How to Be Brave

by Daisy May Johnson

  “Nobody is interested in ducks,” interrupted Calla. She knew that she was being rude, and she was not the sort of person to be rude by choice, but it had been a very bad day. She did not have either the time or the inclination to figure out how to be polite before she figured out who this man was and why he was talking to her mum.

  Elizabeth looked appalled. “Calla.”

  Calla ignored her. “Who are you?” She rested her hands on her hips and glared at the man. He was not the sort of man you would typically see on an ordinary street. He was wearing a dark suit, with a symbol on the front pocket—it looked like a duck with its wings crossed behind its back, and the letters M.O. He did not look like social services, nor did he look like the police. He looked like something else, and Calla did not like that. Not one bit.

  “Another time,” said the man, which was the sort of reply that really did not answer the question. He nodded at Elizabeth, before getting back into the car and driving off in a rather hurried fashion.

  “Mum, what were you doing?” said Calla. “You know you don’t talk to strange people without me—”

  It must be admitted at this point that Elizabeth had already forgotten what the man had asked her. He had said something about ducks and then something about her going with him to help him out on a job, but she hadn’t been paying much attention. She had been working out an elaborate cipher based on custard creams and jammie dodgers.46

  “Calla, I talk to people every day,” said Elizabeth. She decided to hold back on sharing her thoughts on biscuit-based codes with her daughter. “I’ve had a very busy afternoon.”

  Calla shook her head. “So busy you forgot to get dressed? Mum, we talked about this.”

  A sudden look of horror flashed across Elizabeth’s face. She looked down at her clothes before visibly relaxing. “Honestly, I thought I hadn’t put any clothes on at all for a moment there. Calla, don’t frighten me like that.” She grinned at her daughter. “Look, let’s talk about my day instead. Much more fun. Did you know that the Qvada duck could actually form human language? Obviously there was a certain duckish quality to its speech, and the occasional extra quack in a sentence, but the written records still survive. I was reading them today, and it was terribly fond of discussing the weather. Can you imagine?”

  It was not the best time for Elizabeth to babble. She only did this when she was very excited about something, or had a productive session in the archives. Either way, it was difficult enough to deal with on a good day, and a good day was the very opposite of what Calla had had.

  But sometimes it took Elizabeth a long time to realize this.

  “You’re very quiet. Is it because of your detention? The school phoned me and told me you’d be late and well, I think you know that if you do the crime, Calla, then you have to do the time. Anyway. Enough of that sort of thing. Let’s go back to my day. After I was done reading about the Qvada duck, I found a reference to “Mallardus Amazonica—it’s resistant to nearly every illness known to—”

  Calla held up her hand. “Have you seen what you look like?”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “But what about the duck—?”

  “You’re wearing a laboratory coat and slippers. Can’t you just look normal? Can’t you just—for once—try?”

  “But I’m not normal,” Elizabeth said blankly. “Nobody is. Everybody is extraordinary. We all burn with potential, and to seek for the normal in the world is to limit yourself. Why on earth would you ever want to do that?”

  “Normal deals with envelopes,” said Calla.

  The pile of angry envelopes on the corner of their dining room table had been growing and they’d had lentils for tea for the past four nights in a row. Calla knew the signs that money was tight. She had known the signs all her life.

  And realizing that her daughter knew all of this suddenly made Elizabeth very sad. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this sort of thing,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “But I do have to deal with it,” said Calla. And as always when she and her mother fought, her words began to go somewhere that she did not expect. “Can’t you get a proper job somewhere, or can’t you teach or work in an office or, I don’t know, do something that doesn’t involve you coming to school and looking like this and talking—about—ducks.”

  Elizabeth smiled. She had wanted to cry moments earlier, but now, wonderfully, she could do nothing but smile.

  Calla said, “Stop it.”

  But, if anything, Elizabeth’s smile grew a little bit wider. She said, “Oh, Calla, I think you’re ready. I honestly do.”

  “For what?” Calla was still annoyed and bubbling over with feelings that she did not quite understand, but she was also interested in the way that her mother was looking at her. She knew a lot of the expressions her mother wore, but this one was brand-new.

  “This,” said Elizabeth. “I want you to take what I’m about to say very seriously because I think it might be the most important thing I ever tell you.”

  “More important than the speech habits of the Qvada duck?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  LIFE LESSONS COURTESY OF LINDA AND FREDERICK

  Calla reached out and took her mum’s hand. The two of them walked over to a nearby bench that looked out over the park. There was a small dedication on the back of the bench that read For Linda and Frederick,47 who loved this view and each other. Calla sat on Frederick and her mum sat on Linda.

  “I know I’m not the most straightforward person in the world,” said Elizabeth. “And I know that sometimes our life isn’t as simple as it could have been. There have been moments when I’ve thought that I’m doing it wrong. So many moments when I’ve wondered if I’ve done the right thing, made the right choices…”

  “I can’t imagine you not making the right choices,” said Calla simply.

