Rowan In The Oak Tree (3 page)

“You like this, don’t you? Open up for daddy.” He
whispered into her ear, sounding almost as though he was a good daddy, doing
the
aeroplane
routine while feeding his beloved baby.

Rowan squeezed her eyes tight shut, and remained stock
still. On receiving no desirable response to his demand, he stood up and pulled
the covers from the bed in one swift movement. He climbed back onto the bed and
straddled Rowan; pinning her calves down. He tugged hard on her
jamas
, pulling them down towards her knees, and sat a
moment.

Rowan failed to hope this time. Silent tears slid down
her cheeks as she gave in to what he’d come to her room to do. Roughly, he
lifted her hips up, so her bottom stuck up in the air, and proceeded to touch
her girly parts, parts she’d been too terrified to discover for herself yet.

Maintaining her silence, she cried harder as she heard
his zip being pulled. She knew the worst was yet to come, and she knew what it
would be. Her sobs shook her whole body as she cried into her pillow while he
burned her from the inside out and made her red raw with pain. She took a full
mouthful of her pillow and chomped down hard as he seared her insides one last
time before collapsing on top of her.

*****

Hours after he’d gone and left her to her tears of
solitude, Rowan lay there in the black, watching the shadows of leaves play on
her ceiling as the trees behind her house danced in the darkness. The moonlight
gave her room a faint blue hue as it crept in through the gap in her curtains.
In an attempt to get
herself
to sleep, Rowan tried to
count each individual leaf as its shadow fell on the pale blue backdrop above
her bed.

As she began to doze off, Rowan imagined the patterns
in the leaves made pictures, and that she had her own secret cinema. She
watched as a little girl played in a field with her dog and his ball, and
smiled as they ran through the long grass. She could smell the meadow flowers
as each was disturbed, and could hear the delight in the little girl’s voice as
she and her dog neared the edge of the field, where a man who could only be her
father was waiting.

Rowan sat bolt upright in bed, fully awake and fully
alert. If the little girl ran free in the meadow with her dog to her father,
she could run away with Peyton and be free; run away through the peeling blue
gate at the end of the garden and into the woods behind her house. She knew
that on the other side of those woods was the place her aunt lived, and beyond
that place, her own father.

She grinned with glee, and would have bounded out of
bed to pack her most important possessions straight away, had there not been a
creaky floorboard right by the side of her bed that would give her away.

Slowly, she lay back down and covered herself up
again, pulling the covers up to her chin. She smiled, and for the first time in
years, fell into a peaceful sleep filled with dreams of Peyton and her daddy.

*****

The following morning passed in a slow-motion blur for
Rowan, and she barely noticed the blood on her bed sheets as she stripped them
from her mattress. She barely noticed her
maman
shouting, so usual was it, and so full of dreams of running away was she.

She didn’t notice at all when she was hit so hard that
she fell into the dining table and hit her head, cutting it in the process. She
didn’t register her
maman’s
instant change in
demeanour
as she picked Rowan up and sat her on a dining
chair so she could wipe away the blood and put a plaster on.

The first thing she saw properly that day with her
dream-filled eyes, were the eyes of her honey-
coloured
hound. Peyton looked happy; his brown eyes shone and his tongue hung out of his
smiling jaws. He knew his little madam was happy, and he wagged his tail
furiously, beating his cushion into a pulp.

When the big woman had gone, Peyton cautiously but
eagerly came out from behind the door, head tucked down and bobbing, his tail
wagging and his tongue lolling. He knew his little madam was happy, and wanted
to know why, but first he needed to go outside.

Rowan wriggled her way off the high dining chair and
stood, knees bent, arms wide, inviting Peyton for a cuddle. Peyton obliged, and
ran up to his little madam, putting his head between her knees as he wagged his
tail so hard Rowan thought it might fall off.

Rowan reached down and scratched the soft head of her
one and only friend, before patting her chest with both hands, inviting Peyton
up for what Rowan called an ‘up-cuddle’. Within seconds Peyton’s forepaws were
on her shoulder, and he stood at his full height in front of her to lick her
face, tail still wagging back and forth madly.

He stopped licking her a moment and looked at her
plaster, before nuzzling it on her temple and looking into her eyes. At times
like this, Rowan imagined Peyton was talking to her, and she understood each
word he said.

She looked over her furry friend’s fuzzy shoulder, out
of the kitchen window. The sun was shining, the trees were dry and still. It
was going to be a beautiful day.

Peyton noticed the shift in her attention as she
paused
her affections to look outside. He was pleased to see
her smiling; showing her teeth in a grimace any other animal would have found
threatening. Peyton thought it good that outside excited
her
and he dropped back onto all fours before making his way to the door. He wanted
outside too, and what better time than now, when his little madam was obviously
eager to be out in the sun.

Rowan went to the hall door to listen to what her
maman
was doing, causing Peyton to flop in a hump by the
outside door. On hearing her
maman’s
snores, she
stifled a chuckle and made for the pantry, where she’d hidden the runaway bag
she’d packed that morning before
maman
and
daddy-long-legs were awake.

She moved the sack of potatoes as quietly as she
could, and pulled her bag from its hiding place. Shutting the pantry door
again, she grinned at Peyton. The smile shook all the muscles in her face and
she could hear them ring in her ears, so unfamiliar to her was it.

Peyton, on seeing her beaming, jumped from his forlorn
sitting position, and nudged the handle of the door excitedly while Rowan put
her bag on her back.

After slipping the shoulder straps on slowly and
carefully so nothing shook inside and disturbed the tree’s slumber, she made
her way to the door, moving Peyton out of the way by putting her hand on his
head. He bowed out of the way, ever his little madam’s gentleman, and she
opened the door with a click she thought would deafen her, though really it was
inaudible.

