It was true. Greychild hardly ever found every piece for a full pot, so he would just patch two together, or leave them full of gaps for the wind to blow through. But he loved the patterns, the spiralling whorls and mazes, and always traced his finger round them, trying to figure out a meaning.
“Don’t mean nothing,” Scritch grunted. “Just old, that’s all. Old and broken.”
But Greychild waited till the Pedlar Man came next time around with his trays of ribbons and bright shiny knick-knacks which were no good for nothing except all the girlen wanted them. Greychild asked if he’d like to buy one of his pots. The Pedlar Man took a look. He fixed the pot with a crooked eye and turned it this way and that.
“This is a fine pot you have here,” he mused.
Greychild was pleased.
“What will you give me for it?” he enquired.
The Pedlar Man turned the pot over.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Greychild wasn’t sure.
“I want a ribbon,” he blurted. “A long lilac ribbon to give to Dawnflower. She ties petals in my hair and slips me sweet kisses and sews together my clothes. At least I should give her a ribbon in return.”
The Pedlar Man rapped at the top of the pot with his bony knuckles.
“This pot is cracked,” he declared. “No way could I sell it in another village. Who wants cracked pots when I’ve got buttons and bows? Tell you what, you should keep it. It’s a good pot, a sturdy pot. Just that it’s cracked, that’s all. Why not give it to Dawnflower instead of a ribbon? Then she can cook you a broth, so she’ll not only clothe you and twine you with petals and give you sweet kisses – she’ll feed you as well!”
Greychild scowled and the other boys laughed at him. He grabbed the pot back.
“Old Granny Willowmist already gives me food.”
At the end of the day, when the sun began to dip, Greychild grew tired and started to find it hard to tell stones from mud from pieces of pot as he peered into the water. He started to think of food and Granny Willowmist’s warm cottage and wondered if he might see Dawnflower again – and wondered if she might want to plait one of her ribbons through his hair and kiss him with one of her special kisses… Greychild trawled through the water one last time and pulled out one last mud-caked shard. He scrunnied it with his thumbs, just the way Scritch showed him. The mud flaked away, red and grey, but weren’t no piece of earthen pot, the same as all the others which sat in a stack on a scrap of leather on the grass beside him. He scrunnied it again. Something shone. Greychild rinsed it in the water. Weren’t no pot at all. Twas glass. It shone like a mirror.
Greychild twisted it this way and that, expecting to see himself – the boy with the tousled hair, the boy they’d called Greychild. Expected to see the clouds and the sky and everything around – the overhanging trees by the river edge, the swirling flocks of starlings. But instead saw nothing, heard a sound like whistling, and then he saw… markets selling treasures he’d never dreamt of – brought by ships sailing in from the ends of the world. And taverns and food and wine tasting sweeter than any potion that Snuffwidget ever brewed. Saw a far-off city.
“Must be Arleccra,” Greychild mused, “just like the Pedlar Man told us. Must be where my mother has gone. If I go there, sure I’ll find her.”
Greychild turned the glass this way, that way as he peered over his shoulder. He thought that Scritch was watching him. But when he looked again, Scritch was sitting as he always sat, gazing into the water. Greychild slipped the eye of the glass in his pocket. He was hungry now. It was the end of the day. He cast another glance at Scritch, waiting to see what he’d say. Scritch took no notice at first, the way he always did, but then he looked up at the darkening sky. Rainclouds gathering behind them. Sun slowly sinking down.
“Time to pack up,” he shrugged. “Soon be too dark to see anything here.”
And the two of them got to their feet and scrambled back up the muddy bank, scraping and stamping their boots on the grass. Then Scritch opened up the door of the old wooden shed and chucked the small handful of tin he’d collected into a bucket in the corner.
“Lot of good that’ll do,” he muttered. “Won’t make much more than a thimble from that.”
That was what Scritch always said, good days or bad.
“How’d you do, lad?”
Greychild clattered past him and cast a motley collection of broken earthenware into a pile on the floor.
“No good to anyone,” Scritch scowled. “You sure that’s all you got? Not keeping nothing back?”
Greychild shook his head.
