The streets weren’t as dark as they’d seemed from the middle of the bridge. There were lights in some of the windows, but they flickered like candles, and sometimes went out altogether. Jen turned down a narrow alleyway, then another and another. She should be lost, but her feet seemed to know where she was going.
The street widened. She turned a corner into a row of tall houses, steps leading up to painted front doors. Some of the windows had the same strange flickering lights. One house in the middle of the row had lights blazing on the middle floor.
Jennet was sitting on the windowsill, cleaning her feathers. The bird lifted her head and looked at Jen, then flew up into the air, calling out. At the same moment, the front door opened to reveal a crack of light and the silhouette of a girl. The falcon called out again, circling above them.
“Ethie,” said Jen.
She ran towards her friend, but Ethie was looking further down the street, and when Jen turned she saw Eg standing in the shadows. Ethie ran full pelt down the steps, along the street and threw herself into Eg’s arms.
Jennet hovered in the air above the two of them. They were hugging each other as tightly as they could. Ethie lifted her face to Eg’s and they kissed, a long kiss as though they were being given water when they had been dying of thirst in the desert.
It happened so quickly that Jen didn’t have time to shout before the hand was over her mouth. She’d been looking at Ethie and Eg and the falcon and hadn’t heard anything. Although she struggled, kicked out against his shins, her assailant had the advantage of surprise. He dragged her into the house and the door slammed shut behind them. He released her and she spun round ready to shout, but stopped. She stared at him in wonder. Whatever she’d expected her attacker to look like, it wasn’t this. This wasn’t a French poet or a man from a poker game. It was Finn.
“Surprised?” he said. The voice wasn’t Finn’s. “There are two sides to everyone.”
“Who are you?”
“Come, don’t you recognise me? Do you think you’re the only one who can do this? I can play games as well, you know.”
“What do you want?”
“Viens.”
He held out his hand to her and smiled, the smile she knew so well. His dark eyes had a hint of mischief in them. How could she not take his hand when he looked like Finn? She had crossed the bridge to find him.
He led her up many flights of stairs to the attic. The room at the top of the house was large and mostly bare, with wooden boards on the floor. A window was open to the air, and through it Jen could make out the dark shapes of roofs and turrets. There was a narrow iron frame bed against the back wall, and a wooden table in the middle of the room. On the table were a selection of tools.
“Are you going to torture me?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Mon ange, I would never harm you.”
“Then…?”
“Swallow this.”
He held out a small blue bottle and she took it. Their eyes were locked, and he was Finn, her rock to lean on. He said he would never harm her.
She tipped the contents of the bottle down her throat. It was bitter as aspirin.
“Come,” he said, “look at these.”
He led her to the table and she stood looking down at the tools. There were knives in different sizes, some serrated, some not. There were screw drivers, a spanner, a pair of pliers.
“They’re all brand new,” he said. “Sterilised. Top brands, too. Nothing but the best for you, ma chérie.”
She turned to look at him, and still he was smiling. But his face had gone hazy at the edges, his features were blurred.
“Would you like me to stay with you, or would you rather be left alone?”
“I don’t want this,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, and the words felt like pebbles plopping into the cold air.
“You’ve always wanted this. Don’t you remember?”
Of course she remembered. She remembered the knife stolen from the kitchen drawer and kept under her pillow. The excitement of the first incision. The way the blood would spring up so quickly beneath its point. The time she’d woken up in A&E with her dad there, waiting. Worrying. Her mum had been on an all-night prayer vigil that night.
But all that had changed since she met Finn.
“You have to let it out. I know you tried, but you went about it the wrong way. He entered you through the side, so you have to let it out through your side too. Here, how about this one?” He handed her a small sharp knife, the sort you might use for chopping vegetables.
“It’s very sharp,” he said, and he ran the blade across his thumb, drawing blood. It rose up just as she remembered, flooding into the grooves of his fingerprint. “No nasty snagging, it will cut right through.”
She felt dizzy. His eyes had changed, his nose too, he didn’t look like Finn anymore.
“I don’t want to cut myself,” she said. And this time her words were a white ribbon which unreeled from her mouth into the room, wafting and floating in the currents of air. She watched it floating. Saw the words hanging.
I don’t want to cut myself.
He grabbed the ribbon and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Jen, we both know that’s not true.”
“I don’t want to cut myself,” she said again, and another ribbon floated into the air.
He looked annoyed.
“You had a dream, remember? A dream where you cut yourself, but this time it wasn’t your leg. You dreamed about making a wound in your side, where the elephant entered. Let it out again.”
