Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  “Not tipsy!” said Cecil. “No, not that, and I promise I won’t—Look here, I’ll fetch you a sweet!”

  He leapt up, bounded for the sweets table. It looked very much as though he was drunk. But he bounded steadily enough (for a bounder, that is), and he returned with three dishes of trifle, Eldric, and Leanne.

  They’d been playing at Metaphor, which had set them to laughing immoderately and sploshing champagne everywhere except inside of themselves. Just as well, perhaps, as I suspected they already had plenty inside. Eldric pulled out a chair for Leanne, but she preferred to stand, and so, of course, did he.

  “Leanne is a Klimt, of course,” said Eldric.

  “Is she?” I’d never heard of a Klimt, but I was in no danger of exposing my ignorance, for Eldric staggered into an explanation of what was Klimt-ish about her.

  It seemed that Klimt was a painter in Vienna, and it also seemed that Eldric had visited Vienna. He’d told Leanne but not me. Eldric knew just how Klimt would paint Leanne, which was all in gold, with flowers growing from her hair, and he’d arrange her clothes, just so—

  Leanne interrupted. “She’s a little young for Klimt, don’t you think?”

  “Oh sorry, sorry, so sorry!” said Eldric.

  Eldric was tipsy. Cecil was something else.

  I was young, I was dressed in white, I was an underdone sugar cookie next to Leanne’s shot-silk taffeta, glinting blue and green, except that there were fewer glints than there might have been, which was because there wasn’t as much taffeta as there might have been, which was because Leanne wore her skirts right up to her ankles, quite exposing her enormous feet.

  “But I found myself stuck on the sculpture,” said Eldric, and for a moment I pictured him impaled on a monument, until I realized that he was still playing at Metaphor. “What sculpture would Leanne be, do you think? You’re so clever, Briony, you’ll know at once.”

  An old one, missing its head.

  “Unlike you, I haven’t traveled,” I said, and dug into my trifle, which I’d ordinarily have enjoyed, as it was simply bursting with cream and custard and rum. But I wore white and I’d never been to Vienna, so what was the point of anything?

  “I know what Briony would be,” said Cecil. “She’d be a Dresden figurine.”

  “One of those dancing ladies?” I said. “They’re not sculptures, and anyway, I’d end up breaking myself.”

  “I absolutely must step away from the fire,” said Leanne, shaking her laughing hair and looking at Eldric with her curling eyes. As the two of them moved back, Mr. Clayborne joined us to wish Leanne a very happy birthday.

  “It’s your birthday?” I said.

  “Tomorrow, actually,” said Leanne.

  “We’re going to raise a glass at midnight,” said Eldric.

  This was a birthday party. I was glad her birthday was tomorrow, which was the first day of August. I didn’t want her to have been born in July. July was a jolly sort of month, not all hot and puffed up on itself.

  Oh, August One! I remembered making Eldric laugh that day in the Alehouse, when I was guessing at his birthday. And here we were: Leanne was an August One. Wouldn’t Eldric remember how we’d laughed?

  I paid little attention to the conversation, although I did hear Mr. Clayborne say that Eldric looked perfectly dreadful, which I’m glad to say he did.

  “Briony!”

  I jumped, but it was only Rose, tugging at my sleeve, announcing that the Mirk and Midnight Hour was upon us.

  I pressed my hands to my ears. What had I been thinking—or not thinking! I’d let Rose’s ten o’clock bedtime slide by, but Rose had kept an eye on the clock. She’d warned me of the midnight chimes.

  My hands on my ears hardly muffled the chimes, which are wonderfully penetrating. So was Eldric’s voice, calling for attention. “Let us raise our glasses to Leanne on this, her twenty-third birthday!”

  “Why, Eldric!” cried Cecil. “I never thought you’d take up with an older woman!”

  That’s about as clever as Cecil gets, but everyone laughed. It was the champagne, no doubt. Cecil positively glowed. I do have to admit he has lovely skin.

  Rose pulled my hands from my ears.

  Eldric acknowledged Cecil with a flat Cheshire Cat smile, then tugged it into a real smile as he saluted Leanne with his glass. “To Leanne, the best companion a man could ever have.”

