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

"'Mam—'mam, there's folk!"

"Easy now. Only the wind folk."

"What do they want?” Catchie's nearly screaming now, for she can hear a wind woman fly widdershins around the cottage, faster and faster so that she seems to move forward through a new clock, and the woman cursing her for being of the slow world, and laughing at her twig bones and brittle heart and hard fears.

But Spitmam smiles like so and no further, turning Catchie's head to her shoulder. She rocks her in the arm's memory of tenderness, til the storm's spent.

After storm is best ever.

Breaking open the cottages, everyone steps slow onto the scoured ground and spies around, but all are counted sure—the storm's not taken any this time. Folk reset windows, and brush the pathway, spoilt by fallen dykes. There's speculation about scratches on the door frames, which beastie has these claws, and they bring their questions to Spitmam, but she shrugs and closes her door against them. Bairns chase the last of the birds loosed from the storm, curling and fluttering helplessly before the harder world shreds the whirls of shape.

Then when the villagers trust the sky and press back the weight of their sighs, they fill kuddies with meat and mallets and go the path, dancing around the broken stones and picking down the cliff's edge til they come to the smooth sand. Sitting on tufts of beach rush, families help each other with their heavy boots, bound sure with braided straw. Caff and Kery squeal as their mams smear rock cake on the shoes, Derry teases the sky with stones and insults, Pollett organises the mallets on large flaskies spread on the sand. Last, booted folk fan along the beach rim, til Speg starts with a crack of his mallet to a boulder, and in answer the villagers yell and whistle and march towards the water.

The beach's spattered with things wrong-footed by the storm. Men and women close into the water—though never forget water's cunning hatred—and sing as they stomp out the jelly bodies of fishies with their boots. Smaller fishies have been hurled back of the beach, so the bairns beetle the limbs of
cats
and
turtles
and
kestrels
—but no one conjures with names, they're just fishies.

And with each cull, Speg leads their shout—"There's
rock
! Fuck back, water and wind, for we're
rock
and rock's longer than you!"

Catchie crushes
cobra
, regards the beach, runs over and crushes
robin
. “Rock's longer!” she shouts, but she can't join the others, she's thinking of so many new things. There's another world in the water out there, a place under the sea where the cobra springs at the robin, and the robin soars over the sycamore, and the sycamore shelters the bear, and the bear scoops the water for the salmon.

That sets her thinking of the grand fishie, and of the music in its lungs, but there's another sparkle ahead of her. Catchie wipes the hard-water jelly from her boot, but Caff calls first, “Catchie!"

Caff's strayed close to the water, where the bigger fishies are. “There's what, Caff?” Catchie shouts, but Caff just calls her again, more fearful this time. “Caff, you breached?"

Caff points down at a fishie—a sure beastie, maybe five feet long. Its limbs are pudding, but still pulling towards the water's edge in painful lunges, leaving behind skin in sticky tracks. The belly's coated with sand and rushes snag in its hair, but Catchie can still see through the smoky jelly. A mackerel inside the fishie's body blinks back at her.

Caff whispers, “There's fishie?"

"Must be fishie.” Catchie sees how the tide's trying to meet the fishie partway. “Water wants it back."

"But Catchie, it's
folk
."

"N-not folk, Caff—only we're folk."

"But Catchie, she's hair like mam and long fingers like Old Solly and she hurts like the time I stubbed my knee! There must be a name to her."

Can the fishie hear? It tries to speak, drooling in the air, but Catchie thinks that it only talks under water. Poor fishie. Poor
woman
. All she can say to the two girls is the will of surviving, and something else asked, but not asked with words and names.

Some
mystery
.

"Maybe wants a name, Catchie."

Everything wants a name. So Catchie reels through all Spitmam's taught names, but none satisfy the fishie, and her yearning twists further into Catchie. What other names can she want than the ones that are? But before she can say further, Speg's shouting at them—"Get away from the beastie!"—and Catchie and Caff stand back as New Solly and Geddy run towards them, mallets banging against their legs.

"Daft, you've got no thinking what water will do!” Geddy, Caff's mam, chides with a bop to the side of Caff's head. Catchie retreats. She hopes to get a last look at the fishie, catch again her question, but the men have dyked her with their bodies, the trample of boots and mallet swings, and soon Catchie cannot regard the least, not with all these tears and heavy sobs cracking the floor in her heart like trapped songs.

