Quince Rainbow

Quince Rainbow

To Kobi

Ma takes her nap on the old kitchen sofa where she snoozes and snores under a velvet blanket that used to be quite the most luxurious thing in the house. She does this every day and we are ordered to our rooms to occupy ourselves or else stay silent while she rests. Sure, let her have her nap, of course she deserves it, we know. All morning she’ll have been running about, cooking, cleaning, tidying up after everyone else. Everyone being us, but we never feel guilty about it. Not guilty enough to mend our messy ways or keep out of her meddling ones. Since we were too busy working each other into alternating fits of jealous rages and conspiratorial laughter, rattling around the house like mice in a shoe box full of cheese, we paid no attention to the excess of her chores. So let her have it now, her little break after the collective demolition of the lunchtime stew. We tell ourselves she needs it to gather strength for the afternoon. She would say she is re-knotting the strands of her sanity. At first, we try not to disturb her, but it’s hard when we need a cookie right about now and the jar is in the drawer above the sink.The cat’s come in dragging something half-alive that both scares and fascinates you. The little ones have exhausted the crayons. You squirm in your chair, tempted to make small sounds annoying enough to wake Ma, or maybe even sneak out to ghost-ring the doorbell. You’ve been on edge for days, restless with unspent energy, moody with your own moods.
Then I notice something that I had never noticed before, even though Ma must have taken naps right before my eyes each day of my life. I notice how clean the glass front of the oven door is getting as I watch. The heavy silver kettle looks shinier all of a sudden, certainly shinier than this morning, doesn’t it? Do the windows seem clearer to you? Although I couldn’t exactly say how, there is a little less of a mess by the sink since we abandoned it after lunch. The faucet has stopped dripping. I look around me as dust motes turn to rainbow bursts in the sun-lit air of the room. It is so quiet, so peaceful, as though the entire house is napping along with Ma. Even the little ones’ nonsense-chatter fades from my hearing and melts into this golden silence.That niggling almost-headache I’ve been struggling to ignore since the morning -it’s gone. Where it used to be I can feel a warmth like honey trickling into a mug of tea. My limbs have lost their heaviness, they are filled with a sensation like floating in the salt sea. As Ma breathes steadily under her velvet mountain, the house breathes with her, settling into contentment, languidly restoring order unto itself. Intangible sunbeam waves pulse out from the sofa, rise and shine, rise and shine. They reach into you, too, and you give me a smile, startled, shocked, full of delight. The angularity falls from your shoulders- you have been holding on to your stressors today. You wedge yourself more deeply into the armchair, all thoughts of witty shenanigans wiped from your mind. Even the cat has quieted along with its plaything. My head feels as mellow as yours. Your fingers go slack on the purloined cookie. Wondrously, the grease siphons off the frying pan as your eyes flutter closed. A cloud of dust takes off from the top shelf where Ma keeps her silly spell books. One of the little ones curls up in my lap. I don’t know if I’m watching this any longer, or if I’m already dreaming myself.

When I woke, the light had changed. It was later and I heard Ma pottering around the kitchen once more even before I opened my eyes. She saw that I was awake and her smile was the sunniest thing I’ve seen on her for days.
‘Thank your for the help, love’ she said. ‘You found out, both of you, didn’t you?’ 
‘What…’ I began, but had to start over because my voice sounded too squeaky-thin to make it across the room. ‘What is this? Not magic.’ 
‘Oh yes, magic. Quite so.’ Ma nodded to herself, then beckoned me over. Slowly, so as not to wake her just yet, I untangled myself from my little sister’s embrace and pulled a pillow under her cheek. I walked over and Ma looked me up and down. 
‘Don’t look so worried, it’s only a little house magic, a light enchantment to keep things in order.’
‘And you’re doing it,’ I said.
‘As you will be, from now on, I imagine. Not to put any pressure on you, but it will be much harder to escape than to just let it run its course. Believe me, I know because I’ve tried. You’ll be wanting your day-time rests all the time now. I’ve been looking forward to this, love. It will be fun doing it together with you!’
‘Me? Doing what?’
