I didn’t say a word. I’d tucked it all away where even my family never saw it. The secret safe behind my face. The secret of me and Breesh. The secret nobody would understand.
That we weren’t like other people.
“It’s all right,” Elley Craig told me. “You can tell me.”
I turned to the moon. There was nothing in the world but me and it.
“Tell me,” whispered Elley Craig soft in my ear.
“No,” I said.
“Tell,” she said then, quite sharp.
I thought she might clout me as easy as she did that rabbit, but I hadn’t travelled with Dolyn Craig through deep rock and inland waters for nothing. I knew the Craig tempers. She looked just like him with her lip curled, and his reptile eyes glittering in her head. I was glad I’d learned to stand my ground somewhat.
“Tell what?” I asked, baffled why she’d be so fussed about Breesh.
“Tell me she’s your rock-sprite,” Elley Craig said. “Say you made her and we’ll get going again.”
“But I didn’t make her.” It was all wrong to be talking about Breesh like this. “She just came.”
“You made her,” she said again, but smaller and sadder. “Say so. Go on.”
She turned the face of a beggar to me but I didn’t have the heart to say it again. So I shook my head. And then shrugged like Sorry.
“Buggering old hedge-witch Slevin said you did,” she sighed and let the hare up-and-out of her lap.
“Who’s Slevin?” I asked, and then I remembered Sula at the palings. Sula and that blind boy, Scully. His name was Slevin.
“Why would he say something like that?” I said.
“Not him. Her,” said Elley Craig. “The old one. Scully told her.”
All the time I thought me and Breesh were secret and this uplander had been spying. He must have been creeping about the stoneway. Crouching outside the sea-cave. Listening.
It made me feel sick.
We walked in quiet for a while then Elley Craig turned a tight face to me, took my hand and we ran again. All the spring and delight had drained out of her, leaving this quick streak of bad-temper.
The moon was setting.
Her rabbits and hares ran with us for the longest time. At first they crowded our feet, a mobbing grey-soft company, but by the time we got to her place, there were only two left. They were both bucks, full-grown and marked by brawls. They had run closest to the harewitch, leaping in-and-out of her flying heels without once tripping her or being sprawled. They stayed with her to the edge of town. Then they scutted away into the dawn-glow hills.
The sun was coming.
We stopped on a bluff and the harewitch said we were there. There was a small low town below and I knew from story it must be Shipton-Cronk. It was right old, and right dirty, and right empty. In the sunrise every rocky yard, every fallen wallstead, every patchy roof glowed pink like the morning was coming from inside the stone.
And somewhere somebody was fiddling. Only scraps, but I recognised a bit of the Weirdwort tune because Mr Cooley hummed it up at his hives. He said it was a faery tune and the bees liked it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Home,” said the harewitch.
A crookbacked old woman came out into the yard below the bluff and emptied a nightsoil pot into some roses. She stood for a moment with the pot dangling. She turned her face full to the sun and bowed.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“That’s Slevin,” she said.
Mrs Slevin stepped once to the right, a sizeable step for such an old one – a dancing step – and she stuck both her arms straight out in front. She bent to the ground, slapped the earth hard with her flat hand. Dust flew up and she coughed until she retched. Then, like she was in a hurry, she drew a circle in the air and stepped through it with both arms spread, singing words.
I picked up a stick. A big one.
There was no circle but I think I saw one clear as the roses. When the old one took the step through, I saw it hanging in the air like smoke. As soon as she stepped through, it disappeared. Then she crossed her arms and turned her face up to the bluff.
“We’re here,” the harewitch called down.
The old one grinned and waved and called over her shoulder into the house. Somebody came out.
“All right there, Dolyn?” called Elley Craig.
“All right, Mother,” said Dolyn Craig and spat in the dust on the word.
“Is that her?” shouted Mrs Slevin up to Elley, pointing at me.
“That’s her,” said Elley, not letting go of my hand for a moment.
I held my stick tight. I thought I might brave them with it if I had to.
