The family were hardly pleased that Variel wanted to leave them. At breakfast, she told them she must seek the city of the king. She was grateful for all the help they had given her, and one day hoped to reward them for their troubles, but she knew she had a destiny and had to fulfil it.
‘What business do you have in Ashbrilim?’ asked Phoebe’s father.
‘I must find the man I love,’ Variel said. ‘I made a promise.’
Reluctantly, the family gave her provisions and fondly wished her farewell. Phoebe wept openly and begged Variel to return to her one day. This Variel promised to do, if she was able. She too was sad to leave her friends, who had given her so much, but she had a purpose and could not deny it.
For many days and nights, Variel travelled to Ashbrilim. Along the way, she questioned people about Jadalan. ‘Does the king have a son?’ she asked.
‘Of sorts,’ she was told. ‘Though some say he is not of this world.’
Variel was then sure that Jadalan had found his way home. She had only to present herself at the palace for them to be reunited.
However, once in the city, Variel quickly discovered that a common person simply could not walk in through the gates of the palace. She spoke to the guards on duty at the main entrance and said she had come to see Jadalan, the son of the king.
‘There is no such person,’ said one of the guards. ‘The king’s son is Ailacumar.’
Another guard laughed. ‘Perhaps she has come to offer herself as a bride to the prince!’
‘Then she should get his name right!’ said the first. ‘Jadalan died as a babe. Be off with you, wench!’ They clearly thought Variel was mad.
Variel pondered the situation until nightfall. Then, because she was more agile than a human could be, she climbed an ancient oak next to the high wall that surrounded the palace gardens. She crawled along a wide limb that hung over the garden and dropped down onto the wide lawn beneath. The palace gleamed before her in the moonlight. She could see guards stationed around it. For while longer, she must think and plan.
At the back of the palace was an orchard and a kitchen garden. Variel made her way to this place and climbed into an old apple tree, next to a clear pool of water. Here, she went to sleep and trusted that her dreams would advise her.
In the early morning, the head gardener’s daughter passed by the pool and looked into it. She saw the reflection of Variel’s face in the water and mistaking it for her own, said, ‘Why, how beautiful I am! I should not be working in the garden. I shall ask my father to go to the king at once and tell him that I am the true bride he seeks for the handsome boy he calls a son, who sighs and sleeps so much.’
A short while later, the gardener’s wife happened to be passing and she too paused to look into the water, and as her daughter had done before her, mistook Variel’s radiant reflection for her own. ‘Well, look at me!’ she declared. ‘I am beauty itself! Why should I be married to a mere gardener? I will go to the king at once and tell him I am the true bride he seeks for that boy he calls a son, who sleeps so much and speaks so little.’
The gardener was faced with his womenfolk, who he could only presume to be demented. There they were in the kitchen of their house, putting on finery and talking about being so beautiful they must wed a prince. To him, they looked the same as they always had. In between arguments with each other about who was the most beautiful and fit to become a princess, they told the gardener about how they’d seen their reflections in the pool that morning. Suspecting capricious magic at work, the gardener went himself to investigate the matter. He saw the beautiful face in the pool and looked up, spying at once the young woman hiding among the green leaves.
‘Are you a witch?’ he asked her.
‘No,’ Variel answered. ‘I am a lady from a far land, and I have come to see the prince.’
‘Get down,’ said the gardener. ‘You are charming my womenfolk in strange ways, and it must not be.’
Variel climbed down out of the tree, and the gardener told her that because Prince Ailacumar was so listless, his parents had decided to find a bride for him, in the hope that vivacious female company might coax him from his lethargy. ‘Girls and women from all quarters of the world have come to the palace,’ said the gardener. ‘And now, I have heard, King Ashalan and Lord Jadrin have chosen a suitable bride. The wedding takes place very shortly.’
‘Will you help me?’ Variel said. ‘I am the prince’s one true love.’
The gardener stared at her, ‘I should think you mad,’ he said, ‘but I have never seen a girl like you.’