  The guests broke into a chaos of laughter and teasing. Eldric blushed. Leanne didn’t. Perhaps she runs on petrol, not blood.

  Eldric had been thinking of Leanne that night, the night of our communion, the night of the Bitch. He hadn’t been communing with me at all. He’d been communing with thoughts of Leanne.

  “The party’s over.” Rose’s voice was choked with tears. “And Robert didn’t come.”

  “The party’s not over,” I said, which was idiotic, as I oughtn’t to encourage Rose to stay up.

  “Yes, it is,” said Rose. “It’s always over at the Mirk and Midnight Hour.”

  “Let’s go, then.” I couldn’t bear to look at Eldric with Leanne anymore. I was jealous. And why not?

  There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don’t have to be right, you don’t have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn’t mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn’t mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.

  Who cares about pearls, anyway? They’re overrated, in my opinion. What is a pearl but a bit of sand and oyster spit?

  Rose and I went inside. I didn’t say good-bye. This is the advantage of having a sister like Rose. You never have to say good-bye.

  Up we went, up the crumple of stairs to our room, with Rose crying the whole time and worst of all, the Brownie following. He wasn’t begging yet, but he soon would be, begging for his story.

  “Read me a story,” said Rose.

  “But Rose—”

  “Please, mistress!” When the Brownie looked up, one saw mostly the sharp tip of his long nose. “Make me my sweet story!”

  “There are no stories!” I spoke to Rose, of course, only to Rose. The Brownie needn’t think I was speaking to him.

  I said what I always said about the books having burnt, and Rose said what she always said about wishing her book had burnt, and I didn’t ask what I always don’t ask, which is what on earth is her book? Then I laid myself down where I belonged, on my side of the do-not-cross line. I belonged in the imprint of my own self, which as always, was right next to Rose.

  17

  Mooncrumbs

  I awoke at once. Darkness leaned on me, panting in my ear. I looked over the do-not-cross line into the moonlit window. Eldric’s face floated in the glass. I clutched the neck of my nightdress before sliding out of bed. There was too much Briony, too little nightdress.

  I pulled at the casement, released his face from the glass. He reached through the window, his beautiful hand, his five beautiful fingers outspread. If I were a poet, I’d write about hands, nothing but hands. I touched the whorled petals of my fingertips to his; our hands made the roof of a house.

  But, wait: Eldric had been ill only five days ago, the night of the garden party. How could he be so entirely recovered?

  “The time has come,” he whispered. “Time for wolfgirl to come into the night.”

  Into the night! An electrical thrill ran between my shoulder blades. “But my nightdress?”

  “Into the night!”

  I gave him my hand. My whorled fingertips bloomed. Into the night!

  The roof was slippery with moonlight. A skitter of roofs ran below, the view spattered with dormers, chimneys, corbels, oriels. Our descent was planned in ingenious bad-boy fashion. Ropes ran over the roofs, dipped over edges to roofs below, where other ropes waited.

  Eldric showed me his bad-boy technique. You lay your middle on the rope and squizzle yourself along the rope and over the edge. It is generally thought a good idea to hold tight.

  Down he
went. I did the same. You might read about such an adventure in a book, but it’s different in the moonlight, different to experience it in three dimensions—the rope pressing into your middle, feeling thicker than it looked; the slates too, larger than you’d imagined, smelling of dampness and stored-up weather. Your nightdress bunching up beneath as you slip over the edge, and the passing thought that at least you’re wearing undergarments of an unventilated variety. Your feet finding a knot in the rope, which you don’t need, but getting another little thrill when you realize that the lion boy-man attended to every detail with you in mind.

  Eldric would never plan an initiation for Leanne. He never could. Even if Leanne didn’t mind sacrificing her blue-green skirts to the rooftops, she’d never be able to haul herself up and down ropes. She had too much heft up top.

  I was fast, I was strong. I almost laughed to see Eldric strolling about on the roof below, as though he weren’t tensed to leap should I fall. But I had my own bad-boy muscles. He’d learn to trust them as I did.

