by Paul Kearney
I stand up and begin stepping out of the firelight.
‘Where you off to dearie?’ Jaelle asks at once.
‘Just have to –’ I open my hands and make a face. She nods.
‘Don’t be straying too far now. No need to be bashful with us.’
I feel a pressing need to get away from their eyes, almost as pressing as the other thing. It is a relief to walk out into the darkness under the trees. The air is much colder away from the campfires, and the moon is coming and going in the middle of a wrack of broken cloud. It lights up every hanging raindrop.
I keep walking despite the growing urgency of my need. I wonder what Pa would make of me now, or Miss Hawcross. I wonder if anyone at Moribund Lane misses me at all. I suppose not. I am only an orphan to them, a bother, a trouble. Barely a person at all. At least these people seem to think I am important. I don’t know why this is, but it is rather a nice feeling not to be someone just underfoot. I may not be able to gut and skin a rabbit yet – I must get Luca to teach me – but I am wanted here, at least. I have not felt that for a long time.
I am in under the deep beeches now, and I like to think I am moving quietly. But there is a sound off in the wood I cannot account for, a strange snuffling and grunting. I head towards it. Perhaps it is Luca. Luca the boy, or Luca the wolf. He will not hurt me either way – I am sure of that now. Pa used to say that a little curiosity was a dangerous thing. He was probably right – but what is life without it?
I see a thing thrashing on the floor of the wood, and dare not go closer. There is an awful whining noise that neither a man nor an animal should be able to make, and the thing rears up and then falls again. It rolls and writhes, before collecting itself. It is kneeling now, a man, and as I watch he begins to undress. It is old Job.
I see him peel off his jacket, his trousers, his shirt. He grunts and groans, and doubles over as if in an agony of cramps, but finally he has his clothing piled at the foot of a tree, and naked, stands up to stare at the moon with his head thrown back.
I cannot say when it begins, or how, but he drops to all fours, and as he does the white of his skin has darkened, and his back arches like that of a frightened cat. I hear a deep snarl which has no business coming out of a man’s mouth, and as his head whips back and forth long black ears spike out upon it. There is a sharp crack, and Job’s face seems to explode outwards, and a snout pushes through the bones of his face while he shudders and groans.
And before I can take another breath the man is gone altogether, and the wolf is there.
It is huge, grey as the moonlight and white on the muzzle, and it rears up on its hind legs for a second, as if remembering the man it was, before leaping off into the trees.
It lopes away towards the wood’s edge, and the villages at the foot of the hill beyond. And watching it go my heart is all a hammer again, and a cold shiver goes through me as I think of the sleeping people in their beds below, totally unaware of what is padding around their doorsteps in the night.
The normal world has gone once more, and the old, strange earth which Queenie described to me is here.
But some things remain the same.
When I am sure he is well and truly gone, I squat and pee at last, the steam rising round me, and it is such a relief. Then I begin to turn back for the camp.
But as I do I hear a strange sound in the night, completely out of place. I stand stock-still, listening. The night is so still and silent, as if everything has frozen in place under the moon. And it is so cold that any noise seems to crack out louder than it should.
A ticking noise.
It is coming from the little bundle of clothes at the foot of the tree. I walk over to it with my breath clouding in front of my face, not quite able to believe my ears. I kneel down.
The clothes stink, of sweat and smoke and the flesh of an old man. And the ticking is so loud.
So familiar.
I look around at the dark trees, guilty as a thief. Then I root through the bundle.
The first thing I find is my penknife, the one Pa gave me. I stare at it, astonished.
But there is something else, heavy and solid. I pull it out of the coat pocket, a disc of metal in my palm.
It is Pa’s beautiful Breguet watch.
It trembles in my hand, for I am shaking all over now. I press the stud and the lid clicks open, and there is a picture inside. I can almost make it out in the moonlight, but not quite. I know it is my mother.
A shocking rush of pain runs through me, and I clench the watch shut again in my fist.
THE STRANGE THING about grief – how for a while it backs away, and you think it had become part and parcel of the makeup of your life. It becomes a kind of aimless pain, unfocused, just another toothache.
But every now and then it will lunge out of the shadows and grab you by the throat. And there is no way of knowing when that will happen.
And after a longer while still, you think about the person you miss, the one who is gone, and it is as if there is a wall of glass between you and the memories of them, as though your mind were protecting itself from the pain. It goes that way from day to day, and you think that is the way it will always be. But the wolf is still there in the darkness, waiting. And every so often it will spring out into the light, and you will feel its teeth in your throat.
THE TEARS COURSE down my face and I wipe them away at last. I do not think I have made a sound. I put the watch in my pocket, and I feel again the scratch of the twig in there against my fingers.
They killed my father. Job killed him. Not the Roadmen, or Gabriel, or some people up from London. These people – Romani or gypsies or whatever they are - they murdered him.
And all my world has just been thrown up into the air again.
‘THAT WAS A fool thing to do, keeping that trinket. I had not known he did that,’ a voice says.
I am so startled that I spring away from the bundle at the foot of the tree and fall to my side. I scrabble to my knees with my fists clenched.
