A V of geese flew above, strung beak to tail as though on a wire. The Flats turned into the Quicks and gobbled up my feet.
In my pocket, I carried a paring knife. Pearl keeps the kitchen knives bright and sharp. If you believe in justice and a connect-the-dots world, you’d think I’d trip and die on my own knife. But I’d wrapped it in multiple sheets of the London Loudmouth and carried it point down.
I arrived at the Boggy Mun’s bog-hole just as the mist was rising. A melted-butter sunset pooled on the horizon. The mist was thickening over the dark splat of the bog-hole. It grew thicker, now still thicker. I set a twist of newspaper on an island of moss. Against it, I set the knife.
A burble of water—that meant the Boggy Mun was stirring. A wailing of wind—that meant the Boggy Mun was rising.
I opened the twist of newspaper, sprinkled salt onto the moss. Next came the knife. Which hand to use, left or right? My left hand is nimbler, but my scar constricts my range of motion. I took the knife with my right hand.
Slicing yourself is harder than you’d think. Your skin doesn’t slice, not like bread or cheese. Your flesh pushes back. It’s resilient, like the skin of a mushroom.
I pushed at the knife. My mushroom skin pushed back.
I thought of what I did to Rose. I thought of what I did to Stepmother. I pushed through my mushroom skin. Self-hatred is powerful: Out came the blood, drizzling into the salt.
“Boggy Mun, I, Briony Larkin, come to beg of you a boon.” Should I tell him I’m a witch, or would he already know? If he knew I was one of the Old Ones, might he be more likely to grant my request? A trade discount, so to speak?
The water lip-lapped; the wind wailed.
“You have sent the swamp cough to us, to the people of the Swampsea. Our loved ones are dying and dead. If you will take back the swamp cough, I promise to visit this spot every evening and give to you our salt, and give to you my very own blood.”
The wind wailed.
“Every evening,” I said. “I promise faithfully.”
“An’ church days?” said a dry little voice.
A witch can feel surprise, but it takes her only a minute to swallow it down.
“Church days too.”
The water lip-lapped.
“The blood don’t satisfy,” said the Boggy Mun.
“But it’s my own blood!” I said, because that’s how the Old Ones like it best—the personal touch. “And still warm.”
“I got me a few years’ experience wi’ the human fo’ak,” said the Boggy Mun. “Aye, a few years. I learned more on you fo’ak than you learned on your own particular selves.”
The mist pressed against me, as though the air had thickened. As though it were mist thickened with beard, the Boggy Mun’s beard.
I sat back on my heels, but the beard-mist pressed at me.
“She be a lovely lass,” said the Boggy Mun. “Oh my, yes. A lovely lass.”
He was speaking to me, I realized. He could see me.
“Happen this lovely lass got herself a sweetheart?”
I shook my head. “You can see me but I can’t see you.”
“I fixed it up that way,” said the Boggy Mun. “I thinks it be a grand system. What do the lass think?”
“Grand,” I said.
“I sees thee, right enough,” said the Boggy Mun. “An’ what I sees tell me tha’ doesn’t be all mortal, though it be a puzzlement what sort o’ the Old Blood tha’ has.”
“I’m a witch.”
“There be a deal o’ mortal in thee. I hasn’t been learning on mortals all these years that I doesn’t know there be someone tha’ needs must save. Tha’ be certain tha’ doesn’t got no sweetheart?”
“No sweetheart.”
“But there be someone particular tha’s o’ the mind to save. There always be someone particular.”
“My sister,” I said. “My twin sister.” I thought of Rose, back in the Parsonage, in Pearl’s care. Pearl, sworn to keep her eyes on Rose, except for blinking. “We are identical, she and I.”
“What be the name of this sister?”
“Rose Larkin.”
The moment I said those words, I knew I’d made a mistake. The sky leaned on my shoulders, all ashes and smoke.
