The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

The Dastardly Dozen

They roved over the humps of the Pennine Hills, the backbone of England, until they tunnelled through lanes heavily hooded by trees. Come late afternoon, this then gave way to beige fields and a lilac sky, the soft colours of a coming violet dusk. In the distance all around, heather, rough grass, gorse, bracken, and bilberries burned like bonfires along the hillsides. It was unnerving to behold, Charlie found, now that his mind had given way to imagination—the sky, such a bright colour rendered grim, dark, and almost morbid, with the world afire around them. A lorry rode ahead of the Morris Minor, Austin Allegro, and Volkswagen bus, behind the scooter straggled a white camper van, and beyond that a little bus, a convoy carrying humanity's last struggling survivors, rueing the apocalypse that burnt the world away to ash.
     They drove as far as they could into Manifold Valley of the White District in Staffordshire and abandoned the wheels to continue the rest of the way through fields on foot. Jeremiah Strudwick complained about everything on the journey: the sun wasn't warm enough to dry his wet hair, which he'd slicked back into a pompadour with a superfluous use of products that made greasy spikes droop down like charred wood over conniving, fuliginous eyes; nor was the altitude being very kind to his dripping sinuses—although, it seemed to Charlie that the boy had some sort of medical condition as he always had a patterned handkerchief at hand no matter what height, sniffing so regularly that Ciarán Quinn often referred to him as "the wet tap"; he grumbled that the birds chirping too loudly, demanding to know what exactly they had to sing about; the bees buzzed too busily; the midges above the bushes were getting too close the more the day dropped; there were too many nettles to avoid amongst the undergrowth; the clouds weren't an ideal mass to shade his sensitive skin; his jumper was made of wool rather than cotton and so it made him terribly itchy. And the cutlery! One wouldn't even dare get him started on the cutlery available as they were much too shoddy, just as the grass was much too grassy.
     'Why must we live through the true conditions of poverty, lads?' he complained, slowly trudging up the hill behind them all and holding them up. 'Why anyone would think such a crude thing as camping outside was a source of entertainment is beyond me! We could have flown to Macedonia, booked a hotel room in Windsor and trashed it, or went swimming again in the ancient stepwells of India!'
     'Let's!' Seraphina called as she danced into the woodlands. 'If only for me to drown you in them.'
     'I believe I'll come to share your unflattering opinion of Strudwick before this day is through,' Charlie whispered to Frankie, tugging on the hem of his mustard-coloured jumper to pull him close in the bowered passageways. 'From his incessant protests to his vaguely alluding towards his family's loose association with the Rothschild empire at every opportunity, he's exactly how you described.'
     'A little cesspool of vomit that has been left to fester on the carpet for days?'
     'Precisely.'
     'I've said many unfavourable things about the ne'er-do-well; I had to be sure of which statement you were referring to.'
     'Why are you lot even friends with him? There is an awful amount of leeway given that paves the way for the even more awful Strudwick,' Charlie murmured. He looked towards Jeremy to see if he'd overheard, but the boy was too busy scowling and cleaning muck off his wellingtons with a spare handkerchief. 'I can't stand how rude he is to everyone—spitting out whatever he just so happens to think in that moment without consideration. Those sort of bad thoughts about people ought to be whispered about privately to a loyal friend, not uttered to anyone in passing like small talk.'
     'Just as you are doing now about Strudwick?'
     'It's the decorous way to conduct yourself!' Charlie retorted testily. 'He is spoiled beyond reason. I bet he finds all earthly materials to be ghastly or a nuisance if they don't sparkle in the hallway or gleam in the driveway.'
     'Oh, yes!' Frankie swept aside a bough for them both. 'He has been vitiated beyond repair by his parents, no doubt about it. I apologise profusely, but the boy had to attend. After he wormed his way in by giving us all an Atari, he stayed friends with enough of us coevals beyond our first year in Eton to remain around. Suffice to say that there are benefits to his friendship: his family owns a lavish villa in Bulgaria that we're allowed to visit whenever we wish. On such occasions, such as taking advantage of their château in the Alps to go skiing, all expenses are paid for by the Strudwick family, which I assume is the price his parents are willing to pay for us to befriend their abhorrent son.'
     Stumbling from woodlands and out onto a path winding upwards, Charlie turned around and gaped at him. 'Doesn't your family have enough cash to fund your expenses made to the moon if you so happened to wish to journey so far?'
     'Yes, but I prefer to be out from under the rule of them'—Frankie shouldered his bags and breathed in deeply to savour the country air—'even if that means being under the rule of another. Given carte blanche, my choices are then mine to make. Besides, Jeremy also brought another tent and car at such short notice, so his presence, although undesired, is somewhat pivotal to the excursion.'
     Ahead, the others had paused at the foot of the forest-smothered hill. From the coalescing treetops, a precipice emerged like the prow of a ship with a cave burrowed into the side of it. As he threw down his belongings onto the slather of grass between the overindulgent woods that fenced the bottom of the hills like a garden hedge, Charlie looked to the shard of rock and imagined it was the green-stained nose of a sleeping giant.
     'Are we setting up camp here?' he asked.
     'Ask the Captain,' said Ciarán the hedgehog, gesturing towards Seraphina. 'She's the one giving all the orders.'
     'Because we have all these trees surrounding us, we'll be sheltered from harsh winds if they happen to arrive,' she retorted, a magisterial tone of command in her voice that she shared with the other petal of the Rose family present. 'Trust me, I slept under canvases and pavilions in Egypt for weeks on end.'
     'Egypt is a world way from this!' hissed Jeremy.
     'A pity you aren't,' she bit back. The debonair girl pointed uphill towards the cave. 'And look, what a beautiful view we have! When we grow tired of looking at Strudwick, we can turn our heads towards it, instead.'
     'I do not like this.' Glancing at the peak apprehensively, Iggy was clearly nervous despite the stunning scenery around. 'I do not like this one bit. It only needs an axe-wielding murderer to appear for this to become an ideal setting for a slasher film. Everyone knows that the pretty blonde always dies first.'
     Seraphina gushed her appreciation over his concerns for her well-being, petting his arm fondly as she would a puppy—until he informed her that he had meant himself, but that she could be the second victim.
     'Or the token black character,' Xavier Valentine murmured from the outskirts. 'You'll not forget me so soon when I'm using each of your bodies as a shield.'
     'I'm the only female around for miles, surrounded by gorgeous boys and viable victims—except you, Jeremiah; you're neither gorgeous nor memorable, so you'll likely only survive long enough to annoy me into killing you,' she declared. 'Everyone also knows that horrors are one of the few spaces where lovely ladies can thrive unchallenged as scream queens. I'd be the last survivor. The Final Girl.'
     'We shouldn't put our stuff on that slant in the grass because it's much too close to the trees,' said Jeremy, clearly just to challenge and undermine Seraphina. 'Who knows what'll be in there come nightfall?'
     'You should take a look around them for your guts,' she responded as she dragged the crate of alcohol up the slope to overrule him, all the while muttering unfavourably about his repugnance and pompousness. To quench the flames of his rebellion, Seraphina gestured to the more laddish lads who were each following her orders. 'I'm putting them in the shade—for now—to keep them cool, you godawful cretin.'
     'Has nobody thought to mention to Strudwick that defying Seraphina is extremely dangerous? You ought to know this by now after all this time, Jer. Haven't you heard what happened to Rodger Roberts? Of course, you haven't—nobody has heard from him at all ever since he refused to sing in Cabaret after the backside of his costume tore,' said Vincent the Raven, watching the bickering from afar with his arms crossed and fingers tucked underneath his chin. 'If you keep poking at her, she'll have no qualms with stringing you up and crucifying you like her Sally Bowles did to Rodger Roberts' Cliff Bradshaw at the end of the play.'
     The snake shrugged its eyebrows to show its unconcern, though it eyed the siamese cat warily. Rather than to prod the feline any further, it looked towards Quinn, the hedgehog busy putting Fleetwood Mac on the radio, and hissed, 'Quinn, can I ask you something?'
     The hedgehog opened its arms wide to display his openness. 'Ye may.'
     'I've often wondered if there are any prosperous families in Ireland. I—' Jeremy suddenly sighed and chuckled, instantly registering his folly. 'Oh, what am I doing? How stupid of me to ask you! I've only just realised why I've never done so in the first place: I highly doubt a Colleger would know of any. I just realised that if there were, they'd probably owe any aristocratic mannerisms they have to the English, too.'
     'Aristocratic mannerisms?' Ciarán murmured thoughtfully. 'Is that why all you posh twats talk like you're about to ... la petite mort, as the French say, inside your trousers any minute now? Go take a long walk off a very short cliff, ye gobshite—'
     'YOU!' Seraphina shouted, splitting a gobsmacked Quinn's response and stabbing her finger at Jeremy. 'Get very far away from me and collect firewood—right now!'
