Celandine

by Steve Augarde

  She had run away from school, and from the whole world, and she was staggering through the darkness on Howard’s Hill, weighed down by her heavy bag, cold and tired and homeless.

  No, not homeless. She could go home, if she wanted to. Mill Farm was only at the bottom of the hill, and she could turn around and go there now if she chose. She could give up this foolishness and be in her own bed in half an hour. There would be a price to pay – for she would certainly be sent back to Mount Pleasant in the morning. But she did have a choice.

  ‘Fin!’ Her voice was gulping, shaky with exhaustion. ‘Slow down. I can’t see you.’ She caught the brief flash of Fin’s white teeth as he stopped to wait for her, a Cheshire cat grin in the surrounding gloom.

  The air at the mouth of the cave was warmer. From the distant passageways there came a faint orange glow, and Celandine could smell the same oily perfume that she remembered from before, but stronger, now that it was night-time. It reminded her of incense, and of church.

  Fin would not come any closer. He remained at the bottom of the loose pile of shale that sloped away from the cave entrance. His eyes glinted up at her.

  ‘Ah-ah-ah! Nooo. Not go there. Come is me. I.’

  ‘Halloooo!’ Celandine’s voice echoed around the cavern. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

  Fin was still hissing at her from the bottom of the slope; ‘Noooo! Shhh! Is Tinklers there! Is get you …’

  Celandine peered into the shadows of the cave, and waited. ‘I’m all right, Fin. Don’t worry.’ Again her words bounced back at her – too loud for this place – and again there was the sense of something churchlike in the quiet scented atmosphere.

  Two small figures appeared, fleeting shades against the distant glow, and then vanished. Back they came, three, four – more – standing in a huddle at the far end of the cave. One of them separated from the group, and came towards her. Micas. Celandine recognized the shape of his head, the way that his hair grew at the sides but not on the top, like a monk. He carried a light before him, a dish of oil with a crude wick that flared and guttered as he walked. Celandine saw a host of chalk marks on the flickery walls of the cave, and was surprised at how many had been added since she was last here. Months and months it had been. It looked as though they had been working hard.

  ‘Micas! It’s me – Celandine.’

  ‘As I see – I as thowt to see thee no more. What do thee want, child?’ Micas drew close, and looked up at her. ‘’Tis gone moon-wax. Bist not a-bed then?’ His face was puzzled, but his voice was as calm as she had remembered it.

  ‘I’ve run away,’ she said. ‘And I’ve nowhere to go. I hoped that I could stay here. For a while.’ She was so tired. The thought of Freddie entered her head – a white explosion, quite soundless. It made her blink.

  ‘Stay? Bide wi’ us?’

  ‘Yes. Just for a while.’

  ‘Dost have troubles, then?’

  ‘Yes. I have. Lots.’

  ‘Om. And shall they seeken for ’ee here? Wast followed to this place?’

  ‘No, Micas. I promise. Nobody knows that I’m here.’

  Micas stood beside her at the cave entrance and looked out upon the darkness. The little clay lamp sputtered unevenly in the damp night air, giving off a smoky pungency. Lavender. Celandine recognized the scent of it now. Fin seemed to have disappeared.

  ‘The wind don’t turn,’ said Micas. His bald head was tilted backwards as he regarded the shifting skies. ‘Nor yet the season. Come, then.’ He began to retreat into the cave once more, and gestured to her that she should follow. ‘Thee med stay this night, at the least. Elina! Mab! Bring a bolster and pallets – and make up a tansy. We ha’en a Gorji traveller among us, though I never thowt to hear me speken such a thing.’

  In a hollowed-out side chamber close to the cave entrance, Micas and Elina laid down three wicker pallets, end to end. They looked a bit like flat picnic baskets. Elina draped a rough woollen coverlet across the pallets and said, ‘Can ’ee sleep on that?’

  Celandine’s head was rocking with weariness. She lowered herself dizzily onto the wicker bed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Elina. I’m sorry to put you to so much …’ Her voice faded away. She was too exhausted, suddenly, to even be polite. All she wanted to do was disappear into endless slumber.

