by Tim Tilley
“Thank you,” I say, but there’s an awkward feeling rising in my chest.
Papa Herne looks concerned. “Are you alright?”
I clear my throat. “I don’t really know what a home is,” I say quietly.
All of the model homes I made were empty inside. I only imagined what life would be like in them: a library, an astrologer’s tower, a drawing room with long windows and cabinets filled with interesting things.
Papa Herne looks sad – his eyes are shining. “A home isn’t just a place where yer keep yer things. It’s where yer part of a family – where you feel loved, where you feel like you belong.”
“I don’t have any things. Just my clothes and boots. I don’t even have my penknife any more.”
There’s a silence that stretches out. “Homes can take some time to grow,” says Papa Herne, breaking it. “Take the blackbird. It takes two weeks to make its nest. I know we made you a nest in a couple of days, but maybe you should give yerself a while to settle in. Add some of the things that you like to it.” He wipes his nose and smiles. “An’ I know just the place to get them.”
“Where you got the human things?”
“I’ll take you there.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Quarter Day. We’ll go soon.”
I wonder what the place will be like. I picture an abandoned house somewhere in the heart of the forest. Walls covered in ivy, nestled in a tangle of trees. A hidden place away from the human world.
The nest-hut is more comfortable than I could ever imagine. The curved walls all around make me feel cosy, protected, a shell against the surrounding night. As I fall asleep with the dormice, I imagine who might have lived in the abandoned house. Maybe I’m not the first orphan to escape Harklights. Maybe someone else got away.
We’re having breakfast when the rise and fall of birdsong in the forest changes to sharp alarm calls. Just as Papa Herne puts his hat on, a blackbird comes racing into the clearing and lands roughly, Genna astride its back.
“What’s happened?” says Papa Herne.
Genna looks pale as she climbs off. She mouths something, but the words don’t come out.
A loud roar cuts the air. Genna’s blackbird takes off without her. The others at the bird stable fly free.
My heart thuds wildly.
This is the Monster.
“Stag,” says Papa Herne. “He’s making a fighting call.”
Nox frowns. “Can’t be.”
There’s another angry roar, this time much closer. A hulking red-brown form moves between the trees, just outside the clearing, close to the Hob huts.
Papa Herne’s right. As the stag lumbers into the clearing, we all freeze.
“Something’s wrong,” says Papa Herne. “He’s s’posed to be friendly. Quick, everyone hide!”
The Hobs scatter, scurrying in all directions. Mama Herne grabs Linden. Nissa grabs Tiggs, who’s holding Tuff. Genna carries a crying Tiya. Only Papa Herne, me and Nox stay where we are.
The stag is huge. Sharp pointed antlers. Powerful hooves. He eyes the Hobs, then charges at Finn, who’s running to the huts.
Papa Herne casts about, looking for something.
“What are you doing?” yells Nox.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Papa Herne.
Finn backs up against the wall of one of the huts.
The stag swings his antlers at Finn. I flinch but he ducks. The antlers smash into the hut. Finn steps away, then easily slips into the gap between two huts.
“Hey! Over here!” I find myself shouting.
The stag turns around, bellows at us, then turns back to look for Finn, smashing more of the Hob huts. Finn is too quick though – or lucky – and as the antlers crash into my hut, he escapes, sprinting to where some of the other Hobs are, beyond the clearing.
I breathe deeply. “That was close.” I’m relieved Finn escaped but I can’t help my eyes stinging. My hut is broken. I only just got it.
“Where’s yer staff?” says Nox to Papa Herne.
Papa Herne stares at the mess of broken twigs and moss. “In my hut.”
“We need a distraction,” says Nox.
“I think we’ve got one,” I say.
The stag growls, my hut impaled on its antlers. It thrashes its head wildly, trying to shake it off. The fur on its neck is wet – there’s a dark blood stain.
I blink back tears and wonder if the stag got injured in a fight.
The stag roars again and lumbers forward, facing Papa Herne, me and Nox.
