Season of Secrets (17 page)

 

 

 

 

Next morning, it's Dad who wakes me up, wearing
one of Grandpa's checked shirts and Grandma's shop
apron.

“Up, up, up!” he says, banging on the back of a
saucepan with a spoon.

I rub my eyes.

“It's half past
seven
,” Hannah groans, from her
room. “We don't have to get up yet!”

“Don't you?” says Dad. He sounds surprised. At
home, we had to be up in time to drive to school.
Here, it's just down the hill.

He's set the table for breakfast. He's bought me
another present: Coco Pops from the shop. When I
lived with Mum and Dad, I only liked Coco Pops for
breakfast, but now I like Frosties and Weetabix and
eggs if Grandpa is making them.

“Molly doesn't eat that any more,” says Hannah.
“And I don't eat cereal either. I have toast, like
Grandma.”

Dad doesn't wash the breakfast things up, like
Grandpa. He leaves them in the sink with last night's
mugs. He clearly cares less about tidying than I
remember him caring. And at ten to nine, when Hannah
says, “You're supposed to tell us to go now,” he looks at
his watch and says, “Off you trot, then!” without asking
if we've got our topic books or pencil cases or papier-mâché
model of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge.

In the front yard, we stop and look at each other.

“Dad's back!” I say.

“Not for ever,” says Hannah. “But no smelly
Grandma bossing us about!” And she runs off down
the hill, school bag bouncing on her back.

 

When we get home, he's in the shop, selling stamps to
Alexander's dad.

“Afternoon!” he says. “Want an egg?” And he
throws us a Cadbury's Creme Egg each.

“You're happy,” says Hannah. He is. He makes us
proper Dad home-made bread, which doesn't rise in
Grandma's oven either, but tastes just as chewy as it
always did at home.

By Thursday, we're used to having him to ourselves.
It's a shock to think he's going home soon.

After school, before Grandpa and Grandma get
back, I help him in the shop. I stack all the new
tins and things on the shelves. I mop the floor.
I sell sherbet fountains to Sascha and her little
sister.

“If I was your grandma,” says Dad, “I'd give you a
job.”

He looks so happy, I risk asking him again.

“Don't you want to stay?”

Dad puts his arm around me.

“I wish I could,” he says. “But I can't take your
grandma's job. I've got my own work. You know
that.”

I lean my head against his stomach.

“So you can't have us.”

“No.”

“And we're Grandma's responsibility now.”

“Well.” He squeezes me. “Maybe a bit mine too.”

I look up. “If you had another job, would you have
us back?”

He doesn't answer for the longest time. Then he
says, “Would you want me?”

I nod.

“I—” He stops, but then he starts again. “I might
not always get things right.”

“I don't always get things right,” I say. “I get things
wrong, all the time I get things wrong. And you don't
mind, do you?”

“Oh, Moll,” says Dad. “Never. Never, ever.”

“Well, then.”

Dad's quiet. “There's a job coming up,” he says.
“Sub-editor. Working for someone I know from
university. It's the other side of the city, but the hours
are better. And you can cope for a few hours after
school on your own, can't you?”

“Yes!” I say. “Do it!”

“It's only a maybe,” says Dad. “I might not get it.
You do understand that, don't you, Moll? It's nothing
definite.”

“You'll get it,” I say. “You will, won't you?”

“I don't know,” says Dad. Then he squeezes me,
suddenly, so I can feel my ribs pressing against my
organs. “Keep it to yourself,” he says. “But, yes. I think
I will.”

 

 

 

 

So that's Dad sorted. One down and one to go. If
Grandma can sort Dad, can I sort the Holly King?

The night Dad goes, I can't sleep. I lie and listen to
Grandma and Grandpa moving about downstairs. I
can hear people laughing on the radio, and Grandpa
singing as he rinses out the tea mugs, and Grandma
doing the accounts, asking Grandpa, “Do you know
why everyone seems to be buying cotton buds all of a
sudden?”

If I push my head outside my curtains, I can see a
deep blue dusk, with a single star hanging in the sky
over the hills. I wrap my arms around Humphrey and
rest my chin on his head. It's perfectly quiet. It's
perfectly still. No one's out.

And then I see him.

He's standing in the shadows, watching the shop.
It's him. The horned god, the Holly King. It makes me
gasp, seeing him so close.

It's the same thick body, the strong, flat, animal-ish
face. But he looks older, darker. And he's standing,
without the horse he had before. He looks less like a
man and more like an animal, bent and hunched
against the wall.

I don't know why he's here, and I don't worry now,
because now my own man's here, coming up the hill
from the village on a grey horse. When the Holly
King sees him he turns and runs, head bent, body
down, in and out of the circle of street-light light
and down the lane.

My man stops his horse and looks up at the house.
I stick my head out of the window.

“He went that way!”

My man shakes his head. He's older again. A real
man now.

“Come down!” he calls. “Come down and join the
hunt!”

I hesitate, just for a moment, then I pull my head
out of the window and start scrabbling under my bed
for my shoes.

