Dark Sister

by Graham Joyce

  The shop she was looking for was called Omega. She passed kiosk-sized shops peddling memorabilia and second-hand period clothes; tattooists and body-piercing studios; comic-marts and specialist bookshops; eventually finding Omega on the uppermost level. Pulling Sam by the hand, she opened the door and a tiny bell tinkled. A man sat behind the counter, engrossed in a book. He glanced up from the book, but didn't speak.

  The shop seemed chiefly devoted to herbs and spices and to books about alternative medicine; that is to say, its shelves contained rows and rows of jars with handwritten labels, and where there were no jars there were books and pamphlets.

  Maggie turned her back on the man at the counter, pretending to study a selection of pestles and mortars, but she felt his eyes tracking her. She picked up one set made of stone but quickly replaced it on the shelf. When she turned back to him, he raised his eyebrows in a jocular fashion. Sam just stared at the man.

  "Eyebright. I want a herb called eyebright. Do you know what it is?"

  "Of course." It was said in a lethargic manner. The man was in his mid-forties, with thinning shoulder-length hair and a wispy beard. His weathered face and heavy build seemed at odds with his thin, reedy voice. "Euphrasia officinalis if you want to get technical. Euphrosyne by any other name. Red eyebright to me and thee. What d'you want it for?"

  She resented the question. "I only need a small amount."

  "Please yourself," he said, getting up and crossing to a shelf on the far side of the shop. He reached for a jar. "Only trying to be helpful."

  He weighed some of the herb on a beautiful set of brass scales. "Gender, Male. Planet, Sun. Element, Air. Ask for Euphrosyne another time, because that's what most people call it."

  "Do you know a lot about herbs?"

  The man opened his eyes wide and looked at her as if the question was as stupid as it gets.

  "Anything else?"

  She shook her head and paid for the herb. Her fingers trembled in her purse. As she was bustling Sam out of the door, the man said, "Next time come to me for the other things as well. I do it half the price you paid in those health shops." She turned to look at him, but he already had his head back in his book.

  After that she drove out of town to Osier's Wood. It wasn't necessary to drive so far to collect a few stalks of fern, but the place had pleasant associations. She and Alex used to walk there. They'd even made love there one hot summer afternoon; but only once. Alex was put off after claiming to have seen an adder weaving through the fern stalks. She had an idea Sam had been conceived that time in the woods.

  "Know what, Sam? You were made in these woods."

  "No," said Sam.

  "No? I'll give you no!" She waved a freshly cut fern at him.

  "Yes!" said Sam, running away. They played hide-and-seek in among the trees before going back to the car.

  The following day Maggie had to return to the Gilded Arcade. When she went into the shop, the man was seated in exactly the same position, reading the same book, as if he hadn't shifted a millimetre since she'd left the premises the previous day. Almost without looking up, he pointed to the selection of pestles and mortars. "They're all over there."

  She had indeed returned to buy a pestle-and-mortar set, having decided the previous evening that, if she was going to make an ointment out of her ingredients, they'd need to be pounded first.

  "Are you a mind-reader as well as a herbalist?"

  The man looked up, pleased with himself. "Where's the little boy?"

  "With his childminder. I get two hours' relief a week. I'm glad to see there's something you don't know."

  "I can always spot a first-timer. They come here to ask for the more obscure stuff. Then they get it home and realize they need some way of preparing it. Then they remember seeing all these."

  "How did you know I'd been to the health food store first?"

  "That was more difficult. You had a carrier bag spelling out their name in big letters."

  Maggie smiled to herself and turned to finger the implements lined up in the window. She liked the man now that she realized his offhand manner was nothing other than gamesome. She picked up a brass pestle. "What do you recommend?"

  "The ceramic ones chip if you're not careful; the wooden ones splinter and don't take to anything hot; and I don't like to think of the metal ones leaving some of themselves in your mix."

  "Stone, then?"

  "Every time."

  "Not cheap, are they?"

  "Please yourself- Take the brass."

  "No, I'll take the stone."

  "And I wasn't being nosy yesterday. I was genuinely trying to be helpful."

  "Then you must know the eyebright is for eye infections."

  "The little chap. I noticed his eye was sore."

  "Isn't that how it got its name?"

  "Eyebright? No. Applied to the eyelids it aids clairvoyance."

  "Are you serious?"

  He looked at her hard, but his eyes were swimming with suppressed mirth. "I never joke. Tell me what you're making."

  She told him. He nodded thoughtfully. "Not my first choice. But it's an interesting one, and it won't do him any harm. Where did you get it from?"

  So she told him, too, about the diary and the lists of remedies. "And there were the words 'wax.m.' Does that mean anything to you?"

  He regarded her steadily. "As for the sachet, that's a bit of indirect herbalism, if you follow me."

  "Should I ignore that part?"

  "Oh no. And it'll give you something to do with your time." There wasn't a flicker from him to indicate irony. Then he gave her some useful advice for preparing Sam's eye ointment. As she turned to leave the shop, he said, "This diary. I'd really like to have a look at it some time."

  "I might show it you," she said, "and then again I might not."

