Chime (21 page)

“Love story! Love story!”

“Not unless you use your articles.”

“Articles! Articles!”

They gave me a headache.

“Pretty girl love!

“Pretty girl love!”

Enough! “Pretty girl love what?” I said.

Stop, Briony! You mustn’t start speaking as they do. “What is the object of your sentence?”

“Object! Object!

“Love is object!

“Love is object of desire.”

Shut up! You’re making me think of Eldric and Leanne turning their pens into boats and swimming them across an ink-blotter sea. There’d be a pirate ship, of course, and a deserted island—Why didn’t I just kill myself?

“Pretty girl love pretty boy.”

Boy? “I don’t love any boy.”

“Pretty girl laugh with pretty boy.”

Eldric and Cecil were both pretty boys, but you couldn’t laugh with Cecil.

“Pretty girl laugh with pretty boy.”

At last they’d put an object to the sentence.

“Pretty boy! Pretty boy!

“Laugh!

“Play!

Light nibbled at the edges of my vision. Blue flames skittered over the muck, yellow flames dove into the earth. The Wykes were out early today, glinting, flirting, teasing, luring.

“Love story!

“Pretty girl love!”

The Bleeding Hearts were idiots.

Laughing and playing with Eldric was fun, but it wasn’t love. But the Bleeding Hearts were spirits of love and romance. They had no room in their tiny minds for a person who didn’t love anyone.

“Love story!”

I turned away. There’s no point in saying good-bye to the Bleeding Hearts. It’s not in their vocabulary. “Make story, pretty girl.” Off I went, but their chiming voices carried a long way. “Make love story!”

Forget them, Briony. Think about the early hours of All Hallows’ Day. Think about how the villagers will scrabble after you, all arsey-varsy, armed with anything to hand: pitchforks, horsewhips, toothpicks. You can elude them if you get a good head start. It’s the scent hounds you want to worry about. You’ll have to make a few circumspect inquiries about how to muddle your tracks and muddle your scent and muddle the hounds. You’ll muddle them further by taking to the snickleways. Pity you haven’t a boat.

On I went, through spinachy water, into a gray incandescence and the smell of rot. The incandescence insinuated itself beneath my hand as a dog might insinuate its head. I sprang back, but the tattered flesh did not. It quivered.

The Dead Hand slithered and oozed. It tapped finger to thumb as though biting the air. But tapping is crisp; this was all flab and squish.

“No!” I said.

The bloated fingers slimed over my hand, oozed round my wrist.

“You can’t!” I said.

The Dead Hand oozed tighter.

“I’m one of you,” I said. “I’m a witch!”

The Hand pulled. Tightened and pulled.

What should I do, what should I do?

It wasn’t painful, not yet, but the thought of the pain to come was itself a kind of pain.

I sat back on my knees, pulled away. The Dead Hand pulled toward. The bog-hole spat and chuckled.

The Dead Hand did not absorb my warmth; I absorbed its chill. The Wykes sparked up, yellow, blue, glinting, laughing—everything was laughing, the bog, the wind, the Wykes. But not the Dead Hand. It didn’t laugh.

The slop splashed at my knees. The wind snickered.

The Dead Hand was silent. It pulled. I pulled back. The earth trembled.

The Dead Hand was silent. It pulled.

The Dead Hand pulled and squeezed, pulled and squeezed.

I’d brought no articles, no Bible Ball.

“I’m a witch!”

The Hand didn’t care.

But I’m a witch, a witch!

Crack!
My wrist went
crack!
It was the sound as much as the pain that made the sick come spraying from my mouth.

The Hand didn’t care. It pulled.

Pull
and
stretch.
It wasn’t just bones that held my wrist together. There were other things for which I had no name. Things that could be pulled, things that could stretch. Why had I never known them, given them names?

My wrist was small. How could it fit so much pain?
Stretch!
The
crack
had been fast, the
stretch
was slow. How could one wrist occupy the universe of my mind?