“It want but a moment for a body to be striked wi’ the swamp cough.” The Boggy Mun paused. “There, now it be done. Tha’ sister, she be striked wi’ the swamp cough. If’n tha’ be o’ the mind to save her, tha’ best stop these mortal fo’ak from taking the water from my home. Water what be mine.”
The Boggy Mun was gone. I rose, the ground trembled beneath me. I was a fool. I’d thought to make a bargain with the Boggy Mun, but he’d given Rose the swamp cough.
I’d pretended to heed Stepmother’s warnings about the swamp, but I broke my promise, and look what had happened! Mr. Dreary, dead. Rose, struck with the swamp cough.
My thoughts drifted like cold ashes. I didn’t want to hang. I was responsible for Rose. I promised Stepmother to care for Rose. But I didn’t want to hang.
It’s strange how a person can have a distinct distaste for herself, but still she clutches on to life.
I hate myself.
It doesn’t matter, Briony. You have to remember how you hurt Rose, because now you’ve hurt Rose again.
Tell yourself the story. Remind yourself how you hurt Rose. Remind yourself of the swings, the froth of petticoats, Rose’s screams.
You must remind yourself. You must hate yourself.
Remind yourself what Stepmother said to you, not once, but many times. Remember how she’d look at you, how she’d say, “Never tell your father.”
Remember how those words would make your heart lurch and cut off your breath.
“I’ll protect you,” Stepmother would say. “I’ll lie if I have to.” She’d tell me that if Father knew what I did to Rose, he’d turn me over to the constable. “He’s a righteous man, your father,” she’d say. “He’d not exempt his own daughter from the law.”
Overhead, the plovers called out. Full moon! Full moon! The Quicks were a scribble of charcoal.
Remind yourself what you did to Rose; remind yourself what Stepmother did for you. She hid your wickedness. She tried to stop it too. She knew you ought not to enter the swamp. You thought at first it was nonsense. You argued with her. You pointed out that you weren’t in the swamp when you called Mucky Face, but she reminded you that you were standing at the very edge of the river. That it didn’t matter that you were on the Parsonage side, because even in the swamp, you couldn’t possibly have gotten any closer to Mucky Face.
You pointed out that the swings weren’t in the swamp, but Stepmother reminded you that they too hung as close to the swamp as could be.
By the time I reached the Flats, the moon had risen. Full moon! Full moon! I was mid-stride when I saw her, saw the Chime Child, drifting across the Flats. I stood flat and still, a paper doll cut from moonlight. She mustn’t see me. I edged into the shadows. If the Chime Child saw me, she’d want to know my business in the swamp, a thing I was disinclined to divulge.
I didn’t want to hang. Not hanging involves keeping my mouth shut, a thing at which I excel. I didn’t want Rose to die, but Rose living means Briony dying. I didn’t want to hang.
I prayed that she not turn, I prayed she not see me.
Why was I so determined to hold on to life? I’ve so often wished I could stop breathing and let go.
The Chime Child drifted back toward the village. I’d prayed that she’d do so, but actually, I don’t believe in prayer. I believe in good luck. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but if someone’s out there answering prayers, mine’s not at the top of the list.
Back in my wolfgirl days, I’d often met the Chime Child in the swamp. I’d almost forgotten. She and I were the only people who regularly visited it. But who cares, anyway? This particular witch has other things to think about, such as whether she’s willing to reveal she’s a witch in order to save her sister.
&nbs
p; I’d wait until I reached the river. Then I’d decide.
Moonlight floated on the water like spilt cream. The bridge stretched before me. I’d cross the bridge, then I’d decide. Remember, Briony, remember how Rose screamed. You must always remember.
The bridge yawned its reflection onto the river. My feet took me onto the planks. My feet pushed me toward the decision. My feet were turning the far bank into the near bank; they were turning then into now. What was the point of anything?
Of course I’d do it. I had to save Rose. I’d known that all along, of course. I’d just been pretending.
I’d tell someone tomorrow. I’d let myself have until tomorrow.