‘Look.’ She took out the bread basket and handed me the loaf. None of us liked to eat the stale bread from the day before, but this one was fresh and fluffy, a little warm still, as if it had just come from the bakery. Holding the bread I felt a strange familiarity rushing into my chest. I’d only ever had that feeling at things that were handmade, like drawings and bark-animals and knitted socks. Things you knew how they were put together and the time, care and love that went into their making. Sort of like a thrumming of personalisation that advertised unto the world ‘Made by granny for her favourite granddaughter’.
‘Looks like you’re a natural at reviving,’ Ma said. ‘Very useful. I do all sorts, mending, de-griming, untangling, smoothing, but I’m particularly good at shining things up. Have you seen the kettle? Came out an absolute treat!’
‘And… I did the thing to the bread?’
‘Yes! And the grapes, see? I’m glad. They’ve been looking so mushy, nobody wanted to eat them. Oh, I see the houseplants got a bit of a perk-up, too. Well done you. I find reviving quite drains me, not worth the trouble.’
‘What about Hall?’ I asked, remembering the look of utter dumbfounded delight on my brother’s face before we both succumbed to the magical afternoon lull.
‘I think he did the pans and the dusting.’
‘Hall? Dusting?’
‘Yes, quite funny when you think about it.’
‘Can you explain? I mean, will you tell me more about this?’
‘Sure, love, but let’s wait ‘til this evening, Wrenny is waking up.’


Soon the house was back to its normal state of chaos and noise. Shouting about toys that weren’t where they’d been last, a hands-on scuffle between Hall and Brow, who both insisted the other had eaten into their chocolate stash. Wren making a ‘puddle’ in the sofa corner. Pa coming home exhausted and grey-looking, in no mood to hear about a thing before he got a meal and a glass of wine into him. It turned out Hall had no recollection of strange happenings at all when he woke- I stared at him hard and then at the sparkling frying pan, but he only blinked at me in that owlish sort of way he has.
After the little ones had been taken to bed- Pa was supposed to be reading them a story, but he’d probably fallen asleep in their bed- Ma sat us down in the kitchen, Hall and me. For my brother’s benefit, she explained to us what we had done, what she’d been doing for years, the little pieces of magic she’d woven around our house, how her napping had a use beyond the break in the day she sorely needed. At first Hall laughed, then he listened for a bit, then he laughed some more. Ma pointed to the windows, the kettle, the oven door. 
‘I bet you just cleaned them today at some point,’ he said, arms folded high over his chest.
‘At what point, Hall? When did you see me burnish that kettle? When did I scrub that glass panel?’ Ma asked.
‘You’re cleaning all the time! All the time! You’re like a thing possessed when you get your hands on a mop. How should I know?’
‘That’s right. You didn’t see me clean these things because I didn’t. Not in the usual sense. I cleaned them in my sleep, quite literally. Through my sleep.’
‘Hall, listen, it’s true, ‘ I said. ‘You did it, too, when you fell asleep yourself.’ Something was getting through to him, for he finally said, ‘Show me.’
We did and he laughed again, but then it stuck in his throat. He eyed the shelf dubiously, but when he went to run his hand over the frying pan he pulled it right back, as if it was too hot to the touch.
‘That’s the haze,’ Ma said, nodding. ‘What does it feel like to you?’
Hall squinted at the pan. His fingers traced absently along the rim. You could tell his brain was hard at work, a churning water turbine. Any moment now, and he’d be making fff-woosh, fff-woosh sounds.
‘Like it’s mine,‘ he said haltingly. ‘Like I’ve licked a vanilla bun to make sure no one else gets to eat it. It has this strange hue around it, greenish. The colour that quinces have before they’re ripe, but sort of wrapped in a rainbow all haloed in gold dust.’ 
‘Lin?’ Ma’s eyes were on me.
‘Granny Alv’s pink peonies. Golden dawn. Makes me feel as if I glued an exlibris into a book and signed my name to it.’
‘Good. Mine’s silver-blue, if you want to know, but it can change. Not the feeling itself, only the colour.’ 