  They gave her a sacking pillow filled with aromatic leaves, so that as she lay upon it and pulled the coverlet over her, the scents of the forest instantly swept her away on a perfumed tide.

  She was too tired to search for a single thought through the fog that filled her head. And when she heard Elina’s quiet murmur, ‘Rest theeself then, maid,’ she could find no voice to answer with.

  Celandine awoke briefly that first night, and lay in the dead silence, waiting, as the strangeness of her surroundings descended upon her. A dim yellow light filtered through the chamber entrance, from a lavender oil lamp in the main tunnel beyond. She put out her hand to touch the rough stone wall beside her. It did not feel cold.

  The thick woollen coverlet was wrapped about her – she had rolled herself up in it, as though she were a cocoon – and the wicker pallets creaked softly beneath her whenever she moved. She was warm, and she was dry. Beyond that there was no sensation. Blurred images of her long day drifted through her head; sitting on the chair in Miss Craven’s office, the letter from her father, the distemper paint and the glass case, the railway clerk at Little Cricket with his drippy nose, and the injured soldier on the train – Tommy. Again the thought of Freddie burst before her – a puff of white smoke that slowly spread to all the corners of her vision. But she could feel nothing, no pain. She closed her eyes again. Tomorrow, perhaps, her senses might return.

  Tomorrow came and went, and the day after that. To Celandine it was as though she was disconnected from all that was happening around her, seeing herself from a distance – during the few hours that she was awake. For all she really wanted to do was sleep. She couldn’t remember when she had ever felt so sleepy. Her little side chamber was warm, and it was so comforting to just sleep and dream, sleep and dream. And when she was awake, it was equally comforting to lie on her back and look up at the stone roof of her sanctuary, to follow the encrusted patterns of the tiny barnacle-like things that grew there, and to float through the hours like a mermaid in a cavern beneath the sea. No lessons, no freezing cold showers, and no war. All her troubles had been left behind her, banished beyond the wall of briars that separated her from the outside world. They couldn’t find her here.

  Celandine was aware of the quiet comings and goings of the cave-dwellers, as they passed by the entrance to her darkened room, the muffled snatches of speech that told of their normal everyday lives.

  ‘Bist going arter kindles, Tammas?’

  ‘Aye, whilst rain do hold off.’

  ‘Bide, then. I’ll come with ’ee.’

  What were kindles, Celandine wondered? Kindling? There must be fires then, somewhere beyond the deep tunnels at the back of the main cave. Perhaps that was why the cave walls never seemed as cold as she would have expected.

  ‘Bron! Do ’ee mind that crock o’ spadger’s eggs! Thee’ve feet like Gorji shovels.’

  ‘Well what be ’em doing down theer, for all to hop round? Much wonder they ends up scraddled, if that’s where ’ee lays ’em.’

  The footsteps came and went.

  Celandine could hear the excited whispers of the cave-children, playing at some game in the broad main entrance, but the confused echoes made it hard to tell whether there were a dozen of them out there, or only two or three.

  ‘Goo on, Bant, gi’ un a gurt flick!’

  ‘I got ’un! Ohhh … ’Tis out agin.’

  ‘The worse for thee, then, for now ’tis Goppo. In his eye then, Gop!’

  ‘Blinder! Good on’ ee, Gop!’

  What could they be doing, Celandine wondered? She was curious, but not curious enough to leave her bed. She closed her eyes and listened to the muted echoes, soft starbursts of sound,
bouncing through the darkness.

  Sometimes Elina or her daughter Mab brought food – a porridgey mixture of dried fruit, and grain, and seeds that Celandine did not recognize, all stewed up together and ladled onto a wooden trencher. For drink there was either water or a hot infusion which they called a ‘tansy’, and which was a bit like unsweetened tea. It was plain stuff, and plain that the cave-dwellers lived upon little else at this time of year, but Celandine automatically ate and drank whatever was given to her, lost in the nothingness of her own cloudy daydreams.

