The Lost Girl

4

Story



We get off the train in Lancaster and walk to Sean’s house. It takes us ten minutes, across a bridge, down two cobbled roads, and onto a street lined with old, pretty houses. Sean leads me to the third house from the top of the street, fishing a set of keys from his pocket. I stare at the house in interest, marveling at the fact that in all the years I’d known Jonathan, I’d never seen where he lived. Where Sean lives. Or Erik, or Ophelia. When they enter my world, they leave theirs behind.

I hope Sean’s mother’s not home. I always got the impression, from things Jonathan would let slip, that she doesn’t like me.

I’m sure she adores Lucy.

Something funny happens to my throat when I step into the house and smell the faint scent of cigars. Even nine months after his death, it feels like Jonathan is still here.

It reminds me of those late evenings at the cottage, when he would sit on the steps with his cigar and Ophelia would sit next to him and fish for a cigarette in her bag and the smell of smoke would waft into the house and mingle with Mina Ma’s hand cream and the tea brewing in the kitchen. And I’d hover in my pajamas outside the door, listening to them talk quietly about grown-up things. Now and then I would hear Erik laugh at something one of the others said. I always waited for that sound. If Erik was laughing, it meant nothing was wrong.

And one day, just like that, the cigars stopped wafting in through the door and it was only the three of them left. And the sound of their voices was different, no longer an old soothing lullaby but something new and, at first, strange.

It’s been a long time since I’ve missed Jonathan this fiercely.

“I know,” says Sean, like every thought is written clearly in my expression, “I can never walk in without it hitting me either. I think my mum lights his old cigars sometimes.”

“It must be hard letting him go.”

“I don’t think anyone ever really lets go of the people they love,” he says, putting his keys down in a big bowl by the door. “You’re living proof of that, aren’t you?”

“But is that the right thing to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s no right answer.”

I think about that. “No, I guess not.”

“Anyway,” says Sean, gesturing vaguely at the room around us, “this is home. We—” He cuts himself off, watching my eyes drift across the bookshelf and settle on one volume in particular.

“Don’t even think about it.”

It’s the novel Frankenstein, and it’s utterly forbidden and it’s so beautiful I want to snatch it off the shelf and read every last word.

“You can’t expect me not to think about it when it’s right there staring me in the face.”

“I can hide it if you like,” says Sean, unmoved by my piteous, pleading eyes. “You can’t break that law. You are not allowed to read it. The Weavers would have my head if I let you. And God knows what they’d do to you.” He crosses the room and plucks the book off the shelf. “So you’re pronouncing it E-va, then? Not A-va?”

A terribly unsubtle attempt to change the subject, but I let it go. “She was more of an Eva than an A-va. And I am too, I think.”

He cocks his head at me. “I think so too. I can’t wait to see Mina’s face when you tell her.” He grins wickedly.

I stick my tongue out at him, but have to admit I’m slightly anxious about Mina Ma’s reaction. Naming myself goes against everything that is expected of me. How will Mina Ma and Erik and Ophelia take to that?

“We have another half hour before the next train,” says Sean. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” I say, still eyeing Frankenstein.

“I’ll put some tea on.”

He leaves, taking the book with him. He knows I have few scruples when I’m curious.

While he’s out of the room, I look around. At the magazines piled neatly on the coffee table and the books stacked in order on the shelves. The house is tidy, but not pristine; it looks lived in. On the mantelpiece above the fire, lined up, are framed photographs. A younger Jonathan and a woman with blond hair on their wedding day. Baby Sean. Jonathan and Sean by the seaside. Sean and a group of boys in soccer shirts. There’s so much in Sean’s life that he leaves behind to come to us. He has given up a great deal, all that time he could be a normal kid, all that time he could spend with Lucy or his friends.

I hear him come in behind me, the teacups clinking in his hands, but I don’t turn around. “Why do you come?” I ask quietly.

I feel him approach, his voice by my ear. “Because he asked me to.”

This is so surprising, I turn. I notice he hasn’t got any tea for himself, just milk. Sean loves cold milk.