“You two distract him, I’ll get the staff,” cries Papa Herne.
Nox’s eyes go wide. “Don’t we have a better idea?”
Papa Herne shakes his head. “Not at the moment.”
“Hey, let me down!” yells Nox as I pick him up.
“I can run faster,” I say firmly, putting him in my shirt pocket.
The stag lowers his rack of antlers and roars at Papa Herne, who’s creeping towards the broken nest-homes.
I wave my arms. “Over here!”
“Throw something at it,” yells Nox. “Not me.”
I pick up one of the sticks the Hobs were using as a fireside bench and throw it. The stag flinches as it glances off his wound, then bellows angrily and moves towards us.
“That’s it, come on, come on,” I murmur, stepping backwards.
As I step past the fire, I bend down to grab one of the larger part-burned sticks. It glows orange at the end.
“What are you doing?” says Nox. “We can’t harm him – Forest Law!”
“How are we supposed to stop him then?”
“We just need to keep him distracted.”
“What if Papa Herne doesn’t find his staff?”
“Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
I step away to the edge of the clearing. The stag follows us, pacing faster, sniffing the air. I wonder if it’s our breakfast he’s smelling, or me.
I step out of the clearing and hide behind a tree. “What’s taking Papa Herne so long?”
“I dunno,” says Nox. “Let’s go with the backup plan.”
“What’s that?”
“Run!”
I turn and run, following Fox Path, heading west. The stag charges behind us, head lowered. My hut is still tangled in his sharp antlers, making him look like some kind of tree-stag.
“Keep going!” calls Nox.
A surge of energy washes through me. My legs feel as if they are sprung clockwork and could run for hours.
But then something catches my foot – a rock. I lunge forward, hands outstretched to break my fall. Nox yells as I roll on my back to protect him.
Overhead, I glimpse Papa Herne on his blackbird, arcing between the trees.
He’s got his staff!
Papa Herne raises it – a jet of green light shoots out.
Ivy on a nearby tree sends long tendrils racing across the forest floor. They slither and twist, coiling round the stag’s legs, binding him tight.
Thud.
The stag drops heavily to the ground, inches from us, straining as the ivy winds round his body.
Papa Herne and his blackbird swoop round and land on the ground.
I drag huge gulps of air into my lungs. My heart drums. “That was close.”
“Close?” cries Nox. “We nearly got killed! Put me down.”
I lift Nox from my pocket and place him next to Papa Herne as he climbs down from his saddle. The Hob leader walks up to the stag and places a small hand on the beast’s ivy-bound muzzle. The stag glares fiercely at us and makes a low growling sound.
“Easy, easy,” says Papa Herne. “Wick, Nox, help me calm him.”
Nox and I draw closer. The moment I lay my hands on the stag’s muzzle, he writhes and squirms, trying to break free.
“Easy,” says Papa Herne in a soothing voice. “If yer scared of him, it makes him scared.”
I take a deep breath, feeling my hands grow warm against the fur. Aft
er a few minutes, the stag lets out a long breath and drops his head. I carefully pull away the tangle of moss, twigs and leaves from his antlers, all that’s left of my broken hut. The sight of it brings back the ache of seeing my models burn.
“Right, let’s have a look at that wound. Wick, could you lift me up?”
I lift Papa Herne and set him on the stag’s red-brown shoulder. There’s a hole, oozing blood.
“Bullet wound,” I say, going cold. “Old Ma Bogey did this.”
Apart from her crossbow and prized shotgun, I know she owns a six-shooter pistol.
“She’s coming to get Wick. This is a warning,” says Nox, fixing me with a hard stare. “Told you he would bring trouble.”
A knot tightens in my stomach. What if Nox is right? What if she’s in the forest now?
“It’s not Wick’s fault,” says Papa Herne.
“But he’s human! Humans are trouble!” There’s anger in Nox’s voice.
“That’s enough!” cries Papa Herne. “Calm down!”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” hisses Nox.
The stag snorts and silences everyone.
