Chime (3 page)

“A rival?” said Eldric. “Shan’t we have fun!”

I opened the door of Father’s study, which is just a little less tidy than you’d expect. And he doesn’t realize that his armchair smells of tobacco.
Do as I say, not as I do
.

At the end of the corridor lay the charred remains of the library.

“A flood and a fire!” Eldric looked at the blackened floor, at the boarded-up windows, at the great black cavern that had once contained bookshelves. It still whiffed of smoke. “You’ve had more than your share of misfortune.”

I nodded, but it actually had nothing to do with misfortune and everything to do with me. Six months ago, the library shelves held all my stories. Then I set the fire and cremated them all.

And I have the scar to prove it.

But I don’t mind, really. I don’t read much anymore.

“Father would want me to point out the church, which lies just to the other side of the library.” The church and the library shared the wall, conjoined like Siamese twins. “But you probably don’t care about the church, being a bad boy, that is.”

“Don’t tell your father,” said Eldric.

“I probably have an obligation to point out all the local hazards. When they say
safe as houses,
they weren’t thinking of ours.” I led Eldric through the foyer and flung open the front door. “You’ll notice the porch has fallen right off.”

“Good Lord!” Eldric’s eyes were very bright. It was because of the whites of his eyes—yes, that was it. They were whiter than anyone else’s.

I explained we lost the porch to the flood. “Father hasn’t gotten around to rebuilding it, although he’s quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it’s good enough for a clergyman. But I don’t remember that Jesus let his house fall down.”

Beyond the ghost of the porch lay Hangman’s Square, its cobblestones strewn with the lengths of steel that were growing into the railroad line between London and our village of Swanton, which meant that Swanton was living beautifully up to its reputation as the end of the line.

Eldric stared at me with those bright eyes. What a contrast we must have made: my eyes, blacker than black; his eyes, whiter than white, plus an interesting little scar that dipped into his eyebrow.

Eldric stood very still, yet hummed with energy, just as London did. The London I’d never see, strung with electric wires and brilliant with switch-on lamps. I’ve always wondered whether they string lamps into the lavatories, or do even Londoners think there are certain things best left in the dark?

I’m aware that I’m mixing my metaphors horribly. How can I compare Eldric to a lion in one description and to electricity in another? But I don’t care. It’s my story and I get to make the rules.

Back into the parlor, where the mirror over the mantel shelf caught Eldric’s face. Not mine. I’m not tall enough, and anyway, I’ve outgrown my reflection.

Eldric turned away from the mirror, holding out his hand. In the cup of his palm lay his fidget of paper clips. But the fidget had blossomed into a crown. An allover-filigree crown, with a twisty spire marking the front.

I stared at it for some moments. “It’s for you,” said Eldric. “If you want it.”

“I’m seventeen,” I said. “I haven’t played at princess for years.”

“Does that matter?” Eldric set it on my head. It was almost weightless, a true crown for the steam age.

In a proper story, antagonistic sparks would fly between Eldric and me, sparks that would sweeten the inevitable kiss on page 324. But life doesn’t work that way. I didn’t hate Eldric, which, for me, is about as good as things get.

I mustn’t get back to thinking of myself as princess, or wolfgirl. All the silly things I used to imagine. Stepmother was right. It doesn’t matter that you look like a princess on the outside. You’re a witch on the inside and nothing will change that. It’s best not to look at yourself at all.

“I’ll show you where you’re to sleep.” I pushed through the swinging door into what had been the sewing room. Stepmother slept here when she was ill. Stepmother died here, with no one about to mark her passing. Why didn’t I check on her, sit with her? I knew she was dying. But that’s what witches do, isn’t it? They leave people to die alone.

It was hard to imagine Eldric in this room. How would that mixed-metaphor lion- and London-boy fill Stepmother’s empty spaces?

What did mixed-metaphor boys possess? Football things? Trophies? Sweaty jerseys?

Eldric turned on his high-tension muscles to the window, which overlooked the swamp. “Do you go out there and tramp about?”

I used to visit the swamp every day. I used to imagine myself into a wolfgirl and prowl and lope and sniff and howl. “Not for a long time.” I knew exactly how long: three years come September.

