Black Dog Summer (17 page)

“I was going outside anyway,” Bryony mutters, and huffs out her breath as she grabs her shorts out of the cupboard.

Behind her, Gigi tries so hard to clear her mind that her jaw clenches and she starts to quiver.

Once again exiled to the garden, Bryony walks, then stops, then walks again. It is hot and bright, and the sky, which should be sporting a greenish mass of clouds for the regular afternoon storm, is clear and blue. She is so busy planning how she will rearrange her room after the mysterious Simone comes to reclaim Gigi (there will be only one bed in it, for a start) that she scarcely notices what she is doing until she finds herself around the side of the house and up on top of the wooden dustbin cover once again.

The board she snapped the last time grins at her with splintery teeth. She hasn't told her mom and dad that she broke it, and, so far, no one has said a word. She figures that maybe the distraction of her cousin in the house is good for some things after all. She shuffles past the gap to get close to the wall, but before peering over onto the Matsunyane side, she pauses.

The image of the tapeworm-draped figure from her nightmare billows up in her mind.

Bryony wraps her arms around her knees, curling over her tight little ball of fear. She tries to slow her breath. Just as she is about to
climb back down to the safety of the garden below and forget she ever came up here, she hears the glass sliding door of the mask room swish open on the other side of the wall.

“Hello.” It's Lesedi's voice. Who is she talking to? Bryony listens to the soft sound of footsteps on the grass approaching the wall from the other side and freezes. The footsteps stop. “Bryony?”

She gasps. There's no possible way that Lesedi can have seen her.

“I know you're there,” Lesedi continues.

Bryony doesn't answer.

“Right.” Lesedi's voice sounds so close that, even through the layers of brick and plaster and paint, Bryony imagines she can feel her breath moving across her skin. She shivers. “I'll just say what I have to say, and you don't need to answer, just listen, even though you've decided that you know who I am,” Lesedi says.

Bryony lets the air out of her lungs very slowly. Strange, colorless patches swim in front of her eyes.

“There is something dark moving into your home,” Lesedi says.

Although the sky above is clear, distant thunder cracks and rumbles, and Bryony thinks of the shadows in the cupboards and behind the sofa cushions. She squirms when she remembers the way the night gloom seemed to condense and intensify over her cousin's bed. All the little hairs on her arms stand up at once like an army of silky filament soldiers.

“I don't know what it means, Bryony,” says Lesedi, “but it is coming.”

Bryony tightens her arms around her knees, squeezing the scared-feeling as hard as she can to try to turn it into anger. “Are you trying to get me back for spying on you by scaring me?” she asks in a small, breathless voice. “Because don't. I didn't mean to do anything bad.”

Silence from the Matsunyane side. The air smells of cut lawns and ice, just as it does when it's going to hail.

“Adults are always trying to stop kids from being scared, aren't they?” Lesedi speaks again. “There are no monsters in the cupboard, nothing bad is going to jump out from under the bed . . . but they're wrong.”

Bryony is now unable to draw any new air into her lungs.

“Fear is an instinct that is there to protect you,” Lesedi says. “But, like all of us, you need to ask yourself if you're fearing the correct thing, or ignoring the truth because you think you already know how the world works. It's so easy to decide that a familiar thing is harmless and a strange new thing is bad, but . . .” Lesedi's next words are lost as a flock of huge, gray hadedas fly overhead, their urgent cries swallowing up the sound: “I am not the one you should be afraid of, Bryony.”

Acrid sweat has suddenly jumped out all over Bryony's skin. She blinks away the mental image of tapeworms slithering out through the eye holes of Lesedi's white mask. Gathering her strength, she slides to the edge of the wooden dustbin cover and then drops down to the ground with a thump, her hands slamming against the baked clay soil to steady her landing. A little lizard skitters off into the grass.

“You can stop telling me about dark energies and things because I don't believe in any of that stuff,” Bryony says as she scrambles to her feet. “It's just make-believe.” She races back to the sanctuary of the house, calling as she runs, “Everyone knows that magic is just for witches in books!”

I linger by the wall for a moment after Bryony has gone.

