Chime (30 page)

I raised my hand to knock at Eldric’s door. Go on, Briony; don’t be a coward. You have to talk to him again about Leanne.

Go on, knock!

But the door was unsmiling, and Eldric might be too. He’d been gloomy this morning at breakfast, stabbing at his kippers, telling Mr. Thorpe he was too ill for lessons.

I knocked.

The door swung inward, Eldric’s head poked round. “Why, it’s never Briony Larkin!” His face was a blank.

“It’s not
never
her.” Why had I come? But here I was, and there he was, swinging the door wider, beckoning me inside.

How dark he kept the little room. He’d only a fire at the hearth, and the afternoon was drawing in.

“Not never, perhaps,” said Eldric. “But seldom.”

He sounded like Cecil, master of indirection, forever entering by the exit door and slipping backward through the looking glass.

Why did I care if I was talking to Eldric or Cecil? Aren’t men fungible? Won’t one work as well as another?

“Not very tidy, I’m afraid.”

Eldric had transformed the sewing room with a new approach to housekeeping. The bed was unmade, he’d slung his shirt and vest over the back of a chair. He kicked aside a shoe as he ushered me in, sat me by the fire.

“We can’t have you sitting on the bed, can we?” He sat on the bed himself. “Not on the bed of a notorious bad boy.”

There was one difference between Eldric and Cecil, a difference peculiar to Briony Larkin, and that was lust. I lusted after Eldric; I shuddered away from Cecil.

I didn’t sit. On a nearby table lay a half-written letter and a blotter, sopping up a leaky pen. “I’ll come back. I’ve caught you in the middle of something.”

Eldric sprang from the bed. “What an idiot!” He snatched at the paper, flung it into the fire. The flames blew bright and hot. Black lips crunched across the paper; the words crumbled into ash.

“What was that?” I said.

“If I wanted anyone to know,” said Eldric, “I wouldn’t have burnt it, now would I?”

“I thought members of the Fraternitus were not to keep secrets from each other.”

But lust is just a matter of chemistry. It’s just that Briony molecules and Eldric molecules have a bit that hooks together.

He said nothing; I turned round. “I’ll come back.”

And it’s just that Cecil molecules have no Briony-molecule hooks.

“Don’t go!” Eldric grabbed my shoulder. “I’m in a foul temper, I know, but do stay!”

I hated this. It snapped at bits of my insides as though they were elastic. “I’d like to be able to say I’ll make it quick—isn’t that what characters always say in books? But I’ve rather a lot to bring up.”

“Fire away.” Eldric pushed at my shoulder. I sank into the chair.

“I did, actually, want to speak to you about firing away,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll start with that.”

Eldric leaned past me and touched a candle to the fire. Why couldn’t he just sit down!

“Do you have a gun?”

He whistled a few hollow notes, then drew the candle toward my face. “No, but I can get one.”

I blinked back the light. “Can you shoot?”

“Tolerably well.”

“Would you take that candle away? I look just the same as ever.”

He’d seen it all before: the corn-silk hair, the Dresden-shepherdess face, the black eyes—iris, pupil, lashes.

He backed away. “What would you want me to do with this hypothetical gun?”

“Bring it to the Feast of the Dead, on Halloween night.”

“And then?”

“I’ll tell you on Halloween. But the real reason I came is that I have to talk to you about Leanne.”

“I’ve had enough of her for a lifetime,” said Eldric.

“You have?”

“Once I leave her sphere, I find I don’t much like her. But I told you that. You were right, as always: I was under her spell.”

“You rejected her?”

“I will.”

“Then there’s something else I have to tell you. A Dark Muse can only feed on one man at a time. If she’s rejected by him, she can only feed on a blood relative.”

“My father?” said Eldric.

“You have to warn him.”

“I still don’t believe Leanne’s a Dark Muse,” said Eldric. “And listen here: You say the Dark Muse feeds on artistic energy. But I’m no artist.”

“Leanne thought you were,” I said. “She liked the way you’re always creating something from nothing.”

“And once I reject her she can’t eat?” said Eldric. “I mean, feed?”

