The Green Children of Woolpit

by J. Anderson Coats

  “You’ll not be able to understand anything they say,” the reeve tells my ma as the three of us climb down from the cart. “They can make themselves understood with gestures, though, so you’ll need patience.”

  Mother the pig lumbers around the corner of the house and stops at my side like a dog might. The green girl studies her for so long that I have a sudden, wild thought that perhaps she has never seen a pig before. Mother makes a low, screechy sound, then nips me on the meat of my lower leg.

  I choke on a squeal and clap a hand over the wound. Mother  . . .  bit me? The green girl hisses something in that strange tongue, and Mother turns and hurries toward her byre.

  “Their parents are likely from one of the Flemish settlements nearby,” the reeve goes on. “Or it’s possible they strayed away from travelers or merchants on the road to the abbey. Sir Richard has already sent a rider asking after lost children. I cannot imagine they’ll be long at your hearth.”

  “We’re happy to keep them for Milord,” says Da. “We’ll treat them like our own.”

  It’s easily the most words together I’ve heard my da say in some time, but they’re words that warm me like a drink of steaming cider. Perhaps he said something like it when he got home from plowing and saw baby me in Ma’s arms. My da says nothing he doesn’t mean, and when he says things like that, I know he is my da no matter what. Other than little children whose mas haven’t had time to have more babies, I’m the only kid in Woolpit without at least one brother or sister. But I should have one. When I came along, my parents had a baby of their own, Martin, only a few months old. He took sick and died not long after I arrived.

  I wish I’d known him, or that other babies had been born, but Glory has always been like my sister. Now, at least for a little while, I have a brother and a sister. If the green children are just kids and Milord doesn’t find their parents, or if they’re dead, mayhap they could be my brother and sister forever. If everyone is talking about the green children and they’re living at my house, whether they’re ordinary kids or Those Good People, soon enough the whole village will be talking about me as well.

  Glory will never be able to stay away then.

  The reeve climbs back onto the cart and takes his leave. While I cautiously pull up my skirt enough to get a look at where Mother nipped me — nipped me! — my ma beckons to the green girl like she cannot smell the leaf-rot stench, and the girl edges toward her like a stray cat to a flake of fish.

  “Come in, that’s right.” My ma holds the door open. “Sit by the fire. You and your brother too. What can we call you, child?”

  Never give them your name, Granny would say, or they will be able to demand of you anything. Never ask them theirs, or they will punish your rudeness.

  But as I’m about to remind my ma that the green children cannot speak how we do, the girl slips her hand between my ma’s sturdy, gnarled fingers and says, “Agnes.”

  My mouth falls open, but the green girl presses close to my ma and looks up at her like a newborn lamb. A softness is falling over my ma, thick and drapey like a blanket, beginning with her stern mouth and following itself upward, to her well-creased forehead. The pig bite on my leg throbs and I smell the leaf-rot clear and sharp, stingy in my nose hairs.

  “No.” I can’t help it. There are four Elizabeths, three Katherines, and a startling seven Matildas in Woolpit, but I’m the only Agnes.

  My ma puts her arm around the green girl’s shoulders and gives me a ma look. “No? No? This poor child is lost, far away from her parents, and you cannot even welcome her into our home with a little courtesy?”

  “Beg pardon,” I whisper, “but I’m the only Agnes in Woolpit.”

  “Well, not anymore you’re not.” My ma perches the green girl on the hearth bench as I wince at the smell. The boy is still standing in the doorway. Like he’s waiting for something.

  Or being kept outside by something.

  My da guides the green boy in by both shoulders and sits him on the bench next to the girl. He’s creaky from having to stoop along cutting wheat all day, and his face shows it, but that rotty smell surges and he grins like a month of mutton suppers. “What about you, son? What can we call you?”

  The boy’s gaze flicks to the shelf at the far end of the room where my knitting needles are. He makes no reply.