Ma made a motion like dusting flour off an apron, then she said, ‘Now, what you need to know is not that much. This magical talent, gift, blessing, call it what you will, seems to pass within our family down the maternal line. It skips people, but there’s always at least one in each generation to inherit.’ She looked at Hall for a moment before she said, ‘I suppose you’ll be a bit of a special case, Hall.’
‘Special because he’s just become master-duster without any effort whatsoever,’ I said, making Ma and myself chuckle. The corner of Hall’s mouth quirked up for a moment.
‘Does Pa know?’ he asked.
‘Of course he does. Not that he’d notice things righting themselves any more than you two do. He tends to forget about it altogether. The magic, I mean. It seems to do that to those who can’t do it themselves, they just forget that they’ve ever seen unusual things happen right in front of their eyes.’
‘Like us? We haven’t noticed you doing any of that until today. How did we not see it?’ Hall asked.
‘I can’t tell you how you missed it before, but most people are so absorbed with themselves and their own lives that they do not pay close enough attention. And anyway, it’s small things done in the down-times when no one is supposed to be looking.’
‘So you can only do it when you’re napping?’ That was typical Hall, sobering up in no time, asking all the relevant questions, quick-fire smart. My own thoughts still muddled around in the same bramble tangle they’d been in since the afternoon. I couldn’t think of one single thing I wanted to ask out loud.
‘When I’m resting, yes. My body is in a passive state and I can direct my subconscious energies to certain tasks. I pull myself into that feeling, the silver haze as I call it, and I think about what needs done around our space before I nod off,’ Ma answered Hall. ‘As I said, it’s only light magic, very light, and it only works for our family. Outside this home it is almost inconsequential.’
‘It’s bound to the house, then?’ 
‘Mh, sort of. It’s bound to me as a person and I can apply it to my surroundings, to the benefit of my family members. When we stay at granny Alv’s I usually set it up around her home, too.’
‘But not granny Ginster’s. Because she has magic herself,’ Hall concluded.
‘That’s right.’
‘Who else can do it?’
‘As far as I know, apart from me and my mother, only great-gran Fern. And my sister. She was a marvel at darning clothes,’ Ma said in that quiet voice she used when she talked about Aunt Row.
‘You were twins, too,’ Hall said quietly. Ma nodded.
After a quiet while Hall asked, ‘What would you have done if we hadn’t noticed by ourselves?’ 
‘I’d have told you, sometime soon, actually, so you could prepare yourselves. But I guess you caught me by surprise. You’re now at that age where the gift manifests itself. Usually, so it seems, around the time when a girl has her first period. When she becomes a woman.’ 
‘I haven’t got it yet.’ I said quickly. It was the first thing I’d said in minutes. 
‘It will be soon, I imagine.’ Ma got up from her chair and took the tea mugs over to the sink. Likely they were going to be washed and shelved, magically, by the morning. I thought I would never now be able to come down into the kitchen and not wonder what had been put in its proper place in a dream. Finally I thought of a question of my own.
‘Ma, do you just clean around the kitchen and living room?’
‘Tell me, Lin, how much do I hate folding laundry?’
‘Not much?’ 
‘Precisely. Because I don’t have to do it with my own hands.’ She winked, then she held up one finger after the other to enumerate, ‘Ironing Pa’s collared shirts, toilet-cleaning, hairballs in the sink, grime around the shower, the dead things the cat leaves behind, and the dusting in all the rooms. But I suppose I can leave the last to Hall from now on, seeing as he’s such a wiz.’
We talked only a little while longer until Ma said she was too exhausted to stand or sit. Hall had not asked any more questions, instead he kept looking into the flame of the candle on the table. Perhaps he was just tired, like Ma.
‘Have a go at the milk in the fridge, Lin,’ Ma said as she hugged us goodnight. ‘I think it’s about to turn sour and it’d be lovely to have it keep another day.’ I didn’t really know how I would go about such a thing, but I nodded. I supposed I would have to figure it out by myself somehow.
‘Off to bed with you two then. I’m proud of you. Sleep well.’


