Ghostheart

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  I saw where this was going.

  ‘And those ones are you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that’s us,’ she said but she didn’t sound set to the notion. ‘Our places do not come and go. They do not have to. We do not need reminding of what we were, because we still are. We are the shape of regular people; that is, we are every shape.’

  ‘Folk are not peas, see; not even the fat, greenish ones,’ said Caly’s voice.

  ‘But where is your land? And how did you end up here?’ I couldn’t help it. I had to know what they told themselves about this rough home of theirs in the middle of changeable drags, with the Needles for guards and sea-birds for company.

  ‘We was sent away from our place,’ hummed Caly then, cheerful and contented-sounding. ‘Because we was special and they knowed it.’

  I looked at Cara who looked back at me with cold eyes. She was waiting for me to talk. I just about ate my own lips trying not to.

  ‘We was sent into the world,’ she said and watched my face close the whole time. ‘From the nor-eastern place, over the whale-road we were sent, from the last lands where everybody is like us and wholly unlike each other. We were sent to help.’ Her eyes gruntled at me like a pig at an acorn but her voice was masked. ‘Because we was special.’

  ‘I thought all the First-ones were special,’ I said, pretending I didn’t know why she looked at me like that. ‘With all their varied and perfected shapes, you know.’

  ‘Bless! It’s not the shapes that make a person special,’ Caly butted in. ‘Hasn’t you been listening?’

  ‘We were special because of what we had in us, Miss Quirk,’ said Pedder in his chapel-tones. ‘Because of what we were for.’

  ‘But what were you for?’ I asked.

  ‘For helping Dogsbody of course,’ he said.

  ‘He was all by himself,’ said Onnor. You could hear the tears just about to bust out as she thought on the aloneness of this Dogsbody.

  Cowel smacked his lips and bubbled like something at the bottom of a mudbottom hollow.

  ‘That’s right, that’s right,’ Pedder said to him. ‘He’d left the book behind.’

  ‘What book?’ I asked, but I already knew. Nobody answered me.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ said Caly’s voice. ‘Out here all lonely without even his book. It’s a lucky thing we came.’

  Cara rolled like a bolster to face me. She waited until I stopped trying to look everywhere but at her and then she let me see her doubt straight-up. It trembled in every part of her face. But she spoke in clear, clean tones.

  Like a question.

  Like an accusation.

  ‘We was sent away by them who knew best,’ she said. ‘We was sent away by our mothers.’

  And she lay back and waited.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Words

  SO I SPENT THAT NIGHT TELLING CARA.

  I told her about Carrick and the plagues of wickedness. I told her about the unseasonal weather and the sky-blackening flocks. I told her about the exiles of ghosts and the expulsion of monsters. At first, she looked like my brother when I told him birds weren’t angels, and there was no downside-up country in the bogholes or elsewhere. The only difference was there was no argumentation from Cara. She just lay there as I talked, a pale log with the grey face of bafflement on her.

  She lay like that for a long time.

  Then slow, slow she nodded, light as campion.

  ‘I always felt there was something,’ she said, and that was that.

  But she was terrible downcast by all the heartless particulars of the story. I couldn’t blame her. When I’d first heard it I couldn’t think how folk could do such things. Or how other folk survived having such things done to them; I’d been somewhat sneery with Lily Fell and all her talk of sorrow and God’s purposes. So to cheer her I told Cara about all the little coracles and their cargo of gifts.

  I said as how her mother went to the shore every evening and watched the sea for boats or signs. I said as how Lily Fell thought she heard Cara singing every evening. I said as how her mother still walked the sands and waited for her to come home, but this just made her cry again.

  So then I turned and watched the sliver-moon on the just-before-dawn sea, and I stopped talking.

  Words were dwindling to useless, I swear. You said the true words and folk fell to ruckus and tears. You held back the words and they fell to eyeing you sidewise. I could see why somebody might just give up on the whole blathering thing.

  Finding missing things turned out to be trickier than you would think, too. It took more than asking their whereabouts. Answers hid as much as they showed.

  Poor Cara looked like nothing would make sense again, and I knew just how she felt.

