The Three Thorns

by Michael Gibney

  Most of the passengers took to their seats in a hurry to rest their feet when the mammoth train eased its way out of London’s central station.

  Both boys leaned out of the window to wave a fond farewell to the city. That was when they spotted Peter waving back to them.

  “What in the name of King Henry are you doing down there?” Tommy yelled in panic.

  “No time to explain boys. Just follow that map!” Peter called back, just enough time before the train took Benjamin and Tommy from sight.

  ***

  Silence filled the train when the passengers settled. The hypnotic rocking of the carriages had sent Benjamin off to sleep as the train sped through the countryside at a great pace.

  Thoughts of Peter stranded back in London worried Tommy. He bore the guilt for leaving George. Now with Peter gone too, Tommy felt alone with the added pressure of Benjamin to look after.

  “At least we have the map,” Benjamin mumbled in his sleep, as if he had read Tommy’s anxious thoughts.

  Outside, trees and bushes flew past the train window, showing beautiful scenery and many fields in the distance. But Tommy’s troubled mind refused to give him any peace, making the entire train journey a strenuous one.

  Another hour had gone past when he surrendered to his tiredness and drifted off, resting his head on Benjamin’s shoulder.

  It felt like he’d just closed his eyes when the train conductor shook both of them out of their sleep.

  “Your stop, young Sirs,” he chuckled lightly.

  Yawning loudly, the boys jumped off the steps of the train and landed on a hoary platform overgrown with moss. They looked around, smelling the fresh air and enjoying their first taste of true freedom in the middle of the countryside. The woodland area ahead was calm and completely desolate, which suited both runaways fine.

  Tommy exited Warwickshire Station first, shuffling inside his pockets for the map.

  “Check your pockets Benjamin, do you have the map?” His voice sounded desperate.

  Benjamin eagerly unfolded his own map, relieved that Tommy hadn’t mentioned the money yet. No one really knew where the money came from or whom it belonged to, but Benjamin suspected it had something to do with the shifty-eyed Mr. Jennings, an idea he didn’t like to entertain.

  Tommy quickly snatched the map and studied its directions to the black ‘X’ mark with the name ‘Jacob’ on it. The instructions were surprisingly simple to follow, leading them to a narrow path at the bottom of a tall muddy hillside.

  “Well, that was easy,” mentioned Tommy after he lined the map up with the hill in front of them.

  “I wonder what’s up there?” muttered Benjamin.

  8

  The Winter’s Stranger

  “Follow me and don’t slip,” Tommy instructed as he led the way up the dark hillside. The road was bare and the hillsides lay empty, devoid of human life.

  Poor Tommy felt just as scared as Benjamin but he had to ignore his fear and become the leader, since their group had been torn in half.

  The night’s cold air settled over them unexpectedly, biting Benjamin’s ears and numbing his hands and toes. From a distance, the dark hill hadn’t looked steep, but now it seemed to tower above them menacingly. Benjamin kept slipping in the icy mud until he reached the top.

  Tommy fuddled around the map and struggled to read the further they were from the station’s lamps. “This Jacob fellow shouldn’t be that hard to find. There’s only a stretch of countryside to get across before we reach our destination. How hard can it be?” Tommy chattered on to keep himself warm.

  The woods around them were spooky. Howling winds brushed through the massive branches and blew against their frigid faces as the pair made their way toward the opposite side of the hill. A huge frost-covered field lay ahead of them.

  “I-I think we should go back,” Benjamin suggested, raising his voice over the wind.

  “Don’t chicken out now, Brannon,” snapped Tommy. “We stick with Peter’s plan until we find this farm.”

  A second howl came from the woods ahead, only this time it didn’t sound like a gust of wind. It was more animal sounding.

  Maybe it was a fox? thought Benjamin. He could only hope.

  “I’m going back to the station,” Benjamin said, turning around and running face-first into something sturdy and large. Benjamin bounced back to the ground before he gazed up at a large figure standing over him. The strange character firmly clutched a few dead rabbits in one hand and raised a lamp to his face with the other. The light of his lamp revealed a deep scar on the left side of his face, accompanied by a few smaller scars on his right ear and forehead.

