Silver on the Tree (3 page)

He said, “Are you sure? You won't laugh at me, you won't … judge?”

“Of course not,” Stephen said.

Will took a deep breath. “Well then. It's like this…. This where we live is a world of men, ordinary men, and although in it there is the Old Magic of the earth, and the Wild Magic of living things, it is men who control what the world shall be like.” He was not looking at Stephen, for fear of seeing the changing expression that he knew he would certainly see. “But beyond the world is the universe, bound by the law of the High Magic, as every universe must be. And beneath the High Magic are two … poles … that we call the Dark and the Light. No other power orders them. They merely exist. The Dark seeks by its dark nature to influence men so that in the end, through them, it may control the earth. The Light has the task of stopping that from happening. From time to time the Dark has come rising and
has been driven back, but now very soon it will rise for the last and most perilous time. It has been gathering strength for that rising, and it is almost ready. And therefore, for the last time, until the end of Time, we must drive it back so that the world of men may be free.”

“We?”
Stephen said, expressionless.

“We are the Old Ones,” Will said, strong and self-confident now. “There is a great circle of us, all over the world and beyond the world, from all places and all corners of time. I was the last one to be born, and when I was brought into my power as an Old One, on my eleventh birthday, the circle became complete. I knew nothing about all this, till then. But the time is coming closer now, and that is why you were given the reassurances—warnings, in a way—to bring to me, I think from two of the three oldest of the circle.”

Stephen said, in the same flat voice, “The second one didn't look very old.”

Will looked up at him and said simply, “Nor do I.”

“For God's sake,” Stephen said irritably, “you're my little brother and you're twelve years old and I can remember you being born.”

“In one sense only,” Will said.

Stephen stared in exasperation at the figure before him: the stocky small boy in blue jeans and battered shirt, with straight brown hair falling untidily over one eye. “Will, you're too old for these silly games. You sound almost as if you believed all this stuff.”

Will said calmly, “What do you think those two messengers were, then, Steve? You think I'm smuggling diamonds, maybe, or part of a drug ring?”

Stephen groaned. “I don't know. Perhaps I dreamt them … perhaps I really am going out of my head.” The tone tried to be light, but there was unmistakable strain in his voice.

“Oh no,” Will said. “You didn't dream them. Other … warnings … have begun coming too.” He fell silent for a moment, thinking of the anxious hurrying figures looming
misty out of a time three thousand years past, and the Saxon boys, after that, watching terrified for the marauding Danes. Then he looked sadly at Stephen.

“It's too much for you,” he said. “They should have known that. I suppose they did. The messages had to come by word of mouth, that's the only way secure from the Dark. And after that it's up to me….” Quickly he seized his brother's arm, pointing, as the incomprehension on Stephen's face began changing unbearably to alarm. “Look—there's James.”

Automatically Stephen half-turned to look. The movement made his leg brush against a low bramble clump growing out into the field from the trees and hedge behind. And out of the sprawling green bush rose a flickering, sudden cloud of delicate white moths. They were an astonishing sight, feathery, exquisite. Endlessly flowing upward, hundred upon hundred, they fluttered like a gentle snow-flurry round Stephen's head and shoulders. Startled, he flapped his arms to brush them away.

“Stay still,” Will said softly. “Don't hurt them. Stay still.”

Stephen paused, one arm raised apprehensively before his face. Over and around him the tiny moths flurried, round and around, wheeling, floating, never settling, drifting down. They were like infinitely small birds fashioned of snowflakes; silent, ghostly, each tiny wing a filigree of five delicate feathers, all white.

Stephen stood still, dazed, shielding his face with one hand. “They're beautiful! But so many … what are they?”

“Plume moths,” Will said, looking at him with a strange loving regret, like a farewell. “White plume moths. There's an old saying, that they carry memories away.”

In one last whirl the white cloud of moths flowed and fluttered round Stephen's uncertain head; then the cloud parted, dispersing like smoke, as in the same curious communion the moths disappeared into the hedge. The leaves enfolded them; they were gone.

James came thudding up behind them. “Gosh, what a chase! It
was
a mink—must have been.”