I see you, Ancestor.

I am the pale yellow sap of an acacia tree, rising upwards, spreading outward into thirsty branches and biscuit-dry leaves. I am thick white thorns, like shards of hollow bone, stabbing blindly at the sky.

Stay awake, Ancestor. Soon, they will need you.

Just before sunset, Bryony goes over to Dommie's house for Shabbat dinner. As the two girls wash their hands together at the bathroom basin, jostling for elbow space and flicking water at each other from the tap, she tells her best friend about Gigi's morning exercises, leaving out the bit about the head smashing because just thinking about it makes her feel a little sick.

“A zombie, doing yoga!” Dommie crows. “I can just imagine the movie.” And both girls crumple into a giggling, useless heap. It takes
ten whole minutes before they can compose themselves enough to sit down at the table.

The candles are lit, the plaited bread is waiting beneath its linen napkin, and Mrs. Silverman chants her prayers in her beautiful voice, but Bryony waits in vain for the feeling of quiet wonder to overtake her as it used to. The sip of wine tastes sour in her mouth, and when she glances across at Shane, the clips holding his yarmulke on suddenly look silly.

She bows her head and bites her lip and realizes that she doesn't
want
it to feel like magic anymore. Now that she knows there's a real witch living next door going on about darkness and monsters and things, Bryony just wants to go home, where the TV will be on and her brother will be watching it and playing StarCraft on his laptop at the same time, and her mother will be warming up a Woolies ready meal because Dora has weekend nights off, and her dad will be reading a magazine about golf. She sits on her hands to stop herself fidgeting and waits for the dinner to be over.

BRYONY WAKES
before the sun comes up. Outside, she can hear the first birds starting. It's Saturday; she could be sleeping late, but lately she's begun to dread sleep. Lesedi was in her nightmares again. This time, she had been wearing a mask shaped like the head of a black dog, and had been trying to break in through Bryony's bedroom window.

Bryony is relieved to hear Gigi stir, and she watches as her cousin slides out of her bed on the other side of the room and begins to do another yoga session on the carpet. Bryony lies motionless and observes through half-closed eyes, unconsciously syncing her breathing with Gigi's loud inhales and exhales.

Bryony is afraid that Gigi is going to start hitting herself again, but once her cousin has finished doing her sun salutations, she just climbs back into bed.

“Saturday Special” breakfast could hardly be called special where Gigi is concerned; she doesn't eat scrambled eggs or bacon, and doesn't even have butter on her toast. Bryony watches the slow smearing of apricot jam that Gigi applies to her slice, and takes a big fat sinfully meaty mouthful from her own.

Tyler is shoveling as usual, with his elbows on the table, but Adele doesn't say anything; she's too busy watching Liam. Bryony has noticed, now that Gigi is no longer talking to Liam any more than she talks to Adele, the bloodless look has left her mother's face. Bryony sees her father glance up, catch her mother's eye, and give a slight nod. He clears his throat.

“Gi?” he begins, focusing hard on cutting the ribbons of fat from the edge of his bacon. “Your aunt Addy and I were thinking that perhaps you would like to start school on Monday.”

“Who the hell would
like
to start school?” snorts Tyler, but no one glances in his direction.

“What do you think of that then?” Liam asks, finally giving his niece a cautious smile.

“I guess.” Gigi shrugs, her face impassive. Simone will be back soon, and Gigi will go with her to the farm and carry on her life and it will be as if all this horrible time spent with the Wildings, school or no school, will never have happened. She takes another bite of toast.

“We've made a few phone calls to the high school that's affiliated to Bryony's primary. They're willing to take you in, even at this late stage in the year.”

“Will she have to write exams? She won't know half the stuff in time.”

“Shsh, Bryony.”

“Saint Scary's?” Tyler wrinkles his nose. “Those chicks are all so stuck up.”

“You're just saying that just 'cause they don't want to talk to
you
, Tyler,” Bryony retorts, and her brother flushes luminous pink.

“We'll need to get you a uniform,” Adele says. “I don't suppose you've got school shoes in amongst your things, have you?”

