Breath (9781439132227) (11 page)

“Ah, who cares, anyway?” says Bertram. “We've got important things to dwell on.”

Let it go, Father
, I am thinking.
Listen to Bertram
. I squeeze the girl's hand.

She doesn't look at me. She says nothing. Her arm is limp.

The others go on about their business. It's happening. They're really letting her stay.

And she's my charge.

Oh, Lord, let me not be like the people the piper spoke so bitterly about that day in the woods: let me deserve this child.

My knees feel weak. It's just as well; I kneel so that my shoulder is at the girl's eye level. She looks at Kuh and blinks. Her lips form a perfect circle. I know she breathes “Ooooh,” even if she makes no noise.

The world changes quietly.

We're pouring beer from barrels into jugs and sealing them good with wood pegs. The six of us work together while Ava perches on a bench watching, Kuh in her lap. Ava and I won't get to drink it, of course, but the rest of us are growing happy at the very idea of the beer. And the smell of it alone makes me a little tipsy. We laugh, as though this is the start of a beer festival like any other, in any other year.

Only it's totally different. Laughing these days feels like blasphemy. But even in the face of illness it should be no sin to recognize little pleasures. We should be allowed that much. We have to be allowed that much. Our laughing becomes almost defiant.

The beer smells clean and strong—just like it should. We still haven't used this year's grain harvest for our bread; we're giving the fresh grain to the animals. But we had to use fresh grain for this beer. There was no other way—there simply wasn't enough of last year's grain left to make a whole year's worth of beer and still have old grain for bread for all the farm families. Besides, the animals are dying in spite of the new grain. And the monasteries are using fresh grain for their beer. Yesterday the monastery pub started serving this year's beer from fresh grain. So no one will buy our beer if it isn't as tasty as theirs.

We finish the job and put the beer jugs on the wagon. We'll drive them to market tomorrow. Our beer is so loved that it'll all go in one day. It always does.

The beer for home consumption remains in barrels in the cellar beside the piles and piles of apples. There's plenty left for our family and for any festivals we want to contribute to.

Then we sit down to the evening meal. Soup of so many different vegetables I can't even guess at them all. Großmutter chopped them alone when she took a break from the beer work, but I stayed with my brothers and Father, working hard, and Ava stayed with us too. She never leaves me.

After the soup there's pears, then the fresh beer and darkest bread. Großmutter has been adding extra molasses to the bread dough. She says it's to cover the musty taste of the old grain, but I heard her ask Ava if she liked molasses, so I know better. Ava wouldn't eat the bread before, but she gobbles it down now.

Ava and I drink cider. It's cool and sweet. She sits on my lap at the table, and I lean out to the side so I can smile at my girl child. She never smiles back, but she looks at me now. She has a steady, soft gaze. Her face is framed in wispy, light brown hair. It's clean now—I saw to that. It amazes me how easily she fit into our lives. At first I worried about her all the time—about what a responsibility I'd taken on. But now she's a given, like a shadow, always there but never in the way. Or not a shadow—a little flicker of candlelight following me around like a benevolent spirit. The smell of her makes me feel good.

For the first time in so long the conversation is about something other than the rat disease that ravages our animals and the townsfolk. We talk about beer. Father says this is the most delicious beer he's ever had. He wipes the grain hulls from his teeth, then licks them off his finger and chews
them. The boys do the same. With new beer the hulls have the consistency of cooked nuts. That's what they say, at least. No one uses straws till the beer is at least a month old and the hulls have become soggy mash.

Ava's sad that the others aren't using straws anymore. But she and I still use them. She takes our used straws and sets them carefully on a shelf. In the morning she'll sit outside in the grass and weave them into pentagrams. She makes a whole goblin cross with just one straw, the most delicate cross imaginable.

They go into the common room, Father and my brothers. Großmutter stays behind in the kitchen, at the table. When I ask her to come, she waves me away, mumbling something I can't quite catch. So I take Ava by the hand and we go into the common room without her.

Summer nights are a memory now; autumn chills the air. Bertram lights a fire in the warming oven.