  “Emmmmmmmm . . .” The green girl is trying to say something, but it’s like she’s got a mouthful of fresh honey and the sounds are all gummed up in it. Like me when I try to speak without planning my words. The green boy’s fingers flash — did he pinch her? — and the girl flinches and presses her lips shut.

  “Martin, then.” Da claps him on the shoulder, his voice wavering the smallest bit. There’s a quiet look between my ma and da. They’re remembering the baby who slipped away so small and who also had that name. The big brother I should have had.

  “Agnes.” My ma tries to blink back her teary glisten. “Please fetch our guests some bread.”

  I stand up. So does the green girl.

  My ma chuckles and says to her, “No, child, Fair Agnes will get the bread. You are the guest.”

  I’m wringing my hands in my apron. It’s not the green girl’s fault that her name is Agnes, too. It’s a silly thing to care about when the green girl is like me. A foundling. Only she’s old enough to be scared, and I was so small I never knew different. “They’ll just eat beans. Raw beans. And I don’t want to be Fair Agnes. I just want to be Agnes.”

  “Well, we have to tell you apart from our guest somehow,” my ma replies firmly. “You’ll be Fair Agnes for your hair, and she’ll be Green Agnes for her . . . herself.”

  The girl grins like this is the first thing that’s happened all day worth smiling over, and I feel barely a handswidth tall. If I were lost, far from Woolpit, far from my ma and da, far from anyone who could even understand me, and there was a girl being snippy about her name of all things — well, I wouldn’t like her very much. I wouldn’t be too happy to be her foster sister. Or her friend.

  If I were one of Those Good People, I’d be sure any reward due her would be the kind that ends up a punishment.

  So I put on a big smile and turn to the girl. “Please forgive me. That wasn’t nice. I’ll go pick some beans for you and your brother.”

  “Good. You do that.” My ma waves me toward the door. She’s still fussing over the green boy and girl and doesn’t look up when I fetch the ratty basket from the shelf.

  The girl does, though. Right as I’m leaving, she darts a look at me from under my ma’s arm. It’s triumphant, like she won a footrace at midsummer or just got made May Queen, and all at once I shiver like someone walked over my grave.

  After all this time, I knew certain things would be different. This house is colder than our last one, and a strange shape. There’s no earthwork or palisade wall, but there’s a fire to tend and a pig fattening on the hoof and pots and spoons. There is light here, honest-to-goodness sunlight, and I could cry for how the prickle of the last of summer on my skin is like a nice, long embrace from an old friend you never thought you’d see again.

  There is the food I cannot eat. Bread I recognize, and meat, and it is real bread and meat and not just leaves made to seem grand by the fair folk’s glamour. I want to eat it. My hands tremble and my mouth waters, but one bite of it and I’ll die on the spot.

  There will be conditions, the king said. Otherwise you’ll try to cheat the bargain.

  Best of all, there is her. There is the big woman with the red face and misshapen nose, smelling not of damp and rot but sweat and meat and wool. She is nothing like my first ma, but she is a ma. You can see it in the lines of her face, how she’s always staying up worrying over big things she can’t control and small things she tries to. You can see it in the dirt beneath her nails. The way she rarely sits down.

  Beside me on the bench, the boy-thing perches like a watchful cat. Already he’s using his glamour to put ideas in these people’s heads.
He made this da give him the name of his own dead son. He did it with a smile. I have till All Hallow’s Eve, but I must not take that long. The boy-thing is dangerous. Even in this boy-shape that hides so well what he really is.

  While we were in the pit, the boy-thing kept whispering. No one’s coming , he said. They’re all gone. Long dead. Keep calling for them, though. Nothing is more amusing than someone who thinks there’s hope. If he’d have just stood there, I’d have given up. Instead I kept screaming so I couldn’t hear his voice. Someone would hear me. Someone would come. I just never thought it would be a girl with a ma like this ma. This is a ma who loves her child. You can see it in how she keeps watch on the door. How she wants her daughter to share and show courtesy. This is a ma who will miss her child and grieve her when she’s gone.

