Iris and the Tiger

by Leanne Hall

  ‘Mum, if Dad has something to say, why don’t you put him on?’

  ‘Your father and I are in agreement that you should leave the developers alone and concentrate on what’s happening inside the house.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Iris did not agree, but she knew not to mess with her mum when she used that tone. She felt like someone had poured quick-setting concrete over her.

  ‘Okay, then, thanks for calling, Mum. Aunt Ursula needs me. I better go.’

  Only after she hung up did Iris remember that she’d wanted to ask about the Chen family fortune.

  Iris didn’t try to stay awake on the drive home. The light ebbed out of the sky as they left Barcelona. Headlights swooped out of the darkness and away. Raindrops spattered the windows again.

  ‘Somebody should have warned you about what you would find at my home.’

  Iris opened her eyes. Aunt Ursula was propped on the seat next to her. Her face was powdery-white, her hair jet-black; she looked straight out of a silent movie.

  ‘It gave you a big shock, whatever happened in my brother’s studio,’ she said. ‘And all your questions about the paintings—I know you know.’

  Iris tried to reply, but she wasn’t as awake as she thought she was. Aunt Ursula pushed herself upright.

  ‘I was very nervous about having a child visit. Jordi is different, I’ve known him forever. But I had no idea how to entertain a young girl. I fear I got it very wrong, Iris.’

  Iris recalled the over-the-top dinner party on the first night, and Aunt Ursula pretending to melt, and her ridiculous poem and all the cake. And those were just the non-magical things.

  ‘I love your house,’ she said eventually. ‘I love Spain. This is the biggest adventure I’ve ever had. But how come my mother didn’t tell me how unusual Bosque de Nubes is?’

  Aunt Ursula half-opened her eyes. Streetlights lit up her face at intervals.

  ‘Your mother couldn’t see anything. There’s no magic inside her. I know you are trying hard to understand the paintings, Iris. But—’

  Aunt Ursula’s face went very still.

  ‘But what?’ asked Iris.

  Aunt Ursula began to snore lightly.

  Much later, they stopped on the outskirts of Sant Joan, at a petrol station. Aunt Ursula was still fast asleep with a slack mouth.

  Señor Garcia turned the car off and peered through the windscreen, trying to catch the attendant’s attention. When no one came, he got out of the car and began to fill the tank himself.

  Iris followed him out. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.

  Señor Garcia pulled a note from his wallet for the petrol. The station attendant stared through the window.

  Iris took the note and trudged into the shop. There were shelves of chips and chocolate inside, bottles of oil and magazine racks. It was the same as the petrol stations at home, only the signs were in Spanish.

  The attendant watched Iris all the way to the restroom doors, hissing through his teeth. He was still staring when she emerged again.

  Señor Garcia had finished filling the tank and was now squeegeeing the windows. Another car pulled up on the opposite side of the pump.

  Iris paid the attendant as quickly as she could. As she left, she glanced up at the circular mirror near the automatic doors. It was supposed to catch shoplifters, but instead Iris saw the attendant’s reflection. He was making the sign of the cross, from forehead to chest and across to each shoulder.

  When Señor Garcia swung the car in front of the house, a spectral Elna was there to greet them, holding a flickering candle in a jar. She wore a pink velvet tracksuit, but her face was made up as if she was headed to a nightclub. Her usual gold cross hung around her neck.

  ‘Electricity gone. Maybe a tree fallen down,’ she said, as Señor Garcia and Iris climbed out of the car.

  The wind was whipping up anything in its path. A plastic plant pot clattered across the verandah, and the surrounding trees made sounds like crashing waves.

  Leaning against Elna’s legs was a fold-up wheelchair. She dragged it to the car door.

  ‘This always happen when she go outside. I’m not a nurse, you know.’

  Elna began to help Aunt Ursula into the chair. Iris was shocked to see how pale and weak her great-aunt was after their day trip.

  ‘Iris!’ Aunt Ursula called out in a whispery voice.

  Iris leant around the car door.

