by Polly Ho-Yen
In a flash Betsy had turned towards me, her eyebrows raised and questioning. I gave the tiniest shake of my head. I didn’t mind playing football with Betsy but I definitely didn’t want to do it in front of all her brothers.
‘Next time it’s ours,’ Betsy said to the tall one, and though she was only half his size, she prodded him in the chest; the force of it made him take a step back. Her brothers ran off, a blur of bodies.
Betsy ran back and sat down beside me once more, a little deflated. She sighed loudly.
‘You can play without me,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t mind.’ If it wasn’t for me, she would be playing football with her brothers.
‘No, little fish,’ Betsy said straight away. ‘I stay with you. Little fish stay together.’
She smiled over at me, a crooked sort of grin. Suddenly I didn’t feel so cold any more, and in that moment I knew that I wanted to tell Betsy everything. All that had happened with the walnut and the pine cone, the moss and the conker. How I had found them and what they had allowed me to do.
‘Betsy, I have to tell you something. It’s a secret.’
‘I won’t tell,’ she said immediately.
‘I’ve been finding things. Just over there.’ I pointed to the bin.
‘Rubbish?’
‘No, not rubbish. Someone has put things there on purpose, I think, so I would find them.’
‘What things?’ Betsy asked, crinkling up her nose.
‘Things that give you powers,’ I said.
‘Powers?’
‘I know it doesn’t sound real but I swear it’s true. The thing might look quite ordinary. A walnut, a conker. But they make you able to do things.’
‘What you saying, little fish?’ Betsy said. ‘Magic?’
‘Well, yes. It is magic, I suppose. I know it sounds crazy, but honestly, each time I wanted something to happen I held them in my hand and it did.’
I described to her the coin toss when we first moved in; the way the walnut had moved in my hand. How using the pine cone had fixed the broken mobile phone, the conker had made Dad appear in the playground and the moss had made Tiber return the night I was all alone.
‘Every time it’s worked.’
‘So you can make something happen right now, if you want?’ Betsy’s eyes gleamed. She stood up expectantly, slapping her hands against her thighs.
‘Well, no. I realized that I can only use each thing once. It gives you just enough power to change one thing. You can’t keep using it over and over. And I only have the leaf left now. I haven’t found any more things.’
‘So the mystery person stop leaving you things?’
‘Yes,’ I said. It had been several weeks since the last gift. ‘I don’t know why, but I’m going to leave something there so whoever it is knows that I haven’t forgotten them. Then maybe they’ll start up again. I’m going to do it tomorrow when Mum’s not around.’
‘Show me exactly where you find the things.’
We walked over to the bins. My bin had collected some odd pieces of foam and an old dusty computer that looked like a tower block. Just as I was gesturing to the spot in between the bin and the lamppost, Betsy’s grandmother, Maria, came out and called her in for dinner.
‘Bye then, little fish,’ Betsy said. ‘Until we meet again.’
‘Bye. Have a good time in Colombia.’ My voice sounded very small, like when I’d tried to talk on my first day at school.
Betsy suddenly launched herself at me in a hug. ‘I miss you,’ she whispered fiercely into my ear, and then she turned and ran towards her house.
‘Betsy!’ I shouted out. She turned her head. ‘I’ll miss you too. Don’t forget me, other little fish.’
‘Never!’ Betsy said. She grinned crookedly, and then disappeared into her house.
That night I took the piece of silver birch bark out of my reading book. It had got flattened and a bit cracked but it was still in one piece.
The next morning I put the bark in a carrier bag and carefully wedged it into the slot before Tiber came out.
I thought about it all day at school. I wondered again who was leaving things for me there and whether they would find my gift. Whether they would like it. And I thought about Betsy too, travelling back to her home country, the distance between us getting greater and greater with every moment that passed. I finished school and I wondered where she was then.
Mum was waiting for me as usual and I pulled her towards our house eagerly.
‘What’s the rush, Leelu? Why are you in such a hurry?’ she asked.
When we turned into our street, I sprinted over to the bins, but I could see immediately that the silver birch bark had been taken.
20
Mum was in a rush to cook dinner.
‘I have to do some extra hours,’ she said, and glared at the packet of rice she’d taken from the cupboard, as though she could cook it with her angry stare alone.
‘I can do it, Ma,’ Tiber said. ‘You get off to work.’
‘What’s your game?’ she said, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. It’s not like Tiber to help in the kitchen. He can be helpful with things like fixing the phone or getting the television to work or changing batteries. But not so much with cooking.
‘I can do it,’ he assured her, and started to light the gas with the little clicky thing that you have to point at the hob – just the way Mum does.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, but she was already putting on her jacket and edging towards the door. ‘There’s some cooked chicken in the fridge to go with it. If I run now, I can catch the bus and I won’t be too late.’
‘We’ll be fine – right, Lulu?’ Tiber said.
I felt uneasy about Mum going, but she looked at me in such an expectant way that I nodded. Her face relaxed and she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder in a final sort of way.
