Song for a Scarlet Runner

by Julie Hunt

  ‘How many mists are there?’ I asked.

  The man looked startled for a moment, then he wagged his finger in front of his face as if he’d been caught out. ‘Now that’s a Morrow question if ever I heard one. Everyone this side of the marshes knows there are three mists.’

  ‘What about the other side of the marshes?’ I asked.

  The man laughed so much that he had to put his hand on the cart to steady himself.

  ‘There is no other side of the marshes,’ he cried, wiping his eyes. ‘Hop in!’

  As I climbed into the cart, among the strange vegetables, I saw a flash of red. The man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Just you, not your vermin,’ he said.

  ‘He’s not mine.’

  ‘Of course he’s not yours. But you are his,’ the man sighed. ‘That’s the way it is with them.’

  For some reason I thought it best to own up about the stolen cake, so I told him that I’d already had some of his food.

  ‘What the vermin does is no fault of yours.’

  The man clicked his tongue and the donkey began walking very slowly along the road. The man walked beside the cart. He had a slight limp.

  ‘What did you think of the First Mist?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘I liked it. It made me feel safe.’

  The man laughed as if I had made another joke.

  ‘I always enjoy the First Mist,’ he said. ‘But not the second. What’s your name?’

  ‘Peat.’

  ‘A grand name! It’s rich and deep and will keep you warm all winter. My name is Last, Amos Last.’

  The man had a peculiar way of talking, but I liked him. Wim had told me she’d heard there were people who lived on the edge of the marshes. She thought they spoke a different language. Amos Last’s words were the same as ours but his accent was different. His voice went high and low, and there was a softness to it, as if the mist and rain had seeped in and taken away the hard edges.

  We had not gone far when the road straightened and a rise appeared ahead. The donkey stopped.

  ‘My apologies, Bray.’

  Amos motioned for me to step out of the cart. When I was on the ground, the donkey began walking again.

  ‘That’s our Bray for you. He’s not one for hauling people up hills.’

  We walked along in silence for a while. I leaned on the cart so as to take the weight off my leg.

  ‘Finest Bray. Most handsome of donkeys.’ Amos gave me a wink. ‘Here you are, walking ahead on four strong legs, and we’re coming behind with only two good ones between us.’

  The donkey paused and flicked his ears, then he began walking again.

  ‘But that’s the way of the world, eh, Bray?’ Amos Last said cheerfully. When the donkey snorted, he added, ‘Nothing to forgive, my friend.’ He turned to me. ‘It’s his nature. It’s in the breed.’

  I wondered if the sleek was following, or if he had gone back to his hole in the escarpment. For a moment I thought I would miss him.

  ‘Did a stranger pass this way?’ I asked.

  ‘And when would that have been?’ Amos chuckled.

  ‘About two full moons ago.’

  Amos Last smiled and scratched his chin. ‘Can’t say I saw him. One of the children might have. You can ask them.’

  ‘Children?’

  For some reason the thought alarmed me; I had never met any children before.

  ‘I had a dozen or so at last count,’ Amos said. ‘It’s hard to keep track of them. Gilly would be about your age, or was it Ula?’

  We reached the top of the rise. The road stretched ahead, with wild grass on one side and neat fields on the other. In the distance it turned sharply to the right and went up a steep hill. Perched near the top I could see a small wooden shack.

  ‘That’s our place. The end of the road.’ Amos Last sighed, and his shoulders slumped. His good humour seemed to have left him at the sight of the shack.

  When we reached the spot where the road turned, he unhitched the donkey. ‘Thank you, Bray,’ he said. He turned to me. ‘Bray doesn’t like hills, and he doesn’t like my wife,’ he explained.

  A cross-looking woman appeared outside the shack. ‘No. Absolutely not!’ she yelled. ‘We’ve got enough mouths to feed.’

  Amos Last looked up the hill. ‘It’s only until after the mists,’ he called.

  ‘One night,’ his wife yelled back. ‘And no more. If the Morrows can’t look after their own, why should we?’

  Then she clapped her hands and a big group of muddy children came out of the shack and ran down the hill. There were so many of them it seemed like an avalanche. How could they have all fitted inside the hut?

