Fairytales for Wilde Girls (31 page)

 

Witch of the Woods

That was the only answer, whichever way she posed the question. The second Isola had outlived the first, and Lileo Pardieu-Wilde had died in her daughter's place, a soapy and naked sacrifice stretched out on the bathtub altar, surrounded by fruit shampoos and scented candles – offerings to vengeful gods who demanded blood for their wine goblets, virgin or otherwise, give or take a few decades on the vintage.

‘But you're nothing like her,' said Isola tearfully. ‘My mother loved these woods, and you've been killing them.'

Lileo's eyelids fluttered closed.

‘It's because she's toxic,' muttered Florence, drawing the group's attention again.

‘Please, Christobelle, Ruslana. Let her go,' said Lileo. ‘She's a good girl. She's just upset.'

Hesitantly, they slackened their grips, and Florence scrambled free, falling sloppily in the grass, her torn dress heavy and her eyes shining furiously.

‘She's not,' said Isola tearfully. ‘She's not good. She's been possessing me.' Nobody spoke, and she asked, ‘Who is she?'

It was Alejandro who answered. ‘I believe, Isola, that she is
your
ghost, in a way. A split –'

Isola remembered.
They called them ‘splits', or sometimes ‘echoes'; half-hearted hauntings, the kind her brothers had always warned her about . . . Unpredictable, confused, often caught in loops. Unable to change, unable to move on, a split infects their surroundings with their feelings – emotions so strong they anchored them to the earth.

‘– like a small piece of you that died,' said Alejandro heavily, ‘when your Mother did.'

‘I'm not sure what I am, exactly,' muttered Florence, her eyes like daggers. ‘What do you think – am I innocence? Am I childhood? What've you been missing, Isola? What is it that makes you
less
than human?'

Her princes all cried out instantly in her defence, but Isola couldn't untangle their words; people had said that she'd changed, hadn't they? That she'd turned strange and cold, Ice Girl Isola, after her tenth birthday?

‘We can't be apart forever,' said Florence, raising her raspy voice over the din. ‘But you refused to remember. And once you did, it would all be so
lonely
again – remembering me would mean remembering how we came to be apart, and why no-one ever seems to acknowledge dear dead
Mother,
why it seems Father hasn't talked to her for
years
. . .'

Isola started. Had Father spoken to Mother lately or even looked at her? Had she imagined their minimal interactions? Isola shook away the thought. This wouldn't do, it wasn't Father's fault her princes had been driven out – it was this dark girl before her! ‘But you made my life Hell! You took my brothers away!'

Florence snorted in disgust. ‘Yeah, and that clearly worked, 'cause they're here now. Obviously they can avoid you if they're given the right motivation, but they just can't help themselves from rushing in. Gotta save the snivelling little princess from the bad old real world.'

Shocked by the venom, Isola took a step back.

‘You held them so close because, secretly, you
knew
you didn't have a mother anymore. You only had
her,
the pathetic thing in the bathtub that has the nerve to call you
daughter –
not even a proper ghost, only a piece of what you remember, trapped in an endless loop!'

‘But –'

‘And Dad never acknowledged her, did he? For almost seven years, it's been as if she doesn't exist – because she
doesn't
, Isola, she's dead! And you're keeping her here,' accused Florence. ‘Who's the evil witch here, huh? You're so determined to hold on to her that you've kept this half of her, too –' she jerked her head towards Lileo, who was teary-eyed in her dishevelled nature goddess dress ‘– the part she
died
trying to kill, to
protect
you
from
!'

 

Killing Loneliness, Eating Time

With that, Florence scrambled upright and fled, rushing past the Wish-You-Well and under the mossy Bridge of Sighs, vanishing into the dark.

Isola ran after her, under the Bridge. The vision in her left eye seemed sharper than usual. There were tree stumps around her, black and spindly like burnt-out wood, etched with jagged names.

Not tree stumps at all, but tombstones.

