‘What were you doing up there, Charlie?’ says Beaky. ‘Why were you hiding in that tree?’
I shrug. Nothing I say will make any sense to them. My mood is zigzagging about so fast I don’t even make sense to me at the moment.
‘Did you hear me talking to your dad?’ asks Lamont.
I nod, avoiding his eyes.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your baby brother,’ whispers Beaky. She touches my arm softly. I yank my arm away from her; for some reason her kindness just makes me cross.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbles.
Nero whines.
‘You’d better go back to the hospital, Charlie,’ says Lamont.
I stare at him angrily; who’s he to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do?
Beaky and Lamont look at each other. It’s a secret look, like they’re suddenly in a gang I’m not part of. The ‘Pity Charlie Club’. Now that baby is here everything has changed. Even my friends.
I grit my teeth in rage and turn away. I focus on the lumpy old tree root I’m kick-kick-kicking with my toe. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I find the deertooth and I squeeze it so hard it proper hurts.
Everything feels wrong here. I want to run and hide as far away as I can from all of it. Thoughts swarm about in my head like bees. Buzzing. Dara. His little lips pale blue. Mum’s puffy eyes. The camera flash. Dad’s fake smile. The squeak of my feet on the lino. The wall of heat. The ambulance siren. I swallow and squeeze the deertooth harder. What if Dara dies? My thoughts are so muddly they’re making me dizzy.
I close my eyes. Beaky and Lamont are talking to me, but I try to block them out, let their voices go blurry and fade. I concentrate on my thumb as I press it on to the sharp tip of the deertooth in my pocket.
Behind me in the forest, something screeches.
I spin around, opening my eyes just in time to duck as a jay dives straight towards me.
I lift my arms to protect my head. The jay shrieks again as he twists mid-air, then swoops fast and low back past me, his wing feathers flashing blue like a beacon.
Too blue.
I look down; there is a tiny bead of too-red blood on my thumb tip. And all around me the colours of the forest are too much themselves: too green, too blue, too red. All shimmering in the heat. I shake my head hard to clear my ears, because all the sounds have gone muffled, like when you’re underwater. Then the jay’s back; his shriek cuts through the fuzziness and fills my ears.
The sunlight dapples yellow through the trees; I gaze into the leafy greenness and I can just glimpse the jay, diving towards the distant shimmer of the river. I can’t resist. I forget everything and take a big breath and run into the coolness of the forest, following the jay.
I run fast. My feet thump thump on the softness of the mud and mulch. My heart quickens. I lift up my arm and I leap to grab at a dangling leaf. I run, Dad’s bag bumping softly on my back. In here the air smells damp and mossy; I gulp it in. I reach the turn where the path slopes down. I run faster still. So fast my legs feel like they aren’t even mine; so fast I can hear the thud of my own heart. The path bends, twisting down to the water. I leap a tight turn and my foot skids in the mud. But I don’t fall. I run faster. Bracken tickles my hands, nettles too, but I’m so quick they don’t even get time to sting me. I can hear it now: the sound of the river trickling over the rocks. I race around the last bend and the sun pours into the dell and flashes silver on the water and it looks so cool and beautiful and I’m so so hot and I leap over the long grass and down the ridge and keep running across the sand at the water’s edge, running, splashing right into the river.
I stop.
My heart freezes.
There’s someone in the river.
Face down.
WAKE UP!
I don’t stop to think. Two steps and I’m there. The body’s floating in a rocky pool but the water’s slow here and only knee-deep. It’s a girl. Her hair’s all long and floating on the water. There’s blood coming out of her head; it’s making red swirls in the clear river. Near her is a jagged rock which is smeared in blood. She must’ve slipped, bashed her head on the rock.
I grab the girl under the arms and try to lift her. She’s so heavy! I heave with all my strength and lift her shoulders clear of the water. Her head dangles down over her chest. I lean right back. Her head flops on to my shoulder and her body turns and my feet slip and I fall so I’m sitting there in the shallow pool with the girl who is lying limp in my arms. I push the wet tangled hair out of her face.
It’s not a girl. It’s a boy.
His eyes are closed. I hold my wet hand in front of his open mouth. No warm air. He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing!
