Folk Read online

  At the sheep field, he sits in the nook Murnon built into the wall for the purpose, the stone pressing into his spine, and waits. When the piping call of the kites begins, he follows the sound in his mind, its threads spooling over and round and down to the wood. But pushing once more through the wood’s spindles and sweet bracken, he finds the clearing empty. They are leaves, not feathers, that rustle and rise around his boots. Only as he is tramping home in the rug-thick dark before dawn does he hear the faintest wheeling cry behind him.

  It is up to the windloft he goes in the first morning light. Long feathers litter the floor, turning, red and silver-grey. He gathers them up, feels them resist his clutch as they pulse in the breeze.

  His head is furred with lack of sleep. His bones feel weak. Ivy Rincepan will not come knocking yet, and it is for the comfort of the familiar arch and sweep that he takes his crescent blade from its hook and begins to work at the last skin. The long rasps as he scrapes are like breaths. He sees Murnon lying in his feather bed, his eyes red raw, his skin faded to ash. Still he scrapes, long slow sweeps across the skin. When his arm is tired, he changes hands and scrapes the other way, but still no calm. He drops the blade, picks up the bag where he has stuffed the feathers and climbs back down, his hands shaky on the ladder.

  Firwit’s knuckles are hardened wax again when he raps at Guller’s door, which is streaked in green-grey ridges. Above the door, a frame the shape of a small crooked house is built into the wall in place of a lintel. Inside the crooked house, caged by iron spindles, a magpie rattles back and forth. He’s seen this before, as a child, when the first fowlmonger lived here. The magpie hunts for the way out, not understanding what it is to be caught, no notion of a trap.

  As the door swings open a rancid stink hits him, of bird grease and feathers scorched in the grate.

  Guller’s black eyes stare up at him. He is no taller than a child, and his smile is childish, gap-toothed.

  ‘Ah! Fine to see you, Firwit the parchment man. Come in, come in.’ His voice is wheedling.

  ‘Let that sorry prisoner out,’ Firwit replies, nodding up at the scuttling magpie, and waits for Guller’s shrill laugh to be over before following him inside.

  A string of songbirds, tied like onions, hangs drying above the hearth. There are feathers everywhere, stuck in cobwebs, drifting like thistledown on the floor. A white goose lies on the table, each wing severed and fanned, held outspread by a peeled branch tied along its length. The goose’s eyes follow Firwit as he steps around the room.

  ‘What use would a bird skin be?’ Firwit asks. He does not want to breathe this foul air long.

  ‘Where shall I begin, parchment man? A wren skin for luck at sea. A rook skin for stealth. A swallow skin to dry a drunk.’

  ‘A kite skin.’

  ‘Ah! Those high-sky spirits.’ Guller’s eyes dart and flash. His grin reveals sharp yellow teeth. ‘You hear them, up on the hill?’

  ‘I believe that’s where they belong,’ Firwit says.

  ‘And that’s where you found those, eh?’ Guller is looking at the reddish spears that poke from Firwit’s sack.

  ‘These I found in the house.’

  ‘What luck you have. Brought them for me, have you? I’ll do you a good trade for those.’ Guller scoops from a pocket a fistful of tiny eggs, blue, brown and white, some speckled, not two the same among them, and holds them up to Firwit. ‘Shouldn’t find beak nor bone in there,’ he says, ‘but they’ll make breakfast either way.’

  ‘A kite skin,’ Firwit repeats. His jaw is tight.

  ‘Good for flying, I’d say.’ Guller laughs, looking sidelong at Firwit. ‘So high they fly, those sky spirits. You hear them, even when you can’t see them.’ He begins to whistle, that same looping, wavering note that spins in the darkness above the sheep field and into the wood. Guller’s eyes are closed. He begins to sway and drift around the room, singing, whistling, as if the spirit of a kite were in his mouth.

  The smog of the room is caught in Firwit’s throat. He grips his bag of feathers and stares at the goose on the table, its wings outstretched beside it. The dark red spots on its sides have spread.

  ‘A kite skin, Guller, with my brother’s wool tucked inside.’ Firwit’s voice croaks. ‘I had it. Now it’s gone.’

