Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  There was the long-faced twigger, pale and grave, and the soft-hunch one in a basket on his back. I saw the spidery buggane scuttle down to the waterline after our hens. She stopped there, that one, lifting her face into the sun and I saw with a shock that she was beautiful.

  She was beautiful like a mortal, I mean. Like a person. Her black hair brushed the ground as she went, and though she went low and quick in her motion her voice came high and slow, ringing up from the beach like faraway bells.

  ‘Sorry,’ she called out. ‘Sorr-eee. That were me. I done that. Should’ve known.’

  The twigger’s face was drooped as a chapel-candle, his eyeholes like watermarks in the wax and his mouth just a fold ear-to-ear. Above his bony shoulders, the hunch godling’s face rose pink and soft. She was laughing and her teeth were like pearls set in a row. Her hair coiled red and grey down her little back, ending where her legs would have been if she’d had some.

  ‘Don’tfretdon’tblameyourselfOnnor,’ she said, quick and full of sighs, like she’d said it a hundred times.

  A hen flapped up the scree calling out, baffled and pitiful. Giving up on its world making sense it bundled down into the grit, wings spread and ruffling. The twigger put out his foot and stepped on its tail.

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said, picking up the hen and holding it close to his heart. He blew gently in its face and it closed its eyes.

  The dwindled ones stopped mid-fists. Ginny shoved a handful of shellgrit in the other’s mouth as she kicked away from him. He sat up spitting.

  ‘Them hens will live with Caly,’ the twigger said.

  ‘Bless,’ said a woman’s deep voice, then, from behind me.

  ‘It’s one of them from the other island.’

  My breath stopped. I rolled over. A sizeable beast in a red shift and apron stood over me, holding our other hen in a pair of hairy hands. It was some sort of female. She bent and studied me in the rudest way. Like I was some uncommon beetle. My breath came back in a rush.

  ‘Oooh, it’s the spit of the rest, isn’t it?’ she said, looking close into my face like I had no feelings at all. Her eyes were brown as earth, deep and wet as bogholes, but I was eased somewhat to see only curiosity in them, not blood-hunger. She was covered head-to-foot in soft brown fur, parted over her face and brushed back until it shone. She reached a hand down to me and her palm was bald. I took it and she pulled me to my feet. The others mobbed around.

  I had no words.

  I waited to see what would happen.

  I thought of calling Mungo.

  ‘Why did youse bring it?’ the hairy one asked the others.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Ginny. ‘It just came.’

  ‘I thought I saw something,’ whispered the spider-woman from inside her hair. ‘Sorry. I should have said—’

  ‘Is there others coming?’ the hunch said, quite curious and bright. They all turned to stare out into the cove but there were only porpoises jumping and the gathering loons.

  ‘Is it a female or a male?’ The hairy one came closer still and she smelt like rosemary. I wondered if she rinsed her whole self in it like the brown-haired towny girls rinsed their heads.

  ‘I’m a girl,’ I told them, in case they were thinking of finding out for themselves.

  ‘Oh, sweeeet. Listen. It’s talking.’ The hairy one made prayerful hands just under her beard. ‘What did you do with your hair?’ She pushed loosed bits of her own back into its combs, and patted it like some pet.

  The twigger stooped to me. ‘What is you doing here?’ he asked.

  I didn’t know the right answer so I stayed mute.

  The twigger didn’t look frighted or mean like some of the others, but he didn’t look friendly either. His eyes kept shifting, down the shore, up the scree, back to me.

  ‘Does you think it knows what it’s saying?’ said the spider. ‘It might be just some words it learned.’

  ‘Does you think it bites?’ Ginny said, taking a step back.

  They looked like monsters but they acted just like folk. And now the dwindled male poked me in the belly with a bit of driftwood, and the face on him could have been Dolyn Craig’s. I felt my eyes narrow and my heart wither toward him.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to do something with it now, will I?’ he said. ‘Does you want me to knock its head?’

  ‘Yes, go on,’ said Ginny. ‘It’ll most probably murder us all in our sleeps.’ Her face was disgustful when she looked at me. I tried to look like the sort of person who’d never kill folk in their sleep, or any other time.

