Foxlowe. Eleanor Wasserberg
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Spike Walk. She held her arms out as though spinning on the moor for fun, holding Freya’s eye. It was always me, in the end, who looked away. At Meeting, it was agreed that me and Toby were to keep watching her, and never let her out alone. But so often we lost her, slipping away over the stone wall and running so fast we could only wait for her to come back, a sickness rising, waiting for the night, for Freya to balance things again.
We knew, me and Toby, deep down, what it was that called her away again and again, and leached away when she bled in the Spike Walk, only to build again, because it was so old and rooted so deep; it had touched her when she was so very tiny, grown around her like a vine around a tree. We never betrayed her. Even she didn’t know. When Freya would scream at her Why do you do it? Blue could only shake her head, and me and Toby held each other’s eye.
Around a Solstice after her first Spike Walk, Blue had a bad run of them, her skin never seeming to heal by the time the next Walk came. So me and Toby taught her maze-making, one of our favourite games, to try to keep her attention with us, to hold her for a while. She’d kept watch while we stole the cogs of thread from the sewing box, fiddling with the fresh bandage on her arm. Toby showed her how to snap the line with her teeth, running the tongue over the tender parts of the mouth, avoiding the rot.
—Where do you chew? Show me, he said. Blue arched her head back and pointed.
—That one then, Toby said, and flicked at a tooth on the top of her jaw.
I remembered, briefly, those teeth coming through: the screaming, the sudden sharpness of her bite on my fingers. She’d lost many by then, sat twisting the loose ones in Meeting. Freya kept them in an old jar, with mine.
—Wrap the thread like this, Toby said, —and cut, and you have to be quick, because the chasers are coming for you through the grass!
Maze-making was best played on the sloping moorland near the Standing Stones. You had to catch the right time of the year: when the grasses were grown over our heads. A couple of dogs had followed us down, and flopped in the sun where the grass was lower.
Toby was the best maze-maker. He went in first, trailing a bright red thread, and disappeared into the green. The end was tied around the stile post, and the knot bounced and slipped as Toby made his path. The grasses crashed and snapped. Then a yell, —Now! and we plunged into the maze, following the thread line, the ground marshy beneath our feet, the crushed grasses like a carpet, and stones tipping us off course. Blue was faster than me, pivoting and making the quick turns with ease, leaving me squeezing through the grasses behind, trying to follow Toby’s path. His counts carried over the air, and my very skin strained to get to him before the seconds disappeared, then suddenly Blue parted a wall of grass and fell upon him, as he yelled Fifteen!
—You did it! he yelled, rolling Blue onto his stomach, the thread still hanging from his thumb; she’d got to him before he could cut the thread on his teeth.
—Too slow, too slow! she cried. —My turn!
Toby solemnly gave the thread over to her with a little bow. He was tall now, so his jeans stopped at his shins, and it had made a kind of gap between us, as though it was him alone, then me and Blue lumped together, the smaller ones. Teaching Blue our game was another small ending of the world of us, of me and Toby.
Blue curled Toby’s thread around her thumb as she collected it from the grass and we picked our way out of the maze, ready to start again. Through the green, I glimpsed a figure hovering near the stile.
The man was wearing a brown suit and his white hair was short, his face shaved. A smile played around his mouth as he took us in.
—Hello, he said.
Toby put his hand on my shoulder.
Blue tilted her head and waved. He copied her, making her laugh, then she danced, and so did he, waving his briefcase in the air.
—Playing a game? the man said.
Toby found his voice. —Are you lost? he said.
—Ah, no, just arrived, the man said, taking off his shoes. He perched on the old wooden gate, rolled off his socks, wiggled his toes in the sun.
—So nice here, the man said.
Toby looked at me, silently saying, What now?
The man had closed his eyes and was holding his face to the sun. I wondered if he’d forgotten we were there.
I shrugged back to Toby, and mouthed, Just keep playing?
There were no rules for outsiders who popped up on the moorland like spirits. We knew most of the locals by sight, and avoided them if we could. The thought that held me and Toby still and kept our hands on Blue’s wrists to stop her shooting to this new plaything was that the man could even be a moor spirit, or the Bad, dressed up in a suit.
The man opened his eyes and his smile faded. —Oh, he said, —don’t be frightened.
A dog bounded over and the man welcomed it with a kiss on its muzzle. She was Toby’s favourite, a bitch with soft brown fur turning grey around the eyes. We both remembered her as a puppy, but Toby would play with her and try to teach her tricks, gave her a few different names that never stuck. When he saw the dog licking the man’s face, Toby’s grip on Blue relaxed and she rushed over to sit next to him.
—Why are you here? Do you have a name yet? We’re playing a new game, she said. —It’s with threads and you have to catch the maze-maker before he cuts the thread and I just won, how old are you?
—How old do you think I am? he said. He held up his chin and pushed back his hair, so she could look at his face. Toby and I went over to crouch in the grass.
—Old, she said. —Eighty Solstices.
—No, older, I said to her. —Look at his white hair.
The man laughed. Up close he was very real, with mud on his trousers, brown spots on the back of his hands.
—Do you live outside? Blue said. —We live at Foxlowe.
The man smiled. —I wondered if you might, he said.
I felt better. He wasn’t a real outsider at all, but knew home.
—We should take you up to the house, said Toby, like it was a question.
The man gestured for him to lead the way.
We almost broke into a run, taking him back over the stone wall. We three had a huge secret, a gift, maybe even new family, and we’d met him first. The man kept stopping along the way to look behind us, to where the Cloud sat on the horizon.
When we reached the stone wall behind Foxlowe, the man’s scalp under his white hair had burned red. He stood for a while gazing at the house, windows flashing in the sun. The garden was in full summer bloom; the sweet pea were bright, the fruit trees swollen. We three waited for the man to say something, about how he knew our home, but he only stared, then vaulted over the stone wall and dropped into the gardens, so we had to scramble to follow him.
Toby flung the kitchen door open and yelled into the house, —Everyone! Hey!
Egg and Pet were already in the kitchen, their arms around each other, Egg kissing Pet’s forehead. They were always fighting and making up in Freya—Richard seasons, which this was. Mostly, it made life easy when Freya and Richard were together: Blue and I had the attic to ourselves, could whisper into the night. We’d find Freya every morning in the kitchen, where she’d kiss us both, though Blue would duck her head away, and give us pancakes soaked in apple syrup. She even laughed when Toby dropped a case of eggs when he tripped on the steps near the fountain. Toby had gone white, but Freya just made sketches of the mess, foamy yellow and the raw white like spit on the marble. But Libby spent her days with Egg in the ballroom, playing the tapes on the tinny stereo, and slept wrapped in his arms, making Pet’s eyes raw.
They broke apart, stunned. I grinned; it was hard to surprise the grown. It took a second for Egg to recover. He strode forward, holding out a hand