The Amazing Soul of Alice Tipton (NINE)

NINE


I’m standing in the big lake (near Daisy’s house) on the fifth day of the warmest May in over sixty years. The man on the radio said that it was 30°C today and that we should all ‘sunshine while it lasts’. And I am. The water swirls, still too-cold despite the heat, around my toes and washes over the tops of my feet and ankles. The sun shines brightly down and throws sparkles off the gentle ripples created by the wind. The trees in the park are all still oddly bare and point upwards into the sky; like cheese-strings when you first start peeling the cheese strips apart, but they haven’t yet flopped over.

‘Alice! Alice!’

Alfie runs awkwardly towards me, splashing his way through the few inches of water and laughing. In his hands, Alfie holds a newt about the size of his thumb, which he proudly shows me.

‘Daisy found it under a rock but she was too scared to pick it up! We can’t decide what to call it: I like the name ‘Thor’ but Daisy wants to call it ‘Tallulah’ after her unicorn. I told her that I’m the oldest so I should pick the name and that Tallulah is a dumb name.’

‘And what did Daisy say to that?’ I ask innocently (as though I haven’t noticed that he is soaking wet from head to toe).

‘She pushed me in the water and told me that I had a dumb name.’ He grumbles, looking embarrassed.

I laugh and look down at the little amphibian. We are learning all about amphibians at school this term and how they can live in water or on land and have a low body temperature and lay eggs that are different looking from bird’s eggs. The newt is a dark green colour with silvery speckles across it’s back and tail. I reach out and touch it cautiously; it feels cool and slippery but not slimy the way I imagined it would. There’s something about the newt that seems familiar to me but I can’t pin it down. It’s only when I glance over to the grassy edge of the lake that I realise what- or more importantly- who the creature reminds me of.

‘Eli,’ I grin, ‘I think he should be called Eli!’

The newt’s namesake glares at me accusingly but he can’t do anything about my misuse of his name as he’s deathly afraid of coming into the water. I tried to lure him in with promises of water fights when we first arrived but he staunchly refused and has been sitting at the side, sunning himself like a cat, ever since.

‘Isn’t that the name of your invisible monster friend?’ Says Daisy as she arrives, slightly out of breath, beside us.

It’s a little bit harder for Daisy to run around in the lake because, technically, her prothesis isn’t meant to get wet. She’s had to look out for rocks to jump onto and keep very close to the bank so that only a minimal amount of water gets on it.

‘Yes,’ I respond, ‘the newt looks like him!’

‘Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary friend, Alice?’

I scowl at Alfie and consider pushing him over again to teach him a lesson. Even Daisy gasps: she knows how passionate I am about this issue.

‘He. Is. Not. Imaginary.’ I speak with such venom in my voice that Alfie shudders and backs away from me a bit.

I’m still angry and so I stalk out of the shallows and haul myself up onto the bank to sit beside Eli, who is currently laughing himself silly at my facial expression.

‘Don’t be mad, Al, I didn’t mean it! It was only teasing.’ Alfie grovels to me as he and Daisy make their way over to me.

He has to stay on my good side because, although it’s his birthday party and, although he’s nearly twelve, I am fully aware that I hold the power in this relationship. However, I have to admit that, in general, the presence of Alfie to my life for the last year or so has been brilliant and I have had more adventures with him than I would have ever had if it was only me and Daisy. My ‘best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world’ has accepted Alfie’s existence without question and Eli gets on really well with his replacement Athorian, Twigs, who is even younger than him, on her first assignment, and has a shock of almost blue curls on her head.

‘You’d better apologise to Eli.’ I say, stonily.

‘I’m sorry, Eli.’ He addresses the newt and stifles a laugh.

Just before we descend into all-out war, Alfie’s dad calls us over for cake and we all scurry, dripping and muddying our feet, back to the picnic rug. Now that I’m properly out of the water, the heat seems to crawl over my skin and I feel myself begin to burn. My Dad smothers me in sun-cream as soon as I reach him, and, forces my (previously abandoned) sun-hat onto my head.

‘You’d better all have a drink,’ Mr Matthews (Alfie’s dad) instructs us as we collapse onto the rough wool blanket, ‘You’ll all get dehydrated if you’re not careful.’

‘What’s dehydrangered?’ Daisy asks as she takes big gulps of lemonade from a plastic beaker. (Daisy doesn't know as many long words as I do.)

