25. Freely, Yours, Forevermore #2
I hereby freely enter into this covenant, in which I shall act as scholar. The scholar will be bound to the ancient terms of this agreement in perpetuity. The scholar will receive knowledge in a fair exchange, as long as he is willing to give his utmost in return.
Briar wonders if this is the pledge they make the pips recite at the end of their week of torture.
It looks weird in little-kid handwriting, all that poncy legalese.
It’s written again on the next page, with a couple of changes in the wording.
On the page after, Bastian has written it out with line breaks in strange places, emphasising particular words, like slam poetry.
Then he’s given it some Poe flair: Into this covenant, hereby freely, I will enter, weak and weary/in exchange for knowledge and long-forgotten lore/only this, forevermore.
Briar mouths along with it, slotting the words into the familiar meter.
The next rewrite is less poetic, and somewhat sadder.
I enter willingly into this covenant. I bind myself forever. I will give everything I have. Please please please
It goes on and on like this, new iterations on every page. Briar does feel bad, then, and tucks the notebook back into the pile - but not bad enough to stop looking. The last drawer needs to be yanked, hard, before it judders open. It’s empty but for one, small scrap of paper.
The letter has been worn white along the line where it’s folded, but the border is still red and blue, and when Briar opens it, that stupid brown tractor is smiling back at them.
It’s Briar’s handwriting. Briar’s notepaper, Briar’s childhood vitriol in response to Seb’s earnest kindness, written in such forceful biro that at one point, it’s punctured the page.
They’d thought these things - ruminated over them, imagined again and again what it might be like to say them - but Briar remembers a stoic silence, a dignified hurt. The first step in a life spent locking things down and holding their tongue.
This was written to hurt Seb in return, and Briar had erased it completely from their mind. How? What else are they forgetting?
Flashes of something - Seb, small and scared, shouting. Screaming. Blood on his face, on Briar’s knuckles. But that can’t be right. It would be too life-altering, too brutal a break in the backbone of their childhood. Briar would remember.
There’s something acidic rising in their throat. They rush from the room without locking the door, take the rest of the steps two at a time, dart out of the back door and keep going.
It’s only when they’re back in their attic bedroom, clumsily pulling on trainers, that they realise that apparently they’re going for a run.
They tear the room apart looking for earphones, which inevitably died while Briar’s phone was in lock-up and will take too long to charge.
Downstairs they jog through scattered flocks of scholars, and when they hit the weathered, much-abused tarmac of the road they speed up, feet and heart pounding in rhythm until all they can think about is how they’ll draw the next breath.
The gentle hills around Temple feel like mountains as Briar summits and descends them, the pleasant summer evening air suddenly close and cloying.
Any time a thought threatens to slip past Briar’s defences they speed up.
They don’t have one of those smart watches that tells you how fast you’re going, but soon they have a stitch and the taste of metal in their mouth and their heart feels about ready to explode, so it’s probably pretty fucking fast. They’re forced to come to a stop halfway up another hill, half-blinded by sweat, and then they pull out their phone and call Kay, still bent over and struggling to suck in any air.
It takes ages to connect, and when it does, she sounds confused.
‘I’m in Italy, dumb dumb. This is probably costing us both a fortune.’
‘Shit,’ Briar wheezes. ‘Sorry.’
‘Have you been buried alive? Are you talking to me through a straw?’
‘What?’
‘What’s wrong?’
Briar wipes the sweat from their brow, then wipes that hand on their shorts. A car comes careening around the corner at breakneck speed, and Briar steps back into a waist-high patch of nettles to avoid it. ‘Shit. Ow.’
‘Briar Barnabas Horatio Blow-Job Jones, tell me what’s happening, and tell me fast because this is probably costing me one pound per wheeze.’
‘I don’t know,’ Briar manages to get out, red spots dancing at the edges of their vision, burning nettle pain smarting on their calves. They’re going to be sick. Maybe they already have been sick, and managed to swallow it. ‘I think I just . . . missed you.’
‘You what? Are you high?’
‘No,’ Briar says. ‘Not high. I don’t know.’
‘I don’t mean this as an insult, BJ, but you’ve never told me you miss me. I didn’t know you were capable of that much human emotion. I once gave you a fucking pop-up birthday card I’d made myself with cardboard and a craft knife and you said “Okay”.’
‘I didn’t. Did I?’
‘You did, but I knew you liked it because you put it up in your room and kept it there for like, years. You are not so much with the words. I’m used to it. So did you have a near-death experience or something? Or did it just occur to you that uni is actually happening?’
‘No, it’s just . . .’ Briar watches a couple of jackdaws mobbing each other as they fly overhead. ‘Am I like . . . a good person?’
Kay’s voice changes. ‘You really are dying. I wondered why you hadn’t replied to any of my texts.’
‘I haven’t had my phone.’
‘You want me to be honest?’
‘Please.’
‘Well, you are a bit of a dick sometimes. I love you, obviously, and I sort of assume you love me, maybe in the way a fish experiences love for another fish it just happens to share a tank with, but whatever. You’re a very closed-off person!
Prone to violence! You probably need loads of therapy!
It shouldn’t be weird as hell for you to call me up and communicate an emotion, you know?
But you can work on that. I have to go, we’re cliff jumping and June’s been holding on to me this whole time so I don’t fall and die. Text me back!’
‘I can’t, they’re going to take my—’
‘Bye!’
Briar imagines her dropping her phone into a nest of towels, grabbing her sister by the hand and leaping into the ocean without hesitation. She’s always been brave like that.
Briar likes to think of themself as the hero, the big man, the protector - but maybe the truth is that they’re a coward.
Or worse.