Angel fish, p.1
Angel Fish, page 1
Angel Fish
Lili Wilkinson
Published by Lili Wilkinson, 2021.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
ANGEL FISH
First edition. February 15, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 Lili Wilkinson.
Written by Lili Wilkinson.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Lili Wilkinson
Dedication
Angel Fish
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
twenty-seven
twenty-eight
twenty-nine
thirty
thirty-one
Author’s note
Acknowledgements
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Also By Lili Wilkinson
About the Author
This book was originally published in 2009 by Black Dog Books
one
A boy has come to Machery. I think he might be an angel.
When he speaks, even the birds stop singing to listen. When he speaks, his eyes shine with a light that I know cannot come from dirt and skin. When he speaks, my head whirls round and round with strange thoughts, and my heart goes patter patter patter.
I first saw him two days ago. I was fetching water for Maman. The pails were heavy, but Maman tells me carrying them will help me to grow and be stronger. I am not strong, and not very tall. The other boys in Machery say I am a sparrow that will never grow to be a cock.
Maman says I must grow strong because I will never be very smart, and a man needs to be one or the other. This is why she makes me eat so much cabbage. She says it will make me strong. I hate cabbage.
When I carry the water pails, I like to pretend I am in another place. It is very hot this summer, so I was pretending that I was lying by a cool stream on a soft bed of clover. Sometimes I pretend I am a silvery fish dancing in the stream. Or a white bird flying low over the water.
I was pretending all this very hard so I closed my eyes. Machery is all brown and dusty at the moment, and it is hard to imagine you are a dancing silvery fish when your eyes are full of brown and dust.
With my eyes closed, I didn’t see him at first. I only heard the shh, shh, shh of bare feet walking on the dusty road. With my eyes still closed, I pretended that it was the shh, shh, shh of branches bending over so leaves could kiss the water of the stream. I pretended that the leaves were tickling my silvery fishy skin as I danced below the surface.
As the shh, shh, shh came closer, I opened my eyes.
For a moment I was confused. I looked into eyes that were as blue as the stream in which I’d been swimming. I blinked, and then the eyes were attached to a person. He was very tall and thin, with brown hair that was thick and bushy, like a sheep. He looked to be a few years older than me. Maybe fifteen? His skin was dirty. It was hard to tell which brown bits were freckles and which bits were dirt. He had no shoes, and was dressed in rags.
And his eyes. Blue like the sky. Blue like an arrow. Blue like when someone hits you in the stomach and for a moment you can’t breathe.
He smiled at me, and the arrow-blue eyes crinkled at the edges. ‘Hello, friend,’ he said.
I wondered how he knew he was my friend. I didn’t think I’d ever had a friend before. But when he said it, I knew it was true. I knew it all the way deep down inside me, in my darkest and most secret places.
‘I am Stephan.’ He reached out a hand and I took it. ‘I’m Gabby,’ I told him. ‘Gabriel.’
The boy nodded approvingly. ‘Gabriel is one of the very greatest and most sacred angels.’
I shrugged. I don’t really know angels.
The boy’s lip curled in another smile. ‘Your pails look heavy, Gabriel,’ he said.
And they were, but I had forgotten.
‘I will let you get home,’ he said. ‘But we will see each other again. Very soon.’
I nodded. We would. I would see my friend soon.
The next day was Sunday, so no work.
I went to mass in the morning with Maman and Papa. I have no brothers or sisters. Maman has tried to birth me a sister four times, but each time it has been no more than a wet and red thing. Papa thinks she is cursed. Maman says she cannot be cursed, because she birthed me. Papa replies that I am cursed too, because I don’t remember important things and am very small and find many things hard to understand.
One of the things I find difficult to understand is Father Sebastian. He reads to us every Sunday from the holy book in a tongue that Maman says is called Latin. Everyone else in the church nods and purses their lips when Father Sebastian speaks in the tongue that is called Latin, but I don’t understand any of it. And when I ask Maman or Papa, they get angry and tell me to hush. Once I thought that maybe they don’t understand it either and are just pretending, but when I told this to Maman she said that it was a wicked thought and I must never think it again.
When Father Sebastian speaks in a tongue I do understand, it doesn’t make much more sense. He uses lots of names of people that I don’t know. I think they must be saints or angels, but it is all very confusing because there are so many of them and it is hard to remember which ones are good and which ones are not.
Most of the time Father Sebastian reads to us or speaks in a voice that is all the same and very boring. But sometimes he gets excited and bangs his fist on the wooden stand and shakes his head so his cheeks wobble from side to side. Sometimes he gets so excited that I see sweat on his forehead. Or a tear slide from the corner of his eye and wriggle down his cheek.
After Father Sebastian talks, we all sing. This is my favourite part. I don’t know what any of the words mean, but I make up the meanings in my head. There is one that goes gloria, gloria, gloria and then some words I don’t know. It is the very best song. I think that Gloria is a land where nothing is brown and dusty, and the streams are clear and full of silvery dancing fish.
