The First Book of Calamity Leek (25 page)

I fastened the lid down. It quietened some of the sloshing.

‘Verse one!' I called out.

We stepped back off the buckets onto the Lawn, and sang on,

But there's nowhere to hide, since you pushed my love aside –

WE HAD MADE
a good start on the second chorus, when a tall body came bursting from the Glamis Castles, roaring like the Devil Himself was burning out its throat.

Our singing died off.

The body came charging up the Lawn in a blur of fur, its hair smashing at the night like the wings of an angry bird.

My sisters jumped down off the buckets.

The roaring body jumped on them and threw back the bin lid.

Bone-white arms shot down into the water.

‘Wait!' I shouted. ‘It's not time yet!' I shouted. ‘What do you think you're doing?'

But the figure didn't answer, and Eliza had dropped her torch in fright, so I couldn't see.

‘Halt!' I screamed at the crazy sploshing sounds. ‘Stop right there!'

But they didn't, and it didn't matter no more, because all my sisters were jumping up on the buckets now to join in the fishing.

‘Careful!' Dorothy said.

‘Quick!' Nancy said.

‘Easy with her head,' Mary said.

And like that, a wet lump of Annie was fished out of the bin, long before we could have drowned the Devil out of her.

‘Well, thank you very much, that's just about ruined that—' I said, scrabbling about for Eliza's torch and switching it on. And I turned to glare at whatever sister thought it was a fine game to come and interrupt our Goddess-given work.

But my mouth dropped wordless. Because stepping back from us, with her face lowered, it weren't none other than our slowbrained sister, Maria Liphook.

Must be twenty blinks my eyes did, looking on Maria, staring at her white face, at her black hair, dangled feathery and long. Old as eighteen-year-old Emily, Maria looked, but smileless. Maria's face was utter smileless. There wasn't one lunatic grin about her lips no more.

Dorothy unknotted the ropes, and unwrapped Annie from wet fur. Annie fell in a gasping ball on the grass. Mary ran to the yard to fetch a smock and furs, and Eliza went for hot milk. Annie coughed out water. Dorothy rubbed Annie warm. Mary dressed Annie in must be ten old furs and another for her head. Then Annie hunched herself up and flinched everyone off her, and coughed and coughed and coughed.

Maria stared at Annie's heap of wet Outside clothes and shoes.

We others stood about.

And there was nothing to be heard but an owl keeping watch on the Wall, Annie coughing, and our cold hearts battering in their boxes.

Maria looked from Annie's clothes to us sisters. Her eyes were shining black.

Mary burst into tears. Dorothy puked. Nancy spat on the Lawn and glared at me. And Eliza curled up in the barrow and pulled her fur over her head.

‘We were only—'

‘I didn't want to—'

‘Clam said it—'

I looked over their jelly hearts and I thought, well and good, I'll be the one who speaks the bone-marrow truth, shall I? ‘We were drowning Annie of the Devil, that's all, Maria. She weren't never going to be killed proper. We were going to fish her out when her heart had cooled down. Emily said it was the only way. And now you've stopped it, Maria, the Devil is still cooking her up, and soon He will cook us all. And furthermore to everything, it's a rotten old trick to go being dumb for years, and then start up roaring for Annie, after it was me that tried so long to progress you. Even though Nancy said I shouldn't have bothered.' I sniffed back snot. ‘It so ain't fair, Maria Liphook, it ain't.'

Maria didn't look to have heard me. She turned and started walking off north, towards the yews. Like that was that. Like no manner of explanation was needed.

‘Wait up!' I shouted. ‘You can't just go off, Maria, that ain't fair neither. And that ain't the path for the yard, Maria. That's the wrong way.'

But her feet weren't stopping.

‘Didn't you hear me, Maria? Or are you turned slowbrained again, is that it?'

‘Maria, please.' This was Annie's voice, calling out behind me. Annie's voice, shouting strong. ‘Will you please come back, just for a minute?'

And Maria stopped then, she did, straight off she stopped and she turned. And truth be told, I couldn't see one drop of slobber on her lips. And I looked up at eighteen-year-old Emily smiling on her plinth, and I had to wonder about miracles then.

‘Will you come and sit with me?' Annie said, flinging back her wet hair, her eyes gleaming on Maria, but not on us. ‘Will you come back and keep me safe from them?'

