A fine mist hung over the grasslands as the hunters, followed by One Eye, moved off towards the grazing herds. There was the feel of snow in the air and the women had wrapped up tightly and insisted that their men put thicker skins around their shoulders, binding them into place with extra thongs. Silently, feet trudging across the cold, dewy grass, the band moved off, away from the cliff, and was swallowed by the mist.
The boy watched them go, and when they were out of sight he scrambled up to the shrine-cave and disappeared inside.
The hunters had moved silently across the mist-covered land for several hours when the first feelings of unease came to them. The fog was dense and they could see only a few paces around them. They grouped together and Red Spear motioned them to silence. One Eye watched him, breath steamy with the cold, as he pricked his ears to the low winds and listened.
There was movement all around them, shuffling, the sound of invisible feet paddling across the frozen grass.
A stir went through the hunters. Was it Grunts, was it the squat and ugly men who lived in the shadow of the moving snow walls? Clutching his red-ochred spear, Red Spear motioned for the band to move on. One Eye, his own spear held ready to stab, followed, but now his eye was wide and watchful, his heart thundering. Grunts were unpredictable. They might pass by or they might attack. There was no way of telling.
The hunters spread out as they neared where they could hear the bison grazing. Still the wall of white separated them from anything that lay ahead or behind. Each hunter was a vague grey shape as he moved through the mist, spear held ready, head turning from side to side. Behind them the sound of creatures grew louder.
“Look!” breathed a hunter close to One Eye. His voice caused them all to stop and turn. What they saw made them howl with fear …
White shapes, running through the mist. Ghosts, shimmering and flickering in and out of vision. Ghostly spears held high, mouths open in a silent war cry. Grunts, spirits, the spirits of the ugly creatures that had died at the hands of the hunters over the years gone by.
One Eye ran. He ran hard and he ran fast and he was aware of the other hunters running beside him, breathing fast and hard, eyes wide and constantly turning to regard the apparitions that pursued them.
All at once they were among the bison. Their approach, not the most silent, had been muffled by the heavy air, and the animals were taken by surprise. The huge black head of a male bison looked upon One Eye, and the creature stood, for a moment, stunned. Then it snorted and turned, lumbering heavily away and out of sight.
From his left there came a scream and the sound of flesh torn. One Eye moved over and saw the shape of a hunter spreadeagled on the ground, being gored by the huge leader of the herd. And beyond the sight of the man threshing against the veil of death, the white ghosts of dead men came running through the fog.
One Eye staggered backward, his head turning frantically from right to left as he searched for a way out. The silent shapes were all around and now he could see their tiny eyes, black orbs in the white of their spectral faces. Their bodies were naked, squat and heavy, their brows huge and jutting, giving them a peculiarly blind look.
They ran through the fog, and ghostly spears flew from ghostly hands, sailing silently past the hunters and vanishing as they flew from sight. The bison snorted and raged and ran amok among the terrified hunters. One Eye came up to the steaming flank of a small animal, and when it saw him it turned on him. He stabbed at it with his spear and felt the point sink into flesh. The bison roared and thundered away. One Eye stood alone, surrounded by the shifting wall of white. He could see the ghosts moving closer, their bodies swaying as they neared him, mouths open, screaming their silent screams of anger.
Behind him he heard the thunderous approach of a large bison and ran to avoid its maddened gallop. Distantly, a hunter screamed, and the scream was cut off as his life ended at the razor tip of a bison’s horn. One Eye ran towards the scream, and as he ran he passed bewildered and terrified hunters who stood still, now, almost ready for the death that was overtaking so many of the tribe.
A bison snorted close by and lumbered out of the mist, its flank catching One Eye and sending him sprawling. As he staggered to his feet a new sound reached his ears. He paused, on his knees, breath coming short and painfully. There was blood on his tightly wrapped fur breeches, but he felt no pain.
