“What? Right now?” I asked with some edge to it, and then wished I hadn’t.
He looked at me from under his hedgy brows like he did when I’d been too slow for him.
“The other islands have come,” he told me.
The other islands used to come and fetch away our Dead-ones to the Afterward paths. People say they still come for the ones not marked out for a chapel grave. Commonly folk have to wait years for the islands to sail back round our way. It’s a bit of luck for a person to have the islands come as they’re dying; it means no waiting about town with folk you knew and hated well even when they were living.
“They’ve come for me,” he said cheerfully.
“They might have come for anyone,” I told him, heaving his bedstuff back into place. “You don’t know. They might have come for me.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he said. He sucked the last of the salt from his fingers. “You’d have to go out to them and you can’t even go out of town.”
I’d never heard him talk so pointed.
I took the salt-piggin from him quick smart.
I put it up high in his sideboard, too high for him.
“They’ve come for me,” he told me again but softer. “And I need to give you the end of the story.”
Old folk give stuff away. They’re always pushing things into your hands, saying Take that, take This. Some of it is useful, some is pretty. Mostly it’s rubbish entirely, with a strange smell on it. Now Shenn Cooley was giving me the last of this story. It was all he had to give.
I didn’t want to take it.
Taking the story would mean I was saying All right to the rest. To his dying. I didn’t want to think on not sitting with Mr Cooley a span of each day. I didn’t know what I’d do without his glad old face to feed, or his words. He talked to me like my Frights were nothing but a passing Fever that I’d grow out of.
He gripped my hand tight and pulled me outside. His one eye was full with the sky. His hand trembling somewhat.
“All right,” I said sighful. “Tell.”
I tried to give him some of yesterday’s greens for his slice of bread but he wouldn’t take them. He just left the good food sliming in the sun. I kept my eye out in case some bird took it before I could.
“Well, so,” he said, “after he accidentally killed the water-sprite, Brother Collect was never the same. The only person who ever knew what he’d done was that first Prior and he never told from the shame it would bring on the Order. He just set Brother Collect new mortifications and penances, and then sent the young monk to the Mother-house for reunification. When Brother Collect came back he’d taken the mute-pact and never talked again.
“And straight on his return, he chucked his assemblage of wonders. He never went back to Midwoodpool. It was haunted terribly by the lack of Pond-Averick, and there wasn’t even a shallow grave to gloom by.
“Poor Brother Collect dwindled, faded to a regular monk.
“As he was taught he trampled the flowers of the world and counted his pleasure as dung. He spurned his body; he spat on good food, a decent brew, the love of folk for each other. He prayed the Holy Offices but they never again lit him like glow-worms inside. He withered. He dried out.
“He even prayed to die – but he didn’t.
“Brother Collect knew he had fallen short of his Heaven with his love for Pond-Averick. The rest of his days he lived out trying to make up for it. At least, that’s what the Prior and everybody thought he was doing. He looked miserable enough for it.
“But after he died, as an old, old bad-tempered man, when the young Brothers were laying him out, they found a mark on his side. A red-raw welt between the ribs over his heart. It was the place Brother Collect had lashed that dappled stone from Midwoodpool. The soft-hide strap had hardened and bored into him over the long years. It left a bright scar right around his chest. The stone from Midwoodpool left a hole in his flesh, but when the young Brothers freed it from the hide, all its motley had gone. It was just a dull grey rock.”
Lovelypig came and found the salt in Shenn Cooley’s whiskers. She’s got a real nose for it. Mr Cooley let her lick his chin in the high sunshine.
“Do you think they let him in Heaven anyway?” I asked.
I knew he killed Pond-Averick but I still felt sorry for that Brother. He’d had the worst sort of unluck.
“Well,” said Mr Cooley. “There’s been stranger than him that got there.”
We looked at each other over the slobbering Lovelypig.
“At least that’s what they say,” he added.
