by Unknown
‘Shhh…’ I whisper, offering my hand to be sniffed.
The wolf-dog snuffles lazily, painting my hand with a warm, wet tongue before settling itself down again.
The sleeping bag stirs, curling, rustling. A tousled head appears briefly, eyes screwed tight shut against the light, before dipping back out of sight. A skinny arm snakes over the sleeping bag and blackened fingers close round the toy mouse.
Mouse and Leggit have a place all of their own.
I move away quietly, following the water downstream until the den is out of sight over my shoulder. Then I kneel down beside the stream and plunge my fingers into the icy flow, scooping up handfuls of silvery water to splash my face. The cold makes me gasp, and my skin tingles. There’s nothing to dry myself on, so the water drips down my neck. A couple of ratty bits of hair, escaped from yesterday’s plaits, cling in dark, wet ringlets around my face.
‘Bet that woke you up.’
I blink, wiping droplets of water from my lashes.
To my right, a huge old oak tree spreads its branches out across the stream. Finn sits astride the lowest branch, his legs swinging. He grins, then looks away into the distance, his face dappled green in the dawn light. He doesn’t look like a sulky teenager any more, just a big kid in tattered skate clothes.
‘It’s freezing,’ I say, which may well be my stupidest comment ever. Like a mountain stream was ever going to be warm.
Finn rolls on to his stomach and lowers himself down from the oak branch. He hangs for a moment, bare feet peeking out from frayed, baggy jeans. Then he drops and turns to me.
He’s older than me, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He’s really tanned and his eyes are a surprising blue-grey colour. Jade, who knows about these things, would say he’s good-looking. I like his hair, which is dark and thick and matted into dreadlocks, reaching almost to his shoulders.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he says.
‘Not really.’
‘I s’pose it was a long time ago. We used to meet up at the festivals, your family and mine. Storm and Tess were good mates – still are. You were just a baby, really, but you always wanted to be doing what the other kids were doing. You were always following me, tagging along.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Must have been a pain.’
Finn laughs. ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I kind of liked it. You were always asking questions, always listening, like I was the smartest kid you ever met. It made me feel important. I suppose I thought you were kind of cute.’
‘Oh!’
‘Long time ago, though,’ Finn says again, in case I might be getting any ideas.
‘Sure.’
‘D’you see Mouse up there?’ he asks, poking one bare toe into the water. Barefoot, in the woods? Ouch.
‘Yeah – he’s asleep in the den with that scruffy dog.’
‘Right. He doesn’t much like the tepee, or the festival. He’s missing his mum,’ Finn says. He steps into the stream, letting the frayed hems of his jeans soak up water like blotting paper. I can see his toes, pale and bluish, curved around a rock beneath the rushing water.
‘Coming in?’
I shake my head. ‘No way. Too cold – I tried it already, remember?’
‘Chicken,’ Finn says, kicking an arc of water towards me.
‘Don’t!’ I squeal, pulling at my splattered cords. I take a shaky step towards him, balancing on a shiny rock midstream. I dip the toe of my boot into the water to get my revenge, but the movement wrecks my balance and I slide off the rock into the water, screaming, laughing.
Icy water floods my boots, soaks my socks. My feet slide over the rocks on the streambed, and it’s only when Finn grabs at my elbow that I manage to stand upright.
‘I changed my mind,’ I tell him, as we stagger, giggling, towards the bank.
‘Sure,’ laughs Finn, ‘sure you did. Only next time, Dizzy, remember you’re supposed to take off your boots!’
I drag myself up out of the water, boots squelching.
‘I will,’ I tell him. ‘Next time, I’ll remember.’
So, I’ve made a friend. Unbelievably, he’s a male friend. Sara, Sasha and Jade would be speechless.
OK, so they might not approve of his dusty, felted dreadlocks or his dirty fingernails or the faint grey tidemark that edges his jaw, but so what? They’re not here and Finn is, and right now I need a friend. Especially a friend I’ve known since forever, even if there has been an eight-year gap in the relationship.
We sit on the bank, with our feet turning blue in the water, and we talk. Finn tells me about his mum, Tess, and his dad, some old Irish hippy he never knew. He tells me about his brother, Niall, who’s just finished his A levels and chose to stay home in Lancashire because he’s grown out of festivals.
