by Livi Michael
Nobody’s following.
Slowly, my heart stops banging in my ears, and my breathing slows down. That old couple couldn’t catch a lame hen.
Even so, I crawl under the cover of a hawthorn bush and crouch there, sick and shaken.
I can’t think what to do.
I just can’t think.
None of it makes sense.
I bury my face in my hands and wait for my thoughts to make sense. There’re two of them, mainly.
One is, I’ve come out of the forest at the wrong place, different from where I went in. I lift my head up and look around to check.
But there’s Mabb’s Hill with the bump on top and the little bit scooped out of the side, as though someone’s dipped into it with a spoon. And there’s the boulder, like an old man, turned into stone. And somewhere below me I can hear the river burbling on, the same that Lu fell in, where me and Digri and the others built a dam, and chased the Peggotty Witch.
Digri, I think, and my heart breaks into mourning. What wouldn’t I give to have him walk up to me now, round-faced and whistling, and tell me it’s all been a joke.
When that doesn’t happen, I stare mournfully down at the settlement. It’s our settlement all right – it’s where I live.
Maybe the raiders have been.
This second thought comes to me with a sickening thump. Raiders have been, killed everyone, or took them away, and left two old people in their place.
But the two old people look like they’ve always been there – like they were just making breakfast.
And why does everything looks so deserted, and broken down? How can all that have happened in just one night?
I spread out my hands and my fingers are shaking. Something else is pressing on me – something I don’t even want to know.
I stare all around, as though looking for clues, and that’s when it comes to me, the thought I didn’t want to have.
All the birds are singing and calling. One lands in the tree next to me and pecks at the blossom.
May blossom.
There’s a straggle of bluebells that’ve lately been in flower under the next tree. Wood sorrel, and anemones. The thrush next to me sings so sharply it hurts my head and I start to shiver and shake. I hug myself to stop the shaking from spreading, and next thing I know I’m retching and all the bile and water in my stomach comes flooding up through my mouth and nose.
I’m sick till I can’t be sick any more, and I crawl away from my own vomit and lie on the ground, panting like a wild animal. And when I open my eyes I see the petals of the wood sorrel, like pale stars, in front of me.
It’s spring. Late spring, early summer. Only when I ran away from my hut, and my mother, and Lu, it was autumn.
Well, I can’t lie here forever. Even though my whole body’s hurting, and the world doesn’t make sense. Somehow I’ve fallen asleep and slept right through the winter, like a bear, and now I’ve woken up and everything’s changed. But I can’t live here, in the forest – I don’t know how. I’ve come up with a plan. Not a very good plan, but the best I can do.
I have to go back to the huts and try to talk to someone there – to tell them I’m lost and find out what I can. Then, if they chase me away again, all I can do is try to make my way round the edge of the forest – not through it because that way I might never be seen again, but round the edges – looking for everyone, my mother, and Digri and Myrna and Bryn and Lu. And I’ll go on looking, finding what I can to eat, until something kills me or I drop down dead – even if it takes a hundred years.
I have a funny feeling when I think this, as though I might cry, but I shake it off. Don’t talk daft, I tell myself. It didn’t take a hundred years to get here, did it? And my mother wouldn’t just leave me – she’ll be out somewhere, looking. And cupping this thought in my mind like a candle flame, I get up slowly and set off once more down the hill.
A bit of sackcloth hangs loosely from one window and flaps in the breeze. It’s even plainer to me now that the only hut still occupied is the one I used to live in, that’s got the old man in it now, and his shrew-like wife. I creep towards it, and see the light from a fire flickering through the window. The door’s shut. Probably locked. I should knock at it, but instead I press myself up to the wall near the window, listening.
‘You didn’t see anything then?’ comes the old woman’s voice, thin and rasping, and the old man just mumbles a reply.
‘Could’ve been a goblin. Or a sprite.’
The old man mumbles again, and she lays into him.
‘Speak up, can’t you? You know I can’t tell what you’re saying when you mumble on!’
