STARS, HIDE YOUR FIRES
Blunted as her senses were, leaden as her thoughts felt, Fable didn’t at first notice the new arrival at the glade. He emerged from the overgrown road on foot and stood for a long moment, watching.
It was one of the boys who sighted the intruder.
‘Heeeey! It’s Raff!’
‘Raaaaaaff. Maaaaate!’
‘Fellows,’ said Raff. ‘This is some gathering you’re having here.’
He stood at confident albeit unsmiling ease – hands in pockets, brow rutted. Boys rose to greet him with hands outstretched to shake and were rebuffed; Raff’s hands remained pocketed. The boys at her side did not budge, however, their arms weighing unbearably upon her now.
Raff stepped no further into the clearing, and seemed indifferent to her presence. She wanted to rise and say something, anything, but the bravado with which she’d swung across a flooded gorge deserted Fable now in Raff’s presence.
‘Wanna beer, Raff?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Come on, get it into you! Have a cigarette.’
‘Got the truck waiting out on the road, can’t stay.’
‘Ah, come on, Raaaaaaff. You gotta cut loose one time.’
‘Not for me, Dane. I’ll keep going.’
Dread made Fable shrink beneath those heavy limbs. Would Raff turn now, as quickly as he’d materialised, and leave her to them?
Laughter issued from the ruins and Raff’s gaze shot to the mansion. He stepped closer. ‘Who else is here?’
Dane listed boys according to their larrikin nicknames. Raff’s brow did not soften. ‘This isn’t your usual gang, is it, Fable?’
He’d finally addressed her, but his eyes traversed only the boys. Fable shook her head, a lump forming in her throat.
‘Don’t matter,’ came one boy’s cocky reply. ‘We’re all firm friends here now.’
‘Yeah, Fable’s having the time of her life with us,’ Johnny Fletcher said from the milk crate adjacent. ‘She’s been swinging on the vines, right over the creek!’
‘She’s even taken your title,’ bragged one heavy arm’s owner. ‘And she managed it as a rebound.’
‘Brave girl,’ Raff said, his eyes still not moving to Fable.
Dane made a noise like a primate. ‘Nah, not a girl – if you know what I mean?’ Beer sloshed as he mimed breasts. ‘Coconuts! Ay, fellas?’
Laughter spread around the fire.
Raff alone remained serious. ‘And which one of you is driving back tonight?’
‘We’ll draw straws.’
‘Don’t think so, Johnstone,’ Raff said, patience now disappearing. He stepped closer to the fire pit. ‘I’m going to offer Fable a ride home now. And anyone else who thinks it might be time to leave . . . seeing as I’ve got the truck ready and all.’
‘Fable wants to stay with us,’ Dane said, tightening his moist grip on Fable’s leg. ‘It’s her first time going to Vinelands.’
‘Yeah, she’s here for a good time.’
Someone moaned in a long falsetto, and the group exploded.
Raff straightened to his full height, with a look that could fell a tree. ‘It’s getting dark, and Fable’s people are going to be looking for her.’
One of the men had resurfaced from the mansion gloom. ‘Don’t be such a bloody party-pooper, Hull,’ he said, a cigarette hanging limply from his lips.
Fable swung a breathless glance at Raff.
Raff’s serious lips twitched. ‘These kids are a bit young for your company, aren’t they, Furse?’
The man called Furse crushed his fag beneath his foot and slouched back against the stone, languid resistance in every line of his body. ‘Fable’s enjoyin’ herself. Let her be.’
The other man’s voice echoed from the dark innards, ‘Go home, Hull.’
Raff’s face remained emotionless, but, at his quiet persistence, courage flared at last in Fable. She began to struggle free. The arms clung, even in their unravelling.
‘I am ready to go home.’
Raff’s eyes shifted to Fable, with a single, emphatic nod. He motioned with one arm. A cry of disgust encircled Fable as she picked her way free, evading reaching hands. She stumbled over a large root, into Raff’s grip.
‘Well, we’re off, fellows,’ he said, guiding Fable away from the fire circle with a firm hand at her elbow.
The clearing was in an uproar as Fable and Raff disappeared up the track. His grasp was unrelenting. All thoughts flew from Fable’s head at both his nearness and the fear besieging her. Raff walked at a full pace, penlight scything the blackness before them. Fable had to jog to stay abreast of him.
She’d thought herself sobering up at the campfire, but now they were in motion she felt the world spinning beneath her.
‘Hang on, I need—’ Fable doubled over to vomit.
Raff waited, his eyes focused over her head at the dark pathway behind, the ruins beyond.
Fable wiped her mouth and reached for Raff again. The compassion on his face withdrew behind brusqueness.
‘You’re too young to be drinking, Fable Hamilton.’
