Only Ever Always

by Penni Russon

  There’s a dull thump, and a mess of noise that is all tooth and throat and muscle and bone. I smell sour blood, I smell something’s insides, but they’re not mine. I risk a peek.

  It’s a second dog, a blur of pale yellow fur. Fighting they become one terrible snarling thing. They tumble towards me and I yelp and bury my face in the road, eyes closed, gravel pressing into my cheeks. I wait for the two of ’em to tear me apart.

  And then. And then. All sound whimpers and dies. I lie there with my forehead pressed against the concrete and the only thing I can hear is my own raw breath. I dare to look. Muscle and tooth and hard nail claw – vanished. I get up warily. I look round, fists raised, ready for fighting.

  The yellow dog stands to look at me from a safe distance. I can see the pale hairs of its belly, long thin scars in its short coat of matted fur. Its gut is bloated with emptiness – I know that bloat. Dog watches me. Then it turns and lopes into the yard of a broken house and disappears down the side, towards the river.

  And there’s just me on the long grey road. Me and the stirred up dust and my own stuttering heart.

  Market is spread out. People lay down their wares. Others pick and jumble. They come to sell and swap, they come for treasures, they come for this and that, for hum and jostle, to gather together, to tittle-tattle.

  What’s mine is gone, scattered on streets. I didn’t have the stout to retrieve all them little pieces. My fingers aint working nohow, they’re curling tight to stop ’em from shaking.

  I push my way through the pickers and the crumbles, looking for Groom. But Groom aint nowhere. I ask the usuals if they seen him. They shake their heads and go back to their tattling.

  ‘Not today, luvvy,’ tells Mudda Meggsy. ‘Buy some soap?’

  ‘What need I got for soap?’

  ‘You got need, girlie,’ Meggsy laughs. ‘Smells ripe you do. Look at your filth.’

  I sniff my forearm. ‘Smell like I always do.’

  ‘Listen to ’er. Dainty biscuit, you are.’

  People is strange – what they want, what they buy. Sometimes people what don’t know better offer me paper money or silver coins in exchange for my crumbles. What good’s that? I aint got no use for plinky coins. I want birds’ eggs or vegetables from the ground or things for making or candles or matches. I aint got no use for much else. Paper money’s for the rich, like Andrew’s Doctor.

  ‘You, girl. You. You come over here. Come and see Dolores. That’s right. That’s right.’

  At first the words is just one of market’s hums, but the voice singles itself out, rising to meet me. There’s a woman, older’n most, older’n Mudda Meggsy even. She wears all her clothes like some do, layers of ’em, as if they don’t like to leave nothing behind. She has her wares laid out neat and nice, just a selection of things all spaced out, but not the sort of things I’d be swapping for. Dainty things, little splinters, ready to crack and brittle away, no usefulness to ’em. She aint a usual, I never seen this one afore. Sometimes ones come that just want to swap enough to keep on for a while, ones what have enough to get by otherwise, or ones what are just passing through, going somewhere else, looking for somewhere better.

  I don’t know her, but she looks at me. ‘Yes,’ old woman tells, all narrow and squinting. ‘Yes. There’s waves off you all right, wobblings and tremblings. I think Dolores has something of yours.’

  She’s scrounging round behind herself, searching through her sacks and bags. I hover and want to be gone. I think she aint quite right. Wobblings and tremblings? I meet lots that seem fine when you look at ’em but inside they’re all jangled up, like their brains is full of tangles, like someone tipped out all their parts and jammed ’em back in without care.

  ‘You aint got nothing for me, Dolores,’ I say. ‘You must be waiting on someone else. I’m looking for Groom. You know Groom?’

  Dolores shakes her head and frowns, not looking round from her scrounging. ‘I got something for you all right. Just you wait there, girl.’

  Not that I’m planning on doing no waiting, but now I stopped I don’t know how to walk no more. My knees is weak, like they want me to sit. My breath shakes in my body. All of a sudden I’m cold. I see in front of me, real as life, that river dog’s long snarling tooth.

