Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  The women stand and I bow my head. The women talk in clusters, while the circle of salt is swept up. Nell approaches the man, whose eyes flick around, glazed. She leans down and says to him, ‘We’ll be taking our discussion on your punishment to another room. You’re to be kept here bound, till we’ve fixed on a decision.’

  She glances round and catches my eye, steps towards me and pauses. I watch her feet and walking stick come closer to me. ‘How old’s this one then?’ she asks, quietly.

  I don’t breathe.

  The woman next to me grips hard on my wrist. Her voice whispers, ‘Twenty-one. Just.’

  ‘Well, soon then. Bring her again, for the Scattering Up.’ Her feet walk away.

  I exhale and whisper, ‘Thank you,’ to the woman next to me. I can hear her rapid breathing, she grips my wrist so tightly my hand has gone numb.

  The other women walk away in groups of threes and fours, down the steps from the platform and through one of the doors on the side wall. I wait for the last cluster to move away. I try to follow them, but the woman yanks me across the platform and back behind the curtain.

  Her voice hisses; ‘You’re not going with them, stupid girl, you’re not a part of this!’

  ‘Mum?’

  She pulls her shawl down. She’s got fury in her crimson cheeks.

  The footsteps disappear. A door bangs shut.

  ‘Now,’ she says, and drags me out from behind the curtain, across the platform, past the man in the circle of earth, pulls me down the platform steps and past the looms and baskets and ropes. At the arched front door she pushes me ahead of her out into the night. She steps outside, her feet deep in the snow, closes the door behind us, turns to me and grips my arm again, her eyes furious. ‘Did you leave for this? You’re coming home.’

  ‘I’m not.’ I yank my arm away.

  She stumbles. I reach to steady her, but she steps back.

  Her words hammer out, ‘So help me, you are coming home. The gate’s smashed, the twins went outside and they want to be allowed out again, and this filthy girl made dinner and stole all the keys. And she didn’t do the flowers I needed.’ She wails and bites her hand. ‘You are coming home.’ She sobs.

  I say, ‘That old woman knew you. All those nights you locked me in my room – you came here?’

  She turns away.

  ‘You lied about my age, so they wouldn’t get angry—’

  She answers over her shoulder, ‘With me. For bringing you.’

  ‘But you didn’t bring me.’

  Her feet are planted in the snow, even with her back to me I can tell her arms are folded.

  I say, ‘Mum, you remember that story, the one about the girl who took care of everyone she lived with, and more and more people kept moving in, because they wanted to be looked after? She got three choices from a visiting witch. Her reward came when one of her choices resulted in the whole household dying in a firework accident. After that, she gave herself all kinds of new choices – she let herself be wicked, to play with fire, torch houses, burn down entire cities. She danced in the ashes and had never been happier. You read me that once, when I was little.’

  She doesn’t turn round. ‘I did not.’

  ‘You tried to change the ending, and said that the girl was happy when she’d used her last choice to please other people. Her mother, I think it was. The girl had scrubbed so hard, she’d worn the skin from her hands, so her fingers were made of bones. You said she could clean so perfectly because having bony fingers meant that she could scrub and scrape even the tiniest corners with incredible precision.’

  ‘I was clever, I was teaching you to keep your feet on the ground. You were seeing ghosts, hearing voices—’

  ‘I knew you made up the ending. I’d already read it.’

  Flakes of snow fall on the back of her heavy dark coat. Her silence thickens around her, like a fence with no gate.

  I ask, ‘Did your mother read you stories?’

  Her back stiffens. I reach out my hand but don’t touch her.

  ‘You saw Anita, didn’t you?’

  She finally turns round and glares at me.

  ‘You stole—’

  ‘Quiet,’ she hisses. ‘She was an imaginary thing, some phantom you dreamed up. The thought of ghosts, they rage through my dreams even now. Is that what you’d have wanted, to let your mind just wander off, to find more imaginary friends to haunt your own mother’s nightmares with?’

