Season of Secrets

by Sally Nicholls

  “Why can’t anyone else see you? Why do you keep disappearing?”

  “Do you mind?” he says. “I don’t want to worry you.”

  “I. . .” I don’t know what to say. He reaches out his hand and touches mine. I shiver.

  “I don’t want them to find me,” he says.

  “The hunt people?”

  He doesn’t answer. “You are being careful,” he says, instead. “Aren’t you? Nights are getting longer. The Holly King’s getting stronger. . .”

  “The Holly King,” I say. “Who’s he?” But I already know the answer. “He’s the man on the horse, isn’t he? The one who was leading the hunt? The one who’s after you?”

  He closes his eyes again.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he says. “I don’t want to frighten you.”

  “He couldn’t hurt me?” I say. “Could he?”

  “Of course he could.” He looks surprised that I could even ask such a question. “Perhaps you shouldn’t come any more,” he says. “I don’t want him to hurt you. . .”

  “Would he?” I say. He doesn’t answer. “He wants to hurt you,” I say. “Doesn’t he?”

  My man watches me without moving, leaning back against the tree.

  “Yes,” he says. “He wants to hurt me.”

  We’re quiet. I’m filled with uncertainty, mingled with fear. Surely he can’t just mean to sit here, waiting for the Holly King to come? Surely he’s going to do something?

  “Can’t you use magic on him?”

  “Magic?”

  “Like you used to make my flower.”

  “Your flower made itself,” he says.

  “Can you make other things make themselves?” I say, hopefully.

  He starts to laugh and then it turns into coughing, horrible, wet coughing, and I’m frightened. I don’t think he can stop, but he does, eventually.

  “Are you all right?” I say.

  He shakes his head. I wonder if I ought to go. But he holds out his hand like he wants me to stay.

  “You can do so much stuff,” I say. I’m thinking of all the things that go with spring: celandines in the field behind Grandpa’s house, baby blackbird beaks opening and closing in their nest in our plum tree, spider silk shining on the grass in the mornings. “Can –” I stop. “Do you make baby animals get born?”

  He holds out his hand again, thoughtfully, turning it so that the palm is upwards. I wonder if he’s going to make something for me – a baby mouse, maybe, or a squirrel, perhaps. I’d like a squirrel. He must have guessed what I’m thinking because he looks up, and his eyes are laughing. “You can’t make a baby without a mother, can you?” he says, teasing. Ivy curls out of the palm of his hand and up his arm. He holds up his hand, watching it.

  The muscles in my chest tighten. I look down at the earth. “Could you make the mother too?” I say quietly. “Could you make someone come alive for me, if I asked you? Only, your face is on tombstones, my teacher said. You’re the god of rebirth, she said. Someone dead – could you make them come alive? Could you?”

  He doesn’t answer. I look up. But he’s gone again.

  Long Distance

  Dad rings this evening.

  “Are you all right, love?” he says.

  I nod, then remember that he can’t see me. “Yes,” I say.

  “Sorry I was so rotten, love,” he says. He sounds tired, like most of him is somewhere else. “I’m doing my best.”

  “I know,” I say. I lean my head against the wall. “I’m sorry too.”

  “Peace?”

  “Peace.”

  We’re quiet. I tap my heels against the stair, waiting for him to say something.

  “Did you have a good afternoon?” he says eventually.

  “I went to see my man,” I tell him. “This man I’ve met. He lives in a little house, like in a book, because he’s hiding from this hunt who are trying to kill him. He can make things out of nothing, like trees and flowers and magic potions.”

  “Sounds useful,” says Dad. “Maybe you can introduce me next time I come and see you.”

  “Maybe,” I say doubtfully. “Only he won’t let anyone but me see him. He makes himself invisible.”

  “Oh well,” says Dad. He gives a little half-laugh, although I can’t see what’s so funny.

  Hannah puts her head round the kitchen door.

  “Dinner!” she says.

  I cover the phone with my hand.