‘If you’ll take me to the prince, you’ll not regret it,’ Variel said.
Sighing, the gardener nodded and took her into the palace. They went to the room where the royal family took their breakfast, and here Jadrin and Ashalan sat with their adopted son, whose head was sunk on his breast in slumber. Variel recognised him at once as the one she loved. Also seated at the table was an exotic princess from a far land, who was indeed very beautiful, but she might as well have been a horse for all the notice Jadalan took of her.
‘What is this?’ King Ashalan demanded as the gardener ushered Variel towards the table.
‘This young woman claims to know the prince,’ he explained.
‘Indeed!’ said Jadrin. ‘You must tell us all you know of him, girl.’
But Variel barely heard Jadrin’s words. She rushed to Jadalan’s side and knelt beside his chair. ‘Hear me,’ she said, ‘I have come to you as I promised I would. Awake and look upon me.’
Jadalan did not stir, but uttered a soft sound as if his dreams were pleasant.
Variel knew then that some creature must have touched Jadalan in love before she’d come to him, and that all memory of her had faded from his mind. Part of him was lost, perhaps, in the land of angels.
Variel took hold of his hands and no one stopped her. Jadalan’s parents and his prospective bride looked on in curiosity and perhaps some hope that this stranger could awaken the prince. Variel began to sing, ‘For you I raised the city dead, for you I drained the lake, for you I took the pearl of life with both our lives at stake. For love of thee, beloved one, I fell for love of thee. And to this world I came a girl, your one true love to be.’
When Jadrin heard this song, he asked Variel what she meant, for their son had not spoken of any of these things to his parents.
Variel looked at him and said, ‘Three times I completed the tasks that Jadalan had been given by my father, Lailahel. He is my one true love, but now he will not awaken or speak to me. I have travelled here in vain.’
‘Jadalan!’ Ashalan exclaimed. ‘How is this possible? Our son was hardly more than a baby when he was taken from us. We dared not hope this person might be him.’
‘This is your son, Jadalan, have no doubt,’ Variel said. ‘Time passes differently in the land of angels. And I was an angel’s son, banished from my father’s realm for daring to love a human.’
At once, Jadrin jumped out of his chair and went to his son’s side. He put his arms around Jadalan and kissed his face and told him to awaken.
The sound of his name drifted through the fog in Jadalan’s mind and he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Variel’s face and she leaned forward quickly and kissed him upon the mouth. Jadalan’s memory returned, and it quickly became clear that the exotic foreign princess would not become his bride.
Jadalan and Variel were married very soon after, and lived long and interesting lives. Of the angel Lailahel, nothing was heard again.
The Oracle Lips
Sheila met the woman she should have been in the ladies wash-room at Euston station. It was very early in the morning, two o’clock; a time of day when memories of Old London seem very near to this reality, perhaps seeping up from the drains. People like Sheila were like bright flames to these fleeting ghosts. She didn’t want to be there; the empty, echoing chamber, with its weirdly dull strip lights, felt like an abattoir or an operating theatre. Sheila saw blood on
the tiles in some places. Ghost blood.
She had seen ghosts all her life; one of her many unusual talents. She read cards for her mother’s friends; that sort of thing. Sheila felt it was only her abilities that made her interesting to other people. Nobody would want to know her otherwise. She was like a ghost herself.
She wasn’t used to being out so late; the night often unnerved her. It was when the whispers were loudest and it was hard to shut them out. She had washed her hands and gone to the mirror to comb her hair, which was so wispy, it needed to be brushed every half hour; an inconvenient task that Sheila rarely had time to attend to.
Shadows wanted to manifest, but she fought them. She was exhausted, having been awake for nearly twenty hours. Perhaps she should have stayed overnight in London with her sister. Her mother would have approved. But Tess gave Sheila a head-ache - too energetic, too noisy. The trip had been meant to be a treat - Mother had paid - but to Sheila, outwardly grateful, it had been nothing but a trial. Her craving for the solace of her bed-room, which had begun virtually the moment she’d stepped off the train that morning, had become more painful as the day progressed. In the end, she had fled, mumbling about an appointment she had in the morning. Dentist. A good excuse. Tess would not have believed anything more exciting.
