Someone has brought Nanny a something. A dish of threads to repair a bonnet. A bowl of breakfast soup, hot and oily and snaily. Someone has brought Nanny a something. And put it on a campstool of some sort.
The someone is Boozy but she’s fussing in the kitchen tent. It’s unclear if she has cottoned on to a sense of approaching menace. What about Melena? And Frexspar? Maybe the good man has left already. And if Nanny was alarmed, she’s let it pass. She’s hied herself off to find tweezers to work a sliver of wood out of her thumb. Everyone else is engaged in adult enterprises.
Or perhaps Elphie’s skittishness is only a mood of the river. Lurking in the mist that hides some peril signaled by that startled shout, that midvowel muffled in midair.
Tipping over whatever Nanny has set down, Elphie claims the stool underneath it. It’s light enough to carry. She goes over to where the baby hangs in the tree. Maybe it’s not quite accurate to call it a baby, but it has suffered what is sometimes called “failure to thrive,” so it isn’t much larger than it was a year ago. The thing can’t move by itself much, so it’s no fun to play with. It’s a severed item, a fragment of childhood. Elphie pokes it from underneath with a ladle—the bowl end, so not to hurt it, just make it laugh or cry or something. The baby murmurs in the quietest of responses. A natural stoic. What a tiresome creature. And everyone flapping around it all the time, because it can do nothing for itself except soil its nappies. And everyone fussing. And everyone holding it all the time because it can’t hold itself, really. All it can do is stare, stare accusingly, and sometimes babble some babble. A sugar tit, a pacifier of some sort, is tied with a cord to its ankle. No problem of this strangling her, though, because she can’t reach for it or even roll herself over. She’s an immobile plug of a baby. She stays put.
Elphie thinks the creature is issuing some kind of message. Urgent syllables that everyone else thinks are mistakes. Elphie knows better. The infant is trying to magic itself whole. Fixed. Necessary. Loveable. It isn’t going to work, though. Such a shame.
They talk about Elphie outgrowing her condition. Change, change. Later, she will realize they have sat her there day after day, hoping to bleach her with sunlight, like stained sheets. But of the infant they never suggest such a miracle. It will not walk. It can never balance. It won’t grow strength because there is no place to put it.
Maybe they’re being kind, to keep the infant from developing unanswerable hopes. Maybe they think she won’t reach her next birthday. Or maybe their low expectations of Nessa will prompt her to come around, eventually. To prove them wrong.
The big sister throws the ladle down. If she only had a couple more inches she could . . . she might . . . No one else is around. Severin and Snapper are down by the water, whispering and scuttling with bent knees. Then Severin stands thigh-deep in some rushes, hooting his own secret language, and cupping his ears, as if to listen for an echo. He’s distracted. It’s easy for Elphie to steal into the side tent where her father practices his orations. She drags at one of his heavy stupid books. The way Boozy carries Nessarose around sometimes, on her head—Elphie tries that, balancing the book upon her scalp.
She wobbles across the camp. She clomps the volume upon the flat cap of the stool. She scrambles upon it. Learning does give one such a lift. The tome provides just enough height.
Elphie pushes up from the bottom against the infant. The way she’s done with the ladle, only now she can use both her hands. She tips the creature through the netting and out of its hammock. It slips down into the crux of Elphie’s arms and gurgles at the adventure. Nessarose rarely smiles at Elphie, so if the big sister is capable of remorse, this will be the moment. But Elphie is nothing if not determined, even when she determines herself wrong.
She puts Nessa under her arms, against her hip, its head facing the grass and its little legs pointing generally skyward. A tilting fish, astonished to find itself swimming in midair. The baby kicks a little. Elphie scuttles downslope like a monkey with a purloined savory. Where can we put her?