Perfectly Preventable Deaths

33 Water Horsetail

Drowning can be quick, but it feels slow. You cannot move, you cannot call for help. Your eyes are glassy. You may panic, hyperventilate. You try to swim, you can’t control your legs; your arms are flapping but it isn’t helping. In the end there’s nothing you can do to cheat your death.

What I feel here, right now, is something else. It’s stupid to compare it. So dramatic. But this morning there were three spots of blood upon my pillow. I think I must have coughed them in the night. When I woke, the first thing that I did was draw a breath. I drank in air like water. It tasted like new life.

Catlin is really sad, and also bitter. Lon hasn’t been around in several days. To make matters worse, Brian, in another parenting move learned from blogs written by stepdads with too much Internet, has decided to bring home a kitten. Catlin is supposed to love him, and by extension Brian.

‘This little scut was wandering around Jack Collins’s land,’ he announces, holding him up like flag of truce. Jack Collins is Charley’s uncle or cousin or something. He helps Brian put up fences and things, but I had not realised he was also a kitten dealer.

The kitten looks nonplussed. Its eyes are still milky blue and its stomach is very soft and fluffy. It should not be allowed out of the castle or Bob will surely eat it. I finger the orb inside my pocket.

‘I went up to talk about some things that need doing in the castle. And there she was. The only one of the litter left alive. Their mother abandoned them.’

He holds it out to Catlin, like a 99 on a sunny day. The kitten mews pitifully. Like, What exactly am I doing here? I’m small. Put me in a box. Leave me alone.

Brian continues talking.

‘I have purchased a litter tray and a small cat bed. We can keep it in the kitchen at first until it’s confident, and then transition it to other parts of the house.’

He clearly also has been learning from cat-dads with too much Internet. I resist the urge to pull up a chair and take out the popcorn. I am on Brian’s side. Brian is in the right here. Team Brian.

Brian is still holding the kitten out like he’s Rafiki, and we’re all the cartoon animals of the African plains. Catlin reaches out and his face is all, Yes, yes, drink the potion, but instead she just pokes it with her finger, and scowls, and even though she’s being a brat, I have never loved her more. I don’t want her to stop being herself. I just want her to be safe. I let out a small, sad sigh, and she moves her scowl from the kitten to me. Fair enough. I’m bigger. I can take it. Slightly. Sort of.

Brian puts the cat down on the kitchen table, beside the sugar bowl. Mam picks it up, plonks it on the floor and wipes down the place it sat with antiseptic spray. She has pure I wish you had told me about this, love face. Oh, Brian. I pour myself a mug of tea. I kind of want to cuddle the kitten, but I’m worried that will look like I was in on the plan to put a fluffy bandage on a Lon-shaped wound.

‘I hate cats. Which is a fact a parent would know.’ Catlin has chosen to spend more time with us this week, so we can ‘actively feel the fire’ of her hatred. She glares at Brian who, I notice, has combed his hair in a slightly different way. He must have taken what she said to heart.

‘I think he’s cute,’ I say. I touch the kitten’s ear. He flinches and lets out a mewp of surprise.

‘Maybe that’s because you’re going to be a cat lady who dies alone in an apartment that smells of cats, surrounded by cats who are secretly delighted because they always wanted to eat you all along for being awful.’

‘Catlin!’ Mam exclaims.

‘You know I’m right, Mam. Who’d fall in love with her? She betrays people because she’s jealous that they’re soulmates.’ There is a pause, and Catlin moves her gaze across the room. ‘I’m talking about me and Lon.’

‘We know,’ Brian says. ‘You talk of little else. And I am tired of it. I think I’ll call her Bridget.’

‘No,’ I say, taking the little creature from Brian and plonking him on my lap. ‘Look at his tiny kitten junk. His name is clearly Button, because he’s tortoiseshell and shiny.’

Brian smiles at me. Puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Button,’ he says. ‘I like that, Maddy.’

Mam smiles too. ‘It suits him.’

I feel a warm wetness bloom onto my leg. It takes a beat to work out what it is.

Catlin laughs her head off. ‘Serves you right. You don’t support true love, then you get pissed on. I wish I had my phone. Lon would love this.’

