Folk Read online

  As twists of shrill green leaf unfurl and bracken spreads green light on the ground, he hears the whirr of a bee circling his head. Others land to browse his arms and palms. He lets them crawl, his eyes turned up to watch the flying clouds.

  Listen, for the beat that runs through the gorse maze. It is an early twilight, the opening between last sun and first star, the door of the day closing until, soon, night will seal it shut. There are feet thudding in the gorse’s winding tunnels, hearts thumping in time. The girls of Neverness are running the paths, the strings of their bows held taut in outstretched hands, their arrows trembling. Each has only one arrow, a ribbon tied to its tail, the silken band stitched with her own name.

  Among the beating feet, Orta runs. She is a dumpling of a girl, taking her first turn at the gorse-maze game. The dress Gad made for her is too long, and the loose linen catches on thorns as she hurtles round corners, where the last of the gorse’s flowers speckle yellow. The cap her grandmother knitted has already been plucked from her head as she ducked through a scratching arch. Here and there she passes other girls, their bows held high, their faces fierce. Orta may be smallest, but she is wilful. She will spear her arrow deep into the gorse, and lodge it amongst the thickest parts. She will have the reddest kiss, from a boy who has dived so deep for her arrow that his lips have been pricked into a bloody pincushion.

  Look now, down the slope of the headland, to where the villagers of Neverness are gathered. Men and women are lighting torches from the bonfire, wandering together in the heather, their faces lit bright in the spreading dark. They are hungry for this year’s gorse-burning, but they must wait: for the youngsters to play their game and be paired, one boy for each girl, one kiss for each ribbon. Many remember Crab Skerry, the boy lost in the burning. This time they will count them off, their sons and daughters, before they start their blaze.

  Gad tucks a stray wisp of misty shawl around her mother as they watch for Orta to come pelting from the maze. They share the glow from their torch with Verlyn Webbe, too old now to carry his own with one hand. Verlyn gazes at his son, Marram, who is handing out scallops scorched on sticks in the bonfire. Marram’s wife, Iska, shakes her head at the scallop he offers, her eyes fixed on the headland where her twin daughters are running through the gorse with their bows. Marram tickles her chin with the single feather that sprouts from his thumb.

  Weaving about the heather, the folk of Neverness wait for the stars to prickle out. May the fiddler sways near the flames to warm her fingers as she plays her mournful tunes. The villagers have learned not to ask for a jollier jig from her. Away from the fire, near the path, Hark Oxley stands alone. He is a grown man now, in middle age, his face weather-creased, his hands roughened by stone. He bends to tousle the head of a sheepdog that bounds up to him. Following behind, slow on his ancient legs, is the dog’s owner, Firwit. Hark greets the old man, and helps him to a tree stump to sit.

  ‘I see Redwing’s back for another winter,’ Firwit says, and nods towards a tall man whose long hair is lit red by the bonfire flames.

  ‘Only one who ever leaves,’ says Hark.

  ‘Do you ever think of it, yourself?’

  Hark shakes his head. ‘Life’s here, such as it is.’

  ‘Thought I might ask him,’ Firwit says. ‘See if there’s room for another in his boat, when spring comes.’

  ‘And leave your sheep?’ Hark leans to ruffle the sheepdog’s fur where he lies at Firwit’s feet.

  ‘Eighteen years, it’s been. Might have been yesterday, for all I’ve got to grips with it. If I’d married, it would be different. But I was good as married to Murnon.’

  ‘Not reason enough to be off, I’d say.’

  Firwit shrugs. ‘Well, don’t you make the same mistake. Why are you not married yet?’

  They turn at a cry of delight and watch Marram and Iska bend to embrace their daughters, who come scampering from the gorse. The girls’ hair glows coppery rich in the light, and Redwing frowns at them from where he munches on scallops nearby.

  Firwit nudges Hark as Gertie Quirk dashes past, chasing her nephews with a monstrous growl.

  ‘You might’ve asked that one,’ Firwit says.

  ‘It was Madden Lightfoot I hoped to ask.’

  Firwit turns to peer at Hark in the gloom. ‘Shame,’ he says.

