Authors: Alison Littlewood
‘We went away after that, for a long time; they said she was ill, but it took a long time for her to die. After she did I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had to come back here, where I knew I belonged. And Marlene – oh, she was just the same, don’t you see? She’d always be young, always be beautiful. Like Snow White in her glass coffin – frozen in time, always lovely and admired, never to grow old and become the crone or the witch or the wicked stepmother, never to disappoint—
‘
Was
she beautiful, do you think? In her grave, with worms threading through her skin? Do you think the maggots ate her eyes?’
Alice didn’t answer.
‘And my mother had always told me that one day my sister would come back. She would come back for revenge.’ Levitt looked at Alice. ‘All the stories that were my sister’s became mine. My mother read them to me, but oh, how she read them: they became terrible things: fierce and terrible.
‘Most of all, though, she read the story of the juniper tree. And she told me my sister was coming, just like in the story, creeping up through the ground, clawing her way out to take her revenge on her worthless brother. And I learned to be afraid.
‘But I learned something else too. All the time she grieved – all the time she cried – she was a false mother, an unnatural thing; because she wasn’t sorry, not underneath. Not in her heart. No. I don’t believe she was.
‘I think it was her, all the time. She must have hated my sister. She saw how she was growing more lovely and further away from her every day, and she wanted to keep her the way she was for ever. That’s why she sent us to the woods: she
wanted
us to leave the path. She was tired of us. She wanted me to make little Marlene go on the rope, she wanted it all.’
He looked up and his voice grew faint. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said. ‘Not my fault.’
Alice’s eyes widened.
‘You know this, Alice, you
understand
. You know the stories say they’re stepmothers, the wicked ones, but they’re not; they never were. The true stories, the old stories, they
knew
: it was the real mothers who grew bad, who had the canker inside them. It’s the thing they tried to hide, isn’t it? The story they don’t like to tell.
‘I was just the one she wanted to blame, that was all. All those tears – I shouldn’t have cried them. I was innocent. It wasn’t my wrong, it was hers.’ Levitt parted his lips in the semblance of a smile. ‘Innocent,’ he said. ‘I did what I was supposed to do, what she’d planned for me to do. That’s all I’m doing now.
‘And all the time, the stories went on. Oh, how she loved those stories. She made me suffer. She said they
always have their revenge, that good little girls never really go away. Sometimes I’d wet the bed, she was so—But inside I knew what I knew: and it was the story of the juniper tree, most of all, which taught me. Two children, one the mother hates, one she loves. She kills the one she hates – cuts his head off with the lid of the trunk, you know this, Alice – and then lets the other child think
she
killed her brother. That’s what my sister’s death was. My mother was the playwright; I was merely the player.
‘After that it was better. I learned from the stories, grew to know more and more of them. She didn’t like it. She started to mock me for it, laughed at me, but I didn’t care; I knew it was only because she was afraid. There was magic in the stories, I had seen that. All I had to do was bide my time, to learn from them, until I found a way to take it – to
use
it.’
His eyes flashed. ‘And then I saw the bird and I knew I was right. I knew my sister at once, I would have known her anywhere. She had come back, just as my mother said.’
‘What do you mean? You can’t think your sister became the blue bird – and anyway, you never saw it.’
‘Ah, but I
did
see her – of course I did, you silly girl. I saw her long before any of you, before anyone else. When I saw those feathers – she was always something special, my sister.’ He looked around as if the bird would be there, inside the hut. ‘You know from the tales that birds are never what they seem. The blue bird is a glamour, a trickster;
birds in the stories – they could be anything, anyone. And I have to
know
.’
‘You have to know what?’
He grimaced. ‘I have to know if she blames me.’ His eyes were weak now, watery. ‘I have to know if she listened to my mother’s stories too, if she was twisted by them, tainted. I sometimes think, perhaps she came for revenge after all. But I don’t think so.’ He shook himself. ‘The youngest,’ he said, ‘the most beautiful – it’s always about them, isn’t it? I hear her song, you know; day and night, ever and ever in my head.’ He batted his hands at his ears.