“Jonathan asked you to take his place?”

Sean nods. “When he got too sick to work, he asked me to go instead. He didn’t know what kind of guardian another replacement might be. He worried you’d get someone who was unkind, who would tell the Weavers every time you did something wrong. Ophelia’s supposed to, but we both know she doesn’t, and Dad was afraid someone else might. He thought I was your best chance.”

“That doesn’t seem fair, to ask you that when he was so ill and he knew you wouldn’t refuse.”

“I could have refused.”

I smile. “But you didn’t. You never would have.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds, anyway,” he adds. “He only asked me to come until he died. He said, ‘When I’m gone, you can quit if you want. But you might find you don’t want to leave her.’”

“But you never quit.”

“No,” he says, “I stayed.”

I watch him with wide eyes.

“Why?”

“We should go,” he says, looking past me at the clock, “or we’ll miss the train. Drink your tea.”

I want to push the question, but I don’t. My nerves feel wobbly, and I drink the tea quickly to soothe them.

“Eva,” says Sean.

The sound of my new name is thrilling, and I look up at him, my skin as hot as the tea.

“I don’t agree with what they do to you,” he says. He lifts my wrist and turns it over to reveal the small, delicate stretch of skin where my tattoo will go. “But I like you a lot more than I hate this.” His fingers feel so light against my wrist, it might be my imagination. My pulse throbs faster under his thumb.

“Don’t,” I say unsteadily, pulling my wrist away.

He drops his hand. “I didn’t mean . . .”

Of course he didn’t. Why would he have meant anything by it?

“I know.” I force an easy smile, but it comes out a bit twisted. “I felt one of those static-shock things, that’s all.”

He doesn’t point out how lame that sounds. “Okay,” he says simply, “ready to go?”

It’s still light out when we get back to Windermere, the streaky pinkish-gold light that means the day is ending. The sky looks like it’s melting.

I check my watch. It’s almost seven. It’s starting to get dark earlier. I shove my hands in the front pockets of my jeans to keep them warm. It’s not as easy as it used to be in my old jeans: these are new, in the skinny style that Amarra recently discovered.

We turn the corner and are less than a hundred feet from the cottage when I feel Sean’s hand clamp down on my elbow.

“Keep walking,” he says in my ear.

“But—”

An exasperated breath hisses through his teeth. “Do it.”

I look quickly at his face. It’s completely calm. Wooden. Taking my cue, I try to hide my alarm. I keep walking, not slowing down or approaching the cottage. I look casually around and try to spot the thing that’s set him so on edge.

There’s a small park up ahead with a playground for children. I’ve been there a couple of times, always when it was empty because I wasn’t supposed to play with other kids growing up. It’s full of laughing children and parents and old couples strolling around. The road is mostly deserted, but there are a few people passing by and two teenagers standing outside a house, talking.

Then I see him. He seems ordinary, a regular guy in his thirties, but he’s the only one who might have spooked Sean. Unlike the others, he’s on his own and he’s standing quite still, leaning against a lamppost and consulting a map like he’s a tourist. This isn’t an unusual sight, and I open my mouth to tell Sean so, but then the man’s eyes flick upward and settle on the pair of us. I look away quickly to avoid eye contact, and my heart leaps into my mouth. There was something about the way he glanced at us. Something hopeful.

Sean turns abruptly and heads into the park. I follow him, glancing once at the man watching us. I could swear he looks disappointed.

“What’s going on?” I ask Sean once we’re by the edge of the playground, well out of the man’s earshot.

Sean shrugs. “Being careful, that’s all.”

I give him a disbelieving look. “You think he’s a hunter.”

“I think he might be.”

A hunter. The word rattles around my head like loose change. I found out about hunters years ago. No one told me. I suppose they didn’t want to frighten me. Getting a secret out of Mina Ma is like trying to pry open a sealed pistachio, but she couldn’t stop me from eavesdropping. I used to hear her talking to Erik about the people who hunted and killed echoes all over the world. On the news they call them vigilantes. An old secret society set on stopping the creation and survival of unnatural things like me.

