Dykstra shows up and hugs her daughter while getting the story. Chloe and Amelia hug goodbye and promise to see each other tomorrow. All’s well, so they say, that ends well, even though the dance has been spoiled.
Lachlan, with Mrs Dykstra’s blessing, says he’ll take the girls to a live gig soon, to see a band they both like, to make up for it. Mrs Dykstra, who is single, is promised a ticket too, and she grins like it’s Christmas for her as well.
Amelia and Lachlan are silent for a short while in the car ride home. Lachlan is still high on the relief of knowing that Amelia is all right, she’s all right, she’s going to be all right...
He doesn’t flinch when Amelia reaches out to rub her hand along his forearm. Under his shirt, the track marks of his past feel the passage of her fingers through the cloth.
‘I would never,’ she says.
He wants to say ‘I know’. What he says is: ‘Lives don’t always go the way we plan.’
She squeezes the muscle under her hand. ‘I’m sorry for whatever made you pick that path.’
Lachlan swallows. ‘It was... it made sense at the time.’
‘You must have been so lonely.’
Lachlan blinks.
She smiles at him, and he smiles back. She withdraws her hand and folds it with the other one in her lap.
Amelia looks at Lachlan again.
‘I know you don’t like me noticing them,’ she says, and does not need to elaborate. The needle marks. The scars on his body, the marks of violence. She has scars too, he knows. For all that he wanted to spare her, he couldn’t, and there is a map on her body of mishaps and accidents. Nothing given to her deliberately, though. No harm done to her through malice or anger. He thinks he would destroy anyone who tried.
His silence doesn’t faze her. ‘Do you know what Mum says about scars?’
Lachlan shakes his head minutely.
‘She says that the thing about scars is that you only get them if you survive. Some scars are bad and some of them slow you down a lot, but if you have a scar, life tried to kill you and didn’t succeed.’
‘Is that what she says?’
‘I was asking her about hers, you know, the one from the C-section when she had me. She says she doesn’t mind it. She could have died, or I could have died, but we didn’t. The scar proves she outlived death, because the dead don’t heal.’
Clara, thinks Lachlan, really is more than good enough for my brother.
‘We talked a lot about scars that day,’ Amelia continued. ‘Because you and Dad have so many and I wanted to know what it meant.’
Lachlan swallows. ‘What else did she say, then?’
‘Mum says that some scars are what life gives you for being careless or unlucky, but at least you can learn something from them. Then, she says, some scars you get because you took risks so you could grow. And then, she says, some scars you get because you choose them, so you can protect someone you love or something that matters.’
Lachlan thinks about all of his scars; the ones he got through carelessness and bad luck; the ones he got through risk. The ones he chose.
‘Those scars you have, on your head and mouth, the one on your ribs… you got those making sure that drunk old bastard didn’t hurt Dad. Mum says those scars are like... sort of like badges that love makes in your skin.’
Lachlan pulls the car to the side of the road, because it’s dangerous to drive when you can’t see. Tears are sliding out of his eyes, faster now that he’s closed them. Amelia undoes her seatbelt and reaches across the seat to wrap him in an awkward sideways hug.
‘I know you made mistakes,’ she says, her cheek resting on his shoulder, ‘but you made up for them, and that’s something my grandfather never did. You’ve got badges, even if you didn’t want them, and Dad’s scar… I don’t think you know. But he and mum, they say that’s his badge. Because it helped you to stop. He got his brother back. So he doesn’t mind.’
Lachlan’s hands are over his eyes and he can’t stop crying.
‘This thing,’ says Amelia, hugging him, ‘with the drugs. I promise you. I’d never do that. And if I’m ever that lonely, I promise. I’ll come to you. But I never will be.’
Lachlan gathers his girl close, his nose in her hair, revelling in the miracle of her. No, he promises her silently, you never will be.
LOST AND FOUND:
CHANGELING
Bloody treacherous faeries.
Faeries get fancies. They see things they like and just take ‘em.
Pretty, shiny, sparkly things.
And also babies.
Faeries have an unfortunate tradition of taking a shine to some chubby little darling and whisking it away to the Land of Faerie. There they feed it little cakes and sips of flower nectar and generally spoil it rotten.
They’re not stupid, though, faeries. Even they have noticed that vanishing infants and toddlers create an awkward kerfuffle amongst those slow-witted and reality-bound humans. Some of those humans are annoyingly attached to their offspring, as well as irritatingly persistent in trying to get them back.
So faeries leave a substitute. A little changeling, very much like the child it’s replacing, but quieter. The changeling cries less, fusses less, is more placid and obedient and docile. With this sly bit of subterfuge, the faeries hope that the humans will just be grateful that their infant is suddenly much more pliable and easy to manage. The faeries hope the humans won’t pursue the matter. Parents and their attachments to their offspring are just so pestilential.
It’s not going to work this time though. Do you see that sparkly little jacket? That pink and spangly thing with flowers in it? That belongs to a bright and lively little girl who is always chattering and giggling and, well, yes, also screaming sometimes. She’s a kid. She doesn’t know all the words yet for what she wants and needs, let alone have oratory skills to help sway her audience to her way of thinking. When she’s a teenager, she’s going to be absolute hell, in the best possible way. In the meantime she chatters and giggles and screams as occasion demands.
Right now, she is making the Faerie Queen wish heartily she never saw the kid. Right now, she is expressing her opinions rather forcefully, even with her limited vocabulary, about the taste of bleeding flower nectar and the use of cobwebs – GODDAMN COBWEBS – as a blanket.
Have these faeries never noticed what kind of spiders live in the Real Plane that is called Australia, that this little girl quite rightly views with concern? It’s hard to feel cosy and relaxed sleeping under a little blankie made of the butt-silk of venomous things.
Okay so maybe the