‘Shut up,’ I tell her, putting Button on the floor. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

I peel the tights off, lash them in the sink. I don’t want urine in my laundry basket. I crank the shower up, and step inside. It’s steamy-warm, running down my back. I wash my heavy hair. I scrub my face. I squeeze a quarter-bottle of shower gel on my poor disgusting leg. Button is cute, I think. He won’t fix anything. But maybe he’ll give Mam a thing to do. Train him, feed him, mind him. He’s small and weak. He’s such a little thing. All bones and fur, there’s hardly any flesh. Just little scraps. A warm slice of ham all stuck together, purring. And maybe Catlin will like him in the end.

I already do. I mean, obviously it’ll be a while before he gets lap access again. A girl’s got to have a code. But Mam and Brian didn’t want to see my reaction to the kitten at all. They were all focused on Catlin and her drama. I get that Lon is the worst and also dangerous. But I was being groomed by an actual witch for a bit and no one even noticed. I literally got in her van. OK, it was a car, but even so.

Everyone’s concerned with Catlin’s secrets. Ignoring mine. I think of the dead girls on the mountain. Their bright bones in the soft grass in the night. The parts of fox that gave beneath my feet. Catlin felt it too, the sense of dread there. Her useless prayers upon the bloody earth.

I look outside my window, at the trees. A lush, soft shape. An owl. A barn owl. I wrap the towel around me. It swishes past. I read somewhere that owls have special claws. When they grasp at you, they feel your heartbeat pulsing through them. They won’t let go until they sense the stop.

There’s something in the garden. I feel it wrong a while before I see it. Something’s moving slowly through the shrubs. Not trying to hide. It’s something tall and thin. A shadow-man. The twinkle of a phone screen. I hear a buzz begin in Catlin’s room. I open the adjoining door. She’s at the window, staring out and smiling. Her hand is busy, working at the latch. It doesn’t budge.

‘Fuck off, Madeline,’ she snaps.

No chance of that.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘The window’s broken,’ she sighs. I see her skin whiten and the bones push at the flesh from how hard she’s working to open it.

‘Let me help,’ I say.

‘You’ve done enough,’ she growls, but moves aside.

My hands press at the frame. And I see Lon’s form below, his head tilted up towards the window, staring. I startle, still my hands.

‘Madeline, I’m all the way up here. What do you think he’ll do? Stab me with a really, really, really long knife?’

The window’s jammed, even with my help.

‘I can’t,’ she mouths. ‘I love you.’

He raises his hand aloft, drifts back into the dark. We watch until the forest swallows him up.

‘Did Mam give you your phone back?’ I ask.

‘None of your business.’ She pauses, and her face turns wild and bright. ‘He loves me, Mad. He told me so at lunchtime. Finally. I just wanted to put it into words. To tell somebody.’

So happy now, remembering. It must have been when she went for a smoke or to the bathroom. How did I miss it? We were at school together all day long. My brain is twisting, trying to work it out. Lon worming his way into her life. Burrowing, like a parasite through flesh. How could we see him so clearly underneath the window, in the dark? He’d have to be much taller than he is for that to work. I mean, that’s science.

‘Catlin?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you still mad at me?’ My voice comes out so vulnerable. I hate it. I hate how much I need us to be friends.

‘Of course I am. You’re kind of dead to me,’ she says.

I try not to react. It’s what she wants right now, not what she needs. I look at her and think, I’m here for you, my twin, I’m here. I’m here.

‘It was a horrible thing you did, betraying us like that. You tried to break our hearts. But it made us stronger. Did you see him looking up like that? I mean, it’s like he knew what I was saying, like he heard me. Even though he couldn’t. That’s how in tune we are.’

Barn owls rely on noises made by prey. They search until they locate them. Soft and white and smaller than you’d think. But they will find you, razor claws and all. Pluck you up to carry, kill and eat. Catlin’s brushing her hair; it ripples down her back. It’s grown since we moved here. Things have happened and they’ve changed us both.

‘Do you not worry though, Catlin?’ I ask. ‘That if he hurt a girl, he could hurt you? And with the Helen thing. I mean, can you see where I am coming from, at least a little?’

‘With another boy, I maybe would. But, Madeline, it’s Lon.’ She says his name as though it settled everything. ‘I wish that you would just let me be happy.’

‘But people said –’

‘What people?’ Her voice is scornful. ‘Was it Charley? Oona?’

