Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  But the pink fence is covered in blue-white snow, the sky above it glows pale pink and floats in the windows. A whole landscape of pastel colours. A picture of some sugar-coated home in a winter bedtime story: a house that tastes of sugared almonds and marzipan. But anything in a storybook that is as sugar-sweet as this always gets destroyed.

  If this were a picture in a story, it would be an image of a home that waits for change. Waits for a wolf to come calling, asking for a new red coat, or for bears to break in and eat all the oats, for a baby with a squirrel’s face to throw a hazelnut at a crack in the wall. The whole sugar house would collapse, dissolve itself. The sweetest story would change into a darker tale, where there’s no sugar left anywhere in the whole world and real bears roam, armed with teeth, claws and killer instincts. Where the dead lie voiceless in their graves and criminals are never caught.

  A story that lasts longer than bedtime. Longer than the final page. Longer than a kiss. Longer than a lifetime. As long as ever after. And right now, that seems like the worst thing that could happen.

  The gate in the pink fence is off-centre; it’s been broken.

  Inside that sugared house is the only family I’ll ever have. They’ll want the gate mended, locked up. I want to shut them away safely behind it.

  My heart clenches in my chest and I think of my mother and how she looks like a child when she eats the food I cook for her, and how my father has given me a respect for all living things. And the twins, secretly plotting their escape.

  My parents made sure I had so many books, and taught me to read and write. I think of all the games of three choices I’ve played, when I thought I had none. My parents had choices as well. They chose to bring me here with them. Other children are left behind in the world, when their parents run away from something. From wars, from tragedy, from shame, pain, loss, from losing control or will or hope. Or called towards something else – a bottle, a missed opportunity, death, a second family, a hospital bed, a new lover … So many choices. Many people have children, but they can’t always keep them.

  But mine kept me. Nothing bad has ever happened to me. I think of Mary having had no choice at all.

  The procession of women trudges away over the hill through the snow in another direction, away from my parents’ home.

  My parents wouldn’t know what to do if danger came and hammered on their door, demanding a cup of tea. But perhaps it’s time it did. Maybe sugar only tastes sweet when it’s been stirred.

  I keep out of view of their house, and follow the women.

  Mary

  Darkness behind my eyelids. ‘What happened to me?’

  Shadow Mary’s voice inside my head, You have forgotten. Forgotten everything. Over and over, her voice cuts my belly like metal.

  The tall man walks towards me in bed.

  I call out for Mam but hims pale hand closes my mouth.

  I wake under thick blankets. A fire. A box of matches on the hearth. A basket of peat. A room I dun know. Silence. My hands fidget, wool scratches my fingers. Samplers in frames on the walls, a cross-stitch of a woman’s face. A crimson rug on the floor. The fire burns bright, only I can’t feel the warm. Through the window, the sky’s thick with grey clouds.

  A doorway with a heavy black curtain pulled across it, a woman’s voice humming behind, low, quiet.

  Kelmar’s voice, louder. ‘Dinnertime, keep them teeth sharp.’

  I’m inside Kelmar’s cottage.

  Bright colours light up everywhere; the floorboards gleam brown and ochre, the crimson rug has flecks of red, orange, deep blue.

  Sound. Claws scrape. Something thumps in my head, a pulse. The sound of crunching. My jaw too tight. A bump, a low growl. I lean forwards; my spine aches.

  A bark. ‘Hoy. Settle.’ Kelmar’s voice. Her boots thack thuck across the floor.

  My heart thack thuck in my chest. I move my arms, shift my hips forwards in the chair and sharp pins prickle down my legs. My voice cracks out of me, ‘Is Annie here?’

  Kelmar calls out, ‘No. Just her dogs.’

  She comes through with two green cups, puts one in my hands. The warm tea smells of honey and cinnamon. The chair opposite me creaks as she sits down.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ She sips from her cup like it’s easy.

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘You’re in shock. You understand that?’

  Not far away from this cottage, clifftops. Just a walk. Just one step, and another, and another. I will see the Pegs, watch how strong and brave them are to stand so solid while fierce waves wash all around them.

  Kelmar’s voice, ‘Mary, come back.’

