The End of the World Is Bigger than Love

by Davina Bell

  The whole Why of it was a mash-up of tidal friction, sonic waves, gravity. The tilt of the Earth’s magnetic core in the face of that heartbeat of internet waves that had pulsed across the wet blue bits of the dear, sweet planet—waves that Pops had put in the water. And how they actually travelled, well, it belongs with all those science-y things we would have learned if we’d stayed in school, or if Pops had really gone into it all properly when he told us that something like this might happen.

  I know now that the water and everything in it rearranged itself, so that the bulge around the middle of the planet sloshed back towards the poles, which did something to the spinning, and I guess that’s why Pops had chosen our island so carefully, because we hardly felt a splash of it, even though, elsewhere, the ocean was splitting itself into three different oceans and whole countries were underwater, whole cities already being eaten by salt.

  I will say it again in case you missed it: the world had stopped turning, just like they say might happen in corny love songs if the lovers are ripped apart, and little did we know there were earthquakes rumbling all around the rest of the planet, like deep hunger pangs, and a blanket of fog was settling down on the top of the cold slabs of sea, like when you toss a doona up over your bed and it drifts down in perfect rumples that make you want to lie on top of it immediately.

  We were so used to everything breaking—glass and engines and branches and computers. But when the world broke down, we couldn’t believe it at first; it was like being told we had actually been ghosts all along, and who could take that with a shrug?

  The bear didn’t understand, couldn’t ever possibly have understood, and I’d be lying if I said that this didn’t make me feel suddenly, deeply good and, for a few hours there, I almost clean forgot that the bear was a Threat (capital T). When he waddled out from his snoozing, he was all confused and clingy, like a little kid the first time you take them to the movies and the lights go down and they want to climb onto your knee. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he was completely, pathetically gorgeous.

  I heard Winter explaining it to him later, what Pops had told us; at least as much as she could, and of course she had remembered more than I had—she always did.

  You might think that the most annoying thing about being stuck in the half-light of the after-sunset was not being able to see: having everything in a gloomy half-shadow, and missing the colours that come when light bounces around, or whatever it does—I want to say ‘refracting’? But to tell you the truth, it was exciting at first, the candles and the kerosene lamp, and us and the bear all cosy, as if we were having a sleepover in the school gym and the power had gone out, and the teacher had gone outside with a torch to fuss over a fuse box. That feeling you get when everyone says the things they usually only say at sleepovers or on late-night car rides.

  We ate the last of the jam I’d been saving, our spoons clinking against each other as they scraped round the jar. We talked about what might be coming next, what might be affected if the sun was stuck just below the horizon, and if right now you’re thinking, like, Ummm, photosynthesis?!, well, you’re a few steps ahead of us, and it wasn’t even that whole photosynthesis equation that needed figuring out—it was a thermal kind of question, which is just a fancy word for ‘heat’. That’s what was slowly draining away from this side of the poor old world, and waiting for us on the other side, six months from now, which, if Pops was right, was how long it would take for us to see sun again. When we did, it would beat down on us for another six months, during which time, well, things wouldn’t be great unless you were totally and completely into Death By Barbecue.

  At least, that’s what could have happened. But maybe you’ve guessed by now that this is where Pops and the bell tower come in.

  Winter

  I had gone out early to run it all away.

  In the green breath of forest air, I could pretend. That the full set of our secrets was still inside me, caked up the sides of my mind. That yesterday hadn’t happened. That I hadn’t told. That I wasn’t being pulled two ways, in half.

  But if I had the chance, would I swallow it back inside me?

  Were guilt and regret the same thing? It sounded like something Summer would have loved to debate. But we couldn’t. So I ran.

  When I was done, I went back to Edward’s bed and lay down.

  The half-light fringed everything orange, dulled everything mauve.

  He opened one eye, closed it and rumpled my hair.

  His hands, gentle with half-sleep and morning love. Pete still asleep in the crook of his knee.

  ‘You’re soft,’ he said. ‘Like droopy roses. Whatcha call ’em—petals.’

  His palms left star prints all over my skin.

  Until he ran his fingers through the gaps in my ribs, the dips like little graves.

  He was suddenly awake. He looked up at me. For the first time, I saw fear in his face.

  Eat, his eyes said. Please eat. For me?

  But it had become so easy not to. Like I had fitted the world into a music box, neat and turning. I didn’t need food to feel full.

  Lying there, I realised: whatever I had done, however bad I was, I still had this slippery magic. It didn’t matter that my heart was being stretched to breaking, the past on one side, the future on the other.

  I forgot it all when I was running. Each step, each breath, each empty day, I was turning myself into diamonds.

  I thought about the feeling I got when Summer ate while I watched. Clean, as if I were praying. I thought about an engine that runs on light. The long white robes of holy men. Repentance.

  Summer

  I got busy packing my knapsack, all the while imagining karate-kicking through the shreds of mist that floated along the beach on our way to Saving the World. Not that we would need that much once they came to rescue us, surely?

  Who exactly are ‘they’, you’re thinking. And I have to admit that I was also hazy on the details, but Pops had said we could trust the people who came to rescue us—and only them. ‘They will ask your mother’s middle name.’

