by Paul Kearney
The five years saw him grow furiously so that his clothes crept up his limbs overnight and alarming wisps of hair began to appear where there had been none before. Where Rose had had some. That thought was absurdly comforting.
'You'll be growing out of your skin next,' his grandmother said to him, holding a shirt against his widening shoulders and pursing her lips. 'And that hair! It's like a shaggy dog on top of your head. What am I going to do with you?'
He roamed the woods and meadows around the farm like a gamekeeper, often in the company of old Mullan. He grew lithe and tall, gawky until flesh began to fill out the stretching bones. And work round the farm made the muscles under his skin move like smooth stones. The sun burnt freckles around the bridge of his nose and made his grey eyes startling in so brown a face. Rachel admonished him for being 'wild', bent his head over the kitchen sink and scrubbed the back of his neck whilst he wiggled and squealed in her strong, stout arms. This was even though he had had the responsibility for keeping himself clean four years and more.
'You're not so grown up you can wander about a Christian house with a neck as black as peat,' she said.
The days and weeks and months washed back and forth like tides, taking and giving flotsam or jetsam. Demon died and was quietly mourned by Pat. He would no longer be an unseen presence under the dinner table. They buried him near the river without ceremony, though Michael's grandfather touched his cap to the grave in an odd gesture that was both farewell and salute. After a decent interval his place was taken by a pair of squalling pups, and soon they were running at Pat' s heels like midget doppelgangers of their grey-muzzled predecessor.
The land remained the same. There were perhaps a few more cars on the roads to frighten the horses, and here and there a new house was built; One or two copses were slaughtered by farmers who wanted another half-acre of pasture to put some silver in their pockets, and there were the usual tales of outrages in the city, talk of the British Army being brought in, which caused a barely perceptible tension between Pat and Mullan for some days. But all that was too far away to worry about.
Sean's acquisition of the new tractor was much more newsworthy—a great, roaring McCormick Cropmaster that put their little grey Massey Ferguson to shame. It reminded Michael of nothing so much as a scarlet, bug-eyed dragon that farted smoke. Pat appeared uneasy both at the smokebellowing apparition in his yard and the amount of money it had taken to put it there, but Sean was grinning and confident. Clark Gable on a tractor.
'It'll be a bloody car next,' Mullan prophesied gloomily, and went back to grooming the chestnut mare.
School continued to claim Michael for two thirds of the year, much to his frustration. He walked the two miles into the village five mornings a week with his books and his lunch in a bag and in winter a bundle of turfs for the stove on his back. He hated maths, science (what there was of it), geography, grammar, and everything else except some bits of history (Celts, Vikings and Normans, his island's heritage), and reading, when there was something interesting to read. He sailed through Lady Gregory, the Brothers Grimm, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson and even some Conrad. He was an anomaly in the class (apart from being a head taller than any other child). He loved reading—only certain things, perhaps, but he loved reading. The teacher was a Miss Glover, and she had been across the water. A comfortable, round-faced spinster, she spoke with an accent that the children (and most of the surrounding district) assumed she had picked up in England. She could be imperious when she forgot herself, but mostly chose not to because she was aware that it secretly amused the children. Michael had seen her annoyed and even cross many times, but never furious enough to hit a child, which was unusual in the extreme.
He made few friends at school, none that were even remotely as close as Rose had been. A fair few of the class were relatives; the Fays were a numerous horde. But he had little to do with them. He was 'odd', and would have had a hard time of it were it not for his precocious height and strength. The two-room school bordered on to the first heights of the Antrim plateau so that behind the paved playground there was a long reach of gorse-scattered heath running up into boulderstrewn hills above. The village it belonged to was merely one straggling street stretching from the Bann bridge in the valley to the first folds of the eastern hills. The school was at its eastern end, set far back from the road. Michael's grandfather had been schooled there a half-century before, and some of the books the children used still spoke of the British Empire and the Raj. It reminded Michael of Mullan's war tales; how he had seen Indian troops shivering in the mud of the trenches, and Old Contemptibles, the remnants of the Regulars, trying to speak to the Belgians in Urdu or Hindi, confident that one language sufficed for all foreigners. Brown men, tanned by the sun of Africa or India or Afghanistan, meeting their end in the chill drizzle of Flanders. The end of an Empire, Mullan had said sadly—but then Mullan was a Protestant.
