by Paul Glennon
“Was it destroyed, or did they never finish it?” Norman asked. Even he could see how much work it must have been for the animals of Undergrowth. It was impressive and at the same time disappointing.
“A little of both,” Cuilean replied. “They finished the roof, perhaps a hundred years ago now, but then the building stopped. The fox kings of Louwth needed the money for their wars.”
Norman tried to remember his history of Undergrowth. “The Christianized foxes who ruled the hill country after the crusade of Ferrix?”
“Yes,” Cuilean nodded in confirmation. “Ferrix and his descendants ruled here for two hundred and fifty years. For two hundred of them they were at war. In the last days, they had no time for building churches. Their strongholds and city walls needed the attention of the masons.”
“I never understood who was against who in these wars,” Norman said.
“Better historians than you or I have had the same problem,” Cuilean replied. “Often it was the foxes against themselves, the grandsons and great-grandsons of Ferrix squabbling over the right to rule, the right to be paid tribute. If not that, it was the desert wolves to the west or the rats.”
“Who rules here now, then? Why didn’t they ever finish the abbey?”
“No one rules here now. It suits everyone. Each village has its own council, its own clique of bullies. No one is powerful enough to restore the old citadels, and no one cares for the churches. It suits all the nations that surround it that none of their enemies controls what we now call the Borders.”
They had arrived at the abbey. Norman had a strange sense of dizziness. It was as if he was trapped between scales. The abbey was the closest thing to human scale that he had seen here in Undergrowth, and yet it was too small to be what it was meant to be: colossal and awe-inspiring.
Now that they were beside it, Norman saw a smaller building behind the great church, in full repair and apparently occupied. A thin curl of smoke rose lazily from its chimney.
“Stay here,” Cuilean ordered, “out of sight of the Abbot’s house. I must have a word.”
Norman sat in the lengthening shadow of the church while Cuilean had his word. He had never found it strange that Undergrowth’s history had so many parallels to human history, with its medieval wars and habits, its cathedrals and crusades. It was a book, after all. The person who wrote it knew about all those things. But it was different when you were in the book, when it was a real world. If Undergrowth existed like this, without a person writing it, it was peculiar, suspicious even, that the animals had villages, cities and countries like human civilizations. It was weird that they spoke English or any human language, bizarre that they were Christian. As he waited for Cuilean to return, he wondered what sort of animal their Christ was. Did they all imagine the same one, or did foxes imagine a fox Christ and rabbits a rabbit Christ? Norman didn’t go to church and his family wasn’t particularly religious, but he felt guilty thinking this question.
“By the Maker, you’ve brought us a strange one, you have, Prince.” This was a new voice, the voice of the Abbot. “You made it sound like a hairless bear or a woodwitch, but I think I know what this is. Not for nothing is Tintern the home of this earth’s finest bestiary.”
The fox abbot stood and appraised Norman as if he had seen dozens of his sort. On his hind legs, the Abbot stood more than three feet tall. He might have been four, if his shoulders weren’t bent and his snout didn’t stick forward like an old man’s. Was he an old man? His fur was grey, but that might have been his natural colour. His voice was raspy and thin, but that too might have been his natural fox bark.
“Aye, we’ll look after him for a night or two,” he said. “Your father kept the roof over our community’s head for long enough. We can’t begrudge you the half roof of our abbey, and it will be needed tonight all right. We’ll have a rainstorm for sure.”
Norman and Cuilean looked up at the clear evening sky. No cloud justified the Abbot’s prediction, but neither boy nor stoat bothered to contradict him.
“We’ll find something in the larder for a beast of his ilk,” the Abbott continued. “Luckily it’s been a good harvest and we’ve had little need to send succour to the poor.”
While the fox and Cuilean made plans for him as if he wasn’t there, Norman wondered why the Abbot looked familiar. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Something about his face, which looked, well, arrogant and knowing. It wasn’t as if Norman had seen a lot of foxes up close in his life, and he didn’t pretend to know anything about fox physiognomy, but if that slight curl of the snout exposing one canine on the left side had been a human mouth, you would have called it a sneer. And if a human raised the hair above one eye, like the whiskers sprouted from around the white patches of the Abbot’s glinting eye, you’d think he was trying to let you know he was in on some secret.
