Nieve (4 page)

She did, too. She slept as if
she
were in a coma, or as if she'd spent the night underground, dreamless in a deep cavern. When she woke, she even had strands of cobweb trailing across her chin as if she had emerged from some hidden, spidery place. Nieve brushed the cobwebs away with her pyjama sleeve, not much liking the idea of spiders taking shortcuts across her face during the night. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and blinked a couple of times. It was still fairly dark in her room, yet she had a feeling that it was late morning. For a minute or two she lay listening to a soft tapping sound on her window. That creepy plant outside came to mind . . . and then . . .
rain
, she realized, her heart sinking. Then
school
, and her heart sank farther. Not that she minded school, but a dreary Monday, and the smell of damp clothes in the classroom, and math, and the hands on the classroom clock moving so slowly that they seemed to be injured . . . then
no
, it was Sunday!

Nieve sat up. Sunday, no problem. A rainy Sunday indoors was bearable. She was never at a loss for things to do, drawing, reading. Her friend Malcolm might be over his measles by now and they could get together at his place or hers, play some cards or crokinole. She was a wizard at crokinole. Or, even better, they could start a newspaper. This would give Nieve some journalism experience, see if she was suited for it.

Getting dressed, she considered what to call the paper. Not
The Star
or
The Sun
, both of which were taken already.
The Moonbeam
? Too cute.
The Beacon
? Too boring. The Comet maybe . . . or how about
The Laser
? Yeah, that was more like it: incisive, probing, up-to-the-minute news.

The house was hushed and dim, no sign of the parents. Nieve made her way to the kitchen and fixed herself an ample breakfast: cereal, toast with loads of butter and jam, juice. She was careful not to make too much noise. Her parents might feel better if they got to sleep in.
She
certainly felt better, although there was something at the back of her mind struggling to get to the front. Something she was supposed to do? Didn't matter, if it was important, she'd remember eventually. If it was about burning that freaky plant out front, the day was too wet. She might try cutting it down, but pictured it fighting back, or springing back up, twice the size. She pictured it
bleeding
all over her . . . and then she told herself to wise up. That wasn't possible.

When Nieve finished breakfast, she carried the dishes to the sink and called Malcolm's place. No answer. She hung up and tried again, in case she'd punched in the wrong number. There was still no answer. Her luck, he and his mother were away somewhere. Malcolm must be better, which was great. Maybe they'd gone out for a morning hike . . . in the rain . . . .

Nieve wandered into the living room and looked around. It was awfully quiet, not to mention gloomy. She turned on the lamp beside the couch and the light that poured out made the whole room cozier and more inviting. What would it be like to produce light simply by snapping your fingers, she wondered? She tried this, although finger-snapping wasn't one of her finer talents, and nothing happened of course, but there was no harm in pretending that it had. FINGER-SNAPPING GIRL GENERATES LIGHT read a headline in her (so far) imaginary paper.

Rain was pounding down on the roof and she could hear thunder in the distance. When she walked over to the window and gazed out, she saw that the front yard had huge puddles in it, and the spruce trees that lined the walk were twitching and shaking their branches as if they were mightily angry. A vein of lightning streaked across the sky and the boom of thunder that followed was a whopper, a house-shaking
crash
that made her jump. Somebody was getting pummeled.

Nieve had always found storms exciting, and when younger had begged to go out in her swimsuit and jump around in the rain. Silly, since she could have gotten fried by lightning, and she'd never been allowed to anyway. Storms terrified her mother. During a storm, Sophie usually hid in the downstairs closet with a shopping bag on her head. Nieve smiled at that, and it occurred to her to check the closet in case her mum
was
in there. The moment she turned away from the window to do this, though, the front door sprang open.

“Dad!” She whirled around. He'd given her a start. “I didn't know you were up.”

“Yep.” His hair was plastered to his head and his sneakers made a slurping noise as he pried them off.

“What were you doing outside?”

He unzipped his sodden windbreaker, which was sticking to him like an extra skin, and peeled it off. “Walking.”

Weren't single-word answers the kind only kids delivered when they were trying to be evasive? Apparently not.

“In
this
weather?”

“Great for ducks,” he said.

“I suppose.” She also supposed that corny humour was better than none. “Is Mum up? I was going to check the closet.”

Sutton gave her a blank look. A blank, wet look, as there were drips of water hanging off his nose and chin.

“You
know
, in case she's hiding from the storm.”

“I already checked there,” he said, heading toward the bathroom.

She watched him go, watched as his socks left big wet splats on the floor.
Ducks
, she thought.

Nieve spent the rest of the day working on her newspaper, although she found it hard to concentrate.
Where was her
mother?
She drew a picture of Artichoke for the front cover and wrote a story about him, about how Dr. Morys had found him, a puppy abandoned on the side of the road (people from the city often dumped their unwanted pets in the countryside, which infuriated her, but she tried to give her story a neutral tone). She wrote about what a smart and loyal dog he was, and how he had gone missing. Missing . . . where
was
her mother? Every time she asked herself this question, a knot in her stomach tightened. By dinnertime her stomach was practically all knot and she couldn't have forced a single thing down. Not that any cooking smells were wafting out of the kitchen.

