Winter Wood

by Steve Augarde

  Midge shook her head at the wonder of it.

  The Rowdy-Dow tree, once so dead and barkless that its appearance had been white, was now charred and smoke-stained, a great dark stump of a thing, its limbs crow-black against the blue of the summer sky. And around its base was a perfect circle, a ring of fresh grass that had sprung up from the scorched earth, a brighter green than the grass beyond. Like a fairy ring.

  So what she had seen, or dreamed that she had seen, had truly happened. The fire had been real. Within that circle the Various had stood, and had brought together the Stone and the Orbis, and had travelled on. They really had gone.

  ‘Is this what you expected?’ Katie was staring at her.

  ‘Yes. Pretty much.’ Midge tried to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Let’s have a closer look then.’ George stepped forward into the sunshine.

  Midge hung back a little longer. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to go poking about among the grass, for fear of what she might find. It would be awful if there were . . . remains or something. She still couldn’t grasp what had actually happened in that outlandish ceremony she had witnessed. Or imagined. Because after all, she couldn’t really have been here. Could she?

  ‘You OK?’ said Katie.

  ‘Yeah. I think so.’

  There was very little to see. The ashes had been mostly washed away by spring and summer rain, just a few patches of orangey-white stuff still visible here and there. Other areas of the soil were black, and there were scatterings of charcoal amongst the fresh grass. It was surprising how quickly the grass had reappeared. Another season and there would be no evidence left of what had happened here.

  But what had happened?

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ said Katie. ‘So they were all standing inside this bonfire thing, and then they all just disappeared?’

  It did seem ridiculous, put like that.

  Midge sighed. ‘Well, yeah, basically. That’s what I saw. I mean, I dreamed it, but it was like I was really seeing it. I just keep thinking . . . I just keep thinking about this idea of aliens. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. I mean, if there are other worlds – and loads of people reckon there are – then maybe . . . you know . . . it’s not all flying saucers and UFOs and whatnot.’ She was struggling, but she clung on to what she knew. ‘They called themselves travellers. That’s what they did. Travelled. At least they did before they lost the Orbis. And I think they meant travelling through time. Or space. Or other lives. You saw it, didn’t you, George – the Orbis?’

  ‘Yeah. Weird or what,’ said George. He was kicking around in the grass on the other side of the blackened tree. ‘Like an old astronomy thing. All slidey knobs and suns and moons and stuff. Hey, what’s this? A relic!’ He bent down and picked something up from the grass. It was pronged – the metal part of a small gardening fork.

  ‘Ha! Great find,’ said Katie. ‘We got what we came for – let’s go!’

  ‘No, he’s right, though,’ said Midge. ‘It is a relic. They used things like that for fishing and stuff. Like a spear.’

  George brought the fork across to show them. It was encrusted in dried ash, orange with rust.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ said Katie.

  ‘Clean it up and keep it. Maybe hang it in the tree house. It’s my relic.’ George stuck the fork in his back pocket.

  ‘Hmf.’ Katie sounded unimpressed. Nevertheless she kicked half-heartedly at the grass around her feet, perhaps in search of some relic of her own.

  ‘Let me show you the other clearing,’ said Midge. ‘Then maybe we should go and look at the caves.’

  They walked across to where a gap in the bushes led into the Great Clearing. The short pathway had already become overgrown through lack of use. Soon the bushes would meet and the two areas would become entirely separate.

  The pea sticks and beanpoles had all gone now, and the once neatly tended rows of vegetables were a tangled mess, overgrown with weeds and tall grass. You could still see what had once been, though, and Midge said, ‘This was like allotments. Beans and potatoes and stuff. Look.’ She grabbed hold of a bunch of flower-headed stalks and pulled, not really knowing what to expect. The stalks were fleshy and they crushed easily within her grasp – the immediate aroma giving her a clue as to what she had found. An onion, long gone to seed.

  ‘Want it?’ She dangled the sorry object in front of Katie.

