State of Grace (3 page)
This huge
whoo-hoo!
goes up from everyone down in the water. A jump from the very top of the rocks makes the best splash, and that’s pretty much what everyone’s expecting.
Fern is looking at me, shading her eyes. Gil’s watching too, and Jasper’s calling out my name, which is kind of funny. It’s not like I need anyone to remind me who I am. I’m the same as I’ve always been. I’m Wren with the wavy hair that’s sort of red and sort of brown. Wren who’s good at climbing. Wren who loves Dot and every creation, the same way they love me.
So I can’t figure out why I’m not just finishing the climb and jumping off the rocks right now. That’s how I always do it. I’ve climbed these rocks heaps of times since I was created and never once have I stopped to think about what I’m doing.
Except for now. Today, there’s a wild kind of feeling surging through me. A squeezing sensation in my stomach. My fingers are curled around two jutting bits of rock and my toes are all white from hanging on so hard. And suddenly, it’s like all creation’s a million shades brighter.
‘Wre-en! Wre-eeeeen!’
Everyone in the lagoon seems to be calling out my name. Gil, Jasper, Luna, all of them. They just want me to jump and splash the way I always do.
Only I can’t. I’m literally stuck here on this rock. There’s this picture inside my head, one that definitely wasn’t there before I spoke to Blaze. It’s me, sprawled on the rocks with my head caved in, blood pooling around my body.
I look down. Blaze has stopped walking away. In fact, he’s completely still, staring up at me, as frozen as I am. And right in that moment, I think maybe Blaze saw on my face something I wasn’t even aware I was thinking until now.
Dot only knows how, but he was right just before. I always thought going beyond was what creations did. Only now I know
he’s
questioning it, I realise I am too.
I could let go of the rock, I realise, let myself tumble end over end down to the ground. Quicker than a butterfly flutters its wings, I’d be meeting Dot the exact way me and Fern always talked about.
How superthrilling would that be? Or should be, anyway. But now it could be real, there’s suddenly a whole lot of other stuff flashing into my head. All prenormal thoughts. Is it possible that I would soar off the ground and go beyond if my head was split open? Would I meet Dot? Could that actually happen? Really and truly?
I can still hear the others calling my name from the lagoon. Creations are begging me to jump. A whistle splits the air but it’s long and low and warped, just like before when me and Blaze were talking.
And over the top of all that, I think I hear Blaze and that voice of his, all low and soft.
‘You’re okay,’ he says. Over and over again, just ‘You’re okay’ and ‘Hang on’.
Blaze walks towards the three jutting rocks. He holds out a hand to help me down.
But I don’t take it, because it’s right then that I manage to unstick myself. I release one hand from the rockface, wipe it on my sungarb and stretch my cramping fingers. Then I swing my way to the top of the rock, easily. My bare feet slide into a crack, one on top of the other and I know I’m going to jump and everything’s going to be normal, the way it always has been.
The wind catches my hair and whips these long ropes all over my face. I raise both arms up to Dot out there beyond the fringe. I tip my head upwards too. I open my mouth and out comes this huge whooping sound.
The whole lagoon yells back because I guess they’re as happy as I am right now. I’m Wren, Wren who believes in the Books exactly like she should.
That churning feeling before, it’s completely disappeared. I mean, if I go beyond, I’m obviously going to meet Dot. How else could it possibly be?
At the base of the rocks, Blaze still has his arm out to me.
‘I’m all good,’ I tell him, this huge smile on my face. ‘I’m jumping!’
In front of me, the lagoon’s all perfect and clear, fresh and crisp and dotly. I spread my arms wide. I bend my knees. Then I do it.
I jump. I swear, right then, my entire body’s ringing with a love for Dot that’s so powerful, I honestly feel like I’m flying.
O
UR HUTS ARE
right at the opposite end of the lagoon. Like
I said, Dot’s creation is huge. It’s one gigantic rectangle that feels even bigger in the prelight, which is what it is now the day’s pretty much over. To get back to the huts from the lagoon, you have to pass the gazebo and the newfruit grove and everything else in creation too. The orchard’s the one thing that lies beyond the huts, that and the fringe of trees.
So it kind of figures that Fern’s practically collapsing after such a long walk.
‘Come up,’ Gil says when me and Fern finally make it back.
