Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  ‘It’s a borer,’ said Pa looking close and his mouth twisting. ‘You can’t use it on folk? Not really.’

  ‘We can and we do, Mr Quirk,’ said the Father, and he sounded hard and right. ‘This is a fight. We don’t turn our noses up at any weapon. They don’t choose to leave a body once they’re in, you know. They must be expelled.’ His mouth snapped shut on the last word. ‘Don’t worry. Unless they die or God doesn’t wish the cure to take, it always works.’

  ‘It won’t hurt him,’ Brother Olloo told Moo, patting her arm.

  ‘What won’t?’ she asked.

  ‘Boring the hole.’ He picked up the trepan and a little mallet. The herb-Brother nodded, safe and knowing, at her.

  ‘Just a little prick,’ he said.

  We left Boson there to be cured. All the way up the Bogward nobody had anything to say. Even my mother.

  Chapter Eight

  Sparrow

  AFTER FIVE DAYS IN THE MONKHOUSE my brother came home in love with hunger. He said fasting was tastier than any food. He said he felt better at not gobbling-up God’s good world and the less he ate the more sense everything made. He’d learned who he was and what he was for, he told us. He was made to live on nothing but dew-gem and prayer and nobody was going to stop him now. All he had to do was listen for the word that would save the world — and then he could go home to God the Brother.

  Meanwhile he was all ribs and cheek-bones and black eye-holes, his face hanging from a new close-fit hat.

  We were all frighted of that hat.

  It was Moo that took it off.

  Underneath, Boson’s skull was rough-shaved and scabbed up, and smaller than you’d think. My mother grasped his whole head in her hands and turned it this way and that in the sunlight. She ran her hands all over his stubble and around his ears, and in the end she found what she was looking for. Laying his cheek flat in her hand she felt a sizeable lump behind his ear. It was a sort of bung.

  They’d plugged the hole with beeswax. It had a certain smell of the chapel and herbyard about it. Moo poked it gently and it shifted in the hole a little. She put his hat back on, slow and careful, and her face didn’t change one bit.

  ‘They said wicked ones would come out, Fer,’ Boson told me cheerfully. ‘Only, angels flew in instead.’

  ‘He’s burning with the Fever,’ said Moo to me. ‘Fetch a bowl.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ my brother said. ‘The angels are talking up a storm in there with their tongues of flame. So I’m bound to be a bit warmish.’

  ‘Are they?’ asked Moo briskly. ‘Go get the bowl, Fermion! And fill it with the queach by the willows.’

  When I came back she’d wrapped Boson in rugs and laid him in the deepest smoke coming off the damped-down fire.

  ‘Be easy, Moo!’ He was coughing and comforting her. ‘Don’t fret. After this bit of firing, I’ll be tempered to angel-craft and ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’ I asked him as Moo took no notice but just caked his chest in warmed mud and willow-rot.

  ‘Ready for the off,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Faraway,’ he said tender and full of wanting. ‘Longaway.’

  I told him he couldn’t go longaway. Wherever he went it would be the same time as here. Moo shook her head at me like she was saying clear and plain, don’t fret him with all That. But he said he’d asked the Brothers themselves about the angel Tempus. He’d asked them if their bells didn’t tell them when to do things, would they do everything at once or do nothing at all? They’d not answered him but only asked a lot of questions then about monsters and strangers, and about Moo. He told them he didn’t know any monsters or strangers; he only knew God the Brother and his angels. And of course the Jesus-beaten old gods dwindling in exile.

  ‘I didn’t tell them,’ he finished up telling my mother. ‘They stuck something in my head, and I still didn’t tell.’

  ‘Didn’t tell them what?’ I asked Moo.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘He’s Feverish and Ranting.’

  She said he was more gravely sick than she’d thought. She said to pay no mind to anything he said. There was only one thing left to try and she would settle that tomorrow.

  After he came back to us my brother was quieter and he stayed put. It was a relief to my parents, but I could see he was brooding and churning, not healing. He pulled his nest down out of the willows, and he’d only talk with the birds when Moo and Pa weren’t about.

