Morgan

Hidden behind this long black curtain that covers a high window and the wall beneath it, I can’t see anything. The window has gone light and dark again in the time I’ve been still, listening to quiet talking, footsteps, the sounds of doors opening, doors closing.

And now, just my own breathing, and beyond the curtain, thick silence.

I walk along the wall behind the curtain and find a white door. I open it and step into a small room. The walls are painted cornflower blue, and in the middle of the room a long cabinet houses a collection of objects behind rippled glass. There are small pieces of white paper beside each object, covered in handwritten black words.

On the paper next to a left-handed glove:

MEGAN BROOK
To be learned:
Never want something that
you know you can’t have,
until the impossible
becomes possible.

A strand of my white hair has come loose and I tuck it away under my shawl. I wander the length of the cabinet. A scratched ring, a mirror, a necklace made from glass beads. A chain. A glass question mark. A stone with a hole through it. A pile of salt. A small rusted bell.

An old worn boot. The paper next to it reads:

NED JARED
To be learned:
Never let a sense of uselessness
lead you in a direction
you are unable to retrace
your steps from.

Mary’s father. In the corner of the room is a small table and chair, on the table is a pen and a pile of small pieces of blank paper.

I write on one of them:

THE THRASHING HOUSE

is full of ghosts.
The dead must be buried.
These objects are relics of ghosts,
so bury them in the graveyard.

I close the door quietly behind me and listen. No sound. I crouch down and crawl out from under the curtain, the black fabric heavy and thick with dust.

I stand up in a huge room, filled with looms and woven fabrics. This room is lit by candles, flickering along the far wall. In the middle of the room are solid frames, looms made of wood and metal. Half-woven fabrics of wool and thick threads, patterned and plain, tweed and twill. On a much smaller frame, an embroidery with the trunk and roots of a tree and leaves every possible shade of green. Notes on a small book on a table next to it, of the colours and stitches they’ve used.

On one side of the room are baskets piled high with matted seaweed from the poisoned shore, nets slung over them. There are three machines in the centre of the room that have a much simpler shape than the looms: each made from a wooden frame with a handle on one side and a geared wheel that turns. The strands are fed through a small wooden dome shaped like a spinning top. The spinning top must turn, to twist the seaweed into rope. There are white gloves with stained fingertips on the floor next to some crates stacked against the wall. To make the ropes, the women must twist the seaweed and walk the width of this room.

I look in the crates where the muscular ropes are coiled like sleeping snakes, the strands held in place by double-pronged pins, to stop even one strand unravelling. Some of the pins are sticking outwards as well as inwards. One of the ropes moves.

A shrill whistle from outside.

I spin round. The arched front door is closed. I turn back into the room. Along the walls are other doors. Silent rooms, closed away.

A high platform at the back of the room has a circle of chairs that surround a tall wooden box, an oval object on top of it. I walk past the frames and looms towards the platform.

The oval object on top of the box is the shadow man’s head. My stomach twists. The women have beheaded him.

His eyes move to mine. His body must be standing inside the box beneath that head.

Still attached.

He says, ‘You’ve been hiding.’

I say, ‘You’ve been caught.’ There’s a yellow tinge to his pale face.

I climb the steps onto the platform. A creak and groan in the wooden planks underneath me.

Three whistles from outside.

His voice is a groan. ‘Quick—’

‘I’m not going to help you.’

His breathing is laboured. ‘Trade.’

‘You haven’t got anything I want.’

I walk past him to the long heavy curtains at the back of the platform. I step between two curtains and hold them shut just beneath my eye. I can see the back of his head and the whole circle of chairs.

A loud clack and the arched door creaks open. A crowd of about fifty women, young and old, stride in, their footsteps thud on the wooden floor. They’re wearing thick coats and shawls flecked with snow. They stride towards the platform, gazes fixed on the man’s face. They come up the stairs. Candles are lit and placed around the outside of the chairs. Their feet echo on the floorboards.