  ‘Once I saw an infinity of doors in the house. Doors that opened onto doors that opened onto doors—impossible to see where they ended. I’ve searched for years, but they’re no longer in the same place. Do tell me if you come across them, won’t you, Iris?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Ursula. Of course I will.’

  ‘We’ve got it, Iris. Go inside,’ ordered Elna.

  Señor Garcia shooed Iris off with his white-gloved hands. It had turned into a freezing night, so Iris ran up the front stairs.

  It was late when Iris woke to the sensation of steel jaws on her foot. For months she’d been getting cramps in her legs at night. Growing pains, apparently, which was rubbish. Growing up shouldn’t hurt this much.

  Iris pulled on her toes until the cramp eased. She tried the bedside lamp—the power was back on. Outside, the wind had eased.

  Iris observed the foggy night through the guestroom window. The mountains were fuzzy and the box hedges around the garden were like castle walls. There was a golden flicker at the heart of the garden. Someone was down there.

  Iris slipped on her sneakers and added a hoodie over her pyjamas. Señor Garcia had given her a torch because of the blackout, but it cast a feeble light.

  Iris emerged onto the balcony. Sleepily, she walked up to the gold-and-velvet barricade that kept the east wing separate. The mysterious east wing. The black beyond was so dense it was almost solid. The darkness pulled on her but then something rustled loudly behind her.

  ‘Dog, is that you?’

  Even as she said it, Iris knew it wasn’t the shadowhound. Was it something downstairs?

  She faltered at the top of the stairs, prey to the same slithery feeling she’d encountered on her first day at Bosque de Nubes. Another rustle. The carpet on the staircase rearranged its pattern. Leaves and flowers transformed into gold skulls against the red background.

  Iris’s breath snagged.

  It’s just the magic, she told herself. She started down the staircase. It means you no harm, it’s just doing its thing.

  A whisper laced the still air. A harder sound rose up. Iris glanced over the handrail and saw the tiles of the lobby move about like Scrabble pieces. They slid past each other until they formed letters:

  I. R. I. S.

  The tiles kept changing place—adding a D and an A—but Iris wasn’t waiting. She was filled with the same inexplicable fear as when she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, the sketch of her own face in Uncle James’s studio.

  She ran down the remaining stairs and across the lobby. The front door swung open and she ran through. Torchlight saw her down the side of the house, and past the birdbath and veggie patch.

  The grassy slope at the rear of the house flashed under her feet. After she’d run through a gap in the hedge, she stopped.

  A fire burned at the centre of the ornamental garden, at the foot of the horned statue. People were gathered around it, silhouettes wrapped in flames and smoke.

  Someone in a black hood spoke and the group turned to look at Iris. A shape broke off and crunched across the gravel. Iris froze.

  ‘It’s little Eeris! Eeris!’

  Elna tottered towards her in tight jeans and a duffel coat, her hair pulled into a high ponytail, long silver strands dangling from her ears.

  ‘Shhhh!’ she said, even though she was the one being loud.

  The maid gave Iris a fierce one-handed hug that smushed Iris’s face into her coat. In her other hand, Elna clasped a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  ‘Little Australian, come,’ she ordered.

 
Iris was dragged to the bonfire, which was set up in a rusted 44-gallon drum. She wanted nothing more than to go upstairs to bed, but Elna was determined for her to meet her friends.

  Alex and Xavi lounged at the foot of the statue, sharing a cigarette. They weren’t that interested in Iris, and she didn’t blame them.

  Sophia, freckle-faced and chubby, warmed her hands at the fire. She lurched towards Iris, saying something in Spanish and then bossing Elna into translating.

  ‘She say: So really cute.’ Elna swigged from her bottle. Her cheeks were flushed and she kept looking sideways at Alex. ‘Light off!’ She slapped Iris’s torch. ‘It is secret, Señorita Freer not to know. Señor Garcia not to know.’

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ Iris asked.

  Alex whispered in Xavi’s ear and both men snickered. Iris had an awful premonition: this is what the girls at school would want to do soon, drink in the dark with boys who were more interested in talking to each other. Violet had already started hanging around the bus stop longer after school, trying to get the attention of the boys walking past.

