Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  I waited.

  ‘What other one?’ I said, in the end.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, pleased-like. ‘You haven’t heard.’

  ‘No,’ I said in spite of myself. It was all he needed, the great blather-pail. ‘But keep it short,’ I added.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he started in his best listen-to-me tones. ‘Short, then. When Ma was a just-wed woman, and your parents were children, and you and I weren’t yet thought of, there was a Brother down at the monkhouse who was one of those who saw the world in a drop of water and heard angels everywhere. He drew folk to him; heartbroken folk usually, but also folk cursed with unexplained joying.

  ‘This Otherwise Brother,’ Scully Slevin said, ‘was never left alone. When he slept he was infested with archangels needing to pass messages. When he worked he was crowded with lost Dead-ones looking for particular paradises, and at meditation foretelling phantasms rose in him, warning and sounding bells. But in spite of the world loading him with its sour parts, he stayed sweet as honey.

  ‘He was so sweet that all the lice in the monkhouse took up residence in his robes. Not one single louse stayed put elsewhere.’

  I felt the sneer coming, and hid it.

  ‘From a distance,’ Scully went on. ‘He looked to be soft-edged, so crawling with them was he. He wouldn’t kill them, he wouldn’t use the cures. He said it was his glory to carry his little brothers and sisters, and for his body to feed such a multitude of holy mites; they were so many and the monks so few, he said, it was plain who God preferred.’

  That tickled me. A laugh bubbled up. I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Hah!’ I bust out. ‘Hahahaaaa—’ The laugh turned to tears in the middle. I swallowed them in a lump as big as a crabapple. Scully Slevin grinned into the sky like a bog-turtle on a rock.

  ‘So, what with all his lovingness and his courage about the frightful Seeing and all, folk came to noticing him. Then they came to wondering at him, then to just plain loving him — then one of them wrote to the Bishop and before you could say Pater Mary One there that lousy monk was, Venerable and rushing saintward. Without even asking, one of his followers made a picture of him and carried it about the island.

  ‘That picture was so doted-on that the scribes had to make copies to sell, and then poorer folk took to copying it themselves onto bits of bodge. They said even the copies healed folk. If you were lucky your copy would burst into a holy blaze all untouched.

  ‘He couldn’t walk alone anymore; there was always somebody following and watching. And then the Father himself started up with relic-mongering, selling the Venerable’s little bits and pieces, and charging real coin to hear him at a bit of a prayer. When somebody snuck up on him at Vespers and pulled the hairs from his head without so much as a ’Scuse me, that was the end for him.

  ‘He took his bowl and his shawl and he left in the middle of the night. Nobody saw him again.’ Scully stopped and scratched the back of his head with his bow. ‘Veneration takes some folk that way.’

  The foolishness about the lice sounded just like my brother. But that Venerable showed more sense than Boson ever did. My brother didn’t have the sense to run away. When he waxed fit he’d say he was going to stay away from the towns, and avoid the nesting-rocks, and just be quiet with us. But then his sense would wane under the affliction and he’d be off down among the guillemots again, or into Strangers’ Croft, or even right down into Merton.

  ‘He’s probably made himself at home already,’ said Scully Slevin.

  ‘The lousy Venerable?’ I asked.

  ‘Boson,’ he said. ‘He’s probably out there right now on his Dead-isle kicking up his heels and filling his belly.’

  ‘Ooh, it’s lovely out there,’ said Ma as she wheezed up behind us. ‘It’s always warm and you can sleep anywhere, the shrubs are so soft and quilty. There’s the foamiest brew trickling from the rocks, and the lake is all broth. The Dead ‘uns take to it in boats with dippers as big as your head. All a body has to do is lie about and be cosy. He’s a lucky boy.’

  I didn’t trust myself to say a word at all about this.

  Back at home my brother’s body, herbed and oiled, lay in the shadows beyond the hearth. By then he’d started up with bubbling like the bog and the burial would have to be soon, though none of us said so; he still seemed one of us in spite of being dead and the notion of putting him in the ground made us shamed somehow. He was set all about with lit rushes, and our place quickened to beauty by them. The beauty and the horribleness were of the same measure.

