Midwinterblood

by Marcus Sedgwick

  Nine

  Until that moment when Rebecka told him about the death of their daughter, David had not thought of home.

  Unconsciously, he’d decided to suppress such thoughts, as they would have hurt far more than his ankle ever could.

  * * *

  David sits alone at the kitchen table, staring out of the window. Vaguely he notices smoke from a bonfire in the farmyard, then he hears shouting outside.

  They are arguing again, but this time Benjamin is involved, too.

  Suddenly, Benjamin is back in the kitchen.

  “Mr. Thompson,” he says breathlessly, “my father is burning your things.”

  David almost jumps from the chair.

  “What?” he cries. “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know. He won’t make sense.”

  “I must stop him. Will you help me?”

  Benjamin nods and becomes a crutch on David’s right side. Together, they hobble out of the kitchen and into the farmyard, where Erik has an old oil drum with the end cut off. Gray smoke broils from inside, in thick choking clouds.

  David is too late, Erik is poking the last of David’s uniform into the drum with a hefty wooden stick.

  Skilla runs around, barking.

  David’s heart is pounding.

  “What on earth are you doing? What gives you the right to do that? Stop it!”

  Without waiting, and heedless of the pain in his ankle, he lunges at the barrel, knocking it flying, and sending smoke and spits of fire across the mud of the yard. He sees what he feared was in there, and grabs his smoldering flying jacket.

  Sinking to his knees, he bats at the burning leather, frantically hunting through the pockets.

  “Right?” shouts Erik. “It is not a question of right. It is a question of sense. There are soldiers coming. I heard it in the village today. They have been on the other islands, to the south, hunting for men like you.”

  David hears him but ignores him, and ignores the burns he’s inflicting on himself, as he turns his jacket inside out, searching for something as if his life depends on it.

  Finally, he finds what he is looking for, drops the jacket on the ground, and sits back, speechless.

  It had seemed so unreal here, like a dream, in this little idyllic haven, away from the war. But Erik was right after all. The war has come back to find him, to the very doorstep of the island.

  Soldiers are coming.

  “And if they come here, there must be no trace,” Erik says. “Of you.”

  He sets the barrel upright again, and with the stick fishes everything back off the ground and inside.

  He pulls matches from his pocket and sets it all alight again, and this time, David makes no effort to stop him. He sits on the ground, clutching something tightly to his chest.

  He is trembling.

  “What do you have there?” Erik asks roughly. “Everything of yours must be burned.”

  David does not answer.

  “Do you hear me?” shouts Erik. “Everything!”

  He makes to grab at whatever is in David’s hands, but David pulls away and they begin to fight, wrestling on the ground.

  “No!” screams Rebecka. “Stop it!”

  Benjamin loiters, unsure what to do. Skilla barks.

  “No,” cries Rebecka again.

  The men do not listen to her, but it is over soon. Erik is stronger than David, and the airman is injured after all.

  Erik stands, grimly about to cast the object into the flames when he stops.

  He looks at it. It is a wallet, a simple one that folds in half.

  Erik opens it, looks for a long time, then slowly closes it again.

  He holds it in the air for a moment, his arm outstretched, as if thinking, and then he drops it at David’s feet, and walks away, into the farmhouse.

  Rebecka approaches. She sees what her husband saw.

  The wallet has flopped open, and inside is a photograph.

  She kneels beside David, who picks the wallet up and shows her the photograph.

  It’s a portrait, of three people. One of them is David, in his uniform. He has his arm around a pretty woman; his wife. Standing in front of them, her head tilted to one side, and a smile on her face, is their daughter.

  Rebecka takes the photograph, and David lets her.

  “What is her name?” she asks quietly.

  “My daughter?” David asks.

  She nods.

  “Merle. Her name is Merle.”

  Ten

  That night, David goes to bed early.

  He’s been drinking Rebecka’s tea like water, and it really appears to be working miracles on his ankle, as well as making him very sleepy.

  He is getting ready for bed, when there is a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” he calls.

  Rebecka comes in, and behind her, Benjamin.

  They both look solemn.

  As David climbs into bed, they each stand at one corner of its foot. Rebecka twists her hands nervously.

  “Benjamin,” she says. “Tell David what you heard.”

  Benjamin nods.

  “I was in the village today, at the inn, and there I spoke to a fisherman called Stefan. Stefan was in Skarpness yesterday and he heard talk in the harbor there.”

  He pauses.

  “Go on, Benjamin,” says Rebecka, but Benjamin seems scared, as if what he has to say is risky. And maybe it is.

  Rebecka helps him out.

  “We may not be fighting in this war, David, but some of our people don’t like having foreign soldiers telling us what to do. There is a resistance movement, and they have made contact with your people. It seems they know you are here somewhere. They have come for you, and have put word around that if you are able to travel, you should present yourself at the tavern in Skarpness, on the docks.”

  David is speechless.

  Petter made it home.

