Celandine (10 page)

Celandine emerged into the dazzling sunlight and it was a relief to be able to straighten up. She stumbled blindly forward, found her footing on a large flat stone in the middle of the trickling shallows and began to push back her mass of tangled hair – retrieving the loose ribbon in the process, along with one or two stray hair-pins that dangled across her limited vision. But then, out of nowhere, some larger object swept past her face, frighteningly close, and she very nearly overbalanced as she tried to avoid it.

The thing jabbed at her threateningly – it was like a big fork – and Celandine squealed with shock, raising her arms to try and fend it off. More sharp objects . . . spears . . . javelins . . . they were suddenly all around her, all stabbing and prodding in her direction . . .

She caught terrifying glimpses of small bearded faces between her flailing hands and flying hair, as she shielded herself from the stickle of weapons that kept lunging towards her. They were going to kill her. There were lots of them, hordes of them, hissing and snarling at her, and they were going to kill her. She buried her head in her arms – dizzy with terror – quite unable to defend herself against so many assailants and certain that she was about to die. Her legs gave way and she banged her knees on the damp stone as she fell.

The material of her pinafore muffled her cry of pain and fear, and it was as though she were screaming
to
herself beneath the bedclothes . . .
go away . . . go away
 . . .

Celandine felt hands tugging at her sleeve, gripping her wrist, yanking her arms away from her face.

‘Ah – ah- ah . . .’

Fin’s voice. It was Fin – clinging to her, hanging on tight to her arm. Celandine struggled to free herself, still squealing with panic, but her hair was in her eyes again – she couldn’t see what was happening.

‘Fin! Get out o’ there!’ Another voice. Then more voices, all of them shouting, ‘
Fin! Fin!
’

‘Pato – grab a hold of ’un quick, afore she strangles ’un!’

Celandine managed to get one arm around the wriggling creature at last and lifted him off his feet in order to gain some sort of control over him. With her other hand she roughly swept back her maddening hair, shouting with anger now, not caring any more, feeling nothing but outrage towards this impossible thing that was happening to her.

‘Get . . .
OFF
me, you . . . you . . .
lunatic
!’

‘Ah – ah – ah . . .’ Fin was still hanging onto her like a monkey, but at last she had a clearer view of the rest of the group and she realized, through the mist of her rage, that they had backed away from her. There weren’t as many of them as she had imagined – half a dozen perhaps – and although they still brandished their weapons at her, they did so from a safer distance. The wild-eyed expressions on their unshaven faces spoke more of panic and confusion than of murder. Celandine struggled to keep her grip on Fin as she
glared,
panting and furious, at the semi-circle of agitated little figures – and waited for them to do their worst. They hopped and splashed about in the stony shallows, making short determined rushes towards her, then retreating just as quickly. So close, they came, but no closer. They were frightened, she realized – frightened of her.
They
were frightened of
her
.

Her fingers were beginning to slip. She tried to renew her grasp on the material of Fin’s tunic, but could not find the strength. Her legs and arms suddenly felt useless and her head wouldn’t stay upright. She let her chin fall onto her chest for a few moments, her burst of anger exhausted, weak with shock.

Fin, released from her hold, kept his hand on her shoulder as he bent down to peer into her face.

‘Ah – ah – ah . . . ooooo . . . all better . . . all better . . .’ He wouldn’t stop jabbering. Celandine raised her head once more, in helpless exasperation now, and put a finger to her lips.

‘Shhhhh!’

She didn’t know what had made her do such a thing, but it worked. Fin was instantly quiet and calm, staring at her finger in fascination, following it with his eyes as she allowed her hand to fall back into her lap, continuing to watch it as though it had just performed some astonishing trick and might well come up with another.

‘
Fin!
’ An urgent hiss from one of the group – the one with the long fork. ‘Get
out
o’ there! Come away
with
’ee!’ Celandine tried to focus. Was this the one she had seen before – the anxious bearded face that she had glimpsed that first time when she lay in the baby-carriage beneath the trees? She couldn’t tell. Her head was spinning, as it had done then. Yet there was something about him . . . something familiar . . .

