Chapter 18 #2
I still don’t know why, but back then, before we saw the writing in the sky it became very important to me that Storm was wrong about Freya being able to see the future.
The best way I can explain it is that there was something in the way Freya was so sure about things despite being younger than us, that really got under my skin.
I know it irritated Cat too. There was a kind of smugness that went along with the gloominess.
Cat said we should probably try and rise above it as we hadn’t suffered like she had, and Storm overheard us and looked furious, but then shrugged and said we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it because Freya was sometimes just a pain in the ass, just like we were, and there was a beat while we all tried to figure out if that was a spiky barb or just joshing like friends do, and then another moment of relief and surprise as we all realised it was.
Cat and Storm and I were out checking the fish traps on the river when we saw the writing in the sky.
The fish traps were something Cat had seen in a book a long time ago, and we had learned how, and now we strung them in the waterway and checked them every couple of days.
Sometimes there was nothing, sometimes too much.
We just took what we called the fatties and let the rest go.
Every now and then we would take the entire contents of a crowded trap and would smoke what we couldn’t eat fresh, but somehow neither of us liked fish enough to eat as much as we caught.
It was good food to keep you going but it never seemed substantial somehow.
Cat was showing Storm how we emptied the traps, up to her knees in the water while the young girl held back, hovering on the edge.
I wasn’t exactly in a bad mood but Freya had sent us on our way with a gloomy prediction that there was no real point going because nothing good was waiting for us.
One of the things I noticed about living with more people than just Cat, was that they left the taste of their moods in my day if I let them.
And I found it hard not to carry away a bit of the dark cloud Freya walked around with all the time.
Maybe staying unaffected by other people’s moods was a skill everyone had when the world was full, probably it had to be like that in case you drowned in the sea of everyone else’s emotions.
I found it hard enough dealing with just two new people.
And so I was still irritated at finding a piece of Freya’s dark cloud had followed us into what was, apart from that, quite a nice sunny day.
Certainly the sky was blue in that clean-after-the-storm way, with no clouds in it.
You believe it? I said. That Freya can see the future?
No, said Cat. Maybe she made a couple of lucky guesses but nobody can see the future.
People see ghosts, Storm said.
This was something she and Freya believed and could not be argued out of.
They’d never seen one, but their mother had told them it was so, and now she was gone it had become a matter of faith with both of them.
It was one thing I nearly got to tease Storm about, which I did by taking it very seriously.
They believed ghosts were people stuck in the old days who were unable to move on.
They had lots of ideas about how and why they got trapped that way.
So, if ghosts live in the past and we live now, who lives in the future? I said.
That’s a crazy question, said Storm. The future hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe there are different kinds of ghosts, I said. Maybe future ghosts are already out there. Just waiting for us.
There are no ghosts watching for us in the future, little Mouse, Cat said.
She was wrong about that too.
Almost as wrong as Storm was about Freya being able to predict the future.
Come in, Cat said, nodding encouragingly at Storm who was still hesitating at the water’s edge. It’s quite shallow and nothing is going to eat you.
Well, I said. The pike is pretty big…
What’s a pike? said Storm, stepping back from the edge and looking at me in sudden suspicion.
A river shark, I said with a grin.
Stop it, Mouse, said Cat.
No such thing, said Storm, turning to Cat for reassurance. No such thing as a river shark, right?
A pike’s not going to bite you, said Cat. Mouse is just joking with you.
Mouse, said Storm. Not funny!
And Freya can’t see the future, I said, pointing at the bulging fish trap as Cat hauled it out of the stream.
I could see at least four trout in it, their unmistakable golden bodies dappled with pale-ringed dark spots catching the light as they came up into the sun.
There was also a much larger fish, a greeny one that we didn’t know the old name for, but called Big Red because of the colour of the circles round its eyes.
Shall we keep them all? said Cat.
I don’t want to eat that big one, said Storm. It’s got devil eyes.
The way the girls believed in good and bad luck signs was the opposite of us.