  This journey of mine had been no Progress at all; it’d been more like some maze. I’d found no real answer to the question of my brother, and only other questions in the answers that were given. Questions sprang from questions, and a person could go on forever asking and only get answers that led to more questing.

  From Cara’s summerbed I saw my home glow-washed at the sea’s edge. Redcliff rose flushing in the first rays. Boson still lay in that pink cliff, under a mound nobody would visit.

  Unless hawks and eagles had found him and dug him up.

  Or the wild Cronk dogs fought over him.

  Or Dolyn Craig and the others done something worse while I’d been out here looking for him, looking for an answer to him. While I’d been hunting his gods and monsters. And all the missing things.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked, loud, sudden, sitting up. Cara jumped and stopped her silent tears. ‘Who is Dogsbody?’

  ‘Dogsbody,’ said somebody close-by in the rock.

  I thought for a moment the inside-voice was back.

  It wasn’t. The voice came from outside of me. I swung my legs over the edge of the summerbed and listened.

  ‘Dogsbody,’ it said.

  Somebody was mocking me. It was probably Ginny with her two-facedness; one face like a wasp, one like a honeybee. I stuck my head out into the morning. The huddles of stones were quiet and I was alone on the ledge.

  ‘Dogs-body,’ the voice said again, from behind. I twisted to see.

  It came from just above me.

  It came from a gap in the rock.

  It came from a beak in the gap.

  ‘Hellooo my cosset,’ said the beak in heartfelt tones. Like it knew and loved me. Like it had been waiting for me. ‘Hell-ooo.’

  I slipped out of the rock to see it better.

  I saw its tail-feathers and its body, green and glad. I saw its fine scarlet collar, and the pink skin outspreading from its dark eye, like the spreading rings of light from dropping a stone into black water. And I saw its beak, curved and burly. It could’ve had your finger off. It was big as a raven and smart as an adder. You could tell.

  ‘Morning,’ the talking bird said. Without opening its beak.

  ‘Morning,’ I said back. It seemed rude not to.

  I put my hand out to it but another hand stopped mine.

  ‘Morning Miss Quirk,’ said Pedder’s voice behind me. I turned and there were the twins, pale and waking, still half sleepclad. The bird crooned a little deep in its throat.

  ‘Careful there. Only Corr touches him,’ Pedder said. ‘He’s not entirely tame.’

  I remembered the Brothers’ list of bird-demons.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Is it a demon?’ I asked, getting as close as I dared. Its colours were better than spring. ‘Is it Shax? Or one of Them?’

  Cowel laughed, just about knocking his brother’s head off.

  Pedder rocked and stumbled, then righted himself.

  That is, they righted themselves.

  When one body is split into two heads, it’s no simple matter knowing who’s rocking who, who’s righting who.

  ‘Come here, you,’ Pedder said and reached his arm around the wildness of his brother. He pulled him in tight and close. ‘He’s finding things funny
he never used to,’ he told me in a whisper like it was something indecent. ‘I doesn’t know what’s got into him.’

  Cowel wobbled hugely and gave me a wink.

  ‘Nngyaa mmbrrad bee,’ he said, yawning hugely.

  ‘I know,’ Pedder told him. ‘We’re just waiting for Corr and then we’ll go.’

  ‘But what is that bird?’ I asked again. It was as hard to get straight answers from these monsters as from any other grown person.

  ‘Oh, he’s just Dogsbody’s parrot,’ he said, like such things were common as bugs here. ‘We’ll take him back up with us.’

  The other monsters slumbered on, tidy in the rock like so much house-stuff laid out on shelves. I could hear Caly just about gravelling the rock with her snoring, and somewhere in there Ginny whined even in her sleep. The mount sulked over us and in its shade I was cold. Carrick glowed pink and white, sitting in the sea like a pearl in its shell and altogether right and lovely.

  ‘I’d like to go home now,’ I said.

  ‘Well, of course you would,’ said Pedder. ‘Wouldn’t we all?’

