Chime

Stepmother was a Dark Muse. She fed on me, she fed on Rose.

“Briony!”

I come upon a tangle of alleys. Weave yourself into them, Briony. Go round one more corner, Briony. Perhaps they won’t find you.

I sit beside a rubbish bin.

Snow falls. The world outside is small and white. The world inside is vast and dark.

A figure emerges from the gray and snow.

“Briony?”

My tears go on forever. Snowflakes fall like shredded clouds. My tears go on forever. The figure comes nearer. Eldric’s lips are so red they hurt.

32 Word Magic

I am stomping out new memory paths.

It is difficult. There are too many I am wicked paths crossing and crisscrossing my memory. I don’t believe the nice things I say to myself.

I like you! I tell myself.

I answer myself: What a stupidibus!

Stop saying that, Briony. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

I like you!

Briony pinches her lips. She says nothing.

I like you!

I don’t believe it now. I shall have to reverse the false memories that Stepmother stomped into my brain. You’re a witch! She trod out paths to memories that never existed. You hurt Rose. She trod them out over and over, so they appeared to be real, even though they led to nothing at all.

I like you!

It would be easier to believe myself if Eldric said something. I love you. He said it once. But he hasn’t said it since. It would be so easy: He sits a mere table’s width away. But he stomps out no paths. He is indifferent.

“Wrap that bit around the end, will you?” he says.

“The squiggly bit?”

“That’s the one.”

It’s only March, but today comes with a whiff of spring. From the front porch, Eldric and I have a terrific view of the square. Father and Eldric rebuilt the porch after the trial, while I was ill. I’ve seen Dr. Rannigan any number of times, but he never says I told you so! I was ill for months. You’d think a person who’s lost his hand would need a great deal of time to recover, but it seems that a person who wanders the swamp in her petticoat, then bides in jail for five weeks, needs even more.

A river of steel flows into the village. On it stands the five thirty-nine, snorting and pawing the ground. She’s ready for her run to London. But for now at least, the plans to extend the railway into the swamp have been suspended. There’s been no draining of the swamp since Halloween. But Mr. Clayborne’s contemplating the possibility of sinking great posts into the swamp and floating the railroad on top of them. Then the queen will be happy and the Boggy Mun will be happy.

“This fidget needs a bit of a twiggle,” says Eldric, and I twiggle. We have a terrific working vocabulary. But Eldric needs my help less than he pretends. He’s worked out a way to tie a knot with just the one hand. I’ve seen him.

“Tell me the story again,” says Eldric. He says his memories of the Dead Hand and the swamp are like a dream. He remembers, but he doesn’t remember.

“Which version do you want?” I say. “The one in which I am terrifically heroic? Or the one in which I am extraordinarily heroic?”

“The latter,” says Eldric, but then he looks at me sideways, and I know what he’s going to say.

“For goodness’ sake!” I say. “I am not too tired. Would you and Father please stop treating me as though I’m going to break?”

“But you did break,” says Eldric. “That’s hard for us to forget.”

“You broke too,” I say. “But you don’t see me worrying about you.”

“But you do worry, I think. You worry in a different way.”

Eldric’s right, although I’ll never admit it. I do worry about him. I worry that he has horrid feelings about having lost his hand, his dominant hand. He was a boy-man who boxed and fidgeted and climbed roofs, and now— What does he say to himself when he’s alone?

I hate myself? Is that what he says?

I can only guess at his feelings. I know what Dr. Freud would guess, but he’d be wrong.

“You could at least complain,” I say. “I adore complaining. It calms the nerves.”

I wish I’d lost my hand instead. I have no particular need for it, except for writing. But even so, I need only the one.

“Ha!” he says. “You didn’t see me all the while you were ill. Just ask my father if I didn’t complain. Or Pearl. Pearl knows.”

It’s true. I’ve lost time, all sorts of time. I’ve lost memory time with Stepmother; I’ve lost real time with Eldric. I feel as though he and I are just now meeting all over again. I try to identify what’s shifted between us. Perhaps the best word for it is guarded. Eldric has grown guarded.

I tell a highly colored version of our journey through the swamp on Halloween night. But there’s enough truth that I let Eldric shake his head and say, “How did you do it, though? All those miles, and me, such a weight!”

“Robust,” I say primly. “You’re robust.”

“You’re very kind.” Here comes his curling lion’s smile. “I rather think my father would call me hulking.”

“Only when you ask for thirds at supper. You tell him I say you’re robust, and that I’m the one to know.”

The five thirty-nine whistles. Eldric and I jump, then laugh. The skip-rope girls scatter. The five thirty-nine tosses her luminous hair and chuffs away from the station.

Someday I will gallop away with the five thirty-nine to London. And someday, I will take one of her sisters from London to Dover, then sail to France, and I know just what I’ll say. “Pardon, monsieur.” I will be very polite. “Le restaurant Chez Julien, il est sur le Boulevard Saint-Michel, à droite, si je ne me trompe pas?”

I mention this to Eldric, but he shakes his head. “Let me remind you of the correct phrasing, and please note my perfect accent: The restaurant Chez Julien, she is, if I do not mistake myself, down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to the right?”

I speak again in my French voice. “I must note one error, monsieur, one oh-so-small error. A restaurant, he is a boy, not a girl.”

“Really!” says Eldric. “The French have certainly got that wrong!”

“You can correct them on your next visit.”

“I shall be sure to.” Eldric sweeps his newest fidget into his palm, admires it from all sides. “We are ready for paint. Or, as they’d say in Paris, Voilà! French is an admirably economical language.”

“I’ll fetch Rose.” I peel off my lap rug, but Eldric springs up first.

“I’ll do it.”

“I am not going to break!”

“Not if you keep quiet,” says Eldric. Dr. Rannigan has told Eldric and Father he was astonished I managed to hang on through the end of the trial. But he also says he’s seen it before. That sometimes people stave off the