I don't wait to get dressed. I just take my coat off
the hook and pull it on over my pyjamas. There's a
jiggle of excitement where my heart is as I let myself
out of the back door. I always wanted to do this, go
out alone in the middle of the night. I never
understood how the Famous Five dared. But tonight,
I'm not afraid. Tonight, there's a man on a tall horse.
Tonight, the moon is round and silver, and tonight the
air is sharp and cold and tonight the sky is a deep,
deep blue and there's this one, bright star shining over
the hills and I'm out without anyone knowing, and I
want to sing.

He's waiting beside the wall. He's not got a saddle
or a bridle – he looks like he's stolen someone's horse
straight out of its field. Maybe he has. He's wearing
what I think is a cloak, but when I get close I see it's a
deerskin. A real deerskin, with four dangly leg-skins,
but no head. It's tied round his neck by the front legs
and the rest hangs down his back. There's a strong,
thick smell, frightening and exciting at the same time.

“Come on, then,” he says, and holds out his hand.

I've only ever been on a horse once before and that
was a pony really. I'm not frightened, though. I climb
on the wall and my man reaches down and lifts me up
by my armpits, and there's a messy, scrabbly moment
when he's pulling and I'm holding on to the horse's
mane, and then suddenly it's all right and here I am,
sitting up in front of him.

I look at him and I look at the house and I laugh
out loud.

“Look,” he says and he shows me something. It's a
horn – the sort you blow and the sort that belongs to
an animal, both. The narrow bit at the end is made of
what looks like gold, but the long curved body comes
from an animal. I don't know which sort.

“Can I?” I say and he nods.

I put my mouth round the horn and blow, but all
that comes out is a sputtery noise. My man laughs. He
takes the horn off me and holds it up in one dark arm
and then he blows.

This wonderful noise comes out – Tu
raaahh!
Tu
raaahh!
Tu
raaahh!
– it's a hunt-call and a warning and
a challenge, all rolled into one. The horse rears up on
its hind legs and my man's arm tightens around my
waist and he blows the horn again – Tu
raaahh!
Tu
raaahh!
– and we're off.

Off down the lane, the horse's hooves clattering on
the road. Off, with the wind in my hair and my man's
arm tight around my chest and my fingers clinging on
to the horse's mane. We really are going faster than
fairies, faster than witches; faster than rollercoasters
and sledges, faster than ice skating, or bicycles, much
faster than Chloe's fat pony. We leap over a hedge and
my man blows into the horn – Tu
raaahh!
Tu
raaahh!

And I realize that we aren't alone – there are other
shapes crashing through the hedges, low and dark and
fierce and hot – dogs with black legs and white teeth.
There are other huntsmen around and behind us, wild
huntsmen, and I look back at my man and see the
shadowy outline of horns growing up out of his head,
and all of a sudden, I'm afraid. I've been here before.
I remember this – the night, the wild hunt and the
hunted man, only this time my man isn't hunted, he's
the hunter.

The huntsmen plough forward into the night. The
dogs howl. My man spurs his horse onwards, over
and through the hedges, branches and leaves digging
into my legs and tearing at my clothes. “Stop!” I
shout, “
Stop!
” but he just laughs. He's different again;
wilder, more dangerous. I cling to the horse's mane
and squeeze my legs tight around his belly. The Oak
King's arm still holds me, but he's laughing now and
urging the dogs on. If I fall off, I'll be crushed under
the horses' hooves and – I realize with a sudden start
of fear – he won't go back for me. He won't even
notice I'm gone.

I want him to stop. I want to tell him I've changed
my mind, to let the Holly King go. I'm frightened.
Everything is mixed up in my head – who's good, who's
bad, who's right, who's wrong. I can do nothing except
cling to the horse's mane and wait for it to end, however
it will end.

We pour through the fields, through the night. Above
us, the stars whirl. Below us, the world is turning. Winter
is over. It's the spring equinox, and tonight a new rule
begins.

The dogs are howling. They've seen what they're
looking for. A man, running. They pour down the hill
like black water and cover him. He holds one hand up
over his face, but he's down, covered with dogs, and I
see that he doesn't have horns any more, he's just a
man, and I'm screaming and screaming and my man
has pulled in his horse and he's watching, just watching,
without doing anything,

and then
. . .

And then it's over.

The world is still. The hunt is gone. There's
nobody here but us – me and the horned Oak King
on our horse and the Holly King down on the grass,
one hand still raised above his head. He's bleeding, but
he's still alive. He stares at us. He doesn't speak.

I'm crying, tears rolling down my cheeks. I'm
crying because I thought that the Oak King was good
and the Holly King bad, but it's not that simple.
Because if you want the summer, the winter must die,
and if you want the winter, the summer must die
too – because Persephone must go down under the
green earth – because the world must turn – because
the Holly King and Oak King must fight and one
must defeat the other.

My man – and he's the horned huntsman now, the
leader of the wild hunt – my man stands straight on
his tall horse. He doesn't say anything to the Holly
King and he doesn't say anything to me. He looks
down at him, lying there on the grass. Then he pulls
on the horse's mane and turns it round, back towards
the village, towards home.