The Whispering Road

by Livi Michael

  I step quite close to the hen without looking its way and act as if I'm thinking of nothing in particular. Then I lunge round at it. Of course I miss and it shoots into the air squawking, which sets off all the others. I don't mind the commotion – Old Bert'll come running, but that's part of the plan – I'm damned if I'm leaving without a hen.

  Have you ever tried catching a hen? They're flapping up and squawking fit to burst, and I'm diving here, there and everywhere, falling over the bucket, scrambling over the crates and swearing. Annie's got her mouth open, screaming without making a sound. There's feathers flying and enough noise to wake up Adam in the Garden of Eden. Finally, when I snatch at my last hen and miss so that it goes screeching forward, Annie seizes the shovel, lifts it and belts the hen for all she's worth. It flies into the wall like a football, then hits the floor, kicking and twitching. I grab it and wrench its neck. In my hurry I pull too hard and its head comes right off. And the thing's still flapping there under my arm and suddenly I'm gagging, doubled over, just as if I had something to throw up. Then Annie freezes.

  ‘Door,’ she says as it rattles.

  No time to think. I drop the hen and grab the shovel. I clamber up on the crates hearing Old Bert cursing outside. Through my mind flashes the image of Jack the Giant-killer and I lift the shovel up, but suddenly I'm scared to death. We hear the plank across the door being dragged off and thrown away. Annie's face is dirty white like the snow. I shut my eyes and see the giant's head bowling across the floor – whack! Whack!

  Of course it doesn't work like that. Old Bert flings the door open so hard it nearly comes off its hinges, and I bring the shovel down as hard as I can, and next thing I know Old Bert's turning round roaring like a bull. I slam the shovel at him, right between the eyes and he staggers back. But he must have a head like an anvil because he just keeps on roaring and lungeing.

  He grabs the shovel. I go flying off the crates and Annie screams. Somewhere outside all the dogs start barking at once. I see him lift the shovel high above his head. I shut my eyes. The next moment there's a terrific crash, then silence. I open my eyes. Old Bert's sprawled crossways over me. He's hit his head on the stone wall and lying still.

  Annie rolls out from beneath his feet. She must have rolled in front of him, lickety-split, when he went for me. But now she's up and tugging at my arm.

  ‘Shovel,’ she says, then, ‘hen.’

  I struggle out from under Old Bert. All I can hear are the dogs, then Young Bert and master are outside, calling and cursing. The door's wide open. I can see a lantern flare. Annie drops the shovel and the hen into the sack, then we're off, running like tinkers over the slippery cobbles, round the back of the shed, into the snow-filled night.

  2

  Chicken

  ‘OI!’ roars Young Bert, and sets off across the yard with his bandy legs. His lantern bobs and flickers as he reaches the shed and takes in the scene.

  ‘Da!’ he cries. ‘Da!’

  Young Bert's even bigger and uglier than his da. If he gets to us first there's no hope, none at all, we'll be libbed to death and he'll suck on our bones like a troll, but I keep on running because what else is there to do? Past the stables where the horses set off whinnying, round the back of the barn. I'm thinking about the back wall, and how there's no way over it that I know of.

  Master loosens the dogs' chains, snarling, ‘Fetch!’ and all the dogs bound forward howling murder. There are four of them – mean yellow hounds kept half-starved and savage. Me and Annie just keep running and slithering. Blood's pounding in my ears and all I can think is, No chance, no chance, in time to the banging of my heart. Past the tool shed we go and suddenly we're up against the wall, six foot high with a bolted gate. I'm about to start climbing when Annie tugs me to one side, and there's a miracle.

  A small hole at the bottom where the wall's collapsing and neither Old nor Young Bert have ever done owt about it. We plunge into it and are soon sorry – there's a thick thorny hedge beyond. We've no choice but to push through the thorns as best we can because the dogs are on us now in a snarling rush. They're too big for the gap but that doesn't stop them. They're up over the wall baying for blood and slavering. All my shirt's tangled in thorns but I rip myself free and suddenly I'm falling, tumbling over and over, too fast to even notice how much it hurts. From the corner of my eye I see Annie flashing past and I wonder if we'll both be dead by the time we hit the bottom. Then I realize that even if we're not we soon will be, because at the bottom of this drop's the river, groaning and gushing past in flood, full of drifts of ice and boulders.

