ANNE BRONT? HAD A FANCY, SOMETHING too foolish to ever mention. Sometimes she imagined that there was a tiny mathematician in her mind. He was always busy, this little man, measuring the wideness of smiles, calculating the timbre of voices. He tallied his numbers on an ever-clicking abacus, and occasionally, to her great surprise, he would look up from his reckonings and tell her unknowable things. This person is lying. That person is afraid. Today her little man told her that Emily was keeping secrets.
"You're quite certain that all the story papers have been returned?" Anne asked as she laid out the breakfast things.
"Safe under the floor again," Emily replied without turning around. She was staring out the window, a bouquet of spoons in her hand. Grasper, the family's Irish terrier, had his paws on the sill, as if he, too, saw something diverting in the fog.
"Every page?"
"Every page."
The parsonage was so small that it had been difficult to find a place to examine their stolen property. In the end they had spent the previous afternoon reading stories in Papa's study, where the family piano was, taking turns at playing scales so that no one would become suspicious.
Anne set the family's plain white china around the little table. One bowl was chipped, and she put it at her own place, turning the flaw toward herself. "And the animals. Have they been … ?"
"All fed."
Anne watched as Emily ran a hand over Grasper's ears, noticing that her sister's skirts were wet with dew; she must indeed have been outside this morning, feeding Jasper, the tame pheasant they kept in the yard.
"I didn't see Snowflake," Emily added. "But I expect he's still out murdering things."
"And did you … ," Anne began.
"And, and, and," Emily repeated. "Don't we get enough scolding from Charlotte?"
Anne held her tongue. Emily didn't deserve harassment; her older sister might be dreamy, but she didn't shirk her chores. Still, Anne liked to be assured that everything was perfectly in its place. The Bront?s had nothing fine—everything was plain and functional—but Anne loved how neat and orderly their home was, especially on mornings like this one, when the fog surrounded them like an endless, gray sea. Somehow order made her feel that no matter what dangers lurked outside, the parsonage was their snug little fortress, where nothing evil could touch them.
Finished with her work, she looked at her nearly perfect table and refrained from mentioning the missing spoons. Emily seemed to have forgotten she was holding them.
"What exactly is so interesting out there?" she asked instead, coming up behind her sister.
"The fog. It's like a living thing this morning. See how it pours itself over the stone wall?"
Anne could barely see the wall, though there was only a short stretch of green lawn between it and herself. The churchyard beyond, with its small monuments and crooked gravestones, was all but lost.
"It makes me think of the gytrash," Emily said.
The gytrash. The ghost dog of the moors, who tore out the throats of unsuspecting travelers. Anne had always hated that story. She frowned and peered out into the grayness. It had been foggy for so many days that there was a sort of unreality descending on the parsonage. The town of Haworth, which lay beyond the church, was beginning to feel like a fairy tale, while the stories Tabby told of fairy hobs and ghost dogs seemed as near as they had in childhood. Anne put her hand up against the cold glass, her breath fogging the pane. "Yes. I think I see what you mean."
Crack! Something sounded just above their heads. Anne jumped, making a little scream, and Grasper yelped. A second report split the air.
"It's only Papa," Emily said, laughing. Their father slept with his pistols loaded, and they must be discharged for safety, or so he said. He shot them out of his bedroom window every morning. "Did you think it was the spectral hound?"
Anne tried to laugh, too, but her heart was beating fast.
"Oh, heavens, the spoons." Emily looked at her fist as if the spoons had just appeared there. Quickly she dispensed them around the table. Grasper followed, getting underfoot. In name he was their father's dog, but, like all their pets, he circled Emily like a planet around a star.
Emily moved to the birdcage in the corner of the room. "You should make a remark today, Anne."
Anne stayed at the table, aligning cutlery and making final adjustments to a vase of wildflowers. "Oh. I don't know."
"Try. It could be something very simple."
Though her conversations with Emily were easy and natural, with others Anne could only manage a few stilted words—and at meals with Charlotte and Branwell bickering, and Aunt Branwell scolding, and everyone talking at once, even those few words seemed to dry up and blow away.
Emily put her fingers through the bars of the birdcage, making tutting noises. Rainbow and Diamond, the tame finches she had raised, fluttered and chirped. "Tell them we saw the gytrash in the fog. That would make for wonderful conversation."
Anne blushed at the idea. "I wouldn't have Papa think I still believe in such things."
"Who saw a gytrash?" Tabby bustled in carrying a tray. She was a large woman of about sixty, with a wide, red face and a stomach that enveloped the cords of her apron. Tabby was the family servant, but to Anne, who had known her all her life, she was more like a member of the family.
"We did," Emily said. "Right outside."
Tabby set down her tray and put her hands on her hips, taking in Emily's wry smile. "That's nowt to make fun about." She picked up a spoon and waved it at Emily to make her point, disturbing the lovely order of Anne's table.
"The Heatons at Ponden Hall were quite bothered by a spirit a few years back." She put a finger to her chin. "Not the gytrash, though. This'un came as a headless dwarf, I believe. Or were it a burning barrel rolling down t'ill?"
Emily giggled. "If I were a thing of fog and shadow and could take any form I wanted, it would not be a barrel rolling down a hill."
Tabby pursed her lips. "Now you mind me, young miss. These things are not t' be mocked. Old Tom sends out his minions in many forms—the white lady dragging her chain, the dusky calf, the ghost of a loved one. It's the see-er who chooses the appearance, not the spirit. Whatever you're fearing most, that's the form it takes." She began to take things off her tray—a cone-shaped loaf of sugar, a saltcellar, a pitcher of cream—each one landing with a thump on the table. "Is ther making a remark this morning, Anne?"
Anne looked shyly to the floor. "I'm not sure what I'd say."
Tabby thrust the empty tray under her arm. "How's about: The porridge is 'specially good today."
"Is it?"
"What a question. It's 'specially good every day."
Anne was saved from arguing the grammatical sense of this by a series of bumps and scrapes from upstairs—the unmistakable sounds of Branwell moving his easels about. He must be inspired to paint today.
"Ee 'eck!" Tabby said. "Are both t' men up already? I mun get that porridge off the fire." She smiled. "Or I'll make a lie o' your remark."
When she was gone, Anne gave a semblance of order to the things Tabby had deposited so haphazardly onto the table, and then she joined Emily, who was standing at the window again.
"I used to long to see the gytrash," Emily said.
"Surely not."
Emily's hand found hers and squeezed. Her fingers were ice cold. "I would ask Charlotte to tell me the story again and again, though it always terrified me."
"I can't imagine why you'd want to hear it," Anne said.
Emily looked at her with a frown. "Haven't you ever wanted to be devoured?"
The chill in Emily's hand seemed to travel through Anne's blood and across her body. Of course she hadn't. "No." She let her sister's hand go.
Just then, the little mathematician in Anne's mind looked up from his clicking abacus and blinked.
"Oh," she said. "I got it wrong, didn't I? We didn't steal those papers to read about Zamorna, did we? It's the villain. It's Alexander Rogue you love."
Emily made no answer, but Anne knew she was right. What she didn't know was why the idea should disturb her as much as it did. Rogue, Zamorna—they were both only fictional characters, weren't they? But in his stories, Rogue had done such cruel and terrible things. He was chaos. He was the black hound, tearing out throats on the moor. What sort of person could love that?
