Brunt Boggart

by David Greygoose

  But Crossdogs had no truck with the man who had tricked him so.

  “Where is the girlen?” he demanded. “What have you done with her?”

  “What have I done with her? You should rather ask what has she done with me?”

  The man lay gasping at Crossdogs’ feet, his shirt ripped to tatters and his back all covered in scratches.

  “How did this happen?” Crossdogs asked.

  The man sat up and took a deep breath.

  “My mother always told me I should go out and get a girl. She told me to do it, but she never let me go. So when you took up the yolk and the chair, I ran and I ran out over the hill, under the clear blue sky. And there I espied a charming girl with her hair all long and black. Before I could speak she seized me and flung me on my back. She ripped my shirt and kissed my lips so hard that they’re bruised and blue. And then she rolled me swift and sure into a bed of thorns.”

  “Was this rage or was it loving?” Crossdogs clenched his fists.

  The man raised his hand.

  “To tell the truth, I would not know. Happened so fast that it seemed both the same.”

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  “Didn’t stop long enough to ask, for I felt so ashamed and knew that I must find my mother again.”

  The man looked around.

  “Where have you left her?” he asked suddenly, gazing out across the deserted moor.

  Crossdogs nodded away to the distance, to where dawn broke slowly up over the hills.

  “She is safe enough. I found her a cottage. Can see there for miles – and she dreamed she seen to the edge of the world. Dreamed she saw you there kissing Ravenhair.”

  The man shook his head.

  “Didn’t know what her name was – she had no time to tell me. But all the while as she kissed me and rolled me in the briars, she called but one name.”

  “What she callen?”

  “Called for Crossdogs,” the man replied, and then he looked down.

  “Twas Crossdogs,” he repeated, but when he raised his eyes again, Crossdogs was gone. In the distance, shrill and clear, his mother’s voice echoed:

  “On and on!” she shrieked. “On and on!”

  Grinfickle, Chaindaisy and the Wheel

  Let me tell you… let me tell you… Grinfickle’s hair hung lank and straggled, matted by rain, the salt of his sweat and the dust. His shirt was weary-ragged and his limbs dangled gangly-loose as he toiled in the shadow of the wheel which stood as high as he was tall and then as high again. Each day the wheel dragged deeper into the mire as Grinfickle traipsed along his route across the dark flat fields. Its rim was rusted and its spokes loose and rotted as it clattered and it rattled along the rut that it had worn.

  Grinfickle trailed on, hauling his burden from homestead to village to town. Along the way he gathered anything he could find in the hedgerows or by the roadside – tattered rags and shrivelled flowers, shards of glass and tarnished bones. He knitted them and twisted them with bits of wire and lengths of string, till he made them into dream spindles to hang from the spokes of his wheel. Who did he make them for? – I know what you’re asking. Why, at first he made them for the girlen-soon-to-be-women and the wifen-without-men he might find along his way. They would wait wide-eyed outside their cottages when they saw him come trundling over the hill.

  “What do you have for me?” each one asked and Grinfickle presented his latest spindle which the girlen clutched and twirled before planting a kiss on his cheek.

  “If you hang the spindle about your neck before you go to sleep,” Grinfickle dropped his voice so no-one else could hear, “then whatever you dream of in the night you will see before you when you wake.”

  And one might dream of bright-eyed daisies and another might dream of rainbows – and sure enough next day they would find them. But soon the spindle would fade, its berries would wither, its petals would droop and the girlen and the women would each grow tired of him – and so Grinfickle set off again, his shoulder to the wheel. And the women would forget and forget they had forgotten until he came back round again when a moon and another moon had been and gone.

  One night a wifen dreamt of mountains when she wore Grinfickle’s spindle, but the next day when she woke all she found was dust. And another dreamt of necklaces and another dreamt of rings, but all they saw in the morning were turnips rotting on the floor and nettles with no sting.