“I don’t want this.” Pebbles. She heard them drop to the floor. One, two, three, four. I don’t want this. He had to move his feet out of the way.
He frowned and thrust the knife towards her.
“I don’t want this. I don’t want to cut myself.” Pebbles and ribbon. Jen laughed out loud as he kicked at the pebbles. “I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want to cut myself.”
She moved away from him, grabbing at the ribbons, chanting the words over and over until it was hard to see him as the air was filled with dancing strands of white silk.
“Jennifer, don’t do this.”
“You’re not Finn,” she said, and this time it was flowers, huge white chrysanthemums which burst from her like explosions.
He grabbed at them and tore them apart, scattering the petals, and the air was filled with their smell.
“You have no power over me,” she shouted. The flowers hit him in the face and fell to the ground. “I don’t want to cut myself,” she repeated until he was surrounded with ribbons, batting at them with his hands, and she turned him, spun him round and round so he was tied, his arms bound to his side, his legs strapped together, and he fell to the ground.
She turned to the table and picked up the knives one by one, stabbing them into the table top until they stood there in a row, their blades quivering.
She laughed, and a spray of diamonds sprang from her mouth, hung sparkling in the air before tinkling to the floor.
Someone was climbing in through the window. She spun round. The room still danced, but the ribbons had changed into shafts of light. Light was coming from the window, and a dark figure was climbing in over the sill.
“Jen?” said a voice she knew.
“Finn!”
It was so bright it was hard to see him. He came to her.
“Are you alright, Jen?”
She looked at the floor, and he followed her gaze. Beau was sleeping, gently breathing, his chest rising and falling. He looked nothing like Finn any more. His high forehead glistened with sweat and his lips were thin and straight.
Finn took a deep intake of breath. “Jen, what’s been going on?”
“He gave me something. A drug. But I’m OK.”
Finn held her. She could feel his heart beating in his chest. She could feel warmth where their bodies met, a contrast to the freezing air of the room.
“Is it morning?” she asked, her voice muffled by his hair.
Something was happening to him. She could feel movement where her hands touched his back, something creeping over him. It slid across her skin, and the hairs on her hands raised to meet it. It passed on, through Finn’s t-shirt, through his skin. His body convulsed as it entered him.
Jen pushed him away and looked into his face. His eyes were darkened and he began to shake. She held on to his shoulders. His face changed shape, his hair receded like the tide to reveal a high domed head and jutting eyebrows. His body shook violently and he pushed her away as he bent double and shouted, “No! Get out of me!” A stream of brown vomit poured from his mouth, but never reached the floor. It kept coming, and Jen put her hand on his back, and rubbed from side to side.
Eventually it stopped. He was hugging his stomach as though in pain, but he looked like himself again, his eyes were the right colour and his hair flopped forward onto his face. She kissed him on the temple. There was a bit of white ribbon caught in his hair, and white petals were scattered across the floor. Amongst them, something was shining.
Beau had disappeared, leaving only a heap of ribbons. A shadow lurked in the corner of the room. It moved back and forth but had no substance.
“Let’s go,” said Finn, straightening up.
Jen moved her legs and the room tipped alarmingly. Finn held her, and leaning against each other they walked towards the door. He saw the row of knives standing up from the table and gave her a questioning look. She grinned.
Light from the window caught the shining thing on the floor. She bent and picked it up.
It was Ethie’s medallion.
Outside, there was no sign of Ethie, nor Eg or the falcon, but the dark was lifting. There was a line of shining white along the horizon as the night came untucked.
“Come on,” Jen said. “We need to get to the bridge. There’s someone waiting there for you.”
Jen opened her eyes. The clock was still ticking. There was the sound of the breathing tube. The monitor was beeping, but sounded different. The green line was following the same pattern, but the peaks were higher, much higher, and slightly closer together.
Then she saw Finn’s father had tears in his eyes. He was holding Finn’s hand.
He looked at Jen. “The doctor’s on her way,” he said.
“What happened?”
“His eyes moved. And look – his heart. Something has changed.”
At that moment the door burst open and a doctor and two nurses came in.
“Monsieur, Mademoiselle, I must ask you to leave the room.”
They surrounded the bed and began to take readings. They lifted Finn’s arms, checked the monitors. Patrick took Jen’s elbow.
“Come on, Jen.”
She let him propel her from the room, but at the door she looked back. Finn’s eyelashes were moving, and the skin of his eyelids trembled a little. For a moment she thought he was going to open his eyes. Then she was out of the room and she and Patrick were looking at each other wide-eyed.
“I don’t want to speak too soon,” said Patrick, “but I think he’s waking up.”