“Do you see that?” says Melis. He points.

I look. There's nothing there. “The fire, you mean?”

He smiles. “Do you see the yellow and orange and red and blue?”

“Sure.”

“Do you see all the colors?” He sits on the floor and looks at the fire intensely. “All of them. All those colors. Even you, even you, Salz, with all the numbers in your head, even you couldn't count them.”

I remember the piper in the woods saying I couldn't count the boats in the Bremen harbor. I look again at the fire. It's an ordinary fire. I pull Ava closer to me.

“Do you see how sharp they are?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Melis. The fire's like it always is.”

“No, it's not. Are you blind? Look. Look at the colors.”

Ludolf laughs. “I can see it even with my eyes closed.” And his eyes are closed. He stands like a post, both arms hanging close against his sides. “Blue, blue, blue.”

They're playing a game with me. I don't get the point of it, unless the point is just to leave me out. They've left me out even more than usual since Ava came. The way they've been acting, you'd think they were jealous. But they don't even talk to Ava; to them she isn't here. So it's no wonder she pays them no attention either. Sometimes she's so noiseless I get the sense that no one really sees her except
Großmutter and me. And maybe that's not bad, for I believe she enjoys being invisible. She never looks more calm than when she's in the midst of hustle and bustle with no one giving her the least heed.

I look at Bertram, sitting in a chair. He's not part of the game, which surprises me, since he's usually the first one to leave me out. Father's sitting too, but he's leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees. He looks annoyed. Maybe he'll put a stop to this idiotic talk.

“Knife tongues,” says Melis. His words slur a little.

“Speak right,” I say. “I know you're not drunk. You had only two mugs.”

“Knnnniiiiifffffe,” says Melis. His face has changed. It's flattened somehow. He seems to be in a trance. Really. I've seen it before; our coven's supreme head sometimes goes into a trance when he's chanting. If Melis is faking, he's faking good.

“Knife tongues,” says Ludolf. He laughs. His eyes are still closed. “Blue knife tongues.” He falls onto his knees, and I know that must have hurt, but he doesn't flinch and he still doesn't open his eyes. He sinks back on his bottom, with his legs all cock-eyed. He leans on one hand and stretches his neck toward the fire. “Blue.”

Ava pulls on my hand. That's her signal that she
wants to be picked up. She has to be around four years old, so no one should hold her anymore. But she likes it. And my arms are strong. I lift her now.

“Red, too,” says Melis. He keeps his eyes on the fire as he changes position till he's lying on his belly. He moves extra slow.

“Blue,” says Ludolf. “Blue music.”

Annoyance makes the back of my neck burn. They shouldn't make fun of me with Ava watching. I wrap my arms around her and squat in front of Melis. “This is the worst drivel I've ever heard.”

“Get out of the way. Whatever your name is.”

“You know me,” I say.

“Of course I knnnoooow you. You're my brrrrrother.” Melis's words get more and more slurred. “You're the sick one. I knnnoooow you. I just don't remember your name. Or the name of that burrrrr that sticks to your side—that weed. Move. Both of you. I want the colors.”

I stand and walk away. Ava twists in my arms, looking back at Melis.

Bertram gets up from the chair. He goes straight to the fire and swipes a hand through it.

“What are you doing?” I shout.

He reaches both hands now. He holds them there. And he screams.

I set Ava down and pull him back quick. “Are you crazy?”

He pushes me off him and screams from pain the instant his hands touch me.

“What'd you go and do that for?” I say. “You've ruined yourself.”

He looks at his bright red hands. They blister already. He's laughing. And Ludolf laughs, eyes still shut. Melis's eyes are on the fire, unchanged; to him nothing happened.

Ava's cheeks are tear streaked, but she makes no sound. I gesture for her to go upstairs. She doesn't move; she's never gone upstairs without me before.

I look at Father. He should be smacking Bertram on the back of the head for doing such a stupid thing. Bertram will be good for nothing until his hands heal.

