17: The visible and the invisible

Because her visits to the big house were always in secret she began to feel that the things that were important to her were invisible, or at the edge of madness. She would imagine telling her friends about Icarayus, or Raven, and them turning away from her, or worse. She feared their judgement and ridicule and yet for most of the time she judged herself harshly.
She would go round having silent conversations with herself about her own private theatre of the absurd, the bringing to life of dead people and the terrible, growing awareness that peace existed almost entirely in this invisible world. It began at the portal in the tree and ended when she placed her feet back on mother earth.

But, her visible world was the world of grief, petty challenges and disagreements, of exams and career choices that, when she was at the big house, would fade into insignificance. The problem was that it was her visible world that could, more than anything else, could prevent her reaching the big house. She could make all the right moves, she would extract herself from the visible world and climb up into the hand in the branches. She would decide to leave that world behind, but often the real life would follow her, like a silent stalker, filling her thoughts, contorting her feelings into grief and guilt and acting as a shield against the invisible. A shield she could not easily put down.

She felt torn in two and yet without this invisible world she feared that grief would overwhelm her and condemn her to a life of wailing and moaning and always being the twin who was whispered about. She wondered how her parents coped, they had no secret visits to the big house, or at least she assumed they did not and yet, except for a few dark days and a lot more wrinkles, they seemed to be getting on with their lives. She wanted to ask them how they kept the beast of grief at bay. How they kept their silent stalkers quiet in the dead of the night, or in the first light of the morning. For when she woke it was to Raven’s memory and then, as the light penetrated, to her loss.

She said nothing for if she started a conversation about Raven she knew where it would lead, it would lead towards making the invisible visible and, should that happen, the magic would be gone and the comfort that she gained would be lost for ever. She contented herself with tending Raven’s plants and pond and allowed her parents to believe that that was enough to stem her grief.

Danny was more of a complex problem for although he bridged the two worlds, however imperfectly, he was the only one who did, but that caused its own tensions. He had started to join her in the tree and bring his dreams along and she listened and smiled as she thought of Raven masterminding the subjects in his dreams. In truth she did not understand Raven’s choice of subjects anymore than Danny who seemed perplexed by his dreams. There seemed to be a an endless series of trains, many platforms with Danny on them watching trains speeding past and a lot of searching for something which always seemed to be behind him, or disguised in some way.

What it seemed to be suggesting was that Danny was lost, missing the point, or searching in the wrong place and, for her, one of the wrong places was in the bottom of the lager cans which always accompanied him, regardless of the time of day. But who was she to suggest that he, like her, seek comfort in an invisible world when the visible world seemed to be working for him?

What Isabella didn’t know, because Danny could not form the words, was that he had an invisible world too, one in which Raven’s hands were clawing at an icy ceiling which was consigning him to death. A world that was full of Raven begging for help and being unable to reach him. A world in which Danny was the coward and Raven the popular hero, lost to a world that was mourning and missing him.

This invisible world consumed Danny day and night. The smallest reminder would send him spiralling into his own personal nightmare, from which he was finding it increasingly difficult to escape and in which the boundaries between fact and fiction were becoming ever more blurred.

Bit by bit, day by day, Isabella and Danny became closer, they shared a bond which was unspoken, but they both knew that together they were able to keep part of Raven alive and feared, should they part, that he would fade forever from their memory and then they would both have betrayed him.

However close they had become the first kiss was a surprise and, for Isabella, marked a turning point. It happened, of course, in the tree and that meant that Danny had taken ownership of a place that was hers and Raven’s, and that did not sit well with her. He could never take Raven’s place, she was sure of that, but on the other hand to reject Danny completely felt like a rejection of Raven too, or the breaking of the last link in the chain which had her at one end and Raven at the other.

So she responded with her lips while her mind was crying out, “Not sure, not sure, not sure.”

When they separated Danny looked elated and relieved. 'He’s been building towards this.' Thought Isabella and wondered what his next move might be. But nothing happened and so after a suitable gap she took her leave and Danny made no attempt to accompany her home.

Isabella spent hours and days in silent torment about her relationship with Danny, or at least his expectations of her. Her parents were confused by her withdrawal and her moods and tensions heightened at home. Her friends teased her and mocked her doubts and misgivings. Danny was seen as dangerous, but tantalising, by her group of friends. He was difficult to get close to and that made him an attractive challenge, so there was a lot of envy in their reactions when she told them about the kiss. What she left out of her story, of course, was the part about Raven and how that complicated and confused her feelings. After few sleepless nights and restless days she decided that she had to ask for help and the only place she knew to do that was the big house.