Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

child. My eyes left my mother’s face and dashed to the refrigerator. They touched its flank and sprang away, a glance over and done in a second. But when I looked back at my mother, she was not looking at me. She was looking at the refrigerator. “Anwell,” she sighed.
    “Yes, Mama?”
    “. . . Where is your brother?”
    I could not say, I could not dredge the words. So I said, “In the garden, Mama.”
    There was a brief silence. “Are you sure.”
    I was terrified of her. Her mind was quick. Yet she’d believed me — I had outwitted her. Inside my chest, a child leaped. “Yes, Mama. He’s outside. I didn’t want him to wake you.”
    I prayed Vernon would stay quiet just a few moments more.
    Mother’s sights shifted suddenly, lurching back to me. She smiled thinly, and smoothed my hair. “Mama isn’t well,” she whispered. “She’s been asleep all morning.”
    I nodded vigorously, and dared to say, “You should go back to bed, Mama.”
    Her smile lingered. “Shall I?”
    I swallowed and was speechless: I had reached the end. Mother rocked vaguely, her hand still on my head. Her blue eyes looked salty, marine. “You’re a good boy, Anwell,” she said. She turned away slowly, as if she were old, and shuffled along the hallway. Her fingers brushed the rosebud walls. She did not know it, but I scurried in her wake. I wanted to be certain that she would disappear. She walked slowly, she drifted, I almost bumped into her. But finally she reached her room and wafted through the door. It shut with a click. I pushed on it carefully, and was certain it was closed.
    Then I ran down the hall, almost skipping. The torturous clouds were gone, I was giggly with glee. I burned with love and pity for Vernon. I had never felt that way.
    When I opened the refrigerator door he fell out as a jumble of angles, like books spilling from a high shelf. At the same time he seemed boneless, floppy as a rag. He somersaulted on the lino and lay still. His color was blue.
    I pulled the cloth from his mouth. His eyes were swollen but not shut. I bit my lip, I shook him, tapped his chest and spoke his name. I knelt on the floor beside him and didn’t know what to do. Small cat-sounds of distress piped up from my throat. I leaned very close to him and willed him to move. The wetness on his face had dried and marked his cheeks with snail trails. His hands and feet were perfect, tinged faintly blue. All around him rose the sweet odor of banana.
    I dared not call my mother. I sagged on the floor, paralyzed. I did not want to stay, yet I didn’t dare to leave. I sensed that he was dead, but wasn’t sure if death was forever. It seemed best to stay nearby, in case the chance came to make everything changed. So Vernon and I stayed where we were until my father arrived, but no chance came to change.
    It was the first time I’d told the story to anyone. The telling left me drained. I’d been gouging holes into the soft earth and now my fingers were filthy. “Vernon never hurt me, not on purpose. Not one day in his life.”
    Finnigan had been snapping thorns from the canes and sticking them with spit to his nose: he had a dozen gray horns sprouting now, and no room for any more. He had also been plucking petals and letting them fall, and now knelt in a ring of crimson. He glanced at me with his hyena eyes. “You didn’t mean to hurt him, either. That was just an accident.”
    I nodded. I hadn’t meant it. It was a relief, to be understood.
    Finnigan chewed his lip, thinking. “Maybe it was an accident that things died in the fire. Maybe I didn’t mean that, either.”
    He glanced at me and smiled hopefully, and I smiled in return. We needed each other’s forgiveness, and gave it. “Don’t tell anyone,” I said.
    “No. Don’t you tell about the fires.”
    “No, I won’t.”
    Finnigan knocked the thorns from his nose and wiped it dry of spit. “Anyway,” he said, “you were just a kid. You didn’t know any better. Your