Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot

by Horatio Clare

  He got up and dressed very quietly. He went downstairs as quietly as a black cat. There was a light shining under the living-room door. He opened it. There, sitting on the sofa, was his father. Jim had his head in his hands. He looked up when Aubrey opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Aubrey Boy!’ Jim said, bravely.

  ‘Hello Dad. You OK?’

  ‘Yes!’ Jim said. ‘Fine!’ But he didn’t look fine.

  Jim smiled. ‘I think I must have reversed my clock – can’t sleep! Thinking about this and that. Why are you dressed?’

  ‘Come with me, Dad,’ Aubrey said. ‘We’re going for a walk. Let’s leave a note for Mum.’

  ‘Are we? OK … why not? A walk in the snow might be lovely.’

  As Jim got his boots and coat and hat, and a hat and coat for Aubrey and gloves for both of them, Aubrey wrote Suzanne a note.

  Dear Mum we are going for a walk in the snow. Don’t worry! We’ve got all our hats and coats on. We’ll be back soonish. There’s something I want to show Dad.

  Love A xxx

  CHAPTER 14

  The Visitor from the Furthest North

  High Peak is the lighthouse of the moors, a tump of ground which rises to an outcrop of rocks. On a clear day the view is not just spectacular; it is almost supernatural. People have seen remarkable, impossible sights from up there. Walkers have said they looked east and saw right across the country to the North Sea. Lots more have said they looked west and saw the Irish Sea on the other side. Others claim to have seen the Mountains of Mourne in Ireland, and one little girl said she saw all the way to Holland once, in the other direction. ‘It was as flat as a slipper and the colour of tulips,’ she said. ‘And it had windmills.’

  To get to High Peak from Woodside Terrace

  you cross the stream, climb up the

  other side of the valley and take

  the road until it runs out. Then

  you follow the track until

  that runs out and

  all you are

  left with is a

  path. You follow this path

  for a while, like Moses crossing

  the Red Sea, staying on the

  narrow trail

  between waves of

  moorland, and after a mile

  or so there is High Peak,

  like a watchtower in the sky.

  It was hard work for Jim, and even harder for Aubrey with his shorter legs, but at least the snow had stopped falling. There were clouds, heavy with more goosefeathers, driving southwards overhead. Here and there were ragged gaps where starlight showed, and the luminous snow gathered every photon of light, collected it and bounced it back at the clouds, so that Jim and Aubrey walked over a glowing white moor, under clouds like a swollen sea. Star patches rode in this sea above them like islands. The snow crunched softly under their feet.

  ‘Where are you taking me, Aubrey Boy?’

  ‘Guess!’

  ‘I think I know…’

  ‘You probably do.’

  ‘Feel like a view, eh Aubrey? I doubt we’ll see Holland tonight.’

  ‘There’s someone we’ve got to meet.’

  ‘Really?’ cried Jim, alarmed. ‘In the middle of the night? Who?’

  ‘A Visitor from Furthest North,’ Aubrey said. ‘I’ve never met her before.’

  ‘Not someone you met on the internet?’ Jim demanded, ‘Not some crazy kook?’

  Aubrey decided his father needed to know one or two things.

  ‘Dad, you know the heron? His name’s Ardea. He’s a friend of mine, right?’

  Jim laughed. ‘That makes sense!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, not sense exactly but…’

  ‘And you know the raven and the squirrels, and Marcel the fly? They’re sort of my friends too.’

  Jim nodded. He might have been having a bad time recently but he was still a man who understood stories very well, and knew there were more stories in even the smallest wood than could ever be written or imagined.

  ‘I’d like to meet them,’ Jim said. ‘Except that raven! I’ve had plenty of him! But I guess they don’t talk to everyone?’

  Aubrey was extremely relieved. ‘This is that kind of friend. We’ll recognise her when we see her, according to Athene.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Jim. ‘Who is Athene? Some sort of owl?’

  ‘Some sort is right,’ Aubrey grinned.

  The last scramble up the side of High Peak made them both pant. They were not far from the top when Aubrey stopped.

  ‘Dad! Look! She’s there!’

  Jim peered ahead. He could see the outcrop of stones that marked the highest point but there was nothing … wait! There was something there. Perching on the stones themselves was a shape, a huge, mantled shape like an eagle, but white, white as the moor.

