Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  ‘I was proud of him. It blinded me. I was slothful. It was easier to just let him be. I was greedy for his happiness. It softened me. I should have been greedy for his goodness.

  ‘I lusted after his rightfulness. I should have been lusting after his humbleness.

  ‘I was a glutton for his respectability. I should have stuffed myself with honesty.

  ‘Through my own fault, my boy was left to become a home for the wickedness.

  ‘I knew better but I pretended I didn’t. Let the blight fall on me. I should have known. I should have known.’ Moo drooped her head, clasped her hands and became quiet as the crowd.

  She’d finished.

  Neen Marrey had gone. My chest was about busting with shame and my ears searing. All through these terrible years Moo had behaved like Boson’s distempered particulars were his and his alone, and a deep mystery to be blamed on him or a sickness. Now she said such afflictions ran in her family blood. That she knew but pretended not to.

  I turned to find my brother’s face.

  There he was. He’d heard it all. I should have kept him home like Moo said. I wanted Pa to come and get us, but he’d said he wouldn’t be seen dead at a penance and he’d stuck to his word. There was just me.

  My brother slipped through the mob like a whip-snake through the reeds, his face sharpened to a single point, and his affliction all that was left of him. Folk rocked sidewise as he, quick and wind-like, came straight to the cross. The Father blocked his approach to our penitent mother.

  ‘God has heard your mother,’ he told Boson, as if that’s all there was to it. ‘And if you do as you’re told from now on, there’ll be no more trouble.’ Everybody sighed like it was the end of a cold day and they’d come in to find the broth warm and their bed turned down.

  Boson didn’t even try to look normal. He took the form of a crane. He opened his face to the Father, who stepped back somewhat.

  ‘Now, then—’ he said but Boson flapped a bit and warbled.

  ‘But. Who. Are you?’ my brother asked.

  ‘I am God’s servant,’ the Father told him.

  Boson listened to the air.

  ‘No,’ said my brother. ‘No. He says he doesn’t know you.’ And he shrilled right in the Father’s face.

  Boson turned and flew from the close, dropping feathers as he went. You could hear him all the way out of Market-Shipton. It was his own prayerful litany, the one he chanted with the birds and always had.

  ‘God the Brother,’ he whittered fadingly. ‘And God the Moo, God the Sister and God the Pa—’

  Everybody was furious. He’d spoiled everything. And what’s more, he’d forgotten all about God the Dog. Because that’s when Mungo loped from behind me and bit the Father.

  Right on his—

  Chapter Nine

  Sparrowhawk

  THE MORNING AFTER THAT STARRY night-talk, Pa and me got an early start in the cut. I sat up and wriggled blind as a mole out into the fresh morning. My weighted-shut eyelids lightened and I opened them just a slit. They rolled back in my head and trembled violently before settling to useful. I peered out of them at the just-before-dawn waking world. It was not light yet. It was only a change in the dark.

  There was the half-built rick, there were the drying spits lying about ready to stack, and there was the turfbank dug right down until it was seeping water. It was all just as we’d left it days before. Nothing had changed up here.

  Pa was already in the cut, his whole self hidden below its edge, throwing the spits up over the bank. Spit after spit landed black and wet up on the lag. I went to work on the half-built rick and slowly the sun came warm. Me and Pa and the sheep-bags and the turfbank all quietly steamed in full morning. I kindled the turf back to a glow and heated the brew. We sat on the bank sipping together and watching the sky.

  Leaning against my father I felt all my longings drain away; I was almost happy. I let myself fill with bleary clouds. Maybe when we got home Moo would’ve come out from under her shawls and started talking again. Maybe there’d be a warm pie or even a frumenty. Maybe we’d find her and Gilpin out in the plots, laughing and throwing snails to the hens.

  Pa got up and fetched his jug from the stacked ricks. Wiping it with his sleeve, he took a pull and kept on pulling until it was empty.

  ‘Wake up!’ snapped the inside-voice. ‘Look.’

  All the hopeful softness set hard again. All the bleariness cleared to sharp lines. I stood up and put my hands on my hips.