  ‘Lock it up. Send it away,’ she added, covering her nose and mouth like I smelt bad.

  I had a very bad feeling and wished the inside-voice back. In spite of its being some ghost or demon, it had told me what to do next when I couldn’t tell myself. I listened but there was no voice in there. So I listened to the voices outside instead.

  ‘There’ll be no knocking heads, Dorrin,’ said the twigger, calm. ‘Nor locking up, nor sending away.’

  ‘I think she’s really talking,’ said the hunch, smiling sweet and fresh at me. It reminded me of someone.

  ‘But she’ll bring others.’ The Ginny female looked again to the sea. ‘They’ll come in their boats like this one and then we’ll be swarming with them.’

  ‘Does anybody know you was coming?’ the twigger asked me straight.

  ‘No,’ I said, and my mouth was salt-swollen around the words. ‘There’s only me.’ I swayed a bit.

  ‘Bless it!’ said the hairy one. ‘She’s done-in.’ Tender and huge as a new parent, she bent and scooped me up like I was nothing but a wisp, and started up the scree.

  ‘I’ll be tending her while you make up your minds,’ she told them over her shoulder. ‘You may as well be done-for with a full belly,’ she said to me and laughed like it was comical. I was too swoony to protest and anyway, I couldn’t stay on the shore. Those dwindles were all for ridding themselves of strangers, and I didn’t know if the twigger and his hunch would win-out for me. Then I remembered.

  ‘Mungo—’ I said. My stomach turned, my head whirried and that was that.

  I dreamed I was walking on the reedswamp. It stretched out on every side like it had no end or beginning, and all still-waters and glimmer. I looked down at my feet and they were shod in little coracles. The cranes were all gone; there were no frogs, no bog-turtles, no salamanders. There was only me, and this angel struggling in the bog like a stuck cow. His wings were just drooping clods but his eyes were full of gembugs and when I bent to see, there was another whole world down in the water beneath him. He opened his mouth to talk and a raven flew out of it.

  I woke in a fury. My clothing was gone and I was wrapped in one of our old sheep-bags. It smelt like Pa and just for moment I was homesick for him. Until it came back to me what sort of home I’d left, that is.

  I sat up. Mungo slept by me, breathing easy. I was in a tiny snug, a cave with a grey earth floor and walls browned by turf fire. The walls had been hacked into, carved into ledges to take pots and dippers and suchlike. In the back wall, in the innermost part of the cave, they’d hollowed-out a sleeping place and that’s where I’d been put.

  The hairy one was at the hearth, bent over a pitchy kettle. She was humming as she filled dishes with something that smelt like dub-scum and garlic. Our hens huddled in a hole in the stone wall, making creaky noises and looking disgruntled. She was the Caly who was to have our fowl.

  Was this dark hole the godlings’ Blazey Hall? Where were the bright mobs? Where were the bees? Where were the fiddlers and their faery tunings?

  I considered the bony twigger towering over us all, towering over even this broad and tall Caly. I considered Caly, covered in fur, and I considered Cara the hunch.

  They weren’t gods. Not even small pitiful ones.

  They weren’t even real monsters. Not like a kraken.

  They were just that monstrous generation, still living and all grown-up out here.

  I
suppose I could have marvelled at them. I could have been glad for Lily Fell. Or I could have galled at their unnaturalness. I could have wondered how they lived out here all this long time. But I didn’t. I just about curdled at the sight of them and what they’d done to my family, and my voice came sour and bile-frothed.

  ‘Why did you tell him you were gods?’ I said.

  ‘You’re awake.’ Caly turned her beasty face to me and sounded pleased. ‘We brang your hound up. He were just about dried and salted. He drank up that whole tub, didn’t you, my cosset?’ She came and rubbed up behind his ears and he whined in his sleep.

  ‘Why would you tell him that?’ I said again. ‘You’re not a god’s arse!’

  ‘Now, now. No need to have my face off; I told nobody nothing,’ she said. ‘I doesn’t go over anymore. Drink this.’ She filled a bowl with the stinking broth and brought it to me. ‘Corrie will know. He knows most things.’