‘Will you grow out of them, too?’ I ask.
Finn shrugs. ‘Right now it’s OK. I get to skive off school for a while and bum around the countryside. I’m no crusty, though. I’m not going to waste my life sitting in a tepee smoking dope and talking about all the stuff I’ll never get around to doing.’
My heart thuds.
‘Last night… that was dope they were smoking?’
Finn laughs. ‘You really haven’t been around festivals for a while, have you?’ he grins. ‘Yes, Dizzy, of course it was dope. Y’know, spliff, weed, whatever you want to call it. You were probably half-stoned yourself, sitting in there breathing all that smoke.’
‘But –’ I struggle to get things straight. ‘Isn’t it – isn’t that drugs? Isn’t that illegal?’
Finn rolls his eyes. ‘Yes, it’s drugs,’ he says. ‘Yes, it’s illegal. The papers are always going on about how it’s no worse than drink or tobacco, but it’s still against the law. Bet you never knew your mum was an outlaw, did you?’
I flop back into the grass. There’s a lot I didn’t know about my mum. A lot I still don’t know. I feel angry, embarrassed, ashamed.
‘Look, Dizzy, it’s a hippy thing, a festival thing,’ Finn says. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘You didn’t,’ I lie.
‘I did. I’m sorry,’ he says.
I shut my eyes and try not to care. How am I meant to know stuff like this, anyway?
I know about drugs, of course. We’ve had lessons at school about what to do if your friend offers you something dodgy. You just say no, and you try not to judge them, but it’s OK to tell a teacher all the same, because drugs are dangerous, they can wreck your life.
I shudder. Nobody ever told us at school what you’re meant to do if your mum offers you weed. Well, she hasn’t, not yet, but you never know. It could happen.
‘Isn’t it really bad for you?’ I ask at last. ‘Dangerous? That’s what they say at school.’
Finn frowns, flicking pebbles into the stream one by one. ‘Dunno,’ he considers. ‘Weed’s not like the really bad things, heroin and crack and all that. I think they just do it to relax.’
‘Do you smoke it? Weed, I mean?’ I ask Finn.
‘Me? No way,’ he answers. ‘I hate all that. They smoke and they laugh and they talk about all these brilliant ideas they’ve got. Storm and Zak are always going on about this healing centre they want to set up in India or Spain. Well, they can dream, that’s fine. Only they’ll never do it, and you know why? Because they just smoke and talk and forget it all in the morning.
‘I used to believe in the stories, I used to get excited, think we really would go to live in a commune on a Greek island or start up an animal sanctuary. It’s just daydreams, though. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Finn chucks a big, craggy rock into the stream, and we watch the ripples spread as it sinks and disappears without trace. I don’t say anything.
‘I hate weed,’ Finn says. ‘It makes you lazy. It makes you sit around dreaming when you could be out there doing something practical to make your dreams come true. I mean, festivals are OK. They’re fun. But don’t get me wrong – I want more out of life than this.’
‘Me, too,’ I say, although I haven’t a clue what I want. It seems to change every other minute, and for now, having Finn like me and not rate me a total loser is pretty high on my wish list.
‘It’s not like they’re doing any harm,’ he says eventually. ‘Well, only to themselves. They’re just turning slowly from New Age travellers into Old Age travellers.’
We sit in silence, the stream rushing past us.
‘I don’t really know Storm at all,’ I say, thinking out loud.
Finn looks at me, and I can’t read the expression in his blue-grey eyes. It might be sympathy, or understanding, or even pity. ‘No,’ he says softly. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’
Then he jumps up, brushing down his soggy jeans. ‘I’m starving,’ he declares. ‘Let’s go see if there’s any breakfast going.’
Back at the camp, people are beginning to stir. Little Calor gas stoves hiss beneath battered kettles, blackened pans of baked beans sit heating among the sticks of the morning’s newly lit fires. There’s a knot of sleepy-faced women chatting beside the tap, and assorted toddlers drift across the grass, eating bread and honey or hunks of cheese while the mongrel dogs hover, ever hopeful.