  ‘Party!’ Sophia said suddenly in English, surprising even herself.

  ‘We are having weather party,’ Elna waved her hand. ‘There is maybe clouds in the forest tonight, the mists.’

  ‘Party,’ Sophia said, quieter this time. She stared intently into the bonfire.

  ‘Really there is no mist tonight, it is only a dud.’ Elna looked morose. ‘But what are you doing here, Eeris?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Iris felt small. ‘I had a cramp.’

  ‘I don’t mean tonight, I mean here, in the house of the witch.’

  The group grew quiet and looked at Iris.

  ‘What witch?’ A chill had spread through her body.

  ‘Señorita Freer, of course. She who is never older, never die. Here, where there is not God.’

  Elna talked to the sky. Her English had gone wonky, along with her sense of balance.

  ‘Things that should not happen and why? Spells! Spells is why.’

  ‘I hear she take the power from the young and give to herself, the old.’ Alex stood up and straightened his jacket. ‘I speak good English,’ he said to the others, who were dumbstruck. ‘Like a vampir, she take the power, the energies, from children to keep herself beautiful. My mother tell story of woman who do this and stay alive hundred of years.’

  ‘Why I start work when I am in high school?’ Elna seized control once more. ‘Because it is good to have young person here! You can see tomorrow how she is—miracle!—so young and energy again.’

  Elna drank from her bottle again. ‘That is why are you here, Eeris.’ She reeled, almost dancing in the firelight. ‘You are wood for the fire!’

  As if on cue the bonfire sparked upwards. Alex sat down again. Sophia’s mouth hung open in a stupid way.

  Iris filled with the impulse to charge Elna and push her over.

  Why was she being so mean?

  A sob worked its way up from her gut. She’d finally been getting on better with Aunt Ursula, which had been a relief when her parents had been so indifferent.

  She turned and ran before the sob escaped.

  It was very early the next morning when tapping woke Iris. She pulled a pillow over her head, but the tapping continued.

  Iris dragged herself to the window and saw Jordi below, throwing a handful of gravel at her window, bit by tiny bit.

  He mimed that he was waiting for Iris in the stables. Iris signalled that she would be down in ten minutes.

  As she showered, Iris thought about the bonfire and how it had made everything spookier than it really was.

  Aunt Ursula doesn’t keep young people around her to steal their youth, she thought. Nothing happened to Mum all those years ago.

  Everything felt different in daylight. She’d been an idiot to let Elna and her dumb friends upset her over nothing.

  The east wing was still dark. The carpet had its usual leafy pattern and the floor tiles were abstract once more. Iris was about to go downstairs when she noticed something out of place on the opposite side of the balcony. It was almost as if someone had laid a mattress out to air, only the mattress was red, marbled with white and in the shape of a—

  ‘Steak.’

  Iris put a hand over her nose and mouth. There was a raw steak the size of a mattress draped over the railing. The giant piece of meat oozed liquid onto the carpet and smelt terrible.

  Iris hoped Aunt Ursula would make Elna clean up the mess. It would serve her right.

  Both Turrón and Miró stood at the front of the stable, saddled and waiting. Jordi waited nearby, a spare helmet in his hand.

  ‘No way,’ said Iris.

  ‘Hear me out.’

  Iris regretted teaching Jordi that particular expression. He was a sponge when it came to English—anything Iris said would pop out of Jordi’s mouth the next day.

  ‘There won’t be any hearing you out. I’m not getting on one of those things.’

  Turrón threw her a wild, contemptuous glance that Jordi did not notice.

  ‘You want to find the eyeball tree, yes? My father says he has seen it once, and tell me where. But it is too far to walk. Better to ride.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at school, anyway? It’s Tuesday, you should be there. Don’t come crying to me if you…fail your Maths test and your dad gets mad.’

  ‘My father says it is okay, because I have a new friend at Bosque de Nubes.’

  ‘Cheating!’ Iris said. Now she felt even more guilty, if that was possible. ‘Don’t say nice things. You won’t convince me.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see the eyeball tree?’

