The Fandom(45)

We start picking apples from a nearby tree – they make a soft thump as they hit the bottom of the basket, chucking up dust and releasing their sweet, earthy aroma. This scene mirrors canon very closely – Ash and Rose picking fruit together – but the conversation differs dramatically.

‘It’s all very strange, Violet.’ His words interlace with the beat of falling apples. ‘I save you from getting hanged, then you turn up in my orchard. Are you stalking me or something?’

‘No, course not.’

He smiles his lopsided smile. ‘I was joking. You were practically drooling over that Gem . . . Willow.’ He sticks out his hip and bats his lashes. ‘You look like a Willow – tall and lanky.’ He mimics my voice and bites into the skin of an apple with relish. This Ash is so much more vibrant than canon-Ash.

I throw an apple at him. It explodes against the bark and releases a fine spray of juice which catches in the floodlight like beads of glass. ‘You can’t blame me, he looks like an angel . . . A demigod.’

He places another apple in the basket. ‘He’s about as far from God as any creature could be – all tweaked and fake.’

‘I didn’t say he was a demigod, I said he looked like a demigod.’

‘Well, aren’t we the superficial one?’ The trunk forms a divider, shielding his expression, but his voice sounds small and a little hostile.

I push my hands between the leaves in search of fruit. My fingers find only twigs. ‘I can’t help who I’m attracted to. You said it yourself, we’re all just animals.’

‘Yeah well, they’ll hang your animal ass if they find out you’ve been canoodling with a demigod.’

‘We were just talking.’

‘He was undressing you with his eyes.’

My hand finally locates an apple – I snap it free almost triumphantly. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Of course I bloody am.’ He laughs, but I see a fleeting glimpse of that vulnerable puppy dog. I was wrong, he doesn’t disapprove of Imp–Gem relationships; he disapproves of me with somebody – anybody – else.

I resist a little smile. ‘Look, Ash . . .’ But I don’t know what to say. I study his slightly asymmetrical features for a moment.

‘What were you and the kid doing?’ he asks suddenly.

‘What, you mean my brother Nate?’

‘Yeah, the kid. You were reciting lines or something, right before demigod turned up.’

‘We were just messing around. Sibling stuff.’

He passes an apple between his hands. Back and forth like it’s too hot to hold. ‘It was like you were rehearsing for something, and then demigod actually said some of the things the kid said.’ He raises his eyebrows expectantly.

I can’t tell him the truth, so instead, I change the subject. ‘I never thanked you properly for saving me and my friends, back in the city I mean.’

He picks up the basket and moves to another tree. ‘That’s OK. Couldn’t very well let ’em hang you, could I?’

I follow him, partly because he has the basket, and partly because I feel lonely, just me and the shadows. I stand beside him and notice the hairs on his forearms, dark against his skin and raised in the cold.

‘Well, you saved our lives. Thank you,’ I say.

He screens his eyes with his heavy lashes, which seem even longer than usual, extended across the pink of his cheeks by their own spidery shadows. He suddenly looks very sad. ‘I just can’t believe you want a Gem, after how they treat us, what they do to us.’

I recall my face pressed into the Perspex, the crumpling paper chain, and I feel like I might cry. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the images from my brain. ‘But it isn’t Willow who does those things. You can’t blame him for the sins of his people.’

He raises his gaze. His irises, so pale they look like glass in the floodlight, his pupils, two intense dots. ‘Who then? Who do you blame? Nobody else is going to rise up and stop the barbarity against the Imps if it isn’t the Gem people.’

I wish I could tell him everything, but it’s too risky. Besides, he would probably think I’m mad. So I steady my voice. ‘Maybe he will, one day, if he falls for an Imp. Maybe he will make a stand.’

‘What do you mean?’

I realize I’ve already said too much and return to picking apples, pretending those frosted blue eyes don’t pierce my skin as they study my profile. At this point in canon, Rose was making up some bullshit about having worked in the Pastures before. Just small talk really. Polite answers, eager nodding, puppy-dog eyes. I wish we were back on script again – this is way too hard.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’m just thinking out loud.’

‘Just don’t get killed, OK?’ He scoots up the tree so he can reach the fruit on the higher boughs.

I strain my neck to look up at him, and he drops a couple of apples into my outstretched hands. ‘I’ll do my best,’ I lie.

‘Because I didn’t save you from one noose just to see you wind up hanging from another.’ He drops an apple straight into the basket. ‘Bullseye,’ he shouts.

Ash returns home on the Imp-bus that morning. I watch him shuffling up the line and climbing the steps, adopting his subservient Imp pose, so at odds with the squirrel I witnessed earlier in the night.