The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, page 13
There’s a long pause.
“Finish up,” Andres says eventually. “I don’t want to deal with the tired-grumpy-beast version of you tomorrow.”
Lilou winces and blushes pinker. “Sure. G’night.”
“Good night, Lils.”
The floor creaks as Andres’s footsteps trail away. Lilou releases an enormous sigh. “Honestly. Does he think I’m still ten years old?”
I smile weakly. It’s not Lilou’s fault, but now I’m back to thinking about how crumpled-up my family is compared to the Starlings. My parents won’t ever check on me again. Oliver certainly doesn’t care if I’m tired in the mornings. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that he must’ve known the truth about our parents. He promised he was mailing my letters. He told me they were coming home. That means he kept me in the dark for seven whole decades. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive him for that. I can’t trust him to tell me the truth, and Jules Starling is dead, which means the only person who might have answers is—
Holloway.
“What is it?” Lilou mutters, like she can hear my thoughts.
“We need to go back to Holloway’s house,” I say. “She was part of the Endling Society too. She can explain what’s wrong.”
Lilou looks unconvinced. A shadow-ballerina leaps across her face. “Are you sure? She hid the truth last time.”
“She must’ve had a reason,” I say determinedly, getting off the bed. “It’s not like we can believe anything Oliver tells us.”
“Can’t we?”
I stiffen. “He’s lied about my family and the Endling Society for seventy years. I don’t want to talk to him.”
Lilou nods and grabs a satchel from under her bed. “We can sneak back out through the window. If we’re home by morning, my dads won’t ever know we were gone.”
The burble of the television suddenly switches off. A light clicks. And Lilou doesn’t hesitate. She passes me a pair of sneakers, then yanks on her own boots, tosses her satchel over her shoulders, and slips out the window. I grab Shrunken Jim and cram the Endling Society photographs into my pockets. No turning back until I’ve found answers. I follow Lilou through her window. Shrunken Jim yelps. But it doesn’t hurt, aside from a small jolt in my knees, and I’m on my feet again in moments.
“Okay,” I say to Lilou, breathless. “Now what?”
Lilou is already running. “This way!”
We duck through a garden gate and into a litter-strewn alleyway. The night is cold and dark and biting. I feel like a shadow flitting across the streets, not quite real around the edges. But when the panic starts to squash my throat again and my feet stumble, Lilou reaches out to clutch my hand.
“Almost there,” she pants.
“Are you . . . are you sure about this?” I pant back. “You can . . . you can still go home. Going to Eelgrass Bog at night . . . it’ll be . . .”
“Dangerous,” Lilou finishes. “But Grandpa wanted me to help finish this, and I never back down on a promise.”
The watch fires, Shrunken Jim hisses, as though he’s suddenly realized where we’re headed. We have to turn around! I’m cursed, remember?
“Yeah, well,” I say, remembering how the fires flared red last time I crossed over, and how I clearly hadn’t imagined it after all, “you’re not the only one.”
19
Sure enough, the watch fires explode with a blood-red boom as we run into the darkness beyond. Embers leap upward to join the stars. Heat sears my cheeks. But we make it through. And we don’t stop.
Lilou’s flashlight beam trembles milky white ahead. My stomach does a little flip when I glance at her running beside me, face squashed in concentration as we navigate around the shadowed tussocks. Even when the dark makes Eelgrass Bog seem to crawl with maggot-breathed demons and long-dead monsters, it’s impossible to feel afraid with Lilou.
Holloway’s house has returned to its position above the tunnel entrance. The iron stilt-legs seem extra spidery in the nighttime, and the cheerful colors are swallowed up by shadows. But there’s a light behind the stained-glass windows. Sure enough, when we barrel through the front door, Holloway is sitting in an armchair by the fireplace, a steaming mug of tea in her clawed fingers.
She heaves upright. “Pedrock? Starling? You came—”
“I know,” I wheeze, “about the Endling Society.”
