How to Be Brave Read online

  “It’s okay,” she said, even though it was not. She looked toward the door, knowing that Aslan lay beyond it and that she could not say goodbye to him even if she tried.

  There was nothing else to be done.

  “I don’t want to stay here a moment longer,” she said. “I want to go now.”

  AT THE SCHOOL OF THE GOOD SISTERS

  Though she did not expect it, nor even want it, Elizabeth North came to love that school with all of her heart. She would not have sent her only daughter there if she had not. When you do not have many people in the world that you love, you take a lot of care of the ones that you have. And Calla Rose was all that Elizabeth had.

  But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

  Calla’s story will be told shortly, I promise, but for now, we must stay with Elizabeth and the School of the Good Sisters. Her first few weeks there did not go well. She spent her days surrounded by people, but was for all intents and purposes alone. It was grief that made her this way, and it was natural to be like this, for she had experienced something awful, but there had to be an end to it. There had to be a point where her grief would stop and Elizabeth would come back to the world.

  And then on one bright Sunday, as the children came home from church after paying tribute to a faith that half of them couldn’t pronounce and a service the other half slept through, something happened that did precisely that.

  That something was a small brown duck.14 It was sitting in the road, with the expression of somebody who didn’t quite know how they’d ended up there, and its wing was held at a strange and sharp angle. Chrissie Poplin was the first to see it and so she said “There’s a duck sat in the road!” and looked around to see if everybody had noticed what was happening.

  “There is a duck “sitting in the road,” said Good Sister Robin, who was a stickler for good grammar.15

  The prim line of children ignored her. They were too busy scattering and running over to where Chrissie stood. Good Sister June swept along with the children as though she were leading them into battle, until she raised her hand and halted everyone a few meters away from the duck. She said, “If anyone—and I am looking at you, Magda DeWitt16—goes one step nearer to that poor, terrified creature without my permission, I will send them to bed early for a week.”

  And every child, including Magda DeWitt and Chrissie Poplin, stopped dead where they were.

  Every child, that is, except Elizabeth North.

  INTRODUCING DUCKS

  Elizabeth moved forward and when Good Sister June turned around to tell her off, she found herself falling silent instead. The girl knelt down and cupped her hand around the duck. She was holding it so gently that it might have been a baby, whilst whispering something under her breath. When she realized that Good Sister June was watching her, she gave the nun a quick, half-shy look and said, “The wing is broken. If I splint it, it’ll heal and the duck can fly again.”

  “Do you even know what a splint is?” asked Good Sister June. She did not mean to sound disbelieving, but she had not heard Elizabeth speak voluntarily for months now. The fact that she had suddenly become proficient in first aid for ducks was really quite difficult to come to terms with.

  Elizabeth nodded. “It’s a support to help the bone heal. I can strap it up. I know how. I watched my dad do it once.”

  Good Sister June waved her hand at Good Sister Robin. “Take the girls home,” she said. “We’ll catch up with you.”

  When Good Sister Robin had bustled all of the children away, murmuring sweet nothings about adverbs and proper nouns, Good Sister June lifted up her habit17 and knelt down on the road beside Elizabeth. She looked at the girl and chose her next words very carefully. “It looks pretty badly hurt. I need you to understand what that means. This might not work. Besides, if it’s a wild duck, then it won’t be used to having humans around at all and the stress of that might be too much for it to handle.”

  Elizabeth didn’t reply. Instead, she slowly teased out the wing of the bird and let her fingers work out where the break was. The small brown duck closed its eyes. For an awful moment Good Sister June thought it had died but then she saw its chest start to move up and down and realized that the girl had, of all things, sent it to sleep.

  As though in a dream, Elizabeth said, “I tried to remember my dad’s face today and I couldn’t. I could remember that he had brown hair and brown eyes but I couldn’t remember him. How he looked. How he was. I thought maybe it was just him that I’d forgotten, but I couldn’t—it was the same with my mum. I couldn’t remember either of them. It’s as if they weren’t ever there at all.” Her fingers stopped moving and she nodded to herself with satisfaction. “There, I found it. It’s a straight break. I think I can help it. Will you find me a stick? I need something really small but really strong.”

  Good Sister June glanced around her and then inspiration hit. All of the nuns wore their hair pinned back under their scarves so that it wasn’t visible. “Would a hair clip do?” she said, obedient to the odd authority in Elizabeth’s voice. She worked one of her clips free and dropped it into Elizabeth’s outstretched hand. The girl began to bend out the metal so that it formed a smooth line and laid it over the curve of the duck’s wing. She took her handkerchief out of her pocket, placed the corner of it between her teeth, and tore a thin strip off. She used this to bind the clip into place before flexing the wing very gently to make sure that it would all stay in place. And somehow, the duck slept through the entire procedure.

  “I know how to do this,” said Elizabeth. “One of the swans on the lake got hurt once, and my dad splinted its wing, and I don’t understand how I can remember all of that like it was yesterday but I can’t even remember his face.”

  There was nothing that Good Sister June could say.

