Short Stories 1st Place: Feather of Owl, Sinew of Wolf by Pauline Brown

Nothing under here. No secret letters or diaries. No jewellery or cash. Nothing to drink or eat, smoke or steal. Not even a stray biscuit crumb.

But as I drop the mattress back into its iron frame, something slips out from beneath the pillow. A hoop, three or four inches across, with dangling beads and feathers; a looped, leathery thong from which to hang it. It reminds me of one of the earrings my sister might pull from her bag the moment she’s beyond the bend in our drive – although this would be ridiculously huge, even for her. Holding it by its loop, I lift it into the light from the window. Beneath my fingers it rocks and twists against the afternoon sun, its motion soporific. My body begins to sway, my eyelids to droop.

I fling it to the floor, blinking hard.

It lands next to Jarratt, who is lounging on his side, his jaw resting on the heel of one hand, his body stretched almost the width of the room. He picks it up and twirls it in front of his face. “You know what this is, don’t you?” Jarratt drawls. He glances at me, and sees that I do not. Derision flickers around his lips.

I look at Headspace, sitting cross-legged between us, cradling Matron’s winceyette nightgown in his lap. “’S obvious,” he claims. But Headspace Headley is no actor. He hasn’t a clue what this thing is, any more than I have.

“A feather duster?” I suggest.

“What planet did you say you’re from, Crabtree?” Jarratt asks, while Headspace buries his face in the nightdress, his shoulders convulsing.

Blood, hot and treacherous, rushes up from my collar like spilt ink through blotting paper. I push back my non-existent fringe, pick up a hand-tinted postcard from the detritus we’ve strewn over the floor and assume an earnest examination of its four views of Skegness. Have they forgotten that this raid on Matron’s room was my idea? The decoy, the logistics, the theft of the key – all my work. Today is my day. Payback for my Ash Wednesday scalping courtesy of Matron’s scissors and their freshly-sharpened blades.

All this frizz, all this fuzz. It simply has to go.

It’s not even as if I needed their help. I’ve only asked Headspace along to ensure he won’t blab. As for Jarratt, I’d planned he’d hear all about my enterprise later, after the event; had imagined him nodding his appreciation as rumours of my audacity bubbled and burst along the corridors of Wolsey House. I’d never intended Jarratt would play a speaking role. But then Headspace went and crapped all over my plans, invited Jarratt to join us.

My icon and my nemesis: James F K Jarratt II. Heir to his Bostonian grandfather’s billions. Champion of sprint and cross-country. Been everywhere. Done everything. Even, it’s said, done it.

Son of a god.

“Go on then, you tell us what it is, why don’t you?” I give Headspace a hefty shove. Too hefty, pitching him hard against the open door of Matron’s bedside locker. He grapples for balance, tearing the door clean off its hinges. Whimpering, he rights himself, holding his hand over one eye.

“Shot,” Jarratt says, and for a moment I’m basking beneath his gaze, believing myself admired.

“Bastard.” Headspace lowers his palm, and we all three see the blood. Jarratt lets out a low whistle. Headspace sways, threatening to faint.

“Wimp,” I say, laughing. I look to Jarratt for his approval, but he ignores me. He lays the Thing on the floor and passes Headspace a handkerchief: clean, crisply folded, monogrammed.

“Thanks,” Headspace says, mopping blood and snot from his face.

Jarratt gives his shoulder a pat. “Good lad.” He sits upright and leans back against Matron’s bed, his hands behind his head.

I notice with relief that the ooze from Headspace’s eyebrow is abating. “Good lad,” I say, raising my hand towards his shoulder. He flinches and arse-shuffles away from me across the floor, into the shelter of Jarratt’s armpit. Headspace looks drowsy. I sense he’d like to nestle there. To drift in the warm currents of Jarratt’s aura.

Jarratt sits motionless, his head thrown back to display his jawline and much-coveted shadow of stubble. My gaze falls to his thighs, to the cloth of his trousers, soft and expensive, to the taut inference of muscle beneath. I draw my bare knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them.

Dearest Mummy, about the long trousers I mentioned in my last letter…

James F K Jarratt II is only three months my senior, but it may as well be three years. I can no longer recall his jaw without its shadow, or his voice before it broke. Legend claims both were overnight feats, accomplished while he slept. Meanwhile the disposable razor I keep taped to the underside of a drawer removes nothing but the surface layer of my skin, and my voice continues to resemble a hacksaw. At least Headspace still sings from the front stalls of the choir – there is some comfort in that.

Jarratt catches me staring. I avert my gaze to the meagre trappings that we’ve pulled from Matron’s locker and spread out over the antiseptic linoleum. A Bible, bound in imitation leather, with an ancient bus or tram ticket poking out from somewhere in the vicinity of the Book of Job. Two fat paperbacks: Destination First Nation and The Missionary’s Book of Prayers, spines ruptured, corners curling. A St Christopher talisman on a broken copper chain. A black-and-white photograph of a young gallant in khaki drill, captioned Wilf, 1943 on the reverse. Paraphernalia, worthless, boring. And that Thing. Identity and purpose unknown.

I pick it up again; examine it. It smells fusty, like the hassocks in Chapel. I push the hoop into an oval. As I relax the pressure, it springs back into shape.