     'That's not fair! Why do I have to do all the gruelling tasks?' Strudwick whined. 'It ought to be Frankie for his tardiness, which was clearly a desperate act to remain the main thing everyone talks about. I—'
     'GO!' She glared at him fearsomely until he wandered off—scowling, stamping, kicking stones, and sniffling as he went. She raised her middle finger at the back of his head.
     'As if getting into Eton with a scholarship—solely off the back of one's own merit, bear in mind—and being made one of the few King's Scholars is anything to be looked down upon,' Charlie blurted, having bit his tongue long enough. 'Tell me, Strudwick, when have you ever had to work for anything in your life—'
     To prevent him from drawing Strudwick's attention, Frankie quickly dragged Charlie away by the elbow. 'Help me fill these coolers with ice, won't you?'
     'Oh! He's such a nasty piece of work! If he says one more disparaging remark, I swear I'll thump the snivelling sack of mucus!' Charlie seethed, stomping behind Carrozza towards the abandoned belongings. 'Mind you, if he says anything at all, be it but a recipe, I think I'll still want to smack him one. The snake costume, who though of that? It's bloody perfect!'
     'I feared you'd all feel more strongly affected by his presence than we are,' said Frankie. 'I suppose when Jeremy's malaise, his affluenza, has him uttering ill-mannered and unfiltered comments, we just refuse to take the bait—not due to some supreme hold he has over us, but genuinely because we quite frankly just don't give a toss what he says or thinks. That, as you could only imagine, if you think about it, is a sadder affair: to hold an unheard opinion.'
     'I think you're used to people like that.'
     'I'd be the first to admit that has an air of Trevor Hamilton about him—except he is utterly useless in social situations and he doesn't know any better,' Frankie grunted, rolling up his sleeves. 'Yes, he often does put me in mind of that old friend of mine, just as—if not more so—loathsome.'
     'If that's truly how you feel about him, then why is he here?' Charlie's anger slammed ice into the bucket, causing for several cubes to bounce back out and knock off his forehead. 'What's the point of him?'
     'I have my reasons. All of my friends have their uses, Charlie.' He wrapped a fist around a bottle of wine and plunged it into the ice to bury it. Grimacing from the cold, he added, 'Keep your friends close, old fellow, and the friends of your enemy's even closer.'
     'Right.' Clenching tight to the handles of the cooler until it creaked, Charlie wondered what his own purpose was. 'Have I told you yet that I think you're a very peculiar boy sometimes?'
     'Your eyes have. And there's no need for you to come to fisticuffs with Strudwick; not only is Seraphina here by right for her unparalleled and inexhaustible spirit and to accompany you to make you feel more comfortable, but also to keep Jeremy in line.' He lifted two coolers until veins sprouted down his arms like blue snakes sliding underneath sand. 'If he nudges a single toe out of it, it'll be Rose who'll throw the first punch. She's done it before.'
     'She won't think too kindly of being here as Strudwick's babysitter.' He frowned.
     'Not mainly. Never mainly, of course. It is only an additional benefit to her effectual presence, hardly the prime reason she's here; she has much more worth than that to give—more than most, in fact.' Frankie jerked his head to signal for them to return back to the others. 'But if you don't know that by now, you'll learn it soon enough—especially once you've heard her sing and seen her dance. It won't be forced upon her at all because I know it'll happen naturally—she's fiercely overprotective, impossibly so. However, if she ever came to learn that this was an element in her that I relied upon to keep the peace, she'll be the first to throw a swing at me and all, too.'
     'You're safe with me,' Chance promised.
     'As are you with me.'
     Am I? Charlie wondered as he followed him back to camp. Frankie Carrozza is dangerous, they promised, as dangerous as a boy could be.
     By the time all of the tents had been pitched, the afternoon had already started to bleed dusky colours.
     'Will we start the barbecue now, or hold off until later?' Bucks asked, glancing to the bundle of unlit branches in the middle of a circle of stones and an even wider circle of bodies and tents. Nearby the clump collected for the bonfire that was to be lit later that night was another bountiful bunch of back-up firewood that Seraphina demanded Strudwick gathered, even though they'd more than enough, just to get him out of her sight and to increase his workload.
     'Eating is cheating,' Iggy called as he joined Rose to sit and drink rosé wine on a small knoll that rose from the ground, a hump no larger than a motorcycle. When he took his seat on the grassy hunch, his eyes followed Jeremy Strudwick, the only member of the entourage on his feet, who was walking around impatiently with his hands stuffed into his pockets and looking around the campsite as if he was checking the diagnostics of a tractor engine. When Jeremy crossed to Iggy and Seraphina and took the spliff from her fingers, she lit four multicoloured cigarettes in her mouth all at once and handed one each to Perkins and Chance and Carrozza. 'Oh, do sit down, Jeremiah,' said Iggy. 'You're making everyone here feel uncomfortable, dandering about like a farmer trying to account for his missing sheep. Actually, you might as well stand, as making people feel uncomfortable seems to just exude from you.'
     'The trouble with smoking this'—Jeremy looked to the spliff in his hands, smoke snaking from his wide, snake-like slits for nostrils—'is that it leaves one as dreadfully ravenous as it does randy. Isn't that the bitch, Perkins?'
     'Yes, it just makes me want to crawl into a ditch and die,' Iggy replied sarcastically, looking away from the boy as though he'd just swallowed something sour.
     'It's a good thing we've got these two lasses to entertain us, isn't it, lads?' Jeremy laughed, but not a single friend even so much as sniggered. Bucks tutted.
     'I'd sooner kick your teeth so far down your throat that you'll have to bend over to smile,' Seraphina replied mundanely, waving her pastille cigarette around to coil smoke.
     Scowling bitterly at the chuckling boys, Strudwick ignored her and bent forward to look between Iggy's legs. 'I mean, pray tell, Perkins, what do you have down there: a sausage or a cabbage? Icky, icky Iggy, swallows like a piggy—' Having turned away to regard his silent, glaring, or uncomfortably coughing audience, Jeremy suddenly shrieked loudly like a pig pushed to slaughter and leapt an astonishing distance away when Seraphina reached out to burn the boy on the nape of his neck with the stub of her cigarette as coolly and as casually as she would swatting away a fly.
     'You asked for that!' Iggy scolded, as if he ought to have known better. 'Turning your back on her is a fool's folly, don't you know?'
     Eyes bulging with rage, Strudwick glared at her and rubbed furiously at his neck. He looked like he was about to consider saying something, but she stared him down with her head held high like a queen daringly until he thought better of it. Satisfied, the she-wolf recoiled like a scorpion. Instead, Strudwick sat down sulkily to wash his stinging neck with water and scowl at all those laughing heartily.
    'You didn't need to do that.' Iggy smiled. 'It isn't as though that little dirty ghoul could ever tell the difference between the anatomical cuisine due to his lack of experience—I mean to say, to ever discover the distinction between sausages and cabbages. I enjoyed seeing him squirm, nonetheless.'
     'Well, darling, you know what Marilyn Monroe sang: "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".' Seraphina linked her arm with Iggy's and narrowed her eyes venomously at Jeremy. 'He should be grateful that it was a cigarette end that I burned him with and not the bonfire.'
     'I bet to differ!' Jeremy retorted.
     'Then beg!' Seraphina seethed.
     The afternoon quickly leapt into evening once the party endeavoured to get very, very drunk on the intoxicants they'd brought. The alcohol weighed down the plastic table nearby—almost one hundred bottles and tins. The glass encasements of the gin, vodka, cider, champagne, beer, Prosecco, rum, whiskey, tequila, red wine, and brandy glowed prettily in the twilight, radiating fuchsia, vermillion, violet, amber, emerald, and indigo hues to blend together iridescently in the gloom like a dusty stained-glass window. Watching them sparkle glaringly from close by, they put Charlie in mind of complex scientific apparatuses, glittery chemical substances, and dazzling potions brewed for witchcraft. When dusk truly settled in, all black and orange like Halloween to make sharp shapes out of the silhouettes of the trees, the last remnants of the day trickling over them, Frankie and Seraphina ordered them all to swallow a mouthful of tequila to kill the lazy, drowsy, and dazing tipsiness that only drinking during daytime brought forth, a surreal dizziness that felt somewhat like rousing with dreams still in the eyes. It rekindled them all, sparking them alive uproariously so that they may carry onwards into the night like stars unclouded.