  ‘Pa,’ I called to him, and my voice rang shrill and wrung-out like some harbour-wife. ‘Put it down!’

  The inside-voice laughed.

  Pa turned to me like I was just some voice, familiar but faraway.

  ‘I’m only warming my cockles,’ he told me, heartfelt and rightful.

  ‘Your cockles must be charcoal by now,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do about my mother?’

  He turned from me like I was a stranger.

  ‘Fermion,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen her. There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘There’s nothing he can do,’ smirked the inside-voice.

  I was raw as a shelled sandhopper and my blood ran black with him. What was he for, if not for saving Moo? And Gilpin and me. What good was he?

  ‘You mean,’ I told him. ‘There’s nothing you will do.’

  He jumped back into the cut and disappeared. Straight-up, a quick rain of spits came over the bank like he had grown extra arms. Looking over the edge I saw him down there, small and dark like a trow risen out of its earth mound, his back curved against me. There was to be no more talk.

  Pa hadn’t come to Shipton the day Moo took the penitent sheet. She’d gone and done her best but the chaos of my brother wasn’t cured so easily. By that day at Shipton Cross, Boson had already become a common amusement. After Moo aired the whole thing in public, he belonged to everybody.

  After that my brother wasn’t a person. He was part-Shax, part-mooncalf, part-distemper and wholly deformed. The Brothers and my mother made it so with all their talk of sin and demons and so forth. After the penance, all that was left was the punishment.

  At least that’s how I see it.

  So when Boson ran from the close there was a clamour of voices. Some shouting he should have more respect for his poor mother, some aping the shrilling noise he made, and among it all, other sad tones sighing. There was some singing.

  The Brothers started up chanting. Nobody knew what to make of it all.

  Moo just stood red-cheeked in her white shift, freckled arms hanging, rocking back-and-forth. I could see she was done-in, all her cures tried and hopeless. The penitent sheet had been her last weapon.

  I followed my brother out into the yellowing greenplots. He was far ahead, just a speck flying up the Bogward. I would never catch him that way. As I watched him, my heart flew with his up the lonely path home. I could feel it fluttering, trapped in the cage of his chest.

  Leaving the Bogward, I struggled out across the plots and to the foot of the Cronks. From there I could see Boson above me against the sky, his great clumsy hands flapping out on either side of him as he went.

  Then I saw the others.

  Dolyn and the towny boys were stalking him. They trotted behind him in a little mob, like ponies in a storm. My brother hadn’t seen them.

  I rushed to ford the shallower arm of the Blackwater and breasted the rise up to the Bogward.

  Too late. All the gusto I’d seen in Shipton seemed to have flowed into this bit of the town, broken away, ganging after Boson. I could tell they were all spittle and gore and ready to go him.

  I shouted out. My brother didn’t hear. But the boys did and that was that.

  They pressed their elbows into their sides and ran tight and hard like boys do when they’re serious. If they’d run a bit looser I wouldn’t have been so dreadclad but as it was, it was as if I’d shouted Go! My legs started to heave me up the rise but it all was all dreamlike; I was moving through honey.

/>   I wouldn’t get to him in time.

  Too late. Up on the path, up through the dust-bands, God’s servant Dolyn came heavily loping. Lumbering hard behind Boson, grinning and knuckle-cracking, he came. And behind him, the ready towny boys crackling like lightning and eager for it.

  It was all over quicksmart. There was no time. That Tempus had a point. While I stood watching, time bunched up and a minute passed like an hour. When I moved to help, the minutes rushed like storms.

  Too late. The little mob closed in and Boson was hidden from my eyes. Fists and elbows raised and fell. I scrambled up between scree and I could hear them quietly grunting, business-like. My own breath was flaying my chest. There were the shrub-wrens rising all around, and the fists were falling faster. Then, as if they were weary, the boys backed off and panted in a circle around my brother’s body wiping their brows. They might have stopped then and gone home to brag about it, but Boson rose from out the middle of their circle and stood up. He was swaying and bleeding. He stretched his throat straight-up, long, white under the chin, and he crowed.

