Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jack.

  ‘Um . . . I’m sorry, we were asked to ask. People wanted to know. Did he ever find what he said he lost? Did he finally do what he had to do?’

  Jack looked at Katherine and she at him.

  ‘What time is it?’ said Jack.

  The man looked at his watch.

  ‘Gone five.’

  ‘The answer to your question is that he found many things but not what he lost and we’re not sure that he thinks he did what he had to do but . . . but . . .’ and Jack smiled, ‘we can tell you this. If it’s only just gone five I think he might say there’s still enough time.’

  As they left Jack impulsively called after them, a smile in his voice, ‘Tell your friends, tell them all . . . he does tend to cut things fine!’

  53

  BY CANDLELIGHT

  Dying Stort might be, dead he was not.

  Weak, very, but the spirit was still there and for what he had to do that was nearly everything.

  ‘There are people, Mister Stort, and lights as well, up on the hill. They are there for you.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eight . . . Nine . . . gone nine.’

  Stort was downstairs on the sofa. The fire was alight, the lights were off, the curtains open, the bright stars showing, but the hill was out of sight from that room.

  ‘Would you like to go outside and look?’ said Katherine. ‘It’s cold but as you can see the rain’s all gone. We could carry you.’

  ‘I can walk,’ he said crossly, adding with more courtesy, ‘with help.’

  He was lightly dressed, the embarrassing pyjamas long since discarded in favour of trousers. They helped him off with his dressing gown and bundled him into a fleece and jacket. He sat down again and Katherine put thick socks on his feet and offered him the trainers he wore around the house.

  ‘Something more robust I think. Where are my boots?’

  ‘You have lots of pairs these days . . .’

  ‘My own,’ he said, patting her shoulder, ‘they have served me well. They shall serve me to the last.’

  ‘There’s no “last” about it quite yet!’ said Katherine.

  ‘There is, my dear.’

  They got his boots. Old things, worn and often repaired, the bits of black tyre tied up with green twine and occasionally red.

  ‘Aah . . .’ he said pleasurably as he put them on, ‘that’s better! Now please, Katherine, help me up.’

  Arthur was dressed warmly and holding Judith’s hand.

  ‘Why are we going out?’

  ‘Mister Stort is going outside and we’re all going with him. He thinks he can manage it.’

  ‘Can I take this?’

  It was Jack’s horse. Lately she liked to have it close by. ‘I can put it in my backpack.’

  ‘We’re not going for long . . .’ said Katherine.

  ‘Please . . .’

  They togged her up from top to toe so she was all ponies and pinks.

  Then, when they were ready, they assembled like an expedition going up to the mountains.

  Jack said, ‘We’ll turn off the lights, all the better to see folk’s lights up on the hill.’

  They emerged from the house, the air cold and the ground moist but not frozen.

  Katherine held Stort’s arm, Jack hovered nearby to help.

  ‘Look!’

  The great conifers were silhouetted against a glowing sky, the base of the hill was dark, or seemed so, and the top aglow. The sky above shone darkly with the moon and stars, a hundred million million of them.

  Only slowly, as their eyes adjusted to the dark, did they see that the lights on the edge of the hill were not the only ones there. There were others lower down, candles in jars perhaps, some moving along the road beyond the garden and others on the shallow slopes on the far side. Yet more were wending their way up the steep escarpment side to join those on top, pinpoints of moving light that made the hill come alive.

  ‘There are so many of them,’ gasped Jack.

  ‘Hundreds and hundreds,’ said Katherine.

  Stort stood staring, the lights so many, and the night so clear, that his face and eyes shone with them all. He was pondering, nearly humming, thinking hard, scratching his head, tempted almost to stand on one leg had he been able. He was almost the Stort of old.

  ‘It is a pity,’ he said, ‘that all trace of the horse once carved into the hill has gone, for surely it meant a great deal to the world I knew. I was thinking that on such a night as this, with all that light along the hill’s edge and elsewhere too, I fancy you would see its wondrous shape. Judith! Let me have that horse of Jack’s!’

