The Green Children of Woolpit

by J. Anderson Coats

  Something hisses, and suddenly I’m in Woolpit in February, the endless days of harsh, stinging sleet, the rawness of a nose that won’t stop running. The chill of the house, its leaky roof, its elbow-rubbing closeness with a da who farts. Glory Miller, smirking and turning away, giggling behind cupped hands with Kate and Tabby. The whispers about my first ma, what she must have been and done.

  My words will never turn as graceful as the wind. My first ma might be a pig. But I am the girl in this story and that means this is my story. That means I’m the one who’s telling it.

  My da, somehow coming up with a bit of mutton in the darkest part of winter to liven up a pot of porridge. My ma, who faces down the gossipy mas of Woolpit who still mutter from the sides of their mouths about foundlings and belonging. Mother the pig, who always seems to know just where I am, even when I have no juicy parsnip tops for her. Mother, who bit me so I may not always be able to see through the seeming, but I know when it’s happening. I know not to believe it.

  Mother, who never for a moment left me.

  Out of nowhere I crack my forehead on something hard and cold. A mighty wooden door without a mark or a carving at the end of a dim, barely lit passageway. The sounds of music and laughter are gone, and only the faintest green light picks out the frame.

  Mother brought me to this place. Or the walls let me come here just so they can trap me forever in a tiny closet while I scream and pound and slowly suffocate. Whatever’s behind this door may be my end. Or it might set me free.

  The only way to know is to open it.

  Glory turns up in the earliest part of the morning, brushing snowflakes from her hood. I’m delighted to see her and invite her in to pass the time. She agrees and takes the spindle I lend her, but she’s not on the hearth bench for two turns of the thing before she asks, “Where is Martin?”

  “Out playing with the other boys.” That line has come out of my mouth so often with the housewives that I say it without thinking, without reaching for the fairy cloth.

  “But it’s barely sunrise.” She says it like she’s truly puzzled, but I’m instantly on guard. Glory Miller did not just happen by. She intends to put eyes on Martin.

  I force a chuckle. “What I meant is that he’s gone to spend the night at a friend’s hearth. They were out playing, last I saw.”

  “You said he was sickly.” A question creeps into her voice that I have no liking for. “That he stays close to home.”

  I have to put a stop to this. I pull the fairy cloth all the way out of my apron and wring it like a dishrag. “Martin is no concern of yours. There’s no need to keep looking for him.”

  She winces hard like I slapped her, and when at length she blinks at me, thin bands of green stripe one by one through the blue of her eyes. “. . . keep looking for him . . .”

  “Right. No need for that. He’s always somewhere nearby.” I slip the fairy cloth away, then adjust the spindle in her limp hands. “Here, you should spin awhile.”

  “My da is having trouble finding the green land and the river,” Glory says dreamily. “The nearest river is far, far away. Too far for you to walk, he says. Not while you were so sick and weak. Not with Martin so little.”

  “I can only tell you what I remember.” I keep smiling. Brittle and rigid.

  “Too far from the wolf pit as well!” Glory sings, but playful instead of mean.

  The reeve is going to be trouble. He wants me back with my parents, and that is impossible. Soon enough, the lord of this place will force him to stop looking. The reeve will not be able say to his chieftain nay. I’ll be taken away from the ma and da I’ve fought so hard to make my own.

  Chore by chore. Errand by errand. I’ll need every one of these people to stand for me. I’ll need every housewife and husbandman to circle around Agnes and insist that she has always been here and should not be made to leave.

  There is a feast at the manor house. A midwinter feast, even if the villagers use it also to celebrate the birth of their god. There are tables of meat and bread, even a pile of honey cake, and I eat three heaping plates one after another because I can. Already daylight is falling and a massive fire throws shadows everywhere. The whole village is here and the mas pet my hair while the little ones swarm cheerfully, hoping for a piggyback ride.

  I am dozens of chores and hundreds of errands beyond the wide-eyed children who dared one another to bump against me to see if my touch would turn them green. The mas are happy to let me swing this child in a dizzying, giggling circle and play-punch that one on the shoulder. All the little ones love Agnes.

