Foxlowe

I didn’t know then that I wouldn’t have to do any more Spike Walks. They would all be for Blue.

7

Once I asked Freya about the Spike Walk, and she said there was a story for it, only we didn’t tell it often, because it was clear as a summer sky what the Spike Walk was for. She told me the story anyway, and I told it to Toby, then to Blue when she asked, so it wouldn’t be lost.

Foxlowe existed before the Family did. Many years ago, before long Solstice days, before the house brimmed with the smell of wine and candlewax, before home, Foxlowe stood alone. The Standing Stones slept on the moor with no one to imagine what they meant or to care for them. Every Summer Solstice the sun path lit up through the Stones, all the way up to Foxlowe’s walls, and the sun set twice. No one saw it, or cared, or did things in the proper way. Freya was carrying her old name, and living in far away, concrete places, and only just beginning to understand how very wrong things were. It would be a long time before she and Foxlowe found one another.

Then Richard came, and Liberty, carrying their old names, and others with their old names too, people who lived at Foxlowe before the home we know. Foxlowe welcomed them with warm light and the blue stained glass made puddles on the wood for them to play in, and sunlit dust flurried in abandoned rooms. Richard knew the house from a long time before. He said the garden was full of things to eat but they had rotted away, swollen and burst, because no one had been there to enjoy them. They had to live for a little bit like the outside, paying money for all the food. But soon the paintings were taken down, and the furniture hauled away, and Foxlowe began to look like itself: the chickens, the vegetable patches, the fruit trees.

Most of the paintings were high up, and left squares of dark wood behind, in the way covered skin stays white in summer. In the Spike Walk, though, the nails stuck out low, and when you walked past them, they bit at you, snagging clothes and skin. In the first years, talk was of taking the nails down, and smoothing the wood with sandpaper and fresh varnish, but other jobs were more important, and everything had to be learned.

When Freya came, she said, —Leave them up. We’ll call it the Spike Walk. No one knew why, but as in all things, they did as Freya said. Then many Solstices later, the children came. They were afraid of the Spike Walk and the ghosts at the end of the corridor. Freya understood that if the children got the Bad in them, you could get it out by making them walk up and down the Spike Walk until the skin bled a little. And then the others understood why Freya had told them to leave the nails where they were. Sometimes Freya’s wisdom wasn’t revealed for a long time.

8

As she got older, Blue would be punished again and again for disappearing alone, walking out onto the moor, talking to outsiders. Her arms would be streaked with scars, etchings of Spike Walk nights, and we got used to seeing her bandages. After that first time, she never cried in the Spike Walk. She held her arms out as though spinning on the moor for fun, holding Freya’s eye. It was always me, in the end, who looked away. At Meeting, it was agreed that me and Toby were to keep watching her, and never let her out alone. But so often we lost her, slipping away over the stone wall and running so fast we could only wait for her to come back, a sickness rising, waiting for the night, for Freya to balance things again.

We knew, me and Toby, deep down, what it was that called her away again and again, and leached away when she bled in the Spike Walk, only to build again, because it was so old and rooted so deep; it had touched her when she was so very tiny, grown around her like a vine around a tree. We never betrayed her. Even she didn’t know. When Freya would scream at her Why do you do it? Blue could only shake her head, and me and Toby held each other’s eye.

Around a Solstice after her first Spike Walk, Blue had a bad run of them, her skin never seeming to heal by the time the next Walk came. So me and Toby taught her maze-making, one of our favourite games, to try to keep her attention with us, to hold her for a while. She’d kept watch while we stole the cogs of thread from the sewing box, fiddling with the fresh bandage on her arm. Toby showed her how to snap the line with her teeth, running the tongue over the tender parts of the mouth, avoiding the rot.

—Where do you chew? Show me, he said. Blue arched her head back and pointed.

—That one then, Toby said, and flicked at a tooth on the top of her jaw.

I remembered, briefly, those teeth coming through: the screaming, the sudden sharpness of her bite on my fingers. She’d lost many by then, sat twisting the loose ones in Meeting. Freya kept them in an old jar, with mine.

