Liyana
Liyana wakes with a start. For a moment she’s confused, doesn’t understand where she is. She blinks into the flickering fluorescent lights, takes a breath of stale, disinfected air, wincing as she stretches out her stiff neck. Then Liyana’s gaze settles on her aunt lying in the bed, shrouded in white, head tipped back on the pillow, eyes closed, arms unnaturally straight at her sides.
Liyana doesn’t want to be there. She wants to be in Kumiko’s bed, encircled by her arms, their limbs entwined till they’ve become one glorious multi-limbed creature; an immortal, untouchable goddess: Kali, Durga, Lakshmi – instead of an ineffectual girl unable to achieve anything, be it getting published, or pleasing her girlfriend or inspiring in her aunt the will to live.
Liyana glances up at the plastic clock on the wall ticking away each interminable second. Tick, tick, tick . . . Why is it, she wonders, that time becomes so sluggish after midnight? Especially the hours between two and four o’clock. When she’s in Everwhere it’s never the case, but always on Earth. Which is why when she’s in this world Liyana hates being in a hospital, where time passes most slowly of all, infinitely preferring to spend the dwindling hours with Kumiko.
Fortunately, Liyana has plenty of thoughts to distract herself with. She thinks of her aunt Sisi, the secret that’d been kept from her all these years. She thinks of what Sisi told her she must do to stop Leo’s resurrection from destabilizing the delicate symmetry of good and evil in Everwhere. ‘There’re demons still lurking in the shadows and darkness ready to rise up from the earth,’ Aunt Sisi had said. ‘An act like that is in great danger of tipping the balance, especially given the sacrifice.’ Despite Liyana’s questions, Sisi wouldn’t be pressed on the details of this sacrifice, only muttering cryptically that ‘you will know when you know’.
And then Sisi had taken her to the lake.
They had only walked for a little while, though it could’ve been longer, given the strange passing of time in that place, but had then come upon a small dense wood of silver birch trees unknown to her. And, beyond that, a lake larger than Liyana had ever seen, either on Earth or in Everwhere.
‘My God,’ she’d gasped. ‘It’s . . . incredible.’
While Liyana stood gazing open-mouthed, Aunt Sisi had slipped off her shoes and walked to the edge of the water. ‘I’ve brought you here to be blessed by Mami Wata,’ she said. ‘Just as I did when you were a little girl.’
Still gawping at the great expanse of liquid made silver by the moonlight, Liyana kicked off her own shoes to pad barefoot across the banks of moss and stone to stand beside her aunt. ‘Who’s Mami Wata?’
Sisi gave a short, derisive snort. ‘She’s the goddess of water, of course. She bestows many things on her followers: healing, fertility, creativity, wealth . . . Any of those sound good to you?’
Liyana gave a wry smile. ‘Yeah, all of them except fertility. I’ve no need for that.’
‘So you say now, child.’ Aunt Sisi peeled off her dress and dropped it at her feet. ‘But one day you might change your mind.’
Liyana, a little startled by her aunt’s sudden nudity, took a moment to reply. ‘Did you?’
‘Touché.’ Aunt Sisi’s laughter rippled through her ample flesh. ‘You’re a smart one, aren’t you? And no, I did not. And I never regretted it. But then, I have you.’
‘Hardly.’ Liyana dipped a toe in the water, enjoying the shiver of the chill through her foot. ‘You’ve not exactly been an active presence in my life.’
‘Too true,’ Sisi admitted. ‘But I’ve always been watching.’ With a nimbleness that belied her age and girth, Sisi sprang down the bank and into the lake with an effervescent splash. She turned back to her niece, grinning. ‘What are you waiting for? Come on!’
With a shrug, Liyana cast off her own clothes and waded out to her aunt’s side. Side by side, Liyana stood immersed to her belly, Sisi to her breasts. A sudden thrill of anticipation shuddered through Liyana, sending ripples across the stillness of the silver water. She itched to swim; she itched to dive in, to push deep under the surface till her fingers brushed the mud beneath, feet kicking to churn the lake as she glided along the murky bed. She wanted to swim till she was exhausted, till her lungs hurt, her legs ached and her skin was mottled and grey.
Liyana closed her eyes, sinking her hands into the water then pulling them slowly back and forth, encircling her legs, feeling the tremendous power of the lake drawing up through her fingertips.
‘I’ve a gift for you.’ Aunt Sisi’s voice skimmed across Liyana’s thoughts like a stone skimmed across a pond.
Liyana looked up. ‘Sorry? I didn’t – what?’