  I weave through the villagers, looking for Kate and Tabby. After a few moments in my company, they are suddenly going to want to play their favorite divination game, and they will seek out Glory and invite her to play. Then I will happen upon the three of them and — how about that! — they will invite me to join in. These things will happen with just the barest wisp of direction. By spring I can be done with the boy-thing’s fairy cloth. I can bury it and forget I ever put hands on it to make this place love me.

  Glory appears at my elbow, smiling in a way that sets me on edge. There are more streaks of green in the blue of her eyes. “Come this way. Hurry.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m saving you from them.” Glory gestures to Ma and Da near the fire, each holding a mug of ale and smiling at some joke. “Something’s happened to Martin. You could very well be next.”

  I go cold all over. I was not careful with the glamour. This is exactly what the boy-thing wanted — to tempt me to use something that could only lead to ruin.

  “Milord says you can stay here at the manor house if you’re frightened,” she adds.

  “No!” I flinch, then frown. “You’ve spoken to him about this?”

  “He thinks it’s really the best place for you both,” Glory says. “If you live at the manor house, I can come visit. I can stay overnight. You’ll have pretty gowns. Mayhap you’ll give me one.”

  No. No. This is all wrong. “Glory, listen to me. The boy is fine. There’s no need for any of this.”

  “If Walter and Matilda hang, you’ll have to go live at the manor house,” Glory muses.

  Like the lord of this place wanted from the beginning. Green children will make him the talk of the other lords, and chieftains have not changed much. Glory Miller is the reeve’s daughter, and it’s in the reeve’s power to hold an inquest into a disappearance. It will be the chieftain who decides fault — and punishment.

  “I will never live here,” I growl.

  Glory studies me for a long moment. Her eyes are more green than blue. “You have to. It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”

  Before I can reply, Glory lets out a long, wailing screech that brings the chatter and cheer to an abrupt, shattery halt. “I call hue and cry on Walter and Matilda! Their fosterling’s been gone since the harvest and no one’s seen him!”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. All that work, gone in an instant. I should have buried this wretched fairy cloth when I had the chance. Now Glory is glamourstruck and all she believes is the last thing she was sure of — a small, helpless boy is missing.

  She lost her brother. She’s going to see to it that I don’t lose mine.

  The reeve steps out of the crowd, holding a mug and frowning. “Glory, have you gone mad? Martin is playing with the other boys.”

  “He is not!” Glory gestures angrily. “He’s nowhere to be found and — ”

  “I saw him earlier today,” says a ma.

  “He was throwing stones with Peter and Dicken on the heath,” adds another.

  I slowly pull in a breath and dare a sidelong glance. Woolpit is nodding. People are looking bewildered and a little peeved. These people don’t get many chances to feast and drink on someone else’s coin, and here is Glory Miller ruining it with accusations that no one believes.

  “That is enough, my girl,” the reeve says sternly.

  Glory stabs a finge
r at him. “Do your job, Da.”

  There’s a startled murmur, a series of gasps. The reeve’s whole face goes stony and he says through his teeth, “Very well.”

  In two paces, he’s at Glory’s side. He hauls her screaming and squawking out of the ring of firelight and into the dim. Her voice grows quieter and eventually dies away. My ma and da are looking baffled and worried, and a crowd of their neighbors gathers around them to murmur comfortingly and wonder.

  I go sit with Kate and Tabby and play their chestnuts-and-fire game. They are quite eager to see which of them will marry last year’s May King, and they get snippy over whose chestnut moves first in the flames. It isn’t long before we hear the clanging of tiny bells, and Glory staggers into the firelight, held firmly by her da. Her face is striped by the bars of a huge metal mask and streaked with tears. Her eyes are red and raw, her pale cheeks fiery, but she says nothing. The reeve’s grip is sure, wrinkling her dress, but he looks ready to cry, too.

  “Glory Miller will wear the mask for a fortnight.” The reeve’s voice wavers, and he clears his throat. “For bearing false witness against Walter and Matilda.”

