A headful of skye, p.13
A Headful of Skye, page 13
“You’re such an unrefined cow,” hissed one girl, tucking ringlets behind her ear. The others sniggered.
“And you’re a two-faced bitch,” Skye replied.
The girls pretended to be offended.
“At least I’m not a lazy bitch. I think you’re just brain dead and that’s why you fall asleep all the time.”
“I can’t help it,” Skye growled, shaking with rage.
“Of course you can’t,” said one of the others, her voice shrill. “You’re so stupid your eyes don’t know how to stay open. You can’t even take a dump without someone making sure you don’t fall down the toilet.” Her giggling turned to a shriek as Skye lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of her hair.
“I’ll shave your head!”
The girl with ringlets dived at Skye, slapping her face hard, knocking her sideways. “What’s wrong with you, you stupid cow?” But Miss Ringlet’s bravado failed as Skye sat up and locked her in a stare.
Cold, boiling eyes; Skye’s jaw clenched.
Skye swept up her ruler in a flash and thwacked the girl across the face. A crack like a whip silenced everyone in the room, and Miss Ringlet let out a banshee’s howl. The screams and insults moulded around Mayu and cleared to reveal another scene.
Snow covered the ground, the day was crisp and clear, and on a bench beneath a naked tree sat Skye. Beside her was a young girl with black, braided hair and dark skin—the same girl that had lured Skye away in the school on the seabed. They wore winter robes and thick scarves and mittens; each was reading a book, like two girls plucked straight off a pretty Christmas card.
“What does ‘aroo-bes-kweh’ mean?” asked the braided girl in an Edinburgh accent.
Skye rolled her eyes. “Honestly, don’t you know anything? It’s ‘arabesque’.”
Mayu felt herself starting to fade. “Skye!” At this rate, they’d lose all the progress they’d made the night before. “Skye!” She ran over and shook Skye’s shoulder, calling once more.
Gasping, Skye looked up from her book. The scene whipped away, and Kitty-Skye was in Mayu’s hand again, both of them falling down to the valley.
Tears filled Skye’s eyes that fell away in the wind and Mayu brought her close to her chest. She allowed them to plummet headfirst, blurring out the sadness she’d witnessed with the wind in her ears and the dropping sensation in her stomach. She stroked Skye’s fluffy head.
“Stop us falliiiing,” Skye wailed, ending with miserable sobs.
Unable to resist a smile, Mayu slowed their descent and curled upright, cradling Skye in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Skye huddled against her breast, hiding her face with both paws. “I don’t want to wake up,” Skye blubbered. “Why can’t I stay here?”
“Staying in one place means things will never change.”
“Exactly, I don’t want this to change.”
Mayu stroked the fluff around Skye’s ears with the back of her finger, sinking slowly towards the rice paddies like a feather. “It’s impossible to stay here,” soothed Mayu, “you wouldn’t be able to sustain a Parallel world forever and your parents are waiting for you.”
Skye bristled and a lance of agony struck the back of Mayu’s head. It sliced through her mind, blinding her, and she almost dropped Skye.
“Don’t fight me, Skye.” She clutched the girl tighter. “It will only hurt us both.”
“I think you should get out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head. You’re in mine. I’m healing—”
Skye kicked her with her back leg, scratching her, and another jolt shot right through to Mayu’s forehead. Her focus shaken, they fell like a rock into one of the paddies. Muddy water gushed up Mayu’s nose and she tasted silt on her tongue. She coughed and spluttered as she surfaced, spotting a bedraggled Skye paddling towards one of the dirt tracks.
“Skye,” she called, “the jolt of misinterpreting temporal space—the overload of electrical stimuli to one part of the brain—it could kill us without going through the logical processes. Parallel worlds are imaginary, but real enough that—”
Skye hauled her feline body onto the path, then turned back to yell, “I don’t know what you’re bloody talking about!”
A hurricane of rice stalks, mud, and floodwater rose up behind Skye. It arched over her head, five liquid fingers sprouting from the crest of the wave as it aimed for Mayu. Throwing out one arm, the assault never made contact; it domed around Mayu with a roar and a crash.
