Season of Secrets (2 page)

And here he is. A dark shape, bent and running. It's
a man, low and strong. He's so close I can hear his
breath catch in his throat.

And then he's past, off down the road to the
village. But now I can hear other noises – a horn, then
another horn, and another. Coming closer. Horses.
Dogs, barking.
Baying
. That's what dogs do, in hunts,
when they smell their prey.

The running man has heard them. He looks back.
His face is white in the darkness and wet with rain.
He isn't wearing shoes, or a shirt. I can see his chest,
rising and falling. I can feel how frightened he is. Who
is he? Who's chasing him?

And then the dogs are here.

They charge round the corner and pour on to him.
They're huge, more like wolves than dogs. He falls,
lifting his arms to cover his face. And now the
huntsmen are here, black shapes on tall horses. The
lead huntsman stops and raises his head, and I have to
clench my lips to stop myself screaming. He's got
horns
growing out of his hair, great tall antlers rising up out
of the sides of his head. I press myself deep into the
hawthorn tree until twigs dig into my back and thorns
tear at my jumper.
Don't see me
.
Don't see me. Don't see me.

The lead huntsman sits tall on his tall horse. He
raises a black hunting horn to his lips and blows, a
long clear note.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

And . . .
               

               . . . they're gone.

 

I don't move. I keep my eyes shut. I can still smell the
horses and the huntsman, but the noises have gone. All
I can hear is my heart and the quick, snuffly sound of
my breath going in-and-out-and-in-and-out. And the
rain. They must still be there, they must, they must—

There's a noise. A small one, something shifting,
pebbles moving. I open my eyes. The lane is empty.
The horses – the man – the dogs – they've gone. But
something's still there, scrabbling in the lane.

Hawthorn trees aren't made to be held on to. They
have too many prickles and not enough big branches.
I shift and slip and slide into the lane, mud all down
my legs and back. I struggle and fall forward. On to
something – some
one
warm.

I scream. I scream and scream and hands come up
and hold my shoulders, warm, living hands.

“Hush. Shhh. Shhh.” The voice is low and strong
against the rain. I scramble back, terrified, and the
hands let go. “No one's going to hurt you. Shhh.”

It's not the hunter. It's the other one. The hunted
man.

All of a sudden, I start to cry, gaspy, shuddery
sobs. The hunted man sits back and watches me. I can
see in the darkness that he's young, that his face is wet
with sweat and rain, that his hair curls.

“There,” he says, in his low voice. “Nobody's hurt.
Nobody's hurting you.”

“You're hurt,” I say.

He is. His legs are all torn up by the wolf-dogs.
Dark blood oozes out and over the ragged cloth of his
trousers, rain and cloth and blood. Sobs shudder up
inside me again and I look quickly away.

“Nobody's hurt,” he says, again. He looks at me.
“Are you far from home?” I shake my head, and, “Go
home,” he says. “You shouldn't be out at night. Didn't
your mother tell you that?”

“My mother's dead,” I say, and I start crying again.

There's a noise in the lane, bushes rustling. I tense,
squeezing my stomach to keep the tears inside. The
man grips my arm and lifts his nose like an animal,
sniffing danger.

There's a rustle from the bushes and a bird rises; a
crow I think, wings flapping madly and then gone.
The man's grip on my arm relaxes and I hiccup, aware
suddenly of how stupid I must look, snot and tears
dripping down my face, covered in mud.

The hunted man leans forward. “Go home,” he
says again, more urgently. “Do you want the wild hunt
to find you?” But I'm frightened again and don't
answer. He grips my arm. “Go well,” he says. “Go
safely. But go now.”

There are only the two of us in the darkness, only
the two of us in the whole world. I don't want to
leave him, but I don't want to stay here either. I
stumble back to my feet and down the lane, to home.

 

 

 

 

I've not gone far when I see a torch, and hear a voice
calling.

“Molly! Molly!”

“Grandma!” I run straight into her.

“Molly!” She holds me to her, then pulls me away
and shakes me; not hard, but enough to shock me.
“What did you want to run off like that for? Haven't
we all got enough to worry about?”

“I didn't—” I say, and I start crying all over again.
Grandma puts her arm round me.

“Hey, shush.
Shush
. None of that. Grandma's got you.”

But I remember.

“Grandma! There's a man.”

She pulls back.

“A man?”

“He's hurt.” I know exactly where he is, by the
hawthorn tree. I point. “Look.”

Grandma shines her torch where I'm pointing.
There's nothing there but lane.

“You aren't telling stories again are you, Moll?”

“No! Look! I'll show you!”

I pull her closer.

“Hey now, Moll, slow down. Easy does it. Where
was he?”

