Chapter 101: The Girl Who Won't Forget

The shingle went cold and the whole of the pack turned round and looked at the cliff.

Callum was standing at the top of the shore with his good coat and his grey hair and the chain of office round his neck and two of his guards behind him.

He came down the shingle slowly with his hands at his sides and his face doing nothing at all.

"The child is mistaken," he said.

Clara stood up.

"The child has not been mistaken once since the spring," she said. "She saw a wolf in the schoolyard and drew a picture of it and the picture had a mark on its shoulder and the mark was the mark of the curse. She saw a man with a chain of keys and she told us and the man with the chain of keys was the Gamma. She dreamed of a wolf in a cage on a Council ship and the wolf in the cage was the Alpha's wolf. She has been right every time and she is right now."

Callum stopped three paces off.

"I have been the speaker of the Council for eleven years," he said. "I have been on this cliff for two days. I have read the book and the wall and the whole of it. I have stood in the byre with a cold in my chest and I have come forward and said the Council will stand with the pack." He looked at Clara. "And you are going to take the word of a child of six over the word of the speaker of the Council."

"I am going to take the word of a child of six over the word of a man who has been lying to this coast for forty years," Clara said. "The child has no reason to lie. The child has a wolf in her and a mark on her hand and she has been in this village since the spring and she has never once been wrong."

The shingle was quiet.

Callum said, "Then the child is lying."

And Ivy said, "I am not lying."

She said it loudly. She said it in her clear child's voice that carried across the shingle and up the shore and out over the water.

"I saw you," she said. "I was on the wall with my brother and I saw the copper wolf come out of the pack house yard and I saw you standing in the yard with a lantern and a chain on your belt. You had a jar in your hand and you were pouring it on the step and then you put the lantern down and you went down to the shore after the wolf."

The shingle went very quiet.

"A jar," Clara said.

"A blue jar," Ivy said. "With a stopper. He poured it on the step and it went fizzing and then he put the lantern to it and it went up."

Nina said, "Wolfsbane and oil. That is a fire that burns nothing but itself and leaves no trace and it smells of nothing once it is out. That is how the schoolhouse burned and nobody could say how."

Clara said, "You set the fire at the school."

Callum did not move.

"The schoolhouse burned in the night and a child was nearly killed," Clara said. "You set it. Not Aldous and not the Gamma and not the priest. You set it and you have been standing on that cliff for two days with the whole of this village telling you the whole of it and you have been the thing that has been coming out of the north for a hundred years and you have been doing it with a chain of keys and a good grey coat and a jar of wolfsbane."

Callum looked at her.

"I did not set the fire," he said.

"You did," Ivy said. "I saw you. I saw you with the jar and the lantern and the chain of keys. And there is a thing I have not told anybody." She put her hand in her pocket and took out a thing and held it up. It was small and blue and it had a ground stopper and a little of the liquid still in the bottom of it. "I picked it up off the step the next morning when the fire was out and I put it in my pocket and I did not tell anybody because I was frightened."

The shingle went very quiet.

Callum looked at the bottle.

And then he moved.

He moved faster than an old man should move. He went for Clara and he got his hand on her arm and the guards behind him came forward and the whole of the pack came forward with their hooks and there was a crush on the shingle and I was on four feet with my teeth at the guard's arm.

I got the guard down. I got him down and I stood over him and the pack had the other one and Callum was on the shingle with Clara's hand on his coat and his face in the stones.

"The bottle," Clara said.

Ivy put the bottle in her hand.

Clara held it up in front of Callum's face.

"This is the bottle," she said. "This is the thing you poured on the step of the schoolhouse and set alight with a lantern. This is the thing that nearly killed a child of six and burned a school to the ground. And it is in my hand and the whole of the pack is standing round us and the Council is on the shingle and the priest is on his chain and the whole of the coast is going to hear about it."

Callum said, into the stones, "You cannot prove it was mine."

"The child saw you," Clara said. "The child saw you and the child picked up the bottle and the child has been carrying it in her pocket since the fire because she was frightened and she did not know who to tell. And there is a thing you have forgotten, Callum. You have been the speaker of the Council for eleven years and the Council has been the hands of a thing in the north for a hundred years. But there is a thing that has been in this village for forty years that you did not know about." She stood up. "The priest kept two books. One was the record. And one was the book he kept in his chest and burned in the chapel stove." She looked at the priest. "Tell him what was in it."

The priest said, from his chain, "The names of every man who has been paid by the thing in the north since before I came to this village. The men in the good grey coats and the Alphas and the priests and the men with chains of keys. Your name is on the first page. It has been there since before I was born."

The shingle went cold.

And out on the water, Vaughan's ship came in and the thing on the deck lifted its head and howled.