Season of Secrets (3 page)

 

 

 

 

“You made him up,” says Hannah.

We're coming down the hill to school.

“You always say that,” I say. “Why do you always
say that? He was real. He was
there
.”

“It's always made up,” says Hannah. “The stuff
you say you've seen. Either that or you've gone crazy.”
She looks at me thoughtfully. “Do you hear voices?
Do they tell you to do things?
Kill Grandma, Molly. Kiill
heeeerrr. . .
”

“Shove off.” I hunch my bag on my shoulders. “If
it wasn't for you, I'd never have been there. What did
you have to go back to Grandpa's and leave me there
for, anyway?”

“We couldn't have really got all the way home, you
know,” says Hannah, in her older-sister voice, like it
was all my idea in the first place, and she runs off
down the hill before I can answer.

I follow after.

How do you know if something's real? Shadows on
the wall, noises in the night, scurrying shapes that
might be mice or little men or merely imaginings. The
man last night
felt
real. But then so do dreams. Are
dreams real?

“Come on!” shouts Hannah, over her shoulder.

 

Our school here is tiny – a square stone building with
a postage stamp of yard and a scrubby playing field
over the road. There's only one classroom and one
round table that everyone sits round. There's one class
and eight people in it.

We're late. The others are inside. Sascha – who's
six – is standing by the empty hamster cage, crying.

“I only wanted to stroke him!”

Everyone else is watching Josh and Matthew, who
are flat on their bellies under the Nature Table,
shouting.

“I can see him!”

“Don't let him get away!”

Josh and Matthew are like Hannah. They take up a
lot of space. They're brothers. They hang around with
Alexander, who's leaning over the table, also shouting.

“No – not like that! Try and trap him—”

Alexander's sort of plump. His blue school jumper
is twisted up one shoulder and it's already got orange
juice spilt down it. His parents both work for the
University of Northumbria. He's the sort of boy who
knows far more about Romans than is good for
anybody.

“No, look—”

Josh and Matthew ignore him. Only Oliver, who is
four and the smallest person in the school, turns and
stares at him; round pink face, brown eyes and a wet
red mouth chewing on his jumper cuff.

That leaves Emily. Emily isn't chasing hamsters.
Emily has fair hair and blue eyes and sparkly silver
shoes. Emily's by the water tray, looking out of the
window.

Outside, the sky is grey.

It's going to rain again.

“All right!” Mrs Angus has come in from the
kitchen. “Joshua Haltwhistle, get out from under
there
right now
! Now!”

“I've got him!” Josh comes slithering out, hamster
cupped in his hand, hair speckled with bits of Nature
Table mushroom.

“And just what did you think you were doing?”
Mrs Angus starts into Josh, who's indignant.

“We were helping, miss! Sascha let the hamster out!”

Mrs Angus ignores him. Mrs Angus is the teaching
assistant, but very fierce.

Sascha cries louder, sensing trouble.

I feel someone's hand on my shoulder. I look up. Miss
Shelley is standing behind me in the doorway, watching.

“I think,” she says, “it might be a good day for a
trip. Don't you?”

 

I never knew there were schools as small as this. This
one is way more random than my old school. We do a
lot more art and a lot less numeracy. Plus, trips.

Today, we go to the church.

In the porch, Miss Shelley hands everyone a
clipboard and tells us to draw something.

“Find something that speaks to you and see what
you can make of it.” The boys all open their mouths
to argue and she waves them away. “If you can't find
anything exciting, you can do brass rubbings.
Everyone needs more purple tombstones. Go on!
Shoo! The crayons are in the box.”

Miss Shelley is proper young. She's got yellow hair
and long black skirts that make swishy sounds when
she walks. She looks like a witch. A friendly witch,
who makes helpful potions from flowers and trees.
She's beautiful.

She likes things that
speak to you
. I don't care. I like
this church. It's dark and close and smells of crushed
dust and old stone. I wonder if my dad and Auntie
Meg ever came here with their school and drew
something that spoke to them.

The boys have set off down the aisle.

“Look! Dead man!”

“It's a statue!”

That's Josh and Matthew. Hannah shoots them a
look over her shoulder.

