The Runaway

by Claire Wong

  Then a picture pops into my head, of my mum and Diana when they were younger. Faced with a situation like this, Diana would be the one to react like I am now, and Elin would already be laughing and shrieking as she flew out across the stream, trying to see how high the swing would go. I have never thought that I had anything in common with my aunt: I always assumed she disliked me so much because I reminded her of her sister. I have certainly never wanted to be like Diana. Well, if Elin would have chosen to have fun, then so will I.

  “Rhiannon?” Grace looks over to me when it is my turn on the swing. I can already see Callum opening his mouth to tell her that there is no way I will appreciate something that isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but I march past him and take hold of the rope. Adam holds it steady for me as I jump up onto the wooden seat, and then I kick back against the ground and am propelled forwards. I had forgotten how much this feels like flying! The air rushes past my face as I am suspended above the stream. If I fell now, it would be straight into the water. My feet almost touch the branches of the trees on the opposite bank before I start swinging backwards. I hear a voice ring out with loud laughter, filling Owl’s Ledge with the sound. A second later, I realize that I am the one laughing.

  “OK, I’m going to go for a proper run-up,” says Adam when his turn comes around. He pulls the swing back as far as it will go. “Did anyone ever figure out, as a kid, if it’s possible to swing all the way around the top of a tree if you go high enough?”

  I smile to remember it: that was what I always used to try to do. I think there was a swing in the back garden when I was younger. I made it quite high, too.

  “No,” says Callum, “but one time I tried to kick the top of a tree in front of the swing, and my shoe flew off into the next garden! I had to hobble over there in one trainer to collect it.”

  Adam begins his run and jumps out across the stream at high speed. We shout encouragement from the bank. He makes it across the water, and the rope is close to horizontal before he loses momentum and starts falling back.

  “Not quite high enough,” Adam says, smiling as he jumps to the ground.

  Next, Callum decides he will try standing on the swing seat. Halfway across, he nearly lets go of the rope, and struggles to regain his balance. He laughs as he wobbles and almost falls into the stream, which seems to make it fine for the rest of us to laugh too.

  I wish I had a camera and could keep a picture of this: everything, from the sunlight glinting on the waterfall, to the childlike fun we are having under the autumn-coloured trees, is just perfect. I wonder if Adam and Grace meant for this to be their real birthday present to me. As if guessing what I’m thinking, Adam hands the swing over to Grace and comes to stand next to the rest of us, and as he does he says, “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “It’s a much better birthday than I could have imagined.”

  And I make a promise to myself that even though I don’t have a camera, I am going to capture this moment in my memory and never forget it.

  Part Three:

  Book

  Chapter one

  Llandymna

  The church hall has been booked for months in advance. Diana’s birthday party will be all that anyone might expect it to be: meticulously organized, thoughtfully detailed, and implicitly compulsory. Two days before the event, Adam and Grace find they have been delegated tasks along with the rest of the village.

  “It’s a compliment, if you can believe it,” says Tom, who has come to the cottage to bring them their instructions. “It means she wants you to feel like you belong here.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about table centrepieces,” says Grace from behind her pile of books.

  “Well, I guess she interpreted the fact that your research involves looking at plants as basically meaning you arrange flowers for a living.”

  “If anyone wants a vase full of hemlock and acorns, I can certainly oblige.”

  “Always good to have an excuse for a party, though,” says Adam. “I don’t mind helping set up the room, if you let me know what time to get there.”

  Tom thanks them for being so gracious about the fact that he has just turned up at the cottage with these instructions from Diana. He half turns to leave, and then lingers in the hallway.

  “Actually, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he says. Grace motions for him to sit down.

  “Callum?” asks Adam.

  Tom nods. “I’m assuming you passed on the message that he wasn’t going to be prosecuted over the fight with Ifan?”

  “I did.”

  “Well then, I don’t understand why he hasn’t come back.”

  “You and me both!” Adam mutters, then adds, “Sorry, that’s not helpful. Callum seems worried that even without legal consequences, there might still be trouble waiting for him if he comes back to Llandymna at the moment. He takes the opinion of his neighbours very seriously.”

  “What does he think will happen? That we’ll form an angry mob with pitchforks and flaming torches, and chase him down?” Tom exclaims crossly.

  Adam and Grace exchange a look across the room. Evidently Tom does not know his village’s history, or he might think that scenario less improbable.

  “There has been a fair bit of gossip,” Grace points out.

  “But that won’t amount to anything real. What if I went and talked to him? You still know where he is, right?”

  “We do,” says Adam, “and I think it might be a good idea for you to speak to Callum. You might have more success than we have in convincing him to come back. But at the moment he may not want to see any of his old friends.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s angry. He feels… well… let down by all of us for not speaking up for him more.”

  Tom looks away.

  “It’ll pass,” says Grace. “Give it time.”

