Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12

by Gavin J. Grant

  "The wind's always a bad one,” Spitmam says, just that and nothing more, for she'll name the wind, but she won't talk about it. Wind's a private matter for her, Catchie's seen, very deep.

  "True, all winds come from trouble, but seems the winds are strutting more with every new storm. Seems they're getting particular each season."

  "Wouldn't say about that. Now, Kery, don't look while I'm doing. Not having you bawl out my cottage."

  "Oh, granny, wouldn't do that."

  "You say. Girl, find me a sly ripper."

  Inside the cottage, Spitmam keeps all her healing work in fesgars and kettles hanging by crooks. A thick storing, with secret cubbies behind the corked jars that even Catchie's never permitted to root. Catchie knows the sly tools for the careful tasks are by the tattie bucket, so she moves the collie aside carefully, knowing the fire's locked sure but fearful of anything to do with fire, and there finds a ripper.

  With a hand firm to Kery's chin to make sure the head wouldn't dally, Spitmam takes the ripper and quickly slices hard and down the girl's chest. “Tickles,” Kery says, but Aggie shushes her and watches Spitmam peel away crumble to get into the chest cavity.

  "Reach that out,” Spitmam orders. Catchie grips three stone birds out of Kery's cast and lays them on the ground, where they try to stand but fall over. Swift, Spitmam resets Kery's chest, bricking it with strong mud from a side-bucket and harshing the surface with sand.

  "No wailing—there's good, Kery."

  "Where's to see, granny? Those the birds?"

  "There's kitties, Kery, except that one, but a starling."

  "You have all the names,” Kery says, dumbed by Spitmam's knowledge, and bounds off the stool and out of the cottage.

  "Her da was the same,” Aggie says after her. “That man grew out birds and fishies and useless things, til that tree grew right out his skull. Didn't have the will of it anymore."

  With her last sigh, Aggie looks for the broken cottages round the village edge and adds, “But then which folk got the will of it now?"

  "Folks keep to the names—there's the backbone."

  "Well, so, Spitmam."

  After they're away, Spitmam stays at the door, regarding the sky while Catchie wraps the chickies in a hankie and sits them in a kuddie. “I'll take these to Hammle."

  "You don't linger, girl. First storm's across tonight."

  "Along before dark."

  "Promised."

  The short's across the hellafield, but Catchie decides on the wayward and follows the village path til she comes to the cliff edge. Here, the path's picky down to the beach, but Catchie stays on the edge, tracing it round towards the grand fishie site. There's angry things in the air—shags and terns, Spitmam says, but with all their screaming at Catchie, they're only birds and she lobs a few rocks to make more view of the sea.

  Sea. There's another Spitmam word. Most folk would just give it the name and avoid thinking or talking about it. Best not regard water, they'd say. Water'll snatch at the folk who stray too close, or it'll worry at the earth, eating foundations, making bog and sucking away their island. Water kills. Air hates. Fire would do both, and worse, if they allowed it sparking outside their collies.

  This close to the edge, Catchie sees the air's too black for bravado, so she gathers the kuddie and skeddaddles in a straight cut to where the fishie's lying.

  Hammle hails her when she's close. “Come to scat the beastie now, Catchie?"

  Catchie flushes with the accusation, bridling at its twisty tone. “'Mam took stone birds in Kery."

  "Why they're not taken the pend?"

  "Says take them to Hammle direct. There's you here, not the pend."

  "Sure, right so."

  Hammle jumps off the fishie's back and swaps his heavy clipper for her kuddie. Brusquely, he throws open the hanky and pokes the sick birds.

  "Kitties and starling,” Catchie tells.

  "Didn't ask your naming,” Hammle sharpens, but softens it with a smile. “Name's not the matter."

  While Hammle probes the birds, Catchie leans over the edge and considers the fishie. Most body's been brought out now, strapped over by dozens of tethers and bridged by rafters laid across the top by the upstander. Even held down so, the beastie still shudders with force Catchie's only witnessed in sea or storm. On the skin, the fishie's already moulting, its peels like a tattie thinned for the pot. Catchie comes closer, then close enough to touch the beastie's surface, haired all over by budding gravel flowers with odd heads. Tulips, Spitmam instructed her once.