But the three of them just looked at me. They looked at me like I glittered in the sun. Like I had stuff inside that they wanted. And like they were wondering how to get at it. The two women smiled at me, their eyes dappling. Dolyn Craig smiled too.
That is, he showed me his teeth all right.
But I wasn’t fooled.
Chapter Seventeen
Harewitch
ELLEY CRAIG PULLED ME DOWN off the bluff into the yard. The steep and dusty path was hidden under dried out worts and vines, but Elley took it in her long, careless steps. I dug my heels in and slid behind her into Shipton-Cronk. As we went I heard bees in the roses, and children laughing. Halfway down clouds of flies rose to meet me from out the roses and I couldn’t see for them. They were stuck to my eyes, in my ears and up my nose, even in my mouth. I went the last part on my arse, part blinded, spitting flies. Then of a sudden I was sitting in the roses with Lovelypig.
The old one, Mrs Slevin, came to meet me where I sat hooking flies out of my teeth. I gripped my stick that had seemed so hefty at the top of the bluff and held it up between us. Now faced by the three of them it had shrunk to a pitiful twig.
I put it down and sighed. I didn’t know what I would have done with it anyway. This looked to gladden Mrs Slevin more-than-somewhat.
“Well,” she said, taking it from me right kind and gentle. “That’s a start, Miss Crowal. Now, isn’t it?”
She put out her hand to fetch me out of the roses. Something about this old woman, with her crookback and her feathersoft hair, put me in mind of Shenn Cooley. He lived part in this world and part in one that’d gone and it gave him the look of somebody seeing you from faraway. Mrs Slevin had the same look.
So I let her help me up and lead me and Lovely to the threshold of a low and mossy house. Dolyn Craig was leaning against the stonewall. I thought he might be cheered we weren’t dead under Spindlestone. But some people can sulk the goodness out of everything.
“Why’d you run?” I whispered as we passed.
“I like running,” he said.
“Tell her right, Dolyn. It’s because he’s frighted by you,” said Elley Craig to me.
Dolyn’s face slammed shut.
“Is it right you’re my mother?” he asked. “Like the old witch says?”
Elley looked to Mrs Slevin and scowled.
“What did you tell him for?” she said and turned back to Dolyn.
“I am,” she said. “What’s it to you?”
“Well, that explains it,” said Dolyn Craig, sneery and bold.
The harewitch didn’t bother with more words. She stepped up and took his chin in her hand. She tilted his face and looked right into it. It was like she was measuring him. There was no love in her. No softness like when Mam looked at Neven.
His eyes on the harewitch were full with ice and gravel. But when he turned away, they had the same look as the sibs in the hungry times. It’s the look of a bone-deep hope that has learned not to raise itself. My hand moved by itself and reached to him.
But he was running again. He went out of the yard with a bellow coming out of him, deep and cracked like a full-grown man.
“I wanted a girl,” said the harewitch, watching him go.
“Let him be, you ungrateful rag,” Mrs Slevin sighed a
t the harewitch. “Give the lad a chance.”
“You should have let me tell him,” said Elley Craig.
She gloomed into her house. Or what was left of it. Nobody had lived there for a long time and you could smell it. Lovelypig wouldn’t come in at first and had to be carried.
Elley Craig’s place was a dead place: no embers, no woodpile, no hens, no mites. Every crumb and dreg scavenged, and the longtails long-gone. Even its ash and dust was blown away. It smelled of earth and ants and loneliness.
“Don’t mind her,” said Mrs Slevin and she put her arm around my waist. “It’s not about girls or boys. She doesn’t like anybody any more, poor thing.”
I looked down into her beamy old face. She looked a right fond person herself – doting, in fact. Somebody who might like everybody, including me. My head swam and I leaned back into her arms.
“You’re Mrs Slevin,” I said.
“Mureal Slevin,” she said, leading me inside. “Scully’s mam. You know him?”
She puffed up a bit, proud.
“I’ve seen him,” I said.
It was good to hear somebody say their own name clear, like they only had the one and knew what it was. Out here everybody looked to be two people, at least. Even me.
