Lorali Read online

  She lets me take her wrist, and her fingers gently fall through the sleeve effortlessly, as the coat is too big for her, and then I do the same on the other side.

  She smells of all things new.

  I bring the coat round her, but don’t want to risk it coming off again, so now, face to face, I try to find the zip to do her up, and it is well awkward, as I can’t quite grip the little metal bit to slot the zipper bit in and my thumbs are a mess. I’m shaking. I try to focus my eyes on the zip but my pupils keep springing all over her body, a bit wanting to look. I keep telling my brain to stay calm and just do up the zip.

  Her belly button. Her thighs. Her collarbones. Her hips. Her – I start thinking again about what I’m doing, about how mad this is. Does this count as kidnapping?

  I stand back to take a look at her. Her bare legs shake; they are creamy but opaque, like tracing paper. I can almost see the blood pumping through the veins like blue juice through a straw. And they have blueing blotches on them. I look at my jeans. I have got boxers on … I could … I can see how on paper this seems like quite an idyllic way for a bloke to spend his sixteenth birthday – dressing a naked girl – but in reality it’s hell.

  I take my jeans off – I wear them most days so they are loose and slide off my hips easily – and the wind attacks my legs instantly, so cold it’s almost boiling hot. All pins and needley. Her hair blows across her face; she doesn’t pull it away from her eyes. She looks like art.

  ‘Here.’ I hold the jeans out and pull the bottoms of my boxers down as low as they’ll go to try to cover as much of my skinny legs as I can. They are dark blue and could possibly pass as shorts; well, that’s what I tell myself. I’m not that hairy and am worried she’s wondering whether I’ve done all that puberty business.

  She doesn’t take the jeans. I panic. I change my mind and step back into them and then she lowers her head, her eyes looking sad. ‘You want to wear them? You can. Please, here …’

  My voice doesn’t sound like my own, I seem to have lost my identity and my personality has changed to that of a house brick.

  She doesn’t move.

  ‘OK,’ I say. I check again for passers-by and then quickly for a phone signal. Still nothing. Even in this weather I feel an unusual sweat take over my body. I wipe my brow.

  I breathe out. ‘OK. How do we do this?’

  I shuffle towards her feet. Each toe is perfect and tidy, not like mine or Mum’s. I take a foot in my hand and it’s like holding a rag, small and floppy and soft. She wobbles when I lift her foot and falls onto my back, her hands on my shoulders. Her near fall breaks the awkwardness slightly and I reassure her. I can be in charge now because she has let me. I then lift the foot into the jeans and wriggle it as far up the leg as I can, being as non-weirdo as possible, and then do the same as before with the other foot. I then wrap her arms round my neck and lift her into the jeans, pulling her weight and the jeans with me as I land her to standing position. I look to the sea and the distance as I do up the zip and button on the jeans. The sweat is pouring into my eyes and there’s no excuse for this amount of perspiration.

  She is as light to lift as a fairy. She lands back on the stones as silent as stepping on snow. The jeans hang loose and I adjust the belt to the smallest hole but it still bows and I picture us running through the Old Town in the rain and her jeans sliding off, and how much that can’t happen.

  ‘Hold on,’ I say and I find my door keys. I use one to create a new hole in the leather to make the belt wrap round her tighter. Thank god this isn’t one of Elvis’s pleather belts. ‘There,’ I say and smile, a bit proud. I look up and she smiles back. It is worth it.

  She is wobbling around like a newborn deer on ice skates. I think it is because of the jeans but I don’t want to ask. Maybe she is wounded, has broken a bone or something and I didn’t notice because of the nerves. Either way, she is here now, safer back at ours with me than on her own. But I can’t risk bringing her in with me right away, not with Mum there wanting to eat birthday cake. I decide I’ll just pop in, be a moment, let Mum know I’m back and then find a way to distract her enough so that I can bring the girl indoors without her noticing.