  ‘Perhaps I needed a ghost to play with. You and Dad living like kings and qu—’

  ‘Quiet! This island needed an undertaker, it needed a coffin builder. We’re needed, even if the people are all mad, the dead must be buried!’ she cries, her hands over her ears.

  ‘The Thrashing House called you here,’ I whisper. ‘You weren’t just running away. You were running towards.’

  Wiping her eyes with her hand, she turns and walks away.

  She looks like a small child, lost in the snow, looking for a home with a fire inside it and a mother who can smooth out her hair and warm her with baked bread, steamed puddings. I wonder what stories her own mother told her, if she ever talked to her at all. I imagine her in a story with a happy ending, with a fireside that’s always warm.

  Outside the Weaving Rooms, I sit on the steps leading to the door that holds behind it a man tied in poisoned ropes, and a crowd of angry women discussing justice. On the ceiling, a painting of a woman with white flowers in her hair.

  Some time soon I will move, and something will begin. I’m waiting for the moment when the door opens, like the cover of a book, and I will step up, introduce myself to Kelmar and she’ll take me to Mary.

  The snow spirals and flickers through the pink and grey sky. The whole island is silent and white. An empty page, waiting for someone to write a new story on it.

  I look at the footprints of the women that lead up to the door of the Weaving Rooms. They had a reason not to wait. They had a reason to move.

  To make these footprints. To chase after something they want.

  I think of the ghost of a father who feels useless. And the ghost of a mother who wrote, Tell her, before she was blown away.

  Kicking the snow off my boots, I go through the arched door, cross the room with the looms and open the side door that the women went behind.

  They sit around a great wooden table. Their faces swivel and gape at me.

  I say, ‘I’ll give any one of you the Thrashing House key, in exchange for being told where Mary Jared is right now.’

  A clatter of loud voices, chairs shifting against floorboards.

  Kelmar stands, says, ‘Keep talking,’ then walks around the side of the table. Some of the women rise to let her squeeze past, she pushes other chairs out of her way. Mutters and mumbles scuttle around the room between paler faces, frowning up at me.

  Kelmar reaches the doorway, turns back to them, says, ‘The matter in hand. Justice.’

  She takes my arm, closes the door, glances up at the man and says, ‘We’ll go outside.’

  I follow her. ‘Does Mary know you’re her aunt?’

  ‘Outside.’ She opens the arched door.

  We step into the snow.

  She turns to face me. ‘You got her out of the graveyard, and got her somewhere to recover. So I’ll be trusting you to take care of her till I’m there. And no, she dun know I’m her aunt. Fell out with Beatrice when Mary were born. She thought I should’ve told her how bad the pain were to be. Said she’d never have chose to have a child if she’d known. Never forgave me for it. So, no. Mary never has known me as her aunt. So let me tell her that, and dun think it’s your business.’

  ‘I won’t. Where’s Mary?’

  ‘At mine. Look.’ She walks a few feet from the door and points at a funnel of chimney smoke behind a small hill. ‘Follow the smoke to that fire and you’ll find her there. Watch you take care of her. Dun give her any shocks. She’s had enough.’

  ‘Thank you.’ My eyes blur.

  ‘The
key, then. Give it here.’ She holds out her hand.

  I pull it out of my pocket. ‘Her father said to give it to someone older than her.’

  ‘Her father’s thrashed. An old boot.’

  ‘You’ll take care of this.’ I put the key in her hand.

  Kelmar nods, watching my eyes. She says, ‘I’ll look after it as much as you’ll look after Mary. Take turns, that’s how we take care of this key. And that’s what it’ll be for you and Mary. Not have one care more than the other, but both have to care just enough. Be yourself first.’ She reaches out a hand and strokes a strand of my white hair escaping from the scarf. She says, ‘You’ve got a lot of hope glowing in you. And she’s found some way to keep going. Might not always serve her, but it’s got her this far. You’re as light as she’s dark. Tell her I’ll be home, soon as I can.’ She walks back into the Weaving Rooms and closes the door behind her.

  I knock on Kelmar’s front door. No one answers. I open the door and Annie’s dogs crash out, knock me over and charge away. I brush off the snow, go inside the cottage and call Mary’s name into every room.

