Liam's hand had closed around the fragile shape of the purse without him noticing. He opened his fingers now, carefully, and broken, dead black fragments fell onto his lap.
He'd been expecting it for several hours but it still made his heart clench, a physical pain. He forced himself to get up and look over at Rachel, lying completely still and colourless on the couch. Her eyes were still smudged with makeup. Together with the severely shorn black stubble on her head they gave her the appearance of a fever victim. She looked... vulnerable. As though she'd lost something important.
"What power?" Liam had asked Rachel's aunt Delilah, struggling to understand. And she shrugged.
"Personal power, the kind her mother and sister have almost none of. And another kind of power too, maybe one she barely knew she had. It's not anything specific, and it's not easy to pin down. I certainly didn't know she had it."
"Do you have that kind of power?"
"Me? No. Not really. Maybe a little. Nothing that could turn a purse black, though."
His face felt as though there were some feeling trying painfully to get out. Why had he thought he could go away, and then fix everything when he came back, as though he'd been there all along? He hadn't been there all along. He hadn't been there when his best friend stopped being OK.
*
Delilah called. Rachel was sleeping deeply. Liam didn't know whether she needed this sleep—Delilah had said she was weakened, after all—or whether it was something to do with him cutting her hair.
He pulled the phone off its cradle in the hallway.
"Hello?"
"How's she doing, boy?"
Liam leaned back against the wall. "I don't know, Delilah. She's sleeping, she barely moves. And the purse is still darkening." It was, it was like a black hole. And when he'd touched it with his finger a few strands had cracked and broken. He'd pulled back quickly.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
A brief silence.
"I'm not sure. Probably not a very good sign. If it decays away to nothing it might mean she had no power left anyway. Maybe. I don't really know of course."
"The boyfriend came round. He was looking for her."
"Kane's not yours to worry about, boy. Rachel will deal with him when she's better."
If she gets better. Liam didn't say it.
*
The doorbell rang. Liam was examining the purse under the lamp-light. It was definitely worse than it had been. The silken strands looked brittle and burned, as though they'd been touched by fire or extreme cold. The tiny flap was beginning to unravel.
Rachel lay on the couch, completely still, one hand curled in upon itself. He was beginning to believe she wouldn't wake up.
The ringing bell didn't go away so he unlocked the door. Opening it halfway, he kept one hand on the doorknob. A young man rested his arm against the post, a dark lock of hair falling over his forehead into his eyes, his stance radiating a sort of relaxed tension. He straightened and pushed the hair out of his eyes.
"I heard you had my girl," Kane said.
"No."
"That's funny." Kane's smile became a little dangerous. "She never turned up tonight, you know. Not like Rachel to break a date. She's a..." His lip twitched. "Dependable girl. Does what she's told."
Liam made an effort to think. "She always used to be a bit unpredictable," he said. "She liked to make things more complicated than they needed to be, I found." He shrugged. "She probably hasn't changed so much."
Kane laughed a little, an ugly sound. "Don't let her fool you, boy. Rachel's all grown up now. She could play you like a piano. But... I make sure she hasn't got much time for those kinds of games—you know?"
He pushed away from the post and came closer.
"Don't get mixed up here," he said softly. "I know you've done something to her. I can feel it." Then the moment passed and the charming smile played around his mouth again. "You see my girl, you send her over, okay?" he said.
*
Rachel was dressed to go out when Liam turned up at her house late in the afternoon. Her oriental eyes were heavily shadowed in blue and her lips were a deep pink. Her hair fell about her shoulders in a sleek black curtain.
For a moment he was confused, disoriented by contrasting images from the day he left; Rachel as she'd been three years ago, with her hair pulled into a loose knot at her neck, her feet in scuffed purple sneakers, her mouth pressed tightly closed except when she gave him the purse, and told him not to come back if it changed. He remembered laughing and saying, "Rules, Rachel, you always have rules." She refused to say goodbye the way other people did.
He spoke before she could say anything, the lie coming easily. "I know you don't want to talk to me, but Delilah sent me," he said. "She's at my place and she's... upset about something. She asked me to get you."
Rachel looked trapped. "I'm supposed to be meeting Kane."
"You won't be late, I promise. Delilah needs you for a minute, that's all. She's your aunt, Rachel."
