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

Itzy slept well into the afternoon the next day, finally waking to the sound of birds tittering about how she should have been up hours ago. She rolled over sleepily. Her arm flopped over the side of the bed and her fingers tapped the floor carpeting. The curtains were shut and the fairy lights still coloured the room faintly.

Then she saw something that woke her right up.

She grabbed her phone off the night stand and dialled the number she’d been given last night.

‘Damn it, Seth,’ she greeted him when he answered. ‘Why is Parson Brown still in jail?’

‘Hiya, Itz,’ he spoke sleepily down the line. In that haze, she could almost pretend he was normal. He even sounded sort of –

Focus, Itzy.

‘Answer the question,’ she said.

‘Hey, own that anger,’ he replied.

She took a deep breath and counted to five. ‘I just want to know why you didn’t release the bear. My mum could find him! How am I supposed to explain it to her?’

‘Dunno.’

Itzy was flabbergasted. ‘Dunno? That’s all you have to say?’

‘Yep.’

Something clicked. ‘You want me to get him out of the jail myself.’

‘Oh, she’s got it!’ Seth announced to an imaginary audience. He made a grunting noise, like he’d been lying down and just sat up. ‘Remember what we went over last night. Own it. Make it yours. Alright?’

Then he clicked off and the connection flat-lined in a long drawn-out beeeeeeep.

Itzy stared at the phone in disbelief. In the background, Parson Brown banged in his prison and yelled that they could chain his body, but they could never chain his mind.

‘For goodness’ sake, shut up!’ she shouted at him.

He only banged louder.

She swore under her breath. At least it was a weekday. It meant her mother was at work. There was time to fix this.

‘Okay, I can do this,’ she told herself. She inhaled deeply. ‘I can own this. Get control.’

She closed her eyes and let the frustration flow through her, rather than around her. It filled every part of her, cooling her blood and making her head feel watery, like her brain was floating. But try as she might, the words would not come.

That only made her more frustrated. She opened her eyes and hit the bed. ‘I hate him,’ she said.

Except that wasn’t right. She didn’t hate Seth. She didn’t know him well enough to attach such a strong emotion to him, and it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t do this.

She shut her eyes again. This time, letters danced in the black. Ds did pirouettes, Fs leapt and were caught by Rs. They attached themselves to each other in delicate but passionate embraces, melting into one another, before slowly separating into neat rows.

They started to spell something, something sensible.

The banging stopped.

Itzy’s eyes flew open and she jerked her attention to the floor, where the bear had been. Except he was gone.

She looked at the bed. He sat, free of his prison, on top of her pillow. A dopey smile was stitched onto his face, his eyes glazed with plastic.

‘Parson Brown?’ she whispered.

She poked him, and then immediately drew back her hand and held it protectively over her chest, prepared for him to fire one of his blades at her. But he just toppled over. His stubby stuffed legs stuck up in the air.

‘Huh,’ she said as she admired her handiwork.

The doorbell rang downstairs. Itzy abandoned the bear and headed down to answer it.

It was Devon. She wore a pair of skinny jeans embroidered with bright blue flowers, and she had on one of her staple strappy tops. This one was fuchsia, the front covered in crisscrossing ribbons, making it look like a corset. Her feet were encased in blue silk ballet pumps.

‘Hey, you ready?’ Devon asked.

Itzy’s head went blank. ‘Sorry?’

Devon rolled her peridot eyes. ‘Shopping. I need a new dress and you were going to buy some more of your boring stationery, remember? Then we’re meeting Ash for milkshakes?’

Come to think of it, that did sound familiar. Hadn’t there been some sort of conversation about it after the funeral?

‘Oh, right,’ said Itzy. ‘I’ll just get myself together and let’s go.’

The girls headed back upstairs to Itzy’s room. Itzy rummaged through her dresser drawers and pulled out a clean top. It was bright red and said Heartbreaker on the front, which was ironic since Itzy hadn’t dated anyone in almost three years. Devon had bought it for her last birthday in an effort to give her some colour.