She tried to roll her eyes, but the resulting head spin only made her turn and puke violently. When she staggered upright, it was to Raff’s unnerving seriousness.
‘Fable, you’ve got something on the back of your legs.’
She spun to see, achieving only a wheeling lurch. ‘What?!’
‘Nothing, forget it,’ he said, moving on again.
‘Please! What is it?’
At her pleading tone, he stopped. ‘Stay still.’ He retrieved a scrap of cloth from his pocket, stooped and swiped gently up the back of her leg. At his touch, Fable swayed widely. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself, but Raff had moved clear.
He lifted an inky-black shape, glisteningly engorged, for her perusal.
‘Only a leech,’ he said, sounding more relieved than she felt. ‘It’s been having an absolute feast. Check yourself at home for more.’
In his hand lay a white handkerchief embroidered with a blue R – and covered with her blood. Fable stared. A rude thing to have done, bleeding over a man’s pretty handkerchief like that.
‘Out, damned leech,’ she said with a weak smile.
Wryness tugged at his lips. He placed the handkerchief in her hand. ‘All right, Lady Macbeth, I’m taking you home.’
They pressed on. As they neared the road, Fable remembered Eamon.
‘Wait! Your brother’s back there, too!’
‘Eamon isn’t there.’
‘But he is! He brought me here. You can’t leave him—’
‘He’s not. Let’s go!’
Fable stumbled after Raff, confused by his tone. Moments later, the truck came into view. A hunched shadow in the cab moved away from the window at their approach. Raff banged on the door.
‘Get in the back!’
The door opened and Eamon swung down. Even in the weak light seeping from the doused pools of headlight, even in the haze of inebriation, Fable saw the dark bruise that stained one side of Eamon’s face. He glowered at Fable in passing.
She climbed into the cab, lost for words, or indeed thought. The situation was bigger than she could presently muddle out. For now, she wanted to rest her head against the window, just for a wee while.
Raff leaned over Fable, placing a balled-up jacket between her head and the door. The truck shuddered into life and Fable closed her eyes. Raff’s steely silence and the rocking motion of their descent tipped her into sleep.
*
Fable stirred with the engine’s cessation at Summerlinn. Eamon leapt off the truck and disappeared into the dark drizzle.
Raff turned to Fable. ‘Hang on a sec, I’ll be right back.’
He crossed the manicured lawn and bounded onto the front stoop. Figures waited in a frame of spilling light: Mrs Hull and someone else Fable couldn’t distinguish through the rain-rippled glass and her drunkenness. It could only be Adriana, awaiting the gossip she would disperse, methodically, like a spring back-burn. The same rumour Mrs Hull would spin up and down Main Street in hushed, yet no-less-flammable tones.
Raff conferred with the pair, using explosive arm motions, pointing in her direction several times. The smaller figure turned to peer. Yes, Adriana. With a theatrical display of pity, Adriana’s darkly fringed face began to shake slowly at the truck. Her lips moved in silent chastisement: ‘Fable, Fable, Fable . . .’
The mimed words hit Fable with the force of a shout.
Raff’s voice was audible now even over the distance and rain. He was furious. At Fable, obviously: the inconvenience of bringing her home, not to mention the scandalous position in which he’d found her, surrounded by groping boys, on the cusp of something irrevocable.
But what? Fable couldn’t get it all straight in her head. She only knew she could not bear another moment of Adriana’s scorn, and Raff’s ire.
She slipped out of the cab, fleeing for the forest.
*
The distended serpent rolled beneath Fable’s feet as she skirted the bridge unsteadily towards home. How many times must she cross this flood today?
Dead centre of the bridge she slipped on a sleeper, and for one terrified moment felt the creek opening to swallow her. At the last second she managed to right herself, giggling with the terror of it. She planted her feet, and raised her face and arms to the few stars which shone against the cloud-strung sky, her body absorbing the power surging against the bridge.
Raff arrived on the bridge with a panting stealth that was somehow reassuring.
‘Fable . . . ?’
‘I don’t need you to rescue me, Rafferty Hull!’
‘Of course you don’t.’
‘I’m going home!’
She whirled to leave, only to sway wildly again. Beside her, she heard a pronounced intake of breath.
Once she’d regained her balance, he spoke in a slow, placating tone. ‘I know this bridge better than you – at least let me see you across.’ He advanced carefully, hands ushering her forward.
‘I don’t need you or your stupid brother.’
‘Nobody needs my stupid brother.’
Raff was so close now she felt rather than saw his grin. Her urge to return the smile was unexpected. She fixed her feet, indignantly.
‘Come on, couple more steps and you’re there.’
‘You always treat me like a child!’
Raff paused now. ‘No, not a child. Like a newcomer to Noah Vale – which you are.’
‘You mean an outsider! Or, worse, a Hamilton!’