  “D’you want to talk to Dad?”

  Hannah shakes her head and vanishes.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  “All right,” Dad says. He draws in his breath. “Don’t I get a kiss?”

  I kiss my fingers and press them against the phone.

  “There. Did you get it?”

  “Wait—” says Dad. “Yes – no – no – oh, yes! There! Got it!”

  “Your turn.”

  “OK,” says Dad. I can hear him smiling. “Sending now. Ready?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the time it takes a kiss to travel all the way from Newcastle down a phone line. The kiss zips down wires and across space. It shoots through the receiver, and lands on my cheek with a splat.

  “Got it?” says Dad.

  “Yes,” I say. “Got it.”

  “Off you go, then,” says Dad. He sounds suddenly sad. I put the phone down, so I don’t have to hear.

  Golden Leaves and Kings

  The leaves on the trees are changing colour; turning from green to yellow and falling from the sky. They do it at home too, only you don’t notice because there aren’t so many of them. There are rosehips in the hedges and red berries on the hawthorn bushes, a cold tang in the air and the fallen leaves to crunch through in the grass.

  In school one morning, a great wind blows up. We all go out and try and catch the leaves as they swirl down from the trees in the road. We gather them up and take them back to press in dictionaries and atlases. On Wednesday, we take them out and laminate them and turn them into mobiles to hang from the ceiling. Mrs Angus – who turns out to know a lot about trees – teaches us the Latin names, which we’d never have learnt in my old school. Oak – Quercus robur. Ash – Fraxinus excelsior. Hawthorn – Crataegus monogyna.

  I like to think that they’re the real name of the tree, the friendly name you’d use it if it ever happened to speak to you. Quercus Robur sounds funny and friendly. Fraxinus Excelsior is brave, like a knight. Crataegus Monogyna is a little frightening, a shrivelled up old witch-tree with long red fingers.

  We don’t do holly, which is good, because I don’t want anything from the Holly King in my book. I ask Miss Shelley about him, though.

  “The Holly King?” she says. “Where did you hear about him?”

  “The man was talking about him. You remember – I told you. The statue from the church, that I met.”

  Across the table, Josh whispers something to Matthew and Matthew sputters. Miss Shelley ignores them.

  “I see,” she says. “Well, the Holly King is another pagan archetype. He’s a counterbalance to the Oak King – which is another name for your Green Man. The Oak King rules in spring and summer and the Holly King in autumn and winter.”

  So my man’s the good one and the Holly King’s the evil one.

  “Do they fight?” I say. “Is that what counterbalance means – that they’re enemies?”

  “Sort of,” says Miss Shelley. “Look, Molly, it’s all rather complicated. There are so many stories—”

  But the Holly King’s not a story! Why can’t anyone understand this? He’s a real person, and he’s after my man. The Green Man or the Oak King or whatever his name is.

  Miss Shelley’s watching me. So’s Emily, across the table.

  “The Holly King kills him,” I say. “He does, doesn’t he? The Green Man dies, that’s what you said. So does the Holly King kill him?”

  “In some versions of the story,” Miss Shelley says. “Yes. The Holly King and the Oak King fight at midwi
nter and the Holly King defeats the Oak King.”

  I clench my lips, tight as oak roots.

  “Molly?” says Miss Shelley.

  I look up.

  “Does he have a hunt?” I say.

  “A hunt?”

  “A wild hunt? Does the Holly King have one?”

  “Oh, the wild hunt,” says Miss Shelley. “All sorts of people had a wild hunt, Molly. Woden and Odin, Herne, of course – the Devil in some versions – King Arthur in others. Even your Green Man is supposed to lead it, in some stories.”

  “He doesn’t!” I say. “He wouldn’t!”

  Matthew snorts. Behind Miss Shelley’s head, Josh makes circling motions around his ear. Crazy.

  “You stop that!” I say. Miss Shelley jumps.

  “Molly!”

  “It was Josh!” I say.

  At break, Hannah corners me.