  ‘STAY HERE, OK?’ I say, pulling my Nike jacket round her tighter. The raindrops on her eyelashes quiver, the skin on her tingles. She is like one of those antique paintings, one that’s been retrieved from the bottom of the ocean, salvaged from some grand ship. I capture the moment. Her standing there, gazing at me, in the garden with its overgrown weeds and brambles. Even if somebody were to look, they won’t see her, least not in the rain.

  ‘I’ll be real quick, I promise. Don’t move.’ And she literally doesn’t. Not even a nod to show me that she’s understood.

  I scramble for my key, need to get inside, distract Mum, and get hold of Elvis and Flynn. Then I’ve got to get them off my back for a bit because now my phone signal is back to full bars it won’t stop pinging about arrangements for tonight. What am I meant to say? Sorry, lads, but now I’m responsible for a naked girl. What on earth? I take a final look at her over my shoulder and lift my finger up as if to say ‘one sec’; meanwhile I’m thinking, I need a lifetime.

  I run round the front so Mum isn’t suspicious. I see her through the blinds in the living room. She’s on the phone and she looks like she’s been crying. As I get closer she sees me and quickly rushes off the phone. She has definitely been crying. Again.

  I prepare myself but the door bursts open before I can.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Rory!’ She beams as though she’s genuinely elated and pulls me in; she feels warm and – I know it sounds dumb – really human. Maybe it’s just familiar.

  I smile. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ I don’t like that she’s been crying; it almost distracts me from the girl wearing my clothes in the garden. Mum always cries on my birthday, since Dad left us anyway. Her tears sometimes make me think she still loves him. I don’t know if I still love him any more. You can’t love someone once they’ve left you behind. Once they’ve forgotten about you as though you never even existed.

  ‘Where have you been, love? I was worried.’ She rakes her hands through her hair, her sleepless eyes combing through me as I walk to the kitchen. Her touch annoys me. I feel guilty every time I look at her. As though Dad’s betrayal has somehow transferred on to me. I’m forever saying sorry to her because he won’t. Wanker.

  ‘Worried?’ I cough to try to hide my squeaky voice, knowing my mum can read me like a book, and reach for a glass to fill up with water. The spotless surfaces glimmer under the reflective shine of the splattering rain through the window. Mum’s been cleaning. The house smells of bleach, polish, air freshener.

  ‘Did you not hear?’ she rattles. Her eyes are watching my every move as if I’m a germ about to upturn every angle of the house she’s aligned.

  I freeze. Locked, belly up against the sink, the tap water has filled the glass and is spilling over the sides. Please don’t tell me this is to do with this girl. Please. No.

  ‘Hear what?’ I eventually scratch out. Dreading her next mouthful of information I drink quickly, so my lips don’t react to her reacting.

  ‘The cliff face, Rory. A big chunk of it fell off today, right into the sea.’

  ‘What?’ I shake my head. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘What do you mean is that it?’ Mum stares at me.

  My response is stale but I am so relieved that it is to do with the cliff and not with the girl in the garden.

  ‘Don’t bits of cliff fall … a lot?’ I ask innocently when I know the answer is no, not really, they do not.

  ‘You live in a bubble sometimes, Ror. The storm, the one that has drenched you right through as I can see, it ripped the cliff face off! Done my fence in too.’ As if it is trying to hammer home her point, the wind rattles the windows so that they tremble in their frames. She scratches her head and looks down at the floor.

  I am getting impatient and itchy too. I look over her head, out of the back window, to
see if I can spot the girl in the garden but I can’t, not from here. ‘Is your head still hurting?’

  ‘I’ve got some tablets.’ She rubs her arms. ‘I could just really do with them kicking in.’ For a moment her face morphs into the one I once knew and then vanishes like a waft of a smell you recognise that triggers a memory. And then disappears before you can fully remember it. I smile shortly back and try not to look concerned and with that her face flowers with guilt and she slips back into the role of birthday boy’s mum, which I could really do without.

  ‘Cake!’ she squeals, changing the subject, and she begins to fill the kettle. ‘I’ve got balloons and there are your cards, loads this year. It’s a big deal turning sixteen, Rory.’ I think I prefer her depressive state to her feigned happy state.

  ‘I know, Mum.’