  My belly felt full of stones with the hunger in it and, though I didn’t want to give her the pleasure, I took some. It tasted better than it smelt, and I ate until it was gone. I kept a stone-eye on her all the time. Caly crossed her arms and looked content to see me eat. Then she went to the threshold and called.

  ‘She’s woke up!’

  In they came, shuffling and breathing and turning their wicker hats in their hands. The snug filled up with them. Tall or short, overly- or lack-limbed, bald or furred; whatever they were afflicted with, it surely wasn’t godliness.

  ‘Which one of you lot is Corrie?’ I said.

  The twigger stepped forward, no godling but just the bone-boy grown up into a bony-man. His hunch that was only a sluggy woman rested her chin on his shoulder. She was wrapped now in fine red wool.

  ‘He’s Mister Corr,’ she told me, neighbourly, like it was some pot-luck and we were all regular folk just meeting. The whalefish comb breached in the waves of her hair. ‘I’m Miss Cara.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ I said, bowing cold and sidewise. If she wanted to pretend nothing was going on, I could do that too. I’d been given plenty of false-faces these past years.

  ‘Your mother sends her regards,’ I added, just to see what would happen.

  She fell straight to stillness. The others muttered in offended tones. All except Corr who held up his hand to them. They shut up then, and he raised an eyebrow at me. Like he was telling me to go on.

  ‘Well — he believed you,’ I told him and Cara straight-up, the liars.

  ‘Who did?’ said Corr, sitting by me. He was quiet-spoken and you could tell he was a cool, dry man and had some sense. The others were almost panting, and the snug fogged with their gasps and temper. It was of a sudden unbearable and hot in there.

  ‘My brother of course,’ I said and the sweat trickled down my neck under my shift.

  The bony-man shook his head in a kind, regretful sort of manner. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. It pricked at me like a thousand needles under my skin.

  ‘My brother, my brother,’ I said with some force and his fine yellow hair flew back from his face in my breath. Now he just looked baffled. He pressed his thin lips together until they disappeared altogether.

  ‘Up the moaney?’ I said at last.

  ‘Ah,’ he said and jumped like a trout. ‘Wait here.’

  Taking Cara off his back, he left.

  I crossed my arms and waited.

  The monsters watched me.

  Cara was leaned against the wall in her little basket. Her smile was gone and I was glad to have wiped it from her face. Going about making fools and corpses of poor afflicted folk!

  ‘What does you mean,’ she said in a pale voice, and her lips curled around her tears. ‘Saying such things.’

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ I told her, unmoving. ‘Tears won’t change it. He believed you—’

  ‘Not that,’ she said, as Caly dabbed at her face making noises like a broody hen, and the spidery one held her whole head in her arms and rocked. Dorrin and Ginny watched me like I was something come to life, that shouldn’t have.

  ‘Her mother?’ Dorrin said. ‘What a rot-hearted child you is.’

  They all mobbed around Cara, fussing like she was wounded and I was the blade that stuck her.

  ‘All bile, see,’ said Ginny to the rest of them, smarmy and like she knew all about me.

  Cara was making little sobs and her tears came like heavy rain. I didn’t know what I’d said. I did know her mother.

  Wasn’t she wrapped in Lily Fell’s shawl that I saw set out into the sea myself? And wasn’t she the spit of Lily, with her face like a sea-pink and her hair that uncommon colour of crane-berries. And she still had all her own teeth. Everybody knows teeth run in families. She should have been happy to hear her mother still watched the sea for her.

  Some mothers wouldn’t.

  Let her weep. Let them all look at me with the faces of blame. It eased something in me to see it.

  At last Corr came back. He stooped beneath the shadowed breastsummer, and turned from the dark snug to face the bright yard. Holding onto the beam with one long white hand, he reached his other into the sunshine and murmured soft words to somebody still outside. His hand rested in the sun for a moment; and then a hand from outside gripped it and somebody stepped over the threshold. Somebody limping, somebody crooked, dragging and wheezing into the shade.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. I couldn’t help it. It just came out.

  I slipped to the back of the snug with Cara and Caly and the hens.