A throaty growl, like no sound he had ever heard in his life. And it was near, very near. A hunter screamed, and it was a scream of terror, not of death. One Eye jumped to his feet and crouched with his spear-point centred unwaveringly on where he could hear something big and cumbersome moving in his direction. The hunter who had screamed so loudly came running out of the mist, face smeared with blood and sweat, eyes open, mouth open. He carried no spear and ran past One Eye as if he hadn’t seen him. He disappeared into the mist and a moment later One Eye heard a grunt and a gasp. The hunter reappeared, staggering, a red-ochred spear thrust deep into his belly.
The roar of the animal that approached came again, nearer. One Eye backed away carefully and his eye searched the fog for any sign of what it could be. The ghosts appeared again, dancing towards the lost hunters, and now they seemed almost … taunting.
Behind One Eye there was the snort of a bison. He swung around but could see nothing. As he walked forward, ears keened for the sound of the beast behind him, he came to He Who Carries a Red Spear, standing with his back to One Eye, crouched and waiting for the bison to charge. One Eye could hear its snorting in the mist and realised that any moment it would tear into sight and Red Spear would either kill or be killed. But that could not be! Remembering how he had drawn the hunt, how he had spirited Red Spear’s life into his own hands, One Eye edged forward.
He raised his spear high and threw it with all his strength at the centre of the leader’s naked back. Red Spear screamed and arched over backward, and One Eye saw two feet of spear protruding beyond the other man’s chest. Naked, blood pumping down his glistening limbs, Red Spear lay dead at One Eye’s feet.
A shadow fell across One Eye and, as he was about to defile the body with his hand axe, he froze. Straightening up, he became aware of the heavy breathing close behind, of the rumbling roar of a wild beast …
“NO!” he screamed, flinging his body around and staring up at the black creature which towered over him. “NO!” His hands flew to his face and he staggered backward, tripping over the body of Red Spear. The monster lumbered forward, rising onto its hind legs and reaching down with its front paws. Claws as long as a man’s forearm glinted and slashed down at the painter, caught him just below his throat and ripped downward, disemboweling him and throwing him twenty feet across the grass with a last jerk of a bloodstained paw. One Eye had a brief second to assess his killer. It was like a bear, yet so unlike a bear—the muzzle was long and twisted, the teeth too long, too white. The eyes, huge, staring, were the eyes of a dead man, not a living beast. And the fur … the fur was unlike the fur of any bear that One Eye had ever seen. It was black and red! Black and red!
Then there was only pain for One Eye, intense pain and the sight of his own blood and entrails seeping onto the grass. Followed by the blackness of death.
* * *
Crouched in the mouth of the shrine-cave, the boy shivered as black storm clouds skated overhead and icy winds whipped down from the northern ice-wastes, driving the mist before them, clearing the grasslands to the eyes of the desperate women.
The hunters were late, very late. The women were frightened and they wailed. The fire burned high as a beacon for their men, and soon, tired and bloody, spearless and without a single kill between them, the few hunters that survived returned to the camp.
The boy crawled into the deep of the cave where a small fire burned and illuminated the drawings and paintings on the wall. He reached out a hand and traced the figure of his father, moving his finger to the outline of One Eye poised, ready to throw his spear. Then the boy’s fingers traced the great bear tha
t reared up on its hind legs, body finished with red ochre and black charred wood, teeth pearly white with root gum … It had taken him a long time to draw and he was proud of it. That it was not a realistic likeness of one of the bears which roamed the tundra he was not to know, for he had never seen a bear.
He settled back and regarded the towering shape as it seemed to swoop on the little figure of One Eye, dancing among the smudges of the hunters the boy had drawn earlier.
The boy laughed as he reached out and smudged away the black drawing of his teacher. One Eye would not be coming back. The tribe had a new painter, now.
Scarrowfell
1
In the darkness, in the world of nightmares, she sang a little song. In her small room, behind the drawn curtains, her voice was tiny, frightened, murmuring in her sleep:
Oh dear mother what a fool I’ve been …
Three young fellows … came courting me …
Two were blind … the other couldn’t see …
Oh dear mother what a fool I’ve been …
Tuneless, timeless, endlessly repeated through the night, soon the nightmare grew worse and she tossed below the bedclothes, and called out for her mother, louder and louder, Mother! Mother! until she sat up, gasping for breath and screaming.