     The friends of Francesco Carrozza were a gregarious, boisterous, joyous, and welcoming bunch of rambunctious boys. Charlie also noticed that all of them were attractive—and if they weren't fetching, then they at least had a distinctive and striking quality about them. They all differentiated from their neighbour and they were each branded with their own trope, which made him think of tarot cards, that formed them into what the school had known them as: the Nomad Lads (or the Mischief Men, sometimes). Francesco Carrozza was the Maverick Philosopher, the counterpart to Trevor Hamilton, who was reputedly known as the Misanthrope Thinker. Ciarán Quinn was the Rebel because he was from Ireland, a country currently rife with turbulent throes and devastating woes of a civil war. Bradley and Xavier Valentine were the Chessmen. Bradley, dressed as a rabbit, stood and swayed to tell alluring and lively stories, but Xavier, the hare, sat solemnly under the shadows, the fire bronzing the dark skin of his astonishingly immaculate and beautifully sharp features that made it difficult to pry his eyes from him; he was one of the most handsomest boys that Charlie had ever seen. The Valentine twins were called the Chessmen because where Xavier was as black as onyx, his brother Bradley was as fair as Ivory. Xavier very rarely spoke, as his brother talked enough for both of them, but when he did happen to utter something, it seemed his opinion was regarded as one of the highest. At times, when they all shouted over one another to be heard, voices growing louder and louder like building blocks being stacked, he would shift in his seat and all heads would turn and face him keenly to hear what he had to say—only for the boy to cough politely into a balled fist more often than not. Edmund Giles, a bespectacled, finely elfin, seemingly fragile boy with a sickly complexion, who was owlish and dressed like an owl, was the Aesthete. His skin was as pale and as withered as paper, lips as rose-red as the petals pressed between pages, youth pinching his nose and cheeks pink. He had a sketchpad on his lap throughout most of the day, often sketching whatever he considered the most captivating moments—be that the sun sliding behind the cliff-topped hill; the lads running through the field to relieve themselves behind bushes or the blackened edges of the forest; a hand dangling over a knee and clutching a can; or Bucks drinking a mad concoction of spirits from a wellington. When he fixed his sweater vest or buttoned his tweed shirt when his friends loosened it, he encompassed the archetype of a librarian glad to lose himself amidst the bookcases under his charge. Vincent Carlyle was the Raven due to his insightful knowledge of all undertakings of the Eton College staff and students. Those pale irises and blackest pupils spied everything near and everything farther afield, ruthless eyes that never twinkled under light, two dark pits that fell away into voids underneath the sharp point of a widow's peak; the rest of his strawberry blonde hair he constantly combed backwards across his head neatly with a black comb disguised as a switchblade. To Charlie, his frilled white shirt, black greatcoat, and baggy ashen-coloured knickerbockers made Vincent look as though he'd raided the costume racks in the backstage of a retelling of Dracula. Being the son of a magistrate and an undertaker made conversations with him rather poetic; he tended to derail them from mundane debates towards the more controversial topics. When he wasn't reciting quotes from Hemingway, discussing historical periods, or expanding his thoughts on the Classics, muffled behind his cigarette, he'd often ask thought-provoking and personal questions or express ideologies about the next great revolution. Overhearing decrypted comments half-muttered as a joke, Charlie learned that Vincent Carlyle had been procured from the ranks of Carrozza's oldest enemy—what this meant, he had no idea. Hugo Brooks-Humphrey was the Preacher, a blonde, portly, and cherry-cheeked boy who made Charlie think of Germany and dumplings.
     Sitting down alongside him on a log, Charlie asked the boar, 'Why do they call you the Preacher? Are you frightfully religious?'
     'My father is a vicar,' Hugo replied, tearing a juicy strip of bacon apart with his teeth. 'But maybe it's because I've a habit of scolding the boys when they get too carried away, or maybe it's because I've made one too many biblical references about them as a joke. It all started when I compared Jeremiah Strudwick to Azazel when we discovered that he'd been snitching on us to the greatest foe, which is why he's been branded as the Snitch, so we'd forced him into being a turncoat like Carlyle. However, unlike Strudwick, Vincent announced his apostasy of our rivals and willingly joined our cause after he'd spent some time with Frankie on a science project and made a friend of him over their love for theatre and insurrections. After he'd heard the gospel of Francesco and admired his proclivity for rebellion, Carlyle switched to our brigade by choice because he preferred our ideology and leader. To show his loyalty to our cause, Vincent gladly disclosed all of the intel he had on Frankie's nemesis.'
     'So, that is why Strudwick is his "friend": he wormed his way in to spy on you all, and when exposed, you flipped him and made him a double agent. But Carlyle thought you all made for a better friendship and that's what formed his decision,' Charlie whispered, stealing a look at Strudwick as he leaned closer towards Hugo to conceal their cloak-and-dagger discussion. He raised his eyebrows and took a frothy sip of cider, too tipsy to realise that normal people don't have a nemesis. When it dawned on him, he looked to Hugo incredulously. 'What sort of person has an arch-enemy outside of a comic book? Who is Frankie's nemesis?'
     'Trevor Hamilton, of course. His worst enemy—and greatest friend, once upon a time.'
     'Oh right!' Charlie gasped, shocked by the revelation that the two boys were at war and Eton was the battleground. When he'd composed himself so as not to startle the others, he quietly added, 'But if what I hear of Hamilton is true, then he enjoys stagecraft and revolts?'
     'Yes, but Frankie was uncommonly kinder to Vincent and took an interest in his life outside of Eton like a friend would,' Hugo confessed. 'Carlyle had a sickly brother. When Frankie heard about this, he caused enough mayhem to postpone lessons for a few days so that Vincent could go and visit him in hospital.'
     Charlie smiled down at his hands and then looked through the campfire at Francesco Carrozza opposite, enthusiastically spearing his arms through the night as he retold a comical rowing story to Xavier and Bradley. When their eyes met as he turned to take a sip from his can, Frankie smirked and winked. The slither of a story endeared Carrozza, to a point that Charlie considered him a great person to just sit and admire from afar—something besides his curls and his scent, something beyond his penchant for rascality.
     'Strudwick,' Hugo continued, then took a long drink of his sherry, 'regretfully, has since proven himself to be a valuable asset and Carlyle has since been vetted to prove his allegiance. Mind you, I still think that slippery snake is as rat-like as his features.'
     'Monikered as the Preacher all because you're the vicar's son who makes religious juxtapositions.' Charlie grinned. 'I'd imagine it's a force of habit from your upbringing at this stage, no? What—what evangelical thing would you say about Frankie?'
     'Frankie Carrozza is like Saint Michael the Archangel and Gabriel—a divine leader, both blessed and cursed by humanity's need for him, and damned by his battles,' Hugo murmured pensively, scanning their surroundings to ensure of no eavesdropping. 'On a pilgrimage in Rome, I spoke with a man who declared that there were secret scriptures hidden in the Vatican and it is in them where it is whispered that they, too, had briefly been tempted to fall from grace.'
     A sullen fox sat in the corner, its gloved paws dangling over its knees. Still, stern, and solemn, Rupert Emmerich, the Effigy, hardly moved—except to fix the foxy ears sewn into the peak of his newsboy cap, to raise a glass to his painted mouth, or to sweep a hand through a thick mop of chestnut-coloured hair to tousle it untidily and keep it from his forlorn eyes. Despite having whiskers and orange and white paint on his cheeks, he still managed to resemble the decorous schoolboy all-year-round—dressed smartly in a blazer, shirt, and tie—but unlike the sylphlike Edmund Giles, he was unconcerned with dishevelment and stains. At times, Charlie felt his suspicious gaze fall on him, but when he looked, Rupert was preoccupied with using his tail to swat away midges or lighting a cigarette. Although he might have imagined it—or romanticised him, almost—there appeared to be a glumness to those thieving eyes, so rueful that it only enhanced the endearing comeliness of the rest of his otherwise expressionless, stony features. It was something in his complexion—the colour of wood behind bark, but the cheeks flushed red from rum and mirth—like the sad shame of a child whose parent had disappointed them. Much like Xavier Valentine, Rupert did little to contribute, stealing long spells of poignant silences to himself. It was well over thirty minutes since he'd said, 'Strudwick, if I hear you mention a Rothschild one more time, I swear, even if you develop a lisp later in life and talk affectionately about your friend Ross' child, I am going to dissolve you in acid.'