  ‘Grief! That’s not a what,’ Caly said. ‘That’s a who.’

  ‘It’s just Pedder and Cowel,’ said Corr, helping the creature forward. ‘This is Miss Quirk, PC. She’s from the other place.’

  And then my brother’s two-header stepped forward into the smoky light. He was a real man. A real man split at the waist.

  Or was it two men sharing a pair of legs?

  ‘Well, well,’ said one of the heads, very mannerly and proper. The other head rolled about somewhat, and the upright one gripped it by the shoulders. It made a long, hollow noise and dribbled over its chin.

  ‘Pardon my brother,’ said the talking head, wiping the spit away. ‘He’s not himself these days.’

  ‘Miss Quirk,’ said Corr. ‘The twins.’

  ‘Pedder here,’ nodded the one who was himself. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ His brother made a trill and rocked wildly on his reedy neck.

  ‘Steady there, I was just about to tell her,’ Pedder said, holding the wall to keep himself steady. ‘This is Cowel.’

  They held out two of their four hands.

  I shook them.

  Why not?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Birdangel

  ‘IS YOU REALLY THE OTHER ONE?’ asked the steady head, the one they called Pedder. ‘He said he were twinned but I can’t say we believed him. No offence meant but he were kind of downside-up. He talked of nothing but birds.’

  The unsteady head mumbled something, and Pedder raised his eyes to the roof-beams. ‘All right, all right. You did,’ he sighed. ‘But I didn’t believe him. How can a twin go walking about by itself? I mean, it’s not natural, is it? That’s not a proper twinnish attachment. That’s — well, that’s just being brothers and sisters. And I still says it, but how can a woman and a man be twinned?’

  He looked put-out at the notion.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I remembered crawling into dark caves after my brother and the feeling of his fingers gripping at me as I dragged him into the sunshine. I remembered waking when he woke, the feeling of his eyes on me in the night. I remembered him calling my name.

  ‘But we were.’

  ‘Were?’ said Pedder.

  ‘Yes,’ I said and then didn’t know how to go on. All these days I hadn’t said it. I hadn’t said the words out loud.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I told them and it was like ashes in my mouth. I swallowed.

  ‘He died,’ I said. The words dropped into
my belly.

  ‘It was me that found him,’ I said.

  It was as though he’d died again; as though I’d killed him just saying it. But there were no wide skies opening in my head. No towers or wings of cloud. There was no Faraway out here, I supposed I must be already there. I just stayed put in the snug with all their sad faces staring right at me. Staring right into me.

  ‘In the boghole,’ I finished.

  Cowell made a terrible noise and butted at Pedder’s ear with his brow.

  They sat down at Caly’s bench, they sat down hard and sudden. Cara mizzled louder, it seemed to be all she could do, and Caly and the spider went tomby quiet. There were no words in me to tell about Boson, only words that buried him deeper. I shut my gob and waited to hear what they had to say for themselves.

  ‘He followed me with questions,’ Pedder said to the snug in general. He turned to Corr and spread his hands. ‘He wanted to know who we were.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you just tell him?’ I said. It seemed a simple thing to me. ‘Don’t you know?’ I shot a look at Cara, she shrunk deep into her basket.

  ‘We doesn’t have to know who we are, just what we’re for,’ said Dorrin, very high-toned for such a low man. ‘We aren’t all samey, and prideful about it like you lot.’

  ‘I’m not samey,’ I said, somewhat insulted though I couldn’t have said why. ‘I don’t know anybody like that.’ But in my mind-eye I saw the folk at the cross that day.

  I saw those faces all the same crowing around Moo in her penitent sheet. They were all one big face; one big face cheerful it wasn’t them that stood there shamed. I saw the faces of Dolyn and the towny boys the day of the beating. Their one face all the same; one big face clenched like a fist.

  Then I saw a grog-face, a face like all grog-faces; dumb and false. A face that thinks it’s getting away with it. I saw Pa’s face looking the same as that. Dorrin saw me fail a moment on the memory of it. I detested the loathsome dwindle for giving it back to me.

  ‘So what are you for, then?’ I said to Dorrin. ‘Except thieving hens and fighting women.’