  Is everything old, like the Pegs? The Pegs hold on tight, dun let nothing wash them away. I’ve always wanted to see Sishee’s dress under the waves. Sishee’s drowned dress. Inside the teacup, in the tea, the sea swirls around the bottom of the clifftops. Such a long way down.

  ‘Mary?’ says Kelmar’s voice from somewhere.

  I’m swimming in the sea in the cup because I’m not yet drowned.

  ‘Wake up.’

  I surface.

  Kelmar leans forwards, ‘Do you want to talk, or do you just want quiet?’ She seems huge.

  I stare into the tea. The rememberings are floating in the cup. Pictures. Watching something from a long time ago …

  Mam stood in my bedroom holding the baby wrapped in a blanket.

  Hims fingers twitching.

  Mam said, ‘A baby needs a name, and with a name, him will know who him is.’

  My voice, ‘Call him Barney for me.’

  She took him to the door, said, ‘All right. Mary, this is my son, your brother, Barney. You get up out of bed soon. Folk’re talking.’

  She walked away with my brother, Barney.

  My breasts bound beneath a heavy bed dress. Mam’d bound them the day after him were born, showed me how. It were to stop the milk. That were the first time. Three years ago and now there’s no milk, but I still bind them flat.

  Mam pretended the baby were hers. A woman in to wet-nurse him, who’d lost a baby of her own. Blank over her face. Mam must’ve got up to him in the night, changed hims nappy, weaned him quick off the wet nurse’s milk and onto warmed cow milk. I held him close when she weren’t watching. Whenever she caught me with him she never said a word, but she looked so sad when she took him from me.

  It always were my arms him wanted.

  I always wanted him in my arms.

  And then,

  ‘She died,’ I whisper.

  Kelmar says, ‘I’m so sorry Mary.’

  I lift my cup to my mouth. Eyes float in the tea. Kelmar’s blue eyes from the blank dark. The blank dark is the part of me what kept all the things I forgot inside of it. I drop the cup. The eyes spill all over the floorboards. Them close and are gone.

  The space between me and Kelmar is dark and warm. I breathe hard. I lean away from her, and the space grows bigger. She moves back to her chair. I wipe my nose on my sleeve.

  I’ve got ghosts in my eyes she can see.

  ‘Where’s Valmarie?’ I ask.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘For good?’

  Kelmar frowns down at her hands. ‘She won’t be back.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Found what she’d been looking for. No need to stay in a place if you’re not tied to it.’

  ‘Did you tell her about me and Barney?’

  ‘No.’ Her face is open and clear.

  ‘But you pair were close.’

  ‘It weren’t anything I wanted to speak of.’

  My throat cracks out, ‘Dun believe you’re the only one what knows. You must have told even just one person, got it off your chest.’ I stare at her large breasts and up at her face, quick.

  She dun notice. ‘A midwife knows what’s going on. If I were to speak to just one person, I’d lose trust. Not just trust from people, neither. Me, the birthing woman, and life and death stood watching from the corners. Always four of us there, keeping h
ope high, all possibilities considered. All waiting to see what the next contraction brings. These things are not for the chattering of. Trust’s too easy broke.’

  ‘So you never told anyone?’

  ‘Your Mam wouldn’t let me near you after. Not even to check you were healing right.’ Kelmar looks at the fire, she’s still talking, telling me she came round for days, then each week, then a month later, but Mam never let her in. She tells me she saw me out and about but always with other folks there, or I’d walk away, sometimes look right through her. She tells me she thought about talking to me, but then she thought I were coping the best way I could.

  ‘Dun understand forgetting.’

  ‘You were too young. Sometimes folk can remember the hard stuff, other times them have to blank it out.’

  ‘I kept drinking a tincture. The whole year is blank.’

  ‘The forgetting herb. But your Mam … there’s coldness in that.’ Her teeth bite her plump bottom lip.

  ‘So, is that why you and Valmarie killed her, for the sake of coldness, for what she did or dun do right?’ In the grate the flames dance.

  ‘We?’ Her face is flushed. ‘Oh no, you dun think that. We never killed her.’ She spills a splosh of tea on the rug and stands up. ‘I’ll get a rag.’