While I was brushing my teeth and then my hair, my toes would not stop scratching at the grout between the tiles of the bathroom floor. Antsy? No, not really. Excited, I thought, mixed with a little apprehension. The way Ma had talked, this gift we’d been so miraculously granted was a good thing and I could see that. I could see how I might be able to use it in good ways. Would take a bit of getting used to, though. As I lay in my bed, I stared at the ceiling, at nothing, for a long time, thinking hard about milk. Fanning out from my diaphragm, spots of warmth started to stipple my skin. It was that feeling again, the one that Ma had called her silver haze, but I thought mine was more like a creeping pre-dawn hush. It settled over me like a rippling veil that made my body sink into the mattress. My mind split, one half tracing out the exact shape of the milk carton in the fridge, the other washing me out to sea on gentle rose-gold waves. Another piece of my awareness nudged me deeper towards sleep. The dream-sky above me shifted rapidly from gold to pink to the brightest of blues. One more breath and it deepened from orangey purple to violet-black. Cascades of stars and the scent of apple blossoms cradled my body as it floated along. If this was how this magic-thing worked, I would start taking naps three times a day and always go to bed early. The sensations were exquisite.
Then a sliver of cold light ripped through my consciousness. A lightning flash, I thought at first, but I was sure my blind-outs were down. I sat up in bed to look around. The light had gone as quickly as it had come and from the darkness I felt Hall crawling in under my blanket. Something bare and shockingly cold slid along my calf.
‘Uh, move your feet!’ I hissed and he pulled them away by drawing his knees into his chest, arms cradled between. His face radiated heat, though not the feverish kind. Like little nestling birds we lay there, facing one other, quiet and breathing into each other’s warmth, until he whispered, ‘I got it, you know, the period. Two days ago. It’s the ickiest, strangest thing ever. Blood trickling out of me. All those pains and aches I never knew could crawl into a body. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘Oh, Hall.’
There was really nothing I could say. I felt him begin to shake all over so I stroked his cheek, his arm, his shoulder. When he didn’t brush my hands away, I skimmed lightly over his chest. He had filled out there recently, but I guess I hadn’t noticed because of the tight straps he wore around his chest these days. 
‘Tell me, Hall’ I said, moving my hand to the back of his neck, where the curls got thicker and tighter. Just like my hair, if it were short. I’d always gloried in the fact that I could look at my brother and see myself as a boy, feature for feature. I’d thought it funny. Our bodies developed in perfect synchronicity- we were of a height, had the same rounded chin, the same broad nose, Pa’s dark eyes. Mirror-images right down to the gappy front teeth. But somewhere along the way I had forgotten that our new body would not suit Hall at all. Forgotten that it might just be hell for him. Swellings, lumps, curves, dips, changes to his entire anatomy. He’d hate those as I welcomed them in myself. As I had welcomed them already. Well, some, at least. It would be that much harder for him to wear the things he loved and look the way he wanted, my gangly brother with his taste for turtlenecks and granny-made waistcoats.
‘It hurts, Linden, it hurts too much. I was okay before, but this is not good. Make it not happen, please, please, make it go away.’ They were not even whispers anymore, his words, only breaths that held on to a bit of a shape for me to make out, but I heard him alright.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it go away,’ I whispered back, my heart crumpling into a tight ball as I said those words. No comfort, but they were true. We’d sworn, long ago in childish seriousness, that we would always be honest with each other, even if that meant it might hurt one or both of us. Never had it been this difficult to stick to the promise.
‘My body is submitting to all these changes that I understand, I do, but I don’t want any of them. I can’t turn them off and they are relentless, one thing after the other: tightness, softness, soreness, pain, everything straining against who I am. Who I am, Linden! I can’t be myself like this.’
‘This was always going to happen, Hall. We might have glossed over the fact for a while, but it won’t go away just because we want it to.’
‘I know. I just thought it would be…’
‘Easier?’ 
‘No. Yes. I understood, I knew that it was going to be hard, I told myself I was prepared for that. But I didn’t know about deep. It’s too deep, Linden, I can’t feel myself for the bottom of things. There’s nowhere for my feet to land, no purchase, just a gaping that’s swallowing me up!’
At his words, I reached down, took hold of his still-cold feet and pushed them into the pit of my stomach. Maybe I wanted to warm them or maybe I just wanted him to feel something solid against his soles. 