“Mink?” Stephen said. He shook his head suddenly, like a dog newly come out of water.

James stared at him. “The mink. The little black animal.”

“Yes, of course,” Stephen said hastily, still looking dazed. “Yes. It was a mink, then?”

James was bubbling with triumph. “I'm sure it was. What a piece of luck! I've been watching out for one ever since that article in the
Observer.
It told you to, because they're a pest. They eat chickens, and all kinds of birds. Someone brought them over from America, years ago, to breed them for the fur, and a few escaped and went wild.”

“Where did he go?” said Will.

“Jumped into the river. I didn't know they could swim.”

Stephen picked up the picnic basket. “Time we took the fish home. Hand me that lemonade bottle, Will.”

James said promptly, “You said you'd get me a drink on the way back.”

“I said, if you caught ten more fish.”

“Seven's pretty close.”

“Not close enough.”

“Stingy lot, sailors,” said James.

“Here,” said Will, poking him with the bottle. “I didn't drink all the lemonade anyway.”

“Go on, Sponge,” said Stephen. “Finish it.” One corner of the basket was fraying; he tried to weave the loose ends of wicker together, while James gulped his lemonade.

Will said, “Falling to bits, that basket. Looks as though it belonged to the Old Ones.”

“Who?” said Stephen.

“The Old Ones. In the letter you sent me from Jamaica, with that big carnival head, last year. Something the old man said, the one who gave you it. Don't you remember?”

“Good Lord no,” said Stephen amiably. “Much too long ago.” He chuckled. “That was a crazy present all right, wasn't it? Like the stuff Max makes at art school.”

“Yes,” Will said.

They strolled home, through the long feathery grass, through the lengthening shadows of the trees, through the yellow-green flowers of the sycamore.

The way home was a winding way: first through fields and along towpaths, to the place where they had left their bicycles; then along curving small green-shaded roads. Oak and sycamore and Lombardy poplar reached high on either side; houses slept behind hedges fragrant with honeysuckle and starred with invading bindweed. In the distance they could hear the hum of a hurrying, more preoccupied world, and see the cars flicking by on the motorway that straddled the valley of the Thames. It was late afternoon now; the horizons were lost in haze, and clouds of gnats danced in the warm air.

They were cycling along Huntercombe Lane, half a mile from home, past Will's favorite flint-walled, brick-trimmed cottages, when James braked suddenly.

“What's up?”

“Back tire. I thought it would last, but it keeps getting softer. I can pump it up enough to get home.”

Will and Stephen waited, while he unhitched his pump. Faint voices drifted towards them from further up the road; the road crossed a small bridge, up there, over a stream that meandered through the farm fields on its way to join the Thames. Generally the stream moved so sluggishly that it hardly deserved the name, though on just one wild day of his life Will had seen it in spate. He scooted his bicycle idly up towards it. No sound of running water today; the stream glimmered shallow and still, scummed with green weed like a pond.

Voices came nearer; Will leaned over the side of the little bridge. Below on the bank a small boy came running, panting, with a shiny leather music-case that looked half as big as himself banging against his legs. Three others were in pursuit of him, yelling and laughing. Will was about to turn away, thinking it a game, when the first boy, finding his way blocked by the side of the bridge, twisted, skidded and then turned at bay in a movement that somehow spoke not play but desperation. He was dark-skinned, neatly dressed; the boys following were white, and scruffier. Will could hear them now. One was yelping like a hound.

“Pakkie—Pakkie—Pakkie! Here boy, here boy! Here Pakkie—”

They slid to a halt in front of the small tense figure. Will recognized two of them as boys who went to his own school, a tough troublesome pair much given to gang-rumpus on the playground. One of them smiled a thin nasty smile at the boy they had been chasing.

“Don't want to say hallo, Pakkie-boy? What you scared of, eh? Where you been?”

The boy jerked to one side and lunged, trying to slip past and away, but one of the others stepped swiftly sideways and blocked him. The music-case fell to the ground, and as the small boy leaned to pick it up a large dirty foot came down on its handle.