  ‘Where’s Mungo?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone up already.’ He stopped to steady Cowel in a terrible fit of twitches and lollops, and then Corr appeared on the upward path. He stepped like a crane. Very like. Just like. The pages of our book hung limp and wet in his hand. He came quiet, and he bowed. Not so much of a bow I’d feel scorned and wonder what he was about, just enough of a bow to know he meant it. He took the parrot onto his arm. Then he nodded to me and to the twins, and he pointed up.

  ‘I’d like to go home,’ I told him.

  ‘Mister Dogsbody is waiting,’ said Corr, like that would fix everything

  ‘Oh. Right,’ I said. ‘Did you tell him I was here?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s just waiting.’

  We started up the mount. Corr led, with the parrot, then I came with the twins following. First, we went on stony steps the mountain had managed by itself, all ragged and bare. Then further up, the steps looked to be more carved by hand and less by luck and weather. The bony-man led us along tight ways in the rock, always peakward. I soon found it unhelpful to look either up or down.

  To look upward and see the traceline of sky between the great masses of rock made me swoony. I felt the mountain bearing down, gloating over me, burying me alive. To look downward only softened my knees and stuck me to the narrow path, unable to go back or go on. I felt the pull of the fall just waiting behind me. Sometimes I had to squat down low in the gravel to steady myself. To stop the fall from taking me.

  It was best to just keep my eyes straight ahead. To just let my feet walk. To just go along with them.

  That mountain was bone-dry. There was some sharp, hard smell everywhere. It sighed from the stone, sour and stinging. Out of the innermost keeps of the cliff it breathed. By halfway up I was just about peeled and potted from the heat and the salt-breath stone. My feet kept trudging upward, my breath kept tearing in-and-out and I wondered when it would end.

  I longed for some new sort of Faraway, but it didn’t come.

  This was commonly when the inside-voice would utter something; something obvious.

  ‘Thirsty?’ said Pedder of a sudden. He turned his face to the rock.

  Corr was already sipping from the cliff with his thin lips like a spout. The parrot clicked its beak and took flight. It upcircled in a streak of green and trailing tail-feathers. It was just a bright speck in the trace of sky. Then it was gone.

  The rock-spring leaked its cold, fresh water and it was all I could manage not to skip like a child. I made handcups in its seep and drank my skinful. I’d never tasted water so strong, with that stone-salt reek all through it. But somehow that bad smell went from the rock into the water and turned into a good taste. The twins were lapping at it like beasts.

  We laid our cheeks in the seep’s slime-path and sighed.

  The sun rose to midday. It passed overhead, journeying along the gorge’s traceline of sky for a while and disappeared. It left its heat in the stone.

  Still, Corr’s legs went on without resting. He didn’t look back once. He kept his eyes upward always. Then of a sudden he turned and walked right into a sheer wall of the mountain.

  I scrambled to follow him and found hidden there a tunnel, a chimney cutting straight through the mountain and leading to its peak. Its walls were smooth, there were no grips. There wasn’t a root to hold to, or a cleft to hang from. Only a dangling vine-ladder leading upward. Corr was already away up it.

  He went deft as hoppers and almost as fast. I tilted back to see the chimney’s height, and the weight of the rock above pressed me like a cheese. I laid my hands flat on the stone to steady myself.

  ‘You go on, Miss Quirk,’ said Pedder. ‘We doesn’t go up. We has one too many heads.’

  I saw what he meant. There was only room for one head at a time up the narrow chimney. Halfway-up, it wiggled and closed in like a flue. From then on all was dim.

  I put my foot to its lowest rung and swung a moment from the ladder, hoping it would hold. Then I headed hand-over-hand into the dim chimney. I went like a rock-spider, except for the grunting. When the wiggle came I was ready for the dark passage to follow. Ready to be brave. Ready to be alone in the tight, hard place — but it didn’t come. Beyond the wiggle, the sky showed above me at the chimney’s cap. I made a beeline for that speck of sunshine.

  I could see a shaggy face at the cap. A shaggy face looking down on me. A shaggy face drooling.

