Aurabel Page 9

  Sometimes, I spin on the wheel for so long that I don’t even know where the day has gone. It swims away and is dark before I know it. It’s because I go into a trance, I reckon. Thinking about me. What I am now. My metal tail. Sometimes I still feel the skin of my tapestry, tingling. Like a phantom dull throb. The nerves wake me up in the night; I feel blood moving up and down the veins but they aren’t real. Now I’m metal. Breathe in for six. Breathe out for six, five, four, three, two …

  I think about Murray. About Tippi. About the king and how he probably thinks I just wasn’t cut out for the job, like I shrimped out or something. Because that Sienna isn’t going to tell the truth. And what will the Tips all be thinking about me? The rumours will be spreading, no doubt. And I think about other stuff too. Course I do. I have to talk myself out of the bad way and think about the positives … Like how I’m lucky to be alive. I think about how I’m gonna bounce back from this ten times stronger, a thousand times harder, than the Mer I once was. And then, and this is my favourite bit to think about (and nothing gets me working like this … so I save the thought for when I’m most tired and don’t think I can manage another turn of the wheel), I think about how I’m going to kill Sienna. Rip her ribcage apart like an oyster shell; reach for her heart like the tiny black stone it is. And then feed it to her. And somehow the wheel always turns again.

  CHINA DOLL

  Back in my home of Hastings, autumn’s face has reared up in the form of sun-coloured fallen leaves and new seas. The air has a raw crunch to it. Deep craters of oily polluted puddles spoil the tarmac crosses of roads. Mothy overcoats and waxy macs roll out, smelling of cedar wood and attics, shoes with laces braving the boggy, moody hilltop.

  Girls in town sniff me out. An arched eyebrow in a coffee shop stings me like lemon on a paper cut. Gangs of friends hang off park benches in gaggles, laughing at my attempts to be believable. Girls with low rucksacks and charcoal eyes, with piercings and coloured hair, girls with hard skin masked in cover-up, hip bones poking out. Girls who probably know how to growl.

  Outside the chip shop a different gang of girls but girls all the same: drinking, smoking, singing. Lip gloss. Swamped in sweet marshmallow perfume and vanilla. A blinding mass of hot pink and neon yellow. Of trainers that are too cool for me. Of jeans too tight. Full of stories I’ll never get to hear, never get to retell. Songs I don’t know. They snort when I pass.

  I am unavoidable. Hard to miss. Even when I try to blend in I am always the one red sock in the white wash turning boys’ cheeks pink. Which, in turn, makes other girls hate me. I can’t go out. Not like other girls my age, because under crowded fluorescent blue lights I am a siren; a screaming alarm; a glitch. I don’t know the words. I don’t have the handbag. I don’t have the right tickets or the right ideas. I don’t tong my hair. I don’t know the rhythm.

  With eyes to the ground I walk forward everywhere I go. Only ever do what I came out to do. Get what I need. Talk to whoever I have to.

  Until I can get back home again, where my shoulders can loosen, my knees can unlock.

  I try to wash the thought of the Selkie away like a bloodstain on a sleeve. And the stain of Opal away even harder. Get back to the routine I know. For now, at least.

  With a sense of normality readjusting itself, I get back on the familiar bicycle of life, pedalling breezily in the bliss of domesticated simplicity that I cherish so much. Trips to the supermarket with Cheryl to get milk, bread, bananas, eggs, wine, salad. The cinema with Flynn. And of course working at Iris Spy, where I happily while away the days scrubbing the dull bruised metal handle of an antique walking stick until it shines like a star.

  I don’t want magic.

  I don’t want any of the past to haunt me any more. I want to forget about it. The sea. My life before. And bury the world I once lived inside.

  Until it finds me.

  She seems kind enough as she snoops the shop; genuinely curious as she asks the price of a china doll. I never liked the doll myself. Her eyes are too silent. Of course she is a doll but she is unnerving; the seemingly content sassy smile and cocky expression across her face, as if she knows some inside secret she is leaving you out of – but if you gently knock her skull with your knuckle you’re met with nothing but vacant echoes. She cheats you.

  ‘Ten,’ I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound too under-watery on its own without the voices of Flynn and Iris to counteract its telling tone.