Crack,
and
stretch,
and now
snap!
I had nothing in my stomach to lose.

Someone shouting now. “Bloody hell!”

The pretty boy.

The pretty boy pulled. He was London soap and pine. The pretty boy cracked and stretched and snapped. He was tawny flesh and lion’s paw. His paw dug for my hand.

“Hold on!”

But it was the Hand holding on. It was the Hand squeezing.

“Hold on!”

Hold on to the pretty boy? I could hold on to him only with my thoughts.
Pretty boy laugh! Pretty boy play.

The Hand squeezed.
Love is object of desire.
Those chiming words, hold on to them, hold on.

The Hand squeezed.
Pretty girl love pretty boy.
Hold on to those words, hold on.

But the Hand squeezed. It squeezed out my thoughts. It squeezed out my brain-light. I was disappearing. I saw my brain-light go drip-drip-dripping out my mind.

Out it went, drip-drip-drip, until I was snuffed out.

Dark and light, dark and light. That was the world. The world was like lace. Lace is dark and light. Stepmother wore lace. Leanne wore lace.

Leanne and Eldric, dark and light.

When we think of lace, we think of white, but without the dark, the in-between bits, there’d be nothing to look at.

Dark and light, dark and light.

Bones are hollow. Bones are webbed with lace.

Anesthesia, Dr. Rannigan!

Bones can hurt—how they can hurt!

Take a hand, crush it slo-o-o-o-w-ly, splinter the bones, crumble the lace, squish away the negative space.

Anesthesia!

“Drink it down.” Eldric’s voice pressed a spoon to my lips. “There you go, every last drop!” Liquid trickled down my throat.

All those airy hollows, gone.

I swallowed. Swallowing tore my hand.

Anesthesia!

Dark and light, the world was dark and light.

Dark and light, mint and apple.

Go away
!

But my voice was lost, and anyway, the Brownie never listened.

Mint and apple. Dark and light.

The smallest eye-twitch tore my hand-lace.

“Every last drop!” Eldric’s voice was honey.

The honey voice sang.

Once I had been in the roar-time of my life. Now I was in the hush-time. The people who sat with me were in the hush-time. They made hush-time sounds: a mouse-squeak as they sit in the chair, a crumble of rockers on wood. Father singing, lullaby-soft.

Stop: That’s not a hush-time song!

That’s a roar-time song. Stop!

Father didn’t stop.

Eldric sat on the end of my bed. His end went down; my end went up.
O I fear ye are poisoned.
I had to erase that song.

“ ‘I Know Where I’m Going,’ ” I said.

“Briony?” Eldric’s end of the bed went up. He stood at the pillow end. My eyelids felt his gaze.

“Did you say something?” His voice was thick as porridge.

“ ‘I Know Where I’m Going.’ ”

“Shall I sing it?” he said.

I flapped my good hand. Yes!

My end of the bed went up.

Eldric cleared his throat. He sat so long, now silent, now clearing his throat, that I slipped back into darkness.

“I have here a ladies’ hatpin,” said Eldric. “I know you are wondering what this superb specimen of masculinity would want with a hatpin. But what you don’t know is that Tiddy Rex and I are building a castle, and of course, every castle needs a catapult, and what every catapult must have is something to pult. Even as I speak, this hatpin is being transformed into an enormous medieval stone.”

Eldric’s voice was hush-time, but a catapult is not a hush-time pursuit, and neither was the smell. It was a roar-time smell: wood smoke, mixed with a warm, brownish spice, mixed with a whiff of the fruited soaps sold at the Christmas fair.

“It takes a dozen men to heave this stone into the catapult—or women, of course, if they are boxing champions, like you.”

When a person is ill, a whiff of roar-time is better than any tonic. I opened my eyes. Sun slanted in the window. It lay curled in the palm of my left hand, my wicked hand.

