Look at me, Briony, walking and talking with a boy-man. Tonight is the first meeting of the Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus. Eldric and I walk along the towpath. The sun sits on the river like a great orange yolk. Eldric and I admire it.
It feels as though it’s been months since Eldric arrived, but it’s been only five weeks. If you want to stretch out your life, here’s my advice: Look about for new experiences, lots of them. It slows down time. Here are the experiences I recommend: Sit down to breakfast with a person, actually sit and eat and talk. Plan the details of a secret club while your father reads the paper, and even if your father realizes what you’re doing, it’s all right, because you’ve kept the important thing secret.
No one knows about the fraternitus.
Pardon me: Fraternitus. It’s the sort of word that simply begs for a Capital beginning.
The Shire horses have marked the path with their great dinner-plate hooves. We put our feet inside their footprints, we laugh.
Briony feminina regularitatis est.
She is a feminina regularitatis who deserves a holiday, just for this one evening. Listen to what she did. Hark unto the extreme cleverness of Briony Larkin.
This is Briony Larkin.
This is Briony Larkin; who burnt down the pumping station.
This is Briony Larkin; who burnt down the pumping station; which made the Boggy Mun happy.
This is Briony Larkin; who burnt down the pumping station; which made the Boggy Mun happy; which prompted him to cure the villagers of the swamp cough.
This is Briony Larkin; who burnt down the pumping station; which made the Boggy Mun happy; which prompted him to cure the villagers of the swamp cough; which cured Rose Larkin.
This is Briony Larkin; who burnt down the pumping station; which made the Boggy Mun happy; which prompted him to cure the villagers of the swamp cough; which cured Rose Larkin; which meant that Briony Larkin deserved a holiday, and she wasn’t even obliged to sneak out at night and worry about being caught, nor was she obliged to worry about Rose waking and bolting into the swamp in a panic, because Father and Mr. Clayborne are looking after Rose, will wonders never cease?
This is Briony Larkin.
I deserved a holiday, and I deserved to dispense with the laces and trusses expected of a clergyman’s daughter. I wore my oldest frock, which looked remarkably like a potato sack, and I wore very little beneath. I should never have imagined how lovely that feels. It’s most freeing, and it gives you the delicious sense you’re on your way to moral degeneracy. I shall soon be painting my lips and drinking gin.
The first meeting of the Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus was also to be my first fighting lesson. I made a fist and showed it to Eldric.
“Fistibus Briony.” I shook my fist. “Eldric terrorificorum est?”
“Terrific? I’m terrific!”
“Not terrific!” I said. “Quite the opposite. Listen carefully: terrorificorum.”
“Hmm,” said Eldric.
“Grant me patience, O Jupiter Magnificum!”
“Not terrified!” shouted Eldric at last. “Never terrified of Briony’s fistibus!”
We laughed and laughed. I was aware that I didn’t hate myself, which left me in a philosophical dilemma. Should I hate myself for not hating myself?
Briony destere Briony.
It doesn’t quite have the same ring.
I initiated conversation, like this:
“Do you think you’ll return to London?”
I found myself truly interested in what the answer was to be.
“Not for some time,” said Eldric. “Father intends to find another tutor willing to spend at least a year in the Swampsea. I feel it my obligation as a bad boy, and a founding member of the Fraternitus, to complain whenever he speaks of staying on. So please don’t mention how very glad I am to stay.”
“Mumibus wordium,” I said, although I knew that Mr. Clayborne knew Eldric was fond of the Swampsea, and that among the three of us—Mr. Clayborne, Eldric, and me—each of us knew the others knew. There’s an example of the Clayborne family language. It’s a silent language, but dead opposite to Father’s. And I, Briony Larkin, was beginning to pick it up. I learn languages quickly. Have I perhaps mentioned that?
“Speaking of tutors,” said Eldric, “I wonder that your father let you go without lessons since that Genius Fitz of yours left. I hope I’m not being a nosy parkerium.”
“You can’t blame Father,” I said. “Or, rather, you can blame him, and I certainly invite you to do so, but it will have to be for something else. Father intended to send me to school. It was all arranged, and my trunks were packed, but Stepmother fell ill and I stayed to care for her.”
“Surely there were other suitable people who might have done so?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
It was impossible to explain. Stepmother fell ill.
