The 13th Descent: Book One of The Rosefire Trilogy (12 page)

“That’s great to hear, man,” Fizz says. “I miss them.”

“They miss
you too. But, thanks to you, they finally own a computer.”

“Yeah?
I’d like to see Auntie Paula trying to work it,” Fizz sniggers.

Aunt
ie Paula?

T
hat’s right...Fizz!

Fizz i
s Mike’s cousin! The one who used to come and stay with them every other summer when Nanna and Georgie Pa used to take me up to Uncle Merv’s farm...

“Now she has
finally figured it out, you can’t get her off it. She says she only gets on the internet to see how you’re doing, but I’ve caught her on the Keith Urban and Michael Buble sites a few times,” Mike chuckles.

Holy shit…

I’ve seen
Paula scrolling through Syzygy’s website a few times...

Fizz is
her nephew...

Fizz is
Mike’s cousin...

I sink to the floor.

Fizz is...

Josh.

Oh…my…God…

I go from sitting to lying down.

Josh
laughs out loud. “Sounds like the old girl has turned into a cougar.”

“Hey, now,”
Mike growls. Josh keeps laughing.

“So,
you’re both coming to the Castle?” Josh’s tone suddenly turns serious.

“Yeah
, we are. We’re leaving tonight.”

“So are we.”

“The guys coming?” Mike asks.

“Teddy is coming with me. The others will make their way over
soon after,” Josh replies.

“
So, you’ve got your passports in order then?”

“Yeah. A
nd our wigs too,” Josh scoffs. “You?”

“Yep.
No wigs though.”

“Lucky you.”
A pause. “So, how is our Rose holding up?” Josh asks.

“
Confused. Curious. Narky. The usual,” Mike says with a snort, “but, surprisingly, this time round has been the easiest yet.”

Josh and I both gasp in unison, one mentally, one verbally.

“Really?” Josh says out loud for both of us.

“
Every lifetime, she amazes me more and more,” Mike says.

“And every life
time, you fall in love with her more and more,” Josh states.

“Yeah.”
Mike sighs. “Yeah, I do.” A pause that seems to go on forever. “Soon you’ll see why. She’s incredible.”

“So I’ve been told,
” Josh tonelessly says.

“You
really don’t remember her?” Mike asks.

“No. Nothing.
Nothing at all,” Josh answers, still flat.

“What about
everything else?”

“Connections with certain people and places
, but so far that’s it. They’re throwing everything at me, but not much is twigging. They’re hoping me meeting Serenay will do the trick, even though I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because the people, the places, as soon as I see them I know that they were once important to me. And I can see who they used to be in my head...it’s kind of like déjà vu in slow motion. I’ve seen so many photos of her and I can’t remember her...at all.” Josh loudly exhales. “Does she look the same as she did back then?” he asks.

“Very similar.
But fairer. And even more beautiful.”

“
I keep looking at the recent pictures of her, but I’m not getting a flicker of anything, except appreciation. She’s a looker. Beautiful, unusual eyes.” Josh says.

“I know
. She’s always had them. Up close they’re a mix between gold and amber,” says Mike.

“
Tell me more about her.”

Mike
inhales, pauses and says, “She’s smart. Calculating. Always thinking, you know. She feels, everything, and she shows it, even though I’m sure she doesn’t realise how much sometimes. She’s impulsive. Passionate, but obsessively focused when something snags her attention. She’s doesn’t know how to do anything by halves. And, her tinkling laugh has never changed. We have these little Blue Wren’s where we live and her giggle kind of sounds like their song. It’s one of the reasons why I call her Ren.”

“Wow
, man. That’s deep. Not corny at all.”

“
Piss off,” Mike growls.

Josh laughs
and so does Mike.

“One of the reasons?
” Josh asks.

“You do know her name is
Serenay, right?” Mike throws back.

“Yes, dickhead. T
hat much I had figured out.” 

“
Soon, you’ll see what I mean. How she looks small and delicate, even though she is anything but. How with her, it is all or nothing, no in-between, even though getting her to settle on middle ground every once in a while would be nice,” Mike scoffs. “How she thinks she is ordinary. Nothing special. A common bird with plain colours. She has no idea of how simply beautiful she is. Beautiful. Graceful without trying to be. But strong. And wilful. And stubborn. I mean, really stubborn. Not to mention, fiercely protective of those she loves. Don’t give her a reason mate, or she will tear you to shreds,” Mike explains.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Josh murmurs.

“
Scared?”

“Shitless.
”

Mike
chuckles. “Don’t be. Because if you don’t meet her, you’ll be missing out. We all will.”