  I hit a rock and bounce, and one hound tumbles past yelping, then I fly past a branch that's jutting out and grip hold hard. The world swings round then steadies itself. I see three hounds prowling at the top but they won't come down, even though Young Bert and master are driving them on with sticks. Then one falls, tumbling over and over. Another puts back his head and howls, a heart-stopping, lonely sound that nearly makes me lose hold of the branch. Both the others join in, and the sound echoes around the hills. I look down at slow black circles in the foam, searching for Annie.

  I can't see anything at first, though I crane desperately to left and right. Hoping the branch'll hold, I scramble to one side under a little ridge so that no one can see me from the top. I try not to feel sick when I look down.

  Nothing.

  Annie must be floating downriver with that dog.

  I'm not crying, I never cry, but the snow's stinging my eyes.

  ‘What're you waiting for?’ I hear master say to Young Bert. ‘Get down there after them!’

  ‘Me?’ says Young Bert. ‘Not me, Master – I'm feared!’

  ‘Get on with you!’ says master.

  ‘I'll not go where dogs won't!’ says Bert, then I hear thwack! thwack ! as master starts beating him with his stick, and Young Bert cries loudly, ‘Da! Da!’

  ‘I'll give you Da!’ shouts master, more enraged than ever, but Young Bert, only three teeth in his head and even less sense, hasn't got the sense to stop crying. And all the dogs start baying again, so there's a right racket, and suddenly it happens. A huge ridge of snow comes crashing down.

  Down and down and all around me before there's time to shout. The branch breaks and I'm spinning forward and there's snow in my mouth and ears. I land with a thud in a mound of snow and a great weight of it falls on top. I'm buried, and for a minute I think I might be dead. Then I try to move.

  I can't move my arms but I manage to kick a bit, and wriggle and struggle backwards till I've tugged myself clear. I'm cold and battered and wringing wet. My ears are full of roaring, which I realize slowly is the noise from the river. My chest hurts and my heart seems to be banging in my head, but at least that proves I'm alive. On the stony riverbank, with the river surging and boiling and gushing out of its bed.

  Usually there's a big wide bed to this river, full of stones. I remember when the teacher, Miss Julie her name was, managed to talk the master of the workhouse into letting her take us all out one day. ‘It's such a beautiful day,’ she said to him.

  And master grumbled and gurned, but he was a bit sweet on Miss Julie, like we all were, so that was how we all came to go out, walking along the riverbed, looking at flowers and fish, under the big blue sky with the sun burning down. And we hadn't got to get our workhouse clothes wet or soiled, but soon we were splashing through the river and throwing stones and laughing.

  ‘Don't worry, children,’ Miss Julie says, ‘your clothes'll dry on the way home.’

  So that's what I'm thinking about now – sun and flowers and fish – because it stops me thinking about Annie, and the fact that I'm all alone and there's no chicken and I don't know what to do next. I scramble along just above the level of the river because it's so swollen now there's no bed left. From time to time spray catches me and it's like knives on my frozen skin, and I slip and slither on wet rock and there's no sign of Annie or the chicken. And I'm getting tired, so tired I'm not even hungry any m
ore, just numb, and it would be easy to let myself just slide into the river and be carried along, let the darkness close over me. I'm not even thinking any more. I go round a bend in the river and think, Just one more bend, one more rock and I'll be there, but I don't know where there is. And then I'm too tired, and instead of climbing over the next rock I just lie across it.

  The river churns on black and brown where the foam's rising. It's been frozen all winter but now it's free and roaring like a hungry animal, roaring and tossing stones and branches. There are voices in it too, hundreds of voices. Old Bert's voice is in there, and master's, and Miss Julie's, and if I listen hard enough I can hear, faint and far away, the voice of my mother. So I lie there, just listening to what the river has to say and almost, not quite, making out the words, when suddenly it says, ‘All right, laddie, up you come,’ and there's hands beneath my arms pulling me up.

  I kick feebly and turn my face away, but I'm pressed against some rough material that reeks of mildew and smoke, and I'm carried along roughly, jolting and jigging, and the river's turned into someone big and brown that's carrying me away, but I don't care any more and anyway, it all feels like a dream.

