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Pearl’s playing by herself when a kid falls out of a tree, right on top of her.
She’s on summer hols, and it’s the day before her dad is supposed to take her to the United Kingdom to see her mother and brother. “Christmas just isn’t the same in Australia,” he’d grumble. Honestly, Pearl prefers Australian Christmases, but she keeps the thought to herself.
Her bags are all packed, winter coats, scarves, to layer on as soon as they touch down at Heathrow and get off the plane. She’s brought her brother a few Aussie sweets and there are some carefully packaged feathers and butterfly specimens in the her suitcase’s secret pocket. She hopes Grian likes them, she spent months searching for some of them! And she hopes he has acquired some fun British things for her too.
She’s lost in her thoughts and doesn’t realize there’s a dark shape hovering above her until too late.
Snap-CRACK!
Pearl lets out a very loud scream.
“Mierda!”
She throws herself backwards, landing on her back, just in time to avoid a humanoid blur slamming into the ground where she stood. The brambles prick at her hands, but she supposes it is marginally better than getting squashed by a boy falling on top of her.
“Um.” Pearl says, eloquent as ever. She scrambles to her feet, brushing off the leaves on her shorts.
She stares at the boy, crumpled on the ground in front of her. He has dark, chocolate-colored hair and bright blue eyes. He’s maybe around her age, ten or eleven, but when he stands up to dust himself off, Pearl notes that he is significantly shorter than her. (Not that he’s short, Pearl is just quite tall.) “Are you okay?”
The boy nods. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t realize you were there, I was just playing by myself—”
His voice is tremulous, lightly accented, and when Pearl takes a closer look, his dusty clothes look expensive. He must be here on holiday; he doesn’t sound Australian. Pearl comes to the conclusion that his family is probably renting the luxury farmhouse that borders the Moon’s sunflower field.
“You’re trespassing, I hope you know that,” Pearl tells the boy. “You’re on my family’s land.”
“Will I get into trouble?” His eyes grow wide as saucers and his voice pitches up. He probably isn’t familiar with the property laws in Australia. That’s fine, Pearl is the only one in her class that can recite the whole of section 17 anyways.
“Not if you play with me,” Pearl says. She can just imagine her father’s disapproval of her not extorting this gullible tourist for money, but she figures it’s a worthwhile trade-off if she has fun instead. Money can’t buy happiness, right?
“What’s your name?” The boy tilts his head, blue eyes questioning.
“I’m Tilly,” Pearl blurts out, her father’s lectures about stranger danger drilled into her mind. Names are powerful, he had said, and it was only later on in life when she realized the extent of his statement. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jay,” he tells her, but not without a moment of hesitation. Pearl narrows her eyes at his hesitance, but she very well can’t say anything, not when she lied about her name too.
“Like the letter, or the bird?” Pearl asks.
“Oh, like the bird,” Jay says. Pearl nods, satisfied. She’s never seen a jay before, since they’re not native to Australia, and she tells him as much.
They spend the afternoon playing in the dust, drawing up fictional nations and pitting them against each other.
“I, the mighty Panda General of Mythland, am taking your watchtower by the southwestern border!” Jay declares, waving around a banksia cone.
“Never! I, Goldie the Goose of Helianthia, shall not cede land to Mythland, ever!” Pearl shrills. She rights her own cone, decorated with a pretty eucalyptus leaf. They spar back and forth with their figurines, until—
“Ah!” Pearl gasps, pain shooting through her hand. Blood starts to flow steadily from a gash along her ring finger, dripping onto the ground.
“Tilly!” Jay’s eyes immediately widen in shock and concern. He grabs Pearl’s hand, inspecting it closely. “I’m so sorry, Tilly, I didn’t mean it—”
“It’s okay,” Pearl reassures him through her pain. His blue eyes have gone round and tears of guilt are already starting to form in his eyes. She stuffs her whole hand in her mouth, trying to ebb the flow of her blood, to no avail. It’s still running along her arm and dribbling on her shoes, ruining them. What is she supposed to do? She can’t go and call for her father, he’d get angry and she would get grounded and have to stay in her room for the rest of summer, but she can't just stay out here with an open wound that big, can she?