  His skin damped like the flesh of slugs.

  His mind turned inward.

  There was no light coming off him.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I told him the night he came home. ‘You’re safe now.’

  He said he wasn’t going to cheer up and that people shouldn’t forever look to be happy.

  ‘Look around, Fer,’ he said, waving his arm at the yard. ‘People should be sad.’

  I looked around but all I saw was the soft muddy world and the big sky.

  The morning after he came home my mother bundled herself in her clean black Sunday wraps. She crumbled sage-tips down her chest and covered it with her pure bleached front. She dug out a billowing old cap and arranged it so you couldn’t see much of her. She was always trying to not stand out, to hide the great nose on her, to look like anybody else. Like that, she went off the moaney and down into the lowlands.

  I wondered why she would choose to do such a thing. We hadn’t been welcome in the towns for over a year.

  Firstly, Boson was one who’d been named and chapel-blessed in the common way, but it hadn’t taken. Those who expected such things to keep a person right didn’t like the sight of a full-christened soul wandering moonstruck like some pagan. He moved through their lanes and clear-fells like the moaney winds and after a time they never knew if they would find him muttering around the next bend. A person might find him dancing, naked, weeping — anything. Nobody knew what to expect from him, and there’s not many folk who joy in the unexpected.

  Secondly, there were those who thought my brother special, and they could be worse than the others. His sneaking, soft-toned followers came up the Bogward most nights just to see his face and hear him talk. It didn’t matter how many times we chased them off. They’d hang about the yard, pitiful and cow-eyed, until Boson appeared and then they’d mob around him asking questions about love, sick cows, lost bangles, children, and death. They were regular, respectable folk in daytime. One of the followers was even a council elder in Merton, yet at night there he was in our yard, right at the front of the mob holding his torch and gawping.

  And then, there was the matter of the Seeing. Everybody knows that Seeing can be brought on by either angels or demons, and it’s hard to know which it is. When Boson took to shouting his angelbird-news at folk in the by-ways and at market, calling God his brother and insisting He wasn’t unreachable in Heaven but quite close to hand, the towns came down heavily on the side of demons.

  The towns would know all about the failed cure by now. I didn’t like it that Moo was down there by herself. And planning who-knew-what.

  In the long-shades of late afternoon she came home. Her hair was out of its cap and flew about her head like flames and she walked in rightfulness and with an air of decisions-well-made. After our year of wring and fret, she looked calm and sure again. She came direct to me where I sat against the wall with Gilpin and flopped down next to me, sweating.

  ‘I’ve settled it for him,’ she told me and her eyes were bright and full of purpose. ‘Sunday will finish it.’

  ‘Finish what?’ I asked, letting Gilpin slide off my lap.

  ‘I’m to take the penance for him,’ she said. ‘I had something to do with his turning out like that, anyway, so I’ll put it right with the good Lord and that will be that.’

  ‘What did you do, Moo?’ I asked.

  I had another bad feeling.

  It sat in me like a toad.

  ‘None of your business.’ She upturned her face into the dying sun
light and leaned back against the stone, closing her eyes. I didn’t know whether she meant it was none of my business what she’d done to make my brother a mooncalf, or none of my business where she’d been.

  I felt sure it was some of my business. He was my twin, after all. And she was my mother.

  ‘What about Sunday?’ I asked instead.

  ‘That’s none of your business either,’ she said. She dipped her chin and gave me her do-as-I-say face. ‘I need you here, and I need you to keep your brothers here. Do you think you can do that?’

  ‘Of course,’ I told her, somewhat insulted.

  Later we heard her and Pa fighting out behind the byre, but couldn’t hear their words.

  As we lay listening Boson said the angelbirds told him folk have pipes inside them that carry feelings. Each pipe is dedicated to one feeling; there’s a pipe for love, one for anger, one for sadness, and so on. Sometimes an upswell of feeling had to come out through other pipes, or it would pop its own pipe like a bladderwort. Today our parents’ upswell of love was coming out through the anger pipes.