  They invite Tom to stay for dinner, but he declines and instead makes his way back into the village. He finds himself outside a house he has not visited since the day Rhiannon disappeared. Maebh does not ask him why he has come; she simply invites him in.

  “I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve come to see you.”

  Maebh does not seem to consider the apology necessary, as she offers him every kind of biscuit and cake in her house.

  “I wanted to speak to you,” he says. These are words she has not heard from Tom since he was much younger, and she grants him her complete attention now.

  “What is it?” she says, taking on the grandmotherly tone she once used in talking to this young man, and still uses with all the children.

  “You always seemed to think well of me, to see some promise in me, when I was younger,” he says, “even when others didn’t. You encouraged them to trust me and listen to me, and I wanted to thank you for that now.”

  Surprised and smiling, Maebh answers, “Why would I not have told people to pay attention to you? You always had a wise head on those shoulders. It was clear when you were a child that behind the serious face there was a lot of thinking happening.”

  “I know that I started trusting my own head above anything else after a while,” he replies, “and I’m wondering now if I’ve really reached the right answers. I don’t know who else to tell this to, but I think I made a mistake letting Callum get away.”

  “Do you, now?” Maebh says, interested.

  “I meant to protect a friend, but now he isn’t coming back, and I’ve just learned tonight that he blames me for not speaking up for him sooner. I thought that by just doing nothing I could help, but I don’t know any more. And I wonder about Rhiannon too: if I should have done something sooner; if intervening after the incident at the school would have kept her here.”

  “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, it seems,” Maebh remarks, “but the question is, what are you going to do now?” />
  “Nothing, really,” says Tom. “They’re gone, and neither wants to be reached, and I don’t see what I can do without making things worse.”

  Maebh looks disappointed. “Thomas Davies,” she says, “you are a policeman. If anyone has the authority to take action and sort this mess out, surely it is you. There are a thousand things you might do. You could have a message delivered to Callum, as it sounds like you know how to reach him now. You could tell Diana her niece is alive.”

  Tom starts. “You know about Rhiannon?”

  “I do. And I hope you haven’t been keeping her situation a secret simply to make life easier for yourself. You are a thoughtful, sensible young man, and there are much bolder characters than you in this village. But you cannot avoid the difficulty they may bring you, if it means being unkind to them.”

  Tom pulls a perplexed face and stares at the wall as he contemplates this. Maebh sighs with exasperation.

  “I shall have to take matters into my own hands at this rate.”

  “I thought you already had,” says Tom, snapping his attention back to her. “Don’t think for a second that I believe Ifan was persuaded to drop all the charges against Callum purely because I made a case for it to him! Nia told me you went over there.”

  Maebh pulls a face. “Someone has to sort this village out.”

  Rhiannon

  It may be cold, but the sun shines on the forest, or at least the part where we are sitting. We all agreed that it was time to break from work and have something to eat. Grace has been teaching me to recognize more plants today, and now she points to a clump of tall pink flowers.

  “That’s rosebay willowherb. It’s also called fireweed, because after a forest fire it’s the first thing to grow back.”

  I prefer the name fireweed. I like the idea of this resilient plant bouncing back from disaster with swathes of bright flowers.

  “Is it edible?”

  “Yes, but it’ll taste bitter. I think if you peel off the outside of the stem, the inside is good. Not that I’ve ever tried it, of course. This is all just from research reading.”

  “I’ll stick to sandwiches, thanks,” says Callum through a mouthful of cheese and ham.

  Callum and I never speak of how we fought: it would mean admitting a degree of defeat on both sides, and we have no intention of becoming friends enough to do that, though I think Callum is a little less intolerable now. Every day Grace teaches me about new plants that are good for curing illnesses or eating, and Adam tells us that we work harder than most adults. I’m not used to trusting compliments, but he always makes such an effort to find something good in everything that I find myself walking home a little taller at the end of each day.

  Grace starts telling us about the plans for Diana’s birthday party. Callum looks resentful at the mere mention of Diana, and I think I would have reacted the same way back in the summer. But somehow I can bear to hear her talked about these days. Perhaps it is just good to be talking with anybody at all.

  “We’ve all been roped in to help with the day.”

  “I bet she won’t let Nia be part of it though,” says Callum.

  “Even Nia,” says Grace.

  Callum splutters and almost chokes. “So Diana forgave her, but not me?” he says, indignant enough to stop eating for a moment. “Besides, what on earth would Nia ever add to a party?”

  He casts a look at me as he says this, presumably because he knows that Nia and I were sort of friends before I left. I decide to confuse him by saying nothing. A squirrel bounds past and leaps up a tree, chattering crossly at us. I watch it intently, deliberately not turning back to Callum.

  “So you agree,” he says, drawing whatever support he can from my silence, “that Nia is just about the most boring person in Llandymna, and that her whole nervous and feeble act just makes people feel like they can’t have any fun around her in case they step on her and she breaks?”