Itzy brushed out the rat’s nests in her hair and pulled it into a high ponytail. Even then, the tips of her hair still crept down her back, almost to her elbows. When she was done, she turned around for inspection and Devon nodded in approval.

Itzy grabbed her phone, and pulled her house key and some money out of the bag she’d brought to the funeral the day before. She stuffed the items into her jeans pockets and the girls padded out of the room, down the stairs. By the door, Itzy dipped her feet into her trainers.

They caught a bright red double-decker bus and sat on the top deck. Itzy stared out the window, at the treetops that lined the roads. It was a beautiful sunny day, the sky mostly blue, with only a few white clouds marring it. The green of the leaves was bright and reflective through the glass of the bus windows.

The girls alighted at Ealing Broadway and headed into the shopping centre. Devon had to buy a dress to wear to her cousin’s wedding, and she decided to use that as an excuse to head into every clothing shop there was, even the ones that were wildly inappropriate for what she needed. After a while, Itzy left Devon in one of the changing rooms of New Look and agreed to meet her outside the stationery shop.

Itzy had an unnatural passion for all things stationery. She loved their covers, she loved crisp paper, she loved pens and holding pens and different types of ink. She loved the thrill of buying a new notebook and not knowing what might end up filling it.

Writing was something Itzy had wanted to do ever since she was a little girl. It had begun as a means of escape. She loved creating characters, people who behaved in just the right way, who said and did all the right things. Even as she grew older and gradually immersed herself more and more in the so-called ‘real world’, she never lost that first love: story-telling.

She browsed the shop and was drawn to a book covered in a photograph taken by the Hubble telescope. It showed a red nebula radiating its arms to the older stars scattered around it. She placed her hand on it, expecting to feel heat come off it, or some spark. Nothing came, of course. She thought she might get the book for when she returned to college for her final year, next month.

Itzy paid for the book and exited the shop. Devon was waiting for her. A bag hung from one of her arms.

Itzy motioned to the bag. ‘Found something, then?’

Devon grinned wickedly. ‘Going to upstage the bride, I think.’

Itzy smiled. ‘Brilliant. Milkshakes?’

They headed out of the shopping centre and walked to a café, where they found Ash already occupying a chrome table, deeply engrossed in a comic book.

Itzy and Ash had been friends a long time, despite superficially having little in common. Ash was into awful low-budget films, and had a passion for soca music and 1970s funk classics. He was an adept swimmer with an unfortunate obsession with snooker, and he had more patience than anyone Itzy had ever known – even more than Devon. Itzy, on the other hand, had never been athletic and had a terror of playing anything competitive or exposing her body, even if only in a swimming costume. She filled her head with eighteenth and nineteenth-century tragedies, and she listened to music that demanded to be played in the dark, with ambient lighting.

But they shared one significant similarity: they both had absent fathers. Itzy’s had walked out, but Ash’s was dead, which lent him another dimension. She loved that he could be so alive and happy despite his difficulties.

Devon took the seat beside him and shuffled near him. ‘Hey,’ she greeted him with a goofy smile.

He looked up from his book and gave her a quick kiss.

Itzy sat across from them. ‘Do I get a kiss, too?’ she joked.

Ash grinned at her. ‘You wish.’

They ordered milkshakes, Devon’s chocolate, Ash’s banana and Itzy’s strawberry. They sipped them outside at the table, which wobbled every time one of them leaned on it. The sun shone down on them, drawing red out of Devon’s hair.

‘Devon told me about the funeral,’ Ash said, after a while. ‘You alright?’

Itzy shrugged over her drink. ‘I feel a bit mixed up about everything.’

Devon’s face grew serious. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.

Itzy smiled. ‘Thank you. But it’s more than just the stuff with my dad. After I got home...well, I went for a walk and somehow ended up at my brother’s house.’

