Snake Ropes (11 page)

But she would never have let me steal this one.

Grandmam loved tangling up Da’s fishing nets when no one were watching. She had a child’s heart, so my job to take care of her were easy. I kept it beating so hard in her she lived longer than them said she would, but I had no games in me to fight against death; not playing with her, listening to her stories, cooking her broth or warming her with fires or soft blankets could look after her from that.

In the last few days I had a Grandmam, I saw death, a shadow with no face, waiting in the corner. Only it weren’t going to let me bring it into any game, fight it for Grandmam and win, and by then, Grandmam were propped up on cushions and weren’t able to play, other than with how fast or slow her breathing went.

Sometimes Grandmam’s breath stopped for a moment, I’d call in Mam, we’d watch her, then she’d breathe again. In the gaps between breathing not me or Mam would breathe them breaths for her, lest we took the life out of her before her time. But that shadow with no face were stood there in the corner, and it must have breathed for her, even without a mouth, for Grandmam died anyway.

‘She were old,’ Mam said, and hugged me. ‘It were the way of time.’

I told myself Grandmam’s stories over and over again after she died, so I’d never forget them. I can still remember the stories in her exact words. I’m warm now, even in my hands, thinking of her fireside voice.

The key wants me to remember Grandmam’s stories for comfort. So I’m calm when I listen to what it tells me. I put the key on the floor, for I want this memory just for myself.

Grandmam told me about the Glimmeras, and she would moan and groan, tug at her hair when she spoke. The story of five old women what live on a tiny rocky island just to the north
of ours. How them got there, Grandmam weren’t sure. She said them’d been there forever.

This is what she said:

Be mindful you never become like them, for though once them must have been like normal folk, them are not like us any longer
.

The Glimmeras are a family to each other. Five of them, all old, all ancient. Them are mothers or sisters or daughters or grandmothers to one another. Them have been alive for so long that no one remembers. Each one has a different colour of hair: red, gold, grey, white and black. Them have claws for hands, and them eat only dead fish, for that’s all them can get
.

Them always used to bicker. Each believed herself to be better than the others, to be the greatest of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss. One day a rare thing happened, and all of them agreed on something. The thing them agreed on was that them would have a competition that would decide, once and for all, which one would be the best of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss
.

The competition was called ‘The Thronebuilding’. Them were all very excited about the idea as this were the most important thing ever to happen on thems tiny island. It were the first time them all agreed on anything. Them made sure each understood the terms before them began
.

Each of the five was to build her own throne using only the rocks on the island. The competition was held on the tallest part of the island, so them could all see the thrones that the others were making, so them could see what them were competing with. It dun matter who finished first, but them agreed that the winner would be the one with the grandest throne. The one who won would make all decisions and settle all arguments.
All agreed with each other that the winner would have the final say on everything
.

The Glimmeras set to work. Each tried to make her own throne grander than all the others. But because them all could see what the others were doing, every single good idea worked on the thrones was copied. No one wanted to lose, so them copied each other, stone by stone, rock by rock, pebble by pebble. When them finished, all the thrones stood along the pinnacle of the top of the tallest part of thems island, all lined up next to each other
.

When it was time to judge the winner of the competition, them all stepped back and looked at the thrones. Them roared with anger and flew at each other, lashing out with thems fists and teeth, as all the thrones, while very grand, looked exactly the same. No one could win
.

Them fought and fought till all were exhausted. Them slumped down all cut and bruised, each in thems own throne. A whisper started between them about having a new competition. Them argued and hissed and cursed and swore at each other while the sun rose and set and rose again, but them finally agreed on the terms of the new competition: the one that could sit on her throne for the longest time would be the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss of all the others
.

The whole thing was, there only ever were them five what lived on that rocky island. Them could only ever rule over one another. Perhaps if other folks, not related, lived there, the Glimmeras would have saved themselves from thems fate by bossing everyone else around. But there never were any other folk, so that never came to pass
.