The chairs creak and shift as they sit down in the circle around the man. Only one or two of the chairs are empty. The women’s faces on the far side of the circle glare up at him, focus and determination in their eyes. An old woman with a black shawl over her hair raps her walking stick on the floor three times.

A woman wearing a purple shawl walks around the outside of the chairs, sprinkles salt on the floor. Encloses them all in a white circle.

The old woman stands, her sunken eyes gleam as she takes out a small hessian bag from a hidden pocket, moves towards the man and sprinkles another circle, in earth, around the box.

She announces, ‘The Thrashing House delivers justice. We have just been told of hims crime, and the length of time it has took to bring it to light. The Thrashing House has released him. This is because the truth had to come out, and could not, if him were thrashed. We’ve to deliver justice ourselves.’

From under the floor a loud creak that sounds like the Thrashing House roots.

A woman’s voice clangs out, ‘I’ve been given hims name. We can pull hims voice from out of hims silence. Pull off hims name; the one word him can hide behind.’

A low hum. The women close their eyes. The hum rises in volume. Their bodies are still, their mouths open wider as the volume increases. The notes are a discordant sound that fills the room, the lower tones a dirge, the higher notes a lament that soars through the air.

One woman stands, her white boots gleam as she advances towards the man. This must be Kelmar, Mary’s aunt. All the other boots are brown. She walks around the edge of the circle of earth.

‘Laang … waarrrd,’ she sings, her voice is a chant. ‘LaangwaarrdLaangwaarrd Langward.’ The sound is vivid and rich, I almost close my eyes, the hum of the women, this voice that chants above them, makes me drift, I’m pulled both out of and into myself, something inside me waking, another part falling asleep. Drawing out and pulling back, drawing out …

All the voices pick up the word, their tones and pitches the same, the letters are unimportant, the order is rearranged. My eyelids droop. I shake my head to wake myself. A word without beginning or end becomes a word with no meaning.

The shadow man screams.

His scream is like the scream of a horse. It cuts through the chant and the women’s voices increase in volume. His scream gets louder and louder, his scream, no, more than his scream, some part of him is tearing. They are ripping his name away, leaving him with nothing to hide behind.

The old woman lights some herbs she holds tightly in her fist. She walks around him, sunken eyes closed, but sure in her footsteps. She feels her way in the sound, still chanting, smudges the air with the smoke, which coils out, rises, thickens. The scent of lavender and some other herbs … sage, valerian …

The women chant, their eyelids closed.

His scream fills the whole room, jars through the smoke, the chant, all his anger, lust and confusion, all the things he’s ever felt and kept hidden. His scream fills my head, and I can see why the women’s eyes are closed. Scratches zigzag through the smoke above the man’s head – his scream tears. Rips through anything his eyes see – his scream splits the air that he breathes, the air we’re all breathing.

I fall forwards onto the platform and my head hits the floor. The others still have their eyes closed, one of the women blusters down to me, clamps her hand over my eyes, hisses in a distorted voice, ‘Hum. Just hum.’

She yanks me up, my feet scuff over the salt into the circle and the man’s scream seems quieter, one hand shoves me down onto a chair, while her other hand tightens across my eyes. She takes her hand off, I keep my eyes shut and feel her pull my shawl up to cover my hair. She pushes my head forwards so it’s bowed.

I hum. The scream grows quieter, seems a long distance away. With my eyes closed and a hum in my mouth, I’ve stepped into another room, empty and clear, where I stand alone, looking at blank walls. A room that exists just alongside this room where my body sits. A room with dust around the cornices, a thick lilac carpet and no doors. A room where I can still hear everything that’s going on, but nothing touches me. In a room next to me, some women chant, and some man screams, but I’m not there any more.

My hum is too loud.

I don’t know what note it should be. The chant around me is lower, I lower mine … the scream has stopped. I blink hard, the sounds around me drop to silence.

