by Helen Slavin
“What? I didn’t botch it all for you?”
Aron laughed and kissed her, his twinkling eyes casting downwards as he pulled away.
“You did not.”
He didn’t look at her again. He glanced back out of the doorway and gestured to his car.
“I thought we could maybe try again tonight? Head out for a quiet dinner. Something special. Just the two of us.” His eyes focused on his fingers, which were reaching for her cheek, a soft stroke upwards. It reminded her of Anna’s finger moving to her lips last night to hush her: “It’s okay”, when it was very far from that. Charlie tamped down the sense of panic. Going out with Aron was the easy path, the escape route. The harsh scent wafted in again. It was metallic and a little bit chemical, and Charlie needed to get it out of her brewhouse.
“No. Sorry.” She hadn’t meant to sound harsh. It was something to do with the metallic scent, as if it was adjusting the acoustics of her voice. She could taste it as she spoke. Bitter-edged like frost. “I am really sorry,” she tried again with no effect. The scent was tainting the tone of her voice. An alarm bell was ringing in a distant part of her head. What was this alarm? There was only one way to find out.
“I have Havoc Wood stuff on tonight.” She expected his rancour, but he just nodded, leaned in to kiss her.
“I get it. I’ve said before. I totally get it. Family stuff is family stuff.” His hand traced a tender line at her neck. “I sprung it on you. We can take a rain check.” He kissed her again and began to move out. “I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll text you,” she promised.
But on the way back home, she switched her phone off and felt the layers of doubt and fear settle around her like a cloak.
6
Family Traits
The flock of Canada geese had landed overnight and were dispersed across the field of winter barley.
“They’ve not done too much damage.” Winn made the statement as she and Emz crossed the rutted field in company with Logan’s mum, Etta Boyle.
“Yet,” Etta said darkly. “They only landed in last night. Made a hell of a racket.” They moved towards the clutch of geese. “Took a detour from your place?” Etta asked. Winn shrugged.
“We’ve had a couple of flocks in already. You could be right, though. This is a lovely spot though.” Winn looked around at the wide expanse of field freckled with shoots of winter barley, the river running through it, another field beyond, and, at the edges, the orchards. Etta Boyle looked at her muddied Wellingtons.
“If you say so. We’ve never had them land before.”
“Who knows, who knows?” Winn mused as she looked back towards the gate through which they’d come and assessed the ragged incline of it down to the river.
“So, Winn, can you take them?” Etta asked. “’Cause if you can’t, Mike will be up here with Logan and the shotguns before the week’s out, and he’s even suggested having a shooting party at the weekend, charging folk for bagging themselves a Christmas goose.”
Winn looked round with a nod. “Yes. I understand. They are the epitome of Wild and Free Range.” She took in a huffing breath. “Right. Yes. We need to get the trailer nearer. Can we open that gate at the edge of the orchard?”
The gate was opened, and Winn manoeuvred down through the orchard. It was one thing organising the transport, it was quite another persuading the geese to accept the lift. Etta, Winn, and Emz herded and flocked and chased and, at the end of an hour, had precisely three geese in the trailer.
“I could do with a coffee,” Etta sighed, as they watched the geese huddle at the river’s edge. She took out her mobile and texted back to the farmhouse for refreshments.
“And a big net,” Winn said.
The sky darkened with rain clouds and the air chilled further as the sound of the quad bike buzzed over the field towards them. Emz turned from their fruitless efforts at goose gathering to see Logan Boyle at the controls. He pulled up and took out a basket from the back of the quad bike. He was first to have his hand in it and take out a sausage roll.
“Consider that your tip,” his mother said, as she handed out mugs and began to pour coffee from a flask.
“No luck then?” Logan smirked at his mum who pulled a face in return.
“Don’t start, smart arse.” She sipped more coffee and handed out a tin filled with sausage rolls.
“I said I should come and herd ’em.” Logan was leisurely. “Dad’s got the dogs, but I’ve got the quad bike, and it’s the same principle.” Logan looked at his mother and then, with a more polite expression of respect, at Winn. “What d’you reckon, Winn?”
