Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge
‘Don’t be thick, they want it in cc.’ Josh’s neck was flushing as he looked further down the page.
‘What are all those?’ Chelle prodded a sequence of fuzzy photographs with her fingertip.
‘Match these photos with the correct model names.’ Ryan looked at the speckled pictures. One of them looked like a bicycle with extra bits stuck on, and a couple seemed to be close-ups of parts of engines. ‘How are we supposed to look that up?’
‘There’s a bit at the bottom too,’ Chelle said. ‘They want a written piece about why you want to win the motorbike. But we could just put some of that stuff Will Wruthers was thinking for that, couldn’t we?’
‘Not for five hundred words,’ Josh muttered. ‘Useless idiot – why didn’t he just enter the competition himself?’
The traffic lights next to the pavement where they stood flickered slightly, and the bleep of the pelican crossing dropped a semitone. Josh did not seem to notice.
‘Because he’s worried he’ll win,’ Ryan said quietly. ‘And then he’d have a Harley and he’d have to tell his mum he wanted to keep it.’
‘He should just tell her to lump it.’
‘Yes, but he’s afraid of her. You can tell from the sound of his thoughts. I think he’s really scared of lots of people he seems angry about. He’s even a bit scared of you, Josh.’ Ryan regretted letting the words out as soon as he saw Josh’s face. He felt as if he had betrayed a confidence.
‘Give me the magazine,’ said Josh. ‘I’m going back. I’m gonna make him fill it in.’
‘How?’ Ryan said nervously.
‘Don’t look so scared! Go wait for me at the Cross.’ Josh stalked off with the magazine under his arm, and Ryan obediently followed Chelle across the cobbled square to the bus stop at Market Cross.
‘Do you think we should go back and like maybe listen in and see what Will Wruthers is thinking?’ Chelle asked suddenly. ‘I mean, I could, it’s OK, I really don’t mind . . .’
Ryan looked up at Chelle and was suddenly startled by how happy she seemed. His mind had been so full of ways to work miracles, he had not noticed her pleased smile. The only other time he’d seen her look quite so happy was during a cricket match in the school field the year before. As usual she’d been exiled to fielding out by the fence. But somehow a ball had curved her way. She’d put up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, ducked in panic and then straightened to look at the ball cupped in her hand, with a disbelieving smile. I helped, said her smile. I was useful.
‘Maybe in a bit,’ he answered gently. ‘If Josh doesn’t come back soon.’
Josh came back half an hour later without the magazine. ‘It Is Done,’ he said in a low-pitched voice as he approached them at the bus stop, the capital letters clearly audible.
‘What did you . . . ?’
‘It wasn’t easy. I had to wait till the tea shop was empty. Then I went over to the counter like this . . .’ Josh made a little backwards motion of his shoulders, like a gunfighter limbering for a draw. ‘Dropped the magazine slap! in front of him, and put a pen next to his hand. And then I grabbed him by his weedy tie and told him, Either the answers or your brains are going to be on this magazine, it’s your choice . . .’
There was a devastated silence.
‘. . . and you two are beautiful,’ continued Josh. ‘You’ve got no idea what you look like; you both look like . . .’ He dragged off his sunglasses, bulged his eyes and dropped his jaw in dead-carp astonishment. ‘Yeah, really, I forced him at fork-point to fill in the answers, and then Matrix-kicked him through a wall . . .’
Chelle’s open mouth managed a single squeak of outrage, and Ryan remembered how to breathe again.
‘No, course I didn’t . . .’ Josh broke off, possessed by one of his convulsive fits of silent laughter. The other two had to wait while he laughed into his fist. ‘What happened was, I went up and sat at the table right at the front, with the magazine open in front of me. And he could see I was putting answers in in pencil, and he kept turning his head upside down trying to see what the questions were, and what answers I was putting.
‘And he could see I’d put things like the prototype engine being “about as big as a coconut”. And he started to twitch, like this.’ Josh gave the eyelid of one eye a neurotic, twitching flutter. ‘I swear, I thought he was going to grab me round the neck, wrestle the pencil out of my hand and fill it in right.