  The whistle has carried Guller in his dance to a dark corner. He shakes something out, making dust rise, and brings to Firwit the hollow bird he carried from the hill.

  ‘Yours now, then, parchment man,’ he says, and holds it out. ‘It was Murnon’s. I made it for him myself, when he asked.’

  ‘What for?’ Firwit grasps the wings, feels again the strength in them, the force of taut feathers.

  Guller grins and lets out a curling note between his teeth.

  ‘Good for flying, like I said. Lifting the spirits. You put your mind to it – and Murnon could – or, you put your mind in it.’ Guller nods at the skin. ‘Only takes this, and a little wanting, a little bite of a red-top agaric, chewed up. See the stars from up there, kite-wise. Anyone can do it. All sorts do. You ask them, those that come to the wood. I’ve had Quayle the fiddler up there, little Gertrude Quirk, that lovely Madden from the stables. All as high and happy as kites.’

  Firwit turns the bird skin and pokes his finger into the pinch of Murnon’s wool beneath the scalp.

  ‘Sky spirit, your brother. Lover of stars.’ Guller’s eyes no longer flash. ‘Come yourself, to the woods one night,’ he calls, as Firwit opens the door and leaves the rattle of magpie in its cage behind him.

  Firwit lies down on his bed with the bag of feathers stuffed beneath his head. Flying, Guller said. A sky spirit, your brother. Come yourself. He knew Murnon by day, sheep-tender, bread-baker. He did not know him by night.

  He twists and turns, searching for Murnon in the reddish dark behind his eyelids. He senses the answer is out there, in the dark, in Guller, but he cannot follow his brother there. Flight feathers, they are, inside the sacking, but it is only the quills poking through that keep him from sleep. Perhaps it does not matter, the dark space in his mind where Murnon sits.

  At dawn, the wind rises and the parchment frames clatter in the windloft, until Firwit climbs the ladder, squinting in the bright stripes of light.

  The skin he meant to finish leans up against the lattice, lit from behind, and he sees that with his scraping, the sweep of one hand and then the other, he has thinned out shapes like two curving wings. With his short cutting knife, he slices through the parchment skin. He needs only a length of twine then; a few stitches. As he works, the last dots of down that have followed him from Guller’s house lift from his shirt and are carried out through the open eaves and lost.

  He climbs the hill in the clear midday light. The sheep look up from grazing when he reaches the wall. He does not know whether they sleep at night, or only rest sometimes, when the world wearies them. He tucks the kite skin between the stones around the flat seat of the wall nook, and then in the white daylight he sits, the waxen white curls of the sheep below him, the deep white ruffs of cloud above, the cut parchment pale in his hands. When a kite’s whistle streams from far above, it is as it should be: the sound of the hill, with the chit of the birds in the undergrowth and the hiss of the insects in the grass.

  Firwit lets the evening lull him, but when the first bats come to cut through the dark he is alert. With the night, the wind grows stronger, the sounds of the hill are washed away, and he unwinds the twine across his lap, his fingers slow from stillness. There are no stars to be seen, but a smudge of cloud is brightened by the moon buried deep behind it: his brother’s night sky to fly in. He clambers up to stand on the seat, the twine-end between his teeth. Then he hurls the parchment up and the wind takes it, flies it fast and spreads its wings white and high above Firwit’s head. It wheels and settles into a rising, falling flight, the tug of the twine sending throbs into his hands. When, soon, the eerie whistle of the kites pours up from the wood, Firwit listens as the parchment bird, with no need of
feathers, is woven in the silver threads of their sound.

  By nightfall, everyone knew the man’s name was Redwing. The fishers saw him first, dragging his boat up on to the shore. They were sitting out the last day of November in their huts, as was custom. As was custom, they herded the stranger to the ale room. Soon a crowd was spilling out of the door and into the dunes.

  ‘Gossip is, he’s a fine one,’ said Gad, when she came knocking on Clotha’s window. ‘And a head taller than any of them. Hair like a bonfire. I want a look.’

  Clotha laughed at her friend. ‘What good will it do you?’