  “Grinfickle, Grinfickle – not another spindle,” first one said then another. “Once they brought dreams of nightingales and primroses blooming fresh all out in the fields. But now the only dreams the spindles bring is rain and bleak wind as it blows through your wheel.”

  What could Grinfickle do? All he knew these long years gone was how to make dream-spindles and push the great wheel. And so he kept toiling, decking out spindles to sell to the mothers to give to the childern at each cluster of cottages. But never no more did he offer them to the wifen-without-husband or the girlen-come-to-be-women, for they would only push him away.

  “That great wheel become a shackle,” Grinfickle muttered, “and these dreams been no dreams for me at all. The harder I push the wheel, the quicker it brings me back to the place where I started. On and on and back again, through sunshine, wind and storm.”

  So Grinfickle journeyed across the flat marshlands, over rattling bridges and ford of stream, past stooks of hay that rotted in the shallow fields, until he came to a broken-down hut in the middle of a mire of brackish mud. Grinfickle clung to the wheel and heaved and hawed until the sweat on his forehead stung his eyes. The mulch sucked his boots, tugging him down – but at last he gained the door of the hut and pushed it open on its rusted hinge.

  Inside by the flickering lamplight Grinfickle could see the Pedlar Man sitting, his nimble fingers threading beads onto a line of spindles. In the corner leant his sack, waiting to be filled with all the scarves and trinkets he’d take with him next time he set out along the Track. But as Grinfickle stood in the doorway, the Pedlar Man hardly looked up at all.

  “See you come back,” he grunted as he bit off a length of thread with his broken blackened teeth.

  “Always come back,” Grinfickle replied. “Can’t go nowhere else ’cept to follow the track of this cursed wheel.”

  The Pedlar Man sat up and fixed him with a beady eye. A lantern flickered, hung from one hook in the cobwebbed roof.

  “Wheel ain’t no curse,” he said. “I told you that yearen ago. The wheel is your own dream. Take you wherever you choose.”

  Grinfickle sat down on the edge of a bench cluttered all over with trinkets and geejaws.

  “Wanted to go over the hills to find me wifen in every village and give each one of them a dream.”

  The Pedlar Man studied the spindle he’d made, glittering with insects’ wings and specks of shell from a song thrush’s egg. He brushed it down with his sinewy fingers and tossed it into a box.

  “Grinfickle, Grinfickle,” he said. “When will you ever learn? One dream is enough, don’t need no more. Too many dreams make a man muddle-headed.”

  Grinfickle sighed and nodded.

  “None of my spindles bring pleasure no more. Making’ems a chore. None of the wifen wait for them – and the childern I sell’em to, why they just play with them for a day then throw them away.”

  The Pedlar Man looked at him.

  “Grinfickle – what did I tell you when I showed you how to make your first spindle?”

  Grinfickle shrugged and gazed around the shadowy shack.

  “Told me every spindle should be the best I ever made – whether it be of shiny berries or sparkling cobwebs or bits of broken old glass.”

  The Pedlar Man winked at him.

  “You know that,” he said.

  Grinfickle got to his feet and opened the creaking door. He trekked all by himself until he came to a scrub of ferns and ran his fingers beneath their fronds to touch the golden spore which lay hidden there. He gathered up a thimbleful which he
placed into his pocket, then made his way back to the Pedlar Man’s shack where he worked all night silently on just one spindle made of mulberry leaves and primrose petals. When he finished he paused, just as the dawn light crept under the door, then he took up the spindle between finger and thumb and sprinkled it all about with the golden dust of the spore.

  Now let me tell you about Chaindaisy, who lived in the midst of a hawthorn thicket – its branches heavy with pale white blossom and peppered with yellow lichen. Whichever way she went, whichever way she turned, the thorns would rip and rake her limbs, so that every day she was scratched and bleeding – until this was all she knew. At night the dark-winged Shrike would come – the butcher bird with its hooded head and hooked black beak – and hang its catch upon the thorns. Lizards, beetles, mice and frogs all dangled in the sallow moonlight till Chaindaisy stole out and gorged them under the shivering stars.

