Beneath

by Gill Arbuthnott

  She took a deep breath and dived.

  The water pulled her down immediately, spun her over and round until she had no idea which way was up. She whirled like a leaf caught in the current that shouldn’t be there at all. And then the water simply spat her out, and she fell through air to land with a thump on dry ground.

  What had she done? How had she done it?

  She lay still for a minute, getting her breath back, before she sat up. She should be soaking, but she wasn’t even damp. Around her breathed the Kelpie – the Nykur – world, shimmering as disconcertingly as it had the first time.

  It didn’t look like autumn here. The great trees still had their leaves, the huge briar bushes were still heavy with flowers. She could smell their odd musky scent from where she sat.

  Slowly, Jess got to her feet and looked round, trying to find her bearings. The trees stretched away in all directions. She would have to be very careful not to get lost. She thought of calling Finn’s name, but she didn’t want to disturb the silence. She remembered what he’d said about wolves in the forest.

  Jess looked around for a sharp stone, so that she could mark the tree trunks and find her way back. She picked up a short, thick branch as well. She wasn’t sure it would be of much use against wolves, but it made her feel better.

  From behind her came the sound of running water. She headed for it, scraping marks into the tree bark every twenty paces or so.

  Her common sense was reasserting itself more every minute. What on earth had made her do this? She had never thought it would work, of course. But why had she even tried? These Kelpies were no friends to humans. They’d stolen Freya, and Jess had taken her back and hurt one of them in the process. What would they do if they found her here? This was the stupidest thing she’d done in her whole life.

  No it wasn’t. Finn’s fate mattered to her. She had to find out what had happened to him. She didn’t want to be haunted by a Kelpie for the rest of her days, like her gran had been.

  Jess came to the edge of a stream. The rose bushes grew thick along its banks. She hadn’t been here before, but surely this stream would take her back to Roseroot Pool.

  And if it didn’t? Would she wander the forest until she died?

  “How did you get here?”

  Jess gasped and jumped, heart racing. Finn stood among the trees, a look of utter disbelief on his face.

  “I… I came through the pool.”

  “That’s impossible.” He walked slowly towards her.

  So he was alive. Relief washed through her. But he looked drawn and tense.

  “You couldn’t have come through the pool,” he said.

  “But I did. I swam out and dived and I was here. I didn’t think it would work: I’ve swum there before and nothing happened.”

  “It shouldn’t be possible,” said Finn. He was within arm’s length now. Was he dangerous? Jess took a step back.

  “Only Nykur can travel through the gateways alone. I would know if you had Nykur blood.” His hand went to his neck and as he pulled at his tunic Jess saw the angry red mark that the halter had left.

  “Could it be because of that?” She pointed. “When I trapped you, maybe it did something to me as well as you. It gave me power over you. Maybe it gave me some of your power as well.”

  She expected him to scoff at the idea, but he simply stared at her.

  “Why are you here?” he asked abruptly.

  “I…” What should she say? “I was afraid that I’d killed you with the halter. I only wanted Freya back, I didn’t mean to hurt… anyone. I’m sorry. And then I saw what had happened to the pool…” She felt her skin glow with shame, as though she was the one who had poisoned the pool. “I wanted to know if you were all right.”

  He nodded. “I am. But my sister’s sick. She went through the water and it burned her.”

  Jess was aghast. “I… I’m so sorry.”

  “You should go. If anyone else finds you here…”

  Suddenly she felt danger all around her.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “The river here will take you back.” She dropped the branch and the stone, and he walked with her to the bank in silence. She cared, Finn thought. She’d come back because she cared about what she’d done to him. He felt a surge of hope.

  “You mustn’t come back.” He forced the words out, though they were the very opposite of what he wanted to tell her. “I don’t know what my parents would do if they found you here.”

  Jess stepped down into the water.

  “I’m sorry, Finn. I never meant this to happen.” There was so much more that she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find the words.

  He nodded. “Just go.”

  And so she did, and came to the surface again and saw brambles and dead fish. She was back in her own world. In the water her father had poisoned.

  As she pulled herself out of the water and stood dripping, fury possessed Jess. She took one last, long look at the ruin of Roseroot Pool and turned for home.

  When Jess reached the farmyard, she ran around the back of the barn and there he was, holding one end of the big pull saw, sharing a joke with the man on the other end.

  He stopped as he saw Jess running towards him, her face white with anger.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened to you?” he demanded.

  “What’s wrong?” she repeated, incredulous. “You’ve poisoned Roseroot Pool. How could you?”

  “What do you…”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know.” She was almost screaming now. “Salt. Rat poison. How dare you? Do you know what you’ve done to them?”

  So suddenly that she hardly saw the movement, her father raised his hand and slapped her hard across the cheek. Jess gasped and put her hand to her face, shocked into silence.

  “You will never speak to me like that again,” Ian said coldly. “Never. Do you understand? Get back to the house and stay there.”

  And he turned on his heel and went back to the saw as though she had ceased to exist.

  There was a knock on the door. Jess ignored it, staring out of her bedroom window into the evening darkness.

