DECEMBER 2017They were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the stone circle, despondent.
Anna, Britta and Jade-Marie wore their white nightdresses over their school uniforms, coats on top. Viola was zipped up in a long, maroon padded jacket that belonged to her mother – Deborah Kendrick preferring the moth-eaten sheepskin for her vigils on the veranda. All of Viola’s mainland coats were too thin for the dropping temperatures, no matter how many jumpers she layered underneath.
The girls had offered to get Viola a nightdress too, which had thrilled her initially as a sign of acceptance, but she had politely declined. Viola’s confession, the afternoon of their first meeting – the whole truth of it spilling out of her, the reason why she and her mother had left their old life to be here on Lark – had allowed the girls to confess in return. They were the keeper of each other’s worst experiences now – but this had reduced some of the trappings of their magic. Once Viola understood why the Eldest Girls gathered at the stones, what they were trying to achieve, she couldn’t see how a nightdress would help.
Nothing was working. Terrible things continued to happen. The sky was darkening, the ground was cold and hard. They rested their chins on their hands, their elbows on their knees.
Viola could feel it festering within them all – the notion of futility.
She had to do something, say something, lift them from this abyss.
‘There is a reason,’ she said, ‘why none of this is working.’
Viola poked a finger at the pebbles that they had carved into runes. Beside them was a bowl of water in which they hoped to catch the reflection of the waxing fingernail moon.
Britta sat up, always primed to challenge. ‘Oh, yeah. And what reason’s that?’
Viola met her gaze squarely. ‘It’s because none of us believe it will work.’
They were all quiet in response; no quick rebuttals. She was right, their faith had wavered.
A tealight candle flickered out in the twitching of the winds.
‘So,’ shrugged Britta, ‘what are we supposed to do?’
‘Stop dabbling at the edges,’ came Viola’s definite response.
‘Meaning?’
‘I say we do something big.’ Viola could feel it, the sensation growing inside her – rebellion, recklessness, an appetite for fire. ‘I say we do something that will actually make a fucking difference.’
She had never heard the girls swear and hoped that her use of the word would demonstrate her seriousness, shock them into action.
‘But, what is there left?’ Jade-Marie asked. ‘What haven’t we tried?’
‘Plenty!’ Viola recruited each one of them in turn with a fervent stare.
She was not as steeped in all this as they were, but she had read books that they hadn’t, seen films, visited museums. She knew the extremes – where they needed to tread. An image came to her of a glass cabinet in a gallery seen on a school trip, way back. Within that cabinet a grisly offering, the bloody object of a curse, with a handwritten card explaining how it had been used.
She relayed it to the girls, Anna looking sick at the suggestion.
‘But that’s a bad spell,’ said Jade-Marie. ‘We don’t do bad spells, only good.’
‘Says who?’ Britta replied quickly.
Jade-Marie was emphatic. ‘No, Brit, that’s not right. We turn our cheeks, like my dad did. We respond in the right way, we don’t stoop to their –’
‘And how did that work out for your dad, then?’ Britta was enraged. Jade-Marie’s eyes welled. ‘Turn the other cheek?’ Britta spat. ‘Turn the other cheek! You know how the rest of that passage goes, don’t you? It says that, if they’ve taken our shirts, we should hand them our coats too. You want to do that, do you?’
Jade-Marie hung her head.
Britta bellowed out a great cry of frustration. Anna put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, pulling her back from the edge, before carefully manoeuvring herself towards it.
‘But if we were to do this,’ she said, ‘and we were acting against evil, then it would be a good thing.’ They all looked at her – cool, calm Anna, the voice of reason. ‘We would be doing God’s work even,’ she went on, ‘because, well, that man would deserve everything he –’ She paused here to glance at Viola, ‘– everything he fucking gets!’
They allowed themselves to laugh at that. Viola thought of Macbeth, the play text she had almost given the girls, and a school production she’d seen back home where the Weird Sisters had cackled manically at the end of every scene. How she’d rolled her eyes at their performances, but just look at her now.
‘We have to believe, though,’ Viola put in, returning them to the seriousness of their cause. ‘It will never work, if we don’t truly believe.’
‘I believe,’ said Britta defiantly, as if swearing an oath.
‘I believe,’ said Anna.
‘I believe,’ said Jade-Marie.
Viola echoed them – ‘I believe’ – because in that moment she did, or she truly wanted to, or she understood that this was all that was available to them. These girls were her family, her sisters, and there had to be a way to stop terrible things happening to the ones you loved.
They went sky-clad that afternoon as the light faded. Viola couldn’t remember who suggested it. Perhaps it was a collective, organic impulse, that sloughing off of their clothing, bringing themselves forward naked, ready for the next phase. No longer were they children flirting with symbols and chants; they were women with a power that no longer frightened them.
Viola had always shielded her body in the school changing rooms but this situation did not compare. She felt free, unleashed from judgment. Of course, she noticed their individual differences as they undressed – the flatness or not of their stomachs, the shape of their thighs, the spread of their pubic hair – but she felt no embarrassment, no sense of competition, not even the fleeting, confusing sensation of desire. The girls’ bodies, she had thought, would look like they belonged on Lark. They would be country bodies, feral and tight and brown, their heels blackened from contact with the earth, but this wasn’t the case. The Eldest Girls were as inconvenient and as pale as Viola, because Lark’s landscape wasn’t one you romped across or lounged upon. You battled with it. You wore clothing like armour.
The four girls lifted their arms to the darkening sky, shivering. It was so very cold.
‘We are here for you, Bethany Reid!’ said Britta. ‘You are not forgotten.’
‘And to the ten men gone,’ called Anna.
‘We defend the ones we love from evil,’ said Viola, her voice strong and loud.
‘No matter what!’ affirmed Jade-Marie.
And then there was a flash.
The girls gasped and wrapped their arms around themselves. There had been no rain, no thickening of the air to suggest a storm was upon them. Had they brought this burst of light into being with their naked conviction? Was this a sign that those on the other side could hear their pleas, that they were there now, with them in spirit?
Then came laughter. Male laughter.
Anna realised first; screaming, crouching low, snatching at one of the oversized nightdresses to cover herself. Another flash, and Jade-Marie, Britta and Viola were grasping for clothing too. Not fast enough. Another flash. The girls bundled together – one cold, pale animal with many naked limbs.
The figure was indistinct, dancing within the shivering circle of light printed on their retinas, becoming clearer with every blink.
‘Go away!’ shrieked Jade-Marie. ‘Go away!’
‘Why is he here?’ cried Britta. ‘Oh, god, I can’t believe he’s seen us like this!’
‘He has a torch,’ said Anna. ‘Why’s he flashing us with a torch?’
‘No,’ said Viola. ‘It’s not a torch.’ She was the only one who recognised that smooth rectangular object in his hands. ‘It’s not a torch,’ she said, the words seeming to soothe them, though they should have done the opposite. ‘It’s not a torch, it’s not a torch.’