Chapter 50
Quill
Leaf of Wonderland
Unbound
Gustavo Santaolalla
“Please, Gravia,” Mama whimpered, grabbing my wrist. “You can’t leave me…” Her desperate grip tightened, and she banged her head against my thigh, wrapping both arms around me so that I was forced to stare at the greasy bird’s nest that was her hair. “Never.”
She squeezed as if I might actually disappear through the front door. For all eternity.
Even though I sometimes dreamed of it, I could never bring myself to do it. She was my mama. How could I leave her behind? Even though she had left me behind long ago.
“You're going to leave me, little butterfly... aren't you?”
With tears in her eyes, she looked up at me with a pained smile, clutching the fabric of the dark blue wool sweater I was wearing for two weeks now because it was the only piece of clothing that kept me warm since our electricity had been cut off.
Papa hadn't sent any money since he had lost the court case. And Mama couldn't manage her savings, except when it came to her beer.
“You're going to leave me just like he did.”
Her smile disappeared and she began to sob.
The stench of beer made me hold my breath. It stuck to her hands because she always filled the glasses too quickly, causing it to spill over the rim.
She pulled herself up on me, turning her gaze away from me as if it suddenly caused her pain, and I knew immediately how much she had already drunk.
Every drop was one too many.
“Mama...” I sighed and wanted to support her. “Let me take you to bed.”
Despite being only eleven years old, I was strong enough to support her. She was skinny. Whenever she took a shower, you could see every rib.
“Your father was always right.” She let her head sink against the wall, closed her eyes, and cried uncontrollably. “You ruined our lives…” A lump formed in my throat. “It's not even your fault...” Her next words turned into a deep sob. “And yet you ruined our lives...”
I could block out everything, absolutely everything. But whenever she drank too much and became someone else, I realized that I was the loneliest person on earth. That Papa had always been right.
No one would ever be able to love me.
They all wore masks. Either to make an effort with me, or to protect themselves from the darkness I left in their lives. But when I was truly myself, when I simply existed, their masks became too heavy and shattered at my bare feet.
Mama let me walk on shards every time she drank too much. And it hurt more than any shard of dishes Papa had thrown at me.
“I'm sorry, Mama.”
I wanted to leave, to get out of here. To play until my head arrived in Wonderland. But Mama grabbed my hand as I turned to walk away.
“I just wanted a simple life...”
She stroked my hand with her trembling ones, smiled desperately – her glassy eyes dark-circled, swollen – and staggered as if she were about to fall to her knees again, but managed to keep her balance against the wall.
“A girl I can weave flowers into her braids. One I can dress in beautiful rose-colored dresses. One that doesn't constantly scrape her knees on the pavement.”
That was too much.
I couldn't listen to her any longer, didn't want to cry and become weak in front of her.
I didn't want to become like her, even if I would be half her forever. Damned to not know which half of me I hated more.
I didn't want to hate Mama. But she hurt me. That was all I knew.
I spun around, but her grip tightened.
“They'll take you away from me if you don't stay here.”
“Mama...”
I wanted to calm her down, but she shook her head violently and dragged me down the hall.
“Come on. Be a good girl and go down to the basement.”
She stopped in front of the basement door and unlocked it with her usual movement, while a knot formed in my stomach.
She turned to me and smiled.
“Get me a beer, butterfly.”
With horror in my stomach, I slowly shook my head.
“No...”
“Gravia.”
Her gaze became serious when she realized that I knew what she was up to.
She would forget me. She would never let me out of there again.
“You can't lock me up.”
Overcome by my inner panic, I tore myself away from her and stumbled back.
“They're going to take you away from me!” she suddenly shouted at me, and I flinched, staring at the woman I didn't know.
She wanted to lunge at me, but I turned around, ran as fast as I could, and threw open the door that led to the dark garden, where the cool summer evening air greeted me.
“Gravia! Come back!”
I kept running, even though I knew she wouldn't follow me anyway because she hadn't left the house in weeks.
“Undankbares Miststück!”
Her unusual words brought tears to my eyes, but I still started climbing the walnut tree where my friends and I had built a cloud ship that we would soon fly through Wonderland.
The bark was wetter than usual. Too wet.
“Why did God punish us with you?!”
Her scream echoed through the house, through the garden, but when I looked around, I couldn't see her anywhere.
She had stayed inside, probably collapsing again, and I hated myself for leaving her behind.
I wanted to climb up to the next branch, already several meters above the ground, but my rubber boots slipped down the bark.
A shriek escaped me and the jolt was too violent for me to hold on to the branch above me.
I fell into the depths.
The impact was hard. Harder than usual.
I had never landed on my arm before.
Automatically, I rolled onto my side, letting the pain blur my vision, and finally squeezed my eyes shut with a loud sob.
My head burned from the inside, as did my arm. The rest of my body trembled with fire.
I wanted to get up, but I couldn't. Why couldn't I?
Shock pulsed through every inch of my body.
Sobbing quietly, I held my arm.
This pain...