“What’s it like?”

“Wet.” I remembered that September day with terrible clarity. It was the day Stepmother told me I’m a witch. I’m still astonished she had to tell me. How could I not have known? Or at least guessed? I had, after all, left a trail of destruction behind me, wide as a football field.

“It’s very beautiful.”

Beautiful? The swamp stretched as far as the eye could see, a gray shimmer, bronzed with reeds and cattails. I used to think it beautiful, but I have no particular feeling for it anymore. I suppose the old wolfgirl Briony would have disliked the idea of draining the swamp, but why should I care? I could never visit the swamp again.

“Pearl did what she could to make the room comfortable, but please tell us if you need anything.”

Strange to think of Eldric hanging his university jacket and trousers in the sewing cupboard, which had once been filled with needles and spools of thread and embroidery frames. That was back in the days when Father thought his daughters had to be educated in the domestic arts—a hideous phrase, which is of course why Father chose it. He hired Pearl’s mother to help domesticate us, but along came Stepmother and set us free.

“I’ll ask Pearl to attend to the fire.”

Stepmother had never cared for fires. They made her too warm, she said. I had to wrap up when I came into the sewing room to care for her. The sewing room was a sad place then, and I always think a clean-swept grate is desolate.

The light from the window caught at Eldric’s wide lion cheekbones, and at a rougher sweep down his cheeks. Whiskers? Did this boy-man shave? Of course he did, foolish, ignorant Briony. He was twenty-two. He’d be shaving away in this room, in the very room where Stepmother died.

I was suddenly aware of him, of the overwhelming Eldricness of him, of his busy London blood pumping just inches away. Of his paper-clip energy and switch-on eyes.

“Miss Briony!” It was Pearl calling—screaming! “She runned out. Miss Rose runned into the swamp!”

I slammed through the swinging door. I’d done the very thing Stepmother had warned me about. Or rather, I hadn’t done it.

I hadn’t been caring for Rose.

I hate myself.

You must take care of Rose.
Stepmother had said that again and again.
Take care of Rose.
And I had promised.

I’d learned how to do it. I’d learned I had to hate myself.

I crashed into the kitchen. The cupboard door was ajar.

When you hate yourself, you don’t neglect your responsibilities. When you hate yourself, you never forget what you did.

I’d even forgotten about Rose’s cough. How little it took, two bright eyes and a couple of paper clips. What if it’s the swamp cough and she dies, Briony? How will those bright eyes look then?

Let’s review the rules, Briony: What, above all, mustn’t you forget?

You mustn’t forget to hate yourself.

One hundred eighty-three steps to the river.

I hurtled down the riverbank.

One hundred eighty-three . . .

Other footsteps now, joining mine—no, pouncing over mine, catching me up.

“You can’t come with.” I threw the words over my shoulder.

But Eldric was already at my side. “Your father made a plan,” he said. “You and I are to search the swamp, while he and my father search the fields.”

One hundred eighty-three steps.

“And he gave me a Bible Ball.”

“Then mind your feet,” I said, “else the bog will have you for supper.” The Horrors couldn’t touch him, not if he carried a Bible Ball.

“Your father says you know the swamp better than anyone.” Eldric ran beside me on quiet lion paws.

But it had been three years. I’d changed; perhaps the swamp had changed. “Mind your feet.”

One hundred eighty-three steps are quickly taken. We turned onto the towpath, ran beside the river.

“I have Bible Balls for you and Rose,” said Eldric.

The bridge rose ahead. How many steps? Rose would know. Already I was winded. I’d lost the old Briony, that longago wolfgirl who could lope endlessly through the swamp.

I spattered over the pebbles at the foot of the bridge, trying to keep up with myself. My breath grew hot and sharp.

“You can’t help Rose if you overtax your strength.” Eldric took my arm, reined me into a trot.

“I know you’ve been ill,” he said. “Ill for almost a year. I can’t even imagine. Please don’t overtire yourself and make me have to rescue you.”