‘A few people,’ I say. I sit on the edge of her bed. She’s at her altar, rearranging candles, little Marys. There are over twenty of them now. She’s obviously been raiding the castle. She holds one in her hand and strokes its hair.

‘Charley hates Laurent,’ Catlin tells me, ‘because he turned her down and she hooks up with everyone. She begged him once when she was really drunk and he said no because he didn’t fancy her and also it felt wrong. And then she started this rumour about him and Helen. Taking the worst thing that ever happened to him and turning it into a weapon to use against him. Lon is one of the good ones, Mad.’

I don’t believe her but I really want to. Her face is all patchy, eyes filling up again. Tears splash onto the Mary. She puts her down, picks up the wizened skull. Her mascara running just a little.

‘And Oona just hates men because she’s gay.’

I jolt at those words out of her mouth.

‘Excuse me? That is not a thing at all.’ My voice is almost spluttering.

‘It is a bit. Lon told me. With lesbians, they resent not being straight and often take it out on the men around them. Spreading vicious rumours and so on.’ Her tone is his, but that is no excuse for what she’s saying.

‘That’s bigoted, Catlin.’ My voice is colder, stronger. How dare she parrot hateful things like this? The sister that I knew would never, ever …

‘Sometimes bigoted things can be true. Stereotypes exist for a reason. I mean, I wouldn’t say it to Oona like that. But it makes sense. I mean, when Lon explains it.’ Her voice is calm. She wipes her eyes a bit. ‘I can’t believe he looked up at my window. It’s really romantic, isn’t it?’

The subject has been changed. But not for me. I think of what I’ll have to tell her some day. It just got harder. I won’t forget this. She hasn’t noticed I’m not even listening. What does she even think of me at all? The things she said about me in the library. She fully, fully meant them at the time. I feel my hands moisten and the back of my neck tense. How could she ever, ever …?

‘It can’t be true, Madeline.’ Her voice is quieter now. It’s more like hers.

‘Mamó said things too though,’ I say. ‘And Brian. Lon hates it when you talk to other men. He watches through your window. Visits in your dreams. You sounded like him there, the things you said. They aren’t what you think. It makes me worry.’

‘Worry away,’ she says. ‘You’re always worrying about stuff anyway, with your salt and your leaves and your poking into other people’s business. Why can’t you let me be happy? It’s hard for me too. I won’t always be around to protect you. I’ve fallen in love and eventually I’ll go away. We’re growing up, Madeline. Things can’t always be the same forever. You need to let me have this.’

She’s shifted back, her eyes bright. She’s sweating, holding a little skull, fingers twisting round and round and round the yellowed cranium. Some of the jawbone is missing, I notice. It takes so little force to break a girl.

‘I thought that Brian gave it to the guards?’ I say.

‘It might be another one … or something …’ she says. ‘I found it back inside the trunk again. Goodnight, Madeline.’

She wants me gone, and so I leave her there, still clutching at a part of someone’s corpse. Organise things, clamber into bed. Nothing was ever proven. It’s not enough for me to feel she’s safe. Who says that though, about the man they love? They couldn’t prove it doesn’t mean it’s lies. I think of Mamó feeding meat to the raven. The smooth and shining thing inside the beak. The salt. The mint. The jars in the moonlight. And the fox. I think about the fox.

Even if my life goes according to plan, if I work hard, do well, I can’t fix everything. Lon’s big hands on Catlin’s little arms. Digging in. His face against her face. I can’t just walk away from who I am, from who I choose to be. I cannot be a witch. I can’t choose magic. It is over now. But in my stomach, something stirs and flutters. And it tells me that I’m wrong. Things unfinished widen and they grow. In spite of me. In shadow and untrained.

Magic feels more emotional than scientific. It’s like a series of escalating inklings that end in an outcome, possibly a desired one, but sometimes a surprise. I’ve been wondering recently why I have to collect things at all. I always feel as if I have to keep Mam and Catlin safe. And maybe I always did. But from what? Boyfriends, husbands, colds and flus and thieves. The world’s a terrifying place all by itself, without the risk of monsters, magics, Gods.

I look at my small hands, my wide and stubby fingers stretching out. The gape of bone that strains beneath the skin. So many horrors underneath the surface of a person. So many things that we can choose to be.