Stargirl of the Edge

Ch 64 - Third Revelation

Plot summary: Olivia's dad has been in captivity since 5 June, she has been on an emotional roller coaster, but now his fate is about to be revealed...

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Olivia stood up and screamed as loud as she could...
“Yesss! Yesssss! Yessssssss!” she shouted, screwing up her face and punching the air with her free hand, “Yes! Yes! Yesssss!” And then her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh Mum, I can’t believe it!” she cried, “I can’t believe it! When? When was it?”
Ben listened, still a little confused.
“This morning?  So what’s happening now?”
Ben looked at her, silently mouthing the words ‘Is he okay?’
She looked back at him and nodded.
A smile came over his face and nodded.
The phone call continued for what seemed like ages, her mum just didn’t shut up. Now Olivia was smiling too, and wiping away the tears.
“Early next week? Oh, okay, the embassy? Debriefing? What’s that? Well okay, whatever. Oh, Mum, I just can’t believe it’s true! I just can’t! He’s coming home. What? Okay, okay I’ll be back home soon, we’re still in Liverpool. We’re just having something to eat! Ben’s going to drive me back soon. Okay speak to you in a while. Oh I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it!”
“Oh, Livvy,” said Ben, itching to stand up and put his arms around her. He did and then they both hugged. He squeezed her tightly, what a relief it was to feel her in his arms, to smell her hair and feel the warmth of her body. She felt so small and light, he could feel her rib cage against his arms, and yet she was so strong, a true heroine. He wanted the hug to go on all evening but soon she let go of him and they sat down again.
“Oh my goodness Ben, I can’t quite believe this. Am I dreaming?!”
For most of the week, everything had been heavy, everything had weighed her down. Now she felt weightless, light-headed, as if she were on a cloud, floating in the air.  The waitress brought the main course, chicken and cashew nuts, and beef with black bean sauce.
“Oh my goodness, the food! Now I feel so hungry!”
She looked at the freshly prepared meal on the table. Food had never looked so yummy. But first she wanted to tell someone, she wanted to tell everyone.
“Hey!” she said to the waitress, “I’ve got good news!”
She reached into her bag for the crumpled newspaper article about her dad’s kidnapping. She had one in English and Chinese.  She gave the waitress the Chinese one.
“It’s me, see, that’s my photo! And my dad! He’s free! He’s coming home. I’ve just received the news!”
The waitress looked at the article, then at Olivia, then excitedly covered her face with both hands and said in Cantonese...
“Congratulations!”
She ran over to the other waitresses, and passed on the news. Each one in turn read the article and covered her face excitedly with both hands before passing it on to the next one. This was probably the most exciting thing that had happened in the restaurant for some time.
The last one passed it on to the owner, who stood behind the counter wearing a grey suit and tie, an older man, with an inscrutable face.  He read the article, smiled, nodded and handed it back to the first waitress.
“He’s free, my dad’s free! He’s coming home! Next week!”
She felt hungry and started to tuck into the food but there was no room! She had become so used to eating small portions of food. Grabbing the serving dish, Ben poured Olivia’s share of the chicken and beef onto her plate, and the rest onto his, then he shovelled the rest of the fried rice onto both plates, before attacking the food with a knife and fork.
“Hey, weren’t you going to show me something on your phone?” he said, between mouthfuls.
Olivia tapped on the screen and gave it to him. He looked with astonishment and began to swipe the screen to go from one picture to the next.
“Wow, did you do these?”
She nodded.
“They’re amazing! Wow, these landscapes, kind of Chinese, and yet, not Chinese, they’re fab. And these ones of the sky at night?”
“Starscapes, white on black, mixed media. Enlarge it!”
He pinched on the screen with his finger and thumb, and scrolled around the image, looking at details before zooming out again.
“What are these? They’re a bit weird. I don’t know how to describe it, like a car accident or something. Is that meant to be a bullet hole?”
“Oh, don’t bother with those, keep going.”
“Wow, who’s this?” he asked, showing her the screen, “Looks like a woman, from ancient times. Ancient costume. So who’s she then?”
“Oh, her? She’s… a friend. She helped me.”
“Wow, that costume, and look at the eyes, they kind of glow, and there’s like… a halo around her. What do you mean, she’s a friend?”
“She’s a special friend, like, I met her in the woods, on the Edge. She helped me. She’s my guide, my companion, my sister.”
Ben was lost for words, looking first at her and at the figure on the tiny screen.
“Hold on a minute! You met a… spirit? In the woods?”
“No, no, not a spirit. She’s not real… She’s in my imagination. You don’t think I believe in spirits do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” said Ben.
