Tall Tales From Pitch End

by Nigel McDowell

  ‘Dead,’ said Bruno. He tugged on one of the Owl-Sentry’s wings, tugged it out wide. ‘Does it mean never coming back or just never bothering to waken up?’

  Bruno’s mother didn’t speak for a moment. Then words disturbed the veil: ‘Yer father’s a proper hero now, Bruno. Being – being taken from us like that, by those no-good Rebels. But we’ll be well looked after because of it. Ye just wait-see. He’s a hero. Died for Pitch End.’

  Bruno released the Sentry’s wing. It sagged, then snapped back into its body.

  ‘But—’ he began.

  ‘No more buts,’ said his mother. ‘It’s time.’

  She kissed his forehead. Felt like cobwebs.

  A storm licked the Sea of Apparitions. Waves rose, shattered, regrouped. And when Bruno and his mother arrived at the harbour, they saw the entire population of the town crammed along the tumultuous shore. The one-footed raven population too, teetering on railings and shipping masts, rooftops and chimney pots and men’s bowler hats; black spots littering Bruno’s vision, ruffling nightmares that croaked: ‘Tragedy! Tragedy! Oh the tragedy!’

  Anyone who was anyone was there. Many too who were nobody Bruno could know or name. When the story had emerged that Bruno’s father hadn’t just disappeared on the same night of the Rebel attack on their house, but had been murdered by one of the Rebels, there wasn’t a Pitch Ender who would dare be anywhere else on the morning of Michael Atlas’s Forgetting – too much scandal to be leeched, too much indignation to be mined, the lust for tragedy too much to miss.

  Temperate Thomas, Head of the Pitch End Elders, led the ceremony.

  Bruno and his mother took their place, standing on shingle, the Temperate upraised on the ceremonial casket used for all Forgettings, its edges split and panels cracked. Temperate Thomas clapped his hands for attention, shivered and stamped his feet and clapped his hands some more just to keep them from forgetting warmth.

  ‘Come forward, the Withermen!’ he called out.

  Four men parted the crowd. Long hair as grey-brown and as lank as dead grass, blank-eyed and heads bowed, between them they carried an oak casket, two on either side. The body of Michael Atlas hadn’t been found so tradition dictated that Bruno and his mother would offer just the casket to the sea, filled with Michael Atlas’s ‘most treasured possessions’. At their approach, Bruno looked for the same thing all Pitch Enders looked for, never tired of seeing, but with a mixture of disgust and intrigue: clock faces embedded in the four men’s chests, over their hearts.

  Most, like the Temperate, called them ‘Withermen’. Some – not many and mostly children – called them ‘Wind-Up-Men’. But Bruno preferred Withermen – ‘Wind-Up-Men’ was too childish for him. Bruno had asked his mother more than once or twice what the clocks in their chests were for, and was it to keep them going all day long, never dying like the people it was their job to deal with? His mother had told him, ‘Sshhh, and don’t ask so many questions all the time.’

  ‘Hurry now!’ the Temperate told them.

  One of these Withermen was the Mr Pace who had sent the black roses. He was a friend of Bruno’s father. Had been. Bruno remembered trips to North Street to buy spuds and apples and string and candles and wireless batteries (or to South Street – butter, milk, eggs, shoe polish), and his father would stop and speak to Pace and the other Withermen at their parlour on North. Bruno noticed on these occasions how other Pitch Enders scowled, hurried past the parlour. And after, how shopkeepers would flick their notices from COME IN! to GO AWAY! if they saw him and his father approach. He’d tugged his father’s hand and asked, ‘Why do they not want to speak to the Withermen? Is it coz they’re dealing with the dead bodies of people? Do people not like it or what?’

  His father had laughed and said, ‘Ye’re a clever boy, Bruno. Sharp as a tack. Don’t bother a bit about what anybody in this place thinks. Speak to whoever ye like.’

  Back on the beach for his father’s Forgetting, the shingle was a careless racket under the Withermen’s boots. They settled the casket at the top of a long, skinny-legged, wooden chute that led to the sea. Temperate Thomas began, though the waves were keen to edit: ‘With a veritable ocean of regret … tragic loss of such a great character … martyr to the cause of decency … dedicated father, masterful husband…’

  And on and on.

