Wild Blue Yonder (The Ceruleans: Book 3) (13 page)

In Hollythwaite, in the garden leading down from the back of
the house, there was a row of cherry blossom trees whose pink petals, for a few
short weeks in spring, showered the surrounding lawn. When Sienna and I were
small, a groundsman had made a swing for us from ropes and a plank of wood.
Sienna turned her nose up at it – she was much more interested in the large,
modern play equipment at the side of the house. But I loved that homemade
swing, and in the first warm weeks of the year I’d spend countless hours
swinging and dreaming. That was until my father – my ex-father, I should say –
called me to his study one day and told me: ‘No more swinging. The rope has
worn the branch down; soon, it will snap.’

It was a rare afternoon: Hugo was home and in the mood to
parent. Having issued his command (his favourite activity) he moved on to give
me a lesson (his second favourite activity) in the symbolism of the cherry
blossom. The fleeting existence of the cherry blossom, he informed me, was a
metaphor for human existence; of what the Japanese call
mono no aware
, the
pathos associated with life’s ephemeral nature. At the time, I’d plastered on
my ‘interested and learning’ expression and thought inwardly,
Yawn.
But
now, I had cause to remember Hugo’s lesson, and think on it.

It was the eve of my commitment ceremony with Jude, and I
was not in my room twisting my hair around curlers or painting my nails with
Plum Seduction. I was in a quiet corner of the island, sitting on a homemade
swing suspended from a cherry blossom tree, looking out at the blue sky and the
blue ocean, and thinking.

Mono no aware
. Knowing that things are transient,
impermanent, focuses the mind on appreciating the beauty of now. My life had
been impermanent. It had come and gone, and now I was in a new life, which
would also be gone, in time. Committing to Jude tomorrow – that was just a
moment, which would pass, and only have the meaning I attached to it. And Luke,
out there. My time with Luke had been fleeting, though once we knew I was
dying, we’d treasured each moment. Could we do that again? Could we be
together, despite our basic incompatibility, and forge a relationship based
only on fleeting, transitory moments?

These past weeks, focused as I was on the task of convincing
Evangeline that I was a good Cerulean and Jude’s devoted partner, I’d deliberately
pushed the distant future from my mind. The end goal was simply getting off
this island, finding Sienna and then… and then, I didn’t know. But last week,
at Kikorangi, I’d seen something that had smashed down the brick wall in my
mind I’d carefully constructed to keep me sane and focused.

After a lengthy tour of the school and its grounds, I’d been
set up at a computer in the office and left to my own devices. Left alone with
an internet connection? Surely not! But it had been made abundantly clear that
I was being watched: Barnabas had taken great pains to introduce me to computer
geek Noah in the next-door IT suite, and I had no doubt that he would cut me
off before I could so much as type
SOS
. So I was as good as gold on the
web, determined to pass this test so that Evangeline would give Jude and me her
blessing to leave. So what if the fashion site from which I bought wedding gear
happened to belong to my best friend? Yes, she was one of the people I missed,
that I’d like to reach out to. Yes, she was the sister of the guy I loved. But
she was also a fabulous fashion designer, and hers was the only online store
that had what I wanted, I told myself.

The website was new. It had been in the pipeline when I was
still in Twycombe; Cara had talked about it endlessly, and had even convinced
me to do a fashion shoot for her so she’d have images to use. Before I’d died,
I’d transferred all my money to Cara and Luke, and I’d been hoping Cara would
use some for her business. Evidently she had, because the site was amazing:
beautifully designed, professional and offering a wide array of clothing, shoes
and accessories (each expertly photographed
without
a model, I noted;
Cara had not used my shots – perhaps she thought it inappropriate given my
death).

Carefully, I selected Cara customisations from each section
of the site, adding them to the basket. When I was sure I had everything, I
headed to the checkout page. The total was a healthy five hundred pounds –
surely less than Evangeline would expect me to spend on wedding attire, and a
good boost of income for Cara’s business. In the payment screen, I added the
information Barnabas had left out for me, including the PO Box address
(untraceable, just in case, I thought). I hovered over the ‘Additional comments
for vendor’ section, itching to add a note to Cara. But in the end, I just
clicked ‘Buy’.

