A Different Kingdom(20)

'You're too grown up for your own good!' Aunt Rachel had shouted at him, after he had made a remark about her soda bread that had caused even his grandfather to smirk helplessly. But she had not stopped there. 'Hanging around with Rose as if she was your sister, and her ten years older, that's what ruined you, boy.' And there had been a shocked silence in the kitchen. Michael had blundered out with treacherous tears stinging his throat, but not too quickly to miss Pat's voice raised in anger, Rachel's shrill reply.

As always, it was dimmer under the trees, a darker, grimmer shade than the green swaying dimness of summer. He scuffed through leaves for a moment, thinking of Rose with a baffled, angry confusion of grief and desire, and then shifted into his wood mode, watching his step. It was possible there might be something in the wood on an evening like this. Dusk and dawn, Mullan had said once, and he had been right.

Michael had seen huge deer in these woods, and something that might have been a beaver once, slapping in the river—and wolves, of course. They were dark, the wolves, blacker than those he had seen in animal encyclopedias, with larger skulls and bonier frames, their legs like long jointed sticks. Built for speed, like greyhounds. He had watched them from the branches of trees, stinking of woodsmoke to hide his smell. Mullan had taught him that.

There were around a dozen of them, though the numbers varied, and they most often were encountered moving north to south, swimming the little river without a thought and casting about the undergrowth as though following a scent. Once he had seen them in the open fields below the upper meadow, a distant crowd of loping shapes, tiny as ants in the failing light. For the life of him, Michael could not figure out where they had come from or what they were doing here. He knew that the last wolf of the British Isles had been killed in Scotland in the eighteenth century. There were no longer beasts in the fields to be afraid of, and in Ireland at least there were no wildernesses left. The puzzle fascinated him.

But there were no wolves here this evening. He could hear the river, full and rushing between its banks. The undergrowth was dying off with the approach of winter and the ground between the trees was almost bare, clay covered with leaf mould, cold and damp.

It was the sound of voices that halted him.

He crouched, the ground cold on his knees, and saw on the other side of the river a flicker of yellow light. A fire. He edged forward, knowing who it must be, afraid but curious—and still bloody minded from his tangle with Aunt Rachel.

They were in the dip on the western bank of the river. He could see their shapes squatting in front of the flames, backs to him, the evening becoming dark enough for the fire to dazzle him. He closed one eye and crept forward,' felt his palm slide in muck and then sink in freezing river water. Around him the trees soared up and the rain dripped off them in a pattering susurration. He was covered, sight and sound. And smell, for he could smell them, the same smell as before, and he was a frightened child again for a second, rigid with one foot shin deep in the churning river, smelling the musky reek of them. But he was almost thirteen now, an old thirteen, a big thirteen, not far off six feet and as lean as a cat. He was invincibly young, and pig-headed to boot. He waded out across the river.

The rain grew heavier, trickling down his neck and soaking his shoulders. The fire flared as someone threw another faggot into its heart. The light shone off rain-slick forms and the smell grew thicker. Wet bodies, unwashed and wood-filthy. The talk subsided abruptly, and for a panicky second he thought they were aware of him, but there was a moan, a savage grunt of deep pain, and then the talking started again. If it was talk. It sounded like the muttering of discontented hounds.

He was barely twenty feet from them when he halted, unwilling to trust his woodcraft further. Their fire cast a tiny dome of yellow light in the blackness of the wet trees, lit up the falling raindrops as if they were sparks come from some overhead forge. Four of the Fox-People squatted around the flames, their masks making them into prick-eared shadows, the eye sockets strangely lifelike. They were huddled in thick furs. (Bear? Michael wondered. No. Not thick enough. He looked again. Wolf. They were clad in wolfskins, with the spiky neck ruffs pulled round to their napes so they appeared hunchbacked. )

He could see the paint on their faces, pale as lime. White across the eyes and then some darker pigment rubbed in on the nose and mouth. There were other skins under the wolf furs. Fox, probably. He thought he saw the end of a brush peeping out towards the fire. They had rawhide belts and slings, roughly sewn pouches (mostly empty), and beside them on the sodden leaves were spears and knives, some of cruelly sharp flint, others of what might have been bronze, green and slick.