'He never said that to anybody. He said he found it under a bramble.'
'Aye, well, do you think a grown man, nearly sixty years of age when it happened, would talk about how he had been as scared as a baby by some shadows?' Mullan smirked triumphantly and settled his point with a sweep of his pipe hand. A few ashes scattered from the bowl and drifted off into the air.
'You're making it up.'
'Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. You can take it or leave it. I'll tell you this, though. When I was your age, if I'd turned the word on any of my elders, I'd have got a thick ear.' For a second Mullan looked almost fierce, and it was possible to see the young soldier who had gone over the top on a long-ago July morning.
'Sorry,' Michael said sullenly. He had been going to tell the old man about the fox faces by the river, but he was sure it would be indifferently received. Still his secret, then.
Mullan levered himself upright on the pitchfork and retrieved his bucket with a clank. 'Never you mind it. But remember that there are more things in heaven and earth...' He trailed off. 'Aye. More things than you can poke a stick at. Listen to your elders and maybe you'll learn something. Now I'm off. Stay out of mischief.'
And he lurched away with the pitchfork slung over his shoulder as if it were an Enfield, humming 'Tipperary' and towing smoke behind him.
WHEN MULLAN HAD gone Michael wandered his way down to the dip of the river in the bottom meadow. Despite the brightness of the day, it was dim there in the shadow of the trees. He stood undecided on the lip of the slope and stared down to where the river plashed and burbled to itself. Hazel stumps stood like square-topped stones in the litter of the wood floor. He began thinking ... What if?
What if there were Little People in the woods, like in the stories Rose told him. What if there were wolves and bears and trolls, wicked witches—and fairies, too? But not ones that lived in flowers. What if they were big and silent and gleeful, more like goblins? They would have a goblin kingdom, castles and mines. And there would be knights in armour with swords and women in towers with long hair. What if it were all real, all true?
And something like a picture entered his mind— someone else's memory, perhaps—something which had happened a long time ago in another place. Or something which had still to occur.
THE HORSES WERE spent, head-hung and exhausted. The stink of their sweat was steaming the air as Michael and Cat dismounted, their own leg muscles trembling in sympathy.
'We've not lost them,' Cat said, pushing the wet hair from her face. Michael nodded. He was almost too tired to care. Fear had carried them far, but tiredness was dulling even that.
'Fire,' he said; 'I'll get a fire going. The light's failing. Night is coming.' There would be a moon again. The full had waxed and was on the wane but it was still thick and silver in the sky. Enough to quicken the blood of the pursuit. Enough to hunt by. Soon the woods would be a dappled maze of moonlight and shadow, a silver chiaroscuro.
'Lord, I'm sick of trees,' he said.
Cat did not reply. She was unsaddling the horses, wiping them down with the sodden saddle blankets. No picket pins would be needed tonight to keep them from straying.
Darkness. It was creeping out of the trunks of the trees, seeping up out of-the leaf mould, bleeding into the snow-leaden clouds. He was sick of darkness, also. Two thirds of every day seemed given to it.
There was dead wood in plenty about the feet of the silent trees, and small drifts of dry leaves in the crook of roots. Elsewhere gobbets of snow marked the wood floor where the canopy was thin. The ground was cold, clay below the humus sucking the heat away. They needed the fire. It was both a defence and a heartener.
He skinned a knuckle on the steel and cursed softly. His weak hand made things awkward. Spark after spark leapt into the tinder, smoked a moment and then died. At last, though, one caught and glowed; He bent his face to the ground and blew with infinite care until he had a flame, fragile as blossom, curling into the leaves and twigs. Bird-nest linings made good tinder, feathers and all, if they were old and sheltered enough.
The flame spread. He eased wire-thin twigs into it, coaxed it around them. And when he straightened, back creaking, he saw with a shock that it was almost fully dark.
Cat unrolled their bedding, and even across the fire he could smell the damp staleness of it. Too many rainy nights, too much clay underfoot. They drew less warmth from it than from each other's bodies. And even with that closeness they had not loved in many days. Someone had to watch, all the time. So they would not both be woken, as had happened three nights ago, by the screams, and sit up to see the eyes in the dark beyond the firelight, hear the grunting snarls that were almost speech.
They had nearly died.
The fire caught well. He could toss wrist-thick branches on it now and watch the sparks spiral into the air like just-forged stars. The warmth was a blessing on his wind-scoured face, soothing the long ache of his scarred limbs.