‘Well, aren’t we the superficial one?’ The trunk forms a divider, shielding his expression, but his voice sounds small and a little hostile.
I push my hands between the leaves in search of fruit. My fingers find only twigs. ‘I can’t help who I’m attracted to. You said it yourself, we’re all just animals.’
‘Yeah well, they’ll hang your animal ass if they find out you’ve been canoodling with a demigod.’
‘We were just talking.’
‘He was undressing you with his eyes.’
My hand finally locates an apple – I snap it free almost triumphantly. ‘Are you jealous?’
‘Of course I bloody am.’ He laughs, but I see a fleeting glimpse of that vulnerable puppy dog. I was wrong, he doesn’t disapprove of Imp–Gem relationships; he disapproves of me with somebody – anybody – else.
I resist a little smile. ‘Look, Ash . . .’ But I don’t know what to say. I study his slightly asymmetrical features for a moment.
‘What were you and the kid doing?’ he asks suddenly.
‘What, you mean my brother Nate?’
‘Yeah, the kid. You were reciting lines or something, right before demigod turned up.’
‘We were just messing around. Sibling stuff.’
He passes an apple between his hands. Back and forth like it’s too hot to hold. ‘It was like you were rehearsing for something, and then demigod actually said some of the things the kid said.’ He raises his eyebrows expectantly.
I can’t tell him the truth, so instead, I change the subject. ‘I never thanked you properly for saving me and my friends, back in the city I mean.’
He picks up the basket and moves to another tree. ‘That’s OK. Couldn’t very well let ’em hang you, could I?’
I follow him, partly because he has the basket, and partly because I feel lonely, just me and the shadows. I stand beside him and notice the hairs on his forearms, dark against his skin and raised in the cold.
‘Well, you saved our lives. Thank you,’ I say.
He screens his eyes with his heavy lashes, which seem even longer than usual, extended across the pink of his cheeks by their own spidery shadows. He suddenly looks very sad. ‘I just can’t believe you want a Gem, after how they treat us, what they do to us.’
I recall my face pressed into the Perspex, the crumpling paper chain, and I feel like I might cry. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the images from my brain. ‘But it isn’t Willow who does those things. You can’t blame him for the sins of his people.’
He raises his gaze. His irises, so pale they look like glass in the floodlight, his pupils, two intense dots. ‘Who then? Who do you blame? Nobody else is going to rise up and stop the barbarity against the Imps if it isn’t the Gem people.’
I wish I could tell him everything, but it’s too risky. Besides, he would probably think I’m mad. So I steady my voice. ‘Maybe he will, one day, if he falls for an Imp. Maybe he will make a stand.’
‘What do you mean?’
I realize I’ve already said too much and return to picking apples, pretending those frosted blue eyes don’t pierce my skin as they study my profile. At this point in canon, Rose was making up some bullshit about having worked in the Pastures before. Just small talk really. Polite answers, eager nodding, puppy-dog eyes. I wish we were back on script again – this is way too hard.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’m just thinking out loud.’
‘Just don’t get killed, OK?’ He scoots up the tree so he can reach the fruit on the higher boughs.
I strain my neck to look up at him, and he drops a couple of apples into my outstretched hands. ‘I’ll do my best,’ I lie.
‘Because I didn’t save you from one noose just to see you wind up hanging from another.’ He drops an apple straight into the basket. ‘Bullseye,’ he shouts.
Ash returns home on the Imp-bus that morning. I watch him shuffling up the line and climbing the steps, adopting his subservient Imp pose, so at odds with the squirrel I witnessed earlier in the night.
I slump into the bunk above Nate.
He pokes his head up so it’s level with mine. ‘So, how did it go with Ash?’
‘Rubbish. I think he may hate me.’
‘Well it doesn’t matter whether Ash likes you or not, he’s just a side character, it matters whether Willow does.’
I know Nate’s right, but it kind of matters to me that Ash likes me. ‘I guess,’ I reply.
Nate pats my arm. ‘Get some sleep, heroine extraordinaire, gotta look your best.’
It makes me smile when Nate goes all nurturing on me, like he’s the older sibling. ‘Thanks,’ I say.
He bobs back down, and I soon hear the rhythmic pattern of his breath as he falls into sleep.
The Day-Imps begin to arrive, and their movement, combined with the light seeping through the cloth dividers, keeps me awake. Plus, my mind is just a whirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions: I think of Katie, back in the bell tower, at the mercy of a patch-wearing sociopath with a bit of a crush; I think of Alice, wherever she may be; I think of Ash and those winter eyes; I think of the way Dad always touches Mum’s hand as she pours milk on his cereal; and finally, I think of my feet, dancing mid-air, searching desperately for solid ground, never to find those ruby slippers and return home.
In five days, I will hang.
I roll into the foetal position and imagine all these thoughts pooling in the side of my head, seeping into the pillow below. Finally, I fall into an uneasy sleep, punctuated with twisting shadows and screams and a feeling like I want to move but can’t, like rope binds my limbs. The dream changes, and suddenly I can move again. I feel surprisingly free, like all of the weight has been lifted from my chest. It’s summertime – the smell of lupins and freshly cut grass, the sound of children playing mixed in with birdsong.
I’m seven years old, stood in my parents’ garden with Alice and Nate. Alice looks so young – her feet not yet crammed into heels, her hair free to kink around her face. And Nate, he’s only four years old. His legs still have that lovely, chubby fold at the ankle and the knee, and his shorts drown his petite frame. I’m blowing bubbles, watching them sprout from the wand and float into the air, perfect spheres shining in the sun. Alice and Nate run this way and that, trying to catch them, squealing as they pop in their cupped hands. More, Nate cries, more bubbles, Violet, more bubbles please.