Father is not a fire-and-brimstone sort of clergyman, but he does sometimes talk about Hell. I think Hell’s a myth, but don’t tell Father I said so. I think strands of Hell are woven into our everyday world.
Take this example.
As I pushed open the gate to the Parsonage garden, the smell of mint and apple sprang up at my feet. I recognized it at once.
“I told you to go away.” I would not look at him, no, not at the Brownie, creeping around my skirts on his horrid stick legs.
“That you did, mistress,” said the Brownie. “But now, with the stepmother dead and gone—”
“Don’t you speak of her!” I said.
I’d banished the Brownie after the library fire. I didn’t argue with Stepmother this time, not when she said that the Brownie and I were a dangerous combination—even the mint-and-apple Brownie—and that the Brownie must go. Not when she said the library wasn’t near the swamp, which meant my witchy anger must have ridden upon the Brownie’s power to call up the fire: He was the only Old One anywhere near. He was always very near, in fact. He tended to follow me about.
The Brownie crept alongside me on his double-jointed legs.
“Go away!”
Silence.
“Go away!”
Silence.
I slammed the Parsonage door behind me, but that was only for show. Doors mean nothing to a Brownie. He squirmed inside in his own oily way. The Brownie was back, the Brownie who’d helped me call up the fire. There’s a bit of Hell for you.
Another strand of Hell:
I return from my visit to the Boggy Mun, knowing that Rose has the swamp cough. The Parsonage appears empty. Pearl has left for the evening. I walk about; there is a slant of light beneath the parlor door. Shall I knock?
Go ahead, Briony, knock. That’s what a regular person would do, and really, it’s not so very difficult. But I was lying to myself.
I always lie.
Father sits beside Rose. Eldric sits beside Dr. Rannigan. I’d almost forgotten Eldric lives here, that he’s slept here for ten whole nights.
“How are you, Rose?” I say.
There comes a long pause, and Father answers for me. He tells me that Rose has the swamp cough. He tells me that the cough’s not terribly bad—it never is at first—and that scientists in London are working on a cure, and that surely before Rose falls very ill, the scientists will have found a remedy.
Father always lies.
Dr. Rannigan knows Father is lying. He says there’s nothing to do when the cough gets bad, save for injections of strychnine to stimulate her heart. And morphine, of course, morphine at the end, to ease her passing.
Ease her passing. The words rang in my head like the bells of some lunatic cathedral. Morphine to ease her passing.
“Rose,” I said, “I’ve a mind to call at the firehouse tomorrow. Would you like to join me?”
Father glanced at Dr. Rannigan. Dr. Rannigan nodded and said a bit of fresh air wouldn’t hurt, and went on to tell us how to wrap her up and how long she might stay out, but I was too busy regretting my offer to listen. Rose is besotted with the firehouse and the firemen, and a besotted Rose is a tedious thing indeed.
Morphine to ease her passing.
Father looked from me to Rose and back to me again. For the first time since Stepmother died he noticed our clothes. He muttered something beneath his breath that sounded remarkably like “Good God!” He said we couldn’t go about dressed like twin versions of the Little Match Girl; and that we certainly couldn’t testify at Nelly Daws’s trial like that; and that Pearl would know how to fix us up.
We were to have new clothes.
We were to have new clothes because I tried to bargain with the Boggy Mun and he outwitted me. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Father shouldn’t feel guilty, but he does. We were to have new clothes because I made Rose sick.
This, to me, is Hell.
On and on ring the lunatic bells.
Storybook events come in threes. So, it seems, does Hell. Here’s the third strand of Hell woven into that night.
I lay in bed, listening to Rose cough. It was a wet, skin-scraping cough, very different from her earlier cough. Rose had never had the swamp cough. I was a fool.
I was a fool, yet I was clever.
It was the clever Briony who’d called up Death. She called it up so she might go into the swamp, so she might save Mr. Dreary, who wouldn’t have died had she not called it up. It’s rather unbearably circular.
But there are more unbearable circles.