Once outside in the glorious sunshine, Peyton ran down
the garden, jumping over flower beds and through the branches of the baby apple
tree in the middle of the lawn, and stopped with a lurch at his spot. His
little madam’s good mood was infectious, and her having the bag with her to him
meant treats or a trip, neither of which he’d had in a while.

Watching him with a smile, Rowan closed the door with
another deafening click that no one heard. She took hold of both shoulder
straps of her bag and pulled them tightly down before skipping down the garden
in pursuit of Peyton.

Patting her leg, she summoned him, and they walked
side by side to the gate at the end of the garden. The gate was old and
overgrown with ivy and weeds, and would be very hard to open, she decided.
Putting her back to the gate and her hands on top, she pushed herself up and
sat on it. Saying goodbye to the garden, she swung her legs over and called
Peyton; patting her thigh as she walked away across the clearing.

Peyton needed no encouragement and bounded over the
gate after his beloved little madam, catching up with her just as she reached
the edge of the trees.

*****

Peyton nudged Rowan's hand with his
soft wet nose as they walked along through between the trees side by side, he
hadn't been taken out for a walk since he'd arrived with the family, when his
little madam was all sticky fingers and nonsensical noises and would grab and
pull with her little paws.
Rowan smiled at him reassuringly, and patted his
head, overjoyed to have him with her as her companion. She looked behind them
and was pleased to find she could no longer see the houses for the trees,
bushes and brambles. They'd entered the woods on a clear wide path, one well
used by the older kids who would play in their dens and hideouts in the trees,
by parents who would build tree houses for their children, and by the bigger
animals she knew lived in the woods, the badgers she'd read about, and the dogs
she could hear on a night from the darkness of her room.
Though she was in unfamiliar territory, she felt
safer in the woods and away from her home. She knew what dangers lurked in the woods,
but had decided that Peyton's presence would deter any animals from coming too
close.

They were off the beaten track now,
which even though Rowan had read that this wasn't a good idea, she felt was the
right thing to do, as she was more likely to be able to keep going in a
straight line, and would surely reach her daddy before night time.
The sun dappled through the trees and set
Peyton's fur aflame with light, his honey
colouring
shone ablaze with oranges and yellows. He'd started to walk ahead of Rowan a
little as the gaps between the trees grew smaller and smaller as the wood grew
denser around them and she watched as the sun's rays shone through the trees
like a light from the heavens and onto her pretty puppy's back.

The sun and its lovely warming rays
began to disappear before long; thick yellow clouds had blocked it from sight.

“There’s snow in them there clouds,
arr
lad.” Rowan told Peyton, imitating her
maman’s
deep, husky tones.

As they walked along, hurrying now in a hope to find
shelter for the air had an ice chill to it, and the snow was falling fast,
though few flakes were falling around Rowan and Peyton where they were under
the trees.
Slowly the tall trees began to thin out and smaller trees and bushes replaced
them.

The snow flurried fast and hard into Rowan's face and
chest and soon the front of her coat was covered, a snowman was she, with
sodden trousers and cold ears.
Peyton was tucked in behind her, his head down against the wind, using Rowan's
legs to hide from the cold white stuff attacking his face.

Suddenly Rowan stopped, and Peyton crashed into her
legs, causing Rowan to pitch forward onto her toes and nearly off-balance.

Rowan looked left then right at the place where she'd
stopped. The bushes they'd been walking between stopped their abundance
abruptly, for here was a dirty road. The road was made of mud and sand, and had
been sprinkled with snow, like icing sugar on a cake. Rowan had known there was
a road in the woods; there was a quarry at one end of it, and at the other, the
entrance.
The ring road.

Knowing her house was behind her, and that the main
road lay downhill from her home, she knew that the left direction would be
pointless to take, as it would only take her straight home.

Turning right, she headed away from the main road with
its police station filled with scary officials and up the hill farther into the
woods. She knew she'd wind up going back on herself eventually, but in order to
cross the woods safely and avoid the main road, where surely she'd be seen and
returned to her living nightmare, she had to skirt around the old quarry.

With Peyton in tow, she walked up the slight hill
until the ground began to disappear on her left, revealing the biggest hole
she'd ever seen. As she walked along, she told her hairy hound of her trip to
the seaside when she was very small, of how she'd dug a hole in the sand with
her plastic spade and filled it full of water. She told Peyton of how a giant
had dug this huge hole with his huge plastic spade, looking for gold.

She had no idea when the quarry was made, when work
there ended, or what was dug for there, but to tell her tall tale to Peyton
made her feel less lonely and alone.

As they continued to walk the left side of the road no
longer dropped away slowly but disappeared completely. Rowan and Peyton walked
along the road, the cliff top a few feet away to one side, the tree line thick
and course with holly bushes and brambles on the other. The road they were on
continued right around the quarry before entering it, and vaguely through the
silent snowfall Rowan could make out the other side of the quarry.

Peyton padded beside her as they made their way around
the edge, being careful not to walk too close to the left for fear of falling.
Through the fast falling flakes loomed a dark shadow, and it grew as they
continued to walk along. It grew taller and taller and turned a dark green hue
as they neared it; the grey gloom cast by the snow was disappearing as they
drew closer.

Rowan was not afraid for she knew that the great green
growth was merely a tree.
The Oak Tree.
It was famous
for being the biggest tree in the woods. It stood with its roots in the quarry,
and a very strong looking branch stretched towards the road on which they
walked. The story was that it took one boy and his father one whole day to
build the giant tree house that sat in the middle of it, where the branches
split the trunk in three and went off in all different directions. Looking at
the magnificent old tree and its tired and worn yet vast and beautiful tree
house, Rowan had an idea.