Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  In May, the mud has melted into slush. The peat moss is emerald and the sundew plants show their bright, yellow faces. You might think they resemble happy schoolchildren, until you learn of their flesh-eating habits. We cut across a corner of the Flats, oozed across scrub and moss, trod on bright, carnivorous smiles.

  I’d forgotten how wolfgirl could change direction mid-stride, how within the space of a heartbeat, she could turn from the Flats toward the estuary. Eldric did the same, wolf and lion, shifting quick as wind.

  “You’re fast,” said Eldric.

  “I’m catching up with myself,” I said, which made Eldric laugh.

  At least we wouldn’t be going into the heart of the swamp, which meant I was unlikely to hurt anyone. The fighting lesson was to take place in a meadow called the Scars, not because we were interested in acquiring any, but because it was dryish and largish and free of crops. At the far end of the Scars rose the pumping station, or at least what was left of it.

  “Funny about the pumping station,” said Eldric.

  “Funny,” I said.

  The pumping station was already being rebuilt. As soon as it was all brash and red-brickibus, Rose would fall ill. I had another plan, though. We could stow away on the London-Swanton line, once it was up and running. It was behind schedule, which was troubling. Rose had to leave the Swampsea while she continued well. No matter how far we traveled, Rose would die of the swamp cough if the Boggy Mun infected her again before she left.

  It turns out there are two ways to make a fist. If you make one sort of fist, you punch your opponent. If you make the other sort, you break your thumb.

  Eldric curled my fingers into place, set my thumb upon them, just so. How casually he did it, as though he touched girls every day. Perhaps he did. Had he ever really touched a girl, touched her in the Pearl and Artie way?

  Such a nosy parkerium, Briony!

  “Soften your knees, sink into your heels. You want to keep yourself low.”

  “I have an advantage there.” I softened, I sank.

  Eldric punched, slowly, just to show me, keeping his arms close to his sides, turning his fist to make the punch, turning it back when he snatched it away. “It’s the snatching away that gives it power,” he said. “Also, by pivoting from the hip. Never punch from the elbow.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Only a stupidibus would fight like that.”

  Guess what? I can punch as well as make people laugh.

  Soft knees, weight low, sink into heels. Hips pivot—wham! My fist flew forward.

  “Nicely done!” said Eldric, although it had glanced off of his palm like a pebble.

  “Why aren’t you begging for mercy?”

  “I make a point never to do so,” said Eldric. “It puts one at a disadvantage.”

  He laughed and I laughed, but the clergyman’s dutiful daughter didn’t laugh. That girl was gone; wolfgirl had returned. Wolfgirl, who was leaf dance and moon claw and tooth gleam. When Jupiter sizzled the air with lightning bolts, she caught them on the fly.

  “Nice throw, Jupiter!”

  “Nice catch, wolfgirl!”

  Her mouth was a cavern of stars.

  Eldric adjusted my hands. “You want to draw your right hand in a bit.”

  The witch nodded. Eldric assumed she was right-handed. But the witch was left-handed, and she had the second sight, which meant she saw the Strangers wriggling from beneath the great stones that dotted the Scars. She saw the Strangers weaving and wobbling toward her on their tiny string legs. But Eldric hadn’t the second sight; he was blind to the Strangers, so she pretended blindness too. She showed him her new fist-making skills; he gave her fist his undivided attention.

  One doesn’t laugh at the Strangers, despite their spaghetti arms and legs, despite their outsized heads that loll about on spaghetti necks. The Strangers are proud and powerful. The Strangers control the harvest.

  “Excellent fistibus,” said Eldric, but he wasn’t done with my hand. He inspected my left palm, the pucker of scars.

  “There’s no fortune to be read in that palm,” I said, but of course he wanted to know about it; of course he’d been dying to ask since we first met. “Do you want the version of the story in which I’m a hero, or do you want the true version?”

  “Both,” said Eldric.

  “Greedy!” I said.

