Her uncle had been alluding to their long years and vitality. If their secret ever got out there would be no acceptance and celebration, and certainly no rational inquiry into the practice of Absence. The good people of the world had ways of dealing with such deviance and none of them were pleasant. So they had to keep their secret, and to do that they needed to keep moving.
But finding a new place to live wasn’t straightforward, and it had become more difficult over the last few years. They had agreed to rules for choosing a new place - the purpose of which was to minimise the chance of being recognised by those who knew them from previous places, and who might become suspicious of their implausible youth. There had to be at least fifty miles, or two days’ travel by horse and cart between the new and the last three places and there couldn’t be any obvious trade connections. Most people travelled very little from where they lived and those that did tended to do so across a limited area. There were notable exceptions: hardy merchant types, mobile military personnel and officials with broad or roving jurisdiction. They were always wary of people with these occupations and her uncle never took any such work for himself. Their preference was for small, little known places - ideally sleepy hamlets at the end of narrow trails. The kind of places people needed good reason to visit and travellers hardly ever passed through. They rarely stayed somewhere as big as Agelrish and they had agreed never to live in Irongate again. Most people visited the city at least once in their lives and it was the place they were most likely to bump into someone from an previous home. They made ripples everywhere they went, but did everything they could to stop them coming together.
The last time their ripples came together was during a picnic on the bank of a river, outside the little town of Branhill. They were sat watching the water when a voice hailed them; using names they had left ten years in the past.
‘My eyes! If it’s not Abe and little Pip.’
They jerked around to see a man standing behind a stone wall. In polite reflex they raised a hand and waved, but privately they exchanged a look of alarm. On high alert they got to their feet and made their way over to him. The man was wearing a flat cap that shaded his face and hid his white hair, but they soon recognised him.
‘Kall! How’re doing?’ said her uncle, extending a hand over the wall. Kall Anbur was her uncle’s ex employer - the owner of a carpentry workshop in the town where they left those old names behind. Kall gripped her uncle’s hand and they shook with the warm enthusiasm that characterises the reunion of good friends in faraway places.
‘Doing good, but look at you two. You haven’t aged a day,’ he said, going straight to the fact they were afraid of.
They had prepared a story to satisfy inquiries into their apparent lack of aging: there was an herb mix that was popular in the city – a paste you could rub onto your skin that kept the wrinkles away. It was a weak explanation and one that became less plausible the more years they had to explain away. But on this occasion they had no need for the story. Kall seemed to accept their unseasoned looks and he moved on to an aspect of Della that had changed.
‘And what have you done to your hair young lady? I almost didn’t recognise you. If Abe here hadn’t turned to look up river, I’d have walked right on by.’
Della smiled. Her hair was blond and curly hair when Kall last saw her, but it was black now and her uncle had straightened it with a plant extract that smelt of lemons. ‘I thought it would suit me.’
‘And so it does!’ he laughed.
They invited him to join their picnic and he took them up on their offer for the best part of an hour. They discovered that he was in Branhill visiting his sister who owned the house on the other side of the wall. Her husband had died and he was walking the boundary to find the broken section he had promised to fix. When he finally got up, he expressed a desire to continue their catch up and they agreed to meet him in the local inn that evening.
But by the time Kall stepped into The Buttered Crust that night they were long gone. As soon as he was out of sight they hurried home to pack their things. And before the hour was out they were on their way to the hideaway. In Branhill they were known as Halor and Drew; her uncle was working in the mill and she was back at school. Meeting with Kall in earshot of new friends and acquaintances would have exposed their deceit and invited the kind of attention they strived to avoid.
When they found a place that satisfied their distance rule, her uncle would assess it in Absence, looking for spirit lures and haunts. And they would move there only if he deemed it a low enough risk. Nowadays nowhere was completely safe and their threshold for ruling a place out had risen accordingly. Agelrish was not free of threats, but it was better than most. There was a powerful haunt in Galleran Forest and a much weaker one at the lake, where a young girl had drowned whilst playing on the ice. Her uncle had marked the dangerous areas on a map and she had learnt to stay clear of them.
The difficulty in finding a suitable place to move to, usually meant weeks of looking. So if they were going to leave Agelrish in a hurry their only option was to spend time in the hideaway. This made a quick departure even more appealing. She loved the hideaway and would be glad to spend time there after what happened with the monster.
Her uncle came out and sat down beside her. He handed her a bowl of steaming porridge topped with bramble jam, but she wrinkled her nose and tried to push it away.
‘Need to eat,’ he said and pushed it back. She took the bowl onto her lap and pushed the jam around with her spoon. ‘Have you thought about school?’ She frowned, unable to grasp his meaning. ‘Your leg. You can’t just throw your crutch away and wander in there like you’re all better. It’d raise some eyebrows if you did. Remember what we told them: you were bitten by a snake when you were six. Something like that doesn’t get better overnight.’
