Aurabel Read online

  ‘Is it you?’ Breathy almost-silent words tumble out from the ridiculousness of them. The seal stares back at me, with her big puddles of inky eyes. ‘No … clearly not.’ I shrug to myself, wrapping my arms around me.

  The seal shakes her head. Flaps her flippers around her mouth. She rolls in the water, juddering, before recoiling, heaving up her body to standing. The seal then unpeels itself of her skin. Just like taking a coat off. No blood. No effort. Now a bundle of simple seal skin is on the floor and before me, standing, now I can take her in: the most striking, flawless, unclothed woman. Tall, statuesque; long, strong legs; elegant, slender arms and feminine, dainty fingers. Her hips and breasts are full and plump but not flabby like the coat of seal she undressed from. A glossy, deep-chocolate stream of hair tumbles over her shoulder, her eyes, the same colour, staring me into a smudge.

  ‘Lorali.’ She is pleased to see me, like we have met before. How does she know who I am? Who is this? Was the seal a disguise? I can’t be sure. ‘Sorry to make you come out so late, but I couldn’t risk showing you myself in the daylight. And I need you to take me seriously – you might not have believed me if I hadn’t shown you who I was.’ She speaks with little emotion, her sentences urgent but not rushed. Almost breezily flippant in her manner. I can’t stop staring at the discarded skin next to her; how it slipped off her the way it did.

  ‘Believed what?’ I utter.

  ‘That you and I have lots in common.’

  ‘Do we?’ I find that hard to believe, seeing her body.

  ‘You are a fish who lives like a woman; I am a woman who lives like a fish.’

  I am not a fish.

  ‘Who are you? What do you know about me?’

  ‘I am a Selkie.’

  ‘A Selkie? The skin you came out of, was it seal? Are you half seal?’

  ‘I’m not half seal nor half woman. Right now, as I am before you, I am whole woman. When I go back into the water I’ll be whole seal. I’m never half of anything. Just like you, Lorali, I can move between two worlds.’

  I shake my head. This isn’t true.

  ‘Lorali,’ she says sharply, in a deep, serious tone. ‘Rory is in danger.’

  ‘Rory?’ I stutter. I haven’t heard his name in context for so long. Desperate for any news of anything about him I feel my heart shatter, urging to get to him. ‘In danger how?’

  ‘You must go down and save him.’

  ‘Of course!’ I panic. ‘But how can I? I’ve surfaced, I’m a Walker now – I can’t reverse. They told me. Once you surface you cannot return.’

  ‘Yes, Lorali, they told you that because that is true. For them. NOT for you. Unlike me, you are half and you always will be half. Because you are different, because you were from a natural birth. You are unique.’ She steps closer, her hands wrapping around mine now. She is boiling hot to the touch. She smells of the sea. Bitter. Tangy. Natural.

  But she grips me harder, locks me into her stare, her eyes fierce. A warped groan comes from within her: a new voice, different from the controlled tone she had been speaking in just moments before. She is panicked, terrified. ‘Do not listen to me, Lorali. Ignore and forget everything I say. Stay where you are. It’s a lie.’

  The naked woman bites her tongue, just as surprised as I am at the voice that came from her. I snap away from her grasp, snatching my hand out of hers. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Who was what?’ She regulates her composure, at war with the contradiction, ignoring her split personality.

  ‘How is Rory in danger?’ My patience, from fear, has gone. Tears welling but I suck them back. I don’t want her playing on my vulnerability. ‘Tell me right now, or I’m leaving.’

  ‘The sea is not a safe place, little Lorali. But you can rescue him, before his resolution. You can bring him back to land.’

  ‘How can I trust you?’

  ‘You CAN’T!’ the deeper, more desperate voice roars before being once again trapped within.

  ‘I have no reason to lie to you, Lorali.’ She smiles sweetly and it seems so genuine this time. Any word of Rory seems to weasel its way to my heart and melt me down.

  The sound of seal cry beckons from the water behind her. ‘I have to go. Don’t think on it for too long; his resolution is sooner than you think.’ A baby seal’s head pops up from the water, then another. The woman smiles at them and reaches for her seal skin as though she’s picking up her coat at the end of a party, and confidently walks towards the water.