—Wrap the thread like this, Toby said, —and cut, and you have to be quick, because the chasers are coming for you through the grass!

Maze-making was best played on the sloping moorland near the Standing Stones. You had to catch the right time of the year: when the grasses were grown over our heads. A couple of dogs had followed us down, and flopped in the sun where the grass was lower.

Toby was the best maze-maker. He went in first, trailing a bright red thread, and disappeared into the green. The end was tied around the stile post, and the knot bounced and slipped as Toby made his path. The grasses crashed and snapped. Then a yell, —Now! and we plunged into the maze, following the thread line, the ground marshy beneath our feet, the crushed grasses like a carpet, and stones tipping us off course. Blue was faster than me, pivoting and making the quick turns with ease, leaving me squeezing through the grasses behind, trying to follow Toby’s path. His counts carried over the air, and my very skin strained to get to him before the seconds disappeared, then suddenly Blue parted a wall of grass and fell upon him, as he yelled Fifteen!

—You did it! he yelled, rolling Blue onto his stomach, the thread still hanging from his thumb; she’d got to him before he could cut the thread on his teeth.

—Too slow, too slow! she cried. —My turn!

Toby solemnly gave the thread over to her with a little bow. He was tall now, so his jeans stopped at his shins, and it had made a kind of gap between us, as though it was him alone, then me and Blue lumped together, the smaller ones. Teaching Blue our game was another small ending of the world of us, of me and Toby.

Blue curled Toby’s thread around her thumb as she collected it from the grass and we picked our way out of the maze, ready to start again. Through the green, I glimpsed a figure hovering near the stile.

The man was wearing a brown suit and his white hair was short, his face shaved. A smile played around his mouth as he took us in.

—Hello, he said.

Toby put his hand on my shoulder.

Blue tilted her head and waved. He copied her, making her laugh, then she danced, and so did he, waving his briefcase in the air.

—Playing a game? the man said.

Toby found his voice. —Are you lost? he said.

—Ah, no, just arrived, the man said, taking off his shoes. He perched on the old wooden gate, rolled off his socks, wiggled his toes in the sun.

—So nice here, the man said.

Toby looked at me, silently saying, What now?

The man had closed his eyes and was holding his face to the sun. I wondered if he’d forgotten we were there.

I shrugged back to Toby, and mouthed, Just keep playing?

There were no rules for outsiders who popped up on the moorland like spirits. We knew most of the locals by sight, and avoided them if we could. The thought that held me and Toby still and kept our hands on Blue’s wrists to stop her shooting to this new plaything was that the man could even be a moor spirit, or the Bad, dressed up in a suit.

The man opened his eyes and his smile faded. —Oh, he said, —don’t be frightened.

A dog bounded over and the man welcomed it with a kiss on its muzzle. She was Toby’s favourite, a bitch with soft brown fur turning grey around the eyes. We both remembered her as a puppy, but Toby would play with her and try to teach her tricks, gave her a few different names that never stuck. When he saw the dog licking the man’s face, Toby’s grip on Blue relaxed and she rushed over to sit next to him.

—Why are you here? Do you have a name yet? We’re playing a new game, she said. —It’s with threads and you have to catch the maze-maker before he cuts the thread and I just won, how old are you?

—How old do you think I am? he said. He held up his chin and pushed back his hair, so she could look at his face. Toby and I went over to crouch in the grass.

—Old, she said. —Eighty Solstices.

—No, older, I said to her. —Look at his white hair.

The man laughed. Up close he was very real, with mud on his trousers, brown spots on the back of his hands.

—Do you live outside? Blue said. —We live at Foxlowe.

The man smiled. —I wondered if you might, he said.

I felt better. He wasn’t a real outsider at all, but knew home.

—We should take you up to the house, said Toby, like it was a question.

The man gestured for him to lead the way.

We almost broke into a run, taking him back over the stone wall. We three had a huge secret, a gift, maybe even new family, and we’d met him first. The man kept stopping along the way to look behind us, to where the Cloud sat on the horizon.