  I quickly stepped behind the cart, and this made them laugh.

  ‘Not yet,’ they cried. ‘First, let’s get this lot up.’

  They loaded each other with the tubers, and they loaded me up as well.

  ‘Come on,’ they said. ‘We’ll play later.’

  I wondered what they meant by ‘play’. Marlie and I had only ever worked. There was no opportunity to find out. When we reached the shack, Amos Last’s wife was waiting outside.

  ‘Pay up,’ she said. ‘What have you got?’

  Her eyes were fixed on my cow charm, but I wasn’t going to give her that. I had nothing else except the things in the bag. I took out the stranger’s shirt and she snatched it.

  ‘Go and wash your face and hands, you dirty Morrow!’

  ‘I’m not a Morrow,’ I said.

  The woman glared at me.

  ‘You’re an Ebb?’ she demanded.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, you’re not a Last,’ she said. ‘And there are only three families in this district – the Ebbs, the Morrows and the Lasts.’ She put her hands on her hips.

  ‘I’m not from this district. I’m from Skerrick.’ It seemed easier to say that than try to explain about the Overhang.

  ‘Never heard of it!’

  An old woman with bright-blue eyes poked her head from the door of the shack. ‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said.

  Amos Last’s wife regarded me shrewdly. ‘You can stay tonight and go back to where you came from tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not going back,’ I said. ‘I’m going on.’

  ‘You little fool,’ she said. ‘There’s nowhere to go. We are the Lasts, and this is the end of the road. Beyond us there are only the marshes.’

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me further up the hill, past the hut. The pain in my leg made me cry out.

  ‘Don’t play your foreigner tricks on me,’ she snapped as she turned me around. ‘Look out there! If you go on, that’s where you’ll end up. All the muck of the world drains into those marshes.’

  I looked where she pointed. The marshes were vast. They began with lowlands of trees, grasses and ponds. Further away I could see fields of reeds and then a complicated maze of islands and waterways that seemed to move as I watched, although perhaps it was just the reflection of clouds in the water. Islands seemed to join up, then separate. It was mesmerising. In the distance, the land seemed to fray off into the sky.

  ‘Is that the coast?’ I asked.

  ‘There is no coast. There are only the marshes.’

  ‘There must be ocean somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘If you believe there is anything beyond the marshes, you’re dreaming,’ the woman sneered. Then she turned and went down into the shack, slamming the door behind her.

  THE LAST CHILDREN

  As soon as their mother was gone, the Last children ran up to me. They were full of questions.

  ‘What happened to your leg? How did you get here?’

  ‘Did you come down the river?’ a girl about my size asked.

  ‘How could she come down the river? She’s got no craft,’ someone else said. ‘How old are you? Where did you say you were from?’

  A tall boy fingered my cow charm. ‘What’s this for?’ he asked. ‘It looks like two horns.’

  ‘It’s for luck and
making wishes. It belongs to my sister, and I’m going to give it back to her one day.’ A lump formed in my throat.

  The boy closed his eyes. ‘Make Ma happy,’ he said. ‘And let Bray go up hills!’

  Everyone laughed. ‘Does it work?’ they wanted to know.

  I nodded, blinking back my tears.

  ‘Of course it works,’ the tall boy declared. ‘If you hadn’t found Pa and Bray, you could have wandered into the marshes. You’re not from here, so you wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘Known what?’

  ‘About the swamp hags.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They take children. They lure them into the marshes.’

  ‘Don’t scare her, Bryn.’ An older girl stepped in front of the boy. ‘My name’s Hennie,’ she told me. ‘Don’t listen to him.’

  ‘I’m not scaring her, Hen. I’m probably saving her life,’ Bryn said quietly. ‘We’ll show her later, when it’s dark.’

  I would have liked to hear more about the marshes, but Amos Last’s wife yelled that it was dinnertime.

  Amos sat at the head of a rough-hewn table and the grandmother sat at the other end. A small fire burned in the fireplace. There wasn’t much food for a big family: a few oatcakes, some cheese and a pile of tubers. My stomach rumbled. I had only eaten one oatcake since the sleek and I left the stilt hut that morning.

