“Let it be!” I’d pushed Flaxney into the wall.
“What?” he’d said, surprised. “There’s too many of them.”
There was too many of us but we didn’t go round clouting each other with sticks. Well, not so as anybody died from it.
“There’s not enough grub for them,” Flaxney told me. “I’m putting it out of its misery.”
That’s what Da said when he killed old dogs and aged cows.
“It wasn’t miserable,” I said, looking at its still body.
“You’re pitiful,” said Flaxney and he got up and went out, kicking the dead longtail over the threshold.
“Next time the pot dries out,” I shouted after him, somewhat weepy and shamed for it, “we’ll just put you out of your misery, shall we?”
Lovelypig was born the day after Flaxney clouted the longtail. She came out last and was so small you might have thought she was just some afterbirth, until she squealed. Then her mam rolled on her and she made such a din for such a rag, everybody in the pen laughed. I picked her up and wiped the blood from her snout and mouth. Her tender new tail was straightened right out.
Lovelypig’s face was pink as the newest, freshest blossom-animal and her four trotters fit into my palm all at the one time. When I picked her up, she snugged right into to me. Her skin was soft as sea-foam. It rolled over her ribs like it was too big, and her fat belly sat in my hand like a bird.
I loved her.
But in spite of making everybody laugh, they would still have clouted her if it wasn’t for me. She was too small. She would never make decent eating. And there was something in me that wanted, like I’d never wanted anything, to not let that happen.
I told my father she would be company for me.
“Company?” he said, baffled, looking about at my herd of sibs.
“I mean a friend,” I told him in a whisper. “Somebody who likes me.”
He stood and flexed all over, with his arms crossed against me and his face full with nothing. I showed him the piglet’s face and her trotters. I showed him her belly, and the way her snout followed smells without her head turning.
“It’ll be good for me. To learn to look after things,” I said, using the words he likes. “It will teach me, Da. Useful things.”
I kissed her snout. I curled her tail around my thumb. Da frowned for a moment and then his brows lifted, his body flopped. He wilted, entirely.
“That’s true,” Mam said, going by with three upside-down piglets dangling in both hands. “She’ll get children one day.”
She said it like she thought children just types of piglet.
Carrying Lovelypig home that day inside my shift, wriggling against my skin and making her piglet din, I wouldn’t have minded if children were like piglets. I hoped they were. Nothing could be more lovely than Lovelypig.
So Lovelypig came home with me and ate from my dish and slept in my bed, and she held fast to her life that everybody thought so unimportant. And she was full with thankfulness, never licking or nipping the littlest ones, even though I could tell she thought they smelled good to eat. She grew slowly and stayed small so she would fit wherever she was put. It was always like she knew what she was; she was a pig who shouldn’t have lived.
That was the same season me and Breesh Dunnal had made bloodsibs.
She said it would make us true sisters forever, and nobody would ever be able to say we weren’t.
“We’d be our own sibs then,” she’d said, hugging me tight. “It’d be just us. We wouldn’t need anybody else. See?”
I did.
I fetched Flaxney’s whelk-blade down to the cave. It was small and sharpened so often half the blade was worn away, but it was like a razor. I lost it there that day and he still frets me about it.
Breesh went first. She drew the blade across her palm and the blood came first time, in a fine red thread. I had to try three times before I could let the blade cut me, but at last we were both bleeding enough to make the pact. Right grave like she was at the scaaney, Breesh pressed her palm to mine and our blood stirred in together.
Afterwards our hands were still red and wet, and we pressed them onto the pale stone of the scaaney. They left dark handmarks. That’s how the pool got its fancywork.
Then Breesh said we would be websters and live together in some place very close to the sea, where we would grow corn. She loved corn. It would be just her and me and Lovelypig.
But we never talked about that any more.
On my way out into the broken lanes, I passed that girl Feer Charrey throwing water around her yard. Her mam was trying to keep the dust down and Feer was always out there wetting the hot ground. She stopped sweaty with her bucket hanging and I could feel her smile on me as I went.
I pretended not to see.
“Hey, Mally,” she called. “Want to do something later?”
I pretended not to hear.
Feer Charrey’s smiles had purpose. They wanted me to smile back. But I would never do that. Breesh Dunnal was enough friends for me. Feer called out again and came at me like she had a plan.
I jumped the rubble outside our gate and ran on tiptoe past the yard of our other-side neighbours, the Caillets.
Mr and Mrs Caillet were Dodi Caillet’s parents. They had the same years as my parents, but since Dodi went missing Mr and Mrs Caillet looked old. Ancient. The sort of oldness that has given up on life entirely. It had been years but they’d never gotten over Dodi. She was the only one of theirs who’d lived and now they had nobody left.
I always ran by the Caillet place. It wasn’t that they would do anything to me. He was never in and she never went out. All day and most nights he worked their holdings, and she sat behind a thick curtain hung over her door and looked out on the lane. All you could see were her feet. When I saw Mrs Caillet’s feet below that curtain, I couldn’t breathe right.
They were there today, loose and pigeon-toed like they didn’t have the heart to hold themselves together.
