Foretold (3 page)

Thane added, “Anyway you’re too late. We got here first.”

“Why aren’t you at the Landing?” Colin asked. “It’s no secret Scylla Grey has a candle out for
you
tonight. Lucky dog.”

Scylla Grey?
If it had lurched before, now Pippin’s heart clenched tight as a fist. Scylla Grey was a ship captain’s daughter down at Mosey Landing. She was the prettiest girl Pippin had ever seen, with the whitest skin and the nicest frocks. Her father brought her fantastical things from all over the seas, like fans made of dragon fins, and a lace mantle knit of sea foam. She carried herself like a princess, and led a blinking Manx cat with her everywhere on a pink velvet leash. She wasn’t even horrible, which was the worst thing about her. Scylla always had a nice word ready, and sometimes bought cakes for the tots—the good kind, even, with icing.

Did
she
want Matty too? Pippin felt her hopes slipping away. What chance could an apple seed have next to Scylla
Grey? Or next to Ava, for that matter, or even Elsie. They didn’t look like tots playing dress-up, and none of them needed chest tonic, that was sure.

Matty was glowering. “What are you waiting for?” Colin asked him. “Go get your own girl and leave us be.”

Matty said, “That’s not the way it works. You don’t barge into a girl’s house with your sweaty hands. Anyone who tried that on my sisters would get a gun barrel tucked in his ear.”

“Well, Ava Gentry’s not your sister, so arse off,” said Thane. “Take Pippin. We didn’t really want her anyway.”

Matty glanced at Pippin, and she couldn’t read his face, but sure he wasn’t jumping at the chance. “No one’s
having
me,” she cut in quick, before he had time to say no thanks. “Or Ava or Elsie either.” And she marched over to the bell and gripped the rope. “You better go on, all of you, or I’ll pull.”

When she said
all of you
, Matty looked that surprised, and wounded too.

Like how it feels?
she thought with a pinch of satisfaction. “Good night, lads,” she said, all low and final, with that glimmer Nasty Mary had taught her that made her eyes go silver as a night cat’s. The Breeds got spooked but tried not to show it. They cursed plenty, going off, but Matty lingered.

“Do I have to go too, Cathy?” he asked. He was the only one who called her that.

“That depends. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same.” He came closer, studying her breeze-spun hair, and she got a pang, worrying suddenly that it made her look not like a fairy but only a girl too young for marrying. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

He asked, “Shouldn’t you be at home waiting for your phantom?”

Should I?
she wondered, still stung by the Breeds’ words,
the only way she’d see a phantom was if she caught it on its way someplace else. Well, she didn’t want any stupid boy who didn’t want her, not even Matty. Sidestepping his question, she said, “I saw the Breeds and I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

“Louts,” said Matty with a frown. “Sure they’re not the only ones. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a fair few of our mams met not phantoms on St. Faith’s Day but our fathers out for a prowl.”

“Do you think it isn’t true, then? About phantoms?”

His eyes were deep in shadow, so Pippin couldn’t see the green she knew was there, nor even the usual sparkle. “Oh, I know it’s true,” he said.

“You do?”

“Sure, for haven’t I sent my own phantom down to the house I want it to go to?”

Pippin’s heart missed a beat. “You … you have?”

“I have. Not that I wouldn’t rather go myself like those two, and see my girl with my own eyes, but that isn’t how it works. Gentlemen send phantoms.”

Down
, he’d said. Down to the Landing. To Scylla. Pippin stared off into the dark, imagining Scylla lovely in the candlelight—and sure her hair would be smooth as a waterfall, not wild as a bird’s nest!—while Matty’s phantom floated in the window. She thought her heart might fall into two pieces like split kindling. She didn’t say a word, too afraid of bursting into sobs.

“Of course,” Matty said, and he chewed his cheek and gave a stone a little kick, “maybe she won’t want to see it. Maybe she’ll send it away.”

