Chime by Franny Billingsley

Author:Franny Billingsley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-02-01T23:00:00+00:00

17

Mooncrumbs

I awoke at once. Darkness leaned on me, panting in my ear. I looked over the do-not-cross line into the moonlit window. Eldric’s face floated in the glass. I clutched the neck of my nightdress before sliding out of bed. There was too much Briony, too little nightdress.

I pulled at the casement, released his face from the glass. He reached through the window, his beautiful hand, his five beautiful fingers outspread. If I were a poet, I’d write about hands, nothing but hands. I touched the whorled petals of my fingertips to his; our hands made the roof of a house.

But, wait: Eldric had been ill only five days ago, the night of the garden party. How could he be so entirely recovered?

“The time has come,” he whispered. “Time for wolfgirl to come into the night.”

Into the night! An electrical thrill ran between my shoulder blades. “But my nightdress?”

“Into the night!”

I gave him my hand. My whorled fingertips bloomed. Into the night!

The roof was slippery with moonlight. A skitter of roofs ran below, the view spattered with dormers, chimneys, corbels, oriels. Our descent was planned in ingenious bad-boy fashion. Ropes ran over the roofs, dipped over edges to roofs below, where other ropes waited.

Eldric showed me his bad-boy technique. You lay your middle on the rope and squizzle yourself along the rope and over the edge. It is generally thought a good idea to hold tight.

Down he went. I did the same. You might read about such an adventure in a book, but it’s different in the moonlight, different to experience it in three dimensions—the rope pressing into your middle, feeling thicker than it looked; the slates too, larger than you’d imagined, smelling of dampness and stored-up weather. Your nightdress bunching up beneath as you slip over the edge, and the passing thought that at least you’re wearing undergarments of an unventilated variety. Your feet finding a knot in the rope, which you don’t need, but getting another little thrill when you realize that the lion boy-man attended to every detail with you in mind.

Eldric would never plan an initiation for Leanne. He never could. Even if Leanne didn’t mind sacrificing her blue-green skirts to the rooftops, she’d never be able to haul herself up and down ropes. She had too much heft up top.

I was fast, I was strong. I almost laughed to see Eldric strolling about on the roof below, as though he weren’t tensed to leap should I fall. But I had my own bad-boy muscles. He’d learn to trust them as I did.

We scribbled down the last ropes, tumbled into the garden, which was heavy with the scent of azaleas. Eldric must be feeling very much recovered indeed, to have arranged not only for a full moon, but one of unusual brightness. She was dazzling, glinting off the Flats and the Quicks.

I looked at Eldric. The moon hung in his eyes.

“Into the Slough, wolfgirl!”

Into the Slough!

Impossible that Eldric could love Leanne. Not a girl who thrilled to the hanging of a witch.

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