Her face shutters, just like Oliver’s when he noticed the photographs. It closes up, and a lock slides into place. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“That key let me into Oliver’s library,” I say. “I found a box like yours, and these photographs . . .” I trail off. Holloway isn’t even looking at me properly anymore. Her eyes keep twitching to a far corner of the house where a couple of spun-reed hammocks are strung from the rafters.
One of the hammocks sags as though somebody is lying inside.
“Is someone else here?” I ask, confused.
Holloway clears her throat. “No. Well. Yes. Your brother thought I gave you the library key on purpose, so he came to confront me about it. Except he’s been fighting that curse of yours too hard. By the time he reached my house, he was almost unconscious on his feet.” Misreading my horrified expression, she quickly adds, “Don’t worry. He’s just asleep.”
“Oliver is here,” I choke out. “Oliver is on Eelgrass Bog.”
“It’s the first time since . . . well. The incident. But now he thinks I’m interfering.” She paces distractedly. “I’m not interfering. It’s been seventy years, so I didn’t think he still kept Endling Society relics in the library! How was I supposed to know?”
To be fair, Shrunken Jim points out, you could’ve just . . . not given Kess the key.
Holloway seems to notice Shrunken Jim for the first time. She looks guilty. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t give it to her! She found it herself, and I . . . There was no good excuse . . .” The half witch stumbles over her words like uneven ground. “You’re the one who can’t do your job properly, Jimontheos! Each time, you promise it’s the last time. Yet here we are again!”
“Wait,” I say. A horrid realization falls into place. “Jim, you know Holloway?”
His mouth-stitches sag. Yes. I am sorry, Kess.
If it wasn’t for Lilou’s arm around my shoulders, I think my knees would’ve crumpled and left me a muddly clump on the floor.
“That pickled head really can talk,” Lilou says, dazed. “How come I can’t hear him?”
“Because you aren’t cursed,” says Holloway wearily, “and Kess, well, is.”
My throat closes. “Why?” I manage. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
We have told you. Many times, Shrunken Jim explains. But your memories rot away. That’s your curse.
“Usually it’s easier than this.” Holloway sighs. “Once or twice a decade, your curiosity gets too strong. You cross into Eelgrass Bog. I make you a cup of tea, then send you home. After a few weeks, you forget you were ever here. This is the first time you’ve mentioned the Endling Society. I suppose we have Miss Starling to thank for that.” She wraps her arms tight around her middle, as though she’s afraid of unraveling like an old knot. “Perhaps this mess is mostly my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay with me. I shouldn’t have let you take the library key. And I should’ve tried harder to steer you away from the Endling Society. But it doesn’t matter. These memories will fade in time too.”
I let this sink in. “But what if I don’t want them to fade?”
Holloway shrugs helplessly. “That’s the problem with curses, Pedrock. They seldom care what we want.”
It’s why you have me, Shrunken Jim murmurs. I made a bargain with Holloway after your curse was laid. She charmed this jar so I could exist outside of the Drowned World—it’d been so long since I’d seen the sky! Or pigeons! Or pickles!—and in exchange, I promised to keep you within the bounds of Wick’s End as much as possible. I also promised to keep you company. The curse makes it difficult for people to remember you too. Plus regular humans grow up too fast, of course. Demons are much better friends.
“I thought you came from my parents?” My voice is a squeak.
Once you forgot the truth, you believed whatever I told you.
“Right, well . . .” Lilou looks between me and Shrunken Jim with a puzzled expression. I realize she’s only catching half of our conversation. “I want to know why Holloway didn’t just explain all of this last time.”
“Because remembering is messy,” Holloway says. “I didn’t want to tell Kess that her parents were dead. I didn’t want her to be unhappy.” She reaches out and squeezes both my hands, eyes dark and wide and glimmering like scraps of night sky. “We were friends once. And I hate that we can’t go back to the Endling Society days. But it is best to let yourself forget, Pedrock.”
Remembering is messy.
