A Vision of Green (Florence Vaine #2) (10 page)

She actually laughs. “That's your granny, love.”

Gran's ashes are in there? I've never seen a dead person's ashes before. It seems sort of morbid to have them just sitting around by the window like that. “But there hasn't even been a funeral,” I say, mostly to myself.

Sal's laugh transforms into a cackle. “It was this morning, didn't your dad tell you?”

With a laugh like that, Sal would have fit right in with Diana's coven, I think to myself. “No, he never said.” I'm not surprised, Dad thinks I had a soft spot for Gran, so he'd only be too happy to ensure I missed her funeral. I can see how each move he makes is entailed to push me back into my hole, the hole he used to rule.

I'm not upset though, I just feel sort of empty. Sal falls back into the sofa and closes her eyes. I don't bother asking her what it is she's taken or reprimanding her for it. She's a grown up, one I don't know enough to care about, and quite free to destroy her own body with whatever substances she can get her hands on. The fact that I make her a bowl of chicken noodle soup while I'm making my own dinner kind of contradicts that, but what can I say, I'm not completely unfeeling.

Sal sips the soup like a frail old woman. I hate how drugs can make people so weak. I sit in the kitchen and eat mine at the table with some of the wholemeal brown bread I bought. When I'm finished I go upstairs to do my homework.

Later on, at around ten-thirty, the night air outside seems to call to me. I've never experienced anything like it before. Completely out of character, I open up my bedroom window and climb out onto the wide ledge that slants down onto the roof of the kitchen that juts out from the main part of the house.

I look up at the sky, but soon realise that's not what had been calling on me, nor had it been the night air. It was the forest. The trees in the distance stand tall and extend up into the dark sky, disappearing into its inky black depths. Why am I feeling an urge to jump off the ledge and run right into those trees, as ominous and mysterious as they are?

A chill seeps through my thin cotton t-shirt, and then something absolutely impossible happens. As I look back at the forest, it begins to glow, like it has an aura, like it's alive. All green and thick and pulsing. It moves as though the forest has emotions, as though it can feel. I crawl forward and grip the end of the ledge, fighting my impulse to jump off. I'd only hurt myself.

The swishing sound of the leaves fills my ears, louder than it should be considering how far away the forest is. Then a face forms in the air, well, not a face exactly. It's more like a projection of a face. A face with horns, the one I thought I saw the other night by the swamp. My eyes grow wide, glued to the projection. The face is as big as a cinema screen in the night sky. Can anyone else looking out their windows see it? I feel like I've taken some of Dad's drugs by mistake.

Suddenly, it jumps closer and closer and I barely have the time to rear away and scuttle back in through my window before the face has blurred my vision, filling it up, filling it right up with green, and I feel myself lose consciousness.

When I open my eyes I'm outside, standing amid the trees. The cold air drifts over me, it's fresh and clean. Night time air always seems purer than air during the day. I think it's got something to do with electrolytes or ions, or whatever.

Momentarily I wonder if this is like the dream I had before, the one where Lauren had been dying and I'd been inside her body in this exact forest. The witches had taken Lauren from her bedroom in the town and brought her all the way out here, draining her life in increments. The memory of being in her skin makes me tremble. I look down to examine myself. Nope, I'm still wearing the same clothes I had on when I'd crawled out of my bedroom window.

I startle when I glance up and in the space before me that had been empty a moment ago, there now stands a man. The horned man whose face I had been looking at before I got here. How on earth did I get here?

“
Who are you?” I ask, as his dark eyes gaze down at me, and I take the opportunity to study him. The leaves are gone from his face, and he'd look like an ordinary man if it weren't for his horns and the vaguely green tint to his skin. He's wearing an old grey shirt, dirty trousers and no shoes. A rounded branch twines around his neck like a piece of wooden jewellery. His aura is exactly like the one I saw surrounding the forest.

“
My name is Green George,” he answers, “and this forest belongs to me.”

“
D-does it?” I ask, stepping back a little bit. His voice gives me chills. Not chills in the way Diana and the witches gave me chills. There's no malevolence there. But chills in the sense that I'm standing in front of a very different being to those I've encountered so far.

“
It does now,” he replies, clearly noting my apprehension in the fact that I'm backing away from him.

“
So it didn't always?”

“
Not until very recently, the magic opened it up.”

Magic. Does he mean Diana's magic? “How does that w-work?”

“
The machinations are unimportant. I'm not here to explain things to you, child. I need you to be my messenger. You are familiar with the Nephilim, I believe?”

I push back a cough and answer, “I am.”

“
You will go to them and tell them to stay away from my forest. They have been interfering with the new creatures that dwell here. These creatures belong to me. Everything in this forest is mine in one way or another, and I will rule it as I see fit.”

I wonder why he wants Sam and the Nephilim to steer clear. Frank told me how they police the supernatural world, so maybe this Green George is a bad guy, the same as Diana. Maybe they're trying to get rid of him so he can't cause anyone harm the way she did. And then, I wonder why he's chosen me to purvey his message for him, so I ask him just that.

