Fairytales for Wilde Girls (26 page)

 

Teenage Hexorcism

She salted every windowsill and doorway. She hung charms from doorknobs and filled her drink bottle with holy water she'd taken from the school chapel. She put some holy water in her parents' things, too – Mother's bathwater, Father's beer. She painted protective hieroglyphs on each of her ribs. Anything. Everything.

All that wasn't enough.

It was the witching hour when Florence tapped on the window. Isola longed to break her wishbone fingers.

She clutched the cross-shaped piece of glass over her heart, her last weapon. There were no brothers left, no Bunny. She couldn't go to Edgar. She couldn't risk him.

‘
You brought her here!
' screamed Florence through the window. ‘You summoned my mother to the only place I thought she couldn't hurt me!'

‘I didn't!' Isola yelled, scrambling out of bed. ‘I didn't do anything. I don't even know this witch!'

She ran to Mother, who was in her bedroom and only half-awake. Mother rolled over to make room and muttered a few dreamy words of comfort. Isola burrowed into the goose-down pillows and even from Mother's safe place, she could hear the one-eyed girl singing.

 

Cage, Moon, Stripe

Then, the worst.

‘Eat,' said Father Wilde gruffly. ‘You're skinny as a bean sprout.'Her ribs protruded like seashell armour. Father poked her in the side to illustrate his point and his finger seemed to cut between them. She heard a dull
clank
.

Edgar had noticed, too. He watched her with a sheen of brittle concern over his creased brow. He didn't say anything, however, and Isola appreciated his tact, although she took care to wear her loosest blouses while on their bedroom dates.

When he was picking a film from his stack of DVDs, she spied a sketchbook on the bedroom floor and flicked through it. They all seemed to be sketches of her: portraits in profile, in deep thought, with straightened hair, golden-cage hair, just-got-out-of-bed hair. Glittery nails, bare blonde eyelashes and the occasional freckle, moon-shaped markings that looked like birthmarks in charcoal.

And with sudden clarity, she realised she didn't look like that any longer. Her unbrushed hair curled lankly, the rainbow streaks ran dry, and she was much too thin to be the girl whose smile seemed alight in these drawings.

She couldn't reconcile it – the terror and loneliness of Florence and her life without her princes, with the bubbling that Edgar inspired in her belly. How dare she seek out this occasional happiness when everything else in her life was going so very wrong?

He deserves better,
she heard again in the back of her mind, but this time, the whisper came in her own voice.

 

She stripped and twisted on the spot before the magic mirror.

It hardly looked real.

Black stripes from her thighs to her ankles. A noose-ring of moons around her throat. Worst of all was her torso.

Her skin seemed translucently pale, and instead of ribs, she could see – feel them – the skeleton of an empty cage. Steel-barred, girl-shaped, like a dressmaker's doll. Half-mannequin parts.

‘It's not real,' she whispered. It was like the bombing of the chapel, all witchcraft – all in her head. She could still hear her heart beating loudly, a disco thump in her ears.

 

Killers

In the potted rosebush, Dame Furlong was dead in her web.

‘WINSOR!'

The faerie appeared almost instantly. Her daisy petal eyepatch was oozing green and she was trembling with fury. ‘What?'

‘Did you do this?' Isola pointed at the shredded spider, who was scattered in pieces through her web-home.

Winsor's remaining eye blazed wickedly; she opened her mouth to form the denial. ‘No, I –'

‘Don't you dare lie to me, you monster!' Isola bellowed.

‘Me?' Winsor flew right up to Isola's face, her features sharper than usual, her remaining eye bulging madly. ‘ME? You're the monster, Isola Wilde! You hate me, you always have! You want me to starve, you love those icky insects more than me, you poisoned the flowers so I'd die. You stole my eye and ruined my face and
I hate you
!'

‘Leave,' said Isola, struggling to keep the furious tears at bay. ‘Leave this garden – leave Avalon – and don't ever come back.'

Winsor blazed greener and greener. She was a nuclear meltdown in miniature, and the disfiguring green veins on her face pulsed ugly. Opening her tiny fanged mouth, Winsor shrieked, ‘I HATE YOU! NO WONDER ALEJANDRO LEFT YOU HERE TO DIE!'

Isola's hand snapped up, almost of its own accord, and swatted the faerie to the ground. Winsor bounced on the garden path, cried out in pain and shock. Isola brought up her foot, sheathed in its deadly combat boot, and brought it down, crushing the faerie like an autumn leaf.

A gasp, a swift flash of regret.

A curious surge of relief.

She went into the flowerbed to find Bunny.

 

Carnivore

It got easier after that first meal. Dinner was crystallised clumps of fairy limb – a tiny hand here, a Barbie foot there. She tried to pick out all the glossy hair and leaf and petal skirts first. Bunny complained when their bellies were full of blossoms or nectar. The creature who loved candies despised the naturally sweet.