‘Dehydrated,’ Her mum corrects with a smile, ‘It means that you don’t have enough liquid in your body and your body needs water to work properly. You can feel dizzy and tired if you don’t drink enough. And, Daisy, I think you might need to take off your prothesis for a bit, Sweetie, let it dry out thoroughly.’

Daisy nods and removes the elasticated strapping that holds the two parts of her leg together. I watch in fascination: I haven’t seen this process in the two years since her accident because she normally takes it off in the bathroom, by herself. The prothesis comes away easily and reveals a bright, pink; ‘stump sock’ that protects her skin from the plastic and metal. She looks a little embarrassed about having to do all of this and so I look away again.

Alfie is more direct:
‘Your stump is so cool, Daisy, you look like some awesome superhero!’

To my surprise, Daisy giggles and sticks her arms out in opposite directions; like Superman.

‘Super Daisy!’ Alfie points at her, excitedly, ‘With the power to shoot lasers from her leg!’

***

The rest of the afternoon passes pleasantly and my friends and their parents doze off in the heat, under the big oak tree where we’ve set up camp. When everyone’s asleep, it’s my time to hang out with Eli. He’s stayed just on the edges of the day’s activities; in order to avoid getting too close to any of us. Although, actually, he’s been a lot better over the last few months at ‘social interaction’ and, on special occasions, manages to squeeze my shoulder or even hug me.

‘Put your glasses on, Kiddo.’

‘You sound just like my Dad, Eli! I thought you were supposed to be young and cool!’ And then I throw myself into the lake so that he can’t catch me.

My glasses are a fairly recent and unwanted addition to my face and I take every opportunity to ‘forget’ to put them on. Dad loves me wearing them because he says I look just like him in them but I still maintain that I look stupid. Also, I have few enough friends as it is without adding massive glasses into the mix that already contains blue hair and occasionally talking to things which aren’t there.

‘I am young and cool!’ Eli protests from the water’s edge, ‘But it’s also my job to look after you. All of you. Even your eyes.’ He grins and reaches a hand out to pull me out of the lake.

When I take it, I almost decide to pull him in, but, some deep instinct warns me not to and so instead I pull myself out and onto the grass again and take my glasses from him and reluctantly slide them onto my nose.

‘Anyway, you know I think that you only have trouble seeing because you’re seeing two worlds at once and so that should make it an exciting thing that you need glasses. Would you rather not have them and not be able to see Sielo?’ His voice is gently manipulative and he even nudges me in the arm.

I am unable to resist; ‘I guess it’s better to be able to see you.’ I grumble and kick at the water with my pale feet.

‘Oh!,’ I say, suddenly getting excited, ‘Can we try out my new camera? Please? I want to see if you show up in photos.’

‘Sure we can, but I doubt I’ll suddenly become visable.’

He laughs affectionately at me as I scamper back to the picnic rug and pull my two-day-old camera out from its soft, grey, bag. The camera is small and pink with a giant shutter button and a wide display screen for ‘easy and practical use’. Most importantly of all, my Dad told me, it is ‘everything proof’. This includes: water, heat, shatter, pressure and dirt proof-ness.

‘You could literally throw this out of your bedroom window and into a bath of hot, muddy, water and, after a quick wipe down, you’d still be able to use it again.’ Dad had told me when he handed it to me, with a big, pink, ribbon on it, as a reward for helping clean out my Grandma’s house, now that she’s gone to live in a nursing home.

And now I would get to test this out. I get Eli to pose, waving, for me by the water and press the shutter button hard and quickly, as though somehow speed will capture his image better. I don’t know yet how to turn the flash off and so as I release the button, a shot of light explodes from the little light panel and bounces on the water’s ripples and Eli shields his eyes.

I bring the camera down from my left eye and tap the ‘review’ button to see the picture I’ve just taken. At first I’m disappointed: there’s no green man in the picture; just a pretty, spring, scene.

I show the image to Eli, sulkily: ‘I guess you were right.’

‘No, wait, Alice!’ He sounds thrilled and I look hopefully back to the display screen, ‘Look! There’s a smudge on in the picture; right where I was standing. Try again and see if it does the same thing.’

Slightly less impressed by the blur than my friend, I obediently point the camera at his face once more. When we examine the picture this time, the anomaly is more obvious; it is as though a person-shaped shadow has replaced Eli and everything behind him is slightly less clear. There’s something else in the image that confuses me.