‘So then I looked bored, and asked him if he’d seen the competition. And I said, Ooh look, the twenty best entries get to go to the Golden Oak Rally in Guildley, pity I’m too young to enter. And he jumped right over the counter to take a look at the questions. Well, he almost did – you could see he wanted to.’
‘And you left it with him?’
‘Yeah. He’s hooked now he’s started.’ Josh yawned. As far as he was concerned, the matter was already over. ‘And if anyone can rant on about Harleys for five hundred words, it’s him, right?’
‘What if he doesn’t . . . ?’ Ryan stopped himself. ‘I mean, nice one, Josh, but what if he doesn’t send the answers in?’
‘Bet you he does.’ Josh peered at Ryan and clicked his fingers in front of the younger boy’s frown. ‘C’mon, let it go. We’ll come back in a week and see if Wet Will’s heard anything. Forget it for now.’
Perhaps Josh was right, Ryan thought. Josh seemed able to snatch up any sort of a plan and trust himself to it full throttle, like James Bond surfing down a snow slope on half a door or someone’s cello case. Ryan had a mind full of ‘what ifs’. His brain never wanted to let go of something when he could feel the holes in it.
‘Come, my friends,’ Josh announced in deep, superhero tones as their bus approached. ‘Let us leave. Our Work Here Is Done.’
‘The “big as a coconut” bit was my idea, wasn’t it?’ said Chelle as she followed him on to the bus.
Josh insisted that they ride on the top of the open-top bus back to Guildley. They blinked in the breeze and found the pigeons skittering after a paper cup strangely funny. They would be back a little later than promised, but no parents would mind. Crook’s Baddock was the very opposite of Magwhite. Parents thought that if you went to Crook’s Baddock and breathed in, you would come back better educated.
At Guildley Market stop they got out, and Josh revealed that he had been hatching another plan.
‘C’mon, we’re going back to Ryan’s bridge. The one with the poster.’
‘What? Why?’ The sun above Ryan lost its warmth.
‘We’re going to report in, tell her we’re doing what she wants. Maybe get some info on our next mission.’ Josh paused, seeing the look on Ryan’s face. ‘Look,’ he said more quietly, ‘she’s going to have orders for you sooner or later, right? Do you want her popping out of walls when you’re not expecting it? No? C’mon then.’
I don’t think I can make myself do this, thought Ryan as he turned his feet towards the bridge. But perhaps I can just . . . let go, like Josh, just let the plan happen quickly so I don’t have time to think. He set his face hard and dropped into a trot so that he was ahead of the others, and they wouldn’t see his face.
‘Hey.’ Josh caught up with Ryan. He lowered his voice so that it couldn’t be heard by Chelle. ‘It’s paper really, OK? Remember that. If she tries anything, I’ll tear her face off.’
Ryan nodded, dry-mouthed.
The sun was lower than it had been that morning, and the bridge shadow had swung away to one side, allowing one corner of the poster to be illuminated. Ryan could get quite close to it before he had to step from lighted pavement to shadowed ground, and felt his steps falter. Josh, of course, moved past him straight into the shadow to stand directly before the poster. Ryan had assumed that Chelle would hover out in the sun, so he was surprised and grateful to see that she was at his side.
Josh unscrewed his plastic bottle of lemonade and peered at the poster.
‘This one?’
‘It wasn’t so wrinkled before. I guess that’s
‘What did you do to set it off before?’ Josh leaned forward and held his face so close to the poster that Ryan took several involuntary steps towards him into the shadow. He had suddenly imagined watery hands thrusting out to grab Josh’s head.
‘Nothing. I just stood in front of it. Like we are now.’
‘Was anything else different?’
‘Well . . . it was wet.’
Josh took a long drink from his bottle, paused for a second, and then threw the rest of the lemonade over the poster.
‘Josh!’
‘You wanted it wet. It’s wet. Hey, do you think now she’ll start pouring with lemonade instead of water? We could get some cups and set up a stall or something.’ A long pause followed, during which little runnels of lemonade ran down to the pavement. Apprehensively Ryan tugged back the bandage around his hand, but the warts on both hands showed no sign of swelling into eyes.
