Nieve (2 page)

Gran was wearing her dress inside-out. This wasn't because she was dotty, or ‘daft,' as she might say. She was as sharp as anything, and even laughed about the superstitions, of which the inside-out dress was one. It was meant to ward off harm, as was the blue woolen thread she wore tied around her wrist, and the acorn she carried in her pocket. “It's more fun to believe in these foolish freets than not,” she'd often said to Nieve. “Habits leftover from the Old Country, pet.” She always smiled when she said it, amused at herself but content nonetheless with her contrary cast of mind. “They're part of our family history, you mustn't forget.”

When Nieve had arrived at Gran's to tell her what had happened, she paused before leaping over the broom that lay across the threshold of the cottage. She liked leaping over it when she came to visit, but had to wonder if Gran's precautions would stop bad luck from entering. The broom didn't stop bad news. News that she herself was bringing.

Gran wiped her eyes with her sleeve, as Sutton had done, but her tears weren't a rehearsal. Nieve felt her own eyes well up. She said, “Artichoke's gone, too. He ran off.”

Artichoke was Dr. Morys' dog, a black lab who seemed to wag his whole body when he wagged his tail, so happy he was to see you.

“Oh,
Nieve.
”

A fat black spider with red spots on its abdomen dashed across Gran's oak table and wedged itself into the crack where the leaf fit when she needed a bigger table for company. They both watched it go, watched it
squeeze
itself into the crack and disappear.

Gran then raised her eyes to meet Nieve's, eyes of the very same seer-blue shade, and said, “They're coming, you know.”

And they did.

–Two–
The Weed Inspector

I
n the beginning there weren't so many. Nieve encountered the first one while she was wandering along the road outside of town. Not that she knew it for sure right then. Gran had warned her about the wandering. Normally this was not a problem for she was accustomed to going off by herself to climb trees in the woods, or run through the fields, or simply hang out. She liked the outdoors. All of it. She liked the cushiony feel of moss, the yellowy yellow of buttercups, the medicinal smell of cedar, the sweetness of wild strawberries, the sound of wind in the poplar leaves
tappity tapping
. Not to mention the squirrels, red-winged blackbirds, foxes, grasshoppers, bluebirds, ants, snakes – every living thing, including the rocks. She especially liked the land that bordered her town, as familiar to her as her own arms and legs, and yet inexhaustible as far as curiosity went. And hers went pretty far.

Anyway, she was out because she couldn't be in. It was too weird. Her parents were having a bout of dysfunction. Usually their partnership, business and otherwise, worked like a well-oiled machine. But not this day. Nieve had been sitting in the kitchen, drinking a glass of ginger ale (treat! it was for her upset stomach), and flipping through the newspaper. Partly because she was considering a career in journalism and was testing the depth of her interest, and partly because she was searching for news of
them
. Who were they,
what
were they? She knew she needed to prepare, but didn't know how. Maybe, just maybe I'll find a clue in the paper, she had thought, something strange might have happened in another town. She hadn't found any stories of unusual or inexplicable occurrences (only the regular bad and sad news), but every time she had turned a page she got the impression of
something
slipping away out of sight, a something that slithered behind the lettering of the newsprint before she could see what it was. It sort of shimmered, and then was gone. She had begun to turn the pages faster and faster, trying to catch sight of it, and couldn't. It was immensely frustrating, and she was concentrating hard, and rattling the paper like mad, when she'd heard her mother's voice raised to an unnaturally high pitch.

“Sut-
ton
! A baby can cry better than
that
.”

To Nieve's ear it sounded like a slap, only made of words. Her parents were in the living room, rehearsing for the big sympathy gig. She figured the job must have been commissioned by some wealthy hotshot who needed a flood of heartfelt tears to make himself feel better, but she'd been too preoccupied herself to ask about it.

Her dad said, “C'mon, Sophie, I'm doing my best.”

“No you're
not
, you're
not
even trying. You're
wasting
my time.”

Slap, slap, slap. That was the sound of Nieve's mother storming out of the room, her flip-flops whapping against her heels.

Nieve had put down the paper and walked softly down the hall, stopping at the entrance of the living room. Sutton was sitting on the couch, staring at nothing – or at nothing she could see. He looked as though he might cry for real. She knew this had to be humiliating for a professional weeper, and instantly stepped back out of view. Then she had very quietly, and gratefully, slipped out the front door.

She was kicking a stone along the road that leads out of town and raising some dust, the kind that felt as silky-soft as talcum powder. Earlier, she'd been crouched down drawing her initial – a loopy, fancy N – in this dust when she spotted the stone on the side of the road and took up stone-kicking instead. The stone was white and egg-shaped, richly speckled with flecks of black granite. Nicely rounded, it was practically made for kicking along the road – so that's what she did. She was kicking, walking, kicking, thinking, while the stone bounced and rolled ahead.

She didn't like it, this thing with her parents. Dealing with unhappiness was their job not their problem. Unhappiness didn't belong in their house, but somehow it had crept in, unnoticed. It was like a virus, not something you could see, but something that made you sick. Nieve wondered what an unhappiness germ would look like if you could capture it and observe it under a high-powered microscope. Ugly, splotchy, and
thrawn
, as Gran would say. Twisted.

A bee zimmed past her ear. Then another zimmed past, and another. Beeline, she thought. She heard an odd sound above her head and looked up. Three ducks were flying southward, their wings making a whistling noise as they rowed rapidly through the air. Ducks always made flying look like such hard work, which it probably was, although other birds seemed to pull it off more effortlessly. Just their style, she supposed.
Why do ducks fly south?
Dr. Morys had asked before he collapsed.

