by Gavin Wilson
was reached.
You will have children. You will bring us your first born child.
For some reason a vision of Nanny J rose in my mind and I laughed.
You laugh at us?
There was a palpable change in the environment of the cave. The blue glow increased in intensity and malevolence with the cloud closing the space around me, until two large eyes were all I could see.
“No. Not at you; a memory. You will have no part of any child of mine. I have nothing to lose here at this moment other than my life. Why should I condemn an unknown, an innocent, to suffer an uncertain fate simply to save myself? I refuse.”
The atmosphere changed again. There was a curious edge to it. Perhaps I had given them something to think about.
We have seen many of your line. Thomas, John, Alfred, Zena. Only one has passed alive before. Why should we not commit you back to the earth from whence you came?
“I'll get there one day” I replied.
One had survived! John and Alfred were my grandfather and father; both had died in the mines. Thomas? I had a distant memory of an Uncle Tom but didn’t know what had happened to him. And Zena? Well Nanny J had a lot to answer for and would certainly be asked some questions when I returned.
If I returned.
We will wait, but there is still a price.
They closed in, the black and swirling blue enveloping me. In an instant I was bound and gagged. Panic set in, and I struggled as hard as I could, but could not get free. A stone knife was produced, blue-edged in the swarming darkness and I screamed in terror into the filth of the gag: screaming again and again as the knife gouged into me, searing with every cut until I once again fell into blessed unconsciousness.
I awoke in moonlight and blessed fresh air. Something was tugging at my arm and I glanced over fearfully, only to see something run away on sturdy legs, something that looked a little like a child. The Small Folk? I lifted my arm to find it bandaged and clean. Definitely the Small Folk. Had it been the Piskeys I would have been stripped and roasted, probably with an apple in my mouth knowing their reputed brand of humour.
Standing carefully, and feeling weak, I surveyed the surrounding land by bright moonlight. My father’s Davy lamp sat on the ground next to me and I picked it up and began walking west. An hour later I crested the rise above the village and made my way home to Nanny J.
2.
A roar sounded from the bar next door and brought me back to myself. I looked back into the deep brown of the beer in front of me; a new pint of ale in the local pub craftily called Cornish Knocker. As I'd sat down in the corner to await the arrival of my grandson, a crow had alighted on the windowsill and tap, tap, tapped on the window pane. Already thinking about Knockers, the sound had tipped me over into memory.
“Pint alright Charlie?” called Alan, the barman. “You'm takin' your time tonight.”
Waving off his worries I resumed drinking, enjoying the traditional ale and slipped back into the past.
3.
Nanny J had been waiting for me when I returned from the hills. Tears had coursed down her cheeks as she embraced me and led me inside.
Over a steaming mug of tea she told a tale of loss. Thomas a great uncle had been lost in the mines, as had my grandfather John. But when Alfred had gone missing following a collapse, a younger Zena Jago had left her grandson and daughter-in-law crying in the night, and had walked to the mine. Always considered an advocate of the white craft she'd managed to summon the Knockers with a gift of blood and something precious: a life. She'd intended for it to be hers, but the Knockers had misunderstood and had taken not only Alfred’s but his wife’s too. Be true to your heart she'd said all those years ago and I had, but some sort of deal had been done on the blood they'd taken from me.
In time I married a local lass and we had a daughter and two sons. The youngest died of measles but the other two survived and grew strong. I had long since apprenticed myself to a local carpenter and when he died childless of a heart attack, I took over the business and passed it on to my son in turn. My daughter married and had lovely twin girls. My son married and passed my name on to his only son.
My boy never had to go into the mines, and not long after they closed for good with the world demand for tin dropping through the floor.
4.
And so here I was, a maudlin old fool, waiting for a grandson of the same name. An old man in a modern world with technology and widescreen TV blaring out the football in the next room. A world with no room for faerie and legends: a world with no place for Knockers and Small Folk unless they were a whimsically named pint of beer.
I was looking forward to seeing young Charlie again though. He'd mentioned a new job a few weeks ago and I was keen to see how he was getting on.
The door to the pub opened and Charlie walked into the snug. He didn't see me straight away as I was sitting in the corner opposite the bar. A big lad, he was well over 6ft tall with a rugby player’s build and a shock of sandy surfers’ hair which defied all efforts to keep it lying down.
“Evening Alan,” he said, drawing the barman’s attention from the still rowdy game next door. “Pint of Tinners please.”
He carefully eased his jacket off his shoulders, showing one arm in a sling, and it was then that I saw it. Printed in large letters on an obviously new top were the proud words “Cornish Rescue”. Not rugby. Something else, something far worse.
“You been in the wars boy?” asked Alan lifting a glass from the shelf.
“Sort of,” replied Charlie. “We had a mine rescue out at St Just earlier in the week and it all got a bit rough down there.”
Eerie light flared in my eyes, panic roared through my veins and blue-edged pain seared my nerves as Wilf ran away through my memory. There was a sudden disappointed group groan from next door as the opposing team scored a goal. In the few quiet moments which followed, I tapped a rhythm on the table in front of me.
Tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
And there was the answer to the question I dared not ask. Charlie wheeled around to face me, colour draining from his cheeks as his freshly lifted pint glass dropped clumsily from his uninjured hand.
I rose from my seat and led him to the table, apologising to the barman who stood open mouthed behind the bar. Leaving him there I returned to the bar, bought him another pint and sat down next to my still shaking grandson, leaving the barman to turn his attention to the spillage.
“They've got a new beer in. It's called Knocker,” I said as I placed his drink in front of him.
For a second I thought he was going to run, but instead he took a deep breath and reached for his drink. As he looked into his amber beer I rolled up my shirt sleeve exposing my left forearm and the crude stick man carved there so long ago by a sharp blade. Charlie put his drink down and looked at me, his eyes widening as he saw the scars. Involuntarily he touched his own tightly bound arm and shuddered.
“Did you make them any promises?”
After many long seconds, Charlie spoke. “No. They didn't want to talk. They just tied me down and made me bleed.” He paused and looked me in the eye. “I don't suppose offering them my Kendal Mint Cake would've made any difference would it?”
There is a beauty in the human soul, something truly inspiring about seeing a spirit who has come up against the darkness and survived. There is also something more binding than love; a shared laughter amidst a common suffering.
No child of mine had gone to the Knockers, but it appeared that the blood of generations had been offered as a gift.
The End
~