Scritch bolted the door, raised his eyes to the sky.
“Rain coming soon,” he said. “Best be getting along.” And without waiting for Greychild to reply, he tugged up his collar and set off away down the overgrown track to where he lived, a hand-built hut at the edge of the riverbank – half way from the village, half way to nowhere – a patchwork of planks and beams threaded together with wire and string. And out in the front where there might be a garden were all manner of bits and pieces and broken things.
Scritch would cook his fish outside, out on a tarnished griddle. When he’d eaten he’d sit in a battered old wicker chair and listen to the rooks away up in the woods. Then he’d stump inside and spend the night hunched by an oil-lamp, smelting and twisting all the metal he’d collected into trinkets for the Pedlar Man.
Greychild was skittering as quick as he could along the winding path that led back to Brunt Boggart. But not to go straight to Granny Willowmist’s cottage, hungry as he might be, hungry as he was. No – for now he had the glass in his pocket, and as soon as he was out of Scritch’s sight, he drew it out again and sat down under a tree in the spinney by the path. He looked all around and listened. Far away he could hear dogs barking in the village yards, and Oakum Marlroot calling in his cattle, out on his lonely fields.
Greychild thrust his hand in his pocket. What if he was just tired and hungry and the glass really was just a mirror? Or not even a mirror, but just another piece of broken pot? His fingers curled around it and he slowly drew it out. It was dull. It was nothing. Greychild shook his head. It was just as he feared. What should he do? Should he just chuck it over his shoulder, a useless piece of broken glass to lie in the bushes for the jackdaws to peck?
Greychild breathed on the eye of the glass and rubbed it with his sleeve. At first nothing seemed to happen. But then as he peered closer into its centre, he could see leaves. Leaves like the leaves all around him. Maybe was just a mirror after all. But then as he looked, the leaves turned to gold. He sat up and gazed around. Wasn’t autumn. Was still summer, late summer, damp and wet. The leaves on the branches were dripping with green. But the leaves in the glass were burnished with gold. And then they faded away. Greychild could see hills. Hills that he knew, hills that he saw every morning from Granny Willowmist’s top window – but he couldn’t see now, here under the bushes. And then he saw the hills beyond the hills – the hills he only ever saw on a clear bright day, not when it was cloudy and dull, like now. The hills where no-one had ever been, only the Pedlar Man.
Greychild gasped and smiled. Now he could see far beyond the hills. He could see Arleccra, just as he had seen it before. He felt as if he was walking there, down the streets, through the alleys, past the markets down to the ramshackle warehouses where sharp-faced boys and grizzled old men unloaded barrels and bales hauled up from the harbour. Greychild gazed at the crowds, more people than he’d ever seen before.
And then at the edge of the throng, he thought he saw a woman. A woman waving to him. Greychild’s heart beat faster. He was sure this must be his mother. He’d know her anywhere. He tried to call out, but his voice was lost, somewhere between the spinney and the Glass and Arleccra. But he was sure it was her. He ran towards her as she turned away, though she seemed to be beckoning still. But as he reached the spot where he’d seen her, she faded into the crowd. He was surrounded by faces he’d never seen b
efore, and voices he didn’t know. And then one voice that was familiar.
“Greychild, what are you doing?” He turned to see Dawnflower sitting beside him in the spinney. She put one arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.
“What’s this?” she asked and reached into his lap for the fragment of glass. Greychild pulled it away and sat up straight.
“It’s just a bit of glass – nothing to do with you.”
“Let me see,” Dawnflower teased. “You know I like trinkets and sparkly things. Is it something you found down there in the river? Let me see – I won’t break it.”
Greychild shrugged and handed her the glass.
“It’s dull and scratched,” she said. “Not pretty at all. What you bother fishing this out for? Why you bother keeping it? It’s just a dirty old bottle, broken in the stream.”
“Look again,” Greychild told her. “Here – breathe on the glass. Polish it with your sleeve.”
Dawnflower blew on the glass, as if she was kissing his lips. She rubbed at it with the hem of her dress.
“What can you see?” asked Greychild.