  She’d run straight up to her room after the dreadful encounter with her father, and had stayed there, ignoring her mother’s calls to supper and Ashe’s none-too-subtle periods of listening at the door. If she touched her cheek, she imagined she could still feel the print of her father’s hand on her skin. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anyone.

  Jess heard the sound of the door opening, and turned over on the bed so that her back was towards it and she was facing the window properly. She heard the creak of someone sitting down in the chair, but whoever it was didn’t speak.

  Silence stretched thin. Three minutes, four, five.

  Curiosity got the better of her and she turned her head on the pillow.

  It was her gran.

  Jess sat up slowly.

  “How long were you thinking of staying in here?” said Ellen, in a noticeably unsympathetic voice.

  “I… I don’t know,” said Jess, taken aback.

  “It’s no use expecting your father to back down, you know that,” Ellen continued briskly. “It wouldn’t do any good even if he did. He can’t undo what he’s done.”

  “Did you know what he was going to do?”

  “He didn’t tell me, if that’s what you mean. But I guessed.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “And how could I have done that, even if I’d wanted to?”

  It took a few seconds for that to sink in properly.

  “You think what he did was right?”

  “Life will be safer for the children here if the Kelpies have no way through to our world. Of course, what Ian did to the pond won’t poison it forever, but it will keep them away for a while. They might decide it’s not worth the risk at all any more.”

  Jess felt as though she’d been struck all over again.

  “But… you’ve seen one
of them. You know what they are, that they have their own world. Euan is part of that world. Surely you care what happens to them?”

  Ellen looked at Jess curiously.

  “Do you think they care about us?”

  “Yes, of course.” Doubt surfaced in her mind. She had no real reason to think that. “That is… they must. Finn said he used to watch us on the farm. He was interested in us.”

  “That isn’t the same as caring, my dear,” her grandmother said quietly.

  Jess stared down at her bed, confused. Ellen was right. Of course it wasn’t the same. What had made her think it was?

  “You’ve been through a very strange time,” Ellen went on. “You’ve done something extraordinary. But you need to step back into your old life now for everybody’s sake, especially your own. You need to let go, let the Kelpies drift out of your memory. It’s what I did eventually. It’s what you must do now.” She got up stiffly and went out.

  Jess lay on the bed thinking about what Ellen had said for a long time after her grandmother had left.

  The hours she had spent in the Nykur world had been incredibly vivid. She couldn’t imagine why Finn had ever spent time in this grubby, muffled place where she lived, when he had that pristine world of his own.

  If she let go, let her memories of the world below the water fade as Ellen wanted, life would go back to normal much more easily.

  But was that what she wanted?

  She could keep her memory of Finn and the Nykur world fresh if she tried, but what was the point? She would probably never see him again. Why would he want anything more to do with her after all the trouble she had brought down on him?

  Your life is here… now… Think about it sensibly, Jess. You can’t live here properly with your mind full of phantoms. She’s right. It’s best if you let go.

  And in her mind, she packed her memories of Finn and his world into a little box and pushed it into the dimmest corner of her brain, to lie there and gather dust until she could no longer find it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The last leaves fell. Skeins of geese passed over the farm at dusk and dawn, going to and from their roosts. Darkness came early now and lingered late, and lamplight glowed from the farmhouse windows more often than not. Sometimes, deep in the night, wolves howled from the hillside, and folk from some of the higher farms talked about huge black wolves leading packs that raided right into the steadings.

  On most mornings there was a skin of ice on the water trough in the yard, though it still melted during the day. The family slept cocooned in quilts, and stepped unwillingly out in the mornings on to cold floors, hopping from foot to foot while they dressed as quickly as possible.

  Magnus came back to Kirriemuir with tales of black wolves being seen near Dundee. He started to work in the shop with Arnor, displacing the ancient Lachlan to some vague, unspecified job that seemed to involve a good deal of sitting and dozing. He came out to Westgarth regularly too; Ian always seemed to have something that he needed help with.

  Magnus was staying in Arnor and Freya’s spare room, but whenever Jess visited the house his belongings seemed to be spread everywhere, to Freya’s exasperation.

  “The next time he leaves muddy boots in the hall, they’re going down the well,” she said, as Jess stepped over them when she arrived one morning.

  Jess sniffed. “Do I smell burning?”

  Freya gave a wail and rushed for the kitchen.

  “Biscuits,” she said, pulling a tray out of the oven.

  Jess gave them a calculating look.

  “They’re almost not quite burnt. I’m sure Magnus will eat them.”

  Freya rolled her eyes.

  “It’s about time he went out to Westgarth for a couple of days so that I can re-stock the kitchen. Your mother’s had time to build up supplies again since his last visit.”

  Jess smiled.

  “She seems to have got the idea now that she needs to cook twice as much if Magnus is going to be there. Ashe tries to compete, of course, but you’d have to scoop his legs out to give him any chance.”

  She picked up a biscuit, juggling it from hand to hand to cool.

  “He said he was going to come out this weekend if Arnor could spare him.”

