Runt (10 page)

I lay on the bed in the Hoover-ness from below and closed my eyes so I could still see Bala Lake only not on the screen any more just in my head. I liked the lake being in my head all in a peacement and no monster in it and me floating in it and it all warm not cold like I knew it would be in Real Life and no monster in it either again not like Real Life. Just me in my head in the warm floaty-ness. I thought of the screen that let me look at Bala Lake and the webcam that showed me each little ripple on it as it happened in Real Life and me miles away from it but still seeing every ripple and wave and the boats going across it at the same time as they went across it in the Real World and it was like old wizardy fellers with glass balls in the Olden Days. I knew that there were people who understood it all and could tell me if I asked them how such things like that could be but I knew I wouldn’t understand their words and so it was Magic to me cos I could never understand how I could see things miles and miles away over all them High Places as them things really happened. It would always be Magic to me, that would, oh yes. That thinking made me feel funny and spinsome, how one person could be looking at Bala Lake standing right by it and seeing the same things that I could see hundreds of miles away and it was as if the world was shrivelling up dead quick like when I put an empty crisp bag on the red coals in the fireplace and spin went my head so I rolled on to my side and put a pillow over my head and
tucked
my ears in, folded them in against the sides of my head. And I thought then about how lucky we are that we’ve got bendy ears cos if they were hard like our fingernails we wouldn’t be able to tuck them in so we’d have to sleep on our backs or our fronts all the time so our ears wouldn’t snap off and if we slept on our backs we’d all snore loads and if we slept on our fronts we’d all probably smothercate and die so hurray I thought for our bendy ears.

I slept for a small bit cos I don’t think I slept very well in the tent the night before, not after That My Time, and Arrn woke me up when he sniffled his wet nose against my face and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was his red ears going glow. I rolled on to him off the bed and we had a little play-fight then I got a shower in Drunkle’s bathroom which was of a sudden all clean with the wet black dust gone from the wall and the platey fungussy stuff gone and even the towel all dry and fresh and smelling of a niceness not like old socks. Amazing, I thought. Drunkle has Cleaned Everything Up. I put new clothes on well not new but clean and put the old ones well not old but dirty in the washing basket and then went downstairs and there was my Drunkle in the kitchen sitting at the table and that kitchen too was all Dead Clean, no dirty dishes everywhere and all the tops and machines and things all in a gleaming. Drunkle put a smile at me.

—What d’you think, bach? Could eat your food in here now, couldn’t you?

He waved his arm around the kitchen all pleased and happy’d with himself and what he’d done and I
told
him it looked dead nice and he put a smiling into the kitchen which made it even nicer and he said he was going to take a shower and that we had to go back to the Mynydd Tafarn so he went upstairs and I went outside. As soon as I opened the door Arrn came crashing down the stairs and ran outside into the world and ran round the yard like a mad bugger, all muck flying out from his feet cos Drunkle hadn’t done to the yard what he’d done to the kitchen but that was okay cos cleaning up the yard would be a Big Job. An All Dayer. Maybe even a Two Dayer. I went over to the barn and climbed Straw Hill and saw Charlesworth at her counter and I asked her for a packet of tea and a pound of streaky and she just watched me with her green green eyes which closed all happy’d when I stroked her head and made her go prrrr. I looked into the hole in the straw and saw the kittens all curled up together in a furry bundle sleeping with their tiny sides all going in-and-out slow cos they were alive and they were all asleep even my little black-and-white bitey mate and I wanted to pick him up so that he’d bite me again and feel him in my hand all small but still alive but I didn’t cos he was in sleep and I didn’t want to wake him up or break his kitten dreams. I watched them for a bit as Charlesworth watched me as well then I went down off Straw Hill and saw Arrn at the doorway to the cowshed looking in with his red red ears all standy and his tail all standy too so I went over to him and stood by him and he put a little growl into the cowshed and I looked into there too and could see nothing growlful but I knew that Arrn was seeing the bull, Snowball the bull who
got
shot ages ago when he went mad but who still lived in the byre in a way. And as I watched I saw a shadow come out of another shadow and that shadow moved and it was like a tractor it was so big and I heard it make a rumbly, grumbly sound and then I thought that it might bellow and I didn’t want to hear that it would be too scary and Arrn growled again and fearment came on me out of that shadow then Drunkle’s voice called me and the shadow in a sudden went and me and Arrn ran away back across the mudsome yard and Drunkle was all clean in his truck and we both of us got in as well, me in the front next to Drunkle and Arrn in the back on his own. Arrn was dead mucky and I got some muck on my new clean clothes too but I didn’t care cos well I just didn’t. Drunkle started the engine of the truck and for a bit it sounded like Snowball’s grumble and I didn’t tell Drunkle about the ghost bull and I reached over backwards and stroked Arrn and then we were both better’d and Drunkle sang us a song as he drove us back towards the pub.