“Can’t see nothing at all,” she said. “Just looks like a great sad tear.”
She held it up to the sky. A drop of water splattered onto the glass. Greychild looked at Dawnflower, afraid that she might be crying.
“Scritch said it would rain,” he remembered as he grabbed Dawnflower’s hand and pulled her to her feet. She tugged her coat around her shoulders, and gave him back the piece of glass which he shoved into his pocket while they sheltered under the trees. The rain kept on falling, rattling the leaves, soaking into the grass around their feet, pelting the river’s dull surface as it wound around the bend. Dawnflower sneezed. Greychild rubbed his rumbling stomach.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Suddenly all he could think about was Granny Willowmist’s kitchen and the steaming hot supper that he knew she’d have waiting for him. And so they ran hand-in-hand, up the narrow winding track, all through the water-pudge, mud splattering up their legs. They ran past the pigmires and the turnip-stooks. They ran past the middens and the scratted patches of parsnips and turnips till they reached Granny Willowmist’s cottage.
She was standing there in the doorway waiting. When Dawnflower saw her, she stopped abruptly, planted one last kiss on Greychild’s cheek and skidded away suddenly through the mud, her hair plastered to her face, her dress clinging wetly around her as she slithered and slipped away to her own mother’s cottage, the other side of the Green.
Granny Willowmist looked at Greychild sternly.
“Get inside at once. Look at the state of you! Where have you been?”
Greychild stood dripping in the middle of the kitchen, eyeing the bubbling pan on the stove.
“Take off your jacket, you’re drenched, child.”
Greychild sneezed.
“What’s for supper?” he asked.
“Never mind what’s for supper. There’s no supper for you till you tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“Been working,” said Greychild. “Been working with Scritch, down by the river, same as I do every day.”
“But what you been doing with Dawnflower? I don’t trust that one.”
Greychild put his hand in his pocket and touched the glass.
“Nothing,” he said. “Been doing nothing. Just met Dawnflower out on the path in the spinney where I been sheltering under the trees when the rain came. And we waited together a little while to see if the rain would ease off – and then we came home.”
He stopped.
Granny Willowmist was still staring at him, this strange lost child who came from the woods, who could speak no words at first but only sing one song, who stood dripping wet in front of her in the middle of her kitchen floor.
Greychild looked at the pans again.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “What’s for supper?”
Willowmist smiled.
“Come on, get your clothes off. You’d better sit down – you’ll catch your death of cold.”
Greychild sneezed and wrinkled his nose.
“It’s bacon and tatties and dandelion leaves,” Willowmist reassured him, taking his coat. Greychild laughed. He couldn’t wait to scoop out a bowlful.
“Don’t worry ’bout me,” he said. “Seen worse rain than this when I lived in the woods.”
“I know, I know,” said Willowmist, rattling the pan and the ladle. “Just stay away from that Dawnflower, that’s all. You never met no-one like her when you was alone in the woods. She’s just like them girlen from across the river and over the hill who took my sons away. Most times never see them now, too busy tending their cattle and digging of their fields. She’s just like them. I know what she’s after, she’ll take you away. And it’s too soon for you, my Greychild. Too soon by far…”
Greychild was tired. Soon after supper he took off to bed and wrapped himself tight in the blankets. He fell into a sleep that felt deeper than sleep and dreamed a dream that felt more real than waking, that he was there in Arleccra again, could hear music and dancing and his mother was near calling his name, again and again.
Greychild sat up. The voice was in the room. He stared around, suddenly awake. A soft milky light bathed the walls. He could hear Granny Willowmist across the way, snoring. Then the voice came again.
“Greychild… Greychild…”
Not Mother now. Not in the room, but somewhere outside. He climbed out of bed and tiptoed through the moonlight which flooded the floor. Eased the casement slowly open so its creaking wouldn’t wake old Willowmist. He looked down and peered around.
“Greychild…”
He heard the voice again. Then out of the shadow of the chestnut tree on the edge of the Green stepped Dawnflower. She was about to call his name again when she looked up and saw that he was there.