  Kneeling hearth-side and stirring and stabbing at the brew, Pa looked to have started up his drinking without us. Moo still sat right where she was sitting when I’d left, in the farthest corner from Boson with poor Gilpin snotty and whining at her knee. I went to wipe his face, and he wrapped his legs and arms around me like a vine.

  ‘Here they are,’ said Pa. ‘At last.’ He took a brew to my mother. She took it and drank it down in one.

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ He patted her arm, and sculled his own. Then he poured for everybody. We all stood about and waited for somebody else to do or say something.

  In the end Mrs Slevin started it off. She went to my brother where he lay and she looked right into his face like he might still have something to say about it all. My mother rose and came like a shade to her side and they looked together. All was quiet but for the soft hissing of the turf and gorse fire.

  Then Gilpin said clearly, ‘Is bruvver wakin’up now, Moo?’ and that was that.

  The noise out of my mother was like some bird rising from inside her belly. I had to look away. By the time it busted out, high and lonely, Gilpin was wailing and I’d covered my ears. Mrs Slevin joined in, in a neighbourly sort of way. I felt myself becoming part of that Dead-noise. Like it was in me too and it might come out. I looked to Pa but he stayed by the brew.

  He was watching Moo like she was tricky weather.

  I took the snotting and blithering Gilpin outside to show him the moon. He snugged into me holding my nose in one fist and sucking the other. Our nightyard was blooming in light-blossoms. It was full of Dead Lamps. They’d been breeding up all summer.

  The Dead Lamps hiss in and out of the black earth of the bog. You can never make them come; they just do or don’t. They dance in gentle flames, but if you try to dance with them they take fright and flicker away into the willows. Being shy they commonly come in twos or threes, and only stay the moment.

  But tonight they were coming in banks of firelings, one after the other. When I went to them they didn’t disappear but just moved away and hung in the shadows, soft as gold.

  Maybe they came for the dead that way.

  Maybe they’d come for my brother.

  What did I know?

  I slipped back inside and laid sleepy Gilpin down in Moo’s corner. Pa gave me a glazey smile that just about slipped off his face before he’d done with it.

  My mother was telling-the-birth.

  She didn’t mention me.

  ‘He was born at dawn,’ Moo told the fire, all soft and low. ‘It took a while but then after he’d made us wait a full day, just like the sunrise he came. Easy, like a little hare slipping out of its coat. Directly, he tried to sit up. His face was straining and purple with trying, the little scrap, and he nearly managed it too. You could see he was one who was glad to be here. His eyes opened the moment he felt the air on his face. He never opened his mouth to make a noise for days and when he did, it was to laugh. Remember, Mureal? It was like he knew things. Secret things. I used to put him out in the garden and he’d lie in his wrappings and talk to the magpies. He sounded just like them. Do you remember?’

  ‘Ah, he was strong in it, Moirrey, even then,’ said Mrs Slevin. ‘And he’ll not be wasting it, neither. He’ll be returning to us to tell all that lovely knowledge, and joying us with it somehow — I mean, you don’t talk with the creatures and not hear some things worth telling. It only stands to reason.’

  ‘He d
idn’t talk to the creatures,’ sighed Moo.

  ‘Only the birds,’ I said, without thinking.

  Moo stood straight-up and wiped her face. ‘You know I can’t be doing with that,’ she said, sort of rightful but with regret. ‘He won’t be back, and the Lord knows where he’s to end up.’ She went back to her corner.

  Scully plainly felt now was the right time to pay his Dead-duty, because he started up with a lively knees-up tune. Pa was hopping around the table with tears all through his beard. He looked cheerful enough in his grog and misery, so I left Scully to play and sat by my brother’s head.

  Under the fiddle another tune carried on the wind. We’re used to the winds moaning around the uplands, as they work themselves through the marsh’s hollow reeds and our blasted sidewise trees that look like they’re trying to fly away, but this was different. Pa and I heard it at the same time.

  Somebody was outside, singing.

  My father stopped jigging and growled, deep in his throat. Then he rushed blood-eyed into the yard.