  It was a bright night when Hark followed Madden up to the wood. His gut churned, from the vile mushroom tea Madden had made him drink as they left the house, and from the hunch that this was a mistake.

  Madden grew wild as they crossed the hill, and the world grew wild with her. Tumbling leaves turned to waves, and the sky tilted over Hark’s head, its starry eyes blinking at him. Madden ran ahead, stretching tall as the trees. She leapt long grass that deepened into bristling fur along the hill’s ridge. Hark’s legs slowed, heavy as mud, but somehow, soon, the wood rushed around them, deep, dazzling.

  ‘We’re here,’ Madden called, her voice curling up and away.

  They ducked beneath naked branches. Hark bent his head and clung to Madden, watching the ground leaves whiten in the moonlight haze.

  Madden pulled him forward, further in, and two black trees moved to meet them. They were Guller, the bird man, and Murnon, the shepherd.

  Guller held a sack, a hunch at his back. ‘Glad to see you again, Madden. You drank?’ he asked.

  ‘Hark, too,’ Madden said and went to take his arm. ‘I hope he’ll try tonight. I’ve told him what a gift it is you give.’

  Guller grinned, his eyes like marbles. He stood only as high as Madden’s shoulder, but Hark felt the urge to pull her away, to safety.

  ‘One more to come tonight,’ Guller’s voice wheedled, ‘but she’ll find us.’ He took Madden’s hand and led them along the ash-pale path, Hark stumbling behind, the shepherd Murnon loping silent between them.

  They reached a clearing, a great bowl of moonlight, stars dewy in the dark far above. Hark’s stomach bubbled like broth. He tried to call Madden away from Guller, but she was opening the sack with him, pulling out bundles that unfolded in their hands. He knew what they were. She touched the feathers so easily, it made him shiver.

  Murnon the shepherd held his shoulder. ‘Steady,’ he said, but the word echoed, far away. Murnon’s face was old, the lines in it furrowed so deep by moon shadow, it seemed ancient stone. In the silver air, they all four sat, waiting.

  ‘Don’t you want to see? The kites,’ Madden whispered, but Hark would not put out his hand to touch the mound of feathers in her lap. She turned it over, and spread the wings wide, so he could see the clean dried skin of the underside. He watched her take the white stone she wore on a thread around her neck and tuck it into the head of the kite skin. When she leaned and kissed Hark’s cheek he felt the heat of her breath, and the brush of a wingtip on his bare arm.

  ‘No sign of old Winfrid yet. So, you first, youngster?’ Guller said, and Madden stood, a tall, thin shape beside the little man. Guller unspooled a length of cord. He tied one end around Madden’s waist, and the other around a tree trunk at the clearing’s edge, leaving the cord loose between them.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Hark whispered to Murnon.

  ‘A tether, lest she lose her way,’ Murnon said. ‘Brings her back.’

  Hark could hear the thrill in Madden’s breath, deep gusts that prickled alarm in his head, even as Guller began to whistle. Madden had told him how Guller made birdsong in his throat, but a chill struck him to hear the flute notes of a red kite flowing from a man.

  The sound rose. It sent his mind high, clear of the trees, and he heard the whistle of other kites, threading the air. Madden spread the wings of her kite skin as wide as her arms would let her. Her knuckles were bone, gripping feathers as the kite skin rose, until she held it high above her head. Hark’s stomach clenched.

  Wing shadows flooded the floor of the clearing and the kites called on and on. Madden leaned backwards, the cord pulled taut from the tree, the wings in her hands seeming to beat as the
kite strained upwards. The whole wood quivered. Hark saw the whites of Madden’s eyes in the moonlight. Though she held the wings high in her strong hands, her legs trembled. He stood to go to her, to make Guller stop what was happening, but Guller shook his head. Soon, Hark saw Guller tug on the cord, pulling Madden forward. She dropped the kite skin and fell. Guller caught her shoulders and eased her down. She smiled as if in sleep.

  Hark bent over her. ‘Madden,’ he tried, but Guller hushed him.

  ‘She’ll wake. She’s been a long way, up there.’

  Hark felt the chill of the wood’s breath, the trees bending closer to stare at Madden. Her eyes opened. ‘What was it like?’ he asked, but she sat up and pressed her face hot into his neck.