  I crane my head looking for Groom. Where is he? How come this woman aint heard of him? Everyone round here knows Groom. I can’t believe there’s a person in this city that don’t tattle his name. Even if there weren’t no people to tell, I’d tattle it to the brown river and the low sky. Groom’s older’n me, but not by much and his hands is real broad, real gentle and his eyes is the colour of the deep brown river.

  ‘Here it is,’ she tells, triumphant.

  ‘I tell you, it aint me you got for. I can’t swap nothing anyway.’ And I spread out my empty hands.

  Dolores squints. ‘From you, I’ll take an I.O.U.’ She leans forwards to offer something. It looks like a ball of glass.

  ‘What would I be wanting this for?’ I say, but I look in spite of myself and then my breath is a hook in my throat.

  ‘Take it,’ she croons. ‘Feel the weight of it.’

  I hold it in my two hands and she’s right, it’s got weight. I feel a tight strumming in my ribs and I peer inside. There’s a rough triangle of glass missing, and a sharp hole where it should be. Once the ball would have been whole and smooth, sealed up, now I can wriggle my finger inside. ‘It’s broken,’ I say, and my voice creaks with disappointment, though I don’t know why I’m disappointed. I aint buying today. I just want to find Groom. The longer the day goes the more I want to see him afore I make my long walk home.

  ‘It’s still good,’ she tells, persuasive. Her head bobs up and down, like she’s got a loose spring. ‘It’s still got something. Look, girl. Look deeper.’

  Inside there’s a tiny girl. I seen delicate crumbles all my life, dainty little things that aint of any use, that crack away just as soon as you look and I aint never understood or desired ’em.

  But the look on this girl’s face carries me places. She’s got her head back. I can’t tell what she’s doing. Her face shines, even though the world she’s in is tattered and dusty. You can see that once she was with someone, there’s an arm curling round her back, but the rest is gone. I wonder if they’re dancing. Andrew would know. He remembers about dancing. He tried to show me once, but he said it weren’t no good without music and he couldn’t remember no tune to la la la.

  The word music enters my bony skull and I turn the glass ball over. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I find it under the wooden base. It’s a stiff silver key. I try to turn it, but it won’t budge.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Dolores tells. She’s all of a sudden sharp. ‘Do you want it or not? I haven’t got all day about it.’

  Neither me or Dolores has anywhere better to be. But I don’t say this. Cause I want the music ball. I’m shocked with wanting it, when usually I don’t want nothing but food and water and light against the dark, things what we can use. This aint of no use, there aint no call for me having it. But, yes. I want it.

  ‘I aint got nothing,’ I say again. I hold on to it tightly, hold it to my chest. I think about running. She won’t catch me, I know. But there’s ones what marketeers pay to keep an eye for thieves – we call ’em screws – and they got fists and they got metal pipes and they can rip the hair from your scalp. And if they catch me I won’t never be let to come back. Thieves aren’t forgotten at market, even though we’re all of us making a living from taking in one way or another. You gotta have hard lines, Groom tells.

  ‘I take I.O.U.s,’ Dolores tells again. ‘But it won’t be cheap.’

  ‘How do you know I’ll pay?’

  ‘Oh you’ll pay me, girl. I don’t need to worry about that.’

  I aint dumb. I don’t trust her; she’s got dog’
s breath. Andrew would rip me if he knew I signed an I.O.U. But there’s the girl inside the glass and I can imagine her spinning, can almost see it through a fog in my skull. I could fix that key and we could have music, Andrew and me, and maybe he could teach me real dancing. I tell myself how happy he would be if we had music, how he might wake properly, not be tired anymore. I tell myself it’s for Andrew as Dolores pushes paperleaf and stub at me. I take the stub in my fist and make the letters of my name. Dolores smiles, showing her tongue, her shining teeth.

  I barely finish making the last shape when suddenly there’s yelling and pushing and the pointy stub snaps in my fist as the front of a man sweeps me up and propels me along in his path. Dolores snatches paper up and waves it while I’m jostled away from the table, clutching the music ball and suddenly, now that ball’s mine, I feel rooked. I want my name back.

