25

Freya’s yell was a sound for blood or broken bones. The Family came running, some still holding the chipped cups of wine in their hands. Toby and Blue came too, and everyone looked around at each other. Seeing all the Family was safe, they relaxed, and all turned to Freya for her to explain.

—We’ve been complacent, Freya said. —The Bad has outwitted us. We’ve been housing it right under our noses. It’s so clever we didn’t even see it.

—Freya, Dylan said. —It’s all right, we’re all all right.

—I sensed it. I’ve been trying to manage it, but it was so much worse than I thought, Freya said. —It’s used infants before, remember? But this time it sank so deep we didn’t see it so clear. Now Green has told the truth. Blue was outside the salt line, her first Scattering. The Bad passed right through her. Remember the way she screamed that night?

All the blood drained from Blue’s face, and as though it flowed into his skin, Toby went red. Blue took a steadying breath, and took Toby’s hand, and I hated her.

—It was years ago, Ellen soothed.

—It’s been calling her out on the moor ever since, Freya said. —We’ve tried to heal her but she keeps being called. She belongs to the Bad. And now it’s made her into a Leaver.

Intakes of breath to this. Wine and smoke exhaled sour from everyone. Dylan spoke. —Oh, Blue, don’t go, we love you. We’re your family. We all forgive you.

—Don’t do this, said Pet.

—We can’t just let her go, Freya said. —You don’t understand.

—Blue’s just a child, Ellen said. —We can’t let her go. What would we say to Richard?

—We know what to do, Freya said. —We’ll start with the Spike Walk, and then—

—No, said Blue. —I’m not doing the Spike Walk.

—We are Leaving, Toby said.

—With Green, said Blue. —Green is coming too.

Freya laughed, but her voice was small. —Is that so? she said. She moved down the stairs, into the Family group, who were leaning against the banisters, some swaying.

—No, I said.

Toby and Blue tried to take my hands, and Toby whispered, —Don’t be scared. Remember the story, it can be just like that. It will be easy.

Freya caught the whispers, took a step back towards them. They cowered. —The story? What have you been putting in her head? she shouted, and I felt, underneath all the betrayal and hurt, the old pride, that I was Freya’s, that she would always look out for me, no one could hurt me, not ever.

I turned to the Family, their glassy-eyed stares.

—It’s true, I said. —She’s had the Bad from the beginning. It was mine and Toby’s fault, but she’s been infected all along.

—Shut up, said Toby.

—That Winter Solstice when she came, remember I named her, and I took her out to the salt line, and I—

Freya jerked her head, a warning to lie. What I’d done was enough to turn the Family against me.

—But there was a gap, I said, —so she was outside the salt line, and the Bad got in and took her, and it’s been there ever since. It’s not Toby, I said. —Please don’t hurt Toby, hurt her instead, it’s all her.

Blue’s face went slack, like pinned hair taken down before sleep. Freya went to Blue and took her face in her hands, shouldering Toby out of the way. Blue reared back but Freya held her fast, pressing a thumb into Blue’s throat.

—My girl, she whispered. —We have to save you.

We scrubbed the attic door with vinegar, laced the upper landing with salt. The Crisis was on everyone’s lips, and we told it and retold it, each with our own version: some dwelling on the colour and shape of things, others simple, the facts. Lighting candles along the staircase, hanging torches from the beams, we strayed to all the stories of the Bad we knew, to try to find some kernel of knowledge we had forgotten. We listed All The Ways Home Is Better to each other, because we knew what was coming would make us need to remember the list. We played music, as though Solstice had already come. Freya had locked the attic door, with Blue inside, and she howled and flung herself against it, and we heard crashing sounds of the room destroyed, and nodded to each other: This is just how the Bad sounds, it is rage, it is confusion, it is violence.

Toby didn’t tell stories or scatter salt or light candles. He crouched outside the attic door, inside the salt, and shouted to us that he must have the Bad too, then, and we should lock him up with Blue, if that’s how Foxlowe worked now, if people were not free to be Leavers, and that I, Green, was a liar and a bitch, and the salt line crossing never happened. We ignored him, spoke louder, scrubbed harder.

I named her, I was responsible, so it was me that had to do it, the first night. I wore a garland around my neck to protect me, and our strongest flashlight hung from my waist. She started sobbing as soon as we opened the door. Around her, all our life was wrecked: the Cancer box smashed on the floor, Freya’s sketches all torn up, the knitted blanket she’d made for us bitten and torn. I stopped feeling afraid of the Bad, felt only hate, that it had come and destroyed the two people I loved most, apart from Freya, and had poisoned us from the very beginning. This was my chance to undo what I’d done, that freezing night when she was a baby and lay with the night air and the Bad swirling all around her.

The wax burned my own arm like an echo. Burning flesh smells sweet, like the gardens in high summer, or forgotten and rotting fruit. She fought hard but Freya was holding her down.

