tyrant spell issue six
DESCRIPTION
Magazine with stories and articles about the supernatural for teens and over.TRANSCRIPT
Tyrant Spell
Issue Six
Late Lammas & Autumn Equinox
EDITOR’S PAGE
TYRANT SPELL!! Hi! Welcome to the sixth edition of Tyrant Spell.!! There has been a reprieve! Tyrant Spell will continue, but will be shorter for a while.
! The theme story celebrates the festival of the Goddess Pomona, and is about recognising true love and the importance of teamwork.
! Saviatona episode four and the third part of the serialised novel, THE BOY WITH THE SNOWSTORM will be in the next edition. Clio part five appears in this edition, but the conclusion to the story will now appear in the Hallowmas issue, which will see Tyrant Spell come full circle.!! Please like, or comment about the magazine on Issuu, or email me. !! Poems, articles and stories, artwork and photos are still welcome as long as they reflect a theme or the general tone of Tyrant Spell. All previous Issues will continue to be available on issuu.com.This time, I would like to have reader contributions regarding The Devil. Stories, poems, artwork or non-fiction on this topic.! The deadline for contributions for the Hallowmas edition is October 6th. Just email. The address is on the back cover. Contributions should be in the form of attachments and all will be considered for publication and all emails answered. All suitable submissions received after this date will be held over for a future issue.! ! Alix
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INTRODUCTION TO THE THEMES OF ISSUE SIX
Lammas, the festival of first fruits, the disseminating Moon, the festival of Pomona, Roman Goddess of Fruit, and Autumn Equinox.
! Lammas is when the return begins. Did you feel it as the full moon in all her glory came and slipped away leaving a sense of bereavement, heralding the harvest, but also Equinox, equal day and equal night again.! Persephone returns to the underworld, and her mother Demeter mourns, the earth begins to cool, the winds of change to blow as we move towards the stillness of winter and its dormancy, until Spring Equinox, when her reunion with her mother is spectacular!! The theme story Dark Fruit pays homage to Pomona, Goddess of Fruit. Her festival is celebrated each year on August 13th. ! It also reflects the blessings of Lammas and links Pomona’s story to that of Persephone travelling through the underworld, but finding love in her new role.
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;Lengthen night and shorten day;Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
..A.. A..
! ! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! ! Emily Jane Brontë !
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Contents
Editor’s Page!! ! ! 3
Introduction to this issue’s themes! ! ! ! 4
Contents! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 5
Serial The One and Only, part six ! ! ! ! 6
Dark Fruit! ! ! ! ! ! ! 25 Serial Clio, part five! ! ! ! ! 82 ! ! !! Mystery Poet ! ! 91
IN THE HIDDEN HEART 92
Contacts on the back cover
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Serial, THE ONE AND ONLY, part six
Resume of Parts One,Two, Three, Four & Five:
Daisy bumps into someone she can’t see in the woods
and wakes up feeling and behaving reckless and
ruthless. She asks her cousin Charlotte to go to The
Bridge, the club where Daisy’s boyfriend Kieron plays
with his band, Lonely Little Bleeding Hearts. They are
regular performers there.
At the club, Charlotte meets Ed, the quiet but
gorgeous looking boy who serves the non alcoholic
drinks that The Bridge sells to its teenage patrons.
Daisy sings with the band as their guest vocalist
and is really very good. She also seduces the
keyboard player Declan, even though she loves Kieron
and knows that her friend Cheryl fancies Declan.
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Charlotte sees Daisy kissing Declan and is
disturbed by her cousin’s behaviour and by the evil
look that she glimpses for a moment in her eyes.
Daisy has no intention of going to America with
Declan. Cheryl finds out about Daisy and Declan
seeing one another behind everyone’s backs and
doesn’t tell Kieron, but falls out with Daisy.
Meanwhile Charlotte is watching her cousin and is
spooked by her increasingly reckless behaviour.
On a sixth form trip to Kelvingrove Art
Gallery in Glasgow, where Daisy has arranged to
meet the band who are doing a gig in the city,
something terrible happens. Will, the band’s
drummer, who has always lusted after Daisy, is
overcome by a fit of jealousy, somehow
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precipitated into a fury by Daisy, or something to
do with Daisy...
And tragedy occurs when Will rips a medieval
sword from its case, which transforms from a
rusting relic into the shining lethal weapon that it
once was.
Will then uses the sword against a defenseless
Declan.
He is eaten up with guilt and remorse after
Declan bleeds to death, there on the gallery floor.
Although he was jealous of the attention Daisy was
paying Declan and despite his being very hot
tempered, he can’t believe that he has done what he
has done. Was he really responsible?
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Daisy convinces the police that Declan took
the sword from the case and that it was he himself,
who, while larking about with it, sliced his own
arm off.
She goes to the doctor because she is
becoming convinced that she is going mad. She
feels guilty about Declan’s death and not just
because he and Will were fighting over her.
Somehow, she knows that she is responsible, even
though Will wielded the sword, it was she who
killed Declan with it.
Daisy can’t stop herself being unkind or rude
or cruel and one night she sees a strange boy/girl
in the bathroom, who disappears, but then she sees
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his eyes looking at her from her own face,
reflected in the mirror!
Charlotte would like Daisy to confide in her,
but knows that she won’t. She is suspicious that Daisy
and Will are not telling the truth about what
happened to Declan, but daren’t think about what
the alternatives to their story might be.
Ed, the boy who works at The Bridge, joins the
band after kieron hears how good a musician he is
and asks him to play with them.
Then, in the middle of the night, Charlotte
sees Daisy floating in the air, outside her bedroom
window.
In the morning she goes to the graveyard.
Unable to face Declan’s funeral on the following
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day, she takes a wreath to his elder sister’s grave,
where he is also to be interred and sees Will
sitting nearby. Charlotte hides and hears Will
talking to Declan, telling him that he is sorry for
killing him.
Now Charlotte knows his secret!
Martin is introduced into the story. He lives
alone in a bedsit and is lonely too. At night he
goes to clubs and strangers are his friends. He
hides behind a disguise, wears a mask, which he
creates with make up, white and black and red!
He has a recurring nightmare in which he sees
a severed head and a girl with very blue eyes. He
doesn’t know who she is.
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Another girl, someone he has met in one of
the clubs, he also sees at the cafe where she works,
but she doesn’t recognize him without his mask.
No one knows him. Only the authorities know
his name.
Meanwhile Charlotte is enjoying a new
notoriety, as Daisy’s friend and as the almost
girlfriend of a member of the band. She is,
however, still concerned about Daisy, who,
Charlotte observes, is growing thin and tired
looking.
She sees a strange vision of a snake inside
Daisy. It seems like a part of Daisy crying out for
help, but Daisy sees her looking and smiles in a
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smug way, as though she doesn’t care and there is
nothing that Charlotte can do anyway.
Daisy is still playing cat and mouse with
Will. He is being driven crazy. He wants Daisy so
much, needs her, as she is the only one who
knows what really happened to Declan and shares
the secret with him - so he believes, not knowing
that Charlotte overheard his ‘confession’ in the
graveyard.
Will wants Daisy to make it all better,
knowing that, somehow, she is responsible for
what happened to Declan, not he. Besides which,
he is and always has been, besotted with her.
Daisy has asked Will to meet him at her
school. She has a key to the shed, used as a green
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room by the cast members of Oliver, which is being
staged at the school with Daisy in the role of
Nancy.
Will feels that Daisy is going to allow him to
usurp Kieron’s place in her life, anytime now, so
blinded is he by his passion for Daisy that he is
prepared to be her slave - or partner in crime...
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THE ONE AND ONLY
A tale of possession
Daisy
i waited for Will, after the others had all gone
home and thought about Kerry. She kept upstaging
me. She can sing. She’s not as good as me, but she
can dance better and the dance teacher, our
choreographer, Miss Winters, was giving her all the
best steps, even a ballet sequence with Daniel or
Del, the twins sharing the role of Oliver.
The thing is, i knew why Kerry was Miss
Winters favourite really and it had nothing to do
with her being a good dancer and everything to
do with the cute boy that she made as the Artful
Dodger!15
Oh, they thought no one knew, but i had
noticed when Kerry started smiling at Miss Winters
in a different way, not just pleased to be given so
much attention, to be given the ballet with Oliver,
although she was well pleased about that, smirked
about it all rehearsals, the week before.
I thought Miss Winters was a bit pervy, flirting
with Kerry, but Kerry was flirting right back and she
had blushed like crazy when Miss Winters danced
Oliver’s steps with her that night, to show Del how to
do it. There they were arm in arm, thought it
should’ve been obvious to everyone what was going
on, but it didn’t seem to be, so...