  She gave it to him and he held it up, as if against the dark canvas of the hill.

  ‘See how well it fits, Jack. If you hold it so . . . yes . . . and you stand so, Katherine . . . there! Ah, I cannot pick you up, Judith, but your father can and if I hold the horse . . . so! . . . I’m sure that you can vaguely see . . .’

  ‘It’s galloping!’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Did you ever see the real horse, the one the Shield Maiden rode?’

  ‘I did. It was as big as the sky itself, bigger actually. The only thing that was bigger was the Scythe of Time which we . . . which I saw with . . . my friends . . . on the Malvern Hills. Now that was big! It was also terrifying.’

  ‘But you could beat it, Mister Stort!’

  ‘The only being that ever “beat it”, as you put it, was my dog, who I told you about when we talked about the Hyddenworld.’

  ‘The one called Georg without an “e”?’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘What happened was he faced the Scythe to protect us and was cut into a million shards, like chimes. Perhaps they were chimes. Certainly they were memories and reflections.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Who knows, Judith.’

  ‘Do you miss him too?’

  Stort stood in silence, staring at the far-off candles on the hill.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do. But that’s what happens when you get old. You miss what you lost and sometimes you miss what you never realized you had.’

  They moved slowly across the lawn, past the Chimes, in among the trees, which in another time, another world, had been the henge.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Katherine.

  Stort was breathless, his steps uncertain, his eyes wandering, sadness returning.

  ‘I am . . . unsure which way to go, you see. I am not sure I can remember the way any more.’

  They were at the boundary fence beyond the trees. Ahead was the pasture, which dipped to the little stream and copse, and the path that led on across the road and finally up to the hill.

  ‘I think perhaps this is as far as we need go,’ said Katherine. ‘Mister Stort can rest here, but be careful of the barbed wire. Judith, hold my hand.

  He did need to rest, taking shallow breaths, leaning against a rickety post, sizing up the pasture ahead, the hill above and the wandering lights between.

  ‘Listen!’ whispered Arthur. ‘Can you hear it?’

  It was like a singing, a fluting and a piping and a music that held an allure like nothing they had heard before.

  ‘Bilgesnipe music,’ said Stort in wonder at the sudden memory. ‘We are not the only ones here tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are many hydden hereabout, for they – we – celebrate the season’s turn, especially this night when spring returns again.’

  ‘As we are doing,’ said Jack, ‘thanks to you.’

  ‘Ah, yes . . . but I mean celebrate! Not watching passively but singing and dancing and – I’m sorry, Katherine – supping good brew.’

  She squeezed his thin hand.

  The music came and went with the light breeze and to their left, wending their way upon the green pilgrim road, came more lights.

  ‘Hydden,’ whispered Stort, ‘come for this night of nights.’

  A deep momentary hush, the trees behind, music,
lights, stillness together, a moment for always.

  ‘If I knew where to go and what to do I would go and do it,’ said Stort suddenly. ‘I had a glimmer of it before but it’s fled my mind. I do believe I am almost too afraid now to try to find my way, but perhaps, Katherine, if we just . . .’

  ‘No, really,’ she laughed, ‘this is far enough. It gets dark below the hill . . .’

  ‘Well,’ grumbled Stort, ‘I never was much good at finding a route without Barklice and I am very tired. Yet . . . what time is it?’

  ‘Nearly ten, I should think,’ said Jack. ‘Long, long past your bedtime, Judith.’

  She, looking to stay on no doubt, hoping to drag the excitement out, searched among the stars for inspiration and, pointing, finally said, ‘Is it as big as . . . as . . . as that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Scythe thing.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘That!’

  Stort bent a little, one hand for balance on the fence post, the other on Judith’s shoulder as she pointed again.

  It was a thin arcing line of light, the colour of steel, and as they stared they saw, as Judith had, that it reached from the furthest star to the far eastern horizon of the Earth.

