by Mary Watson
Dropping the toast in the slop bucket, I searched the junk drawer for the letter opener I’d stashed there. Then Maeve hustled me out, jacket in hand.
She sent me into the dark day to catch some flies.
And there I was, alone in the ghost estate, feeling the creeping cold. I ran my eyes over the houses, wishing I wasn’t the stand-in bird in this warped version of the hunt. It struck me as odd that I’d never seen a real wren hunt, except on TV, and there the masked wrenboys parading the streets with the plastic bird made it look like such a merry, rousing thing. Not like this, this secret hunt that none of the villagers seemed to notice, this chase that was so dark and unhappy. On TV, the masks and music were mysterious and thrilling, but here they felt sinister.
‘David.’ I cupped my hands around my mouth. My voice echoed through the untended square. The houses stared back with empty eyes.
No trace of the boys. Just an old Coke can in the middle of the road.
It was always the thrill of the chase for them. Those final exhilarating minutes when they closed the distance between us. It didn’t happen often, but there’d been years when I won. When I got away, gasping for breath as I ran through the cottage gate while David watched from the trees.
But most of the time, they caught me. Tracked me through the village, the forest, even down by the lake. And they’d make me sit with them while they drank beer and decided on their trophy.
A dull, echoing scrabble that might have been boots against loose stone came from the other side of the rubble heap. My immediate reaction, deeply ingrained, was to run. I held my body rigid and refused to turn away.
‘David.’ My voice was loud and angry.
The sound of high-pitched male laughter echoed through the empty space. I moved towards the running footsteps. By the time I climbed the rubble heap, they were gone.
Not for the first time, I cursed my name.
Wren.
Might as well stick a sign on my back saying, ‘Please hassle me on Stephen’s Day.’ It was the only thing my mother had given me before she ran off with a man from God knows where when I was a few days old. Fallen in with a bad crowd, her judgement had been clouded by an addiction to heroin. She’d taken money and jewellery and left me behind.
I jumped down from the rubble and kicked the Coke can, watching it rattle away. Walking on, I heard deliberate noises from just beyond: scuffling, some rustling. But when I turned and called out, no one was there. Purple clouds hung low, making the near darkness tighter.
Talk to them, Maeve had said. When I left the cottage, flowery bag in hand, I was sure I would find the boys, hand over whiskey and cake, and reason with them. But that was before the darkness started settling in. That was before they started playing hide-and-seek.
A distant noise broke the silence. It could have been an echo of laughter or a cry from somewhere in the woods. A fox, I hoped.
The faint smell of cigarette smoke wafted over, and then it was gone.
In the village, they said that the woods weren’t friendly after sundown. They said that bad things lurked in the forest, hidden behind the dank, fallen boughs. The good people of Kilshamble liked nothing more than blood and gore. We were fed gruesome stories with mother’s milk.
We loved best the stories of the bloodthirsty tuanacul, the people of the forest, who would crush you in their embrace. Beautiful, strong tree men with roped muscles, who kissed you until you withered. Women with lips of petal, who lured you close and wrapped vine-like arms around you, choking the life out of you.
I believed these stories as much as I believed in aliens and ghosts, so barely at all. Except on those days when the light was violet and the wind blew wild and the forest and fields felt restless.
‘Wran.’
He said my name the way they did in the old song.
My tormentor.
While I was fixed on imaginary dangers, the real trouble had nestled in close. He spoke my name as gentle as a caress.
Wran.
He almost sighed it.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
‘David.’ Maybe I could pretend that this was a normal chat between neighbours. ‘You have a good Christmas?’
He reached out his other hand and steered me to face him.
‘Sure.’ He leaned in, smiling. ‘But I prefer Stephen’s Day.’
He was good-looking, tall, with the back and shoulders of a rower. For the last three years, he’d attended a posh boarding school overseas. He had that easy confidence that came from wealth. From being told that he deserved the best and no one else mattered. But it was more than his rich-boy arrogance that made me despise him.
He was one of them.
If it wasn’t so awful, it might almost be funny, David’s instinct to target me. That somehow, blindly, in playing this game, he’d stumbled upon his true enemy. I was the Capulet to his Montague, the hot to his cold, the white queen to his black knight. I was the oil to his water, the bleach to his ammonia, the salt to his wound. We were everything that was anathema to the other.
