The voices of girls!
"So pretty as you be, Rosy!"
Eldric and I, plunging into black spruce.
"Fires are dangerous!"
A green dimness now. Needles of sunlight, glancing off Rose"s hair. "Fires are dangerous!" She stood screaming, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Us got us some visitors!" said a girl"s voice.
The girl was-Look up, Briony; you have to look up. Higher-into the treetops!
Three figures, dashing and darting through the trees.
"Such a pretty Rosy!"
They sat astride black branches-no broomsticks for these Swampsea witches!
"Doesn"t you be wishing to come along with us?"
I crunched my fingers round the Bible Ball. "Get away from her!"
The black capes, the gnarled branches, swirled around Rose. "You be making such a pretty little witch, Rosy!"
Rose clapped her hands to her ears.
What if I proclaimed my own witchiness? Would they leave Rose in peace-honor among thieves, and all that? But I couldn"t, not with Eldric listening. I shook my Bible-Ball fist at them.
"Ooh, doesn"t I be scareful!" said one of the witches, although the branch she rode bucked, like a startled horse. Wisps of carrot-colored hair floated from her hood.
"I be trembling in my drawers," said another.
"Such a woeful lie!" said the third. "You doesn"t wear no drawers!"
"No drawers for us witches!" How they screamed and laughed.
I darted forward, pecking the Bible Ball at them.
"Look at them eyes she got!" said the redhead. "Like to coals, they be."
The witches rose on their branches, screeching with laughter. "It be fine not wearing no drawers." The redhead again. "Look Rosy, such a treat it be!"
Rose didn"t look.
Pine needles swirled about our feet, stirred by an unnatural wind. I smelled the tart-treacley scent of magic. The wind corkscrewed up to a miniature whirlwind, a tornado of pine needles, spiraling up and under the witches. Now, at last, the capes decided to follow the laws of nature, billowing up and out, leaving us with a spectacular view of three naked backsides.
My hands jumped like startled birds. I ought to have looked away, but the sight was horribly fascinating. Fascinatingly horrible. Eldric grabbed my bird hands, and together we stared up at the three gnarled branches circling the glade, up at the twin-moon backsides.
The witches laughed. This was no old-hag cackling but peals of girlish laughter. Eldric and I stared. The witches circled and descended upon Rose. More laughter as they pulled away, one of them dangling Rose"s hair ribbon from her finger.
"Now girls, for t"others!" The witches dove upon us. Eldric and I ducked-they"d smash into us-but the branches reared back, then hovered an Eldric"s arm"s-length away. There came a rearrangement of legs and capes. They laughed and laughed as we stood, looking up into their inner girl-parts.
Eldric crunched my bird hands. I jerked my chin to my chest. I felt my face boil with my own hot blood, which in an alabaster girl is a terrible thing to see-shades of crimson coming but never going.
I felt rather than saw the witches circling, then rising, now above the trees, now out of sight. But their shrills and shrieks of amus.e.m.e.nt blew to us on that unnatural wind.
That unnatural wind-think about that, Briony. Think about anything rather than what you"re thinking about, which you mustn"t name, because then you"ll think about it.
The unnatural wind is a perfect memory to stuff into your mind. It will make you remember you hurt Rose. It will make you remember the swings, the froth of petticoats, Rose"s screams-those knitting-needle screams, which even when Rose was only seven, sounded just as they do today.
You must remember so you can hate yourself. It"s been ten years, but you mustn"t let yourself forget what you owe Rose.
It was Easter Day and Rose and I wore our white, frothy frocks. It was a day of froth: the froth of spring blossoms, the froth of lace on Stepmother"s hat, the froth of petticoats as Rose and I pumped ourselves higher and higher on the swings.
Stepmother wasn"t Stepmother yet; it would be years before she and Father married. We knew her well, though, Rose and I. Perhaps she meant to help the poor Reverend Larkin with his motherless daughters. That would be like her. Father was forever fretting that he didn"t know how to raise girls properly. Poor man, his wife dying in childbirth.
I remember so clearly how Stepmother"s pretty fingers flew like hummingbirds. How she played a game of catching at our legs, pretending to pull us down. How she pulled at Briony"s legs, Rose"s legs. Briony"s legs, Rose"s legs.
Rose"s legs. Rose"s-Rose"s-Rose"s- When you"re jealous, your spit turns to acid. When you"re jealous, you eat yourself from the inside out.
