Chapter 23

 

An Undignified Awakening

 

On the far side of the high brick wall, Olivia slips out through the back door of the terrace house and walks across the narrow yard to her cubbyhouse. The moon isn’t due to rise for another ten minutes.

Olivia isn’t certain how she knows that but she is sure it’s true.

“Yip,” she calls, as she opens the cubbyhouse door. “Are you there?”

Ah—statue! The sarcasm carries on his mental reply. Do you think I might have popped to the shops for a milkshake or something?

“Actually,” she snaps at him, “I’d almost convinced myself I was going mad and I’d come down here and all I’d find would be an ugly lump of rock.”

Ugly. His tone is incredulous. There’s no ne—

“Oh, shush,” Olivia interrupts. “Do you want my help or not?”

No need to get personal.

“I’m thinking, garden ornament. You’d go nicely in amongst Mum’s petunias. You might even scare the slugs away.”

Yip gives a mental growl.

“Do you have to be on any special roof? she asks.

Technically not, he admits. I suppose the roof of your little terrace will do.

“I wasn’t thinking of the terrace.” Olivia drags Yip into the yard. She spins him around to face the cubbyhouse.

No, he says.

“Yes,” Olivia replies.

That’s degrading, he whines. I think I’d rather stay statue-trapped.

“It’s that or my neighbour’s dog kennel,” Olivia offers.

At least dogs have a proud history of protecting mankind, Yip says.

“It’s a Chihuahua.”

Oh.

Olivia pulls out one of the chairs and drags it to the back of the cubbyhouse, out of sight of the terrace’s back door. She comes back and starts dragging Yip there as well.

Why are we going all the way around here? Yip asks.

“I don’t want Mum and Dad seeing what I’m doing, and I’ll be doing this one-handed. I’m pretty sure I’ll drop you at least once…”

Drop me?

“I thought you’d rather land on the grass than the concrete.”

Oh.

Olivia unwinds a piece of rope and ties it around Yip’s chest.

That tickles, he protests.

“You are made of stone.”

Still tickles.

Olivia throws the other end over the roof and hurries to the front. She takes the rope into the cubbyhouse and passes the end out through the window.

She grunts as she hefts Yip. She squeezes him between her body and the back wall as she tugs in the slack on the rope. She is sweating with the effort.

She does the same thing twice more until he is shoulder height off the ground. He is still twenty centimetres short of the roof.

“Do you have to be all the way up on the roof?” Olivia pants with exertion.

I just have to be touching it.

Olivia looks at her watch. There is only a little over a minute to moonrise. She wraps the rope around her wrist and braces her right foot on the back wall of the cubbyhouse. Her bad leg trembles. She hopes her knee doesn’t give way.

Twenty seconds. The second hand on her watch ticks away.

Olivia takes a deep breath, bunches her muscles, leans back and heaves with all her strength.

Yip scrapes against the wall. One of his horns jams on the edge of the roof.

Soft moonlight slants into the rear yard of Olivia’s terrace house just as her foot slips on the grass. The rope slides through her hand and burns a coil of pain into her wrist and palm.

Yip crashes onto the grass.