The centre of Vivien's Wood was a graveyard.

‘This is where you buried me,' said Lileo quietly.

Isola jumped; she didn't realise the woman had followed.

‘Your father wanted me in the churchyard with my own mother, but the vicar wouldn't allow it.' She gave a sad little snort. ‘A suicide in hallowed ground! Imagine! So you had to bury me out here, with all these long-gone strangers . . . and you wouldn't visit. You'd explore every inch of the woods, but you'd never pass under the Bridge. You stopped looking, and so you forgot how to see.'

The air beyond the Bridge of Sighs felt cold, away from the flaming tree, away from the princes.

‘I'm so sorry,' Isola muttered.

‘No, my princess, don't be! I didn't want you to visit. I always knew what I was – the worst part of Lileo, broken off, the splinter in her soul. So I left. I haunted the world. I never intended to come back.'

‘But I called you back. We held a séance…'

Lileo sighed heavily. ‘And she came, too.'

Isola went towards Florence, who was kneeling over a grave, crumpling up flower heads to scatter like confetti. ‘I hate her,' sobbed Florence, ‘but she's my mother, so I love her, too.'

Isola leaned over the tombstone. She didn't read the name engraved. ‘The story about your death – why did you make it up?'

Florence shook her head vigorously. ‘I didn't – it's a story, it was all along – don't you remember
Wolverine Queen
?' She stifled a sob into her sleeve, and Isola felt something icy in her snap, a piece float away.

It was a story in her fairytale book, one she hated and had made herself forget. All along the truth had been ink and paper bound in a book on her bedroom floor – the visions and terrors like the proddings the real world inflicted upon the sleepwalker. Remember, remember . . .

‘I thought the story would help remind you.' Her hands, clasped as if in prayer, were starting to shake. ‘I'm so
angry
,' she whispered. ‘She didn't mean to, but she killed me, Isola. Split my self up. Trapped with her illness, like you were still trapped with her in that house.'

A single memory floated feather-like through Isola's thoughts: Father exploding with rage over a breakfast table when she mentioned her ‘imaginary friends'. It wasn't Alejandro's name he was reacting to, but the word
Mother
. . .

‘Don't let her keep you in a cage,' whispered Florence.

Isola looked at Florence. Her hair, Isola's natural ashy, dishwater-brown, was stained darker with mud and sorrow. Underneath the accumulated dirt, Florence's dress was cream with pastel ribbons – the dress she'd worn at her tenth birthday party.

She'd been trapped in the woods for so long. Screaming for Isola's attention. Remembering, so Isola didn't have to.

Isola had buried the truth with her mother, festering down there in a box, in the mud, in the dark of the woods. The illness. The stigma. The suicide.

She nodded at the ghost girl and straightened up. ‘I'm sorry,' she called to Lileo. ‘I'm so sorry about what happened to you. About what's still happening to you. I wish I could do something –'

‘So stay with me,' whispered Lileo, and Isola clutched the top of the tombstone to steady herself. She felt crumbling rock, a creep of moisture – all the worldly remnants of her real mother.

‘Stay with
us
,' Lileo reiterated. ‘We'll live here. Nimue would have wanted that. Your princes – they can stay, too. It'll be the world you've always wanted.'

‘But I don't –'

‘Surely you know you cannot go back,' she said with a bright laugh. ‘Your other mother is an echo, acting out her last years. She'll never change!'

Isola moved past her, under the Bridge, back to the burning Vigour Mortis tree. Somehow it still stood upright, its uppermost branches clawing at the sky, fruitlessly trying to cut a saviour rainfall from the belly of the clouds. The Hindenburg moon sat between them, bulbous and burning white.

She saw a vision of herself, drawing back an arrow, setting the moon aflame, and wondered how she'd never noticed the way the Nimue world had bled into the other, through cracks in the walls of that house until she couldn't separate the realities, like so much tangled thread.

