Dark Angel (33 page)
Authors: Eden Maguire
‘I should have stayed,’ Orlando said. He jutted out his bottom lip, hung his head.
‘Then what?’ Grace argued. ‘No way would Jude have made it if you’d stayed to help Tania.’
‘Yeah, thanks, buddy.’ It was all Jude was able to say before he moved slowly out of the house on to the porch looking out on to Black Rock. There was a dark scar on the mountain – the burnout from the latest fire. We heard from the fire service that, despite their planes and helicopters, flames had totally wiped out Black Eagle Lodge and there were no survivors. The problem now was counting the dead – how many permanent residents had been at the commune, their identities, their next of kin.
‘Good luck with that,’ was my personal reaction.
‘Luckily, there were no Bitterroot fatalities,’ Ricki Suarez, the head of the hotshot team had told news journalists. ‘Local families were not affected.’
‘“Luckily!” ’ Holly had echoed as we’d watched the TV news. ‘Hell’s teeth – what did luck have to do with it?’
Quietly Grace followed Jude on to the porch and sat with him. Her mom had told my mom that since Tuesday night she’d never left his side.
‘We need music,’ Holly decided, and Aaron chose a dance CD though none of the rest of us felt up to dancing.
‘It’s a party,’ Aaron reminded us. ‘Everything worked out, didn’t it?’
Orlando had got Jude to the hospital, Grace stayed with him all through the night. They didn’t speak about events at Black Eagle Lodge – about Ezra and Cristal and the whole Zoran thing – and I don’t suppose they ever will.
‘It’s like a black hole,’ Grace had tried to explain to me before the party began. She was pale and edgy, snatching every opportunity to say thanks. And I have to say she still didn’t look like the old gentle, generous, fun-loving Grace, but give her time. ‘My memory has this giant hole and it scares the crap out of me.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I’d replied. I’d squeezed her hand.
Then Holly and Aaron had arrived to party. And now I stood inside the house looking out at Jude and Grace sitting hand in hand with Black Rock in the distance and a ragged, painful gap in their memories that would take a long time to heal, but I knew it would.
Orlando came to stand with me and hold my hand. ‘Are we OK?’ he checked.
‘Hey, still Mister Insecure?’ I smiled and slipped my hand in his.
‘No, really. You don’t hate me?’
I flashed him a look, told him not to be stupid, kissed him.
After a while we all got into the music and the party took off. Holly and Aaron danced, she blamed him for stepping on her foot, we laughed – same old, same old. Eventually Orlando and I smooched in a corner. Grace and Jude came in from the porch, ate snacks, drank beer. To look at us you would think that none of this had ever happened.
At around ten I told Orlando I was tired and would he drive me home. I asked him to stay over.
‘Hey, you two,’ Dad said when we walked into the house. ‘Orlando, you want to come fishing with me tomorrow?’
‘Dumb question,’ Mom told him.
‘Why dumb?’
‘Because!’
‘Tomorrow is Dallas,’ I explained. ‘Orlando’s interview. While you’re fishing I’ll be driving him to the airport.’ Me – not his mom, notice.
That night was special. We talked, we made love. I made sure Orlando knew how much I would miss him.
At the airport the next morning he almost wouldn’t board his plane. They’d called his section and he was still standing at the gate, holding me tight.
‘Go!’ I whispered.
He shook his head, stayed exactly where he was. ‘What if I changed my mind?’
‘No. You can’t. It’s a great college – think Mimi Rossi, Julian Sellars. This is your future we’re talking about.’
‘What about our future, you and me?’
‘This
is
our future,’ I said. I leaned back to drink in those lovely features – the badly behaved sweep of dark hair, the blue Irish eyes and wide mouth. What a leap of faith, I thought as I eased out of his arms.
The desk attendant called his name. Immediate departure – all that.
‘You know what you told me on Black Rock?’ I reminded him. ‘In the smoke, in the middle of everything.’
Orlando nodded. Slowly he bent down to pick up his bag.
‘Whatever happens, wherever we are, what you said then is still true.’
He kissed my lips, waited for me to say it.
‘This is about love,’ I whispered, turning him towards the gate. ‘Now go!’