Shopping done, I clicked about Cara’s site some more. She
had clearly been hard at work, and I was choked up with pride as I clicked on
each page. Not just pride, grief – and a longing so deep it was physical. I
clicked the ‘Blog’ link quite innocently, thinking perhaps to read Cara’s
latest business news. But the moment the page loaded, I realised my mistake.

He was there, right there on the screen.

Luke.

The picture had been taken outside the front of their house
in Twycombe. Cara was sitting on the steps in a short mini-dress that showed
off her beautiful legs, and laughing as she watched Luke unload an enormous box
from the back of his van, staggering under the weight but managing a smile for
the camera. He was just as I remembered him, but his dark hair was a little
longer and wilder than usual, and his red cheeks contrasted starkly with paler
skin, and his eyes – those blue eyes I loved – were lacking something of their
sparkle. Dragging my eyes away from his, I checked the title of the post, ‘The
last box of 20: Vintage shoes HEAVEN!’, and the date, yesterday’s.

All these months, Luke had been nothing more than a memory.
But this – this was real. A connection to him. All at once, my chest tightened
painfully. A picture was not enough. I wanted to be there, in this scene. I
wanted to be holding the other side of that box. I wanted to be cracking some
lame joke to make that smile wider, warmer. I wanted to kiss away the lines on
his forehead.

Since that moment, Luke had haunted me, day and night; only
his was an inconstant ghost:

Come home! Find a way to come back to me. Give it up,
your new life. For me.

Stay away. Coming back when we can’t be together properly
– it’s cruel. You’ll hold me back from having the normal, happy life that I
deserve.

I love you still. I never gave up on you. I love you, I
love you, I love you.

I let you go. I moved on, as we agreed I should. There’s
someone else now.

I don’t care what you did while you were away. I don’t
care if you can’t commit to me now, here, as I want. I’ll take whatever you can
give me. Just stay, stay with me.

Jude – what is it with you and him? You’re together?
Fake, you say – is it? I won’t play second fiddle, Scarlett. Especially to him.
I don’t like that guy…

The last one in particular had me sitting up in bed in the
middle of the night, eyes wide open. Jude. Did he love me? When I stood with
him tomorrow and he declared his commitment to me and love for me, would I see
truth shining in his eyes? And what about me – was it all a lie? Or was there
some part of me, buried deep down, that believed it too?

How much easier the path ahead would be if I let myself love
Jude. He wasn’t hard to love. He was kind and caring and fun to be around. He
was loyal and giving – the guy had spent months putting on a performance for
me. And it would be false to say I’d never considered him attractive. I could
find Sienna, and then come back to Cerulea with Jude and relax back into life
here. Have some babies. Read some chick-lit novels. Surf the odd wave between
babies. Live out my second life doing good for both Ceruleans and humanity. I
pictured myself in a white frock sitting on a cloud in heaven with a big gold
halo over my head. Saint Scarlett. Had a pleasant ring to it.

But beneath the shiny veneer, there was so much wrong with
that picture. Have babies I’d never raise? Spend year after year in one little
place? Do nothing much but mother and milk cows? Never be with anyone else,
ever again, but Jude? Be with
Jude
?

I pushed my trainers into the ground and pushed back a
little, setting the swing into a rocking motion, and I thought about what other
options I had. I imagined for a moment that I could get away: I could find some
way not to come back to the island, but to return to Twycombe. Skipping past
the happy reunion with Luke and Cara and the others, there were obvious
problems.

I couldn’t be around those I loved for too long, so could my
relationship with Luke even work?

I would want to settle in Twycombe, the place I loved, but
would I be free to do so? No doubt both Evangeline & Co. and the Fallen
would be out to take me for their own ends. How could I hold them off?

