Runt by Niall Griffiths Read Free Book Online

looked like soup cos they had their hands both wrapped around the paper mugs which is what you do when it’s cold or early and you drink soup or other hot things out of paper cups so I went over to a place undeneath the floating steam-cloud and saw a table with a great big pot on it and a woman with a scarfness around her head dipping a big spoon in the pot and filling people’s held-out cups so I took a cup from the tower on the table and held it out and lovely thicksome soup went in it and well look how much
you’ve
grown said the scarf-headed lady with the spoon who was Arthur’s missis and I went so fast as hot as the soup.
    —Haven’t
you
filled out, she said in a smile and I hid my face behind my paper cup and didn’t know what she meant.
    —Last time I saw you you were
this
high, she said and held her hand not far below my chin. I felt heat off her fingers on my face and I saw her fingernails in my eyes quite close and the veins in her skin and the rings on her fingers and the things she wore around her wrist which made a jangly sound. I was making a sound like them too all jingle-jangle but only inside.
    —Sorry to hear about Fay, she said in a lower voice. She had been friends with my Auntie Scantie but not Best Ones I didn’t think.—How’s he holding up, your uncle? Is he okay? Must be terrible for him.
    I didn’t know what to say so I just told her he was sad.
    —Well, yes, I can imagine …
    I didn’t know what to say so I told her I was staying with him for the summer.
    —Oh yes? she said and I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer but I couldn’t say anything anyway cos her eyes got a kind of light in them then and made their drawing-inny darkness not so dark but even more drawing-inny and I
did
think of some words to say but they kind of stuck in my throat like chewy bits of meat so I swallowed the words, with soup, back into the place that made them. Nice soup, it was. It had turnips in it and onions which I like. And the Hot Place in me I thought I might have to hide which made me think Oh No again and sadded me a bit but I was scared too cos Arthur’s missis and her eyes and her hands and her Looking At Me and her smile was making me feel things I didn’t know what to do with, was making me feel growing in parts and shrinking in others and hot in parts and cold in others and I didn’t know what to do so I just drank more soup and remembered of a sudden that her name was Rhiannon and then I noticed too that she had some dark marks on her neck going a bit fadey but still kind of a blueness as if someone had grabbed her there hard. And as
if
I didn’t know who that Someone was.
    —Well, I’ll have to come across and visit you, won’t I? she said still with that smiley funny-eyed-ness that I liked very much and was a bit scared of too. —Check up on you both, like. Bring you over some soup or something.
    —I’d like that, Rhiannon, I heard a funny voice say. It was deeper and had more out-of-itself-ness than my voice but it must’ve been me speaking cos I felt the words in my heart area and in my neck as well. This also scared me a bit but then I was nudged from behind and a hand held a paper mug in front of me and it was empty and Rhiannon Smiled At Me Again.
    —There we are then, she said and spooned soup into the held-out mug and I took my mug away from her with my hotness and coldness and bigness and smallness and my head went spinning almost like My Times were coming on me but it was different than that it was more to do with things I could feel with my hands or taste with my tongue or smell with my nose or feel pressing against my skin altho it was as big as My Times and filled with things in the same way and I didn’t know what to do with this new fast spinniness inside of me. It was fast like a hare or a diving falcon too fast nearly for me to chase or even see. But then one of the boys from My Gone School banged into me and soup spilled on to the back of my hand and