‘I’ve telled you before,’ the old man says. ‘I couldn’t see it proper – light were in my eyes.’
‘You can’t see at all,’ the old woman says scornfully. ‘I keep telling you – you’re near enough blind.’
‘And you’re deaf,’ the old man mutters.
‘What did you say?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Well – whatever it is – it’ll have to be found,’ says the old woman. ‘We can’t live with it here – boggartspooked. What did you say it looked like again?’
The old man sighs. ‘I telled you – I couldn’t see it clearly. But what I saw were like green and grey tatters in the wind – like some wild forest thing.’
I look down at myself. It’s true that my clothes are all in tatters. And greenish-grey. Like someone’s caught up a pile of leaves from the forest floor and sewn them together. Badly.
‘Well, whatever it is, it’ll have to be found,’ says the old woman sharply. ‘If you were man enough you’d be out there now, hunting it down.’
‘Nay, not I,’ says the old man fearfully. ‘I’m not going out there hunting some wick thing, that’ll lead me on to the Lost Paths, or change me into some fey beast. We’ve had enough ill luck as it is!’
Then the old woman gives him the sharp edge of her tongue, shrew that she is, and I can’t help but smile. So that’s what they think I am – something fey, or wick, a boggart or a goblin. It’s then that I come up with my great plan.
I’m starving, of course. For all I know, I’ve not eaten all winter. Plus I’ve been sick. And there’s a great pan of pottage on the fire. If I just knock at the door and try to talk to them, chances are they’ll drive me away. Especially if they think I’m from Faerie. Seems to me they’re a bit simple-minded. They might not even be able to answer my questions. So my plan is food first; questions later.
I stand to one side of the window and call in through it, making my voice high and keening, like the wind through the reeds.
‘Old man!’ I call softly. ‘Old ma-an!’
Even though I can’t see them, I can hear the old man clutching his wife.
‘What was that!’ he hisses, spluttering food.
‘What was what?’ says the old woman, shaking him off. ‘I didn’t hear anything!’
She must be really deaf, I think, and try again, cupping my hands round my mouth.
‘Old ma-an – come to me. Don’t be afraid – I’m calling you!’
I’m really good at this – didn’t know I could make my voice sound so eerie. The old man’s nearly bursting his britches. ‘There – there!’ he cries in a sobbing moan, and ‘Where – where?’ cries his wife.
What a pair! Him nearly blind and her nearly deaf. Don’t know how they’ve stayed alive so long. I don’t feel sorry for them, though. They’re in my hut.
‘Come to me now!’ I cry, in a mournful, hooting tone. Next minute, the door’s bursting open and the old woman runs out with a stick.
‘Come and get me – boggart!’ she yells, brandishing it like a demon.
This is my chance. I seize a scatter of pebbles and throw them as far as I can. One bounds off the wall of Myrna’s hut and the old woman runs after it, distracted, and waving her stick. I whip round and in through the doorway, into the dim hut.
I’d considered leaping out at the old man a
nd yelling Boo! But he’s not even looking. He’s huddled in a corner, weeping and covering his eyes with his blanket. Meanwhile, on the table, there’s a great steaming bowl of stew, so I grab it and run out of the door again, whipping round the corner just as the old woman returns, her stick lowered, looking confused. She goes back into her hut, and I grin at the squawk she makes when she sees that the food’s all gone. I can hear her setting about her husband with the stick, but I don’t wait to hear more. I hurry to the old storehouse and crouch down, wolfing all the food down at once, then finish with a happy belch.
This is a good game and I’ve not finished yet. I lick the bowl clean, I’m that hungry, and put it to one side for future use. When I look out again, the old man’s pinning a piece of bread to the doorway with a peg. I laugh at this – a short, snickering laugh. I know what he’s up to – stale bread’s supposed to keep faeries out. And there’s the old woman, scattering rowan leaves and herbs and daisies all round the hut. The old man looks around fearfully, this way then that, then runs away from the hut in a shuffling, stumbling run, and comes back with the hens, flap-ping and squawking under each arm. They take the hens in with them, obviously afraid that the boggart, or me, will kill and eat them if they leave them outside. Then I can hear them shutting and bolting the door, and dragging things across it to make it safe.