‘It hard to catch faeries,' he explained, munching happily. ‘I is happy Solawile catch them for me.'

‘They've always hung around this place,' muttered Isola. She worked to keep the garden beautiful, luring faeries, easy prey.

‘Not no more,' said Bunny, shaking his head, his soft ears flopping. ‘Not now wood witch daughter Florey eats them up.'

But it wasn't enough.

‘Unicorn would be nice next, yes. Most easy to kill foal,' he added. ‘Most easy to catch. Strong magic in the meat, strong Bunny to keep you safe!'

Isola bent down to thumb the fairy wings from his mouth, the ghoulish crumbs of his last meal. ‘I already told you. I won't kill a unicorn. Especially not a foal.'

‘Fool kill Winsor,' said Bunny slyly. ‘Fool can kill anything.'

Isola's stomach was churning. ‘But you're too small. You'd waste it.'

‘Can't all at once, no.' Bunny poked out his tongue. ‘Got to bury and nibble at every now and then and again. Weeks and weeks of yummy magic baby flesh.'

 

She'd already picked her next target. In her music box was a lighter she'd stolen from James in an effort to force him to kick his smoking habit. Retrieving it, she lit the flame in the fireplace and waited. Soon she heard clacking nails, and ash dribbled down the chimney. The lizard-like dragon came slithering down, sniffing curiously, flicking its tongue. It was no bigger than a dog and had raw-red skin, good-luck golden claws.

Catching him by his scaly neck, Isola dragged him from the chimney, and with the glass shard stabbed him between the dark jewels of his eyes. He burst open like a piñata, gemstones tumbling from his gaping wound.

Bunny squealed with joy when Isola brought him the dragon corpse. She didn't want the jewels, however – which were no doubt collected as ransom for some poor kidnapped princess – and buried them where the plum tree had been, hoping one day a tree would grow sprouting fruits with diamond seeds.

Upstairs, Isola found the gargoyle playing with the dragon's gold claws. Bursting fit with Nim-meat, he was contentedly eating sweets again. Now that Isola had upheld her end of the bargain, she hoped Bunny would uphold his.

‘I'm being possessed. Like you said,' she whispered. She rapped her fingers against a cold steel bar that had replaced a rib.

‘Yes. Ghostie Florence is taking over,' said Bunny. ‘She go deep and deeper until there's no Solawile left, only ghostie there in the flesh.'

Isola crouched down, lifted him into her lap. ‘How do I make it stop?'

‘Slowly,' he said, and gently nipped the tip of her finger. She'd never seen him this kind or reassuring. She wondered how frightened she must look or how much he had appreciated the meal. ‘With Bunny's help. Bunny go up high!' he added, rearing up on his stout hind legs. ‘Up high, like the churchy-stone gargoyles, yes.'

The Seventh Princess: An Instalment

‘The seventh princess awoke in a cave, weak and thin but alive. She could hear her brothers calling to her on the wind, and first thought it a dream, until she heard it anew – their voices echoing down from the top of the mountain. She left the cave, determination stimulating her bones, and she climbed the cliff-side, breathless and exhausted. Her brothers didn't let her stop, and she struggled to the top, and there the last dragon sat, curled and sleeping, surrounded by sweets and treasures, long scraps of blonde hair, and the piled bones of the Six Princes.'

Isola hid her face in her hands dramatically; Mother ploughed on.

‘Some were charred black. The dragons had obviously enjoyed a great feast. Without waking the dragon, the Seventh Princess, sobbing silently, took a rock and cut off all her golden hair – and used it to lash the sharpest bones together, making a great sword as big as herself: a weapon to defend herself with.'

 

Hair, Meat, Flower

She got up an hour earlier than usual – it wasn't as though she was sleeping, anyway – and spent the time in front of the magic mirror. The mirror hardly spoke anymore, and when it did, only in written whispers, tiny words in dead languages. All the intelligible things it said – ‘DON'T GO INTO THE WOODS', ‘DON'T TRUST THE NIMUES' – were fair warnings given unfairly late.

Isola spent the extra time on her hair, spraying and teasing it up into a big blonde cage, a hollow hive. She showed it to Bunny, who sat imperiously on the vanity.

‘How's that?'

He grunted, and she lifted him into the makeshift nest. She felt his warm weight shifting, and it was surprisingly comforting.

‘Victorian girlies put I in their bonnets,' he complained. ‘Lotsa room.'

‘Where did the boys put you?' she asked, styling her cage of hair closed around him.

‘Their soup. Well,' he added, snickering, ‘they
tried,
oh yes. But Bunny can't be caughts, missy clever girl!'

‘Unfortunately, it's the twenty-first century and they'll notice if I wear a bonnet.'

‘And won't notice hair?'