They are the reason I mustn’t tell people what I am. It’s why I’m tucked away in our cottage and not allowed to hang around normal people. It’s why Mina Ma has a pistol and double locks the doors and looks suspicious if strangers talk to us in town.

I’ve never been afraid of hunters. I think it’s like standing in a field, caught between a blind tiger and a healthy one. You can’t watch them both. So you ignore the blind one. It doesn’t know where you are; it can only try to sniff you out in the dark. You watch the other tiger, because it doesn’t have to find you. It can see you. It can catch you with a single leap.

I have always kept my eyes only on the Weavers. On their laws. Until now. Now, with Sean tense at my side and a stranger nearby, I feel a tiny prickle of unease.

“Sean, he’s just a guy.”

His teeth clench. “You think I’m being paranoid?”

“Yes, actually,” I say, trying to cast off my unwelcome doubts. “How would a hunter have even found me?”

The look on his face tells me the answer. The fight. Of course. Erik tried to stop the kids and their friends and their parents from talking, but one word slipped to the wrong person would have been enough. Any one of them could have tipped a hunter off about the rumor. Anyone could have told him which house to watch.

“He looked awfully disappointed when we came in here,” says Sean. “He was expecting us to go to the house. Or he hoped we would. If he is a hunter, he was probably waiting to find out what you look like. If he finds out, he can follow you, get you alone—”

“Stop,” I say sharply. “This is ridiculous!”

“That’s what they do.”

“He’s probably a tourist—”

“And if he isn’t?”

I’ve never tried so hard not to be scared. I bite my lip. “If he isn’t, then no harm done,” I say, trying to sound uncaring. “We walked right past the cottage, so he has no reason to think I’m the one he wants.” I put on my best brave face. “Sean, I know you’re just trying to be careful, but I think you’ve got him all wrong.”

“Either way,” says Sean, glancing over his shoulder, “he keeps looking at us, and I’m not going back to the cottage until he’s gone.”

Sean turns around and walks a few steps, to a young father playing with his daughter on the slides. I stay where I am, trying to hold on to my conviction that hunters are not worth being afraid of, that there’s no way even one of them could have found me.

When my palms feel less clammy, I approach Sean, in time to hear the father say, “Yeah, it is sort of weird. Think it would be overkill if I rang the police?”

“Might be,” says Sean, shrugging. “Dunno.”

The other guy rubs his jaw. “Ah well, it won’t do any harm. If he’s just waiting for someone or whatever, they’ll sort it. I’d rather look silly than risk the kids.”

I open my mouth to protest, then shut it again. I give Sean a dirty look as soon as the father walks away. “You told him there was a weird guy staring at the children?” I demand.

He’s unmoved. “Whatever it takes to make him leave.”

“Not exactly playing fair, though, was it?”

“Hunters don’t play fair.”

“We don’t know—”

“I know,” says Sean. “Everything about him is wrong. He’s pretending to be a tourist with a map, but you can see the date on the cover and that map is ten years out of date. He’s also got padding around one of his ankles. See, his jeans don’t quite sit right. What if that’s where he’s hiding a knife?”

I stare at him in silence, nauseated. How did he even notice such small things? How did I miss them?

For a minute he looks bitter. “You don’t consider them a threat. But hunters have killed others like you, all over the world, and there’s always a chance, however small, that they’ll turn up on your doorstep. Like he has. Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe I’m not. I just like knowing what to look for.”

I don’t say anything for a long time. I want to ignore everything he’s saying, but he makes sense. He always makes sense.

“Still think I’m paranoid?”

I shake my head. “Well, maybe a bit. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that Jonathan should have given you a chance to be a regular boy. He shouldn’t have ruined that for you.”

“If he hadn’t raised me the way he did,” says Sean, “I wouldn’t be here. Is that really the way you’d rather have it?”

I don’t know how to answer that. I glance at the lamppost. The man is gone, and a police car is vanishing back down the street.

“Don’t tell Mina Ma, Sean. You’ll scare her.”

“She’d rather know.”

