The Runaway

by Claire Wong

  “How can I help?” asks Grace.

  Nia looks puzzled by the question. “I – I’m not sure. I think it’s all things I need to do.”

  Her face looks thinner, her eyes greyer, and Grace suspects it is not simply busyness that has brought about this change.

  “You don’t have to do everything, surely?”

  “It’s only right, really.”

  “You don’t blame yourself for what happened?” Grace realizes what is driving Nia to work herself so hard. Nia’s shoulders drop and she leans on the back of a kitchen chair. Grace stands on the opposite side of the table. Nia looks down as she speaks next.

  “I could have stopped it all if I’d only managed to explain what Callum had meant. I knew it wasn’t intended for Ifan, but I didn’t try hard enough to tell him that when we got back home. And I’m sure part of why Diana’s been so sharp lately, with Callum and others, is because I upset her when I gave that interview. There was no need for a fight, but I didn’t prevent it like I should have done. I’ve always been too quiet, but then the one time I speak out, this happens.”

  Grace sighs to hear what this woman really thinks of herself.

  “You know you asked me about our Ghanaian names when we first came here?” she says after a pause.

  “Yes,” Nia replies, her uncertain tone showing she does not follow the connection here.

  “Well, my middle name, Ayawa, is traditionally given to girls born on a Thursday. And Kofi means that Adam was born on a Friday. But there are different traits associated with children born on different days. A bit like the old rhyme ‘Monday’s child is fair of face’. You know the one? A child born on a Thursday is expected to be observant, a good listener, and quietly analytical. A child born on a Friday is traditionally a natural leader with a good heart.”

  Nia laughs. “That seems to describe the two of you very well!”

  “And our names are a reminder that people are different, with different strengths. I don’t believe I am the person I am because of when I was born, but I do know that while my brother is an expert at making friends and bringing out the best in people, I am good at reading situations and taking in information. And those differences between us make us suited to the different work we have chosen. Adam would hate academia, but I could never do what he does either.

  “Do you see my point? Our characters are different, but that doesn’t make one better than the other. I don’t think you should beat yourself up for being someone who is quicker to listen than to speak. And you definitely shouldn’t blame yourself if other people don’t listen to you properly, which I suspect may be what has happened here.”

  Nia smiles, for she sees Grace means to be kind, but it is hard to process any thought that goes against all that she has accepted for years to be true.

  “If I speak and nobody hears,” she replies, “do I blame the whole world’s ears, or my one voice?”

  Rhiannon

  Last night I watched a hedgehog shuffle past my house, its black nose sniffing for the chance of a meal, its spines as sharp as the knife I reached for when I first heard the movement outside. But it wasn’t the danger I had imagined. Then, rather than stay awake all night with my heart pounding and my ears alert, for a change I managed to drift back to sleep before I had told myself more than a few lines of a favourite comforting story.

  This morning I noticed a gap in the wall, and spent a long time repairing it. I would rather destroy my land than let Callum find it. I’m glad his foot is injured, as it makes it less likely he will wander far enough in this direction to stumble upon the fence, and even if he does, he will surely mistake it for a thicket, as was always my intention. But once I’d used up all the nearby brambles and fallen twigs to rebuild the boundary, I had to travel further to find firewood. So here I am, trampling over the browning undergrowth, with branches bundled under my right arm. Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental when two figures come walking through the wood and catch sight of me. I’m not far from the main path.

  “Hello!” Adam calls out to me. “Is Callum still alive?”

  “If he isn’t, it’s no fault of mine,” I answer, deciding that if he won’t be serious, then neither will I. It’s not that his expression gives much away. In fact, if I were to describe only his face now he might sound almost solemn. It’s more the way he swings his arms when he walks, and always looks as if he is preparing a joke he wants to tell. Grace walks alongside him, far more collected than her brother, but not in a proud way like Diana, and she looks amused by my retort.

  “Shall we go and see if a tree has fallen on him?” asks Adam. I am about to readily agree when I remember why I’m here in the first place. I explain that I have to take the firewood home first, but say that I will meet them afterwards.

  I head back to my house, checking over my shoulder a couple of times that I am not being followed. I do like Adam and Grace, but I’m not completely certain yet whether I can trust them. Most of the adults I have met up to now have had their own secret agendas and have feigned friendliness to get what they want, like the way Diana canvasses for support in the village to gain influence. Actually, the young people I’ve met have been just as bad – it was simply more of a surprise to discover that grown-ups can be petty and hypocritical too.

  I put the firewood in a pile just inside my house, where it will stay dry if it rains later today, then grab a handful of hazelnuts to eat on the way back. If we are going to be working hard again, I don’t want to be too weak to pull my weight. I find that I’m walking too briskly to eat though, almost breaking into a run. I don’t want to miss out on anything interesting.

  When I eventually arrive at the shelter we built yesterday, Callum looks tired and miserable from his ordeal of sleeping in the woods. He is wrapped up in a blanket now, watching Adam build a campfire. I feel a pang of jealousy: there was no one to help me when I struggled my way through the first few days in Dyrys.