  ‘Thee be more like a mousen than a giant.’ Elina had come into the side chamber to collect Celandine’s wooden dish. ‘I’ve heared a mousen make more of a noise, leastways. Will ’ee not come through the tunnels and sit wi’ us?’

  Elina had a kind face. The long grey hair that fell in a single plait over one shoulder, and the coloured scarf she wore about her neck, made her look like a tiny version of the old fortune-teller that came to Goosey Fair each year. Her dark wrinkled eyes were full of concern.

  Celandine shook her head.

  ‘I don’t really like tunnels,’ she said. ‘And I just feel like being quiet. I’m just happy to be quiet. And to sleep.’

  ‘Ah. ’Tis the same wi’ us all,’ said Elina. ‘We’m none of us so lively. Once the season do turn, then we med turn wi’ it.’ She paused at the chamber entrance. ‘Little Loren have been asking after ’ee,’ she said. ‘Most taken wi’ his letters, he be, and wanting to show ’ee.’

  Celandine laughed. ‘Is he? Then I’ll get up, soon,’ she said. ‘It’s time I did.’

  Her legs felt weak and achy as she stood barefoot at the cave entrance, her navy mackintosh slung around her like a cloak. She looked out upon the dripping woodland and shivered. She had not arrived at a good time. Winter had yet to loosen its grip, and the endless wind and rain made venturing from the cave almost impossible.

  Loren, standing beside her, gave a little cough, and Celandine saw the tiny cloud of his breath on the cold morning air. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and put some warmer clothes on and then we can read a story. Would you like that?’

  He looked up at her and nodded. His nose looked sore and runny, and the red rims around his eyes made his taut skin seem whiter than ever.

  ‘Aye,’ he whispered. ‘I would.’

  He was half-starved, Celandine realized, and immediately felt shocked and guilty. The blue veins were visible at his temples, and the skin so stretched about his cheekbones and jaw that his teeth protruded slightly. He had not been as thin as this the previous summer.

  And, now that she looked about her, Celandine saw that they were all of the same appearance, the cave-dwellers, gaunt and frail and pale as milk-water, their wide eyes staring from the lamp-lit shadows. They were at the mercy of the seasons, even more so than the farming community that she knew. An overlong winter, a miserable summer, and they might actually die. It was horrible to imagine. What could she do to help them? She could stop eating so much of their food, she decided.

  Later, with her mackintosh still draped about her shoulders, Celandine knelt among the cave-children to watch them play. She wrinkled up her nose at the gruesome focus of their game – a battered and ancient ram’s skull with great curving horns and long yellow-stained teeth. A ghoulish sight it made as it lay in the middle of the cave floor, grinning horribly at all around, as though it had just risen from the underworld.

  The ram’s head was positioned between two chalked lines near the cave entrance. Behind these lines the children crouched, one group to either side of the skull, so that an empty eye-socket faced each team. With their pinched little faces frowning in concentration, the cave-children pushed up their ravelled sleeves and took turns to flick tiny coloured pebbles at the skull – the aim being to try and land the pebbles into the gaping hollows where the eyes had once been.

  ‘Blinder!’ This was the name of their game, and it was the quiet exclamation that went up whenever a score was made. Even in the excitement of the moment the players’ voices were seldom raised.

  When each child had taken a turn, any pebbles that had lodged in the eye-sockets were fished out again, to be counted up. ‘Ickren, dickren, dockren, quatern, quin …’ So strange, the murmured words that kept the tally. The side that had scored the most took a corresponding number of pebbles from their opponents. It was a cross between marbles and tiddleywinks, thought Celandine, if a rather sinister one.

  Loren leaned towards Celandine and placed a bright red pebble in her palm. She looked at the little stone. It was beautifully polished – as shiny as a blob of sealing wax, or a jumping bean.

  ‘Goo on,’ said Loren. ‘Gi’ us a blinder.’

  ‘Ay, Celandine. Try thee hand.’ Goppo, the champion player, grinned up at her. He spat into his grubby palms and vigorously rolled his own pebble between them – an encouragement for her to do the same.