  “Why do you have to do that?” she says, pushing me back against the playground wall. “Why do you have to go on about hunts and stupid gods? Everyone thinks you’re mad. You do know that, don’t you? If you have to make up stories, at least pick ones that make sense.”

  “It’s not a story,” I say, furious. Hannah glares.

  “Grow up,” she says. She drops her hands and walks away.

  I feel tears starting in the back of my eyes. Hannah’s supposed to be my sister. Sisters are supposed to stick up for each other.

  “Mum would have believed me,” I call after her.

  She doesn’t look back.

  An Aneurism in the Family

  An aneurism is this disease that people get sometimes. It’s where the wall of one of your blood vessels gets damaged, so blood flows into the wall and makes a balloon, which gets bigger and bigger until it explodes inside you and you die.

  Aneurisms can happen to anyone at any time – even kids can get them, though Auntie Rose says it’s not very likely me or Hannah will. She says they only happen really, really rarely. Also, mostly people who get them are old. So out of the people I know, Grandpa is most likely to get one, because he’s the oldest.

  Which means he’s probably going to be the next person I love to die.

  An aneurism is what happened to Mum. It’s why she died. She waved us off at the school gate and then got into her car and drove off, and half an hour later she was dead. So we were the last people to see her alive.

  Probably, if we’d been doctors, or the Famous Five, or if we’d known about aneurisms, we would have noticed something was wrong and saved her. You would think that if someone is about to die in half a hour, her children would notice. But we didn’t.

  When it happened they rang Dad at work, but they didn’t ring us. We only found out when we came out of school and Grandma was standing there waiting for us. But by then she was already dead.

  So we never even got to say goodbye.

  A Man in the Lane

  Kick. Kick. Kick. I stump down the lane, kicking up leaves. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hannah. Neither do you, smelly Josh Haltwhistle. Kick. Neither do you, Dad. You could have us back if you wanted. You could.

  I stamp around the corner . . .

  . . . and stop.

  He’s there. A tall figure, snuffling around the lane.

  I shrink back in the hedge. He’s got his back to me, looking down at the track to my man’s house. He’s so close that I could throw a stone and hit him.

  It’s the huntsman. The Holly King.

  From behind the hedge, I stare. In the daylight, he looks half-human, thick and stooped and low, with strange, high shoulders and legs that look more like a bull’s than a man’s. He’s wearing some sort of cloak, but his legs are covered in thick, black hair, like a faun’s. His face, when he turns it to look down the lane, is human enough, though it’s flatter and wider than a normal face, and his horns are gone. He’s got that same . . . wildness about him that my man has. He looks like someone who’s stepped out of a story, not the sort of somebody you’d meet just walking into Grandpa’s shop to buy stamps.

  I creep slowly backwards. He’s staring down the track towards the field where my man is. Does he know he’s there? Why doesn’t he go in after him?

  What’s he waiting for?

  I edge down the lane, Indian-style, and round the corner. There’s another field here. I climb over the gate and now I start to run.

  His field should be behind this one. Behind or along. I duck under the electric shock wire and look round. Here is a bigger field, longer, bumpier, with marshy clumps of yellow grass and spindly trees. I’m not sure how it joins on to the field where my man is. I think his field is . . . over there.

  I run across, wellies squashing into the marshiness. When I get to the wall, I stop.

  This is his field all right. The trees are moving. Back and forth, back and forth, like there’s a hurricane blowing.

  I stumble-run across to his barn.

  “Man! Man!”

  He’s not there.

  “Man!”

  I run out of the barn and all the way around the back of it, in case he’s hiding.

  He’s not.

  “Man!” I run back inside. He’s gone. He’s not in any of the corners, or hiding behind the sacks or the rubbish in the corner. His oak tree is rustling and shaking, orangey leaves falling like water from a dog. I’m ankle-deep in dead leaves.

  “Man!”

  I run back out.

  “Molly—”

  He’s standing up against the wall, holding on to the door frame. He’s shaking like the tree inside, shaking so much that I’m sure he’s going fall.

