moniquehazel

[moniquehazel]

current wip: a novel that's frankenstein x the alienist about a sad girl and a gentleman monster

[moniquehazel]

UNDER PETALS OVER THORNS - SHORT STORY

When the townsfolk of Spindle wanted to bury a secret, they brought it to the Fewin’s garden for safekeeping.

Jilted suitors handed over gleaming engagement rings to be buried deep in the soil. Children left broken treasure at the garden gate—mother’s smashed chinaware and father’s cracked pocket watch from a rowdy game of Timekeeper during recess. The evidence of illicit affairs were delivered in the post, lust and disloyalty hidden in the depths of the forever blooming garden.

For a small fee, the good and bad secrets were never to be unearthed. The Fewin family had tended to their garden for centuries, nurturing nature and shepherding secrets.

Dawn caressed the tops of the trees, dapples of sunlight reaching Marjorie Fewin through the foliage. She knelt on the dewed grass, tenderly burying the corpse of a tabby cat.

The darling dead creature had been left on her doorstep, wrapped in a knitted blanket. Though there had been no note of explanation, Marjorie knew the cat had been accidentally killed by a curious child, fingers curling too tight around a tiny throat.

Like the good and dutiful garden keeper she’d been raised to be, Marjorie took the bundle to the garden behind Flower Marrow as dawn stealthy approached. She chose a nice spot by the pastel-coloured sweet peas, never judging the secrets she buried.

While packing the familiar dirt back into place, Marjorie heard her departed grandmama’s soft voice like a whisper on the breeze. It slid over the bark of a fruiting tree. The garden belongs to us, and we belong to the garden.

At twenty-three, Marjorie was the only Fewin left in Spindle. With her older brother travelling overseas, she alone tended to the family garden and managed Flower Marrow. Burying secrets wasn’t a lucrative business, and about four decades ago, one innovative Fewin had converted the family cottage into a quaint inn.

Satisfied that the cat was resting under the sweet peas, Marjorie stood and surveyed the garden. It had once been lavish and neat—trees preened and grass narrowly cut, flowers and herbs ordered by colour and weeds plucked daily.

With only two hands to care for it, the garden was more unruly now. Wild and flourishing and utterly gorgeous. Marjorie liked to think of it as a petal labyrinth, not that she could ever get lost in it. She’d grown up in this garden. Knew where to place her footsteps, knew which petals were the softest and which thorns always tried to prick her green thumb. She could grow herbs out of season and never had problems with hungry snails. Marjorie was just like every Fewin that had come before her, all descending from Evangeline Fewin, who’d planted the first seed under a Harvest Moon.

The townsfolk of Spindle considered the Fewins strange and magical, their suspicion riper than the bounty of fruit perpetually available in the garden. But that never persuaded anyone away when a secret pinned their ordinary lives.

No clouds littered the stretch of morning sky, but Marjorie’s skin felt tight like new leather. She rubbed a dirt-streaked palm down a forearm, counting the gooseflesh. It was the same number as the blueberries she’d collected in her woven basket on the way to the sweet peas. A deep-rooted instinct told Marjorie a storm was developing beyond her eyesight, promising trouble.

But trouble would have to wait until after breakfast. Marjorie collected oranges for fresh juice, apples for a baked dessert, and carrots for a roast. Her basket was heavy against the swoop of her hips as she continued to harvest valerian and passionflower for a tea she liked to sell on Market Day in town along with jam.

Flower Marrow was a three-story cottage house. The thatched roof was dark with age and in need of repair, and the cream bricks were bordered with tendrils of ivy. Paint peeled from the front gate in ribbons and bells chimed over the threshold. Potted plants sat by the door—ginger for weary travellers, hawthorn to gladden hearts, mint for hospitality and lavender for luck.

Marjorie entered through the backdoor, stomping her laced boots on the threadbare mat. She left the door open for the breeze to bring in the enchanting scent of the garden.

After washing her hands, Marjorie began to prepare breakfast, still having an hour before Agnes wandered down from the second-floor guestrooms to the smell of burnt coffee.

The cottage hadn’t been fully booked out in years, and the clientele were honeymooners and vagabonds. Even with only one guest, Marjorie made quite the spread. Soft-boiled eggs, fried bacon and garlic mushrooms in butter sauce. Homemade sourdough with fruit preserves along with squeezed orange juice.

Having spent too long ordering her herbs, Marjorie hurried through her morning dressing routine. She brushed her sunlight blonde hair smooth, fixing half of the long curtain up with two old mother-of-pearl hairpins. She cleaned the smudges of dirt from her cheeks and pulled the strings tight on her half-boned stays—cream to match her ruffled dress and embroidered with green flowers.

Everything was ready by the time Agnes shuffled into the kitchen in a silky dressing robe, including the steaming mug of burnt coffee the elderly woman favoured.

“Good morning, Agnes,” Marjorie said brightly, refolding a cloth napkin.

The woman was all well-earned wrinkles and silver hair knotted with rags for curls as she took a seat at the kitchen table. “Morning, dearie.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Like a lamb.” Agnes eyed the table laden with food. She reached for her burnt coffee already sweetened with three sugar cubes. “You really must not cook so much for me. You spoil me every day.”

While Marjorie adored Agnes and loved cooking for her, the extra food was a stark reminder that only one guest dwelled at Flower Marrow. Too many secrets in the garden and not enough guests in the cottage.

Her brother would urge her to charge more for secrets, but the Fewins had never raised the cost. It had always been whatever you could pay. Sometimes it was a handful of golden coins or dull pearls found at the bottom of a jewellery box. Children often left toffee squares and loose teeth. Single mothers would leave buttons and pieces of fabric that Marjorie would use to fix up her clothes. Once a man left a book on constellations and she learnt all about the stars.

“Who are you spending the day with today?” Marjorie asked, leaning a hip against the counter. Agnes spent a month of spring every year at Flower Marrow workshopping a new novel. Marjorie had a whole shelf in her bedroom dedicated to the writer.

“I thought of a new chapter for Heath during the night,” she explained, tapping open an egg with a teaspoon. “Haven’t written for him in a spell.”

“Has Heath declared his love for Nadina yet?” Marjorie prodded eagerly.

Anges smiled cunningly. “No, but he is choking on it quite deliciously.”

“I look forward to reading about his angst.” Marjorie glanced out the window instinctively, seeing the garden doused in sunshine. Soon clouds would shroud the garden and darken the world with waterlogged turmoil. “Best to write indoors today.”

Agnes crooked an eyebrow. “Why is that, dearie?”

“A storm is coming.” She turned away from the window with an unworried smile, playing the perfect hostess. However, her stomach roiled with the knowledge trouble was coming like an unwanted visitor. But a place such as Flower Marrow couldn’t have unwanted visitors.

#

The storm held back for hours like it didn’t want to ruin a timid spring day. But despite its honourable resistance, the sky became bruised by violent clouds the colour of blueberries about to burst. Then it descended onto Spindle something fierce.

Rain hammered at the windows. Wind lashed at the ground with talons. The walls of the cottage groaned under distress and water leaked from the weak points in the thatched roof. It was no doubt the worst storm Spindle had seen in a very long time.

Marjorie bunkered down with Agnes in the parlour to wait out the storm, having a meagre dinner of cheese and cold meat by candlelight.

“Tell me the story of Evangeline Fewin,” Agnes said, hands cupped around a warm mug of hot chocolate. Regardless of the seething storm, this was a regular night for the two women.

“At this point, I think you know the story better than I do,” Marjour said, curled on an upholstered armchair. “You could definitely tell it better than I.”

“Only a Fewin should tell this tale, dearie. Come on, indulge an old lady,” Agnes cajoled.

Always meek and wanting to please, Marjorie easily relented. She readjusted her position, tucking her stockinged feet beneath a cushion. The story of her family legacy was a tapestry in her blood. Threads that linked each Fewin together with that spellbinding garden.

The story unravelled from Marjorie’s tongue as lightning filled the slick windowpanes and thunder clapped. Her words were sweeter than the stain of hot chocolate on the rims of mugs shaped and glazed by a great aunt.

“Near two hundred years ago, Evangeline bought a patch of barren land on the outskirts of Spindle. Not even the thorniest of weeds grew in the dry dirt. But she was a clever and cunning hedge witch, and pored over her grimoire until she found a spell that would rejuvenate the land. It was a simple spell.”

Anges chuckled. “Because witchcraft is simple.”

Marjorie smiled because witchcraft was simple. So simple she didn’t even consider herself a witch. She was just a young woman in love with a garden. “There was a month before the next Harvest Moon,” she continued the story. “Evangeline used it to seek the perfect seed. And when the moon was yellow and swollen, she sliced her palm open wide, whispering a chant so it wouldn’t fall on listening ears. Then she buried that singular seed with bloody hands.”

Over the years, that chant had become something of a folksong to the Fewins. Whispered on quiet nights when the stars were awake and wanting above flowers that only bloomed in the dark. Murmured on sunny days spent toiling around, hands deep in the cool dirt. Under the petals, over the thorns. Salt of earth, marrow of bones.

“Evangeline stayed out there all night after the earth had eaten that seed whole. Just waiting. Eventually, she fell asleep, blood in the dirt and dirt in her blood. She woke on a bed of lush grass,” said Marjorie, thinking of all the times she’d fallen asleep safe and sound in the garden when she was a child.

“A little garden had bloomed while she’d slept,” Anges concluded with a delicate hum. She sipped thoughtfully at her hot chocolate.

Marjorie nodded. “A garden that would continue to grow forevermore.” She didn’t need to glance outside the water-washed windows to know the garden was out there, drowned and drooping beneath the strength of the storm. Thunder faithfully followed lightning.

“Where is Evangeline’s grimoire now?” queried Agnes.

“It’s never been found,” Marjorie said nonchalantly. “Grandmama believed it was buried somewhere in the garden. Hidden away from the world like all the other secrets.”

Agnes was downhearted. “That’s unfortunate.”

Marjorie wasn’t sure she agreed with the old writer. She knew the power of secrets, knew they were kept underground for a reason. While numerous descendants had searched futilely for Evangeline’s grimoire, perhaps it was for the best that it was lost. Because if it held the instructions for a garden that ate secrets and never died, what else did it contain between its ancient pages?

The women talked for another hour. The puddle of melted wax on a chipped teacup saucer marked the late hour. Agnes retired with a yawn, the staircase creaking under her slippered feet.

Marjorie collected the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. The night was wasting away but she was in no rush to return to her cold and empty bed. She thought about what to make for breakfast tomorrow. A parcel of pork sausages still sat in the icebox—she could grill them with some globe tomatoes.

Claws scratched against the backdoor, breaking Marjorie from her thoughts. A shrill mewl seeped through the wood. She tugged open the backdoor and a dark shadow darted over the threshold. The particular and unpleasant smell of wet fur filled the kitchen.

“Cassiopeia, you’re absolutely drenched,” Marjorie complained. The slender grey cat left tiny footsteps across the sandstone tiles, brushing up against her legs. “No, no. I’m not hugging you when you’re damper than a fish.”