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Will
I went running. I went to the gym and did weight
training, when it was raining hard and I couldn’t
run by the canal, and I boxed, knocked a guy who
usually beats me spark out and then I rammed a
Supermarket window at Kingcross on my Yamaha,
for the hell - I didn’t take anything. I can afford
groceries, but I got no relief, not until Friday
night when I kissed Daisy and she asked me to
meet her outside the school gates.
“Hi,” I smiled. Daisy looked great. Pumped up.
Excited. In the shed at the back of the school, it
was all fitted out as a dressing room, with mirrors
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and counters and seats for the actors. As dressing
rooms go, it was pretty cool, I guess.
“Got the paint?” was what she said, not Hi Will,
straight to the point, well, once that part was over
with and we’d written
KERRY SMITH AND DIANA WINTERS
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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all over the mirrors and the walls, I was just glad
to be alone with Daisy. We both got a rush from
trashing the place a bit, then Daisy sat on a counter
and opened her coat. She had a short school skirt on
and bare legs and ankle boots. She looked so hot. I
walked over to her and just stepped into her arms
and kissed her and she was hot for me! Her hands
were all over me and pulling me in. I pulled away
and kicked my boots off and got rid of my jeans as
well. She watched and smiled and hitched her skirt
up.
I went to her and she leapt off the counter and
legged it. I ran after her and then remembered I
was half naked. I put my jeans and boots back on
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and I saw a stick of red lipstick or something on
the counter and I wrote on the mirror DAISY DID
THIS DAISY DAISY DAISY - then I smeared it off
again with my fist, smashed it into the glass and
left.
I went over to see Tatum. I fell in through the
door as she opened it, I was in such a hurry.
“Shh,” she said with her finger to her lips, “Billy’s
asleep, just got him off again. Wet. Hi babe, ok? No, I
can see you’re not.”
Tatum made me forget about Daisy. Tatum was
everything to me that Daisy wouldn’t be. Afterwards, I
lay next to her in bed and listened to her quiet
breathing as she slept and to Billy’s over in his cot
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and wondered about every damned thing. Why I
wanted Daisy and not Tatum; whether Billy was
mine; where my sister was? Where had she gone
after we were separated and Rosy had been
adopted? Was she even called Rosy anymore?
And - how and why had I ended up murdering
my friend Declan?
Tatum woke up and smiled at me sleepily
at around dawn. I knew I had to tell her what
had happened. I knew that she would forgive
me and I needed to be forgiven. I took a deep
breath and sat up. Tatum sat up too. I faced her.
“Tattie, I’ve got something I want to tell
you,” I paused...
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Daisy
“Dad, someone was hanging around the
school when I left tonight and followed me I
think. I had to run to get away from them.”
Dad looked at me with concern.
I continued, “Yeah, I’ve been followed
before. Once someone followed me through the
woods, but I didn’t tell you. This was last year.
Do you think, maybe, I’ve been wanting to ask,
but I was afraid you’d say no, do you think I
could have a car? Just a small one? I did pass
my test last year after the lessons Mum paid for.
I’m sure I’d feel safer.”
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I could see that he was thinking about it. I
added the last card to the stack.
“Dani was attacked last year, but she kept it
secret.”
I watched the cards fall, like Alice.
Alexandra Lesley
To be continued.
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DARK FRUIT
A blur of pink and white hovered in front of her eyes
and brushed her nose, tiny fingers scratched gently
against her face. They were spiky twigs of the
Hawthorn pricking as its blossoms caressed her. The
petals tickled her lips and nose and she raised her
hand and brushed them away, while loving their
touch. She narrowed her eyes as the sun broke
through the branches and shone on her face and as
reluctant as she might have been to leave a
comfortable bed on a Sunday morning, she got up off
the grass.
Her dress was damp and she shivered a little
now as the breeze had fingers as well and placed
them cold against her neck, ran them through her
hair and patted at her through her thin dress. She
retrieved her jacket, which had been her pillow on
the wet grass and tugged it on, the fleece lining
dragging on clammy skin as she pushed her arms
into the sleeves.
The May blossom is later every spring thought
the keeper as he too appreciated the stunning white
flowers on the numerous Hawthorns in the park and
he unlocked the gate and made his way to his shed, 25
rubbing his hands together, as at this hour there
was chill, despite it being June.
No such thing as blazing June anymore he
mused, as he filled his kettle from the tap in the
wall and went back to the shed.
“Here you are Strahan, hot, and sweet as
your self old man,” he said, loud enough to wake
the sleeper, but not to startle him. He placed the
mug on the ground below the bench in reach of the
old tramp’s hand where it already trembled a few
inches above the soil.
A second mug was in his hand. He looked
round for the girl. Sometimes she wasn’t near.
Then he saw her emerging from the shelter of the
dazzling Hawthorns on the park’s Northern
boundary and gestured with the mug, slopping
milky tea onto the path, extra milk in hers, extra
milk, because she might need it.
She came towards them and he thought, not
for the first time, What a beauty and again, not for
the first time, under lock and key she’d have been
if she were mine, under lock and key but he said
nothing of this, and smiled as she reached the path
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and Strahan sat up, bleary, but as dazzled as he
was himself.
“Here she is Barry, Creirwy, herself, or is it it
Cerridwen, the mother, watch out or she’ll steal
your soul, ah, but she’s a darlin.’ Good mornin’
Cherry.”
She smiled.
The two old men basked in the glow of the
light from the young girl, with her amber eyes, and
amber hair and pale amber freckled skin, she
seemed like a human embodiment of the early
morning sunshine to them.
Someone younger than them, only a little
older than the girl, had also been enraptured by
her and he was partly responsible for her being
here with them and not waiting out her time at the
home, before going off to university in the autumn.
She had not been happy at the home,
however, except when her great grandmother
came to see her, which she did regularly. They
would wander about the garden and Great
Grandma would make Cherry laugh like a maniac,
with her tales of her own ‘mis-spent youth’ as she
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called it, in the early part of the previous century,
when she had been a flapper.
“A Flapper! A flapper, my dear, you young girls
don’t know how to live, these days!”
“What was a flapper, Great Grandma?”
“A flapper was a young woman who lived for
the day, but mostly for the nights! Then she danced
and she flirted and went about with whomever she
liked. She wore her hair short and in a bob and had
her dress above her knees and wore pearls. She
wore feathers in her hair and she knew how to fly!”
Great Grandma went off into peals of laughter and
they both laughed until they couldn’t breath.
“Before that time”, Great Grandma had
confided “I had been very shy,” she said, “and
mistrustful of boys and men.”
Now she saw that they were human like
herself and not the strange animals she had once
assumed that they were.
“I met a boy,” Grandma had said one day, “and
I loved him so, William was his name, William
Jardine. He wanted to marry me, but he was poor
and a commoner from Glasgow and my father was a
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Laird and we stayed in the countryside in a grand
house on an estate not far from Edinburgh.
My father said he would disown me if I
married William, but I married him and I gave
William a baby boy, your Granddad, also named
William, Billy to his friends.”
“I don’t remember him very well. I was only
little when he died. Mum told me about him,” Cherry
said and confided, “I wish she hadn’t died too.”
Cherry’s mother, Billy’s daughter, Billie, had
been a singer and had acquired a recording contract
and made a record before she got married and
became pregnant with Cherry. Jonno, her husband,
John McKendrick, manager of a rugby team hadn’t
wanted her to carry on singing then and she gave
way to him.
“Dad used to bring men, rugby players back to
the house, to drink with him. I had a lock put on my
bedroom door and hid myself away, because they
came on to me and Dad took no notice.”
Cherry’s dad died on one of these occasions;
went to bed and never woke up.
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“His blood was probably ninety percent whisky
by then, Cherry and I don’t think he meant to hurt
you. He loved your mother and you, but he was
weak,” Grandma had said, shaking her head.
“I was fifteen and they wouldn’t let me stay in
the house and made me come here. Why wouldn’t
they let me live with you?”
“Ah, they didn’t have my address sweetheart,
but I came to see you as soon as I could, didn’t I?
I’m afraid I can’t have you to live with me, you see,
it’s against the rules.”
From this remark, Cherry deduced that Great
Grandma, must live in a home too.
“Why didn’t I know you before?” she had asked.
“Well, your father didn’t have the right
environment for me to be able to visit you, and -’’
she seemed to drift away, but Cherry knew that her
dad wouldn’t have thought to take her to see her
Great Grandma. She wondered why her mother never
had.
But then when Cherry was only seven and her
mother had been thinking of taking up her singing
career again, she had got cancer and had slipped out
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of Cherry’s life quite quickly. She had been only
thirty two.