  ‘Wait,’ I call. But Dolores is not in my sights no more. ‘Stop pushing!’ I shout at the man. ‘I gotta get back there.’ But it aint no use cause it aint one man who’s pushing but a jarring of bodies, all desperate to get out, clutching what’s theirs.

  And then, finally, through slits in the crowd of arms and bodies, I see Groom.

  ‘Groom!’ I shout, before I am lost for good in the thick of elbows.

  ‘Clara!’ He reaches out a long arm and his fingers dig into my shoulder. He yanks me though there’s such a press that there aint hardly anywhere for me to go.

  We push sideways against the crowd, slip through a narrow gap between old building walls and then we’re running, racing down an open stretch of road, but we’re going in the wrong direction from my home and eventually I stagger to a stop and turn myself round, trying to know where I am, but I don’t recognise this part of the city, except to know we’re somewhere near the river, I can smell the damp.

  Up the road. Groom realises I’ve stopped running and he stops too, leans down panting with his hands on his knees.

  ‘Was it screws?’

  He shakes his head, still out of puff. ‘Not screws,’ he gasps. ‘Raiders.’

  I hear a howl cut through the air.

  ‘They got dogs.’

  I spit. Dogs. I want to kill ’em all, gristle and bone. ‘We gotta get back there,’ I say. ‘I gotta get home.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Groom tells. ‘We aint goin back.’

  ‘I gotta get home.’ I stride back towards market, chin out, arms still wrapped round the damned crumble.

  Groom calls after me. ‘Clara. They’ll get you. You’re just the kind of thing they like. Tasty meat.’

  ‘Aint no dog gonna eat me.’

  ‘I weren’t talkin about the dogs.’

  I stop, but I don’t turn round.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ I say and my voice is thin, unravelling in the empty road. The glass ball is the wrong shape for my arms. I want to put it down, that blighted box, put it on the road and walk away from it. There’s something wrong about it. But I hang on to it. It’s too late now. I don’t know how to leave it behind.

  Groom laughs. ‘Clara, you aint feared, are you?’

  ‘What?’

  Groom swaggers over. He looks bigger now he thinks I’m feared. ‘I never seen you feared.’

  ‘I been attacked by dogs and rooked by some old lady and now Raiders and more dogs and being lost,’ my voice quakes. I straighten my shoulders and stare fiercely at a speck of dust in the air. ‘I aint feared. I just want to go home.’

  ‘I’ll look after you, Clara,’ Groom tells. He puts his arm on my shoulders. ‘I’ll take good care.’

  ‘I don’t need looking after,’ I tell, but I let his arm rest there a moment. My heart is pounding. Honestly I wouldn’t mind being looked after by Groom. My mouth is dry as he sweeps long strands of hair out of his face so I can see his brown river eyes. I feel the weight of the ball in my arms. ‘Andrew,’ I croak, and shrink away from Groom’s embrace.

  ‘Andrew!’ Groom spits. ‘He keeps you. He hides you away. You need people.’ He touches my cheek. ‘You should be with me.’

  ‘We’re family,’ I say, my cheek all a-feather where’s touched me. ‘Andrew’n’me.’

  ‘Aren’t we family?’

  I look to the depths of his brown river eyes. I shake my head regretfully.

  ‘Well, then what? What are we?’

  I can’t answer. My throat is closed.

  ‘You’re cold, Clara. You’re a stonehearted girl.’ He grabs my shoulders, turns me round and gives me a gentle shove. I stumble forwards in the direction of another street, coming off this one. ‘There,’ he tells. ‘Follow that. You’ll find your way home, safe enough.’

  I stare dubiously at the street that turns into a bend afore I can see where it goes.

  ‘This road curls back to your Andrew.’ Groom’s voice is hard-edged. ‘I wouldn’t steer you wrong, Clara. You know I aint lookin to harm you.’

  ‘What about you?’ I say.

  ‘What do you care?’ Groom answers. Dark thoughts are scribbled all round his head.

  I laugh. I can’t help it.

  ‘Don’t you laugh, Clara,’ Groom tells. ‘You’ll be sorry when the Raiders get me.’

  ‘No Raider’s ever gonna get you,’ I call over my shoulder. ‘You’re slippery as riverweed.’

