by Sarah Webb
I pick my way through the debris to sit by the boy’s feet. He stays hunched over the armour, rubbing and rubbing at rust that will never go away. The man who owns this armour cannot hurt him any more – the boy has moved far beyond his reach – but I do not know how to tell him this. I meow but, like my girl, the boy does not look up.
I bat the snow that is falling unheeded by his side.
I jump to and fro in the drifts that have piled against the armour.
Look! Look! See?
I huff and tussle and throw great showers of snow into the air. I roll and yowl and scuffle up its pristine surface in a wanton luxury of destruction. For a moment, I forget what it is I am trying to do and simply enjoy myself. Then I catch a glimpse of the boy’s expression, and stop. I sit up in the mess of snow and stare into his dirty heedless face, which is only inches from mine, as he continues to scour and scour and never look up.
Over the last couple of nights, I’ve tried everything a cat can think of to make this boy see me. I’ve meowed. I’ve hissed. I rubbed myself against him. I even laid myself atop his work – quite literally draping my body across the armour over which he hunches – hoping it would force him to stop. This tactic has never failed me in the past. I once disrupted a council of war in exactly such a manner! But all this hollow-cheeked little urchin did was spit once again on to his ragged sleeve and turn his attention to another spot.
The indignity.
I almost left him there and then, I tell you. I almost abandoned both of them – him and the girl – and stalked out into the night as the rest of the palace cats have done, away from this horrible place and the horrible smell of horrible humans hating and dying and setting things afire.
Almost, I say. Almost. But not quite.
What stopped me leaving? I don’t know … a strange thing … a little thing … a feeling.
It is hard to explain.
Something happened inside my chest that day when the bomb fell on to the tennis courts. I looked at the piles of smoking rubble where the girl and her mother had only just been standing, and it felt as if something had cracked inside me or … or as if something broke. All I know is that it happened when I thought the girl was gone from me; a nasty feeling that I had never experienced before. I do not like this feeling. I do not want to keep experiencing it – but it seems to live in my chest now. Each time she looks at me and cannot see me, it gets bigger.
I am angry now, thinking about it, and I prowl to the door of the tent in frustration and sit down in the snow. Behind me the boy scours and scours as if his life depends on it, and I think of my girl, hitting a solitary ball against a heedless wall. I am so lonely I could weep.
She fed me from a pipette of milk when I was a kit. She used to carry me in her pocket. Later, when I was too haughty to allow this kind of affection, I would follow her, as if by accident, and sleep in nearby patches of sunshine while she did her lessons or read or climbed trees. She was a demon for tree-climbing. Sometimes I would join her up there in the branches; we would grin into the breeze together high above the ground.
My first memory is of her. It is not a good one. I was very young, my siblings and I still nothing but milk-addled balls of fur. We barely understood what was happening when those children came and took us from the hay. I heard my mother yowling as they put us in the sack. I heard the children yelling, and singing ding dong dell … and then all was bubbling water and no air as my brothers and I scratched and tore each other, trying to escape the darkness and cold as the river they had thrown us into closed the sack tight around us.
Hers was the first face I saw when the neck of the sack opened to sunshine and air. She was soaking wet from having jumped in the water. My brothers were cold around me, and her hands were only marginally warmer as she lifted me from their motionless tangle.
“Oh…” she said. “Féach, níl ach ceann amhain beo.”
“There’s not but one of them alive.”
I close my eyes and sink my head on to my forepaws. The snow kisses my ears and shoulders and the back of my neck as I ask myself, Why? Why didn’t I love her more openly? Why didn’t I kiss her every minute of every day she was alive? Why didn’t I sleep, like the faithful friend I should have been, round her shoulders and allow her to scratch my ears and stroke my back the way I know she would have loved.
I miss you. I miss you, my princess. I want you back.
“Tá sé ag cur sneachta.”
I glare round at the boy. He is gazing up in wonder as the snow falls thick and heavy through a hole in the tent roof above him.
