Aunt Maria (12 page)

“Give it to someone. Go away,” said Chris.

They went on standing there.

“It's not interesting,” said Chris.

That was a silly thing to say. That box was the most interesting thing I'd ever seen. It was like something alive. It seemed to get more interesting the longer you looked. I was kind of bent over it, and the clones were all craned in different directions so that they could see it round me.

“Aren't you going to open it?” one of them asked.

As soon as he—or she—asked that, it was obvious we ought to open the box. I could see the catch on one side of the lid, a little clawed green clasp, and I pushed it up with my thumb. It moved easily. Chris said, “Mig, you're not to! Don't touch it!” But by that time my fingers were under the lid and the lid seemed to come up of its own accord.

I think the lid was even more beautifully green and complicated on the inside. But I didn't really notice, because whatever was inside the box started to come out at once. It wasn't quite invisible. You could tell it was bulging and billowing out of the box in clouds, fierce and determined and impatient. The clones all stepped back a solemn pace to give it room. It was all round me. The air felt thick, so that I had to press against it to move, even just to breathe, and it fizzed in a funny way in my hair and on my face. I didn't know what it was, but I could tell it was very forbidden.

Chris shouted out, “Oh, you stupid
girl
!” I had one hand under the box and the other against the lid, squeezing with all my might to try and shut it by then. But the stuff coming out held it open against me as hard as if the hinges were never made to bend. I knew it was horribly dangerous stuff—or perhaps, now I think, I knew it was a terrible waste to let it all out—and I pressed and pressed to get the box shut again. Chris scrambled over and put his hands over mine and we both pushed frantically. The lid didn't even start to give until the box was at least half empty. Then it went down, slowly, slowly, with more powerful stuff escaping the whole time. It must have taken us a good five minutes to get it shut again.

Meanwhile the stuff that was out was doing all sorts of strange things. You could tell it was there because it rippled everything it touched—not like hot air ripples things, but in a way that showed it was changing the substance of the bush or the person or the earth it passed through. Chris and I got rippled furiously. Some of the stuff spiraled hugely into the sky. I could see more eddying slowly down into the ground. But a lot of it lingered about, writhing the bushes, forming swirls and shapes as strange as the pictures on the box, and curlicues of nothing. Some of them were horrifying, and one clone who got in the midst of those covered her head in her arms and whimpered. A lot were splendid and solemn. The clones waved their arms at them in a stiff sort of way and looked wondering, and the curlicues of nothing climbed and twisted and wove around them until the stuff must have got thinned away by the air. Anyway, it went. One clone suddenly burst out laughing. A twist of nothing was hovering between his hands like a cross between a dust devil and an invisible bird. He was still holding it and laughing, and the rest of the stuff was fading into the earth in dying twirls, when Mr. Phelps came storming through the bushes slashing his stick.

He was furious. The orphans stared and then ran, just the way the cat runs away from Aunt Maria. But it was me Mr. Phelps went for, stick up ready to hit me. “You stupid little female!” he said. It was a low snapping snarl that was far more frightening than a shout. I dropped the box and put one arm up. “Half of it
gone
!” he said. “My last hope against this monstrous regiment of women, and it has to be a female who lets it out! You deserve to be whipped, girl. And you, boy, for letting her!”

I heard his stick swish. I think Chris got in the way. There was a thump and Chris said, “Don't
do
that! We were only trying to help!”

“Steal it, you mean, just as your father did!” snarled Mr. Phelps. “Get out. Get out of my sight. And don't let your sister near me again, or I won't be responsible for what I do!”

Chris and I pulled one another up, and we ran. Chris remembered the knitting wool, not me. I remember him humping it along, panting, “Oh, Lord, Mig, this is a mess! I thought he was the goodie and Aunt Maria was the baddie, but I'm not sure now. I
wish
you hadn't opened that box!”

I wished I hadn't, too, so I didn't answer.

And I wish it even more now. I don't know what to do. Cranbury isn't just mad. It's a nightmare.

