Runt (8 page)

Music like the rain like the sky’s drum drum. Been there for ever this music even when dinosaurs were in these High Parts and maybe there’s still one of them Up Here and that’s what’s killing the sheep. A dinosaur over
there
and a spaceship over
there
and they’re moving towards each other to meet.

Pat pat pat. Pat Arrn on the head. Pat the wet tall stone you sit back against like Drunkle did and it makes a wet slappy noise kind of three times.

—The enormity of the task, to erect these stones
up
here. To cut them from the rock down below and drag them up here and all for what purpose? For reasons never to be known, to only be guessed at somewhere between signposts and objects of calendral, calicrend, cal
endrical
reverence and you know what the odd thing is? What the real puzzle is?

No Drunkle no but I did not say the word.

—It’s that
we
put these stones up, me and you, and we haven’t got the first fucking clue now why we ever bothered. We have the same blood still in us, or some of it anyway, as the people who put these things up and we’ve forgotten everything we ever learned in those times. We don’t have the first bastard clue any more, do we? No, we don’t. Cairns, for instance; what do they
mean
? Placed on summits or ridges so everyone could see them but what the fuck for? Ashes have been found in cairns, bones as well, and beakers. Cups, like, y’know? And in these cups they’ve found evidence of intoxicants. Cannabis even.

Drunkle grinned big and waved his sloshy bottle at the High Parts around again. I saw him grin and the whiteness of his teeth inside the orangeness-made shadow around his head.

—Intoxication, bach, eh? So many kinds of that. See, over in England, when Christianity came, they linked these stones with the Devil.

Three times slap again pat pat pat.

—Here, tho, they’re linked with people. We link them with
people
, see? With
us
. With me and you. With your Mam and with Fay and with fucking Arthur even. With everyone. And they make my fucking head
spin
, boy, they make me drunk, like, and d’you wanner know why? Cos they tell us of mankind’s perception of itself; they show us how we have viewed ourselves at different stages in our evolution. So, see, in the Middle Ages these stones were put up by magic and a race of ancient giants, but now we see them as Stone Age computers, like the one at my house that shows you Llyn Tegid. We’ve always said that some of these stones spin or dance or swim, often at important times of the year. We say that, if removed, they will return. We say that they can grow.

Not dinosaurs or spaceships but wizards and computers then moving towards each other. Moving towards each other across these High Parts and when they meet oh when they meet. Stones going spinny like my head and doing a dance like I did when I left the school everything moving together all Times together and oh when they. What will happen when they.

Drum drum went the rain.

—We talk about a race of giants who hurled rocks about as pebbles. Druidic altars or worship stones! Sacrifice stones at which dreadful wails can be heard! Pain and sadness! Pain and sadness! Witches’ covens meet within these circles, we say. And did you know, at a place called Y Meini Hirion in 1958, they exhumed skeletons of cremated children, both eleven years old. Eleven! Pain and sadness, boy!

Oh Drunkle please do not shout please bring your voice down again so that it does not bounce off these High Parts and them rocks like an eleven. Eleven eleven. All Times All Things they come together and them rocks like an eleven go right up to the sky.

—And why? What were they doing there? Petrified criminals, these stones could be! Bad people turned to rock by the hardness of their hearts! Dolmens built to hide the treasure of the Teg, the Tylwyth Teg! Shapeshifters! Descendants of pre-Christian gods! Entities driven out by Wesley’s men because to them the Teg were from Hell! They lured young people into dancing and drinking. Aw Jesus, got to stamp that out. And Christ the Teg had their own language! Didn’t speak English! Can’t have that, no, stamp it out! Talk like us!

Rain’s speaking drumming drumming one of the speakings of the sky. A speaking of the falling water on the tent pat pat and a speaking of Arrn’s breathing and it All Coming Together all Times meeting
on
me and
in
me turning into one Just One.

—Da yw’r maen gyda’r Efengyl, Drunkle said and in my head I said oh Drunkle please stop these words of yours. —Good as the stone together with the gospel, bach, eh? Good as the oh Jesus Christ what’s wrong are you okay?

Drum drum drum. All Times meeting coming together everything
in
me everything
on
me just One Time and it is Mine it is

My Times.

