Ghostheart (15 page)

They’d wait for me and Pa to pass through the thickets back from the cut. They’d wait until we were safe away at home. Then they’d come up into our world, falling up through the mud. They came dirty and starving, and in secret. It was his deepest secret. But he told me anyway, because I was his sister and his twin.

‘That’s the other world down in there, Fer,’ he’d said to me, going home through the skybog after the beating. He was holding my hand and he was happy just to think on it. ‘There’s those in there worse off than me! They wear their monsters right on the outside of them. They can’t go about in the light at all.’

He had leaned close to me and his eyes were cheerful in his bruised head. ‘They’ve got two heads, you know. One for now, one for later.’

I should have known what would happen to him if I let it, but I was too busy pretending. We all were.

Pa was busy pretending Boson wasn’t really so distempered. Moo was pretending that he was brimming with angels and then later, when he was plainly not, she pretended it was demons. Old Shambles, Lily Fell and the followers were pretending he was their lost one returned.

I’d been too busy pretending not to know the sort of country we lived in, and the sort of folk living in it. They would drive just about everybody away, one way or the other. My brother was all of the things people thought should be put in a boat and sent away.

He was special.

Two years ago he’d been mobbed by angels in the outlands of his own mind, and wrestled there into some corner. He couldn’t come home then; he’d had to stay there. I don’t know why. Since then I’d had no brother, no twin. Only a face that looked like mine looking back at me with those eyes like the skybog ravens. Eyes busy pretending to be a person.

Two years ago his mind and body split and started walking a twofold path. I could tether him to the bed at night, follow him around the reedswamps, lead him home from the towns, force his meal down his gullet, hold him while he howled to go home, bathe his wounds, but in the end his body and mind were only gathered together again down among the stars. In the mud.

My heart twisted and I wanted to fight somebody.

Where was that inside-voice when you needed it?

Mungo twitched hugely in his Swoon.

I didn’t know what I’d been pretending to let us float out into open water, with not a notion between us of sea-going and its particulars. It was all very well to talk lightly of lying down and dying of things, when Mungo’s big trusting head was snugged and still warm in my lap. He was dying from lack of water, not lack of sense like my brother. Thirst, I could do something about. Ravings, muteness, grog, the trepan and penitent sheets, were all beyond me.

I picked up the oars and spat on my raw hands.

I was just going to have to live.

That’s all there was for it.

I would just start rowing. Those argumentative birds were the only sign of life in the whole flat dish of the sea, and I wanted to be close to them. The coracle skimmed the clear waters and every dip-and-swing flayed at my hands, until there was blood on the oars and red spotting the glass sea behind. We surged forward and the still waters parted, our little wake the only white-caps in eye-shot.

And then slowly, out of the tangle of birds, a shape appeared. Inside their fret and screech, the other island showed itself. I could see its soaring mount at one end, and the needle rocks at the other. I didn’t know which end to head for, how I would make landfall in all the breakers and whirrying water circling those Needles, but still I stood up and yelled.

‘It’s good,’ I shouted at the island, almost tipping the coracle. ‘Good, see!’

I was brimming with fresh, quick humours in spite of the blood and thirst.

‘We’re here,’ I told Mungo and hugged his head to me. ‘Water, old man,’ I said. ‘Water.’ He did stir somewhat and open his eyes.

There was some part in me woken-up and feeling fine. Some squeamish, fear-split part, now careless and out in the sun-bright world.

‘Well, what do you think of that?’ I thought at the inside-voice. ‘So there! Eh? Eh?’

But the inside-voice didn’t answer. It was gone.

It had brought me to this island and left me to it.

We flowed into the drags and chop around its rocky shores and there was no rowing anymore. There was just holding on and praying. The coracle skimmed the water, and took flight for a moment. When we dropped back to the sea, it felt like hard ground. There were shadows in the water; rising Needle rocks for us to be stuck by, drifting sheets of grapple-weed to smother us, and a dark shape slipping about beneath us.

Our porpoise was back.

