They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1): The Wisdom, #1

By Vrinda Pendred

17-year-old Itzel Loveguard has written another story - and this time, it may have killed her father.

His death connects her with her estranged half-brother Oz, his charming friend Seth who can draw things into existence, and the handsome Aidan who seems to have stepped right out of Itzy's dreams in pursuit of a mysterious black pulse that speaks to him in the night.

Now, Itzy is flung on an emotional journey as she tries to unravel the mystery of why her father took his life - and why everyone is so desperate to find the fabled Wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vrinda Pendred
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370275571

Vrinda Pendred

VRINDA PENDRED originally grew up in Arizona, but moved to England in 1999, where she now lives with her husband and their two sons. Her first novel was The Ladder, a story about two friends learning to grow through their difficult childhoods and find the light that lies inside themselves. She followed this with the YA sci-fi / fantasy series The Wisdom. Vrinda also runs a publishing house for writers with neurological conditions, called Conditional Publications. Their first book, Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry and Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD, was released in 2010 (Kindle and paperback), with future books in the pipeline. In addition to her writing, Vrinda also does freelance proofreading and editing, and spent 9 years tutoring GCSE / A-Level English. She holds a BA Hons in English with Creative Writing, a proofreading qualification with the Publishing Training Centre, and has completed work experience with Random House. On the side, she sometimes writes and performs her own music and runs a herbal tea review blog with a friend. Favourite Book Genres: YA / NA, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror Favourite Fiction Authors: Stephen King, Michael Grant, Graham Joyce, Cassandra Clare, Brigid Kemmerer, Holly Black, James Dashner, Margaret Atwood, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Far beneath the planetary surface, deep in his laboratory glittering with devices of metal, glass and imagination, Quetzal stood before the viewing screen, so large and clear it was easy to mistake it for a window. On the display was the ocean of space they were submarining through.

Planet means wanderer – and that was exactly what Nibiru was. At once a planet and a ship, it ripped its way through space, bending and indenting the black matter.

It was almost hyperbolic in size. Jupiter could have fit thirty times and still had growing room, and everywhere the ship went, it left a gravitational impression. Yet Earth’s astrophysicists had never managed to detect it, despite the mathematical anomalies that cropped up, which could not be reconciled with known physics.

Quetzal watched, unmoving, waiting for the blue dot to appear. His great hands were clasped behind his back, long fingers mixing with the velvet of his long golden robe.

The door opened behind him, and someone entered the laboratory. His chest tightened with anticipation, and he turned slowly to face his visitor.

Like him, Horace was a monument, towering over eight feet tall with his headdress, covering his elongated head. His skin was the colour of autumn leaves and his arms – extending from brief black sleeves of leather – were vined with hieroglyphs, one for each battle he had won…not quite as many as Quetzal.

Also like Quetzal, his hair gleamed like black beetles crushed into thread, flowing like a cape across his back. His eyes were long and narrow, angled up at the outer corners and heavily lined in black. But while Quetzal was known for his fiery gaze, Horace’s stare was like ash falling from the sky in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption.

He wore his own robe of velvet, the colour of tar and woven with gold thread. The ancient symbols on Quetzal’s robe spoke of triumph and strength. Horace’s told a story of domination. His most defining feature was his nose, not long and eagle-like like Quetzal’s, but hooked, giving the impression of an angry parrot.

Horace crossed the room. Each step shook the metal clips on his hulking boots. He stopped beside Quetzal. ‘It's time.’ His voice was deep and resonant.

Quetzal turned back to the viewing screen. As if it had been waiting for him, the blue dot suddenly appeared. He suppressed a gasp. It wasn’t much, not yet, but it would grow and grow until it was close enough, and then they would –

‘Why are you so fascinated with that insignificant speck of dust?’ Horace asked.

Quetzal shook his head. ‘You call your birth home insignificant?’

Horace bristled. He didn’t like being reminded that he’d been born on Earth. ‘Sometimes the past is best left where it is – in the past.’

‘Be that as it may…the only way to embrace the future is to understand our history.’

‘Is that what you think this is? Your way of reaching the future?’