  Slowly, I turn back towards him. “Not at all,” I say. “I think she’s far more considerate than most of us, and that no one ever really gives her a chance to say what she thinks. She might be interesting, if you bothered to listen to her. But that’s beside the point, because really I think you’re only goading me into criticizing her because you’d like to feel that everything that has happened to you is unfair, and having a go at someone else is the only way you know how to stop blaming yourself.”

  The stunned silence only lasts as long as Adam is able to hold back his laughter. I turn sharply towards him, but his face says that he is not laughing at me.

  “I think she’s got you there, mate,” Adam says. Callum scowls.

  I watch as a small flock of sparrows lands not far from us and starts pecking at the crumbs we have left from our lunch. I used to think they were horrible drab little things and prefer majestic birds of prey like Lleu, whom I have not seen since the day we went to Owl’s Ledge. I don’t know exactly why, but his absence doesn’t surprise or worry me very much. I think I always knew he would leave eventually.

  “I think I’ve come to like sparrows,” I say out loud. Adam tears off a small chunk of bread and starts throwing pieces to them.

  “Why’s that?” he asks, keeping his voice low so as not to scare them away.

  “They’re friendlier than hawks, even if they’re a bit scruffier too. And they’re brave, when you consider how small they are. I think that’s better than being imposing and elegant like a hawk.”

  One sparrow ventures so close to me in its quest for food that I could probably reach out and pick it up if I wanted to, but I leave it alone. When they fly away, I feel disappointed.

  “Maebh used to tell these stories,” I go on to explain. “She still does, I guess, about the Sparrow Girl and the Boy Who Shone. I didn’t understand before, why she called her the Sparrow Girl. But I think she wanted us to see what was important about the character.”

  “What did you say was the name of the other one?” Grace asks.

  “The Boy Who Shone. Why?”

  “Nothing. It just reminded me of a story our dad used to tell. But the name of that character was different.”

  “What was it?”

  “The Boy Who Ran.”

  I feel there is something important in her words, if I could just fit all the pieces together.

  “Can I borrow a knife from one of you?” asks Adam.

  “Here, take mine,” says Callum. “Might as well put it to some better use.”

  Adam takes a stick and cuts a small part off so that he has a lump of wood not much bigger than a two pound coin. With Callum’s penknife he starts to cut away at it, carving something small. I wonder if this is another survival mechanism, or just idling away the time.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say to Adam and Grace.

  “Of course,” Grace answers.

  “You said that your dad used to live in Llandymna, but he left. Did he decide to move to another village, or did he run away?”

  Adam pauses in whittling the piece of wood.

  “He ran away,” says Grace.

  I wonder why I never knew his story. Llandymna is a quiet place, or so I thought; I would have expected the gossips to thrive off the legend of a man who ran away. Why do we not have stories of the Boy Who Ran, like the ones Adam and Grace grew up hearing?

  “Did he come out this way too?”

  “Perhaps. He told us stories, long ago, of sheltering under bridges and in ruins, and of making his way through a vast forest. It would make sense for him to have come this way at some point.”

  Sheltering in ruins. But I have only come across one ruin in all my time out here. Surely she does not mean my house? Then I remember something that has sat untouched since the day I found it.

  “Did he lose something while he was out here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A po
cket watch – did he ever mention one?”

  “D’you know, he did talk about that, yes,” says Adam. “He inherited a watch from his grandfather and carried it everywhere with him when he was younger.” He frowns. “But how did you know that?”

  I jump to my feet. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say, and start to run towards my house. If the watch is their father’s, that must mean he was the one who sheltered there before me, the last runaway to hide in the abandoned mill house. I race along the path that only I know, and push aside the ivy tendrils concealing the way to my land. The watch is still lying in a corner of the house, behind my dried food rations. I pick it up and run all the way back to the clearing where the others are.

  I am slightly breathless, but able to say “here” and thrust the watch towards them. Grace takes it from me and turns it over to examine, before passing it on to her brother. Adam tests the weight of the watch in his hands, and then stares at it.

  “Do you think it’s his?” I ask them.

  “It has the right initials engraved,” Grace replies. “R. T. – that could be Robert Trewent, his grandfather. But where did you find it?”

  I wonder what to tell them so that I don’t give away the location of my house.

  “It was when you mentioned ruins,” I say. “There are some in the woods, where I found that when I first came out here. I always wondered who it belonged to.”

  “A ruin?” Grace sounds interested. “I’d like to see that, as much for my research into this area as anything else. Could you show me?”

  “Maybe one day.” I give a non-committal answer. Adam still hasn’t taken his eyes off the watch. He seems to be drinking in every detail, taking in all the scratches that speak of its history. I suppose if someone brought me something that belonged to my mother, I would be the same. Grace leans over his shoulder to take another look.