Fairytales for Wilde Girls (5 page)

 

The Dead Girl – Part Deux

The dead girl from the woods was sitting in Isola's window, illuminated by the light of the Hindenburg moon.

Isola had only noticed the girl as a speck of Tinkerbell light; the moonbeams had caught something on her wrist, reflecting silver. The light danced on Isola's face and woke her, like a lighthouse attracting her attention, warning her of rocks and treacherous shorelines.

Isola threw off the tangle of sheets and sat up.

They each waited for the other to speak. The moon held her star-strewn breath.

‘Hello, dead girl,' said Isola, ever the hostess.

‘Hello, heartbeat girl,' said the uninvited guest. ‘It's like a drum, it's so fucking loud. Turn it down, will you?'

Isola didn't know what to say. Ghosts often said strange things, as though conducting conversations half in dream, one foot hooked desperately in the doorway of the living world they'd been dragged so unceremoniously from. Sometimes they mistook Isola for old friends or enemies. Sometimes they entangled their fates with the red string of hers and she learned to call them brothers.

The dead girl perched on the windowsill and twisted sideways, settling into the frame more comfortably, her silhouette lit by moon- and neon street-light. A stockinged shadow puppet.

‘You see ghosts, you strange little creature.' One striped leg swung down, kicking at Isola's bookcase. A pale mouth smirked. ‘
Eye-so-lah
. You must be pretty special.'

Isola shrugged. ‘I just pay attention.'

The silver on the dead girl's wrist looked like a manacle, one half of handcuffs. The girl must have noticed Isola's gaze, for she lifted her wrist, the manacle jangling, and said, ‘Come look.'

Warily, Isola climbed out of bed and examined the dead girl's wrist from the middle of the room.

‘It's a charm bracelet,' said the dead girl proudly.

The charms showed the moon cycle cast in silver, each droplet dangling from the chain, singing when they clinked together. New, crescent, quarter, half, gibbous, full, waxing and waning round her wrist.

‘It's beautiful,' said Isola. ‘What's your name?'

‘It is, isn't it?' The girl ignored the question and instead smiled at the bracelet. ‘My mother gave it to me.'

‘Oh.' Most of her face was still hidden behind her dark hair, but the girl looked as thin as Death on a diet, and her broken voice crackled like sweets unwrapping. Rosekin and the other faeries' dramatic death-tale was reliable for once. Huh. That was a first.

‘So what's your name?' Isola ventured again. Ghosts liked to talk about themselves, she had found; their histories and faces and names were all they had left in the world. ‘I'm Isola.'

‘I know
that
, weren't you even listening?' the dead girl snapped, thudding her fist to the windowsill. ‘I thought you were supposed to be
smart
!'

‘I'm sorry,' said Isola, although she wasn't. Alejandro had always advised her to tiptoe through conversations with ghosts she didn't know – some were liable to explosive rage and violence, and it was best to assume they all were at first. Stranger danger, spirit-style.

The dead girl, as if bored with Isola's company, contorted into a crouch, preparing to spring from the windowsill. ‘Well, if you're really a smart girl after all . . .' She tilted her head and smiled back at Isola.

The moon lit the black hollow where her eye had once been.

‘. . . you'll stay out of the damn woods.'

 

Little Voices

‘Where've you been all weekend?'

‘Why?' Alejandro touched her hair, disturbing it slightly. ‘Did you miss me,
querida
?'

Isola immediately smoothed her hair back down. ‘No,' she scowled, ‘I had a visitor.'

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. Isola rubbed it clean.

Alejandro had permanent dark circles under his eyes, like Isola often woke with when she slept with mascara on. They had matching wobbly colt legs, except Alejandro was skinny from a youth spent on drugs. The stunning clothes he wore – the clothes he died in – were the height of Victorian dandy fashion. Every day he changed his appearance slightly, although the simple fact he was dead left him permanently unchanging. He sometimes tied his crushed-grape cravat – the only colour on him – to hold back his hair, or wore it like an ascot or an armband. He arranged the diamond pins on his laced cuffs and coat pockets in differing patterns, sometimes mirroring the movement of the stars. On Isola's last birthday, he'd arranged the diamond pins to read ‘16' on his starched black lapels.

Wordlessly, he took her schoolbag and carried it as they ventured through Vivien's Wood. Forever the gentleman.

‘And may I enquire as to whom you have replaced me with?'

‘If I was going to replace you, I'd pick someone a little livelier than
her
– the girl we saw last week. The dead one in the cage.'

Alejandro stiffened. ‘What did she want?'

‘Well, first she asked me to turn the volume of my heartbeat down. Then she told me to stay out of the damn woods.'

Alejandro tugged nervously on his silk cravat.

‘I'll do neither,' declared Isola, shaking out her ice-blonde hair. ‘It's my heart, and my woods. I was here first.'