When I went I took the limp greens with me and left Lovely and Mr Cooley enjoying their salt. I could eat the greens by the time I got home and the sibs would never know.
And then on the way I saw the scaan again.
It was on the edge of the Backdunes where the saltmarsh starts. I was almost safe to the Midwoodward, almost through the last of the mists, at the crest of the biggest dune and about to go heel-first down the slipface – when there she was at the bottom.
I knew it was her.
Pond-Averick. Kneeling in the shadow of the dune, crouching, craning, crawling after something or somebody. Shadowing it.
Straightways I dropped flat into the sand. I crept up the spine of the dune and looked down on her. I was scared but there was something else too.
I wanted to know.
Pond-Averick was more than some scaan to me now and it wasn’t because in Mr Cooley’s story she was beautiful. In fact, death had turned her soft dapples to dirty splodges. Her hair did hang down to her knees but in the sun it wasn’t even silver-grey, it was just grey. The hair did cover her though and it was the only thing keeping her decent. The sun hit her full in the face, and I saw she had a hare-lip.
Mr Cooley hadn’t mentioned that.
My blood went rushing; my belly went falling – that lip alone fetched on low-to-middling Frights – but I didn’t run. I didn’t shut my eyes. I didn’t cry. In case the tears stopped me seeing.
I wanted to see.
I wanted to know what or who she was after. I wanted to know that more than I wanted to run. More than anything.
So I stopped and watched.
It was like this.
I saw her going low along the bottom of the dune. I crept along above, keeping just behind the crest of the travelling dune, moving as she moved. On-and-off she hid in some salt-shrub. The dune-shadows shifted with the sun as we crept about. At last the shadows swung fully sidewise and I saw Pond-Averick’s quarry in the slack of the last dunes. It was a boy.
Or a young man.
The sunlight was falling on the white sands. Beams and rays shot the airs and scattered my sight. I squinted and shaded my eyes and I saw enough to mark him out as a monk. He was sitting on the edge of the Midwoodward, tracing with a stick in the dirt. His form wavered in heat and light and dust.
I knew who it was.
It was Brother Collect. Living out his long regret. Waiting for forgiveness.
But Pond-Averick didn’t go straight down to him – like you’d think she would. She just watched him close with her grey hair blowing in gusts. Over-and-over her hair snapped into her eyes. She let it snap. The three of us looked to be stuck. Not going back, not going forward.
Brother Collect waiting for Pond-Averick.
Pond-Averick watching him wait for her.
And me, still as a snipe, watching her watching him.
Until Lovelypig came from behind, that is. She went reeling over the crest of the dune and rolled down the slipface, laughing and dinning. Then the two lovebroke scaans startled and scattered into the dust and left over mists.
Chapter Ten
Midwoodpool
AHEAD OF US, ON THE heat-wavy Midwoodward, clattered the Shipton pig-mob. They went in a lank and reeky bunch, heading for shady parts. Lovelypig stayed close by me; she doesn’t approve of the common pigs. There in the dust went Mr Owney’s Spit, with a white scar through his yel
low belly-bristles his where his da stepped on him. And there went Gutful, the belly-dragged sow compassed by her latest offspring. Lucky and Arkan were out in front and the bickering Cushag, Wallow and Boom came next. Then those best friends Primrose and Sorrel came quiet, shoulder-to-shoulder and trembling, followed by the mob’s three grunting elders: the tall one, Lofty; the flushed one, Roisin; and then Bombastus, the bad-tempered one.
The rest of the mob was down in the woods, already at the snails and water-herbs. They know all the secret places to find grub. They would be gruntling in the dark earth and turning up mealy nuts, nutty roots, sweetrot fruit, small dead creatures – fallen food that most folk would turn their noses up at. But most thrown-away things are perfectly good to eat if you eat around the bad bits. I glean along behind the mob most summer days. They fuss somewhat but let me be if I clout them. Sometimes I think they see me as another pig – a thieving sort that goes bold on its hind legs. The only pig I never clout is Bombastus because once he ate the finger right off a man who tried.