  Katie laughed. ‘Er, no, I don’t think so. Come on. Show us these caves.’

  As they ducked into the shade of the trees once more, Midge took one last look around the Great Clearing. It was a shame really. All that work gone to waste. She turned to follow George and Katie, but then something caught her attention on the other side of the ruined allotments – dark shadows amongst the stumpy hawthorn bushes. Her heart jumped, and for a moment she thought that they were still here after all. The Various! But it wasn’t people that she could see – it was horses. Those funny little horses that they kept, two or three of them, grazing in the distant shade. So they’d left them behind. She opened her mouth to call George and Katie back, but then thought better of it. Leave the poor creatures in peace. Perhaps they’d be discovered someday and perhaps they wouldn’t, but she wasn’t going to be the one to give them away. And in the meantime at least they’d have plenty to eat. Let them have the run of the place, then, and enjoy themselves whilst they could. They would be her final secret.

  ‘Hang on,’ she called. ‘You don’t know the way!’

  It wasn’t easy clambering up the bank of loose shale that spewed out in front of the main cave. For every three steps up you were likely to slip back two. But they managed it, and stood together in the cool entranceway, peering into the gloom.

  ‘I can’t see a blimmin’— Whoa! It echoes in here, doesn’t it?’ George’s voice bounced around the cavern. They took a few steps forward and gradually their eyes adjusted to the darkness. The walls to either side of them were now visible, but it was still impossible to see into the depths. How far did it go back? There was an entrance to a kind of little side chamber, and they cautiously felt their way around this, but it was completely empty as far as they could tell. Midge put her hand up to see whether she was able to touch the roof. Her fingertips just reached, and she could feel rough textures . . . bumpy things . . . like barnacle-encrusted rocks at the seaside. But then the thought of bats came into her head, and she quickly withdrew her hand.

  ‘Should have brought a torch,’ said George.

  They none of them felt like exploring much further without some light to guide them, and so the experience was a bit disappointing.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, though,’ Katie said. ‘We can always come back and have a proper look.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They turned towards the glare of the outside world. Celandine lived here, thought Midge. It just seemed impossible. She ran her fingers along the walls as she followed George and Katie. Smooth flat stone on this particular bit, chalky patterns . . .

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Midge stepped back and looked at the marks on the wall. It wasn’t patterns. It was writing.

  ‘Look at this.’

  ‘What?’

  Some of the words were still visible, big round letters, written in a child’s hand.

  ‘What does that say? Early one . . . something . . . just as the . . . something . . . was . . . rising? Does that say “rising”? Is it a poem?’ Midge put her head to one side, trying to figure it out from a different angle.

  ‘That word’s “maiden”,’ said George. ‘Next line down. Definitely “maiden”.’

  ‘Oh, I know what it is.’ Katie had got it. And to George and Midge’s surprise she began to sing, her voice echoing softly around the cave.

  ‘Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

  I heard a maiden sing in the valley below.

  Oh never leave me, oh don’t deceive me,

  How could you use a poor maiden so?’

  It was lo
vely. The tune was so pretty, and Katie sang it so beautifully that Midge felt the sudden stab of tears. She didn’t trust herself to speak and was glad when George said something first.

  ‘I never heard that before.’

  ‘Yeah, we learned it at playschool. Good old Miss Reade. She misread me, I can tell you. Thought I was her little angel. It’s surprising how far being able to sing in tune’ll get you. I used to nick her mint imperials and some other poor sap always got the blame.’

  Midge burst out laughing and took the opportunity to quickly wipe her eyes. Katie was such a hoot sometimes.

  ‘But this is so . . . fantastic,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see? Celandine wrote this, when she was a girl. She ran away from home – well, from school – and lived here for a while. Right here in these caves. It’s just . . .’ She couldn’t find the words to explain. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Yeah, it is pretty amazing.’ Katie and Midge stood looking at the chalk writing in awe. Ninety years ago those words had been written, and by a child from another age. Their great-great-aunt.