“You know, not all men are like your dad, or
like mine,” Great Grandma had said, “your dad was
like his dad before him and he would have done
anything for your mother. He encouraged her when
she wanted to become a singer and when she was
successful, he was as pleased for her as she was
herself and proud of her achievement. I don’t think
he wanted her to marry your dad, but he knew that
he was your mother’s choice and so it had to be. He
was worried when your dad turned to drink,
though; he told me,” she had shaken her head
sadly, “just before he died.”
“You must have been so sad at losing your
son, Grandma,” Cherry had patted Great Grandma’s
cold hand.
Great Grandma had shaken herself, as though
to shake off her sadness and had told Cherry, “He
was old, Cherry and ill,” then she had said, “I knew
him all his life, but he knows me better now. Where
he is, everyone knows all that there is to know
about their dear ones, if they choose to know. He
watches over you Cherry, and Billie does as well.”
Suddenly, Great Grandma was comforting
Cherry, for her words were comforting, Cherry
realized, even if she wasn’t sure whether they were
true and how could Great Grandma be sure?
Pomona had looked into her great
granddaughter’s eyes and saw all her thoughts in
those expressive amber irises and more besides as
her pupils suddenly widened, sparkled, as the sun
went down on the home and the garden grew colder
still in the late autumn air, that day, sparkled with a
light of their own, and she had cried out and took
Great Grandma’s hands, even colder now, “I’m nearly
eighteen and when I leave here Great Grandma, we
can live together and I can get a job and we can
watch over one another!”
“Yes, I’d like that, but don’t you think, you
should study first, Cherry, go to college or even to
university?”
“But I don’t know what to study. I don’t know
what I want to do.”
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“You will, Cherry, you will; soon you’ll know
just what to do. By next summer you’ll have it all
clear and laid out before you, don’t worry. I never
had the opportunity to study like girls can today, to
have a career, but you will.”
“You had Great Granddad and Granddad didn’t
you though, Great Grandma?”
“I did and your Great Granddad was like a
strong tree that I could shelter in. From the top
most branches of that tree I could see a rosy future
and he never let me down. A wonderful husband he
was to me and a wonderful father to our son. I was
so lucky!” Great Grandma’s eyes had then shone.
“You will be lucky too Cherry, you’ll see. You’ll leave
all the unhappy times behind you.”
When Great Grandma had gone that day,
Cherry tried to remember her words and to believe
them when the other teenagers at the home
sneered at her and called her Cherry fruitcake. She
went upstairs to the room she shared with Fat Sam.
She had been singing to herself again, a habit she
had inherited from her mother and they laughed at
her. Somehow her face didn’t fit. She was pretty,
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but she was quiet and somehow different from the
others and they despised her for it - despised her.
Even Fat Sam, a fellow victim, wasn’t her friend and
called her by her nickname.
“Oh, hello Fruitcake,” she had said as Cherry
closed the door on the jeers of the others and Sam,
who had been lying on her bed, listening to the ipod
she had stolen, had turned over and faced away from
Cherry.
It was Halloween and all the teenagers at the
home were going trick or treating, accompanied by
members of staff.
Cherry had been persuaded to go along by her
house-mother Dawn and the boys had all been
standing at the gate with the house-fathers waiting
for the girls who had taken longer to get ready.
Witches and vampires poured from the front
door and Cherry after them, who had also been
persuaded to wear a mask, or rather, a half-mask,
like a cat’s face with holes for her eyes, leaving her
nose and mouth free below its glittery fox coloured
contours, that somehow fit her perfectly.
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So much so that when Carmelo saw her
appear from behind the other girls he saw a cat
who had turned into a half girl, half cat, with long
golden hair and a long blue coat that didn’t hide
the fact that she was slim and walked with a cat
like grace. He had dawdled at the gate, waiting for
Jay who had been his best friend at the home
before he left to go to live with foster parents four
years earlier. Jay came out, last as usual, wearing a
skeleton suit on his gangly six feet and sloping
down the path. He grinned at Carmelo, brushing
past Cherry as though she were not even there, as
the others had and punching Carmelo on the
shoulder, greeted him with his voice that was as
gawky as his body.
“Great you came mate,” he had said, slinging
his arm around the other boy’s shoulders and
sweeping him into a hug, “Trick or treating!” he had
whooped and pulled Carmelo down the road after
the others who were disappearing around the
corner. Carmelo had glanced back as the cat girl
had slowly followed, looking as timid as a cat can.
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Jay, who was another misfit, who yet seemed
to fit right in, protected by the staff and the other
kids alike said loudly then, so that the cat girl must
have heard. “Never mind her, that’s just old
fruitcake, batty as a bat, crazy as a cat,” he had
cackled, but not unkindly, just repeating what
others had called Cherry. He was not malicious;
however, some of the other teenagers definitely
were.
Carmelo, had shaken his head at his friend
and pushed his head, told him off.
“Its rude to call people names mate. You
don’t like it - can it it Jay, ok?”
Cherry had followed the others, feeling pretty
miserable, and found herself tagging along after
some of them who had given the house-parents the
slip in the dark streets, during a momentary
diversion when another group of teenagers, boys
and girls, tried to start something by setting off a
banger just behind the kids from the home and one
of the girls had begun screaming hysterically. This
took the house-parents attention and the rear
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guard didn’t notice some of the boys and a few of
the girls as well, sloping off.
Cherry had gone with them to get away from
the others and Carmelo and Jay were among
them.
She had followed three or four of them up a
long driveway to a large detached house, where
an old man told them to clear off after they had
repeatedly rung the doorbell dozens of times.
“Trick, trick!” the boys had yelled, although
Carmelo hadn’t joined in. He was eighteen and
mature for his age besides.
That was when it had happened, first the
boys had thrown eggs at the old man and the
windows of his house and then stampeded down
the driveway and Cherry had turned and ran and
as they sped by and around her she had stood on
a stone and turned her ankle and fell, putting her
hands out to break her fall, but before her hands
could be grazed by the gravelly path, she had
been caught and pulled upright by two strong
hands. Once she was standing, the hands had let
go, but a very soft and concerned boy’s voice
had spoken behind her.
“Are yeh all right? The idiots nearly
mowed you down.”
Cherry had then turned to face Carmelo.
She had seen a tall boy with dark blonde hair,
showing in curls on his forehead beneath a
blue beanie hat. His hair was a little darker
than her own, but it was his eyes, even in the
lamp-light, warm, mirroring the concern, that
she had heard in his voice, that had taken her
attention.
“I’m fine thank you,” she had said and
shy, unused to talking with the others, had
turned to go down the path and as she did so
had stumbled when her ankle failed to hold
her and pain shot through it.
A hand had been immediately under her
elbow and Carmelo had spoken to her again
with the same concerned tone.
“I must help you,” he had said sincerely,
“Do yeh think yeh can walk on it?”
Cherry had put her weight on her foot
again and this time the pain wasn’t as bad.
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“I think I’ve sprained it, but I think I can
walk on it,” she had turned to Carmelo, “Thank
you, I’ll be all right now,” she had said self-
conscious still and had tried again to walk, but
had to hobble, wincing a little with each step.
Carmelo had caught her arm again.
“I think I’ll have to help you, that is if yeh
don’t mind?”
Cherry had looked at the boy. He had
smiled and she had found herself smiling back
and leaning on his arm they had moved off.
The door of the house behind them had
slammed and they had turned to see a face
peering at them through the window in the top
half. It had seemed to smile, though the
textured surface of the glass made it difficult to
tell, before the light had gone off and the face of
the old man had disappeared.
Cherry and Carmelo walked off down the
street back towards the home and Carmelo had
introduced himself and Cherry had taken off her
mask and told him her name and Carmelo had
39
thought how much nicer that was than fruitcake
and how pretty she was, even prettier without
the mask hiding her beautiful eyes.
He had told her that the mask was like
those made in Northern Italy, in Venice, where
he came from, or rather where his parents had
lived, but they had been killed in a car accident,
when he was only seven, soon after they had
come to Scotland, where his father had come to
manage a small art gallery.
He had been looked after by his
grandmother, but she had died and so he had
been taken into care when he had been eleven
and had spent three years at the home and had
also been to stay with two sets of foster parents
until he had gone to live with the people he now
called Mum and Dad. He had been with them for
four years. In fact, they had recently applied to
adopt him, because, they had told him, he felt
like their own son and that was how he felt too.
Cherry had told him about herself, and
especially about her great grandmother.
“She sounds cool,” Carmelo had said.
40
When they had reached the home and gone
in. Cherry had called out to the receptionist who
was in her office and they had glimpsed her
through the open door, sitting with her eyes
closed, listening to an MP3 player through
headphones, singing to the music and oblivious to
their entrance.