"I don't think I can help, Liam. She doesn't like me much anymore..." But he'd taken hold of her arm and she let herself be led. He hustled her past the window and bundled her into his car; he saw her sister, Lauren, in the window, staring at him curiously.
You're kidnapping your best friend. Do you feel good about it?
He ignored the thought.
"I think I'll be late," she said as they pulled up to his door, but again she let herself be led inside.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I really am sorry, Rachel. But I had to get you away from Kane."
"Liam?" She took a step forward and he stepped back, towards the door. He reached around behind him to lock it, and pocketed the key.
"Liam, don't. Kane will... Kane will wonder about me. I need to go."
She tried to take the key from his pocket. He stopped her, gently taking her hands. She should have struggled, but instead folded down to her knees, her arms hugged around her. He could see her shoulders shaking.
"Rachel!"
She let him pull her up again, but she didn't seem to have any strength in her legs and her eyes leaked tears.
"Rachel?"
She lifted her face. "Oh god, Liam. Why did you come back here? I told you not to."
"You'll be okay." He tightened his hands around hers. She turned her face away.
"No, I won't. But you didn't have to see me like this. I didn't want you to see me like this."
"You didn't know this was going to happen, Rachel. Maybe you think you did, but you didn't. You would have warded against it if you had."
"No."
"Truly, Rachel. You're not... you're not like this. It's only that Kane's made you think you are, he's made you think you're just like your mother and sister."
"Don't." She made a violent movement with her hands. "Don't say that about Kane."
He didn't know what else to say, so he tugged on her hands, pulling her over to the couch. She sat down and hid her face against his shoulder. He could hear the sound of her crying, but she barely moved. Oh god, he felt like such a rat.
"Do you remember the fairy tale?" he asked eventually. She moved her head slightly, a gesture of acceptance or denial, he couldn't tell. "Once upon a time there lived a king's daughter who had hair as bright as gold, that was how it started," he said. "Delilah found it for me when I first showed her the purse—after I got back."
Rachel burrowed her face into his shoulder a little deeper, and he bit his lip, his hand careful on her hair.
"The fairy tale's about a princess, and the neighbouring king's son she was betrothed to. The son had to go away—the story didn't say for what—and when he went, the princess gave him a purse woven... all out of her own golden hair. She told him that as long as the purse was golden and bright he could know she was happy and well. But if it began to darken then he would know she was in danger."
He adjusted his arm a little. Her breathing was more regular, he didn't think she was listening any more.
"He did go away, and at first he checked the purse every day, but it was always the same glad gold, and after a while he forgot to check it. But one day as he was tightening his sword belt the purse fell out of his pocket onto the ground, and when he stooped to pick it up he found that it had darkened to black. He immediately rode back to his betrothed's kingdom; they told him that a black-hearted enchanter had stolen her away and placed an enchantment upon her, so that she could never speak or cry out when anyone passed her tower.
"There was a happy ending, eventually. He rescued her, of course. He made it look quite easy, actually."
She was definitely asleep, now.
"I didn't know the story when you gave me the purse, Rach. But you were always using stories. Sometimes I thought you didn't know how to live in the real world without twisting it into stories."
He ran out of words, so he took a breath and found the scissors. She didn't notice when he cut away the first lock of hair.
*
Delilah told him what to do. He sought her out at Lauren's party, when his breath was coming quick with helpless anger and he could barely see. She was leaning against the back fence, a little way away from where a BBQ had been set up. She was gazing out into the darkness, and smoking something that smelled illegal. Her dyed red hair shone a little like a corona in the firelight, but her face was mostly in shadow. Still, he saw her raise her eyebrows at his expression.
"Delilah, you said there might be something I could do if she wouldn't listen to me."
"Good evening, Liam," she said.
"Didn't you say that?"
"Maybe. I'd remember better if you cooled off and stopped looming over me."
He stepped back. He hadn't noticed he was that close; hadn't noticed he was taller than her, either. He shoved his hands in his pockets and told himself to calm down.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm being irrational."
She tapped out the ash from her roll-up. "Don't stress, boy. Tell me about it. You talked to our girl again?"
Liam looked at her. "I'm afraid for her, Delilah," he said. "The way she talked to me, and to him... It isn't just that she's grown up. She seems so lost, I don't think... I don't think I can stand it." He pulled the purse out and held it up against the uneven light. "Look at it, it's worse than it was. What if there's nothing left of her now?"