  ‘June,’ I whispered to myself as I walked out the back to the Emporium to finally take that inventory of our supplies. ‘June, June, June.’

  And can you even imagine my intense and heart-rupturing joy when I discovered, behind some folding chairs and a piece of sacking, a waist-high fort of sweetened condensed milk, which is like heaven in a can, and if you’ve never tried it, do it immediately and don’t ever, both at the same time, it’s that good.

  ‘WINTER!’ I yelled, and my voice was sort of husky because I hadn’t used it much those past couple of days. I’d just been flying around in Colonel Mode through the half-light, and Winter had been—

  Where had she been? And where was she now?

  ‘WINTER,’ I yelled again, annoyed, because I wanted to crack that sweet milk open—was jittery with it, that need—but of course I couldn’t without her. Not that long before I had seen her put lentils in her mouth and chew them and spit them out and give them over to the bear to eat, and I know that sounds gross, but sometimes, let’s face it, love is gross.

  Perhaps it was the cold, and the half-dark, and the world changing so sort-of-unexpectedly, but from the moment the world stopped turning, their love seemed to glow, as if they had doused each other in brandy and set themselves alight like Christmas puddings, and that was how it seemed to me: that they were ringed in blue flames. And jammed up next to their fire, I was cold.

  I came across him, that bear, sleeping on his back by the stained-glass window, his mouth open so far I could have slipped a boiled egg right in, his arms out to the sides and bent up at the elbows, like the limbs of a cactus. He looked so harmless, but then again, so had Pops, asleep in his chair on a Sunday night, with his glasses crooked across his forehead.

  Edward’s heart was a wide-open target, practically a bullseye.

  I stood there for ages. Just looking.

  It would be so easy. I could run and get
The Knife from under my pillow—wouldn’t even need to sharpen it. I could imagine I was slicing a butter knife through the foil skin across the top of a tin of Milo. Lean onto the blade to push it down and through. I could pretend that the blood was treacle, gravy. I would tell Winter that he’d come at me with his claws—right at my face. That it was self-defence. We could leave, Winter snuggled into the nook of my neck, needy in grief, in my arms.

  My breath was coming fast. I could do it—I just knew.

  But as I turned to go and get The Knife, he gave a snuffle and a little yawn, and when I looked back, he was rubbing his paws across his eyes and for some reason I thought about Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web, that roly-poly pig, and dear old Fern, the girl who saves him from being chopped up into bacon; how he goes on to live a Full and Meaningful life, befriending all those rascally farm animals, loving that elegant spider.

  I shrugged and sighed and turned and grabbed a lamp and wriggled into an altar-cloth poncho and felt very hobbit-chic as I went outside to look for Winter. I shivered as I walked across the meadow to the river bend and, boy, was it all a-flurry out there, like a frozen-yoghurt van had showed up with free samples—birds were circling, going mad with it, the not-quite-night, and the owls’ hooting sounded even more hoarse than I did, so goodness knows how long they’d been at it, their croaks searching out the dawn. Above the water’s surface, there was a magic carpet of insects, just hanging there and rippling in sync—you could have sliced through them and come away with a wedge the size of half a wedding cake, they were that thick, and all along the riverbanks were the squirrels that Pops had obviously known were there for the trapping, but seeing them all lined up, like those cute mice from Brambly Hedge ready for a summer wedding on a mouse-made barge, well, I would rather have stuck my hand in a trap than gone about killing them. So I guess you can imagine my horror when, as I watched them fondly, imagining them decked out in top hats and tails, they all seemed to launch themselves into the water at once, like kids doing soldier drops at the local pool, except here are two things I learned right about then: squirrels can’t swim and they’re capable of suicide pacts.

  ‘WINTER!’ I screamed, dropping the light. ‘WINTER, please.’ And suddenly she was there, slipping out of the forest, easy as you like, alone, and though she wasn’t even sweating, when I picked up the lantern I could tell that she had run far.

  ‘Winter, what the hoop are you doing out running in this? We need to go to the bell tower, like, yesterday and set off the flare.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Winter.

  ‘What do you mean? We need to—you know what I’m talking about. Plus it’s getting colder by the second and that’s bad news for our hair—it’ll snap right off if we’re not careful, and then what? You know we couldn’t pull off pixie cuts. We’ve discussed this.’

  Winter shook her head. ‘I can’t leave. Edward is sleeping.’

  ‘Well, wake him up,’ I said grumpily, ‘though I’d like to point out that we haven’t even discussed whether he’ll actually be coming with us.’

  ‘I mean he’s asleep for the winter,’ she said.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be winter for, like, six months now. He can’t just snooze around for half a year like some unemployed surfer whose grandma’s left him an inheritance. Winter, do you hear what I’m saying? This is important. We have to get going. The things in the bell tower—don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying here.’

  Winter looked at me, then—looked straight at me for what felt like the first time in such a long time, and I felt fright run through me like ice-water and sick bite at my throat, because the pillows of her cheeks were gone and her eyes had dipped down into her head and the line of her jaw was furry like a bear’s and she was Thin (capital T). And she didn’t look like Winter anymore because she didn’t look like me anymore and I knew that she knew that—had known it way before I had.