He smiles, revealing sharp grey teeth. “I chose to commune with you because you are a descendent of my children. Have you never wondered where you got those marvellous green eyes?”

“
I always thought they were my mother's,” I answer.

Green George continues smiling and shakes his head. “They were not your mother's. Not all of the human descendants of the elves inherit their eyes, you were one of the lucky few.”

“
Elves? I'm related to elves?” I ask, marvelling at the idea.

Suddenly, he gets tense and snippy. “I didn't summon you here to answer
your
questions. You will find the answers you seek yourself in time. Now, are you going to give my message to the Nephilim?”

“
I'll tell them...but...what are you? Are you an elf?”

“
I've already told you who I am. Deliver my message.”

“
You told me
who
you are, not
what
y-y-you are,” I say to him, but then he's gone and I'm back in my bedroom standing beside my open window. I stare out into the night, but not a single trace of Green George's face remains in the sky.

On Sunday after dinner at Frank's house Sam had taken me aside and given me a brand new iphone. He'd said to use it to call him if anything strange ever happened to me, if I needed help or if I just wanted someone to talk to. I was so touched by the gesture that I almost got teary eyed. I think he was concerned about me staying in the house on my own. He still doesn't know about my dad being here, unless Frank or John told him. I'd tried to get him to take it back, said that it was too much, but he'd simply waved away my protestations and told me it was a necessary precaution for my safety.

This is the first occasion where I've had a reason to call him. A very, very unusual reason. I dig the phone out of my drawer and dial Sam's number out of the three I have in my phone book, which belong to Frank, Caroline and the half angel respectively.

“
Hello,” he answers. “It's late Flo, is everything okay?”

“
I'm fine, you t-told me to call you if anything strange happened to me.” I say.

“
Yes, what is it?” he asks urgently.

I quickly give him a recap of my encounter with “Green George”. I'm struck by how pleasant a name that is for a person with devil horns. It makes him sound like a character from a children's television show.

“
Thank you for relaying the message Flo, now get some sleep. We have a counselling session tomorrow afternoon, don't we?”

That's all he's got to say? “Okay, aren't you going to tell me w-w-what this all means? What creatures are there in the forest Sam?”

“
That's none of your concern, Flo. I'm not being rude. This is official business. I can't divulge any details, but I'm very grateful you called me as soon as you could. Good night.”

He hangs up. The whole conversation leaves me feeling entirely unfulfilled. I'd wanted to ask him about what Green George said of elves. Is that where I got my Empath abilities from? I sit on my bed and stew for a while, before I resort to what any self-respecting teenager of my generation would. I pick the iphone back up and do a Google search. Unfortunately, typing in “Green George” only presents me with a bunch of pages for some mathematician named George Green, so I dig a little deeper. That's when I notice a page with information on something called a “Green Man”. I'm about to disregard it when my eyes lock in on the first line:

The Green Man is portrayed in many pictures and sculptures as a face made from leaves or a face surrounded by leaves.

When I'd first seen Green George he'd had leaves on his face, like some sort of odd mask. I read on to discover that Green Men are normally symbolic sculptures and carvings used in gardening or in architecture that represent deities of vegetation and growth. Well, that's not at all sinister, and despite his relatively polite conversation, my instincts tell me there is something decidedly sinister about Green George. His eyes were timeless; ancient. Perhaps I'm on the wrong path. Perhaps Green George is not a being that the internet can explain to me. Now there's a surprise.

Still, I continue my research, learning all about the symbolism of the Green Men, since they're the closest thing I can find to what I'm actually looking for. They feature a lot in churches as decorative pieces, sort of like gargoyles. Some of them are quaint and pleasant, while others are a little scary and veer more towards how Green George had appeared. All of the information I can find seems to be inconclusive as to where the tradition of the Green Men sculptures originated. On one website I find a riddle poem about them that goes:

I am born on May Morning - by sticks, bells, and ribbons

I am the sap - in the dark root
I am the dancer - with his six fools
I am the tump - behind the old church
I am the lost soul - under the misericord
I am the oak - against the stars

I am the face - that peers through the leaves
I am the fear - in a child's mind
I am the demon - on the roof-boss

I am killed in October - and laid on church altars

I am the guiser - on the bright bonfire
I am the old grain - sown with the seed
I am the flame - in the pumpkin's grin
I am the spirit - in the kern-baby's bosom

Overall, the poem seems to be referring to three things. The summer season, the actual church carvings of Green Men and a general idea of nature. The one line that sticks in my head is, “
I am the face - that peers through the leaves”. Green George's face did peer at me through the leaves. I read it over and over again, trying to decipher the clues, some parts seem appropriate, while others are somewhat disturbing. Especially, “I am the fear - in a child's mind,” that's just sort of creepy to be honest. Although some of the carvings would certainly instil fear in a child, I think, as I browse through lots of pictures on various websites showing all sorts of variations on the images of the Green Men.

Underneath the poem there's some more information about them and what their meaning might be. Here it reads:

The stonemasons who created these sculptures used many pagan themes as inspiration, but we have very little information on what the figure of the Green Man actually means. Sometimes a Green Man will be referred to as Silvanus, God of the forest.