What Maeve Can See

He appears in the darkness, sudden enough she almost doubts he’s human. After everything he’s done, he may not be.

She doesn’t hesitate. Puts a bullet between his eyes.

He shatters into a thousand mirrored pieces.

Mirrored?

Dread lights a fire of adrenaline in her blood as she sees her mistake.

She whirls on her heel and —

“Maeve!” her mother’s shout came through the floor like a stray bullet. “I won’t threaten to leave you behind, I know you’d prefer it. I’ll say this: if you make us late setting off, I’ll let Boone play on your iPad.”

Wishing she knew better swear words, Maeve rolled off her bed into a waiting pair of hiking boots. Crossing to her desk, she leaned on the back of her chair.

“Hey, Tedi.”

“I’m here.” The laptop, connected by a braid of cables to her main desktop computer, sprang to life.

“Solutions?”

“There are no new solutions to the problem Annual Family Torture Ritual since you rejected faking your death.”

“Great,” Maeve said.

“I do not understand. That is not a positive outcome.”

“Never mind, Tedi,” Maeve said, “my voice is my password.” Tedi recognised the phrase and logged Maeve into her desktop. She ran her eyes over the screen.

“Ok, Tedi. Save and exit open documents. Add the webpage about VRML plug-ins to my favourites. Quit search engines. Then lights out and power down.”

“Goodbye, Maeve,” the laptop said as it turned off her bedroom lights and shut down her work station.

Standing in the dark, Maeve considered her bedroom door. Considered barricading it with her furniture. Considered slamming it as she left.

She thought of the hours about to unfold in the van. How much less likely she’d be left alone if she caused a row.

“What would January Smoke do?” Maeve asked her blank computer screens.

A spy never gave herself away.

She left without slamming the door.

—feels the sting of a needle. A numbing flood rises through her body.

“Ah, Ms Smoke. For you, I’ve prepared only the most exquisite death.”

The smile he offers as he steps closer—

Boone’s finger drummed nonsense morse code against her leg. Maeve took out one of her earphones.

“Maeve. Maeve. Maeve,” he was saying. She wondered how long he’d been saying it.

“What?”

“Look.” He aimed the offending finger out the window. They were passing a lake. Blue and glassy, ringed with trees stretching to a sun-drunk sky. Boone’s mouth made a little o shape of wonder.

“Pretty,” Maeve said, turning back to her game.

“Why don’t you rest your eyes, Mae?” Maeve found her mother’s gaze on her in the rear-view mirror. “You’ve been playing non-stop since we left.”

Spy much, Maeve thought.

“They don’t hurt,” Maeve said, carefully. She waited, not meeting her mother’s gaze. She didn’t like meeting her mother’s eyes much anymore, didn’t like knowing what her mother was thinking.

“Alright.” Maeve heard carefulness to match her own. “Stop if they do, ok?”

— might as well have bloodstained teeth in it.

It’s the last thing she sees before the drugs take her.

She wakes to iron bars. And the distant sound of screaming.

“What are these?” Maeve asked.

“Tuna salad,” her mother said.

“What happened to PB&J? We get PB&J for road trips.”

“Boone’s boycotting peanut butter,” her mother said, flashing an apologetic smile. “He got to the cupboards before I could hide any.” She glanced to where Boone and Maeve’s dad were returning from the van with a drinks cooler

“Forever?” Maeve asked, wondering if this would be like the time Boone read about the carbon footprint of cheeseburgers. Maeve missed cheeseburgers.

“Until I get one without palm oil. Or the devil bobsleds to work, whichever comes first,” her mother said with a sigh. Maeve listened hard to that sigh. It sounded not at all like the sigh her mother used on her. This one was indulgent, backlit with humour and something that smelled nastily to Maeve of pride.

The sigh her mother used on Maeve was almost a groan.

Maeve looked at her brother as he sat. His t-shirt said May the Forest be With You in big, Star Wars letters, surrounded by silhouettes of fir trees.

“You’ve no need of all your teeth, have you, Ms Smoke?”

“Please, General Valdis, if you’re going to root around in my molars you may use my first name.” Laughter escapes the shark of a man, almost worse than the torture she can see waiting in his eyes.

“January, then,” he says, placing the fingers of one pale hand under her chin, “open wide.”

Boone was snoring. The bear-like rumble of a creature sleeping off lunch. Maeve could hear it through the noise-cancelling mode on her earphones. Could feel it through the cushions of the van’s bench-style back seat. She glanced over, tempted to adjust the angle of his head. She knew her little brother, it wouldn’t help. She went back to her game.