‘What’s that?’ I squint at the far-off black silhouette in the lake that I’ve just seen on my camera screen.

‘It’s a stryder, I think.’ Eli also narrows his eyes to stare at the whale-like creature and makes a little ‘huh’ noise as though he is interested, but not surprised, to see it there.

‘It looks like a narwhal,’ I say, puzzled, ‘But why would there be a narwhal in Surrey?’
‘Do narwhal’s have wings, Alice?’

‘Not as far as I know, but, then again, I thought they were made-up until Alfie showed me that video the other day.’

‘Well, they don’t, but stryders do. They’re actually very rare but it’s obvious that one would turn up to see you.’ But he’s not talking to me anymore; not really, his attention is still fixed on the stryder.

‘You’ve lost me, Green Man, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘They only appear to certain kids; one’s with an important future. You’ll only ever see one in your entire life-time and the stryder will give you something that’s going to be vital for you to do whatever it is that you’re going to end up doing. So, of course you’ll get to meet one because you are going to have the best future ever, if I have anything to do with it.’ Eli grins at me and then back at the giant animal.

‘How do I get my present from it?’ I say (having filtered out most of the information that I’ve been given in order to focus on the jist of Eli’s monologue; which is that there will be presents. Presents from a winged narwhal. For me).

The stryder is coming closer to the lake’s bank but it’s still about twenty or thirty meters away and it suddenly stops swimming altogether and beckons to me with a chubby fin. Without thinking, I leap into the water and doggedly begin to clumsily swim my way over to it.

‘Alice!’ Eli’s voice is panicked, ‘Are you sure you can get out that far and still get back? The water’s deep and I can’t…’ He stops, coughs in an awkward way, and then carries on, ‘I can’t swim, Kiddo. I’d really rather you came back and we just waited for him to come to you!’

This is typical of Eli, always worrying about every little thing and, normally, I would try to pacify him before doing the mildly dangerous thing anyway, but today, there are presents involved. So I ignore him and keep splashing and sloshing my way through the cooling water, alternating between paddling, wading and doggie-paddling until my feet can’t touch the silt-y bottom anymore and I have to properly swim. By the time I reach the stryder’s massive, purple, tail however, I am exhausted and genuinely worried that Eli’s warning may have been a prophetic message. But then the whale-creature scoops me up in its fin and I let out a tiny squeak and my stomach leaps inside me as I feel the tough, wet skin and the swooping sensation of being lifted ten feet into the air. It pulls me close to it’s body and I reach a nervous hand out to touch the smooth skin.

And then I wait. I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen now: I can’t see how an animal with flippers and little, fluffy, white wings can possibly hand me a present. The rhythmic ‘lubb-dubb, lubb-dubb’ of the giant fish’s heart pulses up, through my finger-tips, sending soothing sensations shooting through my arm and into my chest. The feeling spreading through me threatens to send me to sleep but I fight it because I am ten feet in the air, above enough water to drown in several times over and, worse still, I might drop my glasses and get told off by Mum. I struggle to stay awake; digging my nails into the palm of my hand, but eventually I am pulled under.

***

The room is completely white: white floor, white walls, white ceiling, no windows and no doors. Just a white box with me in one corner of its immensity. Then I see them: little figures on the other side of this warm, sterile, arctic wasteland. A boy and a girl. The boy is familiar to me but I can’t work out how I know him. He has sandy coloured hair and big, green eyes. It’s the long, long, white scarf that jolts my memory. It’s Brother. It’s the kid that saved my life in my Soul Kingdom two years ago. I don’t know why I’m so surprised to see him here, as this place so clearly belongs in Sielo. He seems to see me from across the room and starts walking towards me in long, excited, bounding steps. The girl follows closely behind him, holding a doll in her arms and observing me, shyly, from under thick, black, eyelashes. There’s something about her appearance that suggests the Brother might be her actual brother and yet, she also looks completely different from him.

‘Alice?’ Brother calls exuberantly and I can see the big, care-free smile that seems to be his natural facial expression.

When he reaches me he holds his arms out to me as though he wants me to hug him but for some, odd, reason, he isn’t going to make the first move. And I do hug him. Even though we don’t know each other that well and even though I’m outgrowing my ‘Cuddle-Everyone-I-Meet’ phase, I feel that I somehow owe it to him after what happened the last time we met. When he throws his arms around me in response, something feels oddly complete, deep inside me.