That’s always how it is when Gil invites you somewhere. As in, he never puts it to you like a question. Gil’s on the balcony of his hut with Brook. They’re superclose friends, the two of them. You pretty much never see Gil without Brook by his side.
Anyway, I figure why not hang out with them? What else are me and Fern going to do except go to bed? So I head up Gil’s stairs to the balcony, with Fern behind me.
Gil’s hut is the same as everyone else’s. Square, with stilts and a peaked wooden roof with a design of butterflies carved into it. The shutters have the same butterfly design, made out of these tiny little holes in the wood. There’s a balcony all the way across the front of each one, which is where Gil and Brook are sitting, a whole pile of fruit from the orchard on the table between them. Every type in creation, pretty much, apart from newfruit, obviously. Blood oranges, apricots, cherries, lychees, these fat, fuzzy golden raspberries and a pomegranate, torn open and spilling its seeds. There are even coconuts, which means Brook must have cut them down with the big knife nailed to one of the trees. Brook always likes to be in charge of the knife.
I grab a wedge of watermelon from the table and plonk down on Gil’s stairs. Fern settles into a hammock. We don’t get to sit there long before Gil tells us he has an idea. Before he’ll say what it is though, he waits, scooping hair out of his eyes and everything, until he’s sure we’re all totally and utterly listening to him and no-one else.
Did I mention Gil’s hair? It’s shoulder-length, obviously, and blond. Not a yellow-blond the way Fern’s is, or golden like Jasper’s. Gil’s is practically white and it’s soft and flossy. Every creation’s good-looking, like it says in the Book of Beauty, Chapter 1, Verse 1. But on top of that, I guess you’d call Gil striking. Or unusual, maybe. With his kinked nose and long fingers, he stands out from the rest of us, that’s for sure.
‘We’re having a bonfire,’ he announces.
Fern yawns. ‘As long as I get to sleep next to it.’
I spit out a watermelon pip, aiming for Jasper’s balcony but hitting Blaze’s instead. Blaze’s hut is just across the path from Gil’s. In the orange light from the torches that line the path, I can see the shape of Blaze. He’s out on his balcony in his own hammock, his Books lit up and resting on his chest. Asleep, I’m guessing.
‘Brook?’ Gil says.
And like Gil’s directly asked him something, even though he completely hasn’t, Brook gets up, brushing past me as he heads down the stairs. He disappears down the path, past my hut and past Fern’s. Past Luna’s and Jasper’s and Sage’s as well, until he gets to the empty huts and I can’t see him anymore.
There are more empty huts than there are full. Hundreds of them, wardrobes stocked with teeny-tiny sungarb and the beds already made. Dot only knows why. At first, we all looked in them a lot but now no-one really bothers. An empty hut just isn’t that fun compared to everything else there is to do.
I ping a few more watermelon seeds in the direction of Jasper’s hut. His door doesn’t open so I guess he’s inside hooking up. It’s not like him to go to bed early for any other reason. But not every single seed hits Jasper’s balcony. Some of them hit Blaze’s again and after a while he opens one eye, looks up at us and switches off his Books. I guess he’s coming over.
When Brook gets back Gil meets him at the bottom of the stairs and takes the firewood he’s collected. Without anyone saying so, it’s just obvious Brook will be the one to get the fire going, and also that Gil’s going to tell him exactly how to do it.
First off, Gil gets Brook building a pyramid of twigs right by the bottom of the stairs. Then he says to add the bigger branches and everything. When Brook has just a single twig left, he sticks it into one of the torches burning nearby and gives it to Gil. Gil uses the twig to light the pyramid and pretty soon the fire’s really going, all toasty and warm and bright and everything.
Fern must be too tired even to walk because once she’s out of the hammock she sits on the top step and bumps the whole way down on her butt. She sinks in front of the fire, not caring that the grass is kind of damp.
I’m about to follow her when Gil takes something out of his pocket. Of all the random things in creation, it turns out to be a bird. Gil stands there with the bird cupped in both hands, its mangled wing sticking out at an angle. The bird isn’t exactly moving.
‘Where did you get that?’ I have to ask. Gil wants me to, it’s so obvious.
‘It flew into my shutters just before. Brook tried chasing it away but it kept on slamming itself until …’
He smiles, snake-lips curving all over again. Then he brings his hands together over the top of the bird and there’s this crunching sound.
‘Birds aren’t like us, you know. They don’t go beyond.’