It herded us dog-like, with little nudges here and strong thumps there. It shouldered us past hidden rocks and gentled us over razor-shell reefs. At last I gripped its fin and we cut white-water alongside its wild black body, until the coracle was taken by a little whirry and of a sudden stopped, spinning among the Needles. The porpoise gave us one more nudge and we were taken by a strong drag, moving sure and quick.

The drag swung us around the farside of the island. There the shore lay sheeted in shell-grit, but curled around itself, snug from storm-waters. There was a perfect passage through the shore-rock into a still, calm harbour. Our porpoise piloted us into this back-cove. We scraped onto the shore.

The sand was all wrigglework.

There was nothing but birds and sandhoppers.

The godling fleet lay there, deserted.

SOMEWHERE IN THE SEA-FOG, notions about the uses of dying had come up at me like weeds. I suppose I’d thought that if I didn’t do anything about carrying on living, I’d just quietly die and that might fix a heap of troubles. Such as the matter of which Dead-road my brother was wandering, for instance, or what a person could do to save her family from silence and grog. Dead-ones can’t work up the cut, or be insulted by townies — all the troubles would be done with.

I suppose I’d thought we could go together.

That me and Mungo could go Deadward together.

I didn’t want to go alone.

Mungo lifted the face of trust to me. His tongue looked set to snap and crumble in his sucked-dry mouth. I stepped on trembling legs onto the shore and called his name. He raised himself, shivering and deadquiet, and his head drooped right down onto his breastbone. He stepped out onto the grit all right but then sank swoony onto his haunches. He just lay down at the waterline like he would stay there forever. I could see his squinted eyes, and hear his too-light breath, and feel his heart limping under my hand.

The shore spread each way in countless bleachy shells. Behind us the beach rose to scree and sky. In the north loomed the bare grey mount. Overhead, loons in the blue-white sky; underfoot all crumbling snakestone and shepherd’s crown. And down the waterline tiny fish crowded the edge of the fizzing sea. Here we were, still alive and nothing for it but find water, if we wanted to stay that way. I started off northward, following the shore toward the mount, hoping for some stream.

Mungo lay where he was.

I didn’t want to leave him.

My whole body ached. Soon the scree grew to rocks and then to boulders and ledges. My legs climbed all aslant, clod-footed and bone-weary, and the ledges became walls of stone and honeycomb caves. The first cave I came to I ducked and went in. It was broad and sandy, and only a few spans taller than me. There was no seep of water — only all along the walls and laid out on its ledges were our missing things.

Our hoe, the good blade and rope, even the old holey pail and dipper were all there. And not just ours, either. In every pock and crease of rock was some bit of Carrick. There was Old Shambles’s cleaver and a whole basket of Baker’s mugs, and there was even a barrel of wine that must have come from the monkhouse stores. These godlings of my brothers had been running night-raids on us.

I didn’t think it very god-like of them. Gods were supposed to be able to bring honey from stone and apples from deadwood, and here they were pilfering like common sneaking thieves. It wasn’t very monstrous either; monsters were supposed to come loping and tear away whatever they wanted. Not creep about in the craven dark as if they didn’t want to be seen.

I heard them before I saw them. Somewhere outside the store-cave, that shrunken, dwindled female from the breakwater was shouting again. She was making a terrible ruckus, even for a monster or a god. I crawled outside and snuck back along the ledges, down the scree to the shore.

I flattened myself like a speckle-moth, down into the shells, lowering myself behind a dune. I needn’t have bothered because the dwindled one they called Ginny and the other, the male one, had no eyes for anything but each other. They hurtled over the scree in a storm of gravel and the male one had our hens under his arms. He had two arms in the regular way and two legs, and only one head. He had no tail and no wings and he moved like anybody else; no flames or silver clouds or locust-horses; he was just a man. But he was small as Gilpin.

‘
Brout!
They’re
mine
!’ said the dwindle Ginny, spluttering in a terrible fit of spleen. ‘Give them back!’

‘Why’s they both yours, then?’ said the other one, somewhat hip-tilted and smarmy. ‘
Heishan!
I can look to them just as good as you.’

‘I got them and I brang them,’ Ginny said. ‘I held them across the water, and they is mine!’ On this last word she jumped like a salmon and grabbed the hair just above his ears and dragged it back until his face was all muzzle and slit-eye.