‘But it’s not your sister,’ Alice said. ‘It’s only a
bird
, don’t you see?’ And as she spoke she remembered the way she’d followed it. Why had she done that? Her hand went to her pocket, to the feather she kept there.
Levitt followed her movement with his eyes. He smiled. ‘I know you carry it with you,’ he said. ‘I saw you, walking through the wood. The way you took it out and looked at it. You knew. You
knew
.’
Alice shook her head. ‘It’s not real, any of it. You’re crazy. You need help: none of this is real. It’s just – it’s stories, nothing but fairy tales.’
‘Oh, but it
is
real, little Alice.’ He smiled. ‘The stories
are
real. I
made
them real, don’t you see?’
Alice remembered a princess, thrown into a ditch. A dead girl’s face hidden by a crimson hood. A beauty in a photograph, lying dead under the trees, her eyes open. And she found she could not answer.
‘Their lives were forfeit,’ Levitt said, ‘to something greater than themselves.’ His voice grew soft. ‘It was always going to happen, don’t you see? This way, it
meant
something. They never had to grow old, never had to lose their beauty. They’ll always be that way now. They became part of something bigger, something more important. They became part of the
story
.
‘That was why I gave them my sister’s gifts: the looking-glass, the christening bracelet, even her milk teeth. My mother used to say she was the tooth fairy, back then; she kept them in a jar for years and years, until she forgot them – but I remembered.’
He sighed. ‘I needed their power, Alice. Little Red, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White. And I need
yours
.’ He paused. ‘I think she knew,’ he whispered. ‘The first one, she’d been drinking, but I think she knew anyway, don’t you? Later she said she didn’t, but by then it was too late. The second went with me as if it was what she’d been waiting for all her life. And the third: so
potent
– I could feel the life in her, you know. The
lives
.’
‘You knew she was pregnant.’ Alice stumbled over the words.
‘Not me, not then. But I knew where to find her. I knew what story she would fit.’
Alice shook her head. ‘How? How did you know?’
He smiled. ‘She showed me,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean? Who showed you?’
‘The bird, of course – my sister. She showed me who to take. She sang their songs in my ear.’
‘The bird?’
‘She came to you, didn’t she, Alice? She led me to you. She
delivered
you here.’
‘But—’
‘The bird is my
sister
, Alice. Did you think it your friend? Well, it is not.
She
is not. She wants me to come to her, Alice, and I am.’ He picked up the thing he had placed on the chair, ran his fingers over it. It was covered in feathers, and some of them fell from it and drifted to the ground. He unfolded it and spread it in front of him: it was a cloak.
‘I studied them,’ he said. ‘I know the
Streptopelia turtur
and the
Cygnus columbianus
. I know the
Asio flammeus
, and I know its true nature, and I know its forms. The
Luscinia megarhynchos
has no secrets, the
Cuculus canorus
no tricks, not for me, because I understand them all.’ He tapped his finger on the side of his nose, as if letting Alice into a secret. ‘I fed them, you know. I gave them seed soaked in pesticide. I put it in their water. I gave them poisoned bread and poisoned fish – because I need their power too, Alice. I need it if I’m going to follow her, if I’m going to
know
.’
Alice stared at the cloak. It was covered in feathers of all kinds, feathers meant for flight and warmth and display, feathers of every colour, grey feathers, brown feathers, red and pink and every shade between; the sharp blades of
wing feathers, the rounder form of contour feathers, bursts of soft down. It gave off a musty, unclean scent.
‘Crow and sparrow and robin and finch,’ he said, ‘raven and owl and wren. They all came to my garden, Alice. See what they gave me.’ He ran his fingers over them, at once loving and gloating.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No,’ he smiled, ‘you don’t. But you will. I see it in you, Alice. You have the same power in your veins as the others, except it’s better this time, stronger; because you believe, because you
know
. I need you to
believe
.
‘They were all supposed to live. Did you see that? Princesses all, and they should have lived happily ever after, but I stopped them at their moment of transformation. I took their power into myself. And the blue bird chose you, just like them. She picked you out.’