The next revolt took her by surprise.
Mud wrapped around her feet and sucked her into the earth by a few inches. It oozed up her ankles and up her calves. Horror latched onto her, unable to break free.
“Skye, don’t!”
But Skye transformed back to her normal body, wearing her school uniform, and did nothing but watch…glaring through red-rimmed, angry eyes.
“Maybe we should die,” Skye snarled.
15
If Skye’s mind was like a spider web of cells, Mayu felt threads snapping and disconnecting. She closed her eyes, visualising the flow of electrical pulses, and fought to keep their minds entwined. A warped cry shook Skye’s body, and Mayu felt an echo of it in her own nerves. It was working.
Opening her eyes, Mayu saw Skye kneeling in the dirt, gripping her head.
“You don’t mean that. Don’t do this!” begged Mayu, mud gobbling up to her hips now. “You might end up trapped in a nightmare, or you might render yourself brain dead.”
“You’re not listening,” Skye sobbed. “I don’t care.”
Mayu took a sharp breath, trying not to freak out about the water soaking her chest now and the mud creeping over her stomach. “What?”
“I have to stay here.”
Taking charge of their surroundings, Mayu urged the sun to warm them, sculpting a gentle breeze to carry scents of earthy cultivation.
“I understand how you feel,” Mayu said. “Staying here can seem appealing, but we cannot control our dreams forever.” Paddy water sploshed against Mayu’s chin, and the mud squelched beneath her breasts.
Suffocating beneath the pressure around her chest, she let out a ragged shout and tried to break free, tried to dry the paddy fields, crack the mud, split the earth—anything. Nothing changed.
“Skye—” Her mouth filled with water, and she gagged, tilting her head back to keep her nose above the surface.
Mayu struggled harder to rein in Skye’s energy levels. Her vision went blotchy red…or was that the clouds? A thousand angry barbs of foreign brain activity fought against hers, like it was trying to explode outward.
Her nose went under. When Mayu tried to breathe, a wave of liquid invaded her lungs and she convulsed, splashing her arms, aching for a mouthful of air. She could breathe if she let go of Skye, everything inside was panic and tension—her reptilian brain roared for her to save herself. But if she let go, both of them might disappear into separate comas. Skye’s spirit seemed almost out of reach, Mayu clung on by sheer desperation.
Grasping for anything, Mayu clenched her hands in the air above her sinking head, feeling a sting in her fingers. The only way to free herself was to fuse Skye’s spatial-temporal awareness with hers; to use Skye’s own energy against her. It crackled everywhere and Mayu embraced it as her own, tried with all her might to believe this is the best thing for me, to welcome in the threatening, angry essence of Skye Mansfield.
Willing the merge to happen, Mayu felt an instant energy shift as they re-established a connection, gripped each other tightly with metaphorical hands. Without thinking, she gathered a powerful force beneath her, pushed upwards, and shot out of the mud. Her arms flailed as she soared towards the path. Shielding her nose, Mayu braced for impact. She slumped with relief when it never came. She hovered over the ground and dropped the last inch onto her front.
Mayu massaged her pulsing head.
Looking up, she saw Skye standing nearby, staring at her. The girl’s knees trembled and her fists were clenched. Mayu sighed and hung her head, not sure what to say. She wanted to say everything that had been promised to her the past few months, it will get better, you’ll be okay, lean on your friends. But how could she promise those things when she didn’t believe in them? Getting up, Mayu took one step forward and Skye took one step away.
“You’ve been through a lot,” Mayu said, “and I know why you don’t want to wake up. I’m not angry with you.”
“How could you know?” Skye croaked.
“I’ve read about you, I know what happened to your friend.” Mayu folded her arms, unsure about bringing this up, but ready to try anything. Forcing herself to be open, she held out her hands. “The one you used to stay with at Christmas?”
Skye’s whole body shook.
“What was her name?”
“Henri.”