I scramble about, trying to find a foothold on the shifting pebbles of the river bed. I grip the wild-haired boy under his arms and I lean and I stumble and I slip as I drag him backwards out of the water. At last we reach the gravelly sand of the beach. I lay him down on his side and collapse to my knees next to him, panting. The boy doesn’t move. I look around for someone to help us.
‘HELP!’ I shout, as loud as I can. ‘HELP!’
My voice sounds so small in the tallness of the forest. The only reply is the far-off squawk of a bird, shrill and raw like a baby’s cry.
‘BEAKY!’ I yell. ‘LAMONT! Come quick, I need you NOW!’
But they don’t answer. No one does.
The boy’s lips are blue. I touch his wrist and I don’t know if it’s true or if it’s just what I want to believe, but I think I feel the tiniest flicker of his pulse. He’s alive! At least I think he’s alive.
‘HELP!’ I yell so loud my throat hurts.
Where is everyone? There’re always people running round the trim trail or little kids splashing about. Why is there no one to be seen at all, the one time when it really matters?
‘Help!’ I shout again. ‘Lamont! Beaky! Help me!’
But they don’t answer. If Lamont was here, he’d know what to do. He actually knows how to do resuscitation from when the lady from the St John’s Ambulance came in to teach us life-saving. Beaky and me got the giggles when we had to give the plastic dummy the kiss of life and Mr Pasco sent us out. Why didn’t I stop messing around and listen?
I tap the boy’s cheek.
‘Wake up!’ I say desperately. ‘Please!’
That bird squawks again.
‘Wake up!’ I grab his shoulder and I shake him. Hard. ‘WAKE UP!’ I shout.
The boy’s eyes flicker open and look straight into mine. His eyes are so dark I see myself reflected there.
Then he rolls over and coughs so hard that water comes spurting up. He gasps in air but that only makes him cough even more. He drags himself on to all fours and coughs and retches and spits until it all comes out. His head hangs limply between his arms, his long, dark hair brushes the ground and the blood from the cut on his head drips steadily on to the sand. I hear him breathe, shallow rattling breaths. I see his ribs moving beneath his sandy skin, as if breathing is really hard work.
For the first time I look at the boy properly. He’s wearing animal skins on his bottom half and his top half is bare. He’s thin and wiry, his legs and arms criss-crossed with scratches, but he’s strong-looking too. A few string bracelets are tied around his wrists. Then I see his hands, pressed hard into the sand. They’re big, broad, long-fingered, powerful hands. As if he can feel me staring, the boy whips his head to the side and glares at me through his long wet hair.
‘Who are you?’ I say.
SPEA
‘Are you OK? Where do you live? Are you lost?’
The boy doesn’t answer, he just stares at me hard, angry, almost accusing. His eyes are like black holes.
He takes a big wheezy breath, then he starts to speak, but his voice is rough and rasping. Low like a growl and I don’t understand.
Who you? Who you? You boy? You girl? I not know you! Who you?
I shake my head at him. ‘I have no idea what you’re saying.’ His voice gets
louder, faster, like he’s cross.
WHO you? You push me in river? You make me fall? You want kill me dead?
‘Calm down. Please. It’s OK.’
But he doesn’t calm down. He starts really yelling, thumping his chest as he speaks.
You want kill me dead!
I kill you dead! Ha!
I not fraid you! HA!
He awkwardly staggers to his feet, and peers about like he’s searching for something. Then he fixes me with his dark angry glare. I back away.
Where my spea? You TAKE my spea? Where my SPEA?
Spea! I hear, half understanding maybe. ‘Did you just say spear?’
But before I have time to think the boy suddenly leaps forward, springing at me like an attack. I stumble back but not fast enough; he lifts a quick hand and grabs hold of the pocket of my soggy blue T-shirt.
‘Hey!’ I yell, pulling away, trying to tug myself free. ‘Get off me!’
He doesn’t though; he holds on tighter; his nails are filthy black.
You push me in river! You take my spea! I kill you dead!
‘What? What are you saying? Let go!’ I grab my T-shirt and pull back. He yanks hard and my pocket rips off in his big hand. I stagger backwards again.