Yes, I sneer, it is snowing. Now tell me something I do not already know.
He is delighted and sticks out his tongue to try to catch a snowflake.
Oh! I get to my feet, realising. He sees it. The boy sees it! I knew he would! When the snow first started to fall I saw the girl pause – just for a fraction of a moment – to watch the bright flakes drift from the darkness of the sky. I knew then this would be my chance.
Hey! Hey, boy! Over here! Look at me!
I back out of the tent. I leap and I tumble. I scurry and dodge. I whisk great tailfuls of snow into the air.
The boy peers in my direction – not quite certain. Then he laughs, and he is up and following me, lost in the delicious puzzlement of what is happening to the snow. He looks just like a boy again – like a boy on an adventure. He has forgotten his master; he has forgotten to be afraid. Looking up into his face I imagine that this boy would very much enjoy climbing trees.
The men are dragging cannon through the snow as we make our way through camp. They are cold and miserable, and they are trying very hard not to make any noise. They cannot see the boy at all and they are too busy to notice me. At least I hope they are too busy. I confess that I am frightened as they move around us in the dark. I do not want these men to notice me.
The boy is all aglow with wonder and delight, his smile as bright as the moon. His was the face that hovered over me while I choked and strangled at the end of that lethal piece of wire. His were the shaking fingers that released me from the snare. He shooed me into the night, then stood to face the bellowing man who had seen him free me. Last I saw was his skinny body stepping between me and my pursuer, the man’s fist raised against the firelight, ready to strike. I heard the boy cry out, and I fled.
I look up into his face again, and I realise I’m not just doing this for the girl.
An eye for an eye, I think, a tooth for a tooth. A friend for a friend.
I lead him across the snow and moonlight, away from the soldiers who are lining up cannon in the dark.
At the castle wall, I squeeze between the stones into a crack barely wide enough to allow the passage of a rat, let alone a cat. The boy follows me with ease. His presence illuminates the darkness as brightly as any moon. I feel him grinning in excitement as he follows me through the dark. I don’t think he sees me – not really – but he knows there’s something good ahead of him: something better than a rusty pile of armour and the threat of an angry fist.
We emerge next to the ruined fountain. He scrambles behind me across tumbled stone and fallen timber as I lead him to the small door at the base of the graveyard wall. The toc, toc, toc of the girl’s game halts when we step inside. I weave and flow round the boy’s ankles as he pauses shyly at the threshold. Of course, no one sees me; all eyes are on the boy. The girl steps forward, the ball forgotten in her hand. Her mother rises to her feet. From her corner of shadows, she recognises what the girl does not: that this is a foreigner; that this is one of them.
The girl discards her solitary racquet. With a laugh, she throws the ball. It is a good throw – the boy has to dodge the gravestones to catch it. He aims, and fakes a throw. Together they laugh as she leaps for empty air.
He throws. She catches. She throws. Their laughter is as gentle as the moonlight. At the sound of it, the mother sits back down. I make my way round to her side, and curl beneath the ivy there, watching the children pla
y their game. The sun will come up soon, and with it will come the bombs and the fighting. The war will end today. I doubt there will be much left standing when it is done.
I suppose it would be wise for me to run. I think instead I will stay right where I am.
I close my eyes. I might sleep for a while. Beyond the castle walls, men are preparing cannon, but in this graveyard I can hear children playing. I am content even as the sun comes up and the bombs begin to fall. I am content even as the world falls down around me. No matter what happens, I know that right here a young girl and a young boy are throwing a ball to each other and laughing. I know their game will continue for ever. I hope that when I awake, they will see me at last.
Oisín McGann has written and illustrated numerous books for all ages, including the surveillance state thriller, Rat Runner, and the steampunk series, The Wildenstern Saga. He is a winner of the Bisto/CBI Book of the Year Merit Award and has been shortlisted for a number of others, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in the UK, le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and Locus Magazine’s Best First Novel Award in the US. Oisín lives in the Irish countryside, where he won’t be heard shouting at his computer.