     Cedric Bucks Buckley, the Protector, informed Charlie that he was Frankie's longest Etonian friend. Fixing the antlers attached to his ginger head to finish his stag costume, he told him that they'd forged their bond upon their first week of lessons together after Bucks had been an advocate of Carrozza's honour, declaring his guiltlessness in a case of mischief in his defence. Despite being threatened with canes and lines, Bucks remained adamant that it wasn't Carrozza who'd dyed all of the cats in a variety of colours and that the terracotta-coloured marks on his hands was from washing off an obscene mural graffitied into the wall on behalf of the college. Words were not the ruby giant's forte; they did not spill out of him carelessly or superfluously—he was a boy of few locutions and many grunts. His thoughts were simple, to the point, never coupled with agenda. By the edge of the wildwood, he would glance at Charlie as he spoke, regarding him with a look that some would suspect to be a cold stare; however, delivered by Cedric Buckley, it appeared he scowled at everything as though he'd poor eyesight or was daring the world, which was why his nose was slightly crooked and why he'd been barred from many pubs due to accidental fights over accidental glares. He was stony in feature, build, and attitude, as was the nature of his clenched ruddy jaws—locked into place as though hardened to brace the cold, so that his abrupt and drunken outbursts of camaraderie, laughter, and fondness was startling and required some getting used to. Yet, a charm would emit from his direct approach. And when he smiled, flirtation fleeted in his eyes when invoked, as though his personality lay sleeping within that brawny, rocky physique until such episodes summoned it awake like magic.
North Jones, the suedehead dressed as a swallow and wearing an aviator coat, stumbled to his feet and set three wellingtons full of alcohol in the middle. Jones, who rarely kept his feet on the ground and was usually off galavanting in other countries, was the Compass. After he'd witnessed the dismissive wave of North's hand when Frankie asked what he was doing, Charlie deduced that Jones was the least compelled by Carrozza out of all the boys—given wings by adventure, the fascination and friendship with Frankie tethered him only momentarily from time to time on this land.
     'The prodigal daughter has returned to us!' Looking excitedly at Frankie, Jones gestured to Seraphina with his bottle. 'This occasion needs to be marked, mate. And we've two newcomers to christen, so I've took the liberty of preparing the ritual ahead of you! Get up!'
     'Up! Up! Up!' chanted the crowd.
     Laughing and shaking his head, Frankie stood and Jones sat down to give him the floor. His audience writhed with excitement as they watched the boy rove around the campfire, stirring them all passionately.
     'Are we all in agreement then?' Frankie shouted, lifting his fist into the air and staring at them all in the face as he circled. 'All those in favour, say "aye"!'
     'AYE!' cried them all.
     'Tonight is a sad affair: the Nomad Lads/the Mischief Men are disbanding,' Frankie announced as he lifted the wellingtons. He crossed to Charlie, set it as his feet, and knelt before him. 'But it is also a happy one. The Nomad Lads and the Mischief Men will die so that another can live. To Charlie Chance, the Scholar.'
     'THE SCHOLAR!' roared the others, raising their drinks.
     Frankie offered the green wellington and Charlie instantly understood. Wincing, he raised it to his mouth and drained the lot until the spirits burned through his oesophagus. When he'd finished, he coughed out the terrible aftertaste and wiped his chin as the others cheered and applauded. Frankie grinned and nodded proudly, before he sidestepped away from him on his knees.
     He set another wellington down before Iggy, then said, 'To Iggy Perkins, the Trouper.'
     'THE TROUPER!' bellowed the others.
     Iggy pointed at the wellington cocktail in his hand. 'What's in this?'
     'Only a little bit of all the alcohol we took with us,' Frankie assured.
     'And the blood and body of Carrozza, which will be given up for you!' Hugo called.
     Iggy bravely drank down the cocktail, retched once, swallowed it again, and then shuddered violently, causing for the watchers to explode with roars of admiration and laughter. Frankie stood, patted Iggy's head, and then crossed back to Seraphina.
     'Sorry, Cuz, but you'll need to do it again.' Frankie smiled apologetically as he handed her the wellington. 'To Seraphina Rose, the Bohemian Jeweller has returned!'
     Seraphina downed it as easily as she would a glass of water and then wiped her smudged lipstick with a thumb rather nonchalantly. When she became dismayed and shook her empty glass, three of them raced to refill it.
     'THE BOHEMIAN JEWELLER,' echoed their friends, 'HAS RETURNED! HAS RETURNED!'
     'We may be putting to bed the Nomad Lads and the Mischief Men, but this will be a final year of many ends despite our wishes.' Frankie span around and stood to address them all. 'In the ashes, the phoenix is reborn as something similar and something anew. Now that two more boys have joined and a girl has come back to us again, this trifecta merges with us tonight to reform as the Dastardly Dozen!'
     'THE DASTARDLY DOZEN!' they all approved.
     Perplexed by the math, Charlie whispered to Hugo, 'But there are more than twelve of us?'
     'The Valentine twins are counted as one,' he confided. 'And Jeremy Strudwick has never been included as a member in our brotherhood; he was only given an honorary title by us to always openly acknowledge and blatantly vilify him for his unpleasant beginnings. Believing it is Vincent Carlyle who has been excluded from the numbers, Jeremy Strudwick remains blissfully unaware of it all, so mum's the word!'
     The boys' admiration was divided between both heirs of the Rose, Charlie observed. Frankie made them laugh riotously as he encouraged revisits to old memories of past endeavours, tricks, and orchestrated schemes from yesteryears, imploring them to concoct more for all their tomorrows left yet to come. He leapt around the fire to act them all out, hurling enlarged shadows against the trees that cascaded down their amber-lit faces, gleaming teeth and glinting eyes spilling adoration for his debonair spirit as he twirled around the flames and galvanising their mischievous souls and played a few melodies on his ocarina at whim. He seemed to burn brighter, hotter, larger than the firelight, so at times it seemed it was difficult to determine which caused which to draw the bigger shadow—Frankie or the flame? As the artful and triumphant Carrozza danced and howled, his drunk and mirthful Lost Boys mimicked him gleefully and menacingly as their leader spurred their camaraderie. Seraphina Rose, charming, corruptive, and captivating, nurtured their awing hearts by promising that his tales were told true—that Eton was only one island and their existed another beyond it, one where they would be immortal and their ageing youth everlasting. It could be theirs, she swore, if they were only daring enough for the adventures amidst the starry skies towards it. However, she mournfully proclaimed that not all would make the perilous journey intact, that not all would reach it, as many would be ossified beyond these Etonian bounds that held them now. Their summers will only end if they lose the power to worship it.
Charlie took the spliff being passed around and sucked in the taste of meat, smoke, and popcorn. As they howled at the moon, they became animalistic characters in a storybook, a parable about a motley menagerie of a pride kinged and by a lion and queened by a siamese cat; the intellectual owl ruffled its feathers and hooted intently at the night; the raven shook its jet-black dapper plumage like a wet mantle and squawked tyrannically at the council; the mute hare stamped its feet alongside its louder brother, the rabbit; the snake hissed and slithered insidiously amongst them to note the convergence of them all; the boar snorted and puffed and pawed the grass with its hooves, stirred with inspiration as the lion sermonised an uproar to the parish of its own revelrous religion; the handsome and dispirited fox watched from the shadows, sly and cunning and bidding its time to speak to the animal kingdom over matters of grave concern; the strong stag with fiery fur trampled nettles beneath its hooves intimidatingly, thrusting out a chest swelling dangerously with proudness; the swallow looked on from the edge, wings folded together as it leant against a tree and smiled complacently; and the insurgent hedgehog sniffed amongst them, its quills bristling as it suspected its predators would soon turn upon it once court dissembled. Creeping through the trees timidly in its waddling gait to unite with the rallying congregation of creatures, the little red panda cub strayed beyond the fire, With scrupulous eyes, the critter watched them all as it pawed its long shaggy reddish-brown tail to comfort itself, feeling cousins to the fox, which sniffed and lifted its head and spied him from the gloom with gloomier eyes. By the red panda's side, its friend, the unicorn, hurried alongside, jubilant and erratic and swaying its lissom body in answer to the battle-cry roars, snorts, hoots, bays, squawks, and snarls that summonsed them forth, having in turn been summoned by the royal lion. From the depths of the forest, a hounding wolf howled to the pack of an enemy rival in the trees. And as the menagerie cried in union to hail him, Charlie witnessed their undying loyalty to him, their king of the beasts. They would never leave him. They would never forsake him. Not even in his darkest hour. They loved him as they did their own mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their own sons yet to come. They would run away now into the woods, wild and free, to become a band of runaway boys if he only commanded it. These renegades, rebels, outlaws, mutineers, and pioneers of mischief saw only glory in their leader's reverie. Their devotion, their faith, their adoration, their allegiance were his, and he need only accept the captaincy.
     A blanket of darkness tucked them in lovingly as night came on, but Charlie remained safe in the amber hue casted by the bonfire, flames swimming in his irises. As his drunken eyes slowly looked towards a crate of fireworks that they planned to light close to midnight to give Halloween a worthy send-off, he crammed a slice of cold bacon into his mouth to sober himself up a bit so that he could keep up with the others.