A hostile crack of thunder speared the cottage. Marjorie startled and Cassiopeia scattered under the kitchen table. For the second time that day, gooseflesh prickled at her skin, leaving a sickening pattern down her forearms.

As her thudding pulse started to slow, Marjorie decided it was time to retire to her bedroom. Tucked under her blankets was a better place than any to wait for the storm to die.

She went about emptying the buckets and bowls positioned around the cottage to catch the water leaks during the night. Tomorrow she would use all the collected water to wash a load of clothes. She was crossing the small foyer with a ceramic bowl when something slammed against the front door.

Marjorie dropped the bowl in fright. It smashed into a sharp and unsolvable puzzle at her feet. Gooseflesh flared, visible even in the half-darkness, all the candles burning dangerously low. She stared at the front door, bones frozen in place. It rattled rudely against its hinges.

“Hello? Is there anyone home?” The voice trickled through the door, nearly stolen by the wind. It occurred to Marjorie that this stranger must be shouting to be heard over the perilous weather. “I’m looking for shelter from the storm.”

Flower Marrow had never turned away a potential guest, especially not someone looking for haven. Whittling her fright into something useful, Marjorie stepped over the broken bowl and hurried to the door. She opened the door halfway, not wanting rain and wind to steal inside.

Caught between the shadow of the storm and the edge of candlelight, stood a man in a mask of rain and mud. Shoulders wide and secure like a harbour. Taller than anyone Marjorie knew in Spindle. His dark and windswept hair hung in wet ropes to his collarbones. His eyes were indecipherable as they landed on her like an arrowhead.

Marjorie’s breath hitched on an exhale, mouth parting with an impossible sigh. The sight of the man crowding her doorway held her captive like a wife seeing her husband return from war. It could have been minutes or hours that she stared at him.

The tempest quietened suddenly, calming as if it had finally delivered its fateful gift. The thunder became nothing more than a feline’s purr, the lightning a flicker, the rain a drizzle.

“Good—good evening,” Marjorie faltered. “Are you looking to rent a room?”

“Yes. I apologise for the late hour.” His voice was deep and hoarse, like he hadn’t used it for an age. He loosely gestured at his outdated clothes flat to the bone with rain. “And the water I’m sure to drip onto your floor.” He nonchalantly wiped away some of the mask with the back of a large-knuckled hand, revealing skin so fair it was like he loathed sunshine.

She tamely stepped aside, inviting him inside with all the hospitality she could conjure. Grandmama had always told her kindness was the most important thing she could offer to the world. While the garden feasted on secrets, it remembered the warm and gentle hand that tended to it.

“It’s a good thing you’re not made of sugar,” Marjorie said blithely.

After closing the door, she gracelessly skirted the man glistening with rainwater. He took up so much space in her quaint foyer, that it was impossible not to brush against his arm as she moved around him.

It was also impossible not to notice how the wet fabric clung to his body, divinely outlining his arms corded with muscles and defined torso. Her cheeks flushed with warmth, and she inwardly scolded herself for being so easily flustered.

He carried the scent of the storm and the soaked garden. “Are you the mistress of this establishment?” he asked, watching her intently with honey-gold eyes. Rainwater dripped down his temples in glossy beads, and Marjorie had never been so envious of something before.

She hadn’t even been this envious when Peregrine Brownstone married some other girl instead of her after she’d given him her maidenhead at Midwinter Festival years ago. Not that she fondly remembered the night. The whole experience had been clumsy and lacklustre.

Whenever Marjorie ached with lust now, she gave it to the garden. She made a sentimental and girlishly romantic ritual out of burying her lovelorn desire. When she’d dreamed of the handsome blacksmith gripping her hips with calloused hands, she commissioned a key from him and buried it. When she’d thought of kissing the seamstress and sighing into her soft mouth, Marjorie purchased a piece of ribbon and laid it in the ground under the primroses. Her desire was safe with the garden.

“I wouldn’t call Flower Marrow an establishment by any means. But yes, I suppose I am,” she muttered, wringing her hands. Her entire face was burning now. She wished she was under the kitchen table with the cat. “Miss Marjorie Fewin.”

Those strange coloured eyes narrowed. “Fewin?”

Marjorie took a careful step back. “Only name I’ve ever known.”

“Of course you are a Fewin daughter,” he grumbled. Marjorie packed down her perplexity like dirt, a shard of the broken bowl biting into the edge of her foot through her stockings. Whatever tension had steeled his gaze softened. He laid a hand over his heart and tilted his chin to her with respect. “Wyatt Holloway.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Holloway,” she lied so sweetly. Her blush probably gave away the lie, but she pressed her lips into a serviceable smile. The same one she used to take secrets from townsfolk and show guests around the property, reminding them not to unlatch the garden gate. The same one she used to keep Flower Marrow afloat.

She looked down at the fragmented mess on the floor. Cassiopeia meowed from the kitchen, reminding Marjorie of the late hour. She sighed with exasperation—the storm had toyed with her today like a conman playing a fool.

“My knocking startled you,” Wyatt apologetically realised. He instantly dropped to his knees, gathering the broken pieces of the bowl.

Marjorie quickly joined him. “You really don’t need to do that—”

He fervently caught her gaze. “Please, let me help.”

They were bent so close together that Marjorie could count his lashes one by one. Could see the rainwater still stuck around the dips of his nose and mouth. Marjorie effortlessly convinced herself that the rainwater on his skin would taste like the sugar water she left out for dehydrated bees in the summer.

Suddenly she was parched, gazing dropping to his lips. One unbidden and irrational thought echoed in her mind. Let me be yours. Let me be yours. Let me be yours.

Wyatt watched her in return, eyes soft like butter. Marjorie wanted to believe he was as transfixed by her as she was by him. She couldn’t read anything in his lingering gaze, and she hastily sealed her attention on the ceramic shards on the floor.

Together they cleaned up the mess, Marjorie avoiding his calming scent that reminded her so much of her beloved garden. Rainwater continued to puddle wherever he placed his measured steps.

Marjorie failed rather pathetically to keep her eyes from the ridged ladder of his stomach visible through his drenched shirt. Grandmama would be horrified to learn what Marjorie was thinking about instead of offering him food and dry clothes.

She dragged her fingertips down the slope of her neck, the dull bite of her nails stabilising like a rake through soil. “Did you want something to eat? I have bread and cheese—”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Just soaked to the bone.”

“Terribly so.”

His cheeks creased with a grin, those strange eyes crinkling at the sides. Mud still masked portions of his face but Marjorie thought he was beautiful as he wrapped the broken bowl in a tea towel. So beautiful with damp skin and grime under his nails.

Marjorie couldn’t shake the sense that Wyatt was uncannily familiar. The feeling persistently wove around her ribcage like ivy vines. His face wasn’t a memory she’d forgotten because it was the kind of face she would have buried in the garden.

Rainwater rhythmically dripped to the floor.

Wyatt searched her gaze so passionately, as though he was begging her to recognise him. But he remained the perfect stranger. Marjorie told herself the rest was just late-night delusion, that they were just two people near the same garden.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll show you to your room and the bathroom. I think there’s some clothes of my brother’s that might fit you.”

Wyatt nodded graciously. “Thank you, Marjorie.”

He followed her through the cottage as Spindle slept well now that storm had passed. Followed her how thunder followed lightning.

#

She’d overslept.

Marjorie never overslept, and it left her disoriented as she fumbled with the ribbons that kept her stockings high above her knees. She worried that Agnes was already awake and waiting for breakfast. Then she remembered Wyatt and her worry doubled. She didn’t remember her dreams but she was sure he’d been present.

Marjorie skipped whole steps down the groaning staircase. She finished tying off a loose braid as she swept into the kitchen. She’d hoped to find it empty and cast with rainbows from the morning light filtering through the suncatchers pinned over the windows.

Unfortunately, Agnes was already seated at the table. She animatedly read aloud to Cassiopeia from a newspaper. The cat perched on the table seemed to be actively listening, ears twitching.

“I’m so sorry,” Marjorie said, immediately reaching for the packet of coffee beans. “I didn’t mean to sleep in.”

“Hush, child,” Agnes said, peeking over the top of the newspaper at a frazzled Marjorie. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

“You must be famished.” Marjorie searched the counters, collecting utensils and ingredients. Embarrassment filled the gaps between her ribs. Breakfast had never once been late at Flower Marrow. “I was going to grill sausages and tomatoes, but I can do something else. Maybe pancakes?”

When Agnes didn’t reply, Marjorie turned from the counters, a spoon in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other. Her heartstring pulled tight in her chest.

Wyatt Holloway stood in the doorway like an oak tree—mighty and unmissable.

“Good morning,” he said in that low timbre that could make even the most shrewd of women swoon like a hothouse flower. Wyatt was scrubbed clean and fresh, black hair a smooth sheaf reaching his shoulders.

He’d found some suitable clothes from the bundle Marjorie had fetched him last night—brown pants, cream shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and leather suspenders crossing his back. His honey-coloured eyes keenly searched the stupefied kitchen.

Agnes swivelled around to Marjorie, eyes wide with wonder. “Dearie, there’s a man in your kitchen.”

“Mr Holloway arrived last night looking for shelter from the rain,” Marjorie explained, her voice thin and reedy. She set down the spoon and milk on the table and returned to making coffee. Her hands needed the distraction, needed the safe routine of preparing food. “Wyatt please meet Agnes. Another Flower Marrow guest,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Take a seat. How do you take your coffee?”

He settled into the chair beside Agnes. “Black and boiling.”

“Do you live in Spindle? Or are you a drifter?” the older writer prompted, the newspaper forgotten in exchange for something much more interesting. Marjorie continued to peek over at the table as she decided on scrambled eggs.

“I’m returning in a sense,” Wyatt said, extending his hand for Cassiopeia to test. The cat bowed for a petting despite not liking strangers. It had taken three springs for her to warm to Agnes. “Been away for a long time. But in a way, I never left.”

“You should stay for the rest of spring,” Agnes said eagerly, skipping over his cryptic words. “There’s nothing like the Fewin garden during the springtime. Absolutely magical.”

Wyatt’s voice deepened into something saw-toothed and dark. “A magical garden?”

“A powerful hedge witch planted the first seed centuries ago,” Agnes gladly shared. “Isn’t that right, Marjorie?”

“So the tales goes,” she replied, bringing over the pot of coffee and two mugs. She poured out one for Agnes first and then Wyatt. Their fingertips touched ever so briefly as he accepted the handle. Not even the plume of steam prevented their eyes from aligning.

“Seems like the seed was powerful,” Wyatt said egregiously. “Not the witch.”

Agnes laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The conversation sat like the pit from a stone fruit in Marjorie’s stomach. She mindlessly cracked eggs into a frypan, thoughts warping. She watched the yolk split and splatter with a growing frown.