  ‘Wait!’ I call out. ‘Who salvaged him?’

  But the woman is already once again seal, and gone.

  BLOODY PEARL

  Finally, when all is quiet, the lid of the shell opens. The hinges of the jaw of it yawn apart, the opaque enamel scuffed and chipped. Covered in the scratches of their claws. But now, as water, I am still. I am everywhere. Sifting, calm and endless.

  The coast, clear. Her hands, bloody, covered in the stuff, dragging wrists and elbows. Her long, blue hair riddling out of the shell’s mouth like a complicated love song. Her eyes, rapid still. Have they gone? How long has it been? Hobbling out of the shell, she grinds forward. Why can’t she move her tail? Where is she? Clambering out, she grips the lipped edge of the shell to steady herself, thanking it for being there when she needed to hide from teeth.

  Whispers; red plumes of bloody smoke. Swirling in my heart. She is blinded by her own blood. The red mist of the Whirl fogs her vision. All she can hear is a fizzy, high-pitched, unnatural shrill blocking both her ears. A tinnitus cry seems to be coming from within. Her adrenaline makes her tremble. Her tapestry is bleeding. More than that – it is broken. She is sure of it. It will need stitching, urgently.

  She has to get back. The palace isn’t far … Or is it? She doesn’t even know where she is. She tries to swim, to snake her hips and wave her fin, but the weight is too much. It isn’t painful but that is what worries her: that she can’t feel the pain. The fear, yes. The needling sting of shock too. And relief. Relief that she is still breathing. Still here. That is something; means she isn’t dead altogether.

  But where is the pain? Pain means that she is alive. Nerves aren’t responding.

  She goes into a methodical trance of staying alive. Survival. She is losing a lot of blood. Her colours are fading; she still can’t see from all the blood. She speaks to herself calmly. ‘You’re OK,’ she says. ‘You’re OK.’

  Not me, though. I say nothing.

  She is already beginning to sink and so she allows herself to sink to the bottom. There she can see to her wounds. Her tail. It has to be broken. Let’s take a look …

  Down.

  Down.

  Down.

  The way she was recognised: her long teal hair. She has been told it is ‘hair more beautiful than the sea itself’. Now, tangled with the red of blood, it looks like theatre. Her arms span like kites, sailing her downwards. A flying big-top circus tent, twirling towards the grit. Her eyes closed. The moment of hope before she faces the mirror of her tapestry. It would tell all in the reflection. Develop like a Polaroid. Hold onto that moment. My guts bleed for this Mer, for what she is about to find when she sits on the seabed, on the sand with the snaps of crescent-moon shells, down on the level of the hermit crabs and claws that scuttle and scamper on my ocean floor. When she opens her eyes and screams. Because she will realise that she was wrong: her tapestry, just like her blood pearl necklace, is not broken at all.

  It is gone.

  HEART ON THE EARTH

  It’s the pain that wakes me. So I wasn’t dead then. But the only thing alive inside of me is the memory that I relive.

  First the ripping of flesh. The panic. The bigness of it all and swallowing. So quick. The noises coming from me drowned out in the hugeness, silencing my attack. Rough as hell. Tearing flesh. Breaking bones. The hazy muffled screams and licks of fanged tooth in skin – and then piercing. Roaring. Tearing. Screaming. Crying. Don’t.

  I saw the shell. My rescue. An oversized trapdoor.
I remember how it wouldn’t lift, wouldn’t come apart, but I could see it was empty. Damn thing wouldn’t open, jammed together with all this white crust. Fingers breaking on the rough surface, knuckles bleeding and still screaming – suddenly it let me in. I managed to shut the thing down just before they finished me off. They roared and scratched at the shell until they decided I was done.

  Then it was after. When I saw. Really drank it all in. The reality. When the world had slowed. That jagged edge taken off. Lost its bite. Clawing. Ripping. Clenching. Grabbing. Grabbing anything. Muscle. Bone. Arms. Wrists. Grit. Veins. Argh. Loose. Apart. The sand. Weaving. Slushing. Not enough. Raking hands. No grip. Too weak. A stone. A dead, cold stone. That was me. Useless. A corpse. A dead, useless, fucking stupid stone. Heart on the earth. Sliding. A cripple. A joke. Fuck it. NO. FUCK IT. Paralysed. FUCK. Paralysed as fuck. FUCK.