     'This is a true story, mind you. On the night of his school prom, there was a boy who died in very tragic circumstances: as he drove his friends to an after-party on Lovers' Cliff, the car was fatefully struck with lightning and panic behind the wheel upended them,' Seraphina said softly, her deep drawl and wide eyes drawing them closer around the campfire. 'The car careened towards the recently abandoned high school, crashed through the window, and plunged into the swimming pool. The other passengers smashed their way free to safety, but poor Barry, our prom king, screamed fearfully once he realised that his seatbelt was jammed and the door had been bent in, crushing his leg.' Seraphina paused for affect, quickly glancing around to ensure that all were listening intently with bated breath. 'When they were joined by their friends in the other cars, they all leapt into the pool to try and save him, but their efforts were fruitless as his polyester bindings shackled him to his fate. Scared of getting wedged with the car and drowning, too, and of the criminal repercussions of his death, sadly, it took only a few to convince them all that they should leave him to his unpreventable demise as the police sirens approached.' Seraphina drew in deep from the spliff in her hands, eyes wavering drunkenly as she shrugged her shoulders pityingly. 'Only Marcie, his prom queen, remained behind. When she returned from swimming to the surface for air, she discovered the car overturned and the smashed window pressed against the bottom of the pool. She hammered her palm and foot helplessly against the glass on his side, but she might as well have been blowing air into the wind. Accepting defeat, she was forced to watch him slowly die, their hands pressed together and separated by glass as she screamed his name until bubbles almost choked her and he slipped away dreamily into the eternal sleep.'
     'A boy tragically drowns in a school swimming pool?' Vincent Carlyle snorted. 'Accidents aren't very scary—except in the case of Hugo Brooks-Humphrey, who has been the scariest accident I've seen yet.'
     'Oi!'
     'That is only the beginning of their troubles.' Seraphina raised her eyebrows to silence them as she passed the spliff to Rupert. 'On the anniversary of that terrible night, all of that sweet boy's friends gathered for a party to commemorate their dearly departed friend. Being the interloper that he was, Barry had befriended one of many cliques to bring together an unlikely motley crew of discontents and zealots—a cheerleader, a jock, a greaser, a drama student from the gothic subculture, a hippy, a nerd, and the prom queen. The more they swilled back drinks from Americana blue and red plastic cups, the more they spoke about what happened last year, each unable to truly confess the part they'd played, each unable to forgive themselves for leaving Barry to die, and each living their lives unpunished. Racked with guilt and drunken courage, they made a ouija board to contact him, but his replies were ... less than pleasant. With the help of the drama student practicing witchcraft, a dusty book on necromancy from the school library, and Barry's bloody letterman jacket as a totem, they summoned him back.'
     'Oh, please! So, just like that, all of these weirdos and popular kids thought, "Oh, I sort of killed my best mate! I'd best bring him back to life with the convent help of his hack witch here who suddenly has the power to raise the dead!"! What are you smoking?' Jeremy laughed dubiously. 'Mind you, the most unbelievable part of that story is that they would all intermingle in the first place.'
     'That is what you take away from a story about resurrection? That certain students wouldn't intermix out of the love for one focal connection between them? Look at us now: we're all here because of Frankie!' Seraphina snapped at him. 'If you don't zip it, Jeremy, you are going to need someone to summon you from the dead this time next year, and I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed finding someone who cares about you enough to do that.'
     'Well, according to you, Rose, it doesn't sound very difficult. I just need someone dressed like Morticia Addams to—' Jeremy begun, but the last of his words died off in his mouth once he diminished underneath her glare.
     'The spell was a success. Unfortunately, they'd resurrected Barry back into a body that was no longer capable of storing his spirit for very long. Dubious of their success, our motley crew returned to the cemetery later that night to pay their respects with a candlelight vigil and to confess their sins to his grave—only to find it dug up and the headstone cracked. Furious and vengeful, his corpse began to hunt down each of his old friends, determined to kill them and possess their fresher bodies for as long as it would allow him before his old dead soul started to cause it to rot, and to punish all those who'd abandoned him that night.' Seraphina took a long sip of wine, quickly raising her hand out to prevent them from speaking between the intermission. 'As Barry Lecher neared, those remaining friends started to turn on each other. Their deaths by his hand were arranged under who had left first or done him worse, causing for a ruthless few of them, when their time had come calling next, to offer him another body by killing off one of those involved. All of them were slaughtered and found in the most gruesome situations—their guts yanked out and spilling over railway tracks, legs swinging from trees and a barbed noose around their throats, necks snapped at the bottom of quarries, broken bodies spewed across the school corridors, or tongueless and drowned in the bogs.'
     Charlie felt a chill shudder up his spine like a train rumbling across rickety tracks as he imagined a withered hand tearing through the skin of his abdomen like jelly, cold fingers enclosing around his intestines, and the phantom tug as they spilled onto his lap. To combat it, he took a drink of brandy and shifted closer towards the fire so that his back wasn't so close to the shadowy woodlands whispering with wind behind him.
     'One last survivor remained: Marcie, the prom queen. Months passed, yet still she did not hear the signal of Barry Lecher's approach: that sinister message that all of her friends gone before her had heard the wail of before their end—one that swore of their death en route. You see, since they'd committed the unforgivable sin, since they'd upset the natural balance, they'd each been hexed. Day rose, night fell, and sleeplessly, our blonde cheerleader listened carefully throughout them all, keeping an eye on her appearance.'
     Charlie heard little more than the gentle wind tickling leaves and swaying the trees, the spit of the fire, the chilling cries of nearby foxes, and the soft scratching of lead sliding across the paper in Edmund's hand.
     'On homecoming night, one hour before midnight and the second anniversary of Barry Lecher's death, as our heroine was slipping into a dreamless sleep, lulled by the cicadas humming in the trees and her curtains rising and falling to the breeze's breath in through the open window, finally, that was when Marcie heard it: "HE IS COMING!" Her eyes sprung open. Utterly petrified, she slowly turned on her side. Trickles of pale pool lights shivering on the walls like moonlight, blonde hair and nightgown and bedsheets floating around her midriff as though the entire bedroom was submerged underwater, her terrified reflection sat up in the bed and stared back at her from the mirror in the corner of the room. "BARRY LECHER IS STANDING AT THE GATE!", her image screamed, barely heard over the sounds of her thumping heart. "BARRY'S HOBBLING UP THE GARDEN PATH!", it screeched, the pale face looking to the window as hair billowed around it ghostly as though Marcie was looking into a lake. A muffled shatter murmured throughout the house. "HE'S LURKING THROUGH THE KITCHEN!" She yanked the blankets up over her head and whispered prayers, but the drowning girl in the mirror screams, 'HE'S COMING UP THE STAIRS! HE'S CRAWLING DOWN THE HALLWAY!' Marcie hears it then: the sluggish movement, the gurgling moan, the sound of a rotting corpse being dragged across the carpet towards her. "BARRY IS STANDING AT THE EDGE OF YOUR BED!" Our cheerleading captain closed her eyes tight.'
     They blinked impatiently, each of them staring at her, waiting to hear what became of the cheerleader, but Seraphina remained quiet.
     'Well?' Hugo urged quietly, as though fearing Barry might just move from the bed and come between the trees. 'What happened to Marcie?'
     'Well, Hugo, I'm glad you asked. I can't speak for her soul, but I can tell you ... this body'—Seraphina rolled up her sleeves, casually slipping into an American accent—'is starting to ROT!' She lunged towards the boys, causing them to flinch away from her and toppling poor Hugo backwards off his fishing chair.
     'Based on true events, Seraphina?' Vincent muttered dubiously, an eyebrow cocked as he looked at the blazing end of a cigarette. 'Oh, come off it!'
     'It is so,' she swore adamantly, her conviction glowing in the firelight. 'I should know! Having met many fascinating characters on my marvellous adventures, that wasn't even the strangest story I have to tell. Maybe you'd have a fabulous lifestyle as half as colourful as mine if you had twice the lifetime, Carlyle.'
     'Well, according to you and that story, I could double my years by picking each of you off and wearing your skins,' Vincent responded. 'Aside from calling your urban legend Homecoming, I also don't think homecoming or proms in America fall on or around Halloween. Certainly not both, anyhow.'
     'Forgive me, that was my flare for pizazz!' Stretching her arms up above her head, a smiling Seraphina posed theatrically as if waiting for a billboard bordered with dazzling lights to slide into the backdrop behind her. 'Which I give to everything I say and do—even death, perhaps!'
     'If it was me who'd risen bitter from the dead, I certainly wouldn't be giving you lot a warning via your drowning reflections as a heads-up!' Vincent remarked, as if the occasion might yet arise and he was forewarning them. 'What exactly was the point of that?'
