Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  ‘So you’re saying I should forget Barney?’ My voice cracks.

  Annie says, ‘I’m feeling a whole lot better, after a good sleep in your Mam’s chair.’ She whispers, ‘Tragic what happened to her. Your Mam, my friend. Beatrice.’

  It’s a pinprick in my belly, to hear her name. Everyone always calls her ‘Your poor Mam’, or ‘Remember Mary’s Ma?’ Sometimes I forget she were ever called anything else.

  I say, ‘With the amount of diamondback addersnakes folks say we’ve got on the island, you’d have thought someone could have come up with something in time.’

  Annie starts, eyes wide. ‘No Mary, it were a deep, deep bite, she never even saw that diamondback. She were filled with the venom so fast she were out cold in a heartbeat.’

  ‘Well, you’d best get back home to feed your dogs.’

  Thems tails thud on the floorboards as Annie stands up.

  I smile at her. ‘I’ve never been alone here. Not proper alone. Even with Barney gone, when Da were fishing, I knew him’d be coming back.’

  ‘If your Mam were here, she’d tell you to get to doing your broideries. So I’m saying it for her.’ She squeezes my arm.

  ‘Ta, Annie. I wish …’

  ‘I know, pet. Me an’ all.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Dun tell folks I knew about the boys being traded. I’ll not say anything about your Mam and that tall man. Stick together, we should.’

  I nod but dun look at her.

  ‘For your Mam’s sake, Mary. Stick with me.’

  ‘Aye. All right. For Mam.’

  We walk to the door and I’m thinking about what Grandmam said:

  The Thrashing House beats the truth out of a person and turns it into some small object what can be seen and held. These objects are kept safe inside a glass cabinet, in the Weaving Rooms, where only the women go, and when you’re of age, you will be able to go an’ all.

  ‘Annie, you’ll go to the Weaving Rooms soon? You’ll get to see what the objects are what come out the hatch – will you tell me what object comes from Da?’

  ‘No, Mary, I will not speak of Weaving Room talk. And you’ve got to get on, keep going.’ Her eyes shine with tears. She runs her thin hand across her nose. ‘If I think about Martyn, I’ll want everything to stop. There’s no good can come from that kind of thinking. Right.’ She steps forwards. ‘I’ve got to get these dogs out before them piss all over your floor.’

  Right enough, as soon as we look at them, the dogs all clatter over to the front door and scratch at it to get out.

  Annie kisses my cheek. ‘I’ll check on you later. You’ll have a lot of broideries to do if you’re to keep this cottage on. I’m sorry Mary, sorry for us both.’ She opens the door. The dogs lurch out and head straight for the beach. Annie follows them. The wind blows her hair, it looks like golden smoke.

  I make grey porridge, it glugs in the pot. I sit at the kitchen table and eat it on my own.

  I get the buckets and go out of the back door. I walk along behind the row of cottages and up a small track to the well these cottages share. No one else is out back, but Camery’s chickens chatter to be let out of the hut. Beattie’s left her washing out on her line all night, her big white drawers and yellowed pillowcases sag. I fill the buckets from the well, take them home and slosh the water in the biggest pots on the range, go in and out with buckets, till I’ve filled the washtub in the kitchen. I lock the front and back doors, close the curtains up and use the copper jug to wash my hair and scrub the rest of myself clean till the water’s gone cold.

  After I’ve dried off, I bind my breasts flat with a damp roll of bandage. Been binding them for a long time, and I dun remember when I started. Mam must’ve gave me these bandages when them started to grow. A blank in my memory. Mam never bound hers, and I dun think other women do, but the bindings make me feel stronger. It’s hard to breathe when I’ve bound them too tight, as I do often. As the bandages dry, them get tighter and tighter. I change my vest, drawers and socks and put on a clean grey dress.

  I put dried heather in the grate on top of half a firelighter, spark a match, light the twigs and blow on them to get them burning. I put a brick of peat on and get the fire built up. Grey snakes of smoke rise up the chimney.

