Brightling

by Rebecca Lisle

  He turned his blazing wild eyes to her and never had those dear eyes said so clearly, wordlessly, Follow me!

  ‘I’m coming!’ Sparrow called. ‘Anything you say. You’re the boss!’

  Scaramouch didn’t follow the main path, but turned straight into the swamp. He leaped from tussock to tussock and stone to stone with Sparrow struggling to keep up. Suddenly a krackodyle shot up in front of them, flat and hard as an ironing board, but Scaramouch was on it in an instant, spitting and clawing at its eyes. Sparrow bit back a scream and dodged out of its way. Her legs felt like jelly, her heavy, wet boots were dragging her down and it was hard to move quickly. All she focused on was following the cat as he hopped and leaped across the swamp.

  He was heading towards an isolated, dead tree.

  Scaramouch made a final leap right onto the back of a krackodyle and, without daring to think, Sparrow did the same, closing her eyes and jumping blindly, bouncing off the creature’s back as if it were a springboard, and from there into the black skeleton of the ironwood. The creature swirled round angrily, snapping at her. More krackodyles were slithering towards them. The muddy water heaved and swirled as they came.

  Scaramouch was up the tree and quickly scrambling higher, digging in his claws and running vertically upwards. Sparrow wrapped her tired arms around the lowest branch.

  ‘Wait!’ She hauled up her leaden legs. ‘Wait!’

  Snap! Snap! Krackodyles were biting at her toes.

  That made her yank up her legs quickly. Fear helped Sparrow to drag herself onto a higher branch, then up onto another, until she was clear of the fearful open mouths below.

  The krackodyles gathered around the base of the tree, clacking their teeth as if they were taking part in a strange chorus, opening and closing their jaws like a nest of gigantic, ravenous baby birds. Sparrow edged her way over to Scaramouch, who was sitting in a wide hollow where five branches grew out from the tree trunk and where there was enough room for them both to snuggle safely.

  Scaramouch lay on her, pushing his forehead against her chin and purring loudly. His long whiskers tickled her chin. His massive paws kneaded her stomach as if it were a lump of bread dough.

  ‘Yes, we’re safe, we’re safe, Scaramouch – you dear, wonderful thing,’ Sparrow murmured, rubbing his head and his ears. ‘You found me. You saved my life!’

  Scaramouch’s purr rumbled on like a giant bee, and his eyes closed.

  ‘I know, I missed you too. I wanted to take you, but that nasty Miss Knip locked you up.’

  ‘Meow.’

  ‘She is evil, isn’t she? But we’ll never see her again. Ever.’

  Sparrow lay back against the branches. The sky above her darkened and darkened and she watched the stars come out until the night was alight with thousands and thousands of brilliant twinkling dots. She did not look down at the krackodyles, preferring to pretend they didn’t exist, and at last she closed her eyes and slept.

  All night the krackodyles slithered around the base of the tree and occasionally Sparrow woke as one of them thumped against the trunk and set the ironwood ringing, or snapped its horrible chops more loudly than the rest.

  The cat, butting Sparrow under the chin with his head, woke her.

  She sat up quickly and looked around, remembering where she was. It was not quite sunrise; it was that moment when the air is silent of birdsong, strangely colourless; the sky, the reeds, stones and grass, grey and toneless. The air was very cold and still.

  Sparrow looked down to the ground. It was as if the land was made of a patchwork of leathery, knobbly logs and not an inch of grassy swamp or water was visible – everywhere were krackodyles; hundreds of them.

  Their path looked very far away.

  Sparrow took a big, shuddering breath. ‘What now, Scaramouch?’ she said. ‘We can’t stay up here for ever.’

  The cat was motionless as he stared across the marshes. His whiskers were on alert, his ears pricked up, his eyes narrow. He was thinking.

  She turned and followed his gaze. He was facing the east. Watching. Waiting. Sparrow waited too. The sun, a shapeless, brilliant orange light, inched upwards over the hill and began to flood its warmth across the sky. And even before it came over the hill, the grass began to show a little green, the leaves a touch of emerald, the water glistening gold and brown and black.

  It was the signal to move.

  ‘Meow!’

