Chime Read online

  “Happen I might approach Miss Rose?” said the constable.

  “Scissors are dangerous,” said Rose.

  “Danger?” said Eldric from across the room, where he and Mr. Dreary were stuffing Clayborne books into Larkin shelves.

  “I need someone to cut my papers,” said Rose. “Stepmother used to cut for me, but she’s dead.”

  “I’m just the man for a dangerous job,” said Eldric.

  “Happen I might talk to Miss Rose direct-like?” said the constable. “Tell her us needs her help to get them witches.”

  “Certainly you may,” said Father.

  Certainly, Father? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen once the constable sticks his face beneath the table? That face of his, with those saggy eyelids turned inside out and the red bits showing?

  “I don’t prefer to speak to the constable.” Rose’s breath snagged on her words and set off a spasm of coughing.

  “Hand to your mouth, Rose,” I said.

  “He’s only going to ask you a few questions,” said Father. “If you act like a grown-up girl and answer them properly, you’ll never see those witches again.”

  The constable approached the table. Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.

  When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I’d tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it.

  Rose screams on the note of B flat.

  We don’t need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork. In any event, Rose and I never played very well, despite Father’s insistence that we practice an hour a day. We’d never be like Mother, who’d played the piano beautifully, or so Father said. I sometimes wondered if Father really remembered her. Seventeen years is a long time.

  It was wonderfully restful to stand back and do nothing. I heard Father call in the reinforcements, who are named Pearl. I watched Pearl escort Rose from the room. I heard Rose scream all the way upstairs.

  The pitch of B flat has uncommon carrying power.

  Strange how her screams eased the swamp craving, just a bit. It’s like rubbing your elbow after you bump it, I suppose.

  The mighty enforcer of the law returned to his seat. Eldric had taken Rose’s place beneath the table, fidgeting with bits of paper and working the scissors. There’s little to compare between Eldric and Stepmother, except they were the only people I’d ever seen join Rose under the table. How patient Stepmother had been, her hummingbird fingers cutting the papers into bits at Rose’s direction, and those bits into smaller bits, and those smaller, and smaller still.

  There fell what a novel would call an “awkward silence,” save for the sound of Eldric chopping at the air with the scissors. I fixed my gaze on the bookshelves. Before the flood, they’d been filled with a rainbow of fairy tale books and dog-eared Latin histories and all the novels of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters (except that sniveling Anne). Now they were empty, begging hands. The flood had turned the books into bloated corpses that had to be shoveled up and hauled away in barrows.

  I used to like books and reading, but I destroyed our books in a couple of fits of witchy jealousy. Had I meant to drown our books? Had I meant to burn our books? Honestly, you’d think a witch would know what she’d meant to do. I was, after all, a great girl of seventeen when I set the library fire. But I’m not a proper witch: If I’d had a proper witchy education, I’d certainly not have burnt my hand. A proper witch would avoid that unimaginable pain, that horrible healing, that horrible itching. Sometimes my scar itches unbearably. I have to bite at it so I don’t scream.

  The constable dragged up his eye folds. His sausage eyes slid about until they landed on me, which was a greasy sort of feeling. “Us been telled you seen them witches, Miss Briony.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you see ’em close-like?” said the Reeve.

  I’d seen them close-like, all right, but what should I say? If I’d had a proper witchy education, I’d know the rules. Does one betray a fellow witch?

  The Reeve took my silence for fear. “Us knows them witches be right scareful to think on, Miss Briony. But them memories you got, they be the very things to get ’em hanged.”

  “Briony scared?” said Eldric. “I’ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.”

  It’s true: I don’t get scared; I keep my head in emergencies. People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.

  “You got memories too, Mister Eldric,” said the constable. “Didn’t there be nothing peculiar about them witches?”

  Peculiar? No, nothing peculiar, just the normal run of witchy backsides and witchy girl-parts.

  “Him an’ me,” said the Reeve, “us be sniffing round for evidence, see? The Chime Child, she do her job proper. She don’t take to hanging when there don’t be no evidence.”

