Season of Secrets (11 page)

 

 

 

 

Him!

It
is
him. He's half-sitting, propped up against the
tree, grey shadows falling across his face.

“You've come back!”

I'm so pleased, I forget to be shy. I jump up and
hug him, as well as I can with his back against the tree.

“Where've you
been
?”

He doesn't answer. I pull away.

And, for the first time, see him properly.

He looks awful. His face is much thinner than I
remember, with hollows where his cheeks ought to be
and dark shadows under his eyes. It's an awful greyish,
white colour. It's hard to tell, in the darkness, where he
ends and the tree begins.

He's shivering.

“Are you all right?” I say. And then, when he doesn't
answer, “What's wrong with you?”

He shudders. I touch his hand. It's icy.

He's still dressed in nothing but his strange
trousers. I take off my coat and drape it over his chest.
He doesn't move.

“You can't stay here,” I say. I may not know much,
but I do know that. I put my arms around him and try
and lift him. He gasps and cries out and I let go,
helpless. “You have to come back with me. You
have
to.”

“No,” he says. He puts his hand on my arm.

“But
. . .
”

There's a noise in the doorway, behind me. I turn,
too quick to be frightened, and draw in my breath.

It's the Holly King.

He's standing there in the doorway. He's bigger
than I remember – taller, and stronger too.

Frost shimmers on the doorframe where his hand
rests.

I bite my lips. Did he follow me? Did I bring him
here?

Is this my fault again?

I look sideways at my man, my Oak King. He
moves his hand across to mine and squeezes it gently.
He's shaking with the cold, but he can still speak.

“Not yet,” he says.

The Holly King doesn't answer. He turns his black
eyes on to me. “You shouldn't be here,” he says.

“Leave her alone,” gasps my man. That's what it is,
a gasp. His hand is still shaking, over mine. “Go
home,” he says.

“No,” I whisper.

It's quiet in the barn, except for the rasp of his
breathing.

“Listen,” he says, and I bend forward, trying to
catch his words. “You asked me once
. . .
” he says.
“About bringing people back from the dead—” He
shudders. I grip his hand. In the darkness of the barn,
his words have a sinister edge, and suddenly I'm afraid.
“For you—” he says, “I can—”

“What do you mean?” I say. “What for me? What
are you going to do?” Is he going to bring my mother
back? How? As a zombie? A ghost? For real? Terror
rises inside me sudden as water.

“What are you going to do?”

Behind me, the Holly King stirs, frost crackling on
the doorway. My man stiffens. He squeezes my hand.

“Go home,” he says.

I squeeze his hand. I don't know what to say.
I love
you
? It sounds silly and overdramatic.
Will you be all
right
? What would I do if he wasn't? Call the police?
And what does he mean by “not yet”? How much
longer can he last?

I lean forward and pick up my bit of sharpened
rock that I was drawing with. The Oak King, the
Green Man, lets go of my hand. The beast-man steps
aside in the door, leaving me room to pass. I think my
man looks up, but it's so dark it's hard to be sure.
He's in the shadowed side of the barn; a grey ink-shape
merging into the trunk of the tree; in the
darkness, you can't be sure where one begins and the
other ends.

I walk very slowly past the Holly King. I'm shaking.
Neither he nor my man moves. I'm holding the piece
of rock cold against my palm. If I threw it straight
into his eyes, could it blind him? Could it kill him?

I'm close beside him in the doorway. His strong,
animal smell is all around me. All I would have to do
is pull back my arm and throw.

I don't throw. I keep walking out of the door and
the moment's passed. I stop and drop the rock in the
mud, and suddenly I'm running, a small girl running
beneath the great black arc of the sky, across the old
familiar fields, to home.

 

 

 

 

Here's a thing about gods. You might think all gods
are nice – you know, maybe the god of wine gets
drunk sometimes, or the god of maths is a bit boring,
but they're not really
bad
or anything. It's just, you
know, if you're the god of maths, then you have to
talk about long division all the time. But you need all
the different gods, even gods of fractions, or rain, or
underwear or whatever, because otherwise there'd be
no one to ask for help when you got stuck in maths.
Or ran out of underwear.