In the TV room, the house-mother left in
charge had been sitting dozing in front of the t.v.
with a glass of something in her hand, that looked
about to spill, so they had crept past.
Cherry, feeling unexpectedly bold and not
wanting Carmelo to leave had said, “Help me
upstairs to my room,” and added, “I- I have photos
of my mother when she was on stage, if - if you’d
like to see them,” she had stammered, shy again.
She had been struck at once by his eyes, in
the hall light she had been able to see that they
were not brown as she had expected them to be,
but hazel, with hints of blue and green amid
brown.
41
In the bedroom she had sat on her chair. Fat
Sam’s had been piled high with clothes, but
Carmelo had knelt to examine her ankle. It was
swollen, she had noticed.
“But, I think you will live,” he had said and
laughed and she had found herself laughing with
him in the way that she only laughed with Great
Grandma. She had taken off her coat and
Carmelo had thrown off his beanie.
They had to sit together on Cherry’s bed
while Carmelo and she had looked at the photos
and Cherry had asked him if he was at university.
“No, I’m over in Edinburgh. I, I work there,”
he had said, not wanting to tell her that he was
an apprentice gardener at The Royal Botanic
Gardens, in case she didn’t think that was cool.
She had looked up from the photo album
then and caught a slightly evasive expression in
the up till now very frank eyes and felt unsettled.
She had moved away, but Carmelo had caught
her arm and suddenly she had done what she had
felt like doing since she had looked into his eyes
42
for the first time. She had kissed him, gently, shyly.
Carmelo, eagerly had kissed her back and all
at once the joy of being close to someone her own
age, her dancing hormones, and the fact that he
was obviously attracted to her too, had gone to her
head and she stood up suddenly.
Carmelo had looked startled, had started to
say sorry, but she had caught his hand, explaining
as she pulled him to the door that she shared the
room with another girl and didn’t want to have this
moment spoilt by the arrival of Fat Sam.
“You don’t have to go yet, do you?” she had
asked him, sounding she had suddenly thought to
herself pathetic, but Carmelo hadn’t noticed, just
assured her that he didn’t need to be home yet and
she had limped up another flight of stairs still
towing him along and taking a small key from her
pocket with a flourish had said, “I’m in charge of
the washing this week and I have the key to the
laundry room.”
Inside the small room were a large airing
cupboard, a washer, a drier and a spare single
43
mattress leaning against the wall. Leaving the
light off they had still been able to see with the
glow of the street lamp outside and dragging the
mattress onto the floor to sit on, they kissed
again and again and Carmelo shrugged off his
jacket. Cherry took the lead and soon it was
impossible for either of them to stop and
suddenly their clothes had been in the way.
Carmelo had undone his belt and Cherry,
unafraid, though nervous, had pulled off her top,
tugged open the cupboard near them and taken
two duvets from the cupboard, then had begun to
take off her own jeans.
Carmelo had stripped quickly and when they
were both naked they had crawled inside the
duvets, shy until they were cocooned in the
bedding.
It had been wonderful, the most wonderful
thing that had happened to her since she had
come to stay there, the only wonderful thing that
had happened to her since she had been at the
home!
44
Carmelo had matched her passion, but
with a gentleness that meant that she was not
hurt. Even the slightest touch of his skin against
hers had set her own alight it seemed, like
sunburn without pain and his breath was so
sweet and his mouth like the flesh of the juiciest
fruit. Then his touch between her legs had made
her gasp with intense pleasure and when he had
taken his fingers away, replaced them with a
firm, vibrant and more substantial part of his
flesh and had slid into her, she had felt as
though she would faint, it was so good! And
after a long time and something that felt like
going to heaven and back, they had known,
when it had seemed only moments had passed,
that they could go on and on and so they had,
until noises downstairs had told them that the
others were back and they had lain quietly
together then, hot and sleepy and yet Cherry
had felt more awake than she had ever felt
before.
45
They had slept then and woken when the
house was quiet and kissed again and then
dressed and stealthily gone downstairs, both
starving, to the dining room.
There had been voices coming from the
kitchen and Cherry had recognized them as
belonging to the house-mother who had been
asleep in front of the t.v. and one of the house-
fathers, though she hadn’t been able to hear what
they were saying.
Carmelo had noticed a single fruit in a dish
on a sideboard and had scooped it up.
“Let’s take this into the vestibule!”
Cherry had followed Carmelo into the
vestibule, where they had sat on the telephone
seat there.
“How are we going to eat that?” asked
Cherry, looking at the hard and seemingly
impregnable fruit. It was hardly like eating an
apple or even an orange, which could be peeled.
“Here’s how,” Carmelo had accompanied his
words by taking a knife from a sheath on his belt
that Cherry had not noticed earlier. She was
46
surprised now that Carmelo carried a knife. He
hadn’t seemed the kind of boy who would carry
one.
Carmelo had used his pruning knife, one of
the tools of his trade, to slice the pomegranate in
two and then he had pierced one of the glistening
cherry coloured seeds with the tip and brandished
in front of Cherry.
Gingerly, she had leaned forward and taken it
in her lips. It was sweet and almost spicy, but there
had been nowhere to dispose of the little hard pip
within its juicy casing.
Carmelo had held out his hand and half-
smiling half grimacing, Cherry had spat the pip into
his palm. Carmelo had pierced one for himself, but
this was all taking too long. Cherry had a badge on
her sweatshirt, a blackbird and she removed this
now and used the pin. Some of the pips they spat
into a handkerchief from a box next to the
telephone and some they had spat at one another
and when the fruit had been emptied of all of its
tiny sparkling rubies, Carmelo had said half
seriously.47
“Now we have eaten a pomegranate
together we’re as good as married yeh know,”
then he had quipped as Cherry had looked
quickly up at him, all seriously, “well, engaged at
any rate.”
He then had leaned towards her and they
had kissed and Cherry had spoken without
thinking.
“I love you,” she had whispered, so softly
that Carmelo had wondered if he had really heard
the words and without thinking he had answered
straightaway “I love you, Cherry.”
Before he had slipped out, Carmelo had
asked Cherry for her mobile number. Cherry had
told him that she didn’t own a phone at all, so
Carmelo had written his own number on a scrap
of paper and given it to Cherry.
On the next day disaster had struck.
Cherry’s house mother had asked another girl, a
younger girl called Lucy, who at least was not
one of the older girls who bullied and taunted
Cherry, to assist her and the two girls had
chatted while they loaded the machine.48
Later, however, when Cherry had unloaded
the machine, she had pulled out her own jeans,
the jeans she had put on last night before
Carmelo had left, the jeans that had a scrap of
paper in the pocket with Carmelo’s number on.
On the day after the afternoon of this
discovery, Great Grandma had arrived and she
had seemed distracted and Cherry wondered if
what she had done had somehow showed in her
face and whether Great Grandma had
disapproved. After all she was old and from a
more repressed age, despite her having been a
flapper. She had probably not slept with her
husband until after they were married, Cherry
thought.
When she didn’t come on the following day,
Cherry had been concerned, but on that night,
she had awoken momentarily, feeling reassured
and had fallen asleep feeling sure that Great
Grandma would come to see her in the morning.
She hadn’t turned up then, however, nor on the
next day.
49
Cherry had begun to wonder if she had truly
been offended or, Suppose she‘s ill, she had
thought, then, has something happened to her?
She shuddered when she imagined the worst
and on the next day she had gone to look for her.
Cherry had visited several homes, but she was not
a resident in a care home nearby. Cherry then had
rung the local council. None of the most local care
homes had heard of her, nor any in Edinburgh.
Cherry persuaded Jay, after bribing him with
chocolate, to tell her Carmelo’s address. He didn’t
have a phone number or, like Cherry, a phone of
his own either. That evening she had gone to
Carmelo’s house, a large house in the West End of
the city.
At the gate of a long driveway, she had
almost turned away, but had plucked up her
courage after shivering in the cold winter wind for
half an hour and had opened the gate, followed the
winding drive and climbed the steps in front of a
wide front door and had rung the bell.
50
51
An old woman had answered the door and
peered suspiciously at Cherry from behind a
chain, with the door open only a crack.
“Yes, what do you want?” she had asked.
“May I speak with Carmelo?” she had
timidly replied.
“He isn’t here just now, he’s in Edinburgh,
which you would know if you were one of his
friends. Good Evening.” the old woman had said
and had shut the door firmly, before Cherry
could say anything further.
She had wandered slowly back to the
home and found that Fat Sam was out and she
had their room to herself. She had sat sadly on
the edge of her bed where she had sat with
Carmelo, only a few evenings before and
sighed. Then she had begun to cry.