  ‘Were it not for these so-calling-themselves Rebels,’ Temperate Thomas went on, ‘that have burned our homes and turned the milk sour in our cattle, blighted our crops and Pitch-knows what else, then poor Widow Atlas and her boy would still be having a brave husband and salt-of-the-sea father to protect and nurture them both. A breadwinner to provide for them.’

  Bruno examined the face of Temperate Thomas, the eyes in particular so close together that when Bruno half-closed his own they appeared not as two but as just one big one. He would have tugged on his mother’s sleeve, told her of this discovery, maybe made her laugh. His father would’ve appreciated him for it, told him how canny he was and never to lose that talent for seeing people properly.

  ‘Now, who is to care for these two souls?’

  As was custom – no answer nor offer.

  Bruno’s eyes wandered, looked down. He had a sudden desire to snatch up a piece of shingle, feel the sharpness of it in his hand. He thought for a moment, then licked his thumb and bent down to rub a smudge from his left shoe before bobbing back up again, fragment retrieved, slipping it like lightning into his pocket.

  No more words. Temperate Thomas simply nodded to one of the young Trainee Elders. The boy held, at arm’s length, a clutch of straw. Into it the Temperate tossed flame from a careful hand, his Talent summoning it despite the gale and the spray and the cold. The flames were white. The Trainee Elder touched the torch to the casket and it took, swift as fire had taken Bruno and his mother’s home. The casket remained, obscured by twisting flame and smoke. Only when Temperate Thomas gave a nod did the Trainee Elder yank on a rope and it was launched down the chute and into the Sea of Apparitions.

  Too soon, the last reminders of Bruno’s father were snatched by the current. Out, beyond the mist, beyond anyone’s seeing, the casket would be caught by one of the whirlpools, the Sea of Apparitions hungry for any tragedy to swallow.

  Where before Bruno had felt nothing much – bit bored and baffled, not really seeing the point at all in sending out to sea a box that was supposed to contain his father but didn’t but which they all needed to pretend was important – he then suddenly moved towards the waves. His mother grabbed and held him back, hands clasped tight across his chest. Water rushed against his ankles but he hardly felt the cold, the pain.

  It hadn’t been a conscious thought of his, just an instinct – to follow that casket, to watch it leave, watch it end. Bruno started to cry then, cold needling his cheeks, fists clenched. He looked to the Temperate – his expression was perfect pity. Bruno felt a desire to rush at the man, to beat against him as he’d done with the Marshall. Then he looked to his mother, but there was nothing there but black.

  ‘Forget, Pitch Enders!’ announced Temperate Thomas, his voice rising over everything, touching on everyone’s hearing. ‘Forget!’

  The ravens encouraged too: ‘Forget! Forget!’

  ‘We do not dwell,’ Temperate Thomas continued, ‘on the finality of death, but discard past pains like those of the past season – the war we’ve been fighting against the Rebels. And to rightly put that past behind us, let me offer something to all of ye now.’

  Bruno became conscious of another shifting in the crowd. Feet shuffled to position themselves, to allow their owners to see clearly, and only by his position on the beach could Bruno see without needing to strain or move around: two men, boys, tripping along, feet hindered by rusted chains, two Enforcers driving them onwards with rifle barrels at their backs.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Pitch End,’ Temperate Thomas said, ‘we are at the ending of the Single Season War. So now – witness the demise of the Rebels!’

 
Spitting, insults and profanities, more than Bruno had ever heard or dared to utter himself, were hurled like rocks at these two boys. Two Rebels but with tiny, watering, retreating, blackened eyes, skinny legs and cracked knees. They hobbled as their bare feet met shingle, forced on until they stood only feet from Bruno and his mother. They shivered in the shadow of Temperate Thomas, who gave the smallest nod.

  At the wordless command the Enforcers jabbed rifles into the legs of the Rebels. They collapsed on top of one another. They began to cry, squirming, pushing their heads close together, hoping for protection or solace. They didn’t speak.

  One of the boys reached for Bruno.

  ‘Yer tears are dust!’ said the Temperate, suddenly. ‘No protest, no repentance will save ye. No hope now. Yer deeds – yer despicable, worthless deeds – are all that will remain of ye, what will endure, what we will scavenge from the carcass of yer lives!’

  The crack of metal as Enforcers cocked their rifles, took aim.

  Waves clawed the shore.