The Glimmeras sat next to each other for a week, arguing the whole time, then a month passed and them scratched and screeched at each other. Of course them were all soiling thems
clothes, sweating in the sunshine and shaking in the icy winds of night. Not one would budge. The whole place smelled rank
.

Them stewed in thems own filth, screeched and argued and fought and scratched and wriggled and snarled at one another for so many years while thems hair grew long, then longer and longer still. It got all matted together
.

Now them can’t move away from one another or thems thrones unless them all go, thems hair is so tangled and tousled and woven together. Them look like them are one body with five faces, all joined together, covered over by hair. Them must still have thems own arms and legs and bodies beneath it, hidden away
.

Thems hair coils and twists, in parts like a woven rug, in other parts like a tangle of bushes or a whisper of light. In the sunshine the whole mass of hair glimmers, shines back up at the sun like it’s competing with its brightness
.

The hair covers the whole island; nothing can grow beneath it, as it blocks out all the sunlight. When them walk around thems stony island, them all have to decide when to go as them have to walk together
.

If one trips and falls into the sea, them all fall into the sea
.

If one has a nightmare, them all have a nightmare
.

If one gets sick, all get sick
.

If one is hungry, them all have to go to the sea and snatch at the dead fish: only them hate doing anything together almost as much as them hate each other
.

Them fight all the time, pull out chunks of each other’s hair, trying to break free. Thems fights cause storms. In the winter blizzards the snow is the dandruff from thems heads where them pull and tear at one another, trying to break apart
.

We know this is true because the snow here is warm
.

The fire is glowing, so I lay on another block of peat. Grandmam wouldn’t tell me the moral for the story of the Glimmeras herself. She’d ask
me
for it. I’d say something different each time, so she’d get mad like a Glimmera and chase me around the cottage, tugging at my hair. I said the moral were:

dun fight if you can’t win, or

dun argue with someone if you dun want to get stuck with them forever, or

if you want snow what isn’t cold, dun wash your hair, or

if your family stink, stay on an island together so no one else can smell you.

That last moral were always my favourite, as she’d go for me then and we’d knock chairs sliding and rugs flying, chasing after one another. We broke Mam’s mixing bowl, skidding into the kitchen table.

Mam told Grandmam off, said, ‘You’re acting more like a child than Mary does.’ Me and Grandmam both sat in the corner on the floor, plaiting our hair together so our heads were all joined up.

When Mam called us for our tea, we played a game where we would only speak if we could both say the same words as each other, loudly, at the same time. We only ate when we raised our spoons together. Soon we were feeding tattie soup into each other’s mouths. Made a right mess.

I know some of the stories Grandmam told me over and over could be just stories, but all stories have some truth in them. The snow here has always been warm since Grandmam told me it were. And there are other reasons I know this story must be true, because from the north shore, where no one lives, we can see a small rocky island with a mound on the top far away in the distance. A glimmering comes off it, like it shines the sun right back at itself.

The men dun go to the north of our island to fish, for there’s something in the sea what makes it shine too bright. It looks like stringy seaweed, but we know it’s the Glimmeras’ hair. There’s some kind of poison what fizzes and burrows all the way through it. Whatever it is, the fishes can’t swim, can’t even live, it’s so choked up. It creeps closer when folks step too near the water, so we keep well away.

If the Glimmeras’ hair crept up from the sea and covered over our island, we’d get deaded, choked in it. It never has happened yet. I think someone cuts it away from the north shore with a knife. Only there’s so much of it, it’d take a boatload of knives to do the job.

I stand up and stretch. Make a cup of mint tea and stir in a little honey. It’s getting dark outside. The whole day has gone so fast. Remembering makes me feel more tired than anything else. The key’s making me remember things in the time them really took, not like a quick picture memory, or one of the blanks I’ve got where a memory should be. Dun remember Barney being born, but Mam always said I were terrible sick around then and she had to keep me in my bedroom, so I dun make her get sick and hurt Barney when him were still in her

belly.