The soft sound had been heard, however,
by a member of staff walking by on the landing
and she had peered through the almost closed
door at Cherry.
What she saw, in the lamplight shining in
from outside in the street, into the otherwise
dark room, were Cherry and a young woman in old
fashioned clothing sitting together on Cherry’s bed.
The older girl’s arm had been around Cherry’s
shoulder, but even as she had wondered who the
strange girl might be, she had seemed to fade
before her eyes and merge into Cherry’s own dark
figure, sobbing still and now obviously quite alone.
Kahleen knew that she was drinking too much
and had shaken her head, firmly believing that she
had now begun to hallucinate. She would heed her
colleague Jim’s advice and seek professional help,
before she got any worse, she had resolved.
Cherry had felt abandoned and when her
aunt, Jonno’s sister had invited her to stay with her
for Christmas she had gone, especially as her aunt
lived in Edinburgh. She had hoped as she walked
around the German Market or in the shops that she
might bump into Carmelo and that he would be
pleased to see her, but it hadn’t happened.
When she had got back to the home she had
found herself wandering about the garden in any
weather, talking to Great Grandma, half-convinced
52
that she would somehow hear her, even though she
wasn’t there with her as before.
The others had called her more names and
would have nothing to do with her and Cherry had
grown more and more hopeless.
Then she had started to feel bloated all the time
and dizzy in the mornings. She had felt very hungry
and would eat her breakfast voraciously and then
long for lunch. Jam and cheese sandwiches were
delicious to her or honey and bacon!
The other girls in particular were convinced that
she was crazy when they had seen her eating her
toothpaste - “and it wasn’t even strawberry flavour,”
said Lucy, mystified.
Then Cherry had discovered that she couldn’t
zip up her jeans without a struggle and on the same
day the older sister of one of the other girls had come
to see her, bringing her toddler and with a very
pregnant belly and as Cherry gasped as the pain of
heartburn attacked her again and she watched the
two of them, the three of them, really, waving
53
goodbye to Morag, the realization that she herself
was pregnant had hit her.
The garden had been full of daffodils by then
and spring was definitely on its way and the nights
were a little warmer, the dark Scottish winter
relinquishing its hold as Cherry had pondered on
what would happen if they found out that she was
pregnant. The test she had bought had confirmed
this.
Probably, because she was in care herself and
had no means of supporting herself, let alone a baby,
the baby would be taken from her and she might
even be encouraged to have it adopted, Cherry had
thought.
Cherry had rung her aunt, who was the most
scatter-brained person Cherry knew and Cherry didn’t
know at that time whether to be glad that her aunt
was like that or whether she wished that she was the
sort of person who would have taken Cherry in, given
them both a home. She had told her aunt that she
was going to stay with an old friend of her mother’s
for a while, so when her house-mother had,
54
predictably ring her aunt she had been told by
an adult of Cherry’s whereabouts, so she
thought. Cherry’s aunt had even elaborated on
Cherry’s story, with an inherent sense of
secrecy and a need to withhold the truth from
the authorities.
Cherry was by then eighteen, and
although legally still in care, of an age to leave
the home, so no one had gone looking for her.
She had taken an old back pack that had
been left in the laundry room and one of the
lighter duvets from the cupboard, one she and
Carmelo had snuggled into she was sure, for it
had a blue label, and all the others were white
and she remembered it.
Packing as many of her clothes and shoes
into the ruck-sack, and other things she might
need and her old photo-album, and Carmelo’s
blue beanie, which he had left in her room all
those months before, she had crept away from
the home one morning before it had even
grown light.
55
She had caught a bus to the other side of the
city and wandered into a park that had just opened
its gates as the early morning sun brightened the
spring flowers and the grass.
Needing to use the loo, which she had to a lot
more by then, she had found the park toilets and
on the path approaching them had seen a long
silver key. It had turned out to be a key to the
disabled toilet, that someone had dropped and
when she had let herself in, Cherry had discovered
that it was big enough to shelter in at night and
another discovery, that of a mattress dumped over
the park railings, obviously recently because it had
been bone dry, had ensured that Cherry had a bed.
Behind a store for gardening equipment
Cherry had spied some large green sacks just
delivered for park use and had used these to cover
the mattress where she had hidden it against the
wall at the back of the toilet block.
Until recently Cherry had used the mattress
every night and then it had been detected by one
of the council gardeners and taken away as
rubbish. Fortunately, it was now warm enough to 56
sleep outside under the Hawthorns or the fruit trees
and so Cherry did.
Her friends, Barry and old Strahan looked at her
this morning as though she were an angel who had
just appeared to them and she asked them both,
jokily, “Do I have two wings or a halo this morning?”
“Ah, no, sure aren’t yeh your own sweet beautiful
self Cherry,” said Strahan.
The park keeper, Barry, had discovered Cherry
early on in her new home in the park and had gone on
from initially being a little hostile to become like an
adoptive uncle to her, especially after Strahan, often a
resident there himself had intervened.
It was Strahan who had seen Cherry come out of
the disabled toilet one morning in late March with her
mattress, when she had been there for a week and
had watched her stash it behind the toilets.
He had seen her wander then around the park,
marvelling at the new plants coming up and especially
at the buds on the trees, singing and taking such an
obvious delight in her surroundings and when Barry
had later found Cherry taking some more sacks to
protect her mattress and a teabag and some biscuits,
57
he had said as the keeper had threatened Cherry
with the police, “Ah, look around yeh man, Have
yeh ever seen these sheds so tidy?”
Barry had looked about him, still crossly and
said “No, I have not, what about it?”
“Do yeh think the fairies have done it?”
“No, the junior gardeners,” Barry snapped.
Strahan had raised his eyebrows.
“I tidied up a bit to pay for what I took,”
Cherry had said, “I’m sorry, I have to find a job,
but when I do I’ll pay you for the food and the
sacks, I promise.”
Barry had looked at Cherry’s earnest
expression and had not doubted her sincerity.
Now all three of them were firm friends.
Cherry had recently noticed that her
namesake fruit was beginning to appear and other
fruits as well that the park grew in a small orchard
area and a fruit and vegetable garden, sometimes
staffed by volunteers and student gardeners.
Strawberries were also ripening and this area was
kept locked, except when work was being done,
however, it didn’t keep out the birds. Cherry had
58
freed several blackbirds from the netting already
this year.
As she was tending the beds, late that
afternoon, a boy walked up to her and stood
watching.
“Do yeh work here?” he asked.
Cherry looked up to see a dark haired boy,
wearing a peaked cap. He had blue eyes and a
lightly freckled face. He also had a nice smile.
“Sort of,” she replied. She smiled, but then
went back to her work.
Strahan had warned her about the drug
addicts and the perv’s, as he called them, who
haunted the park, especially in the early evening
before the gates were locked, sometimes dossing
down in the park as Cherry and he himself did.
“Josh,” the boy said and held out his hand.
Cherry took it and the boy’s handshake was
firm.
“Actually,” he confessed, “I’ve seen yeh
around.”
59
Cherry decided that she liked the boy, who
was about her own age.
“I’m Cherry.”
Josh offered to help Cherry in the fruit garden
and the other gardeners and volunteers seemed to
like him too.
Barry and even Strahan liked him and he
began after that to come to the park often.
As summer wore on Cherry’s pregnancy was
obvious to all and her well being of most concern
to Strahan and Barry and Josh.
Cherry had taken to leaving the park on
regular afternoons by herself and her friends
believed she was attending check ups at the local
clinic.
“Scans and stuff,” said Barry who wasn’t
married, but knew a little, after all his sister had
three children and grandchildren as well.
“I’ll go to stay with my aunt soon, before the
baby is due,” she told Strahan and Barry, but
confided in Josh that she had no intention of this.
60
61
“Come to the squat, Cherry, I’ll look after you,”
Josh entreated.
But Cherry had heard from Josh himself about
the others at the squat and she didn’t want to go
there. They were the sort of people - and Cherry
didn’t judge them, but was sorry for them - the ones
that Strahan had warned her to keep away from,
some of them.
Cherry was worried. Once or twice, pains that
were a little bit like her period was on its way had
made her feel quite ill, but she had bought a book
with the small wage she received from Barry and
realized that these were her body practicing for the
birth of her baby, but she was becoming scared.
She began to wonder if she aught to go to her
aunt’s after all, but thinking about her aunt’s
character and her probable attitude, she changed
her mind. She knew that Aunt Kate wouldn’t want
her, or the baby. She knew that Kate would panic
and inform the home.
She thought about going with Josh to the
squat. They had mattresses there. Her own mattress
62
had been found by the gardeners some time ago
and had been taken away.
