Chime

children to tell the villagers their tale. Then I’d disappear. I’d lose myself in the swamp. Best start now, start finding places to hide and crannies in which to store provisions.

I pressed into the shady margins of the Slough.

“Pretty girl!” said a chorus of small, chiming voices. “Pretty girl, make story.”

I hadn’t thought about the Bleeding Hearts for three years. I’d forgotten how prettily their voices chimed together. On the other hand, they talked far too much and had the most appalling grammar.

“Pretty girl, make love story.”

“People don’t make stories,” I said. “People write stories. They make tables.”

“Make tables!” Their pink blooming faces turned up toward me like thousands of glorious hearts. “Make tables!”

A person could never talk to the Bleeding Hearts.

“Pretty girl, make story at table.”

“Use your articles!” I said. “Make a story—I mean, write a story at the table. Or, write the story at a table. Or—”

“Love story! Love story!”

“Not unless you use your articles.”

“Articles! Articles!”

They gave me a headache.

“Pretty girl love!

“Pretty girl love!”

Enough! “Pretty girl love what?” I said.

Stop, Briony! You mustn’t start speaking as they do. “What is the object of your sentence?”

“Object! Object!

“Love is object!

“Love is object of desire.”

Shut up! You’re making me think of Eldric and Leanne turning their pens into boats and swimming them across an ink-blotter sea. There’d be a pirate ship, of course, and a deserted island—Why didn’t I just kill myself?

“Pretty girl love pretty boy.”

Boy? “I don’t love any boy.”

“Pretty girl laugh with pretty boy.”

Eldric and Cecil were both pretty boys, but you couldn’t laugh with Cecil.

“Pretty girl laugh with pretty boy.”

At last they’d put an object to the sentence.

“Pretty boy! Pretty boy!

“Laugh!

“Play!

Light nibbled at the edges of my vision. Blue flames skittered over the muck, yellow flames dove into the earth. The Wykes were out early today, glinting, flirting, teasing, luring.

“Love story!

“Pretty girl love!”

The Bleeding Hearts were idiots.

Laughing and playing with Eldric was fun, but it wasn’t love. But the Bleeding Hearts were spirits of love and romance. They had no room in their tiny minds for a person who didn’t love anyone.

“Love story!”

I turned away. There’s no point in saying good-bye to the Bleeding Hearts. It’s not in their vocabulary. “Make story, pretty girl.” Off I went, but their chiming voices carried a long way. “Make love story!”

Forget them, Briony. Think about the early hours of All Hallows’ Day. Think about how the villagers will scrabble after you, all arsey-varsy, armed with anything to hand: pitchforks, horsewhips, toothpicks. You can elude them if you get a good head start. It’s the scent hounds you want to worry about. You’ll have to make a few circumspect inquiries about how to muddle your tracks and muddle your scent and muddle the hounds. You’ll muddle them further by taking to the snickleways. Pity you haven’t a boat.

On I went, through spinachy water, into a gray incandescence and the smell of rot. The incandescence insinuated itself beneath my hand as a dog might insinuate its head. I sprang back, but the tattered flesh did not. It quivered.

The Dead Hand slithered and oozed. It tapped finger to thumb as though biting the air. But tapping is crisp; this was all flab and squish.

“No!” I said.

The bloated fingers slimed over my hand, oozed round my wrist.

“You can’t!” I said.

The Dead Hand oozed tighter.

“I’m one of you,” I said. “I’m a witch!”

The Hand pulled. Tightened and pulled.

What should I do, what should I do?

It wasn’t painful, not yet, but the thought of the pain to come was itself a kind of pain.

I sat back on my knees, pulled away. The Dead Hand pulled toward. The bog-hole spat and chuckled.

The Dead Hand did not absorb my warmth; I absorbed its chill. The Wykes sparked up, yellow, blue, glinting, laughing—everything was laughing, the bog, the wind, the Wykes. But not the Dead Hand. It didn’t laugh.

The slop splashed at my knees. The wind snickered.

The Dead Hand was silent. It pulled. I pulled back. The earth trembled.

The Dead Hand was silent. It pulled.

Articles, articles! Use your articles!

The Dead Hand pulled and squeezed, pulled and squeezed.

I’d brought no articles, no Bible Ball.

“I’m a witch!”

The Hand didn’t care.

But I’m a witch, a witch!

Crack! My wrist went crack! It was the sound as much as the pain that made the sick come spraying from my mouth.

The Hand didn’t care. It pulled.

Pull and stretch. It wasn’t just bones that held my wrist together. There were other things for which I had no name. Things that could be pulled, things that could stretch. Why had I never known them, given them names?

My wrist was small. How could it fit so much pain? Stretch! The crack had been fast, the stretch was slow. How could one wrist occupy the universe of my mind?

Crack, and stretch, and now snap! I had nothing in my stomach to lose.

Someone shouting now. “Bloody hell!”

The pretty boy.

The pretty boy pulled. He was London soap and pine. The pretty boy cracked and stretched and snapped. He was tawny flesh and lion’s paw. His paw dug for my hand.

“Hold on!”

But it was the Hand holding on. It was the Hand squeezing.

“Hold on!”

Hold on to the pretty boy? I could hold on to him only with my thoughts. Pretty boy laugh! Pretty boy play.