—Oh God, bach … oh bloody hell …

I felt Drunkle lift me and I saw bright lights flash then FLASH in my brain nowhere else not behind the mountain top nowehere else but In My Brain. I heard the laughing water I heard the laughing in the springing water and Drunkle put me down by that laughing water and I could feel the rain pat pat on
my
face and I saw the sky all grey even tho it was summer and then my eyes went rolling and I could see Arrn he was with me and I could see crows flying they were with me too and then my eyes went rolling some more and I could see the inside of my head where the FLASH was happening that FLASH that FLASH and I could also see

The world go away. The world go so small like a pea blue and green so far so far away. I could see crows holding me up, holding up my arms and legs and they flapped and lifted me up into the blackness into the highness the very-far-away-ness so the town and the High Parts and the planet they stood on turned into just a pea blue and green so very far away all in a belowness to me. Drunkle was somewhere on that pea. My Mam Bethan and NotDad and Arthur and Rhiannon and everyone was somewhere on that pea so was Arrn oh God uh-oh Arrn was so very far away from me. And everything that had ever happened on that pea and
was
happening and would
ever
happen on that tiny pea blue and green floating in all that blackness and space was
on
me and
in
me and I knew everything about it everything everything oh yes I did. And of a sudden the crows all went, they flew away and I fell a bit but then was lifted again by just one bird this time a hawk his claws in my back holding me up with no pain and I could see his beating wings on each side of me and see his face above mine and he took me even further away from the floating pea and out of the blackness around me and into a kind of bright white light where he let me go and flew away like the crows did but I didn’t fall I just kind of
lay
in the brightness as if it was a pillow all around me and I saw shapes and I heard noises and Everything was in that light. Snowball the bull was there and Bethan before she met that sod NotDad and Auntie Fay too came out of that light all with a smiling on her and she wasn’t in a tree and she didn’t have a rope around her neck she was just putting a smiling on me and kind of all around me she was cos I mean she had her arms around me from behind like when I would go on the horse with her but I could see her in front of me as well cos of her smiling like she always used to put at me cos she liked me did my Auntie Fay before she became a branch on a tree and I liked her as well. And in that light she told me she was sorry that she’d made hearts break but that she wasn’t sorry for what she did cos there were things Down There that had to stop and she then told me that yes there
are
and
will be
future-times and that I would be better’d when I went back Down There and that Drunkle must be better’d too and she laughed then cos I didn’t know she knew about My Word Drunkle and I didn’t ask a question but she heard it anyway and told me there in that light that she now knew Everything, all that was gone and all to come and she said that we will have Bad Times but that we will Come Through them and I didn’t know what she meant by that and I asked her in my head what she meant but her arms then went away from me and I wanted them back around me but she shook her head and then the shape of her was kind of swallowed by a much bigger shape which wasn’t really a shape cos it was Everything All Around. Yes it was a kind of
all-around-ness
which was Everything. It was the names of every raindrop that had ever fallen on to the earth and It was everything that had ever happened EVER from when the earth was born til when it would die, every blade of grass and the dying of every fly and even of the smaller fellers that live on them flies yes even them and every war that turned people into them flies cos they’re only as important as them when they get splatted like them too and every egg ever laid by spider or by bird and every whale and every wave and every grain of sand on every beach and everything everything which made me feel funny as if I would get one of My Times in one of My Times and I didn’t like that thinking even tho I would’ve just Let It Happen if it was going to happen and the Everything shape kind of sucked me into it kind of even closer to its centreness and then so quickly and of a sudden I felt sadder than I had ever felt before. Sadder even than when Dad left or NotDad hit Bethan or when I got duffed up at the school sadder than when Snowball died or even Auntie Fay. I didn’t know that there could ever be that much Sadness and the Everything Shape told me in a headvoice that was my
own
voice that the world now a pea so far away but so so big when I was on it was made of that Sadness and I thought of how big everything was when I was on that world which made me think of how big that Sadness was and I started to cry then cos it meant that everything Down There was sadded even Arrn and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it and just then when I started to cry and needed the Everything Shape to put its arms around me and better me like Auntie
Fay
did a little bit It turned away. The Everything Shape saw me and heard me crying and then It turned away as if It wasn’t bothered and It knew that I needed It to do what Auntie Fay once did but It didn’t care and It just turned away which was strange cos It was Everywhere and Everything but still that’s what It did It looked away from me when I needed It and it was like going to Drunkle for help and him just laughing at me or Arrn biting me and I hated It for turning away and I was going to shout at It but then of a sudden it was like I kind of fell through It, fell through the cushiony cloudy thing and whooshed fast through the blackness past the pea and then underneath the pea and no Good Hawk to hold me this time I just fell into a scary blackness like Bala Lake where there was no light and the blackness was like a cold sliminess pressing up on to my skin and face and I hated it very much. It didn’t hurt when I landed in it but I did still hate it cos of the coldness and the sticksome blackness and then I could kind of see into it like when the Leccy Runs Out at My Mam Bethan’s house cos NotDad’s Drunk The Meter Money and I have to sit in the darkness until it stops being dark, that’s what it was like there in that sticky black Belowplace it was like I could kind of see in the blackness and it was like I was in a great big cave and I could see things that I didn’t really want to see I saw a man so thin I could see his bones and he had teeth bigger than his head and he told me in My Own Voice that he was the Lord Of Want and then I saw a very big fat man with arms where his legs should be and legs where his arms should be and he said that