  When I reached for the cheese, a forked stick came down over my hand and stayed there, pinning me to the table.

  Amos’s wife glared at me. ‘Wait!’ she yelled, then she nodded to her husband and he began mumbling into his beard.

  ‘Preserve us from mud, pestilence, illness, accident, swamp hags, muck and bad mists,’ he said. ‘Deliver us from leaf-rot, bindweed, marsh fly, swamp fever and the treacherous bog.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for bindweed, you wouldn’t be here,’ the grandmother interrupted.

  ‘Not now, Mother,’ Amos muttered.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ the old woman continued. ‘If one of those ladies hadn’t bound your bones up with it, they would never have knitted.’

  Bryn was sitting next to me. He leaned close and whispered in my ear. ‘Bray kicked Pa and broke his bones. But he’s all right now.’

  ‘Save us from vermin, swamp waifs and vapours,’ Amos continued. He didn’t look as if he enjoyed saying the words. ‘Protect us from bogwort and the green fog. For that is the Lore.’

  ‘For that is the Lore,’ everyone repeated.

  ‘Now you can eat.’ Amos’s wife released my hand and everyone tucked in. I was shocked at how ravenous they were. They grabbed the food and gulped it down without chewing.

  ‘Bog in quick, or you’ll miss out,’ Hennie said to me.

  Amos Last’s wife was worse than any of them. She snatched a tuber out of the old grandmother’s hand and shoved it in her own mouth.

  I had never seen people eat so fast, but I supposed the only people I had eaten with were Marlie and Wim and we hadn’t had to race each other.

  When the food was gone and the meal was over, the Last children took me up to the top of the hill. It was dark so they walked slowly. I was glad about that, because my leg was worse than ever. It felt hot and tight and it was throbbing. When we reached the top Bryn stared into the night.

  ‘Sometimes it takes a while to see them,’ he said.

  ‘See what?’

  I looked where he was looking. There were lights far away in the marshes, very faint and blurry. Perhaps they were shining through mist.

  ‘Are they the swamp hags’ houses?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  Hennie took my hand. ‘They are waif lights,’ she whispered. ‘Watch them. They move.’

  The lights did seem to be wavering.

  ‘Are there people out there carrying torches?’ I asked.

  ‘Those lights are the souls of lost children,’ Bryn said. ‘They were probably Morrows.’

  I gasped. ‘You mean the swamp hags killed them?’

  ‘Killed them and made medicine out of them,’ came the solemn reply. ‘Every night you can see the lights of those poor children. They wandered out into the marshes. They thought they heard voices; someone calling them. And they heard drifts of song on the breeze.’

  ‘And they saw flowers,’ said one of the younger girls. ‘Beautiful flowers that glowed in the dark. Flowers that had such a lovely perfume the children wanted to pick some and take them home.’

  ‘But the flowers were always just a little bit ahead of them.’ Hennie leaned close to me. ‘And every time they reached out to pluck one, it disappeared.’

  ‘So they got caught, you see,’ Bryn said. ‘And now they are trying to get back to solid ground, but it’s too late.’

  There and then, I decided I would not go anywhere near the marshes. But I would also not go back to the Overhang.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a place called Hub?’ I asked.

  ‘Everyone’s heard of Hub,’ they replied. ‘It’s the centre of the world.’

  ‘I want to go there,’ I said.

  ‘You’re too young to go to Hub,’ Bryn answered. ‘You should stay here with us.’

  ‘Yes, stay with us.’ A little girl with a round face took my hand.

  ‘Your mother wouldn’t let me.’

  The children sighed. They knew they were too many for their mother already.

  ‘The only way to Hub is by river,’ Bryn said. ‘You’d have to go back to the river and follow it upstream.’

  ‘I didn’t see a river.’

  ‘It’s like that,’ he said. ‘Hard to find. Some days it’s there and some days it’s not, depending on the fog.’

  ‘You would need a craft,’ one of his sisters said.

  ‘Where do I get one?’ I asked.

  ‘They are hard to find, like the river. They look like nests but really they are reed-boats.’