Not once had she thought that maybe the seed had been powerful over Evangeline. The idea threatened to unravel her history, and she wondered if anyone in her bloodline had ever bothered to question the garden spell or if they just continued burying secrets, safe and satisfied in their familiar belief.

A corner of her heart told her it never mattered either way; perfectly chosen seed or clever hedge witch. The spell had required both elements to work. The garden wouldn’t exist without the other. Another corner of her heart—the darkest corner—told Marjorie in a whisper that the garden couldn’t work without its seed and witch.

“Would you mind if I used your likeness to describe a character?” Agnes asked Wyatt as she waited for breakfast. “I could write a fine romance about you.”

Marjorie had little appetite, wanting nothing more than to be out in the garden.

#

Marjorie didn’t notice the blight in the garden right away. She was more preoccupied with the box of handwritten letters that had risen out of the dirt.

As expected, the storm had left everything soggy and humid. Thick mud stuck to the soles of Marjorie’s boots and spattered her stockings.

She’d been surveying the garden for damage when she had come across the top of the box sticking out of the earth. Thinking it a little strange, Marjorie kneeled by the box that spoke of a scandalous affair.

“The storm must have blown the dirt away,” Marjorie muttered to herself. She couldn’t think of any other reason why the secret had resurfaced. Marjorie buried it again, tapping the mud smooth with her palms. “All safe and sound again,” she sincerely told the secret.

A little deeper in the garden, she nearly tripped over the chain of a necklace. She crouched and gathered up a tarnished locket, the gold bleary even under the spring sun high on its pedestal in the sky. She buried that secret again too.

She found a large but shallow hole next. Trepidation tightened her shoulder blades as she walked the rough perimeter of it. She entertained the idea that someone had dug up a secret they no longer wanted buried. But the garden gate was always closed and no one had ever stolen into the Fewin garden before.

The miasma assaulted Marjorie then. It was the reek of something sour and rooting—of something dying. She wanted to choke as it filled her nose and mouth. The source was a nearby plant, the flowers wilting and the soil sodden and mouldy.

Her nose wrinkled at the sight of the perishing plant but her heart was heavy with worry. Marjorie checked the surrounding plants and trees for any signs of the blight but found none. It seemed to be isolated. However, she couldn’t recall Grandmama ever mentioning dying plants before.

The Fewins kept a record of sorts about the garden—a wide and flat book with pages largely empty besides the foxing down the edges. Marjorie had never read it and certainly never had a reason to write in it. Now that book seemed like holy scripture.

Holding her breath, Marjorie plucked one of the withering flowers and hurried back through the garden to the cottage.

She found Wyatt sitting on the backdoor step in the sun, watching the garden raptly. Cassiopeia slumbered between his spread legs. Majorie slowed her paced and tried to tame her rioting pulse. She stowed the flower in a pocket before he could spot the ugly thing.

His eyes flashed like golden coins as he looked up at her. “Are you okay, little hedge witch?”

Marjorie inhaled a grounding breath; the stitch in her side pinched sharply. “I don’t consider myself a hedge witch.”

He hummed his disagreement, tilting his head. “You have dirt smudged on your cheeks. Fallen leaves in your hair and filth on nearly every inch of your clothes. You smell only of herbs and Agnes told me you can grow anything under your green thumb.”

Wyatt rose to stand before her, eyes pinning her down as though she were a rare butterfly he wanted to study under a magnifying glass. She had to lift her chin a little to see his eyes. She forgot about the stitch in her side and the flower in her pocket. The only thing she could think of was the sudden and urgent ache between her thighs.

“I bet there is no other place in this world where you’d rather drop to your knees. From what Agnes tells me, Fewin hedge witches give a lot to this garden.” He leaned closer, watching the way Marjorie’s breasts heaved against the seams of her stays, watching the way colour blossomed across her sun-freckled skin with a blush the colour of rose petals. “But you give more than just secrets to this garden, don’t you? Putting your fingers into the dirt after they’ve been between your thighs.”

Mortification lanced her heart. Marjorie had no idea how Wyatt knew she gave her desire to the garden. She’d never told anyone about her lovelorn ritual.

Marjorie felt her composure breaking. She wished she was more like her Grandmama, who surely would have slapped a man if they said something like that to her. But she had always been a timid girl.

Instead of saying that the garden belonged to her and that she belonged to the garden, Marjorie skirted around Wyatt without a word. She had more pressing things to attend to than the beautiful stranger at Flower Marrow.

Marjorie ransacked the office to find the book. She eventually found it under a stack of postcards from her brother, but the relief was short-lived. She sank to the frayed carpet and cradled the book as she read each page twice.

There had been a drought eighty years back that nearly starved out Spindle but the Fewin at the time generously fed the town with produce from the garden. One of the pages with ink so faded Marjorie had to squint, spoke of a storm that latest five days, but aside from some uprooted trees, everything in the garden had survived.

Twilight came to bridge the day and the night together, and Marjorie hadn’t found a single instance where a blight had infested the garden. She closed the book with a clap of dust and rubbed at the thudding in her temples.

Something was wrong with the garden and Marjorie didn’t know what to do. The only thing she could do was prepare dinner for her two guests. Once the dinner of peppercorn steaks with roasted pumpkin was over, Marjorie had made a decision. 

She went into the garden and ripped out the blighted plant, from the flowers to the roots.

#

The blight had spread despite the reaping.

Marjorie had strolled into the garden before dawn broke the sky into halves with more hope than trepidation. She’d been wrong not to clutch to the worry.

For the garden was dying and the secrets were rising.

Over a quarter of the garden was affected with the blight, seemingly unfolding from the strange hole she’d found the previous day. Marjorie wasn’t sure what was worse—the dying nature or the hundreds of secrets jutting out of the earth.

Marjorie sobbed as she reburied secret after secret. Her knees were sore, hands scratched and cheeks stinging from the salt of tears when she returned to the cottage a few hours later.

She then remembered it was Market Day.

Every fortnight, Spindle became festooned with stalls and food carts in a gleeful event. The whole town gathered with smiles and stuffed purses. Marjorie always sold her jam and tea under a laced umbrella. If she failed to make an appearance, Spindle would know something was wrong at Flower Marrow.

She couldn’t let that happen even though her heart was in the dirt.

A batch of jam simmered on the stove in a saucepan as Marjorie labelled jars. The air thickened with lemon juice, sugar and dissolving strawberries.

Wyatt sought her out like a bloodhound. He leaned against the counter, eyes skimming over the bubbling concoction to Marjorie’s tear tracks. She tried not to notice the straw in his hair or how he wet his bottom lip with his tongue.

“The holes in your roof are fixed.”

Astonishment made Marjorie pause. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m glad to be of service. The staircase is next.” He lifted a shoulder like repairing her house was nothing. It felt like everything to her. She stared incredulously at him, jam and jars forgotten. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re no more than a stranger to me…” She shook her head, trying to flush the foolishness in her stomach. It had nowhere to go but into her heart. “But you feel familiar.”

Wyatt crossed his arms, the action accentuating the veins that mapped his hands and forearms. “Do I now?”

“Familiar like the dirt in my garden.”

“Your garden?”

Marjorie stirred honesty into the jam with a wooden spoon. “Everything in my life is inherited, from the cottage to my clothes. And while I know Fewins have tended the garden for generations, it’s the only thing that feels entirely mine. That it belongs only to me.”

“I’m sure it feels the same way about you, Marjorie.” Wyatt reached around her, dipping a finger into the smouldering mixture to taste it. He hummed his satisfaction. “Sweet.”

He went for another taste and she slapped at his hand. “That’s not for you.”

Wyatt moved closer and grinned, creases bracketing his mouth. “Then what sweet thing is for me?”

The scent of the cooking strawberries was heavenly around them, a cloud of sweet, sweet lust. Marjorie could hardly order her thoughts.

She twisted away from him. “I—I have work to do.”

Wyatt watched her flutter around the kitchen. “You have a whole garden that needs you,” he declared monotonously. “Why are you making jam?”

“It’s Market Day.” Her voice and heart were hollow. “I never miss Market Day.”

She avoided his heady attention—which was no small feat—as she organised what she wanted to take into town. She collected her hand-stitched pouches of loose-leaf tea and stacked jars into a hand-painted crate.

Her beautiful garden was dying and the secrets she guarded were rising, and all Marjorie could do was pretend everything was well. Just get through Market Day, Grandmama told her. Tomorrow you can figure out what is ailing the garden.

Wyatt removed the saucepan from the stove. “Let me come with you.”

“You don’t have to do—”

“You do too many things on your own,” he interrupted, as if he’d known her for years instead of days.

“Fine,” she said. “You can carry the crates and the umbrella.”

#

She was a nice and good-natured girl, it was true. If Spindle ever had a favourite Fewin, it would be Marjorie. She could walk through the cobbled streets and pass the half-timbered buildings without a fuss. Dogs never barked, cats slinked around her ankles, girls gave her braided flower crowns, and most adults spoke warmly with her.

Marjorie was quiet and reliable and compliant as she handed over a tea to help with menstrual symptoms to Miss Dale. She’d already sold most of her stock—the apricot jam had done surprisingly well this time.

Wyatt lingered. She’d expected him to explore Spindle, but instead, he lounged against the empty crates, observing how the townsfolk interacted with Marjorie. Occasionally, he stood at her shoulder and whispered gossip he shouldn’t know against the shell of her ear.

Like how the butcher was having an eccentric affair with the young man that delivered mince and chops—Marjorie had buried T-bones in the garden as evidence months ago. Or how Lacey Bayweather couldn’t stop stealing—various trinkets were scattered beneath Majorie’s white roses.

It wasn’t until Marjorie waved at a mother and her son at the neighbouring stall peddling sweetmeat that it clicked.

“I wouldn’t let that boy get too close to your cat,” murmured Wyatt, lips feathering against the delicate skin below her ear. “He has a disturbing fascination with death.”

It wasn’t that Wyatt shouldn’t know any of these things. He simply couldn’t know any of these things because they are all secrets buried in the Fewin garden.

#

Marjorie sat in the garden, the hemline of her dress stained with grass and prickled with thistles. None of those things were extraordinary. However, the book she’d clawed from the dirt was.

Desperate for answers to the strange Mr Holloway and the blighted plants, Marjorie took a spade into her garden the following morning. She dug and dug and dug until she found it. Right where Grandmama said it would be.

Evangeline’s grimoire.

She found every single answer she needed inked on the ancient and worm-eaten pages. They only turned her into a sad and lovesick creature. Mosquitos buzzed in the gloaming as Marjorie wandered the garden, grimoire clutched to her chest and spade dangling from her fingers.

She passed plants that were drying because something vital was missing. Passed the hole that was actually a grave as she strolled to the back of the garden where nature levelled into a clearing of high grass and wildflowers.

Caught between the shadow of a waning moon and the edge of the setting sun, Wyatt waited for her. He saw the grimoire and sharp-edged spade. “Little hedge witch,” he said softly.

