Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  Ginny sniggered and shoved him hard. He just rocked a bit on his feet, the hard little man.

  ‘I’m for the off,’ he said, tight and cold. ‘I doesn’t have to stay here and be insulted by offlanders.’ He took a dish from Caly’s bench and stumped out into the reddened evening.

  Ginny stopped sniggering. She shot me a blaming look and followed him, calling out his name, crying and wailing Wait; wait for Me.

  Except for Cara’s sobs and the crackle of their hearth, there was quiet in the monsters’ snug. Caly passed out the scummy broth but nobody ate. I’d only been awake an hour and I’d managed to make one monster cry, and two others leave. Even Caly didn’t seem inclined to find me sweet, or bless me, anymore. Of those left only Corr would look at me, which he did now and I saw the pity there. The pity made my tears rise into my throat.

  I swallowed them.

  ‘I just want to know,’ I told him.

  He rose like a stickbug and stooped to Pedder.

  ‘You’d better tell her,’ he said, and took up his broth. ‘There’s no reason not to, now. And the rest of you’d better eat what’s put in front of you. It’s all there is.’

  The monstrous lot came to the bench and took up spoons. Pedder took a miserable mouthful, and then fed his brother. Cowel’s head lagged and dribbled somewhat. Everybody ate like their broth itself might part and spit out bad news.

  ‘Well then, here it is. But youse should all know up front that I were taken by surprise with no time to consider,’ Pedder said and looked around the bench. ‘I went to fetch the turf. It were late and dark and the same as always. I turned into the turfer’s thicket and he was just there. On the path. Looking right at us. I had to tell him something,’ he told Corr again.

  He looked to be some sort of boss, the way they all inclined to him. Corr nodded like It’s all right.

  ‘The boy looked the same as they all do. You know I can’t tell them apart.’ Cowel spluttered and bubbled something, and Pedder hung his head. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I were just coming to that. My brother said this one had a look of difference to the others, and he was right — but you know what he’s like?’ he appealed to Corr. ‘He’s never believed. He thinks they’re like us. He’d have had us knocking on their doors and dropping in if it wasn’t for me. I weren’t to know he was right about this one.’

  The brothers gloomed at each other a moment.

  ‘So anyway, the boy says Who are You, and From where did you Come and Is you the only One, and a whole bunch of other things — and I doesn’t know what to say. I were stuck there with this boy and the rest of you down in the harbour waiting for the drag, and maybe the whole other place sneaking about in the willows with their picks and blades ready for us. So I says to him Honest now, I’m Nobody and I go to leave, but he follows me. The birds said you was Coming, he tells me and he’s all spittle and thrill about it. You go Back, I says to him. But he won’t and he tells me he’s been waiting and watching since he was a child. We was in the place where the stars shine in the ground and he says these birdangels come up out of the bogholes there and flock in the trees, chatting just like folk for them as have the ears to hear such things.’

  That sounded right.

  I could just see it.

  ‘Go on, then,’ I said.

  ‘Well, these birdangels have told him everybody’s doomed who won’t listen to them about the good world waiting downside-up in the holes, and he’s fretted about his mother, who’s particular about how her angels look and talk, and about his sister, who’s stopped listening to anything but herself. Have you come for Me, he says then and that’s when I see he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything about such as we — anything about putting us in shows, or hanging us on walls in our skins. He just said something about Was time nearly Over and asked if he could come with me?’ Pedder said it like it was some sort of miracle.

  Caly stopped eating. The furred one’s face looked like Mungo when we all threw sticks at once and he didn’t know which one to go after. Onnor put her bowl down. She watched Pedder close from inside the black falls of her hair, and every one of the hands fidgeted. Even Cara stopped grizzling into her broth. For a moment she stopped breathing.

  ‘But what about—?’ said Onnor and Corr shut her up quicksmart with a flick of his fingers.

  ‘What about what?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. Sorry,’ Onnor said and her voice was just a wisp in the snug.