  “What’s she doing here?” Callum demands when he sees me.

  “We invited her,” answers Grace. “You might be able to help us answer a question, Rhiannon. Which is the best way to the stream from here?”

  “They’re trying to poison me by making me drink muddy water,” Callum adds.

  “It won’t kill you; just boil it first,” I say, amazed at how little he knows or is prepared for life in Dyrys. “If you want to avoid the steep drop over Owl’s Ledge, where the waterfall is, you need to go that way.” I point northward, through a part of the forest that is overgrown with brambles, but the ground is at least flat.

  “Great,” says Callum. “I guess I’ll get lost or eaten by bears every time I want to wash.”

  “Yeah, you want to watch out for those Great Welsh Bears, mate,” says Adam, laughing. “They’re infamous around here. Maybe we’d better clear a path for you. Rhiannon, could you show Grace the way to the water, while Callum and I go through the supplies we’ve brought and check we’ve got everything he needs?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “We’ll need a couple of sticks for beating down the brambles,” says Grace. “Here, this one could do.”

  I quickly find a long branch that can be used for the task, and we set off towards the stream, flattening nettles as we go.

  “Don’t you feel guilty, killing all those plants?” I ask.

  “A little, but you’d be surprised how quickly they grow back. Come springtime we’ll be flooded with green again. What’s this in my face? Oh, woodbine. Tread softly, or you’ll wake the dormice.”

  A song thrush is pecking at berries overhead and does not notice us. I pause to watch it for a moment, before hurrying on to catch up with Grace. As she forges on, pulling aside any obstacles that might keep Callum from his water supply, I kick the broken stems out of the way so that the floor of the path will be earthy and even, all the while directing Grace towards the stream. Every now and t
hen she points out something of interest: a patch of woundwort, which was used by healers long ago to treat all sorts of ailments; hemlock growing closer towards the stream, which makes a poison; a blackthorn thicket rich with sturdy branches and deadly sap. I take all of this in; it could save my life one day.

  “So all this is part of your research?” I say, wondering what kind of academic knows the folklore of herbs.

  “More or less. I study what the landscape used to look like, so I’ve had to learn to spot the kind of plants that have been native to our countryside for hundreds or thousands of years. These oak trees, for example, may well remember the days of the civil war. And out in the hedgerows of the farms near here, I’ve found hart’s tongue fern and a whole host of other plants that tell me these woods probably once stretched much further than they do now.”

  “You mean all of Llandymna was once covered in trees?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  I like that thought. I imagine trees filling up the streets of the village, their branches pushing through the concrete and entwining themselves in the buildings, until nature has reclaimed it all.

  “You must know a lot about plants too, if you’re foraging for your own food,” Grace says.

  I shrug. “I’ve picked bits up from my uncle’s books. He used to take me and my cousin Eira for walks, before he died.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “You must miss him.”

  I try my best to sound mature and rational as I say, “Can’t do much about it, really.”

  I start to beat the undergrowth around my ankles with renewed energy. This is the sort of work to make your arms ache after a while, but I have spent days hauling firewood around and shaking the branches of trees until they release their crops. If ever I were to be prepared to clear this path, it’s now. Sometimes the stems have grown too thick to be broken easily, and then I crouch down and cut through them with my knife. When I get stung on the wrist by a nettle, it only heightens my determination to get rid of them. When I pause I feel calmer and refreshed.

  “When all this is done,” says Grace, “we’ll go back and have something to eat with the others. We’ve brought a flask to make hot drinks too.”

  For a moment I am inclined to think her shallow, that she should have something so mundane on her mind when I am sorting through the intricacies of my thoughts, agonizing over deep emotions that require the distraction of hard work to make them bearable. But then something about that simplicity makes me laugh quietly. I find that lunch is a better thought than many of the ones running round my head recently, and I agree with her that this sort of work does make you hungry. I look forward to reaching the stream.

  Dyrys

  Callum seems glad when the other two return and Adam suggests that they stop for food. His foot is improving from what appears to have been a bruised bone rather than any breakages. Yet he still cannot walk properly. Adam unpacks the food they have brought, while Rhiannon arranges some twigs on the ground.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s an arrow, in case you forget where the path is,” she says with a mischievous smile.

  They set out the food as a picnic between them. Adam and Grace have brought bread and ham, oranges, a cake and some crisps. They also have plastic cups and a flask of tea. Callum helps himself at once, but Rhiannon hangs back and stares at the spread before her. Tentatively, she takes some bread and chews it slowly, as if tasting something new and unfamiliar.

  There is a buzzing sound, and Adam takes out his mobile phone and looks at it with surprise. “Interesting,” he says, and walks a few paces out of earshot to answer it.

  “I miss having a working phone,” Callum sighs, counting up the hours since he last had access to technology and the civilized world. Grace passes around drinks, while Rhiannon watches Adam pace up and down the clearing as he talks.

  “That was Tom,” says Adam, returning to the group. “He had news for you, Callum.”

  “I thought he was off the case,” Grace says.