  He never did know when to stop.

  The boys let up a howl. The circle closed again. They kicked now, as well as clouting. Boson was sinking under them. Someone’s hand was raised, and I saw the blade shining.

  Then I was crawling, legs burning and guts twisting. I had no breath left to call his name so he’d know I was coming. A ditch opened under me and I rolled into it face-first, my arms giving way like water. Then all of a sudden Lily Fell and Old Shambles were right there in the middle of the ruckus.

  ‘Oy!’ I heard the old man bellow and he sounded like everybody’s pa all at once, quickening to a wallop.

  The boys stopped mid-thug, their fists still raised. They looked around at the path, at each other, baffled by the unexpected voice. Lily Fell took her chance. She fell over Boson’s body and hung on to him cursing like a tanner. None of the boys were willing to go the old lady, but they were sulky at the loss of their game and turned for a moment to consider the old man.

  Straight-up Old Shambles went them with his heavy, knobbled stick and they yielded, abandoning each other and scattering, jumping over me in my ditch as they went.

  Everything went quiet. Too quiet.

  I didn’t want to come out of the ditch.

  While Old Shambles was cosseting me out of the earth my brother threw off Lily Fell and made a dash for it. He ran like we were the enemy. His long white self passed into a stand of silver birch and disappeared into the thickening hawthorn beyond.

  With Old Shambles holding me by the shoulder I climbed up onto the Bogward. My legs trembled like I’d run the whole of Carrick but I still hardened myself and trotted after Boson. I had to bring him home.

  Nobody else would know what to say.

  Nobody else would understand.

  Nobody else could know where he went.

  He would go down into Strangers’ Croft. He would watch the waves, to prove that time was still working and orderly. He would ramble along the pebbly beach to the Sorrow Place and sing out the names of the Old-ones, one-by-one in an encouraging sort of manner, so that they would know themselves loved. He would stay there until something made sense to him.

  I went down to the Croft shore.

  I went down to help him find the sense of this day, as I always had. I didn’t know what I was going to say. It hadn’t been a sensible sort of day.

  Down the green-skimmed stone I limped. The shattered breakwater was empty and the Sorrow Place too. I hobbled around the low-tide cliff-base until the soft beach was behind me and the hard one spread out before in sharps and spines; a Gather Place for countless guillemots, shags, gannets and gulls. There I saw him, flocked in among them.

  He’d wholly given up trying to be a person. He had no clothes on anymore. Except for the feather-hat that was somewhat manky now.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ I said, soft so he wouldn’t run.

  ‘Am I?’ he said.

  The guillemot rocks were spread with such an amount of birdshit they were always fully whiteclad, and they gave off the kind of stench that closes your throat. Boson was crouched there right in the middle and he’d pasted himself in it. Into the thicker bits of paste he’d stuck molted black and white feathers; fledgling down stirred over his face. Only his eyes looked out bare and human. The rest of him snugged in feathers.

  ‘All right?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think I am all right, Fer,’ said my brother, quiet. ‘My head hurts. There are insects. I can’t smile.’

  He perched up on the spine of a long rock, above the sea-birds. All the flocks pressed in around him. I clambered up to him, slicing myself open here and there.

  Taking a corner of my shift I wiped away the scabs and paste and down from around his eyes. Now he just looked like an owl. Was there to be no end to his birdishness? He seemed more high and light than the swifts, more darkly Otherwise than the ravens. His head was a Fever tree in which unknown wild birds roosted on every bough.

  I patted at his shoulder and wished with my whole self that I could remember what he’d been before, so I’d know what to say to comfort him now. As he waited for the right moment to utter his world-saving word, I waited for the word to rise in me that would make him better.

  ‘You’re going to have to stop,’ I told him at last. ‘It’s impossible.’ He started up at me, all chatter and spit.