And then there was the fact that I was not Scarlett Blake,
just a girl, any longer. I was a Cerulean. According to Evangeline, I had a
duty to contribute to the continuation of our kind. I hated her means, but I
saw her point: if every girl Claimed ran away and refused to breed then
Ceruleans would die out. All the suffering people would endure without
Ceruleans to help them. If there were no Ceruleans, Luke would have died in the
car accident that claimed his parents’ lives, and Cara’s legs would always have
remained disabled. I thought of a dozen more Luke and Caras, a hundred, a
thousand
with no one to heal them. I felt sick.

Turning my back on Cerulea was selfish; that much was clear.
Even if I were to go out into the world myself and use my gift alone, I was
just one person, against the many I could have created. Could I live with
myself if I chose the life I wanted, the boy I wanted, at the cost of so many
others? A halo sat a lot more comfortably on the head than a cloud of darkness.

But Luke. True love. In the fairy tales, that was what
mattered most. In the fairy tales, the only acceptable ending was with The One,
not with The Other One Who’s Really Quite Nice But Doesn’t Make Your Heart Sing
Like The One. But then, in most fairy tales the heroine’s path was
straightforward: vanquish the baddie (actually, more like find some hot young
bloke to do the vanquishing for you) and then skip off into the sunset hand in
hand with The One. The heroine wasn’t faced with an impossible decision that
left her flailing about, lost, as I was.

I sighed and rocked and stared out to sea. It wasn’t going
to come, I realised: the shifting inside that indicated a decision. I wouldn’t
re-enter the hotel tonight full of resolve. I wouldn’t stand before Jude and
the others tomorrow with a clear plan for the future. Whatever course I was on,
I wasn’t yet ready to see its destination. It was maddening; what was I waiting
for? I had all the knowledge, and yet I was holding back as if something would
change. Some lightning bolt sent from heaven, perhaps. Blind, unfounded hope.
Idiot
.
The best I could hope for was that when we left the island – soon, so soon – I
would find the clarity that eluded me now.

I stopped rocking the swing and took three steps back, until
the seat was as high from the ground as I could push it, and then I lifted my
feet and took flight. I smiled at the sensation – that giddying, sickening pull
in the stomach that transported me right back to childhood when life was
simple. Automatically, my legs began a forward–back motion that sent the swing
higher and higher and higher. With each rise and fall, a little blossom
loosened and fell, so that soon I was flying in a kaleidoscope of petals.

It was right, I thought. This moment.
Mono no aware
.
The future would wait. For now, all that mattered was the creaking swing and
the fluttering blossom and the cooling breeze and the endless sky – these
things were beautiful.

But it was just a moment. And as with all moments, it
couldn’t last.

‘Scarlett. Here you are. I’ve been looking for you all over.
It’s getting late and Estelle’s having kittens – something about rollers. What
are you doing?’

‘Swinging.’

‘I see that. Why?’

‘I like it.’

‘And this is an essential night-before activity?’

‘Yes.’

‘O-kay.’

A long pause, and then:

‘Scarlett, can you stop? Just looking at you is making me
dizzy. It’s hard to talk to you like this.’

I sighed and lowered my feet until they were dragging across
the ground, slowing me. But not to the point of stopping. My little childish
rebellion.

‘What is it, Jude?’

‘I just wanted to check you were okay. About tomorrow. I
mean, if you’re not sure…’

‘What is there to be sure about? Go through with this…
thing. And then we can go find Sienna. It’s not like I’m going to give up on my
sister.’ The thought of it made me feel nauseous. Or maybe that was the swing.

‘I know. I just… I don’t like you being forced into it, like
this.’

‘No big deal,’ I said. I had to swallow before I added,
‘It’s meaningless, right?’

He said nothing, only looked at me with worried eyes, which
made me feel worse, much worse. So I kicked off again and pumped my legs to go
higher and higher and higher, so high it felt like I could just reach out and
touch the sky. But I couldn’t: there was an almighty crack, and then a colossal
crash, and then just blossom, blossom everywhere.

I heard a muffled curse somewhere close by, and then Jude’s
face appeared above me.

‘Scarlett – God, are you all right?’

‘The branch snapped.’

‘I saw that. Are you hurt?’

‘Father did warn me it would.’ The thought made me laugh. A
lot.