He paused, running one finger over the feathers, then he stood taller. ‘The bird is calling to me, do you hear her? I took their magic, Alice; I stopped their stories and I began another.’ He held up the cloak. ‘I’m drawing closer to her, to my sister. I shall see her once again, in a form she knows; and I’ll talk to her, and I will understand what she wants from me at last.’
He swung his arms around and placed the cloak around his shoulders. ‘That was what I learned,’ he said. ‘People are always transformed in tales, are they not? A girl becomes a bird. Brothers become swans, and are only changed back when dressed in magical shirts, made with
their sister’s love and her blood.’ He was breathing heavily and Alice could hear it, a sound that was almost intimate.
‘Now I’m going to change too – but it isn’t
finished
yet. There’s one feather missing, Alice: one transformation left.’ He set down the cloak and put his hand behind his ear. ‘Don’t you hear it? She’s waiting.’
Alice
did
hear it then, a pure, high fluting note from the woods: a bird, filling the air with its song.
‘I need more magic,’ he said. ‘You’ll give it to me.’
Alice pushed herself up and stumbled away from him, found herself pressing against the wall of the hut. She edged around it but he was too quick; he stepped in front of her. She looked into his eyes and saw the madness in them. He was going to kill her, and he would lay her out like the others, a dead girl with a story to tell.
She leaned forward, grabbed the stool she had been sitting on and held it out in front of her.
‘Now, Alice – I only want the feather. That’s all.’
She shook her head.
‘Just the feather – she gave it to you, I know: I saw it from the hide, saw the way you looked at it. She never once gave me a feather. I
need
it.’
Alice shook her head. ‘No – you’re wrong. I
did
have a feather, but I don’t have it with me. It’s at home.’ She paused. ‘I’ll fetch it for you. We can go together.’
Home
, she thought. Would the police still be there, waiting for her? She glanced towards the entrance as if she could see them marching through the woods.
‘Such a liar.’ Levitt smirked. ‘Hear it squeal. There’s no one coming, Alice. And I saw you, remember? I know you keep it in your pocket. You have it now, you
must
have it. How could you give it up? You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t, because you
feel
it, don’t you? You feel its magic, its strength.
Her
magic.’
Alice went cold. It was true, wasn’t it? She tried to remember a time she had been parted from the feather since the blue bird came, and could not think of one. It was in her pocket now, the same as it always was.
‘Give it to me.’ Levitt held out a shaking hand.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Only if you get out of my way. I’ll go outside and leave it for you on the ground.’ By then she could be running back through the woods, far away from him.
He smiled, his eyes shining as if she’d made a fine joke. ‘You don’t need to do that, Alice. Don’t worry. I’ll come and take it.’ He stepped forward, but as he did so he twisted to the side and grabbed something that had been leaning against the side of the hut.
‘I made this for you,’ he said.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The police were on their way, striding across the woodland floor with Heath at the head of the line. Cate waited for them by the broken window; she glanced at it, reminded herself there was no need for them to know she had been the one to break it. She’d taken the rock she’d used and thrown it back into the woods. Now she had misgivings – what if Heath knew? – but she would do it again if she had to. The important thing was that they had found the killing place; now they would go after Levitt, and they would stop him.
‘Well?’
‘This is it, sir. This is where he did it.’ She pointed. ‘If you look through the window you can see the tool he made to kill Teresa King. And I think there might be blood on the table.’ She hesitated. ‘I leaned in, took a look around. He must have been watching them, sir, before he snatched the girls. There are photographs of them inside. It’s hard to see, but I believe there are pictures of Alice Hyland too.’
Heath didn’t speak. Instead he went to the shed and peered in; glanced back at Cate and boosted himself halfway onto the sill.
‘It’s dark,’ he said. ‘I can’t see a damned thing. You sure this window was broken when you got here, Corbin?’
Her mouth had gone dry. She was about to answer when he let himself drop to the ground and turned away. ‘Get a torch,’ he said to one of the officers, and the man headed away towards the cars.