The bells were done. I was right late. Breesh would be waiting. I tied my hair tight and ran with Lovelypig through the steamy ways and the folk standing about excited by the mess. All the lanes were hard-baked, still cracking and lifting.
I ran by Baxter’s where I tried not to smell the bread, then by Old Shambles’s where I tried not to see the meat. In-and-out the washing lay flat along the Blackwater. Down the Seaway. Between the rimy stone-walls, over the fishwives’ slabs and down onto the Sands.
The sibs were there already. They’d been there since before dawn. Neven saw me coming. He stumped up the white sand on his brown legs and his eyes red from swimming under water. It was unnatural.
“Come on, Mally,” he said. “I brave you.”
He looked down the Sands to the mid-waterline.
“Neven,” I said.
“What?” said Neven.
“Shut your bloody-buggery gob,” I said. “Or I’m going to make you.”
Neven looked up at me like I was a stranger. I never said such things. The heart of a threat was that you would do whatever it was you said you would, and I was never sure I would actually do anything at all. So I never threatened.
Until today.
“How will you make me?” said Neven in an interested sort of way. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But, honest I will. Something.”
Of a sudden I couldn’t see a way out of my life. I would be stuck here forever, haunting the waterline. I stood welling and brimming, and Neven came close and took my hand.
“You can throw me in the sea if you like,” he told me at last.
“Thanks,” I said.
He kicked away down the Sands.
I turned to the caves. Everything was changed. The cliff face was stricken, the rock wall broken. The rock’s black line was crooked now. There were saplings withering all over the high-waterline. Spindlestone Stack had lost its whorl and was just a stone stick. The whorl lay in the sea.
>
Everywhere, the cliff had fallen or risen.
Everywhere, the rocks tilted and jutted.
It was a new world.
But Breesh Dunnal was waiting there on the threshold of our sea-cave. It would take more than a little shaky ground to fright her off. She stood with her hair streaming out dark behind, and both her green eyes shining like silver stars. She waved, and called me by name.
We were late.
Chapter Eight
Second Scaaney: Open
THE SCAANEY POOL WAS BRIMFUL. We drew the circle and named the angels. We called on Ushtey Doo and Mary Mother-of-the-god, and all the Others. We asked for the blessings, drew our joined hands across the waters and then we started up.
Breesh went first. She always did these days. I didn’t want to. Because of the worms.
“What do you see?” I asked but I already knew.
“Her Augustness, the Beam of Glory and Light of All Heavens,” said Breesh, turning the face of glee to me. “As I mentioned before, had taken herself off to a dark cave where she seemed rockfasted entirely and not likely to ever come back to the world. Her parents, the King and Queen, came to the cave and spoke elegantly of her birth and childhood; saying as how she was the diamond of their hearts, and the pearl of their old eyes, and countless other such beautiful thoughts to do with gems and flowers, but the Beloved High-Born and Lark-Voiced Girl had heard all of that before and just sighed.
“The beasts came from the deep woods and bayed for her to come out. The bears clawed at the rock, tearing their paws for her. The wolves slept stretched across what would have been the opening to the cave, if it had been open. The newborn barnacle-geese trooped in from the sea and called for her loud as donkeys.
“And at last the singing birds came.
“Outside the cave they flocked in a spreading alder and sang and sang until one-by-one their throats swelled and closed up; the thrushes sang of love and company, the linnets sang of flight, even the nightingale roosted one night and sang to her of time passing. As each singer was silenced, another came to the tree. Meanwhile the golden plovers wept into the sunset rockpools, but not even their sad small voices cracked her heart and brought her out.
“Inside, the Precious Vessel and Hope-of-the-World heard the singing birds.
“Now the Dappled Ones were dancing. The King’s daughter could hear their shuffle and their drapery. They would be swaying like silver birches in the winds, and treading in circles light as long-leg spiders. Then she heard the voices of men and women.
“Outside, they were singing.
“Outside, they were laughing.
“Inside, Her Majesty the Day-Bright Child, the Immortal Gold-Hoard and Princess-Royal of All the Beauty Realms, lay in her greening bower and she suffered. There was no telling why. There was no knowing what-for. ”
Breesh turned to me with eyebrows up like she thought I might know. Like it was some great riddle or something. I didn’t want to tell her I thought that girl gormless.
“Your turn,” Breesh said.
I stirred the waters.
“Scaaney,” I said to the pool. “Open.”
I squinted into its deeps, past the water, past the stone. I saw the worm there, long and coiling.
“What do you see?” asked Breesh, coming close.
“Nothing,” I said, because I just couldn’t tell her.
Because it went in knots, the loathly worm, squirming behind the waters. Because it was lifting its front end up onto the stone rim. Because it was nodding up at me, and it was my own face on the worm doing it.
“All right, Mally?” Breesh asked me as I backed off somewhat. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Lovelypig, feeling my gloom, licked my face.
“I see a worm,” I told Breesh in sinking tones.
“Is it telling something?” she asked me.
Actually, the worm with my face was making mouths. But I couldn’t look. I couldn’t meet my own eyes in its neckless head. My nose prickled and my throat closed. It was the face of shame on that worm.