When we reached the stone wall behind Foxlowe, the man’s scalp under his white hair had burned red. He stood for a while gazing at the house, windows flashing in the sun. The garden was in full summer bloom; the sweet pea were bright, the fruit trees swollen. We three waited for the man to say something, about how he knew our home, but he only stared, then vaulted over the stone wall and dropped into the gardens, so we had to scramble to follow him.

Toby flung the kitchen door open and yelled into the house, —Everyone! Hey!

Egg and Pet were already in the kitchen, their arms around each other, Egg kissing Pet’s forehead. They were always fighting and making up in Freya—Richard seasons, which this was. Mostly, it made life easy when Freya and Richard were together: Blue and I had the attic to ourselves, could whisper into the night. We’d find Freya every morning in the kitchen, where she’d kiss us both, though Blue would duck her head away, and give us pancakes soaked in apple syrup. She even laughed when Toby dropped a case of eggs when he tripped on the steps near the fountain. Toby had gone white, but Freya just made sketches of the mess, foamy yellow and the raw white like spit on the marble. But Libby spent her days with Egg in the ballroom, playing the tapes on the tinny stereo, and slept wrapped in his arms, making Pet’s eyes raw.

They broke apart, stunned. I grinned; it was hard to surprise the grown. It took a second for Egg to recover. He strode forward, holding out a hand to the stranger.

—Hi, he said. —Are you lost?

—We found him out by the Stones, I said.

—He was just there, said Toby.

—We thought he was a moor spirit, I said to Pet, who’d told us stories about them, how they led you to bogs and marshes, told you riddles, made promises with hidden stings.

Noise drifted down from the house as the others caught the scent of gossip and clattered towards the kitchen.

—If only I were so magical, said the man. —I’m parked over at Ipstones.

Richard, Freya and Dylan burst in, followed by the others. Freya stood for a second, her eyes flicking from the outsider, to us, and then settling on Blue. She had her by the hair before me and Toby could move, and dragged her out of sight, towards the goat shed. The man’s smile disappeared. Richard bounded over next to Egg.

—Hi, he said. —Welcome. Glass of water?

Pet filled a jar.

—We don’t usually sell from the house, said Richard. —We have some goats’ milk, jam and wine, if you’re—

—Unless you’re from a gallery, Dylan said. —We have some new craft pieces ready for market that you’re welcome to look at, and our higher end stuff is in the back.

—Sculpture and pottery mostly, Richard said. —Some paintings.

—Are you lost? Egg asked again.

—Is the girl all right? said the man. —What’s going on?

Folded arms and silence to this. Ellen and Libby were whispering to each other. Toby and I moved closer together. Valentina mouthed Okay? to Toby and he nodded.

—It’s all right, I said.

The man studied Richard’s face. —You’re the owner, he said, not like a question.

—We live as a commune, said Egg, so who owns what doesn’t really —

The man spoke to Richard again. —You’re Ralph’s boy, aren’t you? Same nose, and the clothes—

—Oh, said Richard, and straightened up, grew taller. —You knew—

—I lived here for a while, when I was very young, the man replied.

A ripple went through us. Someone who knew old Foxlowe, before us — not an outsider, but something else, like an old friend we’d forgotten.

The man held up his briefcase.

—I’m supposed to mark them, he said. —Papers. I was on the train. I’ve kept on working, you know. Never wanted to retire.

He looked at the briefcase and down at himself. In the silence Freya’s voice floated, No more said about it. It was her soft voice and so we parted a little as she came back with Blue at her side, hiding her hands in her sleeves, where the new scratches were. I pulled gently at her earlobe, and Toby squeezed her hand.

I found Blue’s ear. —So, how old, do you think? Guess, I whispered.

She sniffed. —A hundred Solstices.

It was the oldest we could imagine. Freya was our eldest grown and she’d lived eighty-two Solstices, summer and winter.

The outside man spoke. —And then. I just, I don’t want to, and I thought, it’s so simple, and I realised I wasn’t far from, well the train was coming through, and I just thought. I always wanted to come back and visit. Silly, really.