When you"re jealous, and when you"re seven-year-old Briony Larkin, and when you"re a witch, you raise a wind. A wind that makes Rose whimper and complain; a wind that makes Rose scream that she didn"t prefer to swing; a wind that makes Rose lose her grip on the ropes; a wind that makes her fall, so that she smashes her head on a rock.
It would make a better story if I could describe how her skull made a sharp crack, if I could describe how her blood pooled on the rock, how it matted the gra.s.s and dried in her yellow hair. But I have learned that life is both less exciting and more horrid than stories.
No crack, no blood, just Rose crumpled on the ground. Just Rose screaming.
Rose, screaming. Rose screaming in the memory-time of the swings; Rose screaming in the now-time of the Slough.
Eldric crunched at my hand.
"That hurts!"
"Sorry!" Eldric let go at once.
"Go ahead, plug your ears," I said, not looking, never looking at him, never looking at him again. My face must be in the crimson-streak stage, which lasts forever. "It"s not rude, not if it"s when Rose is screaming." Pine needles drifted round our feet.
"But I don"t want to miss anything!"
What would that be like, not wanting to miss anything? How wearisome to be forever grabbing at bits of life. Look at Eldric now, stepping over to Rose, bending over her, asking perhaps if she"d been hurt. I sat at the foot of an alder, leaned against its trunk, just waiting. Light-needles glinted off the pale gold of Rose"s hair. I felt a little distant from myself, as though I sat in the audience of a production of my own life.
There would be no surprises in this production. I"d be caring for Rose in every scene. In the next scene, for example, the curtain would open upon me hanging about Tiddy Rex"s sickbed, comparing his cough to Rose"s. I mustn"t neglect to play that scene, even though it had just occurred to me that a person with the swamp cough might be unable to scream so very enthusiastically. But I couldn"t take any chances. It"s my fault Rose is the way she is.
It"s my fault that Rose screams. That she screamed this morning, that she was screaming now. She screamed like a river, the longest river you could imagine, and from time to time, words bobbed to the surface, like sticks. I could make out the words, although I doubted Eldric could. Rose screamed for her hair ribbon. It was her favorite ribbon and it matched her frock. And although she didn"t say this, I knew that without the ribbon, she"d refuse to wear the frock.
Rose is finicky about colors.
Finish the story, Briony. You know the rules. You have to tell yourself the other horridly unexciting events. That you jumped from your own swing, rather hoping you might hurt yourself, just a little, so that Stepmother would fuss over you too. That Stepmother spent such a time crouched beside Rose, touching Rose"s head. That the hummingbirds had flown from Stepmother"s fingers.
That Stepmother rose and looked down upon you. That you looked up at her, at the crisp V of her jaw, at the thin openings of her nostrils. That she waited such a while to speak.
"Oh, Briony!"
That was all she said at first, and then: "We mustn"t ever tell your father."
5.
Help to Get Them Witches "Flying branches?" said Mr. Clayborne, who"d only been in the Swampsea six months and had never seen a witch.
"It be a snag," said the Swamp Reeve, who"d taken the chair nearest the fire. The Brownie used to curl up under that chair, back in the old days, before Stepmother and I forbade him the house. "Us calls it a snag."
The firelight played over the bit of frayed carpet where the Brownie used to lie. I used to look at him and marvel that no one else could see him. But now I had to remember that it was better he was gone. That he and I were dangerous together, the Old One and the witch.
"A snag rode by a witch," said the constable.
"Us needs must talk to Miss Rose." The Reeve wore his neck-skin too tight. You could see his Adam"s apple bounce around, which made my backbone cringe. "She be the la.s.s them witches thinked to thief away."
I shifted in my seat but couldn"t get comfortable. The old swamp craving had returned. I hadn"t felt it for years. It had come upon me the first few months after I stopped visiting the swamp, after Stepmother realized the Old Ones ignited my wickedness, made it run out of control.
"I want Briony to read to me." Rose sat beneath the parlor table, bits of paper scattered around her. Rose is attracted to paper of all sorts, sweets wrappers, shopping receipts, Valentine"s Day cards, instructions for games we never played, the last page of any book-this, in particular, is annoying.
When Father is irritated, he speaks more precisely than usual. "Please come out from under the table, Rose." He curled his sentences as carefully as a schoolgirl curls her hair. "You are a grown-up girl now."
"I don"t prefer to." Rose shuffled the papers about. I knew she was testing the colors, deciding which combinations would look best in her collage. "I want Briony to read to me."