‘What d’you do that for?’ I say, shocked and furious.
The boy looks at the torn-off pocket in his hand, then back to me. Suddenly he roars, his eyes narrow with vicious fury. He leaps at me again.
Screaming, I turn and run back along the beach towards the reeds. But when I don’t hear him at my heels, I glance back.
The boy is lying in a crumpled heap on the sand like a dropped puppet. Has he collapsed? Or is he just pretending? Trying to trap me into going back to check on him … and then … BAM … he’ll pounce on me again? Playing dead.
My heart’s thudding like an engine. I look around again for Beaky and Lamont. Where are they when I need them? I squeeze myself into the reeds and crouch down so that I’m hidden. I watch the boy. Why did he attack me? What’s the matter with him?
I’m hiding right next to the river pool where I found him; I look at the rock where the boy bashed his head – its jagged tip is still red with his blood; it looks like a miniature model of an erupting volcano. How did he end up in the river anyway? And did he just … slip over or … ? My imagination whirs with possibilities, all of them awful. And then I notice something: there, jammed between the jagged rock and its neighbour, is a long pale stick, unusual-looking, sharp at one end. A breeze rustles the reeds.
‘A spear?’ I whisper.
Cautiously, keeping my eye on the boy, I wade into the shallow water, free the spear and pick it up. It’s beautiful, as tall as me and made from wood whittled white, with all the bark stripped off. At its tip the pointed spearhead is held fast to the shaft with twists of twine. I look closer and I see that it’s a flint, carved to a point, just like the microlith I have in my collection at home. Tentatively, I reach up and press my finger to the tip of the spearhead; it’s as sharp as a claw. This isn’t a toy. This is a real spear.
I hold the spear in the middle, where I imagine the boy holds it because the shaft here is more smoothed and worn. My hand fits his handhold perfectly. I move the spear back and forth above my shoulder, like it’s a javelin.
‘Speeeaaa!’ I say quietly, trying out the shape of the boy’s odd voice.
I look back towards the boy’s crumpled body. Why is he running around in Mandel Forest dressed in animal skins and carrying a spear? He still hasn’t moved.
Little bubbles of worry rise up from my belly. I’m worried the boy might attack me, but I’m even more worried he might actually be dying. That can happen with drowning – Mum told me – you can nearly drown and then you seem perfectly OK for ages but a bit of water got trapped in your lungs without you even knowing and it drowns you later when you’re back on dry land. Horrible!
Cautiously, I creep back across the river beach towards him, feet squelching in my wet trainers. I feel braver now, with this spear in my hand.
I stand by the boy. A lizard darts across the sand, past the boy’s bare foot. His feet are like his hands, broad and strong. His right ankle is all puffed up and swollen. His long hair has fallen half across his face, revealing a big oozing cut on his forehead. He has a wide nose and high cheekbones and his eyes are closed. He has long, dark eyelashes. With my toe I nudge his foot, ever so gently, but he just lies there motionless. I bite my lip.
Slowly I crouch down next to him, heart thudding with dread.
BAD SPIRIT?
A shrill cry pierces the still air. I jump out of my skin. The cry comes again; a bird, but not one I recognise; it sounds just like a tiny baby. Just like Dara. The bird cries again.
The boy does a huge jolt like he’s been electrified. It gives me such a shock, I fall back on to the sand. He starts thrashing his head from side to side. He’s alive!
Relief floods through me. Relief mingled with fear. I grip the spear more tightly and shuffle out of his reach, in case he wakes up properly.
‘Mmmmmmffffaaa,’ mumbles the boy, his eyes still closed. ‘Mmmmmfffggaa.’
Then he gets louder, calling out deliriously in his sleep in his language that I don’t understand.
MOTHGIRL!
Mothgirl! Make safe! MAKE SAFE! MOTHGIRL!
‘Mothga?’ I murmur, shaking my head. What does Mothga mean?
His eyes shoot open. He sees me. My heart starts to thud. I shuffle away from him fast, holding white-knuckle-tight to the spear.
‘Hey!’ I say, trying to keep my voice level. ‘Hey! Just be calm. It’s OK.’