She gawped, realising she hadn’t given any thought to it at all. They had agreed on the snake bite story because it was the one that worked best. Its proximity to the truth, uncomfortable though that memory was, meant she didn’t falter when pushed. ‘What should I do?’
‘Use your crutch like before.’ He stood, stepped off the stoop and kicked at the dust. ‘But remember to use it all the time. Even if you think no one’s watching you. There’s some good trackers in Agelrish and if they happen upon your trail, that limp of yours, or lack of it, will stand out like blood on snow. Not saying they’ll be looking, but you need to keep that limp until we can come up with a good reason why you don’t have it anymore.’ He paused to watch her play with her porridge. ‘Or until we get out of here.’
Her heart lifted at that and she managed a brief smile. He sat back down and they watched the butterflies fluttering through the flowers.
‘Do you feel any different now the poison’s gone?’ he asked after a while. ‘You know, in yourself.’
She shook her head.
‘Maybe you will in time,’ he said placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maybe some good’ll come out of this in the end.’
She hoped he was right, but as she looked out again at all those hiding places she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.
Superstitions
With her porridge barely touched, they locked the house up and set off for school. The track into town was thick with the low scent of cow parsley and spotted with buttercups and purple crane’s bill. Midges danced in the air, appearing and disappearing as they moved in and out of the shade. They passed a number of villagers who acknowledged them with a nod or wave. But none stopped to talk. They were newcomers to the villagers and in places like Agelrish it took more than a few months to get past common courtesies. It suited them just fine today. Their undivided attention was on the countryside and the possibility that the monster was lurking nearby.
They soon came to the milestone into which South Agelrish had been chiselled in three-inch-high letters. The grass was cut neatly around it and cheered with a line of red tulips. Above it the horizontal branch of an elegant oak spanned the
lane in a gesture of welcome. At its centre hung a black board that appeared to have a yellow ring painted on it. What it was supposed to be, was a yellow disc covered by a smaller black one. There would be a similar board hanging over the north road and another over the village square. It was hanging there as a reminder and it served its purpose now; as with everything that had happened she’d forgotten what day it was. Today was Black Eye day and the people of Agelrish wanted to be sure it didn’t see a single one of them.
Next to the boulder was a six-foot post to which the corpses of at least a dozen birds were skewered. She chose not to look at them directly, but knew their numbers were comprised of some combination of ravens, crows, jackdaws and blackbirds. The last place they lived had dropped such customs; the local wisdom deciding that such defiant displays would provoke, rather than suppress the Black Eye. But it was rare for people to change their ways and she knew it would take a generation for such thinking to flourish in Agelrish.
As they passed beneath the sign her uncle turned to her with his face crumpled up - one eye clamped shut and the other glaring. ‘Don’t look into the eye!’ he said, staggering forward with his hands around his throat. Mocking the eye did little to ingratiate anyone to a new village, but on any other day she would have laughed. Today she could only manage only a half-hearted smile.
‘Come on,’ he said, dropping his ghoulish charade and giving her a sideways hug. ‘Just one big smile to get me through the morning. What if I promise we get off to the hideaway tonight, no matter what happens today? We’ll take our time planning the next move and make it somewhere special. I bet you’d fancy the coast again. I know how you like the sea.’
He always knew what to say and her smile bloomed, outshining the pink roses that littered the lane.
Her school ran along one side of a cobbled square. Two rows of houses and a row of shops ran along the other three. At its centre was a large elm that rose from cracked cobblestones that were laid in ignorance of its potential. Below its broad crown her classmates played their raucous games, waiting for the heavy doors at the top of the school steps to open and the morning bell to ring. They played in clumps, yelling and skipping, but Della chose to wait quietly with her uncle. To join in with any of them required membership and despite her best efforts she was still an outsider.
In one group, a girl walked up to the elm and leant against it with her face pressed into her forearm. In a raised voice that could be heard over the cacophony of her classmates, she recited a familiar poem with affected solemnity:
When the bells toll,
Be quick to flight.
Find some shade,
That fits you right…
The children danced in and out of the shadows as if the sunlight would burn them.
For when the Black Eye swallows the light,
If you’re in sunshine, you’re in its sight!
She spun on the last word, her thumb and first finger forming a circle around one eye. Her playmates squealed in delight and froze in place. She spied them all with her eye then pointed to a boy whose foot was planted in a patch of light. He made a face of mock horror then after a disappointed groan, replaced her at the tree.
Around the trunk from him, Ismara and her two accomplices were planted like nettles; looking bitterly disappointed. Della could tell they had something planned for her – some act of cruelty they couldn’t dispense with her uncle present. It probably meant that she would get a double dose later on, but it felt good to see their faces all curdled with frustration.
