Chime (35 page)

“Briony, listen!” says Leanne.

She’ll lose those teeth soon. She’s winding down to her final
plink
.

“Briony, stop!” says Leanne. “Briony!”

I round the corner, where months ago, I was sick on the smell of eels. The Brownie swings on beside me. Leanne is a Dark Muse. I don’t know what I am.

Snow falls on my hair. The world is small and white.

Stepmother was a Dark Muse. She fed on me, she fed on Rose.

“Briony!”

I come upon a tangle of alleys. Weave yourself into them, Briony. Go round one more corner, Briony. Perhaps they won’t find you.

I sit beside a rubbish bin.

Snow falls. The world outside is small and white. The world inside is vast and dark.

A figure emerges from the gray and snow.

“Briony?”

My tears go on forever. Snowflakes fall like shredded clouds. My tears go on forever. The figure comes nearer. Eldric’s lips are so red they hurt.

I am stomping out new memory paths.

It is difficult. There are too many
I am wicked
paths crossing and crisscrossing my memory. I don’t believe the nice things I say to myself.

I like you!
I tell myself.

I answer myself:
What a stupidibus!

Stop saying that, Briony. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Briony pinches her lips. She says nothing.

I don’t believe it now. I shall have to reverse the false memories that Stepmother stomped into my brain.
You’re a witch!
She trod out paths to memories that never existed.
You hurt Rose.
She trod them out over and over, so they appeared to be real, even though they led to nothing at all.

It would be easier to believe myself if Eldric said something.
I love you.
He said it once. But he hasn’t said it since. It would be so easy: He sits a mere table’s width away. But he stomps out no paths. He is indifferent.

“Wrap that bit around the end, will you?” he says.

“The squiggly bit?”

“That’s the one.”

It’s only March, but today comes with a whiff of spring. From the front porch, Eldric and I have a terrific view of the square. Father and Eldric rebuilt the porch after the trial, while I was ill. I’ve seen Dr. Rannigan any number of times, but he never says
I told you so!
I was ill for months. You’d think a person who’s lost his hand would need a great deal of time to recover, but it seems that a person who wanders the swamp in her petticoat, then bides in jail for five weeks, needs even more.

A river of steel flows into the village. On it stands the
five thirty-nine
, snorting and pawing the ground. She’s ready for her run to London. But for now at least, the plans to extend the railway into the swamp have been suspended. There’s been no draining of the swamp since Halloween. But Mr. Clayborne’s contemplating the possibility of sinking great posts into the swamp and floating the railroad on top of them. Then the queen will be happy and the Boggy Mun will be happy.

“This fidget needs a bit of a twiggle,” says Eldric, and I twiggle. We have a terrific working vocabulary. But Eldric needs my help less than he pretends. He’s worked out a way to tie a knot with just the one hand. I’ve seen him.

“Tell me the story again,” says Eldric. He says his memories of the Dead Hand and the swamp are like a dream. He remembers, but he doesn’t remember.

“Which version do you want?” I say. “The one in which I am terrifically heroic? Or the one in which I am extraordinarily heroic?”

“The latter,” says Eldric, but then he looks at me sideways, and I know what he’s going to say.

“For goodness’ sake!” I say. “I am not too tired. Would you and Father please stop treating me as though I’m going to break?”

“But you did break,” says Eldric. “That’s hard for us to forget.”

“You broke too,” I say. “But you don’t see me worrying about you.”

“But you do worry, I think. You worry in a different way.”

Eldric’s right, although I’ll never admit it. I do worry about him. I worry that he has horrid feelings about having lost his hand, his dominant hand. He was a boy-man who boxed and fidgeted and climbed roofs, and now—What does he say to himself when he’s alone?

I hate myself
? Is that what he says?

I can only guess at his feelings. I know what Dr. Freud would guess, but he’d be wrong.

“You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.”

I wish I’d lost my hand instead. I have no particular need for it, except for writing. But even so, I need only the one.

“Ha!” he says. “You didn’t see me all the while you were ill. Just ask my father if I didn’t complain. Or Pearl. Pearl knows.”