It was the clever Briony who dreamed up a plan to save Rose. She dreamed up the plan so she might go into the swamp, so she might save Rose, who wouldn’t have contracted the swamp cough had she not gone into the swamp.
The clever Briony knows that when she enters the swamp, people die. The clever Briony intended that Rose contract the swamp cough. She has always been jealous of Rose.
This to her is the third strand of Hell.
10
Lo: the Gloriousness
That night, the swamp craving returned.
What a strange word, craving. What is it, really? It’s hard to describe, despite the fact that it keeps you up all night. It’s trickier than pain. It’s an itch stuck below your skin. You lie awake on your side of the do-not-cross line, listening to your sister heave and cough. You scratch at itch-ants that tunnel through your bones. You never can reach them.
It makes me sympathetic to Fitz the Genius’s craving, which was for arsenic. It sounds a peculiar thing to crave, but apparently more people than one might expect are addicted to the stuff. That’s what Father said after he dismissed Fitz, even though that meant I had no tutor. Even though he was still a genius. I couldn’t see that the arsenic affected him a bit.
Father sacked the Genius, I banished the Brownie, and then I was alone.
Night faded into blue ink. I was bored, I didn’t want to be hanged. I was bored. I buttoned myself into collar and cuffs. I tied myself into ribbons and shoes. Dawn clung to me like cobwebs.
I find it impossible to be bored when I help Rose get ready for the day. That’s because I’m too busy loathing her. Loathing and boredom don’t mix.
“Five hundred sixty-four steps to the fire station,” said Rose.
“Before you take any of those steps, you must put on your shoes.”
“Five hundred sixty-four steps to the fire station.”
Honestly, if I don’t save her life, I’m going to kill her!
Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I’m to trade my life for Rose’s, I’d appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.
“You talked last night while you were asleep,” said Rose.
“Your shoes, Rose!”
“How can you talk when you’re asleep?”
I could blame myself for her good spirits, if I wanted to, which I didn’t. Rose’s fascination with the fire station began when I set the library fire. I’m still astonished that it was Rose herself who alerted the fire station. She told me all about it—how the alarm bell went off, and the firemen went rushing about, harnessing the horses and checking the ladders, and how it was the handsome Robert himself who lifted her onto the fire wagon and stood right behind her so she wouldn’t fall, and off
they went, the hose-carts rattling behind.
“I prefer that you not talk,” said Rose.
I myself preferred not to talk, but I’d have to talk to say so. “Robert wears shoes.”
“I don’t like my shoes,” said Rose.
“I’m wearing my shoes and you don’t see me complain.”
“You only hear a person complain,” said Rose. “Not see.”
How has Rose lived for seventeen years and no one has ever killed her, not once?
“Perhaps you ought to put your shoes on in the wardrobe.” Rose was irritatingly agreeable. She crawled into the wardrobe and shut the door. Rose has a theory that time goes more slowly in the wardrobe, which may be true, given the amount of time she spends in there.
“Five hundred sixty-four steps to the fire station.”
“How many steps to the breakfast table?”
“I don’t want breakfast,” said Rose. “I want to go to the fire station.”
We ended up compromising. We’d have toast, only toast, which as Rose said, is quick to eat. But Eldric was waiting for us in the dining room, wearing one of Pearl’s ruffled aprons. “You look very beautiful,” I said. “Is this a special occasion?”
“I suppose you could say so,” he said. “I’m in charge of breakfast this morning.”
“Boys don’t wear aprons,” said Rose.
“This boy does,” said Eldric. “He does when he’s cooking eggs.”
“But Pearl cooks our eggs,” said Rose. “Anyway, I prefer toast today and so does Briony.”
I looked at Eldric, into his eyes. My fingers knotted themselves together. Eldric looked at me all the while he spoke.
“Pearl’s baby died.” He swallowed, cleared his throat. And then, because he already knew Rose well enough to know she might not understand, he said, “She’s very sad and wants to stay at home.”
My fingers hurt. I looked down. They were twisted all about one another.
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