Finn takes me to the big red family tent he shares with Tess, and there’s Mouse, finishing off a tin plate of scrambled eggs, wiping it clean with a wedge of bread. Next to him, Leggit, the black-and-white wolf-dog, is lapping water from a plastic bowl and crunching dog biscuits straight from the carton.
Mouse looks at us warily from big, brown eyes, his face pinched and hostile. Finn ruffles his hair and sits down, but Mouse pulls away, scowling. He shoots a furious look at me, too, dropping his plate on to the grass and edging away from the tent like he can’t work out whether to hate us or be scared of us.
‘See you later, Mouse,’ Tess calls lightly as the small, skinny figure slopes off, disappearing in the muddle of tents.
‘I don’t think he likes me very much,’ I say.
‘I don’t think he likes any of us very much,’ Finn agrees. ‘Except Tess, and that’s probably because she remembers to feed him. And Leggit, because the two of them curl up together at night. He must be feeling rotten.’
‘Poor kid,’ Tess nods darkly.
Finn dishes up a plate of scrambled eggs and hands it to me, and I wonder if Tess is actually feeding the whole festival or just family, friends, plus assorted hangers on. She cuts big hunks of wholemeal bread, one for each of us. There is home-made jam, Marmite, even butter in a small Tupperware box.
I’m seriously hungry. I’ve been up since before five, and it’s near eleven now. Sleep-ins are compulsory at a festival, Tess tells me.
Leggit, who has been for a quick circuit of the camp, pausing only to wee on the grass outside Zak’s tepee, trots up to Tess and collapses happily at her feet.
‘Have you had her long?’ I ask. ‘Leggit?’
Finn shakes his head and rolls his eyes.
‘Oh, no, Dizzy,’ Tess is saying. ‘Leggit’s not our dog. No, she just comes scrounging around for leftovers. She’s Storm’s.’
The first signs of life are visible over at the tepee. The fiddle guy with the white beard crawls out through the doorflap, hauls himself up and stretches, groaning loudly. He picks up his fiddle-case and saunters off. Next, a large woman with long, grey plaits emerges, rubbing her eyes, trailing blankets.
I’ve eaten, downed two mugs of coffee and even managed a wash with warm water, soap and flannel in the privacy of Tess’s tent by the time Storm and Zak appear, yawning, outside the tepee. I stare down at my bare feet, my toes threaded with grass and daisies while the waterlogged boots and socks dry out in the sun. I don’t want to be like Mouse and Leggit, forgotten, sidelined. I don’t want to be disappointed, even though I’m half expecting it.
But Storm shouts over straight away and I look up, grinning.
‘Dizzy! Happy Solstice, babe!’ she calls, picking her way barefoot across the grass. She swoops down, folding me up in a warm, patchouli-scented hug.
I know I can forgive her anything.
The festival slowly comes to life.
Zak and Finn and a gang of other blokes start moving logs and sticks and branches from the woodpile in the centre of the camp, hauling it up through the woods to the hilltop where the solstice bonfire will be.
All week, Storm says, they’ve been collecting firewood, picking up fallen branches from the woods, scrounging old pallets and broken packing cases. They have till tonight to build the biggest, tallest, best-ever bonfire on top of the hill.
‘Should I help?’ I ask, but Tess shakes her head and winks at me. She gives me a basket and asks me to unpack it in the clearing between the tents. I take out garden secateurs, string, glue, old yoghurt pots, sequins, paintbrushes, rusty scissors and a roll of masking tape.
I sit on the grass, baffled. Tess and Storm have gone. A dreadlocked woman with two little girls in neon T-shirts wanders up, smiling. She spreads a blanket on the grass and sits down. ‘Gorgeous day,’ she says lazily, and I agree. I try not to get worried when the kids start messing with the scissors and the sequins and the yoghurt pots.
The woman with the long, grey plaits appears, carrying a sheaf of coloured tissue paper. ‘Want to sort it into different colours?’ she asks the neon kids, and they do, making neat piles of soft, fluttery paper, weighting every pile with a stone.
‘You’re Storm’s kid, Dizzy,’ the grey-plaits woman says. ‘Hi. My name is Amber. My partner’s Carl, the guy with the fiddle, y’know? Ever do this before?’
Do what? Sit around in the afternoon sun with a couple of old hippies and a heap of rusty scissors?