  In the bedroom I reach under the mattress on my bed and get out the Thrashing House key, wrapped in the broiderie of the owl woman.

  I’ve put the other keys that I took last night in my wooden box. Dun need them, but them’re mine now. Them’ll manage fine without them.

  But no one’ll manage fine without this one.

  Even wrapped in fabric, the metal of the Thrashing House key pulls at my thoughts. I sit in Mam’s rickety chair by the fire.

  The key is made from a strong old metal. It’s gathering a sense of me, so it knows how to talk back when I touch it. I want to get at the stories caught inside it. But it’s pulling at my thoughts, not giving the stories up.

  It’s trading for memories.

  No other metal has ever wanted anything back from me. Just given up what it knows at the first quiet touch.

  The smell of peat fills the room. Outside, the waves swish swash along the shore. I unwrap the edge of the broiderie and hold my finger over the bow of the key. It hums, pulls at my fingertip. It makes me think of Grandmam, we’re curled up in her bed and I’m fidgeting with her hair. It makes me think of Mam, watching her carry Barney down the beach to show him the sea. And Da, grinning so proud, when Mam told him how much she’d got from the tall men for one of the best broideries she’d stitched – a picture of red poppies, the petals blowing off in the winds.

  I think about when I’m grown to be twenty-one. Then I’ll get given the Thrashing House key for my turn on the bells. It won’t be hid here in my cottage with me. A woman will walk up to me and put it, on its chain, around my neck. Everyone’ll talk nice to me for the whole day while I wear it, and I’ll go up to the bell tower that night and ring out the bells.

  There’s a separate door to the bell tower, though it’s attached to the Thrashing House, and it’s this same key what unlocks both doors. The bell tower has just one flight of steps all curled around, no doors inside it that go into the main building. Ringing out the bells must be like reaching up to the stars to pull them down and sew them together, and tucking up the whole island under a bedspread made of stars.

  Mam told me, once, when she’d been up there for her turn on the bells, ‘It’s like the Thrashing House were pulling at me through the walls. I were in the bell tower, but the pull of the Thrashing House made me jittery. I could have left the bells, gone downstairs, outside, and found myself going through the great front door. I felt it was gathering a sense of me so it could call me, make me do just that.’

  I were sat up in bed, couldn’t sleep. Barney must’ve been crying.

  She whispered, ‘I could hear clicks and whirrs in there; the Thrashing House were trying to figure me out. Trying to listen close, to the truth of me.’

  Mam said, ‘You dun think bad of me, Mary, do you?’ She looked stricken.

  I said, ‘No, Mam, I dun think bad of you.’ Though I dun know what she were talking of. I felt freezing, when she said that. Her eyes were wide and scared so she put her arms around me. I wanted to touch the Thrashing House key then, and I reached out for it, but she took the chain off from around her neck and gripped me tight again. It felt like she were tangling me up in blackthorn branches instead of her arms, but I let her hang on till she were calm, for she seemed so upset.

  Remembering made me fall asleep. The morning has gone. I build up the fire again, keep all the curtains closed up and make kale and tattie soup.

  Back in the main room, I sit by the fire. Unwrapping the key from the broiderie, I lie it on my lap and hold my hands over it. It pulls. The air between my palms and the key buzzes.

  Think of Barney. Who knows where him is?

  But the key wants more memories. It’s still trading. If I let it take what it wants, it will speak back. It chooses this
memory …

  Grandmam came to live with us before she died, when I were about seven. Well before Barney were born. Mam said she were too old and crazed to live in her own cottage.

  She dun like it here at first, ran around our home with bare feet, spitting curses at all of us. She saw us like something else, not the belonging people, the family we were. Kept pulling at our hair, mumbling that five were a bad number of folks to have living together, though we were just four. Mam said Grandmam’d never got over her husband, Mam’s Da, taking off to live with some other woman. Mam said best not to ask Grandmam about that, for as she’d got older her mind were crumpling. Grandmam sometimes thought him were stood right next to her, like the ghost of a living man.