“Evangeline cut her palm and buried a seed to make this garden. That’s how the tale goes,” Marjorie said, voice trembling, the seams of her heart unravelling. “But that’s not quite right, is it?”

Wyatt tilted his head, brows crumbling over those strange eyes. He made to touch her—an embrace or a strike, she couldn’t be sure—but his arms fell.

Marjorie tossed the grimoire to the earth, the pages spilling open to an anatomical sketch of an eldritch creature of the forest. “You were the seed she buried.”

Wyatt opened his mouth but Marjorie pitched the spade into the grass, narrowly missing him. “The storm disturbed the dirt enough for you to climb out.” Marjorie continued with tears stuck in her throat. “That’s how you knew those secrets. That’s why everything is dying. Because the prince of the garden is no longer buried.” 

“I knew you’d figure it out.” He sidestepped the grimoire like it was litter, the timbre of his voice dark and tempestuous as the storm that delivered him. “Out of all her descendants, you remind me of Evangeline the most.”

He transformed before her, the mask of humanity thinner than a veil. She’d thought he was tall and sinewy before, but now she had to tip her chin all the way back to catch the tapered ears poking through the tassels of his shadow-black hair. Solid and resplendent like an ancient tree with snarled branches that evoked beautiful nightmares, scratching against windowpanes. The borrowed shirt shed from him like autumn leaves, no longer fitting his Fae physique. A bark-like pattern covered his pale skin, etching over the hills of his shoulders and fading into a moss green at his hands large enough to be considered paws. Something flicked in the grass behind him—a tail that ended in the shape of a heart like flowers from an anthurium plant.

Marjorie gasped.

Wyatt gave a malicious and self-deprecating smile. “Am I that horrible to look upon?”

“Grandmama’s favourite flower was a Clerodendrum. More commonly known as a glorybower,” she said haltingly, voice a lush whisper between the wildflowers. “Rare and strange and beautiful. You… you remind me of that flower.”

He closed the distance between them within seconds. He cradled her face between his palms, searching her gaze with aching sincerity. “Let me return all the desire you’ve sweetly given to me.”

Marjorie blushed with realisation. All those nights where she’d dropped to her knees and buried tokens of lust and longing, she hadn’t only been giving them to the garden.

Wyatt traced a smudge of dirt on her cheek with a thumb. His unnatural eyes glowed like honey under lamplight—gorgeous and garnished with angst and something Marjorie had only read about in novels where the heroine was desired and cherished.

She nuzzled into his palm, suddenly feeling gluttonous. “Take me in the garden.”

Her assertiveness didn’t surprise Wyatt as stars blinked awake above them. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.  He grinned rascally. “It’s the most appropriate place for us.”

Marjorie wanted to cross-stitch the deep lines around his mouth onto her stays to hold him closer forever, flush against her chest.

He caught her mouth with his, carefully and kitten-soft. The tenderness of it all could have broken her heart if she weren't ravenous. Marjorie rose onto her toes, hands travelling over the landscape of his shoulders. She parted her mouth, eagerly giving him access. He licked into her mouth in a devastating kiss that promised to ruin every other kiss from someone else.

Desperate not to part from his mouth, she guided Wyatt down to the ground, teeth dragging at his bottom lip. He growled in pleasure, the sound going to her core. They made a bed out of the grass, petals crushed under Marjorie’s back. Then he was on his knees, nudging her legs open so they bracketed his body.

Wyatt studied her through a heavy-lidded gaze, hands skimming down her stockinged thighs as he lifted the layers of her dress. Marjorie tried her best to remain still, but all she wanted to do was writhe against him and pull him back to her kiss-bruised mouth.

He tugged at the ribbons holding her stockings in place. “Did you buy these ribbons from that seamstress?”

“Yes,” she panted, lust delightfully clouding her mind. She felt warm all over, skin flushed pretty and pink.

“You imagined her slowly unlacing them, didn’t you? Fingers walking over the seams of your clothing, touching you through the fabric before leaving lovebites on your breasts?” His words mirrored his actions—fingers tracing the edges of her bodice before leaning closer to place wet kisses across the tops of her breasts.

Marjorie sighed at the suction of his mouth, arching into his touch. The throb between her legs was acheful. She tried to roll her hips against Wyatt but he drew back sharply. Before she got the chance to complain or whimper, he bunched up her dress and stripped away her underclothes.

“You imagined that blacksmith right here, didn’t you?” Wyatt pressed the heel of his palm against her core. Marjorie gasped at the decadent pressure, unable to restrain herself from grinding against his hand, needing the friction. Wyatt splayed his other hand across her stomach, fingers long enough to touch her ribs. “His calloused hands gripped your waist, and you didn’t even mind the blisters and grease. He fucked you hard and fast in your dreams, didn’t he?”

Marjorie couldn’t form a single word as Wyatt mercilessly teased out her arousal until she was slick and glistening. Even her thoughts had abandoned her as he strummed at the rosebud at the juncture of her thighs. She moaned like a fallen angel, head tossed back into the grass.

“I need more,” she demanded. Needed him closer and deeper and where she couldn’t reach on her own. Two fingers circled her again, gathering the wetness there, before pressing against her entrance. Marjorie propped herself on an elbow and clasped Wyatt’s wrist. “I don’t mean your fingers.”

He kissed her again, deeply and passionately. Then he collected her hips and deftly turned her over. Laying her on her belly in the dirt and the grass and the wildflowers. Wyatt’s tail curled around her waist like a safety rope, and he peppered her spine with kisses as he lowered himself over her in a mating press. So close that they could press flowers flat with adoration between their bodies.

He sank into her slowly with a feral groan, lost in the warm squeeze of her channel. Marjorie quivered at the heaviness and hardness of him as she accepted all of him. A ribbon of ecstasy that promised divinity coiled in her belly.

“Wyatt,” she whined. He occupied so much space it was nearly unbearable and left her lungs empty of breath. Her eyelids fluttered closed at the overwhelming feeling of him deep inside her, the stretch sore but opulent.

The garden prince started to move so carefully it was torturous. Each luxurious thrust pushed her closer, knotting that ribbon tighter and tighter. Simultaneously too much and not enough.

Wyatt burrowed his face into her neck, nipping at her skin. “Such a good girl,” he muttered. The praise made her mewl, silken walls clenching around his cock.

He clasped her chin, raising her head from the ground. “You belong to me the way I belong to you. And we belong to the garden. Are you listening, little hedge witch?” She barely nodded in his secure grip, teeth gnawing at her bottom lip. “Once you’re sated from pleasure, you’re going to grab that spade and cut out my heart.”

Marjorie faltered. “What?”

“You know the spell from the grimoire, Marjorie. You’ve heard it all your life,” he said, voice ragged but unwavering as he relentlessly rutted into her. “Cut out my heart and bury it. The garden and the secrets will be well again.”

“No,” she protested through the headiness. “You were supposed to leave this place. Forget the garden and every Fewin. You’ll die without your heart!”

“I have a new heart,” he claimed, lifting her a little to snake a hand beneath her, gliding over her pelvic bone and settling between her thighs. “She’s kind and good. Maybe one day she can love me the way she loves this garden.”

She wanted to sob into the crushed wildflowers. “Wyatt—”

“You’re not going to lose me or the garden,” he promised, fingers circling her clit with determination. “Now be the good girl I know you are and come for me.”

The ribbon snapped abruptly, and she choked on a cry, the pleasure rich enough to melt her bones like wax under flame. Wyatt faithfully followed her, spilling his seed within her with a deafening moan.

She fumbled for the spade she’d tossed into the grass, the edges biting into flesh as she clutched it, wet rubies sprouting across her fingertips. Marjorie didn’t want to leave Wyatt’s powerful embrace, but the spell rang like a folksong in her mind with blood and dirt.

Under the petals, over the thorns. Salt of earth, marrow of bones.

[moniquehazel]

little playlist for house of dreams

[moniquehazel]

GHOST UNDER THE MISTLETOE - SHORT STORY

New York City, 1856

Priscilla’s white satin gloves kept slipping down her elbows, and she wanted to scream. The sound sat in her throat, eager and frustrated, as she glanced across the crowded ballroom of Hadfield Hotel. Not even a swallow of spiced pear brandy could push the scream down into her stomach.

Priscilla would gladly be spending her December night anywhere else. The snow swirling outside was particularly preferable to this festive society party where guests danced and drank and gladhanded under the disguise of holiday cheer. However, her parents had persuaded their daughter of nineteen with the promise of more supplies for her taxidermy avocation.

It had seemed like an easy exchange weeks ago. But now, standing in a corseted gown of sapphire blue and curls positioned high with jabbing pins and lashes heavy with kohl, Priscilla realised she had gravely miscalculated. She didn’t feel pretty, she felt foolish.

Satin slipped and she tugged.

Priscilla wanted to scream and bury the gloves deep in the snow. Good riddance if they weren’t found until after Christmas when the white streets began to thaw.

Fragile baubles and burnished bells and wreaths of holly decorated the grand hotel. Not that any of the decorations concealed the notorious fable about Hadfield Hotel. At least not according to Marita, who gossiped at Priscilla’s side between bites of tiny caramel tarts.

Crumbs sprinkled onto a cloth napkin. “Do you know the story?”

“I scarcely know what I did yesterday,” Priscilla said blithely. “And you’re obviously dying to tell me.”

Marita grinned shamelessly as the pair promenaded around the ballroom. She forgot all about the desserts being carried on trays, liking the taste of gossip better on her tongue. “It’s rather a macabre story…”

Priscilla indulged her friend’s baiting as the string band—exclusively playing Christmas carols—began an upbeat rendition of Silent Night. “My favourite kind.”

“Your parents should really get you out of the house more,” Marita insisted, hardly bothering to mask her distaste for Priscilla’s hobby. “Get you away from all those dead animals you like to bring back wrong.”

Priscilla spied her parents by the magnificent Christmas tree. They didn’t like her dead and stuffed creatures either. “Trust me, they earnestly try.” She turned back to her dearest friend. “Tell me the story.”

“The Hadfield used to host the most spectacular parties. The envy of all venues. But then it all just stopped when the owner’s son dropped dead.” Marita snapped her fingers, and Priscilla nearly lost her glass, enchanted by the tale. “Poor Fletcher Hadfield. Apparently, he died right here in the hotel and haunts the place. This is the first party held in the Hadfield in nearly twenty years.”

“How have I not heard this story?”

Martia shrugged. “People would rather forget such grim things.” Her eyes widened to the size of teacup saucers at something across the gilded floor. “Oh! Rupert just stepped under the mistletoe. Do you mind?”

“Go get your Christmas kiss,” Priscilla encouraged, offering up the last dregs of her brandy. Marita downed the drink and made haste through the fanfare of the party before another smitten lady got to Rupert first.

Priscilla didn’t feel lonely in the festooned Hadfield. Not as she lingered on the edge of the ballroom like a moth among butterflies. She was a similar creature but noticeably a little stranger with the rabbit’s foot fastened at her throat on ivory lace.