Meanwhile, Jay is standing there, clutching Pearl’s hand, his expression torn. “I can help you,” he whispers suddenly. “I can help you, if you promise to keep it a secret.”
“I promise!” Pearl squeaks. She’s a little dubious, of course, but really, what could go more wrong?
Jay’s grip around her wrist tightens, and Pearl feels the oddest sensation. It’s like he has somehow stopped the flow of her blood in her hand, and she gazes, transfixed, as the rivulets reverse and start to inch back towards her gash. Little by little, the blood is sucked back in her wound and then in real time, it darkens and forms a scab.
“Woah,” Pearl says, turning her hand around to look at it from all angles. Jay lets go of Pearl’s hand, looking pale and nervous of her reaction.
“Thank you!” Pearl tackles him in a hug. “You’re actually the best, thank you, thank you!”
Jay staggers beneath her weight, and Pearl realizes that he’s definitely tired from whatever the heck he just did. “Is that some kind of healing magic?” She asks, excited.
Jay just shrugs weakly, almost guiltily. “Yeah, of sorts.”
“That’s wicked,” Pearl gasps, and it’s clearly the wrong thing to say, because he immediately curls into himself, eyes downcast. She flounders, trying to quickly change tack. “I—I mean, that was really cool! And great! And nice of you!”
“You think?” Jay asks, brightening.
“Of course!” Pearl says. A stroke of daring strikes her, because darn it, today’s her free day, and she says, eyes twinkling, “do you want me to show you my power?”
She leads him to the edges of the sunflower farm. It’s January, so most of the plants are in full bloom, but a few of them at the margins are wilted and with their head detached, probably due to dehydration.
“Look,” Pearl tells Jay, bending down to pick one up. It’s really not a pleasant sight— it’s rotting and bruised and ugly and Jay recoils a little when she holds it close to his face, but Pearl’s practiced her trick many times and, by now, is familiar with the gross smell.
She cups her hands around the base of the head, and focuses. A twinge of doubt nibbles at her— what if her injured hand prevents it from happening? what if performing it in front of someone else doesn’t work? but she feels energy coursing through the ground into her veins and then the wilted petals of the sunflower unfurl, revealing brilliant, vibrant yellow. Jay inhales sharply as color returns to the dead plant, petal by petal.
“Ta-da!” Pearl shows off the sunflower. It’s fresher than ever, and Pearl bets that it’s practically identical to a head that was just cut off from its stalk. Maybe even better, more pristine.
“That’s insane!” Jay gasps appreciatively. “Plant magic?”
“Ya bet!” Pearl grins. “I haven’t tried bringing trees back to life yet, but I’m sure I’ll be able to within a couple of years!”
They get sidetracked, then, as eleven year olds often do. The rest of the afternoon consisted of them climbing trees and crawling through bushes, playing all sorts of fun games.
At the end of the day, Pearl walks Jay back to the trail. The setting sun casts a pretty golden glow over the fields and Pearl wants to commit this scene to memory. She turns to her newfound friend.
“I have your secret and you have mine,” Pearl proclaims. “That means we’re even, aye?”
Jay nods, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. “We’re even.”
It’s a strange thing, saying goodbye to someone you just met who feels like someone you’ve known your entire life. “Farewell, then,” Pearl says. For good measure, she adds, “I better see you next summer.”
“Of course,” Jay smirks. He bumps fists with Pearl and starts down the trail, first slowly with caution, then with more freedom, until he breaks into a run.
Then, he turns a corner and is gone.
Pearl never sees him again.
A decade later, when a villain with blood manipulation powers and startling blue eyes appears in Empiretopia, Demeter doesn’t think back to that peculiar tourist boy with healing magic she met on the sunflower farm back in Australia, not even once.