  “A child?” said Mr. Clayborne.

  “It’s only a title,” said Father. “She’s rather old, really.”

  “One of the witches had red hair,” said Eldric, now lying on his stomach and crinkling the pages of the London Loudmouth. That’s what Father calls the London newspaper.

  Oh, well. There went my attempt to save my fellow witches, although I can’t say why I tried. None showed any sisterly affection.

  Was Eldric thinking of those witchy girl-parts too? Had he ever seen those bits of a girl before? Most girls would blush to think such thoughts, but when you’ve been as wicked as I, you don’t have any blushes to spare.

  What do twenty-two-year-old shaving boy-men get to see?

  “That be evidence o’ the most excellent sort.” The Reeve’s Adam’s apple strained against his neck skin, which is a thing that should be illegal. “Thank you kindly, Mister Eldric.”

  Pearl pushed through the door with a tray. We’ve had lovely teas since Pearl came to us. There’s always soft white bread, like clouds, and butter, and two kinds of jam. The sweet today was lemon cream and butter biscuits.

  I adore lemon cream!

  Pearl glanced upstairs, where Rose continued to cough and drill through the floor on the pitch of B flat.

  “Sorry, Mr. Reverend, sir,” said Pearl, “but I doesn’t got no tricks to quiet Miss Rose.”

  I did, though. I had a few Rose-calming tricks, which often as not succeeded one time out of ten. So why was I sitting here, dreaming about lemon cream? My job was to care for Rose, for nothing and no one but Rose.

  I stood, made for the door.

  “You mustn’t fret about it, Pearl,” said Father. “Rose is difficult to calm.”

  Is she, Father? Is she! How would you know? You’ve hardly seen us these three years past.

  “And Briony,” said Father, “where are you going?”

  What do you think, Father! Who do you think has been caring for a screaming Rose while you’ve been chatting to God?

  But there was no point saying anything. There never is.

  “Nowhere.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go Nowhere,” said Eldric.

  “You mustn’t leave,” said Father. “These gentlemen will have questions to put to you still.”

  Stepmother always said we didn’t have to mind Father. “He’s a good man,” she’d say, “but he doesn’t know much about girls, does he?” We let him think we were minding him, though. It was easier that way.

  She was terrifically skilled, Stepmother was: She was skilled in the art of not-minding-but-pretending. But I, witchy, tricky Briony Larkin, didn’t know what to do.

  Eldric squiggled out from beneath the table. “What if I went Nowhere and gave this to Rose?” Of a sudden, he was kneeling before me, a paper rose blooming in his hands. He’d fidgeted the rose right out of the London Loudmouth. The paper was coarse, but the rose was a miracle of ingenuity and engineering. You could look into its whorled pet
als forever, into petals within petals within petals.

  “Rose will go mad for it,” I said.

  “Yes, go on,” said Father. “Do give it to Rose.”

  “Just follow the screams,” I said. Eldric smiled at me over his shoulder.

  Another awkward silence fell, but Mr. Clayborne did what people in novels always do: He broke the silence by clearing his throat.

  “What is this Chime Child of which you spoke earlier?”

  “Who,” said the Reeve. “The Chime Child, she be a who.”

  “But a special sort of who,” said Father.

  “She be special, right enough,” said the Reeve. “The Chime Child, she don’t be no Old One, no Old One proper, but she don’t be no proper person, neither.”

  Mr. Clayborne only looked from Father to the Reeve and back again.

  “She has a foot in both worlds,” said Father. “One foot in the world of the Old Ones, the other in the human world. It would be a miscarriage of justice to try a witch without someone present who understands the Old Ones.”

  “You doesn’t need to fret none, Mr. Clayborne.” The constable worked his sloppy lips. “There don’t be no miscarriage: Us does it right an’ us does it proper. Any witch us seizes, she get a trial with the Chime Child an’ all t’other trimmings.”

  “Then us hangs her,” said the Reeve.