It is Queenie. She is standing not ten feet away in the darker shadow of the tree. Her eyes shine.
‘You was not meant to know this, little one. A little knowledge can hurt a body. Now you knows something that should have gone into the past without another word.’
‘Job killed him, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’ My voice rises. Please tell me it is a lie.
But Queenie shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’ She looks at me, and there is such a bitter, twisted expression on her face.
‘You killed him,’ I spit at her. ‘Murderers. You killed Pa.’
‘We did,’ she says, and walks slowly into the moonlight. ‘If we had not, then I tells you true child, someone else would have. Your Pa was feckless, angry, a lost soul. He was on his way out. We was just there to give him the final push.’
‘But why – why?’
‘To get you, of course.’ She bares her long teeth. ‘We wants you, Anna. We needs you among us. You belongs here. If you had not shown up in Wytham Wood that night, then you would still be going to the workhouse, maybe not this year, but in the next, sure as houses. And in time, you would have been as lost as your Pa was, a scullery maid one day, or a seamstress if you was lucky. Now you has the chance to be something else entirely, someone important.
‘Your father was no good, Anna.’
‘That’s a lie! It’s all been nothing but lies from the start.’ My throat is throbbing with rage. I can barely think, I am so full of it.
‘No. I have not said a word of falsehood to you, apart from who it was killed your Pa.’
‘Was Luca in on it?’
Queenie’s eyes flash. ‘No! He is as innocent as the morn. It was Job alone. Luca thinks the same as you did up until you chanced on that there watch. There is no murder in that boy, little one. His heart is pure. You has to believe me on that one thing, if nothing else.’
She is telling the truth. Or she is the greatest liar ever made.
‘But you sent him to me.�
��
Again, the twist in her face, like pain.
‘I did. He is my only son, and he does my bidding. That don’t mean he has not his own wants and likes and loves. And he loves you, Anna. ’Tis plain to see.’
Even that cannot dim the fury, the rising hatred. But it breaks some wall in me, all the same.
‘What do you want of me?’ I whisper.
Queenie kneels down in the dry leaves of the wood, a bulky woman wrapped in a blanket with silver coins shining in an arc across her forehead.
‘Job and Luca is the last two of their kind in England. That line has gone back to the days before history was set down and recorded, but now it is near its end.
‘Job is near done, his life burned up by the gift he was born with. Soon it will be Luca alone. After him, there are no more. And a wondrous thing will have been taken out o’ the world and lost forever.
‘To make a skinchanger, a skinchanger must lie with a woman as has the pure blood in her – the witch-blood which is nearly gone to dust now, in this land at least. I am of that blood, as is Jaelle, my daughter. You has that blood in you too, Anna. The power o’ the moon runs in your veins. There ain’t no denying your nature.
‘To keep the gift in this world, one o’ them has to lie with you. That is why you are here. Dearie, you have bled and become a woman. That too happened for a reason. You must lie with Luca, and bear his child, That way the ancient bloodline can be brought to life once more.’
I stare at her, disgusted, horrified. ‘I’m too young.’
‘I weren’t much older than you when I had my first born. But the Roadmen killed him, my beautiful boy. I lost three more, in birth or before it, and then Jaelle came along, and Luca, my last. He was born with a caul over his head, and I knew then that he would live, and be the one to continue the line.’
I scrabble to my feet. ‘I won’t do it, not ever. You can all of you go to hell. I’ll go to the police – I swear to God I will. And Job will hang for what he did.’
Queenie rises also. ‘You are so young, you don’t know what is right and what is wrong in this life, child. It ain’t all fairytale black and white.’
I fight the stupid tears. ‘Murder will never be right. I know that much.’
Queenie shakes her head. For a moment I think there are tears in her eyes too.
‘You ain’t going nowhere child.’ She steps towards me, and all of a sudden the moonlight makes round silver lamps of her eyes and her mouth is twisted and I can see her teeth long and brown over her lower lip.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ I feel the knife in my pocket, and I draw it out and click the blade open. ‘Don’t you dare!’
I can hear voices from the camp, and there are other shapes coming through the trees now. I turn to look –
Queenie lunges at me, quick as a striking snake. She seizes my arm, and there is a horrible strength in her. I am pinioned, and I cannot pull free. Looking at the penknife, she laughs.
‘What – will you cut me now dearie?’
Her other hand comes up in a swing and slaps me hard across the face, smacking my head to one side.
‘Don’t you dare spring no blade on me.’
The rage rises up in me like lit petrol.
Without another thought, I stab the knife into her forearm as hard as I can, and she utters a shrill yelp and lets go of me.
Then I turn and run.
20
IT IS LIKE running from Luca on Port Meadow but oh, so much worse. For I hear them back in the trees, and I know Jaelle’s voice as it rises in outrage and fury, and the others are gabbling too, men and women both. The voices grow into a chorus, as bright as fire in the night.
I run as fast as I ever have in my life with the bloody knife in my hand and Pa’s watch bouncing in my pocket, and all I can think of past the fear is the fact that Pie, poor Pie, is left behind me in their camp, bundled up in my knapsack, and I shall never see her again now. And as I run I am weeping, and the sobs hurt me as they tear in and out of my throat.
