Ashes Under Uricon (The Change Book 1) (6 page)

“Non. La mere du monde.”

He turned to me. “I think she might be saying that Mererid is the ‘Mother of the World’. I have no idea what that means.”

Rhiannon took a step closer to Taid, reached out and grasped his hand, then beckoned to me, saying, “Alors. Venez avec moi. Vite. Vite.”

“She wants us to go with her. And she seems to be in something of a hurry. Perhaps we’d better do as she says.”

I didn’t think that this would be the right time to argue with him, so I decided not to and we set off.

“Does she know where there might be food?” I asked, quietly.

For about half an hour she led us on at a fairly rapid pace.

“We need to stop,” I said. I could hear Taid’s breathing becoming shallower and more rapid. He needed to take a break.

He squeezed Rhiannon’s hand and stopped walking. But she tugged him, saying, “N’arretes pas, pere.”

Taid stood his ground, pointing at his chest. “Difficile,” he gasped. “Mon coeur.”

“Il y a une maison. Deux minutes.” She pointed along the road.

“Oui. Un moment. Attends.” Taid dropped the bag and sat down heavily on a rock at the side of the road. He looked at me. “She says … she says there’s a … there’s a house. It’s … it’s two minutes away.”

“So what?” I said, anger building inside me. “Can’t she see how you are? We’ve been walking for far too long already. Listen to yourself. We – you – can’t keep up this pace for long. You know that. Tell her she’ll have to wait.”

The girl stared at me. “Anglais?” she said.

Taid responded. “Oui. Anglais.”

“Elle parle pas Francais?”

“Non. Anglais seulement.”

I interrupted their little conversation. “What is she saying now, Taid?” It was so frustrating to hear two people speak with words that made no sense to me. Yet they seemed to understand each other.

“She asked if you are English. And that you don’t speak French. I told her you only speak English.”

“Like the rest of the world,” I said, bitterly. “Except her, for some unknown reason.”

“That’s not quite true, cariad,” Taid said, giving me one of his knowing smiles. “It might be true in your world, but that is not how the world is in reality.”

I stared at him, shocked. What he was saying was tantamount to blasphemy, one of the most serious crimes anyone could commit. “You can’t say that. Everyone knows there are only two languages. English for speaking. Lat for reading and writing. It’s not
my
world, it’s
the
world.” I could feel tears biting behind my eyes. How could my grandfather be saying such things? Taid, who knew everything there was to know, as far as I was concerned.

“Don’t cry, little one.” He stood up, painfully, and came towards me, but I pushed him away and turned my face away from the pair of them.

“I’m not crying,” I sobbed as the tears ran down my cheeks, destroying any dignity I might have had left. I turned back to look at them, my pride shattered. “He’s too ill to walk so fast, you stupid girl,” I yelled at Rhiannon. She backed away, a look of terror on her face. “And why are you pretending that you don’t speak English? Everyone speaks English. Not this stupid French that Taid says you are speaking. Keep this up and you’ll kill him. Is that what you want? I don’t even know why we’re going with you in the first place. Just leave us alone.”

Taid sat back down. He spoke gently. “Calm down, Non. You’re frightening her. I’m sure she’s not used to people shouting at her. Especially not people shouting at her in English. She doesn’t understand what you’re saying. In exactly the same way that you don’t understand her.”

“She must do,” I yelled as the tears continued to flow. “She must do. There is no other way of speaking. Only the Apostles can speak in tongues. Everyone knows that. Don’t they?” I took a step closer to Rhiannon, who was now cowering beside Taid. “Don’t they? Don’t they?” My voice had now risen to a scream. “And she’s not an Apostle, is she?”

Taid put his arm round Rhiannon’s shoulders as tears began to flow down her cheeks as well.

I was stunned into silence. I turned away again, my tears reluctantly drying.

“How many Apostles are there, cariad?” I heard him say behind me.

I swung around. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. How many Apostles are there?”

“Twelve, of course.”

“And where are they? These twelve Apostles.”

“They’re in London. Why are you asking me this?”

“How do you know they are in London?”

“They just are. I don’t have to know. They are. In London.”

“Have you been to London?”

