sits up, as if propelled from an ejector seat. “What? Is that on the cards? Really? I thought this was a one-time thing.”
“Why not?” Bea shrugs, as if she doesn’t care one way or the other. “We’ve got the room for the night—might as well make the most of it.”
A little less than a decade ago
Everwhere
When you awake, you’re looking into the face of a man with golden eyes, white hair, and skin so creased with wrinkles he might be ten thousand years old. You wonder if you’ve died and this is the Devil, for he fixes you with a look such as you’ve never seen before and wish never to see again, though you find you’re unable to look away. It’s a look of such undiluted malice that you start to shiver, as if you were suddenly freezing cold.
When you’re able to turn away, the relief is palpable. You want to run but you’re frozen. You tell your legs to move but they seem detached, separate, as if owned by someone else altogether.
When you look at him again you realize that in fact he wasn’t looking at you in any particular way, this is simply the carving of his features. When he smiles a spasm shoots up your spine, a red-hot scarring, a rage of pain. His smile drops and the pain subsides. You realize that he’s assessing you, deciding, weighing up unspecified options. Do his eyes glow a little brighter, or are you imagining it? It seems he is pleased, though you don’t know why. Perhaps he sees something in you: promise, potential, possibility . . .
He steps back, lifting his chin: a nudge, an instruction, an offer. Slowly, you pull yourself up from the ground. Your legs are so weak that you stumble. You stagger forward as he watches you, falling once, twice. You drag yourself up again, then start to topple but find balance. Then, with every ounce of everything you have, you run.
This time, he lets you go.
Goldie
He told me it was my fault. My fault for being pretty. My fault for being there. As if he’d simply been walking along and—oops—slipped on a banana skin and fallen into my bed. It started after Teddy was born. Ma slept with him in their bed, and my stepfather complained he couldn’t sleep with “that bloody thing squawking all the time.” His affection for his son always diminished at night. During the day he doted on Teddy almost as much as Ma did, rocking and cooing and all that. But when Teddy kept him awake, he wasn’t so keen. Still, at some point, I suppose he decided to make the most of those interruptions.
The first night he lay beside me. The second, his hand rested atop my nightdress. The third, it found its way underneath. By the end of the month there was no part of me he hadn’t found.
Liyana
Liyana lay belly up, floating. She could float for hours, capsizing herself now and then, rolling over like a seal, skin slick with water. And although Liyana wasn’t swimming in the sea but resting on her bed, buoyed only by three hot-water bottles, her sense of the ocean was so strong she could taste the salt on her tongue. When at last Liyana closed her eyes, it was on the lapping waves of this sea that she was borne from her dreams and into Everwhere.
Tonight, she followed her sisters on the stone paths, winding alongside rivers and trees, cutting through clearings of ivy and moss. Bea led the line of four sisters, as always. Though, every so often, Scarlet managed to sneak out in front. Liyana was always last in line. Which meant that when she suddenly stopped, no one noticed.
“Wait!” Liyana called out. We turned to see her pointing to a dark snake of water under a bank of willow trees. “Let’s go swimming.”
“But we don’t have our costumes,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Liyana threw the words over her shoulder as she tugged at the sleeve of her nightgown, pulling it over her head.
“Great idea,” Scarlet said, unbuttoning her shirt as she darted across moss and stone. “I’ll race you.”
I looked to Bea, hoping she wouldn’t want to join in. Behind my back, I crossed my fingers. Bea regarded the river, then, with a shrug, crossed her legs and sat in a patch of moss. “Go ahead. I don’t want to get wet, it’s too cold.”
Bea affected a shiver, though it wasn’t even chilly. I wanted to