  “I was quite ill,” I said, which I mentioned not because it’s true, although it is, but because it makes people feel sorry for me. Even a witch wants sympathy. “My memory of the event is rather foggy.” This is also true. “But I know I was writing one of those stories Rose is forever mentioning, and I suppose I smelled the fire—in any event, I found myself at the library door.”

  Here’s where my account of the fire diverges from the truth. I had, indeed, been writing, but the Horrors alone know what possessed me to stumble into the library. What made me call up the fire?

  I don’t think I’ll ever know. Not even Stepmother could venture any theories. And burning my hand—well, I’d been ill, and perhaps I hadn’t been strong enough to control the fire.

  “You must remember,” I said, “that this is the heroic version.”

  “I have it well in mind,” said Eldric.

  “I attempted to rescue my stories, not for my own sake, but for Rose’s. The stories soothe her, and there are so very many she loved. I knew it would take me years to write them all again, and even then, they’d never be the same.”

  “I believe that,” said Eldric. “Heroic version or not.” He curled my fingers into a fist.

  “As for burning my hand in the attempt,” I said, “I think I must blame my illness.”

  It’s unsettling to straddle two worlds, one foot in the human world, speaking to Eldric of scars and fires, the other foot in the world of the Old Ones, where the Strangers look at me all slanty and sideways beneath their toadstool bonnets, their tongues flapping from their lolly-bobbing heads.

  It seems odd that a day given over to bad boys and boxing should turn into a day of memories. But so it was. My memories were dull and gray, like a photograph. The books were black, the fire gray. A cloud of white lace rushed into the library. I didn’t recognize her at first, not Stepmother, because it wasn’t possible that she be there. She couldn’t rise from her sickbed. Her bracelets were the color of cinders, although they jangled in the key of gold.

  Flames leapt into the room. They sharpened their teeth on the floor. And then I couldn’t see, there was only sound—a jangle of gold, a woman’s voice, a girl’s screams. The girl had burnt her hand.

  How much pain, though, must Stepmother have endured to rush to the fire? To try to save me? I never asked, of course.

  “My turn.” I’ve always wanted to know about the scar that dips into Eldric’s eyebrow. Eldric treated me to an account of the Great Pudding Caper, which made me laugh so hard I had to stop fighting to catch my breath.

  “Mistress!”

  Now the Strangers spoke. “Make us our story, mistress!”

  They spoke one at a time, their voices identical, one picking up precisely where the last left off. If you were to close your eyes, you’d think it a single voice.

  Punch, kick, block. I must get rid of my skirts if I am truly to kick.

  “Make us our story, mistress! Our story, it need must be telled. The story o’ the dark earth, o’ the roots, the roots what us tends all the spring long that you fo’ak might have victuals an’ beer.”

  Kick, punch, block, punch. All those stories, the stories of the Old Ones, they burnt in the fire.

  “Scribe it to us, mistress. Scribe o’ the clay. Clay, it be right comely, but you fo’ak doesn’t see it. You doesn’t see the crystals what it got, you doesn’t see ’em sliding and gliding.”

  The Strangers are the ones to know such things. The Strangers rule the underground, not the Devil. They ripen the corn and paint colors on the flowers and gild the autumn leaves.

  “Make us stories o’ the underground. Make
us the story o’ the Unquiet Spirit what tosses in her winding sheet. She be lying with them cold worms an’ don’t nobody hear her shrilling.”

  Punch, block, kick.

  “The Unquiet Spirit, she be shrilling out a name. Tha’ knows it fine, that name. It be tha’ own particular name. It be Briony Larkin.”

  Stepmother screamed my name the day of the fire. Stepmother, who ran to the library despite her injury. I have a theory about how she might have managed to pull off such a feat. It comes in the form of an equation: Love + Fear = Herculean Strength. It’s how mothers come to fling runaway motorcars from their children. It’s how . . . well, actually, I oughtn’t to speculate, never having experienced the Love portion of the equation. But I did read about the mother and the motorcar in the London Loudmouth.

