by Kit Peel
She was scared, but she had never let herself be intimidated by anyone her whole life and wasn’t going to start now.
“What is it?” John asked her.
“Don’t you see…?” Wyn broke off, realizing the others couldn’t see the strange man.
“See what?” asked John.
“Nothing.”
“What are you on about now?” said Lisa.
As the older girl spoke, the collie dog from the night before bounded through the snow, stopping by the old man’s side, its hair bristling on its back.
“It’s just a dog,” said Lisa.
“Looks friendly,” said John hesitantly, as he held out the palm of his hand towards the collie. The dog growled.
“Or maybe not,” he muttered.
“Top skills, John-o,” whispered Kate.
Wyn still couldn’t understand why they could see the dog and not the man. He began striding towards them and the dog kept pace, growling at the young people, who automatically began backing away. All except Wyn, until John and Kate grabbed hold of her.
“Whatever happens, don’t …” began John.
The old farmer adjusted his pack and now Wyn saw an ancient-looking axe was strapped to it, its blade wet with snow. Not taking his eyes off Wyn, and still coming towards them, the man drew out his axe.
“Run!” shouted Wyn.
She slapped Kate’s hand into John’s and shouted for him to hold on to Lisa. Grabbing Kate’s free hand, Wyn half ran, half dragged the others in a line, one behind each other, down through the wood. She led them slithering down the bank to the frozen stream, then across the footbridge and through the rusty gate onto the road. When they were all through, Wyn slammed the gate shut and fastened the latch.
Looking up from her task, she saw the old man and his collie dog standing on the bridge, not twenty yards away. He leaned forward on his axe, staring at her intensely. John, Kate and Lisa watched the dog from the road.
“I think we’re okay,” said John.
“No thanks to you, idiot,” Lisa told Wyn. “You never should run from a dog.”
“What is that next to the collie?” said Kate.
John was squinting, too.
“There is something. It’s like a shadow,” he said.
Just as he spoke, the man and the collie slipped off the bridge and went back into the wood, vanishing between trees.
“What do you think that was?” asked Kate.
“Nothing,” said Wyn.
“It might have been a trick of the fog, like a sort of mirage, because I’m sure there was something,” said John.
“You don’t believe the freak,” said Lisa.
At any other time, Wyn would have thrown back an insult, or worse. For once, though, she had no reply. Against her will, tears were coming. She turned and hurried along the road. Kate called after her, but Wyn broke into a run, losing herself in the fog.
As Kate was calling out to Wyn, the barefoot man reappeared high up in Skrikes Wood, the collie dog at his side. He stood as still as the trees around him, frowning deeply, his green eyes fixed on the girl racing along the icy road, hair streaming behind her.
4
—
In the crisp early light of the following morning, Kate stood shivering in her pajamas, her arms wrapped around her.
The church bells were ringing for seven o’clock. Behind the house, Kate’s horse, Dash, kicked his stable door, wanting fresh air and breakfast.
“I’d better be going,” said Wyn.
“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
If ever Wyn had wanted company on her weekly early-morning task, it was now. All night she had been assaulted by images of the barefoot farmer and all night she had heard the insistent voice of the wind sweeping around the house, whispering a name over and over. She had spent most of the night sitting on the windowsill, peering out into the darkness, desperately trying to think of a rational reason for what was happening to her. Just as dawn had broken, she had convinced herself that it was just her imagination playing tricks on her.
Now, faced with the walk up the dale and the unshakeable feeling that the barefoot farmer was somewhere out there, watching her, her nervousness had returned. The only thing that stopped her from saying yes to Kate was the fear of putting her friend in danger.
“No, I’m fine,” she told Kate, as she fastened her snowshoes over her boots. Kate tiptoed outside.
“Don’t forget these,” she said, handing Wyn a pair of scissors.
“Thanks.”
“And keep your eyes peeled for those wolves, Wyn March.”
“I’ll see you at church,” she told Kate, and reluctantly her friend waved her off.