When he was a boy, Charley dreamed of war – of being a soldier, a warrior, a hero. Back then, he never thought it would involve so much digging. In the chilly gloom of the swampy trench, the sergeant urged them on, growling quietly through gritted teeth.
“Come on now, lads! Dig! Clear it out before the next lot comes down on us! Dig, if you want to live, you little beauties. Dig if you want to live!”
Charley’s cold, numb fingers gripped the short handle of the spade. His body ached, weak with exhaustion. The spade’s handle was slippery with mud, and he lost his hold on it every now and again. It was all the more dangerous because he’d sharpened the blade too, because he needed to use it as a weapon sometimes. So he’d come close to cutting a gash in his leg more than once as it slipped in his hands.
“That could have been us, under there,” Mick said, working beside him. “We could’ve been buried under there, you and me.”
Mick was Charley’s best mate. They had enlisted together, trained together. They’d been sent out on to this insane battlefield in France together. They shared a dug-out together. Now that dug-out was buried here under tons of earth.
“Yeah, well we weren’t,” Charley replied. “Just lucky, I suppose.”
“Quit that chatter!” the sarge rasped.
It was dark, and the small group of men and everything around them was cold. Charley was cold to his bones, like he’d never be warm again. A light shower of snow had fallen that day, on the hard, frozen ground. The floor of the trench was still like a marsh, though. It always was, its surface beaten soft by the constant traffic of boots.
The steam of Charley’s breath looked bright in the darkness. At least the digging was getting him moving. They worked by the light of the stars in the clear night sky. The front wall of their part of the trench, eight feet high, had collapsed during the last German bombardment. Now they were struggling to get the mass of chalky clay dug out and the wall repaired before the German gunners dropped any more shells on them.
Snow was falling again, and he looked up into the sky to see it shower out of the darkness towards him. They were working in the dark because, with the wall collapsed, the ramp of earth offered little protection. German snipers, crack shots, waited for an opportunity to pick off anyone who raised their head too high.
Then there was the artillery. Charley had been terrified of it since he’d first heard the blasts, felt the first impacts through the ground only weeks before. There was nothing you could do to stay safe during the bombardments. You just cowered there against the wall of your dug-out, curling yourself into whatever cover you could find. You clutched your helmet to your head, scared as a child, as explosions punched craters in the earth around you. Sometimes they got so close, the noise of the explosions was like someone stamping on your brain. All you could do was hope and pray there wasn’t a shell plummeting right down on your position. You could only wait to see if it was your turn to be killed by the blast or the shrapnel.
“Agh! Oh, for the love o’ God!”
Mick was hopping around, a grimace on his face. The muck they were standing in was too thick and deep to hop around in, and he nearly fell over as his boot got stuck.
“Don’t tell me you hit your foot again?” Charley laughed at him. “What kind of eejit are you? Keep it up, Mick, and you’ll end up chopping your toes off all together.”
“Grand,” Mick grunted. “Maybe the brass will send me home.”
“They don’t let you out of the war for chopping off your toes. They’re wise to that kind of stuff. They’ll just shoot you for bein’ a chancer!”
“Well, they may come down and do some diggin’ themselves so,” Mick retorted. “Better yet, let them come and get shelled! See how long they last before they start thinking about losing some toes an’ all.”
Charley nodded, snorting.
“All right, so I’ve got a sore foot,” Mick said. “Still, you’re the bigger eejit. Leavin’ your gloves in the dug-out like that in this cold. Three of the lads are down with frostbite, Charley! Pat lost four fingers! I’d rather lose my toes to a spade than my fingers to the cold.”
This was their thing when they were bored – playing “Who’s the Bigger Eejit?”, a game that could go on for hours sometimes. Or until one of the other soldiers snarled that, by the holy Mary, they’d better shut up or he’d shoot them before the Germans got the chance.
