Chapter 36
My neighbour looked just like me. How was that even possible? What was she?
Fairy mirror
The mist had soured and spoiled, and the sky had curdled into thick clouds, casting the world in a foreboding, violet light.
I looked up at the symmetrical frontage of the Sgàthan Sìth cottages perched upon their tiny hill.
The bedroom windows stared down like hollow eyes; the shared awning over the front doors gaped open like the mouth of a corpse.
But it’s just a house, I told myself. Just bricks and stone and mortar and roof tiles and wooden beams and copper pipes.
I clutched my sore hand close to my chest. I couldn’t urge myself any further toward the house, not even for fear of all my belongings abandoned inside. I’d planned on packing and running, but now I couldn’t even bring myself to go in. Not after what I’d seen on the road.
But I couldn’t turn back either, couldn’t retreat to Carlinsrest to Fergus’s laughter, to the sneering children, to all the horrified faces, to Rowan’s pity. But I couldn’t stay here in the drive. She would be back soon enough and I couldn’t be here when she did.
I had to escape. I had to run.
I urged my feet to move. I didn’t care where. I turned a sharp right and marched away under the trees.
Once I’d elbowed my way through the thick criss-cross of younger branches, the going became a little easier and soon I was threading between tree-trunks, trampling the carpet of ivy beneath.
I sniffled pathetically as I walked. I felt like I was a child again and walking away from my parents in the supermarket to purposefully make myself lost, hiccupping slightly through the tears, arms crossed tightly across my pudgy chest. They’d laugh when I was brought back to them, usually by a concerned onlooker or a member of staff trying to be helpful.
Perhaps I never wandered far enough to really worry them.
Maybe they were never that worried about losing me at all. I always went back with them anyway.
I walked straight through a small thicket of bramble, thorns catching on my clothes and skin.
I used to think all children—at some level—wanted more love than their parents were able to provide.
That it was normal to grow up feeling you were loved, but only because someone had to.
To be dissatisfied with it. But to accept it anyway.
Because what else are you going to do? You’re not able to leave.
If there’re no bruises and your belly is full, what’s the harm? So, of course, I always went back.
I had that same sense now of wanting to run, to get lost on purpose.
Only this time, I didn’t secretly want to be found. I had no deep desire for the person I was walking away from to come and hunt me down.
Because it wasn’t just that dull ache, that hunger for something I couldn’t verbalise, that drove me out this time.
It was terror.
I walked deeper into the trees, vision foggy with tears, breath a rasping see-saw, the animal of my body heaving under the weight of me.