But that wasn’t quite true. Stepmother also fell. Stepmother fell. Mucky Face smashed her, and she fell. Which made her fall ill.
I made Stepmother fall and she fell ill. I made Rose fall, and she fell ill.
I hadn’t known what I was doing at the time, but I remember both incidents entirely. My life changed in the few minutes it took for Stepmother to tell me about them. I couldn’t leave her then, of course, not the Stepmother I’d injured. I couldn’t leave her ill, and alone, to care for Rose, whom I’d also injured.
I may be wicked, but I’m not bad.
Eldric turned toward me on soft lion’s feet. Some witchy antenna picked up waves of indignation: Eldric was ready to pounce. “So you sacrificed—”
“Not sacrifice!” I hate that word. Father used it in his one-sided arguments with Stepmother. Is it fair that Briony sacrifice her life for you and Rose?
Father lost control of his voice when he and Stepmother argued. It was no longer the crisp, laundered voice of the clergyman, or even the curling ribbons of his irritated voice. Instead, he shouted. The Reverend Larkin actually shouted.
But in this particular argument, Eldric was the quiet one and I was the one with a throat-full of shouting. Shouting is angry, and Briony plus anger is dangerous. Briony plus anger results in something like Mucky Face.
I ought not to shout. I ought to forget that I’d been longing to go to school after Father dismissed Fitz. That I’d have seized the chance to go anywhere, but especially to London, and school!
Eldric and I had stopped walking now. We had stumbled into an argument.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “Father and Stepmother told me to go, but I refused. I unpacked my trunks.”
I’d sat that day at Stepmother’s side in the sewing room. She couldn’t manage the stairs, not with the injury to her spine. Her beautiful black hair streamed over the pillow. She smiled her generous smile—how could she bear to smile after what I’d done? She’d be in pain for the rest of her life.
Fitz was not always kind about her; he said her teeth were too big. But he was jealous, I think. We’d been the best of companions, he and I, but when Stepmother came into our family, she became my best friend and Fitz second best.
“I know things are done differently here in the Dragon Constellation,” said Eldric. “And I know that when in the Dragon Constellation, it’s wise to do as the Dragon Constellationers do. But I can’t help bringing up a tradition from my native Earth. Parents there are expected to give their children opportunities. Not every parent, of course, but parents like your father, and mine. We expect them to open doors for their children so they can march forth into the world.”
March fourth. Eldric’s birthday.
March forth!
“But I told you, Father gave me opportunities.”
“And your stepmother?”
“I told you that too. I was the one who wanted to stay—who decided to stay!”
Stepmother had taken my hand in her own cool one. She was always cool, and that day, the sewing room was positively chilly. She disliked fires, even on the coldest nights. “You do see what happened,” she said. “Don’t you, darling?”
I did see, much as I wished I didn’t. She laid out the events, like puzzle pieces. She never told me what happened. She left me to draw my own conclusion.
Puzzle piece number one: Stepmother had been sitting under the parlor table with Rose, helping her with those infernal collages.
Puzzle piece number two: I’d stood in the parlor door, watching, and I said something about not understanding how Stepmother could bear the tedium.
Puzzle piece number three: I stood gazing across the river, to the swamp. Stepmother came into the garden, Mucky Face rose from the water.
I did see what I might have been thinking. I knew exactly what I’d been thinking. I was jealous that Stepmother had spent such a deal of time with Rose. My jealousy had called up Mucky Face.
“If your stepmother really wanted you to march forth,” said Eldric, “she shouldn’t have accepted your—well, I won’t say sacrifice.”
“Except that you just did,” I said. “And in any event, you don’t understand.”
But my argument was slipping away from me. I knew I was right, but I couldn’t explain why. We turned toward the bridge. Our feet whispered over the silvered wood. The lion-boy was quiet; the wolfgirl was quiet. I’ve been training the wolfgirl, running her up and down the stairs, when no one’s about to see. It’s marvelously exhausting.
In May, the mud has melted into slush. The peat moss is emerald and the sundew plants show their bright, yellow faces. You might think they resemble happy schoolchildren, until you learn of their flesh-eating habits. We cut across a corner of the Flats, oozed across scrub and moss, trod on bright, carnivorous smiles.
I’d forgotten how wolfgirl could change direction mid-stride, how within the space of a heartbeat, she could turn from the Flats toward the estuary. Eldric did the same, wolf and lion, shifting quick as wind.
