Nieve

by Terry Griggs

  Nieve

  Also by Terry Griggs

  Thought You Were Dead (Biblioasis, 2009)

  Quickening (Biblioasis, 2009; Porcupine’s Quill, 1990)

  Invisible Ink (Raincoast, 2006)

  The Silver Door (Raincoast, 2004)

  Rogues’ Wedding (Random House Canada, 2002)

  Cat’s Eye Corner (Raincoast, 2000)

  The Lusty Man (Porcupine’s Quill, 1995)

  Nieve

  TERRY GRIGGS

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY Alexander Griggs-Burr

  BIBLIOASIS

  Copyright © 2010 Terry Griggs

  Illustrations Copyright © 2010 Alexander Griggs-Burr

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Griggs, Terry

  Nieve / Terry Griggs ; illustrated by Alexander Griggs-Burr.

  ISBN 978-1-897231-87-6

  I. Griggs-Burr, Alexander II. Title.

  PS8563.R5365N53 2010 jC813’.54 C2010-900981-9

  Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government

  of Canada through The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage,

  the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP); and the

  Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

  Printed on Silva Enviro Edition, which contains 100% recycled post-consumer

  fibre, is EcoLogo, Processed Chlorine Free and FSC Recycled

  certified and manufactured using biogas energy.

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

  To David

  . . . make haste;

  The vaporous night approaches.

  —from Shakespeare’s

  Measure for Measure

  Contents

  Weepers & Co.

  The Weed Inspector

  Night Run

  Rain

  Jenny Green-Teeth

  Eye Candy

  Wormius & Ashe

  Dark Matters

  Truant

  Ferrets

  Skin & Bone

  Lias

  Two Pairs of Shoes

  Night Sight

  Luck

  Car Trouble

  The Inhospitable Hospital

  Strange Operations

  Murdeth

  Last Office

  Down Under

  Lich-Way

  Walleyes

  Our Mutual Fiend

  Leftovers

  A Few Words from the Chairman

  Troublemaker

  Nayword

  Inoculation

  Container Gardening

  Fast Forward

  Molly

  Toehold

  Punchline

  Amulet

  Glossary

  –One–

  Weepers & Co.

  Everything is different at night. Not looks different, is different. Nieve knew this because she’d been out late exactly when she wasn’t supposed to be, seeing and feeling and breathing it in. The difference. It was because of them that this was so, and because of them that she knew it.

  There had been signs, and although she hadn’t taken them as such, she hadn’t completely dismissed them either. Superstition was Gran’s department. Nieve was more of a let’s-wait-and-see person, more of a let’s-not-jump-to-conclusions person. In the pond behind her house she’d seen something she couldn’t identify. It was long and black and moved sinuously in the water like a long scarf swirling around and around and up and down. She got down on her hands and knees to look at it . . . it moved as one, but it was many. Hundreds of black fry all moving in concert, as if following a single thought. Little fishes, she said to herself, standing up and brushing the mud off her knees. Practicing their synchronized swimming. Not so strange, really. Although she had to admit that she’d never seen them in the pond before.

  What else? Spiders. Nieve had nothing against spiders. She liked them very much in fact. A spider here, a spider there, interesting. But lately there had been spiders here there everywhere . . . dangling from Nieve’s toothbrush when she raised it up to brush her teeth before bed, scrambling out of her pockets when she slid in her hand to retrieve a piece of string or a marble, dropping on her head from the beams in the ceiling when she zoomed by underneath. Spiders, spiders, spiders, all sizes, all kinds. Gran said that it was bad luck to kill a spider, and Nieve would never have done that anyway, bad luck or no. So she was being extra careful not to squash any by mistake. This required some cautious walking, and running (her favorite form of locomotion), and much paying attention to tiny things that skittered by.

  She saw a tiny thing skitter by that was NOT a spider. It looked more like an elongated spider’s shadow. But as shadows don’t run free on their own, she didn’t want to think that it was. That would be jumping to conclusions.

