Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  Eldric. My stomach curled up on itself, like a hedgehog.

  Give us a kiss, then, love!

  “Honest, miss, you’ve never seen nothing like it. It be a surprise. An’ Mister Eldric requests the presence o’ Miss Rose, as well.”

  “Rose!” I called into the house. “Eldric has a surprise for us in the square.”

  “I prefer surprises,” said Rose.

  I had to face Eldric sometime. Staggering and weaving, singing “Lord Randal”—

  “Let’s hop along, then.”

  “I don’t hop,” said Rose.

  It was not quite raining, but the air was wet. You could see the wind. The gallows rose tall and lonely, skin and bones against gray clouds. The wind set the noose to swinging. I turned my back on its Cyclops eye.

  The surprise stretched and purred before me.

  It was a motorcar. (“Motorcar! O Motorcar!” sing the heavenly angels.) Long, but not too long. Red, but not too red. Sleekest of sleeks, shiniest of shines. And sitting at the wheel was Eldric Clayborne, letting a slop of urchins lay sticky hands all over its redness.

  Not really red, but cardinal. Yes, cardinal—Cardinal!—with its overtones of High Churchiness. (Hallelujah! Hallelujah!)

  “Don’t she be a beauty?” said Tiddy Rex.

  She?

  “All us lads, us be jaunting in her soon. That be the properest word, says Mister Eldric. Jaunting.”

  She. Of course the motorcar was a lady. Briony Larkin might fall in love with a lady. That would be quite proper. There would be none of the nastiness of men and their cigars.

  The motorcar had been acquired with Leanne in mind, of course, but I’d love her anyway. The motorcar, that is.

  Mr. Clayborne’s men had left off their work to gaze at her. Rose walked round and round, touching the candy-apple skin with one finger. All the while, Eldric was helping dirty little boys and girls into the motorcar and sitting their horrid backsides on the white leather seats. One of the boys sounded her goose-voice of a horn.

  White leather. I must pause for another color adjustment. Not white, cream. Thick, melting cream, with darling little buttons to fix the decorative pleats and puffs—cream leather buttons, of course. Even the insides of the doors were padded with cream leather.

  Each wheel was a spun-candy confection of metalwork. In front, protuberant car eyes peered from protective brass hoods. A brass eagle perched on her nose.

  “Do you like her?”

  I jumped at Eldric’s voice. “I’m in love.”

  “So am I,” said Eldric, “which works out well, as I’ve saved the first ride for you. Pearl has made us a picnic. I took the liberty of thinking you and Rose might join me.”

  “I should have thought you’d give Leanne the first ride.”

  “After what you told me?” he said.

  “You didn’t believe me, though, did you?”

  “No.” He smiled; I smiled. Give us a kiss, then, love! Ugh. Hedgehog stomach. Ugh.

  Rose and I shared the passenger seat. I sank into cream leather.

  “Miss!” Tiddy Rex pressed his nose to the window. I found a cunning little crank to open it. “You be taking me next time, miss?”

  I always used to be the one who stayed behind, minding Rose, while the others were off eating ice cream or riding sleighs on cold, crisp nights.

  I don’t care so much about cold, crisp nights, but I have never tasted ice cream.

  The motorcar shivered into life and slid forward.

  “Miss? Miss!”

  “Next time, Tiddy Rex,” said Eldric. “You can sound the horn.”

  Rose talked to Eldric. She actually conducted a conversation. How did the motorcar work? Why did it make such a noise? I could barely hear them, and what I could hear, I didn’t understand. It was all springs and drive trains and liters and cylinders and horsepower. Horsepower? Isn’t the very point of a motorcar the absence of horse?

  It was a peculiar exchange, but peculiar things will happen in this new world of motorcars.

  The afternoon was weepy and gray, but the car was cozy. I held my hand out the window. There’s a peculiar pleasure in having just a bit of oneself grow cold, while the rest is snug beneath a lap rug.

  I sank into the cream leather. “The motorcar makes me feel I am truly a Dresden figurine,” I said.

