by Averil Kenny
Raff circled his arms around imaginary passengers, nodding, and Fable rolled her eyes.
‘Actually, my mother sent me to bring Adriana and her friends home tonight.’
‘I see, so there will be groupies, after all. The ball doesn’t officially let out until one o’clock, though, looks like you’ll have to keep the pumpkin running.’
‘How was your graduation?’
‘Like a successful parole hearing after many botched escape attempts.’
It was Raff’s turn to laugh.
Fable held up her rolled certificate. ‘But at least I have this now. Rumour has it this is the Scroll of Power! Did you see me graduating tonight?’
‘It’s hard to miss you these days, Fable.’
Fable braced against the shiver that ran down her spine at the familiar gentleness returning to his tone.
When she didn’t reply, he said, ‘And how was your after-party?’
‘Tolerable, until I ran out of tolerance. We’ve reached the pairing-off stage. A wallflower can’t even find a corner to hide in now that everyone’s making out.’
‘No one I know, I hope.’
‘The two school captains were trying to rub their last remnants of prestige together earlier.’
‘That doesn’t sound like my sister, I’m sure you mean the vice-captains.’
‘I’d better say yes, since I know you’re not opposed to dragging girls out of compromising situations.’
He paused. ‘Only the ones unwittingly led into that predicament in the first place.’ There was no apology in his tone.
After a long pause, she said, almost inaudibly, ‘I never thanked you. I’m sorry. I was too young to understand . . .’
‘I was only looking out for you, Fable.’
He never used her sobriquet. From his lips, her full name felt like a caress.
‘What are you really doing out here?’ she asked with forced lightness.
‘Same thing as you, I imagine – soaking up moonlit falls. Life doesn’t get much better than this.’
They turned together to the waterfall. After a minute of silence, Raff shuffled over on his seat. ‘Do you want to sit?’
‘Depends,’ Fable said, hands on her hips. ‘How much is a gondola ride these days?’
Raff laughed. ‘The Bridge of Sighs is far too expensive for the likes of you, but I can do a special deal on a waterfall circuit for a newly graduated girl.’
‘I can only pay you with a Scroll of Power,’ she said, holding out her certificate.
‘OK, but if the Paragon rejects this currency, I’m coming after you.’
‘I’m willing to take the chance,’ she said, climbing into the boat without airs.
Raff leapt out to push. Fable settled the puddling folds of her dress. Within moments, they were afloat. The quiet lapping of the oars took them further from the seeping flames and laughter, towards the tremendous roar of the falls.
Lulled into silence, Fable cast a lash-sweeping glance at Raff: he was still wearing a starched shirt from earlier in the evening, tie long since discarded. With his sleeves rolled to the elbow, strength rippled in his rowing forearms. He was an entirely different creature to the boys she had left behind on that shore. She was in this tiny rowboat with a man.
‘So, what are your plans for next year?’ he asked, distracting Fable from the warm building throb, low in her belly.
‘Do you want the answer I give to fend off my controlling sister, or the truth?’
‘I bet the truth is far more exciting.’
‘Honestly – I’m going to trek into the wilds each day to paint, and I’ll only come home for sustenance and sleep . . . and even that part’s debatable.’
‘I would expect nothing less from a struggling artist. And humour me; what do you tell your sister?’
‘She’s determined I’m getting out of Noah Vale as soon as possible, and she’s prepared to drag me out by my hair if it comes to that . . .’
‘If she manages it, my folks should hire her to bring me back again.’
‘So, I promised her I’m only trying to decide on the right college, having a break from the demands of high school education. I can’t bring myself to tell her I had an interview with Smith’s the other day for a shop assistant.’
‘It’s not called Smith’s Newsagency for nothing. I’m sorry to tell you, she’ll already know.’
‘Yep, she’s probably been down to talk Smithy out of hiring me. All for the greater cause of booting me out of town.’
‘We need to swap problems, Fable.’
They shared a smile.