Hard to retain control now. Too weary. At the corner of her vision, a tired shadow woman mopped the floor in endless silence. What kind of life had she led only to end up haunting this joyless place? But the shadows weren’t only of the dead. Flickering images of other, busy lives hovered round, buzzing from cubicles to hand basins to mirror. Their energy made Sheila dizzy.
Then, behind her, she heard a lavatory flush and, in the mirror, saw a tall figure march out of one of the cubicles. A real woman, not a shadow or a memory of a thought. Flesh and blood. At once, the shadows disappeared and Sheila felt a weight lift from her body. She and this singular other were alone.
The woman wore a beautiful long dress of soft moss-coloured fabric, quite severe in cut, which described eloquently the perfect lines of her body. Over her arm, a mass of black velvet coat hung. Ignoring Sheila, this vision stalked up to the mirror and placed a large shoulder bag on the shelf before her. For a moment, her hands lay long upon the leather, and she flared her nostrils at her reflection. Then, with business-like economy of movement, she opened the bag and withdrew a lipstick. Thoughtfully, almost reverently, she removed its cap.
Sheila’s comb was stilled in her hair. Her heart, unaccountably, ached. If only her hands understood the tools of beauty magic. If only her hair hung lush and dark and foaming around straight shoulders. Such eyebrows - a statement of command and control. No fear. None. This woman was not plagued by shadows, for her life was full and absorbing. She was more than whole, at home in her skin, pausing here to preen, before whirling back into adventure and experience. Her movements were concise yet graceful. She was not pretty, but had strong, striking features and the proud stance of a woman who was comfortable with her body.
Sheila was not disposed to envying other women. She liked to look neat, but otherwise never fussed over her appearance. There seemed no point. Where nature had given some women poise and arresting faces and bodies, it had spent little time crafting Sheila’s mortal form. Plain but homely: her mother’s description; meant to be a palliative, she supposed. She was not fat, but not shapely either. Straight up. Straight down. A sort of solid chunk.
The woman caught Sheila’s eye in the mirror. Her hand froze half-way to her face, her fingers curled around the bullet of brilliant red lip-stick. Tightly, she smiled. Pity. A moment of it. Sheila withered in its beam. Then, the woman focused in upon herself and pressed the waxy colour against her mouth. The movement was sensual, almost choreographed. Sheila’s lips were thin, but this woman’s were autumn ripe, the lower lip fuller than the upper. Their cushiony flesh sank beneath the invading stick of pigment. Round and round. Twice. Colour so thick it must surely dry to a hard, gloss finish.
Sheila became aware of staring, and coloured up. She stuffed her comb back into her own small purse and leaned forward to rub at her nose. It was shiny.
Beside her, the woman took a tissue from her bag and pressed it to her mouth. She dropped the kissed paper onto the floor, didn’t even look at it. For a moment, she pouted at herself, then frowned and applied another layer of colour.
It seemed purposeful.
The woman gazed haughtily at her reflection, smiled to herself, and leaned forward to press her mouth against the mirror. A guileless act of self-love. It seemed as if another woman behind the glass leaned forward to accept the kiss. Then, she dropped her lipstick carelessly back into her bag, slung it over her shoulder, patted her luxuriant hair and walked regally out.
Sheila stared at the ghost of the lips on the mirror. Shockingly red. The woman was still here. She had left a part of herself behind.
Outside, the public address system announced the imminent departure of a train, Sheila’s train. Hurriedly, she zipped up her purse and scraped her hair behind her ears. But she could not walk past the lips on the mirror. They glared out at her, summoning.
Almost without thinking, Sheila found herself standing on tip-toe to place her own mouth against the print. The glass was cold and unyielding. She could not feel the thick colour.