The image of Skye with the girl on a snowy bench returned to Mayu’s mind. The girl who had pushed through the faceless students to play tag in the underwater school. She recalled reading that, two weeks before Skye fell into the coma, her friend Henrietta had died in a car crash. Upon impact, her mother’s car had spun, skidding off the road, and ended up on its side—Henri’s side. The mother was knocked out instantly and Henrietta died in minutes, half the car door wedged into her side.
“She was the best thing in the world.” Skye’s expression of anger crumpled.
Nodding, Mayu approached her again and drew Skye into a hug.
Taking a deep breath, Skye let out a wail of grief and Mayu froze, trying to remain composed. She knew that wail. It resonated with her own desperation and hopelessness; with the longing she’d screamed into Yūta’s cold pillow each morning.
“It’s odd to think that any of us could die tomorrow, isn’t it?” whispered Mayu. “All we have are minutes, and whispers, and memories. Life is one constant memory as we pass into the next minute, and for you and me…that leaves a hole when we lose the person we want to share those moments with. I know it does.”
Skye clawed her hands into Mayu’s shirt, trembling like a sheet.
“I want to see Yūta, just to see him sleeping on the couch or making himself breakfast. And I could have that if I stayed here, but not for long, in the end it would kill me. It would be the same for you, Skye.”
“We’re all going to die anyway,” the girl sobbed. “In ten years, maybe less, we’ve destroyed the world, so what’s the point? What’s the point in school? In friends? In anything?”
Decimated rice stalks quivered in the breeze and Mayu shuddered, closing her eyes.
“A friend told me that we are like leaves and that we have to make a choice. We either choose to carry on wherever the wind takes us, or we sink to the ground and rot. We must choose, even if it doesn’t fix things the way we want. And you know…”
Mayu paused, her stomach twisting with doubt. One should never make a promise to a patient, but what if that was what Skye needed?
“When you wake up, you’ll still have me,” Mayu said. “I know I’m not your best friend, but I’ll be there. I’ll be there for as long as you need me.”
Skye’s arms tightened around her. “Can I live with you?”
A little laugh escaped Mayu, her eyes watering. Blinking tears clear, she pulled away and looked down at Skye. “I don’t know about that. I live a long way away from you, and your parents would be hurt. But I’ll be with you when you wake up, and I’ll be with you while you recover.”
“I’m not sick.”
“I didn’t say you were, but you will be physically weak for a while. Your muscles will need retraining.” And she might not remember any of this, or even moments of her life before falling down the stairs.
They fell silent and Skye watched the horizon. She took a deep breath, held it, swallowed hard, and then let it out slowly. Her face struggled to hold a smile and Mayu gripped her shoulders.
“I can hear the whales.” Mayu touched her ear for emphasis.
“What?”
“Listen.” She pointed to the mountain peaks and, squinting, she could see dark shapes floating through the mist. The whales. Their mighty tails made slow, steady strokes, shifting the clouds like sea foam. Their dull song danced faintly across the distance.
Willing the miles to move around them, Skye and Mayu found themselves at the top of the highest peak above the valley. The rice paddies shone like tiny mirrors below. Skye and Mayu shivered, breath visible in front of their faces, but Skye didn’t complain. She hugged herself, watching the whales above her head.
Reaching up, Mayu grasped her hand in thin air a few times, really have to focus on her intention, until her hand finally closed around a length of rope.
“Here.” She passed it to Skye.
The girl hesitated before taking it, she looked up to see what it was attached to. She didn’t even seem surprised.
“Don’t let go this time,” said Mayu.
Grasping the rope with two hands, Skye stared at her like a stunned rabbit.
The rope went taut as the whale it was attached to swam further ahead and Skye almost smiled as her school shoes dragged across the ground and rose into the air. To Mayu’s pleasure, Skye laughed.
Running after her, Mayu bounded into the air and flew alongside her. Skye grinned into the wind, admiring the view.
With a long cry, the whales climbed higher. The scenery grew flatter and the sky darkened.
“Wait, wait,” cried Skye, “we can’t breathe in space!”
Mayu laughed. “Do you think whales can really fly?”
Peering up at the mammal carrying her, Skye chuckled and nodded.
