The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. Caroline Smailes

       A Tiny Bow and Arrow:

      I’ll say, ‘Why don’t you just kill me?’

      And I’ll mean it. I’ll wish he would.

      He’ll say, ‘No point, you’re going to die within the year anyway.’

      And I’ll say, ‘What?’

      And he’ll say, ‘Dead, within a year.’

      But right now I’m running, sweating like that fat bloke who drinks cans of Diamond White in the bus stop – down the road, around the corner, over the sand dunes and onto the beach.

      ’Cause it was Mum who first told me about the advert. She’d been queuing to buy a pound of mince from the butcher and spotted it on the corkboard. I’d just that second walked in from school when my mum handed me the advert, said it’d be a nice little job for me and something that I could squeeze in between school and looking after my little brothers.

      ‘You never took it down from the corkboard?’ I asked.

      ‘I didn’t want no other bugger getting it,’ Mum said, then we laughed.

      The advert’s for a part-time job, for someone to take the money off folk wanting to see the water-healers at The Oracle, the public baths on the seafront. ‘Apply in person’, and Mum said that I’d best hurry. And ’cause I’m a good girl and ’cause I always do what I’m told, I’m running like a mental over the sand and sweating like that fat bloke, to try and get this job.

      The Oracle had been a community swimming baths, had been around for years, then it closed down and started being derelict. The local council had put it up for sale and that’s when some out-of-town folk bought it. They said that the Males 1st Class pool was built over a spring that was full of magic water. It’s the same water that does that holy well up the hill, the one all them religious poorly folk from all over the world travel to. They reckoned the water had healing powers, I mean there’s people who’ll swear the water made their diseases disappear. None of us local folk knew the spring went under the Males 1st Class pool, but those out-of-town folk did and they bagged themselves a right bargain. That’s when the swimming baths changed its name and started charging loads of money for folk to go in.

      Apparently, someone was once cured of being fat and that’s why every local lass pays their weekly subs to have a float. I’ve never been in before, but Mum and her friends are regulars. There’s three water-healers who work there. They’re local celebrities; they never pay for nowt in the shops, mainly because everyone thinks they’ll be cursed if they’re ever anything but ridiculously nice when the water-healers are around. They’re like those baddies in the second Superman movie, those three that were banished from Krypton in the big mirror prison that shattered, letting them come to Earth via the Moon and be proper terrifying. It’s our Bill’s favourite-ever film, so I must have watched it at least a million times. Well Ursa, the female baddie, looks exactly like one of the water-healers, the one who goes by the name of Madame Pythia, and then there’s Martin Savage, the main male water-healer, who’s a bit like General Zod, the one who liked to say ‘Kneeeel before Zod’ in the film. The other one, the one that would be Non, is an old man, known as Silver. He’s said to be quite nice. He refuses to give bad news when he picks up some psychic energy mid-heal; instead he bursts out crying and tells the poor customer to run for their lives.

      If I’m honest, I’m a bit scared of The Oracle and the water-healers, I mean I’ve heard stories from Mum about all these local people who’ve had their now torn apart ’cause the water-healers have told them that they have nowt good in their future, that their futures are set to be proper rubbish and they can’t ever be healed. Me, I’d prefer not to know. All I want in my future is to work hard for the next two years and then to get into college, maybe even go to university and train to be a teacher. I’d like to be one of them teachers that makes a difference, ’cause they ‘proper understand’ kiddies. I don’t want some nutter putting their hands on me and telling me I can’t be healed and my dreams won’t be coming true and I’m best off jumping off the pier. My English teacher says I’ve the brains and I’m used to being around kids, what with being the oldest of seven kids by four different waste-of-space dads, ’cause even though Mum’s proper useless at picking nice blokes, she’s proper perfect at getting pregnant.

      So, I’m running through the sand and up the steps onto the seafront. I can see The Oracle. It’s a massive mansion of a building that’s all orange and yellow like a bumblebee that’s transformed into a building, but really we all know it’s still a bumblebee. There’s fancy stained-glass windows and a clock tower that chimes out every hour, even though it’s something like seventeen minutes slow. There’s three wooden doors in, for the three different water-healers and the three different baths, but mainly people make their appointments through the posh door, the one that leads to Madame Pythia’s pool. But even when it’s sunny, the place still freaks me out.

      I get to the metal gate and I can see the main man-healer, Martin Savage (General Zod), sitting on the stone steps leading up to the Males 1st Class entrance. He’s got a cigarette in one hand, a bacon butty in the other and the zip of his shell-suit top’s undone, showing off his hairy belly.

      ‘Hi,’ I say.

      ‘Hi,’ he says. He smiles and I’m thinking, Kneeeel before Zod.

      ‘I’ve come about the job,’ I say, handing him the advert that my mum’s ripped off the corkboard in the butchers.

      ‘You’re not what I expected,’ Martin Savage says. ‘How old are you?’ Martin Savage asks.

      ‘Fourteen,’ I say.

      ‘You got a boyfriend?’ Martin Savage asks.

      ‘No,’ I say.

      ‘Got any experience?’ Martin Savage asks.

      ‘No,’ I say. ‘But I learn fast,’ I say.

      He smiles (Kneeeel before Zod), then he flicks his ciggie butt onto the pavement, stands and walks up the steps and through the open wooden door into The Oracle. I don’t know what to do so I start kicking the tips of my DMs against one of the steps.

      ‘What’s your name?’ a voice asks.

      I look up and the woman one, Madame Pythia, is standing at the top of the steps, all elegant and mysterious. She walks down the steps, without making a sound, so I reckon that she must have no shoes on, but her violet dress is long and flowy.

      ‘Laurel,’ I say. ‘I’ve come about the job,’ I say.

      ‘So Martin tells me,’ she says, she stops. She looks me up, she looks me down. ‘You’re pretty,’ she says.

      ‘Thank you,’ I say.

      ‘Can you