The Lollipop Shoes (58 page)

Maman ignores her. ‘Anouk. Come here.’

But I’m pinned to the spot in that frozen light. I
want
to go – but there’s something else, a whispering voice, like an icy fish-hook in my heart, that’s pulling me the other way.

It’s too late. You’ve made your choice. The Hurakan won’t go away
—

‘Please, Zozie. I want to go home—’

Home? What home? Killers don’t have a home, Nanou. Killers ride the Hurakan
—

‘But I’m not a killer—’

Really? You’re not?

She laughs like chalk on a blackboard.

I scream: ‘Let me
go
!’

She laughs again. Her eyes are like cinders, her mouth is a wire, and I wonder how I could ever have thought she was fabulous. She smells of dead crab and gasoline. Her hands are like bunches of bones; her hair is like rotting seaweed. And her voice is the night; her voice is the wind, and now I can hear how hungry she is, how much she wants to swallow me whole—

Then Maman speaks. She sounds very calm. But her colours are like the Northern Lights, brighter than the
Champs-Elysées, and she flicks out her fingers at Zozie in a little gesture I know very well—

Tsk-tsk, begone!

Zozie gives a pitying smile. The string of hearts around her waist flips and flirts like a cheerleader’s skirt.

Tsk-tsk, begone!
She forks it again, and this time I see a tiny spark skip across the square towards Zozie like a cinder from a bonfire.

Once more, Zozie smiles. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ she says. ‘Domestic magic and cantrips even a child could learn? What a waste of your skills, Vianne, when you could have been riding the wind with us. Still, some people are too old to change. And some people are just afraid to be free—’

And she takes a step towards Maman, and suddenly she’s changed again. It’s a glamour, of course, but she’s beautiful, and even I can’t help but stare. The necklace of hearts has gone now; and she’s wearing hardly anything but a linked skirt of something that looks like jade, and a lot of golden jewellery. And her skin is the colour of mocha cream, and her mouth is like a cut pomegranate, and she smiles at Maman and says—

‘Why don’t you come with us, Vianne? It’s not too late. The three of us – we could be unstoppable. Stronger than the Kindly Ones. Stronger than the Hurakan. We’d be fabulous, Vianne. Irresistible. We’d sell seductions and sweet dreams, not just here, but everywhere. We’d go global with your chocolates. Branches in every part of the world. Everyone would love you, Vianne, you’d change the lives of millions—’

Maman falters.
Tsk-tsk, begone!
But her heart isn’t in it any more; the little spark dies before it’s halfway across
the square. She takes a step towards Zozie – she’s only a dozen feet away, and her colours are gone, and she looks like she’s in some kind of dream—

And I want to tell her it’s all a cheat, that Zozie’s magic is like a cheap Easter egg, all shiny foil on the outside, but open it up and there’s nothing there – and then I remember what Pantoufle showed me; the little girl, and the shop, and the black box, and the great-great-grandmother sitting there grinning like a wolf in disguise—

And suddenly I find my voice, and I shout out as loudly as I can, without quite knowing what the words mean, but knowing they’re words of power, somehow, words to conjure with, words to stop the winter wind—

And I shout, ‘Zozie!’

She looks at me.

And I say, ‘
What was in the black piñata?
’

15

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.25 p.m
.

IT BROKE THE
charm. She stopped. She stared. Moved closer to me across the snow, and brought her face up close to mine. And now I could smell that dead-crab stink, but I didn’t blink or look away.

‘You dare to ask me that?’ she snarled.

And now I could hardly bear to look. She’d changed her face and was fearsome again; a giantess; her mouth a cave of mossy teeth. The silver bracelet on her wrist now looked like a bracelet of skulls, and her skirt of hearts was dripping with blood, a curtain of blood in the fallen snow. She was terrible, but she was afraid, and behind her Maman was watching with a funny kind of smile on her face, as if she understood far more about it than I did, somehow—

She gave me the tiniest of nods.

I said the magic words again. ‘What was in the black
piñata
?’

Zozie made a harsh sound in her throat. ‘I thought we were friends, Nanou,’ she said. And suddenly she was Zozie again, the old Zozie of the lollipop shoes, with her scarlet skirt and her pink-streaked hair and her jangly multicoloured beads. And she looked so real and so familiar that it hurt my heart to see her so sad. And her hand on my shoulder was trembling, and her eyes filled with tears as she whispered—

‘Please – oh please, Nanou, don’t make me tell—’

My mother was standing six feet away. Behind her in the square were Jean-Loup, Roux, Nico, Madame Luzeron, Alice, and their colours were like fireworks on the Fourteenth of July, all gold and green and silver and red—

I caught a sudden scent of chocolate drifting from the open door, and I thought of the copper pan on the hob, and the way the steam had reached out to me like ghostly pleading fingers, and the voice I’d almost thought I heard, my mother’s, saying,
Try me, taste me
—

And I thought about all the times she’d offered me hot chocolate, and I’d said no. Not because I don’t like it, but because I was angry that she’d changed; because I blamed her for what happened to us; and because I wanted to get back at her, to make her see I was different—

It isn’t Zozie’s fault, I thought. Zozie’s just the mirror that shows us what we want to see. Our hopes; our hates; our vanities. But when you really look at it, a mirror’s just a piece of glass—

For the third time, I said in my clearest voice: ‘
What was in the black piñata?
’

16

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.30 p.m
.