‘I do not like this, Isola.' Creases of worry braided Alejandro's eyebrows together. ‘If Rosekin is right about . . . about what happened, a death like that can do things to people. Twist them.'

Isola could remember that protruding leg and cramped cage all too well. She shivered then said brusquely, ‘Since when did Rosekin know anything about anything?'

‘You would do well to heed the stories of faeries, Isola,' Alejandro admonished. ‘Their voices might be faint, but their words are tall indeed.'

Isola only shrugged. She didn't want to believe it was true – but she'd seen the hollow eye socket, heard the scratched voice like an ancient recording of a girl talking. ‘What happened to the body?'

‘I left it. The unicorns will finish it off.'

‘That's cruel,' muttered Isola.

‘She is already dead,
querida
. Crueller to let the herd starve another winter, I think.'

 

At St Dymphna's, Grape had made a triumphantly late start to the term, and she carried her arm, bent crooked by the thick plaster cast, as though it were some precious baby bird.

‘Seven days in bed? For
this
?' Isola teased.

‘I've not wasted it,' said Grape, affronted. ‘I had to become ambidextrous.'

For the whole day, Grape wrote notes with her left hand. She took a great deal of badly concealed joy out of handing worksheets scribbled with shapes and nonsense to teachers, even though each nun told her in exasperation that she didn't
have
to hand in anything at all. But Grape only took this as a challenge, and started on a maths sheet with a pen clamped between her teeth.

Isola spent the afternoon art class drawing idly on Grape's cast: bunches of rotund purple grapes for her namesake, faeries in bubblegum-glow, an empty birdcage . . .

‘I wish you'd seen it,' Grape was saying. ‘It was so funny – I ran up and pushed Majella into the pool, and then she jumped out and chased me, and I ran up the stairs and
whack
, right into Ellie Blythe Nettle – remember her? – then I fell
down
the stairs, everyone loved it, it was hilarious, my arm was killing me but I kind of drank too much and forgot about it.'

‘Sorry I missed it.'

‘You shouldn't always run off like that! People will start suspecting.'

‘Suspecting what?'

Grape gave a Cheshire-cat grin. ‘That you're Batman. Duh.'

Grape was the only good thing about St Dymphna's. Isola had not been raised religiously; her baptism occurred to pacify the grumblings of her devout grandmother, who had since winged her way up to the strictly conservative heaven she'd never found on earth. Father had chosen to send Isola to St Dymphna's after a spate of teen pregnancies at the local comprehensive; Catholic schoolgirls apparently didn't ever get pregnant or even look sideways at boys. Besides, Mother had gone to St Dympha's and hadn't she turned out all right?

Isola's first day of nun-infested single-sex pro-abstinence anti-Darwin anti-Isola school had gone like this:

The school: a converted nunnery with secret bomb shelters from the Second World War and heritage-listed staircases that led nowhere; a funhouse of stained-glass windows and asbestos under the floorboards.

In the well-manicured front gardens stood a stunning fountain dedicated to the memory of the cruellest of the nuns, who Mother Wilde had remembered as a teacher when she was a student there.

‘And
horrible
she was too. She bruised my knuckles on my very first day,' she'd whispered, when Isola had come into Mother's permanently darkened bedroom to say her goodbyes before school and ended up cocooned under the sheets with her.

‘How come?'

Mother's eyes, bruised with sleep, had widened slightly. ‘You know, it could have been any number of things.'

Beyond the magical man-repelling gate, in the convent gardens, three princes had been waiting to wish good lucks and goodbyes. Of course, this was a one-time-only allowance, given Alejandro's usual stance on Isola's non-Nimuean world, but he recognised that she needed someone fairer-sexed to squeeze her clammy hand goodbye.

Ruslana stood by the fountain, her silver breastplate glinting in the sun and her braided hair roiling down her back.

A bubble of pink light, Rosekin, hovered at her shoulder; Christobelle's golden scales glimmered in the water of the fountain, tye-dyed pink at the tail's fringe.

‘You'll be fine,' said Ruslana, bending to tug the pleats in Isola's plaid skirt straight.

‘Stomp on anyone who's mean to you!' squeaked Rosekin. Stomping was her answer to all Big Problems; she had always assumed that anything bothersome could be squished underfoot by such large creatures as humans.

‘Good luck, my darling,' cooed Christobelle, blowing a kiss inside a bubble out of the fountain. Isola reached out to catch it and it popped wet and lovely in her palm.

Dramatis Personae

CHRISTOBELLE:
The fourth prince. A beautiful mermaid and possible serial killer obsessed with romance, despite the consequences of her own tragic love story.

Rosekin flew a loop-de-loop around Isola's head, and Ruslana gave her school tie a final nervous tug.