‘Would you stay here?' Isola asked her brothers, who were standing shell-shocked in a semicircle.

‘What?' squeaked Rosekin.

‘If I stay here,' said Isola desperately, ‘will you stay, too?'

The princes didn't reply.

‘But you see now, don't you, my princess?' called Lileo. She emerged from under the Bridge, Florence skulking behind.

Isola met her dark half's eyes, and Florence gave an infinitesimal shake of her head.
Stay out of the damn woods
.

Smiling, Lileo extended a hand, and for the first time Isola saw something of Mother in her. Something like love.

Isola could feel her pulse battering her throat like a trapped butterfly. By her feet was the bow Florence had knocked from her grasp while protecting a mother she despised. Isola picked up the last arrow. The tip was smeared pink.

‘Faeriedust,' she said quietly. ‘They say it can heal the good and destroy the evil.'

‘Where did you get those?' Lileo clasped her hands over her heart. ‘Those arrows – they're made from my bones . . .'

Isola didn't answer. She loaded the bow and drew back the string. She felt the company of five silent princes. The beglittered arrow tip began to glow as pink as Rosekin, and for the first time Lileo looked fearful.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Killing Loneliness,' said Isola calmly, and she fired the arrow. Bright pink streaked through the night.

Right into Florence's heart.

The Seventh Princess: An Instalment

‘The Seventh Dragon, Loneliness, faced the Seventh Princess and sneered.

‘“You cannot defeat me,” he boomed, the sound shaking his very scales like gongs. “The princes are gone, and you are more alone than ever you were before.”

‘“Maybe so,” said the little princess, “but you are the last of your brothers, too, and I? I will never be truly alone.”

‘The dragon laughed and smoke billowed from his nostrils, coasting over the cliff-top, shrouding the princess in black mist.

‘“I may be small!” yelled the princess, her eyes squeezed tightly against the burning black ash, “and I may be the last. I may not be the most kind, the most loving, the most steadfast – but I have a little of all those things, and while I have those qualities, and the memories of the people who gave them to me, why, then Loneliness can never hurt me!'''

 

Goodbye-blood

Florence stood a moment, shock shivering down her limbs. Something poured from the wound in her chest, but it wasn't blood – rather, it was a glittering, glowing pink, as the faeriedust ate her up from the inside.

Lileo shrieked with terror and rushed to Florence, her pale hands gripping the arrow shaft, tearing, tugging. The princes and Isola shouted ‘NO!' in unison and there was a rush of shadow, a gold glint, a thrust – Dusk galloped out from his hiding place and impaled the storyteller on his golden horn.

Lileo screamed as she was knocked asunder, and the unicorn ripped his horn free. She scrambled aside, her shoulder dribbling blood, and dragged Florence with her. Lileo hauled the shock-frozen girl into her lap, afraid to touch the arrow in her daughter's heart.

‘Don't die, don't die, my princess, don't die,' gasped Lileo, cradling the girl.

‘But see, Miss Pardieu,' said Alejandro softly, ‘she is not dying.'

And at his words, the pink glow in Florence's chest began to spread, enveloping the girl like the fire had the Vigour Mortis tree. The light was blinding – Isola could feel heat emanating from her and she cringed away, shielding her eyes until the warmth and the pink disappeared, and it was dark in the woods once more.

In Lileo's arms lay Florence, still with wide, shocked eyes –
both
eyes. There was no arrow in her body, no blood and dirt in her hair. She was Isola again, but ten years old, with sleek hair and a bright dress and both her blue eyes spilling tears.

‘Thank you,' she choked out, and her gaze left Isola and found Lileo's, and she dissolved. Lileo clutched at nothing in the bubbling air.

Isola's breath hitched – she felt something warm pass through her, something pink – then she was whole again, possessed forever by her forgotten half.

‘You're welcome,' Isola whispered, pressing her hands to her chest. Through her dress she felt the wedding ring, resting peaceful over her thumping heart.

