Chime. Part 8

"I knew it!"

"Knew what?" said Father.

"I knew the food would be brown. I don't like brown."

It was true, everything was brown: the pie, the sherry, the gravy, the biscuits, the caraway seeds on the biscuits.

Brown or not, it looked delicious. I reached for my fork. I'd grown used to eating with my right hand. I was rarely tempted to use my left. It would be harder if I still wanted to write, but all that's behind me.

It's just as well I switched hands: Witches are thought to be left-handed. Perhaps it's true. Rose is no witch and she uses her right hand. We are mirror twins, she and I. What's left for me is right for her; and if I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I might say nothing's right for me.

But Rose was using neither hand. "I need Briony to cut for me."

Cut for her? After all these years of teaching her to cut her meat? Of telling her knives weren't dangerous if properly used? On the day I break down and slap Rose, I'll probably use my dependable left hand.

"But you cut your meat ever so well on your own."

Rose raised her clenched fist. "My hand prefers to be occupied."

"What do you have, Rose?"

"It's mine," said Rose.

"Of course it's yours, but I'd like to see it." One never knew what hideous things Rose might pick up.

Lamplight glinted off the pewter tankards as they went up and down, although where Cecil was concerned, there was a lot of up and not so much down. Rose uncurled her fingers. On her palm lay a crumple of paper.

"He dropped it," she said. "He didn't prefer to have it."

"It's a Bible Ball," said Cecil, stating the obvious, which was his specialty.

Father sat up very straight. "Who dropped it, Rose?"

"Mr. Drury didn't prefer to have it, so it wasn't stealing."

"The fool!" said Mr. Clayborne. I'd never heard him raise his voice before. "And after all my warnings!"

Yes, Mr. Dreary had been a fool, letting the Quicks have him for tea. He didn't believe in the Bible Ball, he'd left it behind. Slurp and swallow. I'd been right. The swamp reached out and gobbled him up.

"His Bible Ball?" Eldric leaned forward, the very image of a boy who didn't want to miss anything. Least of all Mr. Dreary; no, Eldric didn't miss him. Why was it that Eldric could get away with a thing like that-not being sorry when a person was supposed to be sorry?

Cecil put on a solemn face for about five seconds, which happens to correspond with his attention span. "When in Rome," he said, shrugging wisely.

"We're not in Rome," said Rose.

"What Cecil means," said Father, "is that people who travel to foreign places ought to follow the rules and customs of that place."

"But we're not in Rome," said Rose.

"Quite true," said Eldric. "We're far from Rome."

"In the Swampsea," said Cecil, showing off his geography. I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz "the Genius" and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude.

"We're in the Swampsea?" said Eldric. "Surely not! I'm certain I took the express train to the Dragon Constellation."

Cecil put on his best dead-poet face. He's far too highbrow for silliness.

But Rose laughed. She does sometimes understand when something's meant to be silly. I never can predict when. But the laughing set off a fit of coughing. What was I doing, filling my belly and licking my burns? I needed Tiddy Rex and his cough.

"Don't tell me you haven't heard of the Dragon Constellation!" said Eldric. "It's very far, indeed, from London, and I for one intend to follow all its customs. If a native from the Dragon Constellation tells me to carry a Bible Ball, then it's a Bible Ball I shall carry."

I spotted Tiddy Rex warding the Alehouse against the Old Ones. The barkeep often asked him to perform the odd job, now that he'd achieved the great age of nine.

"Then you must learn our customs," I said, waving at Tiddy Rex. "Here's a boy who'll teach you everything."

Tiddy Rex came bouncing over. "Doesn't you look beautiful, Miss Briony!"

"Thank you, Tiddy Rex!" I said. "And here I'd been thinking this frock makes me look slightly dead." Black is not a happy color for me, but then, funeral clothes do not specialize in happiness.

"Not a bit o' it, Miss Briony," said Tiddy Rex. "You doesn't look a bit dead!"

Tiddy Rex is the one person who can make me smile. He's a very decent specimen of nine-year-old boyhood.

"You've heard of Mister Eldric, I daresay," I said. "But I'll tell you something about him you must never tell anyone else. Promise?"

"Promise!"

"Mister Eldric doesn't come from our planet at all. He comes from a faraway place out in the sky called Earth."

When Tiddy Rex smiled, each of his several million freckles lit up.

"But now that he's here, in the Dragon Constellation, he has to learn our ways, so he can protect himself against the Old Ones. You were warding the Alehouse, just now. Explain it to Mister Eldric, will you?"

"Us mixes wine an' bread, Mister Eldric, an' puts it round by the door an' the windows so them Old Ones doesn't come creeping in."

Tiddy Rex paused, then added, "Wine an' bread be church things, you knows, Mister Eldric, an' them Old Ones, they doesn't care for church."

Wine and bread. This has always seemed rather ghoulish to me, as though one were smearing the threshold with Puree of Christ.

"Thank you, Tiddy Rex. Such things are undoubtedly puzzling to a person from Earth."

"You're a fine lad." Cecil made a great show of opening his fingers to reveal a coin. "Such a deal of money. I wonder how many toffees that will buy you?"

"Sixpence a bag," said Tiddy Rex. "But licorice be the thing for me, begging your pardon, Mister Cecil."

"I like licorice," said Rose.

"Tiddy Rex," I said, "how do you like pork?"

"I likes it fine, Miss Briony."

"Please help me with this," I said. "They've given me such a lot-the whole pig, minus the squeak."

Tiddy Rex laughed and snickled in between me and Eldric, and once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, even when the chew is gone, you can still sc.r.a.pe at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.