“Look,” says Papa Herne quietly. “We’re all worked up about what just happened. But if we keep calm and work together, we can get through this.”
Nox clenches his fists and looks as if he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t.
All the years I can remember, Old Ma Bogey has stayed at Harklights and only left to go to town. The only hunting I’ve known her to do was to shoot the birds that dared to come and land in the yard, or on her roof. The knot in my stomach grows tighter.
My heart thuds.
What if she’s changed her mind? And now she’s decided to come to the forest with one of her guns?
I’m in danger – everyone’s in danger.
Everything about this makes me afraid. Hobs and birds and wild animals could be targets. Has she shot other animals? Is that why the orphan cubs don’t have mothers?
I don’t know what to do – whether I should go looking for her or leave.
Papa Herne must know what I’m thinking because he says, “We don’t know she’s in the forest. Not yet anyways. We’ll keep a watch out. She’s not the only human with a gun.”
I help Papa Herne gather medicine things from one of the wrecked huts. There’s a pair of tweezers, a bundle of moss and spider’s web. And there’s a small bottle of propolis, a sticky dark-brown oil that bees make. Papa Herne is too small to use the tweezers, so I try. The bullet is buried deep. The stag tenses. Every time the tweezers scrape against the bullet, I want to be sick.
I hold my breath, clamp my jaw. Then I dig the tweezers in, ignoring the warm blood that’s filling up the hole like a well.
As soon as the bullet’s out, I drop it in my pocket. I’m going to take it back to Harklights. It doesn’t belong in the forest.
Papa Herne plugs the wound with all the moss and spider’s web – plus more moss that Nox and I gathered – then empties the whole bottle of propolis over it.
“What are we, er, going to do with him?” I whisper.
“Let him stay where he is,” says Papa Herne.
“I’ll get him some camomile an’ arnica,” says Nox. “He needs to sleep an’ heal. You two go help the others.” There’s a long pause, as we all take stock of what’s just happened. Then Nox looks at me in a way that he hasn’t before. “Thank you for saving me an’ digging the bullet out of the stag. Guess I were wrong about you – not all humans hurt.”
All of the nest-huts that were on the ground are smashed to pieces. Some of the Hobs walk among them in a daze, rescuing what they can from the wreckage. Others sit crying, clinging to each other, hardly believing what has happened, taking shaky sips of dewdrops that Mama Herne and Nissa carry on leaves.
“Everything’s broken,” says Tiggs, wiping snot from his nose.
“We have nothing,” says Linden, looking at the flattened hut he shared with Tiggs.
“We still have each other,” says Finn, wrapping his arms round their shoulders. “At least no one got hurt.”
Papa Herne picks up a twig then throws it down. “We can always rebuild our homes. Till then, the homeless can stay in bird nests an’ by the fire.”
“Wick’s really good at building things,” pipes up Nissa. “You should see the hut he made by the deer pond. He made it with sap an’ twigs.”
“It was nothing,” I say. “I was just playing.”
“No, it were brilliant. You should show the others.”
I get up from the ground, rising above the Hobs, and head to the edge of the clearing.
“Where are you going?” hollers Papa Herne.
“To fetch the twig-hut,” I say. This is a way I can make things right, I realize – show that I’m a human who makes things instead of destroying them.
On my way back to the deer pond, the rising and falling birdsong has returned and there’s a bumbling hum of bees. But I feel my chest tighten.
Old Ma Bogey is coming. Shooting the stag was her calling card.
I keep expecting to meet her, stepping out from behind a tree. Pressing the cold circle of her pistol barrel against my neck.
Halfway to the deer pond, a jay swiftly takes to the air from a branch a little way ahead of me, calling out in alarm.
My scalp prickles. I stop, looking in all directions, trying to see what startled it.
There’s no movement.
Must be Old Ma Bogey. She’s waiting behind a tree.
The thought floods me with fear. My heart thuds fast in my ears and throat.
“I know you’re there,” I cry out.
I wait.
Nothing.
Then slowly, ahead of me, two pointed ears, orange-red, rise up from a patch of ferns into bright sunlight.
A fox.
The fear that it’s Old Ma Bogey disappears. The fox pokes her head above the ferns. She isn’t scared by my presence. She stays still, in the sun, silently watching me with fire-coloured eyes. Then she raises her head, shows me her white throat and sniffs the air.
My breathing is too fast, too shallow. I take several deep breaths and blow them out, unwinding the tension I’ve been holding onto.
The fox watches me intently.
I stare back, marvelling at her colour, at how peaceful yet alert she is. She seems to draw on the calmness of the trees that surround us.
I don’t know how long we stand there watching each other, breathing in the clean forest air. But it’s enough for me to calm down. Close by the fox, I notice a tree with a wound that new bark has nearly covered up, just like Papa Herne taught me.
The fox’s ears twist, hearing something I can’t. Then she turns and melts into the ferns.
When I arrive at the deer pond, the twig-hut is exactly where I left it when I rushed to save Tiggs from the water. The place is deserted, except for the frogspawn and dragonflies flitting in wild angles over the water.
On my return walk, I realize that as long as I’m here, and Old Ma Bogey is looking for me, I’m putting the Hobs in danger. I realize for the first time that I need to do more than sneak back in the middle of the night and rescue Petal.
I need to confront Old Ma Bogey and stop her.
The idea seems too huge – impossible.
The palms of my hands break out in a sweat. My heart thuds as a breath catches in my throat.
I’m not ready. Not yet.
I force myself to take long breaths of clean forest air and be like the fox, drawing on the calmness of the trees that surround me. It works. I feel calmer and alert. I might not be ready now, but I will be. I’ll get stronger, be stronger, here in the forest.
When I arrive at Oakhome, I put the twig-hut down in the clearing.
Papa Herne walks up to it. He runs his hands over the walls, looks up at the sloped roof and nods in approval. “This is good. D’you think you could build us more of these?”
I smile at the memory of my matchstick models. “
Yes, but I’ll need some help.”
For a few minutes, I think about the old models I used to make. But then my thoughts turn. I can do better. Why make Hobs homes that look like miniature town houses? There’s nothing like Hobs in the world – apart from wood sprites. They deserve something special. A different kind of home, something that’s just for them.
With my heel, I clear a patch of ground where the old coals of the cooking fire sit, then smooth it down flat with my hand.
I take twigs and lay them out end to end. The Hobs gather round and watch me intently. I keep adding twigs, until I make the outline of a dome with a flat base. The shape is one of those beehives made from woven straw – only taller. I then add torn circles of dead leaves to show where the entrance could go and the windows on two floors.
When I’ve finished, Linden walks up and stands in the middle of the skep shape.
“I like it, but it’s flat. It could do with walls.”
Nissa laughs. “This isn’t the hut, it’s just a picture of it!”
“I knew that,” says Linden, looking embarrassed. He folds his arms, shoving his hands under his armpits.
After lunch, we make a start. It’s surprising how quickly the Hobs work. They don’t really need me. Papa Herne and Genna call red squirrels and rabbits to help. This time it doesn’t matter who are Forest Keepers or Home Keepers – apart from Mama Herne looking after Tiya, and Nox looking after the stag, everyone is working together.
Hob furniture is rescued from the ruined huts. Broken sticks are moved into a huge pile. Some of the Hobs make trips to gather pine sap, using the full-grown badgers to transport it in old tea caddies. Blue tits and sparrows fly off to gather more twigs.
It’s great sharing my model-making skills and not having to keep them a secret any more. The Hobs have ideas too, for upper storeys and staircases, balconies and windows. And there are passages, beams and roofs to think about. Now it’s not just my idea, but something we are all working on together, that belongs to all of us. A warm feeling wells up inside me. The first home starts to take shape.
“It’s becoming real,” says Papa Herne as he climbs a ladder made from a comb with broken teeth.