Fin turned uncertainly towards the frantically beckoning figure, but remained where he was.

‘Come
away
now! Fin . . . come
away
, ye dratted young zawney – if thee don’t . . .’

But Fin lifted a finger to his lips; ‘
Hschhhhhhhhhhhh!
’

The sound was as loud as a steam engine, and once again the effect was instant. All were immediately quiet and still. Fin studied his finger, apparently delighted that it held such power. Celandine was aware of him, his free hand still resting unselfconsciously upon her shoulder, but she reserved her blurry concentration for the others as she tried to get her breathing back to normal, pressing a clenched fist to the thudding pain in her chest.

There were five of them – six including Fin – and they all looked as though they were as frightened and confused as she was. They had lowered their weapons, and she saw that these were not actually weapons at all in any real sense – or at least they weren’t spears. Three of them simply carried sticks, and one of them had part of what appeared to be a window-hook, the kind of pole with a metal attachment that Miss Bell employed to open the high classroom window on hot days. Then there was the
one
with the strange trident – a rake handle, by the look of it, with an old gardening fork lashed to the end of it. There were traces of the original red varnish on the handle of the fork . . .

They were not quite as raggedly dressed as poor Fin, but it was plain that much of their clothing had started life elsewhere. Part of a shepherd’s smock on one – the elaborate pattern of stitching across the chest contrasted with the crude tacking around the shoulders and hem, where it had been hacked off to fit. On another a labourer’s shirt, collarless and similarly butchered. A bridle strap, used as a belt. A thick piece of sacking with the printed emblem of the manufacturer clearly visible, cut and stitched to form a rough tabard. Lengths of binder-twine, used as drawstrings about the waist . . . all these things were familiar to her, and yet so out of place in such an unbelievable situation. And there were bits of fur; scraps of moleskin, rabbit, squirrel, adorning their wrists and ankles. One of them wore a necklace of tiny bright blue feathers: a kingfisher?

Their hair and complexions were all the same – a dark gypsy look to them, all of a kind, a race or a tribe, like the leather-skinned travellers that camped on Burnham Common in the fruit-picking season. They were people, Celandine thought. Just little people . . .

But no. They were not just little people. They were breathtaking. As ordinary as sparrows, yet unimaginably strange. Their locks of black hair rose gently in the breeze, and it was as though they were floating, drifting through space. The narrowed eyes,
fixed
upon her, glittered from the dappled shadows that fell across their brows. Fear and suspicion she saw there, a deep wariness, but also curiosity. Was she as extraordinary to them as they were to her?

‘Don’t ’ee hurt ’un, mind.’ The bearded one with the trident. His voice was full of concern and agitation, almost apologetic. ‘Only he be weak in the nog.’ He wiped a nervous forearm across his face.

Celandine didn’t reply – could find no voice – but instead put her hand on Fin’s back, and gave him a gentle push, feeling the brief impression of his bony little spine through the material of his shabby tunic. He stumbled away from her, hesitated for a moment, and then continued to splash through the shallows, happy enough to return to his own. Several hands reached out to grab him, but their eagerness caused him to panic. He dodged past the group – ‘Ah – ah – ah . . .’ – escaped their clutches and ran off a little way, weaving through the clumps of brambles that grew by the stream and clambering up onto higher ground beyond. Once he saw that he wasn’t being immediately pursued, he sat down on a rock and put his finger to his lips, evidently intent on playing his new game.
Hschh!

The dark heads of the group were momentarily turned towards Fin, and Celandine was at last able to glance quickly about her, still trying to calm her shaky breathing. Everything was so tangled and overgrown. It was like another country in here, a wild foreign land that had remained untouched for centuries. The fallen carcasses of ancient trees lay all around,
propped
against their living companions, their shattered limbs forming strange new structures, angular sculptures, festooned with flowering creepers, ivy, mistletoe, and the all-enveloping wall of brambles. The hillside beyond the stream was rough and rocky, quarry-like, the steep outcrops of stone covered with coarse moss and orange-grey lichen. Great clumps of wild buddleia clung to the ridges, and Celandine thought she could see a dark opening behind one of the bushes, like the mouth of a cave. Higher still the land rose to another tree-line, the great battalion of ash and elm and beech and sycamore that she saw every day from her bedroom window. How different they looked from this angle, towering above her, huddling together, as though guarding some further secret. And there was movement, some little shuffle in the tall grass at the base of the trees that may or may not have been the wind . . .

