After a pause, Fisher sat down on the opposite side of the gazebo stairs, where he would have to reach to touch her.
"Hello," he said, and held out his hand. "My name is Fisher."
Madeleine stared at the pad, entirely focused on her peripheral vision. She understood the gesture, but could not bring herself to move. He sat with hand held out, waiting long after the moment had become awkward. A stretched eternity, and his arm shook a little, reaching the point where muscles would be longing for release.
The pencil Madeleine was holding snapped, and she looked down at the faint suggestion of marks on her blue palm, wondering at herself. Had she always been this person, completely unable to cope with any private crisis? The tightly-wound paralysis was familiar, was, as Tyler had pointed out, very like her reaction when she’d been knocked down a flight of stairs for having a cousin.
Carefully she put the pencil on the wooden boards beside her and felt ill and alive to take the hand which a spare few days ago she had reached for with complete confidence.
"Madeleine."
The hand clasping hers tightened in a way which was achingly familiar, then let go.
"Why does your cousin call you Leina?"
The casual, neutral question helped. Perhaps it was real, this introduction. Strangers who had just met. She could deal with that if she didn’t look at him. And tried not to react to his voice.
"When I was, oh, five I think, I lost my temper at something at the family Christmas party. My uncle – Tyler’s Dad – told me I was a real little Maddie and teased me a tiny bit during lunch. My family had always called me Maddie, but I had no idea the word meant anything but me. I spent the afternoon – and much of the next few months – insisting that people call me Leina instead. Tyler was the only one who did. Everyone else thought it tremendously funny."
"Why not introduce yourself as Leina, then?"
"I prefer Madeleine. And I’ve gotten over caring about being called Maddie. Leina’s just become Tyler’s name for me."
Fisher was looking at her sketch, and she checked a ridiculous impulse to hide it, lowering her hands to her sides.
"I wouldn’t have reacted to your painting in the same way," he said then, with the air of a confession, and beneath that something like a challenge. "I’m interested in art, and I think I would have enjoyed watching you paint, but it’s difficult to imagine – imagine the me before this – sitting for hours, so singularly absorbed. I would have at least read a book at the same time."
Madeleine glanced at him, uncertain. To start by making that clear…
"The others are talking over Melbourne and Brisbane," he went on. "The Sydney situation is stable enough we could leave tomorrow, perhaps splitting into two groups." He took a deep breath. "I had such a…visceral reaction to the idea. That I didn’t care what group, which city. The only absolute was that I go with you."
She sat frozen, found that he was waiting for a response. "You said you thought those feelings weren’t real."
"I said I don’t know how much of these feelings are mine. I wasn’t in control, but I was there, for all of it, every moment. The pretence that we just met falls down straight away, because every time I look at you I’m slammed in the gut. It’s not possible to start fresh, to go back. Feelings so strong and deep they make you stop and catch your breath don’t need rediscovery. They need decisions."
He rose, but to her relief paced a few steps away, and stood with his back to her. His voice was crisp and almost combative when he went on.
"I’m not the same person. I would not have behaved as Théoden did. I would have admired your painting, your talent, but I would not have sat and watched you. I would never have made so much interest clear, or told you half the things he did, things that I don’t admit. I would have put up walls against you because I’ve spent years being bored by people, finding them an annoyance or untrustworthy. I’m not bored by you. I can hardly breathe when you’re in the same room."
He paused, turning just enough for her to see his profile.
"I also refuse to be the kind of person who follows you around making you flinch. So, I’m not going to follow you. I’m choosing Melbourne. If you want time, or want to never think about the parts of the past few days which involve me, go to Brisbane. If you want to find out–" He broke off, and summoned a wry, self-mocking expression which faded as he glanced at her. "I sound like I’m throwing down a gauntlet. Perhaps I am. I want you to come to Melbourne, to let yourself find out if any of what you felt was for me."
Without giving her any chance to respond, he turned on one heel and strode off, back to the house.
Madeleine looked down at clenched hands, then slowly opened the right to inspect the tiny scratch which marred her view of her stars. There had been a lot of pride in that speech, and hurt. Had she really been flinching from him? She’d been trying not to.
She had to admit he had immediately attracted her on a physical level, and she’d been intrigued by things which couldn’t possibly be Théoden. A boy who couldn’t draw but wanted to be da Vinci. Whose mother had been his ideal. Who hadn’t faltered from necessity in the days after the Spire’s arrival, then had had nightmares about the people he’d failed to save. Driven, time-poor, prone to putting people last outside of emergencies. Very like her. And, if that conversation was anything to go by, just as shielded and defensive as she, for all his clear self-confidence.
It mattered a great deal that he’d made sure the entire world knew the debt they owed to the Moth who had possessed him. And he’d seen that the first thing she’d needed to know was how he felt about her art. But how could she go with him, constantly seeing only that he was different from the boy she loved? That would only hurt them both more, a long spiral of comparisons and disappointments she didn’t have the strength to face.
Fight. Always fight. No matter how impossible the odds, no matter who you’ve lost, how you’ve been hurt. If there doesn’t seem to be a way out, look for one. If you seem to have come to an end, start afresh. Never, ever give up.
Had Théoden foreseen this choice? Unable to settle her thoughts, Madeleine walked up to the house, to wash her face and follow the noise of discussion to a crowded lounge room. Musketeers dishing out food and talking over what to do next. They greeted her cheerfully, entirely as if she hadn’t been curled up in her room for the past two days, and shuffled about to make a space for her to sit. Madeleine tucked in beside Emily so she could thank her for a timely rescue, remarked on Gavin’s impressive black eye, and accepted a piled plate from Nash. Pan grinned at her from the floor beside Noi’s feet, then turned his attention back to a sniper war of paper balls with Min.
Acceptance washed over her, a sense of care and belonging, a certainty of place. Whatever happened, they would support her, pick her up if she fell, cover her weaknesses and be glad of her presence. She ate, and found herself almost smiling, and when Noi asked which city Madeleine thought they should go to, she looked across at a closed, expressionless face and said:
"Melbourne."
Epilogue
A perfect autumn day. By ten the streets were already filling, crowds flooding from the train tunnels, walking from the bus drop sites, meandering down the centre of the closed roads, gaping at the crest of white visible above the trees. Most wore dust-catchers: broad-brimmed hats supporting elbow-length veils, reminiscent of beekeeper garb but with a dense, silky weave. A few – the elderly, the very young – were clumsy in Hazmat gear. Bareheaded among them were Blues and Greens, or the foolhardy percentage who gambled that the Conversion would make them heroes, not corpses.