I couldn't move it...
“Mama!” I screamed, again and again, but no matter how much time passed, she didn't come.
I screamed her name hundreds of times, staring at the open back door of the house until my vision finally blurred and I grimaced, sobbing.
My voice was hoarse, powerless.
I gave up and closed my eyes.
Lost Boy
Ruth B.
She wouldn't come. No one would come.
I squeezed my eyes shut, rolled onto the side of my aching arm, and it tore me apart even more, but I couldn't pull my arm to the other side. I had lost control over it.
Curling up, I screamed into the grass, cried until I was freezing and my crying turned into a shaky whimpering.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I tried to drift away. Into my world.
“Vincent...” I whispered, my voice breaking.
He immediately appeared behind me, knelt down, took off his blue coat, and put it over my freezing body.
If I believed hard enough, I would get warm.
I felt Vincent lie down behind me, hug me, and send warmth to the lump in my chest.
“I'm here, Tide. Everything will be fine.”
He stroked my back, my cheek.
“I'll keep you warm.”
Crying, I snuggled up to my only friend.
“I'll never leave you.”
He might not leave, but this wasn't his home. Not our home.
“When will you finally take me to Wonderland?”
“When you're ready.”
My heart pounding, I jerked upright, breathing hastily into the darkness.
My arm...
I could move it. Of course I could, because I was no longer in our old garden. I was at the Rydells'. And eight years had passed.
A creak at the door made me turn my head. But there was nothing there except the dimly lit hallway behind the slightly open door.
Taking a deep breath, I sank back into the pillow and looked up at the large window in the sloping roof, which brought me either the endless starry sky or the pleasant pattering of rain every night.
Today, the glass was fogged up, and I resisted the urge to stand on my tiptoes to draw figures on the fogged glass, as I had always done with my mother's car windows.
My breathing returned to normal.
A dream. As always. Just a dream... The only way for my most painful memories to catch up with me in the here and now.
They felt fresh, as if it had happened yesterday.
The next morning, the neighbors had found me. They had called the ambulance. The paramedics had diagnosed hypothermia and taken me to the hospital, where they had treated my broken arm.
Those had been the weeks when I had learned that only children with real friends got prettily painted casts.
And that my father, despite having lost custody, was permitted to visit me in the hospital to cover the costs, which my mother never found out about. I would never forget his silence and that devastating look.
Knowing that he had come there for me still haunts me to this day, filling me, even after all these years, with false hope. Confusion.
When I had come home with the cast a few days later, she hadn't even noticed that my arm had been in a sling, had just slapped me before running into the bathroom crying.
With a feeling of inner emptiness, I lost against my reason, slipped out from under the blanket, stood on tiptoe, and painted a butterfly on the skylight with my index finger before opening it, lying down again, and gazing at the stars.
My eyes became silent observers of the passing cosmos, and – as always when I looked at the stars and asked myself questions that I knew had no clear answers if you chewed on them long enough in your head – I felt Vincent's presence.
But this time I didn't dare turn my head toward him, because I didn't want to be disappointed by reality.
He often came to me when I had nightmares, telling me stories from Wonderland so that I could fall asleep again.
Dreams in which, despite all the darkness and brutality of this deceptively beautiful place, I found more reasons to fight than in this dreary reality, where, with the passing of human existence, everything seemed to gradually lose its meaning.
But today we were both silent.
He knew that his mere presence, his mere existence, was enough to calm something inside me.
And so we lay there, the two of us, looking up at the stars.
Two never-children.
Threnody
Goldmund
We lay there until the sun drowned the stars in a soft apricot sea and birds began to chirp outside, and at some point I caught myself desperately trying to think of happy memories.
Memories from this week, when I had wandered through the streets decorated with pumpkin lanterns at Oktoberfest with Lara and Thomas, the smell of baked powdered-sugar waffles with maple syrup and buttery pretzels in the air, streets filled with scary fairground rides...
When I could no longer bear the sight of my parents' faces in my mind's eye, I sat up, slid to the head of the bed, pulled my knees up, and took Batteries of Ink from the nightstand.
I opened it to the page where I had last made my annotations. Davian had allowed me to do so because he had said he no longer needed it and would have thrown it away anyway.
I smiled to myself, still in disbelief, because he would never have owned two copies of it if he disliked this book so much.
By accident, I opened the book a little too far back and something slipped out from between the pages.
A yellow autumn leaf.
My breath caught as memories flooded back.
It had been the day Davian had found out I was friends with Lara. The day I had first entered this house filled with joy and beautiful memories.
I had brought autumn with me. And Davian... had held on to it.
A trace of melancholic impermanence. Because that was all he was ever allowed to hold on to from me.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
He had wanted to hold on to me.
One day they tear your skin open,
the next they put a bandage on your wound.
One day they hold a knife to your throat,
the next they turn the knife on those who turn against you.
They hurt you. And yet they do you good.
And they repeat it. Over and over again.
They confuse you.
And it kills you.
Slowly.
– Blue