It’s true. I’ve lost time, all sorts of time. I’ve lost memory time with Stepmother; I’ve lost real time with Eldric. I feel as though he and I are just now meeting all over again. I try to identify what’s shifted between us. Perhaps the best word for it is
guarded
. Eldric has grown guarded.

I tell a highly colored version of our journey through the swamp on Halloween night. But there’s enough truth that I let Eldric shake his head and say, “How did you do it, though? All those miles, and me, such a weight!”

“Robust,” I say primly. “You’re robust.”

“You’re very kind.” Here comes his curling lion’s smile. “I rather think my father would call me hulking.”

“Only when you ask for thirds at supper. You tell him I say you’re robust, and that I’m the one to know.”

The
five thirty-nine
whistles. Eldric and I jump, then laugh. The skip-rope girls scatter. The
five thirty-nine
tosses her luminous hair and chuffs away from the station.

Someday I will gallop away with the
five thirty-nine
to London. And someday, I will take one of her sisters from London to Dover, then sail to France, and I know just what I’ll say. “Pardon, monsieur.” I will be very polite. “Le restaurant Chez Julien, il est sur le Boulevard Saint-Michel, à droite, si je ne me trompe pas?”

I mention this to Eldric, but he shakes his head. “Let me remind you of the correct phrasing, and please note my perfect accent: The restaurant Chez Julien, she is, if I do not mistake myself, down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to the right?”

I speak again in my French voice. “I must note one error, monsieur, one oh-so-small error. A restaurant, he is a boy, not a girl.”

“Really!” says Eldric. “The French have certainly got that wrong!”

“You can correct them on your next visit.”

“I shall be sure to.” Eldric sweeps his newest fidget into his palm, admires it from all sides. “We are ready for paint. Or, as they’d say in Paris,
Voilà!
French is an admirably economical language.”

“I’ll fetch Rose.” I peel off my lap rug, but Eldric springs up first.

“I’ll do it.”

“I am not going to break!”

“Not if you keep quiet,” says Eldric. Dr. Rannigan has told Eldric and Father he was astonished I managed to hang on through the end of the trial. But he also says he’s seen it before. That sometimes people stave off the symptoms of illness to finish something else. Then, though, the illness comes crashing down upon the person like an avalanche. It makes Father and Eldric feel guilty, which is nice, but tiresome.

Eldric speeds through the front door, but I call after him. “I won’t stay in this chair. You’ll come back sometime to find I’ve disappeared.”

Hmm. When might
sometime
be? It might be this evening.

It might, and it will. I mean to walk to the fields to check on the green mist. That’s what the Swampfolk used to do every spring when I was small. We’d rise before dawn. We’d wait and watch. For days and days, we’d watch the sun rise over fields of plain brown earth, and we’d turn about and go home. But one morning, the sun would rise on fields of green mist, and we’d stay to welcome the earth. We’d tell her how glad we were she’d awakened once again. We’d sprinkle salt and bread on the ground and say strange old words that no one understands anymore.

Tonight wouldn’t be like those not-so-very-old days. I’d be watching in the evening, and I’d be watching alone. But I wouldn’t let another day pass without watching for the earth to awaken.

“You may as well have let me fetch her,” I say as Eldric emerges with Rose. “While you were gone, I ran around the square. Twice.”

“Don’t even think about doing that,” says Eldric.

“Or?” I say. I listen to myself. I sound, perhaps, a touch childish.

“Or I’ll pound you into a pulp,” says Eldric with the utmost good humor.

“I know that’s a joke,” says Rose.

“Quite right, Rosy Posy.” I hand Rose the box of paints. “I have a color request for this fidget.”

Rose opens the box.

“Let’s paint it the exact color of the motorcar.”

“I’m the one who has an eye for color,” says Rose.

“I’m the one who’s ill,” I say.

“You’ve been ill too much,” says Rose.

“Hear! Hear!” says Eldric.