When the door slammed behind Mum, Tiber called out to me. ‘Come on, Leelu, you’ve got to do your bit too. Watch this pot. If it starts to boil over, turn the heat down here, OK? And then, when all the water is gone, turn it off.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll be back in a minute. Just going to pop to the shops. Get us some Cokes to have with dinner. Sound good?’
‘Why don’t we go together when the rice is done?’
‘Nah, nah – I’ll go now, and then, by the time I get back, the rice will be ready.’ Tiber gave me one of his winning smiles, his head cocked to one side, eyebrows raised as if to say, Now tell me that’s not a good idea. He turned and, before I knew it, he was gone.
I watched the rice carefully, just as Tiber had told me, and turned the heat down as far as it would go when the pot started to spit and splutter. It still kept shaking the lid though. It was like there was something inside that was trying to escape.
In no time, all the water had gone and the rice had plumped up, filling the pan. I turned the gas off as Tiber had instructed, but I thought I might have got it a bit wrong because there was a smell of burning. Tiber was still not back.
I looked out of the window; I even opened the front door to peer out, but the street was quite empty.
I imagined Tiber coming back. He’d say, ‘Where’s the plates, Lulu? Come on, come on. I’m ready to eat,’ and he would throw down some cans of Coke. I started to serve the food so that everything would be ready when he came back. I couldn’t find a big spoon to get the rice out of the pan, so it took a long time to put it on our plates. Then I found the chicken in the fridge and I put a piece for each of us next to our pile of rice.
Still Tiber wasn’t back.
He didn’t come back when the rice had gone cold.
He didn’t come back when it started to get dark.
He didn’t come back.
Any courage I’d felt slowly leaked away. I didn’t know what to do. I thought about going out and trying to find him, but I didn’t know which shop he’d gone to. I wondered whether to call Mum at work, but when I looked for the mo
bile phone, I couldn’t find it. I realized that I didn’t know the number to call anyway.
There was nothing I could do but wait and hope.
When it got darker still, I turned on all the lights. It made me feel a bit better, flicking on each switch and seeing every room light up. I climbed onto my bed and looked out to see if I could spot the moon, hoping to find the crater that Dad had pointed out to me. It was about my bedtime; the time he said he would be looking at it, but I couldn’t see it. It must have been covered by cloud.
My stomach rumbled but I didn’t want to eat my chicken and rice until Tiber was back. And the front door remained stubbornly closed.
Then I heard a sound. It was like something ripping. It was so loud it filled the house.
Next there was a flash of lightning; it made everything go white, and then, when I heard the rumble of thunder again, all the lights went out.
There was the sound of rain pouring from the sky as though someone had pulled a lever. It pounded against the windows as though it might break them.
When Tiber left the house, he hadn’t been carrying an umbrella or wearing a coat, so wherever he was, he would be getting very, very wet.
The thunder came again. Boom. Boom. Boom. Each clap was getting louder, like footsteps coming closer.
The lightning flickered, piercing the darkness with its whiteness. It felt like the lightning and the thunder were in competition with each other, trying to see which could scare me more.
Then I remembered something Tiber had told me about lightning striking a building and killing the people inside. A fork of lightning, all sharp angles and jagged corners, filled the sky, and I began to shake uncontrollably. The walls of the sitting room flashed white and seemed to tremble.
I had to leave.
21
I ran out of the front door.
Immediately the rain drenched my hair and clothes. They were plastered to my skin.
‘Tiber!’ I shouted out loudly, but as I did so, I heard another sound behind me.
A metallic click.
The sound of the front door shutting.
I looked round, although it was hard to keep my eyes open in the pouring rain. I went back to the thin blue door and tried to open it, just in case it hadn’t closed properly, but it didn’t budge. I didn’t have a key.
The rain soaked through my jumper. Coldness swept through me. The rain seemed to pound down harder than ever.
I looked around for shelter, but the trees were waving wildly in the storm. The lightning flashed again, illuminating their shaking branches, which looked like mighty arms that could sweep down and pluck me from the ground.
The rain lashed at the black windows of all the houses in the row. I wished Betsy was here, but her house was silent. Just looking at it made me feel more alone.
Once again the thunder started to tear through the sky above me, like something was being ripped in two. After it had finished I could still hear its vibrations in the air – but there was something else as well. Something softer than the thunder; something that continued after the rumble had died away.
It sounded like crying, although it didn’t sound entirely human.
The lightning started up again. For one dizzying moment the whole street was lit up and then, just as quickly, plummeted back into darkness.
There was the sound of something slamming. I turned round and saw one of the front doors being flung open with such force that it banged against the wall.
It was the door to the house where the old man with the wolfish dog lived; the man who’d seen me at the window, the first night Tiber had left me.
He was standing in the doorway, oblivious to the storm and the rain that was drenching him. There was a faint glow of light behind him, but it was not bright enough to see his face.
A new kind of coldness surged through me now, taking root in my stomach, fixing my legs to the ground. My body didn’t feel like it was my own any more. I wondered if my skin would crumple and fall to the ground like a coat I’d shaken off, after which there would be nothing left of me. Only fear.