  Somehow, this single, wonderful piece of news is enough to make him dissolve in tears. He buries his face in his hands, and Rebecka nods at Benjamin to leave. When David raises his head again, they are alone.

  “But, what can I do? How can I get there?”

  “You will take our rowing boat. Tomorrow night. It will be too dangerous by day, but the moon is full tomorrow, the grain moon. It will be bright, and you will see the lights of Skarpness to guide your way.

  “Go to the tavern in the docks. Ask for a man called Lindberg. He works there. I know him. But I didn’t know he works for the resistance.”

  “But your boat…? Erik?”

  “Erik has said you are to take the boat.”

  Eleven

  The following day is over in a moment, and yet seems to last for centuries.

  Every ten minutes, David finds himself checking the height of the sun in the sky, waiting for dusk, but this far north, it has gone nine o’clock before the sun finally disappears behind the western hill of the island.

  All day, Rebecka fusses, making food for his short journey, strapping his ankle tightly, then unstrapping it, then strapping it once more. She feeds him lots of tea, tells him to keep all weight off his leg until he has to.

  Benjamin loiters in the yard with Skilla, not coming close, unable to pull away.

  Erik is nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  Finally, at ten o’clock, as David sits in the kitchen, getting his last instructions from Rebecka, Erik walks back into the house.

  “Well,” he says. His voice is flat, his face is expressionless. He looks at David. “It’s time. Everything’s ready.”

  David stands, and winces, but in truth, he can walk now.

  There is silence, as the two men contemplate each other, yet say nothing.

  Rebecka slides a packet of food into a knapsack, and hands it to David.

  He is about to thank her, when Benjamin blunders into the kitchen.

  “There are soldiers! Here! In the village!”

  His eyes are wild, and his panic infects them all.r />
  “In the village? Are you sure?”

  “Gregor saw them, and cycled to tell us. They’re coming this way!”

  “You must go,” cries Rebecka. “Hurry, hurry!”

  Now there is no time for goodbyes. David throws his arms briefly around Rebecka, and Benjamin, who stands in the doorway of the farmhouse. Then Erik hurries away into the moonlit night, David hobbling at his side.

  * * *

  They take a small lane, one that rises over a hill, and down through some woods, to an empty field.

  At the end of the field, David can already hear the sea, and a narrow path leads to a dilapidated jetty.

  They hurry, but David is struggling. Not only does his ankle hurt, he’s had no exercise for several weeks.

  Suddenly there are shouts on the lane behind them.

  Torchlight.

  “They’re here,” Erik whispers. “Quick, we’ll hide in the boathouse.”

  They duck the last few steps, through a low doorway, into the boathouse, where Erik’s boat is moored. It bobs in the water, waiting to be off.

  “We’ll be safe here,” hisses Erik. “Until they’ve gone. They won’t think to look here. Maybe.”

  David nods in the darkness, in pain again.

  “All right,” he says. “All right.”

  They wait, and the voices they heard soon fade. They wait some more.

  Erik points at the moonlight shining across the water.

  “The moon is bright,” he says. “You should have no trouble seeing. When this moon is over, we cut the wheat, on the next dry day. I think we’ll be cutting wheat tomorrow.”

  David nods.

  “I wish I could be here to help you.”

  He means it. It would be one small way of repaying them, in return for what they’ve done.

  “I think it is nearly time for you to go,” Erik says, and he helps David into the boat.

  Suddenly, they hear voices again. Close.

  Very close.

  Erik swears. “Go,” he hisses.

  “I’ll be a sitting duck if they see me!” David hisses back.

  Erik says nothing. When he speaks again, his words seem idiotically inappropriate.

  “Your daughter,” he says. “Your daughter. How old is she?”

  David desperately looks at the shoreline, beyond the boathouse. Any moment he expects to see soldiers silhouetted against the starry sky. The voices are coming closer.

  “She’s twelve. Twelve.”

  Erik nods.

  “I thought so,” he says. “I could tell. I knew it.… Just like our Sarah.”

  He pushes the prow of the boat, silently, yet hard and strong, and as he does so, he leans over and drops something heavy in David’s lap.

  “Just in case of trouble,” Erik whispers.

  The shouts are right behind the shed. If they come around the side, David will be seen, and it will all be over.

  Erik stands, and being careful to make noise, he begins to run along the shoreline, the opposite way, away from David and the boat, calling out as he goes.

  David picks up the oars, and begins to row, as powerfully but as quietly as he can. Very soon he is out to sea, and safe. He ships the oars, and feels for what Erik dropped in his lap.

  It is his service pistol that he thought had been thrown away.

  In the pure bright moonlight, he half sees Erik, a shadow moving along the coast. The soldiers are after him, running.

  Torchlight sweeps the dark, and finds Erik.

  There is a short sudden clatter of machine gun fire.

  It stops.

  David knows that Erik will not be cutting the wheat tomorrow.

