Читать книгу Foxlowe - Eleanor Wasserberg - Страница 10

Life ever after that is full of Blue, and all the trouble she made. It was Blue who made the end of Foxlowe, and Freya and me and all the Family. That wasn’t her fault, but mine. When Blue was a baby everything was already ruined, it only took a long time to happen. Let me tell you about the Bad first, so you understand. We had lots of stories about it, so we didn’t forget. You need to hear them countless times before you can follow the words in your own head, and then tell your own version. Mine is part Freya’s, part Libby’s, knotted together voices.

The Bad is everywhere on the outside. There, it is ignored, and because it has been forgotten, it can move in new ways: it does not creep, or skulk around the edges of shadow, but soars in the open. Listen, and believe it: on the outside, the Bad can force a helpless one to do anything. Imagine the worst you can. Outside, people will twist knives into flesh, pull off one another’s skin. Eat each other.

Now, it is harder for the Bad to take one of us, as it can so easily for outside people, because we have the protection of the Stones and the rituals. And we know the Bad and call it by name.

Never think that safer than the outside means safe.

You have to learn for yourself what the Bad feels like; everyone feels it differently. In the Time of the Crisis, when the Bad got into Foxlowe, it crouched on Freya like a giant fly, and made her world dark, so when the sun shone in, it couldn’t reach her. It made her limbs weak and everything hollow and hopeless. But others speak of the Bad as a voice, inside their own heads, or pain scratching around from inside the skin. Others perceive the Bad as a ghost, a figure you can glimpse in the corner of the eye; it can move things, and kneels on your chest at night. The Bad can twist your mouth to speech, or curl your hands into fists to strike something weaker than you. The Bad can kill. Once, when the Scattering was not done properly, it found and killed the baby goats. It causes illness and pain, infection and fever.

Listen to the things we know, to protect yourself. The Bad thrives on the dark and the cold; it is a winter force. So be careful when the sun is weak and the air bites you. Stay off the moor, where the Bad is strong. If the Bad catches you there, run to the Standing Stones. Even in the winter the Stones hum with a thousand ancient blessings. If you are closer to Foxlowe, run so you are inside the Scattering Salt.

If, despite all our care, you feel the Bad has taken you, you must tell the Founders. They will take you to the Stones, if the sun is strong enough, and Solstice is close. In winter, you will be given candle flame on the skin to try to force the Bad out. It hates heat. If the infection is deep, you may be bled. Summer Solstice will heal you, if nothing else works, and you may have to wait for the double sunset.

The children are the easiest for the Bad to slip into. They must be watched.

The Scattering is something we learned from the Time of the Crisis. Remember that the Bad had come inside the walls. One of those mornings, Freya felt the Bad in the kitchen, scratching across the floor, and twitching her fingers. On the flagstones lay the baby Green, where the Bad had taken full root. The Bad filled the kitchen until it was as black as night and spread cold through the air. In the gloom, Freya watched the tiny chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and the Bad pressed on her, urged the pillow into her hands. As she took it she knocked the salt jar from the table and it smashed, scattered salt across the floor. The room immediately lightened, the air warmed, and although the Bad was too deep in the baby to force out, the skulking Bad pressing on Freya was gone. This is what we commemorate in the Scattering, that Freya was stronger than the Bad in the end, that we have ways of keeping it out.