“Morons,” she says. They ignore her. She doesn't
start looking for something to draw, though. She
hangs around by another statue, watching the boys.

I trail down the aisle after them, running my fingers
along the top of the pews. They have little doors with
ivy leaves carved in the dark wood.

Halfway down the church are two stone pillars. At
the top of both is a face made of stone. A man. He's
got big eyes and a long, thick nose. There are leaves
sticking out of his face and his hair. He looks bright
and wild, like an old god or a goblin in a fairy tale. He
doesn't look like he ought to be allowed in a church.

It's the hunted man.

I stop and stare. The man last night didn't have
leaves, but he had the same eyes, the same nose;
the same round curve to his cheeks. It's definitely him.

“That's my man!”

I'm so surprised, I say it out loud. The boys stop
sliding on the stonework and stare at me.

I look for Miss Shelley.

“That man! I saw him last night, being chased.”

“Was he halfway up a pillar?” says Josh.

“Did he have leaves sticking out of his nose?”

“Of course not!”

Emily has come over now, and is watching me with
her quiet eyes.

“He was running away, last night!”

“You can't have seen him last night,” says Josh.
“That guy's been up there for years. He'd be, like, a
thousand years old. He'd be a ghost.”

I want to punch him. “What would you know
about it, anyway, Josh Haltwhistle? Were you there?
How would you know who he is?”

“He's the Green Man,” Miss Shelley says.

She's standing in the aisle, her dark skirt flowing
and merging with her shadow, so you can't see where
one begins and the other ends. The boys are silent.
Even Hannah is watching.

“Is he from the Bible?” says Alexander, uncertainly.

Miss Shelley laughs. The spell is broken.

“Not exactly,” she says. “Green Man is the name
for a face like that – made of leaves or with leaves
around it. It crops up in old churches and tombstones.
Nobody knows why.”

“Tombstones?” I say.

“Yes,” she says. She looks at me. “The Green Man
is linked to the cycle of death and rebirth. He's put on
graves as a sign of hope.”

“But people don't rebirth,” says Alexander.

“Not often,” says Miss Shelley. She looks so pretty
I feel like melting. “OK, look. The Green Man is an
old god – from before most people could read or
write – so we don't really know anything about him.
But people think he might have been the god of
summer – or of spring. Right?”

“Right,” I say. Behind her, Emily has her head on
one side, listening.

“So,” says Miss Shelley. “Think of him like a year.
He's born with the spring, grows into his full power in
the summer, fades in the autumn and dies in the
winter. You then have the dark period of the year.
Nothing grows. The earth is dead. But something
wonderful happens. Spring comes again and the world
is reborn.”

She speaks as if it's something beautiful. A man
getting torn apart by wolves, beautiful! I can't think of
anything more terrible. And to have the same thing
happen year after year after year, for as long as the
world is turning. My poor hunted man.

“That's horrible!” I say. “Why doesn't anyone stop
it? Can't anyone stop it?” And then, “Does he even get
reborn as the same person?”

Hannah says, “It's a story, Molly.” Behind her, Josh
sputters into his hand. Miss Shelley shakes her head.

“It's never wise to laugh at things you don't
understand,” she says. “If you're not careful, they
might start laughing back at you.”

 

When the others have wandered off, I lock myself in
a pew with my feet on the bench and my clipboard on
my knees. I draw the man from the pillar. He's got a
body of branches and hands of leaves. He has big
eyes but no mouth.

I draw men on horses, with dogs and horns. The
biggest is Josh and the second biggest is Matthew.
They have red smiles and swords that drip red blood.
They're chasing the man made of leaves. A girl with
fair hair and sparkly shoes watches. She might be
Emily or she might be someone else. She doesn't cheer
and she doesn't cry.

“Lovely, Molly!” says Mrs Angus, passing my pew.

 

 

 

 

If I could be anyone in the world, including pop
stars or the Queen, I would be Emily
¹
. Emily has
pink hairslides with stars on them and a set of
rubbers shaped like unicorns and a mum and a dad
and a little brother who all live together on a farm.
All the bits of her match, which they never do if you
live with your grandpa and half your things are in
Newcastle.

“Emily,” says Hannah, “is the most boring person
I have ever met. The most boring person in Britain. In
the whole world!”