Sleeping out was never a worry to her. She
was always warm. If it was chilly, she had her
duvet and the disabled toilet was still her refuge
when it was wet.
One morning she sat under the Cherry trees
and cupped her hands around her tummy. There
were shiny cherries above her and one on the
ground at her foot. She looked at its delicate ripe
skin, split and spilling juice. She thought about the
baby’s skin, so fragile too and her thoughts of the
baby became mixed up with memories of Carmelo,
of his skin. She still thought about him and about
that one wonderful night. How easily she had
rushed into something so short and sweet, but
with such long-lasting and bitter tasting
consequences. She had trusted him, trusted her
own feelings. She couldn’t trust them now, nor
anyone else either. Josh was sweet and so
genuinely worried about her, but he had no home,
nor work either. He had been abused and had run
away from his own father and mother.
She knew that he was gentle himself, but
she couldn’t bring herself to trust him entirely.
As she sat under the tree, she came to a
final decision. It was a painful one, but she had
thought of nothing else now for weeks and she
still believed this was the right decision.
So when the pains came one late afternoon,
later than she had expected them, and she knew
they were the real thing; it was as if the baby had
been waiting until she was ready herself and knew
what to do, she told no one and soon Barry went
home. Strahan had gone to visit his son in
Ireland. She hadn’t realized he had a son, but he
picked up letters from him at a local post office
and now the son was in trouble and Strahan, who
couldn’t look after himself, but, Cherry realized
that of course he could and did, despite his
vagrant lifestyle, was going to help his son.
“I’ll be back soon Colleen,” he had said, “you
don’t need to go to your aunt’s yet do yeh?”
And Cherry had lied and said that she was
sure that the birth was weeks off. Strahan had
been obviously worried about his son.
63
Cherry wandered about the park as the pains
began to come closer together, contractions, thats
what they were called. She wished that she had
asked Josh to stay with her, but she had sent him
away, without telling him that the pains had begun,
before they began in earnest to trouble her,
besides, he had found evening work in a cafe where
no questions were asked and he would be sacked if
he didn’t go, she knew.
Very late, after darkness had come, Cherry
locked herself into the disabled toilet, where she
felt safer. She had light, though it was dim and
water to drink and hot water to wash herself with
and the baby, when it came and she spread her
duvet on the floor and paced about her small room
in between the contractions, which were coming
closer and closer now and suddenly a flood of water
cascaded from Cherry. She had read about this and
had thought it might happen, but it was still scary.
She stood, panting and sweating in the hot August
night, until she had calmed down. At last she dared
to do what she had been afraid to do so far and felt
between her legs.
64
She could feel the baby’s head! Another
searing pain engulfed her body and this time
Cherry, bracing her self against the wall with her
hands, began to push.
Soon, as the pains had intensified and there
was now hardly any space between them, she
had got onto all fours on the duvet and gritting
her teeth at the pain for as long as she could, at
last with a scream that was more a hiss because
her energy was focussed on pushing, the baby’s
head appeared, the pain momentarily stopped
and Cherry could feel the tiny face of her child!
The pain gripped her again and with an
almighty push the baby girl landed in her waiting
hands and she guided her onto the duvet.
There was silence.
Cherry bent over the tiny person below her
and put her fist to her own mouth, a huge wave
of fear, of tsunami like proportions washed over
and then the baby sneezed and began to cry.
Cherry, shakily, relief now flowing through
her, laughing and crying herself, picked up the
65
66
baby and sat with her back to the wall with the
little thing at her breast.
The baby stopped crying as she cradled her,
and Cherry found herself gazing into deep blue
eyes that seemed to be looking into her own, and
she had the strangest feeling that it was not for
the first time, though of course it was. Then
Cherry took and unwrapped the pruning knife she
had scalded earlier for this purpose and cut the
umbilical cord.
Now the child was a separate human being
from herself.
Suddenly there was more pain, but only a
little and Cherry knew what it was as she laid the
baby down, wrapping her in the duvet, where it
was still dry and she delivered the placenta, the
baby’s former home within her body, in just a few
minutes, compared to the labour.
She put it into one of the green sacks and
cleaned up as much as she could, flushing paper
away in the toilet.
When the baby and she were clean, finally
Cherry dropped onto the floor with the baby in her
67
arms and undid her blouse and fed her tiny
daughter.
All the while the baby looked up at her with
her blue stare. So intently did she keep up her
steady gaze into Cherry’s eyes, with her own never
straying away and while she fell in love with her
Cherry was thinking at the back of her mind, how
strange it was that the baby should focus so
unwaveringly.
She dressed the baby in one of the newborn
nappys, which she had bought and the tiny white
baby gro.
In the apple orchard, as the sky began to
grow pink in the east, though it was not yet dawn,
Cherry put the baby into one of the baskets, which
were being used for the first crop.
It was August 13th, her baby’s birthday and
she loved her so much that she almost ached with
the way it felt, which was why what she did next
would have seemed strange to anyone observing
her, if there had been anyone watching.
68
She caught an early morning bus and travelled
across Glasgow and got off near the place that she
had chosen a few weeks earlier.
It was a very smart health centre on the edge
of a residential area with large houses and gardens.
Cherry crept up the drive in the dawn sunshine,
hoping that she would not be seen. The drive was
tree lined so she thought it was unlikely.
She went up to the front door, knowing that it
would be more than three hours before the place
opened.
Cherry put the basket holding the baby on the
step, she kissed her little face and stroked her cheek
and then unable to bear the child’s frank gaze, she
looked away. Almost, it seemed to Cherry now,
though she felt that this was her imagination, the
baby was questioning her.
She left her there - with no note.
At the tube station she got on the train for
Edinburgh and sat in the almost empty carriage and
thought about the baby.
She hoped, as she longed to get off the train
and go back, that the baby would have a happy life
69
and that she would find loving parents who would
give her everything she could possibly want or
need.
She knew babies were sought after for
adoption, by childless couples.
She thought about Carmelo too and what he
also had lost, but it had not been meant to be. He
had never looked for her or even rung her at the
home and now their child would begin her life
without either of them.
Eventually, she fell asleep, exhausted and just
over an hour later was woken by the sounds of the
Edinburgh underground and she left the train. She
had someone to visit. She knew where the place
was and found the right bus, one that took her
almost to the gates.
It took her longer to find the right grave, but
Great Grandma had told her where to look and she
recognized the large and fairly ornamental marble
headstone, as Great Grandma had described it.
Her mother had been buried here, interred in
the family plot that her great great grandfather
had arranged all those years ago.
70
Her father was not here. He had been
cremated and Cherry’s aunt had scattered his
ashes on his favourite rugby pitch.
Cherry had not attended her mother’s
funeral. Jonno had wanted to spare her from the
ordeal of seeing her mother lowered into the
grave and she hadn’t even known where her
mother was buried, had believed that she had
been cremated perhaps, until Great Grandma
had told her of the family plot here, not very far
away from her own parents and grandparents
even grander one.
Cherry walked up to see the names
engraved on the white marble. Her eyes flew to
her mother’s name first and then to the others,
her grandfather, her great grandfather -
Pomona, Pomona, Great Grandma, oh,
Great Grandma!
Great Grandma was buried here too, but
not recently. The first name on the stone was
hers.
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Pomona Jardine, nee Blackwood-Coutts, Beloved
wife and mother,
b. 1907 d. 1933
Great Grandma had died when her son,
Cherry’s grandfather, had been born, in 1933!
So she had never known her son, was the
first thought that entered Cherry’s mind, followed
by the realization that she had been visited for -
for over two years - by a ghost!
Great Granddad too, had lived a long life and
had never remarried and brought up her granddad
alone, Cherry now also realized and then
Granddad had to bring up his little daughter alone.
Cherry thought about what Great Grandma
had said about how they had cared for their
children and was suddenly sure that she was
wrong. She felt ashamed. She had just abandoned
her baby!
With tears streaming down her cheeks she
ran from the graveyard and back to the tube
station, where she composed herself a little more,
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but hurried onto the platform for the train back to
Glasgow.
Oh why wouldn’t it come?
On the hour long journey back Cherry was
agitated, but she began to realize an even more
amazing thing about her baby.
Oh, Great Grandma, Pomona.
She closed her eyes and prayed.
Please be still there my little one, please be all
right and, Oh, God, don’t let them take her away
from me!
When Cherry reached the health centre, she
was so tired that her legs felt like iron bars as she
ran up the drive, but adrenalin and some other
strength, more powerful, still kept her running.
She stopped when she had almost reached the
door and the paved patio in front of it had no basket
and no baby on it.
Oh, where is she?
“Where are you, my baby, my baby?” Cherry
said aloud now and sobbing, she began to bang on
the door of the health centre, for she had seen
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someone moving about inside, though it was still
half an hour off the time that the centre opened
to its patients.