I finished my writing. I went downstairs. I think I must have gone rather quietly because I was still thinking about that amazing box. Chris and Aunt Maria didn't hear me. As I came down she was saying, “Snoring, dear? I wasn't snoring. I'm awake. I've been talking to you.”

“Boring,” Chris said. “B—O—R—I—N—G, that's what I said you were.”

I thought, Oh, dear! and hurried. Aunt Maria said, more in sorrow than anger, “You poor boy. I shall pray for you, Christopher.”

“And get my name right!” Chris snarled. “It's
Christian
, you murderess!”

Aunt Maria said, “
What!
” in a little faint voice. I felt weak and sort of sinking and had to prop myself up in the doorway. I said, “Shut up, Chris.” I think I did, but neither of them heard me.

“Murderess,” said Chris. “Shall I spell that, too?” He was standing facing Aunt Maria. She was in her afternoon chair with her hands on both her sticks, staring. She looked hurt and helpless, as anyone would, when Chris went on. “You killed Dad, because he found out about the green box and tried to get it back, didn't you? I don't know what you did to him, except I know he didn't go off the cliff like everyone was supposed to think—”

“How dare you!” said Aunt Maria. “I've never killed anything in all my life, you poor misguided—”

“You did for him somehow. Same difference,” Chris interrupted. “I know you did. And you did for Lavinia, because she knew too much. And—”

“Stop,” said Aunt Maria, in a feeble, warning way. “Stop there!”

“No, I shan't,” said Chris. “You cover it up with deafness and politeness all the time, but it's true. It's the green box, isn't it? Long before Dad and Lavinia, you got rid of Antony Green in order to get hold of that box and the power in—”

Aunt Maria stood up then, with no difficulty at all. “I've heard enough,” she said. She pointed the rubber end of one of her sticks at Chris. The other she held ready to thump on the floor. “By the power vested in me,” she said, “go on four feet in the shape your nature makes you, young man.” Truly she said that, and she thumped the second stick on the carpet.

And Chris—Chris gave a sort of wail and folded up as if the pointing stick had hit him in the middle. I remember the way the palms of his hands hit the floor and then sort of shrank and bent, so that he was holding himself mostly on his eight fingers. His thumbs went traveling up his arms, shrinking and growing a curved pinkish nail each. The rest of him was a quick seething, too quick to watch. He didn't grow much smaller. That surprises me still. He just seethed into a different thing, with pink flesh boiling into gray and brown and yellowish hair, and his own hair getting swallowed under big growing ears. His clothes fell off about then. The thing he was growing into snarled and fought and backed wildly away from the jeans and the sweater, and bent a head with long white teeth in it to tear at the pants clinging to its back legs. There was a thickish gray tail under the pants.

The kitchen door slammed open. Elaine stood there. “You haven't done it again!” she said.

The thing that was Chris backed away from her with the lips of its muzzle up to show its teeth. He looked like a smallish Alsatian dog by then.

I saw Elaine's face as she first saw him, and I swear she was almost crying. “Is it a wolf?” she said, sort of hoarse and loud.

Aunt Maria leaned on her sticks and inspected Chris. “I think so,” she said. He was cowering back against the table to keep away from her. “He richly deserved it,” she said.

Chris panicked then and raced round the room, long and low, trying to get away. He made one dart at the doorway, saw me, and headed the other way. I dodged back from the door into the hall. Partly it was the sight of his face with its panic-staring, light-colored wolf eyes. He was an animal, but he still looked like Chris. Partly I wanted to get the front door open and let him get away, but my knees were weak, and I had to lean against the wall. There were crashings and rushings from the dining room and I heard Aunt Maria say, “Open the window. Chase it out.”

Elaine said, “I'm damned if I want to get bitten, if you do! It's wild!” Then there was a bang and she swore and the kitchen door crashed. I think she'd left the back door open and Chris got out that way. I heard her say, “It's gone. Good riddance. Now what do you tell its mother, for goodness' sake?”