‘Oo-ow,’ he said and dropped the hens.

Straight-up Ginny let him go and went after the birds. Loosed on the beach, they ran in starts and circles, all wings and sand and mayhem. I saw them clearly, the lot of them running and screeching.

But that was nothing to what came over the scree after them.

Legs and arms, eyes and hair and mouths, but few in a proper place, the godlings came altogether. Each was nothing like the other and each had its own way of going along. And now I could make out their faces.

There was the long-faced twigger, pale and grave, and the soft-hunch one in a basket on his back. I saw the spidery buggane scuttle down to the waterline after our hens. She stopped there, that one, lifting her face into the sun and I saw with a shock that she was beautiful.

She was beautiful like a mortal, I mean. Like a person. Her black hair brushed the ground as she went, and though she went low and quick in her motion her voice came high and slow, ringing up from the beach like faraway bells.

‘Sorry,’ she called out. ‘Sorr-eee. That were me. I done that. Should’ve known.’

The twigger’s face was drooped as a chapel-candle, his eyeholes like watermarks in the wax and his mouth just a fold ear-to-ear. Above his bony shoulders, the hunch godling’s face rose pink and soft. She was laughing and her teeth were like pearls set in a row. Her hair coiled red and grey down her little back, ending where her legs would have been if she’d had some.

‘Don’tfretdon’tblameyourselfOnnor,’ she said, quick and full of sighs, like she’d said it a hundred times.

A hen flapped up the scree calling out, baffled and pitiful. Giving up on its world making sense it bundled down into the grit, wings spread and ruffling. The twigger put out his foot and stepped on its tail.

‘That’s enough of that,’ he said, picking up the hen and holding it close to his heart. He blew gently in its face and it closed its eyes.

The dwindled ones stopped mid-fists. Ginny shoved a handful of shellgrit in the other’s mouth as she kicked away from him. He sat up spitting.

‘Them hens will live with Caly,’ the twigger said.

‘Bless,’ said a woman’s deep voice, then, from behind me.

‘It’s one of them from the other island.’

My breath stopped. I rolled over. A sizeable beast in a red shift and apron stood over me, holding our other hen in a pair of hairy hands. It was some sort of female. She bent and studied me in the rudest way. Like I was some uncommon beetle. My breath came back in a rush.

‘Oooh, it’s the spit of the rest, isn’t it?’ she said, looking close into my face like I had no feelings at all. Her eyes were brown as earth, deep and wet as bogholes, but I was eased somewhat to see only curiosity in them, not blood-hunger. She was covered head-to-foot in soft brown fur, parted over her face and brushed back until it shone. She reached a hand down to me and her palm was bald. I took it and she pulled me to my feet. The others mobbed around.

I had no words.

I waited to see what would happen.

I thought of calling Mungo.

‘Why did youse bring it?’ the hairy one asked the others.

‘We didn’t,’ said Ginny. ‘It just came.’

‘
I thought I saw something
,’ whispered the spider-woman from inside her hair. ‘
Sorry. I should have said
—’

‘Is there others coming?’ the hunch said, quite curious and bright. They all turned to stare out into the cove but there were only porpoises jumping and the gathering loons.

‘Is it a female or a male?’ The hairy one came closer still and she smelt like rosemary. I wondered if she rinsed her whole self in it like the brown-haired towny girls rinsed their heads.

‘I’m a girl,’ I told them, in case they were thinking of finding out for themselves.

‘Oh, sweeeet. Listen. It’s talking.’ The hairy one made prayerful hands just under her beard. ‘What did you do with your hair?’ She pushed loosed bits of her own back into its combs, and patted it like some pet.

The twigger stooped to me. ‘What is you doing here?’ he asked.

I didn’t know the right answer so I stayed mute.

The twigger didn’t look frighted or mean like some of the others, but he didn’t look friendly either. His eyes kept shifting, down the shore, up the scree, back to me.

‘
Does you think it knows what it’s saying?
’ said the spider. ‘
It might be just some words it learned
.’

‘Does you think it
bites
?’ Ginny said, taking a step back.