Everyone I know is covered in blood.
When I come to her name, I don’t feel relief, exactly. It’s not even hope, because I don’t know if you’re allowed to feel hope when your whole world has turned into a symphony of blood and screaming. But it’s something, a tiny something that makes my fingers shake and slip even worse as I call.
She answers quickly, because maybe there’s a threshold for how many things can go wrong and I’ve reached it. ‘Pearl?’
‘Help,’ I croak.
‘Pearl, where are you? What happened? What did he do?’
‘Matilda, I need you,’ I say. ‘I need you. I need help.’
‘I’m coming,’ she says, and there’s a calmness in her voice that uncoils something in me, and suddenly I’m crying, tears pouring out of my eyes, rushing down my face, and it feels like they’re rushing up my throat too, choking me. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at Ph– Phil’s.’
‘Where is that? Give me the address.’
I manage to stammer it out.
‘I’m coming,’ she says.
Then maybe she hangs up, or maybe she says something else, but I don’t know, because the phone slips from my nerveless fingers to the floor.
I force myself to breathe deep. My knees are trembling and there are black spiders starting to crawl at the edge of my vision so I close my eyes. I put one hand against the fridge to steady myself. In. Out.
Oh God. Phil’s mum. Phil’s mum.
In. Out.
Everything hurts. I was stabbed, I recall vaguely. A Rider stabbed me in the right shoulder. I’ll heal you in a minute, Finn had said, but we didn’t have a minute, and now he’s gone.
The collapse is coming like a wave. All my joints are trying to fold in on themselves. I want to melt away, dissolve in an ocean, swim down until I can’t see the light any more.
But I can’t. I won’t.
One breath. Two breaths. In and out, right down to the diaphragm. Slow your heart rate, Pearl. The faster it beats the more blood you lose, right?
It’s not your turn to fall apart.
‘Phil,’ I say.
She doesn’t answer. Her sobs have turned to choking.
‘Phil,’ I say again, forcing the air out of my lungs with all the strength I can muster. ‘Come on. Come away.’
‘No.’
‘Phil –’
‘I’m not leaving her!’
I make my legs carry me forward. I’m relying on the kitchen cupboards to keep me upright, leaving more bloody smears on them as I stagger closer. I want to sit down beside her but if I sit I won’t be able to stand again. ‘She wouldn’t want you to see her like this.’
I reach my hand out. She slaps it away, hard – so hard I nearly lose my balance. Or maybe it isn’t hard at all, because I’m at the very end of my strength. ‘Phil, come away,’ I say, but she doesn’t reply, and I’m not sure if I said the words aloud or just thought them.
I know how long it is until Matilda finds us. I focus on the blinking time on the microwave clock to keep me conscious. Thirteen minutes after Phil slaps my hand away, I hear footsteps. They echo through the house and I worry for three blinks of the clock that it’s fairies come to finish us off or the Riders have changed their mind or worst of all that it’s Phil’s yiayia or pappou and that I’ll have to – but then Matilda comes around the corner and I’m suddenly more in danger of falling than ever.
She doesn’t look shocked or upset or scared. She looks from me to Phil to the room, her eyes surveying everything, and it’s the look of someone who knows what they’re doing, that same look she had the first time I ever walked into her iron shop, the look that says, ‘I know more than you, and you don’t want to be on my bad side.’
‘Who did this?’ she asks.
‘Riders,’ I rasp.
‘Who did they take?’
‘They didn’t take anyone. They – wanted Phil. But I stopped them.’
An emotion crosses her face, and it’s, of all things, surprise. ‘You stopped them.’
‘I – Finn and I – we brought the sixth Rider back to life. Hunter. It was Mr Hunter. My music teacher. I found his heart. I cut him open. I put it back. And Finn –’
‘Started it again?’
I nod shakily.
‘When a Rider is destroyed, those that called them find a replacement,’ she says. ‘But he’s not destroyed. He’s alive.’
I nod again.
‘There’s six of them, but there’s not six of them,’ she says. ‘You trapped them in a paradox. You broke their bindings. You clever girl, Pearl.’
‘Please help,’ I say. My voice is high and shaky as a little girl’s, and I’m crying again, tears salty in my mouth.
‘Of course I’ll help,’ Matilda says, and catches me just before I hit the floor.
I don’t lose consciousness. Not all the way. I know that if I let myself go under I’m not going to resurface for days. I’m awake enough to be aware of what she’s doing – to feel her lay me down on the kitchen floor, take off my shirt and bandage my shoulder, so tight it makes the fingers of my right hand feel cold and heavy. I hear her talking to Phil, low and comforting, though I can’t make out the words, only the tone.
But I’m asleep enough to drift, to doze, to dream.
I dream in flashes. Silver trees. A starry sky. Vines, rich, deep, green, covered in purple berries. The taste of the berries as they force one between my lips, and another, and another, until the juice is running down my face, dripping onto my skin.
I spit the berries out. They land on the ground in sticky dark splotches that look like blood. They’re laughing at me, and his fingers tangle in my hair and pull my head back.
You will eat, little brother, he says. You belong to us.
Liar, I want to spit in his face, but Matilda is shaking my uninjured shoulder, telling me to come on, come on, Pearl, miles to go before you sleep.
‘I’m awake,’ I manage.
‘Can you sit?’
I brace my left hand on the floor and force myself upright. My right arm is throbbing, an ache that I can feel building up to a crescendo.
‘Drink this.’
The lip of the glass clinks against my teeth. I drink it slowly at first, and then gulp it down. Matilda refills the glass twice for me and it’s still not enough.
‘Careful with that arm,’ she says, as I take the glass from her again. ‘Your arm needs stitches, and that bandage will only do you good if you keep it still.’
‘Where am I going to get stitches?’
‘You’re resourceful. You’ll work it out.’
She sounds so calm and so certain that I believe her.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ Matilda says. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes. Yes. I’m listening.’
‘Do you have a car?’
‘Yes. We took Disey’s car when we –’
Oh God, what if we’d taken Finn’s car? We almost did. We debated over whose car to drive when we went from Finn’s place down to the Summer Door. I’ll drive, he said, and I said, no, I’ll do it, and a slow grin spread across his face and he was like, if I didn’t already know that you liked to be in charge, Linford, then – and I said, please don’t finish that sentence, and he kissed me instead.