     'To instil fear so they'd suffer first, of course. We all recall your issues with the occult, Carlyle—for goodness' sake, you stopped believing in Father Christmas when you were seven because he didn't cure capitalism or bring you a bazooka to let you do it yourself.' Seraphina crossed her legs and scowled at him jokingly. 'Anyway, Frankie can vouch for me that supernatural elements exist. When we were in prep school as children, we once spent a weekend putting a spell on an unpleasant classmate that made her much nicer come Monday—though, mind you, we were hoping for alopecia. Then, of course'—she reached across to rest her hand on Frankie's knee—'that did eventually lead you into studying satanism just for the hell of it with that unspeakable fiend of ours, didn't it, darling?'
     When a banjo, fiddle, guitar, and violin were retrieved and ABBA songs were sung, Charlie's eyes rarely left Frankie's across the flame, their inquisitive and assuring nods and scrunched noses only interrupted by an apparition-like Seraphina dancing around the camp fire, her hands roving over her body comically and a wiggle to her hips. When the familiar little beast of desire slowly began to stir awake inside, Charlie took a long raw drink of brandy to put it into a stupor rather than stir it.
     'Oh, I take it you dodged a priest then?' Charlie overheard Bucks say to Quinn. 'And here I thought that that was a rite of passage in Ireland—to be fiddled by a father with a bit of the hows your father?'
     'If a Holy Joe touched me, he'd have gotten these holy hands.' Ciarán blew on his fists and imitated boxing. 'No, me first time was with a garl named Aoife from back home. He got it on wit' hor, too, when he came over for a visit, didn't ye, Frank?' Quinn winked across the camp fire at him. 'Not one bit'ta use to hor at all; I've had more pleasure from letting out a piss that I've been holdin' in for ages!'
     'Is nothing sacred between you two?' Seraphina asked as she twirled passed. 'Is there nothing you won't share?'
     'Not even underwear!' Quinn laughed.
     'Or Annabelle Twigg!' shouted Bradley.
     'And Alistair McCallister, too,' Hugo murmured under his breath.
     'Quinn, did you know that Edmund Spenser, an Elizabethan poet, was absolutely appalled by Irishmen? According to what he wrote, in the main, he believed that they were a bunch of lascivious deviants who offered themselves up freely to both men and women before his shocked gaze.' Vincent reclined on his chair and sucked in deep on a cigarette, a challenge in his eyes. 'In his work, he originally planned to properly subjugate Ireland and eliminate all of its peoples futile uprisings. Spenser said, "Ireland is a diseased portion of the State; it must first be cured and reformed before it could be in a position to appreciate the good sound laws and blessings of the nations". In A view of the Present State of Ireland, he continued to categorise the "evils" of the Irish people into three prominent categories: laws, customs, and religion. Spenser campaigned devoutly for the Irish language to be eradicated. In regards to if children were to learn Irish before English, he declared, "So that the speech being Irish, the heart must needs be Irish; for out of the abundance of the heart, the tongue speaks". He also pressed for the scorched earth policy in Ireland, making references to the crushing of the Second Desmond Rebellion owing its success to the destruction of crops and animals.'
     'Yeh, so?' Ciarán grunted, sniffing indignantly and spitting into the fire. 'What's yer point? He's just some nancy lad who wrote a poem called The Faerie Queene.'
     'Edmund Spenser recommended the complete extermination of the Irish race rather passionately.' Vincent stuck his tongue between his little sharp teeth and clapped a hand around Edmund Giles' shoulder. 'Don't you ever worry that our very own dear little Edmund here might share his namesake's beliefs?'
     'I—I don't!' Edmund spluttered quickly, fixing at his glasses that were shook askew. 'Honestly, Ciarán, I really don't!'
     'Ole Spenser might've wanted to burn the lot of us out of our homes, but it was him who got burnt out of Kilcolman Castle in the Nine Years War. See, we Irish don't fight fire with fire; we just fart on your own fire til it burns brighter back at ye.' Ciarán took a swig of whiskey and spat into the flames, stinging them so that they grew monstrously for a moment and caused everyone to leap back. When they all started laughing instead of jumping to fisticuffs, Charlie was more confused than ever over their form of banter. 'You think I'd ever think that? Don't be an eejit, Ed.' Ciarán tittered. 'I bet if yer mam told ye that ye could teach a pup to swim by throwing it into a lough, ye'd chuck it out a window to teach it to fly an' all.'
     Someone began to play the tune to The Green Fields of France and, once again, Ciarán Quinn stood and opened his mouth and his country sang out of it. When the others were distracted by the Irishman moving on to a very drunken rendition of The Belle of Belfast City and Seraphina playing the part of the dancing belle, Charlie swiped a hand through his unruly comb-over and stepped over Iggy, who was vomiting profusely into a briar patch. Meandering around the gorse, bracken, and heather, he slipped away unnoticed as the rest of the platoon carried on singing and latching around elbows as spiritedly as an Indian tribe attempting a sacred chant to contact the spirit world. Once he'd finished relieving himself into the bushes, he felt two warm fingers touch the edge of his palm, the pressure confirming flesh. Flinching, Charlie turned around to see Frankie behind him, cloaked in shadow. Moonlight arcing down one side of the boy's face to reveal the curve of his nose and an emerald eye, the boy peeked through the night like a gap in a door pried slightly open. He put a finger to his lips to convince him to remain quiet. Behind him, instruments were strummed and the galvanised sang, throwing uninterrupted echoes into the smoky, starry dark. Like Charlie's, Frankie's cheeks were flushed with the night. Carrozza looked behind him towards the main merriment to ensure there would be no approacher or witness.
     'Come with me,' he whispered, 'up to Thor's Cave.'
     Frankie trailed fingers down Charlie's arm to interlink them with his paw, then, hand in hand, up and up and up the hill through the rushes and trees they went. Subduing laughter and dragging one another, Charlie followed like a traveller after the will-o'-the-wisp—into sanctuary or towards peril. His hand felt warm in his like holding a hot cup of tea, smoothness and heat flowing through his skin and tingling his fingers with something magical, as though the blood beneath his flesh thrashed with a violet response to splash onto him—suddenly, something so simple became so beautiful. From afar, he thought hand-holding looked mundane and elementary and he did not believe he missed out on it; however, that was before he experienced it, and he now realised that it was a gesture made to share an adoration for something that was precious and yours. To create a masterpiece, the writer picks up the pen, the painter lifts the brush, and the lover holds a hand.
     In the wildwood, there weren't very many trees at the bottom, but enough had sprouted to conceal them as they travelled deeper into the heart of it and then up towards the velvet night until Irish anthems, rebel songs, laughter, fiddles, flutes, and bagpipes rose up over the hillside in union and fell down the other side like lungs heaving a soft and ghostly sigh. A melodious wind quietly stirred the rustic spirit of the wild, as though some unspoken magic in the Irish ballads had called to its sleeping soul.
     'You're being awfully quiet,' Frankie noticed, unlinking their hands once they'd reached the top. Behind him, a short beaten track and overgrown stone steps led up into the dark tunnels of a cave that rose out of the peak and forest like a giant fin. 'What are you thinking on?'
     Charlie took a deep breath and looked towards the black oblivion clogging the cavern entrances instead, the grey stone almost purple with night. 'My mother always says, "Get out of those books, Charlie, and get outside. There's a whole world waiting out there for you that you've left undiscovered to retreat into another". I can't help but think of that now and wonder if this was what she'd meant, if this would make her proud—'
     'And what did you say back?' Frankie stepped closer. 'Anything?'
     'I once replied, "If I look at this book long enough, Mother, perhaps the pages will turn back into trees", and maybe they will, maybe they have.'
     The handsome, leonine boy looked towards the horizon and smirked. Once he'd finishing shaking his amused head, leaving motives unquestioned, he gripped both sides of Charlie's head and kissed him roughly. The passionate kiss pushed Charlie back until he stumbled awkwardly up the steps and slammed against the cave entrance. From this angle, moonlight slathered the insides of the cavern with lilac to turn it into a Byzantine cathedral. The full moon lay evenly between the ascending breasts of a mountain yonder, the sister summits climbing up into the dark and majestic midnight-blue horizon on the other side of the trees, where the evening star dangled between like a jewel necklace on the naked chest of an immense woman.
Frankie bore down upon him again from out of the dark. Charlie could see his face in the shafts of moonlight teaming through the arches: he looked drunk on rum and thirsty from desire. Steam rose from ghostly breaths scented with alcohol. Trapped between the cool draught, the closeness of their bodies, the rum, and the mission kept them warm. Frankie leaned down and started to kiss and suck and bite Charlie's neck like a ravenous vampire, forcing the boy to suppress a surprised gasp. As he feverishly rotated himself between his legs, his hand firmly held Charlie's side as though to stop him from running off across the hillside if he so happened to decide upon it. Charlie could feel him pressed directly against his own, fabrics between preventing true contact—they were the lands, their denim the seas between. A tongue poked between Frankie's canine teeth to shape a smile as they held each other at gunpoint. As Carrozza continued to kiss his neck, using a hand to push aside the collar of his jumper to get at his throat, he kindled Charlie's body and played his heart and carnal organs like a violin, excitement singing out of him in the strums of each touch.
