State of Grace (16 page)

There’s a figure too, kind of framed by the doorway.

Mum. She’s in crisp white sungarb with a thin red stripe, a neat bag over her shoulder. But her face looks pinched and exhausted. Even in a fragment of an image I can see that.

‘How was it today?’ She steps towards me to smooth the curly hair on my unwilling head.

‘Okay.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

The next thing I see, I’m holding one arm out to her. Strapped around it there’s a device exactly like Dennis’s. The other thing I can’t miss is the thick, white material wrapped around my arms and shoulders.

Bandages
.

I see Mum’s eyes flick across the tiny screen of my device. I can’t read it, because the words are too small and things are shifting and splintering the way they do when I see things. But I can hear what Mum says.

‘I don’t know,Viva. It sounds very drastic.’

My mouth moves and lets loose this barrage of words that I don’t understand. Even in these images I’m a blurter, I guess. The odd phrase floats to the top.

‘I’m the perfect candidate. This is going to fix things … if I don’t like it, I can have it removed.’

There are tears sparkling in Mum’s eyes, still there even after she tries blinking them away. In this tiny little voice she says, ‘Please don’t tell me you’re seriously considering this.’

‘I’ve already applied. I’m sixteen. You can’t stop me.’

‘Stick with the counselling a little bit longer.’

‘It’s not helping. It’s never going to.’

Mum sighs. ‘No-one blames you. You believe that, don’t you?’

I see myself reach for something buried under my pillow. It’s a piece of fuzzy red fabric balled-up in my hand. I start to stroke the fabric.

‘Who else is there to blame?’ I say.

21

B
LAZE HAS
D
ENNIS’S
device upside-down on the table in my hut. He pulls it apart, one crumpled piece at a time, his fingers almost too big to pick up all those tiny squares and rectangles. He lays each piece on a folded-up sungarb and sort of stares at it, like he’s hoping the device is going to reassemble itself.

Dennis wants to get the device working as much as Blaze. He keeps talking about working out where we are. Maybe it’s not Club Naturelle after all he says. He wants to know who’s in charge, what it’s for. He even wants to find a picture of all creation from above, the way Dot would see it.

A
satellite photo
, he calls it. Not that it would really help, Dennis says. If the
electric fence
goes all the way around, there’s probably not going to be a way out. According to Dennis, that’s the way someone wants it.

I don’t bother telling him the answer to all his questions is Dot. Blaze says he’ll sort out the pieces, just keep trying until he somehow manages to put the device back together. That’s his plan. It’s just, to me, the device looks even less like something that’s ever going to work again than it did when Blaze started.

Anyway, Dennis wouldn’t quit asking Blaze when it would be fixed, so finally Blaze had to take him back to Dennis’s hut before returning to work on the device in my hut.

‘Wren?’

There’s no pause before the door of my hut opens. Brook is standing on my balcony. Blaze gets up and in one movement sweeps the bits into his pocket.

Brook stares into the hut. ‘What are you two doing shut in here by yourselves?’

Blaze shrugs. I guess the best answer to that question is not to answer at all.

Brook goes, ‘Everyone’s at the gazebo.’ He doesn’t need to add,
And you should be too
.

With the door open, I notice how the early morning air is damp and thick and solid. There’s a smell to it too, one I don’t recognise.

There’s charcoal in it, but something else too. It’s a rich, fleshy, fatty kind of smell. Already the smell’s working its way into my sungarb, my hair and even my skin.

Getting up, I ask, ‘What is that smell?’

‘An offering to Dot,’ Brook says, in this
of course
voice.

Out the front of the gazebo there’s a ring of people. Over their shoulders I can see they’re standing around a fire with a kind of big cross-bar built on top of it. There are two forked sticks rammed into the ground and another one resting between them horizontally. Speared onto the stick in the middle is a charred shape with three spindly legs sticking out.

There’s no white spots or soft little tail and the head’s completely gone. Still, it’s pretty obvious what it is. Or what it used to be, anyway.

Brook goes, ‘Eat something.’

‘We’re not hungry,’ Blaze says.

‘Eat,’ Brook repeats, as smoke drifts past him. ‘Dot did what she did to the deer for a reason. It wouldn’t be dotly to waste it.’

He watches us carefully, clearly wanting to know exactly how his words are sinking in.