Quetzal glanced at him. ‘We’re dying.’

‘And you think the child can save us.’

‘Perhaps.’ A host of memories flashed through his mind, overlaying the image on the screen. ‘It was a mistake, leaving the Wisdom behind.’

Horace shrugged his enormous shoulders, making his robe rustle on the floor. ‘Accidents happen.’

‘Hm.’

‘Besides, we don’t know for certain that we left the Wisdom there.’

‘I do. I’ve seen it on my sensors. It’s out there.’ His tone left no room for argument, and silence fell in the room. With each expansion of that blue dot, Quetzal’s heart fluttered with anticipation.

Horace broke the spell. ‘Charon has asked to see us.’

Quetzal’s lips parted, and he heaved a great sigh of defeat. He closed his eyes in an effort to centre himself. There was nothing to be done if Charon summoned him. His eyes flashed open with acceptance and he turned for the door.

Horace followed, pausing at one of Quetzal’s instruments – a set of small metallic balls caught in a whirlwind of energy, endlessly spinning in the air, suspended from nothing. ‘What do you hope to do with all this stuff, anyway?’

Quetzal pulled Horace’s hand away before it could disrupt the balls, keeping his voice even. ‘Do you know what that does?’

Horace smiled. ‘What do you think?’

Quetzal smiled back. ‘Then don’t touch it.’

They exited the room and wound down the long corridor that sloped the interior of the ship. A lift hummed up to their floor and yawned open. It was made of translucent glass. When they stepped inside, Quetzal glanced down at the seemingly bottomless pit of darkness and wires beneath their feet. Horace cast his hand over a control panel and they plummeted down 463 decks of ship, to the Director’s quarters.

When they arrived at her door, Horace remembered to knock, a politeness he seemed only able to afford the Director. There was a low beep. The door opened and they were permitted entrance.

The Director was not a woman to be trifled with. She did not respond well to Horace’s embarrassing efforts at flattery when he bowed to her with forced graciousness and commented upon her health. She was unpaired and had never been known to take a lover. But she offered Quetzal a begrudging degree of respect for what she had once referred to as strength of character.

Absorbed in writing something, she sat at a fat desk made entirely of glass, like the lift. Her velvet dress was the violet of royalty and so long that it seemed to sink into the floor, obscuring her feet. Her hair, the colour of straw, cascaded in tempestuous waves, creating the impression of a statuesque lioness. Behind her was another enormous viewing screen displaying the universe outside. It made her look like she was flying amongst the stars.

Horace cleared his throat to get her attention, then gave an awkward bow. ‘Director, may I say how well you look today.’

Beside him, Quetzal merely dipped his head in acknowledgment of the meeting.

Charon looked up at them, her posture untouchable. ‘Horace. Quetzal.’ Her eyes lingered on him for just a second. ‘Sit.’

They sat in the glass chairs across from her.

‘You wanted to see us,’ Quetzal said.

‘I did. We’re almost there.’

‘Yes, Director,’ said Horace.

Charon spun around in her chair and looked at the screen. The blue dot had grown to the size of an orange. ‘Earth – it’s been a long time. Perhaps too long.’ She eyed Quetzal, who forced himself not to fidget in his seat. ‘Are you ready?’ She overlapped her arms on the table, the sleeves riding up, revealing her own battle marks on the skin beneath.

‘Yes.’ Hopefully he sounded convincing.

She narrowed her eyes at him, studying the crease in his forehead, the lick of his lips. ‘Why do you look so restless?’

How to reply? ‘My tracking devices indicate we may have finally found something our people have been seeking for millennia. How could that not make me restless?’

Her mouth bent into the closest thing she had to a smile, and her eyes burned like fire. She looked like a star at the height of its glory. ‘You worry you will yet fail to locate the Wisdom?’

‘It’s possible.’ He shifted in his chair and tried not to notice the way Horace watched him out of the corners of his dark eyes.

‘It’s not. That’s why I chose you to do this. The child has made a decisive move. It’s clear something has changed. You will retrieve that child, and when you do –’

She didn’t have to finish. They all knew how that sentence ended. It had been their mission statement ever since Quetzal had shared his ‘brilliant’ idea with the Council after he’d had too much Saturnian wine.