“No. You know it’s not allowed. Have you?”

“Not recently. As you say, it’s not allowed any more.”

“Any more? What do you mean? Any more?”

“We used to go there. But I’m not interested in that at the moment. How do you know there are only twelve Apostles?”

“It’s in the Bible.” Curiously, I was calming down in the face of this barrage of questions. It was one of Taid’s methods. He knew exactly what he was doing.

“What about now?”

“What about now?” I kicked myself. I was repeating.

“How many Apostles are there now? In London?”

“Twelve. There’s always twelve. When one dies another one takes his place.”

“Hmmm. You said ‘his’. Another one takes
his
place. So there are no women Apostles?”

“Of course not. What are you on about, Taid?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was just thinking about this young lady here.” He squeezed Rhiannon’s shoulders.

The girl looked up at him, then across at me. She put her hand up to her mouth and whispered something in Taid’s ear.

“She says you are very angry, cariad. Is that true?”

“Yes. No. No, I don’t know. You say things that are criminal. You ask me questions that you must know the answers to. Stupid questions. ‘How many Apostles are there?’ Everyone knows the answer to those questions, including you. So why are you trying to make me look stupid. Why don’t you ask her how many Apostles there are? Perhaps she’ll be able to tell you in French.” I paused. “And I’m very hungry.”

“Ah,” he said. He leaned over and whispered something to Rhiannon. She pulled him up to his feet then slowly put her other hand out to me.

“Viens,” she whispered. “Viens, Non. Nourriture. Viens.”

Taid grasped my other hand. “Food, cariad. She says food. Let’s get some food inside us.”

She had indeed been telling the truth. Within no more than two minutes, we came to a small gate hidden in the roadside hedge. She glanced up and down the road before pushing open the gate and pulling us inside. She whispered something to Taid and he turned and pushed the gate closed behind us.

We stood in front of a small, tumbledown cottage. The windows on the upper floor were mostly smashed, but there was still glass in the downstairs window to the left. As we reached the door, Rhiannon withdrew from inside her shift a small key that hung on a silver chain around her neck. She inserted the key into the lock, turned it and pushed open the door. Once we were inside, again she gestured to Taid and he closed it.

We were now in a narrow, dark corridor. To the right was an open door, through which a room was visible that seemed full of broken furniture. To the left was another door, closed. Again, Rhiannon inserted the key, opened the door and led us in. This time, she closed the door and locked it. She slipped the key back inside her shift.

It was a sparsely furnished room that was lighter than the corridor. In the middle was a large wooden table, with four chairs tucked in either side. On the far wall was a wooden cupboard with two doors. That was it. Nothing else.

“I thought she said we were going to have food?” I said, backing up to the door, testing the handle to check that she had indeed locked it. She had.

“Nourriture,” she said, pointing at the cupboard. She pulled out one of the chairs on the side of the table nearest to the window, turned it to face outside and sat on it. Staring through the window she began to hum to herself.

“I suppose she means that there is food in that cupboard,” Taid said. He walked to the end of the room and pulled open one of the doors. There were three shelves inside it. All empty. My heart sank even deeper. What were we doing here? Then Taid opened the other door. This revealed a number of objects, two or three on each shelf. “Tinned food,” Taid said, mysteriously.

I got up and joined him. “Is that what she calls food?”

“I presume so. This is how food used to come. In the past. These are tins, and there should be something inside them. The wrappers are so faded that I can’t make out what they are, but the contents should be edible.”

I took one of the objects off the bottom shelf. It did not look at all edible to me. The food I knew came in paper trays. You could see what you were eating with those. I put the object up to my mouth and bit on a corner of it. It was solid. “We can’t eat that,” I said, now really frustrated.

“You don’t eat the tin, cariad. You eat what’s inside it. We need a tin opener. If there are tins here, I presume there’s an opener around here somewhere.” He moved the other ‘tins’ around in the cupboard, looking for something. I put my ‘tin’ on the table, pulled out a chair and sat on it, pulling up my knees and wrapping my arms around them. Now I was really fed up. Rhiannon seemed quite oblivious to what was going on in the room, still staring outside as she hummed her tune.

“What are you staring at?” I said.