‘That her?’ asked her uncle, after turning his back to them. Della nodded. ‘Who did she borrow that nose from?’
His comment caught her off guard and she was unable to suppress her laughter. She turned away and covered her mouth, hoping the girls hadn’t seen her. You weren’t supposed to laugh when Ismara was cold staring you. It was supposed to rob you of that capacity. She recovered her composure and elbowed her uncle in the side. He always had time for humour, no matter what was troubling his mind.
They had timed their walk well and after only a few minutes wait, the school doors swung open. Lady Demia’s plump form emerged into the morning light, her sour face breaking into a half smile as she acknowledged her uncle. She waddled over to the copper bell that hung above the steps and rung it; the excess flesh on her upper arm wobbling back and forth like dough. The children stopped playing at once. They gathered up their belongings and began filtering into school. Della joined the playground exodus with her uncle; crossing the cobbles with a limp that no longer served her.
‘I’ll be around all day,’ said her uncle when they reached the steps. ‘But promise me you’ll stay near the school when you break at noon and don’t leave till I come to pick you up.’
‘I will and I won’t.’
He laughed and kissed her goodbye, then disappeared from the square after weaving around Ismara and her friends.
Comeuppance
Della climbed the steps and entered the short corridor that doubled as a cloak room. Behind her, encouraged by her uncle’s departure, Ismara broke away from Meldrum and Rhea and surged up the steps, pushing through the children that separated them. Some of them started to protest, but when they saw who it was, they thought better of it. She grabbed Della just as she reached the classroom door, yanked her backwards and slammed her against the wall with all the venom she could muster. The thud of the wooden partition got the attention of all those left in the corridor and they froze to gawp at the spectacle. Ismara pushed her hooked nose into Della’s face, opening her mouth to deliver the threat she had been working on all morning. But the words morphed into a scream when a sudden pain lanced up her leg. And a clean sound; like that of two bowls clocking together, travelled the corridor beneath her cry. Her leg buckled and she dropped to the floor grasping her ankle.
The other children were spellbound by the unexpected turn of events. The school bully; feared and detested by every one of them, had just been felled. And by the new girl - a cripple who looked like she’d snap under a strong breeze. It was a welcome sight. Very welcome indeed.
‘Get away from me!’ bawled Della. She hadn’t known she was going to hit Ismara with her crutch until she’d done it. And now she wanted to do it again and again - to smash her to a pulp. Some black rage had swept up inside her when Ismara slammed her against the wall and now it was pulsing through her arteries. She lifted her crutch to deliver a second blow just as Lady Demia came thundering round the door.
‘Lower that right now young lady!’ she bellowed over a scolding finger.
The crutch swayed in the air and for a split second Della thought she was going to hit Ismara anyway. But then the black rage infusing her fizzled out and she lowered her crutch, feeling dizzy and drained.
‘What happened here?’ Lady Demia demanded as she helped Ismara to her feet.
‘She hit me with that cripple stick,’ Ismara spat, bending double to rub at her ankle where a red mark had already formed. ‘She could have broken it.’
‘You pushed me against the wall,’ said Della in a voice that was barely a whisper. All fight had gone out of her, but she had enough presence of mind to lean on her crutch and fake a grimace.
‘I’ll have no fighting in school and certainly no hitting with sticks. I don’t know what happened here but you’ll both sit at the front today and stay in at break.’
Ismara started to protest in a whine of indignation, but the hang of lady Demia’s face told her it wasn’t a good idea. Under her hot glare Della and Ismara made their way into the classroom - both of them limping.
Della’s hands were shaking as she unbuckled her satchel and took her seat at the front. When Lady Demia turned her back to write on the board Ismara leant over and started whispering new threats. It was meant to be seen by the entire class and it was received with titters of approval. But Della barely heard her. She opened her book and stared at the blackboard, wondering what had possessed her. She never lost her temper like that. She
thought about the way the whispers had dissolved into her and was scared all over again.
Ismara turned back to the front and arranged her books. Despite her throbbing ankle she was pleased with this new development. It meant Della had cracked and it explained why her uncle baby-walked her to school. And all it would take now to reduce her to a blubbering wreck was a little roughing up to show her it was stupid to fight back.
The cripple had put her down in front of many children who now needed reminding of the way things really were. Her next performance would have to be a very splendid and very public one; something humiliating that would make her cry and beg. She looked over her shoulder and exchanged a knowing look with Meldrum and Rhea - assuring them that such a project was already in the planning.
It was the rusty shears that had cracked her. Yes, the rusty shears had been a good idea. She remembered the look on the cripple’s face when she pretended to shut the blades and smiled at Lady Demia. She still had the shears under her bed. Last night she fell to sleep with them on her chest; wondering what it would be like cut her leg off and what colour blood would spurt out.
Absence: Whispers and Shadow Page 4