Instead of answering, Sisi reached into the depths of her bosom to extract a necklace from between her breasts. She held it out. ‘Wear her around your neck.’
Reaching out to take the charm – a tiny woman sculpted of wood – Liyana clutched it tenderly in wet hands, running her fingers along the leather strap before undoing the clasp and fastening it around her neck. She held the wooden carving, caressing the woman’s body, her strong, thick limbs, the curves of the serpent that curled around her waist and up her arms.
‘She’s your talisman – or, rather, your “taliswoman” . . .’ Sisi smiled. ‘She’s been blessed by a vodou priestess in the waters of Lake Volta. Now you can invoke the power of Mami Wata to help you create and conjure, or you can call upon her protection, as you wish.’
Liyana nodded. She could already feel the quickening of her heart and breath, as if the little statue was a miniature moon controlling the ebb and flow of her emotions, the pulse of her blood. She began thinking of what might be possible, how perfectly she might be able to manipulate the elements, when harnessing the deity’s powers. She smiled.
‘Now, for the ritual.’
Liyana frowned at her aunt. ‘What ritual?’
‘You will submerge in the lake and I will invoke the incantation, then—’
Liyana’s frown deepened. ‘What incantation?’
‘Oh, nothing much.’ Sisi gave a little shrug. ‘I’ll teach it to you after—’
‘But I don’t speak Ewe,’ Liyana said. ‘My mother wouldn’t let me. One day I want to learn, but I can only recall a few words, and my accent is shameful.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’ Sisi waved a wet hand in the air, dismissing the words almost as soon as they were spoken. ‘Anyway, this is a language more ancient even than Ewe. It comes from before the time words were carved on rocks and stories read by fire under moonlight – and you’ll be able to learn it just fine. Now, stop stalling and lie down.’
‘Here? Now?’ Liyana held her talisman protectively. ‘But she’ll be soaked.’
Aunt Sisi laughed again, her shuddering body sending ripples across the water. ‘She’s made of wood, she’ll float. Besides, she loves getting wet. Nothing pleases her more.’
‘Oh,’ Liyana said, submerging herself before the words had even escaped, so that ‘me too’ bubbled and popped on the surface above the billowing cloud of her hair, before it too disappeared. Then she rose again and spread herself like a starfish across the surface of the lake, her dark skin glimmering under the unwavering light of the moon. Mami Wata lay between Liyana’s breasts looking for all the world as if she was smiling.
Aunt Sisi took a gulp of air then bent down into the water, her own fluff of white hair elongating like strands of bleached seaweed as she reached to scoop a scraping of mud from the sediment, then rose again and with her forefinger drew a small circle of dirt on Liyana’s forehead.
‘Ina kiran albarka da kariya ga Mami Wata. I invoke the blessing and protection of Mami Wata,’ Aunt Sisi intoned. ‘I ask the goddess to lend her strength and powers to my niece . . . duk lokacin da ta bukaci su. Na gode . . . I offer my blood as compensation for this gift.’
She bent down into the lake again, curved like a comma, blinking open-eyed in the clear water, searching with quick fingers before winkling a sharp-edged flint from the mud and bringing it up. Without pause, Sisi drew the stone swiftly along the heart-line of her left palm, clenching and unclenching her fist so the droplets of blood fell fast into the water.
Liyana opened her eyes and turned her head. But, if she was shocked by the pooling blood, her face didn’t show it.
‘Jinin jinni na jinni, iko na iko,’ Aunt Sisi continued. ‘Ina rokon kakanninsu su shiga tare da ni don neman kariya ga wannan ‘yar, wannan yaro na ruwan sama, wannan’ yar’uwar Grimm. I ask the ancestors to join me, to protect this daughter, this child of the rain, this sister Grimm.’
As if summoned, all at once Liyana drew in her arms and legs and flipped her body so her feet met the bed of the lake, toes pressing into the mud; then she rose from the water, straight and tall, her halo of curls springing free, her skin shimmering as if bejewelled. She lifted her arms, reaching towards the skies, dipping her head back to grin at the heavens. Standing waist-deep in the lake, without instruction from her aunt, Liyana brought her hands together in prayer, murmuring her thanks and afterwards her blessings, as if she too had gifts and magics to dispense, as if she too was a water goddess.
Goldie
Seven nights. Seven nights until she will touch Leo again. This notion is so wildly unreal as to be beyond all imagining. Which is odd since Goldie has spent every conscious minute of the past three years trying to do exactly that, to push her memory into recasting every detail, to contort her imagination to its most creative limits to bring Leo from dust and into form again. She’s become so used to these efforts that they’re almost as automatic as thought or breath. And yet, now her thoughts and breath have stalled.