The box has split open. The man is slumped on the floor. Puddles of ropes around his ankles and wrists. He raises his head. I keep my head bowed, glance round at the women from under the shawl, they’re all watching the ropes that snake around him, slowly tightening.

The old woman stands over him, just outside the edge of the earth circle. She says, ‘Unpunished Crime,’ and stretches out her arms.

The women’s expressions are angry, faces flush, spittle flies as they shout one name: Mary Jared. Their voices shouting are stones smashing, winds howling, the deafening crash of waves. I tilt my head and listen hard, it’s not just Mary’s name, but her name followed by words …

Kelmar stands, walks towards him, I pick out her voice, ‘Mary Jared …’ she shrieks. She leans over him, fists clenched, feet still, not stepping over the earth circle. I catch some of her words … but I don’t want to hear them.

I try to cover my ears but the woman next to me grips hard on my wrist. Her face is hidden under her shawl. So I hum and can’t hear their words any more. The women, still shouting, all stand. The woman’s hand yanks me to my feet, her palm is sweaty. I can’t hear her voice. The woman to my left screeches out, ‘Mary Jared, can’t even remember, can’t even remember, can’t even remember!’ over and over again with a rage like a storm in her voice.

We advance towards him, I’m pulled along in this circle of shouts. The circle closes in, our feet stamp as beads of sweat cluster on the man’s pale brow. The circle reaches Kelmar and includes her. The old woman thumps her stick on the floor three times.

The shouts stop.

The air between us feels solid, thick with anger. All around me, the women’s breaths are fast and heavy. The ropes twist and coil around the man’s legs.

‘Speak, Langward,’ the woman with the walking stick says in a cracked voice. ‘In your own defence. We will listen, without interrupting.’ She glances around the circle of women. ‘You have one chance to tell us what you want to be took into account for your crime. Then we will leave you, talk, and return with our decision on your punishment.’

I want to back away, behind the curtain. I pull my arm from the woman’s hand, but she grips even harder.

The old woman speaks again. ‘We will hear your defence. Begin.’

The women lean in to listen.

Sweat drips from his clammy skin. He says, ‘It is old, what you speak of. There’s no proof in silence.’

Kelmar’s eyes flash. ‘There’s proof in that boy’s eyes! There’s proof in my hands. Proof in the memory I have of bringing that child into the world. I know whose belly that child grew—’

The old woman thuds her walking stick on the floor.

He replies, ‘A lost child has no proof in his eyes.’

Kelmar says, ‘We’ve all seen them. As we see yours.’

He laughs.

A murmur passes between three women opposite me, their faces flush pink. The old woman silences them with a thud of her stick.

He glares at the old woman and there’s anger in his voice, ‘You can’t punish me for something I’ve no control over. Her daughter reminds me of her … always has.’

All around me a low murmur.

He says, ‘Traders are always between places.’

Everyone is silent as he talks about maps, distance, water, nothing being fixed, and how he has never been settled enough anywhere. He tells how he gave Beatrice more trade for her embroideries than he gave to anyone else, and she didn’t tell him not to.

‘Enough.’ The old woman’s voice slices sharp through the air. Her face is raised to the ceiling, scored with lines like old bark.

He continues, ‘Beatrice should have refused the extra trade I gave her.’

‘Did she ever offer you anything other than her broideries?’

‘No. I wanted more.’

‘You gave Beatrice trade for trade. You can’t blame her for something you wanted. You show no remorse, so are not worth the listening. You treated Beatrice’s daughter like a ploughed field, some ditch to shovel your dirt in. Worse than that, you’re still a danger to her. We’ll be keeping you bound.’

She steps back and the women return to their chairs, whispering. The hand on my wrist yanks me down onto a chair.

Three women step towards the man, pull gloves from their pockets and squeeze their fingers into them, watching him. One woman kneels, clears three gaps in the circle of earth and the three women step through and bind him tighter with the thick ropes. The youngest of the three glares at him as she yanks the rope. The women step out through the gaps in the circle and shift the earth back into place.

