Green Monkey Dreams (24 page)

Amerie did not remember her mother going away. Nor even which order the memories had happened in. She had not understood all of the memories, but she had known from them that her mother
was not entirely human.
She was a thing of lightness and dark feathers, and music could move her to dance as the wind moves a feather. Part of her yearned to fly even when she was in human form. Amerie had often seen her dance and sway on her toes, flinging her arms out like wings. She did not look entirely human either. She was not round and soft and comfortable like the mothers of other girls. She was very thin and her legs and arms were bony and hard with muscles.
From flying
, Amerie knew now.

And Amerie was like her mother. Much as she ate, she was not heavy and solid like her father. She was slender and light-boned and her feet were narrow like her mother's though they lacked the queer calluses that must come to her in her bird form.

Once she had heard a neighbour tell her father after a visit that she ate like a bird.

But more than her body, she knew what she was because sometimes she would feel a strange yearning for something more than life could give. Something nameless and demanding and wonderful would dance through her blood, heady and intoxicating. Her fingers and feet would tingle and she would realise that she was on the verge of shapechanging, as her mother had done. But she was half her father as well, and she realised that the fleshiness of him weighed her down and caged her bird self, just as he had wanted to cage her mother.

Amerie had never been able to bear to see birds caged after she realised the truth. Outside pet shops, she would watch them, and they would look into her eyes and know she was part bird and understand her longing to free them. If no one was watching, she would slip open the catch and the birds would fly away.

Some did. Others just crouched against the bars in fear because they had been caged too long. Even shaking the cage would not make them fly because they had forgotten how.

That frightened Amerie because in those terrified birds she saw herself trapped forever. Too frightened to fly. She understood from this that if she did not learn to fly, there would be a day when the urge would leave her and she would come to accept the cage.

After this for a time she sought out and opened every cage she could find, hoping that if she could free enough birds, she would free her own birdself. Because she felt sure her mother had not left her willingly, but only for fear of her father's cage. She must pray for me to fly to her, Amerie knew, pray that her daughter would come to her birdself in time.

Oh, how she longed to fly away from her father's thick angry silences and his black thorny beard. His hand was hard and sometimes when he hugged her, she felt he was trying to make a cage of his body and put her inside it so that she would be trapped there forever beside his great red beating heart, fluttering and fluttering in despair.

In the end a pet-shop owner caught and shook her, asking if she did not understand that the birds were safe when they were caged; that other bigger birds and cats and all manner of predators would eat them now she had let them go, because the poor birds did not understand the danger of freedom.

‘They are tame birds and tame birds must be caged!' the pet-shop man had said, giving her a final shake and warning her that if he saw her near his shop again he would call the police.

Walking away, shaken to her core, she understood that to accept the cage and to forget to fly was to be tamed. While to fly was dangerous freedom. Her mother had chosen to fly away because her father had wanted to tame her. He had wanted her to forget to fly and swoop and sing. He had wanted her safe in a cage, just as he wanted Amerie safe. He held her hand when they walked in the street in his big tight grip to keep her safe.

But to be safe, one had to be tamed, and being tamed meant you would never fly again.

And the predators? Amerie thought of them seriously, cats with flashing wicked eyes and who knew what other sinister beasts waiting to eat up freedom. But then another awareness came to her so powerfully that she stopped in the street and stared in front of her with fear and wonder, because she understood at last how her mother's sadness could have joy in it.

If it was in her to fly, she must fly! She
could not choose
to be tamed and safe in a cage because freedom was in her blood and would never permit it. Though she might die by the teeth or under the wheels of a car, she must fly. The urge was so strong that it was like a beast inside her, roaring to be free. She must fly, else that inner beast would tear her to pieces with its own teeth. She would be alive, but she would be dead inside.

She tried not to open any more cages after that. Her father frightened her when he was angry and he would be very angry if he knew what she had done. All the more because he would know at once why she was releasing birds from their cages. If she gave the slightest hint that freedom raged through her veins, he would find some way to cage her. He must never know, and so she was careful to pretend she was tame.

Instead of dancing around the room or singing, which brought his heavy glowering gaze to press her down to the earth, she would sit quietly and read.

That seemed to please him and he would lay his great hand on her head and say that she was a good girl. He did not understand that while her body was still when she read, her mind flew far and wide. She would only dance and swirl and let her bird spirit move her body to music when her father went out to church on Sunday evenings. That was the only time he left her alone. Only then, as she dipped and leapt, did she dare to pray to her mother to help her learn to fly before it was too late.

And now, the book. Her mother must have flown back in secret to hide it, knowing that searching for books on her own shelf in her father's library, she would find it. Her eighth birthday was only a few days away. Amerie held the book tightly against her chest, understanding that she had been given a warning. If she did not fly before her eighth birthday, she would be too heavy and the urge to freedom
would be tamed.

Her heart pounded against her chest, the mended crack aching with the force of it, as she opened the precious gift.

The hair on her neck stiffened because the first story was called ‘The Red Shoes'.

Shivering with excitement, Amerie began to read.

It was the story of a girl who longed for a pair of red dancing shoes so desperately, she forgot to care for her dying grandmother. She dreamed of nothing but the red shoes and eventually stole money to buy them. But when she put them on, they danced her until she was exhausted.

They would not be removed for they had grown to her feet. They danced her into a ragged urchin, and finally a woodcutter offered to chop them off her. ‘So that you may be still and quiet at last.' The girl was frightened because it meant he must chop off her feet as well, and she would not ever dance again. ‘I will carve wooden feet and strap them to your legs so that you can hobble around. You will never dance again, it is true, but look where dancing has brought you. Let me chop off your feet and you will be safe.'