I CAN SEE
it all so clearly now, like pictures on a tarot card. The darkened shop; skulls on the shelves; the little girl; the great-great-grandmother standing by with a look of appalling greed on her ancient face.

I know that Anouk sees it too. Even Zozie sees it now, and her face keeps changing, going from old to young, from Zozie to the Queen of Hearts, mouth twisting from contempt to indecision and finally to naked fear. And now she’s only nine years old, a little girl in her carnival dress with a silver bracelet round her wrist.

‘You want to know what was inside? You
really
want to know?’ she says.

17

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.30 p.m
.

SO YOU REALLY
want to know, Anouk?

Shall I tell you what I saw?

What was I expecting, you ask? Sweets, perhaps, or lollipops; chocolate skulls; necklaces of sugar teeth; all the tawdry Day of the Dead merchandise ready to explode out of the black
piñata
like a shower of dark confetti?

Or something else, some occult revelation: a glimpse of God; a hint of beyond; some assurance, perhaps, that the dead are still here, guests at our table; unquiet sleepers; custodians of some essential mystery that will one day be imparted to the rest of us?

Isn’t that what we all want? To believe that Christ arose from the dead; that angels guard us; that fish on a Friday is sometimes holy and at other times a mortal sin; that it somehow
matters
if a sparrow falls, or a tower or two, or even an entire race, annihilated in the name of some specious deity or other, barely distinguishable from a
whole series of One True Gods – ha! – Lord, what fools these mortals be, and the joke of it is that we’re
all
fools, even to the gods themselves, because for all the millions who were slaughtered in their name, for all the prayers and sacrifices and wars and revelations, who
really
remembers the Old Ones now – Tlaloc and Coatlicue and Quetzalcoatl and even greedy old Mictecacihuatl herself – their temples made into ‘heritage sites’, their stones toppled, their pyramids overgrown, all lost in time like blood in the sand?

And what do we really care, Anouk, if a hundred years from now the Sacré-Coeur has become a mosque, or a synagogue, or something else altogether? Because by then we’ll
all
be sand, except for the One who has always been; the one that builds pyramids; raises temples; makes martyrs; composes sublime music; denies logic; praises the meek; receives souls into Paradise; dictates what to wear; smites the infidel; paints the Sistine Chapel; urges young men to die for the cause; blows up bandsmen by remote control; promises much; delivers little; fears no one and never dies, because the fear of Death is so much greater than honour, or goodness, or faith, or love . . .

So, back to your question. What was it again?

Ah, yes, the black
piñata
.

You think I found the answer in there?

Sorry, sweetheart. Think again.

You want to know what I saw, Anouk?

Nothing
. That’s what. Big fat zip.

No answers, no certainties; no payback; no truth. Just air; a single belch of foul air rushing out of the black
piñata
like morning-breath from a thousand-year sleep.

‘The worst of all things is
nothing
, Anouk. No meaning;
no message; no demons; no gods. We die – and there’s nothing. Nothing at all.’

She watches me with those dark eyes.

‘You’re wrong,’ she says. ‘There’s something.’

‘What? You really think you’ve got something here? Think again. The chocolate shop? Thierry will have you out by Easter. Like all conceited men, he’s vindictive. In four months’ time, you’ll be back where you started, the three of you, penniless and on the road.

‘Think you’ll have Vianne? You won’t, you know. She hasn’t the courage to be herself, let alone be a mother to you. Think you’ll have Roux? Don’t count on it. He’s the biggest liar of all. Ask to see his boat, Anouk. Ask to see his precious
boat
—’

But I’m losing her, and I know it now. She looks at me with no fear in her eyes. Instead there’s something I can’t quite make out—

Pity? No. She wouldn’t dare.

‘It must be very lonely, Zozie.’

‘Lonely?’ I snarled.

‘Being you.’

I uttered a silent howl of rage. It’s the hunting cry of One Jaguar, of Black Tezcatlipoca in his most terrible Aspect. But the child didn’t flinch. Instead, she smiled and took my hand.

‘All those hearts you’ve collected,’ she said. ‘And still you don’t have one of your own. Is that why you wanted me? So you wouldn’t be alone any more?’

I stared at her, speechless now with indignation. Does the Pied Piper steal children for love? Does the Big Bad Wolf seduce Red Riding Hood out of a misguided need for company? I’m the Eater of Hearts, you stupid child; I’m
the Fear of Death; I’m the Wicked Witch; I’m the grimmest of all fairytales, and don’t you
dare
feel sorry for me—