Track the child, find the Wisdom. The Earthling would unknowingly lead them to the very thing they had all been seeking – if everything went according to plan.

On the viewing screen, the ‘orange’ had grown to the size of a football.

‘Time for you to go, then.’ Charon rose to her feet, her dress falling in heavy pleats down her sides.

Quetzal and Horace stood too, bowing at perfect forty-five-degree angles before straightening.

‘Good luck.’ Again, her eyes lingered on Quetzal.

‘Thank you, Director,’ Horace answered for them both.

They took their leave and doubled back down the corridor, to the lift. This time, Horace rocketed them up 312 floors, to the Deck of Descent. Others on the deck paused in their tasks and stared as their superiors made their way past.

Horace pushed a button on the far wall, revealing a doorway. They passed through, letting the door close behind them. Now, it was just they two, as it would be throughout their mission.

They stopped at an expansive window, the largest on the ship, and stared out at what was now very clearly Earth, waiting for them, large and luminous with its sun’s light. Just watching the clouds move across its surface caused Quetzal’s stomach to churn.

‘Are you ready?’ Horace asked.

‘No – but that doesn’t matter.’ Quetzal reached under his robe and patted one of the deep pockets woven into his clothing, pulling out the black cube, black and reflective. He cast one of his hands over it and activated an invisible atmospheric bubble around them. ‘It’s complete.’

Horace nodded, and they outspread their arms, ready to take flight.

‘Open,’ Horace instructed the ship.

In obedience, the window slid up. The oxygenless air struck them and sucked them out into space.

Track the child, find the Wisdom. The words echoed in Quetzal’s head as they flew.

Not long after, their robes ballooned above them like parachutes as they made their descent to Earth.

ONE

Itzy had just finished writing when she got the phone call. She sat at her desk, caught in that ephemeral state between waking and dreaming, lost in a haze of grey. Shots of black sparked around her head and fingers, like dark electricity.

The phone continued to cry out for attention. She snapped out of her trance and picked up her mobile. It was her aunt Gwen, in Toronto. Normally her heart did somersaults when she got a call from her favourite family member. But now, her chest swelled with heavy foreboding.

She was about to answer when she noticed the time on the screen. Two hours had passed – yet she couldn’t remember them.

It happened again.

She swallowed – and the phone stopped ringing. She’d been too slow to pick up. She set it down on the desk – her gaze catching the words staring up at her from the pages of her notebook on the desk. Words she didn’t recognise. It was definitely her handwriting…but she had no memory of the composition.

Afraid to touch the paper, she flicked through the pages with her fingertips. Lines leapt out at her, and she drew back in fear. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

She jumped when the phone rang again, her eyes darting from the phone to her notebook and back to her phone. With shaking hands, she took the call. ‘Hiya, Gwen.’ Hopefully she didn’t sound as rattled as she felt.

Gwen’s response did nothing to allay her anxieties. ‘I’m s-so sorry,’ she broke out through tears.

Itzy sat up straight in her desk chair, making it swivel on its wheels. A chill shot through her body, and she shuddered. There was only one possible reason her aunt would ring in such a state. ‘Gwen, what’s…what’s wrong?’

‘Your father….’

Those two words hit her like gunshot, and she slumped back in her chair. Somehow, she knew what her aunt was about to tell her.

Gwen choked back a sob. ‘He’s dead,’ she blurted before a fresh wave of tears drowned her voice. Her voice was so clear in Itzy’s ear that she could have been fooled into thinking they were only down the road from each other, rather than separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

Again, Itzy’s eyes darted to her notebook. ‘…how?’

‘S-suicide. He…they found an empty bottle of p-pills….’

All the air went out of her lungs. The room spun around until she forgot where she was, listening but not really hearing her aunt cry.

Gwen cleared her throat, maybe remembering she was meant to be the adult. ‘I’m sorry. I know you said you never wanted to talk about him again, but…I thought you ought to….’ She broke off again in a dreadful sob.