Cuilean did not linger at the abbey. Explaining that he had to get back to his friend in the village, he turned to Norman and bowed slightly.
“I will take my leave now. Know that you have my gratitude for your services to my family. I look forward to hearing more of your tales and your strange wisdom, but I must go for now. The Abbot has offered you the shelter of the abbey and has promised to bring you an evening meal. You will be safer here than anywhere else I can imagine in the Borders.”
Norman thanked him quietly. The stoat nodded again and tossed his cloak over his shoulders. “We shall see you in the morning,” he called as he strode away.
Norman crawled into the abbey through the arched main entrance, like a dog crawling into a kennel. There was plenty of room inside for him to lie down or sit up, but not enough to stand. The roof was tall enough, but the cathedral’s internal vaults and beams cluttered what would have been his head space. Yet the moss that covered the abbey’s granite floor was better than any bed he’d had yet in Undergrowth, and even half a roof was enough to shelter him from the Abbot’s promised rainstorm. As he lay there on the moss watching the last rays of sun disappear between the ribs of the roof’s unfinished side, he had time to wrack his brains over who the fox abbot resembled, but not long enough to come up with an answer.
Stars were just beginning to glint into life between the roof beams when the Abbot reappeared. He carried a torch, which lit his face mysteriously.
“I’ve brought you some supper,” he said in his raspy voice. He seemed out of breath. “I’ve carried it myself, as I daren’t let the young monks see you yet. I’m a wily physician, but even I’ve no remedy for eyes popping out of your head.”
“Your name is Norman?” the Abbot asked, heaving a wrapped package to the floor. Norman’s nostrils came alive as the Abbot unwrapped the package and the scent of warm apple pies wafted upward.
“Norman, North Man, Man from the North…That makes some sense with the bestiary here.” He nodded to the pies, indicating that Norman should help himself. Norman didn’t need a second invitation.
The Abbot had taken a small leather-bound book from inside his cloak and was reading out loud. “The man beast, called by the wood ducks Hewn Man and to which the black bears give the epithet Smaller Giant, dwelleth in the North beyond the mountains and beyond the ice seas. Borne of an egg, like a salamander or snake, its skin is thin and pinkish even as an adult, so that the man must cover itself with the skin of other animals. Weak and unable to care for itself long after its infancy, the man requires the protection of its sire and dam for many years, and unprotected man kids are often devoured by older animals in their pack.”
Norman gulped down a bite of apple pie quickly enough to exclaim, “That’s not true!”
The fox winked his whiskered eye and grinned. “It could be.”
There seemed little point arguing with him.
“I won’t go further,” the Abbot said. “I think it’s conclusive enough. You are a man. It says your skull is thick and obdurate, harder than any stone, and that though you are large, your thinking apparatus is smaller than a vole’s.”
; Norman shrugged. He didn’t have to react to the fox’s goading. It was better to eat in silence.
The abbot fox leaned in closer. The torch between them made the fox’s gleeful whiskers shine. He really did look familiar—there was something about the supercilious way he curled his snout or the unnatural shaggy tuft of hair falling over his glinting eyes. And there was something else strange about the Abbot’s face. Norman noticed that a circular hole had been gouged out of one of the fox’s perky triangular ears.
“What happened to your ear?” Norman asked.
“Hunting accident,” he replied. “Beast was hunting me, and I let it get too close with its arrow.” The fox winked again. “Cuilean says you can read. Is he wrong? If a beast with a brain the size of a vole’s could be taught to read, a fox could make a fortune selling it to a travelling circus.”
“I can read,” Norman answered sullenly. “And my brain is not the size of a vole’s.” He held out his hand to take the book before he fully considered whether the Abbot would really sell him to a circus.