Tania’s story continues in
TWISTED HEART
coming soon
…
I sleep with a dream catcher above my bed. I use it to filter out bad dreams – I had enough of those earlier this summer. Flames eating up the forests, leaping across canyons, shooting firebrands through the night sky. Plus the dark angel voice slithering through my brain with a warning: ‘We will all rise. There will be other times, other places, a million other willing souls!’
I travelled halfway across the world to get a break from all that flesh-creeping stuff and if my good angel isn’t around any more to protect me, which she doesn’t seem to be, I’m not too proud to rely on old superstitions, ancient beliefs, whatever.
My dream catcher is a circle of slender willow branches about thirty centimetres wide, wound with a narrow leather strip and with cotton threads woven across the centre in a geometric petal pattern. A pendulum of turquoise beads and white and black feathers hangs from the bottom of the hoop. Good dreams find their way through the net but bad ones can’t get past. It works some of the time, I guess.
Since the last big burnout on Black Rock I also avoid going up on to the flame-seared slopes whenever possible – me and my best friend, Grace, and all the traumatized kids in Bitterroot if I’m honest.
I prefer valleys and water – cool streams, white-water rapids, Prayer River and Turner Lake.
I mean, I love the lake, totally adore the light sparkling on its surface and the way your feet and ankles turn pale and distort when you wade in from the pebble shore, the icy feel of the water between your toes. It’s where Orlando and I fell in love.
It was midnight, and just remembering it makes my soul soar. The night sky was huge, the Milky Way streaming across it – a glittering banner made out of a million stars. We were tiny and unique. We took off our clothes and swam in the lake.
‘You’re my midnight swimmer,’ he tells me even now.
Or he would do if he was here.
Where do the ideas for your books come from?
My ideas come from a mysterious region of the brain – the ‘What if’ part which must have a neurological label, but which works something like this: ‘What if the world really is split between supernatural good and bad forces? What if we can all be tempted on to the side of shape-shifting, terrifying dark angels to fight against the angels of light?’ With this basic idea, I can create a setting, a heroine and a whole cast of characters, plus a plot so full of twists and turns that even I don’t know how it will end until I get there.
Who would your dream cast be if
Dark Angel
was made into a film?
Actors in a film of
Dark Angel
? Most of the ones I can think of are a few years too old (sorry!), but how about Natalie Portman for Tania (she’s the right physical style and can play sensitive, tormented souls), Robert Pattinson for Orlando (dream on!) and
The Wire’s
Dominic West as the enigmatic Antony Amos.
What have you enjoyed writing the most –
Dark Angel
or the
Beautiful Dead?
The answer to which of my books I enjoy the most is always, ‘The one I’m writing now.’ So it has to be
Twisted Heart
(more on that later).
Who do you relate to more – Darina from the
Beautiful Dead
or Tania in
Dark Angel?
I think Darina has more of the rebel in her – something I can relate to from my own teen years. I don’t have Tania’s psychic powers, but do share some of her thin-skinned sensitivity.
If you could invite five people to dinner who would they be?
Top of my list for ideal dinner guests are: Marilyn Monroe, Shakespeare, Catherine Earnshaw from
Wuthering Heights
, John Lennon and Atticus Finch from
To Kill A Mocking Bird
.
Where is your favourite place to write?
I can only write in one place and no other – it’s my first storey office overlooking a river and a wooded hillside. No other room will do.
Who is your favourite author and why?
Favourite author is so hard – this time I’ll choose one who is alive – it’s Annie Proulx who wrote the short story
Brokeback Mountain
which they turned into a great film. Everything she writes is strong and disturbing.
What advice would you give to aspiring young writers?
People who really want to write don’t need my advice. They’re driven by some inner compulsion. It turns out right if they stick to the truth of their imaginations.
What book do you wish you had written?
A book I totally admire is
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini. I wish I could write something so moving and powerful and true.
How does it feel when you see your books in a bookshop?
When I see my own book on a bookshop shelf I have a mixed reaction. There’s a big temptation to position it so that customers can see it more easily, but there’s also an unexpected panic and a need to run and hide!
Tell us one thing your readers won’t already know about you.
I once fell off a horse high on a mountain with no other riders around. My horse didn’t run off – he stayed and waited for me to get back on my feet, thank heavens. Not many people know that!
What’s next from Eden Maguire?
Next for Eden Maguire is the second book in the
Dark Angel
trilogy. It’s called
Twisted Heart
and the strapline reads ‘Nowhere to hide …’