  Then whoever it is bends forward and pushes his way through a branch that catches at my legs into a kind of opening in the hill. And then I know I'm dreaming, because there's a fire and some kind of skins on the floor, and on the other side of the fire is Annie, wrapped in a skin, calmly plucking the chicken and looking up at me with her light eyes.

  ‘You're late,’ she says.

  Whoever it is that's got me puts me down then, on the other side of the fire. I'm near the flames but I can't feel a thing. I could be scorching. Then he starts rubbing at my hands and feet with snow. I can see black wispy hair on his bent head, and reddish scalp showing through. Then slowly I can feel pain in my hands and feet, tingling and burning so that I can't stand it and I start to struggle up, swearing. But he holds me down calmly and starts stripping the rags off my back. Well, I'm not being stripped by no man, even if he has just saved my life, and I dart backwards kicking in earnest now, and he looks up at me with huge, pea-soup eyes, thick-lashed.

  ‘You'd better get them wet things off, lad,’ he says, and I glare at him. He shrugs. ‘I'll go and get some sticks to dry them on,’ he says, and crawls back out through the opening of the cave.

  I look towards Annie, half expecting to find that she's disappeared but, no, she's still there, covered in fur and feathers. And the chicken looks grey and puckered now and nothing like a bird.

  ‘Who's he?’ I demand, and she shrugs. There's about a thousand things I could say, but the pain in my hands is killing me and I tuck them under my armpits. ‘Where did you find him?’ I ask.

  ‘Fell on him,’ she says. Then she looks at me and tugs my clothes.

  ‘Off,’ she says, and goes on plucking the chicken as if nothing out of the ordinary's happened.

  Nothing makes sense, so I start to peel off my clothes. And it's agony, just touching anything. My fingers feel huge and raw and it hurts so much that I groan and swear and spit. And my feet are killing me; I can't put them down. But I manage to peel the clothes off and wrap myself in a big shaggy skin of something that might have been a wolf, before he crawls back in.

  He drives two big sticks into the earth and holds his hand out for my rags. None of us say anything but he whistles as he starts to spread out my clothes.

  Then I say, ‘Who are you?’ and he looks at me with those green eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ he says, and we stare at one another for a minute, not giving an inch, and the words of a song go through my head…

  Here come I, Beelzebub,

  And over my shoulder I carry a club,

  And in my hand a dripping pan,

  And I think myself a jolly man.

  ‘Food first,’ says the man, and he picks up the chicken and rips it apart with his big hands, dropping some pieces into a pan and skewering the rest on a stick, holding them over the fire. And I huddle closer to the fire. I can feel it now, scorching the flesh of my face. And the wet rags start to smoulder and steam, and fat runs off the chicken, spitting in the flames, so all I can think about is meat. He puts the hot pieces down on a stone to cool, warning us not to touch them too soon, but I'm famished and I fall on it, burning my mouth. I tear at the flesh with my teeth and feel the juice run down my chin, and chew and chew, and have a nightmare feeling like I won't be able to swallow, like I've forgotten how. But I chew some more and gag and stuff it down. When I look, Annie's doing the same, only more slowly, and the man's looking at both of us with a peculiar smile on his face.

  He has a broad, flat face and he looks at us sideways, then quickly away. He picks up the smaller pieces of chicken and eats them slowly, leaving most of it for us. As though he's not really hungry at all.

  I don't know what to think about him. He starts talking while we eat, in a soft, sing-song voice that sounds funny. Not like from around here. He says, ‘It's a fine night with plenty of moon. I walked from Huddersfield yesterday and fetched up here, tired as a dog. Drifts of snow high as my shoulder along the tops. I was looking for somewhere to spend the night and found this place. I made the fire and thought now all I need is some food, but all the way over I hadn't seen so much as a bird, or a hare. So I walked out, looking for what the good Lord might provide. When suddenly I was struck on the head by a chicken.

  ‘Well that's not the usual way that the good Lord provides, so I couldn't help looking up, wondering if he might throw down some taters or peas to go with it. But the next thing that lands on me's the little maid. Don't worry,’ he says with his sideways smile, ‘I'll not try to cook you.’