  Benjamin screamed in fear while Tommy ran to the nearest tree to break off a branch. Hurrying back to Benjamin’s aid, Tommy held the broken bough like a weapon and pointed it at the stranger’s chest.

  “Keep away from us, or I’ll stick you and your rabbits, old man,” Tommy threatened.

  The rabbit hunter hooted loudly. “You won’t do much damage with that thing, lad,” the man said smugly. The rabbit hunter fell silent shortly afterwards when he heard the same howling noise echo through the dark woods ahead.

  “We’d best be on our way, gentlemen,” he whispered in his thick country accent. “Hold this for me,” he ordered, throwing Tommy a large bag of dead pheasants and rabbits. The rabbit hunter then helped Benjamin to his feet with a mighty tug.

  The man was large but quite short for an adult.

  “I don’t travel with adults,” snapped Tommy after he threw the bag back at the man’s feet.

  “Neither do I,” the man replied, smiling back. “My name is O’Malley. I am a hunter of these fields and I have a permit, so you know…and you are?” he asked, eyeing both boys.

  “Oh…my name is Benjamin, Benjamin B-Brannon, Mr. O’Malley.”

  “O’Malley! What kind of a name is that for a hunter?” whispered Tommy to Benjamin, who was trying desperately to ignore his friend’s rudeness.

  The countryman leaned in toward Tommy. “And what do they call you then, boy?” O’Malley asked with a mischievous grin.

  Tommy looked up at the sturdy man and jerked when he heard another howl from the woods behind him. “T-Tommy’s the name, Tommy Joel.”

  The large man took another step forward bending down slightly to look young Tommy in his fear-filled green eye.

  “Indeed…do you have your permit, Thomas?” he whispered.

  The boy could only muster a silent ‘no’ in reply, whilst shaking his head. O’Malley took another glance into the woods behind them and picked his bag of dead animals from the frosty grass.

  “The look on yer face. I’m just joking with ya, lad,” he chuckled, as he began to walk away from the pair.

  The two boys stood in the frost watching the stranger walk down the other side of the dark hill toward the massive open fields. O’Malley stopped a few feet ahead of them. “Well come on then,” he called back.

  “We don’t walk with strangers neither,” Tommy shouted back stubbornly.

  “Suit yourselves, I’ll walk home by myself then. I can’t wait to put my feet up by a nice warm fire and eat some of my homemade rabbit stew. Hmm, or maybe I’ll have some tomato and basil soup. It goes well with pheasant. Anyway, good luck with the storm, boys. Tomorrow’s the first day of winter.” He chuckled again and continued walking, whistling, without a care in the world. The beautiful glow of the full moon gleamed down on him, lighting up the rows of the fields in the distance.

  O’Malley seemed a very odd character, which made Tommy extra cautious of him. The toughened orphan had never had any good experiences with adults or guardians before, much less a wild hunter from the country.

  Benjamin also had little, if any, trust for adults, especially strangers. But O’Malley appeared a bit too jolly to fit into either category. It was a risk between joining this stranger or trekking through the bitter cold and possibly freezing to death. />
  “I think we should go with him,” suggested Benjamin.

  Tommy rolled his eyes and pushed his smaller friend forward. “You go with him if you want to get yourself caught or worse…kidnapped. I’m following the map.”

  Benjamin kicked at the frosted grass in frustration at Tommy’s stubbornness.

  “Well, I’m not going to freeze to death trying to find my way in the dark,” Benjamin sighed as he followed the rabbit hunter’s footsteps.

  Tommy slumped next to a tree to memorize the map. Hypnotic sounds of branches rustling inside the woods sent him into a restless sleep until a loud howl woke him. He peered over the hill’s edge to see a large stretch of land close below, but Benjamin and O’Malley were no longer in sight.

  Winds blew fierce across the fields as Tommy made a late start toward his destination.