Wyn’s path took her across fields from the farm and through the jackdaw wood.
Last night’s snowfall glistened on bare branches. The jackdaws’ nests were white crowns. The birds treated her as an object of curiosity, heckling her from the treetops. And even though she was sure they were poking fun at her, she was glad of the birds’ company. When all the rest of the dale had been cast into silence by the snow, the jackdaws had remained as raucous as ever. To Wyn’s mind, they were the tough, beating heart of Nidderdale and her favorite birds.
Leaving the wood, Wyn followed a track onto the Wath road, which carved a line on the hillside above the river. The morning mists were evaporating from the tops. The day was going to be clear; fresh, breezeless. Here and there on the road were the tracks of small animals, which could have been stoats or squirrels — Wyn wasn’t certain. They were definitely too small for wolf tracks.
Once she was sure she saw a figure standing stock-still in shadows across the river, but when she stopped and stared, it was only a tree. She was grateful when the road dipped under the cover of ash and hawthorns, and fearful again as the trees thinned and the walls shrank to nothing on the riverside. Wyn heard a rustle behind her and spun around, her heart racing. The road was empty.
On the outskirts of the small hamlet of Wath, she turned up a broad track that led into Spring Wood. As she went up the track, Wyn’s fearfulness about the barefoot farmer faded, replaced by an overriding sense of grief. She had made this walk every Sunday for the past three years and it had never become easier.
Steeling herself, Wyn stepped out of the wood. A small house loomed up on the right, half buried by snow drifts. It had been deserted for three years. Other than Wyn, nobody came here anymore.
She forced open the gate, pushing back the week’s snow that had banked up on the other side, and stepped into what had once been a front garden bursting with the plants of summer: hotly colored lupins, ruby peonies, and the reds, purples and whites of poppies and sweetpeas.
As she made her way to the walled fruit and vegetable garden behind the house, Wyn remembered all the times she had come back from school in the happy days before her first foster mother’s illness. When the weather was good, Mrs. March would almost inevitably be working in this garden. Without looking up, the short, white-haired woman would issue instructions and Wyn would run off to find the things that were needed.
As a newborn baby, Wyn had been found abandoned on the track just outside Mrs. March’s house. It had been autumn and Wyn had been left cocooned in a pile of fallen leaves. When nobody had come to claim her, she had been taken in for fostering by Mrs. March. Not that she’d been an easy charge. Wyn had hated being held, screaming every time anyone had tried to pick her up. The local nurse had given up, muttering about the “wildest child there’s ever been.” Mrs. March had persisted. Weeks passed before Wyn would let the old woman hold her. At nine months, just when Mrs. March was losing hope, the little girl crawled across the sofa and lay against her foster mother. From then on, Wyn relaxed around her foster mother, but only her. When anyone else tried to pick her up, the fiery, people-hating Wyn returned.
&n
bsp; As Wyn grew up in the house in the wood, she spent much of her time outside in the garden with Mrs. March. Wyn first crawled, then toddled around the beds of flowers and vegetables, stroking and talking to the plants as if they were her friends. When the garden flourished, bursting with life despite the cooling days, Mrs. March called Wyn her lucky garden charm. She gave the little girl her own trowel and gloves and taught Wyn what she knew, quickly discovering that her foster child seemed to have an inbuilt knowledge that far outstripped her own.
Together they made jam from the fruits in the garden, or rather they picked the fruits together and then Wyn insisted on stirring the mixture on the stove. They went on long walks among the woods and hedgerows to pick sloes and berries. These were mixed with spirits, which Mrs. March refused to let Wyn touch, prompting several heated exchanges.
Even as she grew older, and fractionally more tolerant of trips into Pateley, there was a wildness about Wyn that Mrs. March could never rein in. When thunderstorms rolled across the dale, Mrs. March gave up trying to stop the girl from racing outside and instead would watch her running around the garden, swirling and leaping in the driving rain. Mrs. March also relaxed her rule on Wyn bringing plants into her bedroom, something the girl had done from a very early age, smuggling them inside in her pockets and planting them in drawers and shoes that she had filled with soil.