  She sighed as she stared at the gashes and scars that laced across her hands and breast until she fell asleep with her head in the crook of her arm and a lick of blood on her lips that tasted of salt and iron. When morning came she woke again, still trapped in the cage of thorns. She plunged into the bushes, determined to break free – but the more she struggled, the more the briars held her close. She thrashed and writhed, but the thorns tore her flesh and fresh blood stained her dress again. She clenched her fists in despair and wrenched the brambles from her tangled hair. She made one last lunge, but in vain and so she dragged herself back to the thicket’s heart and sat there listening to the song thrush which sang beyond the thorns.

  The thrush’s song was filled with joy, but Chaindaisy changed it to a mournful refrain:

  “Death is living all around,

  In the sky and underground.

  Underground and in the sky,

  While owls swim and fishes fly.

  Life is dying as we breathe –

  As soon we come, so soon we leave.”

  Then from far distant she heard a rattling and a clanking, closer and closer until it came to a stop just beyond the thicket. Chaindaisy sprang to her feet.

  “Help me!” she implored. “Free me from the thorns.”

  Beyond the bushes, Grinfickle stood and leaned upon his wheel. He heard Chaindaisy calling to him.

  “Free me,” she cried. “Each night I dream I walk the roads and journey to lands that are far and strange, but instead I wake to find myself trapped in this bed of thorns.”

  Grinfickle shook his head.

  “Each night I dream that I can lay down my wheel and rest, but each morning I wake to find that I must journey on along these endless roads.”

  “Can you not help me at all?” Chaindaisy wailed.

  Grinfickle looked all about. The thorns were long, the thorns were sharp and the branches which bore them were thick and strong.

  “I have no axe to hack them down. I have no fire to burn them. But catch this spindle, true as true and see what dreams it brings to you.”

  With that, Grinfickle seized the spindle of mulberry leaves and primrose petals and began to grapple his way up the spokes of the wheel. But as he climbed, the wheel started turning and Grinfickle flung the spindle straight over the top of the thorns to catch in the brambles on the other side.

  Chaindaisy saw the spindle covered all over with golden spore and scrambled up to reach it, never minding no more that the thorns tore her dress, raked at her flesh and scratched her eyes. She clambered until she was just a fingertip away, then she stretched out as far as she could reach, grabbed hold of the spindle and jerked it away from the thorns. As she did so, she fell toppling down to land on the mossy turf on the floor of the thicket.

  And so there they were, Chaindaisy on one side of the thorns and Grinfickle on the other.

  “What to do now?” asked Chaindaisy, clutching the dream spindle between her trembling fingers.

  “You must hang the spindle about your neck before you go to sleep,” Grinfickle instructed. “Whatever you dream of in the night, you will see before you when you wake.”

  As darkness fell, a thin moon rose and Chaindaisy lay down to rest. Grinfickle sat beside his wheel on the other side of the briars and watched while the butcher bird came and left its catch of mice and lizards impaled on the thorns.

  When dawn was just breaking, Chaindaisy stretched.

  “I dreamed a dream the thorns were gone and a tall man came a-kissing me!”

  As she spoke, Grinfickle rose and looked about. The mass of tangled thorns fell withered to the ground and through the branches thin and bare he could see Chaindaisy sitting all alone in the heart of the thicket. And so he left his wheel and pushed his way through the branches to stand beside her.

  “Sit with me a while,” said Chaindaisy. “Sit with me a while and a while and kiss me full and sure.”

  Grinfickle sat beside her. He had played this game many times and more with the girlen he met on his journey. But when he gazed upon her face, he saw her cheeks were ripped and scratched and even her lips were covered about in scabs.

  “Why will you not kiss me?” Chaindaisy demanded.

  “I thought you wanted to escape this place. No time to dally with kisses.”

  But Chaindaisy moved closer.

  “Why will you not kiss me? Plenty of time for running away – I have been here so long, one moment more will not hurt.”