  We scribbled down the last ropes, tumbled into the garden, which was heavy with the scent of azaleas. Eldric must be feeling very much recovered indeed, to have arranged not only for a full moon, but one of unusual brightness. She was dazzling, glinting off the Flats and the Quicks.

  I looked at Eldric. The moon hung in his eyes.

  “Into the Slough, wolfgirl!”

  Into the Slough!

  Impossible that Eldric could love Leanne. Not a girl who thrilled to the hanging of a witch. Not a girl who in the land of metaphor game was a motorcar.

  “Bible Ball first.” Eldric snatched a gossamer bag from some fold of air.

  From what I understand, motorcars are all hot air and rude noises, vented from certain unmentionable regions.

  Eldric tied the bag round my wrist with pale taffeta ribbons. Within lay a Bible Ball. Even a Bible Ball was dressed up tonight!

  Wolfgirl and lion-boy loped past tangles of blueberry bushes. The moon followed us into the Slough. We snickled through ferns and scrub and moon shavings and root tangles and logs frilled with overlapping mushrooms.

  We leapt into snickleways, waded through velvet ooze. We dripped out the far side, trailing smells of sulfur and rotten eggs.

  We laughed at the sulfur. We laughed at the rotten eggs. We laughed at the drifts of moon-peel. We laughed.

  “Behold the task that lies before you.” Eldric took my shoulders and turned me toward a log. “Follow the trail of breadcrumbs until you have found the great treasure of the swamp.”

  Breadcrumbs?

  Shimmering drops ran the length of the log, leading your eye farther into the Slough. Creamy toadstools grew from crevices in the trunk, and in between the crevices were the glittering, glancing mooncrumbs.

  “Not breadcrumbs,” I said. “Mooncrumbs.”

  Clever Eldric! You had to look very close to see that the mooncrumbs were nothing but dribbles of lime. They glowed fluorescent in the moonlight.

  “Quite right,” said Eldric. “That was a test. Your journey is now begun, and remember: Do not return until you have claimed the treasure. Many have sought it; none has returned.”

  I followed the mooncrumbs to the end of the log. There they dribbled onto the ground and farther into the Slough.

  I followed the mooncrumbs, always the mooncrumbs. They made an enormous, luminous treasure map, looping me along paths, circling back upon themselves, beckoning me across snickleways.

  Clever, clever Eldric!

  I plunged into a snickleway, into a skim of moonlight, into the dark and ooze.

  I disappeared. My feet, my knees, my waist. I sank to my chest. Laughter now, Eldric laughing as I plashed about.

  “I shall have my revenge!” I shouted.

  Oof, ooze to the chest, hard to push, hard to push, but the Amazon of the Swampsea can push through anything, can scramble out the other side, shake herself, lope on. A crashsplash came behind me; Eldric had leapt into the snickleway. I loped ahead, leaping logs frilled with mushroom pantalettes; sploging through ooze and splat; following the mooncrumbs until they ran into nothingness at a cobweb of roots cupping a bundle of oilcloth.

  I waited until Eldric caught up with me. I felt like a kettle on the boil, hiss and steam. This—yes, this must be the feeling of happiness. I must hold on to this feeling.

  I opened the oilcloth. Inside lay a small, square box. I opened the box. I sat back on my heels.

  I didn’t know what to say. A skylark sang. It was almost dawn.

  In the box lay a wolfgirl made of wire and pearls. Gray pearls. Tiny wires, tiny pearls, twisted round and round into the very shape of a wolf, into the very shape of a girl, into the very shape of Briony.

  I didn’t know what to say. I clutched the wolfgirl Briony.

  “Off we go.” Eldric reached for my hand. His eyes were white and gold. “One of the tricks to being a bad boy is not to get caught. My father will be rising soon.”

  I flew to my feet, mucky to the shoulder, he mucky to the chest, his curls flecked with mud, my own hair hanging over my shoulder in muddy rats’ tails.

  He wouldn’t have made a treasure for Leanne, would he? And anyway, what Eldric-fidget could possibly represent that tangle of clichés?

  Birdsong rose all about as lion-boy and wolfgirl walked home. They were hardly tired. “You seemed ill last week,” I said. “Especially on the night of the garden party. But here you are, quite—”

  Quite what? Quite well? Such a feeble word for an electric boy.