And the girl had bowed her head and wept as she agreed.

Amerie closed the book, frightened by what she had read. Her mother had once told her she would fly when she wore the red shoes, but here was a story of magical shoes that would not be removed unless your feet were chopped off as well. Her mother's message must be riddled into the story, and she would have to fathom it.

That night, she slept with the book under her pillow. She lay awake for a long time, thinking of all the magical shoes she had encountered in stories. Puss-in-boots had boots that carried him seven leagues at a single step, and that was a kind of flying. And Cinderella had been given glass slippers by her Fairy Godmother, and in them she had flown to the heart of her prince. Then there were the red shoes Dorothy had got from the Wicked Witch of the West, which took her anywhere she wanted if she clicked the heels together . . .

When Amerie slept, it was to dream that she was the girl wearing the red dancing shoes, whirling and dancing and leaping herself to exhaustion, and yet, though she was half dead, her heart laughed and danced inside her and freedom flowed through her soul like a river.

The woodcutter came to her big as a bear in the moonlight. He had a black beard and a red mouth, and he carried a silver axe with two cruelly sharpened edges.

‘I will make sure you don't fly away. I love you and I will tame you.'

Amerie was frightened, but the delight in her blood ate up the fear and she danced in a circle around the great heavy woodcutter. ‘I will not let you cage me.'

The woodcutter made a lunge for her, but she danced out of his grasp and ran until she came to her own house in the middle of the dark woods. Somewhere a wolf howled as she threw open the door and ran up the stairs. She could hear her father's feet on the veranda. The front door slammed open.

‘Come to me,' his voice boomed. ‘Let me cut off the red shoes and you will be safe.'

Higher
, the shoes whispered.

But there was no higher. Except . . .

Amerie turned to look at the attic stairs. Her father had forbidden her to climb them. The roof is dangerous and unstable and you will fall through it, he had said.

Higher
, the shoes whispered urgently.

She ran up the wooden steps, light as a bird on the snow. Up and up and into the roof. It was dark and the roof slanted deeply. Moonlight streaming in through the dormer window lit up boxes and cases and heaps of clothing; it silvered a lace of tulle and a dressmaker's dummy festooned with spider webs.

‘I know you are up there. I will kill you before I will let you leave me again . . .' cried her father, and now his feet were thunder on the stairs. ‘If I cannot have you, no one will have you.'

Higher
, whispered the red shoes.

There is no higher
, Amerie thought.

Then you will be tamed and you will die . . .
the red shoes whispered.

‘I love you!' roared her father, his boots clumping on the wooden attic steps, shaking the house.

Amerie woke up.

Her face and hands were slick with sweat as she reached under the pillow and took out the book. The cover was cool and velvety as a puppy's belly under her hot hands, and she lay there until the sun rose, holding the book tightly to her, trying to think what to do. She must get up into the attic and find the red shoes that would show her how to fly. But her father would not leave her alone until Sunday and that would be her eighth birthday and it would be too late. She would be trapped forever.

She must get into the attic, but her father had forbidden it. She must get him to leave her alone. But how?

‘Are you all right?' her father rumbled that evening. She had sat very quietly all day, not even reading.

‘I feel sick,' Amerie said in her palest voice.

Her father's black brows pulled together over his dark eyes and he took her chin in his big hand and lifted it so that he could look into her eyes. Amerie prayed he would not smell the talc on her cheeks.

‘You look sickly, my little one. Perhaps I should bring you to the doctor tomorrow.'

Amerie's heart thumped. ‘Maybe if you give me some of the tonic you gave me last time, I will be better by morning.'

He frowned again, then shrugged. ‘We will try it.'

He went to the bathroom, but the bottle was empty.

‘That is strange. The bottle is finished. I will go and buy some more. You had better get into your bed.'

She gave him a docile nod, and went up to her bedroom. A moment later, she heard the front door close. She ran to the attic steps and hurried up them, and just as in the dream, there were boxes and a dressmaker's dummy with her mother's slender shape, and in the corner near the dormer window, a froth of gauzy tulle.

But no red shoes.

Her father would only be away a little while and she must find them and return to her bed before he came back. Frantically, she began to search. Under clothes and dresses and a suitcase of silky women's clothing. There were lots of shoes but none were red. She opened the top of one of the boxes and found letters.

One began, ‘My dearest Winter, Jonathon must understand that you need to dance, surely. Did he not first see you soaring on the stage? Does he think you can just stop as if you were a secretary typing letters?'

Winter was her mother's name, Amerie knew, setting the letter aside. She had obviously left all of her letters and clothing behind because in her bird form she had no need for them. Her father had told people she had gone away because he wanted no one to know he had married a shapechanger.

But where were the red shoes? Surely that was what the dream had meant. She opened another box and another. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she had not heard her father's tread on the steps yet, and so she decided to take a few more moments to search.

Help me
,
Mother . . .
she whispered.

Her eyes fell on the silvery tulle, and she noticed a black feather caught in it. Her heart leapt.

Then she heard her father's boots on the wooden veranda.

She pulled at the tulle; there was masses of it. It was a kind of dress, and though white and silver, the bottom of the hem was thick with darkness, and there were black and white feathers stuck there. And there, under the tulle, were dark slender dancing shoes with long silky tapes. They looked black, but the moon made red look black, she reminded herself. Without thinking, she pushed her feet into them. There was a crackle and a roughness inside, as if someone had put red paint in the shoes as well as on the outside, but they fit her perfectly in the heel.
They are too long, but I will grow into them
, she thought dreamily.

‘Amerie?'

Her father was on the second floor and it was too late now to go down and get into her bed because he would see her. She listened to him going into her bedroom as she tied the tapes round and round, making a neat bow at the rear.