  Elizabeth smiled. She was trying very hard not to cry, and that sort of comment did not make it any easier. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she said. “Ever since your father died, it’s just been the two of us and all I’ve done is try to get from one day to the next. I’m not real-world smart, Calla. I can’t rewire a plug or fix the boiler. If I could, then things would be different, but I can’t. I just know a lot about ducks. And I could have made a lot of money from that, don’t get me wrong, but the way—it wasn’t right. Ethics are a costly business, and mine cost me … well, a lot.”

  Calla stared at her mother. She’d never known any of this.

  “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right call,” Elizabeth said dreamily. “We would have been rich, and I’d have been able to give you everything. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in the way that they wanted. “Mallardus Amazonica is special. Some people want to use it for the wrong reasons. I’m just trying to keep it safe.”

  Calla squeezed her mum’s hand. It was the sort of squeeze that said everything she could not even begin to figure out the words for.

  Elizabeth gave her a teary smile. “I need to make a difference. I still do. One day that little brown bird is going to change our lives. I know it. I won’t stop fighting for that until it happens. And neither should you.”

  Calla shook her head. “I just hate it. I’m sick of everything.”

  “No you’re not,” said Elizabeth. “That’s not you. Look, tell me something. If I could grant you one wish right now, what would it be?”

  “To not go to school,” said Calla, and a look of surprise flashed across her face. She very suddenly realized that she hadn’t been upset about what her mum was wearing. Or her talking about ducks. It was school. It had been about the way going to school made her feel all along. “I just want to grow up and be the person who decides what I get to do instead of being told all the time. I’m sick of people bossing me around. You don’t get away with anything when you’re a kid, and it’s not fair. All I have done today is be yelled at and everything’s gone wrong and I hate it, I hate it.”

 
Elizabeth looked at her. “You are miraculous.”

  “I don’t feel it,” said Calla.

  “Then you must be brave and make yourself feel it,” said Elizabeth. She wrapped her arms around Calla and pulled her in tight. Calla closed her eyes and squeezed her right back, as hard as she could. It was definitely a Squeeze Each Other as Tightly as Possible sort of moment.

  When they were done, Elizabeth took a few moments to gather herself. “My mum told me how to be brave a long time ago. Whenever I’ve been very, very sad and very, very scared, and I have been both more than you know, I have always tried to remember what she said. And that was to remember who I am and to never let that go.” Her voice shook, just a tiny bit. “I never want you to be sad or scared, but I know that life will bring it to you sooner or later. I just hope that when that moment comes, even if you can’t remember anything else, you’ll remember how to be you.”

  Calla opened her eyes and looked up at her mother. She pulled up the collar of her coat and used it to wipe the tears off her face. She said, “I’m sorry,” and even though she wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for, she knew that she had to say it.

  “It’s all right.” Elizabeth rummaged in her lab coat pocket and produced two chocolate wafers. “Oh, look,” she said, trying to appear innocent but failing quite substantially. “I accidentally-on-purpose brought us both chocolate biscuits to eat on the way home. Do you mind if we stay and eat them here instead?”

  “No,” said Calla with a small smile. “No, I do not.”

  BUT THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED

  Of course it did, for this is a story, and stories thrive on conflict.

  And Calla’s conflict was a most unexpected thing.

  It was a cream envelope that arrived very quietly one morning.

  THE WAY IT ALL BEGAN

  Elizabeth and Calla had had problems before in their family. They were especially used to the sorts of problems that came in important-looking envelopes and had things like FINAL DEMAND and PAY NOW written in red on the outside of them because they were the sorts of problems that required Calla and her mother to shop from the bottom shelf in the supermarket,48 pay for that food with pennies, and turn off all of the lights in the house, before being solved. But they could be solved, that was the thing. They were solved, and after they were solved, they would have a slice of cake and all would be well in the North household.

  Nothing about that little cream envelope that came in the post that morning seemed like it might be the sort of thing to turn everything upside down.49 Calla saw it first. She picked it up from the doormat and left it on her mother’s desk before heading off to school as normal. She had lunch and double math and argued with Miranda Price as normal. But when she came home and found her mother sitting downstairs with the table set for dinner, Calla realized that there was something happening in their house that was very not-normal indeed.

  “Hi,” said Calla. She placed her bag down on the floor and studied her mother’s face carefully. “What’s going on?”

  “What makes you think that there’s something going on?” said Elizabeth.

  Calla counted off the reasons inside her head: Elizabeth was out of her study, and that never happened until it was dark or Coronation Street50 had started; and the table was set for dinner, but they never ate at the table. Calla used a corner of it for her homework and for the past five years, Elizabeth had used the rest of it to store a life-size model of a duck’s digestive system. She’d made the model for a lecture, back when she’d taught at the university, and the model had lived there ever since. Until today. The gizzards, esophagus, and proventriculus had now been replaced by place mats. Calla hadn’t even known that they owned place mats.

  All of this meant that her mother was trying to tell her that something unusual had happened and that she didn’t know where to begin.

  “A lot of reasons,” Calla said eventually. “But mainly because I think that you’ve been in the kitchen.”

  She could smell something cooking, and it was definitely not the burning sort of cooking that was Elizabeth’s specialty.

