Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  “So, what do you think Ailith?” Charlie found the question popping out of her mouth. “Is this where we need to do the Bone Resting?”

  Ailith looked around. The old stones were furred here and there with lichen and moss, the colours like jewels to her. The heart had been cut out of it long ago; no fires were lit in the hearth. The kitchen that they had visited was not a hive of potato peeling and hissing goose fat, it was a tumbled down run of stones and the rusted bare metal of the oven door. The homesickness banked inside her. She could not manage to find any words, they lay in a jumble within, like burnt scraps. She nodded and turned down the steps.

  12

  Pricking Thumbs

  It had been a prickly day at Prickles. By the time three o’clock had rolled round both Winn and Emz bore scuff marks and scars and looked as though they had been in a minor war zone.

  It had begun just as the school party were making their way up from the clearing. Emz had had a fractious morning with the group of year threes. They had moaned about walking, moaned about being cold, moaned that it was not yet lunchtime, moaned about not having a snack, moaned about the mud. Their constant moaning had, at last, cut into Emz’s skin and made her feel edgy and tired.

  “Everyone… this way. Follow the lady. In twos.” The teacher pointed at Emz.

  Emz set off down the path and they moved swiftly on towards the lake.

  A keen wind was lashing Cooper’s Pond into a ragged blanket. There was chatting, noisy enough to frighten every bird, but as they neared the edge of the water one of the boys piped up.

  “There’s a monster in this lake.”

  The teacher touched him on the shoulder, gently.

  “No. Sam, there is no monster.”

  “There is. A monster pike.” As he spoke a small group of girls clad in varying shades of pink started shrieking and twitching together. Sam made the classic fisherman’s gesture of widening his arms as far as their span. “It’s this big and really really really old and it’s got loads of really really really sharp teeth and it eats meat and my dad tried catching it once.”

  The teacher glanced around at the other children, some of whom were too tired by now to continue their previous moaning and were not really paying attention. The cluster of Pink Girls however were shrieking and squeaking and walking, crablike, with too many legs to control, towards the edge of Cooper’s Pond.

  “There’s no monster pike in here,” Emz shook her head at Sam. “You’ve got the wrong body of water. The monster pike is in Pike Lake.”

  The teacher put her hand over her face in despair as the Pink Girls began screaming in earnest. They were stumbling at the shore line until at last, the weakest, the one with the pinkest wellingtons, lost her footing and fell into the water.

  The screams sent every jackdaw, jay, and magpie for a mile and a half radius into the air as Emz trawled into the water after her.

  Once that accident had occurred there was no choice but to head back to the visitor centre and their waiting coach. On through the wood they stepped, moving up the path from the clearing towards the car park when there was a sound of breaking branches. Debris began to fall from above them. Emz looked up. Squirrels were fighting, their infuriated ‘kackackack’ calls cracking around the trunks of the trees as at least ten of them rocketed through the treetops. The first group were skimming down the trunks now, racing along on the path ahead of the school party causing panic. Rabid squirrels! The tide of children stopped moving forward and started to roil and curve back, each stamping on each other, crashing and bumping and crying out. At the last moment a squirrel divebombed the teacher, the small claws tangling in her hair, scratching at her face. Emz had no idea what she should do, torn between the crying mass of children and the distress of the teacher.

  “Help… ah… ugh…” the squirrel was scrabbling and scratching, the teacher defending her face, her hands scored with scratches. Emz found instinct taking over as Winn headed down the path towards them.

  “You. Here. Now.” Winn’s voice commanded, the small children shocked into turning to see where the sound was coming from, Winn waving her arms, marshalling the group as Emz pounced on the squirrel.

  The second her hand closed around the small furred body she could feel the fear; it ran like shorting electric currents through every muscle, the small heart almost crushing itself in panic, and she reached without thinking. A fingertip here, adjust the ribcage there and the squirrel released its grip on the teacher and bounded from Emz’s hands into the nearest tree. A whiplash of bough, a rustle of twigs, and it was gone.