“Unless she gets to your father, she’ll dwindle and die.”

“Dwindle and die, just as I was doing? Not that I believe any of this, you understand.”

I paused. “Not exactly like you. You’d have gone mad first, but when you died your soul would have lived on. But a Dark Muse has no soul. When she dies, she’ll turn to dust and blow about for all eternity.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about Halloween, when I would reveal what I really was. I’d turn witchy in front of everyone, in front of Eldric. I couldn’t stop thinking of how his fingers would go stiff, how the light would leave his eyes. How he’d say,
Why didn’t you tell me?

“I’ve been wanting to tell you something for a long time.”

“So have I,” said Eldric. “What’s yours?”

“You first,” I said.

“Guests first, my father always says.”

“I’m not a guest.”

“Girls first, then,” said Eldric.

“Mine is not an easy thing to say.”

“Mine’s harder,” said Eldric. But he smiled for the first time that night.

I’d promised Stepmother never to tell. My tongue curled over on itself, protecting its soft belly. But the alternative was worse: Eldric finding out along with everyone else, and I, never knowing what he thought, going into the future, never knowing.

There came a swallowing-up kind of silence. “I’m a witch.”

There, it was done. I’d ruined everything.
Snap!
went my elastic insides.

“You don’t look like a witch.”

I wished I could see his face better.

“Witches don’t look like anything. Witches are. Witches do.”

It was so quiet, I heard the candlewick collapse. The flame turned into a blue corpse of itself. I watched it struggle. I watched it drown in its own spit.

The dark blot of Eldric came at me.

“Prove it. Prove you’re a witch!”

There we stood, fire snapping at my wicked left hand, the tumble of Eldric’s underthings grinning at my virtuous right.

“Prove it!”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I need proof,” said Eldric. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

My spit turned to powdered glass.

“If you were a game,” said Eldric, “you’d be a puzzle. If you were a piece of writing, you’d be a code.”

“But I can’t prove it.” I snapped my fingers. “Not just like that!”

“Can’t you? How peculiar!” Eldric laughed, a horrid splat of a laugh. “Show me the most wicked thing you can do.”

How dare he be angry!

I’d walked my own anger on a leash all these years, but it was always just a spark away. I’d work myself into a rhapsody of witchiness. I’d spark into fire.

Fire!

I thought about fire. I thought of the library—the burst of flame, my hand, the smell of burning flesh.

There came no fire.

I thought of the piano burning, crashing to its knees, like a camel. I thought of all my stories. How long it had taken me to write them, how quickly they had burnt.

There came no fire.

“You can’t prove it.” Eldric’s eyes were hollows of darkness.

The taste of sulfur clawed at my throat. Let my words strike sparks!

Nothing. I needed the Brownie to explode my powers into sparks. I needed Mucky Face.

There we stood, on the divide of dark and more dark. Eldric pressed his cheek into my silence.

“I’ll tell you something that will make you believe,” I said. “Have you never wondered how Rose got to be the way she is?”

I’d never told anyone about Rose.

“I did it myself, with witchcraft.”

I’d never thought to say those words.

“I don’t believe you,” said Eldric.

“I meant to hurt her. It’s only hatred. A Dark Muse feeds on artistry. A witch feeds on hatred. Hatred is easy.”

“But you love Rose!” said Eldric. “I know you do.”

Quiet, Briony. Don’t say any more. Don’t tell him you don’t love anyone.

“Then prove you hurt Rose,” said Eldric.

I shrugged. “I remember lots of it. I remember Rose falling from the swing and screaming. Stepmother told me the things I can’t remember.”

“Damn your stepmother! Maybe she’s the witch.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” I shoved him in the chest, hard as I could.

That had no effect, except that he clamped his hands on my shoulders.

“Have you been drinking?” I said.

“No, but that’s quite a good idea. Listen, I don’t understand why you adore your stepmother so. And since we’ve been speaking of feeding, I have to say that she seems to have done nothing but feed off of you. I can’t stand it when I think of her lying in bed all that time, letting you neglect your education, letting you wait on her.”