I might have smiled, but the problem with bridges is that they go up before they go down, and I hadn’t the strength. It’s true, I’d been ill for a long while. I had a queer sort of illness that made me feel as though I were a music box in want of winding, moving and thinking more slowly with every passing day. Thinking—that was the worst. I’m used to being clever, not dull.

We tipped over the rise of the bridge. Downhill now, into the swamp.

The swamp hadn’t changed. Lucky me, to see it again, before Mr. Clayborne drained the water. It was just as I remembered, a foreverness of mud and water, water and mud, and to the west, a blackness of trees.

“Rose left no tracks,” said Eldric.

She hadn’t, she couldn’t. The swamp is too oozy and flowy and drifty to hold an imprint. In April, the swamp smells of winter, but the snow has melted; the season of mud has begun. Beyond the stretches of mud and water lay the end of the world, where the air turned blue.

But slow-poke Rose could never run to the end of the world, not in a quarter hour. Unlike me, she’s never been quick. I pointed to the blackness of trees.

“She’s in the forest?” said Eldric.

“The Slough.” But if she wasn’t . . . Stop, Briony. Make a plan.

“There are three bits to the swamp. We’re on the Flats now, which is all reeds and shallows. Rose will have come to no harm here.”

Unless one of the Horrors—

Stop!

“In another quarter mile, we’ll enter the Quicks. That’s the bit that likes to gobble you up. If she didn’t come to grief there, she’ll be in the Slough. Tread only where I tread through the Quicks. It’s only two miles, but every step is treacherous. When we reach the Slough, go on ahead.” No need to say I couldn’t keep up.

“You’ll need your Bible Ball,” said Eldric.

I snatched a crumple of paper from his palm. Strange that a thing so small keeps a person safe in the swamp—unless that person is Briony Larkin, who isn’t actually a person, which is the reason she needs no Bible Ball. The Horrors can’t hurt her: She’s a horror herself.

“You keep Rose’s,” I said. “You’ll find her first.”

The wind sang through the reeds. “Mistress!” said a voice, and another—“Mistress!” And now a chorus of melancholy voices, calling my name. Or, rather, the name by which the Old Ones called me back in the days when I was wolfgirl, back in the days when I’d used to roam the swamp.

“Where hast tha’ been, mistress?”

“Such a vasty time to bide away!”

“Aye, a vasty time.”

“Listen to the wind,” said Eldric. “It’s lovely, the way it blows through the reeds.”

I nodded. Eldric saw only the reeds, heard only the wind. He hadn’t the second sight.

The second sight.

I tried to disbelieve Stepmother when she told me I’m a witch. I knew she was right, yet I tried to make a case for myself, pecking at the proof Stepmother offered—pecking at it, turning it over, saying it didn’t exist. Then pecking at another bit, and another, until Stepmother took pity on me. If I wasn’t a witch, she asked, how else was it that I had the second sight?

“Talk to us, mistress! Make us our sweet story!”

Stepmother had leaned toward me then, taken my hand between the two of hers. Her hands were always cool. “I wouldn’t tell you if I weren’t obliged to,” she said. “I only want your happiness.”

It was true. Stepmother wanted nothing but the best for us. She wanted us to follow our dreams, helping in every way she could. She made sure I always had paper and ink and pens; she made sure I had time and privacy in which to write. And even Rose—well, Stepmother never minded the scraps of paper Rose left scattered about the Parsonage; she never minded helping Rose cut them into bits, paste them into collages.

“Mistress!”

The voices of the Reed Spirits faded.

“Make us our sweet story!”

Did the Reed Spirits know what had happened to the stories I’d written for them? Did they know those stories had burnt?

The mud-and-water of the Flats gave way to the water-and-mud of the Quicks. Jellied trickles turned to tricky jellies; the land quivered.

“Mistress!”

What a queer feeling; I’d never ignored the Reed Spirits before. It wasn’t simply that I mightn’t speak to them in front of Eldric. It was that I mustn’t ever speak to them, not ever. Stepmother was very clear. She’d told me again and again: Briony plus the swamp plus the Old Ones is an explosive combination.

I had to break my promise now, but Stepmother would understand: I had to rescue Rose.