And with my face too.
Dolyn Craig. He was a horrible person by anybody’s rule and by any measure, a heartless brout and a hag-ridden reptile. In fact, he was a deadeyed, clod-hearted, devil-infested turd – and with some word written in his heart that wouldn’t let him be.
Some deep-carved word. Some brand-burnt word. One of the words put on him by the other monkhouse boys.
Maybe Filthy.
Maybe Bloodwitch.
The words that made him cry alone at Midwoodpool. That kept him awake night-after-night. Some word even stronger than the ones he bawled at folk in town. One of his mother’s ugly words.
I dug at the worm with a sharp stone, and looked up-and-down the lane for him. Now he was out in the wild Cronks all by himself and it served him right. He was the very type of a devil himself.
I sighed.
I couldn’t help it.
I shouldn’t have cared about that Dolyn Craig, but I did.
Chapter Eighteen
Flylord
FROM WHEN I WAS NEVEN’S AGE, I loved to build towns and countries on the stoneway. I built them from stones and shells, crab-claws and wreck-spars, and I settled nations of tiny shrimp and crab there. I wanted nothing but to be on the warm rock, ordering the days of my nations, and watching their lives. I moved them into houses and out again. I sent them reaping in the weed-gardens I planted. I gathered them in the rockpool marketplace to barter. And they let me move them, send them, gather them.
And then Breesh Dunnal came.
And she wouldn’t let me be. She said the country would be better off in the sea-cave. We took the stoneway nations and moved them up into the stonechamber. She was right; it was better. Safe inside the rock, by the inside sea my nations grew, tucked away from winds and tides. In there with the blossom-animals they made more a world than a country.
It was bigger. It was better. But I missed the smallness of my rockpool countries and the way I could see every corner of them at once. This new world was too big for me to look after right. Any old thing could come into it and I wouldn’t even know.
Breesh bossed me, but I didn’t mind. I went to the sea-cave every day; wintertime when the sea lay like lead, spring when the breezes could blow you away, fall when twilight dawdled on the shore like the small ones, and every summer, good and bad, since my seventh year. She bossed me into playing; she teased me about my Frights. She was big and brown and always smiling. And nothing could take me if she was there.
Except she had been there when the spring tide came. It took me. And she let it.
I sat alone under the stone Cross all day. The sheeny flies settled on me. Sweat ran from under my hair and behind my knees and started puddling at my feet. After some time circling me, the Cronk children came to look. They gathered in a bare and stenchy mob, and stared just exactly like owls. One small girl came close, walking on tiptoe and ready to run quicksmart. She reached out with a scabby hand and patted my knee. I looked down into her face; no hairs were sprouting there, not even a whisker; only a pair of grey eyes and a faraway smile. Her head was shaved bald for the lice.
Same as Sula.
Same as Neven.
Her touch was a charm. Because then the small ones came and patted what bits of me they could reach, all mute as their dogs. They pointed to the fresh-carved Cross-worm and they pointed to me and then they laughed, covering their mouths with their hands. No noise came out, but I could tell they were laughing because Lovelypig laughs just like that; her mouth open and glad, her eyes shut and wet, wheezing. The children laughed at the worm, and then they pointed up and behind the Cross.
Because on the ground was drawn the worm.
Again.
And beyond that worm, another worm.
Deep-drawn with some pointed stick in the Upward path. It was just a dark slither in the pale path, but sharp as pins and long. It went up the path as far as I could see. He’d gone that way and left me this sign. The sign of the worm.
Like it was some joke between us.
But Dolyn Craig was used to being called names. Rat-boy and platterface, bullyman and bastard were words people had never tried to keep from his ears. He went in plagues of insults, always. I’d never thought on it before but now, looking on that worm, I did.
Folk could have called me hoards of ugly names because of the Frights. But apart from the sibs saying I had no gorm, and was a bit soft, I’d gone about town unmolested. Nobody but Dolyn Craig had ever called me worm-girl. If somebody had, I might have upped and clouted them myself. In fact, I was sure I would have.
I felt it in my heart; the start of the fist.
The Cronk girl was dragging me up onto the path.
“The man went there,” she told me, pointing up.
“Well, then,” said Elley Craig behind me. She had the feet of a cat, that one, and the breath of a bird. “Let’s go fetch him.”
“Maybe I should go by myself,” I said careful. “I don’t think he wants to see you.”
The harewitch twitched her nose and lifted her already lifted lip. At least, she looked all of a sudden much more sharp and wild. It was hard to see under all the dirt and hair.
“I bet he doesn’t,” she said. “But I want to see him.”
She looked just like Mam then. Like Mam when Flaxney went to Mr Owney’s and salted his barrels for a laugh, and everybody got the retches from it and Flax ran away for two days before Mam found him and fetched him home. He’d hidden in Midwood. Now I felt even sorrier for Dolyn than I had for my brother.
“I have a few words for him,” she said to herself.
There was no getting out of it. We went together. The path didn’t lead far after all, only to the top of the hill, and then it faded in tall grass and twilight.