  Three other happenings.

  One: Nieve’s big, orange cat, Mr. Mustard Seed, shot through the door one morning with his fur sticking out all over as though he’d been electrified. He didn’t stop for his usual pat-pat on the head, or Nieve’s cheery greeting, or, even more unusual, for his breakfast (Mr. Mustard Seed never missed breakfast). He ran straight to his hideout, an old breadbox that was stored in the deepest darkest farthest part of the basement, and wouldn’t come out. Nieve eventually brought him a bagful of cat snacks, which she poured into the breadbox after shooing away a couple of spiders. They scurried away over the lid. (In the deepest darkest farthest part of the basement one expects to encounter a few spiders.) Mr. Mustard Seed thanked her by mewing once, quietly and tremulously.

  Two: Her parents’ business had suddenly picked up. Not a bad thing in itself, as it brought some decent desserts into the house. And a new, nifty, lime green shirt for Nieve. Not that she overvalued trendy clothes and name-brand runners and all that, but the odd cool item was useful, even necessary. She could hold her head up in school and not be marked for ridicule as some unfortunate kids were. When Alicia Overbury cooed, Oooooooh, I liiiiikkkke your shiiiiiirt, Nieve responded by nodding curtly and saying, Yeah, thanks, I like it, too.

  So the problem with her parents’ new popularity had more to do with the nature of their employment itself. They were professional sympathizers. Their business ad went like this:

  Feeling troubled, feeling low,

  Lost your dog, lost your job,

  Don’t know which way to go?

  Need a hand to hold, or a Tissue for your nose?

  A pat on the back, a hug, a rose?

  Call Weepers & Co.

  Friends-in-Need Support Services.

  They had a sliding pay scale with hugs ranging from 50 cents to a dollar and up, depending on how long they lasted, and with pats on the back and shoulder squeezes costing 20 cents each. Sympathetic murmurs were a bargain, although copious tears and custom-designed indignation on the client’s behalf were pricey.

  Nieve and Gran – who were a lot alike in many ways, except for the superstitions – both thought that this was a really dumb line of work. Although there was clearly a call for it, and lately there seemed to be an overwhelming call for it. That was the troubling thing. I wonder why more and more people are unhappy? Nieve thought, tucking into the fancy chocolate torte that her dad, Sutton, had brought back from the city. She felt pretty good herself . . . except for a little niggling uneasiness crawling around in the pit of her stomach. And it wasn’t from eating too much rich dessert, even though she had.

  “Dad,” she said
. “I’m an eensy bit worried.”

  “Hey, nothing to worry about, En.” Sutton poured himself a coffee, while wiping the tears from his face with his shirt sleeve. (He’d been rehearsing for an important sympathy gig.) “Like the torte?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Great,” he said, and left the kitchen.

  Given their profession, Nieve’s parents were remarkably unsympathetic on the homefront, but being understanding and lovey-dovey could get tiresome, she reasoned, especially if one had to dish it out all day long.

  Three: This was the worst of all. The very worst. It had happened to Doctor Morys, who was the funniest, smartest, nicest man in town, and who had delivered all the babies for the past fifty years, including Nieve and her parents, and all of Nieve’s friends and their parents. She got fidgety and upset just thinking about it, but she had to think about it because it wasn’t right. It was fishy. Not that she’d connected it up with all the other not-right things that seemed to be happening. Not exactly.

  “He was old,” said Alicia Overbury cooly. “I wonder what the new doctor will be like? Dreeeeamy, I bet.”

  “Dreamy?” Who’d want that, Nieve thought? You might go to him with a stomach ache (like the kind she had right now) and he’d give you the wrong medicine. “We might not even get another doctor. Besides, Dr. Morys isn’t that old.”

  “Collapsed?” said Gran, when Nieve ran up the hill to tell her. “James?”