  “Dresden?” said Rose.

  “Something precious and fragile,” said Eldric. “Something that ought to be treated with utmost care.”

  “Briony’s not fragile,” said Rose. “She always says how strong she is.”

  “That’s rather embarrassing, Rose!”

  “She’s right,” said Eldric. “That’s what you’re forever saying.”

  “Still more embarrassing,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s true?”

  We bumped along a rough road, through heather and peat and gorse. The moor rose in lavender folds, dotted with a few arthritic firs.

  “In certain ways, perhaps,” said Eldric. But then he got quiet and didn’t finish his thought.

  “In what ways?”

  “In Amazon of the Swampsea ways,” said Eldric, but I had the feeling I’d just pulled him back from a faraway place and that that was not at all what he’d meant to say.

  Now the earth rose around us, cutting off our view of the moor. Banks to either side dripped with rusty mosses and yellow ferns and mushrooms, brown and rugged, like leather. Autumn had taken hold. Just a bit more than a week until Halloween, which was when Eldric would learn I’m a witch.

  I watched him adjust the turning wheel. If Michelangelo had lived in this age of motorcars, I knew just how he’d sculpt Eldric’s hand. The long, fidgety fingers, the energy that might, at any moment, turn the wheel into a crown.

  We splatted through soggy leaves, then hissed onto pebbles to climb a long rise of moor.

  I imagined what those fingers would do on Halloween, when I revealed my true self. They’d go very still while he absorbed the information. And then what? Would he want me to give him back the things he’d made?

  I touched the gray-pearl wolfgirl that hung against my chest. If he did want things back, it would be too late. I’d have vanished.

  But I couldn’t bear to have him find out that way. What if I were to tell him?

  What if?

  We pulled over at an untidy pile of boulders. The almostrain had given over to almost-sun. Eldric spread a blanket on the sunward side of the boulders, which were flushed and warm.

  Rose turned away, even though the blanket suggested picnics, and Rose was very fond of picnics. She looked down the spill of moor, at the wind tearing through the scrub, at a bundle of ponies tumbling by.

  Eldric produced the picnic basket; we set out our supper. A thermos of tea; cold chicken; buns with raspberry jam and cream; and biscuits.

  “Look, Rose,” I said. “Buns and biscuits—shop-bought biscuits!”

  But Rose did not appear to have heard. She stood smiling, not her anxious-monkey smile, but a real-girl smile. She did have her own thoughts—nice thoughts. Of course she did.

  Pearl was a picnic genius. The picnic was the very essence of picnic-ness. She’d given us a quilt, worn and faded to just what a picnic blanket should be. The buns were wrapped in a blue-and-white cloth, and if I were a girl in a story, I’d have exclaimed, Look, they’re still warm!

  Which they were.

  “I suppose it’s time to get it over with,” I said. “While Rose isn’t listening.”

  “About last night?” Eldric didn’t pretend not to know what I meant.

  “I’m so mortified. Asking you those nosy-parkerium questions, and . . . and singing!”

  “But I’m glad you did!” said Eldric. “You have a—a dazzling voice! I should never have heard it otherwise.”

  I shook my head. “I used to sing well enough, but I grew out of it.”

  “You haven’t,” said Eldric. “I’m telling you, you haven’t.”

  “Perhaps I can only sing when I�
��m tipsy.” I smiled to show I didn’t mean it. “And then, on the stairs—oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Too bad about that terrific memory,” said Eldric. “I’d rather hoped you’d forget.”

  “I wish I had,” I said. “And this horrid thought keeps coming to me. What if I’m no better than Cecil? What if when I get to drinking, I go about kissing people?”

  “You’re not at all like Cecil,” said Eldric.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well,” said Eldric, but he paused, and again, I had the feeling he’d drifted far away.

  “Well?”

  “I’d never invite Cecil on a picnic,” said Eldric.

  “I thought for a moment you were going to be serious,” I said.

  “Not even for a moment.”

  “I did feel dreadfully unwell,” I said. “Just as you’d predicted.”