And Dolyn was there, all right. Drooped among the meadowsweet, he sat cross-legged, rocking, talking to himself low and ragey. I could hear his belly going like a drain before I got anywhere near him. I sat close and he didn’t shift away. I didn’t know if it was a good sign or a bad.
“You’ve got to eat something,” I told him straight.
“Why?” said Dolyn Craig flat.
If he didn’t know why he should eat, I couldn’t tell him.
“Stop it,” said his mother then. “Eat. Don’t eat. Just stop making trouble for everybody.”
“Why did you bring her?” said Dolyn, turning the face of betrayal to me.
“I didn’t,” I told him. “She just came.”
I was saying those words a lot lately.
Me and the harewitch sat either side of Dolyn and the three of us were unquiet company. We perched on the hill like too-big birds on a too-small bough. Dolyn looked to be rooted right into the ground. He never shifted one bit, not even when the wind gusted and me and Elley Craig rocked under it.
She kept throwing looks at Dolyn and nudging me.
“What?” I hissed at last.
“Do something,” she said.
“Like what?” I said, and she shrugged.
We sat until the moon came full and yellow, low in the sky and heavy.
“Tell us about that devil,” I said to Dolyn Craig at last. “And all that. Go on now.”
He lifted his eyes to Elley Craig and I saw him set his mind.
“All right,” he said, like we weren’t going to like it, but he was too wrung-out to fight any more. “I’ve met Him and we talked. I was sleeping and I felt His shadow on me in the sleep. It was like falling. I fell awake and there He was. Right by my bed, big as you – hunch-backed, slug-white. Stinking.”
“What does He smell like?” the harewitch asked, quite interested.
“Rot and brimstone,” said Dolyn. “And He was hairy all over and underneath his skin was all sliming scales. Like a hagfish. And he had a goat’s head, and goat’s feet. And red hands.”
“Doesn’t sound like He knows Himself what He is,” she said.
“Oh, He knows,” Dolyn told her. “He knows all right. And so do I.”
“Dolyn likes to make a full meal of his devil,” Elley Craig said to me, stroking my arm sister-like, and Dolyn choked to see it.
He leaped up and spat while he shouted. “Leave her be and let her hear the truth. You hear too now! He. Came. To. Me,” he said, giving his mother the words slow and loud, like he had to me. “Me.”
Me and Elley Craig waited for the story to go somewhere.
“He came to me and He said, ‘I am the serpent of old and the loathly worm; I am the Flylord. I am the Power and the Throne.’ Who else could it be? Stupid old spit-hag.”
“I don’t know,” said Elley Craig, looking somewhat withered under such a hail of infernal names.
And under Dolyn’s temper. His eyes were full with life, his tones were high and his head looked tethered to his neck only by veins. He was a terrible colour, a cross between yellow and grey, with his nose marked out sharp in white. I thought he might clout her.
“He said it to me,” hissed Dolyn, crouching by my side again and leaning around me. “He said, ‘I am out and about and flying like venom. I am the Oldest Enemy of all but I can be a good friend to you, Dolyn Craig. I am the angel of the pit and the demon of the light. Nobody knows me right. I am the secret the world keeps from itself.’ He showed me His book. And then He called me to Him. By name.”
The last two words came on a small tight sort of breath.
“By name,” he said in sinking tones. “Why do you think he came to me? I mean, why me, mother?”
He managed to make mother sound like an insult.
“I don’t know,” she said but she drew her knees up to her chest and hid her face a moment.
Dolyn was up again and dancing foot-to-foot.
“Stop pretending you don’t know,” he bawled at her. “You do. You do know. It’s the blood. Your blood. It’s in me.”
Elley Craig jumped and pressed her lips together tight to keep her words in.
“You’re the trouble,” Dolyn told her then. “Tell it. You belong to Him.”
“You take that back.” The harewitch looked to be right offended. “I never had dealings with any such as Him.”
She was standing, red-faced, with a fist. He upturned his face to her like Go on Then, but she stepped back and looked out across the hissing sea of grass. Then she breathed deep and turned back slow.
“That place is going to suck the living life right out of you, Dolyn,” Elley Craig said at last. “Come home.”
Dolyn turned an empty face to me.
I knew what the face meant.
Home?
The hearth Ma Slevin had rekindled was no home any more, if it had ever been. Nor was the dusty settlement with its flyblown children. And the harewitch was no soft mother any more, if she had ever been. It was too late for home and hearth and mother for Dolyn.
Elley Craig might be even worse than the monkhouse when it came down to it. She had no soft words for him, and no family pride to hold him in. Not even a living hearth. And she was looking to me to righten all this old sorrow. I supposed she thought if I could just find the right words, the right webster-spell, I could stop Dolyn unravelling entirely. And I couldn’t help.
I saw her hunt my face and then give up.
“All right then. That’s the devil. Tell me about that boy,” she said to him.
“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Now Dolyn Craig grew still, like he’d never move again. “I did my penance. It’s done.”
“Is that where the burns come from?” I asked. “And your back? Is that penance?”
“No,” Dolyn said. “That’s because of her.”
He gave his mother the deadeye.
“The Father is a big one for truth,” Elley Craig said to me. “He’ll tell you that himself. He told Dolyn the truth about me early on. And the other boys.”