  Grandmam rambled about all kinds of things: outsiders and insiders, marriages shipwrecked, the locked-up pink fence on the other side of the island, the Glimmeras fighting. Said we were all cooped up together like chickens peck pecking at each other. Well, her and Mam pecked hard enough at each other for sure.

  She dun have to broider or mend or stitch, as she told Mam, ‘I’m far too ancient to be using up the last snippet of my eyes on the needles and pins.’

  Mam weren’t best pleased, but she broidered more than ever.

  Me and Grandmam used to play together like she were a child. It seemed sometimes to me like we were the same age on the inside. Though on the outside her wrinkles creased her face up, to smiles or tears like tracks in the sand.

  We used to trade secrets, I’d tell her about the things I’d done and pretended I hadn’t, like when I ran away to see the pink fence when the chalk flowers were drawn on it, and then ran right back home again. Grandmam said, ‘That were a good one, take me along when you run away the next time.’

  She told me the secrets of when she’d pissed where she shouldn’t have, and she’d laugh so loud Mam’d dash in for them secrets, like she could smell them. Truth is, she probably could.

  It were when Grandmam were telling a story that she’d sound her age. The part of her what were the same age as me would sometimes play with the stories, find different morals and meanings from what were meant. Some of the morals she played with made more sense from her lips than the morals other folks would’ve come up with.

  Grandmam lived here with us, sharing my room, for only a few years before she died. Them years were the most I’d laughed and fought and been afraid and felt like I were with someone who knew everything, but knew how to play all at the same time. My job was ‘Look after Grandmam’, and it were the best job I’ve ever been given to do.

  I looked after her so well, I got her laughing till she coughed, not caring how loud she snored, eating the butter cream cakes Mam baked before anyone else had one, breaking things deliberate and helping me steal keys for my collection.

  But she would never have let me steal this one.

  Grandmam loved tangling up Da’s fishing nets when no one were watching. She had a child’s heart, so my job to take care of her were easy. I kept it beating so hard in her she lived longer than them said she would, but I had no games in me to fight against death; not playing with her, listening to her stories, cooking her broth or warming her with fires or soft blankets could look after her from that.

  In the last few days I had a Grandmam, I saw death, a shadow with no face, waiting in the corner. Only it weren’t going to let me bring it into any game, fight it for Grandmam and win, and by then, Grandmam were propped up on cushions and weren’t able to play, other than with how fast or slow her breathing went.

  Sometimes Grandmam’s breath stopped for a moment, I’d call in Mam, we’d watch her, then she’d breathe again. In the gaps between breathing not me or Mam would breathe them breaths for her, lest we took the life out of her before her time. But that shadow with no face were stood there in the corner, and it must have breathed for her, even without a mouth, for Grandmam died anyway.

  ‘She were old,’ Mam said, and hugged me. ‘It were the way of time.’

  I told myself Grandmam’s stories over and over again after she died, so I’d never forget them. I can still remember the stories in her exact words. I’m warm now, even in my hands, thinking of her fireside voice.

  The key wants me to remember Grandmam’s stories for comfort. So I’m calm when I listen to what it tells me. I put the key on the floor, for I want this memory just for myself.

  Grandmam told me about the Glimmeras, and she would moan and groan, tug at her hair when she spoke. The story of five old women what live on a tiny rocky island just to the north of ours. How them got there, Grandmam weren’t sure. She said them’d been there forever.

  This is what she said:

  Be mindful you never become like them, for though once them must have been like normal folk, them are not like us any longer.

  The Glimmeras are a family to each other. Five of them, all old, all ancient. Them are mothers or sisters or daughters or grandmothers to one another. Them have been alive for so long that no one remembers. Each one has a different colour of hair: red, gold, grey, white and black. Them have claws for hands, and them eat only dead fish, for that’s all them can get.