  ‘It’s moving, changing, getting bigger,’ said Jack, adding with slight alarm, ‘and it’s getting nearer.’

  They closed ranks and instinctively stepped back, the fence posts and the barbed wire stolid and silvery before them in the night. A measure of protection.

  ‘It’s getting even nearer,’ said Katherine nervously.

  ‘It’s hissing,’ cried Arthur, pulling Judith back further still, for the sound was loud now and the speed of its approach terrifying.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Stort smiled thinly.

  ‘It is the Scythe of Time,’ he said, ‘and I think it might be wise if we . . . we . . . retreated a little more . . .’

  He had almost to shout to be heard as the hissing and snicking and ripping of the air grew ever louder and the arc of the Scythe, its edge hair-thin, came at them from above, from the side and round, and round again so that had they run, whichever way, it would have got them, cut them, sliced them. So they stood stock still and terrified.

  Then it was sweeping right through them, the blade razor-sharp, flattening out as it came, as vast as the Earth, shining as it cut snicker-snack with sound that began far off over there and hissed right into their ears and on to the end of the world, all in a moment of time.

  And the only sound left as their blinking eyes tried to see in the dazzling dark after that swishing light were the five thuds of the wooden posts of the fence before them, cut through at their bases, like through butter, the barbed wire still attached, wringling and wrangling as they all fell to the ground.

  Vision returned and with it the sight of two people standing before them as blinded and bemused as they were.

  One was a man, the other a boy.

  They each carried a stave and the adult had a spare one roped to his back. The other, the smaller of the two, wiry and fit-looking, said, ‘Pa! Can’t see very well and feel weird. Where’m we be?’

  His father was Mister Barklice himself, come at last to the human world and now looking about and trying to get his bearings.

  ‘Bratfire, I’m right here. Let your eyes adjust!’

  He stared about himself a little more, stepping this way and that as if in hope of finding where he was until, standing stock still once more, he cried out in consternation, ‘Oh no! We’re alive, which is good, but we’re not our normal selves, which is bad, very bad.’

  He turned around again more slowly, looking about, but not yet seeing his old friend standing in the shadows, nor the others with him.

  Bratfire, his red hair highlighted by the candles and stars, went close to him, tugged at his sleeve and said, ‘What be bad?’

  ‘I have a very horrible feeling,’ replied Barklice, ‘that we are not quite as we were. Be prepared for a shock. I think we are if not quite human, then no longer of hydden size. If Mister Stort were here . . .’

  ‘I am here, Barklice.’

  ‘Bratfire, the lantern please,’ cried Barklice with hope and joy in his voice. ‘Hand it to me!’

  Barklice opened the shutter and a beam of yellow light was cast upon the curious scene. The tangle of barbed wire and wood at their feet, the lit-up hill behind, the henge trees in front at whose base stood figures he knew and loved: Stort, Jack, Katherine and Arthur and . . . Mirror above! Judith when young.

  ‘Pa, what’s that!?’

  Two big eyes, quite frightening in their way, stared at them from the pasture to one side, a shiny nose in front.

  ‘Georg,’ said Barklice.

  ‘What be he?’

  ‘Mister Stort’s dog.’

  ‘You’m never spoke of ’im to me afore, Pa.’

  Bratfire sounded aggrieved. Georg advanced into the light, sniffed about, and padded quietly to Stort’s side.

  ‘The Scythe took him and now it’s delivered him back,’ said Barklice, ‘like it’s delivered us. He comes and he goes, does Georg. Now . . .’

  He approached Stort and held up the lantern such that each could see the other.

  ‘Mister Stort,’ he said finally, ‘I’ve said it before and you know it well and it does make my heart pound, but you do have a tendency to leave things very late. Eh, Bratfire?’

  ‘He do seem to, Pa.’

  ‘Master Jack, Mistress Katherine and you too, Arthur, if I may – Professor to you, lad – I won’t beat about the bush. Where we’re going isn’t far but it’ll take a bit of hyddening. Seeing as you’re humans now and therefore slow and clumsy, begging your pardon, we better get started right away if we’re going to get Mister Stort up there in time to find the gem he needs to give to the Shield Maiden.’

