Читать книгу Foxlowe - Eleanor Wasserberg - Страница 9

Wisps of red hair stuck out from a striped scarf. I reached out to touch the tip of an ear. Pink skin and tiny gold hairs. It was cold.

I thought of the cool flesh of the baby goats we’d found lying stiff in the shed.

—Is it dead? I said.

Freya frowned and ducked from under the table and I followed her, pulling the hem of my dress, wanting at once to wrench the baby out of Freya’s arms, where I belonged, and to hold it myself, look at it.

—She’s ours, Freya said. —She’s our new little sister.

—It’s family?

—She is, said Freya. —She’s going to live with us.

—Oh.

My Freya’s hands, the bitten nails and blackened tips, scent of soil and sometimes blood — they were wrapped around this new thing’s body, the head cupped in her palm.

—It’s staying? I said.

Freya turned her eyes on me. —Something Bad moving? she said.

—No.

—Seems like a nastiness there. Seems like a little Bad there, she said.

—No, I said. —The Family’s in the ballroom, I added.

—We’ll show them in a while.

This was strange, but I loved when it was me and Freya alone, without all the Family in the way, so I just smiled, until she turned her back to me, shushing as the new thing wriggled and kicked.

I thought of the goats again. —Does it need milk? I asked.

—Well, Freya said.

She brought out a bottle from a new bag, covered in pictures of sheep. She tipped it so I could see it was frozen. She held the new thing higher on her chest, and fetched a lit candle from the table, handed it to me. The gas hissed when Freya turned the dial. I waved the lit candle towards the sound. The ring sparked with a tiny roar.

I loved the blue lights when the gas was on. I breathed on the flames, watching them bow and stretch, while Freya put the bottle into a pan of water. After a while she brought it out with the tongs she used for taking potatoes out of the bonfire.

—Lift your sleeve up, she said. I gave her my good arm. She pressed the bottle to my skin and I yelped, jumping back. She held the bottle in place another long few seconds. I breathed into the pain the way Libby had taught me but just as I was about to thrash Freya released me.

She kissed my hair. —Now your arms are in balance, she said. —Feel how they speak to each other now?

The flashes of fresh burn answered the throbs in my cuts like music. I nodded. Freya put the milk aside to cool. —That’s how you test it, she said. —That same place on your arm. If it burns, you leave it a while.

We took new little sister to the Family, and they asked questions, Libby asking lots of times, —Did she say it was all right? Did you ask her? Are you sure she knows she’s welcome? As though she didn’t know it was only a baby, and couldn’t answer. Toby asked, —Is that it, the secret? I realised it was, and he only said, —That’s shit.

My hands dangled, lost at my sides as I followed Freya to the back rooms. Usually she held my hand tight in hers and stroked the back of my palm with her thumb, but now New Thing filled her arms, wailing a thin cry that cracked at the edges. It was late, the latest I had ever stayed up without falling asleep in the kitchen or the ballroom, waking up cold and finding my way to an empty mattress.

We took the Spike Walk. The spikes were rows of nails that stuck out of the panelled wood. They used to have paintings hanging on them. The story goes that when Richard first came to Foxlowe he sold them all, to pay for the first meals and clothes. I ran my hands lightly over the nails as we walked, followed my hours-old steps.

The end of the Spike Walk widened into the yellow room. It was smaller than the ballroom, but prettier, I thought. There was still some wallpaper left, turning brown, and a bed with a broken frame and thick pillows that had spat out some of their feathers, drifting across the room. White shapes crouched in the shadows, ghosts of wood and cotton.

Freya kicked a ghost out of her way and it groaned across the floor. She shook a sheet away from something and I went in to see. It was an old chest, carved oak like the table in the kitchen. Freya opened a drawer. There were mouldy towels in there; she shook them out and a stiff mouse dropped, rolled across the floor. She held the drawer up.

—Here’s your bed, baby girl, she said.

Freya took off her coat, and patted down the pockets. She took out some sprigs of dry lavender. We lined the drawer with the coat so that New Thing would know her the way pups sleep on the bellies of their mothers. She tucked the lavender around the edges.

—Now it’ll smell nice.

Freya corrected me. —Help her sleep. She’ll be quieter now.

Freya was wrong: that first night New Thing screamed so high, so endless, that the Family came up to the attic, to help shush and rock, and I whispered to Toby, —New Thing hates us. It hates it here. It should go away again.

—I like it, he said. —It’s nice to hold.

It was true it was warm, and though the weight of it pulled at my arms I liked to balance it on my knees on the bed in the attic, blow on its eyelids, see if I could wake it up and make the big cheeks flush with red and the whole face collapse in wailing.

—New Thing’ll be bad for us here, I said to Toby. —It’ll be bad for you. Valentina might love her.

—Looks like she’s Freya’s to me, Toby hissed back.

Until New Thing came Freya’s love for me was like the bricks in the walls and the roots of the oaks at the edge of the moor. Now all the Family were circled around New Thing in Freya’s arms, stretched towards it like a bonfire, and I tried to make Freya see me, worried at my scars, hung over the back of chairs, but she didn’t look up.

It didn’t take long for Freya to see how I hated new little sister almost from the beginning. It was in the faces I gave her and the way I held her a little too rough. Then she overheard my name for her. I thought it would be the Spike Walk but instead I was Edged. Freya told the Family this one morning by tossing me the burnt part of the bread and making sure they all saw. They all had to look away when I spoke and no one was allowed to touch me. I was alone, edging around the circles the Family made around New Thing. I snatched eye contact and accidental touch when I could, watching and listening, haunting rooms.

