Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near Read Free Book Online

‘ Eye-so-lah . You must be pretty special.’
    Isola shrugged. ‘I just pay attention.’
    The silver on the dead girl’s wrist looked like a manacle, one half of handcuffs. The girl must have noticed Isola’s gaze, for she lifted her wrist, the manacle jangling, and said, ‘Come look.’
    Warily, Isola climbed out of bed and examined the dead girl’s wrist from the middle of the room.
    â€˜It’s a charm bracelet,’ said the dead girl proudly.
    The charms showed the moon cycle cast in silver, each droplet dangling from the chain, singing when they clinked together. New, crescent, quarter, half, gibbous, full, waxing and waning round her wrist.
    â€˜It’s beautiful,’ said Isola. ‘What’s your name?’
    â€˜It is, isn’t it?’ The girl ignored the question and instead smiled at the bracelet. ‘My mother gave it to me.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Most of her face was still hidden behind her dark hair, but the girl looked as thin as Death on a diet, and her broken voice crackled like sweets unwrapping. Rosekin and the other faeries’ dramatic death-tale was reliable for once. Huh. That was a first.
    â€˜So what’s your name?’ Isola ventured again. Ghosts liked to talk about themselves, she had found; their histories and faces and names were all they had left in the world. ‘I’m Isola.’
    â€˜I know that , weren’t you even listening?’ the dead girl snapped, thudding her fist to the windowsill. ‘I thought you were supposed to be smart !’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ said Isola, although she wasn’t. Alejandro had always advised her to tiptoe through conversations with ghosts she didn’t know – some were liable to explosive rage and violence, and it was best to assume they all were at first. Stranger danger, spirit-style.
    The dead girl, as if bored with Isola’s company, contorted into a crouch, preparing to spring from the windowsill. ‘Well, if you’re really a smart girl after all . . .’ She tilted her head and smiled back at Isola.
    The moon lit the black hollow where her eye had once been.
    â€˜. . . you’ll stay out of the damn woods.’

 
    Little Voices
    â€˜Where’ve you been all weekend?’
    â€˜Why?’ Alejandro touched her hair, disturbing it slightly. ‘Did you miss me, querida ?’
    Isola immediately smoothed her hair back down. ‘No,’ she scowled, ‘I had a visitor.’
    He leaned down and kissed her cheek. Isola rubbed it clean.
    Alejandro had permanent dark circles under his eyes, like Isola often woke with when she slept with mascara on. They had matching wobbly colt legs, except Alejandro was skinny from a youth spent on drugs. The stunning clothes he wore – the clothes he died in – were the height of Victorian dandy fashion. Every day he changed his appearance slightly, although the simple fact he was dead left him permanently unchanging. He sometimes tied his crushed-grape cravat – the only colour on him – to hold back his hair, or wore it like an ascot or an armband. He arranged the diamond pins on his laced cuffs and coat pockets in differing patterns, sometimes mirroring the movement of the stars. On Isola’s last birthday, he’d arranged the diamond pins to read ‘16’ on his starched black lapels.
    Wordlessly, he took her schoolbag and carried it as they ventured through Vivien’s Wood. Forever the gentleman.
    â€˜And may I enquire as to whom you have replaced me with?’
    â€˜If I was going to replace you, I’d pick someone a little livelier than her – the girl we saw last week. The dead one in the cage.’
    Alejandro stiffened. ‘What did she want?’
    â€˜Well, first she asked me to turn the volume of my heartbeat down. Then she told me to stay out of the damn woods.’
    Alejandro tugged nervously on his silk cravat.
    â€˜I’ll