  ‘Oh, a dream.’ Gad smiled. ‘Not just for me.’ She squeezed Clotha’s waist as she pulled her away along the path by the fishers’ cottages.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ Clotha said.

  But Gad kept hold of her as they nudged through the villagers, milling in the dunes despite the pinch of November wind at their cheeks, and she held on even tighter as she steered Clotha in through the ale room door. ‘Redwing,’ she whispered, and they craned past heads and shoulders to where the gleaming man sat.

  The room was thick with voices, and all faces were turned towards him as he looked about and nodded and smiled. Even May the fiddler, churning out a jig in the corner, kept her eyes on him as she played. Clotha noticed his crooked teeth, the line that creased one cheek. Still, he was horribly handsome. He looked up then and caught her eye. His sideways gaze was so long it made Clotha blush.

  ‘Told you,’ Gad said, when she passed her a cup. ‘Look at those fiery locks.’

  ‘Who’s misty-eyed?’ said Clotha.

  ‘But married.’ Gad’s sigh was longer than usual.

  ‘A good thing too.’ Clotha felt Gad clutch her hand, the way she did each time they silently remembered that she had been married too, once. The imprint of Gad’s hand stayed so long that she didn’t feel her friend slip from her side.

  Clotha had reached the last dune, chasing after Gad, when she felt the thud of steps behind her.

  ‘Your friend said you might have a bed for the night,’ the gleaming man said.

  ‘And you’ve had no other offers?’ Clotha kept walking. He matched her pace, and gave her that sidelong look again. ‘Redwing?’ she said. He held out a hand. When her palm met his, he turned it upwards to his lips. The tide takes, the tide brings in, she said to herself. Why shouldn’t a sea widow make her own catch? and she took him home.

  A warm scent of pepper came into the house with him. She did not ask where he had come from, in his boat, whether all the men and women there were as tall and broad and burnished as he. With their joined hands they pulled each other closer behind Clotha’s door. It was true, his kiss was such deep relief, her mouth watered. Two years; four and twenty months, she had been alone. How many nights? She counted only the treads of the staircase as they flew over them. Gad knew Clotha had only one bed.

  When she woke, Clotha rubbed her eyes. Then she touched the russet fringe of the man’s eyelashes. She kissed them, but he did not stir. Away she crept.

  A December dawn flushed deep at the windows. When she stepped outside, barefoot and naked but for a blanket, the cold spun pleasure across her skin.

  She took tea upstairs, but still Redwing slept. She blew on his ears, she bit his thumbs; she reached chilled hands under the quilt and stroked. He only sighed and rolled his head on the pillow, flame hair sliding.

  At noon, fierce with lust, she pulled the sheets right off him. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ Redwing said, his eyes aglow. ‘Come back to bed.’

  Clotha left the sheets in a puddle on the floor. She did not hear the knocking at her window below. There was nothing but Redwing’s whispers, his pepper scent filling the room, all that day and into the night.

  The next morning when she came downstairs, there was Gad, sitting at her table, hugging a loaf of bread.

  ‘Brought you this,’ Gad said, though she didn’t let go. ‘You didn’t come to the workshop yesterday.’

  ‘He’s still here,’ Clotha said.

  ‘I guessed.’ Gad narrowed her eyes. ‘Where’s he from, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care! We’ve hardly left the bed,’ Clotha whispered, watching Gad tear a lump from the loaf and chew on it.

  ‘Well, come back soon. It’s dull without you to talk to.’

  ‘There’s always your mother,’ said Clotha.

  ‘Sil? Not this time of year. Out wandering in the fog all day. And anyway, I do want to hear.’ They both looked up at the ceiling, picturing the bed beyond.

  ‘Clotha,’ came Redwing’s voice down the stairs. ‘I miss you.’

  Gad grinned. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘Like you let yourself in,’ said Clotha.

  ‘Just like that.’

  As soon as the door had slammed shut behind Gad, Clotha took the loaf and ran up the stairs three at a time.

  After a week, there was no food left in the house.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said to Redwing between kisses, peeling herself from the bed.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ he murmured in her ear.

  She walked light-headed through the village, until she found herself at the workshop door. The ring of chisels, hammers and planes gave her a pang.