“Hush, child. I’m here. I’m beside you. Quiet now. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m frightened, I’m frightened. I had a terrible dream …”
Her mother hugged her, sitting on the bed, rocking back and forward, wiping the sweat and the fear from her face. “Hush … hush, now. It was just a dream …”
“The blind man,” she whispered, and shook as she thought of it so that her mother’s grip grew firmer, more reassuring. “The blind man. He’s coming again …”
“Just a dream, child. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Close your eyes and go back to sleep, now. Sleep, child … sleep. There. That’s better.”
Still she sang, her voice very small, very faint as she drifted into sleep again. “Three young fellows … came courting me … one was blind … one was grim … one had creatures following him …”
“Hush, child …”
Waking with a scream: “Don’t let him take me!”
2
None of the children in the village really knew one festival day from another. They were told what to wear, and told what to do, and told what to eat, and when the formalities were over they would rush away to their secret camp, in the shadow of the old church.
Lord’s Eve was different, however. Lord’s Eve was the best of the festivals. Even if you didn’t know that a particular day would be Lord’s Eve day, the signs of it were in the village.
Ginny knew the signs by heart. Mr. Box, at the Red Hart, would spend a day cursing as he tried to erect a tarpaulin in the beer garden of his public house. Here, the ox would be slaughtered and roasted, and the dancers would rest. At the other end of the village Mr. Ellis, who ran the Bush and Briar, would put empty firkins outside his premises for use as seats. The village always filled with strangers during the dancing festivals, and those strangers drank a lot of beer.
The church was made ready too. Mr. and Mrs. Morton, usually never to be seen out of their Sunday best, would dress in overalls and invade the cold church with brooms, brushes and buckets. Mr. Ashcroft, the priest, would garner late summer flowers, and mow and trim the graveyard. This was a dangerous time for the children, since he would come perilously close to their camp, which lay just beyond the iron gate that led from the churchyard. Here, between the church and the earth walls of the old Saxon fort—in whose ring the village had been built—was a tree-filled ditch, and the children’s camp had been made there. The small clearing was close to the path which led from the church, through the earth wall and out onto the farmland beyond.
There were other signs of the coming festival day, however, signs from outside the small community. First, the village always seemed to be in shadow. Yet distantly, beyond the cloud cover, the land seemed to glow with eerie light. Ginny would stand on the high wall by the church, looking through the crowded trees that covered the ring of earthworks, staring to where the late summer sun was setting its fire on Whitley Nook and Middleburn. Movement on the high valley walls above these villages was just the movement of clouds, and the fields seemed to flow with brightness.
The wind always blew from Whitley Nook towards Ginny’s own village, Scarrowfell. And on that wind, the day before the festival of Lord’s Eve, you could always hear the music of the dancers as they wended their way along the riverside, through and around the underwood, stopping at each village to collect more dancers, more musicians (more hangovers) ready for the final triumph at Scarrowfell itself.
The music drifted in and out of hearing, a hint of a violin, the distant clatter of sticks, the faint jingle of the small bells with which the dancers decked out their clothes. When the wind gusted, whole phrases of the jaunty music could be heard, a rhythmic sound, with the voices of the dancers clearly audible as they sang the words of the folk songs.
Ginny, precariously balanced on the top of the wall, would jig with those brief rhythms, hair blowing in the wind, one hand holding on to the dry bark of an ash branch.
The dancers were coming; all the Oozers and the Pikers and the Thackers, coming to join the village’s Scarrowmen; and it was therefore the day of Lord’s Eve: the birds would flock and wheel in the skies, and flee along the valley too. And sure enough, as she looked up into the dark sky over Scarrowfell, the birds were there, thousands of them, making streaming, spiral patterns in the gloom. Their calling was inaudible. But after a while they streaked north, away from the bells, away from the sticks, away from the calling of the Oozers.
