Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12 (11 page)

When there's a new beastie, villagers go first to Spitmam for a name and second to Hammle for tending. The upstander—the rude way of calling Hammle's refusal to live or work with the other folk—keeps the pend, where all queer things found are taken. There's a grim streak in Hammle, and the bairns know him for being hollered over smashing birds’ eggs. Tall and sizzled with beard, they eye him as warily as the water foaming the cliff rocks.

"Your back's up for carrying a fishie to the pend?” Derry challenges him.

"Maybe not, but it's up to swamping bairns."

"Just saying, upstander,” Derry coos then screeches up the far side of the beastie with his sister, Caff.

Hammle scratches the fishie's belly and considers the sand seeping from the monster's cuts. “Poor thing.” Hammle says sadly and for some reason looks only to Catchie. “Now why they always bring me the ones for dying?"

Catchie says nothing. Who'd weep just for a fishie?

For the afternoon, she and Spitmam sit on their cottage's drying green with pebbles of different sizes laid out on the flags and the sun another in hot flight. Catchie's full up with the new beastie. Spitmam endures the spill of questions, lets them splatter this way and that, for Catchie's always caught by the novelty of the new things that turn up. For as long as she has been able to count days forward, Catchie's been Spitman's other hands, and in all such time, she's never lost the thrill of the world first opened.

"'Mam, the fishie's from the water."

"Of
the water, girl, this one's never from."

"But if the fishie's
of
the water, best we put it
in
the water. Speg could knit hardy tethers and the men'd pull and we'd bring beastie to the—the grand water—"

"Not
grand water
. How often you told? Called
sea
."

"Sea
water and—"

A stinging grip on Catchie's wrist. “Girl, break your fancies."

Spitmam inspects the last speckled pebble of the batch Catchie'd rooted by Aggie's herb fringe. She warms the pebble between palms, breathing slow on it like steam on a bitter day, and pops it in her mouth. There between her cheeks, the pebble rolls til Spitmam's sure, then she picks it out, whispering a secret word over the stone before placing it hush with the other spat rocks on the grass.

"Sea won't take this fishie,” she lectures Catchie. “There's a
stone
fishie, not a water one. You know water's nasty about rock."

Catchie rubs her wrist and ponders this with a look that strays beyond the flies hovering over the garth wall, onto the straggle of blasted cottages making the old village edge, on again across the hellafield prickly with bell, up to the Cags that hide the other side of their island. A world of rock—or if not rock,
from
rock, like soil and pebble—or if not from rock,
allowed by
rock, like sheep and kale and violets.

"What's earth making such daft things for?” she asks.

There's an answer to that, Catchie knows from the way Spitmam smiles so far and no further with tight lips, as if afraid some might peek at secrets through her mouth. Spitmam knows everything, being the villager who's here longest. With so much ground for tilling and nests for culling, folk have too little day to recall how the village got to be so small and recall farther how it got to be so big in the first place. But Spitmam's dug a space for time and squirrelled away the memories folk have left lying, as if waiting out a long winter with her knowledge. And Catchie's seen Spitmam, looking for a sign that such a winter's spent, watching the skies for a private sigh.

Catchie knows better than to press her granny, and anyway, the pebbles on the grass are rumbling and starting to fall about. There's a soft break, a rocky froth, and one by one the pebbles shell off, split with help from Spitmam and Catchie. Soon a brood of beasties are lying in their slag.

"Names,” Spitmam orders, pointing.

"Field-mice."

"That one?"

"Snake."

"Kind of snake, girl?"

"Tarsnake, ‘mam."

"There?"

"Grasshopper. Heath moth. Horsefly."

"Last one?"

"Never know, ‘mam."

"There's
vole
, girl. Tiny one, sure, but proper size wouldn't fit out of my mouth. All's true earth creatures, remember this, and not like that fishie over by the cliffs. These'll survive if water or wind not hack them."

Rough, Spitmam strokes Catchie's head as if untangling. “Remember, names are important. Names fence the world, catch the slips, ward the fears. Don't make little with the names—without them, everything's muck and rubble."

Spitmam lets her head go like a dropped stone. “Now spare me talk of a nameless fishie."