  He looses her with a jangle. Glory stumbles a step, then freezes. The reeve walks away without a glance, but he’s the only one not looking at her. The rest of Woolpit clucks and shakes its head, tsk-tsk, and Glory Miller stands alone at the feast, growing slowly more furious in the flickering light.

  The door swings soundlessly open when I step forward. I don’t even have to whisper once upon a time.

  I’m  . . . outside?

  I’m more than outside. I’m deep in the greenwood, and around me soar mighty, ancient trees. It’s quiet here, eerily so, without birdsong or the rustle of wind or even the lulling buzz of insects. I’ve never been more than a stone’s throw into the greenwood. There’s no benefit in it, and plenty of risk. Hunting the king’s deer is forbidden, even in the hungriest of times, and the milords of Saint Edmund’s and the milords of the countryside still do not agree on who may put the rabbits and birds on their tables. Instead there are bandits and thieves, wolves and badgers, and Those Good People.

  The kingdom under the mountain is only a small part of the Otherworld, Granny would say. All of it is treacherous. It will not want to let you go.

  I turn slowly, trying to work out where I am, but the towering wooden door I just went through is gone. There’s a sprawling oak there now, its branches like old bones, crooked and pointy, its acorns in sharp pieces beneath my feet.

  There’s nothing like a path anywhere, only bushy undergrowth that stretches beneath an endless span of trees.

  A chill runs down my back.

  This isn’t the greenwood. Not my greenwood. I’m still in the Otherworld. I must find the wolf pit. That’s how I got here, so that’s how I can get home. It won’t be long before Em comes after me raging, and she will do everything she can to snatch me back under the mountain and trap me there forever. The moment I get home, I must anchor myself. Salt and iron won’t work. Because of Senna, I owe something to Those Good People, and they can only be warded away if there’s no debt to collect. But she’s the only person who may have any idea how to foil a snatching, and she may not want to tell me.

  There are two girls in this story now, whether I like it or not, and this is the part where they’d start arguing. They would yell about fault and blame while a shadowy menace creeps up on them both.

  I start walking. Tiny glints of wind whisper through the trees here and there, but slippery, like the silvery flash on a frozen puddle. I hurry after them. They’re all I have in an Otherworld that won’t want me to leave.

  I’m on top of the wolf pit almost before I can stop. I skid hard, arms flailing, but only clods of earth tumble toward the shadows at the bottom. The pit looks deeper than I remember, and darker. Overhead, oaks that look bigger and older than the Woolpit trees block out the sky, but for the tiniest peeps of twilit greenish-gray.

  I’ve got to go down there. It’s the only way home. But if I can’t work out how to cross, I won’t be able to climb out of the pit on my own. Em will find me and there’ll be nowhere to hide.

  Or she won’t. I could starve instead. Like those wolves, pacing and whining and finally collapsing, and my white bones would slowly sink into the earth.

  The wind must have led me here for a reason, so I swallow hard, lower myself belly-down onto the edge of the pit, and crawl in backward. My feet don’t touch the bottom, so I make myself let go and slide what feels like leagues, my dress riding up and my bare legs scraping the cold, jaggedy ground.

  My hands are pale against the pit walls, but there’s the unmistakable pattern of earth on them. It’s like when you lean too long against a haymow and the weave of it stays pressed into your legs. Some of Em’s glamour is still on me. Just like Mother when she made her escape. I run my fingers over the uneven, stubbly sides. There’s a ripple of movement farther down and I stop cold. Mayhap Those Good People won’t get a chance to trap me. Mayhap I’ll be torn apart by a desperate wolf instead.

  It’s not a wolf, though. It’s a rope.

  A rope hangs over the opposite side of the pit and there are knots tied every arm’s length, like it was made to be climbed. I don’t hesitate. I’m up and out of the pit in a trice. I stumble a few tottery steps away from the greenwood and —

  I’m on the heath. The Woolpit heath.

  My hands are sun-browned and cut across the palms from the wheat field. But there are no patterns. No marks.