The Earth stretched for miles below them, the earth’s magnetic fields pulsing around the globe visible to the naked eye.
“Hold on tight,” Mayu said, “and don’t be scared.”
“What? Why?”
Mayu floated over to her and took hold of the rope as well. She smiled at Skye’s serious expression and started counting.
“One…two…”
Before Mayu even reached “three,” the whales leapt forward with lightspeed, and the universe sped past in streaks of dust and light. Stars passed in a blur, planets circled beneath their feet, and nebulas engulfed them in clouds of colour.
Skye let out a shriek that turned into an elated whoop. They cheered and took in the scenery with wonder, unable to absorb the scope of the universe no matter how wide they stretched their eyes.
“I’m going to be an astronaut,” said Skye, then she tipped her head back and laughed as if this was the best joke in the world.
The whales halted their journey when they reached a glimmering, swirling nebula glowing yellow, green, blue and pink, and speckled with black stars.
Their rope swung forward with the whale’s momentum, swinging them up, and up, and up—until they bounced softly into the whale’s underbelly, giggling. They swooped back down, like a pendulum, towards the whale’s tail and Mayu let go. Her stomach lurched at the pure elation of hovering without effort. Anti-gravity. Skye stared at her as she swung away.
“You’ll be fine,” said Mayu. “Everything floats in space.”
“That’s assuming things aren’t just falling very, very slowly,” she said, her voice growing faint.
Willing herself forward, Mayu moved at a sluggish pace and held her breath as Skye let go of the rope. The girl hovered, drifting sideways like a starfish in deep water.
“See! I told you,” cried Mayu.
Time slipped by unnoticed as they floated and tumbled through the void, racing each other as if paddling in a shallow swimming pool. They climbed over the backs of the inattentive whales, studying their rugged skin. Eventually, tired out, they drifted side by side, staring out into the darkness.
“We’re so small,” said Skye.
“Maybe you are.”
She chortled. “I wish I could really see the universe like this.”
“Being an astronaut isn’t such a crazy idea,” Mayu said.
“No way. Too scary. And I’d have to be good at science.”
Mayu chuckled and rolled, admiring every possible direction.
“You know, this is the longest I’ve gone without…falling asleep randomly,” Skye said, staring at a distant nebula like it had all the answers she needed. “But my cataplexy still happens.”
“That’s probably because you’re already asleep,” said Mayu, “so you’re not tired in the same way as when you’re awake in the real world. The chemicals that trigger your narcolepsy, or the lack of brain chemicals, I should say, don’t really matter if you’re already asleep. Your cataplexy, however, is trigged by emotion, which you’re still capable of experiencing in dreams.”
With a resigned sigh, Skye’s gaze regained some focus. “I wish I didn’t have any of it. My dad still thinks that half of it is because I’m lazy. I’m not.”
Ugh, ambitious parents. “You’re not lazy. You have a condition and there are doctors who can help to make the symptoms easier to live with.”
“We tried doctors.”
“Well,” Mayu did her best to sound lofty, “we’ll try some more. Why haven’t you been given medication?”
“It’s too expensive. I’ve got something for the narcolepsy, it’s okay, but nothing to stop me collapsing when my feelings are intense. It’s so embarrassing. You saw me…hit that girl with a ruler, didn’t you? I collapsed straight afterwards—I was so angry and afraid they’d hit me back. Sometimes I collapse when I laugh, not often though, thank God. That’s even worse.”
It wasn’t Mayu’s field of expertise, but she was all too aware of the expenses involved with brain related illnesses. Narcolepsy and cataplexy were low in priority, even on Mayu’s radar. She couldn’t pretend to be surprised that remedying Skye’s condition wasn’t given much funding.
“Ugh.” Skye waved her hands, exasperated. “My headteacher tried hippy mindfulness sessions on me. Full of ‘self-control’ guff and ‘connecting with my body’. She thinks she’s a guru or something. I mean, I like her, she’s okay, but she takes the ‘close your eyes and breathe deeply’ rubbish way too seriously.”