  “Somebody’s offered me a job,” said Elizabeth.

  BELINDA FREEMAN

  “But who?” said Calla. It had been a long time since she’d heard the J-word in their house. She couldn’t think who would have offered her mum an actual, real-life job.

  “Do you know who Belinda Freeman is?” said Elizabeth. Her eyes were bright and excited, and she didn’t wait for Calla to reply. “She is possibly the most important duck researcher in the entire world. I mean, she is basically the absolute queen of ducks. Apart from me.”

  “What’s the job, though?” said Calla, who didn’t actually care about Belinda Freeman in the slightest.

  Elizabeth gestured at the cream envelope. “Read it,” she said. Calla picked up the envelope and slid out a letter that had been written on paper so thick it almost resembled cardstock. Nobody sent handwritten letters anymore, and definitely not handwritten letters that looked like this. Every word looked like a piece of art.

  “It’s very curly,” she said carefully, as she tried to figure out what the first word said. “She should have emailed. It would have been easier to read.”

  “She’s very old,” said Elizabeth. “If I’m honest, I thought she’d retired. Nobody’s seen her for years. Somebody must have made her a very good offer to come back to work. Anyhow, do you want me to read the letter?” Calla nodded and handed it back.

  Elizabeth held it in front of her and cleared her throat.

  “Dear Elizabeth. My“ name is Belinda Freeman and I would like to offer you a job. I have been offered funding for a research trip to the Amazon to study the breeding grounds of the rare Mallardus Amazonica. I would rather like you to be part of this endeavor. The trip would be purely for conservation purposes. Our backers are covering all expenses, and they’re also offering a very generous daily stipend51 of—”

  Elizabeth paused and then said the number very carefully, and Calla stared at her.

  “That’s a lot of zeros,” she said. “I don’t even know what that number is.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I didn’t either,” she said. “I had to work it out on my fingers and toes and then I had to borrow some extra fingers before I finally worked it out. It’s a lot.”

  The two of them paused in respectful silence of this, before Elizabeth gathered herself and read the rest of the letter.

  “We will be leaving in only a few weeks and shall spend the next six months in the Amazon. I appreciate this is a lot to ask of you, Elizabeth, especially on such short notice, but your knowledge would be invaluable to us. Mallardus Amazonica is such an elusive beast, and you’re the only person in the world who knows where it may be.”52

  “Is that true?” said Calla. “Do you really know where it is?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “It’s true,” she said. “Well, sort of. I know where it might be. There have been people who’ve wanted me to tell them, but I never have because I’ve tried to keep it safe. But this is a lot of money, Calla. It might help me to protect Mallardus Amazonica, and use my knowledge of it for good. I’ve wanted to take this trip my whole life, but it’s so expensive and I’ve never had the money. But let me finish reading her letter.

  “I hope that this offer is tempting enough for you to consider. Please get back to me forthwith with your decision. Yours in knowledge, Belinda.”

  Calla took a deep breath. “What does forthwith mean?” she said.

  “As soon as possible.”

  “You’re going to go.”

  Elizabeth nodded again, but slower this time. “We’re struggling. More than you know.” She gestured at the pile of envelopes in the corner of the room. They were always high, but they usually went down. They hadn’t gone down for a very long while. Some of them were even beginning to gather dust.

  “But what about your articles?” said Calla. “Or the cleaning jobs—”

  “Nobody’s buying anythin
g, and the temp agency’s had no shifts for me since March. I’ve been keeping us going with my savings for a long time, Calla, but they weren’t even enough to begin with. It’s starting to run out.”

  Calla held herself very still. “I don’t know what that means for us,” she said. Thoughts began spinning through her head. Thoughts of the people who’d taken their TV that one Christmas. The people who’d cut off their electricity. The people who’d tried to split them up. She was very certain that she couldn’t deal with that happening all over again.

  “I don’t know what it means, either,” said Elizabeth. “But I do know that if I go on this trip then we’ve got a chance. We’ll be able to pay our bills for the next two years, and that’s two years we don’t have right now. If I rent the house out while I’m away, we can get a tenant in and that will help us even more. We’ll be able to put some money away for a rainy day. It’s kind of the answer to our prayers.” Elizabeth had to stop speaking then because she wasn’t able to say anything else. It was all too much.

  Calla started to feel a bit strange inside her tummy. There was something that her mother was forgetting and Calla rather thought that the something might be her. Elizabeth was talking like this was a trip for one person. Not two. “But what’s going to happen to me?”

  “Oh! I forgot.”

  “You—forgot me?” This wasn’t making things any better. Calla was used to her mum being forgetful, but it was always about other things. Not her.

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Elizabeth. “I couldn’t ever forget about you. You’re the first thing I think of in the morning and the last at night. When I read Belinda’s letter, I knew I needed to make this work in a way that suited us all, and that involves you going to school. Not the one you’re at now, but the one I went to when I was younger. I phoned them, and they’ve got space for you and you can even stay there over Christmas with the other boarders and it’s all sorted out. There’s really nothing to be concerned about in the slightest. Isn’t that wonderful?”