  ‘Just to think, this time sixteen years ago you were in my arms as a tiny baby and now look at you: you’re taller than me.’

  ‘I know, Mum.’ I walk over to the cards and cake, the ‘altar’ that she’s prepared for my celebration.

  ‘You were so beautiful. You still are.’

  I grin and bear it as broadly as my cheeks will allow.

  ‘Rory.’ She stops me in my tracks in a voice that cuts through me. Has she looked outside? Has the girl come to the door?

  ‘Yeah?’ I gulp.

  ‘Why haven’t you got any trousers on, love?’

  ‘I, errr …’ I keep my eyes on the cake and the cards. ‘Flynn met me for lunch and we, errr … had chips and we, errr … went for a swim in the sea and, errr … got wet.’ This is a bad idea; Mum doesn’t like me swimming in the sea.

  ‘Rory! How many times –’

  I need to end this quickly. ‘Sorry, Mum, I shouldn’t have swum in the sea. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  The sour taste in our mouths is as stagnant as a derelict pond, but we don’t want to fight.

  ‘Let’s have a nice cuppa and a slice of birthday cake and you can tell me all about your plans for tonight. That sponge has been eyeing me up all day. I love birthday cake, don’t you? When the jam smushes into the cream. Where are your jeans? I’ll throw them in the washing machine.’

  ‘They don’t need washing. I’m wearing them tonight.’

  ‘They’ll have seawater and rainwater on them. Where are they?’

  ‘No, honestly, Mum, it’s fine. They’ll lose their shape.’

  ‘They’ll be all crunchy.’

  ‘They aren’t crunchy – they’re fine.’

  ‘I’ll hang them to dry then. Where are they?’

  She isn’t giving up. ‘Flynn borrowed them.’ I rush out and start flipping through my stack of birthday cards in case Dad has remembered. You never know. Stranger things have happened.

  ‘So you came home in your pants?’ Her eyes unpeel themselves.

  ‘Yes. Fine. Yes. I came home in my pant— boxers. They are called boxers, Mum. Can we please just leave it there and have some cake?’

  I walk over to the cake with the knife and begin cutting it, so I can get this over with.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Cutting the cake. What does it look like?’

  ‘But we haven’t even sung “Happy Birthday” yet.’

  ‘Fuck sake, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t you dare swear at me like that!’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, I just want to eat the cake and go out.’

  ‘Well, why not forget the whole cake anyway and go out now, seeing as that’s what you do every night?’

  ‘Fine. I will.’

  ‘Good. Go.’

  ‘Fine.’

  I open the front door to leave. A fight with Mum isn’t really what I want but it means I can get away more quickly and we always make up.

  ‘Rory?’ she calls out as I open the door. ‘Aren’t you going to put some trousers on?’ She is right. Of course. Again. Sadness washes over me – the way we fight like a married couple makes me sink. Sometimes it’s clear that we are all the other has. I have to give my mum fifteen minutes on my birthday. I go back in and we say sorry and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in awkward out-of-tune harmonies and open cards (none from Dad) and eat cake, which is really good, to be fair, and I take a big piece for the girl outside and wrap it up in kitchen roll and she pats my head and before I need to lie and say the cake is for the lads, she says, ‘What a good boy you are, taking cake for your pals.’ And I nod. ‘Take care of those cards, there’s money in those for college!’ I dutifully nod again. ‘Tomorrow’s your last day as my little boy.’

  I smile. No, Mum, tomorrow’s my last day of freedom. After then, everything has to matter.

  Then she sends me, and a pair of clean jeans, back out into the racing wind and the hammering raindrops kissing my head.

  Call you in a bit. With Mum, I text to Flynn and Elvis to hold them off for a bit. If I can just think of what to do with this girl for tonight. It does cross my mind to go back and talk to Mum about her but I know she will stress about it and think I’ve gone and got myself a druggy girlfriend who is also a mute or something.