Cat and I weren’t superstitious, maybe because no one had taught us to be.
The closest we got to thinking like that was the bad feeling we both got about the quarry, and of course what we felt about strangers from the sea.
But those things weren’t superstitious. They were rational, which means there were good reasons behind them: The quarry was dangerous because it killed things, and strangers were what had come from the sea and accidentally killed all our families and their friends.
Only a fool puts their hand in the fire a second time.
Superstition, the girls not-rational way of thinking, that was what made no sense.
We let the Big Red go and watched him jink away downriver, and then Cat showed Storm how to reset the trap while I quickly gutted all the trout and laced a reed through their gills so we could carry them home. I looked up and saw Storm watching me wash my hands in the river.
My mum used to leave fish guts out on the ground for the birds, she said.
OK, I said. That’s good.
She smiled.
She was clever with her hands, even though she couldn’t really read, she said. She was good at stuff like you two. You’d have liked her.
I bet we would, Cat said.
It was a good afternoon.
We were walking back to the Bunker through the hazel wood.
I remember we were in the dappled green light under the branches because we couldn’t see the sky and so I didn’t immediately understand why what happened next.
I was joking around with Storm about whether Freya would be so upset that her fortune-telling magic had got the day so wrong that she wouldn’t want to eat any of the nice sweet juicy trout when Freya herself stumbled into view hurrying towards us, her face wide eyed and paler than ever, pushing the babies in the wheelbarrow we used as a carrier.
She stopped and waved her hands like she was signalling two equally urgent things at once.
The first, accompanied by a hiss, was a shushing motion with her finger held to her lips, the second was harder to make out, but involved a lot of jabbing upwards towards the low canopy of hazel leaves above us.
Storm was first to run to her, followed by Cat and then the two dogs. By the time I caught up Cat had grabbed the male dog we still hadn’t named, and Storm had got hold of Digger.
What—? I began, to be greeted by three shushing fingers.
What? I whispered.
She’s seen something, said Cat.
Something? I said.
She’s going to show us, said Storm. Don’t let the dogs run off!
Cat already had her belt around the dog’s neck, and so I did the same with mine and Digger.
OK, what? I repeated, looking at Freya.
She just gave us a crosser version of her usual blank look and turned and ran back towards the clearing at the home end of the wood.
Did she see someone? I said to Cat as we ran after her, squinting as we burst out and hit the sudden brightness of the clearing and the open sky above.
She saw that, whispered Storm, one arm pointing north while she twisted around, eyes searching in all directions, like she was already expecting an ambush.
My eyes adjusted, and despite myself I went cold and still.
There was a dark finger of smoke rising in the far distance, on the last visible ridgeline before the horizon cut the land from the sky. And underneath that long finger of smoke was a tiny bright glint of fire, like the dot under an exclamation mark.
The Russian bastard used to burn signal fires every couple of days to try and find the rest of his friends, said Storm. They looked like that. He used tyres.
It’s probably from the lightning in the night, I said.
Yes, said Cat. Well. Maybe…
Her maybe jolted me. Somehow in the circumstances it felt like a tiny betrayal.
Not lightning, said Freya. Russians.
Cat and I looked at each other.
The good news is we have the dogs tied up, she said. So they won’t give us away like we were worried they might.
That’s when I realised that today and of course, no doubt, the next few days were now closed.
Storm helped Freya back to the Bunker as Cat took the barrow with the babies and followed them at a jog.
I remember the dog hated being pulled along on the end of my belt, tugging and pulling and backing up to try and get free, but I don’t remember much of the rest of the day as we locked ourselves back in our hiding place in the Bunker.
In fact the only thing I definitely do remember was Storm shrugging apologetically at me as Cat and I locked the back door.
What? I said.
Freya was right, she said. See? It is a bad day.
Yeah, said Cat, pushing past. Well, tell her tomorrow is likely to be worse. That might cheer her up.
It was, and it didn’t.