  ‘It’s a…’ Jim gasped.

  ‘She’s a…’ Aubrey panted.

  ‘She’s a Snowy Owl!’ Jim whispered. ‘I – they hardly ever – it’s incredible! They hardly ever come to this country – what a blessing! We’d better not get too close or we’ll scare her away.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Aubrey said. ‘Come on, we’ll talk to her.’

  ‘You really think…?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘Yes,’ said a deep gentle voice. ‘Come up.’

  ‘That was her?’ Jim squeaked.

  Jim and Aubrey climbed together, holding hands, until they arrived at the top of High Peak and stood before the great Snowy Owl. Close up they could see she had riffles of black feathers among the white, and her eyes were like huge amber lanterns. Her beak was shiny black and her feet were tufted with thick white feathers, as if she were wearing plump slippers. Shiny black talons, sharp as scimitars, curved out of her toes.

  The Snowy Owl squeezed her yellow eyes at them in an owl smile. ‘My name is Scandiacus,’ she said, ‘but my friends call me Bubo. Now, why have I come to see you?’

  Aubrey cleared his throat. ‘Ahem, um, hello – Bubo! I think you have come to help us with the Terrible Yoot – have you?’

  ‘Only you can help yourselves with him,’ said the owl. ‘But I can help you help yourselves. Why is he troubling you?’

  ‘He says he’s lonely, and he likes Dad!’

  ‘What is this Yoot?’ Jim asked. Although he could hear Bubo and Aubrey talking telepathically he asked the question aloud. Aubrey answered him the same way.

  ‘The Terrible Yoot is the voice in your head that has been making you so sad,’ Aubrey told him. ‘He’s the source of all your troubles, but he’s only a small dung beetle in the other world, and he’s lonely there, but when he comes here he becomes this monster and when he tries to be kind to you it comes out all wrong and tortures you.’

  ‘A dung beetle?’

  Jim looked dazed.

  ‘What do you want to know about him?’ Bubo asked.

  ‘Why is he called the Yoot?’

  ‘Ah! That is the question! How do you spell his name?’

  ‘Why oh oh tee,’ Aubrey said.

  Bubo smiled again. ‘Do you know the difference between an acronym and a proper noun?’ she asked.

  ‘Uum … an acronym is … some sort of symptom?’ Aubrey guessed. ‘Like spots?’

  ‘No!’ Jim cried, ‘An acronym is made of the first letters of a series of words, like radar comes from the first letters of RAdio Detection And Ranging. Or FAQ – Frequently Asked Question. A proper noun is a name for a thing or person, like Aubrey.’

  ‘Dad’s an English teacher,’ Aubrey explained.

  Bubo shuffled her feathers. ‘Yoot is not a proper noun, it’s an acronym.’

  ‘We need to know what it stands for then!’ Aubrey exclaimed.

  ‘What might it stand for?’ Bubo returned.

  ‘Yowl oh oh terrible? You orange or terror? You oink oink tomorrow?’

  ‘Do you know what a homophone is?’ asked the owl, rising up slightly. She looked enormous. It was like being tested by a huge headmistress with a massive beak and cla
ws, Aubrey thought. Don’t be scared, he told himself, you can deal with owls.

  ‘Go on Aubrey,’ Jim said. ‘Try!’

  ‘Is it – like a xylophone?’

  ‘Nearly!’ Jim said. ‘Xylo means wood in Greek, phone is sound. Xylophone is ‘woodsound’. Homo means “same” in Greek, so homophone is “same sound”. A word that sounds the same as another word.’

  ‘Correct!’ said Bubo, with a low purring sound. She reminded Aubrey of other great hunters he had seen on television. She was like a lion or something. But owlish…

  ‘Yes,’ Jim said. ‘Homophones are words with the same sound but different meanings and often a different spelling.’

  Aubrey saw it now. ‘So his name sounds like Yoot but it’s not spelt Y-O-O-T … how is it spelt?’

  ‘Y-U-T-E?’ Jim guessed.

  ‘Shorter!’ hooted the owl.

  ‘Indeed!’ said Bubo. ‘So what does it stand for?’

  ‘Utterly Terrible Evil?’ Aubrey tried.

