Fairytales for Wilde Girls (4 page)

Isola shook her head, feeling slightly ill. She felt a certain possessiveness of that wood, an umbilical connection down there in the dirt and the stillness – and now she felt almost betrayed, that it would hide and harbour a murderess, that it had let a young girl swing and bleed in that birdcage without once whispering for help on the pine-needle breeze.

‘Hush,' said Ruslana, and Rosekin snapped her fanged gob firmly shut, always and only obedient to the towering night-woman. Ruslana pulled her great seething cloak around herself, and the ceiling light bulb flickered back into a more constant rhythm. Before they both vanished the Fury gave Isola a piercing look and said in a low voice, ‘Don't go home through the woods tonight, Isola.'

 

Isola had called James, her second-most trusted soul.

It'd rung out the first time; she'd redialled and he'd picked up the second call almost immediately.

‘What,' he'd grumbled, not even posing it as a question. He had still been sore with her, and been passive-aggressive about letting her know.

‘D'you wanna hang out?'

James was now waiting at the gate as school was let out, a cigarette squashed in his scowl. All the girls stared; some even swooned, overwhelmed by the mere presence of a boy on the school grounds, even if he was only lingering at the border.

Dramatis Personae

JAMES SOMMERWELL:
The second prince. Relationship status = currently kind of awkward.

This was James: nervous fingers, acne-scarred, shirts always stretched at the neck as if he had escaped a daily throttling. A lanky Iggy Pop body, muscle plates like insect shells. Isola's oldest flesh-and-blood friend, and her second pretend-brother.

Emotions argued on his face when he saw her; an oddly intense happiness battled a forced apathy.

‘Hey,' he muttered, apathy emerging triumphant. He'd smoked right down to the filter and crushed the cigarette butt under his shoe, leaving it like a love token by the gates of the old nunnery.

‘Where's the sidekick?' he asked quietly as they began walking.

‘Sidelined.'

‘Oh, yeah. I heard about that party,' he said, scratching his whiskery cheek.

They stopped on the High Street to buy cappuccinos in flimsy paper cups from the little café. Isola went to the florist next door and, when the shop attendant was busy misting the roses, nicked a flock of purple hyacinth blossoms. She zipped them in her schoolbag and they continued walking.

James's neighbourhood was loud and dry. A man in orange overalls was chainsawing through the last tree on the street while new houses were being built – three great raw skeletons, skinned tree-bones on display. The industrial cacophony made Isola wince, and she tried not to imagine the rattling chainsaw as the pained, frightened wails of the tree. This wasn't Vivien's Wood, she told herself sternly, but her pace sped up just the same.

A man atop a ladder whistled obnoxiously as they passed. All the workmen laughed.

In her periphery, Isola saw James's neck stiffen, his fists curl. Isola didn't pause – she didn't want to start a scene, get him in a fury. It would take him hours to work himself out of it. She glanced over her shoulder and flipped them off.

They slipped through backyards and doubled back to the Sommerwell house, which lay sideways on an urban stretch of streets leaning into the valley below. There weren't any trees left on this street, either.

Upstairs to James's room. It resembled a genetic splice between a going-out-of-business record store, a movie theatre and a cosy little crack house. A python rubbed its belly on the side of a glass tank in one corner. Tarantino flicks were forever playing on the television, a glitzy pulp of moving wallpaper.

Upstairs the air was hot and thick with remembrance of her last visit.

Images unspooling like the movie reels he loved. They hadn't spoken since. She had returned without anything prepared. No apologies, no promises to put the past behind. Another girl would have avoided James until the freshly spilled awkwardness evaporated dry. But Isola was not another girl, and she wasn't sure if it would ever truly dissipate.

She had not thought this through.

He sprawled on the eternally unmade bed, his face coloured in the garish brights of
Pulp Fiction
. Isola sat on the carpet, breathing hard, suddenly nervous. What had possessed her to come here? And then she remembered, why she hadn't walked through her forest this afternoon, why she'd felt unnerved enough to call on her childhood prince –

His hand dangled off the bed, hovering near her. Isola itched to swat it.