  ‘Are you telling me it were Annie? She can’t have. She loved Mam and she’s been there for me all this time since Mam got deaded. Were it all three of you?’

  She goes out through the curtain. One of Annie’s dogs comes in, sits next to me, whimpers as Kelmar comes back in, kneels down and mops the rug. She says, ‘I can see how you’d think that, but it weren’t like that.’

  ‘What were it like?’

  She sits back on her haunches and tells me it’s too much for me to talk of Mam, and I tell her I’d best get back home then, so I can ask Annie. The dog stalks off, slumps on the rug by the fire and sighs.

  ‘Mary, it’s too much shock, you’re to rest.’

  ‘Since when did you care so much for me?’

  ‘Since you were a terrified girl too young to give birth.’

  I double over, my chest aches like she’s kicked it.

  She says, firm, ‘Mary, there’s something you need to decide.’

  ‘Dun want this.’ I cover my eyes with my fingers.

  Kelmar pulls my hands down, gentle, and says, ‘I need to know if you’ll let me speak out about Barney, about what that tall man did to you.’

  ‘I dun want—’

  ‘Him is held at the Weaving Rooms.’

  I sag back in the chair. ‘Him is caught,’ I whisper, ‘so I dun need to think—’

  ‘You do need to think.’ She grips my hands. ‘And I’ve needed to think an’ all. The Thrashing House must’ve let him go because there’s a truth needs to come out, outside of its closed door. We need to deliver the justice.’

  My heart thuds in my throat.

  She says, ‘You’ve no Mam in the Weaving Rooms, so I want to speak for you. I need to know what you’ll let me say.’

  My hands shake.

  She squeezes them. ‘Tonight, the women meet to decide what’s to be done with him.’

  I ask how them caught him, and Kelmar tells me Annie’s dogs tracked him. She says the women need hims name to call him out from the silence him is surrounding himself in, that him won’t speak any words at all.

  ‘So Annie and her dogs found him?’

  ‘Not Annie.’ Kelmar stands and goes to the window. Folds her arms and looks out. I get up slow, walk over and stand next to her.

  Outside the light in the sky is bright, with grey, green, blue and pink colours spun through the clouds. The sky seems darker than the land, though it’s daylight – for all across the hills, the fields, rocks and bushes are covered in snow.

  I say, ‘Warm snow … a storm from the Glimmeras.’

  ‘Aye. A storm from the north,’ says Kelmar. ‘The moment you fell asleep, it started to snow. While you were sleeping, the snow came in flurries and sweeps and covered everything up. Like you were meant to wake and see everything all new again.’

  She puts her strong hand on my shoulder. ‘Now, what do you need to do, to help you decide?’

  ‘I want to go out in the snow.’

  She smiles. ‘Then that’s what you’d best do.’

  I wear Kelmar’s missing son Jake’s black coat. The snow glistens as I walk out of her cottage, like the island’s been stitched into a different picture. Kelmar’s cottage is covered in snow, with the chimney smoking. I thought I shouldn’t speak to her all this time, since Mam dun want her near.

  That were another lie I told myself.

  I stamp my feet. The snow flurries up in the air. I kick it and it scatters like flour. Kelmar wants me to think about Langward. I think about Morgan and wonder if she’s still in my cottage and if she can see Mam’s ghost. If she can ask Mam’s ghost if she really traded me. Or if Langward lied. I wrap my arms around myself. Because it matters.

  Too much.

  I kick up the snow some more. Can’t feel anything. I think about how Grandmam could tell me how warm the snow were, if she were here with me now. How if Mam were here too she’d laugh, for she only ever half believed anything Grandmam said. The snow’s bundled all the noises away, tucked them up for warm sleep. Like Barney would be, if I had him here with me. I wipe my nose on the coat sleeve. I put my arms around myself. My heart burns warm. Not my brother. My son.

  My son, Barney.

  Barney is mine. Nothing can take that away. A half of him is mine, so I can make that half fill him up, warm him through, warm away anything what belongs to Langward. I can make Barney all mine far easier than him can. For him dun ever know Barney. I’ve always known him. Always loved him. And Barney has always loved me back. Langward can never ever have that.