  Unless this ma never knows that her old daughter is creeping through the half-lit corridors of the kingdom under the mountain, living in fear of the walls, working her fingers bloody and raw.

  This ma will have a new daughter. One who never left. One who’s always been here. That new daughter’s forever under the mountain will finally come to an end. The old daughter’s will be just beginning.

  I blink awake. The room is lit up enough that it must be daybreak. The harvest. I’m late. That’s going to mean a thrashing. Two thrashings: one from my da and another from the reeve. I fling back what little I have of the bedcover, then sit up slowly and try to make sense of what I’m seeing.

  My ma and da are still asleep in their bed, two dark hills of blanket that the light seems to avoid on purpose. Martin’s eyes are closed as well, but the green girl is standing by the hearth bench. The fire is banked, glowing softly, and the space around the door is black. It’s nowhere near dawn, but the house is lit faint and steady. It’s a half-light, like early morning, but there are no cheerful oranges or pinks in it. A neither-nor if ever there was one. The light is hard enough that I must squint despite how dim it is — and it’s green.

  A scream creeps up my throat and comes out a strangled, wrenching squeal.

  “Shh.” The green girl puts a finger to her lips and beckons me closer. Her hood is up, and she carves a stark figure in the dim against the strange glow.

  I’m not sure whether the safe thing to do is refuse or obey. So I shh. I move closer. My heart is skidding because this has to mean that the green children really are Those Good People and I can ask of them the favor they owe for helping them out of the pit. Please have Glory be the kind of friend she used to be. Those Good People may be devious and petty, but if they owe you, they will pay in full.

  When I get to the bench, the girl drops to her knees like I’m Milord.

  “Oh, your grace, I’m so glad I finally found you,” she says in a fierce, happy whisper, perfect and clear like she’s Glory, like she’s me, and while I stand there with my mouth open, she rises in a graceful rustle of cloth. She is nowhere near the quivering, weeping girl who fell to pieces on the manor house floor, or the big-eyed child too nervous to get near my house. “Your parents will be beside themselves to know you’re well and to have you back with them.”

  “My parents are over there.” I flummox a gesture at the bed. “Asleep. How can you — the reeve said you couldn’t — ”

  “I had nothing to say to them,” the green girl cuts in. “Only to you. Breathe in deep.”

  I do it, even though the room smells like garden muck when you turn it in the spring.

  “Good. Now you’ll understand everything I have to say. Keep your voice down, though. No one else must overhear.” Her eyes go quick to Martin asleep near the fire, and she pulls in a long breath like she’s preparing to lift something heavy.

  “Wh-what’s happening?”

  “Don’t be frightened.” The girl steps closer. “We’ve come to return you to your real parents before anything ill befalls you. So please listen.”

  “But who are you? Why are you green?”

  “You ought to know better than to ask someone like me who she is.”

  I go cold. Fight to breathe. “It’s just . . . you were in the pit. Those like you would never get trapped in the pit.”

  “We wouldn’t,” the green girl says with a wisp of a smile, “unless there’s a reason to do it. Unless someone must find the daughter of the king and queen under the mountain and bring her home.”

  I peer at her, bewildered, till her coy look falls to utter frustration. “You, simpleton! That’s you! Those people asleep in that bed? They’re not your real parents. You’re not their child. You’re really the princess of the court under the mountain.”

  For a moment it stings — you’re not their child — and it takes up the whole world, even if it’s true. I love my ma and da, but I was someone else’s baby before I was theirs. I could belong to the woman who came raving to Woolpit. Or she could have found me under a blackberry hedge. Or she could have stolen me out of a cottage. No one is sure, not even my ma.

  Which means I’m no one’s baby. Kate and Tabby say it all the time in that cruel way they have, too singsongy, too wide-eyed-smiley for it to be kind.

  Glory said it meant I could be anyone’s baby. This was after she overheard Kate and Tabby taunting me one more time, and she told them to go fall in the stream. She said it in that fierce, protective way that made me start crying all over again, but relieved, like Glory’s mere saying of it took away the truth of Kate and Tabby’s saying completely.