  Turrón high-stepped impatiently and Iris flinched.

  ‘I swear on my new football that you will be safe.’

  Iris felt crappy.

  ‘It’s not the eyeball tree, Jordi,’ she admitted. ‘The tree is just a clue. When I was looking at the real painting yesterday in Barcelona, what I was really looking for was the tiger. That’s what I’ve been looking for all along. And I think the tiger could be near the eyeball tree.’

  ‘Un tigre?’ Jordi’s whole body went slack with wonder.

  ‘Yeah. A tiger. I realise it’s not in the picture, but it’s in the title, and Uncle James called it that for a reason. The paintings don’t match up exactly with real life, so there’s no reason why there isn’t a tiger out there somewhere in the forest—I can feel it’s true—and Aunt Ursula is always saying that my opinions about art are what’s important, so—’

  Iris stopped because Jordi was flapping his hands so hard she feared he would soon take off.

  ‘Iris! Iris! Dios mio… Last night we come out to the stables because the horses are so, so afraid of something. They are walking up, down, and making noise, being on two legs. Papa look behind the stable and he find some poop…big poop.’

  Jordi’s accent when he said poop was nothing short of hilarious, but Iris barely paid it attention. She was glad he hadn’t questioned why she was so obsessed with the tiger.

  ‘It’s not fox poop, or horse poop, so what is it? Come on, Iris, what is it?’

  ‘It was the tiger,’ she said.

  ‘Yes!’ Jordi slapped his hands together. ‘This is so dangerous!’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Iris started laughing about the poop, even as she was trying to be serious. ‘We’re only looking, right? Like in a safari, where you watch from a distance. That’s not dangerous at all.’

  Jordi would not be deterred. ‘We will have to travel deep into the forest. On recon. Like in Maximum Mission: Countdown when Da Silva and his twin brother cross the Alps to look for the bomb factory?’

  Iris sighed.

  Marcel had stumbled across the eyeball tree—once, five years ago—near the bridge on the old dirt road that used to be the only way into Sant Joan.

  Iris and Jordi picked up the village trail behind the cottage. Iris was concentrating hard so she wouldn’t slide off Turrón. She’d never rid
den a horse before and it was terrifying.

  Jordi, on the other hand, was so comfortable on Miró he could have been drinking a cup of tea up there.

  ‘Loose hands,’ he said. ‘Grip with your knees. And do this.’

  Jordi leant forward and patted Miró’s neck, but there was no way Iris could do that. Not only was she worried about falling off and being kicked by the horses, she was also terrified the horses might start talking or tap-dancing any moment now.

  Anything’s possible at Bosque de Nubes.

  They took the path through light scrub, with the real forest way off in the distance. Iris gradually learnt to use her knees and sit up straight.

  ‘So, you really think the tiger is near the eyeball tree?’ asked Jordi.

  ‘Maybe.’ Iris was no longer really sure. The supposed droppings behind the stable had thrown her. ‘I don’t know. The eyeball tree is one of the easiest things in the painting to recognise, so I thought it would be a good place to start. I don’t have many other good ideas.’

  The day was so bright, the sky so clear and blue, that Iris forgot the dim events of the night before, and the difficulty of their search.

  Jordi tried to teach her a song about an elephant and a spider as they rode, but she couldn’t say the Spanish words nearly fast enough.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Iris pointed at the ruin to their right.

  ‘The old house.’

  The building was ancient and crumbling. Jordi explained it had been built long before the main house. The house had dirt floors and the garden had crept inside—there wasn’t any glass left in the windows, or doors, to stop it. Inside, the rooms lined the edges of a courtyard. A gnarled tree grew in the centre, its branches making a lacy green ceiling.

  It’s Aunt Ursula’s dream, Iris realised. Everything grown over and returned to nature.

  Iris crouched to look at an elaborate sculpture of a turtle’s head, poking out from the wall. The turtle’s mouth gushed a stream of water that disappeared mid-air. The ground was dry underneath.

  ‘Iris!’