AUCHINMURN, WESTERN ISLES OF SCOTLAND
TWO MONTHS AGO
‘Time is running out, Matt,’ Em said, nudging her brother over to make room at the end of the wooden jetty. Muted waves rippled on to the rocky shore beneath them.
‘Go away, Em.’ Matt paused before adding with considerable emphasis, ‘I’ve not made my decision yet.’
‘Matt, how is that even possible?’ Em snapped back. ‘Every other Animare has to make up their mind when they are sixteen. But the Council gave us both a whole extra year so that you could decide. If Lizzy’s really not the one, then your final option for an official-by-the-scroll Guardian is me. And you know how everyone feels about that, including Zach.’
Matt glanced at the ridiculous expression on his twin sister’s face. He knew she was thinking of Zach Butler’s amazing body in skinny jeans. He could hear her in his mind. Dropping his sunglasses from the top of his head, he squinted in disgust at his sister.
Em grinned, punching him playfully on the shoulder. ‘You must admit Zach and I are an Animare and Guardian dream team.’
‘Can you stop talking now?’ Matt said. He turned his face up to the morning sun, and dangled his feet in the wide ribbon of Largs Bay that separated their home in Auchinmurn from its smaller sister island, Era Mina.
Matt and Em had arrived on the islands when they were 12, fleeing London after they’d animated themselves into a Georges Seurat painting in the National Gallery. Their frantic arrival at the abbey’s compound was the start of a dangerous journey that transported the twins to the island’s medieval past and revealed they were part of an ancient order of artists known as Animare – powerful men and women who could bring their art to life. And because their dad had been a Guardian, the siblings had developed Guardian powers of inspiriting and mind-control.
‘The Council of Guardians have made it clear that this union ceremony,’ said Em, ‘this joining together, is our last chance to be a legitimate part of the Animare world. Don’t you want that?’
‘Still talking,’ said Matt.
‘Mattie, our acceptance will open up opportunities I want to be part of! But you need a Guardian!’
Matt said nothing. He looked back at the house, a renovated monastery and its abbey, and at Renard, their grandfather and one of the most powerful Guardians in the world, standing at the open French doors. Matt could sense Renard’s attention on them even while his eyes were observing the catering circus unfolding on the Abbey compound’s expansive lawn.
Waiting staff darted in and out of a white canopy carrying champagne flutes, tea services and vases bursting with yellow blooms freshly cut from the garden. The ringmaster for the event was Jeannie Butler, the Abbey’s elderly housekeeper and an Animare with unprecedented powers in her own right. Wrapped in a starched tartan pinnie, she stood in front of Renard on the stone steps of the patio and shouted instructions to a trio of tuxedoed musicians unpacking their instruments on a small stage nearby. No one skimped on a union ceremony.
‘Do you remember when our feet couldn’t touch the water from here?’ Em asked, looking at her purple varnished toes hanging over the jetty, before splashing water on to Matt’s cuffed jeans.
‘Feels like another lifetime ago,’ Matt said curtly. He didn’t like talking about the past.
‘Kind of was. Remember the day we arrived? We drew for Grandpa and accidentally animated a T-Rex on the hillside. Almost killed Zach.’
‘Em—’
‘OK. Zipped.’ Em pinched her fingertips together, twisting them against her lips. She drew circles in the cool water with her toes.
You know that Zach’s afraid we’re all going to wake up one morning and you’ll just be gone.
Matt shoved his shades back up into his long dark hair. ‘Talking in my head is still talking.’
Apart from the scars on his arms and legs, the changes to Matt’s dazzling, damaged eyes were the most visible signs of the time-travelling trauma he had suffered three years earlier.
‘Zach’s coming in,’ Em said, sitting up and gazing out over the bay. ‘He looks so hot on his board. Doesn’t he?’
‘You want me to lust after your boyfriend too?’ Matt inquired.
Em watched Zach arch his body against his rig to catch the breeze from the Atlantic. May in Scotland was a chancy month: as much a chance of sun as of sleet, hail or high water. It was sunny now, and Zach had peeled his wetsuit off to his waist, his tanned body wet and muscular.
‘Seriously hot,’ she said happily.
‘I’ll go and bring him in,’ said Matt, getting to his feet.
‘No, you won’t,’ said Em, catching Matt’s arm. ‘The sun’s too bright for your eyes.’