  Scaramouch slipped away from her, leaving her chilled where he had rested against her. He walked daintily but quickly along a black branch out above the water. The krackodyles didn’t move. He glanced back over his shoulder at her, came back, and began to climb down the trunk.

  ‘Scaramouch!’ she whispered loudly. ‘Don’t! Is that your only plan? To run again? Please don’t!’

  On the lowest branch the cat stopped and looked at her; then at the ground; then back at her.

  The sun glowed orange and pink behind the horizon.

  ‘I can’t!’ she whispered. Tears filled her eyes. ‘I can’t go down there again. Don’t make me!’

  Scaramouch flicked his tail dismissively. He didn’t look at her again, but jumped down from the tree, as lightly as a cloud on his four soft paws, and landed like thistledown on the broad back of a sleeping krackodyle.

  Sparrow held her breath.

  The krackodyle didn’t stir.

  Scaramouch tiptoed along, stepping delicately between the rows of protruding knobbly ridges on the creature’s spine. He walked right along its length, stopped on its rocky forehead and looked back at Sparrow.

  Her heart seemed to fill her chest, stop up her throat and throb so loudly in her ears she couldn’t hear anything but its boom boom boom. ‘No, Scaramouch. I can’t. They’ll wake! They’ll get me!’

  Scaramouch, motionless as a dead thing, stood his ground, waiting. He was a whisker away from the krackodyle’s teeth, from certain death. ‘Go! Leave me, Scaramouch. I’ll be OK. Run! Go!’

  But Scaramouch sat down delicately on the krackodyle’s broad head and fixed his eyes on her. He yawned a fresh, pink, bored yawn.

  ‘Oh all right, all right! I’m coming.’

  She moved slowly, inching down the rough sides of the tree, gripping the bark with trembling fingers. How had she got up here so quickly the night before? Now it seemed to take a lifetime to come down.

  She lowered herself very gently to the squelchy, boggy ground. Still the krackodyles slept on. She clung to the tree, never wanting to let go, though she knew she had to. Trying to calm her painful breathing, she put a hand to her chest and pressed hard. Still her heart boomed on.

  She fixed her eyes on Scaramouch’s round, yellow ones.

  ‘I’m coming, I am, I really am!’

  She moved as lightly as she could, stepping onto the long, narrow tail of the first krackodyle, one hand against the tree. She waited, swallowed, and moved gently onto its back. Her weight sank the krackodyle an inch further below the surface of the muddy water, which now swirled over her feet. She paused, holding her breath. She wanted to run, she wanted to shout and run as fast as she could. But she didn’t. She waited, searched out her route. The path to get to was just five – or was it six? – sleeping krackodyles distant.

  Almost one done; four – please let it be only four – to go.

  She pushed away from the tree, eased one foot off the animal and gently set it down again, between its back legs – heel, ball of the foot, toes – gently, gently all along the length of the krackodyle’s broad back.

  Scaramouch had already leaped nimbly onto the next krackodyle and was waiting, watching her movements carefully, tail low and thrashing backwards and forwards.

  ‘I can’t be as light as you!’ she whispered to Scaramouch. ‘I’m trying.’

  She trod tentatively along the ribbed and leathery skin, staring fixedly at the animal’s head, alert to any shift in it, to any hint that those jaws might open.

  Nothing happened. It was safe. She could do it. She crossed to
the neighbouring krackodyle, walked along it, and then the third, the fourth and – just one more krackodyle between her and the path where Scaramouch was. If she could touch Scaramouch, she told herself, feel his fur, then she would be safe.

  The orange and yellow rays of the sun were beginning to inch over the treetops and a bird had started singing far away.

  The final krackodyle was so submerged only the rounds of its eyes and nostrils broke the surface of the water, and it was hard to see exactly where its body began and ended. She lost her footing, slipped and landed on its head with a thud and a splash.

  ‘Help!’

  Immediately the krackodyle woke, its red eyes flicked open and its jaws snapped at the air, first to this side then to that. She stumbled away, clambering onto the bank, never taking her eyes from the krackodyle as it bit at the air, its teeth clashing hard, jaws juddering as they banged against each other with an empty, hungry clonk.

  She flew the remaining few feet and dropped on the path beside Scaramouch with a wallop.

  The krackodyle snapped blindly behind her. It missed her completely. Bit at nothing. The sun had risen and was in its eyes and it couldn’t see. It was completely blind!

