Aurabel Page 8

  ‘Do I just talk to you? Or …’ Murray nervously fills the silence, her hands gripping around the bars like a prison cell.

  Kai is learning quickly about the hierarchy amongst Mer. How is he seen as superior to those outside the palace gates? He’ll never know. He’s never known any different. The pups begin to yap impatiently, hurtling themselves off each other and panting.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Kai laughs at them and sends the ball shooting through my waters. ‘Go get it!’ he babbles playfully as the ball springs out of sight, and the pups frantically scurry after it.

  The hurry opens a snoozing eye from Marcia, her job being to guard and protect the palace and Kai, not sleep. She spins out of a spasm dreamily before attentively darting over to Kai.

  Murray mutters nervously as Marcia investigates her. Marcia growls.

  ‘Maybe if you could just tell the king that I need to speak with him?’ Murray retracts. Marcia grunts. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘It’s OK, Marcia.’ It is just a girl from Tippi, Kai guesses. What harm can she do? Marcia screw-faces the Tip. ‘Marcia, that is a dirty look. Very rude.’ Kai strokes Marcia’s chin. ‘Don’t mind her – go on …’

  Murray softens and is able to speak.

  ‘It’s just my mate – she came to work for you yesterday –’

  ‘Yeah, with the blue hair? Aurabel, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Aurabel. That’s her.’ Murray’s eyes light up. ‘Yes! Well see, she never came home, like she never returned from work – I mean, I knew she might be kept late here but I just wanted to make sure –’

  ‘No, she never came back to the palace either.’

  ‘She didn’t?’ Murray frowns. ‘Did she come back from the forest?’

  Murray is like nothing Kai has seen before. His reset soul stutters; he doesn’t want to let her down but he doesn’t want to lie. But it wouldn’t look good. Not on his father, to lose a Mer on his watch. He has given the Mer a chance. It wasn’t advised. She was inexperienced. A Tip too. It would backfire. Already he was hated. But if this gets out the Whirl will seem unsafe. Savage. He’ll have put her at risk. Of course he can’t say that, not to this terrified, pretty Mer at the gates. Shame the young boy’s tapestry isn’t resolved yet so she can’t read if he is even telling the truth or not. I can tell you that he is.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. It’s safe in the Whirl. I really wouldn’t.’ Kai doesn’t know if this is true or not as the Whirl is something so removed from him that it is intangible. He lives inside it, but he does not know it, nor what it is capable of. ‘But I can ask for some searchers to go look for Aurabel to put your mind at rest,’ Kai suggests, eager for the mission, to do something with himself. Meanwhile, Marcia marks his every move vigilantly.

  ‘Kai!’ It is the king. Murray has never seen him this close before. His long dark beard and angry bushy brows. His voice startles her. ‘Come inside now, boy!’

  ‘But, Father, I’m just speaking –’ Kai explains, trying to argue. ‘It’s about the Mer, Aurabel, who came to work for us yesterday and never –’

  ‘Inside. NOW!’

  ‘You were worried for her too yesterday; you were –’

  ‘NOW!’

  Kai mouths, ‘Sorry,’ to Murray before gloomily turning away and heading back inside the palace. Murray sighs deeply. The palace gates have never seemed so tall. The Whirl has never seemed so big. And without the king helping, she will just have to find Aurabel herself.

  And on her way back into Tippi she feels the change in currents before she sees the crowd. Whose chariot is that parked by the fallen plane? The square is lit with the hollowed eyes of her town and they part when Murray enters, making an aisle for her to swim up. Tapestries are grey and purple. Cracked and dull. No one will look at her now. She shakes her head in confusion, her own one blushing now – What is going on?

  ‘Murray …’ Orina’s voice breaks the silence. ‘We have a visitor.’

  Nobody ever visits Tippi. But there she is, in the flesh: Sienna. Council member, beast keeper … here in Tippi, and she speaks.

  Death, herself, has something to say.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news …’

  Murray remains strong. Upright. Listening. Although she feels like a jellyfish, boneless, and wants to collapse, she doesn’t. Her colours shrink out of her like a tie-dye run clean, her organs scooped out, like the middle of her could fall through.

  ‘How?’ Murray poses the question like an arrow.