“What’s it saying?” said Breesh.
I tried again but I couldn’t. I turned from the pool and from Breesh and that’s when I saw. The stonechamber was wide open. Its roof and floor were parted like a clamshell; its glowing sea was breached and lying in small flat puddles.
I could have walked right in.
The rock had cracked side-to-side. The Otherway led upward shining.
Breesh saw me looking and came straightways, scattering the dead blossom-animals and the dried-out sea-plumes. Inside, the stonechamber’s spreads of wall-lace lifted web-like in tiny gusts. Its floors glistened; its walls glowed, and its roof was a flightstone far, faraway. Tunnels went off the cavern, countless and twisting every way. But the Otherway cut broad as the Seaward straight up into the cliff.
“It’s open,” Breesh said and she turned the face of light to me.
She stepped partway into the chamber and tried to drag me with her but I shook her off.
“Hey!” she shouted into the cracked rock.
Her call echoed from every crease and jut. Breesh’s face was just about cracking open itself with the bone-deep thrills in it. She wanted to be away up the Otherway right now. With no thought for what might come of it. Her eyes were shining like the sea in the stonechamber used to.
“I’m not going,” I told her flat.
“But it’s open,” she said as if that’s all there was to it.
“I’m not going in there,” I told her straight. “I’m stopping right here.”
But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. I’d never said No to Breesh Dunnal.
And the earth-tremble hadn’t just opened the stonechamber. The sea-cave itself wasn’t the same any more. There were new ways into it and new ways out. I didn’t see how Breesh and me could ever be safe in it again.
It was all changed.
I looked down into the new-made caves. The waters from the Othersea were flowing away into them, falling in rills and streams, dropping into caverns underneath. The wall-lace filled like sails, rolling across the rock.
A shadow passed under the floating web.
I dragged Breesh down to a crawl beside me.
“What?” she said.
“There!” I told her, pointing to the web flying wide and the shadow.
Middling Frights. Straightways.
“All right, all right,” Breesh said soft, patting me with calming hands.
I pointed down into the open chamber. Something had slipped through that mazy place. It went trailing glow-wash over the puddles, and into the rock on the farside. As it went away into the stone it looked back. Something pale in a shawl of silver-grey hair. Something with the skin of river stones. Something with its tunnelling eyes taking up half its face.
Breesh called downward. “Hey! Who’s there?”
She called again. “Hey!”
There was nobody.
“Have you ever seen a scaan?” I asked Breesh then.
I sat close by her on the edge of the open chamber. She smelled of salt and herself and my breath slowed.
“You mean a Dead-one?” she said.
I nodded.
“I don’t believe in scaans,” she said bold, just like that.
Breesh Dunnal was full with the pride sin and always had been. She thought she knew everything. About me, about everything. Anybody who knew me knew I was soft. But nobody really knew how it was with me, not even Breesh. When my mouth wasn’t dry, it was full with sour spit. When my heart wasn’t in my throat, it was in my bowels. My eyes were getting to be like some glass-eel from staying awake.
I kept watching and waiting for the dooms, for terrible things that never came. Sometimes I prayed: Just come get me then if you’re going To. It would be better than the waiting. But they never did come and now here I was. I stood up.
“Don’t go,” said Breesh.
“I have to,” I told her. “I ha
ve to look to Mr Cooley.”
“Don’t tell him then,” she said.
“I know,” I sighed.
“We won’t be able to see each other any more,” she said. “If they find out.”
“I know,” I said.
I ran from the cave.
“They opened it for you, Mally Crowal,” Breesh shouted after me. “For you.”
She sounded like I should be thankful or something.
Chapter Nine
Collect
THE EARTH-TREMBLE HAD SHIFTED the dunes again. Shenn Cooley’s shack was unearthed now – half-in, half-out of the sand with himself outside on the new thresh-stone, smoking and waiting. The whole place looked to be lopsided from trembling, tilting to one side, leaning sidewise, sinking into the sand.
“I know, I know,” I said and dumped his loaf into his lap. “I’m late. Sorry.”
“All right, Mally,” Mr Cooley said. “I wasn’t really expecting you.”
He pointed back into the shack. Inside, everything was all anyhow. Not one thing had stayed upright.
He dipped his bread deep into the piggin in his spotted hands. He crammed the gritty lump into his mouth and mumbled on it. His lips whitened with the salt and his eye rolled somewhat on the pleasure.
“That’s not good for you, Mr Cooley,” I said, sharpish. “You know it’s not.”
“It’s not worth eating,” he said, throwing a lump to Lovelypig, “without a bit of salt.”
“But it’ll dry you out entirely,” I told him. “You’re not a herring. There’ll be nothing of you left over.”
“Left over for what?” he said.
“Living,” I said.
“Without a bit of salt,” said Mr Cooley, scooping out the last of his piggin, “it’s not worth it, this living you talk so knowingly about.”
There was no arguing with him when he got to talking like that. I stepped over him to pick up his household. I’d got my hands full with his greasy baskets and hairy old ropes when he told me – it was his time.
I stopped and looked at him with armfuls of his mess on me.
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 6