  “Why do you need a trial?” said Mr. Clayborne. “Can’t you tell that you’ve caught a witch if she flinches from a Bible Ball?”

  But not every witch reacts to a Bible Ball. They don’t affect me, for instance, which is convenient. Just imagine: the clergyman’s daughter, unable to touch the Bible?

  Awkward.

  “Not every Old One is susceptible to a Bible Ball,” said Father, “and in any event, even an Old One is entitled to a trial.”

  We all fell silent, and as though choreographed, so did Rose. Eldric must have succeeded with his fidget.

  It was so quiet, you could hear every little clink and tap as Pearl passed the tea things. You could hear the chimney wheeze.

  Two dollops of lemon cream for the constable; two dollops of lemon cream for the Reeve.

  You could hear a chunk of coal crack and spit; you could hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

  Two dollops of lemon cream for Mr. Clayborne; two dollops of lemon cream for Mr. Dreary.

  You could hear the swish of the door pushing past the doorjamb. You could hear Eldric’s lion feet and Rose’s tiptoe feet. Rose held the paper rose just as Eldric had, in the bowl of her hands. There was an unfamiliar softness to her face, as though she might smile.

  Two dollops of lemon cream for Rose; two dollops of lemon cream for Eldric.

  “I want Briony to read to me,” said Rose.

  Three dollops of lemon cream for Briony!

  “I want Briony to read to me,” said Rose, spreading her skirts on the carpet, just as Stepmother had always done, except that Rose’s were white and Stepmother’s were always the colors of the sea. It was surprising how entirely at home Stepmother had looked, sitting beneath the table, following Rose’s instructions. But it was not at all surprising how not-at-home I had felt, watching Stepmother with Rose, watching Stepmother’s infinite patience as she cut the papers to slices, to slivers, to splinters.

  It was jealousy, of course. Jealousy makes you feel small as a splinter. Jealousy makes you feel empty, makes you want to reach for the Brownie. But the Brownie’s bit of carpet was empty, save for biscuit crumbs and a bit of coal-sputter.

  Eldric took his tea on the floor. He did look comfortable, leaning against the wall, and when he smiled, he reminded me of Stepmother. She often smiled when she worked with Rose. She had a great flash of a smile; it echoed her pearls and foaming lace.

  But Mr. Dreary chose the chair next to me. He was too starchy for the floor. He was unlike Eldric in every way, including the depressing whiff of tinned soup—of which, I neglected to mention, Eldric does not smell.

  “Here be the properest thing to do,” said the constable. “If Miss Briony an’ Mister Eldric will be so kind as to take the Reeve an’ me, us’ll examine where them witches was.”

  Not I! Hadn’t I sworn yesterday I’d never leave Rose alone, not even twenty feet’s worth of alone?

  “I’d be glad of a walk,” said Mr. Dreary, stretching his puffy little legs. He was from America and had a most peculiar way of speaking.

  “A walk!” Eldric jumped to his feet, the very picture of a wild boy, pouncing and bouncing with his long, curling lion’s smile. “A walk is so . . . so healthy!” He was ready for another swampy adventure filled with danger and naked backsides.

  “I want Briony to read to me.”

  “But Rose,” I said, although I knew it would do no good, “don’t you remember the library fire?”

  Rose did.

  “What happened to our books?”

  “Your stories, do you mean?” said Rose, ever precise.

  “Yes, my stories.” Rose was right. Ever since the flood last year, the library held only the stories I’d written. I hardly remember that time, though. That’s when I’d fallen so ill, when I was winding down.

  “I like the stories where I’m a hero,” said Rose.

  “What happened to my stories?” I said.

  “They burnt,” said Rose.

  “Am I then able to read them to you?”

  “Stories?” said Eldric.

  “No,” said Rose. “I liked the stories where I’m a hero.” She gave her little pre-cough sound.

  “Hand to your mouth, Rose,” I said.

  “What stories?” said Eldric.

  “Foolish stories about me and Rose.” And the Old Ones. I’d always been writing the stories of the Old Ones. “I’m too old for them now. I’m glad they burnt.”