All this to keep me out – me!
When they’ve quite finished, I sneak up to the door and grab the bread off its peg and cram it into my mouth. Strangely enough, it tastes funny, and crumbles like soil in my mouth. And I don’t like the smell of the herbs, so sharp and bitter in my nose that they make my eyes sting. But I tell myself it’s only like one of Myrna’s evil brews, and I rattle the door viciously to show them I could get in if I wanted to, and I howl and whine at the shutter at the window and throw stones at it, and run round the house widder-ways shrieking just like a real boggart. Giving them something to be feared of.
I only stop when I’m out of breath and exhausted. Then I peep in through one of the cracks in the shutters.
I can just about see them, clutching one another. The old man’s shaking like a leaf in the wind, and the woman’s as grey as death. I fling another scattering of stones at the shutters, then hobble over to the old storehouse again. Think I’ll have a proper look round it, just in case there’s some food there I might have missed.
In fact, I do find an old turnip, but it looks a bit off-putting – wormy and half-eaten already, and the surface like wood. I eat it anyway, and search for more.
There’s a sack in the corner that might be useful to sleep on, except when I shake it it’s full of beetles and dust. A hatch in the floor leads down to the underground hide, and a stink rises as I lift it. I crawl into it now, half fearing what I might find. This is where we hid when the raiders came. There’s a quick, flittering movement, and my heart gives a sickening leap, but it’s only a mouse. What did I think it would be? Ghosts? A dead body, groping towards the light?
I crawl all the way in, and the smell’s mouldy and damp, but there’s nothing else. Nobody I know is crouching there, hiding, waiting to jump out at me. There’s only the memory of the night my father died, run through with spears.
There’s nothing I can do about that memory, nothing at all. So I grit my teeth and crawl out again.
Light’s fading now. I don’t want to go back to the forest. I’ve got to sleep somewhere, but I don’t want to sleep on my own. I want to be near people, however unfriendly they are. And the old man and the old woman have shut me out for the night. So I might as well stay here – in this dank, damp smelly place.
I shake out the sacking once again, disturbing yet more beetles and ants, and crawl in under it, holding my breath.
When I close my eyes I can see my mother’s face, smiling the way she smiled at harvest time. I can see Digri and Peglan and Ogda and Arun. And Bryn. And Lu.
I can’t help it, I start to sniff. A great tear rolls from my eye, hurting a little as it squeezes out. It falls to the earth floor, and lies there like a little jewelled stone.
I’m so surprised by this I stop crying. I pick it up. It’s a little stone – tear-shaped and twinkling in my hand. I’ve seen ones like this before. Sometimes me and Digri would find them, by the river, and run to show someone – my mother, or Digri’s dad. Elf stones, they called them.
I stare at it, baffled, then try to squeeze out another. But it’s no use – I can’t cry to order. And I’m too tired to think about it much. I put it away in my mind, together with all the other things I don’t understand about today. There’s a lot of them in there. Soon there’ll hardly be room for anything else.
I shift and turn about on the sacking. Ground’s bumpy and hard and I can’t get comfortable. I try bending my arms and legs into different positions. Then I fold myself up, right up and tucked over smaller and smaller, till I’m taking up hardly any room at all, like a nut in its shell. Never tried that before. But once I’m as folded over as I can get, I fall asleep straight away – I can even hear myself snoring. And that does strike me as strange, but no stranger than anything else that’s happened to me this day.
Sleep’s strange, as well. Full of flickering shadows and coloured lights. And great cobwebby rooms, with a voice like music saying slowly, ‘I do wish you’d help me –’. But before I can hear what I have to do I pull myself awake, with a real wrench, as though the dream’s sucking me under, just like the river tried to once. And I can hardly credit it, but it’s daylight already. Light pours in through the open doorway, so strong and yellow it makes me wince and curl up again on my sacking. But then this small, fierce hope flares in me – that everything that happened to me yesterday might have been a dream, so I get up quickly and hurry outside to look.