‘And what is it you need to paint so badly in Noah Vale that you can’t in the comfort and freedom of a college dorm?’
Fable tilted her head towards the nearing falls.
‘OK, you’ve got me there,’ he said, smiling.
‘You want to know the truest truth? It’s actually your fault, Raff.’
His smile faltered for a fraction of a second, but she saw it.
‘How so?’
Her mind whirled with possible answers – all the ways in which every beat of her heart was his fault, and his alone.
She said instead, ‘Faerie Falls,’ and did not miss the way his brow loosened. ‘If you hadn’t shared that enchanted place with me, I might have been on the next train out of here, headed for some mundane, thoroughly useful secretarial course.’
‘The local business college is going to have my scalp for this.’
‘Plus, you ruined my sketchbook, so now I have to start over.’
‘OK, I’ll admit to that.’
‘But it all works out the way it was meant to, because when I was interviewing at Smith’s, I found myself a brand-new journal, leather bound, plus supplies – working in a stationery shop is going to have some career advantages, you see – and now, I’m going to illustrate my own book.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘About Faerie Falls.’
‘A whole book about Faerie Falls!’
‘Not just Faerie Falls – every magical place and creature in this valley. It’s why I can’t live anywhere else. As a favourite heroine once said, “there’s so much scope for the imagination” in Noah.’
‘Well, I’ve never found anywhere like it.’
‘Only last week, I found my first waterfall frog. Everyone says they’re extinct now, and yet there he was, hiding under the Glade waterfall. You should see his colours!’
‘Cute little fella, isn’t he?’
Fable stared at Raff, torn between a frown and a laugh. After a pause, she said, ‘If I had to kiss a frog, it’d be that one.’
A whisper of a smile played across his lips.
‘I’m determined to do him justice in my book.’
‘A book about faeries and frogs! Fictional?’ He grinned.
‘Growing up,’ she replied, all seriousness, ‘I pictured my book as a kind of illustrated guide to rainforest faeries – a children’s collection. But I don’t have it in me anymore to paint the perfect faeries of my girlhood. In fact, faeries were never perfect.’
‘Weren’t they?’
‘Not real ones. How could they be anything but flawed and vulnerable, like the rest of us? Or at least that’s how it struck me at Faerie Falls the other day. See, when I first started creating my faeries, they were already their . . . bare selves. Then, I don’t know, I copped some flak at school for my “dirty pictures”—’
‘No one understands an artist.’
‘No one,’ she said tragically. ‘After that, it felt like my faeries weren’t good enough anymore. Guess I thought I had to cover them up, and make them decent. “Clothes maketh the faerie” . . . so to speak. But I think I need to unclothe them again. Not literally make them naked, though some of them might be, but I mean: exposed. Really themselves . . .’ She trailed off, heat swamping her face.
The oars stilled. Raff sat back; unreadable.
‘I’m rambling,’ she said, fidd
ling with a frangipani bloom to cover her face. What was with her effusion tonight? She’d never uttered her idea aloud, not even once, and now she’d blurted it out to Rafferty Hull – of all people!
Time to swim back to shore! No, sink to the creek bed and die.
‘It’s just an idea,’ she muttered. ‘Probably should pack up for college, it’s not like I’m—’
‘Fable,’ he interrupted. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever tell a talented young person not to pursue tertiary education, but listening to you – the valley is clearly in your blood. If Noah is where your inspiration lives, you have to be here.’
Fable looked away. And what about you, what’s in your veins, Raff?
‘It’s funny,’ he said, without a skerrick of humour, ‘I used to see you tramping along the creek with your sketchbook under your arm, and I always wondered what you were keeping in it. You reminded me of when I was a kid; I used to get around Noah with a notebook in my pocket. Fancied myself a newsman, back then.’
‘A hack?’ She didn’t mean to sound amused, but Raff smiled back.