  I've stopped cramming the chicken down, though I'm still eating. I say to him, ‘Are you a tinker?’ Because we used to get tinkers stopping off at the workhouse, selling stuff, or looking for a night's shelter in bad weather. If they were selling, master saw them off sharpish – he didn't like them – but if they had a ticket for the night he had to let them stay. And some of them stank to high heaven and were bad-tempered with it. But some of them were all right and told us stories.

  He stops eating and wipes his mouth. Then he rakes the fire up a bit.

  ‘I've been a tinker,’ he says, ‘and a soldier and a sailor. I've been a poor man, a beggarman and a thief. But I've never been a rich man. I think the good Lord must've overlooked that one.’ He laughs to himself silently.

  ‘What are you now?’ I say, though Annie nudges me. She doesn't want him to start asking questions about us.

  ‘What am I now?’ he says, looking upwards. ‘I don't know that I can rightly answer that one… I sell skins,’ he says, waving at the pile of furs, ‘to rich men that deal in fur. Sometimes I sew them together, into capes or wraps, and sell them myself on the markets. You could say that makes me a tailor.’ He laughs his silent laugh, then looks at us, very keen. ‘What about you?’ he says. ‘What are you?’

  I look at Annie and Annie looks at me, her face all shut up like a box.

  ‘We're lost,’ I begin, not knowing how to go on. ‘We were with our mam and dad, in a big town, then we lost them. We've been looking for them ever since.’

  It's not a good story, not one of my best, but it's the best I can do without thinking. He nods. ‘You'll be looking for the workhouse then,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ we say together, and he laughs again.

  ‘Me neither,’ he says. ‘But how'll you find your mam and dad? They must be looking for you.’

  Annie looks at me but I can't think. My head's filling up with the heat from the fire. But I don't want him taking us to the workhouse. If we go back there we'll be beaten and sent back to the farm. Or to a worse place, if there is one. So I say nothing and he says nothing either. Then after a minute I say, ‘What's your name?’

  ‘Well, now,’ he says. ‘That's an awfully personal question to ask a fellow. I don't know when I last gave out that piece of information. What are your names?’


  Annie says nothing and I'm too tired to think. My head's nodding. Annie's light eyes stare at the man, who stares back.

  ‘What'll we call you?’ she says, and he laughs.

  ‘That's better,’ he says. ‘It doesn't do, to go giving your names out to every Tom, Dick or Harry who asks.’ He straightens, and stretches his legs. I can see that he's not a tall man, but broad. ‘You can call me Travis,’ he says, and looks at us expectantly. ‘Well?’

  ‘Tom,’ I say, very low, and he laughs again.

  ‘And is this Dick or Harry?’

  Annie says nothing. I say the first name that comes to me. ‘Julie.’

  ‘Tom, and Julie,’ he says, as if trying the names out. He looks at us consideringly and nods. ‘Tom and Julie. That's good.’

  Now I can't stay awake any longer. My eyes close and my head drops forward. I can hear Travis moving around, and through my closed lids I can still see the flickering flames. I droop forward, sighing.

  ‘Mind the fire,’ Travis says, and he hauls both me and Annie backwards on to soft fur. And I forget to be afraid, I forget everything but the sleep welling up like deep, deep water into my head. I feel Annie curling into my side, then nothing else.

  3

  Travis

  We must have slept for a long time. I wake up feeling cold again, grey light in the cave and the sound of the river. There are skins on top of us so only my face is cold, and Annie's still curled into me, so I tuck my face back under the skins. Travis isn't here, but I don't want to think, I just want to stay where I am and the next thing I know there's a voice saying, ‘Tom, Tom?’

  I've forgotten I'm called Tom, so I say nothing, but try to get back into my dream. It's one I've had before, the one where the master calls me into his office and says, ‘There's someone come for you, Joe, you're free to go,’ and I look up and there she is, my mother, only I can't see her face, and that's what bothers me most, and I keep trying. So I don't want to wake up, and only when Travis says, ‘Tom?’ a third time do I remember and turn on to my side. Annie's already rolling on to her knees, pulling the covers with her, and there's Travis, lighting the fire again and placing fish on a stone in the middle of it. I sit up, yawning hugely, and remember to cover myself up.