  ‘But’s he’s not evil, is he?’ Bubo prompted, gently.

  Aubrey thought. ‘I was sure he was until I met him. He does evil things but not in his world, and he doesn’t mean to, I believe that – so, he’s – not exactly evil, no.’

  ‘You have one word right, but you need to swap the adjectival form for the noun.’

  ‘Dad? Help!’

  ‘Well,’ Jim said, ‘utterly is an adverb, you know because it ends in -ly. Evil is a noun and an adjective and anyway you say this thing isn’t evil, though it feels pretty evil to me. But if it’s not that then it must be terrible. If terrible is the adjective, what is the noun?’

  ‘Nouns and adjectives!’ Aubrey cried.

  ‘Why can’t they all go and boil their heads!’

  Bubo narrowed her eyes at the boy. Jim shook his head. ‘Terror,’ he said, patiently. ‘The noun is terror.’

  ‘Ugly terror enemy!’ Aubrey guessed, excited now.

  Bubo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was he really ugly, when you met him in the desert?’

  Aubrey paused. ‘No – not at all. He was just trapped in his existence.’

  ‘Existence!’ repeated the owl. ‘Two words right.’

  ‘U-something Terror Existence – what is U?’

  ‘U is everything,’ said Bubo.

  ‘Universal,’ Jim said, instantly. ‘It’s the only U that means everything.’

  ‘Correct,’ said the owl. ‘And there’s an ‘of’ in there too.’

  ‘Universal Terror of Existence,’ Aubrey said, slowly. ‘He’s the Universal Terror of Existence? What is that?’

  ‘What does it sound like? Think.’

  Bubo ruffled her feathers and spun her head around, looking far into the night. Aubrey turned away. The snow was not falling now. There was no wind. The moor sparkled all the way to the clouds. What was the Universal Terror of Existence? Jim put his arms over Aubrey’s shoulders, so that Aubrey stood with his back to his father, keeping warm.

  ‘It’s something everyone has,’ Aubrey said, ‘if it’s universal.’

  ‘That makes sense to me,’ Jim said. ‘I’ve been feeling terrified in my existence, but I didn’t think of being terrified of it.’

  ‘If you didn’t exist you wouldn’t be terrified,’ Aubrey thought aloud.

  ‘And I didn’t want to exist,’ Jim agreed. ‘I thought I was too terrified to live. In fact the real terror came when I realised I wanted to live and I thought it was too late.’

  ‘So – existence means terror?’ Aubrey frowned. ‘Isn’t that a bit bleak?’

  ‘Let me show you a thing or two about bleak,’ said Bubo. ‘Look that way, what do you see?’

  Aubrey and Jim followed the direction of the owl’s gaze. The moors fell away to the south, low horizontals of snow running to the sky.

  ‘Just the moors and the cloud,’ Aubrey said. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Bleak?’ Bubo enquired.

  ‘Pretty bleak!’ Aubrey laughed.

  ‘Now watch,’ said the owl.

  The Snowy Owl drew herself up in a stretch, like someone straightening her back, and spun her head, first to the left, then to the right, so that her blazing gaze swept all the moors around. Now she looked south and hunched forward, as if she were about to take off, and dug her mighty talons into the crevices of her perch. Her wings unfurled and she began to beat them; to Aubrey it was as though a great bluster of icy wind had erupted around him, but then, instead of freezing him, it seemed to stream away towards the skyline. As he watched, the miracle began.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Miracle

  The owl’s wingbeats sent a scoop of air towards the distant clouds in an invisible stream. When it reached the clouds, this stream seemed to furl them up, like a breeze lifting a great curtain. The clouds’ edges tore and twisted, rising, splitting, dissolving, as if all the snow they contained had melted at once, leaving only a wide clear in the sky. In this clear air was a pure twinkling sky so full of stars they seemed like nets of light. Further and further the wide clear spread, until the whole horizon was serene and perfect.

  ‘Like the first night on earth!’ Aubrey whispered.

  It was as though they stood in a gigantic cathedral with the whole galaxy for a roof, where the planets were gold and crimson pearls. All around them starlight shimmered on the snow like notes of music they could not quite hear.

  ‘How far can you see?’ asked Bubo Scandiacus, very softly.