Gigi shakes her head, not saying a word about the fact that she's never owned a pair of school shoes in her life. Everything she learned about history, biology, literature, and science she learned from Johan, her mother, Simone, and Seb at home.

“Pity. Well, no big deal, we'll get you a pair when we go to the mall later on.”

“Yay, shopping,” Tyler sneers.

“Calm down, Ty,” Adele says with a smile, placing a hand on his arm, “nobody's going to force you to come with.”

“No. I'll come,” he mutters, glancing quickly at Gigi and then away again. “There's stuff I want to get too.”

“Well, I've got a game lined up,” Liam says with a grin. “Sure you don't want to join me instead? Those clubs I got you for your birthday have hardly been touched.”

“No thanks, Dad,” Tyler says, staring down at his plate. “Not really in the mood for golf.”

The mall, so unlike the shabby little thing that Gigi used to visit with her mother and Simone on their annual clothes-buying expeditions, is absurd in its immensity. The overwhelming light and sound and humanity make thinking impossible. Gigi walks beside Bryony through the crowded corridors and stares at the gleaming floor tiles. How do they keep them so shiny with all these people walking on them all the time? She feels slightly seasick but is surprised to find that this strange barrage on her senses is a welcome relief. It makes a change from the clawing feeling that will not stop scraping on the inside of her own head.

“The school uniform shop is this way,” Bryony announces, veering left, and Gigi scuttles to keep up, unsure if she'd be able to find her way out of the place should she get lost.

Inside the school outfitters, the racks of dull fabric mop up the sound and light, making the store quiet and stuffy compared to the rest of the mall, as if to prepare the shoppers for the school experience that will inevitably follow a visit here. Adele chats to the shop assistant, and a tunic is duly brought forth for Gigi to try on in the dark little changing room at the back.

The fabric feels itchy against her skin, and the whole thing stiff and difficult to move in. Gigi has to leave the cubicle to see herself in the mirror, and when she does so her body seems to move differently.

I feel like someone else,
she thinks.

She looks like someone else too. In the drab brown tunic and collared pastel shirt she seems anonymous, as though she could be anyone. It's a uniform made for disappearing in. Gigi tilts her head at her reflection, then catches sight of Bryony, staring.

“What's that on your leg?” Bryony asks, indicating the scabby patch on Gigi's calf from where she carved lines into her skin with that wooden splinter a couple of days ago. “Did you cut yourself?”

“I guess so,” Gigi replies.

“Looks really . . . sore,” Bryony says, her brow furrowed. “It looks like . . . How did—”

“Is that one the right size?” Adele asks, picking her way through the clothing racks to get to the girls.

“Ja. It's fine.”

“Have you tried on the blazer?”

“No,” Gigi says, and picks up the absurd, heavy thing and slides her arms into the sleeves. The lining is cool on her skin, but she can tell that it will warm up pretty fast in the sun. Schoolgirls must get really stinky.

“Super,” says Adele, heading back to the sales assistant. “We'll take the tunic, the blazer, and three of the shirts. Thank goodness it's not winter, hey? I'd be buying up half the shop.”

Gigi looks back at her reflection and sees that she's disappeared even further. She gives a tiny, satisfied smile before realizing that Bryony is still staring at the marks on her leg. Their eyes meet in the mirror.

“How about you girls explore on your own a little?” Adele says. “Get something to eat.” She presses some money into Gigi's hand and points them towards the food court.

“But . . .” Bryony whines. Sharing a bedroom with Gigi should've made them at least slightly at ease in each other's company, but an awful, solid weirdness persists in the air between them.

“It's half an hour, not the end of the world, Bry. I'll meet you at the bookshop at quarter past; Tyler should be there by then.” Adele has to give both Bryony and Gigi a small shove to get them moving, and then she turns and heads in the direction of a sage-green, raw silk blouse that she spotted in one of the boutiques on the way in.

The air around the food court is thick with the smell of frying oil, doughnuts, and meat kebabs. Bryony glances up at her cousin and sees that her small, freckled nose is wrinkled in distaste.