THE SMELL OF DAMP MINGLED WITH FRESHLY PREPARED coffee immediately filled her nostrils when her Identego deposited her on the first-floor landing of the house in Bigtoe Square, while her head and heart were filled with a familiar melancholy song, ‘Summer’s Gone’ by Placebo.
You try to break the mould
Before you get too old
You try to break the mould
Before you die.
Cue to your face so forsaken
Crushed by the way that you cry
Cue to your face so forsaken
Saying goodbye.
Drawn like iron to a magnet, Oksa headed for the room which had been—and still was—her bedroom. Having no physical substance, she was able to pass through walls and quickly found herself beside Gus, whom she wasn’t surprised to find there.
It looked like things had improved since her last visit. The house was more comfortable, the electricity was back on, the kitsch wallpaper had been stripped and replaced by white paint, and the floors had been cleaned of the layers of mud left behind by the numerous floods.
Gus, on the other hand, didn’t look great. His tee-shirt did nothing to hide his thinness—he was even scrawnier than the last time Oksa had seen him. His face was emaciated, his cheeks hollow and his eyes darkened by intense physical pain and the fear of certain death.
“Gus… God… what’s happened to you?” murmured Oksa, standing beside the bed on which he was lying.
His hair, just as black, fell to his shoulders and this detail sent Oksa into a panic. How much time had gone by? How many months? She glanced out of the window and almost fainted. The trees in the square were covered with leaves, the sun was shining and, if she thought about it, the temperature was quite mild—warm, even.
It was the middle of summer.
At least eight months had gone by since they’d passed through the Portal.
She shook her head. The weeks in Edefia had been months on the Outside. And time was not on Gus’s side… Oksa jumped onto the bed and folded her legs under her. She leant towards him, nearer than she would ever have dared if she’d really been at his side.
“You have to hang in there. That’s an order!” she shouted, hoping with all her might that he’d hear her message.
The room was filled with the sound of sad guitar music.
You try to break the mould
Before you get too old
You try to break the mould
Before you die.
Cue to your face so forsaken
Crushed by the way that you cry
Cue to your face so forsaken
Saying goodbye.
Oksa knew this song so well. She used to listen to it often, before, when everything was… normal. A wave of nostalgia washed over her, bringing no comfort, as Gus closed his eyes. It was terrible to hear those words again now that things were so different and so much worse.
She edged closer still and studied her friend’s face. The abnormally bulging veins in his neck and temples throbbed as if transporting powerful, uncontrollable torrents of blood. From time to time, sharp pains wracked his body and caused his face to tighten, bringing Oksa close to tears.
“You’re not going to die, Gus,” she whispered. “We’ll be back together again soon, and I’ll save you, I promise.”
The door opened slightly, its hinges creaking, and Kukka slipped inside. “What a surprise—I only have to be on my own with Gus for a minute and she shows up!” thought Oksa irritably. Yelling at her wouldn’t help though. Her antagonism had about as much effect as an air bubble. Even a ghost would be more effective right now. Kukka unintentionally made Oksa even crosser by throwing herself down on the bed and passing through the Gracious’s intangible body. Gus smiled at Kukka, who was still just as gorgeous, and whose dazzling skin and glossy hair did nothing to improve Oksa’s mood. Lying on one side, her head resting on her hand, Kukka smiled back at Gus.
“What are you reading?” she asked, gesturing to the object Gus had just put down beside him.
Instinctively, Oksa glanced over. It wasn’t so much a paperback as a school exercise book stitched down the spine to make it stronger. The pages inside were worn so thin that they looked about to disintegrate. In astonishment, Oksa recognized Dragomira’s bold, flowing handwriting. Did the notebook contain her gran’s memoirs? Her secrets from her years as an apothecary or her Gracious spells?
“Andrew found it in a chest in Dragomira’s strictly private workroom,” said Gus, turning the pages carefully.
“Did she write all this?” asked Kukka.
“Yes. They’re short stories about the creatures of Edefia which she wrote for Pavel when he was little. Reading them, anyone would think that Dragomira had an incredibly fertile imagination to invent things like that. It’s a bit different when you know all these creatures are real!”
“Just a bit,” agreed Kukka, laughing.
“They’re all there: Lunatrixes, Getorixes, hysterical Squoracles… plus a few I’d never heard of, like the Nestor and the Lusterer.”
“Amazing!”
“It really is—except I’ll never see them. Even if, by some miracle, there was a microscopic, freakish chance I could, I’d be dead before it happened.”
“Gus!” exclaimed Kukka. “How can you say that?”
An expression of deep despair appeared on Gus’s face and his deep blue eyes darkened. Oksa understood his pain. In agonies, she battled against her powerlessness. She clenched her fists, crushing the blade of Lasonillia, and her Identego swept her out of the room.
She searched the whole house in vain: her mother wasn’t there. On the brink of despair, she stood at the bottom of the staircase and screamed for her at the top of her lungs, hoping against hope that Marie would appear. But her wish wasn’t granted, despite her passionate entreaty, so she made herself comfortable on the first step and waited watchfully like a frightened animal.
The front door slammed and everyone clustered around Virginia. They were all there: Andrew, Akina, Barbara—everyone except Marie. Cameron’s reserved wife barely had time to take off her straw hat before they bombarded her with questions.
“The doctors are still confident, despite the severity of her last attack,” she announced. “They assured me she’d make a good recovery anyway.”
Hunched on the step, Oksa froze. Virginia had to be talking about Marie.
“She even told me to tell you to eat properly, because she thinks we’re all getting alarmingly thin and she hopes we’ll have put some weight on by the time she gets back!” she continued with a chuckle.
The Spurned gave a collective sigh of relief.
“That’s Marie all over!” exclaimed Andrew.
“So her face isn’t paralysed any more?” asked Barbara happily.
“Fortunately not,” confirmed Virginia. “It’s still a little swollen, but she can speak and blink again. However, she seems to be taking a bit longer to regain the movement in her right arm.”
“When is she coming home?” asked Gus.
“At the end of the week.”
There was a long silence, broken by Virginia’s final words.
“If all goes well.”
Gus cursed and stomped heavily up the stairs.
“Until the next time!” he thundered. “This is already the tenth time since the beginning of the year.”
“Gus!” Andrew shouted reprovingly.
Gus spun round on the first-floor landing.
“Marie gets worse with every attack,” he cried. “We’re both going to die and no one can do anything to stop it. Stop burying your heads in the sand and trying to make us think we’re going to get better, okay?”
He disappeared. A door slammed so hard that the walls shook. The Spurned hung their heads, looking stricken.