  And the tiny bell tinkled as she went out.

  Three days later, all Sam had to show for his mother's incursion into the world of herbalism was a dirty face; that and the gay little sachet round his neck. Maggie inspected the remains of the sticky paste she'd concocted and judged it time to revert to orthodox pharmacy.

  For some reason she'd hidden from Alex her new collection of herbs and her stone pestle and mortar. She wasn't sure why exactly she'd made a secret of the thing. Perhaps she was placing it beyond his ridicule, because nothing was more certain than his scepticism for anything unscientific.

  Unscientific.

  No, it was more than that. Much more. Alex's was like many people's scepticism: it was almost rabid, it was desperate. He used scepticism to seal himself off from whatever he was afraid lay out there. Like the yards of draught proofing he bought for the house, or his damp proofing, or his endless leak treatments. Worse, she knew that in his darkest heart he nursed some kind of suspicion about her. Something they'd never discussed, and never would, but which lay between them, like a sword hidden beneath the sheets.

  She knew what Alex feared was her power. Powers he didn't possess. The power to be surprised, to be delighted, to exult, to be mystified by events. The power to be afraid without fear of showing it. The power to resist the stolid pull of the ground. There was something in her he recognized as a deep flirtatiousness, not necessarily with other men, but with the world itself, with the unknown, and he was afraid that one day it would carry her away from him.

  Beyond all that, she wanted this to be something exclusively her own. That's why she'd hidden the herbs. She wanted the opportunity to experiment freely. Somehow that gave her a feeling of another kind of power; power not just over Alex, but over the preparations she made with her herbs.

  So she hid everything in a lockable trunk in the spare room. It was full of old photographs and memorabilia neither she nor Alex could bear to dispose of but at which they never looked from one year to another. She bundled everything in a black scarf and buried it at the bottom of the trunk.

  Sam came out of the garden and into the kitchen waving a stick. Maggie held his face to the light and l
ooked doubtfully into the corner of his eye. "It was worth a try, Sam. But we'll have to stop using that stuff, it's not doing any good."

  "No!" said Sam.

  "For God's sake stop saying no every time I speak to you."

  "The lady said."

  "What?"

  "The lady in the garden."

  "What lady?" Maggie felt a shiver run through her.

  "In the garden. She said use it tonight. She did. She told me."

  Maggie looked out of the window at the walled garden with the dwarf birch in the comer. There was no one there. She knelt on the floor beside Sam. "Tell me about this lady."

  "You can't see her. She's gone. And she's only this big." He stretched out his thumb and first finger. Then he changed his mind and made her a bit smaller. "No, this big. She rides on a rat."

  "What did she say about the ointment?"

  "She said you have to put it on me tonight. Yes she did."

  "That boy," said Alex angrily. Maggie was startled. He was towering in the kitchen doorway, gazing down at them. He must have been watching them for some time. He looked huge and frightening, his eyebrows knitted, his brow full of thunder. "We're

  going to have to do something about this constant lie telling. He needs a good shaking."

  Alex stormed past them and clumped heavily upstairs. He'd had another bad day at work. Maggie collected Sam to her and hugged him.

  S I X

  Maggie applied her herbal ointment to Sam's eye that night, and the next morning there was a distinct improvement. By the following morning, his conjunctivitis had cleared up completely. Now all they had to worry about, said Alex, was Sam's deep-rooted habit of telling lies.

  "He's just a child. He makes up stories. So what? That's what children are supposed to do. He'll grow out of it."

  Alex wasn't having any of it. "It's not stories. It's lies. Lies. Every single word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. Ask him what his name is and he says anything other than Sam. Ask him where he lives and he talks rubbish. He-tells people his mother is the lady at the sweet shop. If he says yes, we all have to pretend he means no."

  "He's only three years old, for Christ's sake!" "He's nearly four and there's something wrong!" "It's just a phase he's going through, Alex. Your mother told me you were still wetting the bed when you were nine."

  Alex didn't like to he reminded of such things. Maggie could tell that the remark had angered him, because unlike most people, Alex spoke more quietly when he was angry, pausing occasionally for big breaths. "It is not a phase. It is a steady condition."

  "I mean all children do it. Have pretend playmates and the like. That's what I meant to say."

  "Amy certainly never did it. Not on this scale. And neither did any of our friends' children. He needs to see a child psychiatrist."

  "At three years of age! You're the one who's crazy, Alex!"

  "You think it'll help him if we wait until he's thirty? Now's the time to do it, so he can be straightened out."

  "Straightened out? I don't want him straightened out. I'm not putting Sam at the mercy of a shrink."

  "What's a shrink?" Amy wanted to know.

  "It's a special doctor," said Alex, "who looks after little children."

  "No it's not," said Sam.

  It seemed easier to communicate through pointless argument than by any other means; at least that's all Maggie and Alex seemed to be doing. The matter went unresolved; they turned their backs on each other.

  Meanwhile Maggie returned to the diary, flushed with the success of her first efforts. She found the page listing the remedy she had used and underneath it made an entry herself. She wrote the dates, the quantity she had used, and the words Sam's conjunctivitis cleared up. If only the diary had a herbal for banishing fibs and tall stories.