‘I don't get it,' piped up Rosekin over Lileo's quiet sobs. ‘Why didn't you just kill the witch?'

‘Because,' said Ruslana in a low voice, ‘she chose herself over her mother.'

At this, the storyteller stumbled to her feet. Lileo was shaking all over. The blood from her wound had now spilled over her breast and was black – ink, from the stories she'd left behind, and the ones she'd taken with her.

‘I still don't –' Rosekin began.

‘Because,' interrupted Isola, ‘killing Lileo would keep Florence here. Unhealed and angry. Always trying to hurt me in an effort to reach me.' She turned to Lileo. ‘But Florence was trapping you here, too. Your guilt was following you around, in the shape of your little girl.'

The flames still gobbling the tree filled the silence.

‘Mum,' said Isola to the wood witch, ‘you killed yourself, but not me. You don't need to feel guilty anymore, because your guilt has gone.'

‘But I –'

‘And
I'm
fine,' Isola reassured her, ‘and I forgive you.'

A potent spell had been spoken. The twig-crown ringing Lileo's head was blossoming, the dirt was falling in clumps from her skin, her split dress was mending, and her tears were falling thicker than Isola's. A light was shining through the lines in her palms, the cracks in her glass feet.

‘You do?'

The gold light was now shining from her laugh lines, from the inner corners of her eyes, from under her fingernails. Lileo looked towards the far edge of the woods, to the place where Number Thirty-six stood on Aurora Court. ‘We are connected. If I leave, so will she.'

‘That's okay.'

‘Really?'

‘No, not really. I don't know what I'll do without her.' Isola's hands were trembling, and she clutched at Alejandro to disguise it. ‘But I
can
live without her, because she died without me. You have to stop torturing yourself. I mean, you
should
feel a little guilty – you fucked up, royally, and now you can't ever come back. But . . .' Isola looked sideways at the first prince. He always knew what to say.

‘You should also feel proud,' said Alejandro solemnly, ‘because you left behind a daughter strong enough to weather it.'

‘And you should feel joyous,' added Christobelle, ‘because now, she's not going to fall victim to the same dragon.'

‘Feel loved,' piped up Rosekin. ‘All this time, she only held on to your good side.'

‘Feel blessed,' added Grandpa Furlong, removing his hat respectfully. ‘You got ten years with her.'

‘And feel at peace,' said Ruslana lastly, ‘because she's ready to let you go. All of you.'

Lileo Pardieu crossed her hands over her heart. ‘I loved you,' whispered the wood witch, the darkest part of Mother Wilde. ‘And I love you still.'

She breathed deeply, exhaled. The light cracked through her, momentarily blinding. Then Lileo Pardieu began to break apart, a corpse rotting in fast motion, but beautifully; golden pieces of her flaked away, until she had dissolved like Mama Sinclair and Florence before her, her ashes mixing at the roots of the Vigour Mortis tree.

Isola fell to her knees.

And then, at midnight, spring came to Vivien's Wood.

Everything burst into bloom. Flowerbuds ruptured like little red hearts, leaf buds unravelled, a thick carpet of grass shot up towards the sky. The trees' lagging limbs bounced upwards, energised again. The Vigour Mortis tree trembled, the fires spontaneously quenching before it too exploded into life; bright green leaves fluttered down like snow and the bells on the red ribbon around the trunk jangled with the force of it.

Dusk trotted up behind her. He licked her hair. Inky blood dribbled down his horn and onto her cheek like a tear. Rabbits and foxes and wolves and all manner of Nim-creatures gathered in a ring around them.

But Isola was alone again – the brothers were gone, vanishing on the breeze of the broken spell. She cried into her hands, while at Number Thirty-six a small, shuddering rabbit-creature slipped from his blankets and vanished into the dark, and with a last smile, a relieved exhale, Mother Wilde's ghost sank under the bubbles in the tub, and the water stirred no more. The last candle blew itself out.