Everwhere
Goldie wasn’t certain that she’d return to Everwhere tonight. She’d barely been able to make it through the day without crying or breaking something, since her hands have hardly stopped shaking. It’s taken all her strength to hold her composure, avoiding encounters with hotel guests or staff and leaving a tenner for Teddy with a note telling him to get a takeaway. For, while the banker in room 26 neither noticed nor cared about the emotional state of the girl cleaning his room, her increasingly sensitive and attentive brother would sense Goldie’s sorrow at ten paces. And she cannot bear to tell him what she’s done.
It’s guilt that trembles through her fingers, guilt that hurries her heart, guilt that rushes blood through her veins. Never would Goldie have considered herself to be this selfish. She’s kind to the environment, always recycles, sticks to a (mostly) vegan diet, signs petitions and attends protest marches. She’s spent most of her life in service to her little brother, giving up her freedom, her education, her time, to raise a boy she didn’t birth. She never thought herself capable of cold-blooded killing. An innocent animal has died so that she could practise the skills and soak up the strength that she’ll need to kill a soldier. A man. All so that she can be reunited with the love of her life.
Goldie knows that she should stop, knows she should stay on the side of the good and true, knows she should surrender to a lifetime of longing and loneliness, to a world without Leo. She’s managed it for three years, after all, so how hard would another sixty or seventy be? Impossible. If she doesn’t commit murder, the only other option is suicide. But then she couldn’t abandon Teddy.
Goldie has left him sleeping to return to Everwhere tonight. She doesn’t want to see Bea, doesn’t want to remember the killing, but needs to bury the stag. She’d left him in the glade, his body broken, his corpse exposed to the elements, a cruel ending for such a majestic animal – a cruel ending for any creature.
Goldie doesn’t have to think, doesn’t need to remember the way; she wanders along paths and past streams and around scatterings of stones and fallen trees with her eyes cast carelessly down to the ground or up to the sky to fix her gaze on the moon and try to forget. Finally arriving at the crest of the hill, Goldie hesitates. She doesn’t have to look to see the fallen stag, she doubts she’ll ever be able to blink the image away.
Silence falls as Goldie walks down into the valley. In a cowardly move, which she later regrets, Goldie lifts her hands to coax tendrils of ivy from an ancient oak tree which grows close to the riverbank. Slowly, they tear away from the bark to slither along the ground and wrap their protective leaves around the stag’s flanks until the body is shrouded.
When she reaches his side, Goldie can barely see through her tears, though she feels shame every time one slides to the end of her nose. What right does she have to cry? More shamefully still, she cannot bring herself to touch him. Instead she stops a few feet from the body and sits, then splays her fingers and pushes them down into the soil. At Goldie’s touch the ground begins to tremble, as if struck by a sudden earthquake, and cracks snap along the forest floor, ripping dank, jagged chasms into the soil and opening a pit around the corpse.
A moment later the body is gone, the soil closed over, and the blanket of moss is stitching itself together to once more spread evenly across the ground. Goldie squeezes her eyes shut and when she opens them again all evidence of death and murder is gone. Her heart lifts a little, and she thinks of Leo.
‘I’m going to save you,’ Goldie whispers. ‘On All Hallows Eve, when my magic is strongest, I’ll bring you back.’
She waits, as she always does, for the echo of Leo’s voice on the wind. She waits for a sign to show not simply that he’s there but that he’s listening and somehow he hears her, and somehow, he knows. But tonight Goldie’s wish is answered only with silence.
For one cruel moment, she fears it’s all for nothing; that she’s only been fuelled by hope and imagination these past three years, that her lover is forever gone, that she will never see him again. Goldie closes her eyes to see Leo’s face. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, turning to look at her, his eyes soft, his gaze laced with love and desire. A twist of longing wraps like a vine of ivy around Goldie’s neck and constricts her throat, tightening and choking out the little breath she has left. A fog of loss descends.
‘I will resurrect you,’ Goldie whispers at last. ‘We will be together again.’
Liyana and Scarlet find Goldie still on her knees beside the stag’s unmarked grave. Sensing the weight of her sorrow, not having the words to lift it and knowing that sometimes silence is best, they sit down beside her.
