WALES 2022
I DREAMED OF THE trenches again. I often did.
The sour tang of blood and sweat. The scratchy coarseness of my damp uniform. The deafening sound of the sky being cracked down the middle like a ribcage. Ice-cold adrenaline peeling the marrow from my bones.
And then, her.
White hair, black nails, bayonet notched in the hollow of her shoulder.
This has gone on long enough.
What has? I would wake up screaming. What has gone on long enough?
The meaning was clear.
Evelyn and Arden, the perpetual cycle, the snake eating its own tail.
She knew the why . But the loose grenade had robbed me of the chance to finally glean answers. I had spent decades trying to parse who – or what – she was. A forest witch, a bog demon, some ancient god we had angered long ago. Someone with whom we had made a dreadful bargain.
In the fresh-dug grave in frozen Siberia, I had once again asked Arden why. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. And Arden had pressed his eyes shut, tears frozen like beads of glass just below his cheekbones. ‘Because of a deal made long ago.’
The white-haired, black-nailed woman was surely the being with whom we had made the deal.
But what were the terms? What had ever driven us to such a terrible fate?
And when would she find us again?
A week before my eighteenth birthday, Ceri agreed to come and pick me up at the house before we headed out for a coffee.
Despite it not being a real date, I spent almost an hour picking out what to wear, purely for the pleasure of it. Because, depending on how the date went, these could be my final hours as Branwen Blythe, and I was determined to squeeze all the possible joy out of them.
I had two huge antique armoires in my bedroom, handed down from my great-aunt when she’d packed up her life to travel the world. Mum and I had spent a whole weekend painting them a creamy duck-egg blue, replacing the worn brass handles with floral ceramic knobs in white and turquoise and pink. Both wardrobes were packed with thrifted clothes, that unmistakable dust-mote smell still lingering on every oversized lapel and age-stained petticoat.
Tucked beneath the bursting fabrics was the old vintage sewing machine that had once belonged to my grandmother. An original Singer, it was the bright, glossy red of a postbox, with the waxy sheen of a candy apple. I’d been obsessed with it, at the age of ten or eleven, painstakingly following simple patterns with bolts of wacky fabrics, imagining the high-end fashion line I’d have one day, the initials ‘B.B.’ hand-stitched on to labels and sewn into the necklines of glorious gowns.
My first pieces were bad , all clumsy hems and awkward tailoring, but I’d slowly and steadily improved until my creations became actually wearable. Tea dresses and waistcoats and pleated skirts, paired with my mum’s own knitted cardigans.
Then Gracie got sick. Then I couldn’t afford to waste my time on such trivialities when I had to devote every ounce of energy to the art of survival.
I touched a hand to the list of dreams in my pocket; a sheet of lined letter paper folded into a neat square.
Eventually I chose a poppy-red shift dress I’d found vintage shopping with Gracie, some white cowboy boots, a fur coat I’d raided from my great-aunt’s dusty attic boxes, and some chunky plastic sunglasses from a Claire’s bargain bin. An eccentric meshing of eras and styles, of all the different Evelyns I had been. And, always, red. My favourite colour, though I’d long ago forgotten why.
I went downstairs to find it was one of the rare days Mum was home instead of at the hospital. While it was nice seeing her perched at the kitchen island with a cup of tea, like in the before times, it was highly inconvenient for my twisted plan.
‘I don’t understand your clothes, Bran,’ said Mum at the sight of me, and I felt a traitorous pang of longing for my costumier mother in nineteenth-century Vienna. The chaotic warmth of the opera house, the scent of old fabric and perfumed pomades.
One would think having so many mothers in so many lives would have a diminishing effect, but my love for them never felt spread thin. Rather, it felt like a muscle, strengthened from centuries of purposeful use. Or maybe it felt easy because each new mother was born from a recycled soul I had loved before.
‘That’s all right,’ I replied cheerily. ‘You don’t have to. I dress for me.’
‘And I admire it. Back when I was your age, I cared so much what people thought of me. I let it stop me from wearing and saying and doing what I really wanted to. But you’re not like that. You’re so … assured. ’
That ’ s what a thousand years of existence will gift you , I thought, but I answered only with a warm, genuine smile. A glance down at my bonkers outfit.
