The Binding

by Jenny Alexander

  When we three eventually set off down to the hotel in the afternoon, I was expecting them to talk to each other and ignore me, but in the event they didn’t talk at all. It felt a bit weird and embarrassing, but nowhere near as weird and embarrassing as when Mrs Fairfax hello-hello-helloed us in for some juice and home-made shortbread with Duncan, Hamish and Elspeth, and everyone acted normal.

  The minute we left the hotel, they all stopped talking to me. Anyone seeing us go by wouldn’t have noticed anything odd, just one kid in a group who didn’t feel like joining in. But there wasn’t anyone around to see us go by as we left the scattering of houses and struck out around the coast.

  It felt much further than when we’d done it before. What was the point? If walking across a field was Duncan’s idea of a punishment, couldn’t he have chosen one a bit closer to our houses?

  When we came in sight of the south light, we stopped. Duncan told me to walk in a straight line across to the light, touch it, and then come back along the coast to meet up with them. I shrugged a ‘whatever’ and started walking.

  The ground was tufty and tussocky, with cushions of brown spongy moss and deep boggy bright green pools. You couldn’t stride across so much as pick your way through. I didn’t look back at them, but I could hear from the sound of their voices that they had set off and were walking along the coast towards the light as well.

  When I was about half-way to the light there was a sudden whoosh in the sky above me, a shadow flickered across the ground in front of me, and a massive brown bird swooped down at me from behind. I felt the rush of air from its wings as I screamed in surprise and fell to my knees.

  It flew low across the boggy grass, wheeled and came straight back towards me, flying at eye-level. It had a big body, wide wings and a heavy beak. I had never seen anything like it. I got a flash of its hard mean eye before I dropped right down to the ground and threw my arms over my head.

  Away to my left, I heard Duncan laughing.

  ‘Get up!’ he yelled. ‘Keep going!’

  I hadn’t even got to my feet before the bird came at me again from behind, and then a second one swept in from the side. They circled and swooped, going for my head, flying straight towards my face.

  I ducked and dipped, flailing my arms above me, but my feet seemed frozen to the spot. When one of them actually hit the side of my head with its wing, I totally panicked and ran.

  I tripped and stumbled across the tufty ground, waving my arms above my head, and screams came out of my mouth all on their own, every time the huge birds swooped. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The birds flew away behind me and didn’t come back.

  I looked across at the others, and even from that distance, I could see that they were laughing. The only one who wasn’t laughing was Elspeth. I could hear the rest of them as I trudged the rest of the way, to touch the cold white wall of the light.

  When I met up with them on the cliffs, Tressa, Milo, Hamish and Duncan were grinning like a pack of hyenas.

  ‘You did look funny!’ said Milo.

  He was too young to know better, but the rest of them were idiots.

  ‘Don’t look so cross!’ goes Duncan. ‘You weren’t in any real danger!’

  ‘They’re just bonxies protecting their chicks,’ said Hamish. ‘The worst you could get is a bash on the head with their beak.’

  Duncan looked puffed up and pleased with himself.

  ‘It was a punishment fit for a Joker!’ he declared with a grin.

  We set off for home, all of them chatting about how funny I had looked, ducking and leaping and screaming across the open moorland like a mad thing. They actually seemed to expect me to join in, but my heart was still pounding and my stomach churning from being so scared. I would have thrown up, only I didn’t want to give them something else to laugh at.

  We reached the first farm, with Duncan slightly ahead, happily beating down the thistles and nettles with his stick.

  ‘Tell us a joke!’ he said, looking back over his shoulder at me. ‘You’re the one with the great sense of humour!’ It sounded friendly, but it felt like a taunt.

  Everywhere I looked, there were jokes. A cow in the field reminded me—what do you get if you sit under a cow? A pat on the head! A sheep rubbing her side on fence post reminded me—what do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? Little woolly jumpers! The sound of a bee in the farmer’s garden made me think, why do bees hum? Because they’ve forgotten the words!