Anyway. That's what you might think, but it's not
true. Because there are some gods who are just evil.
There's Loki, for instance, who's this Viking god who
went around doing awful things for no reason at all,
like killing other gods just for fun and then refusing to
cry so they never got reborn. He was so evil that the
other gods tied him up in a cave underground and
stuck a poisonous snake over his head, so that now the
snake drips poison on him all day and all night and
his wife has to stand over him with a bowl, catching it.
And when the bowl is full, she pours it away and then
the poison from the snake drips on Loki and he
shakes so much that the whole Earth shakes too, and
that's where earthquakes come from.

Or so the Vikings thought.

And that proves that not all gods are nice. Some
gods will kill other gods and make sure they never get
reborn. Just for fun.

 

 

 

 

All night I lie just between sleeping and waking. It's
the sort of night where you think you haven't slept at
all, but you must have done because where else has the
night gone?

The god of the hunt is banging on our door.

“Not yet!” I shout. “Not yet!”

But, “Now,” he says, and he bangs down the door
and the wind comes whirling in and blows everything
up – all the magazines swirling in the shop, all the tins
tumbling down from the shelves – and I'm hiding in
the doorway, and he's standing there on his hooved
feet, watching. And my mother's there, rising up from
the grave, a skeleton most beloved in blue jeans and
long pale strands of yellow hair.

And I'm screaming and screaming, but then
Grandpa's there, so I must have been dreaming, and
he's saying, “Hush. You're all right. I've got you.”

And I feel his arms around me and I'm crying, and
I say, “He's coming! He's coming!”

But Grandpa holds me and he rocks me, very
gentle, much more gentle than Grandma, and he says,
“Shush, Shush,” and I wonder whether if I tell him
about the Holly King, he'll be able to save my man.
And I wonder if I go out now, into the night, I can get
to him before the Holly King does, and somehow save
him. But the night is deep and dark, and the wind is
whustling round the windowpanes, dying down to
nothing and then whustling again, and Grandpa is
rocking me, saying, “Shush, shush,” just like the man
in the lane, and then antlers grow out of his head and
leaves grow out of his ears and nose and he towers
over me as tall as the oak tree in the barn, swaying in
the breeze, and my eyes are closing and I'm falling
asleep, before I can do anything at all.

 

 

 

 

I know I ought to go back to the barn, but I don't.

I go to the Seaman's Mission Carol Service with
Grandma instead, because we always go, and
remember my great-grandfather, who was in the navy.
I go and see my cousin Tom play an ugly sister in his
school pantomime. I stay and help Grandpa hang up
all the Christmas cards ready for Dad coming to stay.

I know I ought to go back, but I don't.

 

 

 

 

It's the last week of school, and we're doing hardly any
work. We sing Christmas carols instead (Hannah and
Josh sing the rude versions) and practise for the Christmas
play. We're doing a modern version of the Nativity. At
home, there were never enough parts to go around and we
were all stuck being extra shepherds or angels, but here
everyone except Mary and Joseph has two parts. I'm an
angel with cardboard wings and a hotel keeper.

“Yes,” I say. “You can sleep in my garage conversion.”

I wish Grandpa had a garage conversion that my
man could have. He's a sort of god, like Jesus.

Hannah and Josh are Mary and Joseph. Poor baby
Jesus. Josh is a plumber instead of a carpenter, because
carpenters aren't modern enough.

“You can't be having a baby,” he says to Hannah.
“We ent married yet!”

“That's all you know,” says Hannah. “It's the Son
of God, so there!”

 

On the last day of term we cut up old Christmas cards
to make calendars. I wonder who'll get ours this year,
Grandpa or Dad? I decide to give mine to whichever
one Hannah doesn't give hers to, but it's sad. Our
calendars are always stuck up next to each other on the
fridge in our old kitchen. I look across at Hannah to see
if she's sad too, but she's busy drawing horns and a tail
on a Christmas card Joseph and doesn't seem to mind.