  Fuck you, Sienna. FUCK. I’ll kill you, bitch. She set those beasts on me. To her I was some nobody Tip. Well, fuck her. She couldn’t even watch them get me. Coward. Fuck that council. FUCK HER. Fuck that weak king. Soggy twat. Shove your job up your –

  FUCK.

  The pain was blinding. Still. Course I had to save my brain. Couldn’t do any of that nutty nut-bag business where you start overthinking for what if’s sake. Can’t rewind time now. I roll over in the cruddy ground. I must have slept here. Dunno how long it’s been. Don’t even know how I’m meant to start again. Can’t go back to Tippi. Not like this. Those beastie Tips will eat me up for breakfast once they learn that I’m only half a Mer now. That I’m half the Mer I was. I’ll be bottom of the pack. I might even lose Murray. Wait – my pearl! My pearl. My neck is bare. Where’s it gone?

  DON’T CRY, AURABEL.

  Murray. My heart’s bleeding, I swear.

  Six, five, four, three …

  Six, five …

  A PLACE FOR DREAMING

  Aurabel rises from her half-grave of sea earth and salt ruins and looks up to see that she is not in the place she had been but somewhere completely different. Still, too much too soon.

  First, with her last remaining strength, she winds as much palm leaf around her wound as she can find. Working quickly against the irresistible gnawing beg of fatigue, she bandages herself, emotionless. If for one moment she thinks about her tragedy she will go under. Numb with pain, she imagines her disaster belonging to somebody else. A stranger. She is helping them. Yes. ‘Don’t worry,’ she even mumbles with encouragement. ‘You’re all right. I’m sure it won’t scar bad.’

  Mummified up, heaving the weight of her upper self, she bravely heads into the first shelter she finds. A small cave; even though it is dark; even if it is home to a monster, it will be a small monster. Monsters have half of her anyway, she decides; lucky them if they manage to make that half a whole.

  TWO MINDS

  In the bath. I soak.

  Cloudy silence. Drum. Drrrrruuuum. Beating against my ears like the electronic radio. The pumping thump of new blood gushing, running, feeding through my veins and shooting messages to my brain. Tell me what to do. Out again and under, take a breath. Drown again in soapy suds of lavender and vanilla. Little globes of rainbow-froth bubbles trace my skin. Wash myself off. This warming, imposing loneliness could kill me if I let it. The Selkie. What does she know? Does she know more? Does it mean I have to go back? Why did she contradict herself? Why did I feel the seal was saying something different than the woman inside her? And Rory … could he really be in danger?

  Is it better to smash up my new life myself with control or ignore it and wait for the cracks to tear it apart anyway? These borrowed legs I have could even fool me. Yes, real, but I have sacrificed for them. Selfish. Here I play house in this pretend domesticated storyline that isn’t mine to tell. Pull the plug; don’t think too much. Let the worry spill away.

  I am a teenage girl in a bath. A teenage girl who likes the smell of shampoo. I like chicken nuggets and listening to music. I have learnt how to read. How to bake a cake. I walk weirdly. I trip up nineteen times a day. I like cake and tea and crumpets. I am not good with spicy food. I have a mole by my belly button that looks like a cookie crumb. I really love dogs. I like the cinema. I like getting a bit drunk. I like the theatre. I cry my eyes out when people clap in large rooms. I like watching babies in prams. I like watching old ladies catch up on the benches in the park and when strangers give homeless people half of their sandwich. I have legs and feet.

  I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just trying to carry on.

  Though the shadows and marks on the tiles in the mottled marble of the bathroom walls sometimes make the expressions of worried women’s faces. Their bony, crooked, pleading mouths, their frowning heads and sad eyes, they fill me with guilt. With dread. What are they telling me to do? Where are they wanting me to go?

  Rory. A warm tear treads carefully down my face. Because I am scared. Because I miss him. I am too weak.

  ‘Lorali, love, fancy a glass of wine?’ Cheryl calls from the hallway. I wipe my face, rub my eyes, sit up urgently, the foam slithering down my spine. I grip onto the edges of the bath.

