“What’s that smell?” said Eldric.
“We’re almost to the snickleways. They have a fearsome smell.”
“Snickleways?” said Eldric.
“Waterways—you’ll see in a moment; they snickle all through the Slough. They won’t gobble you up, though—unless you can’t swim. You may run—now!”
He ran terrifically fast, which was depressing. I used to run fast myself. Stop now, Briony: That sounds like jealousy, and you know what happens when you get jealous.
Your witchy jealousy breeds firestorms, gales, floods—disasters of Biblical magnitude. Wouldn’t Father be proud!
I ducked through tangles of scrub, prickles of black fir. The snickleways were the color of tea, crossing the Slough, then doubling back to double-cross each other.
“Rose!” I called.
“Rose!” called Eldric, deep in the Slough.
I slipped through twisted branches, plunged into the first snickleway, slogged through the muck. “Rose!” I emerged caked with mud to the chest.
“Rose!” called Eldric.
I brushed past ferns. I pulled against foot-sucking mud.
The water caught at bits of my reflection. Now a dark eye, now a slim nose, now a fall of bright hair. A face belonging to a shattered girl. A girl, scattered through the Slough.
“Rose!” I called.
Scream, Rose! You’re so good at screaming. Go on, jab your screams into my ear-squish.
I never lost my internal compass, although every landmark had multiple copies of itself. The snickleways looked all the same, scum and duckweed and tea-water and reflection shards. The mud looked the same, every teaspoon, and so did the trees and logs and ferns and stumps.
“Rose!”
I crashed in and out of snickleways, dislodged smells of sulfur and rotten eggs. The wolfgirl Briony never used to crash. She slipped silently through the Slough; she could run forever. But it’s three years later now, and I know all the wolves are dead. Isn’t education a wonderful thing?
Another snickleway, more egg-and-sulfur vapors, which prickled tears into my eyes. But they were false witch tears, not real people tears. Witches can’t cry.
“Rose!”
More tea-dark water. The sulfur sting grew sharper; my tongue arched and spat. My hands and legs shook; I stumbled over scraps of my face. I pushed myself from the muck, I listened, I stumbled, I pushed myself from the muck, I listened, I—
Rose’s trademark scream, distant, but unmistakable.
“Rose!”
“Fires are dangerous!” Rose’s voice.
A crashing now, Eldric and I running, converging upon Rose.
We ran at each other, Eldric and I. We ran through trees furred with moss.
“Fires are dangerous!”
But there were other voices. “Rosy, dear!”
“Take my hand, Rosy!”
The voices of girls!
“So pretty as you be, Rosy!”
Eldric and I, plunging into black spruce.
“Fires are dangerous!”
A green dimness now. Needles of sunlight, glancing off Rose’s hair. “Fires are dangerous!” She stood screaming, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Us got us some visitors!” said a girl’s voice.
The girl was—Look up, Briony; you have to look up. Higher—into the treetops!
Three figures, dashing and darting through the trees.
“Such a pretty Rosy!”
They sat astride black branches—no broomsticks for these Swampsea witches!
“Doesn’t you be wishing to come along with us?”
I crunched my fingers round the Bible Ball. “Get away from her!”
The black capes, the gnarled branches, swirled around Rose. “You be making such a pretty little witch, Rosy!”
Rose clapped her hands to her ears.
What if I proclaimed my own witchiness? Would they leave Rose in peace—honor among thieves, and all that? But I couldn’t, not with Eldric listening. I shook my Bible-Ball fist at them.
“Ooh, doesn’t I be scareful!” said one of the witches, although the branch she rode bucked, like a startled horse. Wisps of carrot-colored hair floated from her hood.
“I be trembling in my drawers,” said another.
“Such a woeful lie!” said the third. “You doesn’t wear no drawers!”
“No drawers for us witches!” How they screamed and laughed.
I darted forward, pecking the Bible Ball at them.
“Look at them eyes she got!” said the redhead. “Like to coals, they be.”
The witches rose on their branches, screeching with laughter. “It be fine not wearing no drawers.” The redhead again. “Look Rosy, such a treat it be!”
Rose didn’t look.
Pine needles swirled about our feet, stirred by an unnatural wind. I smelled the tart-treacley scent of magic. The wind corkscrewed up to a miniature whirlwind, a tornado of pine needles, spiraling up and under the witches. Now, at last, the capes decided to follow the laws of nature, billowing up and out, leaving us with a spectacular view of three naked backsides.
My hands jumped like startled birds. I ought to have looked away, but the sight was horribly fascinating. Fascinatingly horrible. Eldric grabbed my bird hands, and together we stared up at the three gnarled branches circling the glade, up at the twin-moon backsides.
The witches laughed. This was no old-hag cackling but peals of girlish laughter. Eldric and I stared. The witches circled and descended upon Rose. More laughter as they pulled away, one of them dangling Rose’s hair ribbon from her finger.
“Now girls, for t’others!” The witches dove upon us. Eldric and I ducked—they’d smash into us—but the branches reared back, then hovered an Eldric’s arm’s-length away. There came a rearrangement of legs and capes. They laughed and laughed as we stood, looking up into their inner girl-parts.
Eldric crunched my bird hands. I jerked my chin to my chest. I felt my face boil with my own hot blood, which in an alabaster girl is a terrible thing to see—shades of crimson coming but never going.
I felt rather than saw the witches circling, then rising, now above the trees, now out of sight. But their shrills and shrieks of amusement blew to us on that unnatural wind.
That unnatural wind—think about that, Briony. Think about anything rather than what you’re thinking about, which you mustn’t name, because then you’ll think about it.
The unnatural wind is a perfect memory to stuff into your mind. It will make you remember you hurt Rose. It will make you remember the swings, the froth of petticoats, Rose’s screams—those knitting-needle screams, which even when Rose was only seven, sounded just as they do today.
You must remember so you can hate yourself. It’s been ten years, but you mustn’t let yourself forget what you owe Rose.
It was Easter Day and Rose and I wore our white, frothy frocks. It was a day of froth: the froth of spring blossoms, the froth of lace on Stepmother’s hat, the froth of petticoats as Rose and I pumped ourselves higher and higher on the swings.
Stepmother wasn’t Stepmother yet; it would be years before she and Father married. We knew her well, though, Rose and I. Perhaps she meant to help the poor Reverend Larkin with his motherless daughters. That would be like her. Father was forever fretting that he didn’t know how to raise girls properly. Poor man, his wife dying in childbirth.
I remember so clearly how Stepmother’s pretty fingers flew like hummingbirds. How she played a game of catching at our legs, pretending to pull us down. How she pulled at Briony’s legs, Rose’s legs. Briony’s legs, Rose’s legs.
Rose’s legs. Rose’s—Rose’s—Rose’s—
When you’re jealous, your spit turns to acid. When you’re jealous, you eat yourself from the inside out.
When you’re jealous, and when you’re seven-year-old Briony Larkin, and when you’re a witch, you raise a wind. A wind that makes Rose whimper and complain; a wind that makes Rose scream that she didn’t prefer to swing; a wind that makes Rose lose her grip on the ropes; a wind that makes her fall, so that she smashes her head on a rock.