I remembered all the times Mum had warned me about strangers; she’d told me I mustn’t trust anyone. I couldn’t stop thinking of Tiber’s scary stories, which had stopped me from sleeping. Why was there always a storm in them?
I realized that I had no place to go, nowhere to hide; that there was nowhere to run but further down the dark street.
I glanced at the old man out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t see him clearly – there was a shadow across his face – but he had a blank sort of expression that made me wonder if he even knew I was there. I stayed absolutely still just in case he hadn’t noticed me.
I felt sure that something terrible was about to happen. I closed my eyes. I thought of Mum and Dad and Tiber and all the good things in my life. I remembered the feeling of a new morning back at home, lying in my bed in the room I’d grown up in, the sunlight pouring down from the blue of the sky. Stretched out across the mattress, lazing in the still part of the dawn, I heard the rise and fall of Mum and Dad’s voices, making each other laugh. It struck me then that this was the nicest sound in the world and I wondered if I would ever hear it again. I thought of Dad’s chuckle; the way it bubbled up out of nowhere and turned into shaking laughter that rocked his whole body.
The old man might reach out, I thought. He might grab me.
I felt my shoulders quiver, waiting for that moment to come.
But the moment passed.
Nothing happened. He didn’t come.
When I turned back to the doorway, I saw that he was standing with his hands upturned, his face tilted towards the rain as though he was speaking to the sky.
‘And there’ll be no more of your rumbles, thank you berry much,’ he said.
Something about his voice calmed me. It reminded me of sunshine, somehow; sunshine from back home, streaming down from the sky like ribbons. And the smell of Mum’s sweet-potato stew. It made me think of Betsy and Ms Doyle and Dad, all mixed into one. The way he had spoken made me think of a song, the sounds bouncing up and down and fitting together to make something more than they could by themselves.
The old man looked up to the sky once more. And then he turned away, back inside, and was gone.
The door had been left wide open.
The rain, beating down harder than ever, made me step towards it. The hallway was softly lit, dry and empty.
As I got closer still, I heard something faintly in the air. It whispered down the hall towards me like smoke. Something like moaning, something like whining.
Then it faded and I heard only the violent pattering of the rain, the sweep of the tree branches as they were carried back and forth in the wind.
The thunder came again. It started quietly, and at first I wondered whether the storm had passed, but then it growled.
And then it roared.
As it died away, I heard the noise once more. A muffled cry.
‘Hello?’ I called down the hall.
There was no answer. No sign of the old man. There was just the soft light coming from the end of the hall, and in the semi-darkness I could see piles upon piles of things stacked on the floor. There were boxes and jars and bags full of things I couldn’t make out clearly; when I stepped inside, I had to be careful where I put my feet.
I could still hear crying. Whatever it was whimpered and groaned, and hearing the sounds of something that was so clearly afraid made me less so. Over the crying I could also make out the broken words of the old man. They were oddly comforting and somehow familiar. His voice was tender and soft, as though he was singing a lullaby.
‘Got you, I’ve got you,’ he said, over and over.
I took a few more careful steps round the teetering stacks until I reached the room at the end of the hall. When I got there, I almost gasped aloud at what I saw.
Every part of the wall was covered. There were jars and jars and jars stacked one on top of the other to make a wal
l. Wooden boxes standing on their side that were stuffed so tightly that nothing fell out. There were feathers and branches hanging from the ceiling so that even I, small as I am, had to crouch in places. Among them hung jam jars holding nightlights. Their warm glow cast soft shadows across the floor.
I felt as though I had entered some sort of magical cave, rather than just a boxy, blank sitting room, which was what ours looked like.
And amidst all the junk the old man was opening jars and boxes and rummaging through them. He flung things out across the room. Diamond-grey feathers; pine cones of every size – one even skimmed past my nose.
He reached up onto the very tips of his toes and pulled out shoeboxes covered in thick layers of dust, emptying them onto the floor, and then pounced upon the innards, sifting through the odd assortment of stuff.
‘Where is it, Dog, huh? I was sure I put it …’
Now and then he would break off his search and drop to the dog’s side to stroke the huge grey head. The dog was crouched, legs tucked up underneath his body so that he looked smaller than I remembered. He was shaking, and with every clap of thunder he shuddered more violently.
It was the dog that was making the crying sounds.
‘Now, now, Dog,’ the old man crooned. ‘I’m not far off. It’ll only be a tick-tock, I’m sure.’ He then leapt away as though he had springs inside him, and started on his frantic rummaging again.
There was another great rumble of thunder, the loudest I’d heard, and the dog shook violently and shrank down even more.
‘Dog!’ the old man cried, and immediately went over to calm the quivering creature. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t let the storm in. I just won’t open the door to it!’
He stroked the dog from the very top of his head, just above his eyes, all the way to his tail, over and over. The dog looked up at him gratefully and, with each touch, grew just a little bigger.
‘Aha!’ the old man exclaimed suddenly. He went to delve behind a stack of boxes and brought out an armful of tubes that, from the pictures on them, looked like they had once held crisps. He uncapped them and tipped them upside down. They were full of the same sort of moss I’d found in the matchbox by the bin.