  Jokes were everywhere, but I wasn’t in the mood, and I said I couldn’t think of a single one. It was too soon. I would get over it, obviously, but I wasn’t ready to yet.

  When we got to the hotel, Duncan said, ‘Everyone meet at the bothy after tea tonight, all right?’ Then he went inside and the rest of us carried on along the top of the jetty beach. Milo and Hamish walked ahead with Tressa, and Elspeth hung back with me.

  Neither of us said anything, and I wished she would go away and leave me alone. I remembered the way she couldn’t meet my eye in the bothy, when Duncan had handed out the punishment. She knew what was going to happen. She knew why it had to be that field.

  Back at the house, I played footie against the wall while Mum and Matt were making the tea. Gradually, the churning inside me stopped, soothed by the steady thud-bounce-kick, thud-bounce kick, thud-bounce-kick.

  Then thoughts came in, the way they always do when you play ball against a wall on your own. I suddenly thought about Benjie and the zip-wire we made in his garden, and the ground-sheet water slide, and football at the park.

  I didn’t feel like going to the bothy after tea. I wanted to tell Tressa and Milo to go without me, this one time, but when I imagined myself doing that, I knew Tressa would laugh and tell me to get over it, and Milo would say, ‘We have to go when the Lawmaker decides—that’s the law!’

  So we told Mum and Matt we were going out to play, and Mum said, in that case, she and Matt might go down to the hotel and meet the visitors.

  ‘We’ll only be gone an hour,’ said Matt. ‘We’ll be back before you get home.’

  Chapter 5

  In the manner of the word

  The firelight flickered across the stone walls, and the waves rumbled on the shore outside. They had set the bothy out in a new way, with the makeshift table at one end, away from the fire, and the fish-box seats pushed back against the walls to make a big space in the middle.

  There was a cluster of tea-lights on the floor in each corner, their bright little flames floating in puddles of light. Duncan produced a cardboard box and when he opened the flaps, we could see it was full of individually-wrapped biscuits, which gleamed like jewels in the candlelight.

  ‘These are the prizes,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a games night!’

  ‘Wow!’ said Milo, feasting his eyes. ‘Your parents are really nice to give us all those!’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ said Duncan. ‘We’ve got loads of them at the hotel.’

  He was acting as if nothing important had happened. I had broken the rules, but I had paid the price, end of story. As far as he was concerned, everything could go back to normal.

  Maybe he had chosen a games night because he wanted everything to go back to precisely how it had been in the moments before the telling and the punishment, when we were all larking around in the pool.

  Maybe Tressa’s telling and my punishment were things he didn’t want, but had to play along with, because he was the Lawmaker, and that was his role. The punishment was horrible, but then what would be the point in a punishment that didn’t hurt?

  Duncan was the Lawmaker and he had played his part, now it was up to me to organise some games, because that was the part I had to play. Seeing as everyone else was behaving as if nothing important had happened, I could too, even though I was still feeling angry inside.

  First we played animal-vegetable-mineral, which they already knew, and then charades, which they didn’t. We’d only learnt it ourselves at Christm
as, staying with Auntie Cath, but we’d gone on playing it for weeks after we got home. Then Matt moved in and Mum had to stop playing and turn referee, sorting out all the aggro between him and Tressa.

  In case you’ve never played it, charades is an acting game. You take turns miming the title of a film or book or TV show and your team has to try and guess what it is. Duncan, Elspeth and Hamish took to it like ducks to water, but that was no surprise—they were acting all the time.

  So I suggested another acting game, ‘in the manner of the word’. What happens is, one person goes outside while all the others agree a word ending in ‘-ly’, such as ‘gloomily’ or ‘dramatically’.

  When they’ve chosen the word, they call the person back in and he or she asks them to do things ‘in the manner of the word’. They might say, ‘Elspeth, make a sandwich in the manner of the word,’ and then she has to pretend she’s making a sandwich gloomily or dramatically or whatever.

