In that way I do not miss her.
That night I told Mam and Da the truth about about Dodi Caillet and they cried.
Then we went to tell Mr and Mrs Caillet.
When I told them about the snakeboat, they cried. I said I was sorry for not telling them before – but they said they were sorry. When I asked what for, they said they were sorry for not keeping Dodi safe. Sorry for not being able to give her sibs to look out for her. For not coming to see me afterwards because I reminded them. For falling into the despair sin.
When Da and I left, Mam stayed. I heard her saying to Mrs Caillet, Would you have a batch about, Murkial?
Da held my shoulder too tight on the way home, like he was frighted I’d fly away. I was glad he did. My ghostheart kept swooping skyward and I wasn’t used to it yet.
At home I lit the torch and sat to the loom, aching. For Dodi and for the Caillets. And for Dolyn, and for the harewitch. For everybody and their broken hearts. Da stood by while I sorted the threads. I turned my face up to him and he took it in his hands. I saw myself shining in there, one of me in each eye of his love.
“It’s good you’re back,” he said.
We never talk like that. I couldn’t look at him. I nodded and pressed my face down into the broad cup of his hands.
“And will you be going again?” he asked.
From inside his hands I nodded.
“Good,” he said, and let me go.
After Da went, I took that dirty silverthread from Lovelypig’s tail-scab and I teased out a few strands. I twisted them until I had one long unbroken thread. Thick enough to hold, thin enough to give. Then I wove that thread into my new motley weave. It went in beautiful – running right along the edge.
You could hardly see the silverthread woven in there. It was just a soft gleam at the hem. Just a quicksilver speck sparking in the torchlight.
Then I took another thread. I pulled it from my braid. It was a thread I’d used to tie up my hair before we came down into town. A rough brown thread. A thread from Dolyn Craig’s habit. I wove it in-and-out around the neck and the shawl was done.
Sometimes, a person might as well be the witch people say they are. After all, I do talk to at least one pig and I weirded myself a friend from stone. I’d heard stories from beyond the waters. I’d travelled the Otherway. The silverthread ran the hem, and the rough-brown ran the neck. The motley shawl was held fast between the two Craig thread-lines, mother and son. Everybody is something else sometimes – and I am Mally Crowal: witch-webster.
It isn’t that different to playing scaaney.
I looked beyond the web. I looked beyond the loom. And I Saw him; half-priest, half-harewitch. Stuckfast between the calling hills and the chapel-song. A tug-of-war man with his mother and father brawling inside him. He would always be dragged between two things inside himself but now at least he knew one thing for sure. He could never go back to the monkhouse.
And one sure thing is enough to be going on with.
The morning after me and Lovelypig came home, I rose with Mary-the-Sea. It rang out sweet over Midwood and the Blackwater, and passed high over our yard like winter birds. Mam and Da had let me sleep and when I woke to the bells, I found everybody gone already. I ate all their leftovers, finishing off sops and licking the spills.
I took the shawl and went out to the plots.
Mam and Da were working hard by the palings and they waved me over. Feer Charrey was taking the water-bag round and I fell to walking alongside her. She slopped the water and just about fell with the unexpectedness of it. I put out my hand to steady her.
“All right, Feer?” I said, like we did it every day.
“I am, Mally,” she said back. “And you? After your little swim?”
“Not so bad,” I told her. “Want to come by later?”
Then she grinned ear-to-ear and I saw that she had a big gap between her front teeth. It gave her a lopsided sort of face, a face full with secrets. The sort of face a person wouldn’t mind looking at for quite a long time.
Mam and Da stopped their work to take water. Mam’s spade leaned against the palings. I was scraping off the clods when I saw the worms unearthed.
They lay at the palings in a wriggling heap. And they never stopped moving – forever twisting, coiling, curling. Under the dirt, in the dark, they would go like this. Travelling tunnels inside the earth in their own secret manner.
Soft. Skinless. Never taking the straight path.
“What was it like?” asked Feer Charrey from behind.
I didn’t know how to say. She gave me the scoop. The water was fresh and cool.
“It was,” I said, hunting the right word, “Sizeable.”
She looked up the path.
“Can I come next time?” she asked, and I nodded.
“There’s witches,” I warned her.
Her brow wrinkled, slow and deep.
“And haunting,” I added.
Her eyes opened, round and big.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “I have friends out there.”
Just outside the palings, at the bottom of the Upward, there’s a stand of quicken-trees with a tall ash in the middle and a spread of harebells underneath. Me and Feer Charrey leaned on the rail together and looked out. There were winds and the harebells were rippling like a pool. There was a sudden warmth at my legs and Lovelypig was there.
Her eyes were tunnelling into the quicken-trees and her nose was twitching. She trotted away under the palings like she had business. She went into the shadowed stand and a moment later a long, scarred buck-hare leaped into the open and bolted.
I unrolled the motley shawl and hung it over the palings. It fell soft, in all the warm browns and mossy greens from the distaff council, with the dapple of blue throughout and at its edges the fine red lines. There was the silverthread at the hem. You had to look close to see it but once you’d seen, it would gleam for you every time you looked. And then there was the rough brown thread hidden at the neck.