‘I’ve got you, Hall,’ I told him.
There was this thing he did, when he got too overwhelmed, where he stopped breathing altogether for as long as he was able. For a full thirty seconds I heard nothing at all, felt nothing but the tense muscles where my fingers still held on to his neck. Then he slowly inhaled, but he sounded far away and it took a long time before his chest moved in some sort of rhythm again. Ragged, but tangible.
‘Can you tell me three things that made you happy today?’ I prompted him. It was a game we played sometimes when he came into my bed. He came to ground himself within the surety of our twinship, to know that at least the two of us were okay, that he was my brother Hall, no matter what the world had done to him that day. If sighs could move boulders, he’d have cleared the druid circle up north in two just then.
‘Brow laughed at my stupid jokes. Pa made over his old suspenders to me. Ma’s bean stew. She put lots bacon in it.’
‘Okay. Now tell me three things that made me happy.’
‘You loved the botanics quiz too much for comfort, you little nerd. The bean stew, too,’ he said. And three, ‘The gift.’
‘Two out of three.’
‘You didn’t like the stew?’
‘I loved it just as much as you did. I’m not sure about this magic thing yet.’
‘Yes, you are, you’re very sure,’ he said. ‘You’re just trying to make me feel better.’
‘You’re lying in my bed shaking like paper bunting in a soft breeze, Hall, of course I want to make you feel better.’
‘Well, maybe you can’t this time.’
‘Well, I’ll damn well give it my best shot, won’t I?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Always.’ 
We were quiet again for a while, just lying there in the dark.
‘About this magic thing, you think it makes me happy?’ I asked later.
‘Yes. You should have seen your face, honey-smiles all through the evening. You’re happy to be of help to Ma and you just love that you’re that bit more special than the rest of us, what with the reviving talent.’
‘You’re not happy about the gift, though,’ I said. ‘Why not? Isn’t it lovely to be filled with such miracles, doesn’t it make you feel useful and grateful?’
‘Can’t you tell it’s just another stupid, unbidden thing to remind me of what I can’t fully be? Like the world is telling me to lie down and take the beating. Don’t you understand that what I want to do is fight this thing head-on, but can’t because it’s too soft, too slippery, too female?’ I could have sworn he wanted to spit out that last word.
‘There’s nothing wrong with soft and female.’
‘Of course. Not for you, not for Ma. But for me, it’s all wrong.’ 
‘I see, I’m sorry.’
‘Even my haze is all crooked. Quince-green, I ask you?’
‘Gran’s jellies are quite nice on toast.’
‘I meant the colour. It doesn’t fit me. Why can’t it be yellow, like butter pears, or a proper foresty green?’
‘Rainbows,’ I reminded him and he huff-grunted.
‘I suppose I can live with rainbows.’
‘Focus on that, then.’ Goodness, I sounded just like Ma. Again we lay in our silence for a while, but he was restless, shifting his knees to knock mine (‘Sorry’), swallowing in noisy, laboured gulps. Clearly, there was more he needed to get out of his system. 
‘So? What else can we do, Hall?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ I could not bear the dejection in his voice.
‘Does it help if I tickle your ear?’ A snort.
‘No.’ But there was an encouraging chuckle from deep within his throat.
‘Here?’ A squeak and a squirm as I ran my fingers over another sensitive area.
‘No!’ 
‘What? You like that spot!’
‘I do, but not today. It hurts. Everywhere hurts.’ 
‘Huh, even your shoulder? Really?’ I felt him nod in the dark. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. Is it bad? I could get you something, a hot-water bottle. Tea.’
‘No thank you, you little meddling mama. I don’t think a cup of tea is going to make any of this better. I feel so dull and undignified. It feels wrong. But I guess I’ll have to get used to all of this.’ 
I’d had that exact same thought earlier, thinking about the gift, and I felt so silly all of a sudden. What small battles I had to fight compared to him. Softly, I bumped my forehead against his. 