  The guesser can have as many guesses as they like, and tell everyone to do as many things as they like—‘Tressa, clean your teeth in the manner of the word’, ‘Hamish, dance in the manner of the word’, ‘Milo, put your shoes on in the manner of the word.’ The game goes on until they either guess the word or have to give up and ask what it was.

  We played for ages and I thought they’d totally got it, but then it was Tressa’s turn to go outside and instead of us all making suggestions and choosing the word together, Duncan said, ‘This time, the word is “normally”.’

  ‘But. . .that won’t work,’ I told him. ‘If we’re acting normally, she won’t be able to guess it. It’s got to be something specific, like “angrily”. How about “angrily”?’

  ‘I think “normally” will work,’ Duncan said.

  You couldn’t help feeling sorry for Tressa. She got us putting our coat on in the manner of the word, and drinking a glass of juice, and reading a book, and walking round the room, and, and, and. . . She kept going and guessing for ages, until she couldn’t think of a single other thing to ask us.

  ‘This is impossible!’ she said, after a squillion years of guessing. ‘You’re not doing anything out of the ordinary. You’re all just acting normally.’

  ‘Yes!’ goes Duncan, punching the air. We fell about laughing.

  ‘What?’ Tressa looked confused.

  ‘That’s the word,’ said Hamish. ‘Normally!’

  Tressa grinned at us. ‘You rotters!’

  ‘It was Duncan’s idea,’ said Milo. ‘Jack said you’d never guess it, but Duncan said you would, and you did!’

  Duncan gave Tressa her prize, then turned the box upside-down to show there weren’t any more left. He crushed the box under his foot and put it on the fire.

  ‘Let’s make the circle now,’ he said, getting up to move the table into the middle of the room.

  We dragged our fish-box seats into their normal places around it. Elspeth placed the box on the table. She took out the cloth of Judgement and the candle-holder and the big candle, and Hamish lit it. Her fingers were as delicate as butterflies as she brought out the papers and the silver pen, and put them on the table in front of her.

  This dance they did seemed to move us into a different place, from the games night to the Binding, in a few well-practiced moves.

  Duncan said, ‘I suggested “normally” because that’s how you will have to act when you’re getting the food for the Feast of the Ancestors, which is tomorrow.’ He looked at me. ‘Like all the business of the Binding, this is secret.’ His blue eyes gleamed in the candlelight.

  ‘Because it’s secret,’ he said, ‘we can’t buy the food and we can’t ask for it. We have to take it without telling anyone.’

  ‘But, isn’t that stealing?’ said Tressa.

  We all looked at Duncan. He looked steadily back.

  ‘How do you think Elspeth and Hamish got the food for the celebration on the beach?’ he said. ‘How do you think I got these prizes for tonight? If you act normally, and don’t take anything that’ll be missed, you’ll easily get away with it.’

  He stood up, and then we all stood up.

  ‘We have to do what the Lawmaker decides,’ Hamish reminded everyone.

  ‘Don’t eat much tea, and bring as much food as you can,’ said Duncan. ‘Let’s make this feast the best one we’ve ever had!’

  We joined hands and the circle turned.

  In the winding, round and round

  What we wind can’t be unwound

  What we bind can’t be unbound

  The Binding

  Tressa and Milo were really excited.

  ‘I wonder why it’s called the Feast of the Ancestors,’ she said, as we tramped up the track towards the house.

  ‘What is “ancestors”?’ asked Milo.

  I told them what Elspeth had told me, about Duncan being descended from the first King of Morna, who came from Ireland and rode through battlefields on a white charger up to its knees in blood.

  ‘Is that true?’ asked Tressa. I shrugged. She said, ‘I hope he tells us the whole story at the feast!’

  ‘I’m going to take that big lump of cheese in the fridge,’ said Milo.

  Tressa said if he did that, Mum was bound to notice. ‘You’ve got to be clever. I’ll help you.’

  As soon as we walked in the door, we could tell Mum was fed up and Matt was trying to jolly her along.

  ‘How was the hotel?’ asked Tressa. ‘Did you meet the new visitors?’