  “I’ve been under the weather myself,” said Eldric, “in just that way. But I think that members of the Fraternitus, young and high spirited as we are, sometimes need to do such things, just to learn not to do them again.”

  “I’ve no intention of doing that again.”

  “Not ever drinking?” said Eldric.

  “Not like that, at least.”

  “A toast at your wedding, perhaps?” said Eldric.

  “I shall never get married,” I said. “But I do like champagne.”

  Funny how I’d started off feeling so comfortable with Eldric last spring, but that now prickly little pauses kept growing between us. It’s dead opposite to my experience with other people. I usually start out feeling uncomfortable and have to ratchet up the tart-and-amusing side of Briony. But as I begin to despise them, it grows more and more easy, and witticisms fall from my lips like toads.

  “Look!” Rose pointed down the bluff. “It’s a horse.”

  It was awkward because of Blackberry Night. Blackberry Night ruined everything.

  “Oh,” said Eldric, his voice so devoid of inflection that I looked up. He stood beside Rose, looking along her pointing finger, shielding his eyes against the sunset.

  “I can tell who it is from that particular shade of green,” said Rose. “I have an eye for color.”

  My mouth turned sour. “The horse is green?”

  “I can tell that’s a joke,” said Rose.

  I joined them, knowing what I’d see. A horse and rider, thundering across the moor. The horse wasn’t green, but I was—turning green, that is. A taste-memory from last night rose beneath my tongue, all sick and eel and grit. I swallowed hard.

  The wind strained through the peacock feather in her hat, tugged at her riding habit of hunter’s green.

  “She rides rather well,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Eldric.

  “She appears to be heading our way.”

  “Yes,” said Eldric.

  “Do we have enough chocolate biscuits?” said Rose.

  “Let’s eat them all up,” said Eldric. “Now!”

  Leanne was now urging the horse up the bluff, now slowing, now slipping from the saddle, turning toward us, smiling with those overripe teeth.

  “What a surprise,” said Eldric.

  Leanne was pink and glowing and robust, looking indecently healthy. “I thought you might come back here.”

  Back here. Eldric and Leanne had been here before.

  Rose flung herself on the blanket and reached for the packet of biscuits.

  “What’s the rule, Rose?” I said.

  “Sweets are for after.” Rose set it down. “But I prefer to ask a question now. A person must always keep a secret, mustn’t she?”

  Come back here.

  “Indeed she must,” I said. I’d thought this place so fresh and new, but they’d been here before. It was all worn out.

  “Even if she doesn’t prefer to?”

  “Even then,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.

  “I don’t agree,” said Eldric. “Some secrets are wrong and ought to be told.”

  “What if a person can tell it without telling it?” said Rose.

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “I have a different question,” said Eldric. “Why do you want to tell?”

  “It’s a wicked secret,” said Rose. “It’s wicked to say you’ll hurt a person if they tell a secret, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Eldric. “Most wicked.”

  We were all sitting now on the blanket. There came a strong smell of musk and salt. Leanne must have drowned herself in scent. For the first time, Eldric looked at her. He adjusted his position ever so slightly, opening the circle, letting her into the conversation.

  “It might not always be wicked,” I said. “What if in telling the person to keep the secret, you’re actually protecting her? What if she’ll do herself a harm if she tells?”

  Was that what men liked, musk and salt?

  “Quite right,” said Leanne. “There are always two sides to every story.”

  “It is never acceptable to hurt somebody, or threaten to hurt him,” said Eldric.

  “But you punched somebody,” I said. “I saw you.”

  “He was hurting someone else.” Eldric ought to have looked at me. I was the person who’d been hurt. But he looked at Leanne. He was falling under her spell, wasn’t he? I had to remind him—

  I mustn’t allow him—

  “Was it only yesterday,” I said, “that you asked me to give you credit for some brains?”

  “I believe so.” Eldric’s fidgety fingers reached for a bun. “How long ago it seems.” He spread the jam very thin, piled the cream very thick.