The fox faces had returned to the river hollow.
Like Rose, they had belonged to another time, when he had been someone else. It was strange that Michael could begin to forget Rose's face, and yet remember every nuance of that moment when she had hugged him naked to her in the river. It paraded through his dreams in the nights and filled him with inchoate desire.
The memory of the Fox-People (as he came to call them) filled him with a mixture of dread and curiosity. There were strange things in the woods and fields, the meadows and hills, and only he was aware of them. His literary diet primed him for them, and his ceaseless wanderings inured him to the sudden sights that would skitter out of the shadows at odd times and disappear again—never harming him, no matter how fearsome they appeared. Only the wolves bothered him. Worried, he had asked Mullan, who was as close to the land as it was possible to be without being buried in it, whether he had ever seen anything strange in the trees, any tracks, bones, signs. And the old man had looked at him craftily and asked him if he had been seeing fairies again.
'Dogs. What about dogs, a pack of them? Any signs?'
'What are you getting at, Mike? Are you trying to tell me we've lost some sheep?'
'No. No. It's nothing.' But he worried when Mullan stayed out all night after pheasants, and wondered what would happen if he stumbled across a feasting pack of wolves. It never happened, and Mullan, close to the earth though he was, never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Perhaps they were his alone then. Michael's wolves.
SOMETHING FROM AN old, old nightmare hung over him, making him cry out. A fox's mask with a dirtdark face below it breathing fetid air on him. He tried to sit up but was pushed down again and a hard, deep voice barked strange words at him. The forest language. Ringbone. His head lolled to one side and he saw that his forearm had been bound with birch bark, black mud oozing out of the crude dressing. The mud stank of urine. He dosed his eyes. He could hear people around him, the crackle of a fire, the wind in the branches of the trees. Underneath him, his bedding rustled as he shifted. He felt a cold palm on his hot forehead.
'Cat?'
'It's all right, Michael. Ringbone and his people found us again, drove off the wolves. You're going to be all right.'
He'd heard that before. Such phrases were very cheap. He dragged open his eyes. Wood poppies. The bastards had drugged him. But he knew Ringbone. He was almost a childhood friend. He raised his good arm in salute to the lean fox man who squatted at his side, reeking of sweat and carrion. The white teeth gleamed briefly in answer.
'Are we safe? The wolves--—'
'They've drawn off for the moment,' Cat said. 'Ringbone's people are keeping watch.'
'It wasn't a manwolf bit me—tell them that—they know that, don't they?'
'Of course,' she said soothingly. 'It was just an animal. They know ... You're all right. They won't eat you.' And she smiled that famous Cat smile, Cheshire Cat, leading him through Wonderland. She looked less tired. There was a pale sun in the air, like a gleam of spring, or autumn jetsam. Her hair was washed and her b
reath smelled of mint. He felt the old stirrings and laughed at himself.
She set a hand on him, down where the breeches were, confining his erection.
'Tonight, maybe,' she said. 'The Fox-Folk can watch for us.'
'Who will they watch?' he asked lightly.
'Whoever they like.'
I've become a savage, he thought. No modesty left. I'd take her now, in front of them all, if I had the strength.
She seemed to know. She bent low and her minttasting tongue entered his mouth, stabbing like a wet snake. He felt the leaves pushed from her mouth into his, tasted the chewing-gum flavour of them. She withdrew.
'Tonight,' she said, grinning. 'We're almost home, aren't we?'
'Almost.' Her grin faded. 'Not out of the woods yet, though.'
He closed his eyes, ashamed of the sudden fear that had been assailing him. This was not the first time Ringbone and his folk had saved their lives. And yet he could not help but remember a butchery, a grisly feast seen by firelight.in a wood haunted by the howls of wolves. Ringbone's people setting one of their kin to rest after he had been... tainted. A thousand years ago, it seemed. Another world, another life.
