A Girl Called Owl Read online

  ‘I made soup!’ she says, as if it just came to her. ‘Let me finish here and we’ll eat . . . Do you have any homework?’

  ‘Yesss,’ I sigh, getting out my maths books. I have my own desk up here, adjoining hers. I sit opposite her, notice a few grey hairs among all the black as she lowers her head to her work. She’s got a pencil behind one ear and a smudge of charcoal on her cheek, and she must have dressed in a hurry: her jumper is inside out. I watch her sketch for a while. There’s something magical about the way it all emerges. Clever hands. I look down at my own. They’re the same shape as hers. Broad palm, long fingers.

  I need to ask her. Mallory’s right – I need to know.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  She doesn’t look up. I take a deep breath, but I don’t know where to begin. My chest tightens as I imagine the words coming out, tangling as I try to make her understand. I’ve asked so many times, and she’s never given me a real answer. How can I convince her that I need to know now? I go to blurt it out but it just seems too big, too important. I don’t know where to begin.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She does look up then. I busy myself finding my calculator.

  ‘Ah, maths,’ she murmurs. ‘Should I find you a tutor, Owl? Mallory’s mother said something about a tutor . . .’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Let’s work.’

  It’s late by the time we get to the soup. She got lost in the sketches and I found myself drawn into the winter world she was creating, a world like the one she told me of so many times, when I was a kid and still believed in things like magic.

  It was dusk when they came to a new horizon. The land dipped away below them and skeletal trees opened out on to a broad valley, where a dome nestled into the lower reaches of an enormous mountain range. He looked at her, and then the silence was broken by a howl that made ice fall from the branches of the trees. Her ears rang with the shock of it, and she turned, looking for the source of that desolate, yearning sound that warned of danger.

  Her companion started beside her, and if there was a spell that had woven them together for their long journey it was broken by that sound. He looked at her, his eyes afraid.

  ‘The wolves of winter. Go!’

  He thrust her forward, down the slope to the valley. She scrambled and slipped on soft snow until she was at the bottom, and when she looked back he was standing with his back to her, five wolves before him. They stood shoulder to shoulder, as tall as he, their grey fur rippling in the wind, blue eyes sharp as they looked from her to him.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘She is my guest.’

  ‘She is not fay. We do not like it. She will bring danger.’

  ‘She is not a danger. Let me have one day – I have never had company here. Let me know this, and then she will return to her own place.’

  The wolves stood silent, and she could see even in their stillness the power that had been built into those muscles. She could imagine the hunt. The silent, terrible determination, the speed, the stealth.

  ‘At our howl she must be gone. We give you one day. And be mindful. It is not of the natural order of things. Danger comes of this, you will pay for it one day.’

  He spread his arms as if helpless and they lowered their heads. And she marvelled at him. The power in his own limbs, the way he held his head. His own stillness and silence matched theirs; he was no man she had ever seen the like of before.

  It’s dark when I wake and Mum doesn’t believe too much in heating so the flat is freezing. I put thick socks and a hat on before I even get out of bed, wrapping myself in my quilt and stumbling over to the window.

  It was a night of dreams. Of wolves howling, and blue fingers that drew frost on windows. Of snow-covered mountains and Alberic’s strange copper eyes. And now, when I look out of the window, it’s like the world was with me. There are no wolves, thank goodness, but on every surface in the darkened street, every rooftop, lintel and tree, is a fine layer of frost. The cars sparkle clean and white beneath a pearly sky, and only a single set of footprints marks the glittering pavements, still scattered with autumn leaves now curled and frozen. It’s all so quiet, and so beautiful. Somehow, I guess through Mum’s stories, winter has always held magic for me. All the dirt and grime hidden beneath layers of ice and snow. Anything seems possible.

  My stomach rumbles. Porridge. That’s what I need.

  I drag the quilt with me into the kitchen. The kettle’s on and Mum’s looking out of the window herself, a faraway look on her face.