‘Can we go now?’ asked Chelle.
‘Not yet. O-ka-a-ay. Let’s try this.’ Josh locked his hands together in front of his belt and bowed to the poster. It looked a bit martial-arts film, but very polite. ‘Great Lady of the Well, we are obeying your bidding. We shall bring more news soon.’
The poster did nothing but drip. The lemonade had left a splash in the shape of a question mark, and the question mark seemed to hover in Ryan’s mind as he trudged along the footpath to his own back garden. The coffee burn had faded, leaving only a pink, shiny place at the base of his thumb, but Ryan tugged the bandage back into place to hide at least some of his little wart colony from his mother’s probing eyes.
It was only much later in the evening that he realized his warts had stopped itching.
9
The Tyrant of Temple Street
Ryan slept well that night, the coolness of his knuckles a blessed relief. In the morning his warts were soft rounds and he felt a painful throb of hope. Maybe our plan with the competition worked. And maybe she’ll let us off with granting just one wish.
‘Legal,’ said Ryan’s mum, picking an envelope out of her morning post and scrutinizing it with an expert’s eye. She sounded almost excited.
‘Saul Paladine?’ asked Ryan’s dad as she opened it.
‘Oh.’ Ryan’s mum looked disappointed. ‘No, just Pipette Macintosh again.’ She paused to read. ‘Oh really, not again! She’s still banging on about my chapter on her temper tantrums. It’s been two years – you’d think she’d be getting tired of trying to sue by now. It’s not even good publicity for either of us any more.’
‘I was wondering . . .’ Ryan hesitated, not sure how to finish the sentence. ‘Someone I know was . . . was thinking of getting a Harley-Davidson, and I was wondering what the best way was to get one . . .’
‘Tell Josh that he will find it a lot easier in three or four years,’ Ryan’s dad answered, carefully spreading his toast with pâté. ‘I daresay he’ll find a way to persuade his parents to buy him one then.’
‘If you talk like that you’ll have Ryan expecting one when he reaches seventeen. And he’ll be far too young.’
‘Neither of us knows how mature Ryan will be six years from now, but in any case . . .’
‘Well, that’s splendid then. When some day the hospital phones to let us know that Ryan has driven his motorbike through the central reservation of the A32 I shall try not to remind you of this conversation.’ Ryan’s mum heaped and shuffled her mail with rather more aggression than it deserved.
‘Well, when he does it will probably be because his mother has stolen his glasses,’ Ryan’s father muttered darkly, laying down his knife.
‘I don’t actually want a motorbike.’ Ryan’s belly was twisting, the way it always did when his parents’ sparring started to look like a real row.
People’s personalities took up space, he sometimes thought. When they were trapped in a house or a job or a school together they rubbed up against each other, squeaked like balloons and made sparks. Ryan’s parents both had large, gleaming, hot-air-balloon personalities. Sometimes it was hard to fit them into the same house, and Ryan had learned the art of suddenly making himself take up less space, demand less, so that his parents were not chafing against each other as much.
As usual, it worked. His dad reached across the table towards the lawyer’s letter and fluttered his fingers to show he wanted it. Then they talked about Pipette Macintosh and the day she lost her temper and pushed one of her statues made of cutlery off its podium and on to the museum caretaker, because he’d tried to take a spoon from it to stir his tea. The tale even stole a smile from Ryan’s mother.
Ryan felt the knot of tension in his stomach loosen, but increasingly scenes like this left him with a slightly sick aftertaste. Suddenly he remembered Josh sitting on the motorbike and chatting with the bikers outside the pub – and he felt a throb of jealousy. It wasn’t that he harboured any desire to sit on a motorbike, but . . . he wanted to be allowed to want to sit on a motorbike.
While he was trying to reason himself out of this, the doorbell rang and Ryan’s dad went to answer it.
‘Ryan!’ The shout resounded from the hallway.
Ryan reached the door to find Josh standing on the step holding a big kite in the shape of a bird. A little behind him stood Chelle.