It doesn’t matter how prehealthy the idea of eating the deer makes me feel. Or how, for whatever reason, being so close to the fire suddenly makes me superaware of my dotmarks. I’m just going to have to ignore the way they seem to stretch and pull and drag at my skin.

I have to eat some deer if that’s what Brook and Gil want. It’s possible what they want isn’t the same thing Dot does. But until I figure out how to make Dennis disappear, the best thing to do is not to stick out.

So I tell Brook, ‘We’d love to try some.’

‘Really?’ Brook’s pretty interested in this.

Gil’s by the fire and the deer’s fourth leg is on the grass at his feet. He picks it up, tears chunks from it with his hands and passes the dripping pink flesh to me and Blaze.

‘All Dot’s creatures should be honoured. Even the ones Dot uses as a sign.’

‘Where in the Books does it say that?’ Blaze asks, like he’s really interested to know. As though he thinks the Books actually do say something about eating Dot’s creatures.

Gil’s mouth is ringed with glistening fat and streaks of charcoal. He ignores Blaze.

‘Go on. Eat.’

The deer flesh is still warm from the fire. I think maybe if I hold my breath I won’t be able to taste it as strongly as I can smell it. I open my mouth and feed in the first piece. It’s a solid lump, chewy with little strings that refuse to dissolve in my mouth the way fruit does. Next to me, Blaze chews and somehow manages to swallow.

But the deer flesh won’t go down my throat no matter how desperately I try to force it. Actually, forcing makes things a whole lot worse. Now the flesh coats my tongue and I feel my chin go all wobbly and my mouth fill with a thick, burning liquid.

I can’t let anything prenormal happen. I have to swallow the deer. Does Dot wants me to? I don’t know. But I’m sure if I don’t I’m going to look majorly predotly in front of Gil and Brook.

‘Now we’ve got the taste for it, I know Dot will want us to go on eating the flesh of her creations,’ Gil says. ‘Don’t you think, Wren?’

The hot liquid works its way to the front of my mouth. I clamp my hand over my mouth to keep it back. I can’t have the deer flesh and the hot liquid splashing out in one big sticky mess all over Gil’s bare feet. I turn away from the fire, suck air in through my nostrils. Anything to get rid of that rich, greasy smell. Sweat cools my skin and makes me shiver.

One last intake of breath and I manage to swallow a tiny lump of flesh.

‘There,’ Gil says. ‘I knew you’d love it.’

There’s still a little string of deer flesh caught in my throat and I’m coughing and gagging, my mouth filling with liquid all over again.

‘Take some more.’

Gil watches me bite and swallow, bite and swallow, my throat bulging with each fleshy lump that goes down. And it’s then, right when I’m wondering if I’m going to have to eat the entire rest of the deer, that Gil notices the bird.

Bird
, that’s what Gil calls it anyway. And okay, it definitely is up in the sky but that’s really the only way this thing is like any other bird in creation.

The sound it’s making is like no bird I’ve ever heard. It comes towards us, making a jagged whirr, this kind of
whoomp whoomp whoomp
noise. It doesn’t fly straight or anything either. It banks and swoops, dipping down then rising up and repeating the whole thing over and over again. It churns the air as it heads for the gazebo, rippling the grass and swirling the leaves.

Now it’s close enough for me to see its shiny white body and the circle-shaped blur on the top. I’ve seen one of those things before, except not here. In Julius’s room, on the front of that book.

Hector the Littlest Helicopter
. And so I think,
That must be the word for this thing then. A hector.

By now, everyone else is looking at the hector too. I mean, they’re really gawking. Obviously they are, because this thing must be pretty extraordinary to anyone who’s never seen one in a book. The hector sweeps across the garden, left to right, all over the place.

Leaves and dirt, dust and grit circle through the air and into our eyes. The entire lawn moves in waves the way the lagoon does on windy days. The sound gets louder until it’s directly above us and low enough to read the single word in blue letters on its belly: POLICE.

Everyone’s shouting at Gil, wanting to know what the thing in the sky is. Somehow, over the top of all the noise, Gil comes up with an explanation. He decides that Dot must’ve sent a gigantic bird with huge talons on the bottom to scoop up anything predotly in the garden.

Animals. People even. Because naturally, anything predotly must be crushed.