  I wonder if you know of the type of pain I’m talking about—types, I guess, because there were so many, but the one I’ll start with is the pain of her spidery little arms, which, once I started, I couldn’t stop looking at, imagining pinching the biceps between my thumb and forefinger, how snugly they’d fit in that measly napkin ring of a circle. And then her collarbones, or rather, the hollow between them, like a perfect well just right for catching tears, which seemed sadder, even, than the collarbones themselves, like the wooden curves of quaint old archery bows squeezed under her skin. I’m not talking Auschwitz-thin or Horn of Africa–thin, but that deliberate, shrunken thin that says triumph and sadness at the same time, and being somewhere untouchable. I thought of all the time I’d spent glowering at that bear as he grew and realised I’d missed the whole point, which was that her knees bulged like round fruit, and there was space between her thighs for a dragonfly to pass through in that weird, jerky hover they do, and I had let that happen.

  I had to remind myself that Winter was there—she was under all that nothingness somewhere. But the more I looked, the more I could only see the cracks and dips of her skeleton pushing greedily through, and the fuzz all over her, like a rash or a secret coating to separate her even more from me.

  ‘You’re just scared,’ I hissed, wishing I could spit on myself for not ripping The Knife through that bear when I had the chance. ‘You’re like one of those women who stay in their houses for thirty years eating canned baked beans in a tatty old dressing-gown, staring out the window while hair grows on their faces. You’re a coward, Winter. You’ll regret it forever if you stay. If you even last that long, because what’s going to happen when you run out of food? That bear’s going to need to eat something, that’s all I’m saying, and by something I mean someone. Obviously.’

  ‘You’re talking about yourself,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re the one who’s scared to go—you always have been. But I’m not leaving now. I’m not leaving without him, and that doesn’t make me a coward. Besides, I don’t know how you can still trust Pops’s plan after…after everything. There’s no way I could still believe in him.’

  ‘’Course I can,’ I said hotly. ‘Of course you do.’

  But Winter just shook her head. ‘You do what you like, but please leave me out of it.’

  Well! You actually could not even compute my shock. It was like my skin had sloughed right off my body, right onto the floor in front of us. Winter had always agreed with me—always. But now…Not only was she flat-out challenging my Wisdom (capital W), there was something in her voice that I had never heard before, and my mind scrabbled around, trying to place it, and eventually it hit on what that something was, and it was steel.

  And maybe that was why I didn’t tell her about the condensed milk, even though I’d been busting to, even though she needed it, but who knows if she would have drunk it—if she was shrunken with love sick, or if she had turned away from food to cut herself off from the world, to climb to the top of a tiny castle and sit spinning gold, only letting things in and out just as she liked, even her breath.

  Maybe that’s why I stalked back to Bartleby, steaming under my poncho, numb and rubbery with pain and disbelief, and waited until she had gone to find that bear. Only then did I sneak off and grab a can and take it over to the piano and open the wooden lid with a bang and climb on in and shut the lid so everything was honeysuckle-sweetness and dark. As I slurped on the holes I’d punched in the milk tin, it was like I was sucking Winter into me, and it wasn’t just the ghost wisp of her that had been skittering around with Edward all summer. It was all of her, full and pure and rosy, and it ran through me, and my brain lit up like fairy lights and I didn’t empty-ache anymore. Even the sick feeling afterwards didn’t stick as much as the golden happiness and the voice in my head that said, Yes, yes, one more mouthful. And it felt deeply good in a way that things often do if they’re not deeply good for you, and everything slid away.

  I don’t need you with me to have you, I told Winter in my mind. You are part of me always. It isn’t a cho
ice.

  Winter

  Summer

  Sure, I could have stayed, but the fact is that I didn’t.

  I left, and not because of the depths of my love; not because I wanted Winter to have her Freedom and Independence and to develop a sense of Self and Identity strong enough that, if she chose, she would have no trouble filling in last-minute as the lead singer in a Queen cover band and belting out the entirety of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and in hindsight it’s a shame that we didn’t take our karaoke machine to Bartleby because the acoustics would have been amazing.

  I left because I was angry and because Winter had chosen Not Me, and who wants to hang around, starving to death on regurgitated lentils, when you are clearly unwanted? I left because there was a box in the bell tower that contained three things and, to be honest, I thought at least one of them would bring me back to Winter soon enough anyway, on a chopper with a rope ladder that could dangle down for her to climb and definitely could not support a bear, and by then, she would surely have tired of the whole co-habiting thing and be busting to go get some mac and cheese with me and Girl Talk.

  I can tell you’re going mad for knowing what those three things in the bell tower were, and here’s what they weren’t: frankincense, gold and myrrh. By now you are saying, Get to the point, Summer!, which is what Pops would grumble whenever he was really listening to me, and admittedly that wasn’t often, but when he did, I just fizzed up with wanting to tell him everything, and that’s one of the reasons I left Winter behind: because, even after everything, I still loved him.