That was when I realized that none of them had seen me, except Chris for that split second. They were too occupied, too violent, somehow. I crept to the stairs and sat there, holding the banister. I was shaking. I couldn't believe what I'd seen. I still can't.

Aunt Maria said, “Dear Betty. So understanding. No trouble at all, dear.”

“If you say so,” Elaine sort of grunted. “What of little sister? Where's she?”

“Upstairs, dear,” said Aunt Maria. “I think she knows about the box, but that's all. No harm done. Do try to stop crying, dear. These things happen. He was getting far too dangerous, you know.”

“I'd gathered that,” Elaine said. “Do you take me for a fool?” She sniffed and coughed and asked, “Are you going to want me here?”

“Sit with me,” said Aunt Maria. “I feel tired. You can help with dear Betty.”

I crawled upstairs very softly on hands and knees and sat in Chris's room on the floor, trying to imagine the same low-down view that Chris would get of it now. All Chris's arrangements were there. The fishing line had torn the curtain and the thermometer had fallen on the floor, but they were a person's arrangements, clever things to do. I wondered what it would feel like to be Chris now. Then I thought, No! I must have imagined it. Or maybe she'll turn him back before Mum realizes. And I still found it almost impossible to believe.

The Mrs. Urs made it even harder to believe. I wasn't going to go downstairs at first, when the doorbell rang.

“Naomi, dear!” Aunt Maria shouted. “Answer the door, dear!”

And Elaine yelled, “Don't bother.
I'm
here. I'll do it.”

Then I realized I didn't dare stay upstairs or they'd realize I knew about Chris. I didn't want to turn into a wolf, too. So I went down. Elaine, who didn't even look as if she'd been crying, let alone chasing a wolf round someone's dining room, was cheerfully showing in a happy group of Zoe Green, Hester Bailey, and Phyllis Forbes. Every one of them made me want to cringe for a different reason, but I went through into the kitchen and turned out the cake Mum had baked. While I did, I thought carefully about the way I usually behaved. When I brought the cake in, I said, “Where's Chris, Auntie?”

“He went out, dear,” said Elaine. The literal truth, after all, but the “dear” was unusual. I thought, I must be very careful!

“Remember the silver teapot,” said Aunt Maria. “Will you be little mother this afternoon, Naomi, dear?”

So I did the tea and tried to behave as if nothing had happened. The others behaved as if nothing had happened, too.

It was creepy. All polite jolly chatter and everyone saying Aunt Maria looked so well today. I thought they all knew about Chris. Look at the way Elaine knew the moment it happened. But no one gave a sign, and Aunt Maria was just the same as usual. I felt a real traitor to Chris, pretending, too, but the more I think about it, the more I think the best way I can help Chris is by pretending and staying human.

I thought a lot, though. You do when something awful happens. I thought a lot about Dad when the news came that he'd gone over the cliff. Now I thought about Chris and the things he'd hinted at. I thought: It's between women and men in Cranbury, and the women are winning. The green box does it. I looked at Zoe Green's mad, gushing face. She was talking about ectoplasmic manifestations. And I thought, Aunt Maria did for your son. Why are you such friends with her? I looked at Hester Bailey and wondered if she knew all about our old car and Zenobia Bailey. She looked too sensible to have a relation like Zenobia—all brown tweeds and sensible thick stockings—but Aunt Maria is sort of related to us, after all. Then I looked at Phyllis Forbes. She has a pink, shiny face with a pointing nose and short, fairish hair like an old-fashioned schoolgirl. I wondered if she knew that half her orphans had just been irradiated with stuff from that green box. I don't think so. I think only Mr. Phelps knows that and I hope none of them ever finds out.

Mum came in as they were leaving. She looked all pink and fresh and cheerful. “Where's Chris got to?” she said.

“I think he went out, dear,” Aunt Maria said vaguely.

“Saw him going down the street,” Elaine backed her up.

“I expect he'll be in when he's hungry,” Mum said.