“If you don’t choose in his favour, then he’ll send his soldiers to kill you, or he’ll do it himself. Depends how special you are,” Bea said. “So you’ll have to hone your skills, practise—practise until you stand a fighting chance of survival.”
She sounded like she was quoting someone, probably her ma.
“You never said it was a life-or-death choice,” I said.
“I thought it was obvious,” Bea said. “You didn’t expect him to let you live, did you? Just like that. He wants to father an army to support him, not a force to oppose him.”
“I suppose your mother—”
“What if we decided to kill him,” Scarlet interrupted. “Then what?”
Liyana was wide-eyed. “We can’t do that!”
“It’s self-defence, they can’t send you to prison for that,” Scarlet said. “Anyway, we didn’t ask to be born like this, did we? It’s not our fault, it’s his.”
I wanted to echo my sister, but I wasn’t quite so brave. Liyana stared at her, incredulous. Bea rolled her eyes.
“You’re not that special,” she said, going into arrogant adult mode again. “None of us are. He’s mightier than any of us will ever be, can ever be—he’s like . . . an ancient oak tree and we’re . . . seedlings—you wouldn’t stand a chance, no matter how strong you got.”
“Why does your mummy tell you everything,” Liyana said, “and ours tell us nothing?”
Bea sighed, assuming the stance of a schoolteacher. “I told you. It’s because they don’t know. They aren’t pure Grimms, are they? If they go to Everwhere in their dreams, they won’t think it was real.”
“My mother knows something,” Scarlet said, almost to herself. “She looks at me sometimes, like she’s suspicious or scared.”
“She’s probably got a bit of Grimm blood then,” Bea said. “Enough to go through the gates anyway.”
A few weeks ago I’d have said Ma knew nothing either, but I was starting to wonder. It’d make sense then, why she held me so tight.
“What if, when it’s time to choose, we hide somewhere and don’t come back here?” Liyana twisted the spikes of her shorn hair. “Then we won’t have to be in an army or die or try to kill anyone either.”
Silence dropped over the glade, as if all sound had been smothered by a dense and sudden fog. This suggestion of never returning was so shocking, so untenable, that no one sanctified it with a response. Death, surely, was better than desertion.
“You can’t run away,” Bea said at last. “You’ll keep coming back, even if only in your dreams, even if you don’t want to.”
“Why?” Liyana and Scarlet asked in unison.
“The need to return has been inside us since we were conceived,” Bea said, pausing to recall her ma’s words. “It’s a product of the bright-white wishing and black-edged desire. We’re like those fish . . . the salmon that always return to the place they were born.”
“So, how will you survive the Choosing?” Scarlet asked. “If you won’t be strong enough to defeat him.”
A look passed across Bea’s face that I couldn’t quite decipher. When she spoke every trace of teasing was gone.
“You don’t have to defeat him,” she said, “if you’re going to go dark.”
26th October
Six days . . .
3:33 a.m.—Goldie & Liyana
“She still loves you,” I say, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder, whispering so Teddy won’t hear. At last, Liyana’s told me everything: her mother, the tarot, Kumiko, the Slade, Aunt Nya, Mazmo, Tesco—at least I think it’s everything.
“I’m not sure,” Liyana says.
“I am.” And I am. Even though I’ve never met Kumiko, I’m still certain. “Love doesn’t suddenly stop, Ana,” I say, as if I’m the sudden expert on the subject. “You need to win her back.”
I hear Liyana sigh.
“I think she’s right about your aunt, though.” I’m more tentative now. I want to say something about Mazmo and art school, about having to work hard for things and not being ashamed to do shitty jobs, but I’m not sure how to put it without causing offence. So I stick to the safer subject. “You can’t give up everything for her.”
“I know,” Liyana whispers. “I know, it’s just so hard. She’s been—she’s done . . . She’s . . .”
“She’ll be okay,” I say. “She doesn’t need you to save her.”
I hear Liyana sigh again. “Perhaps.”
“And as for Kumiko, you have to . . . don’t give up.”