  Something small and hopeful turns over deep within me. Glory was once the kind of friend who would face down older girls. I could be anyone’s baby. Including the king and queen under the mountain.

  A foundling’s a bit of a neither-nor as well.

  I have so many questions. None of them are safe. Those Good People set traps for mortals for all sorts of reasons, from need to want to just plain fun, and the green girl is like Glory, fast and nimble with words.

  They will twist the truth, Granny would say. They will dodge and duck and withhold, but they will never, ever lie.

  Finally I say, careful and polite, “I don’t understand.”

  “Your nursemaid lost track of you when you were very small. No one could find you. The king and queen had given up hope of ever seeing you again.” The green girl’s eyes are wide and earnest. “You were not born to the people you call your parents. You were found somewhere and brought to them. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  The story has never gone any one way. Always it depends on the teller. So I say, “No one’s sure where I come from, exactly.”

  “Hmm.” The green girl nods knowingly. “I bet your ma says it doesn’t matter. It does, though. Down deep, you want to know who you really are.”

  Be wary when Those Good People flatter you, Granny would say, but the idea of knowing who I really am makes me feel half a dozen things at once, and none of them are flattering. I’ve imagined my first parents a thousand different ways, but never in a way where I might have to choose.

  The green girl is waiting. Big eyes, folded hands. Hopeful. This could be a trick. It could also be a test. There could be a reward as sure as there could be a punishment. Those Good People do not lie, but the king and queen under the mountain would not be careless enough to lose track of a child. They would have ridden out long ago to recover me and — hopefully — reward my ma and da who took care of me in the meantime.

  Granny would say . . . Oh saints, what would Granny say?

  “Please,” the green girl whispers. “They miss you so much.”

  There’s a surge in the leaf-rot smell, a wave of it that hits me like a drench of stale water, and all at once I see myself in a long white dress made of something thin and silky, not dirty—never dirty—hands smooth and uncut, dancing, dancing, a trestle piled with food fifty times as grand as Milord’s at the manor house. Laughing, glorious, the center of the room, everyone saying my name, everyone asking what I think.

  I hold out a hand. Only I don’t. My hand reaches out on its own. Towa
rd the green girl’s. Closer. She grins harsh and triumphant and —

  My leg stings where Mother nipped me, and I bend down to rub it and I’m back in myself. In the hard, dim green light.

  The girl’s eyes are closed. All she’s been doing is standing there, but she’s breathing hard like an ox in a yoke. Martin stirs in his sleep and she goes so still that even I hold my breath. As he quiets, she regards him like she would happily murder him where he lies. The look is gone in an instant, and her smile is helpless now. Wry, and a little pained.

  “They were wrong, I suppose,” the green girl says in a small, sad voice. “I was sent to fetch you because your parents thought you were more likely to trust a girl like you. They were sure you’d never follow a strange man away from the only home you’d ever known.” She shrugs, downcast. “But you don’t trust me.”

  “That’s not true!” I step toward the green girl. “Why did the king and queen not come themselves?”

  “They cannot.”

  The leaf-rot smell tickles my throat. Glory didn’t believe me when I told her about the green children. Believing someone when it’s hard is no simple matter. Only not believing someone just because it’s hard makes me no better than a Woolpit ma.

  I lick my lips. “Can I think about it?”

  “It’s already been longer than is good for us,” the green girl says. “Your brother and I were days in the pit even before you ran away and left us to our fate.”

  “He’s your brother. Isn’t he? He’s green like you, after all.”

  The girl makes a sound, something between a cough and a laugh and a snort. She shakes her head, slow and solemn.

  A brother. I should have a brother. His name should be Martin, and he should have twelve summers, just like me. If you believe the Woolpit mas, the raggedy gibbering woman who left me behind returned in the blackest part of night and gave him the evil eye, to wither him so I might grow strong.