The quad bike growled into action and, after ten minutes, had driven the geese further down the bank onto a patch of mud at the river’s edge — some were on the water, none were moving off the farmland. There was an electricity in the air being generated by both the nervous geese and the encroaching storm.
“STOP, STOP, STOP!” Etta chased after the quad bike. “You’re just churning up the bank… pack it in, pack it in.” She flagged him down, frantic, and Logan tore up the farthest edge of the bank, the quad bike slithering a little in the clag of mud before it gripped and dragged over the rising ground to the edge of the field.
“Have to let Dad shoot them.” Logan did not leave his seat. “We could do a Saturday shooting party. We’ll be minted.” His smirk was itching at Emz. How might it feel to slap that face? Her palm stinging against his skin, his hand rising to snatch at her wrist and then… as fantasy Logan turned to look right into her eyes, so the real and genuine Logan turned to look at her on the river bank. Emz felt heat flash through her.
“You could donate the cash to Prickles,” Emz flared back, hearing the blade in her voice. Etta and Winn looked at her and then at Logan.
“We’re not shooting anything just yet.” Etta was conciliatory, and her phone began to ring out. Logan laughed.
“That’ll be Dad.” He turned meaningfully to Emz. “What do you stuff a goose with?” That smirk again, it was so pleased with itself. Emz turned to the geese. The wind was getting up, she could hear Etta’s half of the conversation and hear the bullets in it from the farmhouse end. Logan started up the quad once more, the engine puttering and growling.
Emz turned to the geese. No. No one was shooting any geese, not on her watch. She saw them huddling together, their necks graceful, their heads lifted and watchful. Beyond them, the river whooshed. In less than an hour there would be rain. She could taste it in the air. She looked at the birds. Black. White. Brown. Buff and bronze and bark. Feathers layered. The weak light catching at odd edges and giving them a silvered edge. Wings, flapping, strong; feet, black and leathery, soft triangles of skin. Eyes. Jet beads. Look.
Look. Into the heart of them, where the beats fluttered and drummed. Into the heart of them. This way. This way. Emz walked, the mud of the bank no problem to her leathered goose feet. This, this, this hiss way, hoo, thisthisthisthisthis, here.
The geese began to move, their necks turning as if at a signal, towards the trailer. With a few flapped wings, they began to speed up, a waddling sea of goose, thisthisthisthis way. Thisthisthis way.
Winn jumped to open the trailer. The three geese inside were calm and wary as the leathery feet began padding towards them, the feathered bodies shuffling in and jostling together, thisthisthis way. No sound, no honking panic, a soft susurrating hiss like a whisper.
Emz shut the trailer up and realised she had not been breathing. She took in a deep breath now.
Etta Boyle regarded her for a moment. “Take after your gran then.”
Winn cleared her throat and fussed with the keys as she headed to the Defender.
“Better get them gone.” Winn climbed in and started the engine. Emz looked at Logan and then, with a frantic wave of her arms, rushed at him shouting “SHOO!” before turning to jump into the moving car.
In the wing mirror she saw Etta Boyle laughing, patting Logan on the shoulder. Logan, no longer loo
king so smirky, overtook them on the quad bike moments later, spurtling through the mud at the field’s edge, away, to the farmhouse.
7
The Way Home
“Do what?” Anna was part way through cooking their dinner, the pots and pans a clanging distraction from her thoughts. She had kept her eyes on the cooker, not glancing out of the windows at the twitch of any and every branch, her heart leaping into her mouth at what wildlife she might spot there.
“Show me Day’s Ride.” Charlie threw Emz’s jacket at her, followed by her boots. She moved to switch off the oven, but Anna stopped her.
“Don’t be daft. Leave it on and it’ll be ready when we return.” Anna wiped her hands on the tea cloth and headed into the scullery for her jacket.
