What was she to do in the meantime?
I may as well survey my assets, she thought sensibly, and climbed the stair into the odd-shaped little room above.
The beam of her flashlight, exploring it, showed that the builders had cleared away the dust and left it clean, at least, and bare. There was no indication of anything that might have caused the bangs. Furnishings there were none; Miss Sibley could sit either on the floor or, rather uncomfortably, on one of the cross-beams or joists about a foot above floor level, which meant that she would not be able to raise her head without banging it on the roof behind her.
Oh, well, she thought, at least it is a seat, and she chose the beam, reflecting, with some irony, that she had felt sorry for herself earlier, lying in a comfortable bed, because indigestion prevented her from sleeping; how luxurious, in retrospect, that bed now seemed!
Something scuttled in the corner, and she flinched uncontrollably, catching her breath in what was almost, but not quite, a scream; if there was one thing in the world that filled Miss Sibley with disgust and terror, it was a rat.
“You don’t like rats, and yet you’re going to live in a mill which must be full of them?” a surprised acquaintance at the bank had inquired, and Miss Sibley had pointed out that the mill had not been working as a mill for at least forty years and had been uninhabited for a further twenty; such rats as there might once have been must surely long since have migrated to more inviting premises and choicer pickings. “I suppose there might be water rats,” she said doubtfully, “but they are not nearly so disagreeable, and besides I presume they will stay in the water.”
But here, now, was something moving and rustling in that speedy, furtive, stealthy, and, above all, uncontrollable and unpredictable manner so horridly characteristic of rodents; Miss Sibley gave a jump of fright and, doing so, banged her head violently on the roof tiles above.
The pain was severe; she saw stars, and tears flooded her eyes, tears of pain and shock. She gasped out her very worst expletive: “Oh, blast”—and then, somehow, an entirely different deluge of feeling swept over her, different from anything she had ever experienced in her life before, a drenching, mountainous weight of intolerable woe. Like a rock dislodged in a landslip, Miss Sibley toppled to the floor and lay on the boards, with her head pillowed on her arms, drowned in a tidal wave of tears, weeping her heart out.
What for? If asked, she could not possibly have said: for wasted life, for love lost, young years misspent in dusty, unproductive work, for chances mislaid, lapsed friendships, the irretrievable past.
How long she wept she had no notion; hours may have gone by.
But at last, at very long last, like a tiny spark at the end of an immeasurably long tunnel, came into her head a faint thought: Yet, after all, here you are, in a mill, as you have always wanted to be, and about to begin making cakes, just as you have always planned?
That is true, she answered, surprised, and the voice, the thought, which seemed to exist outside, rather than inside her, added, Perhaps this oddly shaped little room where you find yourself shut up at the moment is like a comma in your life?
A comma?
A comma, a pause, a break between two thoughts, when you take breath, reconsider, look about, wait for something new to strike you.
Something new.
What in the world am I doing here on the floor, all quenched and draggled, Miss Sibley asked herself, and she raised her head. Unconsciously she had laid her right arm over the joist, and she now noticed, with a frown of surprise, that there was a patch of light on her right wrist, which looked like a luminous watch.
Then, blinking the tears from her eyes, she saw that it was no such thing.
Luminous it was, thought not very; a faint phosphorescent radiance glimmered from it, similar to that on stale fish, fish that is not all it should be. And two very bright sparks were set close together at one end; and the thing, which was about the size of a bantam’s egg, suddenly moved, turning on her wrist, so that the sparks went out and reappeared in a different place.
Miss Sibley’s first violent impulse was to shake her arm, jerk her wrist, rid herself of the thing, whatever it was—bat, vampire, death’s-head moth? were some of the wilder notions that flashed into her head.
The second impulse, even more powerful, born of the thought that just a moment before had come to her, was to remain quite still, hold her breath, watch, wait, listen.
She kept still. She waited. She watched the faint luminosity on her wrist.
And she was rewarded.
After a long, quiet, breathing pause, it grew brighter and became recognizable.
Not a rat; definitely not big enough for a rat. But perhaps too large for a common house mouse?
A field mouse?
The thought slipped gently into her head, as had the suggestion about the comma. Wee, sleekit, cowering, something beastie, she thought. Field mice, I’ve heard, move indoors when autumn winds turn cold; perhaps this one had done that once. It must have been long, long ago, for the mouse was now completely transparent; it had started climbing gently up her arm and the stripes of the cardigan sleeve, red and blue, showed clearly through it.
Of course! Miss Sibley thought. I know who you are! You must be Mr. Watkyn. Dear and charming Watkyn.
A thought like a smile passed across the space between them.
That was Gabriel, yes. He named me. And I, in turn, was able to help him. So we can open doors for one another. When he left—
Yes? When he left?
He left me changed; brought forward, you might say. In this attic here, now, there is still some residue of Gabriel: the pain, the fear; as well as the hope, comfort, friendship that we two built between us. Gabriel is buried by now in the churchyard, Watkyn is a pinch of bones and fur long since swallowed by some barn owl; but the product of them lives on and will live on as long as hope lives, and hearts to feel hope.
Thank you, Watkyn, said Miss Sibley then; thank you for helping me, and I hope I, too, can help somebody, someday, in the same degree.
