Brunt Boggart

by David Greygoose

  “These shadows suit me well,” he said. “There is nothing else.”

  But then the bird set up its ceaseless screeching. Bodran covered his ears.

  “Come with me,” Ravenhair enticed. “Let me take you away from that fowl and its stink and its endless din. Let me take you to the riverside, the market and the ships. Let me take you to all the places that Celanda has told you of.”

  Bodran’s eyes turned to misted milk as he paced the cellar floor, across and back from wall to wall.

  “I cannot come dressed like this,” he complained, but the bird continued its screeching as Bodran cast off the robe that he was wearing, then tried on first one, then another and another. He stood before a rusted mirror and brushed his flowing hair. And then he paced the floor again and changed the robe that he had chosen to another glowing red. His gaze darted quickly towards the waiting door as he sat down slowly to lacquer his nails, highlighting the turquoise dragonflies with the tip of a fine-haired brush.

  As he sat down brooding in his high-backed chair, the bird stopped its noise. Bodran gazed at Ravenhair who gestured him to follow, but he seemed settled now, in the silence of the cellar. Then the bird set up a furious flapping as it threw back its head and screeched. In one sudden movement, Bodran threw off his robe and strode towards the door. Ravenhair watched as he hesitated, as he waited, as he turned around to gaze again at the dimly lit cellar.

  “Bodran,” she coaxed, as his eyes clouded over once more and he seemed about to return to his pacing of the floor. But as the bird’s dreadful screaming rose to a crescendo, Bodran took one deep breath and then with shaking hands, pushed open the weight of the cellar door.

  Ravenhair led him gently. She could feel his body quaking as she held him. They edged their way to the top of the stairs and along the dusty corridor. Then she paused before the front door.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Bodran seemed eager now. They could hear the rattle of carts on the road and the cries of hawkers down on the quayside. Ravenhair reached out and turned the handle, then stepped out onto the street.

  “What do you see?” she asked, expecting him to be amazed at the sight of the market stalls brimming with fruit and the sound of the blackbirds singing in the trees.

  Bodran shook his head.

  “I see nothing,” he said. “Only white light, same as before.”

  “Come with me,” Ravenhair reassured him. “I will take you to the riverside, just as you asked. There you will see the cargo ship which brought your orange to you.”

  Bodran smiled.

  “Will I touch the wind?” he asked.

  Ravenhair guided him into the street.

  “You will stand on the riverbank and feel a breeze which has travelled to greet you across seven seas.”

  Bodran giggled and shrieked as he felt the wind upon his face, falling blossom brush his cheek and heard the cries of the flower sellers who thrust bouquets of sweet-smelling blooms beneath his nose. Ravenhair led them down a narrow side street, past a courtyard where old men sat playing chequers in the shadowy sunlight. They nodded their heads and scratched their chins, pondering over the pieces before making a move with a thoughtful clatter and click. Then out of an alley came the familiar babble of children’s laughter and a thrumming of feet chasing towards them.

  “Shufflefoot!” cried Ravenhair, seizing up one of the boys. “Shufflefoot, what are you doing here?”

  Shufflefoot grinned and wriggled from her arms then weaved around her, leading the others in a winding dance. But Bodran stood rooted, staring blankly, first one way then another, as the children whirled around him, prodding and chanting.

  “Stop!” cried Ravenhair, but they took no notice and began to pelt him with the husks of old hazelnuts and broken twigs.

  Bodran held out his hands.

  “Are these falling fruits?” he asked. “Do the children bring sweetmeats just as Celanda does?”

  “Not sweetmeats,” Ravenhair frowned, rounding on the children.

  “Be off with you!” she cried. “Shufflefoot, I am ashamed.”

  But Shufflefoot was gone, hiding in the shadows, and Bodran was left standing alone.

  “Why did you send them away?” he asked. “Bring them back. They were singing. They were my first friends.”

  Ravenhair led him on towards the river.

  “Weren’t friends,” she muttered. “Just want to taunt you. Stay close to me now.”