‘N-no. It’s okay. I know what I said, but…thank you,’ she whispered, speaking on autopilot.

But this wasn’t one of her mysterious, uncontrollable trances. This was life.

Without warning, Gwen launched into the details. As Itzy listened, it was as if she had been transported into her father’s house in Kent. She’d never visited it, so she had no idea what it looked like, and yet the vision was so vivid, she could almost believe it was real.

He sat at his desk, in a corner of the living room, his hair thick and black, like hers. He held his head in his hands, the rough fingers pressed against his scalp, his dark eyes closed in thought. Lost. Suffocating from repression.

Maybe he was thinking of her – or of her mother. Perhaps he could no longer live with what he’d done to them.

The mantras repeated in his head.

It’s my fault they hate me.

I don’t deserve to be alive.

He stared at the empty pill bottle on the desk. He’d swallowed its entire contents not ten minutes ago. It had been so frighteningly easy to swallow pill after pill after pill…to start the process. Now it was too late to change his mind.

When he finally dropped from the desk and slumped to the floor, the pen slipped from his hands and he thought something disappointingly inane like, Why did I never get this desk varnished? When his wife Evelyn finally found him, Stephen Loveguard was gone.

There, Itzy’s imagination stalled. She’d never known his second family. There was no way of knowing how they would have reacted.

Gwen finished her story and took a breath. Then she said those four fateful words. ‘There was a note.’

A note.

‘Do you want to know what it said?’

Did she? Maybe it was better not to know? Or would she wonder for the rest of her life?

Gwen made the decision for her. ‘It said…it said, Don’t let them get my children.’

Itzy fought down the scream rising in her throat, words failing her for perhaps the first time in her storytelling life. But what was there to say? Except maybe, I always knew my father was mad.

‘Itzy. Maybe…maybe don’t tell your mother.’

She shook her head, then remembered Gwen couldn’t see her. ‘I have to. How can I keep this secret?’

Gwen sighed down the line so heavily, Itzy could almost feel her breath tickling her ear. ‘I know, I know. I just wish….’ She trailed off in longing – longing for magic to change the past, maybe. Magic that didn’t exist.

‘I wish a lot of things.’ Before she knew what she was doing, Itzy had ended the call. She’d never hung up on Gwen, before.

Then again, she’d never lost a parent before. Not permanently.

She sat at her desk in shock, the moment consuming her like a voracious beast with vicious fangs – only half-aware of the strange black lines that danced in the air around her like crow’s feathers.

For seven years, she’d worried about this day. Now, it had finally arrived.

She tossed her phone on the floor. It made an unhealthy cracking sound, bounced once, then landed face down in resignation.

Her eyes stared blankly at her bedroom, the walls lined with arty black and white band photographs – quotations from famous writers that she’d printed in oversized coloured fonts – a large cork board covered in photographs of her and Devon posing in a variety of outfits and fancy dress costumes, their faces moulded into faux-model expressions – drawings Ash had done of manga-style monsters opening their jaws and gaping stupidly out of the paper.

When she’d run out of walls, she’d turned to the ceiling. Up there were glow-in-the-dark stars and posters of planets, nebulae, places she often went in her fantasies. All this was bordered with multi-coloured fairy lights that, each night, washed the room in shifting colours: pink, blue, green and white.

Her gaze went to the wardrobe – her old childhood hiding place. Then, to the desk, where her notebook still lay accusingly, waiting for her to read what had been written – but she was afraid to look.

Dizzy, she staggered to her bed and flung herself down, one of her sandy arms dangling over the side. In her mind, stars danced like the constellations. After a while, she no longer felt connected to her body, and her eyes fixed on the black that streaked the air – the black that always filled the air when she slipped into one of her trances.

Did anyone else see it? Or was it just her? Was she crazy like her father? Was his fate also hers?

She trained her eyes on the lines. Maybe she could bend them with her mind? But they only grew fatter, taking shape.

Breathless with fear, she couldn’t look away from the shadowy monster forming before her.

Help. Someone – help me!

Her lungs burned. Then, out of the black, two faint lights shone through. They gained intensity, breaking apart the darkness and forcing themselves into her view. A pair of grey eyes watched her, familiar and comforting in their steel.