Nieve studied the fields on either side of the road. It was awfully quiet. No other insect activity, no birds, no breezes shushing through the tall grasses and wildflowers. Well,
she
could make some noise . . . and she gave the stone an extra hard kick. It shot away, then skipped once
pok
, twice
pak
, and tumbled into the ditch. She ran ahead to find it. Easy enough, since the spot where it had vanished was marked by a patch of dried teasels, spiky and brown.

When she got to the spot, though, she found more than she had bargained for. If Alicia Overbury saw what met Nieve's eye, she would have run screaming back to town. But Nieve was not a screamer, nor a coward. (And being endlessly curious, she wasn't easily routed, either.) She
did
catch her breath. A man was lying in the ditch . . . asleep? She wasn't sure, as he didn't look too healthy, too alive. His skin was a greeny-white shade, and he didn't appear to be breathing. He was dressed in a rumpled black suit and was wearing dusty old shoes with triple-knotted black laces. His clothes were stippled with burs and beggar's ticks, and he had a sprig of poison ivy in his buttonhole, which was not
too
surprising. What
was
surprising, and Nieve squirmed inwardly to see it, was that the stone she had been kicking was resting on the man's forehead – exactly in the middle. She knew she hadn't harmed him in any way, but still.

She stood staring at it and at him, wondering what to do. Go for help obviously. Fetch Mayor Mary, who was temporarily filling in for Dr. Morys and who always knew what to do in a sticky situation.

The man's eyes popped open. He said, “Your name?” He didn't just say it, either; he grumped it, the way some crabby official might.

But he was alive at least. She stared at him and he stared back. His eyes were the strangest she'd ever seen, like something dug up out of the ground. Deep green and hard, like emeralds, but not as nice.

“Nieve,” she answered, and instantly regretted it. Somehow she felt as if her name had been snatched out of her mouth. She felt as if she'd given something away that she should not have.

He smiled faintly, then reached for the stone and plucked it off his forehead. For a moment she thought he was going to say
Is this yours?
the way a teacher does when you're caught in class with school contraband – gum, or comics, or a note from a friend on the other side of the room. He didn't say anything however. Instead, he closed his long-fingered hand over the stone (seriously dirty fingernails), enclosing it in his fist. When he opened it again, he was holding, not the stone, but a mass of tiny, black, wriggling
things
.

Nieve gasped. They weren't insects. No heads, no legs. Maybe larvae of some sort. They were tear-shaped and oily-looking, squirming in his palm. She took a cautious step backward (an Alicia Overbury response might have been more sensible after all). He nodded at that, approvingly, and then flung his hand outward scattering the twitching
whatevers
. Most flew into the ditch or the field, but one landed at Nieve's feet on the road's verge. She watched it slip like water into the dry, gravelly ground. She continued to watch, amazed, as something then began to poke through. It was a black shoot that grew twisting into a black stem and upon which immediately sprouted leathery leaves, then thorns, then a glossy, blackishred flower that smelled like rotten meat.

“You're a magician?” She was determined to keep any giveaway quivers or catches out of her voice.

“Negative. Weed Inspector.” He gazed at her as though
she
were a weed.

“What do you inspect them for?” She'd never heard of such a job.

“Viciousness,” he said, rising up. “Noxiousness,” he got to his feet. “Rudeness.” He climbed out of the ditch and stepped onto the road, placing himself too near for her liking. “All of the required qualities.”

“Weeds can't be rude,” she said. “Or vicious.”

The Weed Inspector raised an eyebrow. The black plant belched (
ew
) then leaned toward her, hissing like snake. Nieve didn't move, even though the thing frightened her. She stood her ground and glared at it, giving it the baleful stare she reserved for people who really annoy her, and it backed off, righted itself and fell silent. He
was
a magician, she decided, but what kind of magician she couldn't guess. She looked around and saw that more of the nasty plants had sprung up in the field, corkscrewing and writhing into the air, and flowering (darkly) with astonishing speed. Other plants near them, normal plants – grasses and flowers – withered and dropped out of sight as if they'd been yanked into the earth. The black weeds
were
noxious, but as far as she knew this was not a quality required for anything.

“Are you from the city?” Nieve asked. Whenever people in town complained about lousy roads, or a lack of services, or new laws that made no sense, the city was usually invoked.

“The City,” he agreed. “The Black City. You're not as stupid as you look.”

“I'm not stupid!” Talk about
rude
.

He gazed down at her, green eyes burrowing into her head as if he were X-raying her brain. “You will be. Soon.
Very
stupid.” Dribbles of mist had begun to leak out of the seams of his coat.

Nieve turned on her heel and walked away, briskly, not so fast as to lose face, but fast enough to save her life. The man was mad and dangerous. She glanced back quickly over her shoulder.

He was gone.

–Three–
Night Run

N
ieve brushed some clingy cobwebs away from her wardrobe mirror and studied her reflection.
Do
I look stupid? she asked herself. No way. She looked the same as ever: alert and intent, friendly, but no fool. During dinner she had not mentioned the Weed Inspector to her parents and now wondered if she should have. Was
that
being stupid? Would stupidity sneak up on her the way unhappiness had snuck up on them? The next time she gazed in the mirror, which didn't happen very often – she wasn't stuck on herself – it might be with dimmed blue eyes and a dummy's vacant stare.