Survivor Song(73)
Once outside in the cool, gray damp air, Robert repeatedly asks what she’s doing and where they are going. Last night he had dreadful nightmares in which the black waters of the river swallowed him and the city whole.
Lily says, “Not far. You’ll see. Quit whingeing.”
They make an odd pair. Robert is fair-haired and creeps along like a rodent in an open field echoing with the hungry calls of hawks and owls. He is a full head shorter than Lily, who could pass for a new teenager. Her long brown hair is woven into a thick single braid that no one dares pull on. Lily-punches hurt the most.
Two streets from the castle they turn right and walk a narrow road behind the sprawling Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas.
Robert whispers, although there’s no one around. “This is barmy. We need to go back.”
Lily pulls Robert into the middle of the road, stops, and points up. “Have a look.”
Across from the cathedral is a set of brick structures associated with the church. They’ve stopped in front of one building’s front door adorned with ornate stone arch work, colored pink and white. Perched at the top, front paws with nails wrapping over the arch, staring down from above a circular window and the front entrance, is the Vampire Rabbit of Newcastle.
Robert laughs once. He looks at Lily as though seeing her for the first time. Then he laughs again. “That’s—that’s a rabbit, innit?”
Lily crosses her arms over her chest; her smile could power a hydroelectric plant.
The Vampire Rabbit is a stone gargoyle painted black. Its nails and teeth are blood-red. The eyes are wide and menacing. Its ears are long, like a hare’s, and if you stare long enough, you can imagine them as bat’s wings, or belonging to a demon.
Robert jokes, “Look at its teeth. Does it have the rabies, then?”
Lily groans and whacks his shoulder. Lily-shoulder-whacks hurt the most too. Robert doesn’t let on how much it smarts by not rubbing his arm. She says, “We’re not in America,” out of the side of her mouth, as though she’s embarrassed to be saying so.
Lily tells Robert a brief and to-the-point story about the city once having had a big problem with grave robbers until there was a night when an actual eight-foot-tall creature shaped like a vampire rabbit [she does not commit to the creature actually being what it looks like] appeared in this same doorway and scared them off. The dutiful citizens then built a gargoyle version in its honor and it has since scared away all other grave robbers. She ends with, “It’s working, innit? See any grave robbers lounging about? Unless you’re one. If you are, I’d leg it before it nips your neck.”
Robert laughs nervously again. “I’m not. Is that the real story?”
She tells him some people think the vampire rabbit could’ve started as an odd representation of the Easter Bunny, a reminder of spring [Robert interjects, “The Easter Bunny gone mad.”], and other people think it’s a symbol of Freemasonry and others think it’s a cheeky two-finger salute to the cathedral and the Anglican Church in general. She adds, “No one really knows why. It’s all sassafras and lullabies.”
Robert pulls his gaze away from the rabbit. He says, “Sassa-what?”
Lily turns red. “Sassafras and lullabies. It—it’s an old saying. Means everything is bollocks.”
“Say it again.”
“No.”
“Your accent changes when you say that. You sound like someone else—”
“And you sound like a tosser. Always and forever.”
*
Lily insists she’s old enough to walk the ten minutes home from school by herself. She engages in a semiweekly, one-sided argument with Gran. She has taken to employing charts and video presentations accompanied by music and sound effects [she wants to make films one day] outlining increasingly elaborate reasoning as to why this small but earned bit of independence would not only benefit her character in the long run, it would also enhance the lives of everyone within the household. Gran patiently waits and smiles warmly until Lily is done with her presentations before she says, “No.” Appeals from Gramp and Auntie, both of whom having been won over [or worn down] to Lily’s side, hold no sway with Gran.
Upon returning from the Newcastle trip, Lily walks home from school with Gran. While their battle of wills in regard to the walking-home debate is building to an epic confrontation, if not a conclusion, Lily adores and is slightly in awe of Gran. She lives to make her laugh that closed-eyed, I-disapprove-but-you-are-too-much chuckle.
Lily doesn’t lie to or hide things from Gran. She tells her about the school trip and successfully sneaking out to see the Vampire Rabbit. Gran does not approve and tells her as much, but Lily, in describing her unwitting accomplice Robert as being as timid as a dormouse and twice as twitchy, elicits the laugh she craves.
Lily has to work to keep up with Gran. They are soon upon their semidetached home with the brick walls and a white trellis.
Lily asks, “Is Auntie home too?”
“She is.”
Lily enters the kitchen first. Auntie and Gramp are in their usual spots, sitting at the intimate round table with the sunny vinyl tablecloth. They both glance over the frames of their glasses, likely reading the same news stories; Gramp clutching his newspaper, Auntie hunched over her tablet. Before they say their hellos and come-give-us-a-hug-and-kiss and how-was-your-day, they smile their wan I-see-you-dear smiles.