‘Most unbecoming dream for a farm kid – probably lucky it didn’t pan out. These days, the only writing I do is letters to clients. Very dry, not like my Noah Vale Post used to be. I’d keep tabs on forest and farm happenings. I was always over-invested, though. Interfering little blighter, actually. At one point, I was the self-appointed president of the first Noah—’
‘Valiant Society for the Protection of Valley Beasts,’ finished Fable.
Raff’s head fell back on a laugh. ‘I can’t believe you know about that.’
‘I was always interested in stories about Noah Vale’s most notorious chicken snatcher.’
‘I think you have me confused with the whopping scrub python that terrorised local farms for a while. No one ever caught him, though.’
Fable laughed, and they sat in a gently rocking camaraderie. A light flurry of raindrops sprinkled over. They looked at the thinly wreathed sky together. Fable stretched a hand to collect errant drops.
It was with regret he next spoke. ‘I wish I had more time here, I could show you all of my secret childhood haunts. Give you enough material to keep you churning out books for years.’
‘Moonlighting as my muse?’
‘First spot I’d take you would be my grove of rainbow trees.’
‘Your what?’
‘When I was much younger, I planted a grove of rainbow eucalyptus trees on the lower farm flats my old man used to promise would be mine one day. Promises that have become outright blackmail in recent years, I might add. When I was a kid, though, I didn’t think there would be anywhere else in the world I’d rather live. Had my heart set on a farmhouse beneath my rainbow trees. Rainbow gums are these incredible trees with—’
‘Coloured bark,’ Fable interrupted, ‘in hues of blue, purple, orange, maroon and green. Eucalyptus deglupta, native to New Guinea, actually. They need copious rain, perfect for Noah Vale.’
Raff shook his head in slow wonder.
She went on quickly. ‘I read about them in a rainforest book old Mr Shearer gave me. Sounded like a myth! I drew my own, but, without the real thing to study, not very well. I can’t believe there are some only a few miles away from my own home. You’ve been holding out on me, Raff Hull.’
Her teasing smile sputtered away under the intensity of his admiration. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Well,’ he said, after a pause, ‘they didn’t look anything special for the longest time. Sometimes I wondered if I had the wrong trees altogether. I had to wait years for the colour to show.’
‘I want to see them,’ Fable interjected, surprised by the boldness of her own asking.
‘One day.’
‘When?’
Raff’s eyes slipped away. Seeing they’d floated far from their course, he began to pull at the oars again.
‘Beats me,’ Fable muttered, ‘why anyone would want to live in stupid smoggy England rather than a grove of rainbow gums, anyway.’
But Raff had drifted into unsmiling thought.
Fable plucked at moonlight caught in a crystal of her gown. A sob, unsummoned, built in her throat.
Raff started, an idea coming to him. ‘I can give you rainbow fish, though!’ He was rowing in earnest now. ‘There’s a spot near, where rainbow fish often gather. I don’t usually tell anyone, because they’re a favourite for home aquariums. But for our artist in residence . . .’
They’d reached the opposite bank, where thick buttress roots snaked into moonlit ripples. Flames glimmered across the pool, distant notes wafted on the balmy breeze; the falls tumbled on.
Raff fastened their boat on a thick root. ‘Now, if you’re quiet . . .’ he said, peering over the boat, motioning her to his side.
Fable drew nearer – so near her knees were now within his opened thighs.
Raff sat back, allowing her to lean forward, right over his lap, to stare into the moonlit water. Her own reflection – faint wraith – rippled before her.
‘See anything?’ he asked in a low voice.
Fable saw nothing. She was conscious only of the breath stirring her hair, and her drumming heartbeat – surely reverberating in the high cliff basin surrounding them, louder than the falls.
A single frangipani dropped from her hair into the moon-washed water. Fable observed it, helplessly.
Raff reached for the bloom and Fable sat back, watching him wipe the water gently from the petals. It might have been her own skin, so hotly did her flesh colour.
He looked up, extending the flower, as though to hand it back to her. At the last moment he raised it higher, to her left ear, tucking it gently behind. His hand drifted lower, lightly picking up a tendril of burning gold, eyes lingering upon it. When he lifted his gaze once more to her face, it was to discover a countenance so profoundly altered, his trailing hand froze.
