The Sword of Straw (21 page)

“Could we?” Nathan asked.

“It’s too dangerous. The marsh has spread—and there are the Urdemons.”

“Perhaps—I could manage something,” Nathan said, suddenly determined. He had transported Kwanji Ley from the prison pits, after all—even if she had ended up in the wrong place. And he had saved Eric, pulling him from Eos into his own world. Maybe, if he concentrated, he could take the princess to the woods her heart craved. He closed his eyes, retreating into his mind, pushing at the walls of thought. He had forgotten how unstable was his tenure in that universe. Too late, he felt the dream receding—heard an exclamation from the princess, anger or shock. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids were weighted, and sleep engulfed him like a wave.

J
UST WHEN
things are really bad, Hazel reflected, that’s when you know they’re about to get worse. That week at school, they got worse. Jonas was now ranged on the side of the enemy, and Ellen and the Sniggerers put a bag of crumpled Band-Aids in her desk, smeared with red and brown stains that might—or might not—have been felt-tip pen. The next day, the bag contained toilet paper, also stained, with a note:
From J.
Fizz, the Chief Sniggerer, leaned across to her in class and whispered: “That’s what he thinks of you. You’re just toilet slime. How does
that
feel, lover girl?” And then, to a friend: “Oh look, she’s crying! Her poor little heart is broken…”

“I’m not crying,” Hazel muttered. “It’s just, that disgusting scent you’re wearing makes my eyes water.”

“Actually, this is Vampiressa. It’s really exclusive—Ellen got it for me from her mum. She’s at the makeup counter in Boots in Crowford. What do you use—essence of piss?”

“If that’s supposed to be wit,” Hazel retorted, “keep trying.”

She was fighting her corner as best she could, but that afternoon someone stuffed a bottle of yellow fluid in her bag, labeled
PERFUME—JUST FOR YOU.
As she took it out, she heard the sniggers, stuttering behind her like grapeshot. Heh—heh—heh—heh…

On her way home she ran into Annie.

“Sorry—I wasn’t looking. Sorry—”

“That’s all right. You know, you ought to get your hair cut. Not short, just…different. You’ve got a pretty face but you never show it.”

“You’re the only one who thinks so.”

“Problem with the boys? Or is it school?” Hazel shrugged. “You and Nathan both. Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea? Tell me all about it—or not, if you don’t want to.”

Hazel shook her head, saying something vague about homework and her mother. The little kindness warmed her, but it also made her horribly conscious of her own treachery. Of course, the spell hadn’t worked properly with Jonas—lust didn’t count as love—and Ellen was still everyone’s center of attention, so maybe nothing would happen with Nathan, either. But she couldn’t face Annie—Annie who’d always been so nice to her—not after what she’d done. She couldn’t face anyone anymore. At home she crawled into her bedroom as into a burrow, and deadened her brain with her personal stereo, and watched
Carrie
on the computer.

On Wednesday, Ellen had the pimple.

Most teenagers have pimples from time to time, it goes with the territory, but not Ellen Carver. She had the kind of prettiness that’s based less on bone structure and shapeliness of feature than accessories like perfect skin and shiny hair—her skin being particularly good, with the smoothness and finish of a rose petal and the glow of a heroine in a California soap. But on Wednesday there it was, beside her nose, a tiny blister of greenish pus with a fleck of black in the center like an atom of caviar. The Sniggerers didn’t waver in their loyalty, though Fizz, who had several zits of her own, was seen to look at Ellen once or twice with a lingering smugness in her face. Hazel, largely oblivious to the finer points of Ellen’s physiognomy, noticed her peering anxiously in a hand mirror during history—a mistake, since the teacher also noticed it, and gave her a detention. Ellen, catching Hazel’s eye, glared at her as if she was to blame. A couple of the Sniggerers tagged after her on her way home from school, calling insults and giggling together, and alone in her lair Hazel warmed herself on the thought of Ellen’s pimple, saying viciously: “I hope she gets lots of them.”

