Free Watercolour Smile by Jane Washington

flooded with light, and I blinked, my unease morphing into something more.
    Two porcelain dolls lay at the bottom of the steps, one dressed as a boy—with little denim overalls and gumboots—and the other as a girl. The details were precise, seemingly hand-sewn and intricate enough to call attention to each tiny stitch, each pleat of the girl-doll’s frilly dress and leather shoes. They were both large, around knee-height, with limbs askew in the grass, but that wasn’t what had inspired the terror that shivered down the length of my spine.
    Both of their porcelain faces had been shattered.
    I could make out an untouched section of the girl’s jaw, a perfect line of painted red lips and a button nose, teetering like a half-cracked eggshell. Their corn-flower hair was a matted mess, congealed with the spread of red liquid that pooled beneath them.
    I heard Noah calling out for the others, and I moved numbly down the stairs as their footsteps thundered across the porch. I wasn’t sure what to think of this. Was the messenger back? Had I done something wrong again? Somehow, this didn’t seem like his style. There were no photos, no riddles—
    The realisation smacked into me so hard that I rocked back on my heels. “It’s h-him,” I stuttered.
    “How do you know?” I could hear Quillan’s voice, but couldn’t tear my eyes from the broken dolls and their pool of red long enough to look at him.
    Was that blood ? Paint ?
    “It’s Jack and Jill,” I said, pointing to the bucket of water at the top of the stairs. “The pail of water.” I pointed at the dolls. “Jack fell down, and broke his crown. It’s another warning. I did something.” I groaned, losing my balance and collapsing to my knees.
    “You can’t blame yourself,” Cabe said. “That’s messed up, Seph. This is his sickness, not yours.”
    What did I do ?
    I was shaking now, my palms clammy and my breath choppy. Cabe’s hand was pressing between my shoulder blades, the voices of the others floating over my head.
    Three months of nothing, and now the messenger was back.
    I was furious. I was terrified. Frustrated. Confused.
    “A-are there any m-messages? N-notes?” I asked, my teeth mashed painfully together.
    “None,” Silas answered.
    I lifted my eyes, realising that I had been staring at my hands, transfixed, as though the answers would land right there, in my palms. Silas was crouched over the dolls, his back to me, blocking them out.
    “None,” Quillan confirmed, still standing on the porch. “Cabe, get her inside.”
    Cabe’s hands moved to my shoulders, coaxing me up, and I let him walk me to the back door.
    “Noah,” Quillan caught Noah when he moved to follow us, “both of you stay with her tonight. She leaves early tomorrow and her head needs to be screwed on straight. We can’t have her straining on top of this.” 
    Noah nodded, and the three of us left together. I put myself through a shower and dressed in cotton shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. I fell into the bed as Noah ducked into the bathroom.
    “This hasn’t been a good day,” I muttered against the pillow, not caring that they were both intending on sleeping in my room. They stayed with me like this, on occasion.
    Whenever the bond had strained me in the last months, Noah and Cabe had always been the ones to comfort me, never Quillan or Silas. Already, my head was swimming and my strain-induced state of semi-awareness was warring with the need to stay focussed , just in case the messenger came back, or exploded something. In the end, the strain won, and I closed my eyes briefly, wincing at the inebriated feeling that settled into my limbs, weighing me down.
    Cabe propped himself against the backboard of my bed, pulling my head to his shoulder as his hands tangled in my hair, stroking absently.
    “I’m still astounded you managed to avoid Silas flipping out,” he said. “We’ve never been able to do it.”
    That was him not flipping out ?
    “Why is he like