  Sienna catches the blade with her fingertips and answers, cool: ‘The petrified forest is an overgrown forest, full with monsters.’

  Murray swallows hard as the truth cuts and the Tips gasp.

  ‘You were meant to protect her!’ Titi, another Tip, snarls. ‘They are your beasts.’

  ‘It happened before I arrived onto the site,’ Sienna lies. ‘Aurabel was sent to the forest by the king to meet me; we got there too late.’ Sienna bows her head and then lifts it when she feels the timing is right. ‘A savage monster got to her before we could.’

  Murray wants to tell them all that Aurabel was a very good hunter, that she was strong and smart. But her mouth can’t make the shape of words. She is frozen.

  ‘Why wasn’t the king there? Why wasn’t anybody protecting her?’ Orina demands. ‘I thought the whole point of this was to join forces. We were told she would be protected.’

  ‘This is why I’ve come to Tippi,’ Sienna begins. ‘To apologise. Of course I feel utterly responsible for this.’

  ‘So you should!’ a gutsy Tip shouts.

  ‘What good is a sorry now?’ Titi snaps back and the others all join in, cursing and shouting.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Murray mumbles to Sienna. The Mer quieten as Murray begins to talk. ‘At least you’ve bothered to come. Aurabel hated that the council never made the effort to visit Tippi. I’ve just been to the palace myself and the king wouldn’t even see me. Now I know why. He is guilty. He is a coward.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Sienna says. ‘I see that now. But, Murray, this is about to change. We are going to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By knocking that coward off his throne. In the name of justice; in the name of Aurabel!’

  A COW-SKIN RUG

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘You’re everywhere. It’s not exactly difficult.’

  I see her flinch at that. It stings. I know. It’s unavoidable. Her eyes out on the city view. Silence is the loudest mirror.

  We are on the roof terrace of her penthouse. Watching the world like two angels. I couldn’t have dreamt us up. How surreal this moment is. Who’d have thought that we’d be up here, us two tails, this high in the sky? The clouds blot the sweeping sky like an inky bruise. City lights illuminating Big Ben, wrapped up in gold like a bar of chocolate. The rooftops, spires of tiles, listen in on the reunion.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Train, of course. It’s not hard, you know, Opal.’

  ‘For you, maybe not.’ She nods at my feet but I know she really means it’s because she is too famous to get on public transport. Too far away from anything else. ‘Did you tell anybody else you were coming?’

  ‘No. I told them I was having swimming lessons!’ I say, which is true. Even though I haven’t swum since I left the sea for the last time. I can’t. Not now I know Rory is in there somewhere and I’m not. That I’ve left him behind.

  And, besides, swimming pools just aren’t the same.

  ‘And they bought that, did they?’ she cackles and I shrug. None of my friends – well, the three that I have – ever ask about my swimming; they know not to. They know it’s a deep crave that I push down like an alcoholic drives away a thirst. Impossibly necessary.

  ‘Doesn’t your water park open soon?’ I ask, changing the conversation.

  ‘How d’you know about that?’ She seems embarrassed, like I am judging her for it.
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  ‘Again, you are everywhere.’

  ‘Marco is doing a good job, I suppose.’ She grins. ‘Not until next month. I can’t wait. I’ve got so many surprises planned … I’m …’ She tails off before adding, ‘Shall we get some bubbles? Champagne?’

  ‘Tea’s fine, thank you.’

  ‘I’m going to have to order something in a minute, the fatty that I am.’

  ‘You look great.’

  ‘My arse is bigger than Myrtle’s! Please!’ She flips through the room service-menu. ‘You look great.’

  I don’t feel it. I feel like an alien dressed in ‘girl’ clothes. A fraud. Like a child forging their parent’s signature.

  I let Opal’s eyes rest on me. I am sure she is curious. Peeling me apart. I almost want to get it out the way and undress for her, let her see my legs. Let her see everything.

  ‘So what’s it like then? Having legs?’

  I haven’t really answered this for myself. Sure, it is weird. New. Scary. Sometimes heavy. Sometimes painful. Sometimes tiring. But other times it feels like the only thing I’ve ever known – when my legs move without me thinking about it I realise it’s me, just me.

  ‘Freeing,’ I say. ‘It’s freeing.’

