Lorali Read online

  Now Keppel haunts the petrified forest, curling through the precious maze of wildwood as though it were some labyrinth, hoping to find her daughter or some sign from the Walker world that she is safe, but the only imprints she sees are the scores her daughter made when she was young. Now they bear the scars of Keppel’s own clawing, spreading, desperate fingertips, as though she believes Lorali will be wound around the roots, hiding somewhere beneath the bark. Her head hangs low in loss and longing. Letting me carry her.

  Opal is singing the chorus to a Walker song when her whales groan. She has just taken off her make-up and she tuts as she makes her way towards the entrance to her apartment.

  The angry locking tusks of narwhals, who are far more aggressive than her own pod of whales, shoot shadows across her front garden and give away who her visitor was.

  ‘Shit.’ Opal wraps her hair into a scraggy knot on top of her head, rehearses a fake smile and takes a deep breath. She has no coverage over her chest but she thinks that is a good thing when it comes to Queen Keppel, who prefers the bare naturalism of Opal, as rare as it is.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ Opal says, beaming, her own whales already greeting the army of narwhals. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Don’t lie. No, it isn’t.’ Keppel rolls her eyes and swims into Opal’s home. ‘Lying is a Walker trait. Stop doing it.’

  Opal unties her hair, hoping it will cover her nipples, and follows the queen inside. She isn’t going to stand uncomfortably before Keppel for no reason.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Opal is cringing at the vast amount of Walker paraphernalia on display. Anything she could find: old broken radios, odd shoes, kettles, photographs of strangers. She can feel Keppel raiding it with her eyes.

  ‘You’ll be the first mermaid to grow legs of your own one of these days, Opal.’

  Opal replies with a short knowing smile.

  The queen bites her lip. ‘Nobody knows I am here.’

  ‘I won’t say.’

  ‘I know you won’t.’ Keppel shifts, holding her nerve, and composes herself.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I want you to go up. I want you to go up and go to the government or whichever Walker it is up there that you need to speak with.’

  ‘Keppel, you are tired. You should get some sleep.’

  ‘I want you to tell them about us. I want you to do whatever you can to inform every Walker walking this earth that we exist and that we are strong and that we are prepared to fight for the return of our princess.’

  Opal knows it is a brave move to try to tell the queen what to do but the extremity of Keppel’s solution troubles her. ‘Have you discussed this with the council? Shouldn’t we wait and see what the Ablegares come back with?’

  ‘Not those clowns again. I want you to say whatever you need to say, Opal. I want everybody looking for my girl – everybody on land and sea.’

  ‘Keppel! This is madness. We can’t do that; they will close in on us! We are outnumbered and in the dark down here. We just about manage to live alongside the mammals and monsters, and the pirates and the fishermen – we can’t risk it. It will be the end for us all. I really think you should sleep on it.’

  Keppel fights tears. She clenches her jaw, on the brink. ‘I lost my mother, Opal. I’m not losing Lorali too.’

  Opal, hands on hips, finds her strength. It tugs from the desperation of Keppel and, of course, the chance to go up. Up. Finally. This could work in her favour. ‘Tell me what to do.’

  BREAKFAST

  Iris gets a headache shortly after that conversation. He has to take his vitamins and then have a sleep but he doesn’t want to. He wrestles with Flynn to stay awake; he has so much he wants to say. He keeps saying, ‘I’ve waited so long. I’ve waited. I’ve waited.’

  Flynn reassures us that Iris will be much more helpful once he has rested. That poor old bloke doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. How does he know that Lorali’s mother’s worried?

  I look at Lorali. She is shivering on the chair. Her eyes … bewildered and broken. I start to panic. Does she hate it here? Does she want to leave? I don’t think I really want her leaving. I want her to feel looked after and special and happy and … safe and … I don’t know … important, I guess. She looks uncomfortable and tired and, well … sad. I want to ask her all the questions that are going round my head. Why did you come here? Why were you on the beach yesterday naked? Alone? Who are you? Are you running away? Are you in trouble? What do you want?

  My phone starts to ring. It’s Elvis. I ignore it.