  ‘It’s settled properly today,’ she says. ‘Yesterday was the first, but this morning is glorious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Glorious,’ I say, shuffling to the cupboard and pulling out the oats. A few spill on the floor. ‘But I do wish we had a microwave. Or heating.’

  ‘The heating is on, and here, I’ll do the porridge.’ She takes the oats from me. ‘You make the tea. Could you not find a jumper? The quilt is a little cumbersome, no?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say, tucking it around myself and shuffling to get mugs and milk. ‘Cosy.’

  ‘You know it’s mostly in the mind,’ she says. ‘You start to shiver and your body tenses and then, even if you’re not actually cold, your mind thinks you are.’

  ‘I am actually bodily cold,’ I say, pouring boiling water over the tea bags, wondering what would happen if Mum ever saw my hands covered in frost. Was it real? Could it happen again, just like that?

  ‘Goodness, Owl, you’re going to scald yourself,’ Mum fusses, coming over as I struggle to hold up the quilt while stirring the tea and fretting silently. ‘Give me that.’ She whisks the quilt away.

  ‘Hey!’ I jump, dropping the spoon. Mum slings the quilt over the back of a kitchen chair and turns back to the porridge, and I think she’s saying something but I can’t hear her because my skin is screaming at me, tightening as a pale, glittering something sweeps up from my fingertips to my shoulders. I can feel it, curling around the back of my neck and spreading over my scalp, like steel tendons wrapping around me. I look from myself to Mum, not breathing, not moving an inch. It’s happening. Right now. Almost as if I predicted it. What do I do? Call out to her? Run? Stand here like a statue until it passes? Will it pass? What is this?

  The room darkens around me and it feels like time has stopped, like I’m stuck in some kind of alternate place where everything is magnified. I notice cracks in the floor tiles that I’ve never seen before, the pencil marks up the wall where we’ve measured my height over the years. The porridge bubbles and sputters, an avalanche of sound that threatens to choke me, and Mum’s just standing there, in our normal kitchen in our normal world, gesticulating with the spoon as she keeps on talking, but if she turned . . . if she turned, what would she see? Would she scream? I imagine the spoon falling from her hand, the porridge boiling over, her eyes widening with shock and fear. And there’d be no going back. Nothing would ever be normal again, if she saw this. I look down at myself again, hoping that I imagined it, caught up in the bloom of new winter. But, as I watch, little flower-like crystals start to spread over my forearms.

  They’re beautiful.

  They’re madness.

  I snatch the quilt from the chair, fling it over myself and scarper to the bedroom, shutting the door and leaning against it, a hot sob bursting out.

  I lower the quilt slowly, taking deep breaths, looking down at myself with dread. But my skin is normal again. Normal and cold, with goosebumps. I sit on the bed.

  What was that?

  It looked like frost. Was it frost? How can it have been frost, on my skin, just like that? Surely such a thing just doesn’t exist – has anyone, ever, in the history of the world, been able to freeze themselves? I’ve never heard of it. It’s impossible.

  ‘It’s like something from one of Mum’s stories,’ I tell the owl on the bedpost. It’s not a good thought.

  ‘Stupid,’ I say out loud.

  The owl stares at me balefully with i
ts round wooden eyes and offers no reassurance.

  ‘Owl? Are you coming?’ Mum calls.

  ‘Yes,’ I call back, grabbing my heaviest jumper.

  ‘I imagined it,’ I say to the owl. ‘That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Does it?’

  The owl blinks with a little dry snapping sound.

  I flinch away, my breath catching in my throat, and then slowly, skin creeping, lean in towards it.

  ‘Did you blink?’ I whisper.

  It doesn’t answer. Obviously. I stare at it for a little longer, until my eyes ache and my head starts to spin. Then I let myself breathe again. It doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything. It’s a wooden owl, for goodness sake! Mum calls again and I make my way back to the kitchen. I won’t think about it. I won’t think about anything.

  And if Mum notices anything’s wrong, I’ll demand some proper answers about my father. That will throw her off.

