Part 36 (1/2)

”Speak!” I said. ”Tell them!”

” 'Twere the Boggy Mun!” said a small voice.

Then another. ” 'Twere the Boggy Mun what kilt us.”

”I be scareful o' the darklings!”

I looked into the crowd. Eldric stood at the front, his face bright as flame.

”The Boggy Mun kilt us on account o' the water.”

”The water what leaved the swamp.”

”The water what goed to the sea.”

”I miss you, Mam! My bed, it be so cold!”

Mothers and fathers reached for their children.

”The Boggy Mun kilt us on account o' them engineering men.”

Fisherfolk are stolid, usually weeping only when drunk. But now they wept openly, and sobbed, and called for their children.

”Where is she!” howled a woman's voice, all dark caves and echoes. ”Where!” The voice struck me between the wings of my shoulders.

The crowd fell back and lost its edges. It oohed and screamed and ran all s.h.i.+mble-shamble.

I spun round, faced the black squall of a mouth.

The bones dripped with flesh. The black squall opened wider. ”There she is!” Maggots crawled between her teeth. Maggots oozed through her eyes.

Softer now. ”There you are.” Her voice was the only thing I recognized. That, and her hair, knots and clumps of sooty hair. Black is the color of my true love's hair. Her flesh was real; she was not like the ghost-children, whose flesh did not decay. Blue petals of skin drifted to her feet.

”I've been waiting to talk to you.” Stepmother set a finger on the tatters of her lips. I'd forgotten this gesture of hers. ”You are a good girl, calling me from my grave.” She might have been chatting at a tea party.

The worst thing was that she still had her eyes. Or one of them. The other bulged from its socket, tipped with fish-belly gray.

”Come closer.” She reached for me with a tattered arm. Bracelets clinked on her wrist-bones. They sounded much as they used to, just as they might have at a tea party.

The air tasted of thunder. It lay on my tongue like a rusty coin.

”I've been screaming; this whole time I've been screaming.” Her bracelets were the color of cinders. ”What else can you do, lying in the cold clay, the worms sewing up your shroud?” Her teeth were straight and white, horrific to see in that storm of decay.

”I don't understand.” My voice had gone funny and distant. I heard it as though I were listening to myself listen to myself.

”No?” The wind tugged at her flesh, spattering gobbets into the night. ”Even though you called me from my grave?”

Or perhaps it was my ears that had gone far away. ”You, an Unquiet Spirit?”

”Spirit?” Stepmother paused; fat maggot-tears oozed down her cheeks. ”I don't believe that's the word your father would use. But restless, yes. Exceedingly restless. The situation at hand-well, I believe your father would call it ironic.”

It was impossible, I know, but my faraway ears heard Father's throat stick together.

”Ironic that after all your attempts to slip away from me, burning your hand when I first turned to you, and then when I turned to Rose-no; let's save that for later.”

Stepmother's face was a howling wilderness, but she spoke in her tea-party voice. Could the others hear? They were quiet as death.

”Ironic that after all you did to destroy me, you should call me from my grave. That now I may scream out to the world the name of the person who murdered me, that then at last, I may depart this world.”

Murdered. I'd known Stepmother wouldn't kill herself.

”Even we Old Ones-yes, even we are unable to depart this world with our business unfinished.”

”Old Ones?” said my faraway voice.

She took a step forward. ”Aren't you afraid, Briony? Afraid of what I might say?” Her jaw dropped, and she was once again a black squall, howling into the crowd.

”You are fools, all of you. I didn't take my own life.”

Stepmother's cheek slipped from her bones, splatted onto the gallows floor. ”My murderer stands before you. Her name, Briony Larkin.”

Briony Larkin? My mind could not react to Briony Larkin . But my body could. I felt the shock of it, cathedral bells clanging at my neck and wrists.

”Peace at last,” said Stepmother, and it happened all at once. Stepmother's skin wilted from her bones. She turned to a pile of petals.

A regular girl would feel something. She'd feel something as the petals crumbled into dust. But a witch merely looks away. Father's face was a crumpled page. The rest of the faces were a blur. The ghost-children had vanished. They'd set themselves free. They too might now leave this world.

The wind whipped across the gallows floor, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the dust that had once been Stepmother.

”Murderess!” shouted someone from the crowd.

Stepmother eddied about my feet.

”Witch!” shouted another.

Stepmother dissolved into the wind. She was gone.

Now a chorus: ”Hang the witch!”

The chorus's eyes were slitted windows.

”No!” Cecil blasted through the crowd, but a clot of men grabbed his arm.