“
I’ve heard that, more than once.” Josh pauses. “But...feeling about her the way you do...how can you be so cool about all this?”

“Because if you and Ren rediscover what you had the first time around then we will all know for sure if the time is now,” Mike gulps, “and I will finally know for sure where I stand.”

“After thirteen
lifetimes, you’d think she’d know how she feels about you,” Josh states.

“She won’t let herself. Even before she remembers
who she was, we can all see that she torn between where her heart beats and where it was born: between the world she loves and the world where that love began. And that’s why she always keeps me safely at an arm’s length...in the friend zone,” Mike explains.

“
Oh, no,” Josh sympathetically chortles.

“Tell me about it, mate. But over the lifetimes, I
’ve had plenty of company. She hasn’t given herself to anyone that way, well, since you.”

“
God…if only I could remember her,” Josh groans.

“
Actually, I’m rapt that you can’t. We’ve got to level the playing field somehow, and you’ve already got the celebrity thing on your side,” Mike says gruffly.

“I don’t think th
at’s really going to help me in this situation, mate.”

Mike
sighs. “True.” A pause. “Look, I’ve gotta know. Have you fallen in love with any of them, Fizz?”

“I have,
” Josh boldly answers.

“
Really?”

“Yes!
Why so shocked?”

“I don’t know. But I am. Anyone I know?”

“No.”

“Don’t feel like talking
about it?”

“Not
really. Do you want to keep talking about the love you keep letting slip through your fingers?” Josh asks, no longer joking.

“
No. I think I’ve said enough. But, I will say this. My love for her has withstood time, space and distance, but I need to know if it can withstand you. And even though she doesn’t know it yet, so does she before she can wholeheartedly give herself to one person,” Mike says, resolute.

“My
bet is that’ll I end up taking your place in the friend zone.”

“
We’ll see.” Mike pauses. “You have met her before you know?”

“Yeah. Apparently,
once when we were kids. Hey, here’s a shocker. I can’t remember that either.”

“Josh, y
ou were six. The only thing you had eyes for back then was your Luke Skywalker light sabre,” Mike says, chuckling.

“
You’re not wrong,” Josh says, chuckling too.

“You know, she was there at the Cloverleigh festival
, the first time you and the band performed in front of a crowd,” Mike says.

The line goes silent.

“Josh?”

No response.

Did they get disconnected?

“Josh? You there
, mate?”

“Yeah. I’m here,” Josh finally answers.

“You alright, mate
?”

Josh
clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

No response.

“Josh?”

Josh clears his throat again. “Look, man. I’ve got to go. See you both soon, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Have a safe trip.”

“You
, too.”

The line drops out
. And seconds later, so do I.

The impact of what I
had overheard may have cruelly snatched away my consciousness, but on the way down I was still mortifyingly aware of where I was and why.

As I slowly come to,
the other half of that mortification is the first sting I feel. One by one, my senses disgracefully catch up, and even though the flickers of light dancing behind my clenched eyelids try and goad me into opening them, I’d rather stay holed up in the neon-speckled darkness.

Phantom
voices mimicking Mike’s and Josh’s soon infiltrate my quiet hiding place, and as their clarity rapidly grows, so does the heat of my shame. It bubbles, boils over and streams hot and salty down my cheeks, but this outpouring is not strong enough to drown out the truth of their words.

Desperately needing to escape
, and fully aware that on the other side is a whole other different kind of hell, I will myself to wake, fully expecting to get an eyeful of our hallway forest-green shag carpet and a woolly mouthful to boot, only to find that I am tucked up in my bed, warm, comfortable and face up.

Sl
owly lifting myself from the flat of my back, onto my elbows, and then up onto each hand, I eventually manoeuvre my leaden body and head into a sitting position. I blearily scan my room to discover that I am only one in here, even though my luggage has been packed and it is waiting for me by my bedroom door. I notice a small navy book with a familiar silver insignia on the front cover propped up against the suitcase handle. The thrill of realising what it is hauls me out of bed to go and take a closer look.

It is what
I’ve always wanted to possess, and, to one day, use frequently, but as I flick through its new, crisp pages, my shoulders slump along with my excitement. Although the photo inside the passport is of my face, the name and the place and date of birth listed beside my vacant expression have never belonged to me.

AMELIE JANE PAR
ACELLE

PLACE OF BIRTH: HAWTHORN, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

DATE OF BIRTH: 17
TH
AUGUST 1996

Familiar sounds and smells distract me from my disappointment. I still myself and listen, sniffing the air like Chip does, and hone in on Mike’s, Aunt Romey’s and Uncle Craig’s intermingling voices coming from the kitchen.