  Guller was beginning with Murnon now, tying the cord at his waist, the kite’s whistle trailing from his lips.

  ‘Bliss,’ Madden whispered. ‘You must try, Hark. It’s just joy, flying up so high, the whole sky turning about you, no body to weigh you down. I wish I could stay up there forever, not just a few hours.’

  ‘But it was moments,’ Hark said.

  ‘Please try. I want you to feel like that, better than anything.’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, but Madden was looking past him, at a figure taking slow steps into the clearing. It huddled against a tree and watched, while Guller spun out the kite’s song and Murnon swayed, his own kite skin stretched high. Guller tugged the cord and caught Murnon as he fell, just as he had with Madden. Then he beckoned the bent figure over.

  ‘It’s been a long while. But you’ve made up your mind?’ Guller said. The old woman nodded.

  The wide grin faded from Guller’s face. For the first time, he looked solemn. The two of them clasped their hands together in greeting for a long moment.

  ‘Is that Winfrid Plait, from up by the river?’ Hark asked Madden.

  ‘Poor old thing’s got nobody left. Hardly leaves her house, except to sit by that pool and mope.’

  ‘Isn’t she too old for all this?’ Hark said. ‘Come on, Madden, I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said and turned to watch. Winfrid held the bird skin unsteady in the air, still nodding as Guller looped the cord around her waist. The eerie cries from the sky pierced Hark’s head, and Guller’s whistling grew higher, sweeter than before. The shaking in Winfrid’s arms calmed, and the wings she held stretched wider. It went on, all of them held in the web of sound that filled the clearing. Still Guller did not tug on the cord, to pull Winfrid back to ground. Hark felt Madden’s hand gripping his own. He heard her gasp when Guller took a knife from his pocket and cut clean through the tether.

  Hark’s head spun, and his gut roiled, as he and Madden stumbled home across the hill. Before they reached the village, he retched and emptied the burning tea from his stomach.

  After Guller had cut the tether, he had laid Winfrid down, still but warm, breathing, in a bed of dead leaves. He had placed the kite skin under her head. Winfrid was already gone, he had said, and it would not take long, here in the wood, for her body to turn cold. The burial would be done later.

  ‘Up there, forever?’ Madden had asked, and Guller nodded. ‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ she’d said, and the joy in her face had opened a well in Hark that filled with cold, black water.

  ‘Why not?’ Madden asked the next day. She stood below Hark with the bucket while he climbed the ladder and painted whitewash on to the wall of the house. The low autumn sun warmed his back, but Madden’s mood, and her words, stirred the dark water that still lay cold inside him.

  ‘Don’t be a dunce,’ he said.

  ‘But why not? If you could choose endless joy, bliss that never, ever wore out, wouldn’t you?’ Madden said, waving the bucket in her hand and sloshing whitewash into the weeds.

  ‘I’m happy enough.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be if you’d tried it. You’d know then, what real happiness was like.’

  ‘I do know.’ Hark leaned down to dip the brush.

  ‘What then. When do you feel it?’

  ‘When I sit with you by the fire. When I eat a good bit of roast meat and talk with my brothers of an evening. Or just this, sun in a blue sky and making a good job of it.’ He turned to dip the brush again, and wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Don’t sneer, Madden.’

  ‘Those are such small things. And besides, you might lose them.’

  ‘I might lose you?’

  ‘That’s the trouble with sleepwalkers. Never know where they’ll end up.’ She shook her head. ‘And you’d be all right without me. You always grumble that I’m a misery, anyway.’

  ‘I’d like it if you were happy. If you could be. Wouldn’t you be happier if you went back to work at the High Farm? You loved those horses.’

  Madden grimaced. ‘I tell you how I’d be happy. If I could go up, flying with the kites, and never had to come back.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘Come and try it. Tonight.’

  ‘You’re going back again, already?’ Hark stared at her.

  She put the bucket down. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If you’d any sense at all, you’d come too.’

  ‘I’m the only one with any sense,’ he called after her as she went into the house and slammed the door shut.