  ‘Hey . . .’ George had found something else. He’d moved further back down the cave and was reaching into a small alcove that had been cut into the opposite wall, a thing that they hadn’t noticed before among the deep shadows.

  ‘What’s this?’ He came back towards them holding a little piece of grey pottery in his hand, a circular dish that had been pinched together on one side to form a spout.

  ‘Is it like an oil lamp or something?’ The dish was half full of some waxy substance, and there was a bit of blackened string poking out from the spout. George sniffed at it.

  ‘Oof. It smells perfumey. There you go.’ He handed the object to Katie. ‘You have it. A relic.’

  ‘What? Can I? Hey, thanks, George. That’s really sweet of you. I think it is a lamp, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, they had lavender oil, the cave-dwellers,’ said Midge. ‘I don’t know how, quite. I haven’t noticed that much lavender about.’

  ‘It’s probably just scented with lavender,’ said Katie. ‘She sniffed at the lamp. Yeah, it’s probably tallow.’

  ‘What’s tallow?’

  ‘Some sort of animal oil, I think. Or maybe it’s whale. Dunno. Anyway, I’ve got a relic now. Thanks, George.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  It was a harmonious moment, a rare enough event in the lives of George and Katie, and perhaps as good a time as any to be thinking of leaving. They slithered down the bank of shale and made their way back towards the tunnel.

  ‘You know what?’ said Katie. ‘This is all ours. I mean, I know it belongs to Dad and Auntie Chris, but it will be ours, won’t it? How lucky is that?’

  ‘Yeah, hadn’t thought of that,’ said Midge.

  ‘I might build a proper tree house here,’ said George. ‘A really big one – or maybe even a whole adventure trail. Hey – we could start charging people to come in!’

  ‘Nah.’ Katie stepped from stone to stone as she headed into the wicker tunnel. ‘We see enough of the “guests” as it is. They’re not my blimmin’ guests.’

  Midge was last out of the tunnel, and she pulled at the rickety wicker doors, closing them behind her and rearranging the brambles as best she could. The entrance was better hidden now. No stray country walker would ever know it was there, and soon it would become even more overgrown. She followed George and Katie, climbing up the steep bank of the gully to throw herself down onto the grass beside them. They sat for a while looking out across the hazy expanse of the wetlands. It had been a year now, Midge realized, since she’d first come here. And so much had happened since then that it made her head spin.

  From a distance Mill Farm looked pretty much the same as it had last summer – the farmhouse itself and the stables and the cider barn still standing where they had always stood. But how life down there had changed. There was a part of Midge that wished it could all have stayed as when she first saw it: a glorious jumble, the yard and barns piled high with junk, chickens running in and out of the hallway. The Deputation from Rhode Island, she had called them. Then there was the old Wellington boot that lay permanently on the front path with the Favoured One as its occupant, the cider barn that had become the Orphanage, Tojo the Assassin, the Summer Palace . . .

  And herself, of course, as mistress of the whole wonderful ramshackle mess – the Mistress of Mill Farm. She smiled to think about it. Things were so different now.

  Perhaps the change was for the best. Ever since the guest apartments had opened they’d been pretty well booked up. Mum was happy in her little office, Uncle Brian was happy, pottering about with his napkins and corkscrews. There had been a couple of hints lately that her cousins and Auntie Pat might be moving in, and that would be good. Barry was OK. Sometimes he stayed over, sometimes he didn’t. He and Mum didn’t appear to be in any rush to go and get married or anything yucky. Although maybe that would be OK too, Midge supposed. Whatever Mum decided to do would be right. Her decisions usually were.

  And what they had done today had definitely been right. They’d taken the thing out of its box, and looked at it, and then put it away again and closed the lid. It was still a mystery, something that might never be explained. Something that might be forgotten, or not. But there was nothing in there to be frightened of.