Bea hasn’t yet revealed all the details of what must be done and, though it’s only seven nights away, Goldie doesn’t dare ask. Instead, she tries to immerse herself in the mundanities of life, of action, and forget. Though, of course, that is impossible. She tries to distract herself with other thoughts: she thinks of her sister Scarlet, and how she’s scornful of Goldie’s job, saying she’s smart and ought to do something better. It’s an old fight they’ve been knocking back and forth like a battered tennis ball for years now. Goldie knows that Scarlet’s right, in theory, but feels her sister should be more forgiving of the fact that she’s been crippled by Leo’s death, that for a long time she could barely be bothered to brush her hair in the morning, let alone put herself together enough to find a new job. Scarlet should know the real reason she stays at the hotel, cleaning dubious stains from strangers’ bedsheets; for what better job could she find when she’s not got a single qualification to her name? And it annoys Goldie that Scarlet herself hasn’t done anything remotely spectacular with her own life and is hardly in a position to crow. Any idiot can get knocked up. Liyana, herself the possessor of an unspectacular job, doesn’t judge Goldie on that front but she does plead now and then that they write a book, or graphic novel, together. But while Goldie enjoys – or rather, is invigorated by the writing of stories – the idea of shaping them into something proper, into a project, a publication, feels too . . . much.
Goldie’s scrubbing the porcelain toilet in room 56 when her mobile rings. She fumbles in her apron pocket to answer. She doesn’t recognize the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Miss Clayton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this the Miss Clayton who resides at 89 Cockrell Road?’
‘Yes,’ Goldie says, suddenly nervous. Teddy, she thinks. Her heart thumps, her palms prick with sweat. Something’s happened to Teddy.
‘Are you the sister of a Mister Theodore Clayton of the same address?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Goldie says. ‘What’s – is he all right?’
‘No, Miss Clayton. He’s just been arrested for shoplifting.’
For one long second Goldie says nothing.
‘Miss Clayton?’
‘Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m coming. Where is he?’
‘He’s being held at Parkside Police Station. If you’d like to—’
‘They’re letting you off with a warning.’ Goldie sits cross-legged on the concrete floor of the holding cell opposite Teddy, who sits on a metal bench staring at his scuffed trainers, saying nothing. ‘Because it’s your first offence.’
Teddy stays silent.
‘You’ve got nothing to say?’
He shrugs.
‘Jesus Christ, Teddy!’ Goldie slaps her hand against the floor so hard it stings. He glances up. ‘Do you think this is a fucking joke? This is the police. If you get a criminal record you’ll never get a job.’
Still, Teddy says nothing. Goldie waits a moment, then pushes herself up to stand. She steps over to her brother and grabs his chin, forcing him to look up. ‘Do you understand?’
He twists away.
She doesn’t let go.
‘Get off me.’
‘It’ll ruin the rest of your life,’ Goldie snaps. ‘Don’t you get that?’
Teddy sighs and rolls his eyes. Without thinking, Goldie pulls back her hand and slaps him. He stares at her in shock. She stares back, equally shocked.
‘What the fuck?’ Teddy shrieks. ‘You can’t fucking do that. I’ll report you. I’ll call social services.’
Goldie feels the sting of tears. She wants to weep, to beg his forgiveness, to hold him like she did when he was a baby. But she knows she can’t show any weakness now. ‘Go ahead,’ she says, suppressing her sobs. ‘You’re in the right place.’
Teddy narrows his eyes, his gaze flicking from her face to the door, trying to gauge how serious she is. Goldie stares him down. His eyes turn to the floor. Goldie exhales.
‘You can’t do this, Ted,’ she says, soft now, consoling. ‘You can’t keep stealing. You’ll get yourself—’
‘Why not?’ Teddy kicks his feet against the bench. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
Goldie frowns. ‘What? For all the reasons I just—’
‘Yeah,’ Teddy says. ‘But that didn’t stop you, did it?’
Goldie blinks, trying to maintain her composure while scrambling in her mind for answers, excuses, denials, or, failing all that, a defence.
‘What?’ He sneers. ‘You think I’m an idiot? You think I don’t know?’
Now Goldie is silent, staring down at her shoes.
‘You can’t afford my clothes or school fees – how can a hotel cleaner buy Boss trainers? And Moschino T-shirts?’ Teddy folds his arms, puffing out his chest. ‘You’ve been stealing shit since I was born.’
Still, Goldie can’t speak. For what can she say? What is her defence? That it’s okay to steal, so long as you don’t get caught?