"What did Kane say to you?"
He shrugged. "I don't think he sees me as a threat at all. Which isn't surprising. I'm the old best friend she's grown out of, that's all."
Delilah took a drag. "That's my sister, Emily, and Lauren speaking through you," she said. "I suppose you had to listen to them, did you? A more dangerous pair of fools I was never related to."
She looked at him, and considered. "You've some charm of your own, you know, as much as he has really. You don't know how to use it though. But you could learn to use those blue eyes to good effect, if you would. Don't suppose it'll do you much good, though." She looked away, blowing out warm coils of smoke. "Mostly I'd say you're more intelligent than he is, but... he must be a clever boy, still. He saw at once what I'd missed, the way her strength was also her weakness. Right from the beginning, you'd see them together and he'd be caressing her hair, playing with it. He petted it, laid claim to it, and through it he possessed her." She coughed, and grimaced at her roll-up. "Quite neat really."
Liam looked at the black shape of the purse in his hands, forcing down the black anger that spiraled up. The purse just filled the centre of his palm. You couldn't really tell what thread it was woven out of anymore, though. None of the silkiness remained that had been there when Rachel gave it to him.
"Should I have come back sooner, Delilah? Would I have been able to talk to her then?"
"Probably. I probably should have done something sooner myself if it comes to it. But I didn't notice what was happening for quite a while."
"But... when I showed you the purse you said there might still be something I could do. Something drastic."
"Ye-es." She wrinkled her nose up, looking indecisive. "There was a way that occurred to me. Dangerous, though. To her, I mean, not to you."
"What is it?" He could hear the urgent note in his own voice.
"I'm not sure it can work," she said. "But it seemed to me that there might be... another story you could use. Not the fairy tale, but my namesake's story."
She raised her eyebrows as he frowned, working this out.
Delilah and Samson? He wasn't sure that marital betrayal was exactly the angle he was looking for.
"Cut her hair, you mean?" he asked at last.
She took a drag, breathed out. "I might be wrong, of course," she warned.
"Why would cutting her hair be dangerous to her?"
Delilah gave him a look. "Don't be deliberately slow, Liam. Kane will lose the hold he has over her, but she'll lose her power too. She could actually die of it."
"What?"
Rachel's aunt made a vague more-or-less motion. "Or maybe fall asleep and never wake up. She's weakened. Physically as well as mentally. She's exhausted, although she probably barely realises that herself. And there's danger if she doesn't die, too. She'll be especially vulnerable, and if you're there, looking after her... there's always a chance she won't even try to regain her independence. That she'll simply depend on you."
She watched as he worked this out in his mind. She was right, that would be a danger—and it would be one he would find it hard to guard against. When he saw her with Kane some of his anger wasn't for her, but for him, because a dark part of him wanted her to look at him the same way she looked at Kane.
Delilah must have seen something of what he was thinking. "I'm glad it worries you, anyway," she said.
*
He met Kane for the first time there, at Lauren's party.
Her mother opened the door to him. "Oh, hi Liam." Emily looked distracted and not especially pleased. "I didn't realise you were coming."
"Lauren invited me," he lied. "I have a present for her, where is she? And where's Rachel?"
"Lauren's in the kitchen, I think. You can leave the present with the others, on the table in the dining room."
"And Rachel?"
Emily led him down the hall. He shrugged his jacket off and threw it onto the hall table as he passed.
"She's with her boyfriend in the living room," Emily said, with a frown. Her hair was bleached the same colour as Lauren's, and her makeup looked the same, although more skillfully applied. Her daughter's role model.
Liam moved past her, on into the dining room. He put the present onto the little table—a pair of earrings, he was fairly sure Lauren wouldn't like them, but they'd been all he could find on short notice—and nodded to the couple of people leaning against the table. They held champagne glasses and leaned together, talking in confidential whispers. He didn't know either of them.
He moved on into the living room and his eyes found Rachel and a dark young man sitting on a couch in the corner. Someone else moved into his line of sight, drifting towards the table of finger food, and Liam moved to the right so that he could see them again. Kane looked older than Rachel, although only by a few years, and he was handsome—nobody could deny that. Rachel was lying against his shoulder, one leg crooked up, and he was playing with some of her hair. The gesture was an odd mixture of negligence and possessiveness.