The Abbot did not hand him the bestiary. Instead, he reached inside his cloak again and withdrew a different book. Norman wondered if it was some trick, whether the book might be written in some strange animal language rather than English, just to make a fool of him. He took it reluctantly, eyeing the fox suspiciously as he drew it from his hands. It was a small book in human terms, no bigger than his palm. It reminded him of the tiny white bible that his godfather had given him for his christening. He opened it carefully to a random page in the middle. The pages were smooth and almost unmanageably thin for his big human fingers. To his relief, he saw that the lettering was decipherable. The book was handwritten in calligraphy, like the medieval texts Norman’s father had shown him at the university, but it was in the alphabet that Norman knew. The language was English, and after a few sentences it became easier to read. He read it out loud to spite the annoying abbot.
That night while the boy slept on the bed of thick moss, the rain fell around him with a hushing sound that reminded him of his mother. Even as he dreamt, he wondered what they were doing back there in his home, whether they missed him, whether they were looking desperately for him. But he needn’t have worried. He was asleep there too, as he was asleep here. Perhaps his mother was just waking now, a coffee pot filled and beginning to steam. His father, somewhere, was slapping a clock radio, reprimanding it, not very gently, for waking him so rudely…
Coffee pots? Clock radios? Norman looked up sharply at the fox, who raised both eyebrows now in a gesture that rolled his eyes as if to say, “Don’t ask me.”
“I know where I’ve seen you before…the library…” Norman managed to murmur only this before a strange and unconquerable need for sleep overtook him. Wasn’t it always like this when you stayed up to read in bed? The good bit was always just a few pages away, and though you sat up reading long past the time when lights should have been out, you always nodded off just at the wrong time.
At Home Everything Is Not Normal
There was shouting somewhere down below, and the scent of coffee and of toast burning. Someone was calling Norman’s name. Malcolm and Cuilean must be back. Probably they’d already had breakfast and had brought him some of the famous lingonberry pies that Malcolm had raved about. Norman wasn’t ready to get up just yet. He rolled over to face the wall of his cathedral, but it was too late now. He was awake. His eyes opened slowly and focused on his soccer medals dangling from the bookshelf. His team had won the league two years ago, and he’d won the most improved award.
Again, someone called his name from downstairs. “Norman, I won’t tell you again. It’s time to get up.”
Of course she’ll tell me again, Norman thought. Mom will keep telling me again until I do get up.
“Wait a minute…,” he muttered aloud to himself, sitting straight up in bed and looking around. It was true. He was in bed. Was it all a dream, then? The Brothers of Lochwarren lay open face down among the crumpled bedsheets beside him. This was his room. That was his mother calling up from downstairs. No talking ferrets were about, and it was apparently a school day. But just a dream?
He looked down at his hands. They were filthy, smeared with pine sap, moss stains and forest dirt. Swivelling his feet over the side of the bed, he caught a shocking glimpse of his other extremities. They were quite literally black. They dangled beneath the ragged cuffs of his pyjamas, which were no model of cleanliness themselves.
Norman scrambled to the bathroom as his mother shouted up again, “Are you out of bed yet, Norman?” In the bathroom mirror he assessed the rest of the damage. His hair was matted and ragged, his face and arms were covered in scratches and every area of exposed skin was smeared with grime. His pyjamas were in tatters, beyond rescuing. He looked like a cartoon representation of Robinson Crusoe. His mother would kill him if she saw him like this. He had a good excuse—but he couldn’t imagine ever having the courage to tell his mother he’d been busy helping restore the stoat dynasty in the highlands of Undergrowth.
His days in the forest with Malcolm had trained him to know when to act and when to think. He could consider explanations and wonder how it all had happened later. Now was the time to act. He turned the shower on as hot as he dared and left his tattered pyjamas in a pile on the floor. Using the hardest sponge he could find, he scrubbed his skin with the same determination and sense of urgency as he’d felt days before while the wolves pursued him through the forest. It was time for dire measures. He even resorted to shampoo and hair conditioner on his tangled and pine-tar-clumped mop.