“Been to piano lesson, has he? Didn't know Pakkies played the piano, did you, Frankie? Only those funny little plinky-plink instruments,
wheee-eeeee-eeeee—”
He capered about, making sounds like a bad violinist; the other, gurgled with unpleasant laughter, one of them picking up the music-case and whacking it for applause.

“Please give me back my case,” said the small boy, in a precise, unhappy little voice.

The bigger boy held it high over the water of the stream.

“Come and get it, Pakkie, come and get it!”

Will shouted indignantly, “Give it back!”

Their heads turned sharply; then the bully's face relaxed
into a sneer as he recognized Will. “Mind your own mucking business, Stanton!”

The other boys hooted derisively.

“You brainless oiks!” Will yelled. “Always picking on little kids—give it back to him, or—”

“Or what?” said the boy, and he looked at the smaller boy and smiled. He opened his hand, and let the music-case fall into the stream.

His friends guffawed and cheered. The small boy burst into tears. Will, spluttering, thrust his bicycle aside; but before he could move further a whirl of limbs shot past him and Stephen's tall rangy form was bounding down the slope.

The boys scattered, too late. In only a few paces Stephen had grabbed the ringleader. Holding him by the shoulders, he said softly, “Get that case out of the water.”

Will watched, motionless, caught by the controlled fury in the quiet voice, but the other boy was riding too high on his own confidence. He twisted in Stephen's grasp, snarling at him. “You crazy? Get meself all wet for some bleedin' nignog? That little cat-food eater? You think I'm—”

The last word had no chance. With a quick shift of grip Stephen suddenly heaved the boy off his feet and into the air, and dropped him into the scummy green water of the stream.

The splash left a silence. A bird chirruped gaily overhead. The two boys on the bank stood motionless, staring at their leader as he slowly hoisted himself up, dripping weed and muddy water, to stand knee-deep in the nearly stagnant stream. He looked at Stephen, his face empty of expression; then bent, picked up the flat leather music-case and held it out, dripping, at arm's length. Stephen handed it to the little boy, and he took it, dark eyes saucer-wide; then turned and fled without a word.

Stephen swung round and climbed back up to the road. As he stepped long-legged over the wire fence, the boy standing in the water came suddenly to life as if released from a spell. He splashed back to the bank, muttering. They
heard a few scattered obscenities, then a furious shout: “You think you're so great, just because ou're bigger'n me!”

“The pot is speaking to the kettle,” said Stephen peacefully, swinging his leg over his bicycle.

The boy yelled: “If my Dad ever catches you, you just wait—”

Stephen paused, propelled himself to the edge of the bridge and leaned over. “Stephen Stanton, at the Old Vicarage,” he said. “You tell your Dad he can come and discuss you with me any time he likes.”

There was no answer. James came up at Will's side as they rode away; he was beaming. “Lovely,” he said. “Beautiful.”

“Yes,” Will said, pedalling. “But—”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“That must have been little Manny Singh,” Mrs. Stanton said, digging a large knife into the treacle tart. “They live at the other end of the village, in one of the houses on that new estate.”

“I know them,” Mary said. “Mr. Singh wears a turban.”

“That's right. They aren't Pakistani, as it happens, they're Indian—Sikhs. Not that it's relevant. What horrible boys those three are.”

“They're horrible to everybody, that lot,” James said, hopefully watching the size of the piece of tart about to be cut for him. “No relation to race, colour or creed—they'll bash anyone. So long as he's smaller than them.”

“They seemed a little more … selective today,” Stephen said quietly.

“I'm not sure you should have dropped him in the water, though,” his mother said placidly. “Pass the custard round, Will.”

“Richie Moore called the little boy a cat-food eater,” Will said.

Stephen said, “Pity that stream wasn't ten feet deep.”

James said, “There's an extra piece of tart there, Mum.”

“For your father,” Mrs. Stanton said. “Eyes off. He doesn't work late for you to pinch his dinner. Don't
stuff,
James. Even Mary's eating more slowly than you.” Then she raised her head suddenly, listening. “What's that?”