Was he joking, or was he really worried? He had to know that any girl would be glad of his phantom! He might not be the handsomest of all the boys, but he was better than
handsome. He was
electric
—clever and able and full of life. He was the one everyone wanted to sit beside, and who they counted on to fix whatever troubles, and whose singing could spread a sudden hush and make folks close their eyes and smile. Tots and animals followed him around, and girls too, no more subtle than the big-pawed pups. And of course there was the little house he was building—all the girls were mad for it, already decorating it in their dreams.

Pippin thought she might as well yank down those gingham curtains she’d strung up in her own foolish fancies. She was never marrying Matty Blackgrace. “Sure she’ll be glad to see you, Matty,” she told him, choking on the words.

“You really think so?” He sounded so relieved, and Pippin nodded, mute. Matty was looking at her funny, so she dredged up a smile, and it felt like a dead thing from the bottom of the river, but it must have fooled him well enough, because he smiled back, sweet as anything.

“Shouldn’t you be getting home, Cathy? Can I walk you?”

“But didn’t you just come from back there?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m only wandering.”

Wandering
, thought Pippin, glum. Keeping his mind off his worries over Scylla is what. She thought of her dreamcake lying where she’d left it, her initials sad and lonely in its golden crust, and she thought of her house, sad and lonely too, and none of it mattered anyway because she’d broken the spell by talking. She wasn’t seeing any phantoms tonight, least of all the one she wanted.

She took a big breath and tried to sound breezy. “I’m not going home. I’ve got other plans.”

“What plans?” Matty asked.

What seized her then? Pippin had no plans, of course,
only this wrenching realization that there was no end of lonesomeness coming for her, not soon and maybe not ever. Right now Matty’s phantom might be with Scylla, but … 
he
was here—the
real
him. For the moment, anyway.

She put out her chin and, feeling as wild as her unpinned hair, said, “Come with me and I guess you’ll see.”

“Okay,” agreed Matty, easy as that, and when Pippin started walking—she didn’t even know where to—he fell into step beside her.

The orchard was quiet, and they could hear the music from down at the landing, faint and foreign, those twanging weird instruments from over the Bigwater.

If it had been daytime, they’d have been able to see the Bigwater from here: a faint blue edge to the south where the sky climbed down. Sometimes it was just all one hazy blue and you couldn’t make sky from sea, but other days the water was dark as ink. “Think you’ll ever cross the sea?” Pippin asked.

“The
sea
?” Matty seemed surprised. “No. I never even thought of it before.”

“I will.” Pippin heard her voice say it, though it came as news to her own self.

“You will?” Matty sounded skeptical. “
How
will you?”

“I’ll fly.”

“Oh. You mean after you turn? You better pick a strong bird, then. It’s a long way for a small creature.”

“Small! I’m not going to be small anymore. I’m going to be a
dragon
, with wings like lacquer fans and jets of fire breath for roasting up goose suppers midair!” Pippin spread out her arms, imagining them wings.
Why not?
she asked herself. At least she had flying to look forward to, whatever else happened—or didn’t.

Didn’t. Didn’t. Didn’t
. What an awful word, and an awful
fate: a whole long life of nothing ever happening! How would she bear it?

“There are no more dragons,” Matty pointed out.

“Well, there will be. There will be
one
, and it will be me.”

“That sounds lonesome, to be the only one of something.”

“I’m the only Pippin, aren’t I? I’ll just be lonesome in the sky instead of lonesome on the ground.”

“Maybe you don’t have to be lonesome at all, Cathy,” he said gently.

“Like you know about it,” she said. She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding bitter.

“As it happens, I do.”

“You? How could
you
know?”

“What do you mean,
me
? Don’t you think everybody’s lonesome until they’re with their one true person, settled and sure, for life?”

Yes
, thought Pippin, wanting to shout it and cry it. Imagining Scylla falling asleep with a glad smile, she said, “Well then, after tomorrow, no more worries for you.”

“I’m starting to wonder,” he said.

Pippin hissed a sigh. “Oh hush, Matthew Blackgrace. You’re in no danger of lonesomeness. Everybody loves
you
.”

“Don’t you think people love you too, Cath?”

He was very earnest. She thought he must be feeling sorry for her. She didn’t want his pity. Her wildness was growing. It felt like a trapped cat trying to scrabble out. “What do dragons care for love?” she asked, then put back her head and ran ahead leaping, pretending to fly.