‘Let’s just go to sleep. If you need somewhere to focus, you can pick the top of my wardrobe to dust, it’ll be much appreciated’ I said. Quite easily, I managed to pull the rosy waves back towards me, but there was no tending to the milk anymore. Instead my attention wandered aimlessly before it settled on Hall’s strained breathing. I could spot a tiny space there, in between the gaps after the shallow exhales. A way in. If I floated in softly, I thought I could hook a hammock onto the tail end and draw it over to the next breath. Click. And inhale. Like a soft, inviting bridge to let Hall hang in there. Within a few minutes, he began to breathe more evenly. Mh, nice work, Lin, very nice, I congratulated myself.
‘Go to sleep, Hall’ I mumbled.
‘Okay.’ And he did.


I woke later to something feeling off. I thought I’d dreamed, but only pleasant things, like flowers on fluffy clouds, so that wasn’t what bothered me. Hall’s back was pressed against mine, his breathing easy and milk-soft. I wriggled my legs a bit and felt something wet spreading under my thigh, like jelly cooling off. Urgh. Half-expectant, half-hesitant, my hands went between my legs. Everything was dry down there. I turned over.
‘Hall.’ I nudged his shoulder. No reaction. ‘Hall, wake up. You’re all sticky.’ 
He came awake with a start and sat up. He rooted around under the blanket. I climbed over him to turn on the night light so we could see better. My legs failed me and folded in on themselves when I inspected the bed. Most of the sheet was streaked in a red so dark as to appear black. There were mucky traces along the back of my pyjama pants and all over Hall’s. When I looked at him, his eyes were dark pools in a ring of white, probably as wide as mine felt.
‘That looks like a lot,’ I said, afraid to say even that.
‘It think that might be all of it.’ His voice sounded hoarse, whether with sleep or fear I couldn’t tell.
‘What do you mean?’, I asked.
‘That must be all of it. For this time round, at least. All the blood. I think I fell asleep to this weird thought that I just wanted something to go away, to be over. Don’t look so shocked, Lin, I didn’t mean to make myself bleed! I didn’t think I could do anything like this, you have to believe me. Did you know the magic can do that?’
‘Hall, are you serious? That can’t be what the gift is for, it can’t! Look at yourself, your face is as pale and shiny as gran’s best china! You don’t look well to me!’
‘I don’t feel well,’ he said, then he hesitated. ‘No, wait, I do feel okay, mostly, less achey. I’m just a bit woozy. Must be the blood loss.’
‘Hallow!’
‘Relax, Linden, I’m not about to keel over. But I guess I could use a glass of water.’ Incredibly, he managed to grin. What I felt bubbling up inside me was not a rational thing, whipping up like a whirlwind of messy, conflicted emotions. Anger, fear, horror, some other things I could not name. I struggled to take a breath before I spoke. I couldn’t remember ever being this outraged or this scared for him.
‘You just force-emptied your body of, what?, like two mugs’ worth of menstrual blood onto my bed! How can you be this calm about it?’
‘I’ll clean it up, Lin, don’t worry, let’s just strip the bed and…’
‘Hallow!’, I cried out again. ‘That’s not my point! Don’t you think that this is dangerous? What if you, I don’t know, pushed out even more? What if it hadn’t stopped? If you’d gone on bleeding?’
‘But you woke me.’ He said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Startled, I looked into his face and all I saw there was this immense trust that I’d never realised the scope of. It shook me like a strong wind. It shook me right awake.
‘Lin, you’re the one who managed to calm me when I was as far from sleep as can be. And you’re the one who woke me from deep dreams before harm could come to me. I think your gift is much stronger than Ma suggested. It’s beyond sprucing things up a bit. You’re sprucing me up.’ I heard what he was saying and I understood.
‘A gift for the benefit of our family. A gift to keep you safe.’
Then we got up silently, stripped the sheets, changed and soaked our stained clothes in the bathtub.
‘I can take care of those,’ Hall said and I knew what he meant. We went back to bed with the night light on. Once settled, I noticed the wet glint of tears on his cheeks, but his eyes were full of warmth. So I did what I always did when there was nothing else I could think to do. I spread my fingers into the curls at his nape and slow-motion bumped my forehead to his. And I said what I always said, because we both needed to hear it. 
‘I’ve got you, Hall.’