A momentary thrill before I remembered I might die in these clothes.
‘Listen, Bran, before I forget … I think you should start seeing Dr Chiang again.’
At the mention of my old therapist, I paused in the doorway. ‘Why?’
She stared at me as though the question was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. ‘Because your father died a tragic death, and your sister has a life-threatening illness, and in order to save her you’re going to have to go through a tremendous amount of physical pain?’
She had a point, but my inner animal bucked against the idea. I’d cut my previous sessions with Dr Chiang short when I’d found myself almost spilling the details of my curious curse. It was incredibly difficult to talk about the trauma in my life without addressing the root of it all.
And yet grief was tucked into every corner of my life. The kitchen, for example, would never stop reminding me of my father. Though it had been ten years since he’d died, I could still picture him whistling as he peeled vegetables in the Belfast sink, his apron stained and floury.
Even now, a blade of longing carved through my chest, the acute sense of being robbed of something wonderful and warm and safe. The mental image of blood seeping out of his eyes, the crush of his organs and bones. My mother’s feral wails when she’d heard, Christmas music still playing in the background. The absolute unfairness of what had been taken, combined with the shuddering violence of the way it had happened.
I had lost a lot of people in a lot of lives, but that was one of the worst.
Until we meet again , I thought, resting a palm over my heart.
Maybe Mum was right. Therapy wasn’t such a bad idea.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘So, this Ceri boy.’ Mum sipped at her steaming mug of Earl Grey. She wore a hand-knitted navy cardigan over a flowery blouse, and her shoulder-length ginger hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell clasp. So mumsy . So unlike the Viennese tour de force of a parent who had shared my love of raiment. ‘Is he from a nice family?’
‘I don’t think he talks to them,’ I said vaguely.
I wondered if, by the same logic as my strengthened muscle, Arden’s familial bonds had become weak, atrophied, irritating spasms to be quelled whenever possible.
Mum frowned. ‘Why? That makes me suspicious.’
‘Something about his dad being an alcoholic and his mum being a controlling nightmare.’
Mum took another sip of tea, her small lips pursed like a field mouse’s. ‘Your dad always liked a drink, so he did. But I like to think I’m not too controlling.’
I laughed, crossing over to the biscuit jar by the kettle. ‘Are you joking? You’re the opposite. When I asked to go to a nightclub at the age of fifteen, you just laughed and told me to crack on.’
A smile spread across Mum’s face. ‘Well, I knew you wouldn’t get in. Better to let the bouncer be the bad guy than me.’
‘You came and picked us up, remember?’ I said, spraying biscuit crumbs all over the rough slate tiles. ‘And you brought a flask of tomato soup in case we were cold or hungry.’
There was a wistfulness to her expression. ‘How do you remember that?’
I smiled at her warmly. ‘I always remember the little things you do for us.’
Tears pricked at her eyes, and for once I didn’t feel the need to tell her off for it. ‘Love you, Bran.’
A lump bobbed in my throat. ‘Love you too.’
My phone buzzed with a text from Gracie.
can’t believe you’re out shagging while I’m dying in the hospital, how dare you honestly
As I chuckled and fired off a reply, Mum drained her tea, popped the mug in the sink and grabbed her handbag from the counter. ‘I’m going to nip to Waitrose and pick up a lasagne. Do you want anything?’
Thank god for that. She wouldn’t be here when Ceri arrived. A small mercy.
I shook my head.
‘All right. Well, good luck on your date, then. Don’t put out straight away. Or, if you do, wear protection.’ Her lips quirked mischievously, and it felt good to see her being playful for once.
I took in her familiar outline, the laughter lines framing her mouth, the gentle rounds of her hips, the scent of lavender and the sound of her humming the Frozen song long after Gracie and I had outgrown it.
The second item on my list of dreams: take her and Gracie to Lapland at Christmastime.
The lights would twinkle and the snow would flurry and we would sip at hot chocolate in clumsy mittens, and we would recapture the festive magic of our childhood, before Dad had died on Christmas Eve, before Gracie had got sick, before we’d stopped believed in flying reindeer and boots down the chimney.
The image steeled me as I prepared myself for what I was about to do.
What I had to do.