Course, Dorothy sobbed at that, and so did Mary. But no one said nothing.

And this Maria, who both did and didn't look like our slowbrained sister, turned to Annie and she nodded. Stepping careful like a sleepwalker, Maria did come back.

Annie opened her furs and tried to wrap them both inside. We others stood about watching. Watching so hard and silent, that after a bit Annie sighed all cross and said, ‘Well, all right, don't just stand there gorming. You can sit down, you know. Only not too close. I don't actually want none of you touching me. Never again, you hear? And I don't want to speak to none of you, never again neither.'

‘Oh, Annie,' Dorothy sobbed. ‘Oh, Annie, I'm sorry.'

Mary let out a wail.

Nancy thumped me.

Annie turned her head from Dorothy's words and Mary's tears, but never mind, we did go up and sit near them, we did.

For a good while no one said nothing.

Annie huddled into Maria and shivered. Maria kept her eyes on Annie's Outside clothes pile. A bat spun a circle about the Lawn border. And we others sat about staring into the cold grass or over at the rose bushes or up into the inky night, and we said nothing.

And truth be told, it got to seeming no one would talk to no one else ever again. Except that then Maria started talking.

Yes, Maria looked down at Annie's clothes and she started talking.

Now, I should say, first off, the words came out of her as soundless as smoke. But after a bit they began to grow stronger and harder, and after a bit more they hatched themselves into full and proper meaning. And what Maria said was this.

‘I wasn't cheating you, sisters. Not on purpose, I wasn't—' She stopped to rub her ears, like the sound of herself was something strange to her. ‘Dumb. Being dumb—' she said and stopped to rub her throat.

Out of nowhere, that Kathy Selden cat appeared, and jumped into Annie's lap. We others inched closer to hear Maria easier. Eliza's torch shone down from the barrow, spreading our shadows behind us like rotten petals from a rotten bloom. Kathy Selden began to purr. And Maria started up again.

‘I did – I did lose my senseful voice. For years I did. Locked in blackness Maria got lost to Maria. So – so how was a lost Maria ever to find herself?'

Maria stared at the Lawn and shook her head. ‘So much in me is fog. Like it's one lonely day, rolling over and over. All fog.'

‘What do you remember that isn't?' Annie said all quiet, her eyes on her hands that were stroking the cat. ‘You must remember something clear.'

Seemed Maria looked up then and smiled for a second, seemed so. Then her eyes dropped down. ‘Trees.'

‘Plum trees?'

‘Not plums. Outside. The smell of trees Outside. I remember them.'

Mary gasped. ‘You went Outside?' And for sure, Mary weren't the only one boggle-eyed at this. ‘You – Loonhead Liphook – went Outside?'

‘The Wall wasn't high then. The bees went over easy. I was six. I went over easy. Grey stone is easy to climb. The smell of the trees, I liked that best. Sweet and sharp as a scratch on your nose. I think about that smell. I think about where the bees still go.'

‘What about injuns?' Dorothy said. ‘Did you see any injuns Outside?'

Maria shook her head all slow, like moving was new to her and she had to go at it careful.

Dorothy looked at Annie. Annie shrugged.

‘So you never hit sense from your head on the bricks?' Mary said.

‘Not on the Wall to Outside, no.'

‘But that's what the Appendix said happened to you,' I said. ‘The Wall bricks damaged your brain, Maria. That's what happened. It's down in the
B
s.'

She gave her head the slowest, saddest shake.

Annie laughed sudden and bitter. ‘That ain't the only question about the Appendix, believe me.'

I threw her a look. She flung back her wet curls and stared back steady at me. Steady and hard and iced all over.

‘Mother said Maria was a disappointment,' Maria said. ‘No Spitting Image of her daughter. A waste of face and space. If Maria was trying to run away, she should be shut up good and proper. Once and for all. It was Aunty kept Maria hid. Said, “Shush, little niece. Call me
soft-hearted, but I can't do it. Mother will change her mind one day. You keep safe down here a while.”'

‘But things can't grow without daylight,' Dorothy said. ‘How were you to grow in the Hole?'

‘Some things do. If they learn to. If they have to.'

‘Slugs do,' I said. ‘Earthworms and millipedes do. Woodlice, beetles and earwigs like the dark best of all. Did you know you were eating them, Maria?'

