The Brides of Rollrock Island (2 page)

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, sprogget!”

We all jumped.

“Move along, all of you, and stop your gawking,” spat the witch. “What’s to see? You think I’m ugly? Well, so are your dads, and some of you yourselves. Look at you, boy-of-Baker, with your face like a balled fist. So I’m out alone? What of it? You think all women are maundering mere-maids like your mams, going about in a clump? Staring there like folk at a hanging—get out of my sight, before I emblanket you and tangle you up to drown!”

Well, we didn’t need her to say it twice.

“You can never tell which way she’ll go,” murmured Grinny as we scuttled on.

“You did grand, Grin,” said Raditch. “I don’t know how you found a voice.” And Kit, I saw, was making sure to keep big Batton Baker between himself and the old crow.

“Sometimes she’s all sly and coaxy? And sometimes she loses her temper like now.”

“Sometimes all she does is sit and cry and not say a word or be frightening at all,” said Raditch. “Granted, that’s when she’s had a pot or two.”

We collected most efficiently after that, and when we were done we described a wide circle around behind Misskaella on our way back to the foot of the path. “From behind she’s not nearly so bad,” I said, for she was only a dark lump down there like a third mound of weed, her hook end bobbing beyond her shoulder.

Y
es, Misskaella, seals.
See? She loves them
!

The seals gleamed in the sunshine. I tried to crawl to them, but Bee held firm to my ankle, and I could not go. Pink flowers on long stems nodded about my ears. I did not even have enough of a mind to know that the cliff dropped away there; I thought that the seals lay on the ground right in front of me, that they were seething worms or caterpillars, sleek and soft-looking. I thought I could catch up a handful of them, and understand them as I understood everything, by putting them in my mouth.

Ann Jelly carried me down the cliff path, back and forth in a tipped-steep world. As we went, I saw the seals more truly. They were grown-up-people-sized; they were bigger even than that. Still I reached for them. I leaned out from Ann Jelly’s shoulder, and when she turned I leaned across her face.

Look, she’s not at all afraid
, she said.

They would roll on you and crush you, Missk, for all their big friendly eyes
.

How they
smell
!

Oh, the king of them down there, fighting off those ones, isn’t he the ugliest thing you ever laid eyes on?

I did not even see the king, for all the mothers so close to me, for all the seal babies that roamed and moaned over them. I did not find their smell foul; it was all one with their fascination. The mothers looked warm; I wanted to crawl over their hills, so much softer than those rocks and sharp periwinkles I had explored before, so much freer than being clasped tightly to Ann Jelly’s side and not carried where I wanted. Why did we hang back so? Why did she not put me down, so that I could crawl to them and climb among them? Why did Bee turn us back, when we had only strolled once and distantly along the edge of the herd? Why must we climb away to the seal-less parts of the world? We might touch them! They might like to be patted, as dogs and cats did. Their babies might approach and speak to us! I pushed myself high against Ann Jelly’s shoulder and watched the seals sink away. I would have cried at the loss of them, if I’d not been so busy being surprised by them, a flap of life here, a surge there, a head lifting to regard us.

We went home, and tea and bread happened as always, its clatter and talk held in by the kitchen walls, so different from the flying world outside, the wind and sun. I was tucked in between Tatty and Grassy Ella, behind my towering teacup.

And you should have seen Missk with the seals, Mam, down at Crescent!
Lorel said across the table. I raised my face hopefully from my bread. Sometimes when they talked of me, Mam lost her sharp look. She even smiled on me now and then.

I should?
Mam poured and put down the pot. She looked at me, and Lorel’s words went in and pinched her face tighter. I watched her around my cup with one eye and then with the other.

She couldn’t keep her eyes off them!
said Bee, out of sight of me.
She wanted to crawl in among them. Of course we did not let her
. She sounded nervous now. She must have caught sight of Mam.

It’s true, she was very interested
, Ann Jelly apologized.
I have never seen her so fixed on anything—

Strange
, Mam said.
Was anyone else about, at Crescent Corner?

There was a pause full of worry at Mam’s loud voice, then,
’Twas just us six
, Bee’s voice came timidly.

Just us six, and a thousand seals
, said Grassy, poking over her bread all unawares.

Good
, said Mam.
Watch her near those things
. She watched me hard herself.
And don’t tell anyone else of this, that she loves them. No one needs to know that. Do you understand?

We were all quiet. Grassy looked down at me. My face tried a squashed-feeling smile at her, but she did not smile back.

Yes, Mam
, said Bee.

Nanny Prout’s house smelt of the ages, and was gloomy from all those years holding only Nanny. She had never wanted company, said Dad, but had shut herself away from everyone, even us her family. She would still have been shut away if she’d had her choice, but because she was so ill Aunt Baxter and Aunt Roe could busy their ways in and interfere. It was they who had told
us to come; this was the last time Nanny would be fit to see us, they’d said.

Aunt Roe had put us in the chilly parlor. The dead fireplace was hidden behind a screen; a dark dresser loomed against the wall. Mam and Dad sat on the edge of the strange sideways couch. The pin in Mam’s shawl sucked all the light from the room, so that the rest of us must sit in dusk. Her hair, freshly tidied, left her face out in the cold, unsoftened. I wore a dress newly handed down from Tatty, and I felt blowsy and floaty in it, not held together properly; cold air crept in under the skirt. I clambered up between Mam and Dad, and drew some warmth off them.