  Bodran stood still. He began to sob. The tears fell like rain into his cupped hands. He held them out for Ravenhair to see.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Tears,” she said.

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Come from inside you,” she explained. “Taste of salt. Taste of the sea. They are all the journeys you never made.”

  The sun shone down on the tears that glistened in the hollow of Bodran’s hand, until they formed a ball of glowing colours. The blue dragonflies on his painted nails glinted as he swung the globe above his head.

  “I see the sky, I see the day!” he cried as colours and shadows swam through the whiteness which was all he had known before. “I see Arleccra, just as Celanda told me.”

  Ravenhair smiled as he led her on excitedly, tasting the vivid colours of the fruit upon the stalls, filling his nostrils with the aroma of spices which wafted out from kitchens and lofts. His ears were filled with dancing clamour as the city surged all around. But then he stopped. Ravenhair watched as Bodran’s eyes darkened.

  “The leaves on the trees are yellowing. They turn to brown…”

  He held out one hand to catch them, though to Ravenhair the leaves on the trees were fresh and green as they had ever been before. Bodran began to shiver. He pulled up his collar against the wind.

  “The branches hang stark and naked,” he said. “Is this the winter which Celanda told?”

  Dancing and capering, the children surged out from the alley again. Bodran could see their faces livid with sores. Their eyes stared dull red and their skin was vivid white. He watched as their hair turned grey and fell away, their backs bent and hunched, their voices cracked and hoarse, as they sang:

  “Pick a poppy, slip a poppy,

  Put it in the pot…”

  —as first one fell to the ground and then another, to lie there still and dance no more.

  Bodran groped in his pocket for the orange Ravenhair had given him. As he drew it out he saw its rotted flesh seep through the cracked and mildewed skin. The dragonflies flickered on his painted nails as the fruit turned to dust and trickled through his fingers.

  Bodran looked around to see Celanda step forward from the shadows.

  “Come with me,” she urged. “You have seen too much.”

  Ravenhair returned to the empty house on the tree-lined avenue where the merchants used to live. All about were cobwebs clinging to the fluted ceilings as she curled to sleep in the room upstairs where dust lay thick on the floor. That night she woke and heard the sound of sweeping, just as she had before.

  “Celanda,” she called, expecting to see her, but as she watched she saw Bodran, broom in hand, swathed all about in a shawl of silver and grey, brushing slowly across the floor. Ravenhair sat up and called to him, but Bodran did not hear. His eyes fixed straight ahead as he softly sang,

  “Pick a poppy, slip a poppy,

  Tie it in a knot…”

  Then he looked down at Ravenhair, but she was fast asleep.

  The Robe of Smoke

  Let me tell you… let me tell you about Spidermind – how he woke one morning as he always woke in the overgrown undergrowth that edged around the scrub of empty ground where the children played at the dark streets’ end. Beetles crawled through his matted hair, while tiny cobs wove webs around him, dragging him this way and that. His fingers fluttered like birds as he scurried hither and thither, blown by the wind, skittering out to run among the flowers that had long since gone to seed.

  Spidermind
crawled through the leaf-mulch. He could see the dreams of tiny woodlice as they crawled between the twigs. He could taste the colour of the fine rain at dawn before it even fell. His waking voice echoed the damp decaying sadness of the song of the east wind as it swirled through nets of gossamer:

  “Throw me a shadow

  that’s lighter than air.

  Throw me a shadow

  that will run anywhere.

  Chase me through sunshine

  then hide in the shade.

  Kiss me with silence,

  slip slowly away.”

  Spidermind stopped. He pushed his wire spectacles back onto the bridge of his long straight nose, his eyes blinking and flickering in confusion. He sniffed the air, his long nostrils quivering. A smell of damp grass and rain on the wind. Spidermind thrust his hands in the pockets of a patched gaudy waistcoat, then tugged his overgrown overcoat close about his shoulders.