Dolyn was the Sneak and the Fist from town. He was the monk in the dust at Newbridge. But also that sad boy at Midwoodpool. And he was the son-of-the-harewitch too. Elley Craig was my lovebroke scaan, and that beautiful runner-in-the-hills, and now this bile-sprite mother with nothing but ugly words for her own son. Even I was somebody I never knew.
I was the holdfast tongue-tied worm stuck inside Market-Shipton – and this new girl who rode the inland waters and shouted at people.
“Mrs Slevin,” I said, sitting down hard. “I’m so hungry.”
Mrs Slevin clapped her hands.
“Right! Call me Ma,” she said. “You sit. Start with this.”
There wasn’t anywhere but the floor, so I sat there and Ma handed me a thick slice wrapped round a cut of eel. Lovelypig limped to my side, bloodspotted from the roses, and I dabbed at her wounds with my shift. Her nose found my hand and gruntled it soft. We shared.
Ma Slevin unpacked a row of baskets, each one covered with a fresh cloth that plainly did not belong to this house. From inside the baskets came food like we never saw at home, or anywhere else: a barley-blites pottage with rampions and colewort and brooklime, sealed piggins holding hazels-in-honey, damsons-in-mead, Ma called them damsons-in-distress. Also, cheese-in-brine, sprats-in-salt and the pickled eel, fat as my arm. Whatever Dolyn said, those uplanders knew how to eat.
I got stuck in.
I couldn’t help wondering what they were having at home. I wondered if there was any way I could hide any of the beautiful spread inside my shift. I wondered if it would still be thieving if you’d been invited to eat, and took some home with you.
“Here, Elley,” said Ma, piling kindling into the longdead hearth and slapping a dish down by the harewitch. “Eat.”
But the harewitch had curled up in a gritty corner and dropped straight into deep senselessness, snoring and whistling through her teeth. I saw that in her sleep her face softened. A bit.
“She’s been following me,” I told Ma Slevin through a mouthful. “She thinks I can weird things. Like a witch.”
Ma said Oh and Really? and Well, what a Thing, and clucked to herself, and then turned back to the baskets.
“What does she think I can do?” I asked.
“Well,” Ma Slevin said, fussing with the cloths and piggins. “I told her you’re a webster, dear. It’s only the truth. Websters are helpful in particular ways. They can mend broken threads – and darn holes – and give things a nice neat edge, you know.”
She took the harewitch’s rabbit and skinned it as we talked.
“And I told her you’re the best,” she told me. “That you have the gift in you.”
I was so surprised it took my mind off the food. Now I was somebody who was the best at something. Somebody with a gift. I was any amount of strange to myself.
“But what’s that got to do with her?” I asked.
“Websters aren’t just websters to her, Mally. Like hares aren’t just hares, and birds aren’t just birds. She doesn’t think you’re a webster. She thinks you’re a witch-webster – she thinks you have a chant that can pull Dolyn’s thread back to her,” she said and she couldn’t look at me straight. “Or at least back to himself.”
“Why would she think something like that?” I said.
“Because, my birdie,” said Ma, standing as upright as her hunchy old back would let her, “I told her you could.”
“But I can’t,” I said, somewhat unquieted by this news. “Honest.”
“Are you sure you can’t?” Ma said hopeful-like.
“I think I’d know if I was a witch or not,” I told her.
I didn’t want there to be any mistake about this. I was not a witch. I would not be a witch for anybody.
“Or anything else,” I added and got stuck into the pottage she’d dished me.
I went to pour some out for Lovely but she’d limped to the harewitch’s reeky form and was curled up close as she could get.
“Everybody’s something else sometimes,” said Ma Slevin, poking the fire with my stick and throwing it onto the flames.
“Folk in town think Elley Craig’s a witch,” I said through all the good tastes. “She said so. But does she weird things? For real?”
“Witching is not about what folk say. And it’s not about weirding or not-weirding things,” said Ma. “It’s about what’s in you that has to come out, one way or the other. It takes different people different ways. There’s witch-smiths and witch-chandlers and witch-masons.