  Adrenaline kept his body going while he ran down the opposite side of the hill. A stone embedded in the ground instantly caught his shoe and flung him forward. Rolling the rest of the way down the steep hillside, Tommy roughly landed flat on his face in the frost.

  The winds had grown stronger and he could feel the frost bite at his bare knees where his trousers had been ripped. His legs were cut and bruised from the tumble, which made him feel wretched. Picking himself up from the frosty ground, he limped his way across the first patch of field.

  Meanwhile, in another open field a few miles ahead, Benjamin wasn’t having too well a time himself. Having abandoned his only companion to follow the prodigious stranger caused him to panic. After all, anything could happen to him now, and Benjamin’s imagination usually thought the worst. His sudden anxiety exhausted his body, and the blistering cold had made his feet twice as heavy. He couldn’t go on. Feeling sick, chilly and downright miserable, Benjamin’s body finally gave up.

  The rabbit hunter immediately took off his large animal coat made out of wolf’s skin and wrapped it around the fainting boy. Lifting Benjamin in one arm over his free shoulder, O’Malley started to slog through the rest of the field while he listened to the sounds from the forest.

  The cold was like nothing Tommy had ever felt. His mind couldn’t concentrate on anything. He lost all sense of hope and briefly forgot about Benjamin and Peter. He even forgot about Gatesville and how he came to be in this serious situation.

  The only thing he had the strength to think about now was a warm bed. Thoughts of comfort became more vivid the icier the weather became. He longed for rest.

  After he reached a patch of forest, his hazel green right eye detected a small light in the distance. A torch? A flashlight?

  The moonlight danced off a pearly set of teeth that shone back at him through the shadows. Bright snow under its body reflected a fierce glow in its piercing eyes as the boy moved inches away from the beautiful face of a lethal wolf.

  Unwittingly, the boy’s eyes locked onto the beast’s dazzling electric ice blues and caused him to faint with fear.

  Tommy could sense another light behind his closed eyelids but was too weak to show any sign that he was still semi-conscious. The light exposed an unusual sight of wolves still lingering near the seemingly dead boy. The ravenous wolf pack stood still, curiously watching the man rescue what was supposed to be their long-deserved meal.

  O’Malley shouted at the wolves that stood several yards away from the boy while he covered Tommy in more wolf skin. The wolves stood as still as stone statues, beautifully silhouetted by the light. None howled nor made a sound. Tommy slipped into a comfortable deep sleep when the heavy fur shawl coated his upper body.

  Heavy snow swept across the open field. With the aid of one large stick and a newly lit beacon in the other hand, O’Malley continued his heroic journey toward the sanctuary of his house, carrying the unconscious boy the rest of the way he had carried Benjamin.

  9

  The Unforeseen Visitor

  Rain pelted down over Gatesville that night. There was a new wrath to be endured for the children, especially the captured runaways. No one had seen hide nor hair of George Johnston since he was ushered back to the dreaded borstal, and even Jimmy Donald had begun to think the worst. Double shifts and extra duties for failing to capture Benjamin Brannon was just the start of a year-long punishment set in motion by the prideful principal of Gatesville.

  It was past midnight when a noisy car pulled up to the front gates. Nearly every boy from the east side of the building block took to their bedroom windows for a careful glimpse at the unforeseen visitor. Two policemen and a peculiar, overly dressed man entered through the main gates. The rain and wind became so severe it almost blew all three hats off of the figures, causing the boys in the east block to laugh aloud before they hushed each other. A man in a trench coat followed Mr. Porter after greeting him, and within minutes the police were escorted into Gatesville’s main corridor.

  “We’ve come a long way Mr. Jennings. You said this was urgent?” The tall, rugged man asked, making himself comfortable as he sat in the principal’s guest chair in his office.

  “You don’t think stolen police property is an urgent matter, Inspector?” Mr. Jennings asked smugly, pouring himself a cup of freshly brewed tea.

  “Two bicycles and a satchel are hardly urgent matters. That case is now closed. We caught the perpetrators and recovered the stolen property, including your money.” The Inspector smiled proudly, seeming victorious in front of his police guards. He then took off his black hat and shook the raindrops onto Jennings’ luxurious carpet.