Someone was moving towards the door now
and Cherry waited, gasping and shaking, for
them to reach it. As the person reached the glass
doors and turned the key, Cherry at first didn’t
believe her eyes, for it was -
Carmelo! How could it be?
He opened the door.
“Cherry, Cherry its you!”
Cherry fell into Carmelo’s arms.
“Carmelo, oh, I left my baby here. Is she
here?”
Carmelo supported Cherry to a chair in the
waiting room.
“Your baby? Sit down. Oh Cherry where
have you been? You look terrible, I mean, you
look wonderful. I thought I’d never find you
again. Oh, where did you go?”
“My baby?”
Carmelo pulled himself together.
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“Yes, she’s here. She’s with my mother.”
Cherry leapt to her feet.
“Oh, where, where?” she looked wildly about
her.
“I’ll take you,” Carmelo said and tender arms
were about Cherry and Carmelo’s eyes met Cherry’s
and behind the consternation she saw the same
concern for her that she had seen once before in
his eyes.
“Mum,” Carmelo called out, then, “Mum its
Cherry, I mean, its the baby’s mother.”
A woman came out from a door at the side of
the reception desk.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said.
She led Cherry and Carmelo into a room
behind the reception, where on a table, was the
apple basket.
Cherry ran to it. Her daughter looked up at
her, her eyes serene, but earnest and held out her
arms and Cherry gathered her up and sat down on
a chair next to the table because she had to,
because now her legs felt about to give way.
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Carmelo’s adoptive mother was the practice
manager and Carmelo had come along with his
mother that morning, while he was still on holiday
from his apprenticeship at the botanic gardens,
before he went off into the city for the day, but
Cherry was still bemused, knowing nothing of
these facts.
She was almost on the verge of passing out
and Carmelo’s mother could see this and while she
wondered at her son’s obvious concern for this girl
who she had never seen before and realized that
he knew her, there were more important matters
to attend to.
Jane Gillespie asked Cherry some medical
questions and then she told her that when one of
the doctors came she would examine her and then
she should go home and rest.
“Where do you live Cherry? Do your family
know about the baby? Does the baby’s father
know about her?”
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Cherry found herself telling the truth to
Carmelo’s mother, except who the father of her
baby was.
“I think we had better leave these two alone
for a while, Carmelo, until Doctor Fraser has seen
them, Oh, here she is now.” Jane looked up as a
car pulled up in one of the spaces reserved for the
doctors, immediately outside.
While Cherry and the baby saw the doctor,
Jane Gillespie grilled her adopted son about the
girl that he couldn’t stop grinning at and who
smiled shyly, all the time, now that she was
reunited with her baby, at him. And - her baby,
the baby that Carmelo kept stealing surreptitious
fascinated and eager glances at, though the truth
was beginning to dawn on her, even before
Carmelo told her, hanging his head one moment
and then looking at her with a fierce expression in
his warm latin eyes. He made the truth, which
dismayed, if it didn’t shock her, sound romantic
and he finished with a note of unmistakable pride
in his voice.
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“I, I think the baby is mine, Mum.”
Consequently, when the doctor had finished
with the two of them, and while Cherry waited
outside in the corridor, with the baby, Jane did
some explaining as well. Then she escorted the girl
back to rest room at the back of the building,
where Carmelo was waiting and made herself
leave them alone together, for a while at any rate.
Carmelo is nineteen. It is his mess. He must sort it
out.
Carmelo sat on a chair while Cherry lay with
the baby on a bed against the wall under the
window with the sun glinting on her hair, which still
dazzled him.Cherry listened as Carmelo told her he
had rung to speak to her at the home at Christmas
and was told that she was away.
“I thought you didn’t want to see me again
when you didn’t ring me.”
Cherry explained what had happened to the
piece of paper and Carmelo looked relieved, then
sad.
“I came to the home at Easter, hoping to see
you and Jay told me you had gone, left for good he
thought.”
By now he was holding Cherry’s hand and still
looking quickly now and again at the baby.
Cherry told him all about her life in the park and
he told her about his work and Cherry asked if there
were courses available in orchard management and
Carmelo said that there were.
“It’s what I want to do, one day,” she looked at
the baby, “when I can.”
“Jay and the other boys at the home told me
you were mad, but I saw straight away that you were
special, special to me, Cherry, that we were the
same,” Carmelo said and there were tears in his eyes,
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this,” he
gestured at the baby, “alone.” Then he gulped visibly
and said, “The baby, she’s mine, isn’t she?”
Cherry nodded and held her out to him even as
he reached for her and suddenly they were all three
huddled together and crying, even the baby, at last,
but then they were almost squashing her.
Carmelo sat by the bed holding his little
daughter then, who stopped crying and regarded him 78
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with an expression of something like wonder on her face,
he thought and realized that his own face must look the
same way to her.
“My so called mates told me how you would wander
about the garden, talking to yourself, that you were
crazy,” he told Cherry.
“Then you forgot all about me,” Cherry whispered.
Carmelo freed one of his hands and reached for
hers, “I did not, I came to look for yeh.”
“When did they tell you about me talking to
myself?”
“I told you at Halloween. Jay told me and then some
of the others told me to leave you alone, unless I fancied
having a laugh, unless you were willing to have a laugh
with me,” he saw Cherry’s look of horror, “I told you, I
knew you were special. I knew you were the girl for me,”
his eyes told her once more that he was speaking the
truth, “They said you wouldn’t have anything to do with
any of them, so I was blown away when yeh liked me,
when, we,” he looked at the baby now, “we made her, we
made her together,” he laughed and Cherry did too.
“We did didn’t we? She’s special too, Carmelo, she-”
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“May I come in?” Jane asked, peering around
the door, noticing that Carmelo was now cradling the
baby in his arms.
The girl, Cherry, was glowing and Jane
suddenly felt a rush of love for her son and for the
girl too, They look so right together, she thought.
Later that day she asked them what they were
going to call the baby.
Cherry looked at Carmelo who had looked at
her straightaway and said, “I thought we might call
her after my mother, my birth mother?”
Cherry’s breath stopped in her throat and she
couldn’t speak, for she knew what her daughter’s
name should be, in a way, what it already was.
“If you like the name?” Carmelo looked at
Cherry and then at the baby, who was lying between
them on Jane’s sofa, “Pomona,” he breathed.
Cherry sighed and Pomona looked up at them
both, her blue eyes twinkling, perhaps she would
have another lucky life this time, maybe even luckier
than the last one!
Alexandra Lesley
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CLIOResume of Parts One to Four:
Callum is going nowhere, well, heʼs going home on the bus from his dead end job one summer night, when he misses his stop and has to get off in a dark lane to walk back. He meets a girl, singing and dawdling in the lane, a very strange - but drop-dead gorgeous - girl." Much to his surprise and absolute rapture, she seduces him! She agrees to see him again too! " When he gets home and sees his face in the bathroom mirror, all his spots have gone!" It is Saturday and he decides to go into town. At the bus stop he meets a girl he sees every morning, but has never had the balls to speak to. Today he introduces himself!" The girl is called Clio. On the way into town they get on like a school thatʼs been the target of an arsonist. Clio tells Callum, who used to be in a band, about the choir that she is in and suggests that he joins. Callum agrees to go to the next rehearsal, but when he sees that his spots have all come back, he doesnʼt go." Instead, on the next day, he gets off the bus on his way home from work, in the spot where he met the strange girl two nights previously and she is there again.
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" When she sees that his spots have returned, she somehow knows that he has met Clio and is as cross as a box of frogs about it." Like a pet lamb, Callum follows her up the track that leads onto the moor." After the inevitable and enjoyable, Callum asks the girlʼs name, feeling that they now know one another well enough to disclose intimate details such as names! ʻSheʼ, says the girl, ʻyou may call me She.ʼ Callum thinks that ʻSheʼ doesnʼt want to tell him her name. He asks her out on ʻErʼ a proper date, but She refuses, saying that she is happy to see him just there in the lane and that she is there most nights." On the way home Callum thinks about Clio and feels guilty for not turning up at the choir practice." His spots disappear and reappear and when he sees Clio on the bus on Monday morning he is embarrassed, but Clio challenges him about missing the practice and somehow when he has explained that his spots make him embarrassed, suddenly Clio is friendly again and tells him that what she noticed about him was his smile. There is an extra choir practice, and Callum finishes work earlier that night and finds that his feet take him to the community centre and when he has sung for the choir mistress, suddenly he is asked to sing a duet with Clio at the choirʼs next gig. The Elemental Voices is a rock choir and theyʼre good and Callum is chuffed! Better still he sits with Clio on the bus ride home and
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every morning and is really looking forward to the choir practice on Saturday." On Friday night, as he is riding home on the bus, Callum looks to see if She is at the bottom of the track, hoping that she isnʼt! He is horrified when he sees as the bus passes the bottom of the track, a large black dog attacking She and hears her screaming as she tries to protect herself. He yells at the driver who stops the bus and Callum flies back along the lane and up the track, like the gallant idiot that he is!" When Callum had got into the lane, however, the dog turned away from She and attacked him instead!" “...we were only playing!” She had said." And once more Callum rolled over to have his tummy tickled, kind of, if you know what I mean." The summer rolled on and apart from Clio somehow intuitively realizing that Callumʼs disappearing and reappearing spots had something to do with another girl, it was amazing, as they were growing closer to one another more and more each day it seemed." To add to their general feeling of being high on life, Clio and Callum were the rising stars in the choir. " Autumn was looming and Clio was going to attend a short course at a music college and they were going to apply for university the following year for courses in music and after that form a band - together!