  “Oh, he will,” said Freya in a voice that suggested Arnor would have little say in the matter. “I’ll see to that.”

  Jess took an experimental bite of biscuit. “Hardly burnt at all. Just tastes a bit smoky. You could try it as a new flavour in the shop.”

  “You’re as bad as Magnus,” said Freya. “The two of you deserve each other.”

  Jess was slowly getting used to comments like this, and didn’t go red at all unless they came when she wasn’t expecting them.

  Anyway, she and Magnus were practically performing a public service for Freya: keeping an eagle-eyed watch on their tentatively developing relationship took Freya’s mind off the recent past. To most people she seemed back to normal now, and the speculation about her mysterious disappearance had died down. Sometimes, though, Jess caught her staring absently, suspended in the middle of some forgotten task, and knew the gap in her memory still gnawed at her.

  Jess gazed out of the window, suspended halfway through drying the soup pot. Outside, fat white flakes settled unhurriedly, falling from a yellow-grey sky, but she wasn’t really looking at them.

  It was two days until Yule, and Magnus had set off for Dundee the previous morning. He’d be gone for a week or more, depending on the weather. It was hard to make definite travel plans at this time of year.

  “Tsk!” said Ellen, shaking her head. “Miles away.”

  “She’s thinking about Magnus,” said Ashe in a high whining voice. “Oh Magnus…” He clasped his hands to his heart and rolled his eyes. “I can’t sleep for thinking about you.”

  “Brat!” spat Jess, rousing as suddenly as a striking adder and flicking the corner of a wet towel at the back of his head with deadly accuracy.

  She hadn’t been thinking about Magnus. She’d been wondering if it was snowing in the Kelpie world. She’d tried, really tried, to forget about Finn and his world, but she couldn’t do it. In truth, she didn’t want to.

  “It’s time you two got out of the kitchen,” said Ellen. “Get wrapped up and go and fetch in the holly so we can decorate the house. Get some ivy and mistletoe too.”

  “About time,” Ashe said forcefully. “Coming, Jess?”

  “As if you have to ask,” she said, their altercation forgotten.

  She fetched a couple of sickles from the tool shed while Ashe found an empty sack, and they set off into the still-falling snow.

  There was a group of holly trees about half a mile along the road towards Kirriemuir. Jess had been checking them each time she passed, seeing the berries swell and colour. Holly was no good without berries.

  “I think the snow’s stopping,” said Jess as they walked.

  She was right. The steady drift of flakes slackened and then stopped as the sky grew a little brighter.

  They reached the trees soon after and set to work. After ten minutes they had half a sackful.

  “That’s enough, Ashe.”

  “No, we need more than that.”

  “No we don’t: look how much we’ve already got. There’ll be no branches left for next winter if you carry on.”

  A twig cracked, somewhere off in the trees, and Jess turned sharply, her heart jolting.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ashe asked, mystified.

  “Didn’t you hear that?”

  “All I heard was a twig snapping. What’s wrong?”

  She looked round wildly.

  “Hello?” she shouted.

  “Have you gone off your head?” Ashe looked at her with frank incredulity. “It was a twig. There are trees all round us. Who are you expecting to be here? There won’t be any wolves round here yet.”

  “Nothing. No one.” She shrugged. “It just took me by surprise.”

  Ashe gave her another scat
hing look.

  “Come on, let’s get the mistletoe and ivy now.”

  The best place to look was the old doocot near the orchard. Roofless and birdless, its crumbling walls were swagged with long trailers of ivy. And inside the orchard there were three apple trees with mistletoe growing on them. Jess and Ashe walked towards them, spilling bits of ivy, arguing about who should climb up for the mistletoe, something they both wanted to do.

  They stopped and looked up.

  “Oh no,” said Jess.

  “That’s useless,” said Ashe.

  The mistletoe was there all right, but there wasn’t a single white berry left on it.

  “There were plenty of berries the other day,” said Ashe. “I checked.”

  They walked round the trees. Not a berry anywhere.

  “I know where there’s some more,” Ashe said eagerly. “Maybe there’ll be berries left there.”

  “Where?”

  “Those two big ash trees up the hill.” He pointed. “Look. You can just see the tops from here.”

  “I’ve never noticed.”

  “It’s there. Not too high either. Come on.”

  “Just a minute, Ashe. We don’t have time. Or at least, you don’t. Remember Mother wants to cut your hair this afternoon. You take the ivy back and I’ll go for the mistletoe.”

  “But I want to come too.”

  “I know, but you don’t want to be in trouble at this time of year, do you…”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Jess festooned Ashe with all the ivy he could carry, and sent him on his way back to the house, then set off for the path that led up the hill towards the ash trees.

  She didn’t come this way very often and it took her a little while to find the trees once she left the path, but when she did so, she could see the mistletoe, not too far up, just as Ashe had said, and still covered in berries.

  Jess checked that the sickle was securely stuck through her belt, tucked her skirts up, and a minute later she was level with the mistletoe, deciding where to cut. She only needed a bunch to hang over the lintel so that anyone who passed into the house would have good luck.