  “It most certainly is not closed. I am still missing three of my boys,” Mr. Jennings snapped after he gulped down his cup of black tea. “One of whom never registered with us here at Gatesville. He’s totally off the books, no trace…like a ghost. Explain that.”

  “Mr. Jennings,” the Inspector said calmly, “whomever you allow to slip under your nose is ultimately your responsibility by law. What we can do for you is draw up a missing children’s report and–.”

  “Those reports don’t amount to a hill of beans,” Mr. Jennings interrupted, jumping upright from his chair.

  “Nevertheless…it’s standard procedure, Mr. Jennings,” sighed the Inspector as he fixed his black hat back onto his head.

  “Once we have a legitimate lead, we’ll let you know,” said one of the policemen whilst the three headed for the exit door.

  “Don’t bother…I’ve saved you the trouble,” Mr. Jennings sniggered, throwing a crumpled piece of paper across his desk at the Inspector who grappled to catch it in one attempt.

  “What’s this?” asked the Inspector, unfolding it.

  “One of my runaways you brought back had this in his possession. It’s a map. I think that’s lead enough for you, don’t you think?” Mr. Jennings boasted.

  “We’ll take this to the station for review,” the Inspector concluded.

  Mr. Jennings’ expression suddenly changed from a boastful grin to an angry disgruntled frown. “What? That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”

  “I would mind my tone if I were you, Mr. Jennings,” the Inspector said coolly. “There are hundreds of runaway cases to be dealt with every day. We have to first run a check on these areas to know for sure they exist. For all we know they could be meeting points that have elapsed by now,” he continued.

  “Or they could be at any one of these spots,” Mr. Jennings interrupted.

  “Let us check it before we use up any manpower and the people’s taxes on a widespread manhunt. We’re just making sure this will not turn out to be a wild goose chase. Then we can proceed. I’ve had more experience in these matters than you have, Mr. Jennings, and many cases like this prove unsuccessful…however, if I find these areas to be habited by the boys, I will certainly contact you in due course, when and only when I have the available staff to do so,” the Inspector added bluntly, turning his back on the old man to exit the office.

  “Ridiculous,” Mr. Jennings hissed. “Lucky for me I have made an extra copy; get t
o the bottom of this myself, I will,” he rambled, muttering under his breath.

  “I strongly advise against taking police matters into your own hands…or you’ll be the one we’ll come back for,” one policeman threatened. Mr. Jennings screwed up his face in disgust when the Inspector motioned for his men to leave.

  “Good night, Mr. Jennings,” the Inspector sighed.

  “Oh forget it, you good for nothings!” Mr. Jennings yelled back once his office door slammed heavily behind them.

  The flickering of the Victorian lamps at the front gate dimmed for a few seconds, then glowed brighter. Neither bobby seemed to notice it at first until the Inspector pointed out the random change in the flame’s color. The normal ember radiance suddenly turned ice blue then changed rapidly to an earthly green and back again. The flame eventually faded to a light gray as if it had been drained of all its color before burning out.

  “That was strange, don’t you think?” one policeman tittered at the Inspector.

  “It has stopped raining too,” the other policeman added, staring at his colleagues who were both bewildered.

  “I’ll meet you back at the station,” the Inspector muttered in suspicion after noticing the orphans peering through the window at him. Taking the piece of paper from his chest pocket, the Inspector hurriedly unfolded the map and took another glance at it.

  “Inspector?” the second bobby asked, waiting on an explanation for the Inspector’s delay.

  “I need to speak with this Jennings character one more time. I’ll send for someone to collect me,” the Inspector replied with a reassuring nod. “Go on.”

  “Very well, Sir,” said both policemen together.

  Once the police wagon left Gatesville’s premises, heavy wind picked up around the grounds. The Inspector was only a step away from entering the building when an enormous blast of wind picked him off his feet and flung him into the darkness of the playground. Wet autumn leaves violently swirled around the man, blowing his hat off as they encircled him.