“Willow,” Jarratt murmurs, his gaze still on me.

Self-consciously I turn it between my fingers. I give the looped thong a tug.

“Buckskin,” he says. “And the feathers are owl. Sometimes eagle feathers are used. But those are owl.”

Spanning the hoop is a net, woven in the pattern of a spider’s web. It is warm and tacky to my touch.

“Sinew of dog.”

I wince; disentangle my fingers.

“Dog,” he says. “Or wolf.”

Wolf?

Yet still the answer to this riddle escapes me. Matron, alone in her narrow bed. Just who or what, besides Wilf, might she reach for in the dark?

I leap past Jarratt and onto the bed. I throw myself onto my back, waft the Thing over my chest, up to my face, feathers tickling. I lay it across my groin, twitching and moaning, arching my back.

“It has to be a sex toy. Matron has a sex toy.”

I sit up in triumph to find Jarratt watching me from the doorway.

“Oh Crabbers,” he says as he guides Headspace into the corridor. “Whatever are we going to do about you?”

Time to go. I smooth out the candlewick bedspread, leave the place tidy. Saints Christopher and Wilf, postcard and books, are back in their locker. Apart from the broken door, which I’ve propped up as best I can across the opening, there’s nothing amiss with Matron’s room.

Except that I take it. The Thing. My trophy. I stash it beneath my mattress, and head down for tea.

The hush of prep is ruptured by a commotion that rattles through the passageways and stairwells leading down from Matron’s attic bedroom. Jarratt, excused for fencing practice, isn’t here. I nod to Headspace, who is back on side after I gifted him my spotted dick at supper.  He joins me outside our dorm, and together we climb the twilit back stairs, our monstrous shadows leading the way.

Sir has arrived before us. We hover outside Matron’s door. Eavesdroppers. Ready to absorb and report.

“Has anything of value been taken?” Sir’s voice demands.

Matron’s reply sounds uncharacteristically timid: “Not exactly.”

“Meaning?”

“My dream catcher,” she says. “My dream catcher’s gone.”

Headspace and I exchange glances. Dream catcher? Headspace sniggers.

“Enlighten me, Matron? What, precisely, is a dream catcher?”

It’s all getting too much for Headspace. He doubles over, his shoulders heaving. Any moment now he’ll give us away. I wrap one arm about his torso, clamp my hand across his mouth.

“I used to have bad dreams, you see.”

Silence. Sir, it seems, does not see.

“You hang it above your pillow,” Matron continues. “There’s a net to trap your nightmares. And feathers for the good dreams to slide down into your head. It was given to me when I was working as a missionary. By the wife of one of the tribal chieftains.”

Headspace’s saliva is sticky between my fingers. I pinch his nose in case he should snort.

“Indeed. And does this dream snatcher –?”

“Catcher.”

“Snatcher, catcher. Let us not split hairs, Mrs Bird. Does the item in question have any monetary value?”

I’m guessing Matron is shaking her head.

“Not really the sort of thing one would expect to find within the precincts of a Christian institution.”

I’m guessing Matron’s head is bowed.

“So we’ll say no more about this adolescent prank.”

Matron, I imagine, is nodding.

 

I am awakened by the echo of Matron crying out in the dark. Her nightmare resounds along the corridors, tracking me down to my bed. I reach up and my fingers find the feathers of my dream catcher. The willow hoop taps against my bedstead. Night-night. Sleep-tight.

By afternoon next day, Matron has gone.

 

Three nights later, with only panelled walls to guide me, I steal along the moonless hallways to Sir’s rooms and lean a package against his door. On the outside, in lettering I’ve clipped from a newspaper: Property of Mrs Bird – please forward.

But before dawn, dreams populated by ghouls and gargoyles see me retracing my steps. And discovering that my package remains exactly where I left it, I find myself gasping – though whether from joy or despair I cannot say.

 

Within a year, I have left Jarratt behind, outstripping him in height and strength and speed. I observe, as though for the first time, the dark slick where his hair parts, the flakes that gather on his shoulders like whitefly, the pimples and scabs in the razor zone above his collar.

Mummy sends the long trousers – Jermyn Street, four pairs. Pa drives over one Sunday afternoon with a leather shaving case, comprising all his favoured tools and potions. My voice drops another half-octave, and I cease to notice anything about James F K Jarratt II at all.

 

I am house captain. I am Cambridge freshman. I am fast-track graduate, leapfrogging my Ivy League contemporaries on the currency trading floor. I am assistant-vice, acting-vice, vice awaiting the president’s retirement, or demise. I make a prosperous first marriage, a happy second, two precocious progeny issuing from each.  Yet through all of this, I have never outgrown my dream catcher. It has been with me ever since that one attempt, feeble and failed, to rid myself of its thrall. Where I go, it goes; each night suspended above my head by its buckskin loop, its willow hoop rocking me to sleep. Sinew of wolf and feather of owl sanctifying my rest.

Yet not tonight. In a moment of distraction in an airport departure lounge, I turned my back and my briefcase was gone. And now, in the sweat and the swelter of this Singapore hotel, dark shapes are swarming about my head like flies around a carcass.

And, sure enough, here comes Matron, advancing towards me in a corridor of shadows, a pair of razor-sharp shears open in her hands.

 All this frizz, all this fuzz. It simply has to go.