  Opal nods. Methodically sips the air in through her mouth, as if somebody has trained her to do it. ‘Freeing. Now that’s a word I like.’ A tiny wind crawls over us, prickling our skin, in the natural way that skin judges a mood. She swigs pink wine from glass as thin as water, her plastic nails clamped around the stem like she’s plucking a tulip.

  I just have to ask her. The question is pressing on my tongue. Why is she dragging it out with the small talk?

  ‘I hate to ask, Opal. But you’re the only one who can help me.’

  She sips again, smiling, eyes on her tail. Her tapestry is a new shade, unlike any of the Mers in the Whirl. The more she drinks, the deeper and more intense the colours become.

  ‘Lorali, I could’ve helped you for the last two years. I could’ve made you a star. I wanted to help you and you could have helped me too. I asked you and asked you, repeatedly, can you do this interview with me? Will you appear on this show with me? Do you know what those freaks would do to get you? Anything.’ Her voice rises. ‘Do you know how bad it reflects on me to seem like I’m championing mermaids and the one mermaid who everybody wants to hear from doesn’t want to speak to me? It’s just embarrassing.’

  ‘I’m not a mermaid, Opal.’

  ‘Oh, get over yourself, Lorali. Just because you’ve got legs now – don’t forget where you came from.’

  ‘I have to remember every day where I came from.’

  ‘Yeah, and it wasn’t from here, was it?’

  ‘Look, don’t be angry at me just because I don’t want the press in my face twenty-four seven; just because I want to live a life.’

  ‘A life? I’m sorry, sweets, I love you, I do, but you don’t live a life. HA! This is a life. Look – nice wine, cocktails, parties, clothes, look at this ring, look, this room, this view, this hair, this experience, the food, the people. This here is life. You could have it. For free. Lap it up. But you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t want that. I want what I have. Normality. That’s why I want you to help me, Opal. I know it’s a risk. I know it’s hard to go back, but I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need to.’

  ‘Doll, I would normally, even if it’s a risk, anything for you. But, trust me, I am helping you by saying no. There’s nothing to cling onto in … bloody Brighton –

  ‘Hastings.’

  Whatever, Hastings. Even worse, OK? Nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true, Opal.’

  Stay calm. I have to stay calm. I have to get her to go back for me. To find Rory.

  ‘OK. It is great that you surfaced, had a little romance, blah blah blah, but that is done now. You’ve got that human being thing out of your system. Rory has gone. You can’t spend the rest of your walking life hanging onto some guy you knew for a hot minute. Baby, you are STUNNING. You could have any guy you want. You could live anywhere you want. And instead … you work in a fucking rundown lighthouse … err … where the light doesn’t even work, with an old cray-cray lunatic who’s basically banging on death’s door and your ex-boyfriend’s fucking pal who’s clearly trying to sleep with you. And so, no. I’m sorry. I won’t be fucking going down, back to that wretched, awful, rotten sea where those bitches shot me down. Because I am way up here. Making something of myself. And they are down there. And I never want to see them again. Not even if it is for you, Lorali. I won’t.’

  She reaches for her glass. And I look for my coat. But I can’t find it in the bigness of the stupid room. All I can see is gold. Gold. And sparkles and shiny, shiny horror and mirrors. Everywhere. And the hugeness of the cow-skin rug – the skin of a living thing spread out on her floor as though it’s art – and I feel sick and I can’t find my coat still, but I don’t care. I just want to be out of this room with this horrible mermaid and out of this hotel with the bright light and the beauty that I cannot touch and the world that I do not know and she is calling my name but I do not hear. My finger is on the button of the lift. My knees weak. That stupid publicist is waiting in the corridor. Calling my name too. Saying something unimportant. But I do not hear. And in the lift. With MORE mirrors. My reflection pinging back and I do not cry. Slow. I beat down the floors of the hotel. A woman with a yoga mat looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. Down. Down. Down. I cannot wait to get home. I flood out of the open elevator doors. Rushing past. Fast. Suited people. Diners. Meetings. Briefcase. Cheesecake. Candle. Cocktails. Pearls. Glass. Puppies in handbags. Past reception. Hold the tears in.

  All I want is home. All I want are my friends. All I want is Rory.