  “Right in the middle of telling a joke,” Nieve nodded. “The one about why ducks fly south to Florida every year. Rob Cooper had already started groaning because that one’s so corny, and then all at once Dr. Morys got this puzzled look on his face and reached out with one hand like he was grabbing at something and then he fell down. That’s what Rob said.”

  “He’s . . . ?”

  “Alive, but in a coma. Mayor Mary rushed him to the city in the ambulance.” The town ambulance was actually an old station wagon.

  “Jim.” Gran sat down very slowly at the kitchen table. “Jimmy.” Every time she said Dr. Morys’ name it got younger and fonder. He and Gran were great friends and had been for years. Although neither of them were old, Nieve thought, not dying old.

  Gran was wearing her dress inside-out. This wasn’t because she was dotty, or ‘daft,’ as she might say. She was as sharp as anything, and even laughed about the superstitions, of which the inside-out dress was one. It was meant to ward off harm, as was the blue woolen thread she wore tied around her wrist, and the acorn she carried in her pocket. “It’s more fun to believe in these foolish freets than not,” she’d often said to Nieve. “Habits leftover from the Old Country, pet.” She always smiled when she said it, amused at herself but content nonetheless with her contrary cast of mind. “They’re part of our family history, you mustn’t forget.”

  When Nieve had arrived at Gran’s to tell her what had happened, she paused before leaping over the broom that lay across the threshold of the cottage. She liked leaping over it when she came to visit, but had to wonder if Gran’s precautions would stop bad luck from entering. The broom didn’t stop bad news. News that she herself was bringing.

  Gran wiped her eyes with her sleeve, as Sutton had done, but her tears weren’t a rehearsal. Nieve felt her own eyes well up. She said, “Artichoke’s gone, too. He ran off.”

  Artichoke was Dr. Morys’ dog, a black lab who seemed to wag his whole body when he wagged his tail, so happy he was to see you.

  “Oh, Nieve. ”

  A fat black spider with red spots on its abdomen dashed across Gran’s oak table and wedged itself into the crack where the leaf fit when she needed a bigger table for company. They both watched it go, watched it squeeze itself into the crack and disappear.

  Gran then raised her eyes to meet Nieve’s, eyes of the very same seer-blue shade, and said, “They’re coming, you know.”

  And they did.

  –Two–

  The Weed Inspector

  In the beginning there weren’t so many. Nieve encountered the first one while she was wandering along the road outside of town. Not that she knew it for sure right then. Gran had warned her about the wandering. Normally this was not a problem for she was accustomed to going off by herself to climb trees in the woods, or run through the fields, or simply hang out. She liked the outdoors. All of it. She liked the cushiony feel of moss, the yellowy yellow of buttercups, the medicinal smell of cedar, the sweetness of wild strawberries, the sound of wind in the poplar leaves tappity tapping. Not to mention the squirrels, red-winged blackbirds, foxes, grasshoppers, bluebirds, ants, snakes – every living thing, including the rocks. She especially liked the land that bordered her town, as familiar to her as her own arms and legs, and yet inexhaustible as far as curiosity went. And hers went pretty far.

  Anyway, she was out because she couldn’t be in. It was too weird. Her parents were having a bout of dysfunction. Usually their partnership, business and otherwise, worked like a well-oiled machine. But not this day. Nieve had been sitting in the kitchen, drinking a glass of ginger ale (treat! it was for her upset stomach), and flipping through the newspaper. Partly because she was considering a career in journalism and was testing the depth of her interest, and partly because she was searching for news of them. Who were they, what were they? She knew she needed to prepare, but didn’t know how. Maybe, just maybe I’ll find a clue in the paper, she had thought, something strange might have happened in another town. She hadn’t found any stories of unusual or inexplicable occurrences (only the regular bad and sad news), but every time she had turned a page she got the impression of something slipping away out of sight, a something that slithered behind the lettering of the newsprint before she could see what it was. It sort of shimmered, and then was gone. She had begun to turn the pages faster and faster, trying to catch sight of it, and couldn’t. It was immensely frustrating, and she was concentrating hard, and rattling the paper like mad, when she’d heard her mother’s voice raised to an unnaturally high pitch.