  THE GREAT CAVE

  Opal Zeal is sitting in the Great Cave where she has been waiting for two hours. The Great Cave is where Opal takes all of her meetings with her select few Walker contacts. That being the Ablegares and … yes, just the Ablegares. The Great Cave is well hidden but also an environment suited for both Mer and the Walkers with a large natural pool for Opal and a ledge of surrounding stone that is well lit, cool and dry. She knows the Walkers will make her wait. The Ablegares like to make others crawl towards them, preferably with their tails between legs.

  Opal keeps her mermaid tapestry in the flush of a natural waterfall, whilst her torso lies perched on the sparkling smattering of the cave’s belly. It is Opal’s job to research the Walker world, keep up with current affairs, liaise with the Ablegares and be ready to communicate with Walkers. It is useful for her species to have sea warriors to protect them and fend off fishermen, poachers and other pirates. Opal, because she is smart, exaggerates the benefits of this arrangement to the Ablegares – the terrors too, if they were ever to let her down. The punishment: cataclysmic, naturally. Over the years she has built a decent relationship with the Ablegares, and trusts the pirate boys to a certain degree. Then again, had she been braver and perhaps made some more connections she would have something to compare it against.

  Since the death of the late Queen Netta, this protection for the Mer in the Whirl is necessary. The Whirl is the sweet little name the Mer dreamt up for the body of waters within me, which they believe belongs to them. A centre of civilisation, if you like. Populated by Mer as the superior species. Ridiculous to begin with, admittedly I laughed when I heard the news, but hats off to them – they have created a world of their own down there. I try not to get involved with their petty politics.

  Opal likes her job. The responsibility. The reliance. She enjoys blending between the two worlds, but there is a cost too: her Mer kin mistrust her. Doubt her. And often outcast her. Which wasn’t the initial arrangement. She had hoped for a little more one-on-one Walker interaction from the role. She had always been fascinated by the way of the humans and, if she was honest, she hadn’t expected this amount of work. And what if it came to it? With a missing princess on her hands, what if she was forced to communicate officially with the rest of the Walkers? With governments? Without the Mer behind her? It plays on her mind that inside the Whirl they often forget about her completely. Out of sight, out of mind: flinging her out into the open air like some kind of wartime canary thrust into a trench to test for poison gas. Of course the role had been her suggestion, something to keep her sane, busy. But now, with Lorali’s disappearance, they need her. And she can deliver. And then she can show her true worth. At last.

  Opal is one of the most attractively striking females under and above water – and she knows it. Her complexion is a perfect wet-sand colour. Her hair is long and wavy and a murky seaweed green, and she wears it in two towers on ei
ther side of her head, like bull horns. Her dragonfly-coloured eyes pop under each sweeping brow of a row of twinkling studs. Across her face, a gold-hooped chain connects her ear and nostril. As Opal is the Mer’s representative to the Walkers, this chain signifies her respect for the link between the two – her ear to her breath.

  Opal has adopted features, characteristics and attributes of Walkers. Traits that she has observed and brought into her mannerisms and taste. It is important to her that she be accepted if she were ever to enter the Walker world. Ready to shine. She is also totally dazzled and besotted by the fashion of human beings. Mastering her hair, her make-up, humanising her posture, her gestures. Fascinated with the species she had once been as she studies them from my waters.

  She doesn’t mind the tail. She enjoys the compromise of the two worlds, their collision within her. Her tapestry speaks of her attraction towards the Walkers. The patterns, symbols and colours like stained-glass windows cast terrific shadows of her longing to be human. She often falls asleep dreaming of shoelaces, wedges, kitten heels and stilettos. It sounds so simple and small but a hungry little engine in her mind keeps her ticking over.

  She knows she doesn’t have the strength within her to actually surface herself. Her location is the closest she could come. Surviving from below. Collecting scraps of magazines to stay on top of the latest fashions. Living through the communication with others. A hunger she has a hold over. And a dark selfish part of Opal hopes, although her mission is to protect Princess Lorali, that the young Mer has surfaced. That she has made it. That she has legs and feet and is using them. To walk and run and dance and … of course, wear shoes. That she is enjoying the wonderfully rich and exotic life of land. In her gut she is rooting for that girl and believes she has the strength to surface successfully.