  ‘I saw he wouldn’t let me be until he were satisfied on the matter. So I told him we’d send him the word when it was time. That’s all,’ Pedder finished. ‘Then he thanked me and that were that.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him you were godlings?’ I said. ‘Up out of the bog?’

  Pedder shook his head and he looked drooped and mournful.

  ‘You didn’t tell him to come find you in there?’

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I were just trying to get away.’

  I just saw it then. The whole thing.

  My brother would have wandered into the skybog that night, to find a bit of star-speck to fly in, no doubt. The ravens would have been thick in the trees. The moonlight would have streaked the bodgeway and shadowed the clearing, and then he’d have seen it; the impossible creature, plainly just up out of the holes.

  Whatever they told him he’d have believed.

  That’s how he was.

  Later, he would’ve hopped tidy into the boghole, feet together and hands tight by his sides, with that look he got when he’d done something clever. I saw him all expectant of gods and angels, and instead just drowning in clod and seep. Following godlings, my brother would have jumped into that boghole himself.

  It was better than being shoved squealing into it by Dolyn’s mob, but only just. At least the last face he saw was the broad face of the sky, not the narrow face of the mob. There was a scutter at my feet and a small, rough hand patted my knee.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ sighed the spider.

  ‘Me too,’ said Pedder. ‘But I didn’t know he would go and jump in any hole.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘And, honest now, I never sent him any word,’ he added.

  ‘But then, what made him jump?’ Cara had stopped her weeping and her face was like Lily Fell’s when she pushed the little coracle into the waves. Looking through the air like the answer blew about out there.

  Of a sudden, I couldn’t stay in the snug with all our missing things about me and the hearth glowing with our own best upland spits.

  ‘Maybe he just got sick of waiting,’ I said. I left them there and went out into the light.

  I was aloft, high up on a ridge above the sea and the evening had come in soft gusts and flushing light. The ridge looked to be the only flat-land on the island, everywhere else the ground slanted away, tilting up and down, butting into itself in folds and crags. There wasn’t one stretch of easy walking anywhere. Across the water Carrick floated, lit up red and gold.

  A long time ago, before Gilpin had come, at this hour Moo would have been stoking up the hearth and having her evening pipe. Pa would have been scouring the tools, with Boson wanting to help but mostly getting in his way and being sent back to the snug to help my mother instead. I would have been picking the mealy-bugs from the greens and Boson would have taken each one outside, one-by-one, telling us they were just a sort of little, flying folk who’d gotten lost in our yard and there was no heart or sense in squashing them to a paste. A long time ago, I would have squashed one right in his face to see him squeal, and he would have and flown to Moo and she would have laughed.

  ‘You’re a proper mooncalf, you are,’ she would have told him and he would have laughed too, and butted her like a calf. ‘The pair of you do my head in.’

  By now Moo must’ve been swallowed whole by those sour mists. Gilpin must’ve dug himself to the other side of the world. Pa must be just about pickled. I couldn’t see how they’d be managing without me.

  Rising behind the monsters’ ri
dge, the mount I’d seen from the shore hung over me and made long, slow shadows spreading out toward the sea. The stony ridge was ringed by a belt of rock, piled up like beehives and each capped with yellow reedstraw. The beehive piles opened themselves like so many mouths, leading to the caves inside. Spread out below, the island lay grey and gravelled; not a trickle of wetness, just a dismal dry mass.

  You had to confess.

  They’d done well to live out here all these years, even with their night-raids on the moaney.

  I went to the edge and looked down.

  Just below, another ridge was spread green and fresh with herbs. In the middle of it sat Dorrin pulling at dead-stalks and cursing.

  From behind he reminded me of Gilpin, giving the dried-up skirrets what-for. Even his back looked a misery. He was slumping and letting fly great sighs, and I felt somewhat sorry for him. I slipped and scuttered down the bank into the greenplot, scraping every bit of me on the way. I landed just behind him bringing a small landslip with me. He leapt like a frog and struck a fighting pose; eyes wide open and mouth tight closed.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  He turned his back to me.

