Season of Secrets (7 page)

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

Hades doesn't want his wife to be unhappy, though,
so he makes a deal. Persephone gets to spend six
months with her mother on Earth and six months
with him in the Underworld. And that's why the
Greeks thought we had summer and winter – winter
because Persephone's mother is so sorry she's gone,
and summer because she's so pleased to have her back.

 

I like that story. I think it's true, that being sad makes
things darker and colder, but being happy makes them
bright.

Persephone's mother is called Demeter.

She's the goddess of motherly love and things that
grow.

 

 

 

 

At the end of the school road, there's a big conker
tree. In school today, the boys are full of it.

“Miss, the conkers are out!”

“Miss, can we go get conkers?”

“Miss, it's educational, miss!”

At my old school, conkers weren't educational.
They were Violent and Competitive and If You Can't
Play Nicely, You Can't Play At All. Here, though,
Miss Shelley takes us down the road at break time and
we pick as many as we can. Josh and Matthew get
loads, whole conker-battalions full. Alexander gets
three – the biggest he can find.

In class we learn about conkers. Their long name is
horse chestnuts, but you don't roast them on a fire.
They're seeds. There's a little spark of life inside each
one, sleeping until spring. The ones that land in the
right place, when spring comes, a little shoot pops out
of the top of them. And then the shoot grows and
grows until it's turned into a whole new conker tree.

Or that's what Miss Shelley says, at least.

 

None of the boys care about shoots and trees. At
lunch, they all rush to the Art Table and start fighting
over who gets to use the screwdrivers and drills. The
poor conkers get hung on bits of art string and taken
outside to get bashed.

Alexander's gets bashed by Matthew.

Matthew's gets bashed by Josh.

So does Sascha's, which is kind of unfair because
Sascha's only six. But Mrs Angus says Josh has to let
her play, so really it's her fault.

Josh's conker is a
three-er
.

Josh's conker wins everything. It smashes Alexander's
second conker and two more of Matthew's. Now it's a
six-er
.

Josh roams around the playground, looking for
more things to bash.

“You got a conker?” he says to me. I shake my
head. My conkers are undrilled, safe in my pocket.

“You got one?” he says to Hannah. Hannah's on
the bench at the edge of the playground. She's
listening to Dad's iPod like she doesn't care what
anyone else is doing. She pulls the earplugs out of
her ears and makes Josh ask over again.

“Conker,” says Josh. “You got one?”

“Conkers are for kids,” says Hannah. Josh goes red.

“You drilled yours,” he says. “I
saw
you.”

Hannah stands up. She's taller than Josh in her
platform shoes.

“Go on then,” she says.

Josh had first whack on all the others, but Hannah
doesn't give him a chance. She's got her conker pulled
back ready to fight. Josh opens his mouth, then shuts
it again.

Hannah narrows her eyes. She pulls back the
conker string and lets fly. Josh's conker swings back,
but it's all right.

It's Josh's go now. He screws up his face and pulls
back his string. Whack! But Hannah's conker is all
right too.

Hannah's getting into it now. This time, when she
whacks Josh's conker, a bit flies off the edge. She gets
another go. A whole chunk of Josh's conker breaks
off. It falls off the thread. Hannah's won.

“There,” she says.

Josh's face is bright red. He looks like Sascha did
when he broke her conker, just before she started to
cry.

“Cheat,” he says. “You
cheated
. You must have done!”

Over by the school door, Oliver is ringing the bell.
Ding
dong,
ding
dong,
ding
dong.

“Line up, everyone!” calls Mrs Angus.

“Cheat!” says Josh.

Hannah gives him this
look
. She doesn't bother to
reply. She just picks up the iPod and marches over to
the line.

Josh scowls.

“Your sister's a bloody cheat,” he says. “And you're
a moron.”

 

Alexander's at the back of the line with his last conker.
It's the best one, a king conker, big and shiny.

“Don't fight Hannah,” I say. “She'll only win.”

Alexander looks at his conker fondly.

“I'm not going to fight anyone,” he says. “I'm going
to plant it like Miss Shelley said. Then I'll have a
conker tree of my own.”

I look at Alexander's conker.

“It's got a hole drilled in it.”

“So?” says Alexander. “I'll take out the string.”

“Will it grow with a hole in it?”

Alexander shrugs.

“Maybe it'll grow pre-drilled conkers!”

 

When I get back to my room, I take out my conkers
and line them up on my window sill. There are four.
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. I lay my head on the sill
and look at them sideways.

I could drill them up and let Hannah bash them
all.

Or I could plant them and grow them into conker
trees in the spring.