Oh, never doubt it, said the voice, closer now, and Miss Sibley lay down to sleep, comfortably, on the flat boards, with Watkyn a faint glimmer of light by her right shoulder.
On Saturday morning Mr. Hoskins visited the mill to pick up a tool he had left there; Mr. Wakehurst, the vicar, had come too, calling, at the same time, to thank Miss Sibley again for the immeasurably valuable gift of the diary; together, with concern, not finding the lady in her kitchen, they searched the house, and she, hearing voices, ran down the little stair and banged on the inside of the panel door until, aghast, they let her out.
“Miss Sibley! What happened!”
“Oh, the door blew closed, in the gale, and shut me in,” she said gaily. “You were quite right, Mr. Hoskins; we must change the catch so that can’t happen again.”
“But you—you are all right? You have been there all night? You were not frightened?” asked the vicar, looking at her searchingly. “Nothing—nothing of an unfortunate nature—occurred?”
“Unfortunate? No! Nothing so fortunate has ever happened to me in my whole life!” she told him joyfully, thinking of her future here, decided on, it seemed, so carelessly, in such random haste. And yet what could be more appropriate than to make cakes, to bake beautiful cakes in Hasworth Mill? She would learn the necessary skill, her cakes would grow better and better; and if, at first, a few turned out badly—well, after all, who are more appreciative of cake crumbs than mice?
Publication History
“Introduction” copyright © 2016 Kelly Link.
“The Power of Storytelling: Joan Aiken’s Strange
Stories” copyright © 2016 Elizabeth Delano Charlaff
Stories previously published in Joan Aiken collections as follows: “The People in the Castle,” “A
Room Full of Leaves,” “Some Music for the Wicked Countess,” “The Mysterious Barricades,” in More Than You Bargained For, Cape 1955 © Joan Aiken.
“A Leg Full of Rubies,” in A Small Pinch of Weather, Cape 1969 © Joan Aiken.
“Sonata for Harp and Bicycle,” in The Green Flash, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971 © Joan Aiken.
“The Dark Streets of Kimball’s Green,” “Hope,” “Humblepuppy,” in A Harp of Fishbones, Cape, 1972, © Joan Aiken.
“The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick,” “The Cold Flame,” “Furry Night,” in A Bundle of Nerves, Gollancz, 1976 © Joan Aiken.
“Listening,” in A Touch of Chill, Gollancz, 1979 © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“She Was Afraid of Upstairs,” in A Touch of Chill, Delacorte, 1980 © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“Old Fillikin,” in A Whisper in the Night, Gollancz, 1982, © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“The Last Specimen,” “Lob’s Girl,” in A Whisper in the Night, Delacorte 1984, © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“A Portable Elephant,” in Up the Chimney Down, Cape, 1984 © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“The Lame King,” in A Goose on Your Grave, Gollancz, 1987 © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
“Watkyn, Comma,” in A Fit of Shivers, Gollancz, 1990, © Joan Aiken Enterprises.
About the Author
Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books, including The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories and The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband’s death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women’s Own, and many others. Visit her online at: www.joanaiken.com.
Read More Joan Aiken collections from Small Beer Press: The Serial Garden
A Junior Library Guild Selection.
“Joan Aiken’s invention seemed inexhaustible, her high spirits a blessing, her sheer storytelling zest a phenomenon. She was a literary treasure, and her books will continue to delight for many years to come.”—Philip Pullman
The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories is the first complete collection of Joan Aiken’s beloved Armitage stories — and it includes four new, unpublished stories.
After Mrs. Armitage makes a wish, the Armitage family has interesting and unusual experiences every Monday (and the occasional Tuesday). The Board of Incantation tries to take over their house to use as a school for young wizards; the Furies come to stay; and a cutout from a cereal box leads into a beautiful and tragic palace garden. Charming and magical, the uncommon lives of the Armitage family will thrill and delight readers young and old.
The Serial Garden includes Joan Aiken’s Prelude to the series from Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, as well as introductions from Joan Aiken’s daughter, Lizza Aiken, and best-selling author Garth Nix, and is gloriously illustrated throughout by Andi Watson.
paper · $16 · 9781931520829 | ebook · 9781931520980
Read More Joan Aiken collections from Small Beer Press: The Monkey’s Wedding
“Hair” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.
“It’s always the children’s book writers that you have to watch out for.”
—Jessa Crispin, Kirkus Reviews
“Part of a storytelling tradition that predates MFA programs and quiet epiphanies, and she concerned herself with a snappier brand of narrative entertainment.”—Review of Contemporary Fiction
Joan Aiken’s stories captivated readers for fifty years. They’re funny, smart, gentle, and occasionally very, very scary. The stories in The Monkey’s Wedding are collected here for the very first time and include seven never before published, as well as two published under the pseudonym Nicholas Dee. Here you’ll find the story of a village for sale . . . or is the village itself the story? There’s an English vicar who declares on his deathbed that he might have lived an entirely different life. After his death, a large, black, argumentative cat makes an appearance. . . .
This hugely imaginative collection of incongruous, light, and unexpected stories features Shelley Jackson’s spooky and eyecatching cover painting inspired by the story “A Mermaid Too Many” and includes introductions by Joan Aiken as well by her daughter, Lizza Aiken.
trade cloth · $24 · 9781931520744 | ebook · 9781618730268
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Joan Aiken, The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories
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