“Well and he only said the truth!” spat Dolyn. “You are my mother. You carry the blood. You passed it to me. That’s why He came to me and nobody else – and you know it.”
The harewitch kept her eyes on Dolyn. She never blinked. She just sat like a rock while he broke over her.
“He could smell it on me.” Dolyn told her like he’d been waiting a long time. “Germana inluvies. He could see it.”
“The others saw I had the blood as soon as I went down. And anyway the Father told them all about it. My house with no food or fire in it, my wicked homeplace – my mother the harewitch. He told how he’d saved me from all that. He told them everything. And when I was a baby, he looked out for me. I slept in his cell.
“I couldn’t stay close by him forever though. When I was seven I was moved to the novice cells. I thought when I moved, they’d let me be. I thought they’d let me join them. That we’d be brothers to each other.
“I wanted to be.
“But that’s not how it was. That was when they started up at me regular. At first it was just a foot or an elbow as I went by. Then it was sticks. Lately they’ve taken to using other things. The hot-iron’s their favourite.”
Elley Craig was hiding her face in both hands now, and Dolyn looked glad and said hot-iron again.
“Did you tell them about that devil?” I asked.
“Course not,” he said. “But they know already. It’s written.”
“They’re arming down there,” the harewitch said. “Storing cures and hoarding. Praying all over. I saw them.”
That explained why the Brothers had been so quiet lately. I’d only seen the herb-Brother in town these last weeks and commonly it’s the Father everywhere, all over everybody, bossing and blessing and telling us our sins. And even Brother Olloo, who liked a chat, only came now to bring his cures and leave with a grim face.
“Will there be a war then?” I asked.
I’d never seen a war or heard of one anywhere close, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be one. Although what sort of war you might fight with such as this devil of Dolyn’s was beyond me.
“Sort of,” said Dolyn.
“Sort of is right.” Elley Craig sharpened up somewhat. “The sort where grown men pray and send children to do the killing.”
“I’m not a child,” he said.
“Is that why you beat that boy?” I asked. “Was he part of the war?”
“He was,” Dolyn said, but he didn’t seem very sure.
“But – he was such a sop,” I said. “I met him once in the lanes and he just whittered and tried to give me a beetle on a string.”
“He was not a sop,” said Dolyn. “He was a sign.”
“Of the Devil coming?” I said.
He looked to be running out of breath and blood altogether. He lay down flat in the grass. But he nodded.
“Who said?” asked the harewitch.
“Father said,” he panted. “And Olloo – Niall – everybody. They all said.”
He was talking short like he couldn’t get his breath. Me and the harewitch tried to lift him but he was a deadweight and stayed laid out in the grass. He closed his eyes and kept telling about the Devil and Boson Quirk though.
“The whole place is full with Devil signs. Has been for weeks. It’s all there. Too hot. Reeky mists. Rotted things. Dead folk walking. Witches. Monsters …”
We waited for him to wrestle his breath.
“That boy was fetched down for a cure,” Dolyn whispered. “But I saw it straightways. No cure would ever take in him. He was crawling with it. Brother Olloo saw it too. Somebody had to do something.”
His words were rightful but his tones came in shame. He opened his eyes to hunt the sky for something. He didn’t find it and shut them again.
“You’ve got to let go of this fast,” I told him.
“I won’t,” he said. “Not until the Father tells it right.”
“The Father’s not the telling kind,” Elley Craig sa
id. “You could die waiting for such as him to tell anything right.”
Her words were hard as ever but she put her hand out to him inspite of herself, and hooked his sodden hair back from his grey face.
“Then I’ll die,” he told her.
Dolyn Craig lay flat on the hilltop; his hardface cracked open like the stonechamber. His face under his mother’s hand was a hard thing to look on. I’d seen it full with a thousand murders; I’d seen it crying at Midwoodpool, and I’d seen it cold and faraway as wiggynagh country. I’d never seen this new face on anybody though.
“The Father said that boy was bad,” he said to the harewitch, whiny and broke-voiced as a child. “He said it would be the kind thing. He said he’d do it himself but for knowing the family so long. He said it would be the best thing. The safe thing. The right thing. So I did it.”
His head drooped sidewise and his breath was slipping in his throat.
“I didn’t think he’d die,” Dolyn Craig told the meadowsweet.
He lay senseless then but his lips still breathed words into the wind. Elley Craig lay close with her ear to his mouth. So did I.
“It’s all your fault,” he sighed to her.
The harewitch’s one tear fell across his closed eyes.
And that’s when the wind picked up.
Chapter Nineteen
Otherways
THE WIND GUSTED STRONG, making waves roll across the tall grasses. The gusts carried voices and footsteps. Twilight was full-gone and the Cronk mob came, heading home along the many moonwashed paths. First they were just threads on the hilltop, blowing in on the wind like gulls. Then they came in knots, bunching and splitting like swallows. And there was music. A tune came swelling and broke over us. I felt full with myself for the first time in a long time.
I squatted by Elley Craig. Dolyn was senseless now.
“We should take him down to Ma,” I said and she nodded.
“Slevin,” she called into the homing mob.
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 13