  After porridge, and thankful that Mum is still a bit wrapped up in her new project, I spend five minutes on Google, keeping half an eye on the completely ordinary non-moving wooden owl. I feel like I’ve lived about a thousand years already this morning and the day has only just begun. Frozen skin, blinking owls – what next?

  Person getting frost on skin: nothing but stuff about frostbite, with some really gross pictures of feet.

  Frozen person: all about cryogenic science, freezing people to bring them back to life.

  Frost on skin: some weird beauty treatments and something about uremic frost which is connected to quite bad kidney disease. So then I look up kidney disease, and I don’t have that: I’d be really sick and there would be other symptoms.

  I feel fine.

  And the frost isn’t even there now. If that was even what it was. Which it wasn’t, because things like that don’t happen to human beings.

  By the time I get to school I am in no mood to deal with anything else. I just about manage to keep it together for the morning, with Mallory shooting me concerned looks and Alberic’s strange presence needling me. I keep my head in my books, do the best listening I have ever done in all the lessons, and then manage to sit at a table with Conor at lunchtime so there’s no chance for private conversation; he’s too busy trying to steal crisps from Mallory and moaning about Alberic, who thankfully is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘The guy’s a proper freak,’ he says, as if Mallory and I had asked. ‘Won’t talk to anyone, just mooches about on his own, all weird and intense. He’s probably been transferred for doing something morbid.’

  ‘Like what?’ someone asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Conor, flicking his hair out of his eyes. ‘Like eating the dissection toads, or something.’

  Eeyuch. I tune out and concentrate on trying to stomach my tuna sandwich. Suddenly it tastes toady and disgusting.

  ‘Owl,’ Mallory says finally, catching up with me as we head towards geography. ‘What is going on with you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say with a smile.

  ‘You are so not. What is it? Did you ask your mum about your dad? Did she tell you?’

  ‘No, and no.’

  She corners me, pushing me up against the lockers while people swell around us, her small face determined. She is small, Mallory. A head shorter than me, brown hair pulled neatly back from her face. Her uniform is always pristine, unlike mine.

  ‘Mallory!’

  ‘I’m worried. You’re not being yourself.’

  I feel the confusion of everything build behind my eyes while she watches me, concern growing on her face. But it’s not like a normal problem, is it, where you tell your best friend and then she says something that somehow makes sense and fixes it? It’s not a crush, or a row with your mum. What could she say? What could she do?

  ‘Owl, please . . .’

  ‘You’d think I was crazy. And it isn’t even anything anyway.’

  She shrugs. ‘So tell me about the nothing. Be crazy. That’s fine. At least I’ll know about it.’

  ‘Not here,’ I say, as someone bumps into us and I notice Alberic heading towards the classroom, his Mohican standing out a mile. ‘After school?’

  ‘Fine. And you’ll tell me everything?’

  I nod.

  ‘And in the meantime stop worrying. Whatever it is, it’ll be OK.’

  I do love Mallory. I’m not sure she can fix this, but I know she’ll try.

  ‘So basically what you’re saying is that you have some sort of magical frost power.’

  ‘It’s not magic!’ I yelp, folding my arms. ‘It doesn’t actually do anything . . . and I probably imagined it anyway.’ I shouldn’t have said anything. Talking about it with her makes it feel more real.

  ‘But you don’t really think that, do you? You wouldn’t be worrying about it so much if you did. Why don’t you give it a try? See if you can show me?’ She’s trying to be kind but I can tell she’s having trouble with the idea. Mallory has quite expressive eyebrows and they’re doing a lot of expressing right now.

  We’ve just got to the lane by her house and there’s nobody else around, so it might be worth a try, but I don’t actually know how it happens. It’s like a sneeze, or a personal sort of storm; it just creeps up on me. I try to explain that to Mallory but she’s determined.

  ‘So, the first time was when I teased you about Alberic, and the second time was when your mum took your quilt away . . . I don’t know, is it something about surprise, or body heat? Like, if I snatch your hat off right now . . .’ She whips it away and throws it over her shoulder, standing back and watching, her eyes bright. ‘No?’ she asks after a minute, when nothing has happened.