I feel the prickle of tears behind my cheekbones. I lie back and close my eyes. They’re joking, I tell myself. Or at least Eldric is. Rose doesn’t know how to joke. But sometimes I cry at the stupidest things.

Rose sets out the paints; she mumbles over them. Eldric whispers. Mumble, whisper, mumble. Finally, Rose says, “What color is the motorcar, Briony Vieny?”

Eldric has coached her, of course.

“Cardinal.” (Hallelujah! Hallelujah!)

The two of them rattle about in the paints.

“Is this one cardinal?” says Eldric.

“No, it’s this one,” says Rose.

“You’ve got an eye for color, right enough,” says Eldric.

I get what I want, but I still feel like crying. What a stupid baby!

Stop, Briony! Don’t you remember about treading out the paths? You don’t want to deepen the path to
stupid baby.
You want to tread out a path to kindness. What might Father have said?
Poor girl, you’ve been so ill, and no one’s looked after you for such a long time.

That’s actually no longer true, although truth is entirely irrelevant to the treading out of brain paths.

Eldric sends Rose to the kitchen. We need a bite to eat, he says. “Ask Pearl for some of those sunset buns your sister likes so well.”

I smile. I know Eldric sees it. He may be indifferent, but at least he forbids me to say I’m not a hero. There! Another brain path in want of scuffing.

I am drifting into sleep. I’m thinking mad, mixed-up thoughts, or perhaps I’m dreaming, but my dream thoughts are true, true in the real world. I wish that Eldric had cared for me while I was ill, as he did when I was recovering from my encounter with the Dead Hand. But, instead, it was Father who cared for me. He sang, and bathed my forehead, and took to singing again at night. It’s awfully silly with daughters who are eighteen, but I don’t have to pretend not to like it. Rose likes it, which means that even if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t say so because one doesn’t say one doesn’t like things if Rose likes them, unless one doesn’t value one’s hearing.

After a few pints of ale, Father even manages a few
I love yous
. He was devastated that he’d left us alone with a Dark Muse—even now he can hardly bear to say the words. I tell him he couldn’t possibly have realized she’d turn to us for her next snack.

I tell him it was reasonable to think he’d dealt her a death blow when he stopped singing and locked away his fiddle. She should have unwound and died.

But Stepmother was too clever, of course. The very day Father locked away his fiddle was the day she told me—“reminded” me—that I hurt Rose and that I was a witch. And that meant I couldn’t leave the Parsonage. Stepmother had made me believe it was too dangerous to enter the swamp, and anyway, I couldn’t leave her alone to care for Rose. Stepmother made sure I’d stay close by. Stepmother wasted no time in beginning to feed off me.

I tell Father no one imagined a Dark Muse could feed on girls.

Father tells me it’s awful to realize how long ago she started planning; taking her first steps when I was seven; making me believe I was wicked; keeping me tethered to her larder should Father discover what she was.

I wish he’d told me from the beginning, when he realized the truth about Stepmother. But it wasn’t possible for him, the Reverend Larkin, to tell his daughter he married a Dark Muse. It was too shameful. He had to hide the fact. He left her to die for want of feeding, or so he thought. He never thought she’d feed upon his girls.

I hear Eldric pause, hear him pad over to me, lion soft. He pulls the coverlet up to my chin. He often performs these small kindnesses for me when he thinks I’m asleep. And when I am asleep too, I suppose.

But I wish he would do the same when I’m awake. I wish he’d help lay down new brain paths for me and scuff out the old. I wish he’d tell me how perfect I am, just as Father did when I was small. That he’d exclaim over my darling apricot ears and perfect fingernails. That he’d scuff out the paths Stepmother stomped into existence, paths of wickedness and guilt.

I fall into mad dream thoughts of fingernails and babies. I put a baby on the wrong train, and no one can find it, and I’m running about, looking for the baby, but the air is thick as glue. What a relief to wake up and realize I’ve been asleep. Rose has gone, leaving behind half a plate of sunset buns and a litter of crumbs. Eldric holds the paintbrush in the tips of his fingers.

“Damn!” he says.

“I can give it a go,” I say.