  ‘Thank you!’ Sparrow cried, giving Scaramouch a quick, light stroke.

  She spun round just as the unseeing krackodyle launched itself towards her – sensing her smell? Hearing her voice? – she didn’t stop to wonder but grabbed a stone and hurled it at the beast.

  The rock hit the krackodyle square between the eyes and sent it toppling backwards, setting the others flapping and splashing, but they only railed for a few minutes before they settled again with their eyes closed, and all went quiet.

  ‘Oh, Scaramouch!’ she whispered. ‘We did it, we –’

  But Scaramouch was already off, bounding lightly down the path.

  ‘Oh blimey, Scaramouch! Here we go!’ She hurried after him.

  They ran along the path, passing many other sleeping krackodyles, but none stirred – they slept on, immobile as dead things, hiding from the light of the brilliant, morning sun.

  4

  Nanny Porrit

  Miss Knip sat down at her vast desk and put on her spectacles, which she thought made her look clever and stern. Who could be coming to see her on the weekly bread wagon? She pushed a few bits of paper around and checked her pale face in her desk mirror in case she’d got ink on it or a strand of hair was out of place. Whoever was here couldn’t be important, not arriving like this.

  ‘Here we are, Miss Porrit,’ Annie could be heard saying in the corridor. ‘Mind your step, dear. In you go. Careful.’

  The old woman whom Annie showed into the room was as small as a child and as bent and crooked as a hairpin. Her face was all nose and pointed chin beneath a black bonnet and wispy white hair.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Miss Knip snapped at her, without moving from her desk.

  It took a few moments for the old lady to get the strength to speak. ‘Nanny Porrit at your service, miss,’ the old woman piped. Her neck was so bent that she spoke all twisted, addressing the floor. ‘I’m old, so old,’ she added.

  ‘No need to state the obvious,’ Miss Knip said. ‘Well, Nanny Porrit, whoever you are, why have you come here bothering me?’

  ‘May I sit down? May I sit?’ she trilled in her squeaky voice. ‘I’m so old.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake! Yes, sit.’

  Nanny Porrit sank into a deep chair. ‘I’ve come. I pray not too late. I pray she’s still here. Oh, my old bones.’

  ‘Who’s still here? What are you talking about?’ Miss Knip asked.

  The old woman started sobbing. Miss Knip rolled her eyes in disgust. She loathed any display of emotion, sure it was done for show. She took out her smelling salts and quickly took a sniff of them to sharpen her wits.

  ‘I was working for a lady in Stollenback,’ the old woman said at last. ‘Sampson was her name, Mrs Sampson. I was old then, but not as old as I am now. Mrs Sampson was a nurse, a keeper of babies. We put them in cradles and rocked them with our feet. Tap, tap, tap, rocking on the stone floor … I can hear it now … ’

  ‘And? And?’ Miss Knip asked. ‘What’s the relevance of this to me?’

  ‘We rocked them to sleep, the babies.’

  ‘I don’t care about that! Tell me why you are here!’

  The old nanny tried swivelling round to face Miss Knip but only managed to twist her head inside the wings of her bonnet, so she couldn’t see at all. ‘I’m blinded. It’s all gone dark!’ she whimpered.

  Miss Knip got up, went over and yanked off the offending bonnet.

  ‘There. Now, old thing, get on with your tale.’

  Nanny Porrit looked startled and blinked several times, but at last continued her story. ‘Her husband – Mortimer Sampson – got the Swamp Fever. He was a fine man. He died.’ She sobbed, gathered herself and went on. ‘Mrs Sampson was, was … never … She couldn’t work any more. She gave them back, those babies, to their parents. She had no strength … no strength at all, like me. So old I might crumble.’

  ‘But no fever I hope?’ Miss Knip asked her anxiously, scanning the old lady’s face for signs of rashes. ‘Just old, are you? Can’t catch that! Very well, go on, what next? And? And?’ She returned to her desk and drummed her fingers on the desktop.

  Nanny Porrit drew breath and started again. ‘Mortimer Sampson was good, a warm heart. A weaver. She couldn’t go on without him.’