  I followed him, this new Pa who roared and growled and shouted at folk.

  Out in the cold moonshine, down by the greenplots, a small mob clung to each other and sang. In spite of my father bearing down on them, gaping like some whalefish, they stood firm and kept singing. As I came closer I saw that there were six of them, and one was Lily Fell.

  ‘Wait,’ I shouted at my father’s charging back. ‘Pa!’

  He stopped, swaying. And we heard the singers singing, straight and true like children in chapel:

  Perch-harp of the World-nest,

  Earth-egg on the Glass-sea;

  Return, return to us,

  Rising.

  Sun-bright boy, deep mud-son,

  Swimming bird, flying fish;

  Return to us

  Ever-rising.

  There was Mr Skinner the hideman, his mouth open wide and red, and there was Old Shambles the butcher’s pa and at the back were some more ancient folk, all wrinkled-up and alike as tears. Some held torches, some tapers. As Pa clenched his jaw and muttered, the old ones wept and rocked and sang up into the night:

  Reckless lovely, joying boy

  Hatching, fledging, taking flight;

  Perch us in your Heart

  Sing us in your Mouth

  Return to us Rising, Rising.

  It was finished and they stood wavering and pitiful-like, not one under forty seasons.

  ‘How long’ve you been singing that about my boy?’ Pa asked. ‘You don’t make songs for those still living!’ The words seem to cram up the back of his throat and stop there. ‘You’ll have sung some of the life right out of him,’ he said.

  ‘We never sung it before, Mr Quirk!’ Lily Fell butted in. ‘Brother Skinner here made it just for this sad night. My word on it.’

  Moo had come out into the night. Her shawl trailed behind her and Ma fussed at it, trying to fix it to her and failing. Finally, it just fell into the dirt and they left it there.

  ‘Si t en,’ she whispered.

  ‘Scuse me?’ said Lily Fell.

  We all leant in to hear her.

  ‘Sing it again,’ she said again, and her voice was this wrung-out thing.

  But the little mob had something to say first. They pushed Mr Skinner forward and he said as how Boson was a saint and a healer and charmer, and a whole rigmarole of blather. They said as how he’d mended their hearts, and fixed their souls, and told them of what was to come.

  They said he was just like the other one, that’d been taken from them too young, too early, before they knew what he was for.

  ‘What other one?’ asked Moo, but mostly just with her lips and breath and nobody heard but me.

  ‘The lousy one from the monkhouse,’ I told her but now Mrs Slevin was pulling at her and saying as how we shouldn’t leave him in there all by himself, and so Moo let herself be led back inside.

  ‘Well,’ said Pa to Boson’s followers. ‘That’ll do, then. Goodnight.’ Nobody moved. ‘Thanks for the song,’ he added.

  ‘Can we come in?’ asked Mr Skinner. ‘Just to see.’

  I could see Pa didn’t want to let them but he could hardly say no, so we all traipsed back in and it wasn’t long before they were caught trying to get a piece of Boson for their old magic. At the sight of Old Shambles trying to take a bit of my brother’s dead finger Pa flew at them again and clouted them Cronkward.

  We sat to our meal in a gloomy circle around Boson. Even the Slevins seemed somewhat damped. Outside the yard, the Dead Lamps bluthered about the moaney like that owl had around our hearth, and sometimes they whispered and even engaged in scuffles. The Dead are mostly a quiet mob. My brother was plainly bothering everybody, even the Dead themselves. This notion uplifted me and I gave my mother a small smile.

  I may as well been a spit of turf.

  From that night on Moo brooded by the red glow of the fire and was unmoved by either softness or sharpness. At first Gilpin clung to her barnacle-like and screeched until he was purple and choking. After this he stood before her trembling and shouted at her to Get Up. He tried to swipe the moaney-fae off her and he told her, ‘Don’t talk to them, talk to meee!’

  At last he tottered outside by himself.

  He ate rindy cheese and uncooked meal and whatever else he found in the stores; he slept in with me or out with the cow. I tried to look to him but Pa and me had to stack as many ricks as we could before the rain.