  She’s not here.

  A note lies on the table.

  My Barney is hid in Annie’s cottage.

  Come and find me as soon as you get this.

  I’m not sure which direction to go in. But the dogs know, and the dogs have left paw prints.

  So I chase after them through the snow.

  Mary

  I slip and slide on the path down the cliffs, fall and get up again. Bash my feet on buried rocks, stagger and yank myself on.

  This snow on my face feels cold.

  But Grandmam said the snow here is never cold.

  But this snow is.

  It melts on my cheeks.

  My feet slide the last distance and I fall onto the beach.

  Grandmam lied. Not a lie. A story.

  I pull the moppet out of my bag. Yell at it, ‘Are you real? Just answer me, are you my Barney’s voice, or some story I’ve made up in my head?’

  I listen close, to nothing.

  I push and shove my freezing thumbs at the seam across its belly. The stitches hold firm. I tear at them with my teeth but I can’t feel my mouth. I sob at the moppet, ‘I only think Barney’s alive, because you’ve been talking when I listen – are you real? Am I chasing after something dead?’ I listen close, to nothing.

  The moppet dun speak, so I drop it in the snow.

  I lie at the bottom of the path. The sea is black and the sky is thick with snowflakes. The snow falls over me. Annie might not even have Barney. This could all be me needing to believe I can find him alive, that I can have him back so I can keep myself so busy taking care of him that I’ve no need to think of how to take care of myself.

  So I can be a ghost for him. A face with no shadows.

  If Barney really is drowned out at sea and dead without being buried, without me able to stroke hims hair for the last time before him is sealed in a coffin box, lowered into a grave with only hims name on that I sit at till flowers grow over him in summer and snow falls over him in winter, then there’ll just be me crying till the sky goes black and my eyes dun see.

  And it’ll be my name the deadtaker carves into a headstone. Kelmar might make him carve Barney’s name beneath mine, but then hims name will be scored out as soon as it’s been carved in.

  That will be the end of my belonging people.

  The moppet is buried in the snow. I whisper, ‘Did I made you real?’ Tears freeze on my cheeks as I pick the moppet up and rub them away with its cold scratchy fur.

  I whisper, ‘Even if I did, I can’t let you go,’ and put it back in my pocket.

  There’s my cottage, the windows dark, the curtains open. No one inside it. So Morgan has gone.

  If nothing else, Annie’s someone what knows me. Someone I thought I could trust, but now dun. But at least I know what I’ll see when I look at her. I’ll see someone what’s got her shadow still attached.

  I drag my feet through the thick snow, past my cottage and up the path what leads to Annie’s worn wooden door.

  I bang on the door. Rattle the handle. It’s locked.

  In all these years I’ve known her, I dun remember Annie ever locking her door. Dun even know she had a key for it.

  For if I had, I’d have thieved it.

  The sky spins around.

  I hammer on the door, scream Annie’s name over and over. I look in the window. The kitchen is full of shadows. I dig out a jagged grey stone from her path.

  I hurl it. The window shatters.

  Reaching in, I find the catch, open the window and climb through.

  In her dark kitchen the broken glass is scattered across the floor, there’s a crack in the floorboard that leads to a doorway, and Annie sits on the floor in the doorframe, hunched over. I scream at her, she curls up, arms over her head. I flail, angered tears all over my face, slap her head, pull her hair, shout, ‘Why’ve you got your door locked?’

  She dun fight back.

  ‘Why’ve you locked it? Tell me!’ I pull her hair, hard.

  I stop. Let go.

  My heart thud thud thud in my throat.

  I squat down next to her. My voice, cold, ‘Annie, have you got Barney? Give me him now.’

  She looks up at me, dark under her eyes. ‘Oh Mary,’ she whispers. ‘Them took the dogs … why did them have to take the dogs?’

  I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Give me him.’

  She raises a limp hand, points to a cupboard at the back of the room, I near trip over her getting to it. I open the cupboard door. Inside is a heavy wooden box. I drag it out. It bangs on the floorboards.

