Chapter Seventeen The New Scar

It’s warmer than I expected on the bus ride home, the outside world moving by in dark blues and orange streetlights. The sound that passing cars make means it’s been raining recently, but it’s not now. The sky is stormy and thick, indigoes and greys and black. I wonder if it’ll rain again. The air coming through the bus window is warm, I can taste the rain on it.

I trace the newest sigil scar on my arm. I’ve managed to hide it for a few days, though it’s pretty and I want to show it off. Like a little flower almost, curving petals around a centre. The one on my leg is like a twig. I wonder if they’re about plants because the book knows, or if it’s all a coincidence.

When I get off the bus, the outside light is on, peeking through the wisteria branches. Inside, the house smells like pancakes; usually Clover only makes them in the morning, but maybe they’re for dessert. When I walk into the kitchen, she hasn’t noticed I’m home. She’s got her daggy trackie daks on, with the dirt stains that just won’t come off no matter how hard she tries, and a plaid shirt rolled up at the elbows, her hair in a bun that has half come loose. She’s scrubbing something off a tray using steel wool. The pancakes must be gone already. She gives up on the tray and lets it sink into the water.

When she turns around, she jumps in fright. ‘Sprout! I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I just got here.’

‘How was Babs’s? How’s her mum?’

‘Yeah, they’re good, it was nice.’ I reach for an apple on the table, and Clover cries out.

‘What is that?’ she asks, pointing to my arm.

‘An apple?’ I ask, looking down at it. And then I notice the sigil scar, still red and raised against my skin although it’s been a few days. ‘Oh.’

Moss comes into the kitchen, a book she must’ve been reading still in her hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

Clover’s looking at me like her heart has broken, and I wonder if there’s any way I can not tell her about the magic.

‘I didn’t do it,’ I say.

‘What happened?’ Clover reaches for Moss’s hand.

‘Um.’

Saltkin flits in through the open window. He looks from the scar, to my mothers, to me. A red wave travels along his skin, turns his wings into flames briefly. The kitchen feels cold.

He comes over. ‘It’s okay, Iris,’ he says. ‘Maybe you should tell them.’

I don’t reply with words, but I nod.

‘I’ll show you,’ I say to my mothers. My heart picks up, beating a little too fast. I can feel it in my throat, and I take a deep breath. The book is lighter than I remember as I take it out of my schoolbag and put it on the table.

Moss and Clover look at it, then each other.

‘The book gave me the scar.’ I flick through the pages until the ones that appeared at Babs’s house are there.

‘What does this mean, Iris?’ Moss asks, sadness spilling from her words. She puts her book down on the table without marking her page. ‘You got the idea from this?’

‘Is this a spell?’ Clover asks.

I nod. ‘I can do magic. Er, like proper magic.’

‘You can?’ Moss asks while she watches Clover pore over the page.

‘Can you read this?’ Clover points towards the book.

I frown, take a closer look. I can, but now I realise it’s not in English. ‘I can’t explain it, but yes. It’s a long story.’

Clover sits down at the table, gestures for us to do the same. ‘We’ve got time.’

I sit opposite them both, and it reminds me of times I got in trouble when I was little. But their faces are kind, and sad, and I don’t want them to think this is anything other than what it is. I know they’ll believe me, but still, revealing everything is strange. I’ve known about magic forever; I met Saltkin when I was a toddler. Back then I told my mothers about Saltkin and the other fae, and the dryads, and learning that I could talk to plants, but that was when I was small. I haven’t mentioned it as if it were real in a long time.

Surely if you grow a baby from a seed in the ground, you’re predisposed to believe in magic.

‘Um.’ I take a breath, fluttering and deep. ‘Do you remember Saltkin?’

Moss nods. ‘Your imaginary friend when you were little. You loved going on adventures in the backyard – you’d tell us the most wonderful stories.’

Saltkin flits over and sits in front of me on the table. They’ll never be able to see him if they can’t already. He gazes up at me and nods.

Clover looks at me like she knows what I’m going to say. She probably just wants the scars to be anything but what she thinks they are.

‘He’s real,’ I say. ‘And everything else I told you. All of it. Everything happened. They love your garden, Clover. And the plants tell me how much they love you.’

She blushes deep, but I can tell Moss isn’t sure how to react. She watches Clover.

‘So this has been going on the whole time?’ Clover says. ‘No wonder you would always know how to look after the plants without me ever telling you anything.’

Moss nods and looks thoughtful. ‘Sometimes I would see you outside – I thought you were talking to yourself.’

‘And you love to go into the forest. I always knew you’d be safe, somehow.’

‘So you,’ I play with my ear, not sure what to do with my hands or where to look, ‘so you believe me?’