She plummeted back into her body at the sound of the front door opening downstairs. Her heart kicked into angry palpitations, as if she’d been on the verge of an important revelation and then cruelly yanked away from it.

‘Itzy?’ her mother called up the stairs. ‘You home?’

She couldn’t move. It was as if her whole body had been soaked in glue, holding her to the bed.

The sound of her mother’s footsteps climbing up the brief staircase was amplified, like the slow, drawn out pounding of feet in the Godzilla films Ash had made her watch.

Her mother finally reached the landing and nudged open her bedroom door. ‘Itz?’

The glue melted, and Itzy turned her head, taking in the sight of her mother. She looked tired. She always looked tired. The divorce had happened seven years ago, but she’d never really moved on. It was so hard, looking at her and remembering how vibrant she’d once been.

She came into the room and sat on the bed, running her fingers through Itzy’s hair. ‘What’s wrong, Itz?’

Itzy forced herself to sit up. She lifted her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, like a little girl. ‘I…I don’t know how to say this,’ she whispered.

Her mother’s body stiffened in anticipation. ‘Whatever it is…just tell me.’

Itzy swallowed. How was she even to begin?

‘Itzy.’ She touched her palm to Itzy’s cheek in a rare display of mothering – real mothering that meant she hadn’t had time to go into the kitchen.

You never knew. Maybe this wasn’t the end of everything. What was that old expression about blessings in disguise? Maybe this would be the turning point, the event that would shake her mother into finally moving forward with her life.

Itzy bit her lip and took the plunge. ‘He’s dead.’ There was no need to define he. The words felt like bile in her mouth, and she was suddenly very worried she would be sick.

Despite everything that had happened, all her father had done to them, her mother’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. Her head quivered. ‘No. He – he can’t – how?’

Itzy stared down at her hands, the fingers long like her father’s.

‘No, don’t tell me.’ Her mother put her hand on Itzy’s shoulder to steady herself as she stood, her legs quivering. ‘I’m…I’m sorry. I know you…you need…I need….’

Itzy didn’t move. How had she been stupid enough to delude herself into thinking anything would change? She knew what her mother needed – a drink. That had become her staple answer to all of life’s problems. Sometimes it felt like alcohol had replaced Stephen as Itzy’s second parent. Each day, her mother held it together just long enough to get through work, then swiftly unravelled once she was home, with an eagerness that revealed the desperation she felt for that oblivion.

Her mother left the room without another word. Soon, Itzy heard clattering in the kitchen, bottles being taken out, a glass being filled. Then, a glass breaking, followed by hysterical crying.

The sounds brought Itzy back to one of the few solid memories she had from childhood. She had been nine. She’d been sleeping when she’d been woken by the sound of shrill screaming.

She’d heard a smashing sound, and then the night had gone ominously silent. She’d drawn the covers over her head, like she did to keep the monsters away. But the monster hadn’t been under her bed – it had been in the room down the hall and answered to the name of Stephen Loveguard.

Footsteps pounded down their staircase, then out the front door. The door was flung open, then slammed shut so heavily that it made the house shake. Her father had left.

But what had happened to her mother?

Trembling, Itzy climbed out of bed, out of the safety of her room, and crept down the darkened hallway. The door had been left open, as if her father had wanted her to see. Her mother lay on the floor next to a shattered lamp, pieces embedded in her temple. Her eyes were closed, like she was sleeping.

The air flew out of Itzy’s lungs. It felt like shadowy hands were reaching out to grab her. She spun in a circle, trying to catch them. If she faced them, they couldn’t get her.

Then, miraculously, she saw her mother’s chest rise and fall with breath – and she rang 999, just like she’d learned in school.

By the time her father returned, the police had arrived, and her mother was taken to Accident & Emergency. She would be alright, they said. Physically, at least.

Her father feigned ignorance of what had happened.

‘I was out on a walk,’ he excused himself with frightening sincerity, as though he’d forgotten what he’d done. ‘I’m not a very good sleeper. She must have had an accident.’

