Season of Secrets (4 page)

 

 

 

 

He's not dead.

He's propped up against the wall, legs spread out in
front of him. They don't seem to be bleeding any
more, but it's hard to tell because he's lying on the
shadowy side, the side that still has a roof. I'm on the
sunny side, which just has a hole and beams and
clouds and a sky. His face is hidden in shadow. The
thing I can see most clearly is the sole of one bare
foot, which is stretched out towards me; hard and
white and covered in mud.

I suddenly don't know what to say.

“You got home safe?” he says. “They didn't find
you?”

I shake my head.

“That's all right then,” he says. He tilts his head
back then screws it up, like it hurts to move.

I come closer.

“You don't have shoes on.”

“No,” he says.

He doesn't have a jacket either. Now I'm closer, I
see that he's bare from the waist upwards. I can see
his chest muscles bulging under his brown skin.

My dad's muscles aren't anything like as good as his.

“Do you need anything?” I say. “Food? Help?”

He leans his head against the wall and smiles. It's a
nice smile. Sort of tired but pleased.

“No,” he says.

It reminds me of the way my mum used to look at
me, half asleep as I climbed up into her bed on
Sunday mornings when I was small. I come closer.
I'm not sure I believe him. Coming down the lane, I'd
almost convinced myself that he was Miss Shelley's
god, but now I'm here, I'm doubtful. What if he's
just a man, hurt like my mum was hurt?

If no one helps him, will he die too?

“Are you real?” I say, suddenly.

He stretches out his hand. “There.”

I go over and take his hand. The skin is rough and
warm. The nails are chipped and his fingers are
crumbled with dried mud and something else.

“Real,” he says.

He looks exactly like the head in the church, except
he doesn't have leaves. He has brown, curly hair, with
strands of red and orange which glow when the sun
catches them. He's wearing thick, brown trousers that
fold over in sort of wrinkles, like the skin of the
rhinoceros in the
Just So Stories
. They stop halfway
down his leg. They're torn and mangled by the teeth of
the wolves, and messed up with mud and thick-smelling
blood, but if I squint and look away, I can
almost forget about them.

“Your face is in our church,” I say.

He doesn't seem surprised.

“Is it?” he says. He looks at me with the same,
fond look. Then he closes his eyes.

He's asleep.

I stay where I am for a while, watching him, but he
doesn't move. I stand up, as slowly and quietly as I can,
and go back to the door.

When I turn and look back, he's gone.

 

 

 

 

I sit on top of the gate and look at the sky.
Really
real!

The way I see it, Famous Five-style, there are two
possibilities.

 

1. He's a real but ordinary person, unmagical. I should (probably) dial 999 like the St John's Ambulance people showed us at school and rescue him. I will be in all the newspapers –
Girl Saves Injured Man
. I might even get a medal.

2. He's something completely different – the Green Man and the old god from the church. And anything could happen next.

 

Grandpa's serving a whole queue of customers when I burst through the shop door. Grandma's nowhere to be seen. Hannah's in the kitchen, kneeling on one of the kitchen chairs. She's drawing signatures in swirly purple letters:

“Hannah. Hann
aah
.”

She turns slightly but definitely round, so her back
is facing me. She's turning the full stops and the dots
on her “i”s into little hearts.

“Hann
aah
.” I pull on her arm. “I've found him. The
man from the church – the god Miss Shelley was
talking about in church. The one who has to die to
make the winter. I've found where he is. We can go and
rescue him!”

Hannah jerks her arm away.

“Leave me
alone
,” she says. “I'm busy. I don't have
time to play games.”

“Hannah – I'm not messing – seriously, seriously,
I've found a man, in a field. He's hurt. We can help
him!”

Hannah looks ever so slightly interested.

“I honestly, honestly promise. Honestly. Swear
on . . . swear on Dad's life.”

“You're not supposed to swear,” says Hannah, but
she puts her pen down. “Show me first. Then if he's
real, we'll tell Grandpa.”

 

I lead and Hannah follows. I know I should be
worried about the man, but actually I'm mostly
excited to be leading a rescue mission. I wonder if we
ought to have brought bandages, or at least aspirin.

“You have to climb the gate,” I tell Hannah. “He's
in the barn. There!”

“You didn't say there'd be
mud
!” says Hannah. She
won't go straight through like I do (my school shoes
couldn't get any muddier). She goes round the edge,
balancing on rocks. “Ow!”

I get to the barn first. He's there; sleeping in his
corner. The sun has moved, so there's a ray of light
from the hole in the roof shining on his face. He
looks like a curly-haired Jesus.

“Hello,” I whisper. He blinks at me.

“Ough!” says Hannah. The floor inside the barn is
lower than the lip of the door, and she's stepped right
off it and landed on a plank of wood. She slides off
and grabs my arm. “What
is
this place?”

“It's where he is.” I point. “Look.”

“Where?” says Hannah. “What're you pointing
at?”

I look.

But he's gone.

 

 

 

 

I want Mum tonight. I want to tell her about the man
in the barn. I want to take her there and say, “A man
was here and then he wasn't. Is he real?”

“The world is a strange and wonderful place,
Molly-love.”

That's what she'd say.

“The world is a strange and wonderful place,” I
whisper, but it just makes me feel more alone than
ever.