‘Oh, they'll notice,' said Isola grimly, ‘but they've never
not
noticed me, no matter what I do.'

 

‘I can't see the board past her hideous hair,' hissed Bridget, who sat behind Isola in French class.

‘What
is
that bird's nest?' muttered Bridget's neighbour. ‘She looks completely mad.'

‘Like her mother,' said Bridget.

‘
Folie
,' whispered Isola over her shoulder. ‘That's the French word for “mad”.' She turned back to the front of class.

Bridget and Friend were too shocked to reply.

Teeth pricked at her scalp, little Excaliburs. ‘Good girl,' came an approving mumble from the depths of her hair. ‘Who is fool
now
?'

 

It was raining when Father dropped Isola off at the gate the next day. Throwing her school bag over her head, she sprinted up the garden path, skidding mud down the convent halls and ignoring the glares of her schoolmates.

She took him to the third-floor bathroom that no-one ever used and plopped him under the hand dryer. He looked adorable but extremely bothered, his fur flattened under the warm air. He was only slightly damp, and when he was dried, he was as fluffy as a long-haired cat. Isola did her best to stifle her laughter but it came out as little snorts, and an unamused Bunny bit her finger when she picked him up to return him to his golden perch.

He usually got restless around fourth period, yawning, clamping his little teeth into her hairline, chewing on the bars of his golden cage. She started putting sweets in her hair, things for him to suck on. On Monday, she wore a candy cane, stuck like a chopstick in a geisha's topknot. Its stripes reminded her of Florence's stockings and she was unsettled, but for once Bunny was content.

‘Talk about attention-seeking,' muttered Bridget as she passed in the hallway, and Bunny's claws contracted into Isola's skull. She hissed in pain; Bridget shot her a filthy look.

Bunny muttered evilly whenever the girls at school so much as wafted their perfumed auras in Isola's direction, so she stuck a fuchsia pinwheel in her Bride of Frankenstein beehive. Colours and movement distracted him. Isola was a matador, rippling silk banners in the Spanish wind. Bunny was as bull-headed as ever.

It was strange, but it was working. Her ribs remained like steel bars, but her skin felt thicker daily. She was still bruised; her neck still burned; her voice still cracked. But with Bunny so close, whispering to her all day, she felt lighter; occasionally, she even felt human again. Like a gargoyle over a church, he offered protection from on high; his spirit-repellant abilities enclosed her like her very own invisible golden cage – Isola very quickly pushed that image from her mind. She didn't want to link her thoughts to Florence, for fear of unwittingly summoning said devil.

In exchange for his increased protection, Isola extended her search for Bunny's food, with no less self-hatred for the task but a renewed sense of gratitude towards the small rabbit-creature who was fulfilling Alejandro's last promise. She started sweeping through strangers' gardens on her way home from school. She captured more faeries and a straw-man imp, which Bunny wolfed down and promptly asked for more.

Mama Sinclair's old garden was particularly thriving. The faeries that used to live in the Wilde garden gathered there, whispering amongst themselves, frightened of being gobbled by the ghost girl. They didn't know to be afraid of Isola, and smiled when her shadow fell upon them.

Weeks passed. She tried to live as averagely as possible. Father was as gruff as ever. Mother seemed perplexed by Isola's distance, but she didn't mention it. Isola saw Edgar nearly every evening, first forcing Bunny to stay home; he watched with glowing eyes as she crossed the street. Isola didn't know how he kept Florence at bay – but he certainly seemed stronger now, his system juicy with other creatures' blood, and he exuded a slight aura, radiating secret strength.

‘Maybe the so-called wood witch
is
Vivien,' she wondered aloud, after Father had dropped her at the school gates. It had been so long since she'd visited those woods she'd roamed since she could walk. She could hardly recall the exact shades of the fairy-ring mushrooms, the sound of birdcall tangling in the canopies, the initials her once-romantic parents had carved in the Vigour Mortis tree.

Bunny flexed his paws, securing his grip on her hair as she walked. ‘What?' he said gruffly.

‘You know. Nimue.' Isola plucked a newly bloomed jonquil from the garden, brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply. ‘Maybe she's the one behind all this. The forest is named for her, after all – maybe she realised I didn't deserve them, so she took my brothers away.'

‘Don't believe,' snorted Bunny. ‘Nimue is story. Like human God. Everyone want magic origin tale.'

‘And
I
shouldn't believe it or you don't?'

‘Both.'

Isola twirled the flower absentmindedly. When she remembered with a pang that she had no faerie at home to feed, she stuck it over her ear instead of in her pocket.

‘Then where did you come from?'

Bunny leaned down and nipped the tip of her ear as he pulled the flower free and spat it to the ground, in what he evidently thought an affectionate gesture. His teeth were syringe-sharp.

‘Came when fool girl needed me.'