  Unlike outside the burning house a week earlier, this time Bruno wanted to see. But realising what was about to happen an instant before it did, his mother clapped her hands over his eyes. Nothing could stifle the sound though – gunshots echoing far out to sea and up North and South Streets and into the cracks of the Elm Tree Mountains, rocking Bruno to his bones. He almost toppled, all breath slammed from his chest.

  Two final crunches of shingle, barely distinguishable one from the other.

  And the final words resounded on the morning air:

  ‘It is over,’ Bruno heard Temperate Thomas say from beyond the dawn darkness of his mother’s shivering fingers. ‘It is over, my friends. Now go forth, and Forget!’

  The ravens repeated: ‘Forget! Forget!’

  ‘Long live Pitch End!’ the Temperate told them.

  The townsfolk chorused their traditional reply: ‘And longer live the Elders!’

  III

  The End of Time

  Before sunlight: ‘Up Bruno. Wake now. They’re here.’

  His mother, veiled face close to his, whispered low but with hands tight on his shoulders, shaking.

  ‘Widow Atlas! Open up! We’re here to collect!’

  Bruno was soft-headed with sleep but still he recognised the voice of the Marshall. There was a thumping at their front door like the Head of the Enforcers was about to bring it down, collapse further their fragile world – three days since the Forgetting and Bruno had barely left his bed; he and his mother hadn’t spoken to each other until this.

  ‘Here,’ said his mother, and she slipped her hand beneath his blankets, pressing something into his hands. Her fingers were cold, the thing she passed to him colder.

  ‘We have to hide anything to do with yer father,’ she said. ‘In case they’re finding it. Take it and keep it somewhere safe. I know ye’ll think of a good place – ye’re a sharp boy. Do it quick-smart.’

  She left him, hurrying out and pulling the door of Bruno’s bedroom shut.

  Bruno lay where he was. He thought to give up whatever his mother had given, push it out from under the blankets, let it fall, drop to the floorboards. Whatever she’d given him, he couldn’t care. He just lay, and listened –

  ‘Widow Atlas’ (the Marshall) ‘we’re here to collect.’

  ‘All I had’ (his mother’s voice, lower than Bruno could’ve imagined it) ‘went in the Forgetting Casket, on out to sea. I have nothing more.’

  ‘Not that nonsense,’ said the Marshall. ‘We’re here for something else. Ye’ve been reading the Elder Orders we’ve been giving out these past few days?’

  If his mother replied, Bruno didn’t hear it. He sat up then, willed by curiosity. His bedroom was at the front of their cottage so he had only to crawl down the bed and listen by the small window –

  ‘He’s wanting to collect what?’ he heard his mother say, her voice still low.

  ‘Temperate Thomas II,’ the Marshall snapped, ‘Head of the Elders, has sent us to collect yer time.’

  Silence then. Or an almost-silence – Bruno was still holding what his mother had given him and only then did he look to it, drawn by sound. A small, circular, brass object. It was ticking.

  ‘Time,’ the Marshall repeated, and Bruno started, covering the object and at the same time noticing that it was bound up tight with a silver chain, as though to hold the thing shut, whatever lay inside having to stay hidden. ‘We need all of it,’ the Marshall went on. ‘Things are changing in Pitch End, Widow Atlas. No more doing what youse all want, whenever ye like. There’s to be proper rules, make sure everyone is for staying in line. Now – how many timepieces do ye have?’

  Bruno left his bed whilst his mother breathed her soft, placid reply – ‘Just a carriage clock in the living room, that’s all’ – and moved quick on his toes to his bedside table and snatched the defunct Owl-Sentry from its place. Then back and under his bed, the fire doing nothing to deter him hiding in this place. He felt safer, being so alone; felt closer to his own thoughts.

  On his belly he opened the back of the Owl-Sentry. This was his hiding place – amongst cogs and gears, rust and verdigris, were plenty of things that he shouldn’t have had. Some things taken from his father’s oak casket when his mother hadn’t been looking that should’ve been at sea, some he’d kept for no proper reason: a strip of greaseproof paper, a wilted rose, a sepia pictograph of himself and his father and mother, a curl of shingle, a wooden ship that sat in his palm perfectly, small sails as frail as web. To these he added the –

  ‘Ye don’t have a pocket watch here, by any chance?’ he heard the Marshall ask.