  Emz helped the teacher back to the visitor centre where Winn had shepherded all the children. They were sitting cross legged like an assembly on the floor of the education room and Winn was now plying them with sweets and squash. There was an unsettled sound of crunching toffees and hiccupping sobs.

  Half an hour or so later, when Winn had been convinced by the teacher that she would not be sued for the incident, Winn and Emz made some fresh tea. As they stood in the kitchen they could hear the squirrels.

  “Sounds like they’re in gangs,” Winn commented as they listened to the footsteps patter across the felted roof. “I’ve never heard the like…”

  Later, possibly an hour later, Emz was hosing out the holding pens when the geese began to land. The first crashed with a thump into the banking just beyond the yard and began to honk and flap its way to the small outbuilding. Emz, her back to the door, was startled as it blundered in and was even more astonished as with a sound like flying flour bags seven more of the Canada geese made emergency landings and followed their comrade into the holding pens. They gathered together in the first one and Emz switched off the hose. What the hell? As Emz tried to leave she was thonked in the head by the wing of a further panicked goose. Once again, she reached without thinking, her hand closing around the fattened breast; at once the wing beats were slow motion and she could sense that electricity once more, crackling and hard. The goose’s wing feathers sliced at her face, the beak clonking down at her until she released it into the pen with its flock. Her eye was streaming from where the array of flight feathers had grazed its surface.

  She wetted a cloth in the kitchen and dabbed its coolness at her eyelid, blinking at the gritty pain. Tears flooded round her eyeball and her nose started running. Her sight was blurry. What the hell?

  “Emz… Emz… Hand! Need one! Emz!” She could hear the sound and wasn’t sure what it was at first. Winn? She sounded odd and off balance, not at all like Winn. Emz hurried through to the nursery.

  Winn was pinned to the floor by what looked like a raft of giant chestnut burrs. The dozen or so hedgehog casualties that she had carefully fattened were rolled into tight spheres of spikes, the prickles piercing not just Winn’s coat but also her hands, pinking into the nape of her neck. Emz tried to pick the first one up and received an electric shock for her trouble. She pulled on the leather gauntlets from the counter top and tried again; the electricity from the hedgehogs buzzed and fizzed through her but she held on. As she hopped and stepped amongst them they rolled and hunkered, the prickles rigid and poking through her socks. They were velcroed together, huddling into Winn for safety.

  With the hedgehogs calmed in a vast cardboard box Emz patched up Winn’s hands. Winn was very quiet indeed. She was still silent as they took pellets out to the geese who were still holed up in the pens. They were greedy and grateful, fussing around Winn’s hiking boots.

  As they wandered back to the visitor centre Winn spoke but Emz could not hear her over the clamour of the birds in the trees.

  “What did you say?” Emz asked but Winn was halted, looking up into the canopy. The branches above were loaded with corvids, magpies yattering in from one direction, rooks from still another, a great black swooping cloud of them. The trees, almost bare of leaves, were suddenly dark with wings and feathers, the birds flapping and unsettled. Winn said nothing more; she grabbed Emz by the arm and pushed her towards the visitor centre
.

  Once inside the back door to the kitchen Winn waved a bossy arm at the kettle and the tea mugs and kept watch at the door.

  “Never seen anything like,” Winn mused. “Never.” The bird sounds were lessened by the four walls of the centre but Emz, as she waited for the kettle to boil, stood and watched the shadows on the woodland floor outside the door. They edged and etched, black and light clashing against each other so that it seemed the earth itself was a reflection of the birds above. Emz felt an urge to run, her breath becoming panicky. There was somewhere she needed to be. She did not want to be late.

  Winn shut the door so fast she almost trapped Emz’s fingers. Emz startled; it was a feeling like waking up. She looked at Winn who was looking concerned.

  “You need tea,” Winn said. “I need tea. And we need to park our arses on a couple of wooden chairs. Make sure we’re earthed.”

  They sat, a while later, watching the sun wink in through the slightly grubby window above the vast metal sink; it was making the slightly tea stained stainless steel look like burnished pewter and Emz concentrated on that small spectacle.