  ‘But I have found two already!’ I exclaimed.

  Hennie raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not a Morrow and telling lies?’ Bryn asked, and everyone laughed. ‘Grandmother has only found two in all the years of her life. Pa has found one, and Ma has never even seen one.’

  ‘I definitely found them. I slept in one and I went across a pond in the other.’

  A clanging noise came from the hut. It sounded like someone bashing a tin drum.

  ‘That’s Ma,’ one of the younger boys told me. ‘It means it’s bedtime.’

  Amos Last and his wife slept in a back room. The grandmother and all the children slept under the table. When I lay down at the end of the row next to Hennie, she put her arm around me the way Marlie had sometimes used to.

  I felt better about continuing my journey. I knew exactly where the last reed-boat was. All I needed to do was follow the green road back the way I had come and I would find it. Then, if I could find the river, I would be on my way to Hub.

  THE SECOND MIST

  The next morning the Second Mist arrived. It wasn’t like the mist I had experienced in the stilt hut. It was thick and white and cold as ice. You could see it pouring under the door and rising up to the roof.

  ‘It’s come early.’ Amos Last’s wife looked at me accusingly. She turned to her husband. ‘See what happens? You open the door to strangers and invite in the disasters of the world.’

  Amos Last put a small knot of wood on the fire.

  ‘That’s right, burn all my wood!’ his wife shouted. ‘And who’s going to chop more?’

  The mist filled the shack. Soon I could hardly see my hand in front of my face.

  ‘What do you do in a mist like this?’ I shivered.

  ‘Sleep,’ one of the children murmured.

  There seemed nothing else to do but lie down and drift back to sleep.

  That morning, in Amos Last’s shack, I had a wonderful dream. I was in a reed-boat paddling up a river. Giant cows grazed on either side and corn as tall as people waved gently in the breeze. The sleek was curled up on my lap, purring like a cat.
/>   The river was slow and wide. I rounded a corner and came across a town built into a steep hillside. Hundreds of steps led to the houses, and bright gardens grew on the roofs of all the buildings. There were trees everywhere, and baskets full of flowering plants hung from their branches. Beyond the houses I could see terraces, where rows of peas were climbing over frames made of birch sticks. The scent of their purple flowers filled the air. Birds sang in the trees and I could hear the sound of a waterfall cascading somewhere in the distance. I saw the stranger sitting on the riverbank, and he waved and called people to the water’s edge to greet me. They knew my name and said they had been expecting me.

  ‘This will be my new home. I will work here,’ I said. ‘I will look after your cattle.’

  ‘Of course,’ the people replied. ‘But first, tell us your story.’ They sat down on the riverbank and waited for me to speak.

  I would like to have heard what I said in the dream, but at that moment I was woken up by Amos Last’s wife.

  ‘Out!’ she cried. ‘I said one night. You’re not staying here till the end of the mists. They could last for weeks.’

  ‘Don’t send her away, Ma,’ I heard Bryn’s voice say.

  Some of the younger children whimpered, perhaps in their sleep.

  I felt for my bag, and Amos Last guided me to the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, once we were outside. He put something in my bag and tied a rope around my wrist. ‘Come.’

  I felt a little tug and began walking behind him. I couldn’t see him but I knew he was just ahead. We went uphill. With each step the pain shot up my leg. After we had walked some distance I heard sobbing.

  ‘What’s that? Who’s crying?’ I asked.

  ‘The mist,’ he replied.

  The sobbing grew louder. It was all around us. Amos had to shout over the noise. ‘Take no notice. It always does this.’

  ‘Why is it crying?’ I called out to him.

  ‘Who knows?’ he yelled in reply. ‘Sometimes it sobs, sometimes it laughs, but whatever mood it’s in, it will chill you to the bone. Put your hands over your ears.’

  We went over the hill and down the other side. Soon we were climbing again. Amos walked in silence. The sobbing quietened, then it stopped and I could just hear his footsteps. The mist muffled all sounds and I couldn’t see a thing. It was the sort of mist in which you could disappear and cease to exist. I suddenly needed to hear the sound of my own voice.