  Miss Knip let out a sigh like a bicycle tyre going down and stood up. ‘You are wasting my time,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what you’re rambling about. You’re deranged, woman!’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not wasting time,’ the old nanny cried. ‘But when you’re as old as me, when your brain’s unravelling like a ball of string … ’ She hit her knee with her hand. ‘Listen! Listen to what I’ve got to say. We must put right what’s been wronged.’

  ‘This is your last chance. Get on with it.’

  ‘Mrs Sampson gave the babies back –’

  ‘You’ve just said that!’ Miss Knip yelled at her.

  Nanny Porrit shrank back in her seat. ‘How can you shout at a poor old thing like me? How can you? You make me shrivel up like a salted snail with that voice of yours. Oh, you mean thing.’ But she collected herself and went on. ‘All the babies went back except one, a girl. Her mother had paid regularly, had seen her daughter as often as she could. She was a dancer or something. Lovely costumes. Glittery. She loved her baby, and hoped to marry the baby’s father – so she said. But then she stopped coming. There was no money for baby’s keep, not for weeks and weeks. Mrs Sampson treated that child like her own … Still the mother never came. She promised she’d come back and take the baby just as soon as she’d got married.’ She sighed. ‘Lovely girl, lovely.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ went on Nanny Porrit quickly, ‘and, when she never came back, we worried. But Mrs Sampson said money’d always be paid, ’cos she knew the family. Knew baby was from a good family in Stollenback. She didn’t want to go to them for fear of getting the young lady in trouble, do you see, for having a baby out of wedlock.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Miss Knip said, although she was beginning to see and she was beginning to suspect that there could be money involved and that she might get some of it. She rubbed her hands together.

  Nanny Porrit started weeping again. ‘Dear Mrs Sampson died,’ Nanny Porrit told her, with a sob. ‘I had nothing, no wages, nothing except a baby girl to feed and clothe and … What was I to do?’

  ‘I think you’re going to tell me,’ Miss Knip said to the ceiling.

  ‘I brought her here.’ Nanny Porrit squinted round and turned her pale eyes on Miss Knip. ‘So’s the orphanage would look after her. I wrapped her up in her lovely Sampson’s of Stollenback shawl and gave her up, but I never –’

  Miss Knip perked up. She knew of one child in her care who’d had such a shawl.

  ‘Go on,’ she o
rdered.

  ‘I gave her to old Miss Knip, that was before you, and I never did tell old Miss Knip that I knew the baby’s family. This little Sparrow –’

  ‘Sparrow!’

  ‘That’s it, that’s the name her mother gave her. Old Miss Knip said I should come and collect her as soon as ever her mother appeared. But she never appeared. So I never picked her up.’

  ‘And why are you here now?’

  Nanny Porrit crumbled again, rubbing at her eyes with her fists. ‘She’s eleven, isn’t she? I want to give her what’s hers, the name of her family. I want to give it back to her … ’

  Miss Knip guessed the old woman was hiding more. ‘Nanny Porrit,’ she said slyly, ‘what a kind-hearted old thing you are. Travelling all this way, just to tell us Sparrow’s family name. Sparrow will be so glad to see you … But why didn’t you come sooner?’

  ‘I’ve been … wondering. Meaning to … I’m old and … ’

  ‘Ready to die?’ Miss Knip said. ‘You wouldn’t want to die with a guilty conscience, would you?’

  She had hit on something. She saw it immediately the way the old nanny flinched and went pale. Her hand shot to the pocket of her greasy black coat and held whatever was there, tightly.

  ‘I should have, but … ’ the old nanny mumbled. ‘I’m here now. God forgive me, I’m here at last.’ She brought something out of her cavernous coat pocket. ‘Here it is. I never sold it, did I? I could have done, but I never did. I pawned it once but I got it back and saved it for little Sparrow. She’ll have it now, won’t she? Can I see the little mite? Can I put it – Oi!’

  Seeing the flash of gold, Miss Knip had shot round the desk and grabbed the thing from her hands.

  ‘Oi, oi!’ screamed Nanny Porrit. ‘You can’t take that! I say you can’t!’

  ‘You did. You took it to sell it, didn’t you?’ Miss Knip said, dangling the gold locket on its chain in front of the old woman.

  ‘But, but I didn’t never sell it!’ Nanny Porrit wailed.