If Grandmam had still been alive, she’d have nursed me, and I might’ve remembered that, for she were never patient when I were sick. She were always prodding at me, saying I had to get better and play with her. And them prods of hers did make me get well faster than any kind of tincture. It’s comfort, like warm snow, remembering Grandmam. Warm snow makes me not mind so much about being alone.

I take the tea back to the fire, sit down and blank my thoughts. Just think of Grandmam saying ‘warm snow’. Not hard to do.
Just blink, make my mind blank. Refuse any other thoughts before them twist in and unravel.

My thoughts are still. I’m blank enough to listen. I pick up the key. It’s cold in my hands. Not pulling at memories. So I’ve done my part of this trade.

Now it will speak back.

My parents are behind some door or another, the twins in their bedroom. My book of blank pages and pen have gone. The paper dolls under my mattress have been taken. But it wasn’t as I thought it might be. I’m still here. And there wasn’t an argument or a fight. It was worse.

No one has looked at me all day.

The twins were in their playroom downstairs this morning, and I went in and they were sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner, tying their four hands together with a red ribbon. They were staring into one another’s eyes. They never hear me when they’re staring like that. I saw them again later, scuttling into their bedroom, just along the corridor from mine. I knocked on their door. They didn’t answer. I tried the handle but they were holding it on the other side so it wouldn’t turn.

I tried to talk to Dad when he came out of my mother’s workroom, but he kept his eyes on the ceiling as he walked away, murmured ‘Later … later …’ and shut himself away behind another door.

We’ve eaten three meals together and though our mealtimes are mostly silent anyway, none of them looked at me. Dad didn’t even come to the kitchen for the last meal. Mum, Hazel and
Ash ate quickly, I watched their plates till they were empty, and so did they. Then they went away.

So Mum’s told everyone to ignore me with their eyes, as a punishment.

If there was a wicked stepmother who lived here with us, she might tell me to sweep the floor and polish the cutlery and do the dishes and clean out the firebox and scrub the range. I could dance with her while I raged and swept, throw ashes at her while she shouted. I could battle with her, disagree, rage and be transformed. We could fight
really
hard but talk about it afterwards. She’d be wicked, beautiful and have a knife-sharp wit. I’d secretly love her, because when we’d fight, she wouldn’t cry or sulk, she’d match my angry words, and I’d match hers. I wouldn’t have to surrender in order to protect her from how she
feels
, as I do with Mum. I know from all the storybooks that wicked stepmothers are to be avoided if you wish to remain good or pure or ignorant. I really want one.

There isn’t a wicked stepmother telling me to punish myself with housework. But I have my real mother, who tells me it’s my job to look after everyone else, thinks that housework will keep my feet on the ground and stop my imagination taking over.

But if they’re not looking at me, they can’t see me. If they’re not seeing me, they won’t guess what I’m thinking. So for now, I can let my imagination do whatever it likes.

It’s almost night and this day has made me feel so invisible, the light has moved across the sky outside slowly, slowly.

My head is full of thoughts and languages and my imagination thinks that all the stories have gone wrong.

I’ve been dancing in ashes for a hundred years with a frog that has turned from me, kissed a prince and become a toad. I’m
meant to have been a much loved daughter made from snow but my parents used icing sugar so I can’t melt and leave them thinking I was always perfect. I’ve developed a fear of enclosed spaces, so I don’t want arms around me or a ring on my finger. I’m not hungry for an oven-baked witch, I’m not laughing at an empress who wears the skin of her fattened emperor as her brand new clothes, I’m in a corner, watching the ice queen who is worried about eating rich foods for a feast in her honour, in case she gets heartburn. I’m so tired, but I don’t want to sleep for decades to give
anyone
a kiss they’ve wanted for only a moment.