“You’re fast,” said Eldric.
“I’m catching up with myself,” I said, which made Eldric laugh.
At least we wouldn’t be going into the heart of the swamp, which meant I was unlikely to hurt anyone. The fighting lesson was to take place in a meadow called the Scars, not because we were interested in acquiring any, but because it was dryish and largish and free of crops. At the far end of the Scars rose the pumping station, or at least what was left of it.
“Funny about the pumping station,” said Eldric.
“Funny,” I said.
The pumping station was already being rebuilt. As soon as it was all brash and red-brickibus, Rose would fall ill. I had another plan, though. We could stow away on the London-Swanton line, once it was up and running. It was behind schedule, which was troubling. Rose had to leave the Swampsea while she continued well. No matter how far we traveled, Rose would die of the swamp cough if the Boggy Mun infected her again before she left.
It turns out there are two ways to make a fist. If you make one sort of fist, you punch your opponent. If you make the other sort, you break your thumb.
Eldric curled my fingers into place, set my thumb upon them, just so. How casually he did it, as though he touched girls every day. Perhaps he did. Had he ever really touched a girl, touched her in the Pearl and Artie way?
Such a nosy parkerium, Briony!
“Soften your knees, sink into your heels. You want to keep yourself low.”
“I have an advantage there.” I softened, I sank.
Eldric punched, slowly, just to show me, keeping his arms close to his sides, turning his fist to make the punch, turning it back when he snatched it away. “It’s the snatching away that gives it power,” he said. “Also, by pivoting from the hip. Never punch from the elbow.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Only a stupidibus would fight like that.”
Guess what? I can punch as well as make people laugh.
Soft knees, weight low, sink into heels. Hips pivot—wham! My fist flew forward.
“Nicely done!” said Eldric, although it had glanced off of his palm like a pebble.
“Why aren’t you begging for mercy?”
“I make a point never to do so,” said Eldric. “It puts one at a disadvantage.”
He laughed and I laughed, but the clergyman’s dutiful daughter didn’t laugh. That girl was gone; wolfgirl had returned. Wolfgirl, who was leaf dance and moon claw and tooth gleam. When Jupiter sizzled the air with lightning bolts, she caught them on the fly.
“Nice throw, Jupiter!”
“Nice catch, wolfgirl!”
Her mouth was a cavern of stars.
Eldric adjusted my hands. “You want to draw your right hand in a bit.”
The witch nodded. Eldric assumed she was right-handed. But the witch was left-handed, and she had the second sight, which meant she saw the Strangers wriggling from beneath the great stones that dotted the Scars. She saw the Strangers weaving and wobbling toward her on their tiny string legs. But Eldric hadn’t the second sight; he was blind to the Strangers, so she pretended blindness too. She showed him her new fist-making skills; he gave her fist his undivided attention.
One doesn’t laugh at the Strangers, despite their spaghetti arms and legs, despite their outsized heads that loll about on spaghetti necks. The Strangers are proud and powerful. The Strangers control the harvest.
“Excellent fistibus,” said Eldric, but he wasn’t done with my hand. He inspected my left palm, the pucker of scars.
“There’s no fortune to be read in that palm,” I said, but of course he wanted to know about it; of course he’d been dying to ask since we first met. “Do you want the version of the story in which I’m a hero, or do you want the true version?”
“Both,” said Eldric.
“Greedy!” I said.
“I was quite ill,” I said, which I mentioned not because it’s true, although it is, but because it makes people feel sorry for me. Even a witch wants sympathy. “My memory of the event is rather foggy.” This is also true. “But I know I was writing one of those stories Rose is forever mentioning, and I suppose I smelled the fire—in any event, I found myself at the library door.”
Here’s where my account of the fire diverges from the truth. I had, indeed, been writing, but the Horrors alone know what possessed me to stumble into the library. What made me call up the fire?
I don’t think I’ll ever know. Not even Stepmother could venture any theories. And burning my hand—well, I’d been ill, and perhaps I hadn’t been strong enough to control the fire.
“You must remember,” I said, “that this is the heroic version.”
“I have it well in mind,” said Eldric.
“I attempted to rescue my stories, not for my own sake, but for Rose’s. The stories soothe her, and there are so very many she loved. I knew it would take me years to write them all again, and even then, they’d never be the same.”