  “Sut-ton! A baby can cry better than that.”

  To Nieve’s ear it sounded like a slap, only made of words. Her parents were in the living room, rehearsing for the big sympathy gig. She figured the job must have been commissioned by some wealthy hotshot who needed a flood of heartfelt tears to make himself feel better, but she’d been too preoccupied herself to ask about it.

  Her dad said, “C’mon, Sophie, I’m doing my best.”

  “No you’re not, you’re not even trying. You’re wasting my time.”

  Slap, slap, slap. That was the sound of Nieve’s mother storming out of the room, her flip-flops whapping against her heels.

  Nieve had put down the paper and walked softly down the hall, stopping at the entrance of the living room. Sutton was sitting on the couch, staring at nothing – or at nothing she could see. He looked as though he might cry for real. She knew this had to be humiliating for a professional weeper, and instantly stepped back out of view. Then she had very quietly, and gratefully, slipped out the front door.

  She was kicking a stone along the road that leads out of town and raising some dust, the kind that felt as silky-soft as talcum powder. Earlier, she’d been crouched down drawing her initial – a loopy, fancy N – in this dust when she spotted the stone on the side of the road and took up stone-kicking instead. The stone was white and egg-shaped, richly speckled with flecks of black granite. Nicely rounded, it was practically made for kicking along the road – so that’s what she did. She was kicking, walking, kicking, thinking, while the stone bounced and rolled ahead.

  She didn’t like it, this thing with her parents. Dealing with unhappiness was their job not their problem. Unhappiness didn’t belong in their house, but somehow it had crept in, unnoticed. It was like a virus, not something you could see, but something that made you sick. Nieve wondered what an unhappiness germ would look like if you could capture it and observe it under a high-powered microscope. Ugly, splotchy, and thrawn, as Gran would say. Twisted.

 
; A bee zimmed past her ear. Then another zimmed past, and another. Beeline, she thought. She heard an odd sound above her head and looked up. Three ducks were flying southward, their wings making a whistling noise as they rowed rapidly through the air. Ducks always made flying look like such hard work, which it probably was, although other birds seemed to pull it off more effortlessly. Just their style, she supposed. Why do ducks fly south? Dr. Morys had asked before he collapsed.

  Nieve studied the fields on either side of the road. It was awfully quiet. No other insect activity, no birds, no breezes shushing through the tall grasses and wildflowers. Well, she could make some noise . . . and she gave the stone an extra hard kick. It shot away, then skipped once pok, twice pak, and tumbled into the ditch. She ran ahead to find it. Easy enough, since the spot where it had vanished was marked by a patch of dried teasels, spiky and brown.

  When she got to the spot, though, she found more than she had bargained for. If Alicia Overbury saw what met Nieve’s eye, she would have run screaming back to town. But Nieve was not a screamer, nor a coward. (And being endlessly curious, she wasn’t easily routed, either.) She did catch her breath. A man was lying in the ditch . . . asleep? She wasn’t sure, as he didn’t look too healthy, too alive. His skin was a greeny-white shade, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. He was dressed in a rumpled black suit and was wearing dusty old shoes with triple-knotted black laces. His clothes were stippled with burs and beggar’s ticks, and he had a sprig of poison ivy in his buttonhole, which was not too surprising. What was surprising, and Nieve squirmed inwardly to see it, was that the stone she had been kicking was resting on the man’s forehead – exactly in the middle. She knew she hadn’t harmed him in any way, but still.

  She stood staring at it and at him, wondering what to do. Go for help obviously. Fetch Mayor Mary, who was temporarily filling in for Dr. Morys and who always knew what to do in a sticky situation.