circling the glade, up at the twin-moon backsides.
The witches laughed. This was no old-hag cackling but peals of girlish laughter. Eldric and I stared. The witches circled and descended upon Rose. More laughter as they pulled away, one of them dangling Rose’s hair ribbon from her finger.
“Now girls, for t’others!” The witches dove upon us. Eldric and I ducked—they’d smash into us—but the branches reared back, then hovered an Eldric’s arm’s-length away. There came a rearrangement of legs and capes. They laughed and laughed as we stood, looking up into their inner girl-parts.
Eldric crunched my bird hands. I jerked my chin to my chest. I felt my face boil with my own hot blood, which in an alabaster girl is a terrible thing to see—shades of crimson coming but never going.
I felt rather than saw the witches circling, then rising, now above the trees, now out of sight. But their shrills and shrieks of amusement blew to us on that unnatural wind.
That unnatural wind—think about that, Briony. Think about anything rather than what you’re thinking about, which you mustn’t name, because then you’ll think about it.
The unnatural wind is a perfect memory to stuff into your mind. It will make you remember you hurt Rose. It will make you remember the swings, the froth of petticoats, Rose’s screams—those knitting-needle screams, which even when Rose was only seven, sounded just as they do today.
You must remember so you can hate yourself. It’s been ten years, but you mustn’t let yourself forget what you owe Rose.
It was Easter Day and Rose and I wore our white, frothy frocks. It was a day of froth: the froth of spring blossoms, the froth of lace on Stepmother’s hat, the froth of petticoats as Rose and I pumped ourselves higher and higher on the swings.
Stepmother wasn’t Stepmother yet; it would be years before she and Father married. We knew her well, though, Rose and I. Perhaps she meant to help the poor Reverend Larkin with his motherless daughters. That would be like her. Father was forever fretting that he didn’t know how to raise girls properly. Poor man, his wife dying in childbirth.
I remember so clearly how Stepmother’s pretty fingers flew like hummingbirds. How she played a game of catching at our legs, pretending to pull us down. How she pulled at Briony’s legs, Rose’s legs. Briony’s legs, Rose’s legs.
Rose’s legs. Rose’s—Rose’s—Rose’s—
When you’re jealous, your spit turns to acid. When you’re jealous, you eat yourself from the inside out.
When you’re jealous, and when you’re seven-year-old Briony Larkin, and when you’re a witch, you raise a wind. A wind that makes Rose whimper and complain; a wind that makes Rose scream that she didn’t prefer to swing; a wind that makes Rose lose her grip on the ropes; a wind that makes her fall, so that she smashes her head on a rock.
It would make a better story if I could describe how her skull made a sharp crack, if I could describe how her blood pooled on the rock, how it matted the grass and dried in her yellow hair. But I have learned that life is both less exciting and more horrid than stories.
No crack, no blood, just Rose crumpled on the ground. Just Rose screaming.
Rose, screaming. Rose screaming in the memory-time of the swings; Rose screaming in the now-time of the Slough.
Eldric crunched at my hand.
“That hurts!”
“Sorry!” Eldric let go at once.
“Go ahead, plug your ears,” I said, not looking, never looking at him, never looking at him again. My face must be in the crimson-streak stage, which lasts forever. “It’s not rude, not if it’s when Rose is screaming.” Pine needles drifted round our feet.
“But I don’t want to miss anything!”
What would that be like, not wanting to miss anything? How wearisome to be forever grabbing at bits of life. Look at Eldric now, stepping over to Rose, bending over her, asking perhaps if she’d been hurt. I sat at the foot of an alder, leaned against its trunk, just waiting. Light-needles glinted off the pale gold of Rose’s hair. I felt a little distant from myself, as though I sat in the audience of a production of my own life.
There would be no surprises in this production. I’d be caring for Rose in every scene. In the next scene, for example, the curtain would open upon me hanging about Tiddy Rex’s sickbed, comparing his cough to Rose’s. I mustn’t neglect to play that scene, even though it had just occurred to me that a person with the swamp cough might be unable to scream so very enthusiastically. But I couldn’t take any chances. It’s my fault Rose is the way she is.
It’s my fault that Rose screams. That she screamed this morning, that she was screaming now. She screamed like a river, the longest river you could imagine, and from time to time, words bobbed to the surface, like sticks. I could make out the words, although I doubted Eldric could. Rose screamed for her hair ribbon. It was her favorite ribbon and it matched her frock. And although she didn’t say this, I knew that without the ribbon, she’d refuse to wear the frock.
Rose is finicky about colors.
Finish the story, Briony. You know the rules. You have to tell yourself the other horridly unexciting events. That you jumped from your own swing, rather hoping you might hurt yourself, just a little, so that Stepmother would fuss over you too. That Stepmother spent such a time crouched beside Rose, touching Rose’s head. That the hummingbirds had flown from Stepmother’s fingers.
That Stepmother rose and looked down upon you. That you looked up at her, at the crisp V of her jaw, at the thin openings of her nostrils. That she waited such a while to speak.
“Oh, Briony!”
That was all she said at first, and then:
“We mustn’t ever tell your father.”
5
Help to Get Them Witches
“Flying branches?” said Mr. Clayborne, who’d only been in the Swampsea six months and had never seen a witch.
“It be a snag,” said the Swamp Reeve, who’d taken the chair nearest the fire. The Brownie used to curl up under that chair, back in the old days, before Stepmother and I forbade him the house. “Us calls it a snag.”
The firelight played over the bit of frayed carpet where the Brownie used to lie. I used to look at him and marvel that no one else could see him. But now I had to remember that it was better he was gone. That he and I were dangerous together, the Old One and the witch.
“A snag rode by a witch,” said the constable.
“Us needs must talk to Miss Rose.” The Reeve wore his neck-skin too tight. You could see his Adam’s apple bounce around, which made my backbone cringe. “She be the lass them witches thinked to thief away.”
I shifted in my seat but couldn’t get comfortable. The old swamp craving had returned. I hadn’t felt it for years. It had come upon me the first few months after I stopped visiting the swamp, after Stepmother realized the Old Ones ignited my wickedness, made it run out of control.
“I want Briony to read to me.” Rose sat beneath the parlor table, bits of paper scattered around her. Rose is attracted to paper of all sorts, sweets wrappers, shopping receipts, Valentine’s Day cards, instructions for games we never played, the last page of any book—this, in particular, is annoying.
When Father is irritated, he speaks more precisely than usual. “Please come out from under the table, Rose.” He curled his sentences as carefully as a schoolgirl curls her hair. “You are a grown-up girl now.”
“I don’t prefer to.” Rose shuffled the papers about. I knew she was testing the colors, deciding which combinations would look best in her collage. “I want Briony to read to me.”
But Rose was not a grown-up girl. She would never be a grown-up girl. She knew perfectly well that my stories were nothing but cinders, and she was not unintelligent, so what was she thinking? Did she suppose I could
