Eldric poured a clinking waterfall into my palm. “Aren’t they lovely! I can’t keep my hands off them. But I give you fair warning: It was a box of paper clips that got me expelled.”
“Expelled?”
“A box of a thousand paper clips,” he said, his long fingers curling, coiling, twisting. “And a sack of colored glass.”
“Expelled!” I might be a wicked girl who’d think nothing of eating a baby for breakfast, but I’d never allow myself to get expelled. It’s far too public.
“Quite definitely expelled,” said Eldric. “The dean left me in no doubt. But really, was it my fault? When the fellow down the hall bet me a thousand paper clips I couldn’t chuck a certain stone far enough to reach a certain chapel?”
“You took the bet?”
“I ask you—for a thousand paper clips! Had I any choice?”
I acknowledged that he had not. “And the chapel?”
“Let’s just say I have quite a good arm. Let’s just say the stone reached the chapel with room to spare. Let’s just say it reached the chapel with the kind of room that took it right through the stained glass.”
Eldric laughed at himself, and I found myself laughing too. It had been ages since I’d heard my own laugh. It was rusty, but serviceable.
“Father will not find that an amusing anecdote.”
“But you do,” said Eldric, “which is far more important. When you’re a bad boy, you find that people either laugh at you or with you. I prefer the with.”
“You’ll have some competition. Cecil Trumpington fancies himself the local bad boy.”
“A rival?” said Eldric. “Shan’t we have fun!”
I opened the door of Father’s study, which is just a little less tidy than you’d expect. And he doesn’t realize that his armchair smells of tobacco. Do as I say, not as I do.
At the end of the corridor lay the charred remains of the library.
“A flood and a fire!” Eldric looked at the blackened floor, at the boarded-up windows, at the great black cavern that had once contained bookshelves. It still whiffed of smoke. “You’ve had more than your share of misfortune.”
I nodded, but it actually had nothing to do with misfortune and everything to do with me. Six months ago, the library shelves held all my stories. Then I set the fire and cremated them all.
And I have the scar to prove it.
But I don’t mind, really. I don’t read much anymore.
“Father would want me to point out the church, which lies just to the other side of the library.” The church and the library shared the wall, conjoined like Siamese twins. “But you probably don’t care about the church, being a bad boy, that is.”
“Don’t tell your father,” said Eldric.
“I probably have an obligation to point out all the local hazards. When they say safe as houses, they weren’t thinking of ours.” I led Eldric through the foyer and flung open the front door. “You’ll notice the porch has fallen right off.”
“Good Lord!” Eldric’s eyes were very bright. It was because of the whites of his eyes—yes, that was it. They were whiter than anyone else’s.
I explained we lost the porch to the flood. “Father hasn’t gotten around to rebuilding it, although he’s quite a good carpenter. He says if Jesus was a carpenter, it’s good enough for a clergyman. But I don’t remember that Jesus let his house fall down.”
Beyond the ghost of the porch lay Hangman’s Square, its cobblestones strewn with the lengths of steel that were growing into the railroad line between London and our village of Swanton, which meant that Swanton was living beautifully up to its reputation as the end of the line.
Eldric stared at me with those bright eyes. What a contrast we must have made: my eyes, blacker than black; his eyes, whiter than white, plus an interesting little scar that dipped into his eyebrow.
Eldric stood very still, yet hummed with energy, just as London did. The London I’d never see, strung with electric wires and brilliant with switch-on lamps. I’ve always wondered whether they string lamps into the lavatories, or do even Londoners think there are certain things best left in the dark?
I’m aware that I’m mixing my metaphors horribly. How can I compare Eldric to a lion in one description and to electricity in another? But I don’t care. It’s my story and I get to make the rules.
Back into the parlor, where the mirror over the mantel shelf caught Eldric’s face. Not mine. I’m not tall enough, and anyway, I’ve outgrown my reflection.
Eldric turned away from the mirror, holding out his hand. In the cup of his palm lay his fidget of paper clips. But the fidget had blossomed into a crown. An allover-filigree crown, with a twisty spire marking the front.
I stared at it for some moments. “It’s for you,” said Eldric. “If you want it.”
“I’m seventeen,” I said. “I haven’t played at princess for years.”
“Does that matter?” Eldric set it on my head. It was almost weightless, a true crown for the steam age.
In a proper story, antagonistic sparks would fly between Eldric and me, sparks that would sweeten the inevitable kiss on page 324. But life doesn’t work that way. I didn’t hate Eldric, which, for me, is about as good as things get.
I mustn’t get back to thinking of myself as princess, or wolfgirl. All the silly things I used to imagine. Stepmother was right. It doesn’t matter that you look like a princess on the outside. You’re a witch on the inside and nothing will change that. It’s best not to look at yourself at all.
“I’ll show you where you’re to sleep.” I pushed through the swinging door into what had been the sewing room. Stepmother slept here when she was ill. Stepmother died here, with no one about to mark her passing. Why didn’t I check on her, sit with her? I knew she was dying. But that’s what witches do, isn’t it? They leave people to die alone.
It was hard to imagine Eldric in this room. How would that mixed-metaphor lion- and London-boy fill Stepmother’s empty spaces?
What did mixed-metaphor boys possess? Football things? Trophies? Sweaty jerseys?
Eldric turned on his high-tension muscles to the window, which overlooked the swamp. “Do you go out there and tramp about?”
I used to visit the swamp every day. I used to imagine myself into a wolfgirl and prowl and lope and sniff and howl. “Not for a long time.” I knew exactly how long: three years come September.
“What’s it like?”
“Wet.” I remembered that September day with terrible clarity. It was the day Stepmother told me I’m a witch. I’m still astonished she had to tell me. How could I not have known? Or at least guessed? I had, after all, left a trail of destruction behind me, wide as a football field.
“It’s very beautiful.”
Beautiful? The swamp stretched as far as the eye could see, a gray shimmer, bronzed with reeds and cattails. I used to think it beautiful, but I have no particular feeling for it anymore. I suppose the old wolfgirl Briony would have disliked the idea of draining the swamp, but why should I care? I could never visit the swamp again.
“Pearl did what she could to make the room comfortable, but please tell us if you need anything.”
Strange to think of Eldric hanging his university jacket and trousers in the sewing cupboard, which had once been filled with needles and spools of thread and embroidery frames. That was back in the days when Father thought his daughters had to be educated in the domestic arts—a hideous phrase, which is of course why Father chose it. He hired Pearl’s mother to help domesticate us, but along came Stepmother and set us free.
“I’ll ask Pearl to attend to the fire.”
Stepmother had never cared for fires. They made her too warm, she said. I had to wrap up when I came into the sewing room to care for her. The sewing room was a sad place then, and I always think a clean-swept grate is desolate.
The light from the window caught at Eldric’s wide lion cheekbones, and at a rougher sweep down his cheeks. Whiskers? Did this boy-man shave? Of course he did, foolish, ignorant Briony. He was twenty-two. He’d be shaving away in this room, in the very room where Stepmother died.