Kevin Symonds came racing around the grey-walled church, glanced up and saw Ginny and made frantic beckoning motions. “Gargoyle!” he hissed, and Ginny almost shouted as she lost her balance before jumping down from the wall. “Gargoyle” was their name for Mr. Ashcroft, the priest. A second after they had squeezed beyond the iron gate and into the cover of the scrub the old man appeared. But he was busy placing rillygills—knots of flowers and wheat stalks—on each gravestone and didn’t notice the panting children just beyond the cleared ground, where the thorn and ash thicket was so dense.
Ginny led the way into the clear space among the trees in the ditch. She stepped up the shallow earth slope to peer away into the field beyond, and the circle of tall elms that grew at its centre. A scruffy brown mare—probably one of Mr. Box’s drays—was kicking and stamping across the field, a white foal stumbling behind it. She was so intent on watching the foal that she didn’t notice Mr. Box himself, emerging from the ring of trees. He was dressed in his filthy blue apron but walked briskly across the field towards the church, his gaze fixed on the ground. Every few paces he stopped and fiddled with something on the grass. He never looked up, walked through the gap in the earthworks—the old gateway—and passed, by doing so, within arm’s reach of where Ginny and Kevin breathlessly crouched. He walked straight ahead, stopped at the iron gate, inspected it, then moved off around the perimeter of the church, out of sight and out of mind.
“They’ve got the ox on the spit already,” Kevin said, his eyes bright, his lips wet with anticipation. “It’s the biggest ever. There’s going to be at least two slices each.”
“Yuck!” said Ginny, feeling sick at the thought of the grey, greasy meat.
“And they’ve started the bonfire. You’ve got to come and see it. It’s going to be huge! My mother said it’s going to be the biggest yet.”
“I usually scrub potatoes for fire-baking,” Ginny said. “But I haven’t been asked this year.”
“Sounds as if you’ve been lucky,” Kevin said. “It’s going to be a really big day. The biggest ever. It’s very special.”
Ginny whispered, “My mother’s been behaving strangely. And I’ve had a nightmare …”
Kevin watched her, but when no further information or explanation seemed to be f
orthcoming he said, “My mother says this is the most special Lord’s Eve of them all. An old man’s coming back to the village.”
“What old man?”
“His name’s Cyric, or something. He left a long time ago, but he’s coming back and everybody’s very excited. They’ve been trying to get him to come back for ages, but he’s only just agreed. That’s what Mum says, anyway.”
“What’s so special about him?”
Kevin wasn’t sure. “She said he’s a war hero, or something.”
“Ugh!” Ginny wrinkled her nose in distaste. “He’s probably going to be all scarred.”
“Or blind!” Kevin agreed, and Ginny’s face turned white.
A third child wriggled through the iron gate and skidded into the depression between the earth walls, dabbing at his face where he had scratched himself on a thorn.
“The tower!” Mick Ferguson whispered excitedly, ignoring his graze. “While old Gargoyle is busy placing the rillygills.”
They moved cautiously back to the churchyard, then crawled towards the porch on their bellies, screened from the priest by the high earth mounds over each grave. Ducking behind the memorial stones—but not touching them—they at last found sanctuary in the freshly polished, gloomy interior. Despite the cloud-cover, light was bright from the stained-glass windows. The altar, with its flowers, looked somehow different from normal. The Mortons were cleaning the font, over in the side chapel; a bucket of well-water stood by ready to fill the bowl. They were talking as they worked and didn’t hear the furtive movement of the three children.
Kevin led the way up the spiralling, footworn steps and out onto the cone-shaped roof of the church’s tower. They averted their eyes from the grotesque stone figure that guarded the doorway, although Kevin reached out and touched its muzzle as he always did.
“For luck,” he said. “My mother says the stone likes affection as much as the rest of us. If it doesn’t get attention it’ll prowl the village at night and choose someone to kill.”
The Bone Forest (Ryhope Wood) Page 18