  “He was hurting someone else.” I mimicked Eldric. “It’s always different when it comes to oneself, isn’t it? But just remember: You yourself admitted you’d been stupid.”

  “Touché!” Eldric handed me a creamy sunset of a bun: mounds of cream, a mere splash of pink.

  “Eldric’s much too hard on himself,” said Leanne.

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning the bun. “It’s just the way I like it.”

  “I know,” said Eldric. “I’ll never come to grips with the thirteenth declension, but I do know what you like.”

  How lovely to eat a sunset, still warm and spread with clouds.

  “Eldric is far from stupid,” said Leanne. “He’s quite a genius in his way.”

  But that was my idea! I’d said he was a genius the night of the garden party. Leanne couldn’t try to kill me, and steal my idea too!

  “He was truly stupid.” I hadn’t said it aloud, though.

  “You are unkind, Miss Larkin.” Miss Larkin, ha! She couldn’t distinguish me from Rose.

  “I think not,” I said. “We are all stupid, aren’t we, from time to time?”

  “But I more than most,” said Eldric, smiling.

  Leanne began to speak, but Rose interrupted.

  “You can stop talking now. You are distracting me from a very difficult decision.” She paused. “I need first to lay the groundwork.”

  “Lay away!” Eldric all but sang the words. He’d gone electric. “Shall I fix you a bun, Rose?”

  Rose nodded. “Do you remember what Father used to call me?”

  “Rosy Posy!” I said, which was the answer, but turned out to be more of an exclamation.

  “He used to call you Briony Vieny.”

  Briony Vieny. “I remember.”

  But I wished I didn’t. How mortifying to remind Leanne of one’s childish pet name.

  “Do you know how Briony and I match up?” It is sometimes unclear to whom Rose is speaking, because she looks all about, not into one’s eyes. This time, though, she made it clear to whom she wasn’t speaking: She had turned her back on Leanne.

  “Your faces match up quite a bit,” said Eldric.

  “Faces are only genetic.” Rose was really very clever in her
own way. “But names aren’t genetic.”

  “May I make a guess on how you match up?” said Eldric.

  “You may,” said Rose, which was generous, because she’s fond of announcing her ideas.

  “You match because a rose is a flower and so is a briony?”

  “It’s a vine,” said Rose.

  “A poisonous vine,” I said.

  “I never can guess correctly,” said Eldric. “It must be because I’m so stupid.”

  “Please, Eldric!” said Leanne.

  I wanted to laugh, I wanted to fling my arms about Eldric. He was playing with me, he was playing against Leanne.

  “Because we’re both plants,” said Rose. “Our faces match up, and our names match up, but there’s something that doesn’t match up.” And Horrors take me if she didn’t produce one of her collages.

  “Do you like it?”

  I did, actually. It was a riot of blues and purples, with a few splashes of peach and gold to give it life.

  “I like it extremely,” said Leanne, although she hadn’t been asked. “How did you know just what colors to use?”

  “I have a gift.” Rose sat rather closer to me than usual. “But it’s not the sort of gift you give someone. I have it all for myself, Eldric said so.”

  “I did the cutting and gluing,” said Eldric. “Didn’t I do an excellent job?”

  “Eldric’s the Administrative Assistant of Scissors and Glue,” said Rose.

  As I looked at the collage, the colors resolved themselves into patterns, and the patterns resolved themselves into an image. “Do I see people?”

  “Yes!” said Rose, and her voice actually managed an exclamation mark. “Who are the people?”

  The people were rather abstract, mostly peach-colored blobs with eyes.

  “Are they babies?” said Leanne.

  “Yes!” said Rose, still sitting with her back to Leanne, which was wonderfully rude. “Who are the babies?”

  I stared into the collage, but the baby-blobs did not give up their names.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Who are they?”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Rose. “Because of the secret.”

  “But Rose,” I said.

  “I like Rosy Posy,” said Rose.

  “But Rosy Posy,” I said.

  “I prefer that you see it,” said Rose. “Because then you’ll get better.”