  “He was. But there’s not going to be a case any more. Apparently there were witnesses who had seen Ifan begin the fight, and he was facing charges of assault. Someone seems to have advised him that even though he came out the worse for the fight, it would look bad to a jury that he incited it. And so he’s decided to drop all charges.”

  “Convenient,” Callum remarks with a tone of scepticism. “So as soon as he thinks he might be in trouble, he stops wanting justice?”

  “Now you claim to care about justice?” Rhiannon sounds incredulous. “You weren’t so much a fan of it when you thought the consequences would apply to you!”

  “That wouldn’t have been justice. That would have been a one-sided version of events leading to only me being punished.”

  “I think you’re missing the point here,” Grace interrupts. “You no longer have any obstacle to going home.”

  Callum thinks about this a while. “Maybe. So I’m no longer a wanted man. That’s good. What about everyone else though – everyone who isn’t the police – what are they saying? They’re on my side, right?”

  The silence that follows this question gives him the answer he does not want.

  “Come on, it’s not as if I don’t have any friends back there!”

  “You’re right,” says Adam at last. “There’s been some gossip in the village, because people get excited when life gets dramatic, but it’s nothing you can’t handle when you go back. Quietly, a lot of people are on your side –”

  “They’re quietly on my side?” exclaims Callum, suddenly angry. “What good is that? I don’t need their pity. I need people to speak up for me. Do you know the power of a bit of gossip in a village like ours? Even if the police aren’t interested in me any more, if everyone else decides to say I’m to blame, it may as well be true. You don’t get it – you aren’t from our kind of community.”

  “Perhaps not,” says Adam, “but I do get how these things work. And I know, as I think you do too, that you need to face Ifan, and talk to him, if you want to get on with your life. And I know that once you’ve done that, it won’t matter what your neighbours say about you.”

  Callum seems to ignore this advice and switches to another strategy. “What about getting someone important to speak up for me? Could you get Diana to say something? Everyone listens to her.”

  “For one thing, that would be a way of you avoiding the issue,” says Adam. “And for another, it sounds like it might be too late for that. Tom said that the decision to drop the charges and end the investigation was announced at a public meeting in the church hall earlier today, and then Diana made a statement denouncing violence and drunkenness in the community. Just because Ifan misunderstood who your outburst was aimed at, I don’t think we can assume she did. She’s not taking Ifan’s side in this, but she’s not taking yours either.”

  Callum nearly explodes with rage at this. “After everything! I ran errands for her. I didn’t complain when she sent me on search party after search party for her.” He nods over at Rhiannon. “I might have lashed out on one occasion, but Diana ridiculed me in front of everyone plenty of times. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her. Was she ashamed to be linked with me – was that it? Did it harm her reputation? Or is she just petty enough to hold a grudge over being called a couple of names? That two-faced –”

  “I know it seems unfair,” says Adam, “but you had the chance to do things the lawful way and go straight to the police after the fight, and you chose to come out here and wait for people to calm down. Your absence is just giving them space to fill in the gaps with their imagination. Come back and show your face, and it will all die down.”

  “I can’t believe she’s still making things worse for me,” Callum grumbles. “Isn’t it enough that she runs the village already? Now she needs to control the lives of people who’ve left Llandymna too.”
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br />   “She’s a strong character,” Adam reasons, “but it’s not as if she doesn’t think of other people. You can see how much she cares about her children, and she made a real effort to help us make friends when we first arrived; I think she just doesn’t realize that other people don’t all think the same way as her.”

  “This is my aunt you’re talking about,” says Rhiannon, with a slight tone of warning to her voice. They fall silent momentarily.

  “I’m sorry. We were forgetting that,” says Grace. She catches her brother’s eye, and both are thinking the same thing. They have been uncomfortable with the decision not to tell Diana that her niece has been seen, alive and well.

  Callum completely misinterprets the glance between the siblings at this remark, and he breaks the silence by taking on a nastily cheerful tone: “Interesting, isn’t it, that she hasn’t come out here looking for you? I mean, we all know you’re here, and so do the police – they’ve searched the woods a few times for you, haven’t they? And yet Diana’s just sitting at home, looking after her own children and hardly caring whether you come back or not.”

  “Callum, there’s no need for that.” Adam and Grace try to silence him, but he ignores them. He has lost his friends, his home and his life in one blow and now he despises this stuck-up little girl pretending to be independent from all the world.

  “I bet you thought you were making a big statement, running away from home, didn’t you? I bet you thought we’d all be devastated and not give up until you were found and brought back. And you know what? No one even talks about you any more. It’s like you’ve just been forgotten. Even by Maebh.” He cannot deny his glee as she repeats this name in shock.

  “Maebh?”

  “Yes, I thought that was very strange. I mean, she was like a grandmother to you, and yet it seems she didn’t really care what happened to you once you were gone.”

  “Callum, that’s enough,” says Adam. Callum looks taken aback by Adam’s tone. He falls silent, but too late. The girl in front of him is ashen. She stands, open-mouthed, taking in all these things. Then she gives a thin, empty smile to everyone, and with near-perfect composure turns from them and walks away.