‘No, never,’ I admit.
Two pink-haired women with grubby toddlers in tow amble over, then a thin, dark-skinned man wearing baggy trousers and a blue velvet waistcoat with no shirt underneath. By the time Tess and Storm turn up again, there are a dozen adults and almost as many kids sitting around on the grass.
Tess and Storm are carrying the bundles of long, skinny sticks I saw in the back of the patchwork van. Some are straight and strong, about as thick as my little finger, and some are thin and whippy.
‘OK,’ says Storm, hands on hips. ‘We’re going to make willow lanterns for the party. Here goes…’
I am now an expert in making willow lanterns. I have the glue-spattered cords and rainbow-stained fingers to prove it, because the dye in cheap tissue paper runs when it’s wet.
First you make a pyramid shape with lengths of willow, binding the corners together with string and glue, then tear strips of coloured tissue to paste around the framework until it’s covered.
Tess moves in and out of the crowd, leaning over to tighten a knot, pouring glue into yoghurt pots. She quietly rescues the wobbliest lanterns and gives them emergency first aid, until even the smallest toddler has something to be proud of.
Storm makes a lantern of dark blue and violet tissue paper, with a yellow crescent moon curving across one side. The other sides hold small, five-pointed stars filled with white tissue paper and dusted with silver glitter.
‘Hey, Dizz, that’s cool,’ she says about my effort, a plain, lanky pyramid with random patches of red, purple and blue. It’s not fancy, but it’s OK for a first effort.
Storm helps the littlest kids, her fingers moving quickly, patching holes, replacing scrunched-up tissue, smoothing surfaces. ‘You’re a star,’ she tells one small boy. Or, ‘Wow, you must have done this before, yeah? What a natural.’
The children look up at her with shiny eyes, lapping up the praise. I bet I looked at her like that, once, before she went away.
No, actually. I bet I look at her like that now.
The grass sparkles with fallen sequins and grains of silver glitter, and eventually a whole crowd of multi-coloured lanterns sit on the grass beside the tepee, drying in the sun.
Tess gets stuck with the job of wiping small, sticky fingers and making endless herb teas for the adults. Storm and Amber put the candles in, a lo
op of wire hooks them on to a long carrying stick, and they’re ready.
Like Storm says, cool.
Tess brings out a tin with a huge, dark, sticky cake in it. She cuts it into loads of pieces, so we all get a bit. It’s carrot cake, and it’s yummy.
‘Is it vegan?’ Storm asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Mmm. I needed that.’
She sips herb tea the colour of washing-up water and rolls a ciggy. I look away so I don’t have to know whether it’s just tobacco or something else as well.
Zak and Mouse come up from the direction of the car-park field, carrying big, wide boxes hidden in bin bags.
‘What’s that, then?’ Tess asks, but Zak just laughs.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he says, and they march right on, into the woods above the camp, up the hill.
Finn appears with a couple of blokes in tow, hauling amps and speakers and a vast CD player up into the woods. The pink-haired women are making sandwiches from peanut butter and chocolate spread and mushroom pâté. Amber is making a cauldron of punch. I spot empty bottles of vodka and rum behind her tent.
‘Loads of fruit,’ she says, chopping up apples and oranges and limes. ‘For energy. Want to do one for the kids?’
The neon sisters help me concoct a potion of cheap lemonade, Coke and apple juice. It tastes evil.
‘Loads of sugar and E-numbers,’ I tell Amber. ‘For kids who want to stay up all night.’
Amber laughs.
Over by the tepee, Storm is setting out discs of paint, brushes, sponges, a mirror and a bowl of water. She calls over one of the neon sisters, picks up a brush, and paints a sunburst and rainbow on to her face. The other sister is transformed into a butterfly.
Soon, Storm has a queue of kids waiting to get their party faces.
‘Come and help,’ she calls over, and although I’m terrified and haven’t a clue what I’m doing, I pick up a damp sponge and do what she tells me.
‘White base, all over the face,’ she says, nodding at the small boy at the head of the queue. ‘Then a grey edging all round it, light, feathery strokes. A few grey smudges under the eyes and cheekbones. Kyle wants to be a vampire, right, kiddo?’