I need to be lifted out. Picked up, and put down somewhere else. I write on the window:

ANY LOCAL WITCHES, YOUR PRESENCE (WITH BROOMSTICK) IS STILL MUCH NEEDED. WICKED STEPMOTHERS IN POSSESSION OF AXES OR HACKSAWS OR NON-ELECTRICAL POWER TOOLS MAY ALSO APPLY WITHIN.

I lie on my bed, close my eyes and think of our own story. All families must have one. Some are spoken of, and some need to be remembered in fragments in order to be pieced together. I think of Mum in the days after she’d built the fence … dressed in magenta overalls and an orange shirt, her hair twisted away under a bright green scarf. She drew roses, sunflowers and violets all over the inside of the fence in coloured chalks. She drew flowers all over the outside of it as well, but I didn’t see them. She said, ‘Now,
that
shows everyone my talent. And it will wash away in the rain.’

She put the padlock on the gate to keep everyone who lives on the island out. On her charm bracelet, the key to my freedom still clanks and clunks.

When she’d locked the islanders out, and us in, she told me, ‘I’ve met some of the women, they’re all mad, they think your father is some kind of deranged man, because who would want to be an undertaker?’ She sobbed, ‘I’m not like the women who live here and they laugh at my voice because I speak properly. I
won’t
be laughed at.’

I said, ‘Are there children I can play with?’ and she said, ‘Where do you keep your loyalty – in your little finger?’

Mum settled into building our furniture once the chalk flowers had been rained away. We were eating lunch on a picnic blanket spread on the kitchen floor. Mum told Dad that she was going to make all the furniture we needed for our home with her own hands. The beds, chairs, shelves and tables. She told him, ‘It will all belong to me if I make it.’ She glared at him, ‘No one else could ever claim it was theirs.’

Dad put his radish sandwich down and stared at it for a long time. He doesn’t like us to talk at mealtimes, because he has to concentrate so hard on eating. He didn’t always find it hard to eat; in our house on the mainland, he was a lot wider. He used to go out and eat fine food and drink fine wines. But since we’ve lived here, he chews slowly, never clears his plate and finds it hard to swallow.

I wipe my bedroom window, breathe another fog on it and write:

I HAVE TO LEAVE

If I stay in this locked room for much longer, I’ll destroy all the books – tear out the pages and rearrange the paragraphs. I still have my small nail scissors. Little use when it comes to picking a lock, breaking down a fence or digging a tunnel, but they can cut up the pages of a book and make up a new story.

I take down some of the storybooks, the atlas, the mythology, psychology and biology books. I pick up the scissors, and put them down again because if I can’t get away from this house, these books could be the only books I ever have. I open them at random pages, move my finger over the words and point at different sentences.

I say aloud …

The match girl … danced with … Medusa … her psyche was disturbed by … photosynthesis. Travelling to Atlanta … she married … a wooden spoon. In the snow-capped mountains, carrying … fungicides … she dissected … the Furies. They were diagnosed as … lampyridae. The girl had … a psychotic episode … of the … tentacles. She ran away with the travelling … metatarsals … she wore … a golden fleece … and lived with seven small … ladybirds … in the … barrier reef … she was jilted by her most beloved … bipolar … bear.

Dad knocks on my door. It’s his quietest knock. He opens it and comes in, says gently, ‘I’m sorry. She was very upset. She’s shut herself away downstairs now. Drawing, I think.’ ‘And I’m not upset?’

‘I didn’t want you to be in here alone, angry or tearful.’

‘Well, I’m not angry or tearful.’

‘That’s good.’

‘I’m invisible.’

‘You aren’t. I promise.’

‘Don’t go. Can I talk to—’

He shakes his head. ‘I promised her a cup of tea, so I’d better go and make it. Think about something you like, to make you feel more … visible. Collective nouns. You used to like them. How about a symphony of starlings?’

‘An unkissablement of toads.’

‘That’s good, if nonsensical. A … twilight of candles.’

‘Ah. An infestation of rice.’

‘Hm.’ His mouth looks stern, but his eyes smile as he closes the door.