  ‘Why didn’t you just take the path?’ he said and I couldn’t see his face so I didn’t know how he meant it.

  ‘I didn’t see it.’ I looked about. There it was, the bottom of a path plain and clear just a few paces away.

  ‘You mean, you didn’t bother looking,’ he said. Walking to the edge of the green ridge, he looked out over the sea and watched the rock of my home lying out there. It was shimmering now in changeable light.

  ‘Why is you here, offlander?’ he said. ‘What does you want from us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I suppose I thought you’d tell me when I got here.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You thunk wrong.’

  And looking back over his shoulder at me, he jumped.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Monster

  I STOOD ON THE SHADOWING GREENPLOT ledge with the sunset sea red before me, and I thought Not Again! My insides parted in the middle and my belly surged. What was it in me that folk were forever jumping and leaving me to find them broken?

  My feet carried me to the edge of Dorrin’s greenplot and I looked down, expecting to see the angry dwindled man lying spreadeagle on the needle-rocks. Instead there he was, still living, squatting in another plot on a second ledge, above another and another. The cliff stepped down in these curving ledges, one after the other. Narrow strips of brown earth they were, all green and yellow with late herbs. Dorrin was turning the earth between his rows like nothing had happened.

  I jumped down to join him in the second plot. It was narrower even than the one above. Two steps would have taken me off the edge.

  Up close, Dorrin didn’t look angry. Now I saw him properly, he just looked fretted. As we both gloomed there, the night-shades fell entirely and Ginny came with torches. Seeing his face, she crept to my side and we stood watching at his back.

  ‘He gets like this,’ she told me, respectful. ‘He misses the other place.’

  Remembering Cara and her shock-struck tears at my mention of mothers, I stayed quiet. My words didn’t seem to mean the same here as they did back home. Every time I opened my mouth, somebody wept or left. Or jumped.

  The best thing I could do was stop talking.

  ‘Why is you here?’ she asked me then, and it wasn’t full of distrust like when Dorrin asked. It was buttery and honey-sweet.

  ‘Well, there was Boson.’ I tried to remember as clear as I could. ‘And there was that voice.’

  ‘What voice?’ said Ginny.

  ‘The inside one,’ I said, and it sounded moony said out loud like that.

  Dorrin snorted.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘You think I don’t know? But there was. It was inside, and it told me things.’

  ‘What did it tell you?’ Ginny asked, lifting her face to me. She was a whole other person to the little battling woman on the shore.

  ‘It told me to stop pelting the birds first,’ I said. ‘It told me that Pa couldn’t help. And it kept asking me what I was going to do next. When you came, it told me to follow.’

  I tried to remember what the inside-voice had really said up the moaney. It had said I should pay attention. That I should stop wasting time. And that the lost crane was no angel.

  ‘At least,’ I added. ‘I think that’s what it said.’

  ‘Who was it?’ said Ginny. ‘The voice inside.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You doesn’t know a lot of things you’ve no business not knowing,’ said Dorrin.

  ‘Well, at least I know who I am,’ I told him. Just the sound of his voice gave me the irrits, now, and I didn’t trust myself to look at his face in case I let fly and thumped it.

  ‘I do know who I is,’ he said, then, in small and pitiful tones. ‘I is Dorrin and I come from the bettermost place. Out there.’ He pointed out past the dark sea and the sliver-moon, out past the kelp forest and beyond. ‘We all does. One day we is going back.’

  ‘To Carrick?’ I said, following his pointing finger.

  ‘No.’ He spat into the greens. ‘Does we look like we belong to you lot?’

  ‘Well—’ I was stumped. The monsters did belong to Carrick. Whether they liked it or not.

  But there was no way to tell them. I didn’t want to set anybody off again.