  ‘No.’

  She picks up the hat and hands it back.

  ‘Well, whatever’s going on, it obviously doesn’t feel like playing right now.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m making it up?’ I breathe out slowly, my chest aches from holding it in. I’ve been really worried about it ever since I promised I’d tell her. I didn’t know how I’d say it all, or how she’d react, and then there was this awful fear that maybe it would manifest and freak her out, or do something terrible like turn her into an icicle.

  ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘I just think there must be some logical explanation we haven’t worked out yet. Does it hurt, when it happens?’

  ‘Not really. Just feels weird.’

  ‘And you’re not going round hurting anyone else, so there’s no big emergency. We’ll work it out.’ She looks at me a little dubiously, then her eyes brighten. ‘Maybe it has something to do with your dad!’

  ‘Like what, he’s a snowman?’

  I mean to laugh when I say it, but it doesn’t really come out that way, because I’m not finding it that funny. Visions of creatures hiding in the shadows, ice on my skin, it all feels so real, and yet how can it be, really?

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Mallory says as we start walking again. ‘It’s probably just because it’s got so cold, and you’re tired and worried about things. Maybe it’s some kind of static, or a weird skin condition you’ve inherited, or stress making you shiver. But you should get a proper answer from your mum about your dad, even if he’s not a snowman. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I say, mostly just to satisfy her. Movement flashes in the corner of my eye, and I turn sharply towards the horse chestnuts that lean their long limbs over the wall from the graveyard. I half expect to see that awful grey creature nestled there, staring at me, but it’s just leaves drifting from the grey branches into the alley. I plaster a smile on my face as I turn back to Mallory, hoping she hasn’t noticed.

  ‘Speak later?’

  She grimaces. ‘Family evening. Probably won’t get the chance. But I’ll see you in the morning. If we both survive till then!’

  I watch her go, feeling a bit envious.

  I know it’s mean, she really does hate these family evenings. But right now, the idea of being bought pizza and ice cream and sitting with both parents in your n
ormal house, with your normal skin on, while they ask you about your day sounds pretty good.

  Usually, when I’m feeling down, I listen to some music, do a bit of drawing or talk to Mallory. But tonight none of that’s working. I avoided Mum when I got in, just called hello upstairs and came into my room. The idea was to do some sketching and lose myself in that, but I’m too agitated; can’t settle. The owls I’m drawing are all lopsided and weird-looking, and honestly I’m a bit fed up with owls right now. Mallory’s having her ‘family evening’ so she’s unavailable. It’s probably lucky actually, all I’d do is moan and then feel bad about moaning.

  ‘Owl!’ Mum’s voice interrupts my thoughts. ‘Come, my love, I’ve made us a lovely daal.’

  Daal is lentils.

  I cannot tell you how much I loathe lentils.

  Mum dresses them up in all sorts of guises: lentil lasagne, lentil stew, lentils in muffins (they’re a special kind of horror) and of course the daal, and it doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that I don’t like them, she just keeps on making things with them in her own special way. It’s as if she thinks one day I’ll turn around and say, ‘You know what, Mum, I was wrong all along. Aren’t these lentils luscious?’

  I am never. Going. To say that.

  I push my chair back from my desk and storm to the kitchen.

  We have a small flat. My room, Mum’s room, sitting room, kitchen. Bathroom. The studio in the attic. Anyway, it doesn’t take me long to get to the kitchen. She’s dishing up the daal. It’s dark out now, and she’s lit tealights all along the kitchen worktops and on the table.

  ‘Why don’t we have family evenings and order pizza and ice cream and talk about how my day was at school?’

  Mum turns to me. She’s wearing small gold hoop earrings and they glint as she moves.

  ‘Family evenings?’

  ‘Yes! Special ones, where you make an effort to find out what’s going on with me.’

  ‘But I already know what’s going on with you, Owl – every evening is a family evening!’