  ‘Made of stone, you are,’ he yells. ‘Black blooded.’

  I look back and he’s still watching. I shift the weight of the glass ball and raise my hand goodbye. Soon the road bends and I know he’s still there, but it don’t matter if he is or not, because I’m gone.

  I walk and walk and walk and I think Groom’s yanked my chain once and for all because this road aint no road I never seen and I can’t tell how it’s gonna get me back to Andrew. But I don’t know what else to do but walk it, and the road keeps crooking itself round and things seem to come together in a picture in my head and I can see like I’m a bird above – which streets are round me and where my own place is, like streets are being made while I walk, out of nothing. The road veers away from the river and I’m glad for it, but I can’t stop twitching at shadows. Like I said, streets got dogs too.

  I’m nearly home when one finds me. It’s standing where I need to go, bigger’n life, like it’s been waiting there for me. It’s the yellow dog from afore, criss-crossed with belly scars. ‘Go on git,’ I say but dog doesn’t git. I drag my voice so it’s growly low, but dog just waits for me.

  It steps towards to me and lowers its head, its tail midheight and wagging. It means to stay. I raise my hand to strike it, swelling out my chest to make myself look bigger and fiercer. It don’t flinch. It aint feared of me. When I get close I see it’s got bites in its throat from that greasy river dog. Blood mats the furry ruff of its neck.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘You gotta git. You know what git means?’

  It doesn’t.

  ‘Listen. You aint mine. Andrew won’t have you. Anyway, what use I got for a dog?’

  The dog doesn’t know that either. I sit down on the curb. It sits down beside me. I look at the glass ball in my hands. ‘What use I got for this? I must be daftheaded.’

  Me and the dog look at the glass ball together. The key’s stuck fast. I gently coax it with my fingers, but I can’t get it to turn.

  ‘Spring must be busted,’ I tell the dog. I stand up, frowning at the bottom of the ball, trying to see how to open it up. I give it one more turn and suddenly sounds come out of the box, itching the hairs inside my ears.

  ‘Ha!’ I say to dog. ‘I did it.’

  But what did I do? Each sound – ber-ling – is a bubble leaking from the box, shimmering and silver and oily. I don’t remember Andrew telling anything like this when he telled about music and dancing; music aint nothing you’re supposed to see. Maybe I even asked him when I was a little kid, and he was tel
ling about recordings and singing and dancing, maybe I even said, open-mouthed, what does music look like? and he would have said: Clara, it don’t look like anything, it just plink plinks, like the sound of coins or bolts rattling in your hands, only a million times better.

  But this music does look like something.

  Them ber-lings come over us, me and dog. They sting my eyes and burn my skin. Dog barks and it seems like that’s a bubble too, black though, not silver, oozing out of his mouth.

  And then I’m somewhere new. Somewhere I aint never been afore. There’s so much crowding my eyes that I can’t look at nothing, cause I’m too busy looking at everything. My skin zings all over, I realise I’m cold, I’m freezing. I aint never been freezing afore. The sky is a savage colour that I know is called blue, but I aint never seen blue like this. There’s houses, whole and nice, and flowers, all pretty and soft and colourful growing out of rich black dirt. Everything looks polished, like Andrew’s gone over the whole world with a spirit-soaked rag. The air smells sweet, and of something else, metal, manufactured. I can hear something too, a deep echoing mechanical purr, somewhere beyond the houses. The trees twitter, bursting with music of their own.

  It’s not till the last ber-ling’s played that I remember the music and by then it’s too late. Going back hurts a lot more than going there. I’m lying on the ground by the time I know where I am and the dog’s licking my face. I catch a whiff of my stinking self and I think maybe at market I might do some swapping for soap after all.

  I push the dog off. ‘You need soap too,’ I say, but my voice comes out dull and thudding, and bitter bile washes into my throat.

  ‘Git,’ I growl. ‘You can’t come home with me.’

  The dog trots off. Just like that.

  ‘Yeah go on,’ I shout. ‘Git. Git. I said I didn’t want you nohow.’ My voice slaps the emptiness and rebounds.