But Hannah is wrong. It's true that Emily doesn't
say much. She hardly ever speaks in class and at break
she just sits on the bench and watches, or lets Josh
boss her about.

But that doesn't mean she isn't thinking things.
Sometimes in class she'll say something or look at
Miss Shelley in a way that shows she's listening and
thinking and wondering. I try and show I'm thinking
and wondering too, but I don't know if she gets it. I
don't know if I'm the sort of person someone like
Emily would be friends with. I'm not little and
blonde – I've got short black curls that tangle, and eyes
so dark they're almost black.

“You're my raggle-taggle gypsy love,” says Grandpa,
which is nice, but it's not much use outside of
Grandpa-land.

 

 

 

 

After school, I go up the lane on my bike. Playing
out.

Playing out here isn't like it is at home. At home, I
go and call for my best friend Katy, or my second-best
friend Chloe, and we play badminton in the street, or
build dens in Chloe's garden, or muck about on Katy's
computer or anything.

At Grandpa's, there's nobody but Hannah, and we
never played much even at home. Here all we've done
is fight and nearly run away. So today I'm on my
own.

I take my bike out and go down the hill first; three
times, for luck. Then I ride up the lane the other way,
away from the village, the way I went last night.

When I get to the place with the hawthorn trees, I
stop. There are dark stains on the grass that the rain
hasn't washed away. They give me a shivery feeling, but
I'm relieved as well.

“See!” I say, to an imaginary Josh. “He
was
real.”

The imaginary Josh looks impressed.

Very cautiously, I look at the mess again. He was
lying in a sort of hollow, which has got filled up with
rain, only the rain is coloured with globbles of this
thick, blackish red. Like paint. The stains aren't just
where my man was lying. There are more of them, on
the bank by the side of the lane. It's a trail, like the
breadcrumbs in
Hansel and Gretel
. Off they go, drip,
drip, drip, off to the left, past the sign that says
PRIVATE LAND and down a laneway I've never
gone down before.

I get off my bike and look at the sign.
PRIVATE means DANGER and KEEP OUT and
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

But I want to find the man again. I want to prove
Josh and Hannah and Grandma wrong. I want to
know for sure that I didn't make him up. I do make
things up sometimes, and sometimes I forget what's
real and what isn't. Like playing that the house is on
fire, until I can almost see the smoke seeping through
the crack under my door. Plus I want to know who the
hunt are and how they disappeared into nowhere and
why my man has his face in our church.

I pull my worst face at the sign: forehead wrinkled,
lips clenched, eyebrows thrust out. I don't care if I do
get into trouble. Going on to someone's land isn't
nearly as bad as abandoning your daughters, and that's
what Dad's done to us. And he got away with it.

So.

This bit of lane has trees over the top of it. It's a
rustly, living tunnel. The leaves are just starting to
turn red in the corners and they're waving above my
head; trees whispering secrets, tree to tree. The blood
is still here too. If the hunt does come back from
wherever it vanished to, I bet it would take those
sniffer wolves about five seconds to track him down.

I wonder if they'd be able to get over a gate,
though? There's one coming up and a field behind it,
with cows, and big clods of muddy, torn-up earth
where the cows come through for milking. The gate is
shut, but there, in the field, is this little stone house
with a tumbledown roof. It's the woodcutter's house.
Or the witch's. It's just the sort of place you'd go to
hide in, if someone had hurt you.

I climb over the gate and drop down on to the
other side. I've got mud on my school shoes and my
socks and all the way up my leg.

I carry on forward.

The house isn't exactly a house. It's a barn. It's got
an old barn door, with a top half that opens on
different hinges so horses (or cows) can look over.
The wood is rotten and the top half is gone.

I peer around the rotten frame.

There are stacks of wood, and sacks of cement
and old ash where someone had a fire, but mostly
there's empty. Half of the roof has fallen in.

There's no one there.

I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“Hello?” I say. “Hello? It's me. Molly. It's Molly.”

No one answers.

“Please,” I say, to the piles of splintered wood and
the sky. “Please be here. Please don't be dead.”

And then the darkness against the wall moves.

“I'm here,” he says.