At the convention, Sheila was left alone with the box of donuts while Victoria and Grace went off to prepare for the costume contest. Sheila was the judge, but she didn’t feel burdened: nothing was really at stake. The only prize was a scroll hand-decorated by Victoria.
There were only eight entries, and two of them were jokes more than costumes: an Invisible Man, and a Time Traveler in Authentic Costume of the 1980s. Sheila leaned on the podium in the darkened hall, unable to see the audience for the glare of the spotlights, and watched the contestants parade slowly past: a mangy Wookie, a scantily clad Amazon, a Vulcan couple who performed a pretend marriage ceremony, and the green-painted girl she had noticed earlier, now wearing a diaphanous gown and huge, painted cardboard wings.
Victoria and Grace came last, and when they emerged from darkness into light Sheila did not recognize them. She saw, not strangers, but two characters she knew very well, her own creations come to life.
She saw Kayli, triumphant in red velvet, brandishing a gleaming sword, leading a hunch-backed, shaggy, conquered grenofen on a leash.
Her heart threatened to choke her, and she leaned forward, nearly dislodging the microphone, to peer against the dazzle of the spotlights, trying to see through the illusion.
Fake fur and a papier-mâché head could disguise Grace, but how on earth had the unattractive Victoria been transformed to Kayli, as noble, heroic, and beautiful as Sheila had always known her to be. Was it possible that Kayli was real? That she wasn’t an invention, but a real person, a resident of Byzantium, and Victoria had found her? What magic was this?
But it was all illusion, even if she couldn’t penetrate it. Of course Kayli and the grenofen were only Victoria and Grace, revealed when they came forward to accept their prize.
Later, sharing the few remaining donuts and listening to Grace’s delight at having won, Sheila could hardly take her eyes from Victoria. The glamour of Kayli clung to her still, making her eyes shine and her cheeks glow, giving her plain, sharp features a beauty Sheila envied.
‘Weren’t the costumes just perfect?’ Grace demanded again. ‘Weren’t they just exactly how you imagined they would look when you were writing the book, Sheila?’
Sick at heart, yet she could not deny it, Sheila pretended her mouth was too full to speak, and nodded. She knew her denial would have made no difference: Victoria had triumphed, and they both knew it.
Now Victoria smiled graciously. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Sheila. Of course, this prize should be yours just as much as ours, because without you . . . well, without you there wouldn’t be a Kayli. You created her first, in your book. And then I was fortunate enough to be able to bring her to another kind of life.’
You stole her from me, Sheila wanted to say. Kayli was mine, Kayli was me – you took her away and you had no right. But although that was what she felt, Sheila knew well enough how it would sound. She could say nothing. Once Moonlight Under the Mountain had been published, anyone could know Kayli. There might even be someone, like Victoria, who had more claim on Kayli now than Sheila did. Sheila, after all, had scarcely thought of Kayli since she sent her in her book out into the world. She had not thought of her as a real person until she saw her in Victoria.
It wasn’t until later, after they had dropped off Grace at her house and driven back to Victoria’s, that Sheila realised she had been robbed of something more concrete than a fictional character.
‘My suitcase!’
‘What?’
‘My overnight bag,’ Sheila said, twisting feverishly around in the seat. ‘Do you remember what I did with it? Did we put it in the trunk?’ Even as she asked she could remember only too well how she had slung it into the back seat, and she could see that it was not there.
‘You didn’t say anything about it to me. Why on earth did you bring it? Why didn’t you just leave it here at home?’
‘Because I thought I would be staying in the hotel.’
‘Oh, Sheila,’ said Victoria in the weary tone she used so often with Grace. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you left it in my car all day – unlocked!’
‘It’s your car. I thought you’d lock it!’
‘Don’t shout at me. If you’d said anything, I would have suggested we lock it in the trunk. I never imagined you’d leave something valuable in the car.’
‘It wasn’t valuable. It was just my clothes, my notebook – ’ the magnitude of her loss struck her and she stopped, struggling against tears. All lost. Everything she had owned in this desolate place.
‘Now, don’t cry,’ said Victoria. ‘That’ll only make you feel worse. Things will look better in the morning. Let’s go to bed.’
She let Victoria lead her to the house but balked at the bedroom door. ‘I want to use the phone.’
‘At this hour!’
‘It’s earlier in California. Please. I have to. It’s important. The operator can bill me.’
‘I do not think this is a good idea,’ said Victoria in a tight, disapproving voice. ‘But if you insist, the phone is in the kitchen. Try not to wake mother, please.’
Damon would be able to put everything into perspective. She knew that if she could only hear his voice things would be better. She would realize that she hadn’t lost everything, only a few material possessions. She could buy herself new clothes, and Damon would give her another notebook. But she needed to hear him say so.
His service picked up the call. No, he wasn’t in; no, he had left no message for her; no, she really couldn’t say when he would be back. Sheila left her name with Victoria’s phone number. ‘Tell him to call me whatever time it is, morning or night. Tell him it’s urgent.’ She didn’t care if the ringing of the phone woke the whole house. The most important thing was to make contact again with her life in California, to convince herself that it was real and this place the fantasy. The sound of Damon saying her name would wake her from this nightmare of loss and confusion.
She tried not to think of what would happen if Damon didn’t phone back. She told herself that she was over-tired and that things would look better in the morning, even if it was Victoria who had said so.
Things looked different in the morning, but not better.
It began when Sheila lost a contact lens down the drain. In three years she’d had no problems, but after one moment of sleepy carelessness in a strange bathroom she had no choice but to put on her old glasses. Then she saw herself – really saw herself – in the big bathroom mirror, and she wanted to scream in protest.
She was not, she refused to be, the person she saw in the mirror. That was the old Sheila blinking through thick, smudged lenses, the self she had outgrown, with lank, greasy hair, dandruff, and pimples. That Sheila was so fat she could scarcely fasten her skirt, despite the fact that it had fitted the day before.
Sheila reached out, and the creature in the mirror reached, too, until they were touching. They were the same. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had no choice. She was trapped in that hateful body again, as if she had never been different.
Victoria’s voice came through the door. ‘Hurry up in there, we’ve got to get moving! Your guest-of-honour speech is scheduled for an hour from now!’
Her speech was inside the lost notebook. Sheila began to tremble. She had no idea what she had written, what the words said. She knew she couldn’t give a speech without that text. She unlocked the door and told Victoria.
Victoria, dressed like a Victorian governess in a high-necked white blouse and a long grey skirt, her face made up like a doll’s with smears of blue eye-shadow and rosy blusher, did not hesitate. ‘You’ll give the speech. I don’t care what you say. But you will give the speech.’