Itzy wanted to scream – to throw herself at the feet of the policemen and say, Can’t you see what a liar he is? Can’t you see what he’s done? But something stopped her.

Because he was still her father, and that carried the sort of weight that makes children keep such secrets, even while they’re losing themselves inside.

Later, it had just been her and her father, sitting in her room. Neither of them bothered to switch on the lights. She tucked her knees against her chest and held herself closely, pressed herself against the wall in an effort to get as far away from her father as she could.

And yet, hadn’t some part of her wanted him to hug her and tell her everything would be alright, too? Hadn’t she wanted him to say how much he loved her, and that he was proud of her for saving her mother?

But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and let his head droop so he was staring down at his fidgeting hands. The darkness made his hair – grown out in those days – look even blacker than it was, like he was hooded in shadow.

Then he said it.

‘I’m sorry, Itzy. I just…I don’t love your mother anymore.’

Her heart stopped beating. Why was he saying this? And why was he telling her, of all people? Was this how divorces happened? She’d always entertained the mad notion that somehow her parents would work out their problems one day and things would get better. The idea of severance had never crossed her mind.

They remained that way a long time. It was hard to say where the time went or how it managed to pass so swiftly. She disappeared into the silence, escaping inside herself like she often did.

Then he got up to go. He looked like he couldn’t remember what he’d come to see her about. Outside, the birds had started to sing.

Her mother returned home the following day. Her father drove to the hospital to pick her up, as if she’d been away for a routine operation. By the time they got back, they were laughing together like friends. Her father was especially affectionate, touching her mother’s hair with a look of longing and adoration on his face. How could he carry on that way, after his confession the night before? And how could anyone ignore the bandages on her mother’s head?

Their marriage went on for another year like that. A month would go by without incident, and Itzy would think perhaps her father really had changed.

Then she would wake to the screaming again and know that, in a way, she was just like her mother. They were both fooling themselves if they thought the violence would ever stop.

That was when she’d written the story.

She shook herself before she could go back down that path. It never led anywhere good.

Ignoring the sound of her mother cursing and wailing downstairs, she peeled herself off the bed and hunched down on the rug. Its pattern was a mandala, like those the Tibetan monks spent months creating out of coloured sand. Once completed, the monks swept their hands through the pictures and destroyed them. It was meant to teach them nothing was forever, so there was no point in getting attached. You would only hurt for it later.

She’d never understood the point of it, until now.

She picked up her much-abused mobile phone and inspected it for damage. Thin lines spidered across the screen from all the other times she’d thrown the phone in anger – times when she most felt like her father’s daughter.

The phone blinked with a message. It was from Gwen. She read it and started trembling again. She needed someone – not her mother, but someone who would comfort her.

She made a call and put the phone to her ear. It rang once, twice, three times, before a cheerful voice answered.

‘Hey, Itzy, you alright?’

‘…Devon….’ The words jumbled up in her head. The letters swarmed in front of her like a plague of wasps, but she couldn’t make sense of them. They refused to connect, to make a sentence.

‘Itz, what is it?’ The cheer had faded from Devon’s voice.

‘My dad….’ That was all she needed to say.

‘I’ll be right round.’ Devon hung up without saying goodbye.

TWO

Stretched out on the floor, on her stomach, Itzy yanked loose threads out of the mandala rug.

On her bed, Devon let out a long, low whistle. ‘I can’t believe he did that. I always knew your dad was an arse – but this? It’s something else. It’s…I don’t know what it is.’ She wrinkled her nose and pushed a long strand of ginger hair out of her face as she glanced at Ash, who was hunched over Itzy’s desk, examining the open notebook.

Her best friend may not have been blessed with Itzy’s talent for words, but she somehow always got it.

Ash swivelled around in the desk chair and stared down at Itzy. His brown eyes and mocha skin looked almost gold in that light. ‘What’s this?’

Itzy blinked. ‘What’s what?’

‘This.’ He waved one of his swimmer’s arms at her notebook.

‘Oh. Oh.’ She lifted herself from the floor and stood beside him. ‘That.’

‘Yeah, that. What is it?’

‘What’s it look like?’

