Page 64 of The Strawberry Thief
Out in the countryside you could see the damage from last night’s big storm. Torn-off leaves covered the ground like sheaves of shredded paper. A big tree had fallen – not one of mine, but one of the big aspens on the Rue des Francs Bourgeois. And the sky was a strange kind of almost-pink, all clouded over with tumbling birds. No damage that I could see in my wood, except for a half-dozen patches of earth, where Yannick and his mother had been digging, and of course, the metal grate and the stones they’d taken from the well.
I found a dry place to sit, cross-legged, on a piece of discarded stone. Bam came to sit right next to me, quiet for a change, and dim. There were so many thoughts running through my mind: so many things to untangle. My mother saying, in Morgane’s voice:
Sometimes children fly away. We do what we can to keep them.
And then the circle in the sand, and the song, that she uses to talk to the wind.
What did you do last night, Maman? Did you send Morgane away? Did you do it to keep me safe?
I ought to ask her. I know that. But Maman sometimes lies to me. She does it because she loves me, the way so many grown-ups do. She does it because she’s afraid. I know. I can see her colours.
What are you afraid of, Maman?
I know a way of finding out. I could use my shadow-voice; the one that always tells the truth. There’s no-one to hear me in my wood; no-one to stop me from finding out. And I could use my drawing-book, to help me see more clearly. Just like Morgane taught me to do with the tattoo ink and the mirrors.
I took out my book and my pencil-case. I always carry them with me. I rested the book on the side of the well. I thought perhaps the well could be my mirror, although I couldn’t see much down there. But the well was full of whispers, friendly and encouraging. And so I began to draw, and as I drew I hummed the wind-song –Bam bam bammm – bam badda-bammm– not loud enough for an Accident, but just enough to get into the mood.
At first I drew a lake, with ducks, and a little girl and her mother standing watching the ducks on the bank. The little girl looked a bit like me, and the mother looked a lot like Maman, with her black hair and red dress. There were some trees in the distance, and I thought they might be my wood, so I drew Bam in the branches, perched there like a golden bird.
I stopped to have a look. Not bad. So then, I sang the words to the song, in my shadow-voice that never lies, and I felt the wind prick up its ears like an animal scenting rain:
‘V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent
V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle,
V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent
V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’attend.’
Above me, in the oak trees, I thought I felt a stirring. It might have been a gust of wind, or squirrels in the branches. And so I went on to the verse, the one about the ducks on the pond.
‘Derrière chez nous y’a un étang…’
Above me, that stirring of wind again, like something alive in the treetops. And in the wishing-well I heard the echo of my voice as I sang, broken into pieces like reflections on a mirror lake.
Then I sang the next verse, the one about the King’s son, and the one about the white duck with gold and diamonds in its beak, and the one about the three ladies gathering feathers for a bed—
Now the wind was getting strong. I could hear its voice in the well, sighing and moaning and whispering.What do you want,Rosette?it said.Tell me. What do you really want?
And so I summoned my shadow-voice and looked into the wishing-well. It was dark in there, and smelt of stagnant water, ferns, and weeds, and things that only bloom at night. And I said:
‘Why am I different?Why did I not grow, like Pilou? Why do I see the things I see? Why am I not like the others?’
And then, all of a sudden, Iknew.
I knew what last night’s dream had meant, and why Maman had called the wind, and why I am so different, and why she’s afraid of Accidents. And then I said in thatothervoice, the voice I recognized from my dream:
‘Youdid it, didn’t you, Maman? You did it to stop me flying away.’
And the voice from the well, the voice that sounds like my shadow-voice, and never lies, came back at me in a thousand whispers and reflections:
Yes.
5
Friday, March 31
The priest of Lansquenet at the time was a very old man called Père Matthieu. He had known both World Wars, and what he had heard from the shadows of the confessional had given him a distant gaze, as if perpetually watching for a ship on the horizon. He had already known that my father had gone to Rennes on family business, and my father’s story played on that. I listened as he explained to the priest how he had been away for the week, and had returned to find his son and his daughter shut up in their room, and Tante Anna nowhere to be found.