  “Make us our story, mistress. Make us our story.”

  Eldric caught at my fist, examined it, made sure I hadn’t slipped into thumb-breaking mode. “Your fists are beautiful,” he said.

  Beautiful! He said my fists are beautiful! How I wished I could tell him about the Strangers.

  “Thank you,” I said. His hand was warm around my fist. “Yours are adorable.”

  He squeezed my fist in mock protest. He smiled his curling smile. How I wished I could tell him everything.

  Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.

  Beautiful! That’s what a friend would say. A friend would touch a person’s hand. But Briony, you mustn’t think about having friends and touching hands. If all goes as planned, you and Rose will leave the Swampsea. You’ll leave the Swampsea on one of Mr. Clayborne’s trains, but nothing will really change. You’ll live alone, except for Rose, you’ll live in the dark with the dust and the crumbs, and when you hear a noise, you’ll scuttle into the cracks of the wainscoting.

  Friendship will get you nowhere. You have to keep your secrets. You mustn’t speak of the Strangers, now lob-bobbling away from you. Now vanishing beneath the rocks. You mustn’t believe that the pretty boy from London will keep your secrets. Do you want to exchange the pressure of all those secrets for a rope about your neck?

  Guess what it is that turns plants to coal.

  Pressure.

  Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble.

  Pressure.

  Guess what it is that turns Briony’s heart to stone.

  Pressure.

  Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric’s, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.

  13

  The Trial

  Pearl returned to us the day before Nelly’s trial. We welcomed her, and we shook her hand, and some coins passed from Father’s hand to hers, and we went our various ways, all except Edric, whom I overheard offering to help with supper.

  Pearl said it was very kind of Mister Eldric but she didn’t need no help, and anyways, she knew her place, she was sure, which was more than she could say for Mister Eldric; and Eldric said never mind about that, he thought she might like some company just now; and Pearl burst into tears and cried and cried, with Eldric saying things too low for Briony to hear; and Briony realized she should admit she was turning overhearing into eavesdropping, in which case she might as well sit down and enjoy it, which she did; and she heard Pearl’s sobs turn to laughter from time to time, as when Eldric tried to peel an onion with the butter knife or said he didn’t mind gathering herbs from the garden if Pearl could tell him where to find the mint sauce.

  How does Eldric manage this so easily? When I told Pearl how sorry I was about her baby, she merely said, “Thank you, miss,” and turned back to the sink. Perhaps she could tell I was sorry about her baby, but only in my head. That’s just a thought, not a feeling.

  The next morning, Eldric also helped out in the kitchen, or pretended to help but really spent most of his time making up disrespectful rhymes about Judge Trumpington and the Chime Child. He even made Father and Mr. Clayborne laugh, although Father couldn’t help but comment that Judge Trumpington does not rhyme with wages of sin, and never will.

  We were on our way to the courthouse, more than an hour later, when I realized that the whole morning was a trick of Eldric’s to set us all at ease. Rose and I, in particular, were nervous.

  How does he manage it?

  The courthouse was tucked behind the jail, overlooking a sullen little street, clotted year-round with mud. Father and I paused on the courthouse steps to have an exchange of words. They were actual words with actual meanings attached to them. It was not a pleasant experience.

  “But you’ve been called as witness,” said Father. He kept his voice low, as we were in public. No one must suspect that the Larkins have their little family disagreements.

  Father and I, together with Rose, Eldric, and Tiddy Rex, made an inward-facing circle, like cows, only more intelligent. The Brownie stuck his long nose between Eldric and Tiddy Rex.

  Go away! But I didn’t bother saying it anymore.

  “Eldric is nice,” said Rose. “Do you think he’s nice?”

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “He gave me a pink ribbon,” said Rose.

  “So he did.”

  “He gave it to me because the witches took my first pink ribbon.” Rose was talking now to Eldric. “When I told Briony you gave me the ribbon, she said, ‘Oh, that Eldric!’ She meant you’re nice.”