I scramble
into the bathroom to use the toilet, my toothbrush and my hairbrush in a half-arsed attempt to look presentable before I go and join them; eager to discover what is next on the agenda, and also to find out who moved my eavesdropping carcass from the hallway rug to my bed.

Please God,
don’t let it be Mike. Anyone but Mike...

I make
my way down the hallway, practising my breezy stroll into the kitchen when my spine and my legs suddenly go rigid at the sound of Mike’s dejected tone.

T
hen the kitchen suddenly goes silent. Shit! They must have heard me. I’ll bet they’re all glaring at the archway, waiting for me to show my sorry self.

E
xpecting to be pounced on, I peek my head around the corner. Aunt Romey and Uncle Craig are sitting at the breakfast bar with their backs to me and Mike is at the stove, frying up what smells to be his favourite breakfast combo of sausage, onions and tomatoes on toast.

I let out a sigh of relief and attempt to chirrup,
“Hi guys.”

T
hey all turn to face me. Instinctively, I wince, preparing for the onslaught.

“Hi
Ren,” Uncle Craig says with a big smile as he and Aunt Romey stand and approach me.

They
both hug me tight, and as I am squished in-between them, I attempt to make eye contact with Mike. He drops his eyes, scowls and turns back to his cooking.

Crap.
That dirty look said it all. It was Mike who found me in the hallway: he knows what I heard, and why my brain embarrassingly checked out for the third time to date.

“Alright
there, Ren?” Uncle Craig asks as he puts a warm hand on each of my cheeks and angles my face up to look at his.

“Yep.
I’m fine,” I answer with an unforced smile, grateful that I won’t be getting hauled over the coals, at least by him. Reading me like a book, he pinches my cheeks and smiles back.

“Are you sure?”
Aunt Romey presses as she hip-bumps Uncle Craig out of the way to give me the once over.

“
I’m fine,” I emphasise, backing away. “Stop fussing, please.”

She
throws her arms up in defeat, and so does Mike as he strides out of the room, only to return seconds later to retrieve the heaped plate of food he had hastily left behind.

While Mike wolfs down his fry up in the next room, my aunt and uncle waste no time briefing me on our itinerary: how we are leaving for the airport in two hours, how our first lot of fake passports make Mike and I siblings, and how they both plan on meeting us at the Apple Isle in a few days.

Seeing my
disappointment, Uncle Craig says, “Ren, we’ve got a few things to take care of before we join you.”

“Like what?” I ask
, pouting. I assumed they would be with me to see Mum, Josh, this mysterious little isle and our holier-than-now relatives. Also, their presence would have been a welcome buffer between me and Mike’s wrath.

“Finding someone to look after Chip for one,”
Aunt Romey absentmindedly says as she thumbs through our stack of travel documents.

“Who organised the phony
passports?” I ask.

“
Family friends,” Uncle Craig answers with a smirk.

“Ah,” I say
with a knowing nod. With what the Avalon’s have had to resort to over the centuries, to them, a bit of identity fraud would be like a piss in the ocean.

With the two hours we have
before leaving for the airport, I check through my luggage to see what Aunt Romey has packed for me, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that I don’t have to unpack and repack much at all. I expected for her to have packed every ankle length, high necked summer dress and one piece bathing suit I owned, but she has packed most of what I usually wear when the weather is warm: lots of my colourful tank tops and my mid-thigh shorts and skirts, as well as some of my bikinis. At first I am impressed, thinking that she wants for me to be myself and comfortable, but then I realise that showing a little more skin than is considered demure might somehow get Josh, the exotic bird lover, to notice a Ren.

I rush
back to the kitchen to question my aunt about her packing motives, only to charge in on her and Uncle Craig talking about Georgie Pa. I lean against the door frame and listen to them excitedly recap Georgie Pa’s reaction over hearing that his Rhoda is alive: how he fell to his knees, clutched at his heart and wept; about how Aunt Romey repeatedly apologised to the emergency operator when Uncle Craig realised that what they thought was a heart attack was just a father’s overwhelming joy, and once Georgie Pa had settled down, how he proclaimed that for his girls and in the spirit of lives lost and found, he vowed to do whatever it takes to stop drinking.

Aunt Romey
then drifts back to recall years instead of hours ago, sharing warm, smile-inducing memories of Georgie Pa and Nanna when she and my mum were kids. How they would catch the two of them slow dancing and kissing in the kitchen, and how those moments were some of the rare times she saw her mother blush. How in the middle of the night, they would hear Georgie Pa softly singing Nanna back to sleep after one of her nightmares. How she would hide his favourite toffees around the house in places she knew he would find them. Even though I have heard these recollections before, seeing my aunt’s eyes light up with love and pride as she speaks about her parents has me straining to remember why I stomped into the kitchen in the first place.