I was augur to his judge.
We would never be friends.
David didn’t know what I was, yet he sensed something was amiss. Something about me vexed him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He didn’t know that from that very first chase years ago he’d unwittingly recognised me. This game was blueprinted in hundreds of years of hostility between judges and augurs.
‘About that,’ I said. ‘About the game.’ I said the word carefully, hoping he couldn’t read my fear. ‘It’s been enough.’
‘Enough?’
‘Yes. No more. This ends today.’ Maeve’s words sounded weak and watery when I said them.
‘Yeah?’ David seemed to have come closer without having moved at all. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ He took a drag of his cigarette before crushing it under his shoe. ‘Run?’
‘Nothing to chase if I’m not running.’ If only it were that simple. Better to be a hunted wren than a sitting duck.
I pulled the whiskey from the flowery bag. But looking at David, something seemed different. He was cooler than usual. Smirkier. Behind stood his toadies, Brian and Ryan. All muscle and no brain.
‘I’m calling a truce, David.’ I handed over the whiskey.
David smiled, then examined the bottle.
‘I’m after passing my exams,’ he said. ‘In the mood for a little celebration.’
He twisted the cap open.
‘I’m getting a new tattoo to mark the occasion. Maybe a wren?’ He paused as he held the bottle to his lips. ‘In a cage. What do you think?’
He took a slug, and slowly screwed the cap back on. He held out his hand to shake mine. Reluctant, I placed a tentative hand in his large, rough one. He closed on my fingers and pulled me towards him, whispering in my ear with whiskey-flavoured breath, ‘You better fly, little bird.’
Pulling away, I stood my ground, holding myself stiff so that my legs wouldn’t just run, run, run, as everything inside was braced to do.
‘Game over,’ I said.
‘Little Wren, the game is just beginning.’ And there it was again, that cool assurance, which made me think that the stakes were somehow raised this year.
I searched his face to see if he’d finally figured out why he hated me so much. As I stared, I saw a flicker of distaste, his sense that something about me was just plain wrong.
But he didn’t know.
He came closer. I didn’t move. This close, I could feel the heat from his chest. He reached out a hand to clamp my wrist.
‘Maybe we should see if your friend wants to play. What’s her name again? The pretty blonde one?’
Nearly dropping the flowery bag, I pulled away. But damn it if I was going to let him bring Aisling into his crazy game. Even as a child playing in the woods or quarry, Aisling had never liked to run. No way would anyone do this to her.
I turned on my heel and fled.
‘I’ll give you to fifty,�
�� David called after me.
I was out of reach by three. I could hear him counting slowly, as if we really were playing hide-and-seek and he was being especially patient.
It would be quicker to cut through the woods. But I wasn’t the idiot girl in the movies who hurled herself into the arms of the axe-wielding maniac by going into dark places.
David and the others were right behind. They were gaining on me fast. Night would fall within the hour. I picked up my pace.
Turning the bend, I saw the boy standing in the road. Waiting. His clothes were dark and the way he stood, still and slightly hunched, made me think of the tuanacul. He was like a tree come to life, sorrowful and ancient. He turned his head, and it was Cillian, wearing a mummer’s mask. The surprised, painted eyes stared at me. Of the four bullies, he was the one most likely to become a finger-severing psychopath once he graduated from terrorising girls. That boy put the kill into Cillian.
He began the slow whistling of the song I had come to hate: The wran, the wran, the king of all birds.
Of course they had split up. That’s why David had given me such a generous start. Cillian was ahead, waiting. To the right was the McNally farm, Cillian’s family. I couldn’t go there. Behind me, the other boys were getting closer. I could hear their answering call, fast and raucous: ‘Up with the kettle and down with the pan. Give us a penny to bury the wran.’
So, like the idiot girl in the movies, the one who ends up hacked to bits, I ran into the woods.
MARY WATSON is from Cape Town and now lives on the West Coast of Ireland with her husband and three children. Highlights of her adult writing career include being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in Oxford in 2006, and being included on the Hay Festival's 2014 Africa39 list of influential writers from sub-Saharan Africa. The Wickerlight is her second book for young adults, following The Wren Hunt.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Mary Watson, 2019
Mary Watson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: PB: 978-1-4088-8491-1; eBook: 978-1-4088-8492-8
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