*
The physical transformation to Matt’s eyes had begun two years ago, about six months after his return from the fourteenth century. At first, it was occasional blurred vision and then a painful sensitivity to bright sunlight. After a year, his eyes began to change colour from a brilliant cobalt to a cold, pale arctic blue. Then, just when he’d accepted the physical changes, fizzing lines like electric currents appeared in his peripheral vision, fluctuating with the light, framing everything Matt looked at with a pulsing halo.
The winter following the twins’ sixteenth birthday, Matt woke up swearing his eyeballs were melting. When his mother managed to coax Matt to open them, it was as if he was staring at the world from under murky water. A translucent film like an alligator’s third eyelid had dropped over his eyeballs.
For three days Matt stayed in his room, alternating cold compresses with warm poultices of Jeannie’s concoction. The poultices looked like sanitary pads soaked in pea soup. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Matt was convinced she had lathered the poultice in sheep’s dung too. But it seemed to work, giving him a modicum of relief from the burning, and after a while he developed a tolerance to the smell. The other advantage the poultice had was in keeping Em and Zach at a tolerable distance, so Matt did not have to witness their far-too-frequent bouts of snogging.
One morning after a restless night, Matt’s eyes had itched more than they throbbed. In the bathroom, he’d drenched his eyes with a warm face cloth until Jeannie’s crusty mixture loosened from his eyelids, then leaned his head over the sink and wiped the final layer of sludge from his eyes.
Em had tapped gently on the door. ‘Are you OK? Your anxiety is making my stomach ache.’
Throwing a towel over his head, Matt had opened the door. ‘Something’s changed,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I haven’t looked.’
Em had rolled her eyes. ‘You’d better look now!’
‘But what if I can’t see anything? My eyes are itching like crazy.’
‘Oh, for… put on your big-boy pants. Besides, itching’s usually a sign of healing.’ Em had softened her tone. ‘Do you want me to look first?’
Matt had sighed. ‘Let’s look together. Turn off the light first. I have a feeling it’s gonna hurt.’
Em had hit the switch, plunging the room into semi-darkness, and Matt took off the towel, keeping his eyes closed.
‘How bad do I look?’ he’d asked anxiously.
‘Your skin’s pretty red, but that’s probably from rubbing off Jeannie’s poultice like a crazy person.’ Setting her hands on Matt’s shoulders, Em had tried to inspirit and calm him. ‘Ready?’ she said.
As Matt slowly opened his eyes, his relief had flowed through Em’s palms.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘You’re just as ugly as ever.’
Em had whacked him. ‘I knew you would be able to see— oh my God, wow!’
Matt froze. ‘What?’
‘Your irises are huge, with slivers of light floating in them. Looks like you’ve had drops put in your eyes… or you’ve been smoking… Have you been smoking?’
‘It’s six in the morning!’
‘Take a look. It’s super cool, in a Prince-of-the-Damned kinda way.’
Matt had faced his reflection. The whites of his eyes were almost non-existent. ‘Jesus. I look like I’m possessed.’
‘It is a wee bit creepy, I can’t deny. How many fingers am I holding up?’ Em had said, waving her middle finger in front of Matt’s face.
Matt had gently slapped her hand away, then grabbed a hair band and pulled his hair into a ponytail before examining himself more carefully. He was paler than usual, but other than eyes like dark blue marbles flecked with light, he’d looked OK. And when he gazed around the bathroom, everything seemed normal.
‘I’m… I think I’m good.’
Em had jumped from the counter, knocking Zach’s contact container and solution on to the floor. Forgetting Matt’s earlier discomfort, she’d flipped on the bathroom light.
Matt had been plunged into darkness. He’d dropped to his knees, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes, his agonized howls bringing the entire Abbey into the bathroom.
*
Now, his vision was only unimpaired in complete darkness. He could see as keenly in the dark as any night predator. As a result he’d become a night owl, a kind of vampire, wandering around the Abbey alone until the small hours, and, on most occasions, sleeping well into the day.
He wore shades most of the time. They helped keep the flashing images at bay. They also stopped people staring at him. But the one compensation for Matt’s distorted vision was how shockingly, disturbingly beautiful his eyes had become. Em had no doubt that one inspiriting look from Matt’s eyes could easily bring Lord Nelson down from atop his column.