Chapter 7
Elanora walked to school by herself, her shoes and ankles wet from the moist fingered grass. The Scrubstone Community School gates opened onto a long rectangular slab of asphalt. Four timber classrooms to the right of the playground lifted their veranda skirts and stood on bare brick legs trying to avoid touching the dirt at their feet. The converted dormitory to the left functioned as the staffroom and library. It shut its eyes to all goings on, thick boards having replaced the glass thanks to one too many stray cricket balls and rocks. The teachers preferred it that way.
The old country school had once been some sort of institution way back in the distant past. There was history in this place but history bored all the students and the teachers were desperately escaping theirs, so the secrets of the school stayed boarded up behind the walls and within the rings of the great fig itself, which breathed unseen. Guardian of the gateway.
Elanora had given Ashden the benefit of the doubt all the way to the gates, but seeing him up ahead, walking past the classrooms to the Strangler, made her blood boil as if she was under its canopy herself.
“Thanks for remembering to get me,” she yelled, storming over.
Ashden spun around. He squinted and raised a hand to scratch his head.
“I thought you were still home looking after your mum.”
“I...I’m so sorry. I raced out of the house this morning so fast that I. I just forgot. I don’t know why.”
“I’ll tell you why,” she started, but her face grew hot and red and her hair flamed around her. A rim of tears sped along her lower lids. Elanora turned her back on him and bolted towards her hideout.
Her throat was tense and her breath hollowed out the path to her chest. She sat under the iron panels picking at her cuticles.
Ashden crouched at the entrance.
“Go away,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I know I said I’d pick you up, but honestly I completely forgot. I knew I had to get to the gateway early but for some reason I messed up.”
“Yeah well don’t worry.”
“You must have been excited to meet up,” he said angling into the hideout.
How about not sleeping a wink! Elanora thought and smiled without humour.
“Why did you say you could tell me why I forgot?” He was inside now, sitting opposite her on a log.
She slumped her chin into her hands. “I don’t want to sound like a whinger.”
“You won’t,” he said gently.
Elanora twisted the mane of the pony sitting in her lap. “It’s not that I care, but I know I don’t matter to anyone. It’s not just you. I talk to people one day then they act like they don’t even know me the next.” She shrugged. “You at least get noticed, I get nothing. Half the time my own parents don’t know that I’m there. I get my own breakfast, lunch and dinner most times.”
“I know what that’s like,” said Ashden, patting one of her toys that reclined on a rock seat. He stared into its eyes. Alive and well. Immediately his face changed. He rubbed his jaw and spoke slowly.
“Elanora. When I look into this souling it’s like I can see you better. And I think the same thing happened the other morning. I only remembered you when I looked into Eski. When I’m not with you you kind of slip my mind. Almost like the memory of you fades.”
“Great!” said Elanora.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his lids with his fingers. “Elanora. Can I try something? Here, look at me.”
He turned her face gently to his and stared into her eyes.
She’d never really noticed his eyes before. His irises were blue like hers but deeper and encircled by a ring of caramel. His pupils weren’t black like night. They were black like a tunnel to the centre of the earth, with not a reflection to mark them. A warm scooping light entered her vision and travelled deep inside. The warmth spread and for a moment she was lit up inside and out. Seen for who she was. Seen and remembered and liked. Loneliness disappeared and her heart shed its cloak and allowed itself to stare back at the boy. In that instant she was connected to him, drawing him into her mind, her thoughts. You are beautiful, whispered the light. He bundled up her hurts and drew them into himself, leaving her clear and fresh.
All too soon the light receded. “Wait,” she said, but Ashden closed his eyes and the connection ended.
The smell of the bush and the earth under their feet filled the silent space between them.
“I won’t forget you again,” he said, opening his eyes. They gleamed.
Elanora couldn’t look him in the face. She grabbed her ponytail and started plaiting it slowly.
“Will you come with me?” he asked, opening his palm to her.
She nodded.
Once outside, she took his elbow. “Did you just read my thoughts?”
He shook his head. “Just your spirit.”
She opened her mouth to say something but closed it again and simply smiled showing white teeth like cloud streaks against a red sunset.
Neither could hold the other’s gaze.
Elanora stood on the edge of the playground looking fearfully up at the Strangler.
“Of course this would be the way in,” she said, her blood burning the front side of her body. Any closer and she would surely be sucked into its trunk, bones and all. She looked squarely at it. The trunk softened and she saw only a likeness to chocolate, smooth, comforting. Her heart beat faster, her blood now intoxicated.
“What’s wrong?” Ashden asked.
“This tree. It does something to me. I’ve always tried to keep away.”
Ashden took a step back. “Maybe we shouldn’t go in. I only meant to explain more about it today, not actually go there.”
His eyes searched her face and a taste of the light returned. “I really need to see it,” she said. The blood heat rising. “If I’m part of that world then don’t I deserve to go there?”
He smiled, “Yes, that’s true. Who am I to keep you out?”
Elanora could no longer hear him over the rush of blood in her ears.
“Don’t forget to keep holding your souling. As long as you’ve got that you can get through,” said Ashden shifting his bag to the other shoulder. Elanora clutched the pony she had brought along even tighter.
“Are you ready?”
Elanora noticed his eyes were shining again. He took her hand with almost parental care and guided her towards the buttressing roots. But he needn’t have offered guidance. Her body knew exactly where to go.
Behind the bulk of the trunk a figure crouched. His pockets bulged with a mixture of rocks and unripe fig fruit that he was collecting for ammunition. The approaching couple made him freeze. He still had sleep in his eyes and the appearance of someone who had slept rough. Been treated rough. He subconsciously rubbed the lump on the side of his head. Oscar Rindman pressed himself into the folds of trunk to hide.
Elanora’s stomach dropped to her feet. Her blood rushed along every vessel in jubilation and for a moment her body became weightless. Exhilarated. Time faded to nothing and Elanora panicked as her body fought its proportions and condensed. Her limbs thickened and shrunk. The volume of blood swirled in her skin with no way of escape. Her memory, her thoughts began to rub away. The fierce pressure building in her veins finally washed the wasting out of her brain. Blood won and Elanora opened her eyes and blinked upon a new scene of total transformation.