  Hark lay awake in the pitch of their room. There was a shadow side to Madden that had always frightened him. It had been there even when they were young and Madden had taught him to ride up at the High Farm. She was so sure of herself with the horses, but sometimes she was more fierce than strong. Hark knew she had night terrors, and that after her father died, she sometimes went to the cave at the far shore end at night. She said that if she didn’t, she’d dream her father’s death, his fall from those rocks, and that would be far worse than sitting and thinking of it purposely.

  Now they were grown, and Hark had got himself this house. He’d planned to ask Madden if she would marry him, though he hadn’t much hope she’d say yes. He’d seen the way Robin Prowd looked at her, up at the farm, with a kind of sad wanting in his eyes. Hark had been secretly pleased when whatever bond they’d had was broken, and Madden arrived at his house with a sack of her things, cursing Robin, asking if she might stay. She couldn’t go home, she’d said through clenched teeth. Hark had felt her shoulders soften as he put his arms around her.

  So now here she was, sharing his house. She trusted him, and he loved her. If he was calm where she was moody, if he planned where she tried not to think of what fate might bring, then he believed he could do her good. He had never forsaken her, through years of wildness and slumps of despair. Even when his brother, Dally, had warned him, said she’d make misery for him and he should court a merrier girl, he’d stuck with her. He wanted the chance to make her happy again.

  It was dawn when he was woken by Madden, crawling into the bed beside him. She was cold, shivery, and he rubbed warmth into her back.

  ‘It was so beautiful, Hark,’ she whispered.

  He held on to her, keeping as still as he could, until she slept.

  He’d finished with the whitewashing and was stacking stones to repair the half-tumbled garden wall by the time Madden rose. It was another fine day, and Hark was pleased with his work. The house that had been a wreck when he took it on would be ready for their first winter together, cosy as doves.

  ‘Why are you bothering with that?’ Madden asked, when she found him heaving a large stone into a gap. She looked pale, and weary.

  ‘Same reason I bother with anything. For you, to make our life good.’ He pushed the stone, to wedge it into place, and it rolled and fell on the far side of the wall.

  Madden huffed. ‘You shouldn’t.’

  He followed her into the house where she sank into a chair and leaned her head on her arm. ‘You’ll get like an owl, up all night and asleep all day,’ he called, while he washed his hands. He heard her laugh.

  ‘It’s a kite I want to be like,’ she said, when he came and sat beside her.

  Hark
breathed deep. ‘Please, Madden, will you not go again? It’s a worry to me.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘Let me make you happy, not Guller and his foul tea and dead birds.’ He thought of Winfrid and took another deep breath. ‘I do love you, Madden.’

  She sank lower in the chair. ‘If you loved me, you’d let me do it. You’d let me choose the same as Winfrid, wouldn’t you? You’re just being selfish.’

  Hark grabbed her hands, though she tried to pull away. ‘You want to be like that old woman, a corpse in a heap of leaves? You don’t know that her soul is flying forever, that she has this bliss you keep talking about. It’s trickery. Guller is playing with you.’

  ‘Guller helped her,’ Madden said, fierce. ‘And it’s not a trick. It feels real.’

  ‘As real as this? Your hands in my hands, here, in our house?’

  ‘Yes. Winfrid is lucky.’ She spat the words, and Hark wanted to twist her hands, to force her to see what was real, what was not, but he couldn’t hurt her.

  ‘Don’t deny me it,’ she said. Her face began to crumple. When she wept, Hark held her shoulders and soothed her, and when that night she tied on her boots and set out for the wood, he did not stop her.

  Every night for a whole week, Madden went to the wood, and came home at dawn to sleep until noon. Every day, Hark hunted for things to cheer her. He went to see Dally and begged the best bits of meat from the Oxley herd to tempt her to eat. He chopped logs and kept the fire up, because Madden liked to be warm. He tried to talk to her, and make her say that there were good things in life, so he could tell her he would always bring them. He would do whatever she wanted.

  But Madden would not go along with it. Always, she said there was only one way to be happy, that only a fool would not take it. She did not eat the food he gave her. She sat in the chair, or lay in the bed, and waited for dusk. One night, ragged with despair, Hark tried to hold her back when she got ready to leave. He stood before the door, gripped her arms to her sides, and shook her. But she only twisted from his grasp and loped from the house barefoot.