  I said what would angels know about pipes? Or the love of men and women? He said my trouble was I didn’t pay attention.

  On Sunday Moo was up before the sun and I watched her dress and stand over the still-sleeping Pa for a moment. He woke just as she bent to touch his hair. Pa was cold, he didn’t even take her hand that stroked his head. But my mother looked sure and shiny. Like she couldn’t wait.

  ‘Come,’ she whispered to him.

  ‘No,’ Pa said and turned his back.

  I went, though.

  I followed her.

  Her whirrying figure rushed ahead of me without a backward look. Down off the bog she went and through the Cronks, down through the crofts and clearings. She slipped into Shipton’s outlying holdings, keeping to the edges, and then she passed out of sight into the crafters. I lay low in a ditch while she passed over the flats browning on the edge of town. Then she passed into the washed-out stone of Market-Shipton.

  I panted across the open fields after her and edged into the din and stink. I’d outwitted my quick mother. She wasn’t going to keep me out of my brother’s cure.

  All Shipton seemed to be out that Sunday, and everybody filing toward the middle of town. Even if I’d wanted to move out of the swarm, I wouldn’t have been able; I was flowing along with them like we were a river. Somebody went by ringing the bell and calling out but I didn’t listen.

  I just wanted to find which way Moo had gone.

  There seemed to be some sort of festival on.

  Folk glutted the paths and crammed into Shipton Cross. Every pig and dog and rooster in Shipton looked to be ganging in too, and were everywhere underfoot. All was stone, bodge and the terrible crowd.

  Along the benches outside of Mr Owney’s, the old men sprawled and smoked and spat sandhopper shells into piles at their feet. They crunched on the sandhoppers raw, in spite of having not a tooth among them. What they lacked in teeth they made up for in eyebrows, either hanging right over their eyes or springing across their brows like a healthy swamp-thicket. They looked to be some bristly hedge planted along the wall of the snug.

  Sunshine poured through the ring of roofs in the close. Its light fell on every blade of yellow wheat-grass and made every grog-spill shine, and glowlit every upturned waiting face. Each time somebody came into the close we turned to see who it was. Each time, the townies groaned or whooped like they do at the hurly.

  Meanwhile Shipton’s weathered grey-stone cross towered above us all. I pushed toward it. The biggest crowds were bustling under it. Even the most outlandish folk had come in to town.

  In a corner off the close I saw that Marrey girl and her aunt loitering about and eying the goings-on. Those two never come in unless they have to. My bad feeling lolloped about in my belly. When the girl caught my eye and I saw the pity there I came over shiversome in spite of all the sun.

  I looked away. The Marreys aren’t like us; they’re not like anybody. Neen Marrey has some disgustful scaly eruption on her and if she looks at you eye-straight her affliction will fly direct into you. I stared in the other direction so’s she could see me do so.

  Then the drums started up. Faraway at first but closing in. Mournful; the drums of a godly procession, not the drums of soldiering. Some in the crowd sighed and others cheered.

  This must be what my mother had come into town for.

  I climbed a wall to find her in the swooning mob.

  Out along the Monkward and moving townward shuffled a line of Brothers. They were all blackclad and serious, even that slow-wit Dolyn Craig with his sly eyes in a great spread of face. Now there he was, beating the drum out front of the Progress and trying not to look prideful about it. Behind him, the Father came praying and patting his heart like it hurt him just to see all the sinners and to hear their cheers.

  In that stream of black, a white robe came.

  My mother.

  She came drooping, and her hair was gone. They’d shaved her, and as she came closer I saw that it hadn’t been done with care. Her head was blood-specked, and at first I thought she’d been bored like Boson. My own blood foamed and I stepped right into the procession of holy Brothers. At first, their progress split into two and flowed around me. Soon, though, they noticed that Moo had stopped and their lines grew disorderly.

  I took my mother’s hands and pulled at her.

  She dug her heels into the earth and leaned back.