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" Callum did his best to avoid going anywhere near the track near where She lived, but one night, near his home, hearing She singing Clio and his song, Callum turns in the lane off which She lives and she is there in the lane and tries to seduce him again." Despite feeling like a candle wick engulfed by a laser beam, Callum resists Sheʼs efforts to persuade him to follow her up the track and what that will inevitably lead to and runs on up the lane, past the track and down Clioʼs drive." Clio invites him in through her bedroom window. Her Dad is asleep and Callum discovers that Clio is every bit as good at seduction as She is. " With Clio, however, love making is different and Callum realizes that he is in love with Clio and that, amazingly, Clio is in love with him!" Callum then discovers that Clio has another talent that he thought belonged to She, when they see that his spots have disappeared!" Then they find out that the choir is going to be on TV the following summer! Everything in life is like birthday and Christmas rolled into one!" Then! Clio goes off to college and tells Callum in a moment of madness to hang out with whoever he likes while she is away." Callum is confused by her attitude.Then suddenly Clio hasnʼt called and doesnʼt answer his texts. On the next night Callum has a drink, falls asleep on the bus home and asks the driver to put him off at the bottom of the track, where She is of course waiting.
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" This time Callumʼs heart is absent and he is wracked with a grief like Niagara Falls in full spate! He is gutted by his betrayal, despite what Clio had said to him before she went to college, he feels that he has been untrue to their love." Clio has her own demons to deal with, however, having slept with a boy from college, which is why she hasnʼt been in touch." At half term, which coincides with Halloween, Clio comes home and she and Callum make up." Then Callum confesses that he has agreed to go to dinner with She and meet her family and Clio realizes that somehow she herself is to blame that Callum has seen She again and agreed to this, so doesnʼt go ballistic as he had thought that she might." On the day of the dinner, however, Clio tells her dad all about it." Sean then realizes the truth about Sheʼs identity, that she is one of the Sidhe, who are faerie people, who live in the hills." He tells Clio the truth about herself as well, that her own mother was one of the Sidhe, that she isnʼt dead as he had maintained, but had left Clio with him as a baby back at home in Ireland and gone back to her people, who had wanted to harm or use Clio for their own ends." Sean realizes that the Sidhe is trying to lure Callum into her world from whence he may never return and urges Clio to follow him as soon as possible, which she does." When Clio catches up with them on the hillside, She throws a dagger at Clio, who screams as the blade reaches her heart!
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"
CLIOPart Five:
The dagger had stopped its flight and was suspended in front of Clioʼs heart, the tip just making an imprint in the fabric of her coat. She had screamed, but not in pain, with fear, mingled with rage and now abruptly and seemingly of its own volition, the dagger flipped around and with frightening speed flew back at the Sidhe, but only to stop in mid air before it reached her and fall harmlessly at her feet. Callum saw her amazement." Equally fast she retrieved it and flew at Clio with the dagger in her grasp, before Callum could even move. To his own amazement, Clio rushed to meet her and then they stopped only about a foot apart from one another, seething and heaving and then as he ran towards them, something even more amazing happened." The Sidhe glared at Clio at first and Clio glared back. She struggled to move. How had Clio frozen her to the spot? It was practically impossible that a human being could wield such power. She stared at Clio, into her eyes. No. Yes. Yes. OH! And the world was suddenly a warm place once more and her heart felt like a glowing coal, a feeling she had never thought to feel again, and she knew as well, the girl, she knew." Clio did know. A great surge of feeling had passed between them seconds after they had looked each other in the eyes. The moment of recognition had been at the same time for her as for - suddenly they
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were clasped tightly together, clinging like mother and daughter reunited, which of course is what they were!" Callum caught up to them just as they flung themselves at one another and at first thought that they were wrestling, then he stood there even more amazed as Clio sobbed on Sheʼs shoulder and more amazed, when he saw tears running down Sheʼs face as well!" She held Clioʼs face in her small hands and brushed away her tears with her fingers in a gesture so tender that Callum felt as though he shouldnʼt be there.Though slighter and a little shorter than Clio she seemed and looked older Callum thought now, but this didnʼt explain the way that they were behaving toward one another. Perhaps She was sorry for attacking Clio, but wow, was she sorry. Suddenly Clio and then She as well seemed to remember him. They both looked at him. She looked at Clio." “Your boy,” she said and Clio smiled and nodded and was still crying. “ I have so much I want to tell you,” she hesitated, “Clio, I like that name. Will you stay a while to talk with me now, to let me talk?” she asked. Clio nodded again and turned to Callum." “Callum, go home and tell Dad where I am and tell him, tell him, Iʼll be home in a while and that Iʼll be safe with my, my mother - my,” she broke off seeing the look of astonishment beginning to break out on Callumʼs face, “my motherʼs people,” she amended, but Callum was beginning
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to guess the truth as he looked from one to the other of the two girls smiling at him through their tear filled eyes and realized, not for the first time, how alike they were. Although one was as dark haired as the other was fair, they had the same glittering green eyes and delicate fairy like faces, though Clioʼs mouth was not so wide, nor her nose so turned up as Sheʼs, but still, they looked like family." They hugged one another. Callum blushing a lovely shade of pomegranate and still looking from one to another in wonder, and then looking back at them, as they began walking up the hill together, ran down the path, until reaching the trees and the lane, they disappeared from his view and he from theirs." When he got to Clioʼs house, he discovered that his mother was there. Two concerned faces turned to him as he rushed in to through the back door and then from the hall into the kitchen. Sean and Ellie were sitting together at the table and both stood up and rushed to him." “Callum, is everything all right?” Ellie said, pulling him into the room to sit at the table, but before he could, Sean, looking paler than his usual ruddy self, grasped Callum by the arm." “Clio, where is she? Is she safe?”" “Yeah Sean, sheʼs fine, Sheʼs, sheʼs with her mother.”
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" Seanʼs face was such a mixture of amazement, followed by relief, wonder and finally concern again." Callum realized that Sean was afraid for Clio, although he couldnʼt guess why." “Itʼs ok, itʼs cool, theyʼre just talking,” he said quickly, then." “Where are they?” Sean asked." “On the moors above the river, on the way up one of the hills. I donʼt know its name, but -” Callum was interrupted by Sean grabbing first his coat and hurtling towards the door, then turning back to grab Callum." “Take me there!” he yelled and pushed Callum out through the door." Alerted to danger, Ellie, without her coat, chased after them both.! ! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! Lavinia Hinde
The final part of Clio is now in the next issue.
" "
" "" " In dungeons dark I cannot sing! ! In sorrow’s thrall ‘tis hard to smile: What bird can soar with broken wing?! What heart can bleed and joy the while?
There will be a poem from this poet in every issue of Tyrant Spell. There is a prize for guessing the identity of the poet, but if you know please donʼt tell anyone but the editor. The first person who guesses correctly will receive a book of poems by the mystery poet.
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IN THE HIDDEN HEARTHidden in the heart of thingsA secret singsLike the wren in the hawthorn,hidden, with folded wings
On the bed, in the day, she wakes.An invitation of her body makes,Yet a demon lies behind her eyes that may not hesitateTo slake its taste for blood upon the hovering fingersThat would her breast caress
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At night, she burns.With prey in sight.The inscrutable face of the huntress she turnsOn my pillow, at rest, her most candid gaze.Then her tongue with rough tenderness kisses my face.She purrs.She stirs,Cradled in my thighs she sleeps at last,Whimpers sighs.
In the hidden heart of things, like the butterfly in its chrysalis,The secret flexes its wings.
Behind the door to the secret gardenMystery...
Alexandra Lesley
To contribute to Tyrant Spell please email the editor first at [email protected]