  ‘Where are we going, Barklice?’ asked Stort.

  ‘Up the hill by the shortest route, so prepare to be puffed.’

  ‘Is she here before us?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her but I heard she was too old to ride a horse, especially that one. Last time I saw her she was on foot. Dragging along as if age had finally caught up with her. But then Mister Stort . . .’

  He came closer and examined Stort’s face and looked into his eyes.

  ‘You’re older now, white haired!’

  ‘You’ve not aged at all,’ responded Stort, ‘which in a way does not surprise me since . . .’

  Barklice raised a hand.

  ‘This is not the time for scientific explanations, Stort, and anyway I have some more important things to say which I wish I’d said before. You’re my oldest friend, that’s what you are and when we spoke of love, which we often did, I’m not sure we said what we were to each other. Maybe we didn’t need to, Mister Stort.’

  ‘I don’t think we did.’

  ‘Well,’ Barklice went on, ‘maybe and maybe not but while there’s still time there was something I wanted to say. You were always the best of friends to me, by the Mirror you were.’

  ‘You too, Barklice. The best.’

  Lives well lived smile with wrinkles and love. So then, Barklice and Stort.

  ‘The time’s come for our last journey together and I intend to guide you well and make it a good one,’ said Barklice warmly. ‘We have a little way to go, Stort, if I’m to get you to the right place at the right time in one piece. Are you ready for the climb?’

  ‘Jack . . . ?’ whispered Katherine uncertainly.

  ‘Arthur . . . ?’ growled Jack.

  ‘Up the hill?’ cried Arthur, addressing his remarks to Barklice in the dark. ‘To do what?’

  It seemed a long way to all of them.

  ‘I have no idea and never did have, where Mister Stort is concerned. He makes it up as he goes along so far as I can see and all I do is see he’s all right. So here we are, there it is, now let’s get going. Where’s Master Jack?’

  Jack found himself saying, ‘I’m over
here.’

  ‘You take up the rear as you always liked to. As for Stort . . .’

  He looked at Katherine and said, ‘It’s best if I now take his hand. I know him better than I know myself and he knows he’ll not stumble with me. He’s work to do, he always has, an important thing to do, that’s sure. The thing is to get him there. He does the rest.’

  There was no further debate and in the wyrd of that night there couldn’t be.

  54

  DISCOVERY

  They followed Barklice and Stort down the pasture in the dark, over the stream, in among the trees and up the road, Barklice watching over Stort’s hesitant progress every step of the way.

  When they reached the road there were folk with candles all about, pilgrims for Stort every one.

  Seeing who it was, and not knowing his hydden name, they said, ‘We’ll light your way, Mister Boots, we’ll light every step of the way. Will it be zig-zag or straight, easy or hard?’

  ‘The quickest,’ said Barklice, ‘for we’ve little time. Bratfire, hold that lantern so we can see this steep sward. Judith, there’s a candle in a jar offered by that man. Take it. Jack, you stay close behind with the others.’

  ‘I am doing just that, Mister Barklice, and all is well.’

  ‘Always was, mostly, when you were about.’

  They climbed steadily, Barklice helping his friend, Katherine with her hands just behind, the hill steepening, the word going before them that, far from being dead, Mister Boots as was had arrived on the hill.

  More lights, more folk scampering back and forth, and the Bilgesnipe music sensuous along the contours and the terracettes, beating to the rhythm of the old lynchets, the laughter and lights and ribbons of that friendly folk streaming in the dark.

  ‘How far, Mister Stort, how far do we need to go?’ asked Barklice who, having got him there, was not sure where to stop.

  ‘This is not an exact science,’ puffed Stort, ‘but a little way more if you please.’

  Up and up they went, slow and steady, folk not believing what they saw. In awe of the stars and moon above and Mister Boots coming up from below with all his friends and family, for that’s what they seemed to be.