  His spindly fingers fished deep into his pocket till he pulled out a snuffbox, tarnished and dented. He prized open the lid then tapped the corners carefully, gathering up one last pinch between his forefinger and thumb. Savouring the moment, he raised it to his nostrils, then held his breath and sneezed. Every bird on every bush and every tree rose suddenly upwards, taking flight and scattering in every direction. Spidermind closed the lid and smiled, slipping the snuffbox back into his pocket as he tugged the overcoat tight about him, set his face into the coming rain and trudged off towards the city streets.

  Ravenhair hurried, hunched and huddled through the shadows of the overhanging buildings. She shivered as she ran to a low slatted door, pulled her shawl about her shoulders and slipped through into the darkened work room. The other girlen scarcely noticed her as she slipped to her place at the long wooden bench. Her fingers shook as she pinched each bright sparkling bead, threaded the needle and plunged its tip through the eye of a limp-limbed doll stuffed with rags. She sewed swiftly and deftly, tugging the thread tight before she tossed the doll aside and picked up the next one. And the next. And the next.

  A thin sliver of light fell through one high window and crept slowly across the work bench. Ravenhair waited for the moment for it to vanish – and then she would know that darkness had come outside and she could creep home again through the sullen streets to her small box-shaped room in the boarding house.

  As their fingers clicked, the girlen had little or nothing to say. When they did speak their voices were heavy and dull and soon as any of them started to chatter or sing, then Lollingtongue’s son would appear to walk up and down between the long rows of benches until silence fell once again.

  As Ravenhair picked up each doll, her fingers caressed its satin dress, purple and turquoise, with trimmings of taffeta. How she longed for a dress such as this, to swirl in, to twirl in, to sing and to sigh beneath the chandeliers in the houses that stood on the far side of the river. But all she had was a dust-coloured smock, same as had clung to her every threadbare step of her journey along the Pedlar Man’s Track. How she yearned for fine clothes like these silent rag dolls – but all she earned here was a pittance of pennies.

  As soon as she seized up a doll, she knew she could not hold it for long, just plunge her needle deep into its eye socket and sew in the bead which would gaze back at her, smirking, “You will never wear a dress so fine as mine…”

  And Ravenhair could only snap the cotton between her teeth and pick up another, its dress more splendid than the one before – while Lollingtongue’s son strode along the rows, running his hands across the girlen’s shoulders and stroking their long tattered hair.

  At the end of the day the girlen stumbled out through the doorway of the work room, into the darkness which had already fallen – their fingers numb, their voices near dumb though they had scarce said a word to each other all day long. Ravenhair clutched her shawl about her shoulders and as she did so another of the sewing-girlen set eyes on the withered root which hung about her neck.

  “What is this?” enquired the girlen, running her fingers across its gnarled and twisted stem.

  Ravenhair smiled.

  “Tis a wolf’s foot,” she declared and the girlen fell back with a cry, but then all the others gathered around.

  “Where did you find it?” they asked.

  Ravenhair laughed.

  “Twas given to me back in Brunt Boggart, the village where I came from. Twas given to me by Crossdogs. He was my one boy, true as true. And he was the Wolf Slayer in the village – for he could hit harder, throw further, leap higher than all the other boys-who-would-be-men. He gave me the wolf’s foot all out in the moonlight one bright starry night, down in the meadow at Sandy Holme.”

  The girlen pressed closer, stroking the root.

  “Let me touch it… can I wear it?…” they clamoured and wheedled.

  “It would suit me so well…”

  But Ravenhair pushed them back.

  “Tis my wolf’s foot,” she said. “It is special to me.”

  “Must give you good fortune,” said one of the girlen. “Must give you strong powers to cast over men folk.”

  “If twas mine,” chimed another, “I know I would sell it. Take it down to Mother Pottam’s shop down in Slopswill Alley. That’s where all the women go who want to know their fortune. You can buy many a potion there that can change your luck with a man.”

  The other girlen nodded.

  “Why, Mother Pottam she would give you near twenty shillen for a trinket such as this.”

  Ravenhair shook her head as she made her way down the maze of alleyways back to the boarding house.