Whatever they want of me they shall not have, and I will run all the way to Oxford if I have to, and turn myself in and tell the police everything. I do not care if I end my days in the workhouse, because there are worse things – I know that now. They say I belong to their world, but they are lying. I won’t have it – any of it.
There will be no more campfires, and boys who turn into wolves, and white horses, and the moon will be nothing more than a light in the night sky. I don’t care if I have to run all the way to the North Pole, but they shall not have me.
I don’t know in what direction I am going, but it is downhill, and I am out from under the trees and running down a wide open field with more woods in front. The land seems dark and empty and I speed up as I hurtle across the grass, my coat billowing out behind me and the chill air aching in my lungs like it has blades in it.
I can hear them behind me. They are hallooing to one another like huntsmen on the trail of a fox. I pelt onwards with no idea in my head except to get away.
BUT I CANNOT just run forever. I cannot even run for many more minutes; there is a stitch in my side and my socks have come down in my galoshes and are bunched around my toes.
I hiccup, and as if that it enough to tip some balance, I trip and tumble and roll over in the grass, the breath thumped out of me. I kick off the rubbery galoshes and am barefoot, but I am not cold now. One second I crouch there on hands and knees, and then I am up again, running even faster now, and when my bare foot comes down on a hidden stone in the grass the pain of it is scarcely felt.
Into the trees again. I slow down to try and get some breath back. The roots and leaves are like knots and needles under my feet, and jabs of pain spear up my legs. The wood is open, not like Wytham, and I can still jog along clutching my side. I am running along the flank of a hill, following the contours through the wood – but soon it is open fields again, hedges and bare furrowed earth.
Where have all the lights gone? The world is dark, as if I am alone in it but for those chasing me.
I cannot go much farther. Once I stop, and have to bend over and vomit, and up comes the stew they served me earlier.
I am stumbling and staggering across the ploughed earth like a drunk. The soil is frozen stiff and when I trip and go down again it feels like falling onto heaped stones. I look back, and I see the light of a lantern on the edge of the wood behind, not a quarter of a mile away. The moon is high and bright and leering at me, an enemy. It casts my own shadow black before me, rippling over the furrows. There are clouds in the sky, coming in from the north.
Oh, Christos, help me. God, help me now.
I start running again, though the pain in my side is a sharp shriek and my feet feel bruised and gashed. There is open country ahead, perhaps a mile of it, and just for a moment I glimpse the moon-bright glitter of water. A river. My mind dredges up what Luca said about running water. There is nowhere else to go, anyway.
I stagger on, through a hawthorn hedge, the thorns scoring my face and hands and legs. Then over a barbed-wire fence, and into ankle-turning ruts where a tractor has mashed its way. I break through the ice of a puddle and my foot goes in the freezing water and the bite of it nearly makes me cry out, but I grind my teeth on it and pick a way through the ruts and the deep holes cows’ feet have made when the earth was soft and wet. It is like playing a horrible kind of hopscotch, and it eats up the last strength I have.
I have to stop. I cannot go on. I must have covered several miles, and none of it on a road or path. Perhaps I have a few minutes’ grace...
I totter into the base of a hedge and draw myself in there. I want to curl up in a ball and close out the world, but instead I lie panting and stare out at the night, and the panic comes and goes in my brain like a bobbing silver balloon.
I have never been so afraid, not ever, not even when we were on the burning quay and Pa was holding my face tight against the awful howling grief as Mama was taken away.
And then
I hear, clear as a train whistle, a high, lonesome howl in the night. It is the sound of a wolf. I have never heard one in my life before, but I know what it is as surely as night follows day.
And another answers.
It is a terrible thing to hear, alone and exhausted in the darkness. I understand now all the fairy tales, those that talk of the dangers of the deep forest, and the beasts that lurk there. All those fears were true. I know them now. I am in the middle of one such story, and all I want is out of it.
I take Pa’s watch out of my pocket and click it open. I cannot see the face in the lid, just a blur.
‘Mama,’ I whisper. I think of her, and Pa, and my brother Nikos, and I wonder how in the world I ended up here, so far from home, cowering under a hedge in an English winter and waiting for the wolves to catch up with me.
‘Now you understand,’ a voice says.
And I am not at all surprised to see a white face before me, hovering in the dark.
Strangely, I am not as afraid of him as I am of the wolves howling in the night, though his eyes shine like shillings, and his ears are as pointed as those of a hairless dog.
‘I do understand,’ I say quietly. And I run my sleeve across my face.
He smiles. ‘Dearest girl, did I not tell you that it would be so? It is the way all desperate things end. And you are far too young for this. It is not right that you should have to shoulder such things on your own. And sweetheart, you are very much alone.’
There is a smile. I know it is there. I can feel it like ants crawling across my scalp.
‘All you have to do is take my hand.’
And he holds it out to me.
I fight back the tears, and the hiccupping sobs that are crowding out my breath. I almost reach for it.