to make it to London without being caught, I’d never see him again.
It’s just lust, Briony. There’ll be plenty of men in London for you to lust. But don’t punch them in the nose, because odds are, they won’t laugh.
27
The Face in the Mirror
The Halloween sky was a splash of pea soup. The sky held its breath, waiting for rain. I stood in the square, voices muttering and crackling all about like dying coals. Everyone was waiting.
“Now!” cried the mayor. The bonfire leapt into life. Torches burst into flame, illuminating stalls with beaded canopies, baskets spilling with brandy snaps and licorice and butterscotch. Figures in beaded masks, passing platters of crystallized ginger, gooseberry tarts, floury buns. And scattered everywhere was toffee: Toffee wrapped in silver paper; heaps and piles and mounds of toffee; silver paper glittering like mountains of ice.
“Ooh!” said the children.
“Ooh!” said the grown folks.
“Ooh!” said Briony.
You couldn’t avoid your reflection. Mirrors hung in every twist and turn of the stalls. They caught at their own reflections too, doubling and tripling and reflecting themselves into infinity.
Despite the half-masks, I recognized most of the villagers. Who could mistake the constable’s sloppy lips, the Reeve’s plucked-chicken skin? Who could mistake a mane of tawny hair and long lion muscles?
The mask turned toward me. The eye-holes glittered; the head tilted into a question mark; the gloved hand beckoned. C
I followed, past the mirrors that showed their faces to the public, toward the hidden mirrors at the back. Some girls wanted their privacy, for it was said that on Halloween night, an image of the man they were to marry would emerge in the looking glass beside their own reflections.
A gloved hand pulled aside a flap of canvas. I pushed into the mirk.
The mirror was a dark hole until Eldric lit a candle. Our reflections stood side by side, masked but unmistakable. I’d never thought about how different we were. Tall and short; gold and pale; broad and narrow; tawny and flaxen.
“I must leave the instant the clock strikes the half hour,” I said, like a twentieth-century Cinderella. Both Cinderella and I needed to keep an eye on the time. She had her slipper problems, I had my ghosts.
“I’ve been thinking,” said the Eldric image.
“Ooh, thinking!” I said. “Shall I tell your father?”
“Very funny,” said Eldric, but he was laughing. “You may be clever, Miss Larkin, but I’ve spotted a few holes in last night’s story. Yes, even I!
“Take Rose, for example. Would Rose ever climb willingly onto a swing? Rose, who’s so cautious she doesn’t even toast bread without wearing gloves?”
I hadn’t thought of this, but I had an answer. “We don’t know what she was like before she struck her head. Perhaps she was quite the opposite.”
He slipped off his mask. “Please remind me not to argue with you again.” Bruises ran from the bridge of his nose into his eye, which was swollen shut.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right. I quite enjoyed telling my story about the great brute with the powerful left hook who surprised me in the night.”
“Poor Eldric!” I said. “And where did this great brute overtake you?”
“On my way to call on Leanne.”
Oh! My mouth echoed my thoughts: O!
“Take off that mask, will you?”
I shook my head. What if my own Briony mask were not securely in place? Look at my lips, look at how they gave me away:
“And?” I said.
“I set it to rights, put her out of my life. It was rather horrible, but it’s over.”
The mirror Briony smiled.
Eldric tugged at the strings of my mask. “Won’t you take this off? I have something to say to you, and I’d like to see your face.”
What could I do but slip it off? It left me entirely exposed, my face raw as a peeled apple.
“First.” Eldric tapped one index finger against the other.
The mirror Briony had no amusing answer. She nodded.
“Two.” Eldric ticked his second finger. “Do you remember the paper I burnt?”
Another nod.
“It was a letter, to you. It was that which put me in so foul a humor.”
Eldric nodded. “It was also the secret I mentioned the other night, the secret I’ll tell only one person.
“Three.”
Briony nodded.
“That made me upset, which made me angry.
“Four.”
The candle sputtered. Eldric cupped his hand round the flame, coaxed it to life. It shone between his fingers, tracing his hand with fire.
“A person might get angry when the girl he loves says she’ll never marry.”
My face was raw. I cradled it in my hands. Give me a mask, any mask! I swung my hair forward.
“I’m almost out of numbers,” said Eldric. “As you know, my mathematical skills are limited.” He laid his fire- traced hand on the back of my neck. What was I to do? I wished I could love, how I wished!
“That’s what I didn’t say the other night.”
I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I’d make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he’d left a handprint of melted light.
His brow was pinchy and he was paler than usual. His scar looked very pink.
The clock struck the half hour. I jumped. “I must go!”
“But the gun!” said Eldric. “What am I to do with the gun?”
“Make sure they don’t hang me. I don’t want to hang!”
And then I was out, into the square, where nothing had changed. The torches still burnt as before, and the toffee wrappers still glinted, and the children oohed and grabbed and ate, and the sky was still holding its breath.
28
Unquiet Spirits
The graveyard yawned with its rotting breath. My skirts fluttered past Mother’s grave.
How might I summon the ghost-children? I knew no spells, poor witch that I was. Might I simply talk them out of their graves?
“Harken to me you little ones, taken by the Boggy Mun. Those were woeful days, indeed they were, and there will be many and many a woeful day to come unless you help me. Come with me, to the village, else more little