Beneath the unwavering moon and the starlight and the rustling leaves, they sit on the mossy ground, three points of a triangle. Scarlet begins setting twigs alight, then blows them out, Liyana juggles dense balls of fog and, after a while, Goldie starts to coax tight curled shoots from the earth, the saplings of fresh silver birch trees. The mists roll in to hang heavy in the air and soften the silence.
‘We know everything now. We know that you’re planning on killing a soldier.’
Goldie looks up, shaken from her reverie, unsure which of her sisters has spoken.
‘I saw it in the cards,’ Liyana says. ‘I called Scarlet, and we’ve come to—’
‘You’ve come to stop me.’
‘No,’ Liyana says. ‘Not stop you but protect you; offer you an alternative.’
Goldie plucks a weed from the soil. She doesn’t look up.
‘I’m learning the art of resurrection,’ Liyana continues. ‘I’ve been taking lessons from Aunt Sisi and she believes that, together, we can bring Leo back in a much . . .’
‘Safer way,’ Scarlet finishes. ‘Unless – unless you’d be willing to consider the safest way of all: not doing it.’
Goldie shoots her sister a furious, incredulous look.
‘All right, all right.’ Scarlet holds up her hands. ‘It was only a thought.’
‘So,’ Goldie turns to Liyana. ‘What are you proposing?’
‘It still sounds dangerous.’ Goldie presses her hands together, looking to Liyana who’s just finished explaining Sisi’s plan. ‘And not at all certain to work.’
Liyana drags a finger through the fog, drawing circles. ‘It’s better than the alternative. At least this way you can avoid murder.’
‘It still sounds insane to me.’ Scarlet ignites another twig. ‘But if we must, we must.’
Goldie gives her a grateful smile. ‘Thank you, I know it’s not . . . ideal.’
‘To say the least.’ Scarlet shrugs. ‘But you’d do the same for me.’
Goldie nods. ‘If Eli dies, I promise I’ll be the first in line to help bring him back.’
Scarlet sighs. ‘Right now, I’m not entirely sure I’d want you to.’
‘What?’ Liyana raises an eyebrow. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
‘Shut up.’ Sparks flare at Scarlet’s fingertips. One lands, like an errant ember from a fire, on Liyana’s knee, singeing a hole in her jeans. ‘No, everything’s fine. I’m just . . .’
‘Damn.’ Liyana spits on the smouldering fabric, patting out the burn. ‘These are my favourite – you did that on purpose.’
‘Sorry.’ Scarlet flashes her an innocent smile. ‘It was an unfortunate accident.’
‘Please, stop,’ Goldie says. ‘We’ll need to be united for this to work. We need our combined force to be mightier than Death, for goodness’ sake. We can’t mess around.’
Scarlet and Liyana look at her, momentarily distracted from their feud.
‘Please,’ Goldie begs. ‘I need you both to do this. And, if you won’t help me do it this way, I’ll go it alone and do it the other way.’
At this, she feels their mutual anger ebb, rolling back with the fog that folds like a fallen soufflé and sinks down into the soil.
‘All right,’ Scarlet says. ‘If Ana can manage not to undermine my relationship for two days, then I’ll keep my sparks to myself.’
‘Okay.’ Liyana drops the three balls of fog which instantly evaporate. ‘I promise I won’t mention what a colossal mistake I think—’
‘Ana!’
‘Okay, okay,’ Liyana says, as a crack of thunder sounds in the distance. ‘I’ll keep my mouth shut.’
‘That’d be a miracle,’ Scarlet huffs. ‘You couldn’t last—’
‘Scar,’ Goldie warns. ‘Stop it, both of you.’
Liyana and Scarlet fold their arms, both glower at Goldie.
With a sigh, Goldie reaches into her pocket and pulls out a peace offering. ‘I wrote this’ – she hands Liyana a crumpled page scrawled with lines of cursive script – ‘I think it’s for you.’
Taking it, Liyana starts to read.
‘No, not now,’ Goldie says. ‘Later. When you’re home.’
‘Okay.’ Liyana nods. ‘Thank you.’
Scarlet gives Goldie a piteous look. ‘Nothing for me?’
‘Oh, please,’ Goldie says. ‘You know I’m not playing favourites, I don’t decide what to write or who to write it for. The stories come to me and then, at some point, I figure out who to give them to.’
Scarlet retorts with a begrudging sniff.