  Annie yells, ‘No! Dun take him. Them took mine. You’re still too young to care for him right. It were milk of one of the lost ones – my baby’s milk what kept him alive, for Beatrice, her shame when her milk wouldn’t come for him.’

  The back of my throat stings. ‘You were hims wet nurse,’ I whisper, my hands on my flattened chest. ‘You made him live, and now you’ve …’

  Inside the box,

  a black cloth covers a lump.

  Barney is here, dead, in this box.

  I close my eyes and reach in.

  Grip the cloth. Pull it away.

  Open my eyes.

  Ropes coil and twist around each other. I throw the cloth back in over them. I yank Annie up and push her against the doorframe.

  ‘That trap dun work on me. I’ve been bit twice by them ropes. I’ve not been deaded. That’s your doing, for taking what’s mine. Where is him?’

  Her eyes flick at the floor. I fly down, pull back the rug, there’s the trapdoor to her storm room. It’s padlocked, with a small key still in the lock. I turn the key and wrench the padlock open. My fingers grip the key, want to take it, but there’s Shadow Mary’s hand over it.

  So I leave the key in the padlock.

  Annie stares at me, her hands over her mouth. A low wail comes out of her. She walks to a corner of the room, slides down on the floor. She sits there hunched up, mutters against her knees, ‘Kieran sold. Martyn gone. Kieran sold. Martyn gone …’

  I lift the trapdoor.

  A ladder leads straight down.

  ‘Barney!’ I shout loud into the dark.

  Nothing.

  My voice echoes, ‘Barney …’

  ‘Annie, did you starve him?’ My belly clenches as I listen to the silence in the storm room.

  She stares at me and says, ‘I want my dogs back.’

  ‘If Barney’s dead, you’ll not be needing your dogs. You’re going to want to be in the Thrashing House rather than take what I’ll do to you.’

  She buries her head in her arms. ‘Calling calling calling …’

  I climb down the ladder into the dark. I climb as far as I can and the ladder ends. I can’t feel the bottom rungs. It’s broken. I call again, ‘Barney …’ and the echo sounds hollow around me.

  Silence.

  Footsteps above me, Annie�
�s face looks in.

  She pushes the trapdoor shut. The padlock rattles and clacks.

  She’s locked me in.

  I breathe in and jump down from the ladder. I land on something soft. Light shines in from a tiny sun in the corner of the room.

  The whole floor of the storm room is thick with owl feathers. Bundles of candles and matches on high shelves, a stinking bucket on the floor, some dry bread in a basket on a chair. In the far corner there’s a small wooden bed. On the bed a ragged brown blanket. Under the blanket the curls on the back of hims head are just as I remember them.

  Barney.

  Is him breathing?

  Let him be breathing.

  I move towards him,

  time is slow, the sun moves across

  the storm room, it hangs in the air

  over him, shines warm light on hims hair.

  Him lies so still. The sun shines,

  brighter, lighter. A whole day passes as I

  cross the room

  him sighs in hims sleep, rolls towards me,

  alive.

  I cry out.

  Wrap my hands around him. Him reaches hims arms around my neck. I pick him up. My arms are full.

  ‘I’ve got you, Barney, I got you,’ I whisper. My tears fall on hims hair. Him puts hims hands on my shoulders, leans back and looks at me. Hims brown eyes have my reflection inside. Him slumps forwards against my chest and hims arms hold on tight.

  I look around the storm room.

  Light shines from the sun, burning so bright, everything has come alive in here. The air is full of tiny floating pieces of cloud. Blue and purple butterflies flit everywhere – from Barney’s dreamings.

  I cradle him. Him breathes in deep, smells me, sighs. My cheek strokes hims hair.

  The storm room floor covered in tumbles of white owl feathers looks like warm snow.

  ‘That’s better, Mary,’ him says, ‘better now.’

  We sit in the corner of Annie’s storm room with a candle burning, casting shadows on the wall. I watch them flicker. Barney is asleep in my arms, holding the moppet tight to hims chest.

  Above me, the sound of barking dogs. Annie shrieks, her footsteps stamp over the floorboards.

  The front door slams.