  While flicking through the pages, settling here and there on remedies, she made a discovery. Some of the pages with ink entries contained further notes, but in pencil and so faintly written that a cursory glance could easily miss them. These entries, too, were mainly lists, written in the same perfectly penned copperplate hand, but they occasionally included additional commentaries. Maggie was astonished she'd failed to notice them before; but then the pencil marks were so weak, they were a strain to read.

  Rue is a mighty powerful one, a mother of herbs. I heard her called Ruta, Bashoush and Herb of Grace and more. This is of Diana, though it is hot and indeed it is of the element of Fire.

  Now rue they used for that Great Plague, but it was denied. It grows best if stolen, which I have. Gather in the fresh morning because a poison to pick later. Some say the sight. I know that to eat leaves will not talk in sleep, which is the tongue of angels and demons. The crushed leaf when breathed back full will clear the brain of envious thought. And rue water kills the flea.

  Now I will use rue on A. she bothers me so. I know this one for she taught it me: Nine drops of the rue oil added to a bath with salt for the nine nights as follows the moon in her waning will breaks the spell she has on me, for she wearies me. And I know other: Rue, vervain, St John's wort, dill Hinder witches of their will

  Maggie felt a strange thrill. She set the diary down and turned to check on Sam. He was playing happily behind her chair, swinging an old biscuit tin loaded with toy soldiers. She picked the book up again and reread the page. What she'd taken to be simple herbalism was obviously something more. She leafed through the pages, searching for more pencil entries

  Listening. This I dearly love above all things. And I can with or without I make a simple. On a windy day, with the sun just up, or fast on the dusk which is my favourite to lie down in a tall leafy bower or such and listen and wait on the wind. And I wait and I wait and there he comes with such messages as are written on the wind in the leaves some time I fear my heart will break. And should I infuse a simple it is the mugwort and I make a tea and sweeten with honey. Or that I make a pot then into the boil the bay laurel mugwort and cinquefoil and I breathe them. But for listening I say I can without a simple or a pot.

  Maggie read on:

  Some words of the mugwort, also called witch herb and old uncle harry and artemesia and felon herb. Why "uncle" I cannot tell, for mugwort is a she-plant and another of Diana whose other name is Artemis. Her planet is Venus and her element the Air.

  Now she is very good for the sight; in a simple or pot or the fresh leaves rubbed on mirror or the crystal. She also wards off fatigue and I have walked long distances: and wild beasts stay away from it. Now pluck before sunrise during the wax moon: A. says, and is insistent, that it should be from a plant as leans northward. Also her powers are strongest when picked at the Full.

  A few pages on, Maggie stumbled across the name of the diarist.

  P. B. come to me and was full of woe, I never seen so much woe, she being barren. Bella, she says to me, three years and no child! I counselled her and I had a bit of Patience Dock so I stitched her a sachet as we talked. I didn't want to give her any of my Man, he being so rare these days so I put bryony, which is good and she wasn't to know. I told her eat poppy and sunflower seed in a cake, and sent her off to find some mistletoe. Well I hope for her but I'm afraid I can't see it.

  Now A. chid me for all this, for her saying is "be silent as the sacred oak-" She says folk turn. But I say we must help, and there's the end of it.

  So now she had the diarist's name. It was Bella. Red-haired Bella. And Bella was some kind of witch.

  Maggie read on as if the diary contained hard news. Some of the pencilled entries she didn't entirely understand; others were merely the elaboration of uses of herbs. So absorbed in the diary was she that she jumped when Sam gave a yelp from behind the chair.

  "It bit me!" he bawled. He held his hand up to her and she saw a thin stream of blood running between his finger and thumb.

  Maggie saw the culprit. The corner of the biscuit tin had become twisted and a sliver of metal extruded from the edge. It was razor-sharp. "Naughty tin!" she said. "We'll throw you away for doing
that!"

  "It wasn't the tin," said Sam. "The tin didn't bite me."

  Maggie took Sam's little white hand and put it to her mouth, sucking the crimson beads of blood. "Who did, then?" she said soothingly.

  SEVEN

  Alex came back from work to find Maggie, Amy, and Sam playing a game in the yard. A large blue candle was set in a brass holder in the middle of the flagstones, its flame flickering in the light breeze. It was Amy's turn to jump.

  Jack be nimble,

  Jack be quick,

  Jack jump over the Candlestick

  And Amy jumped. She cleared the candle easily and shouted, "Mummy's turn!" Maggie stepped a few paces backwards, repeated the rhyme, and took a healthy run. She cleared the candle by several feet. "Cheating!" shrieked Amy. "Cheating! You have to stand still and then jump."

  "What's going on?" said Alex.

  "Shut up!" Amy shouted. "Sam's turn!"

  But Sam was afraid to try. "Scaredy-pants!" Amy bawled. "It's easy."

  "Don't want to."

  "Can I have a go?" said Alex.

  Alex stood before the candle and cleared it easily from a standing position. "No!" Amy bellowed. "You have to say Jack! You have to say it."