  My eyes are burning. The heath is blurry and it’s a good thing I know it well. I cannot run fast enough. My ma and da will be worried, but I’ll say I got lost in the greenwood. It’s kind of true. They’ll be angry I ventured there, especially when everyone must help at the harvest, but after the scoldings and the smackings they’ll forgive me. I’m their baby. Like I was born to them.

  But first I must find Senna. It won’t do a lick of good to hug my parents if Em can simply snatch me back under the mountain. Senna made this bargain. It’s her mess to clean up, not mine.

  I am home.

  No way am I still in the Otherworld, not with the sky that cheerful blue and packed with clouds like sheep on the common. Not with how the leaves on the oaks and elms are such a lively green —

  Green. I left at the harvest, when the leaves were turning. Red and brown flying everywhere, crunching underfoot. The air smelling heavy, like wheat chaff and sweat. Not delicate growing things and new flowers opening every day. Those Good People feast and revel every night, and I passed only days down there.

  At least it seemed like days.

  There’s someone crouching at the bottom of the path that leads up to my house, unmoving like a toadstool. Despite the sun, she’s bundled in a heavy cloak. It’s . . . Glory?

  All at once it doesn’t matter that she’s angry at me. How she repeats whatever Kate and Tabby think on just about everything. She’s been worried. That’s why she’s waiting here. So she’ll be the first to know when I get home.

  Glory sees me coming and climbs to her feet. Her dress is mucky to the knees, and her yellow hair is a thickety tangle of straw and mud. She peers at me so intently that I stop mid-hug and draw back.

  “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” Glory asks in a strange, cautious voice. “From one of the fairs at the abbey?”

  “No. I’m Agnes.” It sounds strange to say aloud. “Your friend.”

  “I do have a friend named Agnes, but she looks nothing like you.” Glory frowns. There’s a faint red line across her forehead, like an old scar that’s healing. “She’s in danger, but no one believes me. I’m the only one who can keep her safe. I keep watch on her house now.”

  She gestures up the track, to the smudge of thatch and wattle that’s my home.

  “The girl who lives there,” I say uncertainly. “The one who’s green?”

  Glory nods. “Agnes.”

  For the first time in what feels like forever, I have to fight to ma
ke words line up in my head. “Glory, it’s me. It’s Agnes. The other girl is not. Not me. I’m me. That other girl is called Senna, and she’s one of the Trinovantes and she’s not from now. She’s from sometime long ago before any of our grannies’ grannies were here. Her people were being killed by men from Rome, and the king under the mountain offered her a bargain, that if she agreed to serve Those Good People, she’d get to live. Only she must not have thought it through, because it’s as bad down there as all the stories say, so she tricked him somehow and . . .”

  I trail off as the rotty smell drifts by like a breeze. There’s only one reason I’d be smelling glamour, and it means I absolutely cannot spend one more moment talking to Glory. Senna must help me and it must be now.

  But when I try to dodge past Glory, she grabs my elbow and pulls me up short. “No. I do remember you, Fair Agnes. You were always following me around. Never taking the hint that you weren’t wanted.”

  It hits me square. She can’t mean it. It’s the glamour. It has to be.

  “You humiliated me in front of the May King and my friends at the Maying last year,” Glory goes on, redoubling her grip and wrenching me closer, “and you killed my brother because you can’t stand it when no one’s paying you any mind.”

  Kate and Tabby were not your friends, I want to say, and we were there together with baby Hugh. Neither of us put the poker across the cradle.

  The smell is stronger now, as heavy as Glory’s grip. Her eyes should be blue but instead they’re the same deep, vivid green as Senna’s cloak. As the light in the kingdom under the mountain.

  “Yes,” Glory whispers. “Yes, I remember. You’re the one who killed that poor green boy and then fled to hide your crime.”

  “Killed him? I — what?”

  “Then where were you? Almost a year you’ve been away, and if you’re alive to return, someone was keeping you.” Glory says it like there was something amiss with the keeping I must have had, and I shudder.