‘The Hamilton name is as old as the hills, and us Hulls. But I grew up here, and you did not. There are things you only learn by long immersion – things that nobody is apparently going to let you in on.’
‘In other words, I’m only pretending to belong here.’
‘In other words, if no one else here is watching out for you, I will.’
His words stung. ‘I don’t need a babysitter! Nobody asked you to drag me home. Matter of fact, I was having fun until you showed up.’
‘Oh sure, it’s all fun and games until someone’s hanging dead from a vine.’
‘What does that even mean? Is this the kind of interfering Adriana has to deal with whenever she goes off without her party-pooper of a brother?’
His brow tightened at her words.
Fable hurried beyond him. Crossing the last sleeper, she contemplated sprinting straight on for home without another word – then let Sonnet do what she did best with Hulls, should he dare come after her. But beer was a boldness she’d never known before. Fable swung back, outrage on her tongue.
His quiet wrath, however, stopped the words at her lips.
‘Adriana would never go to Vinelands because she knows what Vinelands is. What no one else has cared to tell you. And those boys specifically took you there today, without saying anything, because they were pinning all their sordid hopes on your reputation.’
‘What reputation!’
‘You’re the daughter of Esther Hamilton. In this town, stories, true or false, circulate for generations. You’re climbing a mountain other girls, especially my sister, have never had to face. And let me tell you, every one of those boys there tonight was betting on you being as . . . “easy” as the town legends claim your mother was.’
Fable’s bottom lip was no longer obeying her.
‘Do you have any idea what they had in store for you today?’
‘I went because Eamon invited me! And Vince, too . . . but they both disappeared.’
‘And Eamon will never ask you anywhere again; neither will Vince after I get to him.’
Fable held her head, voice small. ‘Would you just tell me?’
Raff dragged a handful of hair back from his own forehead, looking away. He sighed but began to speak – in quick, stilted phrases.
‘The Vinelands ruins are the . . . sexual initiation spot for the St Ronan’s boys. Each summer there are girls they take up there. Or maybe lure there. Get them drunk. Then share them around. Like animals. Who can go the furthest? How many turns can you have? They always say the girls are willing. But they only take the . . . vulnerable ones. It’s drunken, macho one-upmanship. They brag among themselves for years to come. It’s a tradition for the seniors. Usually, a couple of guys from the old boys’ club rock up, too, reliving their own hazing rituals. Every year there’s a girl, sometimes two together.’
On he went, sparing her nothing. ‘There was one girl, the year I graduated, lovely person, but she “went to Vinelands”. They swore willingly. She said it was a bit of fun. It was a . . . big year. None of it bears repeating. And it’s only because she fled town that it didn’t go to the sergeant. It never does, though! Vinelands is only ever talked about as silly kids’ play. Everyone getting what they asked for, especially the girls. But only a few months later, that poor girl came back to hang herself at Vinelands. On the vines you were swinging from today.’
Fable gagged, tasting bile.
‘I hate that I’m the one telling you this. It should have been my sister, or yours. But now you know. You can do whatever you want, but in future they’ll never have the advantage of your not knowing again.’
Fable tried to shake her head, but it was too heavy for her control.
‘When I found my godforsaken brother stumbling down the gorge road this afternoon, drunk as a skunk, and he said you were at Vinelands . . .’ His jaw jumped. ‘I couldn’t just leave you there, could I?’
He seemed to think she might answer this.
‘Fable?’
Her thoughts were a slow turmoil in a whirling world. She bent and heaved repeatedly. He moved to help, then stopped short.
Understanding finally punctured Fable’s stupefaction. Raff had expected to find her in the worst predicament imaginable, and he’d come for her, anyway. What had Fable ever been to Raff but his sister’s pitiable friend? What did it matter to him what she chose to do with boys, how many of them there were, or where she chose to do it?
Yet he’d come for her.
It was too much to process. With a guttural cry, Fable turned and sprinted for the rain-enfeebled glow of the cottage. Behind she heard, or thought she heard, Raff call: ‘Take care, Fable.’
*
Fable dropped into the cottage with the impact of a pebble into a pool, absorbed without fuss or notice. There were no inquisitions to greet her, no need even to feign sobriety. Sonnet wasn’t home. In her stead, only a mildly defensive note propped on the kitchen bench in answer to Fable’s earlier message: Sonnet was staying late at the bookshop to attend rain damage, it had to be done, Fable should make dinner from leftovers and not worry about Plum, who was still at Heartwood. She too could duck up the hill if she really wanted company.
The words swam as relief and dismay jostled for position. There was no one in the world Fable wanted to see or touch or be comforted by more than her big sister, but thank God she wasn’t home. Moments later, Fable was tumbling down the long, spinning slope into grateful oblivion.