‘I warned ’ee, Pato – us all did – that that young vool o’ yourn’d bring us to this.
Now
what be us to do?’

The stubble-faced one with the window-hook had spoken to the bearded one with the fork. They were all looking at her once more. Her knees were hurting and she wanted to stand up. Something occurred to her.

‘That’s my brother’s trident.’ Her throat was so dry that the words came out in a loud croak, the effort of speaking making the pain in her chest worse than ever. ‘Where did you get it?’

The one with the trident – Pato – shrank back a little at the sound of her voice, but looked at her
blankly,
as though she were speaking in a foreign tongue.

He shook his head and muttered, ‘Hemmed if I knows.’ It was a response to his companion’s question, not to hers.

‘We casn’t let her go.’ Another spoke – the one with the feather necklace.

‘Casn’t let her bide, neither.’

‘So what be us to do?’

Pato shook his head again and mumbled something inaudible, at a loss it seemed.

They were discussing her as though she were a stray beast, too difficult to capture, but too dangerous to ignore. Their voices were low and reedy, but the thick accents were similar to the ones she heard all around her at Mill Farm, and they spoke slowly. Celandine could understand them well enough.

She wanted to reassure them, but it was such an effort to speak. She had to try.

‘There’s . . . there’s no need to worry about me, you know. I don’t mean any harm. Only it was Fin, you see. He was frightened. He wanted me to follow him.’ The words babbled out, hurried, loud, nervous.

Again they shrank away a little, and muttered among themselves.

‘What did ’er say?’

‘Dunno. Zummat about Fin, I reckon.’

‘
Be
’er Gorji? ’Er don’t sound like no Gorji I ever heared.’

There was that word again: ‘Gorji’. Fin had used it – and it had scared him.

They were obviously struggling to understand her, Celandine thought. So much for Miss Bell’s elocution lessons.

Her knees were really hurting her, and she was desperate to stand up, but thought it safer to remain where she was for a little longer. She made another attempt to communicate, this time speaking slowly, quietly, trying to calm her voice, trying to match their own volume and speed.

‘What does “Gorji” mean? What is Gorji?’

She could tell that this time they had understood. They looked at her in surprise, and then turned expectantly towards Pato, the one with the trident. He was obviously their spokesman.

His head was tilted to one side as he regarded her, in puzzled silence. ‘’Tis thee,’ he said, at last. ‘
Thee
be Gorji. A ogre. One o’ they gurt giants.’

‘A
giant
? I’m not a giant – look!’ Celandine struggled painfully to her feet and immediately regretted her actions – for they began waving their sticks at her once more, hopping from rock to rock and shouting in panic. The whole terrible scene seemed likely to repeat itself, but this time she remained quiet and still, arms folded, until they gradually calmed down.

She waited, assuring them by her manner that she was not going to make any more sudden moves. Once again they had surrounded her, but their attitude was less threatening than before.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘I’m not a giant . . .’ Then she felt ridiculous, because of course they were right. She
was
a giant.

She was a giant, a great loud and lumbering thing. No wonder they were frightened. No wonder they didn’t know what to do. She looked over to where Fin was sitting, still halfway up the rocky hillside, still ‘shushing’ his finger.

Her eyes were drawn higher, towards the dense line of trees that topped the hill. A slight movement along the ridge made her look – and then she had to look again. Faces . . . there were faces . . . lots of them . . .

 . . . a host of small dark heads raised above the long summer grass, eyes all staring down at her. Dozens of them.
Dozens
. Babes in arms . . . children raised upon the shoulders of adults, and all of them huddled together, standing on the ridge beneath the belt of trees. Watchful, wary, motionless. A whole tribe of them.