The Girl With Glass Feet Read Online Free PDF Page A

behind the bar and did nothing about the muggy summer. She glanced back at the table where Henry Fuwa sat motionless with his head in his hands.
    She wondered what her ex would make of this, proposing drinks with oddballs off the street. She sometimes wished she possessed the flawed kind of taste that drew girls to arseholes who wanted that one thing alone. You knew that kind of guy, that breed of ox-necked brute who would not be averse to wearing the same football shirt every day of the week. Who had a glamour model screensaver that made him fiddle in his pants each time it was displayed.
    Not that this was a romantic endeavour. This guy was nearly as old as her dad. She took a long draught of her lager while she waited for Henry’s gin to be served.
    She wasn’t that kind of girl. Instead (at times it seemed uncontrollably) she went after blokes who were wound into knots over who they were and how they tied into the world. The first time she’d lured her ex to a restaurant it had been all she could do to snap him out of the reverie he entered, only for him to emerge spouting nonsense about how she was a princess, a goddess, even a fucking mermaid one time he called her.
    And now he had ditched her. He was too introverted for her, he’d said, swallowing between every word. Sweet idiot.
A girl like you shouldn’t be hanging out with a guy like me. I’m worried I’m holding you back.
    She carried the drinks to the table. Henry Fuwa looked a little more composed. He rubbed his sleeve across his nose.
    ‘So,’ she began, ‘are you from around here?’
    ‘Some miles away. But I live on St Hauda’s Land, yes.’
    ‘Did you make that ornament? Is that why you’re sad? A lot of work went into it, I bet.’
    ‘No. It was an old jewellery box that belonged to my mother.’
    ‘I mean… the figurine inside. Did you make that?’
    His lips began to wobble again.
    ‘It was a kind of music-box, right? Such a shame. I thought it was pretty. How did you get the wings to stay attached to the little bull’s body?’
    He studied her for a moment, then gave a dejected shrug. ‘I raised it.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘But the most unfortunate thing happened. They like to fly down to the water – to the beach near where I keep them. If they ever escape I know that’s where they’ll head. It’s the salt, or something in the make-up of the ocean. They weigh very little, you see. Little enough to stand on the surface like that fruitfly floating in your beer.’
    The sight of the bug, all six legs cycling in the dissolving headof her drink, distracted her for a moment from her incredulity.
    ‘But yesterday… the tide was in. And there were jellyfish in the shallows. The bull in that box landed on the surface and, as I explained, they love to…’ He ran his hands through his hair and stared ashen-faced into his gin.
    She fished out the fruitfly and wiped it on to her beer mat.
    He started up again. ‘The sting… it received…
People
don’t always recover from jellyfish attacks, so what hope is there for a moth-winged bull? My last resort was a clinic down by the seafront, set up to treat jellyfish victims. I would have had to explain
everything
but…’
    He took an unpractised slurp of his gin and put it back down with a lick of his lips.
    She had yet to decide whether he was lying (to try to impress her?) or just nuts. The latest tune from the jukebox was a tedious soppy love song. She sipped her lager. ‘I take it this… moth-winged bull… was the only one in existence?’
    ‘No. There are sixty-one in known existence. All back at my pen. Sorry… There are only sixty now.’
    ‘That’s… incredible.’
    She knew he could tell she didn’t believe him. He shrugged gloomily. ‘They eat and shit and get themselves killed like everything else.’
    ‘And you’re the only person in the world who knows about them?’
    ‘They’re my secret.’ He took a longer sip of his gin and blinked hard as he swallowed it, his