  ‘I’m not made for st-t-topping,’ he stuttered. ‘If I were, I’d have stopped by now. And it’s not imp-p-possible. I’m for rising. I have been the skylark and there’s no going back after that and I’ve been the nightingale and I’ve been the crane you know I have and I’ve been the skua in its salt and the molty guillemots. I have been the loon. It’s too late for me. You can’t un-know what you know.’

  ‘Well I used to know you,’ I told him. ‘Now I don’t.’

  ‘Forgetting’s not the same as un-knowing,’ my brother said. ‘We walked together once. Before. On the water. Remember?’

  I didn’t remember. I just wanted to get him home to Moo. He was shivering and the bruises were blackening up.

  ‘I’m going there,’ he said next pointing into the sea. The other island floated in a pearly mist like the pictures of islands in the book of beasts. ‘I’m going there the lonely ones need me they’re starving they said I should come when I was ready they said nobody here could see me right not even Moo nobody here could see anybody right even themselves they said I should come out I should come they said I should—’

  ‘Quirks don’t go to sea,’ I said. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him to stop blithering. ‘How will you get out there?’

  ‘I could go in the form of a gull?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ I said. ‘You can’t go in the form of anything but what you are.’

  ‘What am I again?’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re my brother, Master Boson Quirk,’ I told him then as I always did. But this time he didn’t believe me.

  ‘Tempus Fugit,’ he twittered looking around at the nesting-rocks. ‘Everything is happening.’

  ‘Not everything,’ I said. My brother, the angel of time, looked confused. ‘Only some things are happening.’

  The conversations I had with my distempered brother were like no conversations I ever had again. Sometimes I even thought I understood what we talked about. But this was to be our last day. From Tempus Fugit on he was lost to me.

  ‘There’s another way,’ he insisted and stood up. ‘I’ve seen it. I’ve seen them do it they fall up they just fall up to the sky the gate is open and they take the Upward path they fall up—’ He sat and stirred around in a sizeable and fresh birdshit for its augury but lost interest and started up again. ‘I’m expected Fer, I have to go,’ he whined. ‘Stuck they are the poor things stuck in the shape of cranes shape of squid shape of slugs stuck in the middle of shifting stuck and it’s time. They said I should come and they’d send word and I’m ready ready ready—’
He held his striped ribs.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he told me again and he started weeping, slow and light. ‘I want to go home.’

  I knew he didn’t mean the moaney.

  ‘It’s going to be all right, Bose,’ I said, pulling him to his feet and leading him away from the guillemot rocks. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t going to be all right. It was just something I said.

  Up at home, my parents and Lily Fell and Old Shambles waited in a wring-fret for us to turn up. When they saw me dragging my brother along they let out cries and rushed to get at us. Lily Fell was still telling the story as we moved him toward the threshold.

  ‘And then they’ve only turned to booting him, Moirrey, with Fermion here only part of the way up and breathing fire, you can see it in her. And then Mr Shambles is on them and oh! He was mighty, mighty like a Christian! All over them, weren’t you?’

  Old Shambles reddened and muttered that it had been His Honour and he’d never liked that Craig boy anyhow.

  ‘He barks at folk,’ he said. ‘Gives dogs a bad name.’

  In the late afternoon, Pa and I packed up the sheep-bags, we checked the footings and ricks and left the upland cut. We queached back across the high moaney and trudged along the bodgeway until we reached the home-thicket.

  All the way home, the bog murmured and sighed, the evening birds whistled and called, and the inside-voice talked long and grave-like to me. In the home-thickets the Dead Lamps were sprightly. They pattered like they had feet. They muttered like old women. The willows drooped their heads and whispered.

  Everybody had something to say but my mother.

  Boson always understood people better than me. He had the knowledge of hearts and so forth. I was stymied by all the flying humours of folk; their silences and tears. Their broods and rages were like foreign talk to me. I had no answer for any of it.

  My brother had always been our afflicted one. Now he was dead, I couldn’t help noticing that we were all somewhat afflicted. Before, we could always blame him for the mess; now he was gone, who was to blame for all the grogging and sulks? Neither of my parents would talk about it properly and decently, with sense. But I knew what they were thinking.