But Father's standing now, splay legged, staring at the wall. “Don't you come at me,” he says to no one. “Don't you dare. It's what I had to do.” He grabs a fire poker and shakes it threateningly at the wall. “Stay back, I said.”

Who's he talking to? “Father.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

He spins around and cracks me on the head with the poker.

Someone screams high and sharp.

I fall to my knees and wrap my arms around my aching head. Blood drips on the floor. My hair is sticky wet. I want to grab Ava; we should run before he swings again.

He's already swinging, though. This time at the wall. He's smashing the poker over and over against the timber.

My brothers are watching, their faces blank.

Großmutter stands in the kitchen. She's watching too. And she's swaying, with a silly smile on her face. A smile.

I don't know what's going on. My family's possessed. What ghost has come to punish us? I have to get that poker out of Father's hand.

Ava's in the corner, whimpering and clutching Kuh. “Go upstairs,” I hiss at her, and I grab a goblin cross from above the door and run outside for rocks, looking over my shoulder and every which way for the ghost. I hold the cross high in one hand so evil spirits can see it. When I come back, Father's still beating at the wall. “Stand still,” I shout.

And he does. He actually obeys me.

I throw a rock hard at his hand.

“Aiee!” He drops the poker. Then he looks at me
with such confusion I think he might cry. Only he doesn't. He comes rushing at me.

I throw a rock at his forehead. He falls, unconscious.

Every part of me shakes. I felled my own father.

Ludolf and Melis are lying on the floor, eyes closed, making little noises. Großmutter has sunk into a heap on the floor as well. She's laughing softly to herself, her chin on her chest.

Bertram's the only one who looks at me. Bertram and Ava, who still crouches in the corner. They're the only ones who saw.

I felled my own father.

What will he do when he rises?

Bertram holds his hands out in front of him. “Mother loved me. That's the truth. And Johannah loves me. That's the truth.”

His words don't reproach me. He's not even thinking about what I did. The sight didn't register on his eyes. He doesn't know.

Tears stream down his face. “They're the only ones.”

“We all love you, Bertram,” I say. I would go to him, put my arms around him, cling for the comfort we both need now, but for the fear that he'd beat me.

“No.” His voice cracks. “They're gone.”

“Johannah's going to get better,” I say, hugging myself. Immediately I wish I hadn't said it. I don't know if she'll ever get well. “I'm sorry,” I whisper, as much to Father as to Bertram.

He screams as his tears sear his blistered hands.

I don't know how to make Großmutter's poultice for burns. But I can fetch cool water. And I have to do something—I can't just stand here afraid of everything. I take the bucket and run outside again, swinging the goblin cross over my head and saying loudly, “Stay at bay, evil spirit. Stay at bay.” I fill the bucket at the little brook and run back to the house, shouting at the spirit the whole way.

Bertram is on the floor sobbing.

I set the bucket beside him. “Put your hands in here.”

He flops his arms into the bucket with such force the bucket knocks over. He screams from pain. His pants are soaked now. He vomits all over himself.

There's no choice. I run to the brook and fill the bucket again. It's a miracle no spirit nabs me. This is the third time I've tempted it.

But what a stupid way to think. If there's a ghost, it's in the house, not outside.

By the time I get back, Bertram is asleep. I lug
him across the floor to a corner and prop him up. Then I put both his hands in the bucket of cool water. I don't even know if this is the right thing to do.

The common room stinks of vomit.

And Melis and Ludolf are still making little noises.

I stand in the middle of the room and watch over them. It's pointless because there's nothing I can do against this ghost. But I stand there anyway till I'm sure they're all asleep.

I gather Ava into my arms, for she, too, has fallen asleep, and climb the stairs to bed, my head wound thumping with each step. My skull wants to split from this thumping. I stare into the black, a rock clutched in each fist, Ava and Kuh breathing steady on my chest. Sweat pools under me.

Miracles exist.
Miraculum
, indeed, for in the morning none of them remembers the night before. Or none of them admits to remembering. And Ava doesn't talk. Whatever ghost swept through, it's gone now. We mutter prayers that it won't come back.