Movement caught her eye. Her mother’s head turning away.

Pretending to smother a yawn in her elbow, Maeve pinched the stem of her earbud to switch off noise cancellation.

“— drag her away from it,” her mother was saying, voice low.

“I know you don’t want a fight,” her father said. “Why don’t we get there and see how we go?”

“You’re right. I—”

“You’re worried.”

“Of course I’m worried. She’s too bloody good. How old was she when she got round the child filters?”

“Younger than Boone is now,” her father said.

“It’s dangerous, Ethan. She could see something awful. And it’s not only that. She needs to get out. Sunshine. And human friends, not people in chat rooms. God, they could be anyone.”

“I know, Annie.” Her father lifted his hand from the gear stick long enough to squeeze her mother’s knee. “But you know she’s a smart girl. She follows the rules we gave her.”

Her mother sighed the sigh that was almost a groan and let her head fall back against the headrest.

“It was easier before we gave her that first phone. I feel like we opened Pandora’s box.”

Maeve re-activated noise-cancelling mode.

Blood drips from January’s chin. She stares at the General, ignoring the glint of extraction forceps in his fist.

“Do your worst, Valdis. I’ll never give you the location.”

“Now, January. I don’t understand.” His face is kind. A terrible mask for such a man.“Why suffer so much? When we both know you’ll give up in the end?”

“I am who I am,” January says. She winks at him, and his grip on the forceps turns white-knuckled.

But he puts them down. Gently, as if they’re porcelain instead of steel.

“I’ve been a terrible host,” he says, his voice rolling over her like oil, “I haven’t introduced my other guest.”

At some unseen signal, a guard comes through the door dragging—

The diner was loud and the WiFi was slow. When Maeve asked for the password, the waitress delivered it as what it was; a joke long decayed to dust.

“WiFi at the end of the world,” she said, “no spaces, capital W’s, the symbol instead of the at.”

Between bites of chilli and to a soundtrack of Boone’s favourite porcupine facts, Maeve went in search of her friends. As always, they were there for her.

GREEZEBALL1: how’s the faraday cage?

CRYPTOMAE: har. har. last night of civilisation. be nice 2 me.

UNICORNEGG5: that bad?

CRYPTOMAE: it requires bug spray. you have to ask?

GREEZEBALL1: catch me a Sasquatch will u?

UNICORNEGG5: shut up G this is serious. they’ve stolen our mae!

QUARKEATER77: mae mae! When are u back?!?!?!?!

CRYPTOMAE: QUARK! Invent time travel 4 me so I never had to leave.

By the time she finished eating, Maeve felt better. Even looking up into her mother’s waiting frown couldn’t steal away the smile tugging at her lips. She wasn’t sorry she’d spent dinner silently texting instead of chatting with her family and listening to Boone’s toad anecdotes. Her mother thought she needed friends. She had them. So what if her mother didn’t understand that. Didn’t understand her.

Consequences came as they walked back to the motel.

“I hope you’ll make an effort this weekend, Maeve,” her father said, slowing to match her pace. “It won’t work if you don’t let it.”

Maeve said nothing.

“We love you, we’re not doing this to torture you,” her father said. “We’re supposed to be on holiday.” Maeve heard the silent for Christ’s sake at the end of the sentence, and she understood.

It won’t be a holiday if you keep on like this. You’ll ruin it for all of us.

When the lights were out and everyone was asleep, Maeve put in her earphones and pulled the covers over her head.

— a man at the end of a chain. Unconscious. Bloody. Through the gore, January recognises him. Her heart twists.

“Leave him out of this. He doesn’t know anything,” she says.

“If you want to save him,” says General Valdis, “give me the location.”

Maeve stared at the screen.

One red button. One green. Give up the location. Keep the secret.

Co-operate, or resist.

She saved the game, and went to sleep.

Morning was bruised with overnight storm. Maeve sympathised, blinking away bad dreams over an apple danish and Boone’s detailed account of a dawn skunk sighting. She squinted at him. Today’s t-shirt was upset-stomach green, featuring a cartoon shiitake mushroom ringed with the words Fridays are for Fungus. She recognised the latest weapon in his war to get the family to go vegan one day a week.

“Friday was yesterday, Boone,” she said, before she could help herself. Boone stopped mid-story, looking down as if he’d forgotten he had a body at all.