“Dawnflower, what are you doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I lay in my bed and twined this way and that, but I just couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see you. The rain has stopped and the moon is so bright. Come down to me…”
Greychild looked down at Dawnflower, standing under the moon. He looked back inside at the four stone walls of Granny Willowmist’s room. He looked away to the woods, where he’d once roamed so free.
He looked to the road that wound out of town.
“Meet me down at the bridge by the river,” he said. “I’ll be with you there soon as I can.”
Dawnflower caught her breath with delight and blew him a kiss and ran on away. Greychild grabbed up a bag and stuffed it with all that he had, his jacket, spare britches, a fistful of ribbons, one from each of the girls. He crept down the stairs and then in the kitchen he wrapped up a loaf of bread and a round of cheese from Granny Willowmist’s pantry. He checked that the Glass was still in his pocket, then lifted the latch and closed the door quietly and padded softly out into the night. He darted around the bends of the track that led him to the river. There was Dawnflower waiting, her white dress glowing in the moonlight. As soon as she saw him she rushed towards him, and threw her arms around his neck.
“Oh Greychild, Greychild, I’m so glad you’ve come! And what’s this you have here?”
She poked at the bag slung over his shoulder.
“Oh Greychild! What are you doing?” she cried. “Have you packed a bag to leave home? Are you running away from Granny Willowmist? Will you come with me now to stay with me in my mother’s cottage? – I can dress your hair every day and keep you warm every night.”
Dawnflower’s eyes were shining. Greychild gazed at her face. What could he say? His hand slipped deep in his pocket and stroked the glass that lay there.
“Dawnflower,” he said. “I can’t stay here. Four walls don’t suit me, be it Granny Willowmist’s or your mother’s. I have to leave. I wanted to see you one last time. I’m going over the bridge and down the Pedlar Man’s Track. I need to go where my mother has gone, to the city of Arleccra, far ove
r the hills.”
Greychild took Dawnflower in his arms and held her for a moment, so gentle and warm. But then he turned and walked away over the hump-backed bridge, while Dawnflower stood and watched him go as her eyes filled with tears, just like the tears that she’d seen in the Glass.
Oakum Marlroot and the Lumpen Stone
Let me tell you… Let me tell you about Oakum Marlroot. Oakum Marlroot was miserable and miserly and melancholy, anyone would tell you that. Always had been, always would be.
Oakum Marlroot’s fields were a rough dry scrat of wheat and barley and weeds. And a clutch of old cattle that wandered around, in and out the mire; too skinny for meat, too shrivelled for milk, but Oakum Marlroot kept them all the same. All the day long he would work his fields, whatever the weather: sleet, sun or rain, it made no matter. Oakum Marlroot would go, with his hoe, or his shovel, or his hammer, harrying out weeds, filling in fox-holes and waiting for the crops to ripen before he could hack them down.
Oakum Marlroot was a big man, big hands and broad shoulders. He worked all day by himself. He liked it that way, he said. No-one to bother him, no-one to get in the way. But few would work with Oakum anyway. Those that had never lasted long. Young lads from the village, he near worked them to death, carrying great heavy loads. Up every morning before it was light and never leaving the fields until it grew dark. But it was only what Oakum did himself. May as well do it all by himself – that’s what he said. Nobody else to get in the way.
Oakum Marlroot lived all by himself in a brooding house on the edge of his farm, out on the edge of Brunt Boggart. Rooks came and nested in the chimney tops, and the gutters needed fixing. Each time it rained, the water would sluice down and fill up the barrels and overflow across the yard in a slurry of stench from the pigs and the chickens that scavenged and pecked all day long.
Oakum Marlroot lived all by himself, but it hadn’t always been that way. Used to have wife. Big woman, just like him. Big and proud. Used to brew bitter wine from the darkest of berries and make succulent pie out of lambs’ brains and squirrel gut. But Oakum Marlroot’s wife never gave him a son. Never gave him a daughter neither. Never gave him nothing, some folks said. Then she died strange one day when the thunder came, out in the fields alone with Oakum Marlroot, both of them shouting and carrying on. And then she was dead. Alone with Oakum Marlroot, no-one else to see.
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