"More beasties for the pend, Catchie?"

"No, upstander—just come."

"Bringing what?"

"Bring a question."

"Well then?"

"What's
mystery
?"

Hammle tucks his beard and regards Catchie sharp, then passes a clipper to Catchie. “Help with the fishie then."

The storm's cut the fishie at a hundred points, scores to gashes, and the wounds release all queer things. Bushes, already heaving fruit, sprout across the top of the fishie in a hairy line, while tatties are popping just from the skin. The tulips begin to colour across, yellow dissolving red, and a fuzz of sundew and poppies scum the beastie's gut. Like Aggie's old husband, a tree sticks stump out of its skull, and for the itch, the fishie tauts the tethers and rubs against the ditch's edge. Its crackling lies in sheaths underneath.

Hammle's started along the tail, weeding the wounds, mowing the skin. He starts again with Catchie beside him at a clump of bracken. They work silent, and Catchie thinks, maybe she should say it, but the upstander has his pace and speaks when it's time. “What's
mystery
, you say?"

"So, upstander."

"You part of the cull this morning?"

Catchie, strangely ashamed, doesn't say, but there's no need to, for nearly all folk cull, and there's no need to say further about Hammle's distaste for it.

"And there's something you regarded?"

"Upstander, there's a fishie, shape of a woman. Like folk."

"And?"

"Rock has folk, wind has folk. Wind has birds, water has birds. Water has fishies, rock has fishies. Why, upstander?"

Hammle points first across the hellafield. “There's?"

"Hellas. Rock."

"Rock, so.” He points the other way, the cliffs. “There's?"

"Sea. Water."

He points up.

"Wind.” Catchie regards the new dark boundary moving for the island. “Storm."

"In Spitmam's collie. There's?"

"Fire."

On four fingers, Hammle calls them. “Rock. Wet. Air. Fire. There's all, and all's of them. The elements, bitter with each other, fighting to destroy every other. But not always—never always."

"Time when sea not slap folk?” Catchie shuds her eyes away from the sky's face. “Time when storm not smash folk?"

"So, Catchie. That time before, the elements were mix, making a
proper
set of birds and fishies and folk together. But then the elements came apart, then came to blows. Now wind has its own birds, own fishies, folk even. And so water."

Hammle nips the whale's skin, then tufts at his beard. A straggle snips away, and he rolls it to a gritty crumble that falls to dirt. “And so rock,” he says.

"Fire too?” Catchie asks.

"So there's said, but no one's cracked a collie to find its world."

"And this is the way of it?"

"So, til one element crushes all—but there won't happen."

"Why? Rock's long!"

"Rock's long, but wind's faster. Wind's whip, but water flexes. Water's shifty, but fire sparks the world. Fire's light, but rock's what's lit. And so. Every needs each."

Catchie yanks a dandelion from the fishie, spilling its cup into a hundred drifters. “So what held all together once?"

"Many's said."

"What's
your
say, upstander?"

"There's the mystery you're asking.” Hammle pats a cleared plank of the fishie's skin. “Mystery's in the world's glue, sticking the world to our hearts. Once upon, it bound all with all. Now mystery's so small—a wick in a beastie's eye, a gleam along the shore. No fashioning to it left. Our grand fishie has it, but not much longer. Regard the flowers, the trees—five days, and there's never any fishie left. So. So there's the way for all, sure."

Catchie, remembers the stone birds in Kery's chest, and dimmer, how Aggie's husband fell apart with the tree. It's true—none keep their cast.

Catchie considers this full. She hooks the clipper on a fork in the bush, shimmies down the side of the beastie and smacks on the crackling floor. Bending under the roof of pulled tethers, Catchie scrambles the ditch round to the fishie's head, til it's immersed her, curving out and over the sky like the cliffs rising from the beach. Inside that cavern, she listens for the rustle of weeds, and listens again, and hears titchies, hares and flies stirring, and further still, the creature's songs.

She regards the fishie's tiny eyes, strong in its pain and confusion, but there's something other too, the same thing Catchie pitted from the water woman's eyes. Some mystery, closely held, but passing out, through Catchie, forward into the world, drawing out of her an urging sharper than Catchie's ever felt.

Hammle's followed, so Catchie asks, “Why do you help the beastie?"

