Chime. Part 35

The mirror was a dark hole until Eldric lit a candle. Our reflections stood side by side, masked but unmistakable. I'd never thought about how different we were. Tall and short; gold and pale; broad and narrow; tawny and flaxen.

"I must leave the instant the clock strikes the half hour," I said, like a twentieth-century Cinderella. Both Cinderella and I needed to keep an eye on the time. She had her slipper problems, I had my ghosts.

"I've been thinking," said the Eldric image.

"Ooh, thinking!" I said. "Shall I tell your father?"

"Very funny," said Eldric, but he was laughing. "You may be clever, Miss Larkin, but I've spotted a few holes in last night's story. Yes, even I!

"Take Rose, for example. Would Rose ever climb willingly onto a swing? Rose, who's so cautious she doesn't even toast bread without wearing gloves?"

I hadn't thought of this, but I had an answer. "We don't know what she was like before she struck her head. Perhaps she was quite the opposite."

He slipped off his mask. "Please remind me not to argue with you again." Bruises ran from the bridge of his nose into his eye, which was swollen shut.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

"It's all right. I quite enjoyed telling my story about the great brute with the powerful left hook who surprised me in the night."

"Poor Eldric!" I said. "And where did this great brute overtake you?"

"On my way to call on Leanne."

Oh! My mouth echoed my thoughts: O!

"Take off that mask, will you?"

I shook my head. What if my own Briony mask were not securely in place? Look at my lips, look at how they gave me away: O!

"And?" I said.

"I set it to rights, put her out of my life. It was rather horrible, but it's over."

The mirror Briony smiled.

Eldric tugged at the strings of my mask. "Won't you take this off? I have something to say to you, and I'd like to see your face."

What could I do but slip it off? It left me entirely exposed, my face raw as a peeled apple.

"First." Eldric tapped one index finger against the other. Tick. "Apologies for being in such a very bad humor when you visited me."

The mirror Briony had no amusing answer. She nodded.

"Two." Eldric ticked his second finger. "Do you remember the paper I burnt?"

Another nod.

"It was a letter, to you. It was that which put me in so foul a humor."

To me? The lips of the mirror Briony mouthed the words.

Eldric nodded. "It was also the secret I mentioned the other night, the secret I'll tell only one person.

"Three." Tick. "Remember what you said about marriage, during our picnic?"

Briony nodded.

"That made me upset, which made me angry.

"Four." Tick.

The candle sputtered. Eldric cupped his hand round the flame, coaxed it to life. It shone between his fingers, tracing his hand with fire.

"A person might get angry when the girl he loves says she'll never marry."

Girl he loves.

My face was raw. I cradled it in my hands. Give me a mask, any mask! I swung my hair forward.

"I'm almost out of numbers," said Eldric. "As you know, my mathematical skills are limited." He laid his fire-traced hand on the back of my neck. What was I to do? I wished I could love, how I wished!

"That's what I didn't say the other night."

I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I'd make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he'd left a handprint of melted light.

His brow was pinchy and he was paler than usual. His scar looked very pink.

The clock struck the half hour. I jumped. "I must go!"

"But the gun!" said Eldric. "What am I to do with the gun?"

"Make sure they don't hang me. I don't want to hang!"

And then I was out, into the square, where nothing had changed. The torches still burnt as before, and the toffee wrappers still glinted, and the children oohed and grabbed and ate, and the sky was still holding its breath.

28.

Unquiet Spirits The graveyard yawned with its rotting breath. My skirts fluttered past Mother's grave.

How might I summon the ghost-children? I knew no spells, poor witch that I was. Might I simply talk them out of their graves?

"Harken to me you little ones, taken by the Boggy Mun. Those were woeful days, indeed they were, and there will be many and many a woeful day to come unless you help me. Come with me, to the village, else more little bones will rot beside you."

A scuttle of rats plunged by, their tails like dirty string. I gave a little shriek, just to try it out, to see what it might be like to be a regular girl. What else might scuttle by? I had no Bible Ball, not that it would discourage a rat. It would, however, discourage an Unquiet Spirit. It was for that very reason I had no Bible Ball. I wanted the children to approach, to follow me to the square.

"Indeed, I speak to all of you who lie restless in the earth. It is All Hallows' Eve, the night you may rise from your graves and show yourselves to the living. Come! Walk with me into the village where you were born. Come! Tell your mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers-tell them it's the Boggy Mun bringing the death sickness."