  "Beastie's lost the will,” Catchie speaks to Hammle.

  "Body's lost the will,” Hammle corrects her. “Feel that."

  Pushing her hand through the flowers, Catchie grips the skin. There, faint in the caverns and nests of the beastie, the bare rushing of air deep down, and there again, a song, trapped, like something swallowed badly.

  "There's tune in the—” Catchie flicks the name “—lungs."

  Carefully, Hammle replaces the birds’ shroud in the kuddie. “Those lungs are hung with this massy body. Now in the water—in the proper element—that body's easy. Except that this is a stone fishie, and it has no element. Those lungs were never for anything but cracking, poor beastie. And still, there's song in it. Now there's mystery."

  "What's mystery?"

  "There's spirit."

  "What's spirit?"

  "There's the world's secrets."

  "Secrets? Oh, things without names,” Catchie says, meaning all that's never important, as Spitmam would have expected her.

  Hammle wipes his poking hand and takes the clipper away from Catchie. “Well, so some say."

  "'Mam says."

  "So Spitmam says."

  Catchie picks up the empty kuddie and Hammle climbs onto the rafters to clip the flowers on the fishie. Spitmam'll be wanting her to prepare the cottage for the storm. Anyway, beastie's failing, she can't see the sense of Hammle's work. Yet Catchie loiters.

  "And?” Hammle shouts down.

  "And just."

  "And just saying?"

  "Just saying,” Catchie starts, and started, carries through, “There's cob or cunt?"

  A chafing's expected, but Catchie's surprised when he laughs. “Cunt, piggot!"

  "Well, poor lass."

  "So."

  "Mind storm, upstander."

  "Minding, thanks."

  With a wave, Catchie gives the fishie a last regard and says alone—What's mystery?—but the air's fouling with storm so she sprints the short back to the cottage.

  During storm is worst.

  Before, there's Spitmam sealing the door with muddy tar. She's peculiar quiet, figuring the cutstone of the storm's break with a squint as if she'd been halloo-ed from the sky. Catchie's seen her granny peer storms before, as if there'd be a question of setting the kettle and borrowing a spare chair from New Solly next door for visitors.

  After chewing a whole weed, Spitmam finally mumbles alone, “There's not it, not this time."

  "What's it?” Catchie asks, but Spitmam smiles just so and no further, so the girl bites down and bands sure their cottage jars and fesgars with straw wire.

  There's no slope to the storm. Soon after Spitmam's lodged the door, she's half across when the forewind razors the wall boulders sudden, and she's all across when the storm starts to beetle the door and window. Sure in their cubby, Spitmam holds Catchie like a first bairn. They cower in cave dark, not trusting the collie's fire for light. It's the only time Catchie sees Spitmam scratchy with the ordinary fears of the rest of them, though she glares with the anger of one ashamed of ordinary weaknesses.

  Wind has its own screaming, pure intent, but in the storm, it's not just wind. Catchie listens. Shrilling across the flagged roof, tongues through the gaps around the window, but between the shudders, there's the sound of the brutes of the air. Birds shrieking, wauling, hooting, every bird that Catchie imagines, birds with wings, birds in fur, birds finned, birds every-shaped. And her own moan so
pale in Spitmam's embrace.

  "Name the things you hear.” Spitmam grasps her in hard comfort. “Hold yourself with names, girl!"

  From the twist of noise, Catchie untangles the bird sounds. “G-gulls. Kitties."

  "The others."

  "Bab-baboons, ‘mam. Tiger."

  "And all, girl."

  Shaking, Spitmam hugs Catchie solid, and she listens over the storm, for that low growl astride the other wind creatures. Words. Catchie hears words.

  "'Mam—'mam, there's folk!"

  "Easy now. Only the wind folk."

  "What do they want?” Catchie's nearly screaming now, for she can hear a wind woman fly widdershins around the cottage, faster and faster so that she seems to move forward through a new clock, and the woman cursing her for being of the slow world, and laughing at her twig bones and brittle heart and hard fears.

  But Spitmam smiles like so and no further, turning Catchie's head to her shoulder. She rocks her in the arm's memory of tenderness, til the storm's spent.

  After storm is best ever.