His eyes roll up to the ceiling above the platform. It’s painted with a mural. Birds and animals all over an island, seagulls, crows, owls and dogs all painted in a rough simplistic style. The sea around the corners, seals splashing in the waves. A painted woman sits cross-legged in the middle of the mural, in a long white dress with white flowers woven through her hair like some kind of deity. A garland across her heart, with the word ‘Sishee’ painted in faded blue letters. Her hands, outstretched, full of small clouds. This painting of a young woman, at peace and full of wonder, watches us all from above.

The old woman looks around the circle, her eyes stop at Kelmar. She says, ‘You’re the only mother here of a boy what’s been took. So. Ask him.’

Kelmar stands up and says, ‘Are the boys what were took to the main land still alive?’

He says, ‘We are not killers.’

A sigh sweeps around the room. Kelmar slumps down and puts her head in her hands.

The old woman walks back to her chair and sits down.

‘We’re not done yet,’ says another voice. A chair scrapes the floor as Camery stands up and walks over to the man.

The old woman leans forwards on her stick.

Camery asks him, ‘Why do you take the crates of snake ropes?’

He replies, ‘Poison spreads. Isn’t that what your island stories say?’

‘What are the snake ropes used for on the main land? It’s not just me wants to know this,’ Camery says, glancing at the other women. Her voice is strong. ‘The men – them’ve seen them there in the crates on the beach for years. Them want to know why you take them.’

The old woman’s voice cracks out, ‘Camery.’

They glare at each other like cats. Anger crackles between them.

I lower my head, the woman’s hand squeezes tight on my wrist. I keep my face hidden under the shawl. The old woman settles back in her chair.

Camery spins round to face the man. ‘I’m not wasting this. Not if we can get more out of him. What are the snake ropes used for on the main land?’

The old woman’s voice is tight. ‘We have to get them gone. If them folks have a use for them, it’s not for us to consider. Them are away from us, an’ that’s all we need concern ourselves with. Remember Beatrice. It’s for the good of all.’

The man gazes up at Camery. ‘They’re of value …’

A voice shouts, ‘So how come we dun get anything for them then? We should be trading them, not twisting them in secret and dragging the crates to Traders Bay at night, like we’re doing something wrong!’

‘Shut up!’ Camery yells, her eyes fixed on the man. ‘They’re of value to what kinds of people?’ She looms over him. ‘Torturers? Murderers?’

‘Among others,’ he says.

‘Others?’ she spits.

‘They are used to kill.’

The women in the circle are silent. They stare at him, cheeks pale.

‘Who do you kill?’ says Camery.

‘We don’t. We trade them on.’ A rope squeezes his neck.

‘So them’re for death.’

‘People all over the world pay for death. Always have. Always will. A punishment with no … repercussions … no further evidence. Just. Death.’ A rope around his ankle loosens, coils back and moves along his foot.

Camery says, ‘And the snake ropes kill some folks more quickly than others. You’re not yet dead. Just poisoned. Now that tells me the snake ropes can’t help but cause harm. It’s in thems nature. But them move and twist slow when it’s to be a long, slow kind of harm, and them move too quick to see when it’s to be just one bite. Them are venomous, full of thems own evil, and them’re feeling for the evil in you, curling round you, squeezing, poisoning you slow …’

He doesn’t speak as Camery goes back to her chair. The woman next to her nudges her arm, nods her head. Camery points at the old woman, who glowers back at her. ‘Now, we’re done, Nell.’ She slaps her hands on her knees.

The women stand and I bow my head. The women talk in clusters, while the circle of salt is swept up. Nell approaches the man, whose eyes flick around, glazed. She leans down and says to him, ‘We’ll be taking our discussion on your punishment to another room. You’re to be kept here bound, till we’ve fixed on a decision.’