  ‘I’ll take it.’ She smiles, her eyes peering around the corner, as though checking to see if I am alone. Somehow she has a similar look to the doll. Just as beautiful, just as smug, just as secretive, although I doubt as empty.

  ‘Would you like it wrapped?’ I watch her wandering eyes glassily mesmerised by the cluttered walls of trinkets. Books, jars, pottery, wooden ornaments, tin toys, coins, jewellery, paintings, crockery.

  ‘Oo, yes please, if you wouldn’t mind?’

  I reach for the newspaper and begin to happily wrap up this doll; I hide her face first so she can’t say goodbye. The woman stands over me. Close. Suddenly, I knew exactly who this is.

  A journalist. I know it. I can feel her. See her by a feeling, almost. I am cross now. I hope her stupid china doll smashes on the way home. Why can’t they just leave me alone? I pick up the roll of tape, desperately trying to scramble for where the tape ends to get rid of her as quickly as possible, my fingertips skidding.

  ‘Please,’ she laughs. ‘Let me help you with that – you need long nails for jobs like these.’

  I say nothing but let her take the tape. Her fingers are elegant but one hand looks scarred: stitches seam up healed skin. Watching her … Black hair. Dark skin. Deep eyebrows. Green eyes. Long eyelashes. Who is she? She’s wearing all black except for a grey leather jacket. And a scarf, with a pattern of single eyes dotted all over it. She bites the tape and makes me a perfect line, pressing it to my wrist and then another and then another. ‘That should be enough.’

  I smile shortly. Her leather jacket brushes against my skin, but doesn’t feel like leather; it’s … warm. She snaps up apologetically, bringing the jacket tightly around her, as though it has a life of its own and has to be reined in. She begins to browse, styling out her weirdness. I turn the radio up a bit to muffle the awkwardness. Jumpy music plays out in pirouettes.

  ‘Oooo, what a beautiful coat!’ She reaches for a big old fur thing. I’ve smelt it before. It stinks of dead animal. Warm blood. Of damp and decay. Not beautiful. Moth breakfast. So heavy it feels wet. ‘Do you mind if I try it?’

  ‘No. No, please.’ I nod. ‘There is a mirror just there but it’s only small – I keep saying we should get a full length, but we just haven’t got round to it.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll have to let you be my mirror! I trust your eyes!’ She winks and wraps herself up into the furred skin. ‘Well, what do you think?’ She shrouds the coat around herself breezily, inside its swallowing bigness.

  ‘I …’ And then I smell her. Salty. The sea. She’s the same species as the woman on the beach. I know it. I won’t forget. She’s a Selkie.

  She rushes for me, seizing me in her grip, then pulls the collar tight around her throat, strangling herself with the neck of it and says, ‘I can’t talk. Not for long.’ She wriggles words out of her mouth. ‘It is not a safe time in the Whirl,’ she spits. ‘It is not as it was,’ she adds quickly, but then, as if her voice is taken over by another’s, just like with the other Selkie, she says, ‘Rory is in danger.’

  Not again. I want to be sick. I flush white. I need to be sick.

  ‘Ignore me.’ She shakes her head, again. ‘There is still time to save him before his resolution. After he resolves you will not be able to but until then … you can … there is a chance.’ Almost strangling herself with the collar of the coat, her hands clench, her eyes fix on me and they seem to water. ‘Do not trust me; do not listen to anything I say. Keep your life here, as it is, Lorali. I’ve been sent from …’ Flitting, she relaxes; resets her
jaw with her hands, cranking it to one side. She collects herself once more. ‘You have to save him.’

  ‘How can I trust you when you keep contradicting yourself?’ I am angry now.

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘So which one of you is telling the truth?’

  ‘I can’t say because you won’t believe me, but one of us is Selkie and one of us is woman. I can tell you that other voice you’re hearing isn’t the truth. This voice you’re hearing now isn’t telling the truth either. I’m not lying. And the one who’s telling you the truth isn’t the one talking but the one who’s silent isn’t telling the truth. I am telling the truth.’ I stare at this striking woman in the fur coat. Disbelieving that I’ve fallen into the trap of yet another Selkie and … this time … at my work. What next – will they come to my home? To Cheryl? Her eyes fix on me so hard they could bleed. My heart is in my mouth. Sickness in my gut. My skin tingles.