They walked in silence. Havoc Wood itself seemed to hold its breath as they passed, the sound of their trudging feet an arrhythmic heartbeat. Anna and Emz took turns in leading this way and that, their feet sure as they navigated through the wood once more. They stuck with the route they had returned by, making quick time to the foot of ThinThrough so they were all breathing hard with the effort of the steep climb.
“Where is this?” Charlie was slightly freaked out by their location. She knew her way around the wood, she was the Pathfinder after all, but this was off their usual track. She couldn’t recall being here before, and yet there was a hint, a scent of the familiar. If she’d been here, it was long ago, a dusty childhood memory.
“Not much further… is it? Emz?” Anna looked to her youngest sister for confirmation. Emz was marching ahead.
“Here. Just here.” Emz picked up the pace as they reached the line of trees that disguised the green lane of Day’s Ride.
This time they did not break out of the trees onto the wide path; instead they felt the need to hang at the edge, each sister looking up and down the route. It appeared quiet.
“No traffic,” Charlie said at last. She had been deep in thought, aware that her fear was like a zipped-up parka. It was giving her tunnel vision and making her unable to see the way through the wood. At the edge of Day’s Ride, she felt something lift. It was written into her sister’s faces. They had found this place once more, they had done this. The seemingly small and simple task carried a different momentum. There was something about Day’s Ride. She was afraid. Grandma Hettie had always said, “You aren’t brave if you aren’t afraid.”
Charlie took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and let the fear she felt slide away. She stepped forward onto Day’s Ride and opened her eyes. It was a green lane, like many others that ran through and around the wood, an ancient trackway, sheltered on both sides by trees that reached towards each other, making a tunnel of branches and leaves. Except that this one was broader, straighter, than any she had previously seen, stretching out into the distance in both directions.
The path glowed before her. The light it gave off was like seawater in sunlight, the fallen leaves and detritus of the wood making a golden surf. As she looked, she could see other pathways branching off, but Day’s Ride flowed onwards. There was a breeze, a scent carried to her of herbs, sorrel, and lemon balm, from this direction. She turned and inhaled the mousy scent of hemlock, the fust of foxglove. There was a lesson to be had, and she learned it.
“What is it?” Anna asked. Charlie stepped out of her Pathfinding thoughts and looked at her sisters. They wore anxious expressions and remained on the raised bank in the trees. Emz, she noted, had her hand on the bark of the nearest trunk.
“Different scents.” She spoke in a calm and cool way because, for the first time in weeks, that was how she felt. “Lemon balm.” She pointed in the first direction. “Hemlock.” She pointed in the opposite.
“Useful,” Anna nodded.
“Maybe we should take a look at what’s growing where?” Emz suggested. “They might be markers.” Emz stepped down onto Day’s Ride, and at once Charlie saw where the light altered, darkened into starry night, a ribbon flowing from Emz’s feet. Anna was swift to step down and Charlie watched. The light burned a burnished gold. She looked at her own feet. Dirt beneath.
“What is it?” Emz asked, looking down at her own feet. “Did I step in something?”
As she moved her feet Charlie saw the velvet-sparkled dark shift and quiver. Why was there only dirt beneath her own feet? Charlie let the cloak of fear slide back up again. She turned quickly.
“Nothing. This is the way back. The quick way.” She hefted herself up onto the bank again and began to walk along a clear path down through the trees, her sisters following.
At Quinn’s Gate, the rabbit twitched under the gaze of a predator. There were many predators in Havoc Wood, but not many wore a tweedy waistcoat, flecked with what looked like burning embers and sending out a scent that was woodsmoke tinged with honey. The rabbit understood that this villain was not someone she could hop away from into the brambles, but she had no other strategy. A hop, a leap, and she was done. But the brambles twisted and snared her because this creature was the brambles. Except that, with a breath, the thorns of him released her, and she bounced away like a shot fired from a catapult.
Borrower, looking up from the lost rabbit, sensed the edges of Havoc Wood tugging at him. Ordinarily, he would have cursed whoever disturbed his hunt, and he had been looking forward to the meal of the rabbit, but this feeling was not ordinary. It was something older than himself, yawning, stretching, becoming alive.