‘Don’t worry’ – Goldie pats her sister’s knee – ‘it won’t be long before one arrives for you.’
Scarlet raises a disbelieving eyebrow but says nothing. The sisters fall back into silence again and the fog rolls in.
They follow the meandering curves of a river, with Liyana casting longing looks at the water, and Goldie staying on the far side from the bank and Scarlet in the middle. They walk the paths of stone and moss without speaking, brushing through the curtains of willow trees, stepping over decaying trunks blanketed with lichen and choked in vines of ivy. The only sounds are the rush of the river water, the ravens’ cries which drop from the moonlit sky and the wings of bats that pitch and roll above their heads.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Goldie looks at Scarlet. ‘Because, despite all Ana’s taunting, you know we’d do anything for you, don’t you?’
Scarlet stops walking to lean against the trunk of a silver birch tree, as if too exhausted to go on. Watching the river, she follows shards of mirrored moonlight dart across the rippling water, absently snapping a twig from a branch and dropping it into the current.
‘Did you ever play Poohsticks?’ She doesn’t look up.
‘Of course.’ Goldie steps over the stones to stand tentatively at the edge of the river beside her. The fog has rolled in again and she can’t see the path. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
Scarlet snaps off another twig and drops it into the stream. At the splash, Goldie peers into the water. She still can’t understand Liyana’s attraction to something so potentially dangerous; never would she want to set foot in the sea. Hearing Liyana approaching behind them, Goldie reaches for Scarlet’s hand, wanting to draw her back from wherever she’s retreated inside herself, but instead she loses her footing on the slick moss and slips, falling back and smacking her skull on the roots of the silver birch, sliding down the muddy bank and into the water.
As Goldie sinks the last thing she hears is Scarlet’s cry, then she’s dragged under by the quickening currents. All she hears now is the rush of water, the muffled slosh-slosh, the pulse of her blood. All she sees, before darkness envelops her, is a liquescent view of the fog hanging low over the river. Time quickens and slows. Goldie wonders if her sisters are calm, expecting her to emerge unscathed any second, or if they’re panicked and screaming.
To her surprise, Goldie is calm. Even as she starts swallowing water, she’s calm. I should have learned to swim, she thinks. I’ll rise before I’m swept too far, she thinks. Or I’ll sink down into Leo’s embrace. If it’s not suicide, she’s got no reason to feel guilty. Her sisters will look after Teddy. He’s got grit. He’ll be okay. But then she thinks: it is suicide, if I don’t fight it. She begins, half-heartedly, to thrash her legs, but the current is still lashed tight around her ankles, tugging her down. She kicks harder, reaching for the surface, her hands clutching only liquid dark.
When all the fight has left her, Goldie closes her eyes and lets herself sink. It’s all right now, she’s allowed. It was an accident. It’s not her fault. But then she thinks: was it? She’s been wanting to die for so long. She’s been waiting, hoping, begging for that gift. Perhaps she cast a spell, perhaps this is the culmination of all that longing. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. No one will ever know but me.
Goldie smiles, gulping a fresh, final rush of water into her lungs.
I’m coming, Leo. I won’t be long.
And then she’s rising. Up, up, up. Breaking through the water, out of the dark and into the silvery light. Convulsing, coughing, great racking coughs that burn her trachea and wrench at her chest as if long-fingered ribs are slashing into her organs and ripping her asunder. Goldie splutters and spits and chokes, as half the river expels itself from her lungs, leaving her panting and blinking, eyes stinging, until at last she stills and squints at the shapes of her sisters’ faces hovering above her, edges blurred by the fog.
She peers at them; before she’s doubled over by a fresh bout of hacking that folds her in half, until she’s clutching her sides and moaning and gasping for breath, eyes tight shut. Goldie gulps at her sisters, her mouth reaching for words but finding none. Why is she here? The moss is soft and wet beneath her body, a few rogue stones pressing hard into her skin. Where is Leo?
She mouths words and, on the fourth attempt, manages to expel them. ‘Where’s Leo?’
Liyana and Scarlet frown through the fog.
‘What?’ Scarlet asks, pressing her face closer. ‘What is it? You’re gabbling.’
Liyana grabs Goldie’s arm, fingers digging into flesh. ‘Why the hell’ – she’s shrieking – ‘why the hell didn’t you learn to swim?’