  ‘OK. If I was to trust you and go back into the Whirl … say I don’t make it – what happens then?’

  The bell of the shop door tinkles open and Flynn and Iris enter with the cold, bold breeze and handfuls of shopping. The woman, startled, immediately jumps up.

  ‘Not today, but perhaps I’ll come back for it. What time are you open until?’ She whips the bear coat off. Iris, in awe, double blinks at her beauty. It’s the most pert I’ve seen him all week!

  ‘It’s a winner on you! You look a million dollars in it!’ He beams.

  ‘Oh, thank you. Perhaps I’ll come back and try it again. It is getting colder. Summer’s almost left the party,’ she flirts. ‘I really must be going.’

  She slams the money for the doll on the table, wriggling herself out of the coat in a fluster before gathering herself out of the door. ‘Thank you so much for your help. I hope to see you again soon!’ She grins and winks at me. I feel Flynn’s eyes looking at me to see if I’m OK but I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at the eyes on the scarf.

  And I know what I have to do.

  THE MISSING AURABEL

  ‘Mer. My species. My kind,’ Sienna hisses into the handheld tin cone, outside the palace gates.

  Her hair is now ice-white in an almost solid high pony, her skin whiter. Snow-white brows and her filed fangs and split snake tongue make her serpent-like.

  ‘I thank you for coming to the hearing today. Firstly, I want you all to know it is with a heavy heart that I appear before you today. As you well know, both Keppel and His Royal Highness, King Zar, are friends of mine of the closest nature. Watching them suffer as they went through the traumatic loss of losing their only daughter, Princess Lorali, was the hardest thing I have ever had to witness. Although I can appreciate this remains a distressing and heartbreaking struggle for the pair of them, I cannot sit back and watch as our beloved home, the Whirl, is misguided and led to its demise.’

  The crowd of Mer listen attentively. A mix of Tips and Mer from the Whirl. Sienna has never been a council member they’ve warmed to – feared, yes – but they want to sound her out. Even her standing before them today is more than they have seen of Zar at all. Inside the palace, Kai is sent to his room, forbidden to witness Sienna’s speech, ordered to turn his back on the circus below as the ringleader continues to weave her poison-laced threads of lies.

  ‘Zar, I suppose, as any desperate male would when fighting a losing battle, panicked. He so badly wanted to unite the Mer and resurrect the spirit of community – but he employed an inexperienced, young orphaned Mer from Tippi town to clear out the forest. When he told me that Aurabel was to assist me, the keeper of beasts, of course I was elated to be partnering with the Mer of Tippi, whom I have always respected and admired. However, I was hesitant. I know only too well what the monsters of the water are capable of.’

  At this, Sienna lifts her arm and rattles her wrist. The cuff clasped to the chain, link after link, the umbilical cord connecting her to the beast, Nevermind, is still. She smiles, ever so sweetly, and continues …

  ‘I was wary, but, as just a council member I can only advise the king and ultimately the decisions always rest with him.’ She holds her snide serpent tongue, pinning her words dramatically in the air. Kai cannot help but peer from his cut-out window, his heart beating. What is this about?

  ‘Although this young Mer was a fearless and talented hunter, she was also a domesticated, generous home hunter – a raw hand. She wasn’t trained or, dare I say it, prepared for the evils inside the depths of the forest. The KING gave young Aurabel no training, and no security, sending her out into dangerous open waters completely unsupervised. If I had known, I can assure you, I would not have agreed to it.’

  Mer tut and coo, looking to one another. Some sob, for Aurabel. A few more Mer float towards the front. Angry Tips. Kai can’t help but catch Murray’s eyes. She came for his help. Did he let her down? She looks at him like he is guilty. He feels sick. She shoots her head down, stands closer to Sienna, unable to let her eyes meet the eyes of her fellow Mer. Or the eyes of the boy in the palace window.