  ‘Carrick,’ he said, like it was a curse-word. ‘I doesn’t know how you all stand it, crammed up against each other and all the same. No way of telling who anybody is. It makes me green to think on it, the way you all start off the same and just grow taller and samier. Two arms each, two legs, one head, like it was some rule, and all of you going about the same way. Like so many slugs. Human beings have no business being the spit of each other, unless they’re twinned, of course, and then they should have the decency to be properly attached so that other people can tell that’s what they are.

  ‘That whole place is infested but you’re all so prideful you probably don’t even know. Bile-sprites own your air. They’re in all your holdings, in the roofs and the outhouses. Inside the walls. Even the byres are plaguey with them, and as for your chapels and altars—’ He spat. ‘Everybody knows and that’s why we leaves you to yourselves.’

  ‘Excepting for thieving our stores,’ I said sidewise, but he heard me and came close to my face. The great vein in his neck was like a rope, and it was beating and leaping.

  ‘Well, what does you do with them stores but pile them up and gloat on them?’ he said, but I could see he was stung by what I’d said. ‘You is just asking for it. You doesn’t share like real people. All stuffed with sprite-bile, how could you? We takes what we need and no more, and why shouldn’t we? You is all wrong and don’t even know it.

  ‘Them sprites shoot about everywhere, small as seeds and stuffed with pure gall. The daytime is thick with them, none of you is free of it. If you didn’t take such pleasure in it all I’d feel sorry for you. Walking about with your earholes crawling and the green bile oozing until you can’t hear or see straight for it.’ He sat back. ‘We come at night so we don’t have to meet any of youse. You all think you is so special.’

  ‘You is not special, see,’ said Ginny, like explaining something to a small child. ‘You is just full of bile-sprites.’

  ‘I am not,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t help it,’ she said, like that would make a difference.

  ‘I do not think I’m special,’ I shouted. ‘I am a regular person.’ I nearly said Like anybody Else but then I remembered my inside-voice.

  And looking at the pair of them the words stopped in my gullet. Were these dwindles the anybody Else I meant? Of everybody I knew, who was regular anymore?

  ‘See,’ Ginny said, sly. ‘Bile-sprites.’

  ‘Well, what about you lot?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, we really is special,’ she said. ‘Specially me.’

  Dorrin r
olled his eyes skyward.

  ‘Why’s that, then?’ I asked.

  This talk of special and regular was going awry. It was a tardle of birds in my head, flying apart.

  ‘Because she doesn’t have bile-sprites,’ said Dorrin, like I was simple.

  I sat baffling a moment. Where did they get all this?

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I told them. ‘We think we’re special on account of having these sprites in our ears, but you think you’re special on account of not having them.’

  They started bristling up somewhat, but I couldn’t stop the words.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve caught them and don’t know it,’ I said. Straight-up Dorrin set to trembling, and Ginny turned into the whinging dwindle I’d met in the dunes. Some inside-part of me crowed and was glad.

  They couldn’t help me.

  Nobody here could help.

  I took a torch and turned to the downward path.

  ‘You take that back,’ Ginny said, low-toned behind me.

  ‘No,’ I said and I kept walking.

  Of a sudden there was a rattle and a thump, and she was on me.

  She was burly for such a small person and she was on my back. The surprise and burden of her threw me down the path. Her fists thumped me about the ears and head. We fell frenzying together onto the third ledge. I rolled onto my back, pinning her under me squealing in the dirt and stalks. She had my hair in her fists, just as she’d had Dorrin’s, and she was dragging it back like reins. My face stretched over its bones, it burned and stung like nettles. I reached behind to loose her grip and then I saw Dorrin overhead, just a spreadeagle shadow leaping.

  I’d never hit anybody before. The most my brother and I had done was a bit of shoving. I had no knowledge of fighting and its particulars. But it was surprising how easy it came when it had to. I didn’t care if these folk were shrunken, with hands that would fit in my mouth. I wanted to flay them both and hang their pelts by my threshold, just like Pedder said all those from Carrick wanted. My heart was full of little murders. Just the right size for these two.