  Elizabeth got carefully to her feet, cradling the duck against her chest. She said, “I know that it might die. And if it does, it does, but I have to try to make it better. Please let me. It needs a chance.”

  “We don’t allow pets, you know this. I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but I can’t make exceptions.” Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest but Good Sister June held up her hand and stopped her, quite firmly. “We do, however, allow patients,” she said, “and I will allow you to bring this duck home. I will make arrangements for you to have a private space outside to nurse it back to health. You will release it once it is fit and healthy. Are we agreed?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes,” she said. A small smile crept across her face. “Thank you.”

  THE FIRST FRIEND OF ELIZABETH NORTH

  Elizabeth brought the duck with the broken wing back to full health the same way that people wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. There was simply no option for the duck other than to get better, and so it did. When the evenings grew warm, she went outside and fed it rolled oats18 from the palm of her hand and told it that it would be well. As the duck ate, she ran her fingers softly along its bones and felt them knitting back into position. She removed the splint after two weeks, and after another had passed, she knew that the duck was ready to be released back into the world.

  But she also knew that she didn’t want to let it go.

  It was an understandable sentiment for anyone, and perhaps for Elizabeth North, who had lost everything and everyone she held dear, even more so.

  She wrestled with these thoughts for a long, long time, and the only thing that distracted her was the wonder of the duck itself. She was fascinated by the way its neck could twist and stretch so far across its body, and the quick, sharp movements of its beak as it cleaned its feathers. Sometimes when she watched it, she would read from a book about ducks that she’d found in the library and name parts of it as though she were casting a spell: calamus, umbilicus, rachis, vane.

  It was perhaps unsurprising that the duck did not answer her during these moments. However, a girl who had been pretending to weed the communal vegetable patch in the schoolyard did. This was Chrissie Poplin, the girl who had
first spotted the duck back on that Sunday morning all those weeks ago, and she had taken a special interest in the situation ever since. She had not wished to actually touch the duck,19 but she was quite interested in it nonetheless, as it was something different. The fact that it had gotten Elizabeth out of the evening lectures from Good Sister Honey on light aircraft maintenance was not on her mind in the slightest.20

  Chrissie said, “Is your duck getting better?”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. She was watching the duck lift up each wing to preen the feathers underneath. She found the duck much more interesting than anything else at the school and so a part of her was not surprised when Chrissie sat down beside her. Remembering the way that she’d yelled about the duck back when they first saw it, Elizabeth said, “You can stay but you have to talk quietly. It gets scared.”

  Chrissie nodded and watched the way the duck continued to ruffle through its feathers as though neither of them were there. “Is this what you did back in your house? Before you came here?”

  Chrissie knew Elizabeth’s story. They all did. It was like something out of a book by Eva Ibbotson, and as books by Eva Ibbotson and others like her were among their favorite books from the school library’s well-used collection, the whole school had devoured the real-life tragedy that Elizabeth North had given them.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “I just knew what to do. I mean, when I saw that it had a broken bone.”

  “It’s pretty cool, though. You fixed it. You made him better.”

  Elizabeth realized suddenly that she’d never thought of the duck as having a gender. It had simply been a duck. It. That. “Him?” she said, looking at the duck as though it was the first time she’d ever seen it. “Do you think it’s a boy?”

  “Definitely,” Chrissie said, with a confidence that denied the fact that she was failing biology that term. She reached out her hand, unable to stop herself, and carefully touched the very tip of the nearest feather. It felt oily and strangely thick. “I thought it’d be lighter,” she said. “It must be really heavy to have to carry them all the time.”

  “Those feathers have to deal with a lot. He can’t put a coat on if it gets rainy. Or a scarf when it gets cold.”

  “You should be a vet,” said Chrissie. “When you leave here, I mean.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I couldn’t do the gross bits. But maybe, I don’t know, I could do something else with animals. I like finding out things about them. It makes you understand them better.”

  “I want to teach,” said Chrissie. “Maybe I’ll even come back and teach here. I want to be the cool teacher that everyone remembers.”

  “If I was in your class, I’d remember you.”

  Chrissie did not believe in false modesty. She nodded in approval of Elizabeth’s assessment and said, “Yes, you would. So can we be friends?”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “All right.”

  And then the two of them looked at each other and realized that they were friends and that they would be friends for the rest of their lives.

  After all of the complicated things that had happened in Elizabeth’s life, it really was just as simple as that.

  THE VALUE OF A VERY GOOD LIBRARY IN TIMES OF NEED

  And so a small brown duck and the bright and fierce friendship of Chrissie Poplin brought Elizabeth back to the world. She would bicker and joke and laugh with Chrissie for hours and hours, and when she felt sad, she would go and hide in the library and manage all of her grief in a way that she had not been able to do before.