On the Dead High Road he stopped the truck next to a slopey field with a burned tree in it and some crows around that tree. It might’ve been the same tree that I’d seen earlier and the crows might’ve been the same ones that we saw then too and who knew about Fay being dead and Drunkle’s heart being broken and so in fact were different birds than before because of that knowing in them now. I didn’t know. They looked the same as them and were walking the same as them but that didn’t mean anything but Drunkle was looking at them like he looked at the other ones and he turned
the
engine off and let us hear the wind and the noise of them crows. The wind brought Drunkle’s clean smell into my nose and it was not his normal niff of drink and sick and stuff it was all of a soapy-ness and fresh like flowers. But even tho he was smelling different he
wasn’t
different cos he started talking His Words again like he always does cos he’s my Drunkle.

—Listen to the crows, he said. —What d’you think they’re saying?

One of Them Questions again. Always Them Questions of No Answers even if an answer was asked for which it never flippin is.

—Well, whatever you think it is … you’re wrong.

Flippin cheek I thought cos I
knew
what the crows were saying to each other even if I couldn’t’ve said it in Person’s Words. I’ve known what the crows and in fact
all
the birds say to each other since I was a pram-babby but I’ve never told any other humanperson about that cos they wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I did and anyway it is a Secret between me and the birds.

—See, their calls are not for us, Drunkle said, —only for other crows. They don’t care about us. Whether we live or die, as an entire species I mean, is of no importance to them whatsoever. They’ve colonised the entire planet, these birds, even the poles and the deserts. Only one other species can make a similar claim.

I thought of the crows carrying me up into the Lordy-place and being with me in My Times as they always are and I got a bit smiley somewhere inside. Arrn snuffled the back of my neck with his wet warm nose and I then got even more smiley and wanted to
laugh
but thought that that wouldn’t fit with Drunkle’s words and the way he was being right then so I didn’t laugh cos that might’ve put a sad on him.

—Birds of death, we call them. Their blackness and their stalking and their carrion-loving ways. Long ago, they learned to follow armies because of the easy feeding they’d have on the battlefield. Familiars of witches, we say. Gods and goddesses of war. They’re so important to us but they’re utterly indifferent to us themselves. They seem to be waiting patiently for our era to pass, don’t you think? And we put all this stuff on them, we make them into these ill-omened things, yet watch them play; note how they seem to love their lives.

I watched them walk and hop with their wings folded behind their backs like hands and I watched them beak-stab the mountain and watched them fight and play and flap up into the branches of the burned tree and then fly back down to the ground again. Glowing black all the time their feathers so black that their wings did shine as if they had some silverness in their feathers and even their black eyes seemed to go glow as well. Even Arrn was watching them with his tongue out a bit and his eyes kind of in a deepness as if he wanted to be with them as well and not in the car with me and Drunkle.

