Goldie
Goldie doesn’t know how long it was before she finally left, before she finally walked away. It felt like a year, a decade. She went, slowed by reluctance and regret, trudging across bleached moss and stone, along winding rivers, under willow trees, arms wrapped around her ribs, gripping herself tight to contain the emptiness, the feeling that she’d been hollowed out. And, when at last Goldie spirited herself back to Earth, she left her imprint on the air. And she knew that her most essential part would stay behind; that her heart would always remain in Everwhere.
Liyana
It had taken a long time for Liyana to stop shaking: like a gazelle having escaped a lion, her limbs trembled until finally she was still. Kumiko had stayed on – though it’d meant a missed supervision and late essay, thus incurring the not insignificant wrath of Dr Skinner – and held her through the remainder of the night, whispering soothing words, stroking her shaking body.
In the morning, when at last Liyana slept, albeit fitfully, Kumiko rose and went shopping for mangos and strawberries and grapes. On her return she prepared a breakfast of homemade granola, yoghurt and sliced fruit, then slipped back into bed with a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and waited for Liyana to wake.
‘You’re still here,’ Liyana says, before she even opens her eyes.
Kumiko closes her book. ‘Of course, what did you think?’
‘I think . . .’ Liyana smiles a sleepy smile. ‘I think I can’t wait till I wake up with you every day.’
Kumiko bends to kiss her. ‘Are you hungry? I’ve made breakfast’ – she glances at her watch – ‘or rather, lunch.’
‘You’re an angel.’
‘Are you . . .’ Kumiko places a hand softly on Liyana’s cheek. ‘Are you okay? I don’t know what happened last night, but you’ve been in a pretty bad state since. I’ve never seen you like that before. It was pretty scary.’
Liyana closes her eyes and slowly exhales as if blowing smoke. ‘It was, I . . .’
‘Don’t,’ Kumiko interrupts. ‘You don’t need to tell me anything, not till you’re ready.’
So they sit together a while without speaking, Liyana nibbling slices of strawberry and Kumiko reading, but every now and then casting a watchful eye on her beloved.
Eventually, Liyana sets her bowl on the floor and snuggles down into the bed. ‘Do you have a pencil handy?’ She looks up at her girlfriend. ‘And paper?’
Kumiko regards her over the top of her book. ‘I’ve got pen and paper, will that do?’
Liyana nods. ‘I was dreaming of a story; I need to write it down.’ She speaks absently, as if the words aren’t entirely her own. ‘I think it’s one of Goldie’s, I think . . . it must have come to her and she meant to write it but couldn’t yet . . . so it stayed in her thoughts and I heard it . . .’
When Liyana trails off Kumiko has to hold herself back from asking again what happened last night, since now she’s worried about Goldie too. ‘Okay,’ she says, sliding out of bed and setting the Ecclesiastical History on the bedside table in place of the notepad and pen, which she hands to Liyana. Then, on second thought, she passes her the book as well. ‘Use this to lean on, and when you’ve finished perhaps you’d read it to me.’
The Tap-Tap
Once upon a time there was a girl who grew up under an assault of instruction. Everyone told her what to do. Her teachers told her what subjects to study, her friends told her what to wear and how to behave, her parents told her what career to follow, who to marry, how to live her life.
As the girl grew a fog formed around her, created by the breath of everyone who spoke, squealed or shouted these instructions. The fog soon became so thick that she couldn’t see beyond or inside it. The fog muffled her heart and clouded her mind so that her own instruction was lost.
Sometimes the girl felt a stirring inside, as if her thudding heart was a finger tapping against her ribs trying to get her attention. It was a soft tap and only felt at awkward times, so she paid it no heed. Instead the girl listened to the loudest voices, those of her father and mother: the first insisting she be sensible, the second insisting she be safe.
As a woman, she married the first sensible man who asked. And, despite the tap-tap on her wedding day strumming so violently on her ribs that it nearly caused her to faint, still the woman managed to smile and say, ‘I will’. She applied for a series of safe jobs and accepted the first she was offered, although her hand was shaking as the taptap echoed in her chest like a cacophony of screams.
The woman went to work every day and came home every night, and gradually the tap-tap grew fainter and fainter until, one day, she could hear it no more.
For many years the woman lived like that, trudging through the fog, never knowing in which direction she was heading; but still she kept walking. She went to bed with her husband and ate meals with him, though they had little to say. She had children and raised them. She was promoted. She ran marathons, not because she enjoyed them but to stay healthy. She went on camping holidays. She attended PTA meetings. She did all the things she was supposed to do. When her children sometimes asked what they should do in certain situations the woman could only tell them what she had been told: be sensible, stay safe.
One night, the woman dreamed that she was playing hide-and-seek with her daughters. She crawled under the bed, hid in the dark and listened to them calling her name, until their cries became shrieks and suddenly she was trapped in a box underground, scratching at the wood. She cried out, but she was buried deep beneath the earth and no one heard her screams.