  The library was the perfect space for this sort of thing. It was a long room with windows that stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling, and just enough shelves to allow somebody to have a little cry behind one of them. There were not, however, enough shelves for the books. They were piled two or three deep on most, and where they didn’t fit on the shelves, they rose in towers from the floor. Sometimes if you did not know where the shelves started and the walls ended, it could look as if the whole room was built from books. It was also a space that held secrets, and Elizabeth had discovered some of them. She had found her favorite seat, for example, tucked away in a secret corner past Frances Hodgson Burnett and Noel Streatfeild. It was right next to a window and sometimes, when the light was just right, she could see all the way out into the wood.21

  And one day, when Elizabeth was sitting there, recovering from her memories and the persistent ache of her sadness, something most peculiar happened.

  THE OTHER PERSON IN THE LIBRARY

  Magda DeWitt appeared from around the back of the shelves. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were suspiciously red. Elizabeth was the sort of person who knew what it meant when people looked like that and so, when Magda stared at her and said, “What are you doing here?” in an I’ve definitely not been crying sort of voice, Elizabeth could not stop herself.

  “Have you been crying?” she asked with interest. You may not be surprised to discover that Magda did not answer her question. I do not think that many people would have answered, but Elizabeth was still discovering what sorts of things were appropriate to say to other people.

  “Shut up,” said Magda. “Why are you here?”

  Elizabeth gestured at her notebook and said, “I’m studying.” She had made it a habit to take some work into the library every time she went. It acted as a useful cover story. It was the sort of tip that she would have given other people in similar circumstances, but Magda was not other people.

  Magda folded her arms. “I don’t believe it. You haven’t opened the book.”

  She had a point. It was a point, however, that Elizabeth was not willing to concede. “I was thinking,” she said. “And then I’ll write. Why does it matter to you anyway?”

  “You can’t do that here.”

  “What?” Elizabeth said blankly. She was growing increasingly confused by the whole conversation. “Loads of people come in here.”

  “No,” said Magda. “This is my thing.”

  “What’s your thing?”

  Magda stared at her. “I sit here. This is “my seat. I sit here and I do my homework and I get good marks. You’ve stolen everything from me. I’m not having you steal this as well.”

  “I literally don’t have a clue what you’re on about,” said Elizabeth.

  Magda rolled her eyes. “Chrissie.”

  “What does she have to do with this?”

  “She was my friend. We’d been friends for years before you came. But now she’s your friend instead. And you’re helping her get better marks. I bet you’ve been helping her with her homework. This is a plot between the two of you.”

  “You and Chrissie haven’t been friends for years. Trust me, I know all about it,”22 said Elizabeth. “And, look, I’m not helping her with her homework. Why would I? She could get better marks than you with her eyes closed. Both of us could. Half the class could.”23

  “I’d like to see you try. I’ve been the head of the class for years now, and that’s not going to change now you’re here.”

  “And yet you can’t figure out why you don’t have any friends.”

  “Your best friend’s a duck,” said Magda.

  “Newborn ducks understand abstract thoughts,” said Elizabeth, and then she took pity on Magda because she really was looking quite upset about it all, and elaborated, “You wouldn’t think it, but baby ducks are actually very smart. It’s a thing called ‘relational matching’—”

  Magda held up her hand. “I know about ducks.”

  “You totally don’t.”

  “I will,” Magda said grimly. “If it takes doing a project about ducks, then I’ll do that. I’ll make it better than yours. Better than anything you could ever do.” She reached over the desk and grabbed the notebook before Elizabeth could react. Flicking through the first few pages, she pulled a face. “‘Nesting habits of ducks in the Amazon.’ Fine. All right. I’m going to submit this as my own work. They’ll believe it’s min
e. Why would the smartest girl in the school copy from somebody else?”

  Elizabeth stared at her. “We’ve never even spoken to each other, and this is the first thing you want to do? Steal my work and get better marks?”

  “Yes,” said Magda. “You can’t stop me. You’ve stolen everything from me. Now you’re going to know how it feels.”

  But before Magda had even finished speaking, Elizabeth had grabbed the notebook back. She picked up her pen and began to scribble over everything she’d written, and it was only when the paper was more black than white that Elizabeth let it go. “Hand that in,” she said, and she could not help herself from feeling very smug when she did so. “Go on. I hope you get great marks. I think they might comment on your presentation skills, though.”

  Magda said something very rude24 before she placed her hands on her hips. “This isn’t over. You can’t keep an eye on that book forever. I’ll get it from you somehow, and I’ll steal your work. I’ll steal everything from you.”

  And then, because she really did have a flair for the dramatic, she spun on her heels and stormed out of the library.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath and sat back down beside a pile of E. Nesbits. She had a problem to solve. The problem wasn’t about wondering how Magda was going to steal her notebook; it was about figuring out what to do when she did. Magda seemed to be the sort of person who carried out her threats, and that meant that Elizabeth had to deal with this in a different fashion or deal with her homework being stolen from her for the rest of her life.

  But Magda had made one mistake about Elizabeth North, and it was one that would have a greater ramification than either of them could ever have imagined. Elizabeth was a survivor. She had survived the loss of her parents, her dog, and her home. She had survived the loss of the life that she had lived. She had survived the loss of chocolate cake for breakfast and ice cream for supper and a home full of love and laughter.