“I’m the one who injured her spine,” I said. “Just in case that changes your mind.”

“I don’t believe that, either.”

“You don’t need to believe it for it to be so. I called upon Mucky Face to smash her. She’d have died of it eventually, had the arsenic not come first.”

“Mucky Face, the creature we saw from the bridge?”

“The very same.”

“You may be mad,” said Eldric, “but you’re no murderer.” He ground at my shoulder bones.

“That hurts.”

He let go at once. “Sometimes I want to squeeze something from you.” He wrung his hands. “Squeeeeze, like that.” He squeezed his knuckles white.

The fire burnt low, muttering and tossing and closing its eyes.

“How stupid I am,” he said. “I need to remember that if I squeeze, you’ll only break.”

But he kept squeezing his own hands, squeezing until one of his bones cried out.

I couldn’t speak, but then, I never do speak. Not really. I’m always wearing my mask. The underneath Briony is stuck in her own silence.

Someday, silence will make me explode!

Out went my fist, back went Eldric, onto the bed. He held his face in his two palms. Blood leaked between his fingers.

Pretty girl love!
The Bleeding Hearts’ voices chimed in my head.

Eldric pinched the bridge of his nose. His shoulders—how they shook!

The Bleeding Hearts had come close to the truth; they couldn’t have known I’m incapable of love.
Lust pretty boy!

I sat on the bed beside Eldric, put my hand on his shoulder. “I have a handkerchief.” He peeled his hands from his face.

He was laughing.

Be honest now, Briony. You hit a person and he laughs? That is adorable.

“Well done!” Eldric spoke through my handkerchief. “If you’d done that with Cecil, he wouldn’t have had a chance.” He caught at my fist, wrapped it in his bloody palm. “You used your left hand!”

“It’s my wicked hand. My witch hand.”

I could almost see him thinking about this, how quickly I’d adapted to using my left hand, how clumsy I’d always been with my right.

“You really do believe you’re a witch!” Eldric uncurled my fingers, exposing the scribble of scars.

“Why would I lie about that?”

“To get rid of me?” said Eldric.

My hand was red with Eldric’s blood. I drew it to my chest.

“What had you been going to tell me?” I said, but I was already backing away from him, pushing at the swinging door. I mustn’t get too near. What if I threw myself at him, just as I had when I was tipsy?

Eldric shook his head. “Another time, perhaps.”

I was backing away, and I’d keep on too. After Halloween, I’d back away into the swamp, and if I managed to make it to London without being caught, I’d never see him again.

It’s just lust, Briony. There’ll be plenty of men in London for you to lust. But don’t punch them in the nose, because odds are, they won’t laugh.

The Halloween sky was a splash of pea soup. The sky held its breath, waiting for rain. I stood in the square, voices muttering and crackling all about like dying coals. Everyone was waiting.

“Now!” cried the mayor. The bonfire leapt into life. Torches burst into flame, illuminating stalls with beaded canopies, baskets spilling with brandy snaps and licorice and butterscotch. Figures in beaded masks, passing platters of crystallized ginger, gooseberry tarts, floury buns. And scattered everywhere was toffee: Toffee wrapped in silver paper; heaps and piles and mounds of toffee; silver paper glittering like mountains of ice.

“Ooh!” said the children.

“Ooh!” said the grown folks.

“Ooh!” said Briony.

You couldn’t avoid your reflection. Mirrors hung in every twist and turn of the stalls. They caught at their own reflections too, doubling and tripling and reflecting themselves into infinity.

Despite the half-masks, I recognized most of the villagers. Who could mistake the constable’s sloppy lips, the Reeve’s plucked-chicken skin? Who could mistake a mane of tawny hair and long lion muscles?

The mask turned toward me. The eye-holes glittered; the head tilted into a question mark; the gloved hand beckoned. C
ome with me!
The lion muscles pounced into one of the stalls, disappeared into a shadowed recess.

I followed, past the mirrors that showed their faces to the public, toward the hidden mirrors at the back. Some girls wanted their privacy, for it was said that on Halloween night, an image of the man they were to marry would emerge in the looking glass beside their own reflections.