It would make a good shawl for somebody not so fussy about things being tidy. For somebody who didn’t care for regularity.
For some body sleeping rough, for instance.
It was just the shawl for somebody laid down in thorny hedges. For somebody who needed a rug, pillow, curtain, bandage and shift, as well as a shawl. Such a person could wrap themselves in this waterstone shawl and mottle about unseen a good long while.
Safe.
Just another secret in the hedgerows.
The tall ash in the middle of the quicken-trees rustled. A shade moved inside the stand and a mob of rabbits and hares scutted out into the harebells. Soon Mam and Da and everybody would move to the other side of the greenplots, and the palings would be quiet and untended. A person might sneak to the rail then, without being seen.
I spread the shawl wide.
Chapter Twenty-three
Saltworm
THE MID-WATERLINE IS MARKED by blackened weed and shellgrit. It is a line drawn in the sand against me and I go down running, right up to it. I’m full of foam and fizz. I stop on the edge for the time it takes a gull to call – and I step.
I step over the midwater.
In the soft light I take three long steps beyond that line. And there’s just my regular heart and my breath coming tidy. I walk down to the waterline. I am standing right on the edge of the sea.
I untie my hair, entirely.
Seatangle slips around my feet. On top the sea ripples, glittering sidewise across the cove. Underneath the waters are still and deep though.
“Come on then!” I say to the sea. “If you’re coming.”
And nothing comes.
Nothing rises. Nothing. No Blue-man net, no sea-Trow fist, no yellow hair. No reaching hands, no screaming. I stand at the brinkwater with my back to the goldening cliffs. It’s just a quiet evening on Shipton Sands.
And that’s how they find me when they come.
My brothers and sisters, light as scuds, qu
ick as hoppers, all around me, calling my name and just about clouting me with their smiles. Some take my hand, some tumble me in the sand, and it’s all high talk and crowing. We are gathered at the waterline and then we are trooping together into the warm evening sea-foam. The evening is coming hot and our faces move dark over the shining waters. Tosha and Ally. Coonie and Hugo. Treen and Nessa and Flax. Sula and Neven.
And me.
I pick Neven up and carry him on my hip out into the glitter and ripple. I go in until the waters are at my knees, at my middle, at my chest. I go in until the waters are slipping around my chin and only then do I stop. I feel a light drag around my legs that makes me tilt to the sea somewhat.
And Neven is clinging to me now. A holdfast, with his arms stuck round my head. It is too deep for him.
“I brave you, Neven,” I say and pretend to drop him.
“Let me be,” bawls Neven with a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, about to bust out.
I go to do just that and he clings tighter.
“Nooo,” he screams and up close I see his delight and his fear. “Let me be, let me be.”
So I stand there and hold him safe, and Sula comes calling Me too, me Too.
And I laugh out loud with an open mouth and I taste salt that I think is tears. The good kind of tears, with laughter in them. But it’s not; it’s the sea flowing, soft, soft, in-and-out of my mouth. The caverns inside carved-out by my sorrow fill with gladness. The gladness is as deep as the sorrow was.
And the low sun bleeds into the water and sets slow, slow, below the edge of the world. And the waters flow red with another morning and Raphael-Archangel rings out over Market-Shipton and beyond the palings and maybe all the way up into the Cronks. Maybe all the way up to Ma and Scully, and the Cronk children, and Elley Craig. Up to Dolyn, wherever he runs. And maybe even all the way up north to where Dodi Caillet would hear it in wiggynagh country.
Epilogue
Glow-worm
AND MR COOLEY WAS RIGHT about another thing. Those Dead Isles had come for him. He’d ordered his coffin weeks before and the day of the spring tide the wright fetched it to the shack. It was such a fine-wrought, close-jointed box the wright brought, the old man just couldn’t help getting in to test it out. He stayed in it to enjoy his breakfast – at least that’s what everybody said later. They said that waking before the sun, before the gulls, before the bees, on that day the old man had got in and settled to eat his salt and watch the morning come. But it was such a sweet and piney box, and him being up so long already, he’d fallen asleep.
And while he slept the spring tide came foaming.
That spring tide changed everything for us both.
The tide lapped at the sand around his threshold until it washed away and the new thresh-stone tipped and rocked. Bit-by-bit the shack tilted. It leaned into the waters. In the end it fell sidewise entirely and the tide lifted the box with Mr Cooley still in it and, soft, soft, dragged it out to sea.
He never even woke up.
People are sad due to Shenn Cooley’s drowning. But they don’t know where he was headed, or how he felt about it. Or how much he loved his salt.
I am comforted to think on him paddling his fine box, taking gulps of the brine on his way out to those Isles. Shutting the one eye the worm left him on the pleasure of it.
And I have Mr Cooley’s leftovers to comfort me. He willed me what’s left of his shack. And his bee-rights too.