From my bed, I can see the light on the landing. I
can hear people laughing on the television. I could go
and talk to Grandma and Grandpa. I could tell them,
a hunt rode through our village last night. A
huntsman rode through our village and was gone. I
could say, there's a man in a barn and my teacher says
he's going to die. But I'm going to save him.

I don't move.

 

My mum's name was Diana Eleanor Brooke. She died
on the eighth of August. She was thirty-nine, which
sounds very old, but isn't really. Not when you think
that Grandma is sixty-nine and Grandpa is seventy-four.

My mum was the most beautiful person in the
whole world, probably. Beautifuller than Miss Shelley,
even. She had long fair hair and green witch-eyes and
a turned-up nose with freckles, which is a most un-adult
thing to have. Neither Hannah nor I look much
like her. When I was little, I used to hope that my
black curls would turn blonde and straight and so
one day I might grow up to look like her, but it never
happened. The only thing we have in common is
freckles. She was the only grown-up I ever saw with
freckles. She wasn't ever very like a grown-up though.
She was grown-up about things like bedtimes and
cleaning your teeth, but she was like a little kid about
other things, like Christmas trees and fireworks and
fairies. She believed in fairies. She thought she'd seen
one once, when she was smaller than me. Only it was
just for a moment, out of a car window, so she was
never sure. I almost believe in fairies too. And I like
Christmas trees, and banana ice cream, and jumping
waves at the seaside, like she did.

Mum is the person I want now. She's the person I
want to tell about my man. She wouldn't think I was
playing games or making things up, like Grandma and
Hannah do. She'd know what to do. She'd—

I don't know what she'd do, but she'd believe me.

 

 

 

 

So I'm on my own. That's OK. When I come home
from school, I go straight through to the kitchen. The
shop would be a better place to go, but Grandma's in
there and, anyway, she'd notice if things went missing.
The kitchen is Grandpa's place and he's much less
observant. I get a carrier bag from the drawer and I fill
it with things. Apples. Bread. Orange juice. A packet of
ham. A tin of beans, a tin of peaches, a tin of thick
rice and tomato soup. A fork. Matches.

If nobody else is going to help him, that doesn't
mean I can't.

There are blackberries growing in the hedgerows in
the lane. More of the trees are turning autumn-coloured
– soft yellows and oranges. It looks as if
somebody's smudged over the world with a paintbrush,
dulling and mixing the colours. The banks are covered
in the hard stalks of dead cow parsley. The air is fresher,
and colder. It smells of leaves and grass and wet earth.

When I go through into the barn, he's there. He's
awake. He's moved. Last time he was leaning against
the wall, now he's huddled up in the corner, out of the
wind.

“Hello,” I say.

He looks up when I come in. “Molly, isn't it?” he
says. “I wondered if you were coming back.” He holds
out his hand and I come and sit beside him.

In the evening light, I can see his legs clearly. They
look awful. I can see the stains and tears, all the way
down. There's a strong smell, like something's rotting,
and flies are crawling about on his strange trousers. I
look away.

“Do they hurt?” I say.

He yawns and shakes his head again.

“Should I get an ambulance? Someone to help?”

“An ambulance wouldn't find me,” he says.

We sit there quiet together, watching the dust
dancing in the sunlight from the door.

“I've brought you some stuff,” I say. “I thought
you might— I mean, if you want— You don't have to
have them if you don't want them.”

I pass the carrier bag over to him. He looks at it,
puzzled, and pulls out a tin of peaches. He turns the
tin around, sniffs at it. His mouth gives a funny twitch
at the picture, then he lays it on the ground.

“It's pretty,” he says. “Thank you.”

“It's a tin of peaches!” I say. “Don't you know what
a tin is?”

He looks at me, expectant. I tug at the ring-pull
and open the tin for him.

“Look. Peaches.”

He dips a grimy finger into the peach-juice and
touches his tongue to it, cautious. I watch him. A look
of surprise crosses his face and he laughs out loud.

“It's sweet!”

“You can eat it. I brought you a fork – look.”

But he doesn't want the fork. He digs his fingers
into the syrup and eats the peach-slices whole, juice
running down his chin. I know exactly what Grandma
would say about eating with hands as dirty as his, but
he seems happy.

He shakes his head when I show him the rest of the
food in the bag.

“Enough. It's enough. Thank you.”

“Aren't you hungry?” I say, and he shakes his head.

I'm puzzling over this when I notice something
else. Something is growing out of the soil beside him.
A tree. A baby tree. A sapling.

It's almost as tall as him. And I'm almost certain it
wasn't there last time.

“Where did that come from?”

He looks up; lifts his hand and touches the branch
above his head. It
grows
– I swear it – stretching out
like it wants to wrap itself around his fingers. He
draws his hand down and the new branch follows.

And I notice other things. There's grass growing
around his feet that wasn't there before. And the ivy
crawling up the wall – there's more of it behind him.
Was it always like that? Or—

He sees me staring and laughs. He holds out his
hands. They're empty. He blows on them and
something begins to grow, out of nothing. A seed. A
little green sprout. Leaves. A flower.

A bluebell.

“For you,” he says and gives the flower to me.

I hold the bluebell very carefully in the palm of my
hand. I'm afraid it'll vanish if I move.

He's watching my face. He seems pleased. He sits
back.

“No,” he says. “I don't need your food.”