—See the way they leap and walk? I mean they can fly, but they seem to prefer to strut and jump. Why? Why should that be? We don’t need an ornithologist to analyse their behaviour, we need a fucking psychiatrist. They’ve been observed making tools; they are said to have emotional awareness. We feel a need to
deal
with them in our lives in some ways but all we’ve come up with is the name ‘crow’ which is just a poor attempt to mimic their call. Their voice. Which may be all we have left of magic, as if in naming the bird we summon it with a call. Its
own
call. Its
own
name.

We watched the birds for a bit all three of us and I listened to them speak inside my head. They made words in my head and I made words back to them and I knew what they were doing there on the mountain top, I knew what they were up to cos they told me and anyway I always have. I told them in my head that I would see them again soon and Drunkle put his fingers on the key to start the truck up but as he did that two more black birds came to join the crows, two birds
like
them crows but much bigger and they landed in the middle of the crowness like helicopters or something and started to make barky sounds at the crows which made them fly apart and scatter. Some of them hopped away and some flew up into the tree branches but all of them made their sounds.

—Ah, now, ravens, Drunkle said and let the key go out of his hand. —Unusual to see them among crows like this. They’re usually solitary things, living as couples in remote areas like this, even more remote really. I wonder what’s brought them among the crows? Cousins of course but different birds. Avoid each other normally.

I knew because them ravens were telling me but I couldn’t tell it to Drunkle in his Words cos all I had were Raven Words to tell it and no one else I knew could ever understand so I said nothing with my Tongue but everything with my Head.

—He’s a trickster, that raven, Drunkle said in a not-heavy voice as if he didn’t want Raven to hear. —He can do everything the culture forbids. Only he can spew death out again. One of those ravens could be a dead king; Bran could be his name, in fact
is
his name in the language of this place. Flew all the way back here from the Tower of London to revisit the land of his birth and death. Both creator deity and agent of destruction, that’s him. Both holy and obscene he is. Completely beyond our control. The courts they hold; ever seen them?
I
have; twenty or so birds will surround just one bird and make a lot of noise, building themselves up into a frenzy until they all turn on the one bird and kill it. Savage it into a mess. I’ve seen them do such things. Several times. We can never understand.

He looked a bit sad then Drunkle did as he looked out of the window at the birds. The ravens flew away and the crows made a crowd again at the bottom of the burned tree and I watched the two ravens as they flapped slow over the mountain top and then off the mountain into the sun and the misty-ness that was starting to happen just beneath that sun. I wanted to stop Drunkle from looking sad but I couldn’t tell him about why the crows did what he said they did but I thought he wanted to hear that Why but I couldn’t tell him of that Why cos it wasn’t in any of his words or mine it was in different words that came from the crows and also as well the burned tree and the grass and the rocks and all the little insects in them rocks and that grass and it was even in the words of the mountain itself. Words not mine and words not
Drunkle
’s and maybe that was why he was sad and I thought then that maybe this was what the sadness of the world was made of that the Everything-thing told me about cos nearly all of the people on the world only had Their Own Words and could never understand the words of anything else even tho they really really wanted to so it made them dead lonely. Cos they lived in things and in a place that they can never understand all around them everywhere are things they can never understand and that’s what has made the big big sadness on the world and put a big big sad on everyone who lives on it and why they are all mad.

—Aw Jesus, would you listen to me, eh? Drunkle put a smile out of him at me.—Talking pure bloody shit I am. Been living alone for too long. Talking this way and I’m not even drunk. Daft.

Then he showed me a big smile and I showed him one back and then he started the engine and as the truck began to speak Arrn woofed behind me all happy and his tail went whap whap on the seat.

—Soon change that tho, bach, eh? Let’s go to the pub.

We drove away from the crows and the burned tree and off the Dead High Road and down on to the Just High Road and we started singing ‘The Rattling Bog’ and got to the pub at the ‘bird’ bit which is great. We stopped in the car park which was full of cars and we sang the last long bird bit dead loud:

And on that nest there was a bird

A rare bird! A rattling bird!

And the bird on the nest

And the nest on the leaf

And the leaf on a twig

And the twig on a limb

And the limb on a branch

And the branch on a trunk