‘Of course we do,’ Clover says, and a weight drops off me. I knew they would, but somehow I thought that perhaps they wouldn’t. ‘So tell us more about this magic book.’

‘Saltkin always said I wouldn’t be able to do much magic, and this book has changed that. It’s got lots of spells in it, but the pages have to be revealed. I’ve –’

‘Where did the book come from?’ Moss asks. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’

‘I found it in a box at the op shop in town.’ It might be dangerous, but I don’t want to tell them that.

‘It was just there?’ Moss asks.

‘I think it made sure I was nearby. Somehow. It was humming, I could hear it from where I was standing.’

‘And how does the scar come into everything?’ Moss says.

‘I was reading these words out loud when the sigil appeared on the page. And then when the spell was done, it appeared on my skin.’

‘This one looks different, though,’ Moss says. ‘It’s like a stick. That one on your arm looks like a flower almost.’

‘Oh.’ I briefly wonder if I could lie, just tell them it was like that. But I decide to trust them, since they haven’t let me down yet. ‘There’s another one.’

‘How many in total?’ Clover asks, face creasing up with worry.

‘Just two,’ I say.

‘Well, there’s a whole book here,’ she says, flicking through it. ‘Does this mean you’ll have this many scars?’

Moss puts a hand on Clover’s arm.

‘I don’t know if they’re all sigils.’ I show them the twig on my thigh. ‘See, this one’s a lot more faded already. I don’t think they’re going to be too obtrusive.’

‘Do they hurt?’ Clover asks.

‘When they came up they smarted a bit, but not really.’

Saltkin flitters his wings. ‘Can you tell Clover thank you for the garden?’

‘Er, also, Saltkin is here at the moment.’

They both look around the room.

‘How big is he?’ Clover asks.

‘Can we see him?’ Moss asks at the same time.

‘No, if you could you would see him already. He’s small, a bit bigger than a sparrow. Maybe a mudlark. He says thank you for the garden, Clover. It’s home to a lot of his friends. They love it. He says no one else could take better care of it.’

‘Thanks,’ Saltkin says to me, pleased by my additions.

Clover blushes rose-red. ‘He’s very welcome.’ She’s quite flustered as she puts on the kettle. ‘This is all a lot to take in,’ she says, laughing. ‘They’re all out there, are they?’ She looks through the window while the kettle starts to boil.

‘Iris, you didn’t answer one of my questions. This isn’t dangerous, is it?’ Moss asks again, tapping the book.

It could be, but I don’t want to tell them. I lock eyes with Saltkin, and he knows I’m not going to say everything, but I don’t see any judgement in his expression. ‘No,’ I say.

At lunch the next day, the boy brings his stick-and-poke gear from his locker. We sit behind one of the portables where there are lots of cigarette butts on the ground. People don’t smoke as much as they used to, back when my mothers were kids, but when they do they go behind the gym because that part has cover if it’s raining.

The sky is full with the promise of rain but I don’t think it will fall. So no one should interrupt us.

‘We gotta make sure everything is clean,’ the boy says, laying down a little clear plastic sheet. He puts on some gloves, wipes something astringent on my arm to sterilise it.

‘Good place to do it then,’ Babs says with a smile and raised eyebrow, gesturing to the cigarette butts.

‘That’s a good point,’ he says. ‘Like, I’ve done it to myself in places like this, but I don’t know if I should do it here.’

‘It’ll be fine, right?’ I ask.

‘The tattoo is basically an open wound when it’s done, so I dunno if this is right. I’d feel awful if it got infected, if I got you sick.’

‘Hm.’ My desire to have something pricked into my skin forever is overwhelming. I love the rose on the back of his arm. I’m going to get a moon rose on my shoulder, so it’s hidden by the sleeve of my uniform.

‘We could go somewhere,’ Babs says. ‘Like . . . somewhere.’ At this she waggles her eyebrows up and down.

That could be ace, but I wonder if we’ll accidentally find the witch flowers again. ‘I don’t know, it could be dangerous.’

‘We could just like, go to my house,’ says the boy. ‘No one’s home.’ He pauses for a moment, packing everything back into the bag. ‘Well, no one except Lunchbox.’

‘D’you need the book to do the spell?’ Babs asks. She’s drawn up a geometric pattern she wants on her thigh, but that will take more than a lunchtime to do.

‘I’m not sure.’ I run my fingers over the scar flower. ‘Let’s try.’ Each of them takes one of my hands, and I close my eyes and picture the sigil.

When I open my eyes, I see my feet still surrounded by cigarette butts.

‘Maybe not?’ I say.

‘One more time?’ Babs says. She squeezes my hand. ‘I reckon you can do it.’