“Here!” I grab her hand and swing the torch
around. There's the hawthorn tree, and the muddy
streak where I fell down the bank, but no man. I run
forward trying to see where he's gone.

“Hey!” I call. “Where are you?”

“Moll,” says Grandma. “
Molly!
Come back here.
Come on. Tell me what's going on.”

I run back.

“There was a man, a weird man, without shoes or a
shirt or anything, running down the lane, and then
this hunt came out of nowhere, a proper hunt, with
dogs – wolves, really – and a man with horns growing
out of his head and everything. And the wolves got
him, and they would have got me, only I was hiding.
And then they vanished, all the hunt and everyone,
except him, and he talked to me and he told me to go
well and go safely and go now, so I did and then—”

“And then he vanished,” says Grandma. “Or turned
into a teapot?”

“Yes,” I say. “I mean, no. He just vanished. But he
was here! Look!”

I grab her torch hand again and point it on the
patch of lane where he was lying.

“What am I looking at?” grumbles Grandma.

“Here!” I say. “No – here – no, wait – it's here
somewhere, I know it is.” I pull her closer. “There!
Look, it's blood! That's where he was lying!”

It's hard, in the darkness, to tell where the rain and
the mud and the bloodstains begin and end. Grandma
peers short-sightedly downwards.

“Could be,” she says at last. “Could be a fox has
been out, killing rabbits. Let's go home now, Moll. I'm
old and I'm wet through.”

“But the man,” I say. “He's hurt!”

“If he's not here now,” says Grandma, “he can't be
too badly hurt. If he's got any sense he'll have gone
home too. In any case, I think we should go home and
tell Grandpa and Hannah that we've found you.”

So Hannah did go back. I should have known she
wouldn't really run away. I feel cheated, suddenly, of
my adventure – and my moment as the sensible one.
Now I'm the little one, doing the wrong thing again.

Grandma holds out her hand and I take it.

“You think I'm making it up, don't you?” I say. I
did
used to make up stories, when I was little, but I don't
any more.

“Me?” says Grandma. “I think I've got much more
important things to worry about.”

Which doesn't exactly mean that she believes me.

 

 

 

 

Grandpa's coming up the hill when we get back.

“Molly-love—” he says. “What happened? Are—”

“She's fine,” says Grandma, before I can answer.
“She could do with a bath, though – look at her.”

Grandpa takes me up to the bathroom without
saying anything else. He runs the bath. Afterwards he
puts me to bed in my narrow little bedroom with a
plate of cold sausages and hard, yellow potatoes. He sits
on my bed and waits until I'm done. The curtains have
been drawn against the night, but I don't look out. I
don't like to think about what might still be out there.

“We'll get your things fixed soon,” says Grandpa.
“Bring some of your pictures from home and put
them up, eh?”

“Mmm,” I say. Dad promised we were only here for
a visit. Putting pictures up is a bit too much like
staying for good.

“Dad's coming on Saturday,” Grandpa says.
“That'll be nice, won't it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He pats my hand, awkwardly. “You would
tell me if something was bothering you, wouldn't you,
Molly-love? Hannah or school or
. . .
or anything?”

“Mmm,” I say, again. I squirm down further into
the bed. Grandpa sighs.

“All right.” He creaks up and kisses my forehead.
“Sleep tight, sweetheart.”

After he's gone, I lie on my back and stare at the
ceiling. Above my head, the rain is pattering on the
roof. I remember the hunted man, his voice in the
darkness, saying, “Nobody's hurt. Nobody's hurting
you.” I wonder where he is now. I wonder if he's found
somewhere dry to sleep. I wonder if the hunt has
found him.

I remember his hands, holding me, how gentle they
were. I remember the kindness in his voice, saying,
“Shhh. No one's going to hurt you. Shhh.”

 

 

 

 

There's only one thing I like about this bedroom and
that's the window sill. It's big and deep, and if you sit
on it with a book and pull the curtains closed behind
you, you can pretend you're in a secret room and no
one in the world can find you.

I've always been a bookworm, and I've been reading
even more since we came here and stopped having
drama classes and gymnastics and piano lessons all the
time. There's a bookcase in the hall which is full of
Dad and Auntie Meg's books from when they were
kids. Really old hardback ones like
Peter Pan
and
Swallows and Amazons
and books about girl guides. I
know most of them already, because I always read
them when we come on visits.

I would like to live in a book. The world works
better in books. If you go on picnics, the sun shines.
If something gets stolen, you can solve the crime just
by thinking hard. If someone's dying, calling 999 will
save them. It's always obvious who's good and who's
bad, and kids can camp out on moors or go to the
North Pole or be world-famous detectives aged only
ten.

Everything is simpler, in books. In books, lost
fathers always come back from the dead and bullies
always get beaten. The sun always shines on your
birthday and things always work out right in the end.