She did, however, feel the itch of fascination as she glanced at the arched entryway that led to the rest of the hotel. It was the same fascination that allowed her to bind wood and wool into a mannequin and mount skin over it. Brushing fur and cleaning antlers and straightening feathers. To prepare and preserve something lost. After all, taxidermy was the art of remembering.

And somewhere in the Hadfield awaited a forgotten dead son.

No one noticed her absence as she wandered, one glove precariously slipping down her arm. A cheery carol diluted into a whisper as Priscilla crossed the threshold into a smoking parlour. She searched the mahogany wood and upholstered leather and stale shadows.

Priscilla’s stomach flattened like the dust on the shelves. Perhaps this ghost didn’t want to be found when a party he wasn’t invited to tolled down the hall. Try one more room, Priscilla rationalised, turning from the parlour.

Cool fingers tugged at the seam of her satin glove, gently hoisting it back into place. Priscilla whirled, a shriek scratching at her oesophagus.

“Please, don’t scream.”

A handsome young man stood before her in a dishevelled suit a few decades out of fashion. His pupils were white and cloudy, fair hair long enough to touch his blood-stained collar. He looked to be made out of gossamer fabric.

Enthrallment steeled her fear. “I take it you’re Fletcher Hadfield.”

“It’s not every night a pretty girl comes looking for me.”

“I didn’t actually expect to find you. I was merely—”

“Bored? Curious? In urgent need of smelling salts?”

“Fasincated by the macabre.”

Fletcher gave an approving grin. “Ah, my death’s aspiration!”

She studied his body, which showed little signs of rigor mortis. Studied the near-translucent nature of his skin and clothes. “Your skin… does it feel like dead flesh?” she asked, thinking of her beloved dead and mounted animals.

He rolled up a sleeve without hesitation. “Be my guest.”

She brushed her fingertips across his wintry wrist, finding him surprisingly tangible. “How did you die?”

Without looking away from her, he pointed a finger skyward. Pinned over the threshold was a sheaf of mistletoe Priscilla was sure hadn’t been there before. His grin broadened with mischief and possibly sarcasm. “Mistletoe poisoning.”

Fletcher Hadfield leaned closer, eyes sinking to her mouth. Priscilla found little reluctance within herself, curiosity a seductive beast. She splayed a hand across his chest. Hard and cold flesh without a heartbeat. Priscilla fearlessly edged up onto her toes, wondering if her first kiss counted if it was with a ghost.

His eyes softened with loneliness, their lips the width of a bird’s feather from touching. “Will you remember me?”

“Like a taxidermic animal,” Priscilla promised, giving him a Christmas kiss.

[moniquehazel]

Priscilla and Fletcher by @millyillus

[moniquehazel]

Matiah and Atlas from my gothic fantasy by the incomparable @millyillus

[moniquehazel]

my gothic fantasy that feels like crimson peak x taylor swift's ivy

[moniquehazel]

THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD - SHORT STORY

Sam hated the ocean. It eclipsed her vision and every water-marked window in her mother’s car. The ocean was all briny anger smashing at packed sand and rough rocks, roaring with a wet mouth and seafoam teeth, and it was everywhere.

The salt of the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania was so cruel your eyes glistened red, lips cracked and jawline tight like an anchor’s metal chain. This promontory—like a thousand years ago some god had thrown a rock in a tantrum—at the bottom of Victoria would be the only thing she’d know for the next six weeks.

“This will be good for you,” Vera Reed told her silent daughter shrilly. Sam sat in the passenger seat, face turned away and tongue locked behind her teeth. “Like a slap of cold water,” she added, pulling the car over to the shoulder of the gravelled road, wilderness bracketing them in. There wasn’t a clear road to the lighthouse, so Sam would have to walk. “Your father would’ve agreed with me.”

The sad truth was he probably didn’t care enough to agree with this drastic punishment—a punishment for dropping out of event planning lectures and tutorials on crisis management and strategy. He hadn’t cared much when he was alive, so Sam didn’t see why he’d care in Hell.

Sam tasted blood in her mouth, and she shoved the car door open. Wind fresh from the ocean clawed at her flared jeans and the cuff of her cranberry-red blouse—all chosen and styled from high fashion brands and tiny, exclusive boutiques.

Vera leaned across the gearbox, sleek blood-blonde hair slinking over one shoulder, sliding against her gold earrings. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your mother?” Vera had been a model once, but an unplanned pregnancy had ruined her glossy magazine career.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” Sam snarled, towing out her single suitcase and backpack stuffed with paperbacks—Eliza Clark, Sally Rooney, Gillian Flynn and Sylvia Plath.

“Forever the sourpuss,” Vera muttered, tapping her rings against the steering wheel sporadically, evidently irritable. “Scream at the ocean for me.”

“Have your stomach pumped for me,” she tossed right back, both Reed women knowing Vera wasn’t far from another wine bender. The divorcee acting like a widow was spending the next six weeks drowning her grief over her dead ex-husband with her jaded, washed-up friends in an empty apartment in East Melbourne.

“You wouldn’t survive without me, darling,” Vera lectured her only child. Her cold, hard truth rang through Sam with the whip of wind. The seething girl of nineteen rejected that slice of truth because her loneliness was surely independence, and her laziness was surely ruthless potential waiting for a spark.

With the callous grin of a wolf, Sam slammed the door so hard the car’s skeleton shook and her palm tingled. She swallowed the blood slick on her teeth, tasting salt the whole way down as if she’d gulped a mouthful of saltwater. She told herself that blood could be sweet.

The insolent university drop-out had fought against her mother about spending six weeks restoring a lighthouse with a total stranger for a month, spitting and shrieking.

Then she overheard a phone call late one night, overheard her mother speaking to a friend about her, completely sober and sincere. The words ricocheted into a mirror: She’s my splinter and I dislike her.

A broken lighthouse was suddenly preferable to her mother’s side, so Sam stopped arguing and choked down her radiant rage and gamey resentment and sordid love for her mother. Because she didn’t like her mother either and they were each other’s splinters.

Vera didn’t wait nearly long enough before swinging the car around, leaving Sam at the edge of a thin, sand-littered path leading to the lighthouse. She commanded herself not to turn around and watch her mother’s polished Mercedes-Benz shrink away, Sam did though, strawberry-blonde bob blowing into her face.

She didn’t bother taming her hair and let strands tangle around her nose and curl around her earrings. Though, she did consider calling a ride to take her far away. But Sam wasn’t a runaway—she’d done that once when she was thirteen, but she’d just gotten bored and homesick three days later. You don’t need to go somewhere far away, she thought gloomily, kicking at a lonely and corroded seashell. You’re already somewhere far away.

Salt stung the air with a new breeze, lifting sand that scratched at Sam’s ankles, somehow finding a way underneath the hem of her jeans. She would learn quickly that sand could get anywhere, it was the perfect invader. She hitched her backpack up and grappled with her suitcase, sand and dirt already stuck in the tiny wheels.

She started down the natural path of the promontory that wove through shrub and weeds and swaying grass that reached her knees. The jagged edges of the promontory dropped off in cruel cliffs and rocky slopes, patches of perpetually wet sand scattered like solitary beaches, only big enough for one person. She was painfully far from St Kilda Beach, a perfect stretch of golden sand.

“That’s a no for sunbathing,” Sam grumbled, her suitcase dragging behind her like dead weight. She regretted packing her favourite bathers now—a black full-piece with a fabulously scooped back that showcased every inch of her back from the top of her shoulder blades to the small of her back. Her bathers would stay folded in her suitcase, a waste of space and collecting the smell of mildew and bitterness.

It was nearly summer but with the clouds knitted overhead, a coolness moved with the wind clawing over the cliffs. Still, Sam doubted it would rain as she trudged to the lighthouse that rose from the earth like a stubby finger with a broken nail. It was an eyesore, mottled grey and white stone. Distaste made a home on Sam’s face and in her heart as the path gave way to soft grass and pavers pressed deep into the soil.

Two buildings sat before the lighthouse—a whitewashed bricked cottage and a shed that groaned in the wind. Between them and the lighthouse was a makeshift courtyard with an empty firepit that hadn’t been used in quite some time. And everything was battered and stripped by the vindictive weather, sanded down and crumbling under the rime of Nature Mother.

From Sam’s understanding, she wouldn’t be living in the lighthouse but in the keeper’s cottage with the person running this restoration project. A ute was parked, the flatbed stacked with equipment. The high sides were smeared with mud and Sam knew there was no way her mother’s car would’ve survived the off-road trip.

She headed for the cottage, rapping her knuckles against the worn wood, listening as the windchimes that clung from the gutters jingled softly, seashells and bells knocking together. Sam didn’t get an answer, an irritation tightened her muscles. She left her suitcase at the cottage door, wandering towards the courtyard. The new lighthouse keeper knew she was coming today, not that Sam expected a welcome party or anything. But still.

Her eyes found the lighthouse as she walked, neglected by its original parents. One of the slim rectangular windows was cracked and there were patches of white paint, making the grey stone look ill.

“Hello?” she called. Sam thought this was the part in a slasher flick when the killer would emerge with an axe or a chainsaw or maybe a fishing hook considering the seaside location.

It wasn’t a masked killer that popped out from the shed, but an Asian boy pushing down his wireless headphones, letting them rest around his neck. Okay, boy wasn’t the right word. He was probably a little older than Sam but there was a boyish quality to his wrinkled shirt and floppy raven-black hair.

“Samara, yeah?” he guessed, crossing the courtyard to greet her in long, easy strides. “Sorry, I had my headphones in,” he added, words low with an Australian accent.

“I prefer Sam,” she said, prying hair out of her face.

“Sam it is,” he noted, mouth picking up with a lopsided smile. “I’m Robin Seo, but Robbie is good.” He wiped a hand down his dirty jeans before extending it towards her.

One strap of her backpack slid down her arm as Sam took his hand, giving it a firm shake. Her father had once grilled her when she was six about the importance of a good handshake, how it showed the world who you were—weepy puppy or growling dog. Her hand was small in Robbie’s, his grip warm but too tender.

With the handshake over, they studied each other in the diluted afternoon light. There was an awkwardness between them as they assessed the other. Robbie’s examination was kind, and he wasn’t surprised by her. Sam was critical and a little thrown.

His boots were scuffed and there was a smear of grease on one cheek, clearly comfortable with messy, gruelling work. His eyes were dark, skin sun-touched and he was taller than every boy Sam knew.

 Had Vera known who’d be waiting for Sam at the foot of a rundown lighthouse? Had Sam’s mother known who she’d be stuck with for the next six weeks? Her trepidation must have polished her features clean because Robbie tilted his head.

The wind didn’t annoy Robbie’s hair and his hands settled on his waist casually. “You expected a retired sailor in corduroy overalls with a great beard, yeah?”

Sam shifted her weight, crossing her arms. “Actually, I expected a ripped lesbian too into DIY projects.”

He laughed loudly, not holding in his levity. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Sam smothered her grin, shrugging nonchalantly. “The world runs on disappointment.”