‘This is my friend, Alice.’ Brother announces, breaking away from our hug to address the girl with the doll, ‘Alice is a close friend of mine but we haven’t seen each other in ages and ages and I’ve missed her a lot.’

This seems a bizarre description of our relationship but I find that when he says he’s missed me that I must have been missing him, too.

‘Pleased to meet you, Alice,’ the girl smiles at me with the same openness as the other child, ‘my name is Espiri. I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon! I have something to give you.’ Her voice is soft and musical and altogether lovely to listen to.

I consider Espiri and try to work out why it is that she and Brother are so similar. She doesn’t look at all like him and she’s older and taller than he is, but doesn’t seem as confident or excitable. Espiri has long, dark hair and brown, almond eyes and wears a purple dress with pink fairy -sorry, fiary- wings on elastic around her shoulders. But her smile; her smile is his and there’s a certain ‘lightness’ to them both that doesn’t remind me of any other children I know.

‘Are you a stryder?’ I ask her finally.  The dress and the wings remind me of the fake-narwhal, and, she has just said that she has a gift for me.

‘No,’ she giggles and Brother actually snorts with laughter, ‘But I did ask her to bring me to you. We swam for miles and miles, through the Milky Way and the River Thames and we got a bit lost because Brother was meant to be navigating but he kept getting distracted telling me stories.’ She pauses to catch her breath, ‘Now, for your special present!’ She holds out the doll to me.

The doll is about the length of my fore-arm and looks like a miniature version of Espiri but instead of wearing a purple dress, the doll has a super-hero style outfit on. I reach out to take her but Espiri suddenly pulls her back, out of my reach.

‘Wait!’ She exclaims, ‘You have to be careful!’

‘Ok, I’ll be very careful,’ I say, thinking she means the doll is breakable, ‘thank you very much for the present.’

I gently take the toy that is, once again, offered to me. Mini-Espiri is made of a hard plastic and I don’t understand how I could have possibly broken her just by picking her up.

‘You’re going to need her in the future, Alice, you’ll need to use her a lot. Over the years, she’ll change to be ‘age appropriate’ but she’ll always be just yours and not for anyone else to use.’

‘I don’t understand, how can a doll be useful? I mean, she’s pretty and I like her a lot but she can’t do anything, can she?’

‘Of course she can! You just need to ask her to ‘wake up’ and then you’ll see what I mean.’

Feeling a little silly, I whisper, ‘Wake up’, in the general direction of the doll’s ear.
I hold ‘Espiri’ at arm’s length in expectation and realise I’m holding my breath too. There’s a loud crack and a plume of lavender smoke erupts from the doll, obscuring everything for a moment or two. When the clouds clear I look down at my hands and see, to my shock, that I am now holding a solid, metal, sword in place of a plastic toy. I’m taken aback by how right the weapon’s weight feels in my young grasp. It is reasonably plain silver, with an inscription running along the flat side of it’s blade and a single, amethyst buried in the hilt. The engraving reads: ‘El Espíritu es Más Fuerte que la Espada.’ I have no idea what it means but I like the soft curving of the letters and the word that looks a little bit like the girl’s name.

‘It means ‘The Spirit is Stronger than the Sword’ and it’s a reminder that being able to use a weapon isn’t nearly as important as your soul. You’re going to need this in your life, little friend, I’m sorry. But I know that you are very, very brave and that you will use this to protect yourself, and others, if you have to.’

Espiri looks sad for me and I feel a great sense of responsibility fall down over my shoulders, like a cape, and I think I must age ten years in those few moments. I bring the sword up to my chest and take a deep, shaking breath, desperately trying to feel the bravery that Espiri seems certain I have.

‘I- I d-don’t know h-how to use it.’ I stutter.

‘Don’t worry,’ Brother joins the conversation ‘Eli will teach you how to use it. And, any time you need it to not be a sword anymore, you just say ‘go to sleep’ and it will.’
I repeat the words quietly over the sword and relief washes over me as I am holding a doll once again.

***

I wake up with a start, on dry land, under the same tree that my family and friends are resting beneath. For a minute, I cannot work out whether or not I was imagining everything, then I look down and see Espiri, my doll and sword, lying next to me on the grass. Oh great. Now I’ve got to convince Eli to teach me to use a dangerous weapon. I groan; this is going to be a long afternoon.