Her friends gaped at her.

Ash was the first to recover. ‘But I thought he lived in Ashford.’

Itzy took a long sip of her shake and said, ‘I did, too, but it seems he moved, recently. Now he lives oddly close to me. He shares a house with his friend Seth. We met him at the funeral,’ she said to Devon.

Devon nodded. ‘I remember. How strange!’

Itzy took a breath. ‘There’s more.’

‘More than all that?’

Itzy nodded. ‘Um…okay, this is going to sound a little nuts…but….’

Her friends anxiously waited for her to continue. All around them, people strolled past languorously, as if problems didn’t touch them. Itzy felt like she was sitting in a painting hanging on a wall for everyone to analyse. More and more, she was convinced she was epistemologically challenged.

Devon reached over the table and took her hand. ‘Hey. Whatever it is, you can tell us.’

‘I know,’ Itzy said. ‘I really do. It’s just…will you believe me?’

Devon and Ash shared a look. Then Devon released her friend’s hand and sank back in her seat. She steadied herself with her foot before the flimsy chair could topple her onto the ground. ‘Try us,’ she said.

Itzy willed the words to leave her mouth. After all, this wasn’t just anyone; this was Devon and Ash. Devon, who had seen her through every up and down, every ugly scene, every tear, every tantrum, every fall. Ash, who had never once judged her – or if he had, he’d never voiced it or treated her any differently for her mistakes.

‘Well,’ Itzy began, ‘Seth can…do things.’

‘…like?’ Ash prompted.

‘He kind of…draws pictures in the air and makes things appear out of nowhere,’ Itzy blurted. She grabbed her milkshake and finished it off.

Her friends looked stunned, certainly, but when Ash spoke, he sounded more curious than doubtful. ‘So you really can make stories come to life?’

Itzy was floored. They believed her.

Her head bobbed up and down with excitement. ‘I’m getting better at it, too. More controlled. Seth and I were up all night trying – ‘

‘What?’ Ash interrupted her.

‘Okay,’ said Itzy, ‘it’s not how it sounds.’

‘Does Myra know you had a boy stay over?’ Devon teased. A smile tugged on the sides of her mouth and drew it right up to her cheeks, which flushed with excitement. On her pale freckled skin, the pink stood out like the flesh of a raspberry.

‘No, she was…well, anyway, it really isn’t how it sounds,’ Itzy insisted. ‘He was training me.’

‘Oh.’ Devon sounded deeply disappointed. She sipped the last of her chocolate milkshake and pushed the cup aside.

Ash finished his a moment later and asked, ‘Training you for what?’

‘What makes you think it was for something?’

Ash tilted his head and narrowed his eyes like, You know better. ‘You don’t train unless you’re preparing for something. Like a marathon, right? You train for it. You run a lot, you exercise, you build up your stamina, so you don’t die when you have to do the real thing.’

Itzy scratched her head. A strand of black hair tore loose from the ponytail and fell in her face. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. All he said was I needed to learn to control my anger.’

Devon nodded like these were wise words. ‘You do. I approve.’ She grinned. Her eyes squinted in the sunlight, making her look a little like Oz and Seth’s cat, Eurydice. ‘Sounds like he’s a good influence.’

‘Oh, stop. It’s not like that. If you met him –’

‘Which I did,’ Devon reminded her. ‘And by the way, he was gorgeous.’

Ash cleared his throat loudly. ‘Anyway...I don’t know how to ask this, but…do you think your training has anything to do with your dad’s note?’

Itzy’s blood ran cold at this reminder. ‘Why would you think that?’

Ash shrugged. ‘Dunno. Just putting two and two together and seeing what everything’s for,’ he punned badly.

Itzy leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘You think Seth and Oz know more than they’re letting on?’

Ash raised a dark eyebrow. ‘You think they’re going to tell you everything when they’ve only just met you?’

‘Huh,’ was all Itzy had to say to that.