Foxlowe. Eleanor Wasserberg
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figure you can glimpse in the corner of the eye; it can move things, and kneels on your chest at night. The Bad can twist your mouth to speech, or curl your hands into fists to strike something weaker than you. The Bad can kill. Once, when the Scattering was not done properly, it found and killed the baby goats. It causes illness and pain, infection and fever.
Listen to the things we know, to protect yourself. The Bad thrives on the dark and the cold; it is a winter force. So be careful when the sun is weak and the air bites you. Stay off the moor, where the Bad is strong. If the Bad catches you there, run to the Standing Stones. Even in the winter the Stones hum with a thousand ancient blessings. If you are closer to Foxlowe, run so you are inside the Scattering Salt.
If, despite all our care, you feel the Bad has taken you, you must tell the Founders. They will take you to the Stones, if the sun is strong enough, and Solstice is close. In winter, you will be given candle flame on the skin to try to force the Bad out. It hates heat. If the infection is deep, you may be bled. Summer Solstice will heal you, if nothing else works, and you may have to wait for the double sunset.
The children are the easiest for the Bad to slip into. They must be watched.
The Scattering is something we learned from the Time of the Crisis. Remember that the Bad had come inside the walls. One of those mornings, Freya felt the Bad in the kitchen, scratching across the floor, and twitching her fingers. On the flagstones lay the baby Green, where the Bad had taken full root. The Bad filled the kitchen until it was as black as night and spread cold through the air. In the gloom, Freya watched the tiny chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and the Bad pressed on her, urged the pillow into her hands. As she took it she knocked the salt jar from the table and it smashed, scattered salt across the floor. The room immediately lightened, the air warmed, and although the Bad was too deep in the baby to force out, the skulking Bad pressing on Freya was gone. This is what we commemorate in the Scattering, that Freya was stronger than the Bad in the end, that we have ways of keeping it out.
Only a handful of sunsets after Blue’s Naming, it was Winter Solstice, my breath clouding in the attic. I woke to a new dress at the bottom of the bed, and shivered into it under the covers. Freya bounced Blue in her arms. It was still dark. Her face was lit by a torch, gaping shadows around her cheeks and mouth.
She spoke to me. —You’ll be cold. Come on then, she said, so soft, and I went to her and sobbed as she stroked my hair and shushed me. —All right, all right, it’s over now, you know I hate it too, she said.
I wiped my nose on the new dress. Freya had used the material from an old apron of hers I loved: thick cotton, flower print. It had a full skirt that came down to my feet. On it were new white buttons, that she must have got when she fetched Blue, and hidden. I wished I had a mirror, like the big one in the ballroom, too high to catch my reflection in.
We came out into the colder air of the landing, me clutching Freya’s hips, bowing my head into her warm stomach.
—It’s good that it’s so cold. It means the year’s ready to go. Cold and hard like a dead thing, Freya said.
The staircase glowed with candlelight and led down to scented air and an inside forest: ivy curled around the banisters, holly in the doorways, dried herbs scattered on the floors. The rooms smoked with hot wine and the glowing ash from roll ups, and lamps burning oils that we’d saved all year: jasmine and lavender. In the hallway, incense smoke made it hard to see. Ellen and Dylan’s voices drifted over tinny sound: one of the tapes, dug out of their box in the yellow room.
As much as anything was anyone’s at Foxlowe, the tapes were Freya’s: she’d brought them with her from her old life, and they were all one voice, the same woman singing every time. The song I’m named for played all the time before the tape got too wobbly to play, but Freya could remember the words anyway, mine and Richard’s song too, on the same tape. She’d sing snatches of her favourite song while she made the bread: I’m afraid of the devil, I’m drawn to people who ain’t afraid … We didn’t call it the devil, but we knew who she meant, all right. Ellen and Dylan’s laughter was the sound of festival days and nights, as they sang along, wishing for rivers, and Freya picked up the tune, changing the words how she pleased.
Freya brushed Blue’s head with her fingertips. —This is where you live and belong now, she said to her. —Take her, she said.
I tried to lift my arms, but my hands were stuck to my new dress.
Freya crouched, so the baby was level with me, only a small gap between the red hair, the pink skin, and my arms. —Come on, Green, it’s all right. You won’t drop her.
Then Blue was in my arms. Freya let the baby’s head drop against my chest. I didn’t like the sour smell of her, or how her spit bubbled in the corner of her mouth. But I moved how I had seen Freya move, rock shush rock.
In the kitchen, there was honey and jam saved from the summer, gritty and thick, and goats’ milk, still warm. We were the last to come down, and the Family threw smiles and nods my way when they saw Blue in my arms. The aga roared and torches swung from beams. Libby waved to me as I put Blue into one of her drawers by the food stores. Toby opened his mouth wide to show me the mush inside and I caught him perfect on the back of the head, so his jaw clamped down on his tongue. Freya and Libby laughed, but Libby passed Toby some warm milk. He poured half out for me.
Libby wrapped me in the heavy red coat from Jumble. In the pockets, rotting roll up stubs and soil. Freya pulled my hands out to peel two pairs of gloves over my fingers. Fingers froze quickly during the Scattering.
Outside the animals stirred, the chickens rustling and crowing, the goats beginning to bleat. The Family rushed all the light of Foxlowe to the kitchen door, like blood to a new cut. We held the candles from around the house, some just balancing tea lights on their hands, and the torches swung and flashed, illuminating faces, beams, the glinting eyes of dogs.
Freya wound her dark hair around her neck and opened the door to the black of Winter Solstice morning. We poured out with cheering and snatches of stories of the Bad, The salt keeps it out, This is why we, You must remember to, This is important, my feet slipping in too-large boots.
We streamed down the back steps and onto the gravel, across to the fountain, down the ice coated marble steps beyond. The stars were still out, but a weak glow was beginning from the Standing Stones. I collected iced cobwebs that sparkled in our torchlight, and other treasures: frozen leaves, an icicle hanging from a marble finial, a snail shell.
Toby pulled me to the frozen fountain to watch the fish twist and dive together under the ice. We knocked on the sheets, like glass, to bring their white and orange forms ghosting to the surface in the torchlight. If one came, the others would turn and follow, like one giant creature. The grown had a name for them: the shoal. How is the shoal getting on? Should we eat one of the shoal?
Pet and Egg did star jumps to keep warm. The dogs panted clouds and snuffled ice onto their muzzles. Richard came over and laid a hand on Blue’s forehead.
—Take her back in, he said.
—She’s fine, Freya said.
He opened his mouth to say more, but Libby clapped her hands together.
—Richard! Come on, it’s bloody freezing!
He bent his face closer to Blue, his face stretched to one side as he bit his cheek. Freya stared over the top of his head, far out to the horizon. He tried to catch her eye when he raised his head but she ignored him. After a few seconds her half smile twitched up one side of her face and she returned the gaze. Behind us, Libby called Richard’s name, sing-song, then louder, until she broke off the rhythm and called out hoarsely to all of us.
—Right! Let’s go! You know how this works. A whole circle around the house, it must be unbroken. If you run out of salt, make sure someone fills in the line for you. Let’s go.
Richard grinned apologetically as he loped