She glances round and catches my eye, steps towards me and pauses. I watch her feet and walking stick come closer to me. ‘How old’s this one then?’ she asks, quietly.

I don’t breathe.

The woman next to me grips hard on my wrist. Her voice whispers, ‘Twenty-one. Just.’

‘Well, soon then. Bring her again, for the Scattering Up.’ Her feet walk away.

I exhale and whisper, ‘Thank you,’ to the woman next to me. I can hear her rapid breathing, she grips my wrist so tightly my hand has gone numb.

The other women walk away in groups of threes and fours, down the steps from the platform and through one of the doors on the side wall. I wait for the last cluster to move away. I try to follow them, but the woman yanks me across the platform and back behind the curtain.

Her voice hisses; ‘You’re not going with them, stupid girl, you’re not a part of this!’

‘Mum?’

She pulls her shawl down. She’s got fury in her crimson cheeks.

The footsteps disappear. A door bangs shut.

‘Now,’ she says, and drags me out from behind the curtain, across the platform, past the man in the circle of earth, pulls me down the platform steps and past the looms and baskets and ropes. At the arched front door she pushes me ahead of her out into the night. She steps outside, her feet deep in the snow, closes the door behind us, turns to me and grips my arm again, her eyes furious. ‘Did you leave for this? You’re coming home.’

‘I’m not.’ I yank my arm away.

She stumbles. I reach to steady her, but she steps back.

Her words hammer out, ‘So help me, you are coming home. The gate’s smashed, the twins went outside and they want to be allowed out again, and this filthy girl made dinner and stole all the keys. And she didn’t do the flowers I needed.’ She wails and bites her hand. ‘You are coming home.’ She sobs.

I say, ‘That old woman knew you. All those nights you locked me in my room – you came here?’

She turns away.

‘You lied about my age, so they wouldn’t get angry—’

She answers over her shoulder, ‘With me. For bringing you.’

‘But you didn’t bring me.’

Her feet are planted in the snow, even with her back to me I can tell her arms are folded.

I say, ‘Mum, you remember that story, the one about the girl who took care of everyone she lived with, and more and more people kept moving in, because they wanted to be looked after? She got three choices from a visiting witch. Her reward came when one of her choices resulted in the whole household dying in a firework accident. After that, she gave herself all kinds of new choices – she let herself be wicked, to play with fire, torch houses, burn down entire cities. She danced in the ashes and had never been happier. You read me that once, when I was little.’

She doesn’t turn round. ‘I did not.’

‘You tried to change the ending, and said that the girl was happy when she’d used her last choice to please other people. Her mother, I think it was. The girl had scrubbed so hard, she’d worn the skin from her hands, so her fingers were made of bones. You said she could clean so perfectly because having bony fingers meant that she could scrub and scrape even the tiniest corners with incredible precision.’

‘I was clever, I was teaching you to keep your feet on the ground. You were seeing ghosts, hearing voices—’

‘I knew you made up the ending. I’d already read it.’

Flakes of snow fall on the back of her heavy dark coat. Her silence thickens around her, like a fence with no gate.

I ask, ‘Did your mother read you stories?’

Her back stiffens. I reach out my hand but don’t touch her.

‘You saw Anita, didn’t you?’

She finally turns round and glares at me.

‘You stole—’

‘Quiet,’ she hisses. ‘She was an imaginary thing, some phantom you dreamed up. The thought of ghosts, they rage through my dreams even now. Is that what you’d have wanted, to let your mind just wander off, to find more imaginary friends to haunt your own mother’s nightmares with?’

‘Perhaps I needed a ghost to play with. You and Dad living like kings and qu—’

‘Quiet! This island needed an undertaker, it needed a coffin builder. We’re needed, even if the people are all mad, the dead must be buried!’ she cries, her hands over her ears.

‘The Thrashing House called you here,’ I whisper. ‘You weren’t just running away. You were running towards.’

Wiping her eyes with her hand, she turns and walks away.