She wondered what Robbie Seo was doing restoring an old lighthouse when he could be at university or travelling the world. None of the boys back home would take on this kind of project. Not because it was hard work, but because it was outlandish and offered no glory or money. The boys Samara Reed knew from her private high school and pretentious university were incorrigible and bored with cold hearts and short attention spans. Restoring an isolated lighthouse was too selfless and strange. Theories about Robbie and his lighthouse sprung up inside of Sam’s brain, threads upon threads, questions upon questions.

“Funny and cynical,” he concluded, nodding to himself. “We’re gonna get on great.”

Doubt weeded in Sam’s stomach, but she didn’t disagree with him, just looked to the lighthouse backed by the lowering sun. The dying sunlight pushed through the knotted clouds persistently, casting the promontory in shades of dusty orange.

“Welcome to the Bright Lady,” Robbie announced, glancing over his shoulder at the lighthouse. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Robbie was studious about giving Sam the full tour of the lighthouse’s grounds. The shed was a miniature Bunnings, stocked with just about everything you’d need to fix up a lighthouse—shelves and boxes ordered neatly.

The cottage was homely but much too small for Sam with one bathroom and one main room, a lounge pushed up against the kitchen without an island. Robbie pointed out how he’d upgraded the television and offered up the use of his console, not that Sam was a gamer.

She realised with a sinking heart, they’d practically be living on top of each other. But at least she had her own bedroom—a tiny shoebox with a single bed, a window that faced the ocean and a set of drawers. It was all so quaint from her mother’s million-dollar apartment.

Dusk was falling hard when they finally made their way to the lighthouse standing still and silent at the edge of the cliffs that plummeted to the ocean. Mosquitoes and moths hovered as Robbie opened the lighthouse’s door. The hinges whined in protest and dampness and salt swathed Sam instantly; she wrinkled her nose as she followed Robbie inside.

“She was built in 1859 and stands at nineteen meters,” he spoke fondly, watching as Sam glanced around. It wasn’t much to look at, to be honest, with an iron-wrought staircase monopolising most of the space. “She was painted white at some point, but I wanna completely restore her to the original stone finish.”

It was obvious that Robbie had already started the restoration because there were no cobwebs or flaking rust or sticky dust on the antique nautical decorations on the walls, just perpetual dampness that was hard to dry out on the doorstep of the Bass Strait.

Sam turned her head up, eyes scaling the tower. She held her curiosity in check, not wanting to be fascinated by some old lighthouse, but her breath was weightless in her lungs. Somehow, Robbie knew and jerked his head towards the staircase, cocking an eyebrow. Sam nodded, waving away a buzzing at her ear. She followed Robbie higher and higher above the world, the staircase squeaking underneath them.

“The original lantern had parabolic mirrors,” he said, hand skimming the rail. “They used kerosene for a while before everything was converted to electricity. Solar power is more reliable now, though.”

The lantern room opened up, the walls constructed entirely of windows. Sam felt like she was inside a glass cup, air sweeping up her throat. The darkening ocean glistened under the disappearing sun, and it stretched for what seemed like forever. She wandered, soaking up everything as Robbie leaned against the glass panelling, amused with watching her reaction.

 There was a tight balcony wrapped around the lantern room, only accessible by a small hatch, something the White Rabbit would dash through, checking his pocket watch anxiously. There was scattered lantern apparatus and Sam studied it all without a clue on how it all worked.

“The light is visible for twenty-five miles,” Robbie went on from his spot, outlined by the inky spill of the ocean.

Sam muttered sincerely, “Impressive.”

“It really is,” he agreed. “I know the light doesn’t work yet but it will.” There was something hidden in his voice and features, a desperation or a need. Sam couldn’t make heads or tails of it, just like all the lantern apparatus.

Sitting on top of a toolbox was a colourful drawstring bag, seemingly out-of-place in a lighthouse. Sam picked it up, feeling the silk between her fingertips. It looked patched with squared pieces of fabric spreading out at the sides like little ears.

“It’s a traditional Korean fortune pouch,” he explained. “From my halmeoni.”

“Halmeoni?” she questioned.

“Grandmother,” he translated. “She made it because she thought the lighthouse could use some luck.” It was a sweet thought, and Sam made sure to place the pouch back delicately.

They watched the sunset quietly, witnessing the sun sink and drown beneath the watery horizon, all light washed away for another day. It was a breathtaking sight, but Robbie’s mind was turning towards dinner. The pair were descending the stairs when a strange sound made Sam pause.

It was high-pitched and hollow, piercing even the stone walls of the lighthouse. The sound scattered down Sam’s spine in an eerie and ethereal song. She’d never heard anything like it before and it sounded close, sailing from the lungs of something forgotten.

She looked to Robbie behind her, phone light bleeding through his fingers. “What’s that sound?” she whispered. The song curled around the lighthouse, seeped through the walls and up the stairs to serenade them.

“Mermaids,” he deadpanned.

Laughter was ripe on her tongue, tumbling over her teeth. “Do you think I’m five years old or something? Mermaids aren’t real.”

Artificial light cut across his face, giving him a mask in the shadows of twilight. “Does that sound like a whale or a dolphin to you?”

She listened adeptly, gooseflesh rising along her arms. She knew dolphins sounded like they laughed, and whale song was always melancholy. “I mean… no.”

“I’m telling you,” Robbie insisted. “Mermaids.”

Disbelief stuck to her like sweat as they crossed the courtyard, the sound eclipsing the lashing of wind and the roar of the ocean. Sam didn’t sleep that night as the sound continued, whispering against her bedroom window.

She was homesick three days later but kept that ache hostage between her teeth and in the gaps of her ribcage. If she said anything or let her hard exterior rust, her mother would win. Sam didn’t know the name of the game her mother and her had played long before the divorce, but she wasn’t going to crack.

The work was laborious, but Sam didn’t complain, though she expected Robbie was waiting for it. Waiting for the rich, cold girl to shatter like frosted glass. Her knees and elbows were bruised, but she didn’t say a single thing as she sponged the white paint on the lighthouse’s stone and peeled it away. It was oddly satisfying, like peeling off sunburnt skin.

The nights were harder than the days, the strange sound returning in some twisted lullaby. Each evening, Sam sat in her bedroom, reading her novels and scrolling on her phone. Her friends didn’t message her, and her mother hadn’t called, not once. Another game, Sam was sure. Still, it hurt to listen to Robbie talking to his family every night for hours, tongue slipping between English and Korean. He was often on loudspeaker, and it sounded like he had a big, close-knit family. Again, it left Sam’s mind spinning on why Robbie was restoring a lighthouse.

She desperately wanted to ask, but they weren’t sharing anything below the surface, and Sam would rather Robbie think she was a solitary and independent creature. In the same stream as Amy Dunne, Samara Reed was a cool, gone girl—she’d learned that at her mother’s feet.

Sam and Robbie got on fine, working and living together easily. Though he’d walked in on her dressing once when he’d found an old blueprint of the Bright Lady and wanted to show her. Sam had screeched and he had blushed, colour staining his cheeks and neck for hours after.

Two weeks later, the promontory was hit with its first summer storm. Rain pelted the cottage and thunder made the windows rattle in their frames. Sam’s loneliness finally got the better of her that stormy night, and she migrated to the main room on slippered feet.

Robbie looked up from his game, headphones secured over his ears. His eyebrows rose with his welcoming smile, and he lamely waved at her, the game controller still in his hand. Colour from the television splashed across the walls, the storm raging like a wrathful god outside.

She curled up on the other end of the couch with Conversations with Friends, the cover bent over. The pair absorbed their different hobbies side-by-side as the sky and the sea screamed.

The world was remarkably calm the following morning, not a plume of cloud on the horizon. While the sky was clear of the storm, the ground wasn’t. The promontory looked like it had been tossed over and stripped back by a giant taller than the sky, bones and sandy blood left exposed. It would take days to clean away the evidence of the storm.

“Oh, man!” Robbie grumbled, surveying a busted window on the shed, a piece of driftwood protruding out like a broken rib. He wrestled with the driftwood branch as Sam wandered around, sandy sneakers sinking into soggy grass and mud.

She stopped at the jagged line of the cliffs, watching as the ocean glittered like a coin in the morning sunlight. Just like the sky, there were no tell-tale signs that a storm had stirred it into fury last night.

There was no wind, just breathless air and sunshine that wanted to dry out land and skin, baking both in its worldly oven. Sam hadn’t explored the edges of the promontory at all, more interested in looking out than down. But as she used her hand as a visor, she found there was a natural, sloping staircase carved into the cliffside, stones sanded down from the lick of waves over thousands of years.

On one of the tiny, solitary beaches at the bottom of the cliffs was… something. It was beached, sunlight catching on scales and grey skin.

“ROBBIE!” Sam screamed, sneakers slipping in mud, nearly sending her to a watery grave.

He tore around the shed, panic making his legs work faster. He skidded to her side, eyes automatically searching her over for injuries. “You okay?” His hands touched her shoulders, and Sam didn’t realise she was trembling.

She nodded frantically, pointing to the patch of dark sand at the bottom of the cliff.  Robbie followed her finger, and Sam knew she wasn’t seeing things when Robbie froze.

He didn’t stay frozen for long and was moving within the next heartbeat, practically throwing himself over the lip of the promontory without any consideration or second thought.

Hesitating for a minute, Sam scrambled after him, breath sticky in her lungs. She clung to the sharp, slick rocks for balance, more careful than Robbie as she descended to the meeting place of salt water and sand in a little cove.

Sand ensconced the body, clinging to slate-grey skin and littering the iridescent scales like grim glitter. Sam lingered over Robbie’s shoulder, curiosity a dark creature inside of her, fearful but tempting.

Robbie kneeled in the wet sand, reaching forward with a cautious hand.

“Please tell me that’s not a—” she uttered, hovering closer. The body looked like a child, limbs and hair long, half-wrapped in seaweed.

“A mermaid?” Robbie said, blinking against nacreous scales in the hot sunlight. “Would you like me to lie to you?” he quipped, peeking up at her.

That sweaty disbelief was back, damping Sam’s spine. Her eyes moved from its ghoulish skin, closed eyes and ink-black hair to the fish tail, gorgeous fins packed with sand. There was a wound on the tail, dark blood seeping out, and Sam could only assume the mermaid had gotten hurt during the storm.

“Is it alive?” Sam queried, tasting tears at the back of her throat. Tears for the marooned mermaid or herself, she didn’t know.

“There’s a pulse, I think,” he answered, fingers prodding at its throat. “We need to move her.”

Astonishment made Sam’s voice shrill. “Move her where?”

Robbie looked up at the promontory, meaning the cottage. “She’s hurt. She needs help.”

“Are you serious?” Sam exclaimed. Robbie didn’t reply, just scooped up the young mermaid gently. It was limp in his arms, tail draping towards the ground. Robbie steadied his balance and skirted around Sam. “Shouldn’t we call the police? Or sea patrol?”