  “When you’ve been summoned as a witness,” said Father, “you are obliged to enter the courtroom.”

  How had Stepmother managed to shrug off Father’s notions of propriety? She always said he needn’t know what we girls were doing. That it wasn’t lying, that it kept him from worrying and kept us free to do what we wanted to do.

  “But I can’t testify if I’m ill.” My words had actual meanings, but none of them penetrated Father’s mind. It appeared to be hermetically sealed. “I always get ill in the courtroom.”

  “Always?” said Father. “You’ve only been there once.”

  “I saw Briony be ill,” said Rose. “I didn’t prefer her to, but she did.”

  “It’s the way the courtroom smells,” I said. “It smells of eels.”

  Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.”

  “Whose arguments should I use?”

  Father’s clergyman mask slipped. His scratch-lips actually ripped themselves apart. But he couldn’t have been more surprised than I was. The shock of hearing myself uncoiled like a spring. One might be wicked, but one wasn’t pert. Not to one’s father.

  My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.

  “Listen here,” said Father. “I’ll not tolerate this sort of rudeness.”

  “What sort of rudeness will you tolerate?” My Briony mask hadn’t slipped. That was exactly the sort of thing she’d say, only more so.

  When did the pictures start sliding through my mind? Perhaps I’d been seeing them all along; perhaps that’s why I had a headache. I saw pictures of Stepmother—Stepmother, as she was at the beginning, wrapped in pearls and lace. Stepmother, as she was toward the end, her hair spread across the pillow. Stepmother, as she was at the end, her skin like waxed paper.

  They were not quite memories. Perhaps they were dreams, or merely reflections of memories—memories caught on broken glass.

  I had a headache; I sat on the steps, let my head droop over my knees. Father spoke behind my back. “The inquest of her stepmother’s death took place here not four months ago. Briony was terribly upset.”

  I haven’t gone deaf, Father. I can hear you. But do you really think I’m upset because of something that happened here months ago? Have you been reading Dr. Freud? Don’t tell me you believe in psychology!

  “But of course I wouldn’t wear a pink ribbon with this new frock,” said Rose. “I’m wearing a blue ribbon.”

  �
��You have quite an eye for color,” said Eldric. “The ribbon exactly matches your sash.”

  “Why, so it does,” said Rose, which was exactly what Father said when she pointed out her matching ribbon and sash, but Father said it with an exclamation mark.

  “How pretty you be, Miss Rose,” said Tiddy Rex.

  Rose and I wore new frocks for the first time in years and years. Father had asked Pearl to see that we had something suitable to wear to the trial. She and her mother started our frocks, and when Pearl’s baby died, Mrs. Trumpington had her seamstress finish them, which was very kind. They were made from the same midnight blue merino, but mine was far more grown-up than Rose’s: It was cut very trim (no childish flounces for this girl, thank you!), with alabaster buttons down the side of the neck and along one shoulder.

  Tiddy Rex sat beside me on the step; he slipped his hand into mine. “I’ll bide with you, miss. Happen you got one o’ them migraines?”

  Oh, Tiddy Rex! If I were fond of children, I’d kiss that red-radish cheek of his. “Just a headache, Tiddy Rex.” One has to believe in psychology to have migraines.

  “Look at that woman,” said Rose. “She is wearing a most beautiful blue, which I prefer she wear because I have an eye for color.”

  “Thank you,” said a voice, belonging, I supposed, to the blue-wearing woman. “Blue and green are my favorite colors.”

  Everyone but me turned toward the voice, fragmenting our clever-cow circle, and there followed a general twitter during which names were offered and accepted, and greeting cards too, and hands extended and taken, and a pair of blue leather shoes tip-tapping into my range of vision. They were lovely shoes, all creamy leather and satin ribbons.

  Huge, though.

  When I learned that the owner of the shoes was named Leanne, I made a bet with myself. I bet that despite her enormous feet, Leanne would be very beautiful. I glanced up.