The next morning, she did. Arriving in the classroom Hazel saw Ellen’s henchwomen surrounding her desk as though screening it from view. For once, there was no sniggering; in fact, they ignored Hazel completely. Only when the teacher arrived and they were forced to draw back could she see the cause. Ellen’s face had become a bubbling landscape of miniature volcanoes, some heaving and swelling, others exploded into craters that seemed, even at a distance, to be oozing mucus. As the class watched in fascinated horror another one burst and a small white wriggle emerged and dropped onto her desk, where it squirmed into a crack and disappeared. The teacher approached, concerned yet hesitant, evidently worried about catching something. The whispers started. As the day progressed, sinister rumors flew around the school: Hazel overheard someone insisting it was a new strain of sexually transmitted acne. Jonas was seen leaving a room when Ellen entered. The ranks of the Sniggerers thinned. Hazel, observing covertly, thought it was the best day she had had in ages—until the doubts slipped in. Supposing it wasn’t simply an aggressive case of acne? After all, acne didn’t give you maggots. Supposing it was magic…
I don’t care if it is,
Hazel told herself.
It serves her right, the spiteful cow.
But she wasn’t as happy about it as she wanted to be, and on Friday, when she got to school, she was nervous. Acne came and went, but with magic, anything could happen.

Ellen arrived just after her. She’d been sent to the doctor’s the previous morning but by the time she got there all the pimples had burst and she was assured cheerfully that the problem would clear up in a few days. “Just the usual adolescent stuff. What have you been eating lately?” Ellen’s perfect skin now resembled a bomb site, ridged and pitted and scabbed. Caught off guard by a twinge of fellow feeling, Hazel found herself hoping the scars would go away.

Then she noticed Ellen’s desk. It appeared to be quivering slightly as if in an earth tremor, and a faint humming noise was coming from it. Fleetingly, Hazel thought of the bags of dirty bandages and toilet paper left in
her
desk earlier that week. Judgment Day…But she didn’t feel good about it. Gingerly, Ellen lifted the lid.

The desk was full of flies. There were so many they had almost forced it open—as Ellen raised the top they came out in a huge, black, buzzing explosion, zooming in on her face, her hair, her open mouth. Screaming was a mistake. They filled the room, mobbing the Sniggerers, landing on exposed skin and eyes in great dark clots. Only Hazel was left completely untouched, but no one registered that. The maggots must have crawled into the desk and pupated overnight, but surely not in such numbers—hundreds, maybe thousands of fat shiny flies, swarming over pupil and teacher, feeding off human sweat, tears, saliva…
Dear God,
Hazel thought.
Make it stop. Please make it stop.
But the flies still streamed out of Ellen’s desk like bats from the mouth of hell.

It was much later in the day when they were all disposed of, after the advent of professional exterminators with insecticide sprays and fumigating equipment. Various traumatized students were sent home, but Ellen was still there. Hazel recalled belatedly hearing that she didn’t get on with her mother, who was struggling to maintain youth and prettiness and obviously jealous of filial competition. Hazel could imagine such a mother gloating over the ruin of her daughter’s looks, and the idea tweaked her conscience—or her heart. She felt she ought to say something, something kind and sympathetic, a sort of apology without actually acknowledging that it was her fault: that would be fatal. It was what Nathan would do—Nathan had always been her benchmark—only Nathan wouldn’t be in this mess. But she couldn’t find the right words, and anyway, it was impossible to talk in class. Too many people who might listen, and draw conclusions. Hazel had no intention of betraying herself again. She decided to catch Ellen afterward, when she was walking home. As long as the Sniggerers were out of the way…

But the Sniggerers had found events too much for their allegiance. Ellen sat alone at the back of the school bus. When she got off in Eade, Hazel followed her, at a safe distance, trying to look nonchalant, just in case anyone was watching. She knew where Ellen lived and realized she wasn’t taking the most direct route, through the middle of the village; instead, she cut down a path toward the river. Hazel headed for the woods when she wanted solitude; she wondered if, for Ellen, the riverbank provided a similar retreat. She passed the pixie-hat roofs of Riverside House, unoccupied for nearly a year now, and wandered down the meadow path beside the water. It was hot under heavy white clouds, the sort of stifling, midge-haunted heat you get before a summer storm. Clumps of wildflowers grew along the meadow’s edge: bladder campion, and mallows, and various worts. She remembered Bartlemy saying long ago that worts were supposed to heal whatever was in their name—woundwort for wounds and so on—though she couldn’t help wondering what St.-John’s-wort might cure. Bad attacks of sainthood, perhaps? Ahead, she saw Ellen bend down to pick a flower—a white campion—and gaze at it, spinning it between her fingers. The gesture made Hazel like her, though she couldn’t have explained why. A few moments later her quarry halted by the stump of a willow tree, deposited her bag on the ground, and sat down beside it idly surveying the river.