“I’d h
ate to break this up, ladies,” Uncle Craig says, tapping his chunky watch, “but we’ve really got to get moving.” He goes to hunt down Mike who hasn’t reappeared since he took off with his food hours earlier.

I hear
the front door open and their heavy steps going down our short flight of porch stairs, their deep voices wavering in and out as they carry our luggage from the house to Aunt Romey’s car.

“Want some help?” I
call out, hoping Mike will answer me.

“Nah. We’ve got it,
thanks Ren,” Uncle Craig calls back.

No grunt. No snarl. No
t even a bite from Mike. Usually when he is this furious at me, I at least get a nip. He is never this quiet. This distant. This cold. My pride is just hanging on by a fingernail: the need to run over to him and beg him to scream in my face is becoming increasingly difficult to keep a lid on.

Uncle Craig
announces that he is driving and Aunt Romey sits up front alongside him, leaving me, Mike, and the chasm between us to fill the back seat.

He
intently stares out of his window. I am pretending to intently stare out of mine. From the corner of my eye, I can see his face in the window reflection: he is grimacing like he has a stomach ache he is trying to will away. The edges of the chasm are crumbling and falling away fast, so much so that I can feel my right arse cheek is hanging over the side. I am terrified, and it’s not because of the fall. It’s because for the first time ever, I’m not sure if my best friend will reach out and catch me.

After a
n agonisingly long car trip, we say our see-you-soon’s to Aunt Romey and Uncle Craig and silently stride side by side through the glass sliding doors into international departures.

W
e stand together in the long queue to the check-in counter, looking everywhere but at each other. Our most animated movements are inching forward when the loud, young family of five in front of us eventually do. So many times, I try to catch his eye, but he won’t have a bar of it.

More
standing. More shuffling along. More heart palpitations. More silent waiting in one of the world’s busiest airport terminals.

Finally
, we board the plane to Singapore as siblings. Estranged siblings. In our allocated seating, we sit side by side, flying through the black night like polite strangers quietly reading or pretending to sleep.

W
e arrive at Singapore airport to change flights and our identities. My new passport says that I am now “RUBY CAROLINE FLAHERTY” from “CAPE YORK, NORTH QUEENSLAND.” This time my birthday is in November making me nearly eighteen and a half, and Mike and I are no longer brother and sister.

Because
we have an hour and a half before our next flight takes off, and I can’t bear the thought of another torturous half-a-day trapped in an enclosed space with him this shitty at me, I decide that now is the time to take a stab at breaking the ice: here on solid ground with easily accessible emergency exits amongst all these relaxed, smartly dressed people in this posh boarding lounge, hoping our surroundings will make Mike think twice before getting loud as he has been known to do when he is this mad.

I
take a deep breath, lean towards him and whisper, “So…with the recent changes and all, what are we supposed to be to each other now?”

“WHAT
?” he yells, throwing himself back in his chair like he has been electrocuted.

“With our new names, what
are we to each other now?” I softly repeat, the double meaning to my now regrettable question hanging over my head like an axe.

“You’re askin
g me this, here? Now?” he snarls, glaring at me and breathing heavily.

Well done, Ren. T
hat broke the ice, and started an avalanche.

My soaring anxiety
brings with it uncontrollable trembling, and my eyes become hot and twitchy, threatening to overflow. But, then I remind myself I’d rather be up to my neck in his frosty words than suffer another minute of his cold silence, and that I deserve the payout that’s coming to me.

I brace myself and peek up at him, quickly looking straight back down when
I see the gutted expression shrouding his once glowing face. It is in this tragic moment that I realise that I haven’t seen his light since he first showed it to me all those hours ago.

“Well,
um…our new passports say that we’re no longer siblings, so what is our relationship to each other?” I quietly ask, attempting to downgrade my loaded question into an innocent one.

“
You want to know what you are to me?” he growls and abruptly stands. “Do you?” he seethes as he leans forward, staring me down. “You are my first breath. My last breath. And all of the heartbeats in-between. You are my joy. You are my pain. My one true hope. For God’s sake, Ren, you are the mother of the children I finally realise we will never have.” He inhales deeply through his clenched teeth making a hissing sound. “And, after all this time, you still have no friggin’ idea.”

Pinned in my seat, all I am capable of doing is blinking
and assisting the hot rush of tears to spill down my cheeks. As he holds his glare, I see the amber flecks in pools of rich brown ripple, flicker, and vanish. I gasp and slowly point up at his changing eyes, shocked and devastated at how that light that allows me to see into is soul has faded too. He gives me a curt nod acknowledging what has gone.