She got up again, plopping her schoolbag in the far corner. His room was coloured like a bruise: the windows were constantly curtained, the only light the sickly blue glow of technology. She ran her finger along the DVD stack, squinting to read the spines. She'd seen almost everything here, which meant James had seen it all ten times over. Isola wriggled her finger into the crack at the top of the python tank. The snake opened one eye lazily, then closed it again, supremely unconcerned by her presence.

She smiled, and made a resolution to be more like him. To spend more time chilled and uncaring, maybe even more time sleeping on flat, warm rocks.

‘Good advice, snake.'

‘What?' James looked round at her. ‘What did you say?'

‘Just . . . pretending something,' she replied. He shook his head. ‘Fuck, you say such fucking weird things.'

‘Is that still your favourite word?' asked Isola interestedly. ‘I like “verisimilitude”. Tolkien said the most beautiful English phrase is “cellar door”.'

‘Obviously he'd never been locked behind one.'

Isola turned her gaze back to the python. ‘Got any mice?'

James raised the remote, turning down the Tarantino. ‘I might,' he replied. ‘Are you going to tell me what's wrong?'

Isola shook her head.

‘No, nothing's wrong, or no, you won't tell me?'

She didn't answer.

‘Well, what happened at school today?'

The snake lifted its head, watching the dangling ring on her necklace as though hypnotised.

‘Not much,' she said. ‘Grape wasn't there, obviously. I went into the chapel and had lunch under the old organ. One of the nuns actually averted her gaze when she saw me,' she added, feigning offence.

‘Probably surprised she didn't burst into flames,' snickered James. ‘What did that nun call you once? A wild child, right? The heathen
Wilde Child of the woods
. . .'

In a breathless flash, Isola saw the trees again, heard the sorrowful creak of a cage on a rope, Alejandro's shoes scuffling in the dirt. She heard a sparrow snap a red blood-string, an eye gobbled from a wet socket.

She caught her breath and turned back to the tank. James hadn't noticed; his focus was back on the film, despite the fact he'd watched it so often he could mouth the dialogue. Isola shifted the glass lid of the tank. ‘I found a dead body in the woods today,' she said. ‘Can I take him out?'

The movie filled the silence. Nothing but the puncture bites of gunfire.

‘Isola – what?'

‘Can I take him out?' She was already reaching in, tugging the python up by his middle and draping him round her neck like some grand grotesque scarf. The snake wound itself round and round her necklace chain, seeking a comfortable place to cling.

James lifted the remote, and this time he switched the television off. The silence stretched elastic.

‘Isola,' he said in obvious shock. ‘A dead body? Do you . . . really mean that?'

She wouldn't look at him. ‘Oh. Yes, I do mean that.' She spoke more to the snake than him.

‘But, are you . . . who've you told?'

‘You.'

‘Isola! I – damn, are you okay?'

The snake's curious little head disappeared down her shirt. Isola tried to fish him out of her bra. ‘I'm fine. She's not. She was in a birdcage . . . strung up a tree.'

The words hung like stockinged legs, strange and somewhat ridiculous in the context of his bedroom. She heard a long exhale, and finally turned to look at him.

James's ashen face seemed to relax; his glazed eyes blinked moisture back into the sockets. ‘Fuck, you nearly gave me a heart attack. And why – why do you do that?' The shocked relief had already passed; he looked angry now. ‘Tell stories like they really happened?'

‘It
did
happen!' said Isola hotly. ‘There are bodies everywhere lately, first that TV suicide Sunday night and now this. The dead girl's still in the woods, I could show you –'

‘You saw that suicide? The fairground one?' James sounded concerned.

‘Yes, but –'

‘Isola. Look at me for a minute.' He formed the words with deaf lips, exaggerating the shapes. ‘Are you saying there's
really
a body in the woods?'

‘
Yes
, and she was a princess, and –'

James stood suddenly, the blood rushing from his face. ‘Where did you hear this? Who puts this stuff in your head?'

Isola thought he sounded like Father when he spoke like that. She felt her face redden, and said defensively, ‘You wouldn't even believe me last time –'

James laughed, sounding slightly manic, and threw his arms in the air. ‘Let me guess – the faeries told you, right?' He snapped his fingers. ‘What was her name? Rose? Rosekin?'