But the boy doesn’t look OK. He scuffles to his feet and skitters away from me towards the ridge which separates the beach from the forest. He’s making a circle shape, like a telescope, with one fist and shouting words I don’t understand in his strange gruff voice:
WHO YOU? I not know you.
You bad? You bad bad spirit?
BAD SPIRIT!
You take my spea!
You put your bad spirit curses on me!
GO YOU! Go you, Bad Spirit! Leave me!
Go back to your bad bad land!
He yells and yells at me, but his voice is more like growls. Furious. Ferocious. Wild.
Suddenly he stops shouting and stands stock-still, like we all used to do when we played musical statues at birthday parties. What’s he doing?
A shrill cry pierces the air – it’s that bird that sounds like a baby. The cry fades. The boy turns back to me and, fire-eyed, he roars:
WHERE MOTHGIRL?
I hear Mothgirl cry!
Where you take my Mothgirl?
Tell me now, Bad Spirit!
Tell me now or I kill you dead!
Where MY Mothgirl?
‘Moth-ga?’ I say. It’s that word again. ‘I don’t understand you.’
He picks up a stone. ‘MOTHGAAA!’ he yells as he hurls it at me. It misses, but only just.
‘Oi!’ I say, but my voice comes out in a little squeak. I grip the spear more tightly. ‘What’re you playing at? I’m trying to help you!’
Where you take my Mothgirl, Bad Spirit? he shouts, picking up another stone, a bigger one.
‘Stop it!’ I squeak. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying!’ I’ve backed away from him so much, I’m ankle-deep in water.
A wood pigeon rises noisily out of the trees behind the boy, the sudden rustle and fluster makes me jump out of my skin. I see the boy jump too; that surprises me.
Something suddenly occurs to me: I take a step forward, towards the boy. He draws back, wide-eyed.
Unbelievable! In spite of all his yelling and his gruff voice and that big rock he’s brandishing, this fierce boy is actually frightened … He’s frightened of me.
CONK CUSHION
The pigeon flies away over the river. We face each other, the boy and I, and our eyes lock. ‘WHHHHOOOOO-WHHHhhooooooo,’ calls the pigeon as it passes over our heads.
The tiniest
haziest inkling of a memory flashes in my mind. The boy’s voice. His strange growly voice. I recognise it. I’ve heard that voice before …
The boy’s staring at me differently now too. He slowly lowers the hand with the rock in it and points at me, blinking; he’s mumbling quietly to himself, like he’s in a trance, in a dream world.
You not bad spirit! I know you. I see you before.
I member: I sit in hazel tree. I hunt.
I wait. I wait. I wait.
I sleep?
Sleep story come. I see you in my sleep story.
You stand under hazel tree.
I watch you.
Choll-ie-murr-um.
Yes. I see you before, Cholliemurrum!
Cholliemurrum.
Speaking softly, unsure, I echo the boy’s word back at him. ‘Chollie-murrum?’ It’s the word I heard whispered in Mandel Forest last night. I do recognise that voice; it’s the voice I thought I heard. The voice which almost said my name. ‘Charlie Merriam?’ I say.
Cholliemurrum, agrees the boy, pointing across at me. He looks almost as gobsmacked as I am.
‘Cholliemurrum,’ I say, like it actually is my name. And I get such a funny feeling, deep in my head near my back teeth, like … like … the little click a key makes as it turns perfectly in its lock. I give my head a joggle. It feels like my ears have popped and everything sounds clearer, better.
I point at myself. ‘Cholliemurrum,’ I say again. ‘And who are you?’ I ask, pointing to him now.
He stares down at himself, examines his own big hands, then touches his own face.
His eyes meet mine as he slowly, sadly shakes his head. ‘I not know me,’ he says in a husky whisper. ‘I not member me.’
And I hear him properly. I actually understand him suddenly. Clear as air.
‘Oh … You don’t remember … do you?’ I say softly, and then I get why he’s so odd and confused and frightened. He’s lost his memory. ‘Don’t worry, you banged your head, that’s all.’ I touch my own head in the place where his cut is.
The Wild Way Home Page 4