But then . . . Sophie reappeared. She walked through the front door at six-thirty carrying a pizza! And not only was she back, but she was back to her old self. Except that she was chattier than usual; she hurried through the house, talking a mile a minute. Nieve didn't care. She didn't even care that the pizza had spinach on it. Relief swept through her, unpicking the knot on its way, easily undone as a slipknot. She scrambled to get some plates on the table. This was more like it! She was ravenous.

As she ate slice after slice of pizza, she watched her mother's animated expression with pleasure, and listened to her talking about the storm with mounting interest. This was definitely going into her paper, front page news.

“So many trees down, it was incredible.” Sophie was waving her hands around, too worked up to eat. “Power out all over the city, I
did
tell you I was going to the city, didn't I? Nora Mullein called last night, you remember her, don't you? Friend from way back, maybe you don't. She was all in a stew about . . . nothing really, some personal problems, but I had to go, she was flipping out. I'm
positive
I left a note beside the phone. No? Gosh, sorry you two, hope you didn't worry . . . .”

Sutton was also watching Sophie and smiling. Smiling
and
frowning. “Where did you get that ring?” he asked.

“This?” Sophie looked at her hand in surprise. “Oh
this
.” Nieve had noticed it, too, a gold pinky ring set with a jet black stone. “Piece of junk. Nora insisted I take it, guilty for dragging me all the way in to the city, I guess.” She pulled it quickly off her finger and slipped it into her pocket.

Sutton shifted uneasily in his chair and continued to frown.

Nieve didn't want to think about what the frown meant, didn't want another dinner ruined, but when she climbed into bed that night, she did have to admit to herself that things weren't quite right with her mother. But they were more right than they
had
been. Whatever the not-right thing was, it didn't get in the way of sleep. The storm had spent itself and she drifted off listening to the rain
plicking
softly against her window. It sounded like a clock that kept wonky, imperfect time, but had a hypnotic effect just the same.

It was only the next day that the forgotten matter that had been idling at the back of her mind finally worked its way to the front.

–Five–
Jenny Green-Teeth

H
omework! Nieve was confounded. She had completely forgotten. What was even more confounding was that the
whole
class had forgotten . . . except Alicia Overbury. Alicia marched up to Mrs. Crawford's desk with her finished assignment, delivered it with a flourish, then returned to her own desk and sat down, primly, but not without first giving the whole class a satisfied smirk.

The weird thing was that the assignment had promised to be fun, everyone had been keen on it. It involved a report, with drawings, on some aspect of folklore and old-time beliefs. So you could write about night-hags or changelings, magic talismans or hell hounds, whatever you wanted. Nieve had chosen a creature that Gran had told her about called Jenny Green-Teeth. Jenny was a water-demon who lurked at the bottom of deep wells and ponds. If children got too close, she stretched out her long arms and grabbed them, pulling them under and drowning them. Sometimes she was called Nelly Long-Arms and lived in trees. At night you could hear her moaning and sighing like wind in the branches. Scaring the wits out of kids to make them behave, or to keep them safe, was Nieve's take on this. Still, since hearing about Jenny Green-Teeth she herself had been more wary of the pond out back of her place. Pure make-believe, but once you knew about her, she somehow became more real. Nieve could easily picture her in all her grim, stretchy-armed scariness – a warty, tack-toothed Jenny, horrible enough to make your hair stand on end (like Mr. Mustard Seed's fur the morning he ran terrified through the door), and she relished the idea of drawing a picture of her. How could she have forgotten?

Mrs. Crawford, normally mild-mannered, was a bit horrible herself about the homework. She was convinced that the mass-forgetfulness had been some sort of conspiracy the class had cooked up to balk her and wouldn't listen to their protests of innocence. She gave them a severe talking-to, plus extra math homework, plus a detention after class. Everyone, that is, except Alicia, who managed to smirk throughout the whole day, which must have been hard on her face, but obviously worth it to her. The most confounding thing, though, was that by the end of the day, Mrs. Crawford
had forgotten
. Had this ever happened before? Never.

“Tomorrow, class, your folklore assignments are due,” she said, directly after the three-thirty bell rang. “I must say that I'm looking forward to them very much.”

“But . . . but, the detention!” said Alicia. “Don't you
remember?

”

“Detention? If you'd like to stay after class Alicia, I'm sure I can find something for you to do.”

“What!”

“Don't say what, dear. Now everyone scoot. You, too, Alicia, or you
will
have to stay. Goodness!”

“What are
you
grinning at,” Alicia snarled as she shoved past Nieve on her way out the door. “Snotface.”