Fire was a particular battleground, especially Wyn’s love of sitting right up against the living-room fire. Any fireguards that were put up would be tugged away when the old lady was out of the room. Every time Wyn was dragged away, struggling and screaming, Mrs. March was sure that the girl must have burned herself, but to her constant amazement, Wyn’s skin never seemed to get hot.
Only with the threat of having the fire blocked up and replaced with a fan heater did a glowering Wyn agree to keep a few feet back from the flames. It was a deal that she stuck to occasionally, and only when Mrs. March was in the room.
The greatest struggle Mrs. March faced was over Wyn’s hatred of school. There was no convincing the little girl that school might be fun or that she would like being with people her own age. On school mornings, Mrs. March would find Wyn’s bed empty and her window open. And even if she did manage to retrieve her foster daughter from any number of hideouts in the wood and take her, kicking and screaming, to school, almost always Mrs. March would get a call from the headmistress to say that Wyn had run off again.
It was Robin Hebden, who taught some mornings at Wyn’s school, who would find her. He had infinite patience around the little girl. From a hiding place in the crook of a tree, or one of the old hay barns close to the river, Wyn would watch Robin approach. He would never come directly up to where she was hiding, but would settle down close by and start sketching on a small pad. Eventually, Wyn would come out to see what he was drawing, and how badly he was drawing it. She had soon discovered that Robin was a hopeless draftsman. Trees were lumpen, bushes worse, walls ran across the page at the strangest angles, and when there were still sheep in the fields to draw, they were a cross between dogs and pillowcases. When she came and stood beside him, he would hand her his pad and pencil and let her have a go at sketching the same scene, sighing a little as Wyn drew it with much more skill.
Sometimes Wyn would insist on staying out, or being walked home to her house in the wood. But mostly she would let Robin take her back to school, where she would find a place at the back of the classroom, keeping as far away as possible from other children.
“She won’t be shy forever,” she once overheard Robin saying to Mrs. March.
“It’s my fault. I’ve kept her hidden away all these years,” the old lady had replied.
As much as Wyn and Mrs. March fought, they were completely devoted to one another. For all her independent, indomitable nature by day, Wyn was plagued by nightmares which reduced her to helpless tears. Mrs. March would spend long hours rocking her to sleep, frowning at the way the girl would cry out a strange name with the most inconsolable sense of loss. Mrs. March tried her utmost to stop Wyn’s nightmares, but nothing worked, and as the girl grew older, the nightmares only became more intense.
Over time, as the winter snows crept deeper and deeper into the other seasons and the north wind ran over the dale like winter’s wolves, Mrs. March began to rely more and more on Wyn. Although her spirit was as tough as hawthorn, the changing weather began to take a toll on the old woman. In the last few years they shared a bed. Mrs. March’s presence calmed Wyn when the nightmares came for her, and the remarkable heat of Wyn’s body warmed her foster mother through to her bones, so that for a brief time every morning, when Wyn leapt out of bed to make them a breakfast of toast, homemade jam and tea, Mrs March felt back to her old self.
And all the time, Wyn had never felt the cold at all; not once in her entire life. She would think nothing of going outside in just a T-shirt when the hoarfrost glittered on branch and stone. Every time Mrs. March forced a coat onto her, it would end up thrown behind the garden wall.
A blackbird landed on the roof of the house, but flew off almost immediately, creating a little tumble of snow with its passing. Wyn walked through the gate that led to the walled garden, feeling a rush of relief that the flowers she had come to pick were still, miraculously, alive.
