Free The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

‘Mam will kill me.’
    I lean towards her. ‘We made a vow,’ I say, ‘that we wouldn’t talk to boys. And especially not to those two.’
    â€˜That was when we were children, Gwenni.’
    â€˜A vow is a vow,’ I say. ‘And we mixed our blood.’
    â€˜Hymn number seven hundred and sixty-five,’ says the Voice of God, ‘ A Pure Heart .’ Mrs Morris begins to pull at the stops on the organ, and pedals until the organ pumps out the music with only a few silent notes.
    After the blessing we file out of the Chapel. The cloudy day seems bright after the dimness inside.
    â€˜I’ve got a really good idea,’ I say to Alwenna, ‘about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox. Tell you about it on the way home.’
    â€˜I’m going straight down home today,’ says Alwenna.
    â€˜But we always go for a walk after Sunday School,’ I say.
    â€˜Not today,’ says Alwenna.
    Aneurin and Edwin stand behind her. ‘Did you tell fox-face about Mrs Evans?’ asks Aneurin.
    â€˜What about Mrs Evans?’ I narrow my eyes at him.
    â€˜Alwenna’s Mam says Ifan Evans has left her to go off with his girlfriend,’ he says.
    I look at Alwenna but she’s examining the ladder in her stocking. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say. ‘He can’t have a girlfriend if he’s married.’
    Aneurin sniggers. Alwenna starts walking down the hill.
    â€˜Wait for us,’ Aneurin shouts, and he and Edwin rush past me and catch up with Alwenna, one on each side of her. I watch them walking away, Alwenna’s yellow skirt with its big petticoat swaying from side to side. I’ll have to tell her my good idea another time. I’ll go straight home for tea. This Sunday, I won’t be late for it. I think of the tinned peaches and cream and thin bread and butter Tada will have made ready. But I’m not hungry, though my stomach is quite hollow.

10
    I push Bethan’s arm back to her own half of the bed. She snorts and mumbles and kicks her leg out so that it lies over my left ankle. Her leg is heavy and hot and it’s difficult to move it back, even when I kick it with my free leg. I arrange myself flat on my back, straight out under the bedclothes. When I rescued my ribbon this morning from the Chapel floor it had two skinny dead spiders entangled in it, but they’re gone now and I smooth the ribbon back in place over the feathery bumps along the length of the mattress.
    Bethan put out the light before I could find anything about spirits in my New Testament, but there’s a lot more of it to read yet. I only got as far as the end of the first chapter of Matthew, which is all about Jesus Christ’s grandfathers, going back for forty-two generations; I counted them. He had no grandmothers at all. There’s a thin moon chasing the clouds in the sky tonight but its light isn’t bright enough to read by, not even if I get up and sit next to the window. When I lift my head I can just see Mari the Doll on the chair, asleep underneath her patchwork blanket. Aunty Lol gave me the red and green wool for the blanket and lent me the needles. But the needles were size eleven, and it took me weeks and weeks to knit enough squares. When I told Mam I was knitting a blanket to keep Mari the Doll warm just in case she came alive in the night and felt the cold, Mam said: Don’t be silly, Gwenni; people will think you’re odd. But Mari the Doll listens to everything I tell her; maybe dolls have spirits just like people and foxes and spiders. It’s no good asking the Voice of God about that when he doesn’t even know about foxes. I wonder if I’ll find anything in my New Testament about it.
    From the trees in Bron-y-graig comes the hoot of a corpse bird. Mam always says I must cover my ears if I hear it, in case it brings a death with it. I hear it every night when it’s out hunting for mice and voles. Does