  ‘Ooh yeah, lovely,’ I shout back. ‘Be out in a minute.’ With a wet hand I reach for the towel on the floor next to me, leaving a splatter of dirty bath water on the tiles below.

  ADVENTURE

  And when she wakes she screams at the wrapped blood-blotted stump attached to her, replacing what had been hers. Allowing her raw, rasping hellish shrieks to rip and ricochet off the roof of the cave. Her bloody fists punching the hard grey slate beneath her and bawling and howling until her knuckles show white bone. So heavy is her heart I am surprised she does not fall through the floor of the cave itself with the tugging weight of it. Hugging her bottom half close and then just as quickly rejecting it. Tough to watch. But she is tougher. As the musicality of that small, still, strong voice inside her whimpers. Aurabel stops crying. And then, in the new morning brightness, she sees it. Where she is.

  In the blundering emptiness it appears out of nowhere. The colossal metal jagged machine world towers over her. A sunken, once steam-fuelled theme park that still speaks of dreams. Of turning spiked wheels; scribbles of winding tracks that seem to spiral; tall, upside-down uneven spindly bridges made of odd ends of fallen pieces of discarded mechanical leftovers; car parts, engines, factory works, carts, buggies, cranks, tools. Iron. Steel. Silver. Tin. She crawls, like the ghost of a pregnant spider, through the derelict land of industrial architecture until nature shows its face and gives her comfort.

  Aurabel marvels at the way creatures gobble up the mammoth iron legs of the structures. Ivy and small fish have made homes on the arms of bridges. Barnacles stubbornly kiss the cluttered buildings of the fallen fairground. Candy-striped tents, cracked blushing Punch and Judy puppets still angrily tangled in mid-attack. Stuffed machines are now stocked tanks, home to fishes instead of teddy bears and toys. Rubber ducks, prizes, games behave as foreign plants with stems made from the snag of strangled let-down balloons, their colours faded too soon. Some innocent hell of a ghost train, the scares worn, is now a cosy comfort for a dozing starfish. Rusted dodgem cars, paint bubbling on metal like acne and the deceased bulbs marking the graves of immortal Walkers. Somehow, I found a stillness in this adventure land, a peace in this place to repair. Its whale song is spangled, a frenzied flurry laced with the haunt of family laughter and screams of dizzy bliss and dumpy clown-clumsy upside-down paradise noises. Now frozen, like some ageing haunted remains, capturing the leftovers of a once-forever party. The blend of past and present.

  Of nature and machine.

  As the night begins to bleed into my blue, I become blacker and colder, empty and hard. She can’t. At all. Not in the terrible limbs of this stalking nowhere. Her head to the ground, she sinks, her open mouth in the earth … and then dazzle. Hundreds of lights coming from the small glow-bugs clinging to the fallen land; they shine. Just for Aurabel, just to guide her in this struggle.

  Why does it feel l
ike this fairground has tipped off the edge of the pier just for her? She has found a flicker of hope that perhaps she can fix this … It’s not as if she is exactly short of tools …

  And at the foot of the heap of abandoned junk offering out a screwdriver, a spanner, a bolt. Promising it has more to give, the metal mountain opens to her; plenty more where that came from. Burrowing deep, Aurabel begins to weed out objects that will do.

  Up on her throbbing stump, Aurabel whispers to herself in reassurance as she raids the scrapheap. Carefully averting her eyes away from the reflection of herself in the wall of silly mirrors where everything seems a joke; a joke so funny, she almost laughs.

  AMUSEMENT

  Is this adventure laughing in my face?

  The screaming of Walker girls and boys who I will never know.

  Buried souls, for ever in the simplicity of being turned upside down, around and around.

  Applaud.

  This freak cannot laugh any more.

  When it was built, the Walker who made it, did she or he ever think this happy-making paradise would be the grave to a Mer?

  Did they ever imagine that I would lose myself inside its ugly tease of a jungle? Its torturing swirls that hallucinate and so …

  Trippy you could climb the walls with the tip of your nose.

  I thought I knew Walkers but this has thrown me, this horror land of fantasy; I cannot place it – or its purpose – this …

  Dummy-dodo.

  Horror show.

  Strange Walkers with painted faces and frilly necks and fluffy balls lined down their chest and spooks and shadows.