She looks like a small child, lost in the snow, looking for a home with a fire inside it and a mother who can smooth out her hair and warm her with baked bread, steamed puddings. I wonder what stories her own mother told her, if she ever talked to her at all. I imagine her in a story with a happy ending, with a fireside that’s always warm.

Outside the Weaving Rooms, I sit on the steps leading to the door that holds behind it a man tied in poisoned ropes, and a crowd of angry women discussing justice. On the ceiling, a painting of a woman with white flowers in her hair.

Some time soon I will move, and something will begin. I’m waiting for the moment when the door opens, like the cover of a book, and I will step up, introduce myself to Kelmar and she’ll take me to Mary.

The snow spirals and flickers through the pink and grey sky. The whole island is silent and white. An empty page, waiting for someone to write a new story on it.

I look at the footprints of the women that lead up to the door of the Weaving Rooms. They had a reason not to wait. They had a reason to move.

To make these footprints. To chase after something they want.

I think of the ghost of a father who feels useless. And the ghost of a mother who wrote, Tell her, before she was blown away.

Kicking the snow off my boots, I go through the arched door, cross the room with the looms and open the side door that the women went behind.

They sit around a great wooden table. Their faces swivel and gape at me.

I say, ‘I’ll give any one of you the Thrashing House key, in exchange for being told where Mary Jared is right now.’

A clatter of loud voices, chairs shifting against floorboards.

Kelmar stands, says, ‘Keep talking,’ then walks around the side of the table. Some of the women rise to let her squeeze past, she pushes other chairs out of her way. Mutters and mumbles scuttle around the room between paler faces, frowning up at me.

Kelmar reaches the doorway, turns back to them, says, ‘The matter in hand. Justice.’

She takes my arm, closes the door, glances up at the man and says, ‘We’ll go outside.’

I follow her. ‘Does Mary know you’re her aunt?’

‘Outside.’ She opens the arched door.

We step into the snow.

She turns to face me. ‘You got her out of the graveyard, and got her somewhere to recover. So I’ll be trusting you to take care of her till I’m there. And no, she dun know I’m her aunt. Fell out with Beatrice when Mary were born. She thought I should’ve told her how bad the pain were to be. Said she’d never have chose to have a child if she’d known. Never forgave me for it. So, no. Mary never has known me as her aunt. So let me tell her that, and dun think it’s your business.’

‘I won’t. Where’s Mary?’

‘At mine. Look.’ She walks a few feet from the door and points at a funnel of chimney smoke behind a small hill. ‘Follow the smoke to that fire and you’ll find her there. Watch you take care of her. Dun give her any shocks. She’s had enough.’

‘Thank you.’ My eyes blur.

‘The key, then. Give it here.’ She holds out her hand.

I pull it out of my pocket. ‘Her father said to give it to someone older than her.’

‘Her father’s thrashed. An old boot.’

‘You’ll take care of this.’ I put the key in her hand.

Kelmar nods, watching my eyes. She says, ‘I’ll look after it as much as you’ll look after Mary. Take turns, that’s how we take care of this key. And that’s what it’ll be for you and Mary. Not have one care more than the other, but both have to care just enough. Be yourself first.’ She reaches out a hand and strokes a strand of my white hair escaping from the scarf. She says, ‘You’ve got a lot of hope glowing in you. And she’s found some way to keep going. Might not always serve her, but it’s got her this far. You’re as light as she’s dark. Tell her I’ll be home, soon as I can.’ She walks back into the Weaving Rooms and closes the door behind her.

I knock on Kelmar’s front door. No one answers. I open the door and Annie’s dogs crash out, knock me over and charge away. I brush off the snow, go inside the cottage and call Mary’s name into every room.

She’s not here.

A note lies on the table.

My Barney is hid in Annie’s cottage.
Come and find me as soon as you get this.

I’m not sure which direction to go in. But the dogs know, and the dogs have left paw prints.

So I chase after them through the snow.