     This won't be so serene and as dignified as it has nearly been before, Charlie quickly understood. It's much too aggressive, volatile, wolfish.
     Suddenly, he felt Frankie's hand down by his crotch, fumbling eagerly at his buttons, tugging so hard it lifted his back off the stone wall. Down below, he heard the gradual crescendo of their gaily friends howling with laughter and screaming from joy as they set off fireworks. Frankie had become enraptured by the excitement of having them so near, Charlie sensed. Something carnal had been awoke in him, stimulating something wild, ancient, and animalistic, something kindred to the transformation of the werewolf underneath the moon at its fullest. The Rose cousins shared the most abysmal facet with one another in their blood: the danger of living for the thrill of it all. Thousands of colours—tanzanite, peridot, amaranth, byantium, the colours of fire, a green as emerald as his excellent eyes—a whole spectrum exploded across the night sky to shatter it and reveal cracks of the celestial plane behind it, streaks dashing over the trees like a mermaid parade to paint the heavens into an opal gem, to scatter handfuls of golden aureoles that tangled in the branches like fairy lights above, and cascade hues amongst them until their skin was aglow. Unexpectedly, Charlie freed a struggling groan from deep within his throat once Frankie's keen hand wormed its way behind the band of his trousers, urgently snaking through the material of his underwear to flood his groin with warmth and grasp his primed, stiff member. His body responded with a pleasurable shudder almost immediately to answer Frankie's touch as he began, without hesitation, to pump his hand back and forth with tremendous precision, diligence, and speed. Charlie moaned, a whisper in the dark, as Frankie proceeded to devour his neck and throat. The lips would be the last thing touched again tonight. With Frankie's fist working quickly and determinedly inside his trousers, he had to grip his shoulders to keep his legs from giving out underneath him. The brief seconds that he caught sight of Carrozza's eyes, they looked fierce, primitive, aggressive, excitable, and somewhat scary, as though he'd been possessed by a vengeful and lustful spirit—so much so, that he was both enchanted and almost frightened by it. If a bystander was to come across them, Charlie could only assume that they'd think that the expression in his eyes was one of sorrow, grief, or pain; however, truly, it was a plead for absolution, the whimpering tongue in an oval mouth and the wincing blinks of utter pleasure. He could feel the familiar tingles trembling between his thighs and he knew what was about to come soon—or, rather, he thought, perhaps it was all the more suitable and sordid to say "who". Charlie was panting ardently now, groaning and moaning out a mellifluous gasp. This would not take very long—there was bravura in the pressure and swiftness of Carrozza's zealous fingers, an art to his tongue on his skin. His breathing was shallow and laborious during deflation, then heavy and harsh when inflated against Frankie's hair brushing against his chin as he busied himself with dragging his mouth across Charlie's Adam's apple. Burying his fingers and face into his crown, Charlie breathed in the vanilla-and-almond fragrance of Carrozza's shampoo that mingled with the mint in the pine trees around them and the scent of the coming winter frost whispering in the air. Charlie tried to say his name, but he couldn't get passed the first syllable; he could only sigh through the shivery tingles, rampant urges, and exhilarating gooseflesh that crept from his loins up through his ribs to the small of his back, where he felt the heat of Carrozza's clammy hand tugging hungrily on the flesh. His lashes fluttered, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and his lips parted and quivered. Fireworks detonated behind the other boy's silhouette to spill dazzlingly over the treetops, and he wondered, for a moment, if he was gazing upon a solidified visualization of his own elated soul. When Charlie's tongue touched his upper lip and the roof of his mouth, his head rolled back against the bark and one hand pressed against the nape of Frankie's neck to hold him close to his own and run his fingers through the limp curls of his hair to baptize himself in the waves of it, in the surf of him.
     'Frankie Carrozza, are you up there?' It was Cedric, searching through the foot of the trees below for them. 'Captain! Oh, Captain, where are you, my captain?'
     Charlie began to pant heavily, swallowing with difficulty. His grievances were light as he soared into another heavenly realm and far from earthly concerns. Frankie did not bother—or, rather, did not see the need—to stop. Instead, he quickened the haste of his hand; he was either unfazed or enticed by the perverse thrill brought on by being caught in an act of desire. He remained buried against Charlie's smaller build, snapping open buttons on his shirt so that some spilled down his chest, fondling further downwards with the other hand, pumping faster, kissing quicker like the famished vampire in a feeding frenzy. Something in it had produced the safe affect in Charlie, arousing and exciting him with the titillation and fear of being found in a moment of passion.
     'Fra—' he tried to whisper his warnings, but he was too far gone with euphoria. His legs felt weak and tender. The electrical prickling and stirring sensations were about to wash over him in an overload as powerful as a tsunami as his body bucked and writhed beyond his control.
Frankie, it seemed, was much too experienced with the procedure to not know what to do next. Immediately recognizing the symptoms, his other hand clamped firmly over Charlie's feverish mouth to muffle his soft groans, forcing his head back against the bark of the tree growing into the entrance, whilst the other one continued to rise up and down inside his trousers and underpants rapidly until they tumbled to his ankles and a breeze chilled the gap between his bare thighs. Literature often referred to it as "the sweet spot"—sugary, like cherries, vanilla, and raspberry jam. Both of Charlie's hands shot up and pressed hard against the back of Carrozza's hand covering his mouth. Once he felt a thumb give a fleeting brush along the top down below, the precision continued like a hard-working piston until, almost shockingly, Charlie's whole body exploded like a firework with maddening ecstasy. For a miniscule moment that felt stretched into a lifetime, the eruption vanquished his mind with an assault upon his senses, sending his conscience scattering into the ethereal evening and beyond it through interstellar to an astronomical plane where he watched galaxies die and supernovas and nebulas live. With his very soul fetched, for a second, Charlie Chance was no more; he was now a cosmic spirit soaring the wastelands of outer space. Once his psyche was sprung back into the cruel confinements that tethered him to earth, falling quickly and falling hard like one would if they'd stretched the tether between body and soul too far, his legs began to convulse violently as though struggling to contain him again. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, Charlie moaned, groaned, and very nearly screamed into the hot palm clamped over his mouth as his hips bucked back and forth off the stone wall, trembling and shimmying to the spasms in his thighs, powerful enough to near buckle his legs. With his toes curling inside his shoes, his seed ejaculated over the foxgloves, a silvery spurt under the moonlight. Fireworks flared across the sky as brightly as embers, spewing like dandelion seeds winnowed on a breath. They slowly descended like the armada of another race amongst the stars, dripping before the backdrop of an incandescent violet smear like iridescent lights from faraway worlds; in them, Charlie saw new colours and he saw his own.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, his body began to slowly settle and the writhing of his hips came to an end once he ceased vibrating and sensitivity depleted. His body felt numb, his legs feeble like jelly.
     He opened his eyes again.
     As Frankie slid the thumb into his mouth to taste him, he looked instantly exorcised of his devilish stare and all his devils, and offered that smirk that reddened his jaws with cheekiness. He wore an odd expression, one full of pride, as he bent down onto his hunkers and pulled Charlie's trousers up around his waist and buttoned them again. Lastly, he kissed him upon the lips.
     Gazing upon him with dreamy, languid languor, Charlie felt enthralled by his fervent sorcery, unable to disengage his eyes from his long eyelashes, his rouge cheeks, the sharp corner of his mouth that he frequently tugged into a mischievous grin. There was a completion of some sort on Charlie's behalf as they crossed the threshold and beheld one of the few true labours of pleasure, like a jigsaw piece fitting into place in the last slot. For there was no religious guilt, nor shame, or regret: only pure love. Unadulterated, undiluted, undefined, uncompromising, and undoubted, it swelled through him, much stronger than the electrical sensations that his body had just spurted from him mere moments ago. It was something all the more cardinal and all the more unforgiveable, struck through him as harrowingly and as revered as the piercing of an evangelical golden spear forged out of honey-coloured light that he'd once felt but only the poke of before—he absolutely felt the full penetration of it now as it burrowed through his heart like Cupid's arrow. It wasn't something allegorical that he'd felt, something as feeble as a thought, but something truly embodied that he could see in his mind: a seed planting, given no name, given no time to nurture, it instantly burst in his belly and washed through his bones, drenched his flesh, and soaked his nerves and organs with a flood made out of heavenly and gilded illumination. He licked along his lips, gathered his breath back in, and swallowed thoughtfully, still staring, as though hypnotised, back up at Frankie under the gleam of the moon amongst the blue that crowned him from behind, a sky bejewelled by curious stars that dangled down and leaned in from the welkin, carving monstrous shadows out of the demonic trees overhanging them both at the mouth of the shadow-choked cave. With love taking form in his heart, he could feel it currently reshaping it as it bulged and contorted to open new chambers for his blood to flow through it, too. Aeipathy was what he wholeheartedly felt in that moment—without the terror of it due to come—once Frankie had breathed life into him like oxygen to flame, like the lightning strike that had triggered Frankenstein's monster. For love isn't happiness: love is a treasure, and treasures can either become heirlooms or treasures can be lost and stolen.