Every tumultuous undercurrent was finally revealed.
Their eyes locked. The star-scattered, rain-bejewelled night swirled around Fable. A squawking bat flapped off.
Raff’s hand slid up, unhurriedly, to rest right where her fine chin adjoined her neck, her rose-gold hair. Flames danced in her peripheral vision; a melody lilted afar.
Still their gaze held.
Fable’s neck elongated yearningly. Raff bent his head and raindrops spangled like diamonds in his hair as that long-beloved face, those blue eyes came towards her.
Warm lips pressed gently against hers. Her mouth parted instinctively, welcoming in Raff’s breath as his other hand flew to cradle her face. Fable’s tongue ventured tremulously forth, and his mouth crushed upon hers. Two strong hands now enveloped her face.
At last, at last, at last, she sang, drinking in the first and most wanted kiss of her whole life.
His hands loosened around her jaw – a low, regretful groan beginning in the back of his throat, even as his body leaned closer still. He broke from the kiss, his breathing uneven against her cheek.
‘Fable . . . I need to stop.’
‘But I love you,’ she whispered against the side of his face.
He stiffened, eyes squeezing shut.
‘Ever since the first time . . . at the Glade . . . when I saw you . . .’
He drew gently away.
Fable fell silent.
Their anchoring rope began to unspool.
‘You’re the same age as my baby sister,’ he said, voice heavy. ‘I’m way too old for you.’
‘I’m eighteen! My birthday was in August.’
‘Nevertheless, you’re still a girl – with your big future ahead of you.’
The boat, loosened from its moorings, began to drift.
‘Wait for me, then. Wait for me to grow up.’
His eyes blazed with tenderness.
‘Some days,’ she said, ‘it feels like I’m growing up just for you, and it’s taking so long.’
He looked away, raking a hand through his hair. ‘I’m sorry, Fab
le. I can’t. Of all people, you deserve better than—’ He broke off, reaching blindly for the oars.
‘Raff . . .’
‘I’ve been seeing a woman in London,’ he said abruptly, without returning his gaze to hers.
An afterthought.
‘Wait for me,’ she said.
He gripped the oars in his lap, knuckles white. ‘I feel . . . protective of you, Fable. I always have, right from the first time you appeared at the Glade that day.’
The hope flaring in her eyes at hearing this seemed, perversely, only to harden something in him.
‘But . . . like a kid sister.’
She shook her head, tears welling.
On he went. ‘And my life and career are now in London. While yours is just beginning, here.’
When she didn’t reply, he sank the oars into the pool. ‘I’m going to take you back, Fable. You’ll forget about this.’
‘I won’t,’ she said, staring at the clenching of his jaw.
He began to row, looking over her shoulder to the tea house. ‘I won’t be coming home to remind you. And you’ll find the creative world out beyond Noah has been looking for a talent just like you. There’s nothing in this valley that should ever get in your way – especially not me.’
She wanted to wail and cry and plead. But she knew that no daughter of Esther Hamilton should ever beg, for any man.
Turning away, she pulled up her knees and, setting her eyes on the shore, hardened her back against him.
Each stroke took them closer to the flames, and further from the fire. A cold, dark terror crept into Fable’s heart. This night, the first of her emancipated life, was the end of every romantic reverie she had nurtured for over six years. When she reached that shore, the dream of Rafferty Hull would be gone forever. She pressed a fist into her silent scream.
Perhaps she’d always believed sheer desire alone would be enough to surmount every other obstacle to her dream. But now Fable knew: she would never be worthy in Raff’s eyes. Always she would be his kid sister’s foe. Worse: a Hamilton.
Their gentle bump against the rocks stirred Fable into action. She was out of the boat in a trice, before he could even think of helping, much less speak to her again.
She was six steps up the shoreline when, driven by one last hopeful impulse, she spun to face him.