Scarlet
As a child Scarlet had always vowed that when she had a little girl of her own she would spoil her rotten, would give her everything she asked for and plenty more she didn’t. As an eight-year-old, Scarlet wasn’t entirely certain how to go about getting a daughter but if her own mother, who hadn’t seemed to want one, had managed, then surely it couldn’t be too difficult. And once Scarlet had worked out the particulars, she’d do everything to ensure that her own daughter (for she knew it’d be a girl) would grow up under a blanket of devotion, almost smothered by feeling exceedingly and excessively loved.
As a child, Scarlet had no blanket, nor even a cloth, and was forced to cling to the occasional maternal scraps, ripped tissues of almost-affection. Scarlet never understood why her mother didn’t feel for her what mothers were supposed to feel, but she knew that when she was a mother she would be different. She would dote upon her daughter, nurse her, stroke the soft tufts of red hair, plump cheeks, tight curled fists . . . Scarlet would adore her daughter from the start, before she’d done anything to earn it, when all Red (as she’d be called) could do was cry.
Scarlet had often thought about how it might feel to be loved for no reason at all – without trying to twist yourself into agreeable knots, without having to give what you might not want to give, safe in the knowledge that you were loved for just being your own simple self. With her daughter, Scarlet determined to prove that unconditional love was possible, to prove that it had been her mother and not her who was flawed.
Scarlet glances across at Eli, who’s sitting beside her on the sofa typing emails into his phone. It irritates Scarlet that he does this while they’re watching films together; she wants him to give the film his full attention, as if he was at the cinema, as if he was at the theatre. It seems disrespectful otherwise, both to her and to the filmmakers, though Scarlet can’t quite explain why exactly, and so she says nothing.
‘Have you thought about names?’ Scarlet asks.
‘Names for what?’ Eli says, without glancing up.
Scarlet looks at him, head dipped over the glowing screen, wondering how it’s possible that he doesn’t immediately understand what she’s saying, that he’s not constantly thinking about it all as she is. Barely a moment passes when Scarlet doesn’t flush with amazement and awe at what’s happening in her body right now.
‘The baby, of course.’
Now Eli looks up and Scarlet can tell, from the momentary glimmer of confusion, that he’d entirely forgotten. ‘Yes, yes, sorry,’ he says. ‘I thought, I was just thinking of . . .’ He trails off, leaving the alternative subject unnamed. ‘But don’t you think it’s a little soon for that? I mean, we only just found out. Surely right now it’s the size of a pea and anyway . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well . . .’ Eli gives a slight shrug. ‘Shouldn’t we wait till it’s been three months? Isn’t that what most people do?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’ Scarlet slumps down into the cushions. ‘But it’s just . . . I mean, if we don’t tell anyone, then what’s the harm?’ She thinks of her sisters, but since they’ve still not met Eli, there’s little chance of her getting found out.
‘All right,’ Eli says. ‘If it makes you happy.’
Scarlet’s about to object when he pulls her foot into his lap and starts rubbing her toes. When he presses his thumb into the sole of Scarlet’s foot she groans.
‘Oh, yes, please. Yes, right . . . there. Don’t stop, don’t ever stop.’
‘I’m not quite sure quitting my job to become your full-time masseur is an especially wise career move.’ Eli laughs. ‘But it’s entirely up to you.’
‘So, what do you think about names?’
Eli stops massaging and looks at her. ‘You’ve already thought of one, haven’t you?’
Scarlet gives a slight shrug.
Eli smiles. ‘All right then, what is it?’
Scarlet’s silent for a little while. ‘Red.’
Eli considers this with a frown, while Scarlet feels her heart beating too fast.
‘Red?’ he says. ‘Isn’t it a little . . . trendy? How about something more traditional?’
‘Like what?’ Scarlet says, her voice sharper than she’d intended. ‘Elizabeth Windsor or Prince George?’
Eli laughs. ‘Not exactly. But what’s wrong with . . . I don’t know . . . Charlotte, Kate, Emma, Frances, Lucy—’
‘Hold on,’ Scarlet interrupts. ‘If this is turning into a list of all the women you’ve slept with, you can consider all those already crossed off, okay?’
Eli looks sheepish. ‘All right then, how about . . . Annabelle, that’s sweet, isn’t it? Then she could be Bella or Ana. Or Arabella, that’s pretty.’
Scarlet shrugs. ‘If you like that sort of thing.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t mind them.’ Scarlet twitches her toes, pressing them into Eli’s fingers, a subtle nudge. ‘They just don’t mean anything to me, that’s all.’