Gil moves the crumpled bird between his hands like he’s testing its weight or something. There’s hardly anything to it though, just a bundle of blue feathers, a pair of spindly legs.
‘Why would it do that?’ I ask, not looking at the little body. ‘Why would it fly into your shutters?’
‘She could be sending a sign.’
‘
She
as in …’
Gil glances at Brook, who’s looking from Gil to me and back again.
‘Dot.’
I tell Gil I didn’t know Dot sent signs. The Books don’t say anything about it.
‘If you think that, you haven’t read your Books properly. Book of Communication, Chapter 6,Verse 6: “Dot loves talking with her creations”.’
All sleepy, Fern goes, ‘That just means us talking to Dot in the gazebo.’
Gil sort of chuckles then, like he can’t believe Fern said that, let alone thought it to begin with.
‘Do you really think she’d ask us to talk to her and never say anything back?’
I totally see Gil’s point.
Dot’s kind. She loves us. It makes complete sense for her to talk to us when you think about it that way. And if she uses signs to do it, well, that’s her prerogative. She created us, she can do what she wants.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘It’s a sign. So what does it mean?’
Gil stands up. He looks hard at me and says, ‘It’s a wren.’
He tosses the little feathered body and it lands on the fire, making the flames flare and spit. I give this small, sharp scream. I don’t know if it’s because Gil said the bird was a wren, or because he just threw it into the fire. Both, I guess.
For some prenormal reason, I kind of feel Gil’s just hurt
me,
not the bird. Plus, I’m suddenly getting this picture in my head. Flames. Flames accompanied by a huge, roaring whoosh and a tight sort of feeling in my chest.
‘Wren?’ says Gil. He’s sitting down again now, next to Fern, who already has her head in his lap.
Blaze is kind of hovering on the edge of things, still on the path, not quite a part of the group even though he’s been standing there the whole time.
And me? I’m on the top step, as far away from the bonfire as I can get. Gil tells me to come down but I don’t want to, not with the flames hissing around the broken bird and that picture in my head.
Plus, that prenormal thing with my eyes is happening again. Everything’s going from blurry to sharp, blurry to sharp, until I can’t really see much at all. I wonder if this happens to the others too. I wonder if they can tell it’s happening to me.
‘Coming!’
I go down the stairs, clinging onto the rail. I sort of squat, still a fair way back from the fire.
‘Sit closer,’ Gil has his hands in Fern’s hair, twirling it around one finger.
Brook’s on his side, sprawled full-length on the grass. I wiggle over. I’m shivering. Not from the cold, though. It’s that burning wren and, more than that, Gil’s bonfire itself. The way the flames flicker and move around … it’s like they’re waiting for the first chance they get to swallow me up. How come I never noticed that about fires before?
‘You don’t look very comfortable,’ Gil says to me.
Fern has her head in his lap still. Her eyes are closed and her hair’s all stuck to her cheeks.
I’m not sure what to tell Gil, so I do what I’ve been doing a lot lately. You know, blurt out a whole lot of stuff that sounds all fun and jokey and try to fill the silence. I want to at least
sound
like me even if I don’t exactly feel it right at this particular moment.
‘I’m supergood! Squatting’s really … nice. You should try it. I can personally recommend it.’
Blaze’s been following the entire conversation between me and Gil, I can tell. Now he leaves the path and comes and squats down next to me.
‘Can I show you something dotly?’
I’m pretty surprised. Blaze is
so
not the type to initiate things. He never splashes you in the lagoon or throws his arms around you during a really full-on dottrack in the gazebo or anything like that. As far as I know, he’s never hooked up.
‘What, your chub?’
There it is again, the blurting thing. Anyway, Gil and Brook laugh. Fern would have too,if she wasn’t asleep. Not Blaze,though.
‘Yeah, no.’
I think how much easier it’d be to
get
Blaze if he were more like Jasper or someone. You know, a guy who never takes anything seriously. Someone fun. Someone who wasn’t so sort of
intense
the whole time.
I sigh. ‘Okay, what then?’
‘A pond.’
‘I have to say, a chub sounds waaaay dotlier. In my experience, anyway.’
And right in the middle of Gil and Brook laughing all over again, something kind of occurs to me. If I went to see this pond Blaze’s talking about, I could get away from the fire. It doesn’t even matter what the pond looks like. I mean, who actually cares?