Maria smiled so sad it made me wish she hadn't bothered.

‘And you did grow tall, didn't you, Maria? Even in the dark.'

‘Maybe a body wants to live more than you think it does. I don't know. But me, I couldn't think of never smelling them trees again. One time when the memory came strong, when you were all playing noisy in the yard, I decided on killing myself. I reckoned the Devil's Bowels that Aunty told me about would at least have other bodies in the flames to play with. Least it was not the lonesome black that I hid in.'

Maria stopped and rubbed her throat. An aeroplane roared above us, flashing its night eyes at the sky lid. A horned snail snuck along eighteen-year-old Emily's toes.

Maria's eyes moved over our faces. Black as coal balls, them eyes rolling over us. ‘Course we slaughter pigs and cockerels no problem. But see, sisters, self-killing ain't easy. A fly could go mashing its face on a window. A dog might bite its own leg off and bleed away slow. But there ain't a thing on a sister's body to do it for her. And they say we're cleverest in the Garden.'

‘So you stopped trying,' I said. ‘Well, good, Maria, that's good.'

‘I screamed for Aunty to help me do it.'

‘Well, she wouldn't, Maria,' I said. ‘You being an asset to her, like us all.'

She looked at me, and this time her eyes didn't move off. ‘You weren't going to drown the Devil out of Annie. Because He ain't in there. No, far as I know it, He's in lonely bits of time where there ain't no laughter, nor any light to see by. This is what I know about the Devil.' Her voice was rusting away. ‘But enough, sisters. I saw the look in Annie's eyes when she came back through the Wall. I want to go Outside. I want to touch them trees. That's what I want.'

Her eyes turned to the north-eastern Wall of Safekeeping, where the Goddess Daughter had just pulled the darkest blanket off the sky lid. Maria smiled at Annie. Then, all careful, one bone at a time, she got up and started walking off for the yew path north.

‘Where you going?' I called out quick. ‘You're not going now, Maria. You can't go now. You can't go up by Mother's Abode, Maria. That's Out of Bounds on Pain of Death, Maria. That's the wrong way. Where are you going?'

But she went off anyway, under the northern Crème de la Crèmes and up the path into the yews. And we sat and watched her go.

Annie started to cry in little dry gasps over the cat in her lap.

I blew my nose on the end of my fur and tried to speak, I really did.

But no words came.

YOU COME IN
when I am alone, don't you, Doctor Andrea Doors, and you tell me you have something for me. ‘This came for you,' you say. ‘I think you're ready to read it.'

You hand me a white envelope. It smells of medicine and rose jelly. It has my name written on the front in purple ink. My name. Just mine.

For the attention of Niece Leek
– it says –

Absolutely Private.

My heart flips in its box.

I shove the envelope quicksharp under my pillow until you are gone.

‘
MOTHER AND AUNTY
love us and do what is right and proper to us,' is what I said in the end. ‘It would be good to remember that.'

‘I don't know,' Mary Bootle sniffed. ‘Golly, I couldn't lock up a baby even if it was very, very naughty.'

‘Pigs ain't ever shut up alone, are they?' Nancy said.

The Goddess Daughter pulled a blanket off the sky lid. Eliza turned off her torch. Dorothy stared at the heap of Outside clothes. ‘What can it mean? Trees around us everywhere, and no injuns nowhere. Maria locked away for years for going Outside. Then there's this Sam Matthews with so few Demonic Indicators on him. This ain't but counter to everything the Appendix tells us. Where is the logic in it all?'

Fast as a flash in a storm, Annie's eyes went at Dorothy. ‘Do you want to know what I saw? If I tell you, you won't go—'

‘We won't go doing nothing like that ever again – to no one,' Dorothy said.

‘We only did what Emily told me was necessary,' I
whispered. ‘We were only trying to get the Devil out of you. Out of cooking you up.'

Annie stroked the cat on her lap and looked at those strange-laced shoes in front of her. Then she dropped the deadliest words I ever will hear. ‘What if there ain't no Devil?'

Well.

Well, try thinking on an answer to that fat lie. Try thinking what to say to someone who says there ain't no sky lid above you, or your hand ain't really on the end of your arm. For long rabbiting seconds I tried, but my mouth didn't move.