  Twelve

  David Thompson’s daughter Merle has a favorite story, one that she never forgets as she grows up, about how a man called Erik, who she never met, saved her father, and gave him back to her. What she is never told is what really happened to Erik; that is a secret that David and Esmé, his wife, keep to themselves. It would only hurt the child to know it, they think, and anyway, they are grateful enough for all three of them, as the first years pass.

  * * *

  Esmé dies at the age of sixty-three, and even Merle dies before her father, at seventy.

  David Thompson himself lives to be one hundred and one years old.

  His life is a happy life, and he remains physically fit, and fairly sharp right up to the end, as if he once drank some elixir of life.

  In fact the only thing that ever ails him is arthritis in that troublesome ankle.

  * * *

  Eventually, a short but fatal pneumonia takes him.

  Even on the morning of the day he dies, however, he still reads his paper over breakfast, from cover to cover. On this particular day, he reads about a startling discovery of a Viking burial, on a small island in the north.

  He’s always been interested in archaeology, but it’s something else about this story that tickles at his memory.

  Something about the island, though he can’t remember exactly what.

  He thinks he might have been there, once, a lifetime ago.

  One

  On the girl’s seventh birthday, her finest present was not the new white smock, nor the carved wooden hare, though she loved those two things very much.

  The best thing was not a thing at all, but a permission.

  Mother faced daughter across their small kitchen floor.

  The girl tilted her head on one side.

  “Merle, it is your seventh birthday today, and seven years ago, when you were born under a bright fruit moon, I did not think you would grow up so fast. But you have.”

  Merle nodded solemnly.

  “So you have, so I think you are ready, now, to come with me.”

  Merle squeaked and jumped into the air.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Yes, unless I have made the wrong decision and you are not yet sensible enough to come with me?”

  Merle stood rooted to the spot and put a serious face on.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Very good. Then tomorrow we will both go to the western isle.”

  * * *

  Merle slept with her new smock bundled up under her head, instead of her pillow. In her hand she clutched the carved running hare, its long ears sleeked along its back, under her tight fingers.

  But it was not hares she dreamed of. It was dragons.

  Two

  “Why does no one live here?”

  Merle was always full of questions. Their house was a small one on the steep hill up out of the center of Blest Island, the very path that led to the western half.

  Theirs was the last on the right before the top, which meant that Bridget, Merle’s mother, could come and go unseen to the western half.

  This was good, because though many people on the island made use of her skills and her preparations, there were others who disapproved of what she did. In days gone by, she knew, her art had been normal, welcomed, supported, but it seemed those days were gone.

  The modern world had arrived with the new century, and Bridget read about it sometimes; the amazing new things that science had created: of lighter-than-air ships, of pocket cameras, of wireless transmissions.

  She didn’t object to such things, she just didn’t understand why the old things she had learned from her mother should be swept aside by the new. And there lay a problem, because even Merle herself didn’t understand fully the ways of the dragon flower plant, that could heal if prepared in a certain way, or could kill if prepared in another. She had learned a little of its ways, but no one knew everything about it anymore, of all the uses it could be put to, of all the dangers it held.

  “I didn’t say no one lives here,” she told Merle.

  “But no one comes past our house and we live at the end of the lane.”

  Bridget smiled. What a clever young daughter I have.

  “In the old days, more people used to live on the western side. But they moved away. I don’t know
why, but I’m glad. Only Nature lives there now. That’s all. Well, almost all.”

  Merle didn’t hear this last part, because having gotten to the top of the hill, she raced down the long slope on the far side, her arms stretched out to each side as if to gather the fading September light.

  “Wait for me at the bottom!” her mother cried. “Remember! There are dragons there!”

  Merle squealed with delight.

  Three

  They walked across the scrubby terrain of the western half, rocks and grasses, heather and marshes; the soil squelching underfoot in places, like walking on sponge.

  “Have you seen the dragons yet?” Bridget asked her daughter.

  Merle shook her head, then looked around searchingly.

  “Yes!” she cried. “There! Is that one? Yes! And there! And there!”

  Suddenly, she was seeing the flowers on all sides.

  “Which ones do we cut?” she asked.

  “As many as we can,” said Bridget, putting two well-used wicker baskets on the ground beside them. “They won’t flower for much longer, and we can dry some and boil the rest. Here…”

  From her pocket she pulled out a folding clasp knife, and handed it to Merle.

  “It’s not a toy, Merle. It’s very sharp. Always cut away from you. Let me show you first.”

  Merle took the knife and held it very carefully.

  She knelt beside her mother as Bridget sliced one of the Dragon Orchids through its stem, quite near the base.

  “There, you see? Like that. Away from you. Right, you try.”

  Merle copied just what her mother did, and her mother smiled.

  “Very good. But you can take a bit more of the stem. We can make different things from the stems. And from the roots, too, but they’re different again, do different things, and I don’t like to work with them.”

  “Why not, Mommy? Are they poisonous?”

  Bridget considered this.

  “Yes,” she said, “in a way.”

  Merle listened, nodded.

  * * *

  They cut flowers for an hour or so, then Bridget stood, stretching her back.

  “I’m stiff,” she said. “Ow.”