Everywhere around, people start to scatter, exactly like ants before a big storm. The hector banks left, heading for the huts, and now I can see there’s another circling blur at the tail.

Jasper and Luna run past, shouting that they’re going to the gazebo, that everyone’s going there to talk to Dot. The crowd streams past me and everyone’s going in the same direction. I’m right in the middle of the heaving, screaming, gritty swell of bodies. I want to run in the opposite direction but I can’t seem to move.

Two arms close around me. They lift me off the ground and drag me sideways onto the lawn. I stumble and fall to the grass and people trample my hair and hands and body in their rush to get to the gazebo.

I feel myself sliding across the grass, pulled by my feet and I open my eyes and it’s Blaze.

He lifts me to my feet and shouts above the noise, ‘That’s not a bird.’

I nod. He’s right. It’s a hector, sent here by Dot so I can complete my test. Now’s my chance. I can show Dot I’m not going to be tempted by Dennis and his stories about Woodend. All I have to do is make sure he gets on board that hector.

‘It’s come from out there,’ Blaze goes on. ‘It’s looking for Dennis.’

I don’t admit to him that I know what hectors are or how I know. I don’t say he has the wrong idea about why the hector’s here. It’s so noisy, that’s part of it. But mostly it’s because I’m too busy imagining Dennis inside, soaring higher and higher until he vanishes from creation, leaving everything happy and golden again.

____________________

Through the fringe, that’s the quickest way to get to Dennis. Now I know I’m close to passing Dot’s test, going in again is a risk I think I can take.

Over our heads the hector makes this whipping, whirring sound, close and then further away. On top of that, even in the fringe, I can hear people shouting and the sound of my own breath in my ears. Ahead of me, Blaze’s footsteps are heavy but fast.

Then we’re through the fringe and into the orchard, with its thick, sweet smell of fruit. On the edge of the orchard, there’s Dennis’s hut. The hector is right above us, dipping low, sending blossoms spiralling into the air. We pass the coconut tree with its empty nail. It doesn’t matter where the knife is now.

The hector is so close, there’s surely no way Gil or Brook can get to Dennis before we do. I mean, the hector’s going to have to spot us soon. And then this will all be over.

We run for Dennis’s hut. Up the stairs because there’s no time for the whole thing with the window. I’m heaving for breath as Blaze opens the door and we stumble through it, plunging from the dazzling sunshine into the still prelight of inside.

‘Dennis?’ calls Blaze. ‘C’mon.’

But Dennis isn’t on the bed and he isn’t looking out through the shutters. He’s not under the bed or inside the wardrobe or at any of the other places we search, tearing open doors and knocking sungarb to the floor with a clatter of hangers.

The hut is empty. Apart from his striped sungarb, still damp from last night, there’s no sign of Dennis.

At the same time, me and Blaze head back out Dennis’s door. Around us, animals are circling, darting underneath the huts, looking for shelter from the hector. And the two of us are just as clueless, pretty much. Shouting Dennis’s name and everything.

Both of us desperate for a flash of peacock-blue sungarb.

We head down the path towards the lawn in the middle of creation. I check my hut. I pound on the door of Fern’s. We tear open every door and check all the huts, without knowing why Dennis would be there.

It doesn’t even matter because there’s no sign of him. Creation’s big and Dennis is small. He could be anywhere. Anyone could see him. He could miss the hector altogether and I could fail Dot’s test.

I yell his name again but there’s no reply, only the sound of the whirring coming towards us from every direction at once. Gil’s probably found him by now, or Brook. They must have, I think, and about a million pictures light up in my head.

Dennis with his sungarb all damp between his legs.

The gate, shimmering and impassable. A sparking twig.

Steam from the deer’s cut throat.

The empty nail where the coconut knife should have been.

Dennis’s device and those things that FancyVividBlue wrote about me and Blaze.

A butterfly circling.

Brook.

And Gil, always Gil, smiling just slightly as he says, ‘Anything predotly must be crushed.’

22

I
SEE THEM
first. Poking out from under Dennis’s hut, there they are, ten white toes, each one ringed with dirt. I run to the hut and Blaze is right behind me. The white toes are attached to white feet. Those are attached to skinny white legs, which are covered with a peacock-blue sungarb. The legs aren’t moving. Underneath the hut, the body is still.