  “Twenty shillen,” she said to herself. “Tain’t worth nothing at all. Tain’t even a wolf’s foot, though they all believed me. Didn’t even get it from Crossdogs – he ain’t never give me nothing. Just found it down by the edge of the woods one dark rainy night when Silverwing and Moonpetal got tired of waiting to see if that was the night when the Wolf might come.”

  The tiny shop was grey with dust. Behind the counter an old woman coughed, shuffling and shifting the jars and phials ranged on the rickety shelves. Ravenhair stood for a moment, her eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. A stuffed owl stared down at her from high on a cabinet as she stepped forward hesitantly. Mother Pottam turned round slowly and peered at her.

  “What d’you want?” she rasped. Her faded smock was patterned with peacocks but it reeked of garlic and snuff.

  Ravenhair unpicked the knot in the string which held the twisted root around her neck. The old woman turned it over and over between her fingers which were as gnarled and wizened as the root itself. She squinnied it closely.

  “What is it?” she hissed.

  Ravenhair paused.

  “Girlen tell me tis a wolf’s foot,” she said.

  Mother Pottam turned it over again. She sniffed it slowly and raised one eye.

  “Tain’t no wolf’s foot,” she said. “But I smell forest here. I smell bluebell and nettles, tall oaks and skies all mardied with thunder… maybe I even smell mandrake root.”

  She looked at Ravenhair again.

  “And I do smell wolf too, somewhere deep in the woods… a powerful mix,” she mused. “If twas only a wolf’s foot like the girlen told you, then might be worth pennies – a shillen or two.”

  She cradled the root before her, closed her eyes and breathed in deep.

  “But this, I could sell to those women who come here who dream of sweet journeys, who dream of mountains far beyond the sea.”

  Ravenhair smiled, then set her face straight.

  “How much?” she asked, “how much will you give me? The root is full precious to me, given to me by my one boy, true as true, beyond the turning moon.”

  The old woman sniffed again, fondling the root as if she was loath to let it go.

  “I give you twenty shillen,” she whispered at last.

  Ravenhair paused. She gazed along the shelves. She studied all the jars and read the prices inscribed on the labels in faded ink.

/>   “Fifty,” she said.

  The old woman wheeled around.

  “Fifty is too much,” she moaned.

  “Then give me the root.” Ravenhair held out her hand.

  Mother Pottam shook her head.

  “Too much, too much…” Ravenhair heard her muttering, but then she felt something pressed into her palm. It was not the root. When she looked down she saw a worn leather bag lying in her hand. She tugged open the thong which held it closed and there inside nestled fifty silver shillen.

  Ravenhair clutched the bag and ran out of the shop, hardly stopping to look at Mother Pottam behind the counter, who was unscrewing a tall dark jar to place the root inside. As Ravenhair ran down Slopswill Alley her shawl slipped from her shoulders, but she didn’t care. In her hand she clutched a bag filled with fifty silver shillen and she headed straight on to the bazaars and arcades clustered all around the market square. Here gaggles of girlen pushed and shoved as they paraded up and down in dresses brighter and more dazzling than any sewed onto the blind-eyed dolls in the work-room’s dusty shadows. But Ravenhair took no notice of their disdainful stares for now she knew she could buy a dress finer still than anything they could afford.

  She looked first on one stall, then another and then another more, but nothing could she find that she thought might suit her complexion or her hair, the angle of her hips or the trimness of her waist. Until at last she stepped through a door to find high walls hung with mirrors – and everywhere she looked were dresses of every colour, cut from the finest silk. Ravenhair felt dizzy with choice, tugging and flouncing at each one in turn. The seamstress stepped out from between all the finery and stared disdainfully at Ravenhair’s threadbare smock. Ravenhair met her eye.

  “Here in this bag I have fifty silver shillen.”

  She rattled it under the seamstress’s nose.

  “I want a dress that is nothing like the other girlen wear. I want to parade out fine as fine!”

  The seamstress smiled when she saw the bag of money.