Somewhere under all that pulverised clay was the hole burrowed in the ground where they normally ate and slept. Half their kit was buried in there too. They’d both been in the latrine when the bombardment started. They’d brought their rifles with them because the sarge would have their heads if they went anywhere without their weapons. But apart from that, they only had whatever they carried on their belts or in their coat pockets. The artillery shell had landed on their dug-out while they were relieving themselves a mere forty yards away.
“Less talking, more digging!” the sarge’s voice barked softly in the darkness. “My word, who’d be daft enough to have Irishmen in the army?”
“British officers, Sarge,” Charley replied, and Mick giggled.
“Less of that cheek!” came the throaty growl. “Dig, my lovely lads. Build us a nice strong house, before the wolf comes huffin’ and puffin’ again.”
The sarge was all right. He was British Army, through and through, and was forever cracking Irish and Scottish jokes, but he was the first you’d go to for help. Like an angry dad, he was always giving out, but he looked out for his boys too. The men of Charley and Mick’s company were mostly Irish, but they trusted their English sergeant – far more than they did the officers anyway. He was always there with them. Always first over the top ahead of them.
“Post!” someone called down the line. “The post is here!”
“Ah, here.” Mick paused as he was about to toss away another clod of clay. “They never send us post when we’re on the front line. Something’s up.”
“We go over the top in the morning,” Charley said. “They’re tryin’ to boost morale.”
“They want to boost my morale? Tell me I’m not goin’ over the top.”
“It’s what we’re here to do, Mick. You’re the eejit for enlisting.”
“Yeah, right. But at least I was the eejit who knew what he was enlisting for. You joined the army to find your brother. Did you not know there was a war on?”
“Ah, leave off, will ya?” Charley snapped at him, feeling suddenly angry.
Throwing down his spade, he cursed and kicked at a sod of mud. He was still standing there, blowing on his freezing hands and trying to stop his teeth from chattering, when he heard his name shouted.
“Charley Burn? Charley! Post for you, mate!”
He turned too suddenly, finding his feet held tight by the sucking mud. Lo
sing his balance, he toppled over into the massive puddle behind him with an almighty splash. The water was icy cold, shocking the breath from his lungs. The others burst out laughing, but the sarge roared at them to shut up.
“Burn! Get yourself out of there, you fool! I swear, it’s like dealing with children! Get those clothes off you and get dry before you freeze to death!”
Mick helped haul him out, and Charley stood there sourly, trying to scrape the worst of the dirt off. There was nowhere to wash in the trenches, and no hope of getting his uniform clean before they went into action in the morning. And any spare clothes he had were buried in the dug-out.
“Go and get yourself sorted out,” Mick told him. “I’ll get your post.”
Shivering with the cold, humiliated and miserable, Charley went off in search of a blanket, and a fire to dry his clothes.
Sitting in another dug-out, wrapped in someone else’s blanket, Charley clutched a mug of hot tea. He stared into the fire burning in the brazier in front of him. He was warm enough, but he knew his uniform tunic and trousers probably wouldn’t be dry by morning. His coat definitely wouldn’t be dry. When dawn came, he’d have to put on his wet clothes and march out into the cold.
As he had done so many times before, he cursed his rotten luck. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d just come looking for his older brother, Will, who’d joined the army before the start of the war. Sitting huddled as close to the fire as he could get, trying to soak up the warmth into his shivering body, he remembered sitting in the kitchen at home in Dublin. He was drinking tea then too – except that back then, there’d been milk and sugar. His mother went to answer a knock at the front door and came in carrying a telegram from the War Office. Will had been serving in France, and every soldier’s family dreaded receiving one of those telegrams.
She couldn’t bear to read it, handing it to Charley instead. But it didn’t say Will was dead. It said he was missing in action. Charley’s ma had broken down in tears, sobbing in hoarse cries as he read out the words, but Charley wouldn’t give up hope. ‘Missing’ wasn’t ‘dead’. Will could still be alive.