"There's poor beastie."

"Just so?"

"Only so."

She lays a hand along its lip—poor beastie—and regards the coming storm, knowing this should destroy what's left of its will.

I'll save you beastie—she speaks, but alone, and carries the words against her as she and the upstander resume clipping its coat.

When two storms dally, folk dispute which is bairn, which is fierce—but this time, there's sure that the second storm will be the cracker. Never's the air matted so thick, as massy as rock now. The storm shadow's as long as the Cags and some consider that Cags and storm are teeth on a grand jaw, and that the poor villagers are sure to be pulped now.

So folk sit on their doorstones, staring at the grey above and the black to come. There's no talk, only families huddling outside for the last time, til one by one they wave to their neighbours and go into their cottages. Catchie hears the sound of bricking all down the pathway.

She whispers for the fishie, but as the breezes snap at her knees, Catchie calls out now, “'Mam, let's be sheltering."

Spitmam doesn't reply in her staring down the sky. The storm's been her study for hours, ears and eyes pressed to the wind. Catchie wonders if she's become full rock now, forever still, when sudden Spitmam leans ahead, opens her mouth just wide and no further, then opens a little more and no further, then further and stop, then all the way, belting as well, “She's there! Girl,
she's hither!
"

"Where's hither, ‘mam?"

"
There, there!
” Spitmam grabs at the sky, but Catchie regards only bubbling cloud and birds swarming front, as if they're yoking the storm forward. “There! Abreast the storm, oh, she's the dare, coming for me so brazen! Come away,
sister
!” Spitmam shouts up, “Come and find what's here for you!

"'Mam, the shelter! It's too bad."

"Never!” Spitmam growls with a bit of storm in her eyes. “There's she coming and I'm to meet her."

"Who, ‘mam? Who's there?"

"My sister. You not see?"

Before Catchie says not, Spitmam has her arm and pulls her into the cottage. Brief, Catchie thinks Spitmam's turned for shelter at last, but she leaves the door wide for the little gusts to spin across the floor and rip away all Catchie's battening in the cubbies. Spitmam reaches furthest into a cubby Catchie's been forbidden, and from far, she brings out first a water jar, second a fire vessel.

"Touch the fire vessel, girl.” Catchie does, fearful til her thumb rests on the raindrop-cast ceramic. The surface is warm, shakes like broken sleep, and the vessel rolls over with the anger of what's in.

"Now touch the jar."

Catchie considers the jar. Heavy glass, tidy with black straw, capped and sealed with tar. Inside, water sloshes restlessly. When Catchie touches the glass, the water rears at her finger, leaving a small beastie banging the side. There's such hatred in its eyes that Catchie backs away.

"'Mam, the water, there's—"

"So."

"There's you!"

"Sister."

"So the vessel?"

"So. My fire sister."

Catchie brings her legs together in fortress and considers this fishie Spitmam as she curses them soundlessly. “'Mam, how's this?"

"Oh, there's a long story, not to be said now. Long before the village, I fished the shores for my water sister, making traps and waiting patient. Another time, I took evenings with the collie, coaxing my other out of the fire world with tinder."

"So there's world in the collie?” Catchie speaks.

"There's all the cast of wind, water and rock there, but the collie's their dyke. My sister's their only escape, and the fire vessel, her cage."

"Your other sister, ‘mam,” Catchie says, catching at last, “There's her in the storm."

"The last."

"Coming for you?"

"All come for what I have."

"'Mam?"

"Come after the names,” and saying, Spitmam opens her mouth, just so, and then much further, further than Catchie's ever regarded, and drags Catchie close so she can stare down the throat. Deep in, behind the tongue, fizzing with glow, there's a white gem, set in the mouth like the throne of all Spitmam's speech.

Spitmam shuts again. “You regard?"

"There's
precious
, ‘mam."

"There's the most precious. There's all the names that ever been."

"Where did they come?"

"They come from before. When the world split, and the land was cut for islands by water and storm, and
whole
folk were split into water and rock and fire and wind folk, names were about to slip the cracks and out of the world—and where would I have been? This world without names—no
where
for me to be. So I hid the names in my mouth and came to the island. Slow, I learnt the names—there's such use in them to fashion things. The village comes from the names, girl. Every one of you folk, grown from my spit and word of mouth."