The rest of the Family loved New Thing. The sounds it made they repeated, called to each other like a new language. After that first night, its crying wasn’t so frightening. The Family worked out what it liked: the jingle-jangle sounds of Libby’s bracelets, shaken above it, Freya’s knuckles in its mouth, the powdery milk not too hot. And what it didn’t like: the sun streaming through the kitchen windows, the dogs panting over it, and the damp orange blanket made it cry. They spent hours just lying on the kitchen floor, next to the aga, staring at it.

Aside from Freya, Ellen loved New Thing best. Her full name was Ellensia, but we’d all forgotten to use it. Her flesh spilled out of her clothes like filling from a pie, and she liked to wear kaftans she made herself, bad stitching pulling at the seams. She’d take New Thing into her arms and rest her on her vast stomach, singing bits of songs I didn’t know, cooing, until Freya took her back. Once, Ellen dared fight Freya on how to make little sister sleep, and she said, —I have done this before, you know, and we all looked away, sad for her at the mistake, and Freya only nodded, and said softly, —Yes, and where is that baby now? and Ellen left the kitchen with spilling eyes.

Meeting came. At the bay windows, Dylan and Ellen lay on their backs, drawing pictures in the frosted glass with their nails. Dylan was huge and strong, the bulk of him like an oak tree, and he gave bear hugs and wet kisses. He liked to spin us around, even Freya, even Ellen, who liked him, she said, because he make her feel dinky. Dancing to Richard’s guitar were Pet and Egg. Egg, Eglantine, was tall and thin. Through his vest, bones pushed out like they were trying to pierce the skin. He had thick black hair and a moustache he liked to grease with cooking fat and twist into curls. Egg was always with Petal, Pet for short, a boy with a girl’s name. Pet wore blusher on his cheekbones, so he looked like the broken dolls in the attic. He and Egg were always snaked around each other, Pet’s fingers in Egg’s hair.

A burning oil lamp sent jasmine puffs into the air. Candles burned everywhere, in old jars, stuck into wine bottles and cluttered along the mantelpieces. Someone had even put tea lights in the old chandelier, balancing them against the crystal. Toby lay with his head on Valentina’s stomach. I pulled at him to come sit with me, for the Naming, but he shook me off. I crouched next to him, Valentina giving me a weak smile. She was Toby’s mum; he’d called her that, Mum, for a while before he lost the habit, while she never seemed to name him at all. Her long blonde hair was so thin you could see the pink scalp underneath. Freya and Libby called her Sweetheart; behind her back, they called her Bitter Bambi, and in one of their strange truces they could make each other laugh by widening their eyes and snarling all at once. In the coldest days after Winter Solstice, Libby gave Valentina the down quilt that she’d taken from Jumble so long ago it was considered hers, and on the days Valentina went quiet and sad, Libby took Toby on long walks, or taught him dance steps in the ballroom. So I knew Bitter Bambi was something unkind: Libby liked life to be in balance.

—We’re naming her now, Valentina whispered to me. —Then she’ll be family and you’ll have to love her, Green, or everything will be very hard for you.

Freya stood up with New Thing in her arms and we all fell silent. She’d chant the new name and we’d watch it soak into new little sister like rainwater into grass. There was no outside name to peel away, not that she’d ever remember. Freya spoke for a while about the Family and Foxlowe and we all recited All The Ways Home Is Better.

—Now, I have a name for new little sister, said Freya.

I thought of the worst things: the rusted nails in the Spike Walk, the hunger of a starve day, the Bad. New Thing was hooked over Freya’s shoulder, so when she turned, the little face peered over, still wrapped in that striped scarf. Her eyes caught on the chandelier. The tiny wet mouth twitched into a smile and she made a small sound of joy. The best things came: jewels on cobwebs, Libby’s little birds. The flames glowing the night I watched Freya heating the milk.

—Blue, I whispered, too quiet for Freya to hear. —Call her Blue.

—Green has a name for her, Toby called.

Everyone looked at me. I kicked Toby hard and said, —No I don’t.

—She does, she just whispered it!

I dug my nails into his arm, and he howled. Valentina sat up and pulled him to her, glaring at me.

Freya bounced the baby in her arms, not looking at me. —Green is Edged, she said.

—It was the first name called, said Libby. —Isn’t that the rule?

—Freya always does the naming, said Richard, and Libby rolled her eyes, lay back on the floor like she was sunbathing in the cold air.

—Well, said Dylan. —It might be nice to—

—A nice way to end the Edging, Ellen jumped in.

Libby sat up. —What is the name, Green?

—Nothing, I said.

—Nothing? Freya crowed.

—Blue, I croaked. Libby caught it and repeated it louder. It sank into Blue and took her and we all knew that was her name.

—There’s a power in naming, Freya said to the Family, continuing to Edge me. —I hope Green knows what she’s given her. Blue can be many things.

—It’s the lights on the cooker, I said.

—It’s cold, Freya said to the Family.

—And she’s a colour like Green, Richard said.

—Yes, and you know she’s on the tape, said Freya. —With you and Green. Her song is all about sadness.

—Oh, I said.

—I love it, Libby said.

Above us in Freya’s arms, Blue squirmed and opened and closed her mouth.

—There’s a power in naming, Freya said again.

—She’s Green’s now, you know. She should do the calling, said Libby.

So I took Blue into my arms, and gave her the name cold and sad. That was the first little thing I did to hurt her.