Where was my virtuous hand? My virtuous arm was heavy, too heavy to raise itself. I couldn’t see the end of it.

I lay in the sewing room. I didn’t like that. This is where Stepmother had lain. The smell of sickness had infected the room. I memory-smelled it, a bloated oozy smell, toad-scum, stagnant water. It crimpled the underside of my tongue.

I memory-smelled eels. Eels in eel broth. That was a sickmaking smell. Where was my mint-and-apple Brownie?

It was good to open my eyes. It let light into my brain. I was in the sewing room, but the toad-scum smell was gone. It was now just wood smoke and brown spice and fruited soap.

Eldric had brought new smells with him. He’d brought new sounds with him. The sound of his hollow whistle:
If a body meet a body, comin’ thro’ the rye.

Stepmother had never cared to light a fire, but there was a fire in the grate.

I heard him look at me: The chair went
crumble–crumble
—stop!

My heart ticked off the seconds until Eldric bent over me; then his face filled my mind.

“There you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

He’d become gaunt, hollow as his own whistle, save for the under-eye bits, which were scribbly and pale.

“You look tired.” I’d grown a stranger to my own voice. It made the faintest of chimes, like the ticking of a fingernail on glass.

“That’s what I’m supposed to say to you.” His smile pouched out the under-eye bits.

I had all sorts of deep, meaningful questions to put to him, things to tell him, but I couldn’t think what they were.

“I’m also supposed to tell you that talking might overtire you.”

“This is Briony, remember? Since when did talking ever tire her!”

Eldric sounded more like himself when he laughed.

“I’ll be listening,” I said, “even if I close my eyes. Talk to me. Tell me what you’ve been doing while I’ve been ill.”

“I’ve been right here.”

I closed my eyes. “Tell me about the harvest festival.”

“I didn’t go,” said Eldric. “I’ve been right here.”

That was interesting.

“Tell me about the hayride.” I’d had visions of Eldric and Leanne on the hayride. Drinking from the same thermos; sharing a blanket; and when their fellow hay-riders left, lingering, perhaps, in the hay—

“I’ll go next year,” he said.

“What about Mr. Thorpe?”

“Boring,” said Eldric.

My lips were too tired to smile. “But lessons?”

“I couldn’t have lessons when you were so ill. When we thought you might die!”

No lessons with Leanne!

“Any excuse to avoid lessons,” I said.

But Eldric didn’t answer. All he could do was clear his throat.

It may have been hours later or days later when I asked about my hand. Everything is confused when you’re ill.

“You can still feel a hand, can’t you, even if it’s been torn off?”

I realize now how hideous the question must have sounded. But I didn’t mean it that way. It was simply that I knew that people who’ve lost a bit of themselves (let’s say it’s a hand) report that they still feel it. They don’t really, of course, because the hand is miles away, in the swamp. But their brain thinks they feel it. I know because I read this in the
London Loudmouth.

I’d never seen Father and Eldric so flustered. They rushed to assure me that my hand was still attached to my wrist. They interrupted and spoke over each other, which was not like either of them, but their meaning was clear. My hand was badly injured—injured, yes, it was injured—

They were trying to avoid words like
mangled
. I could tell. No wonder my arm was so heavy. It had been plastered up, like something in a Poe story. Dr. Rannigan set the bones as best he could.

“How many bones did he set?” I cared about it much less than they did. It’s my Florence Nightingale calm, I suppose.

There was a pause.

“Twenty-seven,” said Father.

There was a question mark in that pause. “How many bones are in a hand?”

Another pause.

“Twenty-seven,” said Eldric.

“What on earth were you doing?” Eldric asked, the next time we were alone.

“Doing?”

“You left the knife beside the bog-hole,” said Eldric. “After I’d got you home and cleaned up a bit, we saw the cuts.”

The cuts? Of course, the knife, and my mushroom skin, and spilling blood for the Boggy Mun. How long ago that had been.