Chime

by Franny Billingsley

  “But I’m no longer ill,” I said.

  “You’re ill in a different sort of way,” said Rose.

  “What way is that?” said Eldric.

  “She’s ill in her thoughts,” said Rose.

  “I am not!”

  “You are so,” said Rose. “You think certain things about yourself and they don’t make you happy.”

  Eldric glanced at me, but I pretended not to notice. Shut up, Rose! “What makes you think I have unhappy thoughts?” I don’t tell Rose things like that—intimate things.

  “Because you talk when you’re asleep.”

  Oh.

  “May I hazard a guess?” said Eldric.

  “A hazard is dangerous,” said Rose.

  “Hazard a guess about the babies, I mean. Are they you and Briony?”

  “Yes!” Rose actually grew pink from all those exclamation marks.

  “You’re ever so clever,” said Leanne.

  “This one’s you, Rose.” Eldric pointed. “That one’s Briony.”

  “Yes!”

  “How on earth can you tell?” I said.

  “I’ve told you dozens of times that you and Rose are nothing alike,” said Eldric.

  “Eldric has an eye for art of all sorts,” said Leanne. “Don’t you, darling?”

  “If you say so,” said Eldric.

  Darling! Had they darlinged each other when they were here? I imagined them, magnificent on horseback, tossing darlings to and fro.

  “You are not attending,” said Rose.

  I leaned closer. The babies were little more than oblongs of paper, yet they were clearly babies. How had she done that?

  “It’s fantastic, Rose.”

  “I know,” said Rose. “What else do you see?”

  I looked, and Eldric looked, but we couldn’t make out anything else. “I prefer that you see it,” said Rose.

  “Perhaps Leanne can see it?” said Eldric.

  Leanne gazed but finally shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “You see, Rose,” said Eldric, “we haven’t your eye for color.”

  “You may call me Rosy Posy,” said Rose. “Leanne, however, may not.”

  “Rose!” I said. “That was extremely rude.”

  “We didn’t ask her to come,” said Rose.

  I turned to Leanne to apologize, but Leanne smiled and shook her head. “Don’t let it trouble you. I quite understand.”

  “Don’t give up!” said Rose. “Briony must get better!”

  I looked deeper into the collage, into an overlay of dark blues with spots of white and yellow.

  “The night sky?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Rose. “Eldric has corroborated my theory that it’s all right to say yes when you guess correctly.”

  “I intend only to make correct guesses,” I said.

  The collage was divided into halves with a vertical line of black. At first glance, the halves were identical. A pale moon in each, and a pale peach baby with a single eye.

  The babies were identical (unless you chose to believe Eldric), but the moons were not. The right-hand moon hung in the twelve o’clock position, but the left-hand moon had not yet risen so high.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said Eldric.

  “My dear Rose,” said Leanne. “You’re quite the artist too.”

  Good thing she couldn’t go after Rose. Good thing the Dark Muse only preyed on men.

  “Rosy Posy,” said Rose, but not to Leanne. “Briony Vieny.”

  “Our names match up,” I said.

  “Quite right,” said Rose.

  “Our names match up, but the moons don’t match up.”

  “You are exceedingly correct,” said Rose.

  “Did we have a conversation about this before, Rose? When I was ill?”

  “Yes,” said Rose.

  It had been a conversation about how one might describe midnight. I remember being rather breezy and saying that ten minutes before midnight looked just like midnight. Rose had said that was no good.

  “Is the one with the moon straight overhead meant to represent midnight, and the other represent before midnight?”

  “It doesn’t represent,” said Rose. “It is.”

  “Is it then?”

  “You are exceedingly correct.”

  But there I stuck. Rosy Posy and Briony Vieny? Babies at midnight?

  They oughtn’t to be up so late.

  “Don’t stop thinking,” said Rose. “Otherwise you won’t get well.”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. “But Rose—”

  “I prefer Rosy Posy.”

  “But Rosy Posy.” I had to make her understand that I was neither ill nor injured. “How is this going to cure unhappy thoughts?”

  “You won’t have to think them anymore.”

  Twilight crept upon us; we tore into the packet of biscuits. Eldric offered a share to Leanne, but she cared only for the homemade kind. We leaned against the warm boulders. Shop-bought biscuits are delicious! Too bad for Leanne.

  “Don’t stop thinking,” said Rose.

  “Can you give us a hint, Rosy Posy?”

  “It’s against the rules.”

  My attempts to work out Rose’s secret felt rather as though I were performing brain surgery by the light of a glowworm. “I believe you’re too clever for us, Rosy Posy.”

  I held out my forefinger.

  “Yes,” said Rose, touching her finger to mine.

  Rose lay back on the perfect picnic quilt. She closed her eyes, but she was still smiling. “This is how I want to live my life.”

  The rest of us sat in silence while mist and moon and moorland worked themselves into a lather of romance. Leanne was doubtless wishing me and Rose far away. All that lather, but no privacy for a two-person scrub.

  “Except I want you to know the secret,” said Rose, her eyes still closed.

  “I’m trying, Rosy Posy.”

  “Does everyone have a secret, do you suppose?” said Eldric.

  “Mine’s a mad husband in the attic,” I said.

  Leanne laughed. It struck me I’d never heard her laugh before. “This is not a proper secret,” she said, “but I don’t tell many people, as it sounds hideously conceited. I know I can trust the three of you to understand what I mean to say.”

  But there were only two of us now, for Rose was asleep. Her dreaming eyes shifted beneath butterfly eyelids. She wanted to be called Rosy Posy. She had an unconscious, of course she did. This is how I want to live my life. How could I ever have doubted she was a real girl?

  “I’m not an artist myself,” said Leanne, “but I believe my gift is working with artists, bringing their works to life. Teasing out of the artist the very best that he can do.”

  And gobbling him up! Just look at her—all pearly eyes and come-hither teeth.

  “I quite agree,” said Eldric. “That’s clearly your gift.”

  How did he mean it? Not, I hoped, in the way Leanne took it. Look at her smile. She thought it a compliment.

  “What’s your secret, Eldric?” said Leanne.

  “The problem I have with telling my secret,” said Eldric, “is that it’s a secret.”

  “There’s no one you would tell?” said Leanne.

  “One person, perhaps,” said Eldric. “But as there are three of you here, this cannot be the time to reveal it.”

  One person, perhaps. Rosy Posy knew how she wanted to live her life. Briony Vieny would like to live hers knowing Eldric’s secret.

  26

  A Proper Punch

  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 nev
er 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!