Days to come, there's no talk of the fishie by anyone in the village. Where the talk comes from is the dailies—folk harrowing rocks before planting tatties or hunting birds along the cliffs and culling the eggs—that, and the dirty sky. Sky matters most. Always ready for new things, Catchie sees the change in the air first, a dark haze worrying the horizon. Spitmam insists on being told every coming wrinkle in the sky, so Catchie tells her granny.

"There's two storms soon,” she says slowly, which sends everyone off on talk, since storms are the worst that can happen.

"I remember the last wind,” Aggie tells Catchie when Spitmam's examining her young Kery for stomach cramps. “Remember it ripping Kellick's cottage? Poor man thought he was sure downcellar, but wind ripped his will as well. He was just falling down after that. Gravel within the week. Now there's a bad season."

"The wind's always a bad one,” Spitmam says, just that and nothing more, for she'll name the wind, but she won't talk about it. Wind's a private matter for her, Catchie's seen, very deep.

"True, all winds come from trouble, but seems the winds are strutting more with every new storm. Seems they're getting
particular
each season."

"Wouldn't say about that. Now, Kery, don't look while I'm doing. Not having you bawl out my cottage."

"Oh, granny, wouldn't do that."

"You say. Girl, find me a sly ripper."

Inside the cottage, Spitmam keeps all her healing work in fesgars and kettles hanging by crooks. A thick storing, with secret cubbies behind the corked jars that even Catchie's never permitted to root. Catchie knows the sly tools for the careful tasks are by the tattie bucket, so she moves the collie aside carefully, knowing the fire's locked sure but fearful of anything to do with fire, and there finds a ripper.

With a hand firm to Kery's chin to make sure the head wouldn't dally, Spitmam takes the ripper and quickly slices hard and down the girl's chest. “Tickles,” Kery says, but Aggie shushes her and watches Spitmam peel away crumble to get into the chest cavity.

"Reach that out,” Spitmam orders. Catchie grips three stone birds out of Kery's cast and lays them on the ground, where they try to stand but fall over. Swift, Spitmam resets Kery's chest, bricking it with strong mud from a side-bucket and harshing the surface with sand.

"No wailing—there's good, Kery."

"Where's to see, granny? Those the birds?"

"There's
kitties
, Kery, except that one, but a starling."

"You have all the names,” Kery says, dumbed by Spitmam's knowledge, and bounds off the stool and out of the cottage.

"Her da was the same,” Aggie says after her. “That man grew out birds and fishies and useless things, til that tree grew right out his skull. Didn't have the will of it anymore."

With her last sigh, Aggie looks for the broken cottages round the village edge and adds, “But then which folk got the will of it now?"

"Folks keep to the names—there's the backbone."

"Well, so, Spitmam."

After they're away, Spitmam stays at the door, regarding the sky while Catchie wraps the chickies in a hankie and sits them in a kuddie. “I'll take these to Hammle."

"You don't linger, girl. First storm's across tonight."

"Along before dark."

"Promised."

The short's across the hellafield, but Catchie decides on the wayward and follows the village path til she comes to the cliff edge. Here, the path's picky down to the beach, but Catchie stays on the edge, tracing it round towards the grand fishie site. There's angry things in the air—
shags
and
terns
, Spitmam says, but with all their screaming at Catchie, they're only birds and she lobs a few rocks to make more view of the sea.

Sea.
There's another Spitmam word. Most folk would just give it the name and avoid thinking or talking about it. Best not regard water, they'd say. Water'll snatch at the folk who stray too close, or it'll worry at the earth, eating foundations, making bog and sucking away their island. Water kills. Air hates. Fire would do both, and worse, if they allowed it sparking outside their collies.

This close to the edge, Catchie sees the air's too black for bravado, so she gathers the kuddie and skeddaddles in a straight cut to where the fishie's lying.

Hammle hails her when she's close. “Come to scat the beastie now, Catchie?"

Catchie flushes with the accusation, bridling at its twisty tone. “'Mam took stone birds in Kery."

"Why they're not taken the pend?"

"Says take them to Hammle direct. There's you here, not the pend."

"Sure, right so."

Hammle jumps off the fishie's back and swaps his heavy clipper for her kuddie. Brusquely, he throws open the hanky and pokes the sick birds.