  Kelmar told me to think. So I have.

  I flail my arms like I’m fighting whoever has Barney. I rage and punch at the sky, like these punches will pull down the clouds and get Barney back in my empty arms.

  I stop.

  What if it were Valmarie what has him. And she’s gone. How long ago? How long could him survive, hid away in her house when she’s left it? That animal what lived inside her black eyes. Animals want young. Animals breed. Her son Dylan were took. She loved him so fierce.

  With the heart of a seal.

  What if she took Barney for new young? A new seal cub from out of the sea she thought she could love … The snow is thick white dust. My feet go deep, sink and slide up to Kelmar’s front door. Inside, I pick up my bag.

  Kelmar comes into the room.

  I gasp, ‘When did Valmarie leave? How long ago?’

  ‘Not long, why?’

  ‘Where’s your storm room?’

  ‘Down there,’ she waves at a hatch in the floor. ‘But what—’

  ‘Give me a candle.’

  ‘Mary—’

  ‘If you want me to trust you, just—’

  She gets a candle and lights it.

  I surge across the room, open the trapdoor and climb halfway down the ladder. She passes me the candle and I climb down and put it on the floor.

  ‘Let me alone.’ I climb the ladder, close the trapdoor, bolt it, hear her call out, ‘Mary!’ I climb down again, squat on the floor, open my bag and get out the moppet.

  ‘Barney, are you still there?’

  Listen close.

  ‘Barney?’

  The sound of waves.

  I look around the tiny storm room; shelves with candles, firelighters, pickled cabbage in jars. The sound of the sea surges in my ear. ‘Barney?’ Nothing but the sea. Wash in, wash out …

  I say, ‘Mary?’ The sound of waves dies down. ‘Mary, is him there?’

  ‘Go. Away,’ she hisses.

  ‘Just tell me – has hims shadow gone?’

  She says, ‘I’m too young to look after him.’

  ‘You dun have to. I’ll do it.’

  ‘You can’t have him for a son.’

&
nbsp; ‘Is him still in there?’

  ‘You have to look after me.’

  ‘I can take care of the both of you.’

  ‘Dun believe you. You pushed me into the blank dark, and then when you were hurting again, it were me you left in the graveyard, me you let him carve on. Him has cut me across where hims baby grew in me, and you won’t show anyone.’

  Kelmar’s footsteps walk across the floor above me.

  Shadow Mary’s voice cries in my ear, ‘You dun see, even on all that white snow, you dun have a shadow. I’m going to give you back all your murdered memories. Every. Single. One.’

  I say, ‘Please, we got to get him back. You love him, dun you? You want him back too, though you’re angered with me?’

  The sound of the sea.

  I say, ‘Let him talk if him is there. It might be too late, if hims shadow’s not there with you, it means him could be dying – or dead. Please Mary, him could be—’

  A small sigh breaks through the sound of the waves.

  ‘Barney?’

  Hims voice says, ‘Mary, this Mary not let me talk.’

  Kelmar knocks on the trapdoor, rattles it.

  ‘Be up soon, just leave me!’ I shout.

  Kelmar knocks again.

  ‘Not long!’ I holler up at the trapdoor.

  ‘Barney—’

  Shadow Mary says, ‘So you heard him.’

  Kelmar shouts, ‘Mary, come out. This dun feel right – what’re you locking yourself down there for? Unbolt it!’

  I push the moppet back in the bag, climb the ladder and undo the bolt. I blow out the candle as Kelmar wrenches the trapdoor open.

  ‘What’re you up to?’ Her voice is sharp.

  I climb out and wrap my arms around myself. ‘Barney fell out of the tall man’s boat. Him is here somewhere.’

  She shakes her head. ‘You can’t know—’

  ‘I do. Langward told me.’

  Kelmar’s put two bowls of thick chicken soup on the table. I sit down as she clatters in the kitchen. Annie’s dogs are asleep by the fire – a breathing pile of furry heads and legs.

  Kelmar comes back in and hands me a spoon. ‘You decided what you want said?’

  ‘You’re asking me like I’m to choose a colour of thread.’

  ‘Snow did you good then.’