Ash let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘It looks like one of your stories.’

‘So, there’s your answer. Mystery solved.’

He took her hand, forcing her to make eye contact. ‘Don’t be coy. When did you write this? Before or after you found out about your dad?’

She bit her lip, tasting the familiar iron of her own blood in her mouth. For the second time that day, she worried she might be sick.

Ash shook his head and released her. ‘You think you killed him.’

Devon slipped off the bed and joined them, leaning over her boyfriend’s shoulder to skim-read a page of the story.

‘You don’t get it,’ Itzy insisted. ‘The phone started ringing just as I’d finished. You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that I wrote about a girl’s father taking his own life seconds before I found out it had really happened.’

Ash shook his head. ‘Itzy, this is not your fault. You didn’t kill him. He swallowed a bunch of pills like the coward he is. No one made him do that. It was his stupid choice, not yours.’

‘But the stories –’

‘Are stories.’

Devon looked up from the notebook and touched her shoulder. ‘Itz…I know how hard this must be for you. Actually, I tell a lie. I haven’t the foggiest how hard this must be for you. It’s just so, so big.’ Her arms formed the shape of an expanding bubble in the air, to exemplify her point. ‘But Ash is right. You can’t go blaming yourself, on top of everything else you must be feeling. You don’t need that. And you don’t deserve it.’

Itzy blinked at them both. Her friends were right. But knowing this wasn’t the same as feeling it. ‘I keep…I keep seeing him doing it. I want to climb into the picture and touch him, maybe stop him…you know? But it’s like a bad dream. Every time I try to speak, to tell him there must be some other way, my…my voice doesn’t work.’

Their faces filled with sympathy.

‘Oh, Itz.’ Devon wrapped her long arms around her the way her mother should have done, pulling her close. ‘I know you hadn’t spoken to him in…’

‘Seven years.’ Itzy’s voice was dull.

‘…right. But you know…it’s okay to cry.’

Itzy leaned into her friend. ‘I wish I could,’ she whispered. She had never allowed herself to cry over her father. And now, try as she might, she couldn’t make the tears fall. They sat lodged in the backs of her eyes, the telltale lump ominously blocking her throat. She would have no relief. ‘Gwen…she invited me to the funeral.’

Devon drew back so she could look at her. ‘Are you going?’

‘I…think I have to.’

Ash frowned. ‘You don’t. Not if you don’t want to. No one would expect it.’

Itzy stepped away. ‘No, I mean…this is for me. I just feel like I…I have to be there.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Devon offered. ‘You need someone. I doubt your mum will go.’

Itzy stood very still. ‘I’d like that.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Thank you.’

Devon rolled her eyes to lighten the mood. ‘You know I’ll always be there for you, yeah?’

Yes, she knew. Devon had proven herself time and time again.

Ash cleared his throat. ‘Do you think your…brother will be there? At the funeral, I mean.’

She stared at him with wide eyes. How had she not thought of this? ‘P-probably.’

‘Do you think maybe he’ll talk to you now?’ asked Devon.

Itzy shrugged, as if to say, Who knows? Who cares? Except she cared very much, and her friends knew it.

She’d always wanted a brother. Then, in one brief earth-shattering moment, she’d learned she had one. But she’d only met him once, and then –

‘He’s always made it clear he wants nothing to do with me. And I don’t blame him. Maybe I didn’t find out about him until I was ten, but…he’s still older. At the end of the day, he was our dad’s first family. Of course he resents me.’

‘Maybe it’ll be different now,’ Ash said.

‘Maybe.’ But inside, she very much doubted this possibility.

* * *

That night, Itzy dreamt of her father. She was in her room and he was standing at the window, hands held behind his back, gazing out at the night sky. Her curtains ballooned around him like a cape, and his face filled with moonlight.

‘Dad?’ she whispered to his phantom.

He didn’t reply. He just stood there, staring outside, at the luminous heavens. He’d always loved the stars – especially their apparent connections with so many ancient megaliths.

She stepped out of her bed, gaining a grace she didn’t possess while awake. Gliding more than walking, she met him at the window.

He raised one of his arms and