  “Never seen the like,” Winn said.

  “Panic,” Emz contributed, her mind sifting over the images of the morning, of her own feelings.

  “Yes. Fear too.” Winn dunked another three biscuits into her tea. “Not a bird of prey in sight though… or did you see something? Sparrowhawk perhaps? That’ll sometimes do it.”

  Emz considered. She hadn’t seen anything except corvids in the sky. Winn flexed her bandaged, hedgehogged hand.

  “Could have been a minor earthquake you know… something we didn’t necessarily feel but the animals were aware of… subsonic or something,” Winn suggested.

  At the edge of Emz’s mind was a day at Cob Cottage. She had been there with Grandma Hettie, just the two of them that day. They had been knitting on the porch, Emz, her fingertips sore from pushing the needlepoints through the loops and tangles. Grandma Hettie had been skilled, her needles flying in and out, the scarf reeling off them in quick rows. Funny, gossamer thin grey wool that Grandma had spun herself, and shown Emz how it was done with a little wooden weight and a spindle. The same moments played themselves over and she struggled to reach for the moments around them. Winn’s matter of fact voice broke the thoughts.

  “Get yourself off home. Might as well. I think we’re done for the day.”

  * * *

  Emz walked down through Leap Wood, and armed with her binoculars, she found her feet falling into a patrol step, her glance taking in the spaces amongst the trees, her ears listening to the rhythms of the wood outside her own footsteps.

  She reached the edge of Havoc and a little prickling feeling started at the back of her neck. The knitting memory was surfacing once more; she recalled that it was a long time since she’d knitted anything and then she realised why the memory had surfaced.

  The last thing she had knitted had been a tiny bobble hat for Ethan, something for him to wear to keep him warm in the pushchair. Emz had gone to Castlebury to the designer wool store in New Town, the posh Georgian terraced area where all the indie shops were. The same little hat that the police had found on the riverside later, after everything that happened at Halloween.

  Almost a year ago. The sudden grief of it crowded her, a remembrance of the sight of the little hat in a plastic evidence bag. She couldn’t breathe, took in air that seemed to blow straight out of her again. She took a few steps into the shadows of Havoc Wood; it was all she could do to stop herself stumbling and so she sat down on a mossed trunk to gather her thoughts.

  The tears streamed, and she let them, anxious to be done with this before she headed home, unwilling to bring this to Anna. She wiped at her face. She would need to splash a little of Pike Lake onto her skin later to wash the traces away. She took in a deep breath. The air smelt cold and black and sharp. She shook herself and headed off. She was going to be late. They would worry.

  At the edge of Leap Woods Mrs Fyfe leaned against a tree and watched the Gamekeeper wander off into the distance. Interesting. She spat out the bite of apple she had taken, watching its mushed softness curdle into maggots as it hit the floor. The remainder of the blood red fruit in her hand she put into the pocket of her black coat and, with a wry smile, turned back towards Hartfield.

  She had work to do.

  13

  Tester, Try Me

  Mari had had a trying day at her little shop ‘Betty’s’. In fact, the shop had seemed very poky indeed this morning. It was clagged up with all the tat and clutter that she stocked, the air inside the small space heavy with roses and vanilla and not even good roses and good vanilla, but rather the kind that some chemist in a white coat had put together from acids and emulsifiers.

  That bloody woman. Mari couldn’t get her out of her head. That bloody bloody woman.

  She had come in several times before. She was small and tubby, rather like a nasty pecking sort of pigeon. She lived, Mari knew, up at one of the few bungalows that clustered round The Crescent. At some point in the 1970s a local developer, Richard Banks, had tried to spread Woodcastle a little wider. He had bought up the rough land north of the castle and paid off the council to obtain the planning permission to try to drag the place into the twentieth century. He’d built the little group of bungalows, stiff and rectangular, and the rule there was that you couldn’t have a garden fence, plant a hedge, or have anything that marked a boundary. There were other rules too, no ball games, no cycling, no parking, ‘no’ just in general, a rule of under the thumb. No pets probably, although a golden lab or a retriever might be beige enough. Oh my God she needed a cup of tea and a Sunshine Muffin from the bakery. And what had she been thinking about in the first place?