When I sang the gloria song on Sunday, I pretended that the streams were the colour of my new friend’s eyes. Blue as an arrow.
After the singing, we all line up and eat some bread and swallow some wine. Then we can go. Usually Maman and Papa want to talk to other people about boring things like rain and crops, so I go and stand in the sun.
On Sunday, though, Father Sebastian called me over to him.
‘There is a boy,’ he said. ‘A boy who has come to Machery.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, Father.’
‘You have seen him?’
I nodded again.
Father Sebastian shook his head so his cheeks wobbled. ‘You must not speak to him,’ he said. ‘He is from the Fiery Pit. His words are lies.’
I felt hot and angry inside. The boy was my friend. But I nodded again.
‘Do you understand? Do not listen to him. He is a child-stealer. He will take you and sell you to the Saracen.’
‘Yes, Father.’
Walking out of the church in summer is always lovely. The church is cold and dark, and stepping out is like being lifted up into the arms of the sun. It was so bright I had to close my eyes. I turned my face up to the light and let it soak in. In a few minutes I would be too hot again, but for now the hot was delicious.
I could hear Stephan talking.
I opened my eyes.
He stood balanced on a watering trough outside the church. A small crowd was listening — Maistre Eudes the smith and his wife, Maistre Mathieu and his three pretty daughters, Maistresse Claudette and Maistresse Abrial, their heads bent close together, and Monsieur Rotrou from the big farm on the hill.
Stephan spoke in a tongue I understood. He spoke of things I had never heard of before, but he spoke of them with such strength, such lightness, that I could see them before my eyes.
He spoke of the Holy Land. Father Sebastian had talked about the Holy Land. It sounded important, but so very far away from Machery that I had never really listened.
But when Stephan spoke of it, I understood that it was the most important place in the world. A paradise, he said. A real paradise.
I wondered what a real paradise would be like.
It would have streams with silvery fish, I decided. Like in the gloria song. But the streams would be apple- cider, bubbling and fizzing and fresh. And the trees would hang low with the sweetest fruits, all year round, so nobody had to pick and store them. Cows would milk themselves, and it would be the sweetest, creamiest milk you’ve ever tasted.
In the Holy Land, cabbages would have honey-cakes at their hearts, instead of more cabbage.
And then, best of all, Our Lord lives in the Holy Land.
Father Sebastian is always talking about Our Lord. Except the Our Lord that he talks about is mean. He’s always watching to see if we’re being wicked, and punishing us for thin
But Stephan’s Our Lord is different. He is wise and kind.
I imagined that he is fat and jolly, like a king. He has a big black beard and laughs all the time. The only work to be done in the Holy Land is to sit at the feet of Our Lord and sing the gloria song to him. He loves singing. And dancing. And honey-cakes and apple cider.
When Our Lord walks through the soft green grass of the Holy Land, sparkly jewels and sweet-smelling flowers spring from under His feet.
I wanted to go there. I wanted to go there so bad I thought I might break apart like a dandelion and go floating off into the sky.
But then Stephan’s face fell, and the world came to pieces and fell down as well with a horrible thundering crash.
‘But,’ he said. ‘But.’
No. No but. I didn’t want to hear the but. I just wanted to hear more about the Holy Land and Our Lord and the honey-cakes and silvery, dancing fish.
‘The Saracen,’ said Stephan.
I shuddered. Father Sebastian has spoken of the Saracen. I thought of the stories of monsters that the boys in the village try to scare each other with. I thought of red, glowing eyes and horns and snake-pointed tongues and sharp hooves. I thought of them above me, with whips in their hands and steam blowing from their noses. I thought of the smell of burning meat.
‘The Saracen,’ said Stephan, and I wanted to cry. ‘The Saracen are in the Holy Land.’
I felt a hand around my heart, squeezing. I gasped.
‘The Saracen are in the Holy Land, and the paradise has withered away.’
The trees. The streams. The silvery fish. All gone. All burned and choked and ruined. I wanted to throw myself into the dusty dirt and cry. Who could rescue the Holy Land?
Stephan looked at me and smiled. It was like he could hear what I was thinking inside my head.
‘Soldiers cannot save the Holy Land,’ he said. ‘Nor knights. Nor kings. Nor priests.’
Who, then? Who?
‘You,’ he said, still looking at me. ‘You.’
Me? I was small and not very good at thinking.
I couldn’t fight even one Saracen.
‘The only thing that can save us is the purity and innocence of children,’ said Stephan. ‘There is no adult in the world who is untainted by wickedness. Only children are truly pure. And when the children of Our Lord step onto the soil of the Holy Land, the Saracen will crumble into dust, and once again it will be a paradise.’
The crowd started to make soft, angry noises.
‘You can’t take our children,’ said Maistresse Claudette.
Stephan looked at me. ‘Will you join with me?’ he asked.