“I believe that,” said Eldric. “Heroic version or not.” He curled my fingers into a fist.
“As for burning my hand in the attempt,” I said, “I think I must blame my illness.”
It’s unsettling to straddle two worlds, one foot in the human world, speaking to Eldric of scars and fires, the other foot in the world of the Old Ones, where the Strangers look at me all slanty and sideways beneath their toadstool bonnets, their tongues flapping from their lolly-bobbing heads.
It seems odd that a day given over to bad boys and boxing should turn into a day of memories. But so it was. My memories were dull and gray, like a photograph. The books were black, the fire gray. A cloud of white lace rushed into the library. I didn’t recognize her at first, not Stepmother, because it wasn’t possible that she be there. She couldn’t rise from her sickbed. Her bracelets were the color of cinders, although they jangled in the key of gold.
Flames leapt into the room. They sharpened their teeth on the floor. And then I couldn’t see, there was only sound—a jangle of gold, a woman’s voice, a girl’s screams. The girl had burnt her hand.
How much pain, though, must Stepmother have endured to rush to the fire? To try to save me? I never asked, of course.
“My turn.” I’ve always wanted to know about the scar that dips into Eldric’s eyebrow. Eldric treated me to an account of the Great Pudding Caper, which made me laugh so hard I had to stop fighting to catch my breath.
“Mistress!”
Now the Strangers spoke. “Make us our story, mistress!”
They spoke one at a time, their voices identical, one picking up precisely where the last left off. If you were to close your eyes, you’d think it a single voice.
Punch, kick, block. I must get rid of my skirts if I am truly to kick.
“Make us our story, mistress! Our story, it need must be telled. The story o’ the dark earth, o’ the roots, the roots what us tends all the spring long that you fo’ak might have victuals an’ beer.”
Kick, punch, block, punch. All those stories, the stories of the Old Ones, they burnt in the fire.
“Scribe it to us, mistress. Scribe o’ the clay. Clay, it be right comely, but you fo’ak doesn’t see it. You doesn’t see the crystals what it got, you doesn’t see ’em sliding and gliding.”
The Strangers are the ones to know such things. The Strangers rule the underground, not the Devil. They ripen the corn and paint colors on the flowers and gild the autumn leaves.
“Make us stories o’ the underground. Make us the story o’ the Unquiet Spirit what tosses in her winding sheet. She be lying with them cold worms an’ don’t nobody hear her shrilling.”
Punch, block, kick.
“The Unquiet Spirit, she be shrilling out a name. Tha’ knows it fine, that name. It be tha’ own particular name. It be Briony Larkin.”
Stepmother screamed my name the day of the fire. Stepmother, who ran to the library despite her injury. I have a theory about how she might have managed to pull off such a feat. It comes in the form of an equation: Love + Fear = Herculean Strength. It’s how mothers come to fling runaway motorcars from their children. It’s how . . . well, actually, I oughtn’t to speculate, never having experienced the Love portion of the equation. But I did read about the mother and the motorcar in the London Loudmouth.
“Make us our story, mistress. Make us our story.”
Eldric caught at my fist, examined it, made sure I hadn’t slipped into thumb-breaking mode. “Your fists are beautiful,” he said.
Beautiful! He said my fists are beautiful! How I wished I could tell him about the Strangers.
“Thank you,” I said. His hand was warm around my fist. “Yours are adorable.”
He squeezed my fist in mock protest. He smiled his curling smile. How I wished I could tell him everything.
Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.
Beautiful! That’s what a friend would say. A friend would touch a person’s hand. But Briony, you mustn’t think about having friends and touching hands. If all goes as planned, you and Rose will leave the Swampsea. You’ll leave the Swampsea on one of Mr. Clayborne’s trains, but nothing will really change. You’ll live alone, except for Rose, you’ll live in the dark with the dust and the crumbs, and when you hear a noise, you’ll scuttle into the cracks of the wainscoting.
Friendship will get you nowhere. You have to keep your secrets. You mustn’t speak of the Strangers, now lob-bobbling away from you. Now vanishing beneath the rocks. You mustn’t believe that the pretty boy from London will keep your secrets. Do you want to exchange the pressure of all those secrets for a rope about your neck?
Guess what it is that turns plants to coal.
Pressure.
Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble.
Pressure.
Guess what it is that turns Briony’s heart to stone.
Pressure.
Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric’s, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.