can call my parents on? I was supposed to call them as soon as I arrived.’
In the back of Iris’s mind was the idea that she could ask her parents to change her flight home to much earlier, if only she could describe to them exactly how freaked out she was by Bosque de Nubes.
‘There is no phone.’ Aunt Ursula didn’t look at her.
It was hard for Iris not to sound annoyed. ‘I found one upstairs.’
‘Then use that one.’
‘It’s broken. There are blue and red wires coming out of the cord.’
‘Ahh!’ Aunt Ursula threw down her napkin in disgust. ‘Reynaldo, darling, find the trap and go upstairs. That damn thing has been chewing on cords again. It favours the dark, so check the east wing first. You’ll need a torch.’
‘Is that the corridor near my room?’ asked Iris. ‘Why is it blocked off?’
‘The floorboards are rotten almost all the way through. You mustn’t go in there. Reynaldo is light on his feet and he knows where to step.’
Iris nodded. Señor Garcia bowed to the dinner party and left. Aunt Ursula slid back her chair and tapped her spoon against a glass.
‘I wish to tell you of a vision I had last night.’ Aunt Ursula had her honeyed stage voice on again. The lamplight erased her wrinkles. Zeke Dangercroft forgot his soup in an instant.
‘I dreamt that I was flying above Bosque de Nubes,’ Aunt Ursula said. ‘Down the driveway towards the house. The garden was overgrown, weeds and vines everywhere, as if the forest were trying to take over the estate. When I got closer to the house I could see it was in ruins. The roof had fallen in, no glass left in the windows. I flew through the front door and there were trees growing inside, wallpaper ripped, vases smashed, paintings ruined. Leaves and dust everywhere.’