My mind spins back to the library: Oliver’s scrawly notes, newspaper towers, and decades of diaries. All ways to pin down memories and stop them from flying away like birds. I guess he did manage to hold on to more memories than me. But I also think of how exhausted he always is, how he never has time to smile or joke or enjoy himself anymore, because he must’ve been battling the curse nonstop for seventy years. It’s all very complicated. Because as much as I want to be angry at everyone for hiding the truth, as much as I feel like I’m tumbling off a mountainside . . . I get it. Everything would be easier if I’d been kept in the dark.
Some curses obviously don’t want to be fought.
The thought is too big to process right now. I snatch my hands free from Holloway’s grasp. My insides feel too full and too empty at the same time. I desperately want to grab Shrunken Jim’s jar, just so I have something to hold on to, but he’s watching me with the same uncertain expression as everyone else—like I might shatter at any second.
“We don’t have to do this now,” Holloway says softly. “I can make more tea, if you want. Or I can untie the other hammocks, and we can talk properly in the morning.”
I want to argue that sleep is impossible after all the bombs dropped on me today. But I can hardly string two words together. I shrug and say, “Fine. Okay.”
Holloway nods once and unties a row of hammocks. They’re all woven from reeds and plant fibers and sway with the house’s movements. One for Lilou. One for me. One for Holloway. And one for Oliver, already occupied.
I climb into the hammock farthest away from anyone else. Pull a pillow over my ears. Try not to think of anything at all. It’s easier said than done, of course. My head spins with ships and keys and curses, and I’m not sure which visions are dreams and which are memories.
Then, sometime in the small hours of the night, a crash startles me upright. It takes me a second to realize the sound is real—and coming from inside the house.
Oliver is awake.
20
I shrink into my hammock and pretend to stay asleep. But it’s hard to keep my eyes closed. There’s the shuffle of footsteps as Oliver stands up, then a mumbled curse as he must remember where he is. His breath comes quick and panicky. Something gets knocked sideways and breaks. He whimpers, “Ow!” alongside another string of very colorful curses. Shrunken Jim snorts a laugh from his perch on a rafter. Then there’s silence, except for the shallow gasps of Oliver’s breathing. I count to a hundred.
“Ollie?” I whisper.
No answer. I curse too and then roll out of the hammock. Holloway’s hammock is empty. Lilou is here but unmoving, so I can’t tell if she’s woken up too. Oliver is curled up beside a shattered button jar, sucking at a gash on his thumb like a hurt kid on a playground.
“Let me see,” I say.
Oliver flinches away from me, wide-eyed. “Kester? Why are you here?”
“I could ask you the same question,” I point out.
“Where is Ivy?” He jumps upright and trips into a pile of scrolls, sending them rolling across the floor. “She brought you here, didn’t she? She must’ve. I can’t believe that after all these years, she actually had the gall to interfere—”
“Stop,” I say hotly. To my surprise, Oliver actually does. I grab his injured thumb, and he lets me. It’s only a dribble of blood, barely more than a scratch.
Give him what for, Kess, Shrunken Jim whispers. Which is pretty bold of him, really, considering I’m furious at him too.
I open my mouth. Close it again. My heart seems to change its mind with every beat, dark to light, anger to softness. Thing is, I’m not sure how to handle this version of Oliver. He never looks scared like this.
“Kester,” he begins.
“Kess,” I correct.
“You shouldn’t be here. If we’re going to talk about what happened, we should do it back in Wick’s End.” Oliver glances nervously at the cat skeleton on the bookshelf. “I’m not sure what Ivy did, but I must’ve passed out—”
“You did pass out,” I interrupt. “Then she brought you inside and took care of you.”
Oliver snorts, sucking at his injured thumb.
“She also said you’re exhausted because you’ve been fighting our curse too hard,” I continue hurriedly so I don’t lose my nerve. The word “curse” sticks on my tongue like a bad cockle. “I know you figured it’d be easier if you didn’t tell me the truth. But easier isn’t always better, right? I’m twelve years old, Ollie. If I’d understood, I could’ve helped fight too. I could’ve handled it.”