  At last she snatched her hands back from mine.

  Her face was the face of shame and it was not the white robe, not the staring at her oversized gruntle, not even the monks with their tight faces. It was me that was shaming her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘I’m saving you,’ I told her.

  The Father had slipped out of the lines and started shouldering sidewise back along the paths toward us. His hands held his Sunday robe up out of the drains. His eyes were fixed on me.

  ‘I told you to stay with your brothers,’ Moo said. ‘I was depending on you.’

  She pushed at me, hard.

  ‘Go home, Fermion.’ The Father was almost on us.

  ‘Moo,’ I said. ‘Please. Come home.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  She shoved me back into the crowd and at once I was hidden from the Father, who looked for me but couldn’t see me though I was crouched just about at his feet. The Progress firmed up and moved on again.

  Down there among the legs I found myself eye-to-eye with the Marrey girl. Before I could remember to look away, we’d stared right into each other’s eyes and it was too late.

  Whatever I was to catch from her, I’d caught. Whatever elf-shot she’d given me, I’d taken it.

  There was no going back, it was inside me now. That bloody-buggery scaly girl knelt before me like nothing had happened and her huge black eyes welled up.

  ‘All right?’ she asked me. One of her arms was raw-looking and she covered it when she saw me looking.

  I nodded.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’ she said next.

  ‘Home,’ I told her. She shook her head and pointed.

  Boson was there at the back of the crowd, and the Marrey woman was holding his arm and talking gently in his ear. He was wearing his feathered cap and was plainly excited by all the fuss.

  I had a terrible taste in my mouth. Like blood. Like rust.

  ‘What will they do to my mother?’ I asked Neen Marrey, keeping one eye on Boson. She was the only one I could have asked such a thing. The crowd had started up with tangles of singing and praying. The monks were chanting in their chapel-words that sound more like making lists than talking to God.

  The Marreys were shamed folk like we were and perhaps even moreso, as their shame was passed on from their Old-ones as far back as they could remember, whereas ours was fairly new. Now her aunt had taken on that yellow-man they had no standing in town at all.

  Next to Neen Marrey I wa
s a regular girl.

  She made me feel normal. I warmed to her somewhat.

  ‘What will my mother do?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘It’s the penance. Mrs Quirk agreed.’

  ‘Why’ve you come, then?’ I didn’t like my mother being public entertainment.

  As Moo passed, the old men on Mr Owney’s benches all stood up in a wilty row. The groggy town boys hooted at her from the snug, until Dolyn was sent in to quiet them.

  Without her hair, Moo didn’t seem herself. She was shrunken inside the flapping shift they’d given her to wear. Now she knelt before the towering cross, a small huddle in the dust. On each side of her, two lines of Little Brothers formed up, like two black wings spreading from her white body.

  She stood up. Her feet got caught up in the shift and she fell. I’d never seen my mother humbled by anything or anyone.

  I went to lift her but Neen Marrey stopped me.

  Moo had told me to stay home and keep my brothers home.

  I was starting to see why.

  My mother brushed down her penitent shift and told the whole of Shipton our troubles.

  ‘My family has suffered this before,’ she said, like she’d practised it. ‘There was another such as my son, in the generation of my fathers, and he caused as much bother in his own way as this one does now. I should have seen the signs of it but I was full of the will not to see, and I let my boy grow lopsided from the start. I let him talk with the birds. I let him dance with the cranes. I never once asked what they talked of, where he went with them.’

  The outer folk leaned in to hear and just in case they missed my mother’s meaning, the Father said it again. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Quirk has fed her child’s soul to Shax and the lieutenants of the bird legions,’ he called out into the close, loud and important.

  People rocked back a little, the mob moved like a wave.

  Moo started up crying.

  ‘Not on purpose,’ he added.

  ‘I saw to it that he came to chapel and heard the holy words,’ Moo sniffled. ‘And when he started up sermonising out in the skybog, telling his birds about God, I thought it just harmless play. I thought perhaps he was getting ready to be a priest himself.