Nobody spoke; that was alarming. No girl whispered, so Billy had nothing to snipe at. We all listened to the sickroom, the clinks and footfalls there, the murmuring aunts, the silence from the bed. We hardly knew Nanny Prout, any of us children. Ann Jelly remembered her outside Fisher’s, windblown, shouting (
She didn’t even seem to know I was a relative!
). Billy and Bee and Lorel had seen her in an armchair—perhaps
that
armchair, with the brown flowers on. I had no idea who she was, what she looked like, whether I should like her or be afraid. But her dying must be tremendously important; look at us waiting about so warily. The whole house, with the whole day and town beyond it, leaned in over her bed, preparing itself. What would it be like? Was a near-dead nanny awful to look upon? I feared so, from Mam and Dad’s silence and stillness either side of me.

With a rustle of her brown dress, into the doorway stepped Aunt Roe, her face white and pointed. She waved us out of the parlor as if she were vexed with us. “She’s very tired,” she said, her own voice weary as if to demonstrate. “You mustn’t stay long.”

She led us into the sickroom, and stood aside from the door. “It’s Froman, Mam,” she said accusingly, “and Gussy and all their children.” She turned and flapped her hand at us again, as if we must step forward for a beating.

Mam pushed us children into the room. Ann Jelly led the line of us alongside the bed—which held a tiny person, not much more than a doll. Tatty nudged me forward; the others passed me along; Ann Jelly held me by the shoulders. Nanny Prout’s hand on the coverlet, pale yellow, held not the slightest tremble of life.

“Froman,” said Nanny. Oh, the relief that she could utter a word! Her face frightened me, so collapsed and fissured that I worried it would crumple quite away. The bonnet frill around it tried vainly to distract from the fearsomeness.

“Mam.” Dad gave a little bow. Anywhere else, the bigger girls would have laughed at him, but here in the room with Nanny and her approaching death, none of them even snickered.

“And Augusta?” Nanny managed. It did seem cruel of Mam, to have so many syllables in her name that the old lady must labor through.

“Nanny,” said Mam, as if that name, though not as hard to utter, were just as distasteful.

“And all the little ones.” Nanny looked along the taller row of us. “Don’t tell me their names again. There are too many, and what is the point now of my remembering them?”

“Mam, what a thing to say!” Aunt Baxter fluted. She laughed, and twitched the quilt at Nanny’s far elbow.

Nanny’s colorless eyes worked their way back along the lower three of us. Her gaze met mine and stopped. She had been
pretending interest, but she ceased it now. Her lips poked out, pulling her wrinkles after them like the mouth of a drawstring purse.

“This one here, though, at the end, the littlest.” Her voice was dry and partial. “I don’t like the look of her. She’s a bit slanted, a bit mixed.”

“That’s our Misskaella,” said Dad in his comfortable voice. “There’s nothing wrong with Missk.” But Mam pulled away and frowned at me, as if she had never noticed me before.

“She harks back, I tell you,” said Nanny. “It is in her mouth and nose, and just in the general set of her. There’s no denying it. She’ll be hard to marry—that’s if any men are left on Rollrock, after this rash of daughters has gone through. Look at them all! Only the one boy—and him bad-tempered, by the look.”

“That’s Billy,” said Dad a bit more testily. “William, after your grandfather. He’s a little afraid of you, Nanny, is all that face says.”

“Hmph.”

She
was
frightening, that Nanny-doll. I had thought a dying person might be weak and gentle, and distressed to be departing. But she was all opinions, and no manners to keep them inside her. She could say what she liked; being so old and dying gave her the right. I realized that my mouth was hanging open as I waited on her next judgment, and I snapped it shut—and thus drew Nanny’s gaze back to myself.

“Yes,” she said with dislike, “you can see it clearly, looking from the others to this one. She is much later than the rest?”

“There are four years,” said Mam, “between her and Tatty, the next youngest.”

“There is your problem, then,” said Nanny. “Prout men should
never breed late. Nor Prout women. They turn, you know, in their autumns, and then you get miscast faces like this, and who knows what behind them?”

“Oh, Mam.” Aunt Baxter laughed even higher than before. “Here is Froman, come to see you before you go to your rest, and all you can do is fix on his children and criticize!” But her face was all dismay, looking at me. My hand came up to touch my nose and mouth, but they were only the same nose and mouth I had always had; there was nothing new or monstrous about them.

Only Dad was allowed to kiss Nanny goodbye—not that any of us minded one ounce not putting our lips to that crinkled cheek. It would be cold, I thought. It would smell of tallow wax, maybe, or mushrooms.

Then we were dismissed. Dad was quiet walking along the lanes, but the rest of us were glad to be out in the moving air. Billy lifted his head and looked about, for a change, and the girls danced from step to step.

Tatty eyed me where I walked at Mam’s hand. “She had a set against our Missk, didn’t she!”

“Hush, Tat,” said Mam, and Dad clicked his tongue. But already Grassy and Lorel were caroling, “Ye-es! Missk and her funny looks!”

“ ‘Miscast,’ she said.” Ann Jelly too examined me. “What could she mean?”

“I’ve always thought Miss
did
look differently.” Tatty galloped sideways ahead of us. “Not quite part of the same family.” And now they all stared. I screwed up and stretched my face so that they should not see my difference clearly.

“That’s
enough
,” said Mam. “Take the word of a dying woman, would you, one who’s always hated me and mine? Of course she’s going to find fault with us! And who safer to insult than the very littlest of all!”