  She didn’t think she was likely to come up here again, though. Not for a while. And she doubted whether George or Katie would bother. There was no need. Not any more.

  ‘It’s good, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I mean, what they’ve done with the place. My mum, and your mum and dad. It is good.’

  Katie tugged at a long stalk of grass, pulling it gently from its sheath so that the soft end was still intact. She put it between her teeth and bit into it, her blue eyes glancing briefly down at the farm buildings below.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s not bad, I suppose.’

  Epilogue

  The Birds and the beasts had done their grisly work, and there was little enough left of the old Queen now. A few bones lay scattered about the tiny glade, some scraps of stained and rotten material, and of course the ancient wicker Gondla, overgrown with grass and weeds. Such were the remains of Ba-betts.

  It was a gruesome sight, but this was the way of the Ickri, to give back sustenance to those creatures that in turn sustained the tribe. And so this was a scene to be witnessed in respect before passing by.

  Likewise the hidden world of the cave-dwellers was to be explored and explained: the main forge, cold and silent now, and the meeting hall that contained the almanacs – but also the weaving chamber with its empty loom, the storerooms, the inner depths of the smithies, and finally the morgues. Here were the burial chambers of the Tinklers and Troggles, their rituals revealed and then abandoned for ever.

  Together they had looked upon each other’s past, and so understood one another the better as they planned their future.

  They had decided that they would live neither as Ickri nor Tinkler, but rather as the Naiad and Wisp had done. They would learn to crop the land and fish the waters. They would learn to make their winter charcoal, and to weave the withy and the willow into such traps and pens and shelters as they might need. In this way they would add to the knowledge that they already had, and should they ever have to travel out upon the lands of the Gorji again, then they would be prepared.

  But meanwhile they were staying put. The long hazy summer lay ahead of them, and so there was opportunity enough to store both food and knowledge against the far-off days of winter. These were easy times once more for Henty and the Woodpecker, last of the little people.

  Journeying was not for them, they had decided. Better the certainty of being together in this world than chance to find themselves apart in another. The Various might travel where they would, but Henty and Little-Marten had travelled quite enough already, and had seen what such excursions might bring. They had made their choice – to remain where they were – and in this they had no regret.

>   What had they to fear? The Gorji were no great threat that they could see, and had brought them no harm. The long-predicted invasion never came. Henty and Little-Marten had walked and talked amongst giants and had witnessed how they lived. What would such a busy people want with this place? No, the two of them were safer now, they felt, than they had ever been.

  The archers had gone, and so the throstles and the coneys would soon multiply. There would be meat, and birds’ eggs again in season. With only two mouths to feed they would find more than enough here to live on.

  That was if there were only ever to be but two mouths . . .

  ‘Dost reckon we shall have childer?’ Little-Marten wondered.

  ‘Childer? If we did, then strange childer they’d be,’ said Henty. ‘We be of a different feather, you and I, like raven and magpie. What sort of wean would a raven and magpie bring into this world?’

  ‘Casn’t say.’ Little-Marten laughed. ‘A rag-pie, maybe?’

  ‘Aye, a rag-pie. Or a maven.’

  ‘Ha! A maven! It don’t sound very likely, do it?’

  ‘No,’ said Henty. ‘Not very.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Steve Augarde was born in Birmingham, but spent most of his life in the West Country, working as an illustrator, paper-engineer, and semi-pro jazz musician. He has written and illustrated over 70 picture books for younger children, and has produced the paper-engineering for many pop-up books, including those by other artists – as well as providing the artwork and music for two animated BBC television series. Steve lives in Yorkshire.

  You have been granted three wishes,

  The Various was but the first,

  Celandine the second.

  Now, all will be fulfilled as you enter

  Winter Wood . . .

  Also by Steve Augarde:

  THE VARIOUS

  Winner of the Smarties Bronze Award

  CELANDINE

  WINTER WOOD

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 09873 7