  I was, too. Sometimes I wonder if I called up the library fire simply in order to destroy them.

  “I wish my book had burnt in the fire,” said Rose, which is what she’d taken to saying whenever the subject of the library fire arose.

  “A book you wrote?” said Eldric.

  Rose shook her head.

  “Who did, then?”

  “It’s a secret.” Rose was full of secrets.

  Mr. Clayborne’s voice rose, and so did Mr. Dreary’s peculiar accent. Mr. Dreary didn’t want to carry a Bible Ball into the swamp. He didn’t believe in the Old Ones.

  “I must insist,” said Mr. Clayborne. “How can it hurt? It’s no more than a bit of paper scribbled with a Bible verse.”

  “I’d feel foolish,” said Mr. Dreary.

  “It don’t matter if you feels a fool or if you doesn’t,” said the Reeve. “Them Old Ones, they be real as real, an’ don’t it be better to feel foolish than to feel dead?”

  “The Old Ones are dangerous,” said Eldric, his eyes sparkling whiter than white. “There’s the Dead Hand, who will rip your hand off. There are the Wykes, who will lure you into the bogs. There’s the Dark Muse, who will suck away your spirit.”

  “I’m glad to see,” said Mr. Clayborne, “that my son is capable of acquiring and retaining at least some information.”

  “If there’s enough blood and wickedness,” said Eldric. “I stopped in at the Alehouse this afternoon, which is better than any library. I am absolutely stuffed with information. Do you know there exists a person who’s only half of an Old One? Something like that, anyway.”

  “The Chime Child was born at the Mirk and Midnight Hour,” said Rose, who was dotty about birthdays.

  “The Mirk and Midnight Hour,” said Eldric. “Lovely. I wish I’d been born then.”

  “I prefer that you not be born then,” said Rose.

  “I shall accede to your wishes,” said Eldric.

  “Mightn’t it be better if you postponed your trip into the swamp?” said Father. “It will be dark soon.” Father would think of that, wouldn’t he? Didn’t he ever get sick of living with himself, of being so—so prudent?

  “But I don’t want to
miss the Boggy Mun,” said Eldric. “Not the king of the swamp! See how much I know, Father. Isn’t that every bit as good as memorizing the kings and queens of England?”

  “I hears you, Mr. Reverend, sir,” said the constable. “But evidence, it be right fragile. It might to be blown away, an’ that were a woeful thing.”

  “Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.”

  I had to bite back my laugh before I could speak. “I’m sorry, but I cannot accompany the constable.”

  “Why ever not?” said Father.

  What could I say now? I couldn’t tell him I’d promised Stepmother never again to enter the swamp. I couldn’t tell him that Briony and the swamp, together, are deadly.

  How did Stepmother manage to ignore Father so neatly, with him never realizing for a second?

  It was then that the plates of the earth shifted beneath me. Gravity reversed itself and ran uphill. I tasted lightning. I was falling, falling up into witchiness.

  A skull sat on Mr. Dreary’s shoulder. It stared at me as though we were acquainted, which we were. We’d met once, but I couldn’t think where.

  The eyes of the skull were black holes held into place by bone. They were no more than holes, but they recognized me. The skull worked its jaw back and forth.

  When a person has already seen Death—seen it once, at least—you’d think she’d remember whose shoulder it had been sitting on. But this particular person did not. She only knew that that person had died.

  She knew that Mr. Dreary was soon to die.

  How could I have forgotten who it was? I rarely forget the little things, much less the big ones. Perhaps I’d seen Death during the last months of Stepmother’s life, when I was ill and foggy. I remember little from that time.

  Death must have perched on Stepmother’s shoulder when she was fading out of life, but I hadn’t seen it then, of course. No, not Briony, the girl who let her stepmother die alone.

  Death had no lips, but it was smiling.

  No one else could see it, not Eldric, not Father, not Mr. Dreary himself. Just me, Briony, third-class witch. I’d promised Stepmother not to leave Rose. I’d promised her never again to venture into the swamp.