  ‘I now know from Aurabel’s widow …’ Sienna nods at Murray reassuringly, which invites a rearing sea of bobbing Mer heads to stare at Murray too. The dramatic word widow makes her want to collapse … ‘that Aurabel was excited by this position. A job. A career. But also the wall of classes falling down, once and for all. Aurabel wanted unity. Attractive bait to be dangled, no? Any Mer would leap at the chance. But sadly, due to the king’s ill-judgement and incompetence, his frail laws and own inexperience put that young Mer’s fragile life in harm’s way.’ Sienna, milking the life out of her speech, theatrically takes an unbearably long pause. ‘And Aurabel was attacked and eaten by savage monsters.’

  Even though they’ve heard the rumours it does not stop the crowd of Mer from gasping. Kai’s face creases in horror. Is this the truth?

  ‘I do not want to be standing here in the future being told by the weak king to move in packs with weapons because the waters are not safe. Because the king is out of options. Because the king cannot keep peace, keep our waters under control. Or do his OWN dirty work! I do not want to be standing here in the future being told that yet another Mer has died. NO!’

  The crowd of Mer clap and applaud, cheering on Sienna’s speech, which only encourages her to whip and fire her tongue even harder, even louder, even fiercer. ‘Mer, I am unable to restrain the savage hunter inside my heart for my kind! I have to do what is right. I refuse to turn my back on you and leave you in the dark like your king is doing, and so I put it to you … I want to be the one, ME, standing here before you, to tell you that the waters ARE safe, that the Whirl is beautiful, peaceful, thriving and ALIVE!’

  The Mer cheer, and Sienna smiles, glancing at Murray, who nods back in recognition, giving Sienna the confidence to scream her final point from the top of her lungs: ‘I want to stand here … before you, Mer, as QUEEN!’

  DNA MAG

  THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND? Well, this week it’s a no-brainer.

  ‘Sleb’ mermaid and party girl Opal Zeal raises the stakes again with the launch of her water theme park, GUSH! The style icon revealed that the park is a ‘place to feel like a kid again’ and added that ‘lots of humans wanted to be mermaids when they were younger – and now they can in this experience!’ But she warns that the park is ‘like no other’, with rides and attractions that promise to thrill.

  GUSH is located in trendy East London’s Hoxton and the dress code is ‘splash with a flash’ (whatever that means!). The slides appear to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before (imagine Picasso meets My Little Pony at an S & M party), apparently reflecting the true underworld life in the Whirl that Opal was once used to.

  The word GUSH alone is trending! Hashtag serious FEAR OF MISSING OUT! The park is 12+ with a fully licensed bar serving Opal’s FAVE cocktails and mocktails (warning: hot lifeguards) and is said to be more like a ‘nightclub with water rides’ rather than your average swimming pool. A secret special guest is rumoured to
be performing live at the opening event! We think a spray tan, bikini wax and wedged-heel combo is a must. Guest list only. (OBVS.)

  BOUND

  Kai tears himself away from his bedroom window. He wishes he could have done more for Murray. Not Sienna. But he can’t even help himself, let alone another. Why does his father have to be so lenient with everybody else but so strict with him?

  If the council agrees to make Sienna queen – what does that mean for him?

  What does anything mean to him?

  As Kai rolls into his oversized scoop of a bed he feels an invisible lightness in his body. As fragile and as weightless as he realises he is. Unimportant. Invisible. Voiceless. He feels faint, like the haunt of a rumour.

  What is this strange place? Why doesn’t he feel like his name belongs to him? Why does he feel so old and young at the same time? So alive yet at moments like he is retracing a stranger’s footsteps. Often his brain swishes and scribbles in a lucid state where he isn’t sure what is real and what isn’t. Like waking from a dream. Has this always been his life? He remembers meeting Zar, the first face he ever saw …

  ‘My boy, welcome home.’

  Kai has no tangible reason to doubt his life as it is. That this is all there is. This is the only world, inside this palace, this place. This tight balloon. It is all so cloudy, but yes, there is some reminder in that enchanted secret wood, he is sure of it. It jogs a something. Like knocking a settled shell from a shelf and putting it back but not in the exact same spot. But he no longer knows where that shelf even is now that the forest hasn’t opened. He has nothing to cling onto.