"Kitties and starling,” Catchie tells.

"Didn't ask your naming,” Hammle sharpens, but softens it with a smile. “Name's not the matter."

While Hammle probes the birds, Catchie leans over the edge and considers the fishie. Most body's been brought out now, strapped over by dozens of tethers and bridged by rafters laid across the top by the upstander. Even held down so, the beastie still shudders with force Catchie's only witnessed in sea or storm. On the skin, the fishie's already moulting, its peels like a tattie thinned for the pot. Catchie comes closer, then close enough to touch the beastie's surface, haired all over by budding gravel flowers with odd heads.
Tulips
, Spitmam instructed her once.

"Beastie's lost the will,” Catchie speaks to Hammle.

"Body's
lost the will,” Hammle corrects her. “Feel that."

Pushing her hand through the flowers, Catchie grips the skin. There, faint in the caverns and nests of the beastie, the bare rushing of air deep down, and there again, a song, trapped, like something swallowed badly.

"There's tune in the—” Catchie flicks the name “—
lungs
."

Carefully, Hammle replaces the birds’ shroud in the kuddie. “Those lungs are hung with this massy body. Now in the water—in the proper element—that body's easy. Except that this is a
stone
fishie, and it has no element. Those lungs were never for anything but cracking, poor beastie. And still, there's song in it. Now there's mystery."

"What's
mystery
?"

"There's spirit."

"What's
spirit
?"

"There's the world's secrets."

"Secrets? Oh, things without names,” Catchie says, meaning all that's never important, as Spitmam would have expected her.

Hammle wipes his poking hand and takes the clipper away from Catchie. “Well, so some say."

"'Mam says."

"So Spitmam says."

Catchie picks up the empty kuddie and Hammle climbs onto the rafters to clip the flowers on the fishie. Spitmam'll be wanting her to prepare the cottage for the storm. Anyway, beastie's failing, she can't see the sense of Hammle's work. Yet Catchie loiters.

"And?” Hammle shouts down.

"And just."

"And just saying?"

"Just saying,” Catchie starts, and started, carries through, “There's cob or cunt?"

A chafing's expected, but Catchie's surprised when he laughs. “Cunt, piggot!"

"Well, poor lass."

"So."

"Mind storm, upstander."

"Minding, thanks."

With a wave, Catchie gives the fishie a last regard and says alone—What's mystery?—but the air's fouling with storm so she sprints the short back to the cottage.

During storm is worst.

Before, there's Spitmam sealing the door with muddy tar. She's peculiar quiet, figuring the cutstone of the storm's break with a squint as if she'd been halloo-ed from the sky. Catchie's seen her granny peer storms before, as if there'd be a question of setting the kettle and borrowing a spare chair from New Solly next door for visitors.

After chewing a whole weed, Spitmam finally mumbles alone, “There's not it, not this time."

"What's it?” Catchie asks, but Spitmam smiles just so and no further, so the girl bites down and bands sure their cottage jars and fesgars with straw wire.

There's no slope to the storm. Soon after Spitmam's lodged the door, she's half across when the forewind razors the wall boulders sudden, and she's all across when the storm starts to beetle the door and window. Sure in their cubby, Spitmam holds Catchie like a first bairn. They cower in cave dark, not trusting the collie's fire for light. It's the only time Catchie sees Spitmam scratchy with the ordinary fears of the rest of them, though she glares with the anger of one ashamed of ordinary weaknesses.

Wind has its own screaming, pure intent, but in the storm, it's not just wind. Catchie listens. Shrilling across the flagged roof, tongues through the gaps around the window, but between the shudders, there's the sound of the brutes of the air. Birds shrieking, wauling, hooting, every bird that Catchie imagines, birds with wings, birds in fur, birds finned, birds every-shaped. And her own moan so pale in Spitmam's embrace.

"Name the things you hear.” Spitmam grasps her in hard comfort. “Hold yourself with names, girl!"

From the twist of noise, Catchie untangles the bird sounds. “G-gulls. Kitties."

"The others."

"Bab-baboons, ‘mam. Tiger."

"And all, girl."

Shaking, Spitmam hugs Catchie solid, and she listens over the storm, for that low growl astride the other wind creatures. Words. Catchie hears words.