They were water avens; lanky, rust-colored flowers, distant cousins of roses. There was nothing remarkable about them, yet they had always been Mrs. March’s favorite flowers, appearing in vases and jars all around the old lady’s house. While every other tree and flower in the garden was buried under snow, the water avens had survived and bloomed. Wyn snipped some stems from each plant. She left the garden and her old home without a look back, hurrying away towards Pateley and the rising sun.
5
—
Half an hour later, Wyn was in the graveyard behind Robin’s church, wiping snow from a headstone.
She emptied the metal vase of last week’s avens and carefully arranged the new flowers, making sure that they were all as upright and outward-facing as possible. When everything was perfect, Wyn took off her coat, laid it on the ground beside the headstone and sat on it, cross-legged. There was still an hour before anyone else would show up. She stroked the headstone, telling the old lady what had happened that week.
The sounds of Pateley grew with the day: a dog barking, the shouts of children, a bus and the sanding truck trying to pass each other on the main street, more cars, and, as always, jackdaws squabbling by the river. There were footsteps. Robin bent down next to her, admiring the bouquet.
“Amazing how the avens are still going. Tough little plants, just like she was.”
“Not tough enough,” said Wyn, wiping a sleeve across her eyes.
“No, don’t be sad, love. She’s only gone in a manner of seeing. You and I are here in our boots tramping around in all this muck, but Jane will be flitting here and thereabouts. That’s what’s lovely about the next life. You can go gadding around like a mayfly on the wind if you like. And when the warm weather comes back and the dale is how it should be, each blade of grass, every wildflower, every leaf on a tree, every ear of corn in the lower dale will be home to a soul that’s passed on. At least that’s how I like to think of it.”
“What if the warm weather doesn’t return?”
Robin rested a hand on her shoulder, his breath misting the air around the headstone.
“I believe it will. I believe that God and Nature, who are one and the same as far as I’m concerned, won’t give up on us so long as we don’t give up on them.”
Suddenly, anger surged through Wyn, as fierce as it was inexplicable. She didn’t exactly know what she was angry about, only that her entire body was filled with rage.
“Wyn? Are you all right?”
Wyn found herself glaring at Robin, and then felt embarrassed. She fixed her eyes on the ground, until her anger started to fade. She asked her foster father what she coul
d do to help get the church ready for the service.
Together, Wyn and Robin dragged a bag of sand from behind St. Cuthbert’s and went to work with shovels. They were scattering the sand on the church steps when big, bluff Brian Davis came striding up. Brian ran the Nidd Arms pub in Wath, under the watchful eye of his wife Val, and he was Robin’s oldest friend in the dale.
“Well, now look at this,” he said, admiring Wyn’s efforts. “You must come and work for me; show my lazy oafs a thing or two.”
“How’s the new chef working out?” asked Robin.
Brian let out a long sigh.
“You know, I don’t think he’s got any taste buds at all. Val’s furious, but what can you do? All the good ones head off to the cities these days. Ah, there’s Mary.”
An old Land Rover pulled up outside the church, with a trailer behind. Robin’s older sister, Mary Hebden, got out and her collie dog bounded after her and up the church steps. For a split second Wyn thought it was the same dog from the wood and shrank away from it, scrambling backwards up the steps. Seeing that she was scared, Robin caught a gentle hold of the dog.
“It’s all right, it’s just old Tess,” he told Wyn. “You know she wouldn’t harm a fly.”
Now that Wyn looked closely at the dog, she saw that while Tess was far older, her muzzle streaked with gray, there was a definite similarity with the collie in the wood,
“She looks just like …”
“The dog you saw in Skrikes Wood?” asked Robin. Even though Wyn and Kate hadn’t wanted to mention what had happened in the wood, Lisa had told her father. And now, was Wyn just imagining it, or were Robin, Brian and Mary Hebden scrutinizing her a bit too closely? After several uncomfortable seconds, they went into St. Cuthbert’s, leaving Wyn to continue spreading sand.
She had finished and was sitting on a bench on the pavement outside St. Cuthbert’s when she saw John. He sat next to her and took an envelope out of his jacket pocket.