IT WAS AN evening in the autumn, over four years from Rose's departure, and the first prickings of adolescent irritability had helped drive him from the supper table to the stables, and then to the open land beyond the farm. A blustery evening, the clouds pouring across the sky and the wind roaring in the half-nude limbs of the trees. The dark creeping up more quickly, the long days of summer far behind, the hay gathered in and built brickwise in bales under the hayshed roof. The grass was wet and gave slightly underfoot, the ground swollen with rain. Even as he stood watching the blank slate where it was usually possible to see the mountains, the rain started again and he cursed (something he had picked up recently), heading for the shelter of the trees by the river, half wondering if there would be anything in them.
'You're too grown up for your own good!' Aunt Rachel had shouted at him, after he had made a remark about her soda bread that had caused even his grandfather to smirk helplessly. But she had not stopped there. 'Hanging around with Rose as if she was your sister, and her ten years older, that's what ruined you, boy.' And there had been a shocked silence in the kitchen. Michael had blundered out with treacherous tears stinging his throat, but not too quickly to miss Pat's voice raised in anger, Rachel's shrill reply.
As always, it was dimmer under the trees, a darker, grimmer shade than the green swaying dimness of summer. He scuffed through leaves for a moment, thinking of Rose with a baffled, angry confusion of grief and desire, and then shifted into his wood mode, watching his step. It was possible there might be something in the wood on an evening like this. Dusk and dawn, Mullan had said once, and he had been right.
Michael had seen huge deer in these woods, and something that might have been a beaver once, slapping in the river—and wolves, of course. They were dark, the wolves, blacker than those he had seen in animal encyclopedias, with larger skulls and bonier frames, their legs like long jointed sticks. Built for speed, like greyhounds. He had watched them from the branches of trees, stinking of woodsmoke to hide his smell. Mullan had taught him that.
There were around a dozen of them, though the numbers varied, and they most often were encountered moving north to south, swimming the little river without a thought and casting about the undergrowth as though following a scent. Once he had seen them in the open fields below the upper meadow, a distant crowd of loping shapes, tiny as ants in the failing light. For the life of him, Michael could not figure out where they had come from or what they were doing here. He knew that the last wolf of the British Isles had been killed in Scotland in the eighteenth century. There were no longer beasts in the fields to be afraid of, and in Ireland at least there were no wildernesses left. The puzzle fascinated him.
But there were no wolves here this evening. He could hear the river, full and rushing between its banks. The undergrowth was dying off with the approach of winter and the ground between the trees was almost bare, clay covered with leaf mould, cold and damp.
It was the sound of voices that halted him.
He crouched, the ground cold on his knees, and saw on the other side of the river a flicker of yellow light. A fire. He edged forward, knowing who it must be, afraid but curious—and still bloody minded from his tangle with Aunt Rachel.
They were in the dip on the western bank of the river. He could see their shapes squatting in front of the flames, backs to him, the evening becoming dark enough for the fire to dazzle him. He closed one eye and crept forward,' felt his palm slide in muck and then sink in freezing river water. Around him the trees soared up and the rain dripped off them in a pattering susurration. He was covered, sight and sound. And smell, for he could smell them, the same smell as before, and he was a frightened child again for a second, rigid with one foot shin deep in the churning river, smelling the musky reek of them. But he was almost thirteen now, an old thirteen, a big thirteen, not far off six feet and as lean as a cat. He was invincibly young, and pig-headed to boot. He waded out across the river.
The rain grew heavier, trickling down his neck and soaking his shoulders. The fire flared as someone threw another faggot into its heart. The light shone off rain-slick forms and the smell grew thicker. Wet bodies, unwashed and wood-filthy. The talk subsided abruptly, and for a panicky second he thought they were aware of him, but there was a moan, a savage grunt of deep pain, and then the talking started again. If it was talk. It sounded like the muttering of discontented hounds.