When he was done, he could almost run a comb through his hair, but all his scrubbing had done was reveal the scratches and cuts along his arms and legs. His feet, in fact, appeared unchanged. The dirt had actually stained them, so that he looked like he was wearing black socks. Long sleeves and jeans might cover most of this, but there was one long scratch that ran from below his eye to his cheek that he could never cover. He’d have to find an explanation for that.
“Norman, I appreciate you having a shower without being asked. This is a huge advancement, but I wish you could have made this great leap forward on a day when you weren’t running so late.” His mother’s voice was just outside the door.
“Nearly ready,” he mumbled back through a mouthful of toothpaste. He hadn’t realized how awful his breath had turned during his week with the animals. When his mother’s footsteps sounded again on the stairs, Norman slipped out of the bathroom and smuggling his shredded pyjamas back to his room. He dressed quickly, pulling on the clothes that covered the most skin. It was late fall. He could get away with a turtleneck. He was stuffing the bundle of rags that were his pyjamas under a pile of toys when he felt something in their inside pocket.
Trembling fingers unfolded the smooth brown patch of material to reveal the dark outlines of Undergrowth’s geography. “Duncan’s map,” he muttered to himself. “I knew it happened”—as if the scratches, bruises and stained feet weren’t enough to prove that he’d actually been to Undergrowth. Still acting instinctively and moving with animal speed, he slipped Duncan’s map into The Brothers of Lochwarren as a bookmark and bolted downstairs.
Norman had almost managed to gulp down a bowl of wheat squares when his mother noticed the scratch. “Norman, what on earth have you done to your face?”
“The cat. I was playing with it last night in bed, and it scratched me.”
Norman’s father came into the room at that moment. Aethelred had been bought to appease Dora after the death of Moggy, but it showed no interest in children and was mostly his dad’s cat. It spent its days snoozing beside the computer when Norman’s dad worked at home in his study, and curled up any spot of sunlight if no other source of warmth could be found.
“You must have been tormenting him, then,” his father said.
Norman blushed, feeling guilty for accusing the cat. He regarded the animal with new interest after having spent a few days with its furry brethren. “It
was an accident,” he said. “He didn’t mean to do it.”
It was all Norman could do to keep himself awake through the school day. He hadn’t realized how exhausting his adventure in the wilds of Undergrowth had been. Now, when he had time to rest and think about it, he was amazed that he’d been able to do it. Just last year he had tried out for the cross-country running team and had been useless. He’d had to stop and suck wind before everyone else. It was amazing what being chased by angry wolves did for your athletic performance.
Back at school, Norman unleashed his new agility in gym class as he dodged balls like never before, if only because he knew how much it would hurt to take a ball to any part of his bruised body. He actually fell asleep on the bus going home, waking only when Dora shouted his name and the whole bus erupted into laughter. He dragged himself off the bus, up the driveway and up to bed, where he collapsed, exhausted. He dozed off again there for twenty minutes, dreaming he was back in Undergrowth.
He fully expected to wake up in Undergrowth again. That was how it had worked last time. He had simply fallen asleep and arrived there. He’d come home the same way, by falling asleep, but there must be more to it. There had to be some other trick, something to do with the book. Where was that book, anyway? He groped through the pile of sheets and blankets that he’d twisted around him in his slumber. Not there.
Reluctantly Norman climbed out of bed again. If possible, his joints felt stiffer and his muscles more sore than they had that morning. He pulled the bedclothes off the bed and shook them, but no book fell out. It must have fallen under the bed. Norman winced as he knelt down and reached under. His arm slid back and forth but managed only to plough up a field of dust bunnies and cat fur. He flattened himself on the floor and peered under the bed. There, in the corner against the wall, was the dark outline of a book fallen face down on the floor. Unable to reach it from this side, he climbed up again and reached down between the wall and the bed, his fingers groping for the fallen book. When they finally grasped it, he yanked it out fast, like one of those weirdos on TV catching poisonous snakes or wombats, as if it might get away if he wasn’t quick enough.