She cringed, knowing already what he'd say.

‘Isola, Rosekin's not
real
.'

Her gaze wandered to the schoolbag, the shoplifted flowers resting their snoozy bell-shaped heads inside.

A few years back, James had demanded an explanation for her near-constant flower-foraging, and she'd told him about her responsibility; to feed a garden faerie named Rosekin. Rosekin would have liked nothing more than to devour Mother's secret garden in its entirety, so to dissuade her Isola brought home whatever she could find in Vivien's Wood, blooms cut from strangers' gardens and the manicured flowerbeds at St Dymphna's. Occasionally, she'd visit the florist on High Street and, while pretending to peruse seed breeds and Valentine's specials, mash up petals in the pocket of her blazer.

Even after he'd dismissed her notions, she didn't hide her floral thievery. Those flowers were for Rosekin; what further proof did he need?

Isola felt very daft, suddenly, wearing a snake and no wiser than Eve; she hated that she'd once told him about the faeries, about her secret friends. He thought she was crazy.

And he didn't know the half of it.

She'd only told him because she spent too much time around him. James would notice her focus fade away, see her smile into empty corners. And something had possessed her to tell him about her tiny secret friend, and of course he hadn't believed her, and why had she thought otherwise? He'd seen every film version of
Peter Pan
but did not believe in Neverland, either.

James had lived in greenery once too, but now his forest was gone, receding like a hairline up the valley's scalp. Maybe that's why her world could only ever be a fantasy to him.

She dropped her gaze, and James pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly exasperated. The small part inside her that recoiled wanted to shrink away and nurse its wounds – she saw the look in his eyes and felt that piece freeze over, so she couldn't feel anything at all.

‘Isola – just, don't say shit like that. You sound like your mother!'

It took her some time to unwind the reptile, ruining any hope for a dramatic exit. When the snake was finally free she plopped him in the tank and left without a word. Stopping in the driveway, she kicked the front tyre of James's car in frustration then wrote with her finger along his dirty windshield:

SORRY

– I.L.W.

 

Pretty Up Death and Girls Otherwise

On Friday afternoon, Isola discovered Mother had added a nativity scene to the plum tree deathbed. Plastic and real candy canes had been arranged amongst the dry leaves. The peppermint stripes reminded Isola of the dead girl's stockings, and she shivered when she passed the tree, continuing through to the elaborate front garden, what she'd always thought of as a secret garden with invisible stone walls. All Mother's doing, every flowering honeysuckle bush and jasmine vine. She'd stopped tending it a long time ago, but it seemed more beautiful now, thriving in advanced neglect.

‘Hey, Isola!' A shouted squeak issued from a stalk of lavender. ‘I like what you did with the plum tree! Prettying up death is so
you
!'

Winsor
. The bratty garden faerie eternally locked in a hate/hate relationship with Isola, who merely ignored her, as per usual.

 

Mother slept most of Saturday. Father had taken an extra shift. With the sun peeking shyly between clouds, Isola arranged a tartan picnic rug in the patchy shade of the plum tree. She opened her favourite book in the world and began flicking for a story.

Isola's Favourite Book in the World

Les Fables et les Contes de Fées de Pardieu

or

The Pardieu Fables and Fairytales

by Lileo Pardieu

A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn't matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime:
The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast
.

Even then, Mother's contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.

‘Hmph,' she snorted derisively at her latest request, folding up her knees to perch on Isola's bed. ‘Listen to me, Isola. The original
Beauty's
just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it's really saying to impressionable girls is, “Don't worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you're sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he's a prince in disguise!''

Mother's Most Lasting Advice

‘
Never
be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won't devour you.'

Isola quickly learned the only stories Mother would never hesitate to tell were those written by Lileo Pardieu. Mother recited them from memory, translated from their original French.