He had expected to dislike Kane—that he was Rachel's boyfriend ensured that—but the black strength of the feeling took him by surprise. As he watched, Kane tugged a little harder on Rachel's hair, and Liam saw her wince, and turn her face up to his to be kissed. Her boyfriend's hand was still tangled in her hair, but Liam could see that his hold was tighter now.
Liam had always liked Rachel's hair. Delilah said that was why she chose that fairy tale when she wanted something to signify her own life for herself; that was why she chose to take the central idea of the purse to make him a farewell gift. "Which would have made her hair seem even more significant to her," Delilah had said. She'd seemed delighted with the idea, as though she was working out a puzzle. "An escalating effect so she probably didn't even know she was binding all her power up in her hair like that."
Rachel looked up now as he approached. A wary expression came into her eyes.
"Hi, Rachel." He looked at Kane, who gazed at him indifferently. "I'm Liam. I'm an old friend of Rachel's."
The boyfriend raised an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah. Rachel mentioned running into an old friend." He held out a lazy tanned hand. "I'm Kane."
"I wanted to speak to Rachel for a minute, actually."
"Kane..." Rachel turned towards her boyfriend.
Kane looked up at Liam for a second, and then back at Rachel. He seemed amused.
"Sure. Go on, Rach." He untangled his hand from her hair, and gave her a push on the shoulder. "Your friend's got something to say to you."
Rachel got up unwillingly. She only looked towards Liam for a second, but he could see that she looked sulky and a little alarmed.
"I'd rather not, Kane."
The boyfriend reached up to pat her cheek, and then tugged with a sharp little movement on a lock of hair falling down next to her face. She winced again.
"Don't be difficult, Rach."
She didn't say anything else.
Liam took her arm and they wove through the people in the living room.
"What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to talk to you."
She mumbled, "I'd rather not."
"I know. I'm sorry."
There was nobody in the hall so Liam stopped there and turned to face her. She was made-up in the same way he'd seen her ever since he came back, her eyes heavily kohled and shadowed in a metallic blue. She was wearing a miniskirt along with tiny blue sandals with high, teetering heels. A thousand miles from scuffed purple sneakers.
"I went to see Delilah, Rachel, about the purse."
She turned her head, looking fretful. "Just stop it about that purse, okay. It doesn't mean anything."
He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and showed it to her, held it until she looked. It was smaller than it had been when she gave it to him; the weave had warped and shrivelled. It looked... dead. Crinkled as though it had been burned at the edges. He thought it looked worse than it had when he showed it to Delilah. Unhealthy and grey and you would never guess anymore that it was woven out of Rachel's hair.
"Delilah says it does. She said that... she said that you'd done something dangerous, with your hair."
"That's stupid."
"She said that was how Kane got power over you."
She pulled away. "You shouldn't talk about Kane to me. You don't know him."
OK, so that was dumb.
"I have to go back." She turned to look at him again. "Don't come here anymore, Liam."
"Rachel..."
But she'd turned on her heel. He followed her back into the living room and watched her go back to Kane. The boyfriend raised his eyebrows at her, and she sat down against him, draping herself along his arm. He whispered something in her ear, and she turned her head and kissed him, a lingering kiss where his hands found her hair again, tangling in the silky black strands.
*
It was near dawn when Liam dragged himself out of his chair to find something to sweep up the fragments of purse. He'd have to call Delilah, soon, to tell her it hadn't worked. To tell her what the two of them had done to Rachel.
It was only as he was sweeping the blackish-grey fragments onto a piece of paper that he saw the spark of colour; something reflecting the yellow light from the lamp. He reached out and pushed aside the broken black weave. There was a strand there, black like the rest but clean and sleek and undamaged. He stared at it on his finger for a moment. It might have been dropped on the floor when he was cutting Rachel's hair; it might have got tangled up in the tainted thread of the purse by accident.
Or it might not.
He stood up again to look at Rachel lying on the couch, the black bristle like a shadowy bruise on her head. A little bit of pre-dawn light came from the window now and it was possible that it picked up a bit of colour in her cheeks. Maybe her mouth wasn't set in quite the same way it had been, maybe it had something of the cryptic, determined expression she used to wear.
He didn't want to move, barely breathed. But he wrapped the silky strand around his finger, tightly like a charm. And waited.
Click here for commentary by Jarrah Moore
Copyright © Jarrah Moore 2007
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