“I was all stressed out. I needed someone to tell me everything was going to be fine. She said I was going to be a star student and what she said has come true.”
“I don’t understand, you met this person?”
“No, not in the physical sense… Ben, I have a hyper imagination, I can dream while I’m awake. It’s a kind of a syndrome, some people have it. Some writers have it, but I’m dyslexic, I find it difficult to write, so I tell my stories through pictures. Sometimes I go into a trance, It’s so real and I can’t tell fantasy and reality apart. Sometimes I swoon and faint. I’ve never told anyone, apart from you.”
“So this woman? She’s not real?”
“No, she’s not real but, actually, she is real. She really exists, I can’t explain it!”
“Sounds really weird, like, mad!”
“Yes, I suppose it is a bit mad, but I’m an artist, all artists are a bit mad.”
Ben continued to scroll back through Olivia’s paintings and drawings.
“Hold on a minute, this isn’t by you is it?”
He turned the iPhone and showed Olivia.
“Oh, that’s the book. My friend, the princess form Ancient China, she asked for it so I went to the library with my mum, but they wouldn’t let me take it out, so I made a copy. I took it to her but it was the wrong one.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Sutra of Jiang Wei”
“Sutra?!” said Ben, wide-eyed and grinning.
“Not that sort of sutra!” said Olivia, starting to giggle. “A sutra,” she started to explain, “is a book of verses or aphorisms…”
She wanted to tell him about how she had discovered a supernova, but Ben had already moved on to some more of her pictures.
“I love this one with the lake and the trees. And the stars in the sky. What’s this? A Chinese ship, flying in space? I love those dinosaurs! And what’s that? A space station? An undersea creature? A volcano? Livvy, what an imagination you’ve got! And this one, it’s the woman again, she looks like she’s glowing, transparent. It’s amazing.”
“Ben, I’m not the only person with powers of vision, there are others. There was an artist from Europe. Sulamith Wülfing. She said she met goblins in the woods and she drew them in her art. It’s kind of like that. They’re not real, and yet they are real. In our imagination, in literature, things can be real. Have you ever seen people hypnotised? They can actually see things, they believe it. It’s like that.”
“And you say you’ve never told anyone before?”
“No, you’re the first person I’ve told. When you played me your song, I thought, you shared something special with me, something secret. Then I had to tell you. You’re one of us. You’re artistic but you express it through music.”
“Have you never told your parents?”
“My mum? No, she’s on a planet of her own. She’d just worry. And my dad, well he’s just a businessman, an engineer. He wouldn’t understand.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Ben, “When I met you in the woods that time, when I was taking our dog for a walk, and you got angry with me?”
“I was talking to her. That’s where I met her. Actually, I lost contact, because you distracted me. But it doesn’t matter now. You didn’t know. I’m sorry I got upset with you.”
“But these paintings Livvy, they’re incredible, you’ve got an amazing talent. So are you going to study Art then? I thought you wanted to study Science?”
“Actually I was going to take a year off and decide, but now that Dad’s free, I think I know what I’m going to do...”
Ben felt the phone vibrating in his hand, and a name flashed up on the screen. It read ‘Mum’. “Hey, I think you’ve got a call,” he said, handing it back to her. She stabbed the screen with her finger, held it up to her ear and listened. Ben watched every changing expression on her face.
“What? He’s not coming home next week? Say that again!”
She listened as her mum babbled on. She repeated her mum’s words.
“He’s coming home this evening? He doesn’t want to go the briefing? At the embassy? He’s gone to the airport? He’s about to get on the plane? Oh, he’s on the plane? He’s flying home tonight?”
She listened, the excitement and fire and joy in her eyes was like nothing Ben had seen before. It was magical. She ended the call and stood up.
“Ben we have to leave now. He’s coming on the plane from Amsterdam. It gets in to Manchester Airport at 9.35.”
“It’s 8.45 now, I think we should be okay.”
Ben told the waitress they had to leave to go to the airport. She nodded excitedly and brought the bill, along with two fortune cookies. Ben opened his and read the words on the tiny slip of paper.
“It reads: ‘You will go on a long journey to the east.’ Huh! Back to Alderley Edge? That’s not very far! Only about 40 miles!”
Olivia laughed and opened hers.
“It says: ‘The one you love is closer than you think.’”
She looked at Ben. He smiled back at her. They both stood up, leaving the unfinished meal on the table, and walked towards the counter. The waitresses all smiled at her, making little claps each in turn, and the owner grinned and raised his eyebrows. Ben paid the bill, and they each took a mint from the basket.

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The story is nearly finished but there is still some more! Find out about the background to the story in Secrets of Stargirl of the Edge. Click on the link in the comments below.