I go there at sunset and sit on his thresh-stone and watch the glow-worms in the thrift and spurge. I go out to the hives to gather his salty honey. I sit and watch the bright streak of the sea through the slacks of the dunes. I remember the story of Pond-Averick and Brother Collect and the way Mr Cooley looked when he told it.
Like it was all news to him.
Shenn Cooley wanted to give me the full story but he was old and he forgot. In the end he didn’t have time. And I didn’t have time to tell him I understood. That me and Brother Collect were like as two tears; our heads full with rule and our hearts with misrule. That it’s the nature of some people to be cracked up the middle like that and there’s no point wasting time moaning about it. And that I listened all wrong. I was always listening for how to be safe, instead of listening for how to live. Dooms fall on folk in stories – because that’s the nature of dooms. And of folk. And of stories.
It’s nothing personal. That’s what he wanted to tell me.
You can’t change it.
You can only take the brave.
It’s like the harewitch said just before she left me on the Downward.
She asked me When you’re weaving, do you pull the thread Hard? I told her if you pull it too hard, too tight, the yarn breaks. But if you leave it too soft and loose, it won’t hold. It’ll all unravel.
I told her It’s a light touch you need for Weaving.
“Ah,” said the harewitch.
Then she leaned in close, too close, with her flies attendant and she said to me grave as tombs and quiet as prayer: Don’t listen to the words so tight, Mally Crowal; listen to the wind around Them.
Glossary
bile-sprite – a poison-spitting spirit of the air
bodgy – built from old wormy timbers; unstable
boomers [Manx] – huge breaking waves
brave [Manx] – [n] a dare; [v] to dare
brout [Manx] – beast
brouty – like a beast
buggane – a degraded god, a malevolent spirit
cronk [Manx] – a hill
dollop – a wet lump of something
dub [Manx] – a small pool
earwigging – eavesdropping
gormless – without sense, initiative, or backbone; dull, stupid
gruntle – [n] a nose or muzzle; [v] to nose about in something
hedge-pig – [n] a hedgehog
irrits, the – a bad case of irritation
longtail [Manx] – a rat
longtail-mams – rat-mothers
merrow – a mermaid
moaney [Manx] – peatland, bog
palsy – [n] an inability to move a part of the body
piggin [Manx] – a jar, a pot
scaan [Manx] – a ghost, or a reflection in glass, water etc.
scaaney [Manx] – crack, cleft; mirror
tardle – [n] a tangle; [v] to tangle
trow – a small troll-like creature
wiggynagh [Manx] – raider or viking
Weaving Terms
distaff – a short staff for holding the coarse fibre while spinning; also the female line of a family
noil – small tangled knots in the weave
slipstitch – a concealed stitch used for sewing folded edges
spindle – a rod, tapered at one end and weighted at the other (with a whorl) upon which coarse fibres are spun into thread
warp – the direction of threads in a fabric, which run length-to-length
web – a piece of woven fabric
weft – the threads that cross the warp threads at right angles, running the width of the fabric
whorl – a drum-shaped weight on the bottom of a spindle, which helps to regulate its speed
yarn – a spun thread, used for weaving or knitting; also a long, rambling story, especially one that is implausible
A note on women at work in the Middle Ages
If your surname is Webster, Baxter, Farriss or Brewster, your family had a very successful medieval ancestress. Her family named themselves for her profession.
• a female weaver was called a webster
• a female baker was called a baxter
• a female blacksmith was called a farriss
• a female brewer was called a brewster
Acknowledgements
SOME OF THE WORDS in this book are Manx, the talk of the people of the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. This language nearly died out, but is now reviving. There are still only two thousand speakers of it in the world.
The Car
rick stories owe much to the folklore of the Isle of Man, which I have used without stint or permission, but with big love.
Thank you to Frances Muecke, Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, for Dolyn Craig’s Latin swearwords.
First published in 2013
by ,
an imprint of Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd
Locked Bag 22, Newtown
NSW 2042 Australia
www.walkerbooks.com.au
This ebook edition published in 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Text © 2013 Ananda Braxton-Smith
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Braxton-Smith, Ananda, author.
Ghostheart [electronic resource] / Ananda Braxton-Smith.
Series: Braxton-Smith, Ananda. Secrets of Carrick; 3.
For young adults.
A823.4
ISBN: 978-1-922179-53-1 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-922179-54-8 (e-PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-922179-55-5 (.PRC)
Cover illustration © 2013 Emma Leonard
For Jamie C,
my oldest true friend.
“Exquisite. A beautiful, lush, haunting story - one that stays with the reader long after the last word is read.” Magpies
Life doesn’t just grow you up and leave you there; it keeps beating you into different shapes, like the cliffs.
The people of Carrick have been whispering behind Neen’s back for most of her life; ever since her father drowned and her mother disappeared. The townspeople say her mother is a merrow who has returned to her real home in the ocean. But if the villagers are right, then what does this make Neen? This pitiless summer, all the talk will end in trouble.
Secrets of Carrick: Ghostheart Page 17