The sky leaned on my shoulders, it dripped down my spine. It dripped into the graves, which were yawning now, opening their mouths around tiny caskets. The graves were open; they stank of cold.

I'd expected the world to tilt on its axis, as it had done every time I wandered into the spirit world-the skull of Death, the ghost-children. I thought that when the children answered, I'd be standing upside-down on the underside of the world, hair streaming into s.p.a.ce. Perhaps the rules were different when it was I who did the calling.

"Hold my hands, come with me. Come and tell the whole of the village that the waters must bide in the Swampsea."

Something touched me. No, not something: someone. Someone set the tip of a small finger against my own fingertip. The shock of it sizzled through my flesh.

Now another finger, and another and still another, fingers, hands, small hands, wrapping themselves round mine. Hands piled one atop the other, but still I felt them all, each sinking into the others. I could count them. The twenty-nine hands of the twenty-nine children who had heard and risen from their graves.

"Thank you." I spoke but did not look. I pa.s.sed through the cemetery gate. There were little stumbles in my walking, as though I were crossing a field of thunderbolts.

"Once upon a time," I said, "in the far reaches of the Swampsea, there lived a spirit of the bogs. The Swampfolk called it the Boggy Mun, and it had power, oh, a vast deal of power. It could be kindly, but it could be cruel. When it felt ill-used, it sent the deadly swamp cough to prey upon the people. And as is the way of things, the cough carried away the innocent and the weak: It carried away the children."

"Ah!" The ghost-children sighed like rustling leaves. "Ah!"

On I spoke, telling of the dams and the sluice gates and the pumping station; of the cough and the growing number of little graves; of the grown folks who didn't understand that it was the Boggy Mun sending the sickness.

I spoke of how I, the witch girl, came to ask the ghost-children to climb from their graves and speak the truth of the matter.

"Ah!" sighed the ghost-children. Their hands were not cold. Their hands were not warm. "Ah!"

"The ghost-children came out of the darklings, into the village, holding the witch by the hand. How the Swampfolk cried out! They were scareful and their knee-bones knocked together. The tears poured from their eyes, for whom did they see? They saw their own dear children who had died."

We drew near Hangman's Square and the darkness softened. The gallows was just steps ahead.

"And when the Swampfolk heard them, heard their very own children, they went to work at once. They tore apart the pumping station, and they opened the sluices, and the water flowed back into the swamp.

"The brave ghost-children saved the ailing babies lying in their cradles, pale as spilt milk. They saved the ailing children coughing out bits of their lungs. They saved the witch girl's ailing sister, and for that, the witch girl promised to tell the story of their bravery over and over as long as she might live."

I stopped. The ghost-children stopped. I'd never thought to climb the gallows, but this was a day for doing things I'd never thought to do. The ghost-children and I must climb the gallows so that everyone might see.

There were no stairs at the gallows' back, but I hoisted myself to waist height, clambered onto the platform. The ghost-children followed, weightless as dandelion puffs.

The Swampfolk saw us now. The barkeep stood frozen, a clutter of boiled sweets in his outstretched palm.

Boys played at hoops, a skip-rope churned. Silver toffee wrappers blew about the children's feet.

The ratcatcher dropped a bar of peanut brittle. The unmarried girls turned away from the looking gla.s.ses. They turned away, from bright hopes of future husbands, to dead brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and friends.

"The babies and the children grew well and strong, and so did Rose Larkin, thanks to the heroic ghost-children. And the babies and the children and Rose all lived out the rest of their lives in great peace and contentment."

The skip-rope girls were the last to notice. Slap-slap went the rope.

The water is high,

The water is low.

In comes the swamp cough:

Out . . . you . . . go!

Slap . . . The rope stuttered into silence, the handles clattered against the cobblestones.

How the Swampfolk stared! They stood staring in a lump, like cold potatoes. Father's mouth opened. Briony! he said, but he made no sound.

But I had the ghost-children. They formed a circle round me. They waited.

29.

A Crumpled Page "Maggie!"

"My Jess!"

"w.i.l.l.y!"

The names of dead children filled the night.

"Kevin!"

"Baby s.h.i.+rley!"

The ghost-hands slipped away; the ghost-children gathered at the gallows' edge, reaching out to flesh and blood. I saw them properly now. There was nothing horrid about them. No dripping flesh, no unspeakable ooze.