  “He’s here! In the lane! The Holly—”

  I reach for his hand, and he grabs it and squeezes my fingers so tight that I think my bones are going to snap.

  “Don’t,” he says. “Shh.”

  I can feel how tense he is. I can feel the tenseness in his hand and it frightens me. This isn’t my strong wood god.

  “Is he coming to get you?” I whisper. He looks down at me and rubs my arm.

  “No,” he says. “Not yet.”

  Not yet.

  “Help me,” he says, and at first I don’t understand what he means. But then he puts his arm across my shoulders and I realize.

  He leans on me and I hold him up. He’s heavier than I expected; a warm, shaking weight against my arm. The scent of him is stronger again and I clench my nose shut. Together – step by step – we make our way back in the barn.

  Inside, he collapses into the leaves around the oak tree, which gives this little shiver and stops shaking. It’s a proper tree now, with branches reaching up through the hole in the roof. He leans his head back against it and closes his eyes. He’s pale, under his tan. The gashes on his legs have opened again. I can see purple and black bruises on his skin and a mess of dried blood and pus around the wounds and in his ragged trousers.

  I realize I’m shaking too.

  “Why isn’t he coming now?” I say. “Why’s he after you? What did you do to him?”

  He doesn’t open his eyes.

  “Tell me!” I say. “Tell me now! Don’t leave again!”

  He shakes his head against the tree trunk.

  “Stay here! Don’t go! Why isn’t he coming?”

  “The sun. . .”

  “What’s the sun got to do with anything?”

  I want to shake him. His skin is a greyish colour, bluish-white around his lips.

  “No,” he says.

  “No what?”

  “I can’t stay here any more,” he says, and he’s fading. He’s fading. I clutch at him, but he’s gone, leaving me with nothing but the oak tree and the fallen leaves.

  The tree shudders, and is still.

  In the lane, the man-thing – the Holly King – is standing upright at the edge of the track, like he’s stepped down from a real magical kingdom somewhere. I can see leaves fluttering down from the tree above his head. It’s barer now than the others in the lane. The grass around his clawed feet is
white with frost; thick where he stands, fading as it spreads away and out. As I watch, beads of frost creep up the branch of the tree, pale and icy. I shiver.

  Around me, it’s growing dark.

  Demeter

  How does a god change the weather?

  I know another story about winter.

  It’s about a Greek goddess whose little girl vanishes. One minute she’s playing in the forest, the next she’s gone.

  The goddess wanders the whole world over, searching for her daughter, whose name is Persephone. She’s so sad that everything stops growing. Leaves fall out of the trees. Flowers put their heads out of the ground and shrivel back into the earth. Nothing grows, so nobody has anything to eat and everyone is hungry.

  One day, when she’s searching by a river, the goddess finds her daughter’s belt on the ground. She picks it up and starts crying, all over again.

  As she’s sitting there, this woman’s head pokes up out of the stream. It’s a water nymph.

  “Woman,” says the nymph. “Stop crying. Your daughter is Queen in the Underworld. Hades, Lord of the Dead, has stolen her and made her his bride.”

  When the goddess hears that, she leaps up and flies straight to Zeus, who’s King of the Gods and Persephone’s father.

  “Zeus,” she says, bowing low. “Please help. Please save our daughter.”

  But Zeus is angry. He’s angry because nothing will grow, because his people are dying.

  “What do you have against my brother, King of the Underworld?” he says. “Persephone is as great a queen there as my wife is here.”

  (So Persephone has married her uncle. But that sort of thing was quite normal for Greek gods, so no one cared.)

  Persephone’s mother carries on crying and pleading. And in the end, Zeus gives in.

  “She may go free,” he says, “So long as she has eaten none of the fruit of the Underworld.”

  Up jumps the goddess, laughing with joy. But Zeus gets the last laugh. Because Persephone has eaten eight pomegranate seeds in Hades’ garden, so she has to stay.