  ‘No,’ said Bruno’s mother. ‘We’ve never had such a thing.’

  A pocket watch. Bruno realised that’s what he held, the chain knotted around it with (he noticed only then) a symbol of silver attached: a half-shut eye with a bird in open flight at its centre. A storm-petrel, Bruno decided, noticing the long, thin legs. His father had taught him about such things on their wanderings together – Pitch End birds and plants and seasons and the inevitable tides.

  ‘We’re duty-bound,’ he heard the Marshall say, ‘to come in and be checking. So no, a Widow’s word isn’t good enough for me.’

  And in they came – boots and boots, so many footfalls it was as though the Enforcers were on parade, still in readiness for war and not for entering the cottage of a Widow and her five-turns-old son. Bruno shut the back of the Owl-Sentry and listened, watching bland light leak under his bedroom door from carried lanterns. Shadows broke the beams and paused, then passed. He clutched the Owl-Sentry closer to his heart and for a moment its eyes brightened to white, fairly blazed, its head twitching and revolving to gaze at Bruno as though at last it might make a sound.

  A hand went against his bedroom door, a new shadow beneath.

  ‘Marshall,’ he heard his mother say, just outside the door. ‘What exactly is the right-real purpose of taking the clocks?’

  ‘The purpose,’ replied the Marshall, ‘is none of yer concern. But the fact is this: ye’ll do as we say, coz we do what Temperate Thomas and the Elders say. And they say it’s about time this town was brought into line. It’s about time’ (he paused, and Bruno heard the Marshall snort) ‘that there was a bit less time. A bit less doing as ye please. It’s too much sitting about thinking and not enough busying that got us into the recent … unpleasantness.’ Bruno knew that the Marshall meant the Single Season War, the Rebels and their attempts (Sabitha McCormack had told him in Hedge School) to get rid of the Elders. But the real words of what happened were being rubbed out, Forgotten as completely as his father would be.

  No one will be saying war, thought Bruno. They’ll be saying unpleasantness. Like the way no one just says dead.

  ‘Didn’t see any other clocks or nothing, Marshall,’ said the voice of an Enforcer.

  A creak of floorboard, creak of leather.

  Bruno watched the shadow of the Marshall shift.

  ‘That’ll be doi
ng for now,’ he said. ‘Have a pleasant Pitch End day, Widow Atlas.’

  His shadow retreated, and Bruno saw only a vague darkness at the bottom of his bedroom door: his mother, standing stranded, as the Marshall and the Enforcers left them.

  Bruno remained under his bed, and his mother remained outside the door.

  He looked down and watched the eyes of his Owl-Sentry dim, die, as the cry went out over the cold and damp of an Ever-Winter morning in Pitch End: ‘Surrender all yer timepieces in the name of the Elders! Today in Pitch End is the end of time!’

  IV

  Truth

  ‘Ye shouldn’t be talking about yer da, Bruno Atlas! He’s dead and gone so ye should’ve Forgotten! I’m telling Miss Hope.’

  ‘Do what ye like.’

  ‘I will. Do ye know who my father is, Atlas?’

  ‘How could I not know, Sabitha – ye never shut up about it.’

  Sabitha McCormack stalled, then swallowed and said, ‘At least my da is still alive. Ye’re no better than any of the rest of us, even if yer father was killed by a Rebel. So ye can stop acting like the big man and some bloody hero, Atlas!’

  Everyone in the playground laughed.

  That’s it, thought Bruno. No more. Enough is bloody enough.

  He turned, fingers doubling over into a cumbersome but determined fist, sucked in a shallow breath and punched Sabitha McCormack, the Marshall’s daughter. Bone on bone, knuckle against cheek – a deep, sickening collision. Sabitha cried out and recoiled and so did Bruno, but he steadied himself quickly and was able to watch Sabitha stumble and fall to the playground.

  She didn’t move, just lay there, bewildered. Nausea made Bruno’s vision run, the world a ruined watercolour. He knew he’d done too much.

  The other children in the playground drew in, calling out and announcing their outrage to one another as Sabitha’s eyes grew wider and wider again. Bruno knew she was trying to decide whether or not to cry. She was fifteen turns old, same as him, but still she wept near enough daily. Sabitha examined herself, discovered the beginning of some bleeding on her elbows and settled, this time, for screaming.