  “But you are hurt enough,” Grinfickle declared. “I do not want to hurt you more.”

  “How can you hurt me?” Chaindaisy chided as her finger stroked his cheek. “Your mouth is soft and tender. You will not rip me like the tangling thorns. Here – put your arms around me.”

  Grinfickle closed his eyes as Chaindaisy kissed him long and true. But when he opened them again and looked upon her face, the cuts and wealds and scars were gone – and her skin was smooth as milk. So they kissed again both full and long until they heard a thrush’s song.

  “The scars are gone and the thorns which brought them!” Chaindaisy exclaimed. “Now I am free to walk with you. Now I can go wherever I choose.”

  Grinfickle shook his head.

  “If you walk with me you cannot choose but to follow the rut of that wheel.”

  He pointed to where it stood, propped against the branches of the bushes.

  Chaindaisy clapped her hands.

  “But just to walk and feel the air! I’ll follow you and will not care. I can help you bear the weight of the wheel.”

  She ran across and tried her shoulder against its rim. Then her eyes lighted on the spindles dangling from its spokes and she ran her fingers through the array of beads and trinkets.

  “And I can help you to make these!” she cried. “I can pick berries from the hedgerows and collect dew from spider webs. I can help you to make spindles such as you have never seen!”

  But Grinfickle hung his head and sighed.

  “You are welcome to the wheel. I am too weary to push it any more. You are welcome to make spindles and follow where the wheel might take you.”

  “What will you do?” Chaindaisy asked.

  Grinfickle shrugged and sat down on the grass.

  “I will rest here,” he said. “Now that the thorns are gone, this place feels peaceful and warm. You can take the road alone.”

  And so Chaindaisy shouldered the wheel. She could feel its weight as she pushed and heaved until it rolled slowly on its way and then she trundled on behind, treading the rut that Grinfickle had trodden for so many years, on across the dark flat fields.

  At first she felt happy, at first she felt free, now that the thorns had withered away. She could smell the rain on the wind. She could hear the call of the flocks of birds who followed her on her way. But then as darkness began to fall, she approached her first steep hill. She heaved and she groaned, she shoved and she moaned, but the wheel would not move.

  Chaindaisy tore at her hair and wailed. The wind blew wild all around her and grey rain began to fall. As she stood back to take a breath, the great wheel slow
ly toppled to shatter on the stony ground. Chaindaisy stood and stared at the sad spindles which Grinfickle had spent so many hours in the making which now lay tattered and forlorn. As the rain beat hard upon her, she felt her arms begin to itch as if the wealds of the thorns might suddenly now return. Quick as she could, she gathered up the spindles, grabbing and scrabbling as if they might protect her. She plunged them in her pocket and then she ran, leaving the wreckage of the wheel, its spokes splintered and broken across the cold hard stones.

  She ran and she ran all back to the thicket where the branches were still bare and the thorns were all gone. There she found Grinfickle sitting and waiting. As she ran towards him, he took her in his arms and while the thrush hopped around them, so they sang together –

  “Life is living all around,

  In the sky and underground.

  Underground and in the sky

  While flowers dance and shadows fly.

  Life is living as we breathe

  In every spindle that we weave.”

  Grannock

  Let me tell you – let me tell you… Greychild followed the track till it was no more than a scrat of flint high up in the hills. As he reached the top he rested beside a cairn of stones, but beyond him in the valley he spied a rising storm. Its voice howled in anger as it rode towards him, pushing him back then dragging him on. Greychild clenched his fists as he wrestled with the wind which filled his coat and turned it all about, clawing at his face and ripping away his hair.

  It swept him up and knocked him down and when he landed on the ground his legs were buckled and his back was bent. His eyes stared through a bleary mist until he saw a cleft in the hillside and a path leading on to a small stone croft.

  He struggled on as if his legs did not belong to him until he came to the croft’s wooden door and beat upon it with a fist that seemed bigger than his own two hands. The door swung open as if he was expected and there inside a kitchen, three children played with a handful of stones.