Nothing. Everything’s just as it was – deserted, broken-down huts, weeds growing tall, planks of wood and rubble strewn all over. Disappointment stabs me so hard I want to shout and yell, then I feel a wave of sickness and I just stand there, like a wilting weed. Trying to take it all in, trying to believe it – I’m stuck here, in this place where I don’t want to be, and everything I once knew and loved has gone. Too much, too much. It’s swelling up in my head like a seed pod about to burst.
Then I turn my darkest gaze on to the hut where the little old man and the little old woman have shut themselves in. My hut.
I creep towards it quietly. Notice something at the door. They’ve left food out for me – just like Myrna used to for the faeries, to keep them quiet. A few miserable grains of barley and some squashed-looking berries. Call that food? It’ll take more than that to keep me quiet.
I cram it all down anyway. Because I’m starving. Seems like I’m always hungry now. I stand by the window, cramming every last crumb into my mouth. Then I hear a stirring inside. I peep through the crack in the shutter.
The old man’s sitting on the side of the bed in a greyish shirt that falls below his knees. His two feet are planted flat on the floor, squarish, the veins in them knotted like boles on a tree trunk, the nails curved and yellow and horny. The old woman’s hunched over a pot on the fire.
‘Stew’s nearly boiled down,’ she says. ‘We’ll need water.’
The old man says nothing to this. He scratches himself, rubs his bleary eyes. Then he says, ‘I dreamed I had a sister last night.’
The old woman doesn’t even look up. ‘You did have a sister,’ she says sourly. ‘And I had a brother.’
‘No – but I dreamed she was here,’ the old man says. ‘Living with us. Only she was no more than a child. The same age mine would have been when she –’
‘There’s no use talking like that,’ snaps the old woman. ‘That’s all past and gone. We’ve both had people we’ve loved and lost. Only difference is you weren’t old enough to remember yours. But I remember mine – do you think I don’t? Not a day goes past but I don’t think of them –’
Her voice rises as though she might cry, and he interrupts her then.
‘Nay, now – don’t upset yourself,’ he says soothingly. ‘It was only a dream. I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I?’
The old woman says nothing to this. Then she says, ‘One of them hens’ll have to go in the pot. You’ll have to fetch water. And I need to check the barn for eggs.’
I’ve heard enough. They’ll have to go out sooner or later, and then I’ll see what mischief I can make. I skulk round the side of the hut, waiting.
Don’t have to wait long. The old woman comes to the door. She’s nervous enough, looking this way and that, but then she sets off at a scurry to the hen house, bent over but nimble, and returns carrying two or three eggs in a cloth. A little while passes, then the man comes to the door, carrying a pot. He sets off in his hobbling way, looking neither to right nor left. Takes a bit longer, but soon he’s hobbling back, carrying water that sloshes and splashes a little.
Can’t help but wonder how blind he is. He gets closer and closer, then, greatly daring, I step away from the wall right in front of him.
He doesn’t even blink. I have to leap back quick or he’d walk right into me. But he does pass a hand quickly in front of his eyes before he goes in, as though he might’ve seen something funny from the corner of one of them. Makes me feel strange, that. As though I might really not be there at all.
I don’t think about that for long. I’ve realized now how much trouble I can make. The rest of that morning they get bolder about leaving the hut, not even checking to see whether the boggart’s about. Then my chance comes, when they both leave. I slip into the hut.
I have a fine old time then, chasing the hens about and tipping over the broth. The hens flap and squawk, dropping their dirt and feathers everywhere. I smash two of the eggs against the wall and eat the third. Then I break what pots I can find and rip up a sheet the old woman’s been mending, and spill all the water on to the floor.
The old woman comes running, hearing the hens, and I flatten myself against the wall. She stops dead in the doorway with her mouth as far open as it’ll go, so I can’t help but chuckle.
She closes her mouth and opens it again. Air rushes out of her and she sucks it back in. Then it happens. She screams out for all she’s worth.