At our place nobody ever asks where food comes from.
And nobody ever tells either.
So I was following the mob and at first I never saw Feer Charrey coming. I was off the path helping Primrose dig under a root-bound stand when I saw. And by then it was too late.
She was coming at me again, smiling.
Her looks were springy as lambs. She was going to talk to me. I stood to run but there was nowhere. There was only the deadquiet wood behind, the mob all round and Feer ahead, blocking the way. I backed up and fell over Primrose, landing smack on my back in the undergrowth.
Then it was all pigs.
They came from everywhere, the whole mob, too many and too quick to name. So much dust flew Feer Charrey was now just some dim shape inside it. Her hand was still raised to me when I was lifted by the mob and carried away.
I don’t mean they stopped and lifted me on purpose, it’s just that there were countless pigs around me, running, and I fell into them and was somehow carried away. It was run or fall under their hard little trotters. For a time it was dark then bright, scrape then thump, twigs then dirt and all throughout, the din of the pigs.
At first I thought it would be all right.
As we veered from the Midwoodward, I thought, Well, it’s not really outside the Fright-lines.
As we crashed through the trees, I thought, It’s really just a bit Sidewise.
In the shade the lank and sandy pigs glowed like golden things. Even the scrappy ones glowed like there was no such thing as the bloodyard for them. Midwood with its sprites and trolls was just a place to find good grub to them.
Those pigs just go their own way.
And this time they were going fast, carrying me along, running before the wind. They welled around me like water. I danced sidewise through the waves of them, stepping, sliding. At last I had to jump and run across their broad backs to escape that sea of pigs.
I made a beeline for a slim silver flash among the dark trees.
I leaped the last pig and splashed right into Aguey Brook. I knew it was Aguey Brook because of its spotty, distempered fishes. Those waters grow some nasty flying venoms that can spot you all through, and the fish are bad to eat. I stood in the slow brook and sighed.
Lovelypig was gone with the mob.
A sluggish, spotted fish bobbed by.
Watching that fish lap along in the water’s drag, I felt the spots already growing in me. I could feel them forming inside. I felt lumps coming just looking.
“Stop it!” I told myself, sharpish. I turned my eyes upward to the trees. It was all very well to be thinking such things at home where I couldn’t take a step without falling over somebody. Out here in the woods by myself was another thing. I started walking along the brook, hoping to come back to the path. I could feel Other eyes on me, prickling.
Blinking in knotholes and hollows.
“Let me be,” I told myself.
Twigs and boughs reaching down.
“Don’t be soft,” I said. “Don’t be gormless.”
I walked. It was all I could do and I did it. I followed that brook right into the middle of the wood and then, before I was ready, there I was. And I’d seen it all before.
In my mind-eye.
Hazel and hawthorn, sycamore and silver birch. A circle of twisted oaks. A mudbottom pool full with mottled stones.
Midwoodpool.
I stood deep in the herb-Robert and wood anemone, under the creepers and horsetails, and every singular hair on my body stood up. I’d stayed sensible along Aguey Brook and all through the pig-run, but now my Frights clouted me and I sat down hard to pant and flux.
Midwoodpool.
If I’d had time to think, I would have run again. I would have run senseless into who-knows-what grove or tangle, and that would’ve been that for me. One boy got lost in my parents’ time and last winter they found his bones just ten steps off the Midwoodward into the trees. There are Dead-ones still lying wherever they fell. That’s what they say.
But I didn’t have time to think too long on it.
Because seven of the pig-mob came to the pool. They brought Lovely back with them, and I was never so happy to see anybody. They came in golden flushes stuck all over with burrs, and they went down swimming into Pond-Averick’s pool. Even Lovelypig who doesn’t approve of swimming much. Her legs just tend to run in the water like they would on land. She sinks, and then she makes a meal of the sinking, screaming high and clear as any girl. Everybody comes to see what murder is being done and the council have banned her from swimming in town because of the public disturbance.