  All Quirks are born knowing, No turf, No living.

  My mother’s voice had faded on the night of the wake, had been fading since Boson turned up in the skybog, and now she stopped talking altogether.

  I asked her what she thought she was at.

  I said she was not the only one who missed my brother.

  I told her she was a bad mother. It was all bootless.

  My mother was a mute.

  Chapter Five

  Awake

  THE DAY AFTER THE WAKE my parents weren’t hungry. Boson still lay-out and the house was filled with a devilish stink of brimstone. They kept to opposite corners of the snug with the fire smouldering between them. In his corner, Pa cuddled the jug like a newborn and jumped every time Moo shifted in her corner. Now and then he almost said something, but right at the point of it he always backed off.

  He was frighted of her.

  Moo was white-faced now. She looked to be just about bleached, the heart-ague weathering into her like salt into driftwood. All the blazy whiteness of her face made her eyes pool in her head like dew-gems. Apart from her Dead-duties, for two days she’d sat wrapped in fogs with her slow breath the liveliest part of her.

  With one rag less gumption my parents would both fold up and slide to the earth. We needed the market but they didn’t think of such things as food anymore. Outside the sun filled up the sky. Even shady parts were flushed and when I went down into the heat-wavy plots it was like having a thick pottage poured right into my head. The crops drooped under grey-leaf and meal-bug. That morning I’d found Gilpin picking the bugs off and eating them like they were currants. That inclined me to determination. I went back into the snug.

  ‘Pa!’ I said, poking him.

  ‘Yes, Birdie.’ He looked up at me with his moony-eyes and whistled like it might be comical. It wasn’t.

  ‘When will we bury him?’ I asked.

  He took a long, sucking swig on the jug. ‘When your mother shrouds him,’ he said. He made a stab at the song of the curlew but his lips wouldn’t pucker and he just spat instead.

  I looked at my mother. It didn’t seem very likely that she would ever move again.

  ‘Moo!’ I said, sharp-like. She just sat hangdog.

  ‘Moo!’ I said, louder. You could’ve drawn blood with my voice. Once it would have had her banging on at me about talking to others like you’d be talked to yourself.

  Nothing.

  It was no good. She was stone, and Pa was soused.

  I set myself to work then, starting with the cow. S
he couldn’t wait to be settled, while Boson could. Leaving milk in the churn and Gilpin with a dipper, I fetched the baskets Mrs Slevin had brought that were filled with Dead-cloths. She’d probably blessed them at her wicked old altar.

  ‘More than likely she’s just soaked them in devilishness, Mother,’ I said ringingly.

  Moo didn’t stir.

  Not even a sigh.

  So alone I spread the Dead-cloths, and I shrouded my brother. I started at his feet that were just grey lumps at the end of his paling legs. Wrapping the clean, sweet-smelling cloth up and up the log of his body, lifting and turning him as I needed — in spite of the grumblings inside him that looked to be working up to some type of skin-bust. I tried not to look. I tried not to know.

  I wrapped up and up, binding his scabbed shanks and his knees gravelled to the bone. I wrapped up his white thighs bruised with old bruises, yellowing, and new black ones, too. I looked away while I wrapped up his hips and so forth. His belly had bladdered-up from the gases, but after a struggle I got it wrapped down tidy. At last he lay swaddled like a sleeping newborn with only his head free. I touched his hair.

  It was as soft as when he lived.

  The back of my throat filled with an aching clot.

  I swallowed it.

  The last cloths went on easy enough. He looked untroubled by all the fuss. The cloths went over the scar on his neck where I’d hooked him instead of the salmon that time at the Blackwater, up and over his split lobe where Mungo had bit him snapping for a bee and then licked and licked at the wound in sorryness until he looked to lick the ear right off — and at the last the cloths went over the rough-razored skull he’d brought back from his stay among the Little Brothers.

  At last it was done and I went out to the plots. If we didn’t do something before winter the planting ground would just sink back to moaney again and be no good to anybody. I couldn’t find the hoe so I started up pulling at the weeds, feverish-like, by hand. I was sick of putting out my hand to a tool and finding it gone.