  Mum said yes, they did, but they turned out to be total weirdos. All they wanted to do was go off on their own with their binoculars and cameras. If Matt noticed she was basically calling him weird, he didn’t show it.

  ‘What did you kids get up to?’ he asked.

  ‘We played some games,’ said Milo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tressa, steering him towards the kitchen. ‘And we’re really hungry now. OK if we get a snack?’ She gestured me to go with them, but I didn’t meet her eye. My stomach had started churning again, thinking about the horror of the field, and them laughing at me, and then the games night, like nothing important had happened. I was reeling like I’d just got off a rollercoaster ride.

  Anyway, I wanted to stick around and talk to Mum and Matt. Going to the hotel and meeting people had seemed like the only way Mum might start enjoying Morna, and if that hadn’t worked, what was going to happen now?

  ‘I was thinking,’ Mum said to Matt. ‘Maybe the whole summer is a bit too long to be away? I mean, we’ve both got work to do at home before the beginning of term, and the children—’

  ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime,’ Matt interrupted her. ‘Something completely different.’

  It was different all right.

  ‘It would be a shame not to make the most of it,’ he said.

  If she noticed he was basically calling her a grumpy-guts who ought to stop complaining, she didn’t let on.

  ‘Jack!’ Tressa called me from the doorway. ‘Don’t you want to get some food?’

  ‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’

  She gave me a look which clearly said, ‘They’re busy trying not to have a row, and that means they’re not going to notice—this is your chance!’

  ‘So you don’t think we might go home a bit earlier than we planned?’ said Mum, ignoring the interruption. Tressa disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Matt said, ‘I know what we need—a plan! Let’s make a list of all the places we haven’t seen on the island yet, and try to visit them. I bet Jack could help us with that.’

  Chapter 6

  A cake f it for a feast

  ‘Oh, God, seriously?’ said Mum, when she opened the curtains the next morning. ‘More rain?’

  On the upside, me, Milo and Tressa didn’t have any plans for the day; on the downside, Matt did, and there was no way he was going to get Mum out of the house to go and look at stacks and standing stones in the pouring rain.

  Tressa and Milo were happy because more time at home meant more time to plot secret
raids on the cupboards and fridge. They had already taken lots of stuff and I hadn’t got anything, so Tressa was giving me grief.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. ‘We’ve had loads of chances. Look what me and Milo have already got, and Mum hasn’t noticed a thing!’

  She opened her bedside drawer to reveal half a dozen sandwich bags, neatly tied. A few handfuls of peanuts in one, a cheese sandwich cut into little triangles in another; a couple of biscuits, some currants and raisins, six squares from Matt’s big box of home-made fudge.

  Besides the sandwich bags, there were also the two packets of crisps she and Milo had asked for at snack-time that morning and their bananas from bedtime the night before. I’d eaten mine.

  ‘Pull your finger out,’ said Tressa. ‘Me and Milo have done our bit, now you’ve got to do yours.’

  Milo came bounding in holding up his two fists proudly. He emptied his hands on the bedspread with a rattle of dried macaroni. Tressa said that was no good, you couldn’t eat it uncooked, but Milo said, ‘Yes, you can—I’ve tried it! But you can’t eat dry lentils.’ He stuck his tongue out in disgust.

  ‘Have you been trying everything in the cupboard?’ Tressa was horrified. ‘You’ll get us caught! That’s enough now, Milo. You’ve found lots of food and Duncan will be really pleased with you. It’s Jack’s turn to get some now.’

  She put the macaroni in a new sandwich bag, tied the top and placed it beside the others in the drawer.

  ‘Come on, Jack—me and Milo will distract them for you.’

  Mum and Matt didn’t need any distracting because they were already in the middle of something. Mum had made a decision.

  ‘This really isn’t working for me, Matt. I’ve decided I definitely want to go home.’

  That took him by surprise. You could see he was wondering what to say. You could tell Mum was expecting him to say, ‘All right then, Dee, in that case, we might as well all go.’