‘And don't do anything I wouldn't do,' warned Ruslana.

Isola looked quizzically up at the towering woman. ‘But there's nothing you wouldn't do.'

A grin split Ruslana's black lips. ‘Exactly.'

Isola had never learnt to call them
sisters
– a sister was a wicked nun who smacked Mother's hands, and a sister in a fairytale was almost always evil. And so, Ruslana, Christobelle and Rosekin had remained brother-princes to Isola. Protectors who watched with proud wet eyes as their little sister-princess shouldered her schoolbag and assimilated into the steady stream of uniformed girls.

Isola's first encounter with authority went predictably. In one long breath a brick-shaped nun – Sister Katherine Vincent, later Sister K to Isola – commented on the state of her hair, the length of her skirt, and the height of her socks,
which are mismatched by the way, young lady, do you want detention on your very first day you are a representative of this school what a terrible first impression you make
.

‘What's your name?'

‘Regan,' said Isola sweetly. ‘You know, like the girl in
The Exorcist.'

Isola couldn't stand horror films – they always seemed to find a way into her dreams whenever she dared watch them through her fingers – and she had never even seen
The Exorcist
, but was wily enough to employ a little pop-culture Satanism when threatened by one of Christ's wrinkly brides.

 

Unlocked Hearts

Isola waited in her usual spot on High Street for Grape's bus to arrive so they could walk the last ten minutes to school together.

The bus stop was in a sleazy part of town, and was situated in front of an industrial-looking club called The G Spot. They rarely checked IDs here, and it was a commonly held belief that the only number that mattered to the doorman was not your age, but your bra size.

Next to the club was a dingy old town hall that now masqueraded as a holy place; the neon sign over the doorway, reminiscent of a sleazy hotel, announced it as the ‘Church of the Unlocked Heart'.

A lone man with gelled-down hair and an armful of paper fixed her in his sharky gaze just before the bus drove up. The pin on his collar showed the church's symbol – a red heart with a golden keyhole in the centre. No sooner had they locked eyes than a pamphlet was being pressed into her hands, and Isola resisted the urge to chuck it into the gutter.

‘Hey, have you heard about our church?' the man said, his smile seemingly stickered-on. ‘You, miss, look like you could use a little saving.'

‘I'm happy with my bank, thanks,' said Isola, sidestepping the man as Grape hopped off the bus amidst the sea of blue-plaid dresses.

He fastened his white fingers around her wrist, shocking her, and said, ‘You need to be saved, witch.'

‘Gertrude!' Grape called in a put-upon accent. ‘Darling! It's me, Millicent! Oh, what have I told you about your wild church-joining habit?' She snatched the pamphlet, tsking as she looked down her nose at its contents. ‘Gertrude, Gertrude – fifth one this week, dear! Restrain yourself – remember your twelve-step program!' Crushing the pamphlet in her fist and tossing it towards the public dustbin, Grape linked her arm with Isola's and pulled her away, telling the man quite sternly over her shoulder, ‘And you,
sir
, are an enabler!'

Cake, Grass, Glasses: An Interlude

Unlike most people in Avalon, Mieko Grace Tomoyaki wasn't christened at birth. For one, her parents were Shinto Buddhists, and for another, she received her name at the age of eight.

A fortnight after she'd first moved into the village, an inexplicable letter with hyperactive font arrived in the mail – it was an invitation to some girl's eighth birthday party. Her name was Isola Wilde.

Mother Wilde had turned Mother Goose and invited the lonely new girl on her daughter's behalf. Grace clutched Father Tomoyaki's hand nervously as a woman and young girl greeted her at the gate.

‘Hi!' said the birthday girl, bouncing on the balls of her feet. ‘I'm Alice Liddell!'

‘No, you're not, Isola. Hello, Grace, I'm so glad you could come!' Mother motioned Grace's father towards a lawn chair. ‘Mr Tomoyaki, please, sit down –'

‘I'm kidding, I'm Isola.' The birthday girl beamed at the Japanese wallflower. ‘I love your glasses.'

Grace tugged self-consciously at her newly fitted spectacles and didn't answer, as though the little glass circles were walls, not windows.

‘Do you like purple, too?' Isola's saucer eyes grew rounder. ‘Oh! They're grape-coloured! Like your name, Grape!'

‘It's not
Grape
,' corrected Mother Wilde. ‘It's Grace.'

Grace giggled, and from that moment on it
was
Grape. Grape, the new girl from Japan with the glasses and the shyness. Now she was Grape Tomoyaki with the motor mouth and sleek black bob. She still had purple-framed glasses and she was still Isola Wilde's best friend, and the name had stuck so steadfastly that even the essays she got back from teachers were marked with a red X, exasperated corrections and scrawled notes saying, ‘GRAPE, SEE ME AFTER CLASS.'