  ‘Shall I?’ Celandine could not quite bring herself to spit on the pretty stone that Loren had given her, but she blew upon it instead, just for luck, and then balanced it between finger and thumbnail as she had seen the others do. She looked across at the skull, ignored the mocking challenge of that deathly grin, and tried to concentrate upon judging the distance.

  In the very wishing-moment that she flicked up her thumb, Celandine somehow knew that she would succeed. The stone flew from her hand, rose and fell in a graceful arc and dropped straight into the hollow of the eye-socket, like a bird into a nesting box. A tiny rattle of sound and that was it. Perfect.

  ‘Blinder! Blinder!’

  ‘Oo! Did ’ee see ’un goo?’

  Some of the cave-children jumped to their feet, their faces lit up with excitement, but Celandine remained kneeling, staring at the ram’s skull, amazed at what she had managed to do. She could see the little red stone, a demon’s eye that winked at her from its black socket so that the skull seemed eerily alive again in the dim light of the cave.

  ‘Oo! She’m witchi, that she be.’

  Witchy? A witch? Others had said the same, and now Celandine was starting to wonder. Perhaps she really did have magic powers … perhaps she really could perform miracles …

  But it was nothing more than beginner’s luck, of course. Celandine played the ram’s-head game many more times after that, taking it in turns to join with one team or the other. Nevertheless her first miracle turned out to be her last, and although she huffed upon her stone and rolled it between her palms, and cast a hundred magic spells upon it, she never managed to score another Blinder.

  There were other side chambers leading off the main cavern, Celandine discovered, rooms that were used for work or for storage. Micas and Elina showed her what little they had to show; the collection of earthenware pots, mostly empty, wherein they stored dried food against the winter months – rose-hips, crab apples, nuts and wild grain. They showed her the weaving chamber, and how they divided the precious scraps of wool and fur and horsehair that they found into separate baskets, to be eventually woven into something like cloth upon a rough wooden frame. They showed her the wash-place – an eerie echoing chamber where icy water trickled among the black rocks, to disappear through cracks and crevices far below.

  They would have shown her, too, what lay further beyond, through the honeycomb of low tunnels that led away from the main chambers, but here Celandine would not venture. Where the cave-dwellers could just about stand upright to enter these places, she would have to crawl, and she was nervous of doing so. From time to time she heard metallic tapping sounds echoing along the passageways, tink-tink-tink, and when she asked Micas what they did back there, he simply said, ‘We worken the tinsy.’

  Later he emerged from one of the tunnels with a sack over his shoulder. Celandine almost laughed when he opened the sack, because it contained metal-ware – plates and bowls, and bits of jewellery – and she thought he looked like a burglar who had lately robbed a mansion. The objects were dull and tarnished, but when she looked closer she saw that they were
finely engraved. Tiny figures she could see in the flickering lamplight, beautifully drawn, amid many scenes. She looked closer still, beginning to take an interest. So exquisite, these things were, in such primitive surroundings. What were the figures doing, and what did it all mean?

  ‘’Tis we,’ said Micas. ‘And all our story. We maken our tales so, as the Gorji do maken theirs i’ a book, as ’twould seem. See – here be old Emra, that was slain b’ the Ickren, and here be a Gorji dwelling, a-standing on wooden legs long afore the waters dried. We were but tribe and tribe, then, and lived upon the waters, the Naiad, and the Ickren alike.’

  The words made little sense at first, but as the rainy days passed Celandine came to understand more, learning to unravel the pictorial account of the woodlanders’ history. She was drawn in by the story of the Touchstone, the magical object that had been stolen by the wicked tribe that Micas called Ickren, although she didn’t really believe that it could be entirely true. There may have once been such a stone, she thought, but never a one that could lead its followers up to the very heavens. And these Ickren, if they had ever actually existed, had also been exaggerated. She could accept the bows and arrows, but the wings were surely an added fancy. She became fascinated, though, and she continued to work her way through the picture fables, as the cave-dwellers themselves worked their way through the Gorji fables that were hidden within a different kind of code – letters.

  They had made progress in her long absence, and now when they gathered in the draughty cave entrance to look at the chalk marks upon the wall, their cleverness astounded her.

  MICAS