“I don’t think she can hear you,” Taid said.

I repeated my question, more loudly. This time she responded by looking at Taid. “En haut,” she said, pointing at the top of the cupboard. Then she turned to me. She stared at me for a moment. I had not noticed before but she had really piercing blue eyes. Then she lifted her knees up onto her chair and wrapped her arms around them, imitating me. She smiled. “Tu aimes le jardin?”

With difficulty I looked away. Taid was looking at the two of us. “She wants to know if you like the garden. I think that’s what she’s looking at.”

“But there is no garden. There’s just a hedge.”

She smiled at me again. “Imagination.” A perfect English word.

I dropped my knees and sat up. “You do speak English.”

“You do speak English,” she parroted.

Taid laughed. “Not only does she speak English, she also repeats things. Just like you.”

“Why didn’t you speak English before?” I said, banging my fist on the table.

She leaned forward. “Why should I? French is so much better. And
you
don’t understand it.” She banged her fist on the table.

“That’s spiteful,” I said. “Anyway, French is not a language. I think you and Taid are just making things up. I don’t want to understand something that’s not real. So there.” I crossed my arms across my chest.

“That’s your problem,” she said. “Why does everything have to be real? There are many languages. I speak them all.”

“It’s the fault of her education,” Taid said. “They’re not allowed to use their imaginations. Who knows what they might think if they did so.”

She stretched her hand across the table and put her hand on mine. “La pauvre. Poor thing.”

Taid returned to his scrutiny of the cupboard. He still appeared not to have found whatever it was he was looking for.

“What you seek may be out of reach. But only for a moment.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Out of reach? Of course, out of reach,” Taid said. He pulled one of the unused chairs from the table, placed it beneath the cupboard and climbed on to it. Now he could reach the top surface of the cupboard. He put his hand out and retrieved another strange metal object. “The opener.” He climbed down from the chair and returned to the table, clutching the object.

Rhiannon smiled. Once again she looked at me. “Also what you seek may be out of reach. But it is only for a short time.” She then moved her chair back to its place and resumed gazing through the window.

“Why did she pretend that she didn’t speak English,” I whispered to Taid.

He shrugged. “Give me your tin.” I looked at him. He pointed to the strange object on the table in front of me, which I had completely forgotten about. I handed it to him. “Now for some food.” Holding the ‘tin’ in one hand, he placed the other object on top of it and proceeded to turn some sort of handle. As if by a miracle, part of the object came away from the rest. “Hmm. Beans. My favourite.” He handed the tin back to me, having removed the top.

What I saw inside the tin did not look in the least like food as far as I knew it. There was some sort of orange liquid with white things floating in it. It smelled peculiar, too. “Is this food?” I asked.

“It’s called beans. Scoop some out with your fingers, since I don’t think we run to spoons.” He had opened another of the tins by this time. He put his fingers inside it and brought them out with a yellow lumpy substance attached to them. “Wow. Macaroni cheese. My second favourite.” He put the yellow mess in his mouth, licking his lips. “Go on. Eat your beans. There’s a good girl.”

Without much enthusiasm I put one finger in my tin and lifted out one of the white things. When I put it in my mouth I was surprised at the taste and the texture. It was soft and savoury. I scooped some more out. Soon the tin was half empty. I could feel my reserves of energy starting to build again.

“Shall we swap?” Taid asked, pushing his tin towards me. The contents were just as tasty. Before long both tins were empty.

Rhiannon suddenly stopped humming. “Soon there will be a moon. There will be wolves. We must go.” She stood up, replaced her chair under the table and moved to the door.

Taid stood up, placed the opening object on the top shelf and closed the left cupboard door. He picked up the two empty tins and placed them on the bottom shelf that was still visible, before closing the other door.

Rhiannon stood in the open doorway. “Viens, pere. Et vous, ma petite.” She had reverted to French.

Soon we were out on the road, heading off, arm in arm.

For what must have been nearly two hours, we walked in a line across the road, Rhiannon in the middle, Taid and I either side, holding her hands. She slowed her pace this time, so that Taid was able to keep up, without becoming too breathless. She also allowed us to pause briefly, every now and again, so that he could regain his breath.