In the morning, the dawn sun showed up the yellow room’s faded wallpaper and the coat of dust on the furniture, with the Blue-cot drawer missing. I eased off the mattress, broken springs digging into my back.

The ballroom was cold and full of snores. The group slept in rings, holding hands, feet on chests, the best way to sleep. Freya was curled into Dylan’s arms, too tall, her feet stuck out from under the blanket they shared. I felt a surge of love for home. I took a honey cake abandoned by the window with a half-drunk glass of wine, and tiptoed away.

It was always hotter up here. Now there was something else, like there was too much breath, clogging up the air. I’d always known about the Bad in Blue, had slept next to it almost all her life, but now it was spoken to all of us, and was made real, I was afraid. I touched the attic door for a while, listening for steps following me up. Somewhere down in the house, a door shut.

The keyhole was low, far under the doorknob, so I had to squat to see through it. My knees cracked. I pushed against the door, kneeling in the salt, and looked at the tiny metal bar that kept me out. I’d never seen a locked door before.

The edge of the bed, and the ceiling, but Blue was hidden. I shifted to the side until I could see her. Small, asleep. The blankets bunched up in the wrong places. Her leg was propped up on pillows, bent away out of sight. Her fists were clenched in the sheets.

I sank back, sat against the door, and stroked the wood there. I missed the attic, our place, wished I could open the door, lie where I was used to sleeping, whisper to Blue in the darkness, wake to watch the sunbeam approach the Solstice knot in the beam over our heads.

I turned, and Blue’s eye loomed up at the keyhole. I fell back, shocked, and then laughed.

—Oh, Blue, you scared me, I whispered.

A thump as she moved. I looked again, and she was squatting back, her leg sticking out straight, sweat sheen on her face as she cocked it to one side.

—Green?

—It’s me, I said.

—Get away! Don’t come in!

—Don’t be scared, I said. —I’m just here to talk, to see if you’re all right.

—Let me out.

—I can’t, I said. —I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. I’m sorry. I brought you some honey cake, but I don’t know how to get it through the door, I said. —Does it hurt?

—Please, she said. —I don’t have the Bad. I just want to—

—It’s not all the time, I said. —I know that, but it is there, Blue, Freya’s right, and I’m sorry I had to tell them, to tell you. I know it was a shock about when you were a baby—

—I knew, Blue said. —Toby told me.

—Oh, I said. —How could you go behind my back like that? I said, hurt welling up. —How could you make a plan to be Leavers without telling me?

—Knew you’d tell Freya, she said. —We were waiting for you to decide to come too.

—I wouldn’t have told, I lied.

—Did she send you up here to find out things?

—No.

—I can’t believe you burned me, she said, not angry, but with real shock.

—It’s the best way to bring you back, I said. —It’s Solstice soon, then everything will be all right.

—Let me out. Please.

—It’s all going to be okay, I said.

I moved away from the keyhole just in time as something hit the door there, a piece of old Foxlowe bread, cascading spores of green exploding against the door.

Blue’s cries rose in tantrum spirals until her voice was making one long wail. I hid behind the door of the first back room as Freya hurried up, took the key from her apron. I glimpsed her haul Blue up by the arms, a shock of pain draining Blue’s voice as her wounded leg dangled, before Freya kicked the door shut behind her.

In the kitchen, Dylan sat on the aga with his legs swinging and gave me a weary salute, which stretched into a yawn.

Freya came in. She’d found some make-up somewhere, so her eyelashes stood out, made her look startled. She’d smudged some yellow stuff under her eyes, but it didn’t hide the shadows there.

She stroked my hair, told me to make breakfast.

The eggshells caved without the satisfying crack I liked, wilting, their thin membranes underneath snapping like spit.

—They’re old, I said.

In the bowl, red clots clinging to the yolks.

—Don’t be a baby, Freya said. —No squeamishness now.

I turned back to the eggs in silence. We ate breakfast together, the three of us. Others drifted in and out, to fill jars with water and drain them at the sink, or hunt for matches, or light stub ends from Dylan’s glowing paper. Toby came in once, his face a mask, his old silence returned, and the only way I knew he’d seen me was his ears turning red and his hands clenching, just for a moment, into fists. I’d have to wait a while, until Blue was healed, for him to forgive me, but then he’d betrayed me too, so when we came back together, things would be equal.

No one sat with us, Dylan, Freya and me, or talked very much, so we had a kind of peace, and I thought how much I loved Dylan, his oak trunk bulk, and how Freya was calmer when he touched her waist than she was when Richard was here, when her body was wound up tight, and we never knew if she would laugh and dance, or cry and throw things.

I felt the Bad must be stuck with Blue in the attic. It couldn’t get out into the sunlit kitchen and poison the simple good things like the eggs with their flecks of garden parsley and Dylan’s gentle touch on Freya’s arm.