It's very cold at lunch. There's ice by the wall, where
the shadows are. The boys start sliding on it and soon
we all are, even Emily. Hannah and Josh try to push
each other over. After I've nearly got knocked down
twice, I go and slide on the frost, as far away from
them as I can get.

All of a sudden, I have this memory of the time
when I was off school because I had to go to the dentist.
Me and Mum were going back to the car when we saw
this ice rink, an outdoor one in the middle of town.

“Let's go skating,” said Mum, and we went. And at
first I just hung on to the edge and didn't know what
to do, but then Mum held my hand and pulled me
and we went round and round and faster and faster
until we were both hot and laughing and I'd forgotten
to be scared.

And after I've remembered that, I don't want to
slide any more. I go and crouch down in the cold by
the school wall and watch the others.

I wonder if my man is dead yet.

Then Matthew drops icicles down the back of my
coat.

And I feel like I'm going to cry, which isn't how
you're supposed to feel when it's the last day of term
and only four days until Christmas.

 

The afternoon is better. We do our play and all the
parents come and watch. Actually that's only nine
people and Grandpa and Grandma and Miss Shelley
and Mrs Angus, but one of the nine is Dad, so I don't
mind. He comes in with Grandpa and Grandma and
as soon as I see his lopsided face my whole body lets
out the breath that I didn't even realize it was holding
and I get the same jolt of surprise that I always get
when I see him – that he looks the same as always,
that he hasn't stepped further away from us in the
time since I saw him last. And they all say they like the
play and laugh in the right places and there is tea and
coffee and squash and mince pies afterwards.

The entertainment is supposed to be over with the
play, but Miss Shelley starts talking to Dad about us.
She tells Dad all about the Viking poems we wrote for
our topic. So then Hannah has to get up and read one
of hers out.

 

“
Vikings

by Hannah Brooke

 

 

 

Vikings,

Had likings,

For pikings,

And hikings,

To places,

And races,

And chases,

Of a nun,

Without a gun,

For fun,

They wrote sagas,

And drank lagers,

And said, ‘Yah! Grr!'s.

Just like you.

 

I would not be blue,

If I were a Viking too.
”

 

Then Josh and Matthew do kick boxing. And
Alexander plays
The Snowman
on the school piano.
He doesn't want to, but his mum makes him. And
Emily does a ballet dance, because she goes to ballet
classes.

You'd think Sascha and Oliver would be too small
to do anything, but they get up and sing baby songs
with Mrs Angus, and Sascha tells this long, twisty
story about a fairy that goes on for ever and ever. So
that's just me left.

Mrs Angus says, “Why don't you show your dad
some of your pictures?” But pictures aren't a talent
show sort of thing. They're a let's-give-Molly-something-to-do-so-she-doesn't-feel-left-out-thing
and I don't want to do it.

I go and stand in front of everyone. I hold my
hands behind my back and I turn out my feet like
Emily did when she was dancing, and I say,

 

“
Ring Out, Wild Bells

 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night:

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go:

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.
”

 

Which is a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson, which
Mum taught me for Christmas last year. When I'm
done nobody claps like they did the others. Everyone's
quiet for the longest time. I go back and sit by Dad
and he puts his arm around me, so I must have done
all right. And then Mrs Angus goes over to the piano
and we all sing carols.

We sing “I Saw Three Ships” and “Away in a
Manger” and one about wassailing, which is an old
word for carol-singing.

Miss Shelley says, “Any requests?”

And Emily says, “Oh, please, ‘The Holly and the
Ivy',” so we sing that one.

 

Oh, the rising of the sun,

And the running of the deer,

The playing of the merry organ,

Sweet singing in the choir.

 

When we go outside it's dark and all these tiny
flakes of snow are falling out of the sky, like
something in a picture book, and it's so beautiful
that it makes me want to cry. Everyone goes back
to their cars, calling, “Merry Christmas! Merry
Christmas!”, and I hold on to Grandpa's hand so he
doesn't slip on the ice, and I wish it could be
Christmas for ever.