He trailed off and looked up at the archway and the old stone there, then looked back, smiling, like he was pleased to find something there. —I always meant to, he went on. — I was ill when it was Ralph’s funeral, and then, well, I didn’t know. You never know, do you, if you should go back, you know, to places you’ve … He spoke to Richard again, —Oh, you’re so like, he said.

Richard pulled at his shirt sleeves.

—Then it just kept playing on my mind, kept thinking about it, on the train, how much I loved it here. Your granddad and me … He nodded at Richard. —Oh we had some laughs, when I was sent up here —

—Maybe more, I whispered to Blue.

—Um, said Richard, —well, I suppose, if you want to look around—

—I heard everything went to you, the man said. —I remember hearing about all that, and it’s Ralph too, isn’t it?

—Richard, Freya corrected him.

—How old are you? asked Blue.

—I am three hundred and fifty-seven today, said the man.

She laughed.

—Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday? he said.

—You say, Happy birthday, said Richard.

We did, copying the way his voice flew up and down on the words.

On his first day we didn’t talk to Kai much. He told us his old name, and we tried to forget it, in case he stayed. He took a t-shirt from Jumble and wore overalls over it, leaving the brown suit folded in a carrier bag on the back of the kitchen door, ready to be cut up for patches. His first evening with us, he sang with Libby and Dylan; he was good at guitar. He found a mattress in one of the back corridors and Richard said he could have that room, if he wanted.

Days passed. Richard came into our attic and pulled out cobwebbed boxes from the eaves, things we didn’t know were there. He and the man spread out photographs on the kitchen table, and the man found himself, so he said, a boy standing on the back lawns, wearing shorts, his hair cut short, squinting into the camera. He and Richard stayed up late together talking and sifting through pictures, writing things in pencil on the backs. Richard called us to look at them, Blue and me, pointed at dead faces, told us names, but they were like Leavers, just ghosts, and I said so, said, —But they aren’t like us, they just used to live here, and Richard snapped the box of photographs shut. Freya packed them away again, put them back into the eaves. I didn’t like them there, watching us sleep.

The man taught Toby how to play a game with an old ball he’d found in the sheds. He asked Valentina if she minded, and she shrugged and said she didn’t care, then watched them from the kitchen windows. He told me and Blue stories about where he’d come from, Oxford, where there were books buried under the streets, and buildings made out of yellow stone, and Freya let him even though usually we weren’t to talk about old lives, but she said his voice was nice, and she liked listening to it lilt and fall while she worked.

At the end of his first week the weather turned cool, and we made a hot dinner. I dipped bread in egg, pushing it under to make it soggy. Freya took the eggshells and smashed them in her fists.

—So witches can’t use them, she said, and winked at me.

—Can’t we have tomatoes? Ellen said.

—Yeah, no veg all week, said Dylan.

—We’ll all get scurvy, said Pet.

There was a murmur of agreement from Libby and Egg, painting their toenails with tippex.

While we ate, Kai held the conversation. When others spoke, adding anecdotes, we all listened, but when Kai took up the thread again we leaned forward with our forks hanging. He didn’t talk about the outside much but kept coming back to Foxlowe’s old life, and how there had been fires lit in every room, and books covering the walls, and people who brought you things, who just lived there to bring you things, and how he and the man called Ralph had played games on the stairs that sounded like ours, using sacks to race to the bottom. Freya leaned on her hand and watched all this, chewing her eggs, smiling.

—Thing is, Freya said, as she took Kai’s plate.

—Yes, yes, I know, Kai said, smiling. —I’m not an artist, I can’t draw! Not at all! he added, cheerfully. —I heard in one of the villages that’s what it is here now, an artists’ place. Ralph used to paint, you know, he said.

—That’s really not the point, said Freya. —We all contribute something. Richard and I, we can sell our paintings and sculptures, Dylan too, he just got a big commission from Liverpool — here everyone cheered —And I do most of the cooking and sell the wine and the jam and so on, and Valentina sews, Ellen brings in her contribution from the markets down in Leek, and Egg does lots of the goats work, and the garden …

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.