“It’s a mermaid.”

“A vet then!”

Robbie glanced back at Sam, voice strained and sweat already bleeding through his shirt. “Can you stay behind me? Catch me if I slip?”

Sam gritted her teeth, looking back at the disturbed sand and the lapping ocean. This whole situation was insane, but with a capricious inhale, she hurried after Robbie, eyeing that shimmering tail as they remerged to the surface world with a lighthouse at its heart.

Sam scurried through the cottage, tracking sand and mud across the linoleum. Adrenaline was sharp in her veins and Robbie’s voice crackled across her skin like electrify as she squeezed by him and the unconscious mermaid, blood dripping.

“Fill the tub up,” he wheezed. “Make it shallow, though.”

There was a lot of clamouring—Sam’s sneakers squeaking, Robbie muttering in Korean and wet scales bumping into furniture. The bathroom was tiny, the tub even tinier and Sam twisted frantically at the taps. Her thoughts were a mess as she realised there was a smear of blood across her forearm—the red so deep it was almost purple.

“Sam,” said Robbie. The blood was stark against her tanned skin and her stomach teetered. “Sam,” he repeated sternly.

Sam blinked up at Robbie standing on the threshold, struggling with the weight of a preadolescent mermaid.

“Cold water,” he said, jerking his chin at the running taps.

She whirled. “What?”

“The water should be cold like the ocean,” he explained

“Right. Shit,” she muttered, shutting off the hot water harshly, her knuckles pallid.

Sam pressed herself against the sink, making space for Robbie to lower the mermaid into the bathtub, the tail dangling over the side. She watched Robbie as her body thumped with nausea, forcing herself to forget about the mermaid blood on her arm. He seemed so calm, splashing the mermaid’s body with water.

“Should we put salt in the water?” she asked.

Robbie dragged a hand across his face, smudging water and blood across his forehead. “Uh… maybe?” His calm demeanour was drowning as he sought her out with blown eyes. “Yeah. Grab the salt.”

She returned with every grain of salt she could find in the cottage and stooped beside Robbie at the tub. Together they sprinkled salt into the bathtub, stirring it in with their fingers. Blood still bloomed from the wound on the mermaid’s tail, tainting the bathwater. They weren’t equipped to handle this situation, and that fact was palpable in the bathroom. Robbie stood and turned.

“Where are you going?” Sam bleated, anxiety wanting to make a meal out of her.

“To call my mum.”

Robbie left Sam alone with the mermaid. She studied it with flickering eyes. It didn’t look any older than twelve with finely woven braids throughout inky hair. Its hands were webbed and features ethereal, breathing so shallowly that Sam could hardly see its spindly chest move.

Rapid Korean filled the bathroom as Robbie returned, knees landing next to Sam. He was on a video call, a cluster of faces filling the phone screen. Apparently, he’d gotten more than just his mother. The conversation was fractured with English, possibly for Sam’s sake.

“No,” Robbie said. “She’s hurt. A laceration on the tail.”

Sam tried to stay out of the frame, wanting to give Robbie and his family some privacy, but five pairs of eyes found her as Robbie accidentally knocked into her shoulder.

“Seo Min-Gi,” an elderly woman chided. Sam could only guess that was Robbie’s halmeoni. He groaned as the woman continued speaking, head bowing.

He huffed and looked at Sam. “My family wants to meet you.”

“Oh.” Sam tucked some hair behind her ears, cheeks warming as Robbie angled the camera to fit them both. She conjured a smile for her little Korean audience. “Hi, I’m Sam—”

“Samara Reed,” another woman said with the kindness of a curious mother. “We know. Robbie talks about you.” Fives smiles flashed at Sam, muffled giggles following.

“Mum,” Robbie said through his teeth. “Can we focus on the mermaid, please?”

His family was merciful, discussing in Korean what to do with the mermaid. Sam glided her fingers across the iridescent scales, watching over the unconscious mermaid.

Robbie left again, chatter still audible from the bathroom. He moved around the kitchen, fixing something together as he followed his family’s instructions. Sam didn’t count the minutes but the breaths of the mermaid, chest moving at a more even pace. Robbie hurried back into the bathroom carrying a bowl, the phone call finished.

He was wearing yellow kitchen gloves and the mixture in the bowl reeked like the garden—lavender and thyme.

“What’s that?” she questioned as Robbie scooped up a dollop.

“Herbal salve,” he said. “Didn’t have any beeswax but my cousin said Vaseline should be fine.” He leaned over the tub, smearing the salve over the wound.

The mermaid rioted awake from Robbie’s touch, splashing and failing in the tub. Sam and Robbie were drenched in seconds.

“Can you hold her still?” Robbie pleaded, trying to apply another coat of the thick salve. “Maybe calm her down or something?”

The mermaid was a wild thing in the tub and Sam didn’t want to get any closer, not as it screeched and wailed in that same hollowing and hypnotic sound. The same sound that echoed across the promontory every night.

“Okay, okay,” she muttered, stepping around Robbie and settling by the mermaid’s head. Her silver eyes were wide moon disks, filled with fear and pain. Sam grappled for a way to calm down the mermaid. She doubted it understood any human dialect, but it understood music. So, Sam stroked the mermaid’s hair and sang the only song that appeared in her panicked mind, a song her father used to play every Sunday in his office she was never allowed to enter. Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles.

Eventually, the song tamed the mermaid, and just like any child, it drifted back to sleep, sinking into the cool water. Robbie rolled a towel to pillow the mermaid’s head and silence enveloped the bathroom.

They sat by the tub, shoulders touching, as the mermaid slept. The adrenaline wasted away, and Sam and Robbie were left exhausted and hangover, still damp with mythical blood and homemade saltwater.

“Your family seems nice,” she whispered, drawing her knees up. Sam wanted to say comforting and reliable and loving but settled for nice.

“Thank you,” Robbie said. “But they can meddle sometimes.”

“Meddling is better than absent,” she argued bitterly, thinking of her own family.

His brows furrowed but his voice was thoughtful. “Why hasn’t your mum called you yet?” Robbie was more observant than Sam realised, all those evenings when she ate words from a novel than words from her mother.

Sam hugged her legs. “She doesn’t like me.”

“That can’t be true,” he said confidently. He couldn’t imagine someone not liking Sam.

“No, it’s okay. I don’t like her either. It’s like having a splinter in your heart. I can’t remove it, and neither can she.” Sam hated the tears dotting her vision and peeked at Robbie through wet lashes. He was listening intently, adoringly. “Some women just shouldn’t be mothers.”

Robbie shifted on the sleek tiles, his knee kissing hers as a mermaid slumbered behind them, water rippling with its mellow breathing. Sam appreciated the fragile contact.

“Why are you restoring the lighthouse?” she wondered mildly.

Robbie sighed haggardly. “I killed someone.”

Sam jerked her knee away.

“I was seventeen and had been drinking,” he confessed lowly. “Got into a car accident and a girl died. I was convicted and sent to a youth detention centre. It was the worst night of my life, and I wish I remembered more of it.” Sam could see the guilt on his face now, realised it had always been there, tucked into the corners of his smile and between his knuckles that held tools and gaming controllers so tenderly, as if he might break them too. “I just wanted to fix something,” he added, voice strained.

It all made sense now, why he wasn’t at university or travelling. Robbie was channelling his guilt and grief into the lighthouse, into reviving something. He thought he was a bad guy, thought he was a killer from a slasher flick, but he was just a kid that had made a mistake.

“Maybe when the lighthouse is finished, the girl will see the light in heaven,” Sam said softly, tapping her knee to his.

He stared at her incredulously. “That was—”

Sam scrunched her nose. “Too poetic?”

“Too idealistic,” he amended.

Sam gave a melodramatic gasp. “Are you suggesting I’m losing my cynicism?”

Robbie grinned. “The Bright Lady has that effect on people.”

They called the mermaid Lucy, and while there was a language barrier, not everything was lost in translation. Robbie lent out his headphones over the next week and a half, laughing when the mermaid flapped her tail to the beat, all as he cared for the healing wound.

Sam and Robbie camped out in the bathroom, dragging pillows and blankets in. Sam read passages from Sharp Objects and Lucy seemed to hang onto every word, but Sam suspected it was just the timbre of her voice. They learned that Lucy liked two-minute noodles with diced fish, slurping them up and filling her cheeks before swallowing.

And Lucy sang each night for her saviours, limning a gentler song that echoed in Sam’s heart eerily and beautifully. The song wasn’t hollow but whole, settling in the gaps between the bathroom tiles and the cracks inside two broken hearts with hope.

But they couldn’t keep Lucy because she belonged to the ocean, her heart already buried underneath the waves.

Sam was in her black full-piece, and Robbie’s eyes kept skipping down the steps of her spine as the sun shone on her exposed skin. Together, they’d carried Lucy down to the little cove at the bottom of the promontory.

Water lapped around Sam’s waist as they lowered Lucy into the ocean that swaddled her with motherly arms. Lucy’s scales gleamed like mother-of-pearl, just like the tears swelling in Sam’s eyes. Water soaked the fresh braids in Lucy’s hair as she ducked under the surface, breathing water as easily as air.

Lucy broke the swaying surface, extending a webbed hand to Sam. One fat and happy tear rolled down her cheek as Sam pressed her fingers to Lucy’s cold ones.

The mermaid bowed her head respectfully towards Robbie and he bowed at the waist in return, his boardshorts pasted to his thighs. And then Lucy slipped away with a whip of her tail, splashing them with droplets to replace the tears.

Robbie took Sam’s hand, tugging her out of the waves. “Come on,” he said.

They raced to the lighthouse, dashing up the groaning stairs to the lantern room that was sunny and hot. The scrubbed windows showed the ocean, sparkling like liquid sapphire.

In the distance, a mermaid propelled out of the ocean with the flourishment and grace of a ballerina before diving deep to find the other maidens of the Bass Strait. Sam glanced at Robbie, dripping seawater onto the metal floor but hardly caring as he stared out from the lighthouse calmly, a small grin splitting the hidden shadows of his guilt, like splitting an oyster open.

Sam’s mother might not have called her yet, forever playing some unnamed game, but she was glad to be here, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a healing lighthouse with a boy with two names.

“If you’re Robin,” she mused, touching the sun-warmed glass, still feeling the coolness of Lucy. “Does that mean I’m Batman?”

Robbie gave a short, teasing laugh. “He was a rich kid, yeah?”

“Had both a mansion and a lair,” she recalled.

“Mansions are easy to come by, but a lair.” Robbie whistled, hands coming to rest on his waist. “That’s tough going.”

Sam hummed thoughtfully. “We could swap a lair for a lighthouse?”

He nodded, sunlight sinking through the glass windows to sit idyllically on his cheekbones. “That could work,�� he quipped.

It wasn’t tears that swelled now, but something else. Something warmer than a good tan, something stronger than a summer storm and something deeper than the ocean. “Batman and Robin,” she started.