“Please.”

“Fine. But I’m telling Erik. He’ll want to kill the rumors for good. It’s the only way to make sure they don’t come back.”

As we walk out of the park, I realize my hands are shaking. I knit my fingers together to keep them still.

“You might have just saved my life,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke.

Sean smiles for the first time since we left the train station. “Not if he was a tourist.”

When we get back to the cottage, Mina Ma is in the living room, waiting for us. Sean looks at ease, and I do my best to seem the same.

She asks us about the zoo. I describe it for her. Then we offer to help her with dinner, but she shoos us away. So Sean kicks an old ball around the back garden and I shower and try to wash away a lingering sense of fear. Over dinner, I tell Mina Ma about my new name. She is silent for a few minutes. I prepare myself for the worst, but she only watches me and chews. Then she glances at Sean. I can’t decipher the expression on either one’s face. Mina Ma turns back to me.

“I see,” she says at last. “Well, don’t complain to me when you cause a stir.”

I eye her fondly. “That’s it?”

“Yes, child, that’s it. If you want that name, then you can have it, with my blessing.” She shakes her head. “Naming yourself after an elephant. Why am I even surprised?”

After we’ve finished eating, we settle down in the living room, Sean and I on either side of a chessboard and Mina Ma picking stitches out of an old blouse that no longer fits her. And she tells us a story.

“All this talk of elephants make me think of a fable I told you when you were very small,” she says to me. “You might not remember it. It’s the tale of the farmer and the mongoose.”

“Why did talking about elephants make you think of that?”

Mina Ma does not look happy about being interrupted. “Because this was in a book of folk tales and the picture on the cover was of an elephant. Now if anyone mentions elephants again, I will jump in the nearest well. As for the story—”

“Wait,” says Sean, “what’s a mongoose?”

Mina Ma is taken aback. “Ah,” she says, “they look a bit like foxes. But they are smaller. They are very fierce creatures, very bold.” She raises her eyebrows at us. “Anything else?”

“No,” we say together.

“Good. Then I will begin. Once there lived a young farmer and his wife. This farmer came home one day, when his wife was expecting their first child, with a wounded mongoose in his arms. It was only a little thing, with enormous black eyes and soft fur. They looked after it most tenderly, the farmer and his wife, but they worried that when their baby was born, the mongoose would be jealous and try to hurt the child.

“They needn’t have feared,” Mina Ma continues, “because from the moment their baby came into the world, the mongoose loved it and guarded it. He protected it so fiercely that its mother could leave the baby alone, even though their house was surrounded by treacherous woods and poisonous snakes.”

I bite my fingernail. “Is a panther going to come get the baby?”

“Who is telling this story?” demands Mina Ma.

I subside into silence, adopting my most contrite expression.

“Thus did they live together, for a year. The mongoose grew big and strong. As did the baby. One afternoon the farmer and his wife went out to a festival, where they danced and ate mango pickle and fat chilies. When they returned home, all was unnaturally quiet. The farmer and his wife ran to the door, and what did they find on the threshold? It was the mongoose, watching them, with its big black eyes, and its face was stained with blood.”

I gasp. Sean, opposite me, is watching Mina Ma intently.

“The farmer’s wife screamed. The farmer picked up a stick and beat the mongoose until it was dead, aghast that any creature they had nourished could have turned against their baby.

“With the mongoose dead on the floor, they rushed to the baby’s room. But there was their child, laughing and gurgling in her cot, with not a scratch on her. The farmer couldn’t understand, but then, with a ghastly face and a trembling hand, his wife pointed to something lying on the floor, close to their child.

“It was a cobra, the most poisonous snake in the land, and it lay dead, with tooth marks in its body.”

Stupidly, ridiculously, my eyes have filled with tears. My memories of this story have awakened in the back of my mind.

“There are many versions of this tale, of course,” says Mina Ma, briskly threading a needle. “Hundreds.”

“I remember now,” I say, gazing at the French doors, where our reflections are deathly pale. “I remember that in every version I’ve read, the mongoose is killed.”