Maistre Eudes’s wife yelled at Stephan, her cheeks red and shiny as apples and her eyes all closed-up. Someone threw a rock at him, but Stephan didn’t look away. His eyes arrowed into mine.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. Yes.’
two
Maman has been crying since we saw Stephan at the market. It is a whole day now. She only stops crying when she starts yelling. And the yelling is at me, so I prefer the crying, even though I am sorry that she is sad.
Papa isn’t crying or yelling. His face is like a stone, and he is very quiet. I wish he was crying and yelling. The stone face and the quiet means he is very, very angry. I am sorry about that, too.
It is all because of me. Because I am leaving tomorrow morning. Leaving with Stephan to go and rescue the Holy Land from the Saracen.
Maman and Papa don’t want me to go. Father Sebastian doesn’t want me to go. But Stephan wants me to go, and I can’t say no.
The other boys in the village laughed at me when I said ‘yes’. They squealed and called me ‘stupid’ and ‘cork-brained’. I don’t care. They don’t understand. They would be no use in the Holy Land because they are not pure of heart like me and Stephan.
Stephan says that I am special. He says I am not stupid or cork-brained. He says that Our Lord has a special task for me, that I will be instrumental. He says that I do not understand many things because my soul is close to Our Lord, not down in the dirt with the other boys.
He says that the other boys are like worms crawling around in the mud — blind and pale and wriggling in no direction. They just grope and wriggle until one day they die and turn into dirt.
I am not a blind worm. I am not wriggling in the mud. Stephan says I am like a star, or a bird, soaring and pure. He says he is not at all surprised that I don’t understand what other people talk about sometimes.
Father Sebastian has come to our house to talk sense into me.
‘The boy is a heretic!’ he says, his cheeks wobbling.
I stare at him. I don’t know what a heretic is, but I don’t think Stephan is one.
‘He is a child-stealer. He will take you away and sell you to slave-traders. You will suffer. Your parents will suffer. You are their only child. You have a responsibility.’
He goes on and on, and I stop listening. It’s like mass, except at least he is speaking in a tongue I understand.
Father Sebastian gets up and goes over to Maman. She is snuffling and crying still. Her eyes are red and her nose is runny. I’m sorry I’m making her cry. But I won’t change my mind. Father Sebastian puts his hand on Maman’s shoulder and whispers into her ear. Maman looks at me and trembles, then she nods.
I sigh. Perhaps now she will stop crying and let me go.
I am wrong.
It’s not easy to get to sleep. I wonder if I will ever sleep in my bed again. I wonder where I will be sleeping tomorrow night. I wonder what the beds will be like in the Holy Land. Soft and sweet, I am sure. Made from soft white feathers and clover. With a silk blanket. I have never seen silk, but Maman told me a story about a princess in a silk dress, and I imagine it is like wearing water.
I imagine marching into the Holy Land. I am standing by Stephan’s side, and there is an army of children behind us. We are all dressed in white silk, pure and shimmering and fluttering.
I must fall asleep eventually, because the next thing I know there is a rag being stuffed into my mouth, and I am being carried somewhere. I kick and wriggle, but the arms around me are strong. They smell like dirt and sweat and ale, and I realise it is Papa. Maman is there too.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ she whispers.
They take me to the cow-shed and lock the door. Father Sebastian is there, holding a bottle with a cork stopper.
I am put down onto the floor, and Papa ties a rope around my hands and feet so I cannot escape.
Maman is crying again.
Father Sebastian takes the cork stopper out of the bottle, and flicks it at me. I flinch, expecting that it will be some kind of magic water that will burn me. But it’s just water.
Father Sebastian is saying something in Latin. He looks very excited. There is sweat dripping down from his forehead into his beard.
Papa doesn’t say anything, as usual. He just stands to the side and looks awkward.
Maman darts forward and kisses me.
‘I’m sorry, ma petite,’ she says. ‘But this is for your own good. You have been possessed by that devil-boy creature. We must save you.’
I try to tell her that she is wrong, but the rag in my mouth just makes everything sound like mmm-mmm- mmm. So I roll my eyes at her instead.
‘The devil!’ cries Father Sebastian. ‘Stand back, Madame! The devil is coming out! Look at the boy’s eyes!’
I am starting to think I might hate Father Sebastian. I wonder if I will go to the Fiery Pit for thinking that.
Maman starts to cry again. Papa makes a harrumph-ing noise and puts his hands behind his back. Father Sebastian starts to talk in Latin again.
I don’t think they will listen if I try to explain. And anyway, I can’t because of the rag in my mouth. I sigh and close my eyes.
‘Look!’ says Father Sebastian. ‘The devil has left the boy. See how he goes all quiet now. Now he will be safe.’
Maman makes a strange noise that is something like a sob and something like a laugh. ‘But what if the heretic boy comes back?’
‘He won’t,’ says Father Sebastian. ‘Not with the protection of Our Lord over this house.’