“Saving mermaids and restoring lighthouses,” he finished.

“I like the sound of that.” Sam’s smile was a crescent moon over the ocean, high and bright like the lighthouse at the edge of the world.

[moniquehazel]

little snippet from house of dreams

[moniquehazel]

My beautiful Ketra Lovett from Salt Between Sky on the cusp of her corruption arc that is going to be swoony and murderous.

Art by @/jengrayart on Instagram

[moniquehazel]

SALT BETWEEN SKY To save her sister, a socialite hires an unlikely crew to find a broken star. But when she gets entangled in a godly scheme, she must choose between saving the world or keeping her starlight-poisoned blood a secret.

A young adult fantasy that's a gothic and dazzling mix of Stardust, Six of Crows and Willow (tv show).

[moniquehazel]

the glint - short story

It happened every day in the hour before dusk layered the world in darkness. Tamsin never missed it, watching from the observatory perch of Station 06, forehead pressed against the thick glass, her breath turning to fog.

It was enchanting gold, glinting like a star on the horizon. The dying sunlight caught it for only the stretch of an hour, making it shine like a prince’s coin. She didn’t know exactly what it was, no one at the science station on Earth did, and they all had more important things to occupy their time with, like re-terraforming the toxic planet. But the gossamer, reflective light beckoned her religiously.

Her curiosity was ravenous, growing every day as she watched the Glint with wide, unblinking eyes. She’d been cooped up within plasteel walls cramped with advanced terraforming gear and equipment for twenty months now. There was little space for peace with a crew of ten scientists and their children. Tamsin assisted her mother with planetary agriculture, testing and growing produce in an air-controlled greenhouse. Jasper, the only other teenager on the land that had once been England, helped his father with engineering.

Today was different for Tamsin, though. She wouldn’t be waiting for the Glint to make its regularly scheduled performance. She wouldn’t be watching with a bright, fascinated heart in the observatory perch. No, today she was going to find the Glint.

“Come on,” she baited him, “aren’t you curious?” They were both the children of scientists, of course, Jasper was curious. Curiosity flowed in his veins right beside the blood.

They were gathered in the airlock, afternoon swallowing the station slowly. Beyond the wall of gear and ready-and-waiting biosuits—used for only emergencies or with permission—was what was left of Earth. The transparent, armoured door displayed a ruined world. Earth had been diminished to a shade of itself, left inhabitable by poisoned air and land blanketed by a grim combination of snow and ash.

“I already have plans for my evening,” he replied, swiping a hand through his dark, wayward curls as he searched the lonesome outside world.

Tamsin scoffed. “Jerking off alone in your bunk doesn’t qualify as plans.”

“I deeply disagree.” His eyes left the dead world to land on an overzealous Tamsin. Hair escaped from her ponytail and there was a wildness swirling around her pale eyes like the sour vitamin-infused blue juice Jasper always tipped down the drain at breakfast. “Though, I’m open for some company.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend studying on Mars,” he amended flippantly. “How’s that going by the way? He hasn’t picked up any of your cyber-calls this week,” he went on roguishly and all too knowingly. Restricted rations and limited shower-time weren’t the only downfalls of living in one of the few stations sprinkled across the world, privacy was a lost luxury, too. The close quarters meant everyone was in everyone’s business, and secrets were dug up quickly, just like the vines of tomatoes that had disappeared from the greenhouse last week, roots and all just gone without an explanation. Tamsin’s mother suspected they’d been stolen, but she hadn’t figured out the culprit.

“I hate you,” she said, twisting around to search through the line of hanging biosuits, all just hollow ghosts. ‘I hate you’ was a casual conversation phase between them now, like ‘hey’ or ‘you still awake?’ and it wasn’t far from a term of endearment. Though neither would openly admit that.

“Venturing outside the station is—”

“Forbidden. Prohibited. Dangerous,” she listed monotonously, mimicking that of the Chief Scientist of Station 06. Jasper was bemused with her dreadful imitation, eyes sparkling as he leaned against the wall of the airlock. “Shall I go on?” she wondered, eyebrows disappearing under her fringe.

“Oh, please do,” he drawled, smirking rascally. Tamsin was already stepping into one of the smaller biosuits, lugging the flexible but durable material over her body. The biosuits were bright red—an unmissable colour against the ghastly washed-out world—and caught somewhere between a jumpsuit and the archaic astronaut spacesuits from the 20th century.

She gave him an impressive double eye-roll. “Shut up and zip me,” she snapped, turning to give him access to the gap at her back. Jasper obliged studiously, even skirted around to her front to strap the helmet into place.

Tamsin glared at Jasper through the visor, silently challenging him, silently daring him. Her set lips and notched chin asked one question: Are you coming?

“This better not take long,” he muttered, conceding to the curious girl. He hurried into his biocuit, knowing that going to find the mysteriously beautiful Glint was awfully stupid, probably the stupidest thing he’s ever done. However, Jasper wasn’t about to let Tamsin go alone—that would be even stupider.

“Your eagerness to moan over ancient skin mags is duly noted,” she said around a self-satisfied smile, gloved hands already fiddling with the airlock's system to open the door.

Air hissed viciously around them before the door opened with a treacherous click, bolts and hinges freeing. They hadn’t left the haven of the station since making landfall, and both teenagers were buzzing with trepidation. But they still the offspring of scientists, so they stepped out into contaminated air littered with particles—like pollen—that wanted to eat their skin like acid. Their boots instantly sunk into crude snow and ash. All just more poison, pretty poison that masked the rocks and debris on the ground. They headed north in the direction of the Glint, the sun sinking to cradle the planet.

They trekked along a landscape that had once been moorland; it was far from that now, resembling Antarctica but more desolate. It was deadly cold but the biosuits held the frigid, clawing air at bay. The Earth’s silence that enveloped the pair was eerie, it was just as quiet out there than it was in deep space.

“It’s the green light at the end of a dock,” she said wistfully, thinking of the Glint. “The promise of everything.” They were two slashes of blood against dirty snow, two smears of red ink across clean sketch paper.

Jasper searched the horizon, confusion pulling his brows together behind his visor. “I don’t see a green light anywhere.” There was just white and grey, a wasteland. They walked further and further into it, the station now a speck behind them.

“No, it’s a metaphor for hope,” she explained. “Didn’t you read The Great Gatsby?”

“Read suggests that I finished it,” he said nonchalantly, keeping slow to match Tamsin’s shorter, determined strides. “Which I did not.”

“The green light is in the first chapter,” she prompted. “You should know about the green light.”

He looked skyward as if that would polish his memory; the sunlight was transforming, decaying as dusk stirred from sleep. “Huh, I must be thinking of another book,” he decided with a shrug.

She jeered, “Another book you didn’t finish?”

“I finish books all the time,” he argued.

“Sketchbooks filled with doodles of robots don’t count.”

He pantomimed a fatal blow to the chest, faking a stubble for maximum effect, kicking up a flurry of ashen snow. “Oh, how your words wound this robotics prodigy!”

“Avery reads classic literature,” she teased.

His grin was wider than the empty and vast horizon. “I hate you and your well-read boyfriend.”

They were well into the golden hour and Tamsin anxiously scanned the world for her precious Glint. Behind her, Jasper tripped on something unseen, landing heavily on the ground.

Tamsin turned at Jasper’s echoing grunt. “You good?” she asked, kneeling beside him, knees sinking into snow and ash. The sky above them was a riot of colour.

He nodded, twisting around to drag his boots from the icy, grim blanket. A beam—thinner than a laser—of gold light sliced across the plastic of Tamsin’s visor.

Jasper’s breathing was heavy and capricious while Tamsin’s heart soared with wings. She untangled a golden chain from his bootlaces, half of the length hidden under soft grime.

“It’s a necklace,” she expressed, brushing a finger across the tarnished heart-shaped locket, the gold faded but still brilliant in the afternoon light.

And it wasn’t the only thing glinting around them now. Stars of golden light glittered and winked around the pair. A cornucopia of gold surrounded them, shimmering in the low light of the afternoon, dusk curling at the edges.

Both teenagers gaped at the pieces of gold jewellery and old trinkets—forks and spoons and goblets—scattered through the snow and ash like discarded treasure from a lost civilisation.

“It looks like it was left here almost deliberately,” he uttered. Tamsin shuffled around in awe, but Jasper was a statue, one side of his mouth crinkling with a frown.

The gold was distributed by putrid red and mottled black, and Tamsin leaned forward curiously, studying the shapes in the snow-ash. Even though the red skin was spilt well beyond ripeness and corroded with burns, the shapes were still familiar, sickeningly familiar.

 “These are tomatoes,” she announced, fear melting away her glinting awe instantly. The collection of tarnished gold left to sparkle and the stolen rotting tomatoes sat like acid in her stomach. She dropped the necklace hastily.

“The ones stolen from the greenhouse?” he speculated, strenuously pulling himself up but there was some resistance. Tamsin blinked against the glinting world. She knew then it wasn’t a cornucopia of gold, but a graveyard.

Her nod was feeble and dire. “I think this is a… trap,” she whispered, realisation smacking her across the forehead. Her green light—tinted gold—wasn’t hope, it was doom. “We need to get back to the station.”

“Tamsin…” Jasper wheezed, breath misting his visor. “We have another problem.” He wrenched around with a grimace, showing her his exposed thigh. There was a tear in his biosuit and his pants—it looked like they’d been snagged on a rock or a piece of debris when he’d fallen. The skin was already festering and blistering in the air dotted with death.

Panic surged up her throat. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

“That about covers it,” he grunted, trying to manage a smile for Tamsin. Even though he was smiling, fear had camouflaged his eyes.

Urgency screamed at Tamsin, and she covered the hole with trembling, gloved hands, trying to smother the corrosive air attacking naked flesh. “You’re gonna be okay, okay?” They were miles from the station and help and night was coming like a predator of shadows. “Just keep breathing,” she stressed, mind racking for a solution, for a way to get back to the station with a hole in a biosuit.

Particles swirled around them like a storm, wanting to land on skin. Tamsin searched their surrounding desperately. Half of her brain had surrendered to the panic, the other half—the part descended from a scientist—worked towards an answer. If she could just fashion a bandage or covering for the hole, even if Jasper had to hold it in place, they could stumble back to the station, hopefully before whatever had stolen the tomatoes found them.

Jasper was starting to shiver, coldness seeping in through the gaps of Tamsin’s hands. “I hate you,” he said through clenched teeth, biting back a whimper as the meat of his thigh sizzled under her gloves.

“I know,” she said, reluctant to remove one hand to dig around in the snow and ash around them for a sufficient piece of gold, like a bowl or a serving tray or even chunky chains she could weave together. But she needed to if she was going to get them home. “But that’s okay because you’re going to tell me that you hate me tomorrow.”

She pivoted one hand to cover the hole as best she could and sifted through the snow and ash around her frantically, tears stinging as her fingers touched something big.

Dusk had finally come to claim the world, the glinting of the golden heart-shaped locket dying.