  Breaking open the cottages, everyone steps slow onto the scoured ground and spies around, but all are counted sure—the storm's not taken any this time. Folk reset windows, and brush the pathway, spoilt by fallen dykes. There's speculation about scratches on the door frames, which beastie has these claws, and they bring their questions to Spitmam, but she shrugs and closes her door against them. Bairns chase the last of the birds loosed from the storm, curling and fluttering helplessly before the harder world shreds the whirls of shape.

  Then when the villagers trust the sky and press back the weight of their sighs, they fill kuddies with meat and mallets and go the path, dancing around the broken stones and picking down the cliff's edge til they come to the smooth sand. Sitting on tufts of beach rush, families help each other with their heavy boots, bound sure with braided straw. Caff and Kery squeal as their mams smear rock cake on the shoes, Derry teases the sky with stones and insults, Pollett organises the mallets on large flaskies spread on the sand. Last, booted folk fan along the beach rim, til Speg starts with a crack of his mallet to a boulder, and in answer the villagers yell and whistle and march towards the water.

  The beach's spattered with things wrong-footed by the storm. Men and women close into the water—though never forget water's cunning hatred—and sing as they stomp out the jelly bodies of fishies with their boots. Smaller fishies have been hurled back of the beach, so the bairns beetle the limbs of cats and turtles and kestrels—but no one conjures with names, they're just fishies.

  And with each cull, Speg leads their shout—"There's rock! Fuck back, water and wind, for we're rock and rock's longer than you!"

  Catchie crushes cobra, regards the beach, runs over and crushes robin. “Rock's longer!” she shouts, but she can't join the others, she's thinking of so many new things. There's another world in the water out there, a place under the sea where the cobra springs at the robin, and the robin soars over the sycamore, and the sycamore shelters the bear, and the bear scoops the water for the salmon.

  That sets her thinking of the grand fishie, and of the music in its lungs, but there's another sparkle ahead of her. Catchie wipes the hard-water jelly from her boot, but Caff calls first, “Catchie!"

  Caff's strayed close to the water, where the bigger fishies are. “There's what, Caff?” Catchie shouts, but Caff just calls her again, more fearful this time. “Caff, you breached?"

  Caff points down at a fishie—a sure beastie, maybe five feet long. Its limbs are pudding, but still pulling towards the water's edge in painful lunges, leaving behind skin in sticky tracks. The belly's coated with sand and rushes snag in its hair, but Catchie can still see through the smoky jelly. A mackerel inside the fishie's body blinks back at her.

  Caff whispers, “There's fishie?"

  "Must be fishie.” Catchie sees how the tide's trying to meet the fishie partway. “Water wants it back."

  "But Catchie, it's folk."

  "N-not folk, Caff—only we're folk."

  "But Catchie, she's hair like mam and long fingers like Old Solly and she hurts like the time I stubbed my knee! There must be a name to her."

  Can the fishie hear? It tries to speak, drooling in the air, but Catchie thinks that it only talks under water. Poor fishie. Poor woman. All she can say to the two girls is the will of surviving, and something else asked, but not asked with words and names.

  Some mystery.

  "Maybe wants a name, Catchie."

  Everything wants a name. So Catchie reels through all Spitmam's taught names, but none satisfy the fishie, and her yearning twists further into Catchie. What other names can she want than the ones that are? But before she can say further, Speg's shouting at them—"Get away from the beastie!"—and Catchie and Caff stand back as New Solly and Geddy run towards them, mallets banging against their legs.

  "Daft, you've got no thinking what water will do!” Geddy, Caff's mam, chides with a bop to the side of Caff's head. Catchie retreats. She hopes to get a last look at the fishie, catch again her question, but the men have dyked her with their bodies, the trample of boots and mallet swings, and soon Catchie cannot regard the least, not with all these tears and heavy sobs cracking the floor in her heart like trapped songs.

  "More beasties for the pend, Catchie?"

  "No, upstander—just come."

  "Bringing what?"

  "Bring a question."

  "Well then?"

  "What's mystery?"

  Hammle tucks his beard and regards Catchie sharp, then passes a clipper to Catchie. “Help with the fishie then."