  Flynn scratches his head. ‘I’ve just got a missed call from Elvis.’

  ‘Yeah me too.’ I bite my nail quickly. A rough edge catches on a worn throw draped across the back of a chair. A balloon of tension rises in my chest.

  ‘Do you guys want some breakfast?’ Flynn offers and we can’t refuse. Whilst Iris sleeps, his dreamy snores churning through the house, Flynn starts on scrambled eggs and mugs of tea. There is one main room in the lighthouse, which is the kitchen and living area in one. The kitchen is bare brick with lots of screws and nails driven into the cement to hang stuff from. Some worn blackened utensils, some bits of odd sentimental clutter like pictures and notes and little ornaments. They’ve got one of those mad old cast-iron stove things, so it’s boiling hot at all times. Hanging over the stove are bunches of dried chillies, herbs and garlic cloves. All the pots and pans are ancient-looking, hanging in a medieval hammock arrangement from the ceiling, shabby and charcoaled from years of use. Nothing is packaged in Iris’s home. Everything is in brown paper bags or glass jars. Rice. Oats. Coffee. Sugar. It’s like stepping back in time.

  I watch Flynn take half a wedge of bread out of the bread bin, which looks as dry and heavy as a boot, but then he drips some water from the tap onto it and whacks it in the oven.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I ask him, stirring my third sugar into my tea.

  ‘It revives stale bread; a bit of water brings moisture back into the loaf. Little trick I learnt off Granddad.’

  ‘Water revitalises everything,’ Lorali adds. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  Oh do they now? I watch her watching everything.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask her gently and she nods and smiles.

  ‘I’m really good. Are you?’

  ‘You weren’t scared, were you … by what Iris said?’

  ‘Scared?’ She shakes her head. ‘No, you couldn’t be scared of Iris. Iris is the rainbow. The eye. The light in the sky.’ What the …? I am baffled.

  ‘The eye?’ I ask her.

  My brain is straining. And my phone keeps ringing. Go away, Elvis. I’ll ring him later. My battery is still low and like an absolute dickhead I didn’t bring a charger with me, and Flynn has one of them retro Nokias from about the 1800s. Well, when he remembers it. At least his battery doesn’t die every five minutes though.

  My phone buzzes again: Elvis. Again. Probably calling me to ask if I’ve seen the size of Marie from the Odeon box office’s tits or to see if I’m up for helping him refill the teddy-bear machine at the arcade for a zero-split of his wages. AGAIN. I ignore it. Then I see Flynn check his phone.

  ‘El.’ He shows his phone screen to me. ‘Shall I get it?’

  I don’t want to tell Flynn what to do but we both know that Elvis is a petrol can meeting a flame. And we can’t be bothered for that to go off right now. Flynn says nothing and instead of answering, takes the warmed bread from out of the oven in silence. Then Lorali screams, and her clay mug shatters on the floor into tiny shards of chalky splinter.

  ‘It’s hot!’ she screams.

  ‘Yeah, it’s tea.’ I laugh but she isn’t laughing and Flynn looks at me in the same way I look at him. We are wondering the exact same thing. Who is she?

  MAKING AN IMPRESSION

  From the east she entered. The river is grey, slimy and groggy. Horrendous to swim in. Loud. Dirty. Ripe bacteria. Full of the decay of London life. Walker possessions. It stinks o
f grot. It is important to Opal that she looks the part if she is going to get what she wants, and she can’t have the innards of the River Thames spoiling her tapestry, hair and make-up, so her whales, like a raft, float her up river. Blowing seawater on her tapestry from their blowholes.

  It doesn’t take long for Walkers to appear, double-taking whilst out on boats of their own, fishing, walking, lunching, but she is going so fast they can’t stop and ask or catch up with her, only reach for their phones. Call the police. The ambulance. A friend. The paper. Or try to describe the vision in 140 characters or less.

  Drunk or dreaming? Think I’ve just seen a mermaid going down the River Thames. Anyone else? A few hashtags would set that tweet alight.