  Inside, Gad did not look up when Clotha stood beside her. ‘It’s been more than a week,’ she said, and gouged harder at the wood on the workbench.

  ‘If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have him at all,’ said Clotha. ‘I’ll be back, soon.’

  ‘Don’t hurry on my account. One carving each, we’ve to do for the year-turning fair, and you’ve hardly begun yours.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ said Clotha, but she watched her friend’s fingers with envy as they ran along the woodgrain.

  Gad looked up at her. ‘You said it was for Madden, too. Since she won’t do one this year.’

  ‘Please don’t talk about my sister now,’ Clotha said, and she headed for the door.

  At the dairy, when Clotha asked for milk and cheese, the dairywomen March and Iska stopped their work so they could nudge each other.

  ‘Keeping him all to yourself?’ Iska blurted, as she handed over the goods.

  ‘He needs rest,’ Clotha lied.

  ‘I’ll bet he does,’ said March as she turned back to the butter churn.

  At the shore, Gill Skerry the fisher was gruff. ‘Enough for two,’ he said, as he slapped a pair of mackerel into Clotha’s hands.

  By the time she got home, she wasn’t hungry at all. As she opened the door, she breathed in the peppery smell and found Redwing standing there, washed and dressed. ‘What, are you leaving?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I was coming to find you. You took so long.’ He lifted her hands high and ran them for her through his tangled hair, and there was no time to eat or to say there were things she ought to do, outside of the bed.

  That night, Clotha plotted. Since Redwing slept until noon or longer, and could not be roused, she would creep out to the workshop early each morning. She would finish her carving for year-turning, and be back before he missed her. It was for her sister too, after all. The thought kept her awake, the joy of working the wood again, rough in her hands, bending to her own shape, while she stood beside Gad at the bench.

  But when dawn came, Redwing’s eyes opened. He pressed close to her on the pillow, solemn.

  ‘There’s something I must tell you, Clotha,’ he said.

  She did not go to the workshop.

  ‘Three months,’ she told Gad, when, a week later, she stood beside again her at the workshop bench. The carvings had sprung into life, beasts of the sea and air and earth. Her own cut of wood stood under a dusty piece of sacking in the corner.

  ‘If you came back now, you’d have time to finish it,’ Gad said, when she saw her glance at it. ‘And why three months?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘You didn’t ask?’

  ‘What can I do?’ said Clo
tha. ‘He’s happy there.’

  ‘Are you?’ Gad’s grey eyes were stern. ‘You’ll come to the year-turning fair, even if your carving doesn’t?’

  ‘I’ll try. It’s hard to get away.’

  ‘You look thin,’ Gad called after her as she left. Clotha dawdled on the lane, reluctant to meet the glares at the dairy and on the shore.

  ‘I know nobody here,’ Redwing said when she told him about the fair, the carvings, the fire, the merry downing of ale. ‘Won’t it be odd, to dance with strangers?’

  ‘You’re not a stranger to me,’ Clotha pleaded. ‘I’ll dance with you all night, I promise.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, and he kissed her before she could say any more.

  But when the day came, Redwing could not let her alone even long enough to get dressed. ‘I’m more hungry for you than ever,’ he said, and pulled her skirt from her hips. ‘Don’t make me share you. We’ve only two months now.’

  Clotha gave in to his hands and his lips. Two months, and what then? A part of her sighed, drinking in the promise of a silent house, an empty bed, the tap of Gad’s knuckles at the window. It was not so far away.

  January brought snow upon snow, sealing them into the house. Clotha came up with errands to run. ‘I have to help clear the lanes,’ she said. ‘It’s the custom here, in winter.’ But she snuck away from the scrape of shovels and tramped up the hill, with only the sound of her boots for company. The air was fresh as water. She gulped it deep and cold in her lungs.

  ‘I have to help chop wood for the elder folk,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the custom here, is it? If you say so,’ said Redwing. ‘I’ll keep the bed warm for you.’ And he rolled away, showing her his long, freckled back.

  Clotha lingered in the icicled woods until dusk closed the branches in. How quiet, how still, the stars were where they showed. She thought of her big sister, Madden, staring out at them from their bed when they were children.