He was barely twenty feet from them when he halted, unwilling to trust his woodcraft further. Their fire cast a tiny dome of yellow light in the blackness of the wet trees, lit up the falling raindrops as if they were sparks come from some overhead forge. Four of the Fox-People squatted around the flames, their masks making them into prick-eared shadows, the eye sockets strangely lifelike. They were huddled in thick furs. (Bear? Michael wondered. No. Not thick enough. He looked again. Wolf. They were clad in wolfskins, with the spiky neck ruffs pulled round to their napes so they appeared hunchbacked. )
He could see the paint on their faces, pale as lime. White across the eyes and then some darker pigment rubbed in on the nose and mouth. There were other skins under the wolf furs. Fox, probably. He thought he saw the end of a brush peeping out towards the fire. They had rawhide belts and slings, roughly sewn pouches (mostly empty), and beside them on the sodden leaves were spears and knives, some of cruelly sharp flint, others of what might have been bronze, green and slick.
The Fox-People had fallen into silence. They were not cooking anything, though there was a crude spit across the fire, and a good store of wood at its side drying out dose to the flames. They looked utterly weary and downcast. One in particular fingered his flint dagger as though he meant to cut his own throat with it.
Movement on the edge of the firelight drew Michael's attention. Something struggled there on the soaking ground, and he heard again the moan of pain that he had heard earlier. There was a man pinned to the earth like an insect, his hands jerking uselessly at his bonds. He was a fox man, but he had been staked out, and his headdress lay beside his cheek .There was the dark shine of thick clotted liquid on his naked chest, and Michael saw more of it bubble and pop out of the hole there as he writhed. Michael's stomach did a long, lazy roll and he reswallowed a gulp of vomit, feeling it sear his throat.
A wolf howled, long and forlorn, off in the distance. The Fox-People twitched at that, glancing up through the trees to the heavy sky. It was wholly dark now, and there would be no moon visible through the cloud, though it was almost full.
At last they seemed to come to some sort of unspoken consensus. They got up from the fire, hefting their weapons, and made their way over to where their comrade struggled on the ground. One of them carried a spitting branch from the fire that threw a kaleidoscope of shadows along the boles of the trees. Then they stood looking down, as if waiting.
; The bound man growled deep in his throat, making Michael jump. He crept closer.
He could see little. The lying man was threshing and tugging at his ties, and the growling sounds were becoming louder. One of the fox men backed away a step as though in horror. Michael stared in disbelief.
The man on the ground was changing, darkening, lengthening. He was growing a black fur as quickly as steam mists a window, and his body was bending, arms flexing at non-existent joints, his growl becoming a gargled bellow of animal rage. Michael saw his face change, the snout push out and the ears lengthen. There was the glint of teeth, impossibly long. The head snapped from side to side and two yellow lights lit up in the eyes.
'Jesus!' Michael whispered.
He was no longer a man, but some huge, misshapen animal, barrel chested, long limbed and black with hail" One hand, a paw now, came free
And a spear was thrust with incredible force into its chest, pinning it to the ground. The mananimal screamed, and from the surrounding woods Michael heard more than one wolf howl in answer, a desperate, despairing note in the sound.
But the thing's struggles were weakening. Other spears were being jabbed into its still living body. It was impaled half a dozen times. The huge head stopped its snapping. The eyes dulled.
Immediately the fox men knelt and began working on it with their knives. Michael thought he heard one of them weeping, but the rain was too loud in the wood to be sure. He was soaked to the bone, but hardly realized it. His whole attention was on the bestial scenes at the border of the sinking firelight.
They stood up, one holding a slippery, steaming mess in both hands. Then they repaired to the fire, leaving the gutted wreck on the ground behind them. A two-fisted gobbet of meat was slipped on to the spit and the blood streamed from it to sizzle in the fire. The men licked their fingers and squatted on their haunches once more. Two of them covered their faces with their hands. All began keening softly, a low wail of grief. They watched the thing's heart char over the flames, turning it with the prick of a blood-sticky knife. They were covered in blood, soaked with it, and their face paint had bleared in streaks down their filthy faces.