  And it begins to get real as she enters the city of London. Her whales neatly tucked beneath her, she praises them by patting their heads, rewarding them with squirms of fish flesh as an incentive to keep going. She gulps. Nervous now. She sees it all – the industrial oversized bridges, the bleak grey and brown buildings, the washed-out people, the ear-splitting noise of machinery and sirens and traffic: deafening, roaring, screaming, angry. Not natural.

  Opal is frightened. Was this a bad move? The others in the Whirl will feel betrayed. Backstabbed. But she couldn’t refuse Queen Keppel – she’s the queen! And then people begin to call out to her, passing boats get close and then there are police boats and ambulances with their disturbing shattering sirens tailing her. The whales are becoming distracted. She feeds them more fish. ‘It’s OK, boys, keep going, almost there.’ She needs to get to the very heart of London. The Houses of Parliament. She wants to see the Prime Minister. That is what she wants. And then she will stop.

  Her hair: three jelly-sculpted wet steeples stand tall and remain so, all painted gold. Gold jewellery all about her neck. She is fierce. A warrior. A creature.

  The bridges and embankments are stuffed with people now, crammed like tinned sardines up to the barriers. Watching. Snapping. The news has already gone viral. But is it real? She has to make it so.

  ‘OK, boys.’ She strokes their backs. ‘Slow, slow. You can slow now; you’ve done me proud.’ One by one, as instructed and rehearsed, they flee from beneath Opal, just as the police boat catches up with her, the sirens and the spinning light making everything blue, red, violet, blue, red, violet. The last whale flips her up with its tail, making a dramatic splash that flutters through the air like a whip.

  The police officers gawp at her. Shock. Fear. Amazement. Bewilderment. And then, with her frosted pink-glossed lips and bleached white teeth she says, ‘I’d like to see the Prime Minister please. It’s urgent and please say you have bottled water on this boat. One of you is going to have to keep my tail wet; I can’t very well see the Prime Minister all dehydrated.’

  THE ATTIC

  Iris is awake. I am glad. We were all waiting for him to wake again so that he can tell me all he knows. I don’t know if I want everything about me exposed. But I don’t know what I do want either. I am floating. Purposeless. The reason I surfaced now seems so far away. Secondary. Insignificant almost.

  His big body creaks. He potters about and Flynn makes him this hot black gloop. In a mug. That must have been the same poison water that I drank. Only it smells stronger. Potent. Foul. And even though it is fire-hot he sips it normally. It makes me wince. Seems to hurt my tongue even more simply watching it. White smoke drifts from the mug. Though it does not seem to scorch him.

  He asks Flynn to bring down his stepladder. Flynn seems unsure about it, but does it all the same. I think Iris is perhaps royalty. And Flynn his slave. And Rory … what is he? I don’t know.

  ‘What do you want me to get for you, Granddad?’ Flynn asks softly. He goes over to the trapdoor in the ceiling with a long pokey stick. With a hook on the end.

  ‘Nothing. I’m going up.’

  ‘No, no, Granddad. Your back. You can’t. Remember what happened the last time?’ Flynn nudges him.

  ‘Shush up, you. Come on, get the ladder down for me.’ Iris stands. Slow. He ambles over to the ladder, which flashes out with a surprising creak. Flynn stands back to make way. Iris looks at me, and puts his hand out as if we are going dancing. He says, ‘Up we go, little Lorali.’

  Rory follows behind with Flynn.

  I am used to ladders. We have them in the Whirl. Ones we retrieved from fallen ships. Ones we made. We used our arms to clatter up them for exercise. Well, Zar did, and some of the other males who had to keep strong. To fight. To hunt. I could never be bothered. But I have this new weight now. Without the water to carry me. I have to get used to my new shape. To understand the absolute density of my bones. My legs. How they hang paralysed. Seem to seize up.

  I hear Rory miss a rung on the ladder. Slip. I spring back too but my hands catch the wood. I peer down to him. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiles and goes pink.

  This is the top of Iris’s lighthouse. I like the rooms. They call it an attic. It smells of the saltiness of the sea. Of home. In the looming, curving arcs are green bumpy spots. I can almost imagine barnacles growing out of the walls. Starfish smooshed into the plaster. Carmine would love to see it here. To know more of her old friend.