  And I slip through the crowd of paparazzi, in and around the people, finding my feet. And then. I run. And I run. And I run.

  And I never look back. Not once.

  PART II

  ONE MONTH LATER

  TEARDROP

  Aurabel, Aurabel.

  Embraced by the solid arms of the bruised helter-skelter, now a browning tin where the candy-striped red and white has peeled. She can flop upside down, find living morsels clinging to the magic carpet, snooze like a kidney bean in the womb-like clutch of a waltzer buggy.

  When a thunderstorm brings new waves Aurabel hides, finds shelter in the haunted house, where the clanking freaks can’t judge. The bolts quiver, glass shatters, the rolling howl of terror raids, but she is safe. Eats fresh flesh of lobster claw and slurps razor clams and the roots of weeds where the nutrients are at their best. She lies on the ribs of a plastic skeleton in this welcoming house of horrors, placing her open hand where the heart would be. Seeking comfort in the obsolete. Talks to the screaming mouth of an old mad hag, babbling about her day like she’s Murray.

  Aurabel grows strong, understands that her hands are her weapon. That she doesn’t need two halves any more; she has become something new.

  But, Aurabel, your Murray sleeps by the engine of a broken car, her crushed heart under the bonnet with the cold metal. She inhales you through the designs you’ve left behind. Softly mooned around the hardness that never seems to conduct the beats of warm blood. Some days she wants to give up. Not do a life without you. She feels the eyes of the others watching her drift along as a half. She feels so light she could bob away to the stars; without the weight of you to ground her she is helium. But then she is so heavy she could wrap herself up and drown in her own tears, cry until the ducts became crystals. Tears that compete with me to wash away the world and blind it to a watery melt of everything. And still she would see you in the mess of every angle. Aurabel, she thinks you are dead. That your bones lie in the grave of some monster’s intestines; that it’s coughing up blue hairballs, picking your ideas out of its teeth. Aurabel. Let Murray know that isn’t true. Let her know you’re coming home.

  THE METAL TAIL

  I don’t breathe. I don’t move. Not a m
uscle. I just watch. And wait …

  BAM!

  The bent hook drives into the heart of the ray. Using my arms I rake it towards me. Its wings flap helpless, then weightless … she’s already dead.

  Feel bad eating rays, a bit. Only because they’re quite impressive. Did you know, when a ray gives birth, the baby pops out all rolled up? Like a scroll. It actually bursts out like that. And immediately, like the second it’s out, it starts flapping. Unreal, isn’t it?

  It always gets me thinking about me. How I was born. Because we’re not stupid. I know I was born up there. On some bed. Had some life before this one. We just don’t get to think about it. And we certainly don’t talk about it. But now I’m here. On my own. I can think about what I like. The gentle cotton folds of a mother. Maybe I had a father too. A male has never held me before; the idea seems so foreign. My parents would be proud. They’d wrap their hands around my little foot and the sole of it would be soft, like moss. I guess they weren’t to know they’d lose me. That’s what I like to think. Whoever they are. Whoever they were.

  Whilst I eat I crank up the puppets. Four little wooden Walker-like puppet dolls on strings that act out a band. They are so cute and cheery. If you wind up the crank at the back the band plays. One has a stick-like pipe thing, another a drum, one this set of strings and the other has this squeezy box that he pushes in and out. Course, the sound is almost completely muted – mostly bubbles just wheezily breathing out of the speakers. But if you listen really close, and imagine really hard, you can very nearly hear their music.

  ‘Cheers, gents.’

  After I eat the ray I get back to my tracking. Which is pretty much all I do all day, seeing as though that’s all I can do until my strength is built up and I can move again. Tracking is a lot harder than it sounds … I do as many turns as I can on the wheel. It’s hench. I can work out how it would’ve worked for the Walkers because there’s these little carriages hanging on each spoke with a bar across. I think two of them Walkers would sit in each one. Still can’t decide if this thing was made for pleasure or torture or transportation. Still, it works my arms up real nice. Obviously my bottom half is real heavy now, so the climb is hard. I clamber around the wheel, spinning it like a mill. The little carriages pick up water too, scooping it up as I go round – going against the current proper works your arms and core too. It burns.