The Glyde was tidal, flowing into the sea at Grimstone harbor not far away, but this was a season of little movement in the water, and the stream drifted indolently, carrying a leaf or two toward the bank, swirling a broken twig in a sudden eddy. A dragonfly dipped and drank, making the most of its short life, iridescent even without the sun. Hazel watched it, her footsteps slowing, fishing for phrases she couldn’t find.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it—I didn’t know…
A long ripple ran through the water, as if below, in the weeds, something stirred. Hazel thought:
It must have been near here they found Great-Grandma.

Cloud on the sunset

wave on the tide;

death from the deep sea

swims up the Glyde…

The apology was forgotten. She had dropped her rucksack and was running along the path, calling: “Ellen! Look out!
Look out!
” In front of the willow, the water reared up in a wave, glass green, translucent, ten feet high—a wave with hands. It curled over the bank, over Ellen, clutching at her with boneless fingers, dragging her down into the river. She struggled, trying to get a grip on tree root and grass tuft, but its strength was the strength of the maelstrom, the pull of currents at the ocean’s heart. She had no more power to resist than a torn leaf. “Stop!” Hazel screamed. “Lilliat!” But there was no Lilliat anymore. Only Nenufar the naiad, goddess of the deep. Nenufar whose heart was colder than a fish and whose greed was stronger than the tide—Nenufar who lusted for the Grail and the power it would unlock—Nenufar who would kill without pause, without thought, because human life was less to her than the life of the smallest jelly swimming in the great sea. Hazel groped in her mind for the spellwords she had read in her great-grandmother’s book, Commands of dismissal and banishment, but memory failed her. She reached Ellen and managed to seize her arms—felt the straining of her own fragile muscles against the vast sucking force of the water. She, too, began to slide down the bank…

And then the wave withdrew, sinking back into the river, and the clutching hands melted into a frill of foam that settled on the surface for an instant and vanished. All that remained was a ridge of bubbles riding a ripple that sped downstream and was lost in the heavy stillness of the summer afternoon. Hazel dragged Ellen back up the bank; she was wet through, mud-smeared, shivering from the shock.

“What w-was it?” Ellen seemed to have forgotten that this was her enemy, the object of her contempt. “What
happened
?”

“A freak wave?” Hazel suggested.

“It felt like hands—hands p-pulling me into the water…”

“The river current can be very strong,” Hazel offered. “Maybe it was a what-d’you-call-it—a bore.”

“I wasn’t bored.” A little late, Hazel realized Ellen wasn’t making a pun. She had obviously never heard of such things.

“You ought to get home,” Hazel said. “You could come to my place—it’s nearer. Get dry—have some tea or something.”

Maybe they’d be friends now. She’d saved Ellen’s life. Of course it was Hazel who’d put her in danger in the first place—but Ellen didn’t know that.

“No thanks.” Ellen sounded grudging. “Were you—were you—following me?”

“No.”

“I came here to be quiet, to b-be
on my own.
It’s been so awful…You were f-following me. You’re sick. What do you want—to collect some of my scabs?”

Nothing had changed. She’d felt bad about Ellen, wanted to help, rescued her from the water spirit—but it made no difference.

Only to me,
said a voice in her head.

“Look, I just wanted to say sorry. About everything that’s happened. That’s all.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Hazel looked at her for a second from behind her hair. A strange expression crossed the other girl’s face—a shadow of suspicion, a trace element of fear. She drew back a little.

Hazel said: “I’ll walk home with you.”

Ellen was shivering in spasms now, her teeth chattering. The clouds had thickened; thunder rolled far off. Lightning flickered, unobtrusive in the daylight. Rain began to fall in big heavy drops. Soon Hazel was almost as wet as her companion, but when they reached the house, Mrs. Carver didn’t ask her in. She was an older version of Ellen, with very yellow hair and the pout set in faint lines around her mouth. She fussed over her daughter in a complaining way, as if Ellen had deliberately engendered her own misfortunes to cause trouble for her parent. Hazel was glad to get away despite the weather, hurrying home as fast as she could, to be genuinely fussed over by Lily Bagot in a way she would normally have evaded, given low-calorie hot chocolate because that was all they had, and sat by the fan heater in the living room watching
Neighbours
while she dried out.