“Harewitches, now, they have it in them to be on the move. They can’t stay put. They’ll be out in the greenplots, or in at the loom or the bellows, settled as dregs right next to you – and the next thing you know, they’re away. They’ll get this look like they hear something calling, something like music or a friend. It stops them right where they are. I’ve seen it.
“Their noses still smell the old paths. And paths are to be taken. That’s what they’re for.
“And harewitches are not always happy about it, you know. Who would be? It’s a very inconvenient thing. Right where they are they must drop the hoe or the spindle, leave the fire, leave the pot, and go. They can’t help it.
“It’s just in them. And it has to come out. Some folk think it’s a gift but it’s a funny sort of gift that has you homeless and hungry all the time.”
We ate awhile and watched the harewitch sleep.
“It’s all fine and good to be proud of your blood,” Ma went on, a bit sad now. “A person is what they are, after all, and they might as well like it. But folk with the harewitch blood don’t just leave their work, their tools and gear, see? Sometimes they leave their duty, their beasts and so on and sometimes, they leave their people. Their old ones – and their babies.”
“She left Dolyn?” I said, seeing that’s where she was headed.
“She left him right over there.” Ma pointed out into the greenplots, out to a low tumbling wall. “By that wall. She just laid him down one day and bolted.”
We ate the soaky damsons and watched the wall seep rockdust like tiny waterfalls. In my mind-eye I saw a baby in his wraps, lying out on those stones with nobody to keep the flies from his eyes and mouth. Lovelypig stirred and came to my side. I curled her tail round my thumb.
“When Elley got back,” Ma said, dropping the skinned rabbit in the flames, “the Father had come up and taken the baby for a monk.”
Her tones dropped to a whisper. I leaned in to hear.
“Elley never told anybody and never would but she went down to fetch him home more than once and they wouldn’t give him back. They said she was a bad mother and likely as not end up killing him with forgetfulness. She came up home and cried in the yard for a week every time. We told her she was
young and she’d have plenty of babies. We told her it was all for the best that the Brothers took this one. They’d feed the lad and he’d most likely grow into a reading, writing sort of man, and never want for food and suchlike comforts – but it did no good.
“She kept trying until Dolyn was about three and old enough to be scared of her. After the last time she took to the hills for good. Her heart was down at the monkhouse and she’s had to live without it. It’s turned her peculiar.”
Ma Slevin poked the roasting rabbit and checked to see if Elley Craig was still sleeping.
“But she’s started going down there again,” she hissed to me. “I know she has, in spite of her saying she hasn’t. She’d never let them know she was there, of course, but she’s been going down these last weeks. I can see it on her, but she won’t tell.”
We watched the embers glow and the rabbit-fat spit.
“She’s never forgiven him,” Ma Slevin sighed. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“Dolyn?” I said.
“The Father,” said Ma Slevin.
I thought on Dolyn and the Brothers, Dolyn and Boson Quirk, Dolyn and his mother the witch. It was a terrible tardle. No wonder he ran.
“And you told her I could help?” I said. “You told her I could help with all that?”
Ma Slevin turned the rabbit in the embers like she couldn’t look at me again.
“I did,” she said. “Sorry.”
In spite of saying sorry though, she didn’t look bothered. I went out into the yard to think.
The Cronks snugged around the houses. The settlement was just a handful of holdings altogether; each one in its own wasteland, and the bony cows going free in the lanes. There were only some half-bare scab-eyed children and their crooked dogs left in the yards. Everybody who could work was gone out to the plots and snares. I went quiet in my mind and soft in my breath and stayed in the shadows. At the bottom of the lane an old woman swung in a swaddle from a bough of the town oak, knitting.
She didn’t see me.
I walked up to the grey Cross at the top of Shipton-Cronk’s one empty lane. I sat on its dusty base and looked on what folk had carved in its stone over the generations. There were scratches and signs, beasts and birds, and some words. I’d seen all-sorts of pictures drawn on all-sorts of things, including pictures of undressed women on skin. But never anything like that worm I saw fresh-carved and deep on the Cronk Cross.
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 12