I really liked the painting, even though it made me feel tiny, and even though it was about something that happened in the Bible and I don’t know if I believe in those things. I’m still interested in them though, because they are very dramatic, like Coronation Street, and also like the news. Sometimes you talk about floods on the news, Miss Winter. Floods like the one in this painting. Floods are scary things because we cannot control them, apart from trying to stop climate change. My grandma doesn’t believe in climate change, though. She says we should pray for our souls, instead.
Sometimes I worry that my sister has two souls – one called Cath and one called Anna, and they’re having a battle inside of her. But I don’t know if this is scientifically possible. What do you think, Miss Winter? My sister says that she didn’t want to be called Catherine, because it’s a name my dad chose for her. She said that having that name made her feel lost at sea. She said she wanted to reinvent herself. She chose the name Anna because it is the same on both sides, and she likes balance. I asked Jewish Anna if she feels more balanced because of the way her name is written, instead of being called Catherine or something else. She thought hard about it and chewed on the end of her pencil, and then she said that she had never been called Catherine so she couldn’t really tell, which is fair enough, even if it is a hung jury.
What about you, Miss Winter? Were you born with your last name, or did you change it because you thought it would be a good name to have for your job? If you didn’t change it, do you think being born with it meant you were destined to talk about the weather? Is winter your favourite season? I would be very interested to know your thoughts on this. I don’t know anyone else called Jacob, so I’m not really sure what my name means or whether I am destined to become something specific. I will have to wait and see.
For my art project, I decided to draw a flooded world. I used a mixture of pencils and oil paint and watercolour because I couldn’t decide which one I liked best. I decided to put my sister in the painting. I put her right in the middle, lying on a raft on top of the waves. I only drew her as a stick person because I’m not very good at faces and because that way it was easy to make her look the same on both sides, like her new name.
Miss Hudson said that when we look at a painting, we are looking into our souls, and I hoped that when I looked at my painting, I would be able to look into my sister’s soul (or two souls, if that’s what she has) and finally understand who she is and why she’s changed, and why she feels lost at sea.
But when I finished the painting and looked at it, I just saw the colour blue, and all the wobbly lines, and I didn’t understand anything better. The reflection of the sky I drew in the water had stars in it, and these shone out like silver Smarties.
Yesterday, my mum told me that we are going to move into my aunt’s house for a while. When I asked her why, she said it was a long story and she will tell me about it soon. She says Cath-Anna will come and visit us during the summer but my dad will be left behind.
I am excited to move but nervous, too. Where do you live, Miss Winter? My aunt’s house is on top of a hill, and she has a cat. Once we move there, I will invite Jewish Anna round for tea and, if you say it isn’t going to rain, we will draw pictures of the sky sitting in our new back garden.
At the moment, I am writing this to you lying under my bed. My mum is packing up cardboard boxes and I am eating strawberry fruit gums. I will put one inside the envelope in case you are hungry. Are you hungry?
I will also include my painting, as a present. I hope you like it. Please take good care of my floating sister. I love her very much.
The world is a strange place, isn’t it, Miss Winter? I hope we get to enjoy it for a long, long time.
How are you today? Is the sun shining?
(I would say I am sorry for asking so many questions but I believe that questions are very important things.)
Yours sincerely,
Jacob Quinn
Plum Pie.
Zombie Green.
Yellow Bee.
Purple Monster.
When you grow up, who or what do you want to be?
Out on the road, Jack came across a man who said he’d buy his cow for a handful of magic beans. Five, to be precise. He said if Jack ran back home and buried them in his garden, a plant would grow there. A plant so tall it would make friends with the sky.
But what if Jack took those magic beans and planted them inside himself, instead?
Swallowed them down so they were hidden away inside him.
Growing, growing, glowing.
Poppy lies down and covers herself in green leaves.
‘Am I alive or am I dead?’ She giggles, trying not to move her mouth.
‘You’re both,’ I say.
‘Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong.’
She writhes on the ground like an animated rag doll. A sea of aquamarine.
Ivy’s lounging in the tree house, wearing sunglasses shaped like clouds.
Madame Honey wanders between the tents, covered in bees, ticking things off on her clipboard. She pulls out a tape measure and lines it along the shoots poking out from Clover’s torso. She scribbles down some numbers while Clover whistles, photosynthesising in the sun.
I count seeds in the palm of my hand.
One.
Two.
Tree.
OK, bad pun. Sorry.
This summer, when they collected us from the train station, Heath unfurled his hair, complete with twisting vines, and the buds swam along the path behind him like a bridal trail.
Jasmine used twenty face wipes to rid herself of the white paint clogging up her pores, and her green skin shone.
Daisy wouldn’t stop talking until the sun went down, and the young nocturnal ones sleepily chased their shadows around the lawn.
‘Welcome to this year’s Camp.’ Madame Honey’s smile was sickly sweet. ‘My, my, how big you’ve grown.’
On the first evening, we collected deadwood for a bonfire. We burned the coral petals Rose pulled from her mouth, presents from the plants growing quietly in her throat, and we told stories of our springs.
‘I’m working at the greengrocer,’ Heath told us. ‘Trying to save up money for a trip.’
‘Where to?’
‘I want to find the umdhlebe.’
‘The umdhlebe?’
‘It’s a poisonous tree that feeds on everything around it,’ Heath said. ‘It hasn’t been seen in two hundred years but I bet I could find it.’
‘Why would you want to find a poisonous tree?’ Ivy snapped, hanging upside down from the tyre rope swing.
‘Why not? I read a book that says botanists in South Africa found it, its soil fertilised by all the things it’s killed.’
‘Cheerful!’
‘What will you do with it when you find it?’
Heath looked a little embarrassed. ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘I guess I want to study it. See why it’s feared. Perhaps sit with it for a while.’
Rose coughed and a tide of petals fell into the flames.
In the smoke, I saw a lonely tree, the ground around it littered with skeletons.
Lily didn’t come back this year. No one got on at her stop.
We looked all over the train, including the dark, damp corners, where she sometimes liked to hide.
When we arrived, Madame Honey said: ‘Lily’s parents haven’t returned our calls.’
And we all visibly wilted.
Lily was one of the best of us.
At the age of eleven, her hair turned white overnight and she started humming funeral songs.
That’s the year they brought her here.
She always smelled of peppermint.