‘Okay.’ I close my eyes again. I can’t remember the words on the page of the book, but I trace the sigil in my mind and think about the boy’s house. The deck, where we dyed his hair. There was rain, there might be rain today. I concentrate on the feeling of Babs’s and the boy’s hands in mine.

When I open my eyes it’s raining, and we’re on the deck, safe and dry. Lunchbox looks over from where he’s curled up on a chair, then goes back to sleep.

‘Holy shit!’ Babs says, letting go of my hand to jump up and down. ‘You did it!’

‘That’s so cool,’ the boy says before starting to set up his tools. ‘This is much safer.’ He puts gloves on, wipes my skin down again to make sure it’s clean, and then unwraps a needle from a packet. He squeezes out some ink into a little container and then dips in the needle. ‘If you want me to stop, tell me,’ he says. ‘And just relax – it’ll hurt, but it’s like a cat scratch. Not too bad.’ He takes my arm in a gloved hand, and I’m surprised by the warmth of his fingers. He’s holding my arm gently but firmly, so I don’t move with the needle. The first prick startles me, but I tell him to keep going. It’s strange, thinking about how this is going to be on my skin forever.

I wonder what Clover and Moss will say when they find out. I think they’ll appreciate it – he’s a good artist – but they’ll say I’m too young. It’s not like I’m getting something ugly. It’s a flower; it’s my flower, from our garden. And after the larger revelation about magic, maybe my mothers can handle this.

I feel the needle pricking in a curve, and I wonder which bit of the flower he’s doing. He showed me the sketch but he does everything freehand on the skin. I wonder how many other people he’s done this to. He clears his throat and shifts a bit; I realise how close he is. I slow my breathing, matching it to his. Closing my eyes, I feel the needle go in and out, quick, brief, it doesn’t really hurt at all. At times he adjusts his hold on my arm, always making sure the skin isn’t too tight. ‘How are you going?’ he asks.

I open my eyes, and he’s even closer than I thought. ‘It’s fine,’ I say, for the first time noticing just how long his eyelashes are.

When he lets go of my arm, I miss the warmth of him. He takes a photo on his phone and shows me. ‘What do you think?’

It’s perfect, the thin outline of one of my moon roses. The skin around the lines is slightly red, but I was expecting more. More pain. ‘I love it,’ I say. I want to touch it, feel the lines that will be there forever.

‘I have to go over it a couple more times, just to make sure it’ll look good. Need a break?’

I shake my head. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

Babs is reading in a seat in the corner. She’s got a cup of tea in one hand, the steam curling up to the deck’s plastic roof while the rain falls nearby, not touching her.

‘Maybe some tea, though,’ I say. ‘Do you want one?’

He smiles, small and certain. ‘Sure.’

In the kitchen I boil the kettle and catch myself going to touch the tattoo too many times, so I put my hands flat on the bench until the kettle flicks off. I choose two cute matching teacups with a delicate floral pattern, make the tea, watch the milk swirl around like a storm. I stir seven times clockwise, trying to put some goodwill into the liquid. I think it shimmers a bit, but it’s so fleeting I don’t know.

When I sit back down on the deck, I hear the boy sip his tea and sigh, maybe a little more content than he normally would be. ‘Ready?’ he asks, loading the needle with some ink.

‘Ready.’

I could almost fall asleep to it, the rhythm of the needle. The sound of the rain. The quiet contentment of Babs, the hush of the boy’s breathing, so close.

When he’s done, I don’t want it to be over. He pats the tattoo down with an alcohol wipe, smears a cream on it, and then puts cling wrap around my arm. It’s high enough that my shirt can cover it, but I put my jumper back on anyway.

The boy says it will take about two weeks for the lines to heal, and I have to buy a special cream at the supermarket to put on it. ‘Babs, we’ll do you next week,’ he tells her. ‘Should we go back to school? Lunch is over soon.’

Babs and the boy hold my hands again. They finally get me up after four tries. I don’t really want to return. We have to split up to go to our classes. Through my last period of the day, maths, I can feel the moon rose on my skin, not because it’s painful but because it was put there by the boy. I run a hand through the hair on my head, cut by Babs.

That night while I’m going to sleep, I look out the window and see a few stars peeking between clouds.

Saltkin flits into the room and sees the rose, sparkly peach clouds bursting in the air around him. ‘I thought you said you were too young!’ he says, hovering above the skin. ‘It’s lovely, Iris. Very powerful.’

‘Powerful?’

‘It’s been infused with a lot of friendship, a lot of love. He must’ve been thinking about that when he was doing it.’

I crane my neck to get a glimpse. It looks like it’s glowing a little under the moonlight, just like the moon roses.