The pig-mob swam like dogs only with more bluster. Their short legs churned the pool to foam, their bodies about as easy in the water as loaves of bread – but above it all their beamy faces went like pig-saints in glory. Even with the middling Frights strong on me, those swimming pigs were still a beautiful thing.
Lovelypig threshed up to me, grinning.
“Ooooh. You lovely,” I said, scratching her bald head. “You. Lovely pig.”
She came up from the pool and squealed, bossy.
I breathed into her nose like when she was little.
We had a good squeal together; it eased me.
“Lamia! What are you doing?” said a low voice from inside the oaks.
Me and Lovelypig stopped straightways. Even in the Old places it’s not safe to be called witch in anybody’s talk. I hugged her warm, fat self close and shut right up.
That Dolyn Craig stepped out and I’d say he was smiling, but he had those deadeyes.
“Talking to pigs now?” he said in his voice like saws.
Anybody who came on purpose to Midwoodpool had to be wanting to hide. If I ran, I was done-for. Either he’d chase me down or I’d be lost. I looked straight into those eyes.
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” I said soft.
I couldn’t believe it. It just came out. He looked at me like he’d never seen anything quite like me.
“You talk big for such a small, small person,” said Dolyn Craig then, very high-toned.
He came close and made wicked faces right at me.
Up close his eyes were slipping about in his head, just about whispering in his skull. Even when his body was stopped stone-still his eyes kept spinning. There was in him something busting to be out, something ragey and waiting. I stepped back. He was the sort who might clout you now and find a reason later.
Up this close though, I could see that he was sick. The bones showed too sharp in his face, and under his robe his belly stuck out. Not in a fat way but like Neven and Sula. He was yellow and his white lips were peeling.
“You look terrible,” I told his slip-eyes and slit-mouth.
He stopped making faces.
“You’re no beauty yourself, Mally Crowal,” he said.
I didn’t like the way he said my name.
He went to sit on a low bough, but slid to the earth instead like he couldn’t hol
d himself upright. His ankles and knuckles slid about under his skin. He slumped slow onto the bank, and slow he leaned back until he was laid out in the harebells under the oaks. His nose pointed straight at the sky and his cross and scourge hung from their rosary and settled in the harebells.
He looked to be something carved on a tomb.
“Don’t the Brothers feed you down there?” I said.
“I wouldn’t eat it if they did,” he said without opening his eyes.
“Fasting?” I asked him.
He opened one eye to look at me. I hunted it for the liveliness that might mean he was about to go me. And I kept my face empty while he talked about fasting. That somebody might refuse food, even for their god, made me feel sneery and I didn’t want to sneer at Dolyn Craig. Not when we were alone in Midwood. I wanted to keep him talking.
While he was talking he wasn’t likely to start clouting me.
“Not like you think,” he said. “I’m fasting against them,” he told me, sitting up. “Well, against him.”
“Who?” I said.
“The Father,” he said. “I’m fasting against him. Until he tells.”
“Tells what?” I asked.
“That he wanted it done,” he said. “That he wanted me to do it.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Beat that boy,” said Dolyn Craig, and then I remembered. “That Quirk boy.”
I didn’t pay much attention to other people’s trouble. I always had enough of my own. Folk are forever chasing each other about, shouting and brawling about something, and it’s hard to keep up. But now I remembered; Dolyn Craig had given that moony bog-boy Boson Quirk a beating.
“That uplander?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
It had been a week ago. Da said Dolyn and his mob hunted the boy along the Upward until they were only just out of sight, like Dolyn didn’t care at all who saw. They gave him what-for and left him to be found by his own people. Then the boy had died and everybody said it was Dolyn that did it.
The Brothers had kept Dolyn and themselves to the monkhouse afterwards. They were only about town again these last days and Dolyn was never with them.
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 7