  Them always used to bicker. Each believed herself to be better than the others, to be the greatest of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss. One day a rare thing happened, and all of them agreed on something. The thing them agreed on was that them would have a competition that would decide, once and for all, which one would be the best of the five: the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss.

  The competition was called ‘The Thronebuilding’. Them were all very excited about the idea as this were the most important thing ever to happen on thems tiny island. It were the first time them all agreed on anything. Them made sure each understood the terms before them began.

  Each of the five was to build her own throne using only the rocks on the island. The competition was held on the tallest part of the island, so them could all see the thrones that the others were making, so them could see what them were competing with. It dun matter who finished first, but them agreed that the winner would be the one with the grandest throne. The one who won would make all decisions and settle all arguments. All agreed with each other that the winner would have the final say on everything.

  The Glimmeras set to work. Each tried to make her own throne grander than all the others. But because them all could see what the others were doing, every single good idea worked on the thrones was copied. No one wanted to lose, so them copied each other, stone by stone, rock by rock, pebble by pebble. When them finished, all the thrones stood along the pinnacle of the top of the tallest part of thems island, all lined up next to each other.

  When it was time to judge the winner of the competition, them all stepped back and looked at the thrones. Them roared with anger and flew at each other, lashing out with thems fists and teeth, as all the thrones, while very grand, looked exactly the same. No one could win.

  Them fought and fought till all were exhausted. Them slumped down all cut and bruised, each in thems own throne. A whisper started between them about having a new competition. Them argued and hissed and cursed and swore at each other while the sun rose and set and rose again, but them finally agreed on the terms of the new competition: the one that could sit on her throne for the longest time would be the queen, the leader, the priestess, the witch, the boss of all the others.

  The whole thing was, there only ever were them five what lived on that rocky island. Them could only ever rule over one another. Perhaps if other folks, not related, lived there, the Glimmeras would have saved themselves from thems fate by bossing everyone else around. But there never were any other folk, so that never came to pass.

  The Glimmeras sat next to each other for a week, arguing the whole time, then a month passed and them scratched and screeched at each other. Of course them were all soiling thems clothes, sweating in the sunshine and shaking in the icy winds of night. Not one would budge. The whole place smelled r
ank.

  Them stewed in thems own filth, screeched and argued and fought and scratched and wriggled and snarled at one another for so many years while thems hair grew long, then longer and longer still. It got all matted together.

  Now them can’t move away from one another or thems thrones unless them all go, thems hair is so tangled and tousled and woven together. Them look like them are one body with five faces, all joined together, covered over by hair. Them must still have thems own arms and legs and bodies beneath it, hidden away.

  Thems hair coils and twists, in parts like a woven rug, in other parts like a tangle of bushes or a whisper of light. In the sunshine the whole mass of hair glimmers, shines back up at the sun like it’s competing with its brightness.

  The hair covers the whole island; nothing can grow beneath it, as it blocks out all the sunlight. When them walk around thems stony island, them all have to decide when to go as them have to walk together.

  If one trips and falls into the sea, them all fall into the sea.

  If one has a nightmare, them all have a nightmare.

  If one gets sick, all get sick.

  If one is hungry, them all have to go to the sea and snatch at the dead fish: only them hate doing anything together almost as much as them hate each other.

  Them fight all the time, pull out chunks of each other’s hair, trying to break free. Thems fights cause storms. In the winter blizzards the snow is the dandruff from thems heads where them pull and tear at one another, trying to break apart.

  We know this is true because the snow here is warm.

  The fire is glowing, so I lay on another block of peat. Grandmam wouldn’t tell me the moral for the story of the Glimmeras herself. She’d ask me for it. I’d say something different each time, so she’d get mad like a Glimmera and chase me around the cottage, tugging at my hair. I said the moral were: