Not just once, but twice.
I turn all rage to the — boy — beside me. Not a boy — a boy thing. But one look at him and right away I know he’s angry she’s here. It takes several heartbeats before I work out it’s because he’s angry that anyone is here.
No one was supposed to come at all.
The boy-thing sees me trembling and goes from rageful to spiteful in an eyeblink. His smirk is my brother’s, too. Not just the curve of his jaw, his sturdy legs. His movements and manners. There was a time I’d have given all the gold in the deepest hoard to see my brother’s face again.
But not this way. Never this way.
She’s back at the pit edge now. Round cheeks and eyes like a pup on its hind end, waiting for a treat it’ll never get.
A girl like me. Like I once was, down to the straw in her hair and the freckles on her nose. Like I can be again, if I think only on her blood.
Precious few things gain and hold attention in the Otherworld. One is a bargain. The other is a sacrifice.
I spot Glory coming out of her uncle’s house and hurry up the rutted road, panting like a winded horse. “Glory! Hey!”
She takes several more strides toward the wheat field before she slows, and slows, and finally whirls on her heel. “You’re following me again. We talked about this. How sometimes I want to be by myself.”
We didn’t talk. Not exactly. Glory told me and I nodded because I felt tiny and buzzing and she was batting me away, and if I buzzed louder, she’d squash me.
“I found out who was crying. It’s — ”
“Da won’t like knowing you’re here,” Glory cuts in. “You’re supposed to be at the harvest.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be there too?” It’s a real question, not a mean singsong not-a-question like Kate and Tabby ask, but Glory scowls.
“I’ve come to start supper. You are shirking. Chasing crying that isn’t there so people will ask you about it.”
A year ago I could have told what I saw. All of it. She’d have believed me. Now I must prove it to her, and I must be careful how I do it. A year ago I wouldn’t have even had this thought, that I must keep things from Glory till she has a chance to see for herself. It makes my stomach hurt.
“It’s children,” I reply. “A girl and a boy. I think they’re lost. They’re stuck in the wolf pit. Will you help me get them out?”
Glory softens. “Children?”
“Yes!” I grip my apron so I don’t grab her sleeve. “Your da has that rope, doesn’t he? We can lower it down for them.”
“This isn’t a story, right? We’ll get to the wolf pit and there really will be kids trapped there?” Glory glances around like someone’s watching. “Because I swear to all the saints, Agnes, if you’re making this up . . .”
But I’m already hurrying. I’d know the way to Glory’s house blindfolded, and I skip and grin so big my face hurts. Glory is speaking to me again. We’re off to do something together, like we haven’t in so many months that even my ma noticed and I had to pretend everything was fine.
Once Glory fetches the rope, we set off toward the woodland path that’ll take us the long way to the wolf pit, far from the wheat fields. She insists on carrying the heavy coils herself, so I’m out ahead. A little smug. Her eyes will go huge when she sees they’re not just kids. Glory will squeal and hug me for bringing her into this story, even if I did it with a small bit of trickery.
The brush shifts and I skid to a stop. The reeve is blocking the path. Arms folded. Shaking his head in a slow, disappointed way. Glory and I all but shared a cradle and I’ve had my share of scoldings from her da, but his eyes glide over me and rest on her.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he asks.
Neither of us replies. I’m trying to come back from the part of the story where the girls were hugging and being cheered by the whole village, but it’s jumbled with the part where they’re deciding what favor to ask of Those Good People, and this is usually where a grown-up will shout something like speak up! or answer me! They don’t see I’m trying. Often they don’t care.
It’s quiet too long, because the reeve sighs and peels the rope from Glory’s shoulder and says, “Shirking the harvest. I expected better of you.”
Glory’s eyes fill with angry, stubborn tears. Something hard as a nut is growing in my throat. She’ll never forgive me if she’s scolded for that, of all things.
“I heard them crying.” I haven’t planned these words the way I plan most of what I say, but there’s no time. “In the wolf pit. Children. Green children. A boy and a girl. We needed the rope to pull them out. I was going to put it back.”
Glory rounds on me. Her face is going red in splotches. “You promised it wasn’t a story. You promised.”
The reeve sighs deeper. He drops the rope in Glory’s arms and curtly tells her to hang it where she found it before taking herself directly to the wheat field. Then he grabs my elbow and guides me firmly away, leaving Glory on the path, narrow-eyed and furious.
She was going to forgive me and I could say the end and we could start whole new stories together, just like before.
There’s not enough room on the path for the reeve and me to walk side by side, so I’m stumbling in the verge, lashed by branches. I have to make this right. I tap his shoulder and start babbling, “I, ah, well, Glory, she — ”
“Hush.” The reeve doesn’t say it mean. He is not that kind of grown-up. But he says it sharp and simple and final, and I do as I’m told. I know what’s going to happen now. As baby Hugh lay still and cold in his cradle, the reeve warned me what would happen if I spoke false about anything at all, big or small, ever again.
Now I’ll have to wear the mask.
* * *
The mask is the size of a water bucket. It’s made from strips of metal bent into a cage that’s fastened to someone’s head with three sturdy leather straps. On the front there’s a huge metal tongue, lolling like a dog’s, painted red, and there are bells hanging off the cage, dozens of them, so wherever you go, people will know to turn and look.
The reeve has no pity for me as he tightens each strap. “You should have thought about this before telling tales again.”
The story is spilling out of me now. I’m telling him everything as he pulls me by the elbow from the shade of his house toward the wheat field. “You have to believe me. No one else heard them crying. They’ll die if no one helps them climb out.”
The reeve won’t look at me. He leads me jangling back to the field.
The worst part of the mask isn’t that it’s made for grown-ups so it bangs and scrapes my forehead and its sharp edges dig into my shoulders. It’s not even that everyone will hear me long before they see me and know exactly what happened, or that the straps are pulling my hair, or that I’ll have to pour water through the bars for a drink and it’ll itch down my neck and make me damp for the whole fortnight I must wear it.
The worst part is walking behind the reeve, him not bothering to slow because he knows I must follow, whatever his pace, walking toward my ma and da who right now are happy because they have no idea what a mess I’ve made of things.
Like with baby Hugh.
The reeve wept, but mostly he seemed resigned. That little grave won’t be the only one they visit in the churchyard. He nodded, red-eyed, while I told both him and Glory’s ma about the bee, how Hugh was fine until it disappeared into his cradle and then he started screaming and swelled up so bad he couldn’t even pull in a breath, all while Glory and I looked on in horror. But that’s when Glory’s ma swiped at her tears and started blustering about how bees were not to blame, how Glory and I let the iron fireplace poker fall off the cradle and Those Good People must have blown their cold breath on poor Hugh.
Salt and iron would have kept them out! she thundered. Did you two never listen to your grannies?
I walked behind the reeve that day to my house. Through the door I could see Ma spinning and Da whittling ai
mlessly. You are our baby, they always say, and in those moments before we got inside I whispered it to myself because one day I might do something so terrible that they might not think so anymore, and then I’ll be no one’s baby.
Someone’s coming. Finally. I’d started wondering if that girl was smarter than she looked and with one glance at us — at me — fled back to her hearth or her spinning or her playing and pretended she was never here.
Like she knew, somehow, what I’d come for. What I meant to do to her.
But there’s a crashing in the greenwood above, men shouting at one another to beware the edge of the pit. A dog whines, harsh and high like it’s being dragged closer, unwilling. Dogs don’t like places like this.
People should pay more attention to dogs.
Besides the girl, the only soul that has so much as cast a shadow above me was a pig. It was a she-pig, a sow, and she studied me over the pit edge, grunting low. If that sow were a person, she’d be warning me away.
Soon the girl will peer over the side of this pit once more. A part of me wants to be sorry for her. If that is something I can still want, perhaps there’s hope for me yet. She has done nothing to deserve what will happen to her.
Neither did I. Nor did any of us.
The boy-thing grins from his place against the pit wall. I can barely look at him. There’s only one reason he’s wearing my dead brother’s face. My brother did not take their bargain, and the fair folk mean to remind me what befell him every time I look upon this boy-thing.
All of me hardens and I start yelling. I beg for help. I beg for mercy. I scream for my ma and da, lost so long. The boy-thing giggles. He understands what I’m saying, but the men above us won’t. They will only hear my voice. They will hear the rawness of it. The fear. It comes from some deep well inside me. Some terrible, scabbed-over place, half healed and aching.
They will hear my voice and they will find us. The girl, and the men of this place I have finally, finally come back to. They will see only two children, lost and alone. They won’t know one has come for something unspeakable and the other is not a child at all.
They won’t realize any of it till it’s too late.
While I was gone putting on supper and being caught red-handed and blundering badly enough to make Glory even more angry with me, Da kept cutting wheat. All afternoon I tried to catch up gathering, but there are so many cut stalks that I’ll be here all night finishing my work. No one will help me. You should have thought of this natter natter natter.
The sun has been going ever so slowly down, and when it’s dark the reeve will blow his horn and everyone else can stop work for the day. The Woolpit mas are already busy whispering. There’s but one grown-up who would have helped me, and that was Granny. Days like this are when I miss her most of all. The Woolpit mas would always make the safe choice and stay home to do the milking. They would rather have a good wheel of cheese than a story to tell.
The same was not true of Granny.
I catch a whiff of that leaf-rot smell just as someone hurries past me, bumping my arm so I fumble my stalks. Across the field, men are lowering their scythes and women have put aside their gathering. There’s an excited burst of chatter and soon everyone is rushing toward the edge of the field where Glory is standing with her da — and the green girl and boy.
The children each wear too-big cloaks that are clearly borrowed, and both have pulled the heavy hoods over their faces as if it’s January. They clutch the wool with green hands, turning away from the gathering villagers who hover while trying to seem polite and not suspicious. Even though that damp, rotty stink hangs on those kids like they climbed out of the grave and not the wolf pit, soon I can’t see them for the crowd.
Now there’ll be questions. When there are foundlings, there are always questions, and the Woolpit mas are not known for asking with anything like gentleness.
Nothing harmed by courtesy, Granny would say. Doesn’t cost a penny to be kind. Especially when you don’t know what you’re dealing with.
The reeve breaks away from Glory and makes his way toward me. He winces, then gestures for me to turn. When I do, he unbuckles the leather straps and gingerly lifts the mask off my head.
“Off home with you now,” he says. “Your day’s work is done.”
The sun is going down, but there’ll be plenty of light left to work for some time. This is an apology and I should accept it. Thank him. But it’s hard to stay standing. Purple spots all spinny in my eyes. Wearing the mask for even half a day is easily the worst thing that’s ever happened. I’ll do anything to keep from having to wear it again.
I totter a few steps toward Glory. This is how the story will go: She will see me and feel terrible. She didn’t believe me on the path. She turned her back on me. But something small made her wonder. So she went to the wolf pit anyway, and when she saw that the green children were real and in need of help and none of it was a tale, she felt a wave of sorrow as she helped them climb out. I’ve been treating Agnes so badly these last months, Glory would have thought. Now we’ll hug, right in front of everyone, especially those nose-in-the-air Woolpit mas who always want to believe the worst of foundling me.
It’s neither day nor night as the sun bleeds out over the horizon. It’s both. It’s neither. Same as how I found the green children, but in a way I didn’t find them. It’s both and neither unless Glory says something now.
But what Glory’s telling the crowd is how she alone heard the children crying in the greenwood. How she found them lost and afraid, how they wept until she brought them something to shield their eyes from the light. No one else thought to help them. Only she had the wit.
I back away. My legs barely hold me up. The crowd goes blurry. Glory doesn’t notice me. Last summer she would have noticed. She would have shoved through the villagers and pulled me by the hand till I was next to her. She’d have shushed everyone and made them stay quiet till I worked out what I had to say.
But Glory is the girl in this story now. She rescued the green children. She can ask of them a favor and they will grant it, if they are Those Good People, or she will be feasted and cheered by their ordinary mortal parents once they are found and reunited. Her da is the reeve, and he will see to it.
Just once I want to be the girl in the story. Just once I want someone to hear me and believe.
* * *
The reeve said I could go home. So I go. Now I’m under the bedclothes. It’s quiet and dark. No one gawking at me. It’s stifling and damp and I can hardly draw breath, but after today, after the mask, I just might have to stay here till winter. Mayhap longer.
My pallet crunches with the kind of heavy, narrow footfalls that can only come from hooves. I claw the bedcover off my head and nearly bump snouts with Mother. Pigs in Woolpit are allowed to wander where they please. I must have left the door open, which Ma will give me an earful about if she learns of it, but I’m glad Mother is here. She’s such a good listener that she doesn’t care how I think things at her instead of say them with words that catch and trip over one another. She is always ready to get lost in a story. Last month, Glory said she was too old to talk to pigs, but I’ll never be too old to talk to Mother.
Mother shuffles toward the shelf that my da built against the far wall that holds our spare pot and some earthenware bowls. Her wide bottom bumps the wall and a handful of things tumble down. I mutter a swear and rush over to see what broke, but all that fell was a ratty basket for berrying and a pair of iron knitting needles that Granny gave me when I was small. She often watched me and Glory while our mas were busy, and we were a handful and she needed us to be still, so she taught us to knit.
I’m about to put the needles away since knitting is a winter task, but Mother makes a rusty sort of squeal at me, low in her throat, and I hold them crosswise the way Granny would always keep a pair tacked to her door.
Salt and iron will ward Those Good People away, Granny would say, as long as you owe them nothing. They hav
e no power unless you give it to them. If you’ve wronged them, if they have a claim on you, they cannot be stopped till they have what’s due them.
But Granny also said things like Do them a good turn and you will prosper. Your cow will always give fresh milk and your seams will be straight and strong.
I wrap my needles in a scrap of wool and push them far back on the shelf. Close enough to ward away any of Those Good People with mischief on their minds, but far enough to be the show of goodwill I intend.
The green children may not have forgotten I was the one who really found them. They may want to pay me a visit. I even know what favor I’d ask.
Please have Glory be the kind of friend she used to be.
* * *
They don’t come and they don’t come. At length the Woolpit mas start up their whispering as all of us stoop and gather in the wheat field. They were squinting and stumbling, poor lambs. Like the light hurts their eyes. No one can get a sensible word out of either child and they won’t eat a crumb. Milord has taken them in. Doesn’t do to make enemies, does it?
The green children are at the manor house. They might as well be on the moon.
It’s almost midday and my arms are full of scratchy wheat stalks when the reeve taps my elbow and says, “Come with me.”
My neck is still raw from the mask. My ears still ringing. But my ma and da don’t need another visit from the reeve, so I give my stalks to the binders and follow him.
“Hurry,” he says, but then he must notice how I’m dragging my feet because he adds, “No one’s angry at you. Your lord has asked for your help.”
Something inside me glows pink and warm at the idea that a man like Milord needs my help. I’m expected to do what I’m told. Hardly anyone asks for my help.
Most of the time there is never a good reason for one of us from Woolpit to be called to the manor house. Either you’ve done wrong and you must account for it at Milord’s court, or it’s quarter day and time to pay your taxes. Or sometimes if a pig moves into your shed and the Woolpit mas decide you must have stolen it.
The Green Children of Woolpit Page 2