The paths he followed were his own, taking him down to the lake in moments. The lights were on in the Gamekeeper’s cottage, so he gave it a wide berth, though his senses told him that the Gamekeepers were at large, out in the wild of the wood. He would keep himself one step ahead to avoid trouble.
He crackled inside with a new energy and wandered further from his bounds than he had in centuries. He understood that his feet were taking him, unbidden, towards the town. He had not visited Woodcastle in many hundreds of years, not since the last time. He brushed cobwebs from the memory. What had he done? His mind conjured the memory.
Hettie Way had been Gamekeeper, the latest in the line, and Borrower was not ignorant of this fact. He had understood the vows and covenants on both sides. Long ago, the first of the Way women had helped his father, and, in gratitude, he had made a bargain with her. And here Borrower was, centuries later, still paying.
It was his heritage, though, and she ought not to begrudge him, was his thought on the afternoon that the girl had wandered into Havoc Wood. He hesitated, for a hare’s breath, when he picked up her scent at the lane’s end. But what would his father say to such timidity? His father who had taught him to track such delicious strays?
When the Woodcastle women were lost, the panic made snare drums of their hearts. Such pleasing music drew him onwards. He had met her at the stile, offering his hand and the smile of a gentleman so that this little pretty would trust him. Are you lost, dear heart? No matter, I will show you the way home.
By the longest route, of course, and with stolen kisses, and when at last they had reached Banner Hill, he asked only a small tithe, a fingerbone, from the middle finger of her left hand, not a finger she would miss. The whistle he had fashioned from it blew a high piercing note, and at its call she must come to him. Each time. Running.
He saw her bare feet in the wood, the mud on her petticoats, the moon on her skin, and he might have drunk her tears till his thirst was slaked.
Until the evening when he had blown the note and it was no petticoat that snaggled in the brambles at the edge of his clearing. It was a black cape, weathered and proofed and cracking with doom, over the shoulders of Hettie Way.
He had never been so fleet as at that moment. He had launched himself up into the branches, borrowing the skill of flight from the crows, enough to take him footstep by footstep into the canopy where she could not follow. On and on he had raced, borrowing the speed of the weasel, heart in mouth, ahead of her, out further still, from Hackett to Hare’s Ell and settling at last in the crook of the Old Elm to la
ugh at his lucky escape.
Later, he had been unwise enough to stroll up to Frog Pond to rinse the sweat of pursuit into the cool dark waters. The black cape, weathered and waxed against the elements, disguised her until it was too late, her hands in his hair, dredging him from the black depths to lie stranded, gasping on the stone as she cowed him with her magic, set Bounds about him so he could go so far, no further, in Havoc Wood.
He had tried to escape, here or there, but each instance he was dragged back by her binding spell, and Pike Lake spat him out onto the shore.
She had known his history, his lineage. She had honoured the bargain with his father. That was all that saved him. She had known, too, that they called him, amongst other names, Borrower.
It was known that the things he borrowed were never the same once returned. They were “turned”, some said. He had turned them towards Havoc Wood, he had awakened desire and wanting. They were not grateful for his gift.
The young women of Woodcastle were made of sterner stuff than Borrower’s own kind. They were flirty and fighty rather than tricksy and self-seeking. The females of Borrower’s own tribes were like himself: too cunning, too conniving, eager to use him for their own ends.
The women of Woodcastle were odd and vital; muscles and hearts and breath, exotic and intriguing. The bones broke of course, along with the hearts and also those flickering lantern minds they possessed.
The Gamekeeper had put a stop to it of course. He let his mind wander back. But what woman would not want to be his for all time? Cossetted in squirrel furs, her hair tied up with cobwebs?
Was that the message of the dream? That the Gamekeeper was dead, that the Bounds she had set him were broken? Or had Halloween set something else free? Was it time to go out into the world once more and borrow himself a wife?