  ‘There’s Woodside Terrace, and there’s the village,’ Aubrey said. ‘And there’s the town, and the railway line, and the city – I can see the whole city! It looks tiny, like crushed jewels, all those lights – and beyond – look at that huge mountain! What’s that?’

  ‘It can’t be Snowdon,’ Jim said, not quite believing it. ‘But it can only be Snowdon!’

  And there it was, the mountain’s towering crest shining like an iceberg, and all around it were the mountains of Wales, rising like dolphins into the glittering night.

  ‘And that’s the coast! Isn’t it, Dad? It must be, look, you can see the line of lights along the shore, and those flashes, red and green…’

  ‘They’re buoys!’ Jim exclaimed, ‘Navigation lights for the ships coming in from the west…’

  ‘I can see ships,’ Aubrey cried, ‘on both sides, look over there! Those are the lights of the east coast, aren’t they? Isn’t that a lighthouse?’

  ‘Yes, and beyond it that’s a lighthouse on the other side, the Dutch coast, the other side of the North Sea,’ Jim said, and his voice was shaky now, because not only could they both see, quite clearly, the coasts of France and Holland to the east, they could also see the lights of Ireland to the west, and there were the Mountains of Mourne, and as Aubrey stared he saw the mighty Atlantic on the further side, furrowed with the infinite ripples of its waves, where the moon like a sea creature rose out of the ocean and laid a silvering path upon it, all the way to America.

  Aubrey hardly dared to keep staring, because everywhere he turned his gaze, the distances fell away. Now he looked east, and there were the dark fields of France, and if he focused he could see tiny villages, churches and canals, and there was a city with a white-domed cathedral on a hill, and a million rooftops, and a river which bent around a tower which flashed like a firework.

  ‘The Eiffel Tower!’ he exclaimed. ‘It must be Paris!

  And now he looked west, and tracking across the ocean he followed the wakes of ships, and over the curve of the world he saw glowing and pulsing miniature towers which must be huge, huge skyscrapers, and a city of bridges and reefs of light.

  ‘Dad,’ Aubrey said, seriously, ‘I can see New York!’

  And they both started to laugh, because it was impossible, but they could both see the towers and the lights and the bridges, as clearly as you can see the words on this page.

  ‘What can you see?’ asked Bubo Scandiacus.

  ‘I can see – everything!’ Aubrey said. ‘I mean I can see about seven countries, and two
seas, and the whole ocean, and all the way to America. It’s some sort of spell.’

  ‘Only a very simple spell,’ the owl replied. ‘What you are seeing is always there. It’s only slightly unusual to see it all at once.’

  ‘You can never see all this at once!’

  ‘You can if you fly high enough. And now you have seen it you will never forget it, will you?’

  ‘No way! I’ll always remember it. I don’t want to stop looking – could I see Africa?’

  ‘Yes, if you look south east, do you see those peaks, like a tiny white saw on its back?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Those are the Pyrenees – that’s Spain beyond. Do you see the high plains, and the mountains? And the sea beyond them?’

  ‘Yes! I can see two mountains, one further away…’

  ‘That is Jebel Musa. That’s in Africa.’

  ‘Dad, I can see Africa!’

  ‘So can I,’ Jim said, ‘And no one will ever believe us!’

  ‘Mum will. But I can’t believe it – I can’t believe how beautiful it all is,’ Aubrey said, and he wanted to cry, for the wonder of the world was almost overwhelming.

  ‘And to think it’s always there, but we can’t see it!’

  ‘But you do see it,’ said the owl. ‘You see it in miniature every time you go outside and look at what the world is. This is what exists – this is EXISTENCE! This is, you are, I am, we are, existence! And this is the world as it is.’

  ‘As you never see it,’ Aubrey said.

  ‘Hoot! If you fly as high as a space rocket you can see all this. If you fly as high as a satellite you can see whole countries in a glance. If you only fly as high as an aeroplane you will see that it is always a sunny day above the clouds. Or a clear night.’

  ‘What does this have to do with the Yoot?’ Aubrey asked, forgetting the new spelling, because he was concentrating on seeing how far into Africa he could see, which turned out to be very far – his gaze was travelling across the Sahara desert now, and he could see a dark jungle on the far side where he thought there must be elephants.