"Robert's birthday is June twenty-seventh," said Rose, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Robert is the fireman Rose most admires.

"When's your birthday?"

She meant Eldric, which I found interesting. She's never asked about Cecil's birthday.

"It's a very special birthday," said Eldric. "It's the only birthday you can make into a sentence. Can you guess what it is?"

I thought about it. "Yes, oh August One," I said, which set Eldric to laughing and Tiddy Rex asking me to explain.

"I was joking," I said. "My real guess is that it's March fourth, as in, March forth!"

"You be ever so clever, Miss Briony," said Tiddy Rex.

It's lovely to be clever and have little boys remark on it and have big boys smile curling lion's smiles.

Hurrah for the smell of gravy, all blood and b.u.t.ter and yum!

Hurrah for the smell of pork, all sizzle and dark and chomp!

Hurrah for a snickly boy, all round and grubby and snug!

"Briony hasn't any birthday," said Rose.

"I feel certain she does," said Cecil, whose birthday I happen to know is April Fools' Day.

"No birthday?" said Eldric.

"It's one of our strange customs, here in the Dragon Constellation," I said. "I'll tell you about it later." But I had nothing to tell. Rose has such very peculiar theories on the pa.s.sing of time. I mustn't listen to the chiming of midday or midnight, I have no birthday. When I ask why, she says it's a secret.

"The Chime Child," said Rose, "was born at the Mirk and Midnight Hour."

"Hus.h.!.+" I said. "She might hear. It's rude to talk about a person behind her back."

There came a sudden rush to the bar. The music was about to begin. Quick, Tiddy Rex-cough!

Tiddy Rex didn't cough.

"I like the fiddle." Rose turned her chair to face the musicians.

"I like it too." Father stood up, holding his old fiddle.

A murmur arose from the people standing about. "You astonish me, Larkin!" said Dr. Rannigan. "I thought you'd given up the fiddle for good."

Dr. Rannigan couldn't possibly be as astonished as I: I'd seen Father lock away his fiddle. He locked it up, literally, in the silver cupboard. He didn't throw away the key-he's not showy enough for that-but he did the next best thing: He dropped it into his pocket and vanished from the Parsonage. He did come back every evening-one does have to keep up appearances-but he came home only to sleep, and then, never with Stepmother.

"Good lad!" cried Mr. Sly. "Us been missing them fingers o' yours."

"I'll be rusty," said Father.

How ill he'd been then, falling into ever-longer stretches of confusion, his eyes unnaturally bright, as though he were burning up from the inside. And after Stepmother had nursed him with utter devotion, what does he do but lock away his fiddle and absent himself from our lives. He did make a full recovery, though, which is too bad.

But I mustn't think about it, for it makes me angry, and anger and I do not get along.

"Will you sing with us, Briony?" said Father. "Just as we did in the old days?"

How dare he ask! He, Father, who'd been well for three whole years but not brought out the fiddle until today. How dare he!

"I like Briony singing," said Rose.

"I should like to hear you," said Eldric.

I shook my head. I wouldn't sing, not with Father. He'd broken off our ritual of singing every evening, and never a word of explanation. He sang wonderful songs, or so I'd thought. I must have been fond of him then.

Anyway, I can't sing anymore.

Father had grown rusty, but only a little. I don't like to admire Father, but it's true that the old tunes sounded complete with the fiddle added back in. The fiddle st.i.tched all the other sounds together-the whistle, the accordion, and the drum, which Davy Wallace played remarkably well despite his missing hand.

Eldric's fidgety fingers reached for the salt and pepper shakers. Pepper bowed to Salt; Salt bowed to Pepper; and away they went, gliding through the cutlery and plates and splashes of gravy.

Eldric leaned toward me. He smelled of pine and thunder and soap. London soap must be the cleanest soap in all the world. "I always forget," he said. "It's Pepper who's the man, isn't it?"

"It certainly is," I said. "At least here in the Dragon Constellation." Eldric was not unlike Tiddy Rex. He could make me smile too.

Father played the opening bars of "True Thomas." I couldn't imagine Father was actually going to sing. Then he'd have to open those scratches he pretended were his lips.

But Father looked my way. "Do you still know every verse?" No, of course he wasn't going to sing, not Father.

I declined to answer. He wasn't going to flatter me into singing with him. He couldn't disappear for three years, then go all smiles and rainbows and expect the same back. I particularly remember the day Father disappeared. It was the day Stepmother told me I'm a witch.

It was, in the end, Mrs. Whitby, Pearl's mother, who sang. Salt and Pepper changed their steps to match the slow melancholy of "True Thomas." Most people can't fidget and listen at the same time, but Eldric was dead opposite to most people. He could listen only if he fidgeted; and he was fidgeting and following the story of True Thomas, who was stolen away to Fairyland, where he stayed for seven years, unable to tell a lie. That last bit sounds ghastly. If I couldn't lie, I'd be dead.

Once the song was done, Eldric launched Salt and Pepper into a polka. "Does that happen here? People being stolen into Fairyland?"

"We're not glamorous enough for Fairyland," I said. "That's for ballad-y places, like Scotland. In the Swampsea, you'll merely get your hand ripped off, like Davy Wallace, or your wits s.n.a.t.c.hed away."

"That's the Old One for me," said Cecil.

"How do you mean?" said Eldric.

Listening to Cecil's explanation was rather less enlightening than anything Mad Tom might have said, but we finally understood that if any of the Old Ones was to attack Cecil, it would be the Dark Muse. She feeds only on the energy of truly artistic men, draining away their wits, and we were given to understand that Cecil was just such an artist. He wrote poetry, you see.