The dream was so terrifying that when she woke the woman could not get out of bed, could only cower beneath the covers. She stayed that way for days, then weeks. Eventually, her husband called the doctor and when the doctor saw the woman she knew what was wrong.
‘You’re suffering from a sickness which I cannot cure,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ The woman gripped the sheets. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
The doctor folded her arms. ‘You’re being plagued by a demon,’ she said.
The woman stared at her, horrified.
‘Do not worry.’ The doctor raised a hand. ‘The situation isn’t as desperate as it sounds. I cannot cure you, but you can be cured.’
The woman exhaled and the doctor sat back. ‘Let me tell you a story my yiayiá once told me which will explain your malaise. Many years ago, when the gods inhabited Mount Olympus, Hera, wife of Zeus, was bored waiting for her husband to return home from his latest affair, so one day she decided to beget a companion to comfort and entertain her. She pricked her finger, letting a drop of golden blood fall to the ground, then, adding her spittle, she breathed it into life. From this pure essence of lifeforce grew a creature which Hera named the “lumini”. The lumini, it turned out, was endowed with the special gift of being able to create anything out of nothing, including itself. This kept Hera entertained yet it also meant that soon thousands of lumini were fluttering all over Mount Olympus. After a while the lumini grew bored and begged Hera to let them go down to earth and use their powers of creation on a new canvas. Eventually Hera consented, enabling the lumini to enter the spirit of a newborn baby at the moment of its first breath. As the baby grew the lumini acted as a guiding light to steer the individual towards its unique source of sheer delight.
‘Now, if the individual follows the lumini’s guidance then both are happy but, if the individual ignores the lumini and listens instead to the directions of others, and begins to veer off course, then the lumini grows discontent. If the individual ignores the lumini for too long, the lumini becomes angry and increasingly malevolent until finally it transforms into a demon and turns to berating the one it came to nurture, tormenting them until the end of their days.’
The woman slumped back, for now she understood why she felt such despair.
‘But there’s hope,’ the doctor said. ‘For a lumini can always return to its original form. If you start listening, then your lumini will start directing you again.’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘But how?’
The doctor smiled. ‘Well, you can’t reignite your lumini from underneath your bedsheets. You must go out into the world, discover some of the infinite possibilities, so it can nudge—’
‘But where should I go?’ the woman interrupted, slightly panicked. ‘What should I do?’
‘I don’t think it matters where you begin; if you’re going in the wrong direction then the lumini can nudge you in the right direction. You only have to begin, to start exploring. The lumini are playful creatures; they like music and dancing, good food, nature, animals, children . . . those are good places to start awakening them. But what a lumini loves above all is learning; that’s the quickest way to discover the direction to the source of your own particular delight. It might direct you towards being a gardener, a doctor, a dancer, a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a teacher, a nurse . . . You’ll have to wait and see.’
For several moments the woman sat deep in thought.
Then, all at once, she threw off the covers, slipped out of bed and strode across the room. Since it would take some time to find her way she no longer wanted to waste more of it waiting.
The story flows out so fast that Liyana’s fingers can’t keep pace with her thoughts and the page, when she’s done, is a scribbled mess. Slowly, she reads it over and when she’s finished Liyana reads it to Kumiko.
‘It’s sad,’ Kumiko says. ‘Sad, but happy too. Do you think it’s meant for someone?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Liyana folds the paper in half. ‘Yes. Scarlet, I think.’
Kumiko nods, again resisting the urge to ask what happened last night. ‘You could come back to Cambridge with me tomorrow and give it to her. If she’s still staying with Goldie.’
‘Yes,’ Liyana says, her voice distant again. ‘I should go. She’ll need some looking after; they both will.’
Kumiko regards her. ‘And who will look after you?’
Liyana shrugs. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You can stay with me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’
‘But I don’t want to be—’
Kumiko touches her hand to Liyana’s cheek and leans forward until their noses touch. ‘The last thing you’d ever be to me is a burden.’
Liyana smiles. ‘All right then; as you wish.’
Kumiko kisses her, whispering, ‘I love you too.’
Scarlet
She sleeps. For a night and a day Scarlet sleeps and dreams. She dreams to forget the past, to forgive what she’s done, to accept what happened and understand that it was not her fault. She dreams to unsee some of the things she has seen and un-feel some of the things she has felt. She dreams to separate fully from the shadows and warm herself by the light of her own internal fire. She dreams to reclaim the parts of herself she’d lost and cleanse the parts of herself that were corrupted. She dreams to unbind from what has been so that she may breathe fully again. Until, second by sleepy second, creeping minute by eternal hour, Scarlet is very gradually, very carefully pieced back together.
When at last Scarlet wakes, she is her essential self again and also someone entirely new.