Isola had been shocked to discover, when she finally received her rare and treasured bound book of Pardieu fables as a tenth birthday gift, that they were all slightly different to Mother's versions – and not in the way she expected. Mother had never sanitised her occasional forays into traditional bedtime fare – Goldilocks was gobbled up or broke her neck falling from the bears' upstairs window, and the woodsman was always too late to rescue Little Red Riding Hood. But she had altered Pardieu's stories slightly, alleviating the gloomy thread that ran through them; that truthful darkness that never sought to light candles, never tried to brighten the unhappy endings, to whitewash horror with morals. The stories were overwhelming reminders that evil begot evil, bad things often happened to good people and that villains often triumphed.

And, above all, that being a girl in a terrible world was akin to being a princess, wicked queen, heroine, ugly stepdaughter, witch and fairy and child and mother in one fiery package, a bomb beribboned like a beautiful gift and left to tick tock tick tock behind high castle walls.

And then, one day too soon, Mother had blown.

The enormous book was leather-bound and gold-gilded. It looked as though it had been knocked from a wild woman's bookshelf as the raging townsfolk ransacked her cottage and dragged her by her hair to the oil-doused stake in the village square. An inscription on the first page announced in curling copperplate:

Dear Reader,

These stories, fables and memories are all true in one way or another
.

These stories are about you and me
.

These stories feature:

– girls who kill

– girls who are killed

– girls who are alive

– and girls who are otherwise
.

Isola had always loved the last line,
girls who are otherwise
, as distinguished from simply ‘dead'. Girls who are dead in all the ways a girl can be.

There was an author's photograph on the last page of the book. Lileo Pardieu sat on a love seat on a cottage porch, the smoke from her clove cigarette rising like hologram dragonflies. Eyes lined in black kohl, troll's blood. Severe black bob. Cyborg boots. An epilogue of narrowed eyes and crossed, skinny-frog limbs.

Lileo looked nothing like a fairytale – more like the ice queen in her carriage, swapping hearts for snow – and Isola wished, almost more than anything, almost more than Mother getting better, that she could plunge her fist into a slit in time and space, the tiny portal hidden in the book's spine, and drag Lileo Pardieu out by her coarse French hair. It would be slick like a birth, and Lileo and Isola like twins separated by decades and oceans and death. Reunited at last.

Isola ripped up grass blades, razing her early-morning tongue with her teeth as she searched, and finally settled on the first fairytale, which dealt with two of her favourite topics: death and princesses. The slight wind fell silent to listen, and she read aloud to the beglittered tree, like the visitor to the hospital patient.

 

 

A fairytale in reverse. The fate is Grimm. Faeries have no tails, anyway, only downy green skins, jewel eyes and endless riches.

The prince has the charming habit of locking princesses in his tower. His eyes are toxic, the colour of fairy hides, dewy witch-apples.

These are hieroglyphs.

Picture-words. You know this story.

Princess tower-locked, rope-haired, blood-lipped. Magic mirrors give poor advice, Cassandra truths. Thoughts of escape, but she'll never run fast enough on those glass feet.

Fairy godmother, green-skinned, ruby-eyed. She offers a silk dress and a thimbleful of faeriedust, not much and not nearly enough to fly with. But, oh, how she'll float.

Stepmother to the rescue. Dragons with throats full of soot. Arrows sail through the tower window. Roses etched along the shafts. Somebody loves her.

But stepmother tangles on the moat of roses. Body rots in the brambles.

Sleepless Beauty stays up late. Insomniac Beauty. Painted in the stars is poor advice, Cassandra truths. Her glass feet are starting to crack from all the pacing, all the prince's forced waltzes.

The silk dress is soon a shroud. The gold dust is in her eyes and she floats to the top of the tower room to find her courage hidden there, amongst the shadows and cobwebs.

The blue-eyed blonde fashions her braid into a noose, and all the towers are gallows, every cinderblock a storybook, telling the same tale of tragedy. After hours of creaking in the wind, her hair snaps, and the body tumbles. Roses at the tower base, the tomb of Wakeful Beauty. Asleep at last.

The bed of roses ever made a tomb for Sleeping Beauty.

No sooner are her glass toes thrust into the mud grave than the revolutions begin. Uprisings, fire and steel. The prince is lynched in the ballroom with the dead girl's hair. Royalty's a thing of the past. The kingdom chooses their monarch.

Naturally, they elect a wolf.