  “Quite!” said Eldric. “And in tip-top bad-boy fettle. I attribute my recovery to the restful week I spent with Father, reviewing the letters of application from all my would-be tutors, poor fellows. I resent feeling unwell, you know, as I can no longer say I never fall ill.”

  We left the Slough for the Quicks. We passed a slurp of green water where an egret stood laughing like a madman.

  “It was quite nice, really, spending a week with Father. I hardly wanted to sneak out at all.”

  By the time we reached the Flats, a silver eyelid winked from the eastern horizon. It winked the Quicks into emerald splotches and pale shimmers.

  We reached the back garden. The gray slate roof skittered up and up to my bedroom window. “It’s going to be harder going up,” I said.

  “Mmm,” said Eldric. I felt rather than saw that his attention had shifted. “Do you remember what I said just now?”

  I followed the direction of his gaze.

  “That it was quite nice spending a week with Father.”

  The garden door was ajar. Father and Mr. Clayborne sat on the stoop, waiting.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Eldric.

  18

  Sticks and Stones

  We sat in teams of two. Eldric and I at one side of the dining room table, smelling of plant squish and rotten eggs. Father and Mr. Clayborne at the other side, smelling of strong tea and leftover sleep.

  It brought to mind the day Eldric arrived. I remembered standing in the dining room with all those men gobbling up the air and clogging up the mirror. But the numbers had changed, the alliances shifted. The teams were equal now.

  Mr. Clayborne cleared his throat. “Eldric!” But instead of looking at Eldric, he looked at Father. Father looked at Mr. Clayborne, who cleared his throat again. “I always thought you good-hearted, despite your eternal pranks and mucking about.”

  “I like mucking about.” Eldric turned a couple of toothpicks into swords, which leapt into mortal combat.

  “But I never thought you could do anything so wicked.”

  “Wicked,” said Father.

  Wicked? I was the wicked one.

  “Mucking about isn’t wicked.” Eldric wore his lazy lion’s smile. He didn’t mind what he was called. He was a sticks-and-stones sort of person.

  “Imagine my surprise,” said Father, “when I came to look in on the girls and what do I find?”

  His voice hadn’t undergone its morning ironing. “Or, rath
er, what I don’t find. I don’t find Briony.”

  “You check on us at night?” How horridly reminiscent of Dracula, a Dracula clergyman, who has just a little trouble with crosses.

  “From time to time.” Father drew his palms down his cheeks. “It takes me back to the days when we’d sing together at night.” He stretched out his eye-wrinkles.

  “But I was awake then,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Father, his eye-wrinkle insides all soft and raw. “You were awake then.”

  “En guard!” Eldric’s toothpick-swords leapt to ready position. “Parry—thrust!” The toothpick-sword leapt at my finger.

  “Don’t touch my daughter!” Father’s scratch-lips ripped apart. His teeth were too big.

  A horrid, heavy silence followed, a Dracu-clerge silence, while Father reset his lips into their proper scratches.

  “So that’s what you think.” Eldric rolled the toothpicks between his thumb and forefinger.

  “What else are we to think?” said Father’s wrinkled voice. “The two of you, missing all night.”

  “Have a little trust!” Eldric’s voice rose. “I may lounge about and laugh, but to think you’d believe I’d behave—that is to say, your daughter and I—and I, a guest in your house!”

  Snap! Bits of toothpick-sword fell to the table.

  Understanding came like a kick to the stomach. They thought Eldric and I were together—together the way boys are with girls.

  “Returning at dawn,” said Mr. Clayborne. “Together.”

  “For God’s sake!” shouted Eldric. My shoulder-wings jumped. Now they were all shouting, Eldric, Father, Mr. Clayborne.

  I plugged my ears. I hate shouting. It makes my ribs go tight.

  It was stupid to think I could be a bad boy. Of course I couldn’t. There’s no point in trying anything new.

  You try your first step. What then? You have to walk everywhere.

  You have your first conversation with the Boggy Mun. What then? Your sister gets the swamp cough.

  You try your first initiation. What then? You have to—

  Eldric tapped my arm. I unplugged my ears.