But Rose was not a grown-up girl. She would never be a grown-up girl. She knew perfectly well that my stories were nothing but cinders, and she was not unintelligent, so what was she thinking? Did she suppose I could paste the ashes of my stories together, the way she pastes her bits of paper into a collage?
Rose has great faith in my abilities.
"Happen I might approach Miss Rose?" said the constable.
"Scissors are dangerous," said Rose.
"Danger?" said Eldric from across the room, where he and Mr. Dreary were stuffing Clayborne books into Larkin shelves.
"I need someone to cut my papers," said Rose. "Stepmother used to cut for me, but she"s dead."
"I"m just the man for a dangerous job," said Eldric.
"Happen I might talk to Miss Rose direct-like?" said the constable. "Tell her us needs her help to get them witches."
"Certainly you may," said Father.
Certainly, Father? Do you have any idea what"s going to happen once the constable sticks his face beneath the table? That face of his, with those saggy eyelids turned inside out and the red bits showing?
"I don"t prefer to speak to the constable." Rose"s breath snagged on her words and set off a spasm of coughing.
"Hand to your mouth, Rose," I said.
"He"s only going to ask you a few questions," said Father. "If you act like a grown-up girl and answer them properly, you"ll never see those witches again."
The constable approached the table. Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.
When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I"d tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it.
Rose screams on the note of B flat.
We don"t need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork. In any event, Rose and I never played very well, despite Father"s insistence that we practice an hour a day. We"d never be like Mother, who"d played the piano beautifully, or so Father said. I sometimes wondered if Father really remembered her. Seventeen years is a long time.
It was wonderfully restful to stand back and do nothing. I heard Father call in the reinforcements, who are named Pearl. I watched Pearl escort Rose from the room. I heard Rose scream all the way upstairs.
The pitch of B flat has uncommon carrying power.
Strange how her screams eased the swamp craving, just a bit. It"s like rubbing your elbow after you b.u.mp it, I suppose.
The mighty enforcer of the law returned to his seat. Eldric had taken Rose"s place beneath the table, fidgeting with bits of paper and working the scissors. There"s little to compare between Eldric and Stepmother, except they were the only people I"d ever seen join Rose under the table. How patient Stepmother had been, her hummingbird fingers cutting the papers into bits at Rose"s direction, and those bits into smaller bits, and those smaller, and smaller still.
There fell what a novel would call an "awkward silence," save for the sound of Eldric chopping at the air with the scissors. I fixed my gaze on the bookshelves. Before the flood, they"d been filled with a rainbow of fairy tale books and dog-eared Latin histories and all the novels of Jane Austen and Charles d.i.c.kens and the Bronte sisters (except that sniveling Anne). Now they were empty, begging hands. The flood had turned the books into bloated corpses that had to be shoveled up and hauled away in barrows.
I used to like books and reading, but I destroyed our books in a couple of fits of witchy jealousy. Had I meant to drown our books? Had I meant to burn our books? Honestly, you"d think a witch would know what she"d meant to do. I was, after all, a great girl of seventeen when I set the library fire. But I"m not a proper witch: If I"d had a proper witchy education, I"d certainly not have burnt my hand. A proper witch would avoid that unimaginable pain, that horrible healing, that horrible itching. Sometimes my scar itches unbearably. I have to bite at it so I don"t scream.
The constable dragged up his eye folds. His sausage eyes slid about until they landed on me, which was a greasy sort of feeling. "Us been telled you seen them witches, Miss Briony."
I nodded.
"Did you see "em close-like?" said the Reeve.
I"d seen them close-like, all right, but what should I say? If I"d had a proper witchy education, I"d know the rules. Does one betray a fellow witch?
The Reeve took my silence for fear. "Us knows them witches be right scareful to think on, Miss Briony. But them memories you got, they be the very things to get "em hanged."
"Briony scared?" said Eldric. "I"ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron."
It"s true: I don"t get scared; I keep my head in emergencies. People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don"t feel very much.
"You got memories too, Mister Eldric," said the constable. "Didn"t there be nothing peculiar about them witches?"
Peculiar? No, nothing peculiar, just the normal run of witchy backsides and witchy girl-parts.
"Him an" me," said the Reeve, "us be sniffing round for evidence, see? The Chime Child, she do her job proper. She don"t take to hanging when there don"t be no evidence."
"A child?" said Mr. Clayborne.