Matty came after, running too. Pippin twirled and whirled, wilding up her hair even worse. What did it matter now? When she finally stopped and faced him, her chest was heaving with exertion. He was standing very still, his
hands shoved in his pockets, watching her. “Do you remember playing fairy ring?” he asked.

Did he think she could have forgotten? It was a game they’d played as children, when they’d pretend to have strayed into a fairy ring where they had to dance until they fell down dead, and the last one still dancing was the winner.

“Of course,” she said. “I always won.”

“I always
let
you.”

“You never!”

“I did. But just so I could watch you dance.”

Pippin blushed. What did he mean, teasing her? She turned away.

“Why don’t you want to get married?” he blurted. The question was out of nowhere, and it was like a little punch in the heart. Pippin stiffened, her back still to him. “I mean,” he added, “you not going home and all.”

“Well, it’s hardly fair, is it? Girls just have to wait and see who comes, while boys get to pick?”

“That’s not how it is. Asking’s just the hard part. It’s the girl who decides.”

Pippin looked back. “And what if the girl wants to do the asking for a change?”

“
Do
you?” He stood full in the moonlight now, and she still couldn’t make out the green of his eyes. He looked different tonight, she thought.
New
in some way she couldn’t name. Was it because he was a man now, come to his St. Faith’s Day?

And herself, then—was she a woman? Had they left boy and girl behind, to be facing each other as man and woman? Did it happen just like that?

“Do I what?” she asked, flustered to all of a sudden be thinking grown-up thoughts like she’d opened a door to
them. And … wasn’t he looking at her like he was too? She imagined tangling up with him, but not like kittens, and she remembered his broad pale chest, when she’d come around the side of the Blackgrace house in the summer and caught sight of him without his shirt, sluicing a bucket of well water over his head. Smooth it still was, but no boy’s chest, to be sure, and those were no boy’s lips either.

She tipped up her face like she was under some spell, looking at his lips, and then at his eyes, which were fixed on hers, unblinking, and then his lips again. A new wanting bloomed in her. He was so near, but he was so
tall
. Like she was pulled by a puppet string, Pippin rose to tiptoe, but she was such a minuscule specimen it didn’t bring her nearly close enough. If she was going to get a kiss—just one kiss to go on—Matty would have to bend closer … but … he didn’t.

He
didn’t
. When she rose on her toes, he straightened up taller, taking his lips even farther out of reach. It was as good as a slap.

Pippin dropped back flat on her soles, and when a big wind came and tossed her hair all about, she was that glad to hide her mortification inside the tangle of it. Somewhere nearby an owl loosed a mournful note, and it could have come straight from her own heart.

“Is there someone you want to ask to marry you, Cathy?” asked Matty, the cruelty of him!

Her heart turned hard. She said, “I told you. I’m going to be a dragon. I’m going to cast my sharp shadow over the whole world, just fly and fly and eat spice and scare kings.”

“I never knew you wanted to see the world,” he said.

I don’t!
“I suppose I should let you read my diary so you’ll know every single thing about me?”

“Okay, fool girl.” He was shaking his head, kind of smiling but kind of dark around the eyes too. “Let’s say you
can
turn dragon, and I don’t doubt your witching. You’ve still got your whole life to live first, before you change. What about that?”

Whole life. Whole long empty life.

“What about it? Nothing says I can’t change right now, if I’m through with being human.”

“Through with—?” Matty looked shocked. “Cathy, what are you talking about?”

She didn’t mean it.

Did she?

No, of course not. She would never surrender her life and body and humanity just because a boy didn’t love her! Fool girl? Fool girl indeed. Someday she would fly, yes, dragon or bird, and as for all the life up till then, she would endure it, even if she didn’t get to have her one true person and an end to lonesomeness.

She wouldn’t have him pitying her, though, rubbing in the empty years that lay ahead for her while his own phantom was off settling his future. “Oh, why not?” She flung the words. “What do you care? Enjoy your life, Matthew Blackgrace!”

Tears started in her eyes and she wheeled around and ran away and left him there, and the owl’s cry floated after her, just as sad as sad.