  I think of the Whirl. But I don’t miss it.

  Iris begins rifling through some trunks. We had trunks at home too. Iris is rearranging boxes. Shuffling about. I feel cold again, and wrap my arms round myself. My temperature changes so much in this world.

  ‘Your mother is Keppel, the queen, making you …’ Iris flicks through maps that he has drawn. Page after page of scribbled designs and lettering. That only he can read. I can’t read them, anyway. But suddenly I understand. The word. Massive. Pressing against my teeth. Forcing my tongue down with its weight.

  ‘Princess,’ I add. Boom. My mother. My mother. My heart. My heart. My home.

  The room breaks.

  Rory’s eyes widen.

  I was mermaid. I was mermaid. A mermaid. I was stupid to think I could pass as Walker.

  ‘Wait. Wait a sec …’ Rory butts in, looking at Iris. ‘Is she a … Lorali –’ he closes his eyes for clarity – ‘are you a princess?’

  I feel shy now. Like I have done something wrong.

  ‘Of course she bloody is,’ Iris screeches. ‘Why do you think the cliffs are falling down?’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry, I – cliffs? Are they to do with you too? How? How do you know all of this, Iris? Flynn?’ Rory doesn’t mean any harm. I enjoy him and his clumsiness. His ignorance. It is refreshing. ‘Princess of … where?’

  Iris fluffs about. Takes out a pair of old shaky glasses. Wears them on his face. I have seen plenty of glasses. They always come down to the Whirl from careless Walkers. Opal sat a few of us down once. Showed us how to wear them. The water tilted. Everything became bigger. Magnified.

  Iris starts again, ignoring Rory, his eyes scowling over his sheets. ‘Your grandmother, your mother’s mother … She was … yes, here … Netta?’

  Flynn and Rory both look to me for my reaction. My jaw clenches. I feel my family’s pain relived in my newly warmed heart. I say, ‘Yes, my grandma was Netta.’

  Iris considers this. ‘Her story is powerful. Very powerful.’

  ‘Do you want to stop?’ Rory asks me gently, and Iris pauses.

  ‘No. No. Not at all.’

  ‘OK. Just say if it gets … you know, too much,’ Rory says to reassure me.

  ‘Your mother, Keppel, your grandmother, Netta … but … something was … different … wasn’t it? About you. You’re different. I just don’t know how.’ Iris leafs through his pages and doodles.

  I look down. At my two legs. I don’t even know how they became part of me. How my brain instinctively knew how to use them. I feel outside of myself. Like my mind knows more than me; perhaps there is something it’s not telling me. It feels as though everyone knows more than I do. Vulnerable now. Panic – and then –

  ‘Do you know who you are?’ Iris inspects me over the rims of his glasse
s. He knows. Remember. He knows Carmine. Remember. I can speak. I am safe. Aren’t I? ‘Do you want me to explain?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Tumble. Out. Mouth. Words. Be still.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Flynn asks Iris, not impatiently, proud almost. ‘About Lorali?’

  Iris’s heart is wilting like the sea moss. ‘I have a friend. Carmine. She tells me everything. She tells me everything that happens.’

  ‘In the petrified forest,’ I say softly. ‘You have those symbols.’

  ‘Yes, we have our own language. It’s a bit silly.’ Iris blushes and mops his brow.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ I tell him.

  Flynn hides a coy smile. ‘So that’s why you’re always down there.’ Finally a big question for him has been answered.

  ‘Yes … well.’ He looks into his papery, worn hands. ‘I’m going to tell you what I know from the trees in the forest and from my friends in the underworld.’

  I nod. Instinct. Safe.

  ‘Underworld?’ Rory shakes his head.

  ‘Where to begin?’ Iris breathes like his lungs are full of water; they sound thick and full. He splutters into a dirty old rag from his sleeve. ‘Excuse me, this dreadful cough won’t go away.’ He puts the rag up his sleeve once again. ‘The beginning, I think, is probably the best place to start, don’t you, little one?’