  As soon as I stuck my head above the rock, Mungo was on me. He was barking and dancing. He was bowing like he does to his meat, chest low to the ground and his haunches grovelling. His beard trembled. His lips peeled back pink and quivering. He was a mess of pleasure, but no more than me.

  I was full of relief to see him, to hold his head and to see I hadn’t killed him. We fell to the ground together and wantoned about until I didn’t know what was him and what was me, what was panting and what was laughing; the breath of him, the smell of him was a cure in itself.

  We were at the topmost place of the island, on the towering peak of the monsters’ overhanging mount. Sea-winds were blustering up there. There were no more hoppers, they would have been blown away. Even the birds stayed in the lower parts. There was no place higher than this. The little fleet in the natural harbour, the monster’s ridge, Dorrin’s plots; all that lay faraway and beneath me now. The shorebirds were as dragonflies, the gravely scree and its great boulders were just black sand and marbles, and Pedder and Cowel were a black beetle hunching back down the stony ways.

  Corr waited in his quiet way until I was risen and Mungo was calm. Then he crooked his finger and beckoned. We followed him through the last tumbles of rock, all as tall as me and wind-blasted into shapes.

  By those rocks, a stand of stunted quickbeam shaded the east peak. Inside the stand, three upright stones were windbreak to a cave. Next to the cave, inside the windbreak, an oak spread itself broad and rocked in gusts.

  I passed under the quickbeams, through the three stones and into the cave. Before I could steady myself, before I was ready for him, he was there.

  The monsters’ care, their lonely Dogsbody.

  He had his back to me. He was just an old man; still tall, scrawny-shinned, short-robed and raggy at his edges. His hair fizzed all over his head and down his back in a long still-dark plait. He was leaned over a bodgey bench, only kept from tipping right over by the flatstones under its uneven edges. The parrot perched on a bough of quickbeam propped in a corner of the filth-spattered bench. The old man was likewise all a-muck, and streaked with parrot-shit. Even from where I stood I could smell him.

  His bird ruffled and made noises like a crow.

  It didn’t look hopeful, I had to confess.

  If this Dogsbody couldn’t keep himself from such messes, I didn’t see how he could help us. Pa would just have to live in his jug. Moo was just going to have to stay mute. Maybe I would have to stay her
e forever and learn to like it.

  The old man’s bench and floor were mired from countless dripping candles and a few smoky rush torches too. All-in-all I didn’t see how he could stand it in there; his lights smoked worse than a damp, stolchy turf. He was squinting right up close to his pages. Like he was reading them. But he was dipping a fine brush in-and-out a gall by his elbow. The blue that fell from his brush was like a bit of summer sky in the grey cave.

  He wasn’t reading the pages.

  He was making them.

  Like the copy-Brothers at the monkhouse.

  Then Corr moved in softly popping joints to his side, and he offered up the pages from our book. Dogsbody turned to take them, dropping lice in dirty clouds. The pages he’d been working lay on the bench and glowed. Like stars. Like hearths.

  ‘Has he come?’ the lousy one said.

  His hair was crawling on him like a living rug. In fact it was only the lice that had made it dark. Where they fell away, his hair was grey. The old man was shedding crawlers onto the pages, onto the bench, onto the floor. He was brushing them tenderly aside, like each one was precious.

  Scully Slevin’s lousy Venerable.

  Then the light was falling on his face.

  And it was the face of my mother.

  It was the spit of Moo, only a man and a great deal dirtier. It was her tall, sway-backed self, only old. It was her great curved nose, only grown right out to a dog’s muzzle. It struck me that such a nose should always be let grow right out like that. It was a noble nose. And he had her cave of fizzing hair, too, only grizzled and braided.

  Moo would never have worn her hair in braids; she hid her gruntle inside it. Before the shaving and penance, that is, when it was stuck out for everybody to see.

  Now I saw why she’d always hidden it.

  It wasn’t for prettiness.

  It wasn’t even for seemliness.

  Her nose would’ve recalled this other nose. It would’ve recalled it to the Father, to the townies and all the others. This nose that was so singular, and whose owner had caused such trouble in the monkhouse. This gruntle, this dog-nose they shared, my mother and Dogsbody.