I hope he doesn’t hear how I’m trying to convince myself this is true.
A flash of pain crosses Oliver’s face. His gaze flicks to the doorway. “That’s the problem,” he says, his old bitterness creeping back into view. “You don’t handle it. Why do you think I lock the library? You’ve been there before too.”
A chill slithers across my skin. “I—I have?”
“Once. About forty years ago.” Oliver grimaces. “I lost three weeks of records trying to calm you down. Do you have any idea what that could’ve meant? Our memories only last about a month before they fade. I could’ve forgotten our curse altogether! I could’ve forgotten what I was trying to do, and what happened to us, all because you couldn’t handle it.”
Teeny-tiny memories wriggle through my brain cobwebs. Not images or moments, but feelings: panic and grief and helplessness. I didn’t know about the Endling Society or the Drowned World then. I hadn’t known what to do, and Oliver hadn’t given me answers. So I guess I fell apart instead.
“Remembering is messy,” I recite softly.
“Exactly. Which is why we have to go back to Wick’s End so—”
“So I can forget again?” Anger shimmers through my voice. “You sound just like Holloway.”
Oliver must not enjoy being compared to Holloway, because his lip curls and he spits out, “Here we go. Poor Kess, right? I spend every day keeping track of every minute that passes so I don’t forget, while you sit around feeling sorry for yourself because you have to eat lunch alone.”
“But—”
“You get to believe Mam and Da are still coming home. I let you keep that hope, Kester. I could’ve made you hurt with me, but I didn’t.” Oliver speaks quickly, like he’s been desperate to say these things. “Words and pictures are memory triggers, see? If all you see are photographs from before the accident, that’s all you’ll remember. You’ll forget the nasty stuff in between. You won’t even realize how much time is passing if there’s nothing to remind you. It’s a thousand times easier than fighting every day, but no, I’m the bad brother, right?”
My whole body goes quiet. “The scratched-out dates on the display cases,” I say. “That was you?”
Oliver nods.
I bite my tongue to stop an angry sob from escaping. I don’t want to cry in front of Oliver and whoever else might be eavesdropping. But I bite too hard, filling my mouth with the taste of copper, and tears prick my eyes just the same.
“How come you got to make that choice?” I demand. “How come you didn’t just forget like me from the start?”
He glares. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does! It’s my life too, Ollie!”
“See?” He groans. “Poor Kester. Always poor Kester. Nobody cares what I wanted! I’ve been alone this whole time, counting every second of the past seventy years. I lost everything too!”
“I cared!” I yell. “You haven’t been alone! I’ve been here the whole time!”
I think of every sandwich I brought him. Every time I asked for help with the Unnatural History Museum. Every unanswered knock at the library door. Every letter he promised to send to Antarctica. Fury grows inside my chest, tangled up with my grief worse than a bramble. Maybe the truth is painful and messy, but it’s still the truth. And maybe it would’ve hurt less if we’d battled it together.
Oliver fiddles with the wire rims of his glasses. His fingers are shaking. “Doesn’t matter now,” he mutters. “I’ll deal with Ivy later. You and I will go back to the Unnatural History Museum, and in a few weeks, we can return to normal.”
“I can’t just . . . forget again!” I say desperately. “Ollie, the museum is falling apart, and you’re falling apart—”
“Oh, spare me,” Oliver snaps. “What do you know? Face it, Kester, you can’t even trust the right people.”
“At least Holloway is nice to me.”
In the dim light, Oliver looks more wax figure than boy. He smiles grimly, sallow skin stretching over his cheekbones. “Oh dear. Hasn’t she told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Put the pieces together, Kester,” he says. “Who do you think cursed us?”
21
It must be one shock too many, because suddenly, I can’t feel a thing.
“She’s only half witch,” I say. “She doesn’t even use magic.”