  The storm's cut the fishie at a hundred points, scores to gashes, and the wounds release all queer things. Bushes, already heaving fruit, sprout across the top of the fishie in a hairy line, while tatties are popping just from the skin. The tulips begin to colour across, yellow dissolving red, and a fuzz of sundew and poppies scum the beastie's gut. Like Aggie's old husband, a tree sticks stump out of its skull, and for the itch, the fishie tauts the tethers and rubs against the ditch's edge. Its crackling lies in sheaths underneath.

  Hammle's started along the tail, weeding the wounds, mowing the skin. He starts again with Catchie beside him at a clump of bracken. They work silent, and Catchie thinks, maybe she should say it, but the upstander has his pace and speaks when it's time. “What's mystery, you say?"

  "So, upstander."

  "You part of the cull this morning?"

  Catchie, strangely ashamed, doesn't say, but there's no need to, for nearly all folk cull, and there's no need to say further about Hammle's distaste for it.

  "And there's something you regarded?"

  "Upstander, there's a fishie, shape of a woman. Like folk."

  "And?"

  "Rock has folk, wind has folk. Wind has birds, water has birds. Water has fishies, rock has fishies. Why, upstander?"

  Hammle points first across the hellafield. “There's?"

  "Hellas. Rock."

  "Rock, so.” He points the other way, the cliffs. “There's?"

  "Sea. Water."

  He points up.

  "Wind.” Catchie regards the new dark boundary moving for the island. “Storm."

  "In Spitmam's collie. There's?"

  "Fire."

  On four fingers, Hammle calls them. “Rock. Wet. Air. Fire. There's all, and all's of them. The elements, bitter with each other, fighting to destroy every other. But not always—never always."

  "Time when sea not slap folk?” Catchie shuds her eyes away from the sky's face. “Time when storm not smash folk?"

  "So, Catchie. That time before, the elements were mix, making a proper set of birds and fishies and folk together. But then the elements came apart, then came to blows. Now wind has its own birds, own fishies, folk even. And so water."

  Hammle nips the whale's skin, then tufts at his beard. A straggle snips away, and he rolls it to a gritty crumble that falls to dirt. “And so rock,” he says.

  "Fire too?” Cat
chie asks.

  "So there's said, but no one's cracked a collie to find its world."

  "And this is the way of it?"

  "So, til one element crushes all—but there won't happen."

  "Why? Rock's long!"

  "Rock's long, but wind's faster. Wind's whip, but water flexes. Water's shifty, but fire sparks the world. Fire's light, but rock's what's lit. And so. Every needs each."

  Catchie yanks a dandelion from the fishie, spilling its cup into a hundred drifters. “So what held all together once?"

  "Many's said."

  "What's your say, upstander?"

  "There's the mystery you're asking.” Hammle pats a cleared plank of the fishie's skin. “Mystery's in the world's glue, sticking the world to our hearts. Once upon, it bound all with all. Now mystery's so small—a wick in a beastie's eye, a gleam along the shore. No fashioning to it left. Our grand fishie has it, but not much longer. Regard the flowers, the trees—five days, and there's never any fishie left. So. So there's the way for all, sure."

  Catchie, remembers the stone birds in Kery's chest, and dimmer, how Aggie's husband fell apart with the tree. It's true—none keep their cast.

  Catchie considers this full. She hooks the clipper on a fork in the bush, shimmies down the side of the beastie and smacks on the crackling floor. Bending under the roof of pulled tethers, Catchie scrambles the ditch round to the fishie's head, til it's immersed her, curving out and over the sky like the cliffs rising from the beach. Inside that cavern, she listens for the rustle of weeds, and listens again, and hears titchies, hares and flies stirring, and further still, the creature's songs.

  She regards the fishie's tiny eyes, strong in its pain and confusion, but there's something other too, the same thing Catchie pitted from the water woman's eyes. Some mystery, closely held, but passing out, through Catchie, forward into the world, drawing out of her an urging sharper than Catchie's ever felt.

  Hammle's followed, so Catchie asks, “Why do you help the beastie?"

  "There's poor beastie."

  "Just so?"

  "Only so."

  She lays a hand along its lip—poor beastie—and regards the coming storm, knowing this should destroy what's left of its will.