Suddenly self-conscious, she jumped backwards. Her reflection showed a startled pale face, its mouth daubed with a gash of raw red that engulfed her own narrow lips. She rubbed anxiously at this invasion and bent down to pick up the tissue the woman had discarded. This, she shoved into her rain-coat pocket, then scurried out to the concourse. Her face was flaming, she could feel the heat. Platform 15. Hurry. Hurry.
Defences down, shadows assailed her from all sides. She felt as if she was pressing through a throng, although the station was unusually empty, just a few clots of people staring up at the board announcing arrivals and departures. All the shops were shut, fenced off by metal grilles. Sheila ran down the ramp to the platform, where the train panted softly. There was hardly anyone on it. She leapt awkwardly through the nearest door and found a seat quickly. Her face was still burning. She could see herself reflected in the window. A wounded mouth. Remembering, and wanting to scrub her lips, she took the tissue from her pocket. It was white as a towel, the blot like a flower of blood upon it. Sheila stared at it in her hand. The ghost mouth was an oracle, it might speak. She laid the tissue out on the table in front of her, smoothing carefully around the print. Someone sat down opposite her, but they were not really there, so she ignored them. The lipstick had sunk into the fibres of the tissue, revealing every line of the lips they had touched. It was perfect, like a painting. Red on white. The lines, Sheila thought, are so personal, like those on a palm. A woman’s life might be encrypted in the print of her lips, or her future.
The train shuddered, creaked. A guard stamped past the window, blowing a whistle. Doors slammed. And they were moving, away from London, out into the darkness of the sleeping land.
Sheila could not sleep. She stared at the red lips on the table, and when she closed her eyes, the pouting shape burned behind her lids, neon green. She wanted to know the woman who belonged to their shape.
Sheila’s mother let her sleep without interruption until one o’clock the following afternoon. Sheila had arrived home at four thirty in the morning, creeping into the house as quietly as possible, although her mother, whose hearing seemed as acute as a bat’s, called her name as she tip-toed up the creaking stairs.
‘Sheila!’
‘Yes, Mum.’
Silence.
In her bedroom, Sheila had laid out the tissue carefully on the dressing table where her tortoiseshell brush and comb set lay on a lace mat. The lines in the lip print were more defined now, as if the colour between them was bleeding away. Hyper-sensitive with exhaustion, Sheila’s eyes had blurred as she stared at the shape. The lines were widely spaced, most of them without fork, which to her spoke of an open personality, but at the corners of t
he mouth, a series of links hinted at secrecy and deceit.
Sheila’s mother breezed into her room without knocking, bearing a large mug of weak tea. Sheila loathed weak tea.
‘Morning, love,’ said Sheila’s mother, whipping open the curtains.
Sheila blinked in the light and accepted the warm mug. It had clearly been standing on the kitchen table for some time. Full-cream milk fat made oily puddles on the surface of the liquid. Sheila looked up at her mother’s face. She wore thick lip-stick too - some of it had smeared onto her front teeth - but the effect was not the same.
‘Good trip? Why did you come back at that godawful hour? Why didn’t you stay with Tess?’
Sheila began to reply, formulating excuses, but her mother breezed on,
‘Oh, Sheila love, Marj is round, with her sister. I told her you’d do the cards for them in a bit. You won’t be long, will you?’
Sheila sighed. ‘No.’
Sheila’s mother paused, frowned at her daughter. ‘What’s that on your face? Lipstick?’ She laughed. ‘Don’t tell me Tess gave you a make-over!’
Sheila felt her face grow hot. She mumbled incoherently.
‘Right,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll pop down and put some toast on for you.’
Left alone, Sheila stared glumly into her tea. Why must her mother make her feel like a freak show? Her gift was special; it was wasted on divining the narrow lives of her mother’s friends. This was not the first time Sheila had thought it, but now there was anger behind the thought rather than simply numb acceptance.