he
was the Lord Of Misrule and then a man with a small swarm of wasps instead of a face and he said he was the Lord Of Disease and then a shape came to me with a heart the size of a car sticking out of his chest on an arm like a squid’s arm all suckery and he said he was the Lord Of Longing and he stood there in front of me and that giant heart made a squishsome sound and kind of folded open and it smelled like Drunkle’s farmyard after Fay became a branch and I saw in that heart all the things that made that sadness that I felt Up Above in the brightness and there was millions of them sad things that flew out and around me all fizzy like a cloud of things so small that I couldn’t even see what they were, just dots like the eyes of maggots but millions and millions of them and they shaped themselves into four claws in front of me like a big big buzzard’s foot and each claw grabbed one of my arms and legs and then before I knew it my arms and legs were off and the swarmy claws were holding them up in front of my face and it didn’t hurt and at first I was kind of interested in seeing my own arms and legs off like that but then it was like they died and that sadded me again cos it was like bits of me were dead then and I hated it. And then my arms and legs flew around my head as if I was a planet and they were moons doing an orbit-y thing and them Lord fellers laughed and one told me that I was looking at the Fundamental Information Of Human Existence, they were the words he said, and the information was aloneness and danger and the badness in the world around everyone that will always want to smash any happiness and I asked them Lordshapes if they were
ghosts
and they laughed and said that they were Just Like Me and then they went away and then a skeleton came in front of me and I knew that that skeleton was me, my bones there like the ones under the mound that Drunkle spoke his words about way up there on the pea up above me now and I wasn’t scared looking at myself as a skeleton in fact I was better’d by it a bit even without my arms and legs cos seeing me as a skeleton was like seeing myself set free from something as if let out of a cage and seeing them bits of me that will last the longest against the monsters and even the sun and wind and rain. It was like something heavy fell off me as I looked at my boney self and not just my skin and meat I felt kind of lighter and was happy’d and I laughed even and when I laughed the swarmy claws put my arms and legs back on the skeleton and then picked me up and put me on the skeleton too and it was like I was a New Person with new eyes then cos then I could see up into the floating bluegreen pea and see the Everything-ness in that pea and how sick and ill and dying it was and as I looked at that I felt something like an arrow in my chest and that hurt loads but not cos of the arrow, no, it hurt more cos of all the people I knew then were dying and in a sufferment on that pea which I knew then wasn’t really small like a pea it was massive like something I can’t say what because nothing is as big as it or ever will be. And I looked into it and knew what I had to do what a Massive Job I had to do I had to look away from everything that had been and gone so I could make a New World which is really what My Times are but I knew then that I had to do it for
the
whole world and not just for me. And the Lords started to drift back at me in a Not Friendly way like Arthur in the pub car park and I started to get scared but then I heard a scream and the Good Hawk swooped and the Lord fellers ran away in fearment and I held my arms up for the Hawk like a baby does for its Mam and the bird picked me up and I was safe and it took me up til the pea turned big again and I closed my eyes cos of the whooshy wind in them and when I opened them again I was floating over the High Parts and I could see loads from up there, I could see the hole in the ground where the mine shaft had fallen in and I could see the ridge and the tent and the stones and the spring and I could see Drunkle holding another person in his arms and Arrn was running around Drunkle all worried and then I saw that Drunkle was holding
me
and I wanted then to go back into my body so the Good Hawk let me go and I fell, I fell into the stream and I was waiting for coldness and a shockness but there was none of that cos I was a fish as soon as I hit the water. I felt my fins and my tail and I liked that and I knew the place where I’d been borned loads of miles away but I knew that if I wanted to I could swim all the way back to that place, jumping up waterfalls and swimming up streams and all great stuff like that and I liked swimming in that stream then with the other fish and the weeds and the newts and a crayfish looking out at me from underneath a mossy stone and I saw a hole in the bank so I swam into it and zoomed along through a thin black tunnel and uh-oh I thought I am back in the Lordy place but no cos I then shot out into
white
light like a bullet from a gun, shot out in a stream of water into the air dead close to Drunkle and My Body and when I landed I landed in that My Body and I could then of a sudden feel wetness and a shakingness and Drunkle’s arms heavy around me holding me and I could taste a bloodment in my mouth and I could hear Arrn whining and I couldn’t move. I had my arms and legs back on me again but I couldn’t flippin move them. Couldn’t talk even. Couldn’t do anything sept open my eyes.