‘There’s a wonderful wind out today.’ Josh had a ‘talking to parents’ voice that he could pull out from time to time. It made some parents call him ‘intelligent’ and ‘engaging’. It made Ryan’s father raise his eyebrows and smile, as if he was trying to catch an expert magician palming a card.
Ryan’s suspicion that the kite-flying was a cover story was reinforced as soon as he noticed that they were not heading towards the park.
‘So . . . ?’ Ryan trailed off questioningly. ‘It’s Will Wruthers?’
‘Oh, that.’ Josh looked bored. ‘Nah, forget about him for the moment. We’ve found another one!’
Chelle nodded vigorously, a broad smile on her face.
‘It was me.’ She sounded slightly incredulous about this. ‘I’d been shopping for my mum, and it was just after, going back down Temple Street, it came over me again, loud as anything, and I had to use a scouring pad and the green bit scratched my tongue.’
‘You mean . . .’ Ryan tried to pull the loose loops of Chelle’s sentence into sense, like the cord of a drawstring bag. ‘You mean . . . the thought thing happened again? You’ve found another wisher?’
‘Yes!’ Josh sounded elated. ‘So if it’s a good wish, we can forget about Wet Will for now and do this one.’
As they walked towards the town centre, they passed East Guildley Secondary. Ryan looked away, but he could smell the tarmac cooking on the netball pitch. The field would be parched yellow by the long summer. The changing rooms would smell of new trainers and fear.
It seemed impossible that he could be walking past with this freedom. And it seemed impossible that in three weeks he would be walking back through the school gates, desperately picking over forgotten facts and fears in his head. One night a year before he had realized, really realized, that some day he would die, and had spent hours sleepless and paralysed with leaden, desperate horror. The feeling had been strangely familiar, and Ryan had eventually recognized that he felt a version of this every time he thought of starting a new term.
‘We need to get this sorted,’ Josh muttered under his breath. Ryan knew that he was thinking of the new term as well. If they had not paid off the debt to the Well Spirit by then, how long would it be before someone saw Ryan’s knuckle-eyes flutter open, heard Chelle gushing borrowed thoughts or noticed that the strip lighting always blew out when Josh walked underneath it? Even Josh, with all his bravado would be unlikely to brazen his way out of that. Whereas for Ryan and Chelle . . . the torment of their first term would begin all over again. The scalding sense of isolation, the ‘accidental’ brushes
Josh was right; they had a deadline.
Soon after, the threesome turned into Temple Street. There were no ordinary shops here, just two long rows of terraced brick buildings, with intercom buttons and business plaques next to the doors.
‘It was just over there.’ Chelle waggled a finger down the street vaguely enough to take in most of it.
‘Well, we’ve got our Chelle Geiger counter.’ Josh grinned at her.
Interrogation of Chelle revealed a number of things. Her ability to read Will’s mind in Crook’s Baddock had been either ‘on’ or ‘off’ – within a certain distance she had had ‘reception’, but it had been no clearer two feet from him than it had been twenty feet away.
‘So we can’t just walk her up and down and find out where she’s the most weird.’ Josh did not seem unduly demoralized. ‘No problem, I’ve got another plan. It’s blinding. We’re going to walk down the road, and when the Radio Chelle thing cuts in I’ll stop walking. You both keep going, and when the weird stuff cuts out you stop walking, Ryan. And then you and me’ll walk towards each other, Ryan, taking steps at the same time, and see where we are when we meet in the middle.’
At Chelle’s insistence they waited until the street was more or less clear.
‘And I’m keeping this ready.’ Chelle brandished a scouring pad. ‘I mean, while I’m being all weird I might meet somebody I know or something . . .’
Ryan wondered how Chelle’s definition of ‘being weird’ could include gabbling loudly, but not include walking around with a kitchen sponge sticking out of her mouth.
‘I think it was just after the step with the orange cat, cos I remember thinking about going to stroke it, only it was flicking its ear and I thought it might have fleas so I didn’t, but it was just after that my mouth ran off, so I think it might be up by that tree stump, only I s’pose it might have moved – the cat, I mean, not the step – because sandalwood is more expensive but re-energizes the body, and you can leave just a drop of it to evaporate and it fills the whole room . . .’