When Frankie snuck back downhill to camp to find the fire burning low, the insatiable flame now thoroughly satisfied by the feast, and all of their friends already having retreated to their tents after one too many tequilas, he returned to the cave on top of the hill with a few bottles of cider, rising over the summit with a crimson blanket wrapped around his shoulder so that he resembled a Caesar in the quiet light of the coming dawn.
'That big tent down there, the one full of the lads, is humming like a beehive from all the drunken snores whirring out of them,' Frankie laughed, taking his seat beside Charlie on the steps at the entrance. 'I doubt Bucks is among them. Earlier, Seraphina was full of lascivious eyes when she'd asked him just how long he can hold his breath for, which is something she tends to ask every suitor before she takes them to bed.'
'How did you come to be so revered?' Charlie asked, somewhat offhandedly and brusquely, feeling compelled to ask the question after he'd been mulling it over all the while he was away. He imagined he could see a brief milky white-and-pink light seeping into the horizon, the true morn still a long way off. As he looked on in the silence that followed, the surf of it gradually drenched the tents that held Carrozza's portable kingdom and court like a coastline. 'Your name, it might as well be an evangelical word in Eton.'
'Now, that's a bit of an overstatement.'
'Is it? Frankie, they all fall at your feet like the palm branches thrown onto the road into Jerusalem for Jesus Christ! You're essentially Etonian royalty! They're—they're drawn to you just as they would be to the siren calling from the rocks to them on the decks—like a moth to the flame.'
'They are or we are? You make me sound like some sort of tyrannical dragon that has virginal maids pushed to the mouth of my cave as sacrificial offerings every other day so that I won't cause any more chaos! Mind you, I'm only half as ghastly.' He lit a cigarette, an eye squinting at the ghostly sunrise shimmering on the horizon ahead like the frothy offing. 'Do I've permission to speak frankly?'
'Permission granted—though, since when have you ever needed my consent to be frank, Frank.'
'Personally, I think ... I think that when very little is known about something, more often than not when it's something somewhat shiny, the topic evokes deep fascination—becomes a mystery, even. And mysteries are always sought after and exploited.' Frankie snorted smoke out of his nostrils and shrugged. 'I'm a bit of a mystery, that's all; and all mysteries eventually become myths. I've been turned into something beyond what I am because stories have been conjured by others to fill up the void I've left untold. Due to factors beyond my control, I'm also a little unordinary, and so many are so mesmerised by my oddness.'
'In what way are you unique, exactly?' Charlie had many answers for his own question, but he wanted to know the source that defined them all.
'Not unique; just unordinary. I'll tell you about it one day, maybe. But not today, because I like how you look at me today. If you knew, you wouldn't think I was so special, you wouldn't think this was all truly my own doing.' Frankie took a deep drag on his cigarette. He'd been focusing on the dark vista, but, at last, he stared at him and breathed out smoke. 'The Mortal Boy King, they call me. They think I'm honourable. They all think I'm worthy of being hero-worshipped like some Greek figure from the tragedies, some divine deity, some half-assed demigod, but if they only knew the terrible truth: if they only knew that my capricious nature that makes me ... interesting comes from a whim beyond my control. It's all false. Truthfully, I doubt I'd be where I am today if I wasn't a bit strange, a bit of a flirt, and if most of them didn't fancy me—well, those more inclined to take the other road home, too. If I told you the story of how I've come to be in this position, I doubt you'd believe me. The Frankie that you keep in your mind would be lost to you forever.'
'Honestly?'
'Honest!'
'Well, was omnipotence everything you ever dreamed of?' he teased, if only to lighten the mood. 'Was it worth it?'
'Sometimes,' Frankie replied, sounding somewhat weary, 'but all enchantments have their curse. Sometimes, I'm not so sure it was worth the price I paid with my very soul.'
Here, Charlie pleaded wistfully to the night. Lock me here, lose me here, leave me here. Let the weeds grow old and swift beneath me, coiling between my fingers, forearms, feet, and thighs, as fine as gossamer, but as strong as steel, so it may hold me here forever whenever my bones turn to stone. Coated in ivy and bramble, I'll become an effigy from the fields, a statue of the woodlands, a monument to the cave and stars, where we'd awakened our primal nature and returned to the wild. Silent and still, but happily ...
A silence fell over them, one as heavy as the cusp between dusk and dawn around them. When the tin can tumbled from Charlie's fingers, tinkling as it rolled down the steps, he felt guilty for having tarnished the natural beauty somewhat, but he needed to let it be known somehow, somewhere, and somewhat that he had once been here by leaving a mark—even if it only was an empty tin of apple cider, someday soon due to become crumpled, rusted, faded, and overgrown, tangled in grass and weeds.
'I love you, Frankie,' Charlie confessed.
He was thoughtful for a moment, then replied, 'You do, do you?'
'I do. At least, I think I do—no, I do.' Charlie shook his head and then nodded it again, which Carrozza found comical. It could've been the alcohol intake, influencing and reinforcing these feelings, fuelling them and burning them out of proportion, an inferno coaxed to blaze a bonfire as high as any firestorm out of his heart until desire became so heartfelt that he mistook it for love, but he was not too inebriated to realise that this feeling felt too refined, too divergent from anything else he had ever felt before in his little life; strangely, it was both strong and fragile, Herculean in emotion, a momentous rite that made him feel naked as he undressed his heart. 'I'm in love with you,' he whispered. The boy with the curls, who wouldn't love him?
'Good.'
'Good? Is that all you can say?'
'Well'—Frankie took a long sip from his tin and looked to the horizon—'now it's your turn to teach me.'
'What do you mean?' For a moment, Charlie thought he'd meant reciprocating the act; however, he'd intended on doing just that inside the cave, but Carrozza had gently taken his hand from his belt and explained that there was no need—that for him, there was also something in the giving that was for the taking.
'I know lust, Charlie.' Frankie took a long drag of his cigarette and an even longer swill of his cider. 'I do not know love.'
'You know something, that's actually obvious.' He smiled, recalling Frankie's sure touch becoming unusually shaky and uncertain when Charlie tried to coax it into being slightly less aggressive. 'I often wonder ... if you know how to be tender when seduction is no longer necessary.'
Somewhere in his faint and foggy memory, groggy from consumption, the boy was borne back to the moment when Seraphina Imogen Rose had whispered sweet nothings drunkenly into his ear as they stumbled out of taverns that they shouldn't have been in and walked the cobbles towards her hotel with bottles in hand. 'Never fall in love, Charlie Chance,' she'd slurred, waving her hand in the air before them as though she was casting a spell to make it certain, bundled in her mink pink fur coat and batting languid lashes. 'If you can help it, never ever fall in love. Make them love you and you will live forever. You see, that is the best trick of all. But if you love them, and only you them, they'll take pieces of you with them and scatter you across the globe. Wait, bide your time, hold off until you at least see their heart bleed first. Love is an awful, ghastly, and preposterous business—a fool's game. I warn all my boys and girls not to play it. I tell them that lust is simple: you can indulge in it until you've had your fill; you can kill it at a whim. But love, that little bitch of reason and season, will have you lay bare before another like never before—with all of your clothes still on. And once you get the taste, never can you have enough. Outdraw your paramour and pull the trigger first. Control yourself, take only what you need from them, then run. I pull that trick and trigger sometimes twice a day, darling.'
Frankie quickly kissed his forehead, then stood to leave their paradise, their lost kingdom.
As Carrozza slowly stepped down the steps, sensing his reluctance, Charlie pointed inside the cave and said, 'Don't. Can't we just stay up here a little while longer? Let's not leave just yet. Where's the harm in that? Do you want to sleep—'
'If I'd moved any slower, I thought I'd be asleep on my feet before you eventually asked.'
They ventured further inside the cave, a November dawn trickling in through the three entrances, and sat side by side against the stone wall with the blanket around their shoulders and heads roosting together like two starlings. And when they grew as still and as quiet as statues, their bodies did not part; they did not dare to.
This doesn't feel so damned; it feels quite heavenly, in fact, Charlie thought, before he fell from grace into slumber.