  That bloody woman. Yes. Always bringing stuff back half used, always moaning that it didn’t suit, it smelled bad, it had gone off, it had made her allergic! That was the one this morning.

  “I have very sensitive skin,” the woman had assured her. Mari pictured the woman’s face, the thin lined skin stretched quite tight over the severe cheekbones. Mari had thought she had the skin of a lizard, it might make a nice handbag, possibly the kind of handbag that would pinch at your fingers, or maybe give you a neck ache after it had dangled off your shoulder all morning.

  “I have to be very careful… this substance has caused an irritation,” and frankly Mari had to agree, it certainly irritated her to have to issue a refund for something that was perfectly good. There was no point that woman coming in and buying anything, it was like an elaborate sort of pass the parcel game between them. Urgh. Mari felt the resentment bubble around inside her. The bell above the door chinged cheerfully and broke Mari out of her thoughts.

  There were only two police officers in Woodcastle and one of them was retired.

  “Hey.” PC John Williamson, his broad shoulders filling out the crisp white of his shirt seemed to crowd the shop. Mari’s heart sank.

  “Oh no, what have I done now? I parked in the proper space, I’m sure I did.” She turned to rummage in her handbag for her car keys.

  “Oh. No. No. Nothing whatsoever to do with your vehicle.” PC Williamson held up a hand. Mari dreaded what it might be to do with. Just recently it seemed that PC Williamson was waiting around every corner for her. She’d had three parking tickets and been stopped on the Old Castle Road three times for not having a brake light, not indicating at a box junction, and failing to report a stray sheep.

  “No. This is… a personal matter. I’m after a gift actually.”

  Mari’s heart bumped a little, ha, after bribes now, was that it? She tried not to look peeved and failed. PC Williamson was put on the backfoot slightly. “It’s for my sis… a friend. A woman friend.”

  Hmm. Did he have a friend? Or had he arrested this woman? Probably holding her hostage in the station. Mari felt a flush suddenly at a brief fantasy of being handcuffed by PC Williamson. He did fill out that shirt. She switched her smile on.

  “Wha
t sort of gift were you looking for?” she moved around the counter and due to the confined space was instantly beside him.

  “Oh. Er. Erm. Birthday. That’s the one. Birthday.” He looked flustered for a second. It was probably being in a shop that did it. Men were like that. Mari thought of her last boyfriend who could only spend five minutes in a shop before having a meltdown, unless of course that shop sold electrical gadgets, in which case, what a boring afternoon that had been surrounded by HDMI cables and the scent of hot TV screens.

  “What sort of thing does she like?” Mari asked with her fingers crossed that his budget would be huge. Oh. What was that thought that just bulged into her head? Her gaze was drawn to his truncheon, resting in a black leather holster at his belt. Mari was feeling a little flustered now.

  “What sort of thing?” PC Williamson looked blank.

  “Well… is she a girly girl for instance?” Mari asked. “Would she like jewellery? We’ve got this lovely range.” Mari’s fingers trickled through the sparkly necklaces draped around a Romanesque bust. “I’ve got earrings too, does she have pierced ears?” she was enjoying herself now. She had lots of pretty things, things to make people happy if they’d only stop by and take a look. She was not a shop assistant, she was a retail therapist!

  “I like your bust,” PC Williamson said. Mari stopped mid sales pitch.

  “What?” She turned to look at him. PC Williamson was the one to flush this time and he nodded to the Roman statuary.

  “The bust. I mean, the statue... er, thingy. Is it Juno or someone?” he was floundering, and Mari let him. He cleared his throat. “These are lovely. Which one would you choose?” he asked, reaching for the necklaces.

  “This one…” Mari attempted to untangle the necklaces. They had twisted around each other and it was proving difficult. As she fumbled about another customer came in and the shop seemed filled to bursting. Mari greeted the woman.