Fairytales for Wilde Girls (34 page)

Authors: Allyse Near

Tags: #FICTION

The Ever After

The sword, made from the bones of six loving brothers, was what the Seventh Princess had used to kill the Seventh Dragon. It had never made sense to Isola, until now. Using the bones of loved ones to slay dragons â it meant using the memories of people she loved to defeat Loneliness.

And Isola often used her mother's bones to slay dragons. They came to her at night, nibbling at whatever body parts lay exposed, breathing hot, sticky clouds over her face â air that threatened flames. And Isola turned over, with one hand holding on to Edgar while the other held on to thoughts of Mother â of Mother in a scarlet bikini at a beach, a proud belly protruding; of Mother reading stories; of Mother as Lileo, black-rimmed eyes, cyborg boots; of Mother when she still loved Father, when she had the strength to stay Wilde. Isola loved Lileo until the dragons crawled back to their glittering dens, until the only thing possessing her was a warmth settled in her chest, her body a velvet-lined music box for her heart to rest in.

Love was the exorcist.

The drip-fed truth about Mother had unravelled her, and love had wrapped her up again. The bandages were thinner than she was used to. Her princes and fantastical friends had covered her, protected her, swaddled her tightly, arms like armour. And then, with her guardians stripped away and her true skin exposed at last, Isola had burned. Isola had hurt. And now, love was the second skin â the regrown protection that still exposed her to the cruelty of people, the lily-pale armour riddled with cracks through which reality could pierce.

Sometimes she was scared of her future. Maybe one day she'd stick a hunk of glass through her arm, too. Sometimes, her skin crumbled like gingerbread in milk, and she panickedly thought she was possessed again by the sad Isola that could have been, the daughter accidentally poisoned by her mother.

But then it would be summer again, and she'd glue rhinestones around her eyelashes, breathe deeply for the first time in months.

She'd see Edgar, the slight pudge of his belly, his curly hair like Japanese silk, and they'd take lilies and picnic blankets to the graveyard, and read other people's books, and remember a little princess who defeated the worst of the dragons. Loneliness was not immortal. Tragedies played out and then came to a close. Everything ended but the stories themselves.

And some days, she'd close the book. Forget it all happened. Her unstyled hair grew oily and colourless, and she'd eat nothing but comfort food, toffee apples and green-tea sorbet, and when she felt up to it, she'd lie in a lavender field until she felt ready to remember again.

She reached across the mattress. The stubble on Edgar's chin razed her skin.

Edgar shuddered awake at her touch. âWhat is it?'

She leaned into him, shaped herself. âI love you, Edgar Llewellyn,' Isola murmured into his hair.

âLove you too, Annabel Lee.'

And they lived ever after, whether they were happy about it or not.

About the Author

Born in 1989, Allyse Near lives in Melbourne, Australia. She studied creative writing at Deakin University and, while there, won the inaugural Judith Rodriguez Prize for Fiction. Several of her short stories have been published in literary journals.

Allyse writes deconstructed pulp-fables that almost always revolve around women, the wilderness and witchcraft. Her inspirations include the occult, the bizarre, the macabre, history, classic folktales, half-remembered dreams, Wonderlands and ghost stories.

She blogs at
www.allysenear.com
.

Fairytales for Wilde Girls
is her first novel.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks the following people, without whose unwavering support this story may have gone untold:

â¥
My family â Mum, Dad, Stuart, Warren, Michael and Shelby.

â¥
Jane Routley, Judith Rodriguez, and all creative writing lecturers at Deakin University.

â¥
My lovely agent, Pippa Masson, who was the very first to say the magic word â
yes
.

â¥
Annabel Blay and all the staff at Curtis Brown.

â¥
Zoe Walton for championing both Isola and me all the way through the publishing process.

â¥
Cristina Briones for her keen eye and patience.

â¥
Christa Moffitt, Dorothy Tonkin, as well as all the enthusiastic staff at Random House Australia.

â¥
Courtney Brims, for lending her dreamy aesthetic and sinister whimsy to bring my characters to life.

â¥
Tiffany Dalton, and my all friends and extended family.

â¥
Booksellers, bloggers, librarians.

â¥
To the readers.

â¥
And to those whose exhaled breaths I borrow upon these pages; Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allan Poe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian
Copyright Act 1968
), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Fairytales for Wilde Girls

Published by Random House Australia 2013

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

A Random House Australia book

Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

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www.randomhouse.com.au

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First published by Random House Australia in 2013

National Library of Australia

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