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To Richard, for always

I’ve confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged.

Now, if you please.

I don’t mean to be difficult, but I can’t bear to tell my story. I can’t relive those memories—the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp.

How can you possibly think me innocent? Don’t let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

I know you believe you’re giving me a chance—or, rather, it’s the Chime Child giving me the chance. She’s desperate, of course, not to hang an innocent girl again, but please believe me: Nothing in my story will absolve me of guilt. It will only prove what I’ve already told you, which is that I’m wicked.

Can’t the Chime Child take my word for it?

In any event, where does she expect me to begin? The story of a wicked girl has no true beginning. I’d have to begin with the day I was born.

If Eldric were to tell the story, he’d likely begin with himself, on the day he arrived in the Swampsea. That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

But this isn’t a proper story, and I’m telling you, I ought to be hanged.

“I want to go home.” My sister turned from the river and closed her eyes, as though she could wish away the river, and the barge on the river, and Eldric on the barge. But life doesn’t work that way, more’s the pity.

“We can’t leave now,” said Father. “It would hurt Eldric’s feelings, don’t you see?”

But Rose didn’t see. She never saw, not about feelings. “I want to go home.”

Villagers thronged the riverside, but they gave us plenty of room. I’d forgotten that, forgotten how they left a cushion of air around the clergyman and his porcelain daughters. We’d always be outsiders, even though Father’s spent twenty years in the Swampsea, and Rose and I have spent seventeen. We’ve never been anywhere else.

“One hundred and eighty-three steps until home,” said Rose.

The villagers never used to stare, though. If I were an ordinary girl, I might stare too. People like to stare at girls who’ve been ill, at girls whom they’ve hardly seen for three years, at girls whose stepmother has killed herself.

“Look!” said Father. “The barge is almost here.”

But the villagers are wrong about Stepmother, and so is Father. She would never kill herself. I’m the one who knew her best, and I know this: Stepmother was hungry for life.

“One hundred and eighty-three steps until home.” Rose was exactly right. I know; I’ve measured. The Parsonage sat exactly one hundred eighty-three steps behind us, its back to the river, its front to the village square.

“And,” said Father, “just think how happy Eldric’s father will be to see his son.”