“Details,” he said, waving his apple danish at her, and picked up his skunk tale as if nothing had happened. Maeve realised she was smiling.

Her parents pulled up.

Her mother was driving, so it was her father who turned and offered the lockbox.

“This is it kiddo.”

Maeve felt her family’s eyes on her. Boone patted his pockets. Searched his pack. Finally found his phone down the crack in his seat. Switching it off, he dropped it in the box.

Maeve yanked her pack upright and slid out her iPad. She switched it off and put it in the box. From her back pocket she pulled her mobile phone. It went in the box. From her jacket came the handheld games console. It followed the rest into the box. She sat back.

“Maeve,” her mother said, eyes on her in the rearview mirror. Maeve sighed and went back in her bag, bringing up an e-Reader. Her mother wasn’t stupid, she knew when Maeve was desperate it was as good as a tablet computer.

“That’s all of them?” her father asked. Maeve only nodded.

“Mine’s in my bag,” her mother said. Her father reached behind the driver’s seat, fumbling with the pack’s pockets. He found the phone. Off it went, and into the box.

For the next four days, the only technology available to her entire family would be her father’s archaic flip phone. For emergencies.

He closed and locked the box, spinning the dials on the combination with a dramatic flair Maeve thought was uncalled for.

Maeve flopped to the grass. Boone moved around her, searching his pack for tent poles. She stared at the tree canopy and listened to the silence.

So much silence.

Her mother settled beside her.

“I have something for you,” she said, holding out a drawstring bag. “I had your dad bring them. I thought—” she hesitated. Maeve lifted herself on an elbow.

“I wanted to meet you half way,” her mother said, “maybe… bring a bit of your world out here? And a bit of ours to you?” She gestured at the clearing they’d picked for their campsite.

Maeve opened the bag.

“Trail cameras?”

Her mother was opening her mouth to speak when Maeve leaned forward and hugged her.

“I love them,” Maeve said.

“You do?”

“Thank you,” Maeve said. Then she was on her feet.

“Boone,” she called, “you want to play a game?”

“Take some walkie-talkies,” her father suggested when he heard her idea.

Having escaped General Valdis, January Smoke and —

“Boone, what’s your spy name?” Maeve asked.

“What?”

“Like the movies.”

He turned a pinecone between his hands, visibly thinking.

“How about… Finnegan Storm?” he asked.

“Perfect!”

— her colleague Finnegan Storm have a chance to get eyes on The General’s evil operations. Armed with the latest surveillance technology but surrounded by the enemy, they must remain undetected long enough to set the cameras.

Boone was good at sneaking. He spent a lot of time sitting next to ponds and under trees waiting for animals to forget he was there. And Maeve could see he was enjoying the game; grinning a give-away moon-white grin from the undergrowth as he perfected the angle of a camera.

“Come in Alpha One,” he said into his walkie-talkie. Hiding behind a tree, Maeve smiled.

“Alpha Two, this is One. Report.”

“This footage is going to slay,” Boone said. Maeve almost laughed, then remembered she was a spy on a mission, in danger every moment. She slipped back into the tree shadows and moved to the next camera position.

They circled the campsite like this, silent as owls, posting cameras near likely-looking animal lairs, or where Boone thought he saw tracks. When they came up behind the tents, Maeve caught her brother by the back of his belt. Her parents hadn’t heard them.

They were kissing.

Boone mimed being sick.

The enemy are spotted engaged in a primitive bonding ritual. Storm and Smoke use the distraction to avoid notice as they make their escape.

That night, settled round the campfire with a tin cup of hot chocolate, Maeve listened to Boone’s yelps of joy as he reviewed the footage. They were leaving the cameras out overnight, but Boone had begged to go back for one.

“Maeve, look! A pine marten.” He wriggled with excitement.

“Boone?” Maeve asked, watching him watching the video.

“Hmm?” He didn’t look up.

“You should take your eco-campaign online. When we get home I can help you. A Blog maybe? Or, what about TikTok? We can edit some videos together. You can talk about the animals.”

He beamed.

“Really?” he asked. Maeve laughed.

“If Mum and Dad say it’s ok,” she said. “I can manage it until they say you can do it yourself.”

“Can we?” Boone turned to their parents.

“I think it’s a lovely idea,” Maeve’s mother said, coming to sit next to Maeve. She leaned close so her next words would be for her daughter alone.

“I’m proud of you, honey,” she said. Maeve looked at her mother, looked her in the eye. And saw that it was true.