‘Well, that’s all very well,’ Eli says. ‘But while Blue might seem—’
‘Red,’ Scarlet says. ‘Not blue, it was . . . a name, the name I wanted my mother to call me.’
Eli falls silent. ‘Oh. Well, that’s different. Why didn’t you say—’
On the arm of the sofa his phone starts to vibrate. Eli glances at it. Hesitates. Then picks it up and stands. ‘Sorry, I need to take this.’
‘Don’t,’ Scarlet says. ‘Can’t you call them back?’
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ Eli says, striding out of the room.
‘No,’ Scarlet mumbles, her eyes filling with tears. He won’t be a minute, she knows. He never is. Eli is all business, whether calls come in late at night or early in the morning, he always answers and always sees every conversation through to the bitter end. Sometimes Scarlet catches the odd snatched sentence, sometimes she even eavesdrops and sometimes she suspects that Ezekiel Wolfe is keeping secrets. About what, she has no idea, but she wonders if he might be involved in things that aren’t entirely legal. She hopes not but won’t ask. But perhaps she only thinks he’s keeping secrets from her because she’s keeping so many from him.
Is it right, Scarlet sometimes wonders, that she tells him so little of significance about herself? Is not saying certain things the same as lying? Well, she tells him plenty of truths, just not the truth. Which is all right, isn’t it? She is real and true with him, giving her heart fully and completely. She simply separates the two main parts of herself and presents them selectively, being her Grimm self in Everwhere with her sisters and her non-Grimm self with Eli. Scarlet isn’t duplicitous, doesn’t deny things, never deceives him after the fact. Of course, that’s easy enough since Eli hasn’t got even the vaguest notion of who Scarlet is and what she can do. And what if he did? This is a question to which Scarlet has devoted a great deal of thought. She knows he’d be astonished and possibly horrified. Which is why she still hasn’t told him. Because Scarlet’s terrified that if Eli knew who she really was, he wouldn’t love her anymore.
Everwhere
The raven sits on her favourite branch, now and then cocking her head to turn a beady eye to the ground to check on the state of things. Below her the girls gather, waiting for her to speak, waiting for her to teach what they need to learn. Some nights only half a dozen might come, other nights over a hundred: daughters of air, earth, water and fire. For many it is the first time, others have been attending the gatherings for months, even years. For those who are new, Bea will focus solely on inspiration and motivation, teaching them the basics of their skills, demonstrating the potential of their strengths. As for those who have already mastered the fundamentals, Bea must tell them of the things they might not want to hear: now it is time to plunge into trickier topics, to reveal secrets she’s been skirting around so as not to scare anyone. It’s essential not to ignite in them too much fear, for there’s no greater suppressor of strength and power than that. Still, Bea must speak of the shadows, must tell her sisters that Everwhere is not simply a safe haven of self-empowerment but that it contains pockets of darkness best avoided if one hopes to hold on to one’s strength and sanity.
And so, Bea tells of the first time she stumbled into the dark and what might yet happen to them. She ruffles her feathers, wraps her clawed feet around the branch, then turns her beady eyes to the crowd below. Her voice is the breeze that ripples the leaves.
Everwhere is a place of enchantment and empowerment, but it contains dangers too. You must always be on your guard, aware of the warning signs. The sounds of rustling leaves or rushing water or bird calls, these are the hue of Everwhere’s enchantments, but when you hear whispering in the shadows watch out.
They are soft voices, low. They are not human. Do not listen. When they say your name it’ll be a hook in your mouth, pulling you on. You’ll stumble forward towards the shadows then, a fish snagged on a line. Soon the hook will twist, ripping into your cheek as the words darken, taunting and mocking you, saying things you never wanted to hear, never wanted to believe to be true. Fear and despair will surge in you, coursing through your blood, clogging your heart. You’ll clutch your chest as it starts to constrict, you’ll gasp for breath but the air is mustard gas. Your breath will come in gasps, till it doesn’t come at all.
When she’s issued her warning, Bea is assaulted with a thousand questions, some shouted, some shrieked, some whispered. She asks for silence then invites each sister to raise her hand and, one by one, she answers them all. Finally, she addresses everyone:
We cannot vanquish the shadows; they’re as much part of the fabric of Everwhere as the voracious ivy and the unwavering moon. But I’ll teach you strength of mind so you can better resist them, should you go astray. One thing you must always remember: be ever vigilant, for the human mind is a fragile thing – always teetering on the edge of despair, always vulnerable to manipulation – so please don’t think that it can’t happen to you, for that is when it will.