To the River

Howard looked across the wide field before him - which was hazy yellow with maturing wheat - to the wood beyond - a barrier of dark green. Past the wood - perhaps two miles from Earls Court - was the farm to which they had travelled each day early in the morning, for almost a week.

He looked behind to see Mrs Van Dijk climbing the gate into the field. She had been looking at a clump of wild flowers by the path and he had gone on, impatient to see the field under the blue sky so early in the morning. He waited for her, already screwing his eyes against the glare of the rising sun.

He watched her walk. She had a purposeful stride and a way of keeping her head up and her back very straight. He thought it reminded him of the carved women on the prowed ships of antiquity. In her hand she carried two different flower heads, a blue-purple foxglove and a yellow celandine.

‘I’ve never seen so many foxgloves’, she said. She held up the already-wilting flower for him to see. Its shade was similar to the darkest midsummer sky, almost purple in colour overhead.

The wheat waved and sighed around them.

‘We should come out very early more often’ he said

‘But we have a job to do. We have to be there soon’

The field was huge and rectangular, but the path followed a perfect diagonal from corner to corner. It was so large and flat that Howard felt like the field somehow reflected the sky, like they were two surfaces pressed against each other with him in between, and like the world was reduced to only two colours - the wheat’s colour and the blue sky above. Over to the left, in a meadow was a derelict barn with ochre roof tiles. This was the only evidence of human habitation. Even the tall tower of Earls Court’s church was invisible behind them.

In front, the field boundary was marked by a thick low hedge and a small stream. A wooden footbridge crossed the stream and then the path climbed slightly through small meadows to the edge of the woods. The woods known locally as Collins Woods were the largest of the Earls Court area and Howard had worked in them for years, now and then, cutting trees and clearing land. He sometimes used this very path to go to work in the woods because after skirting their southern boundary it plunged through them toward the slightly lower land in the northern Vale.

But the farm was on the far side, set in small meadows. It was a low stone building with thatched roof, painted white, though badly maintained. The thatch was thin in places so that the roof leaked, and unlike most farms in the area there was no walled courtyard. In the meadows were twenty cows, large black and white Friesians with wet noses and steaming breath. These were the farm’s only asset, since the occupants, the Smith family, had fallen on hard times. The farmer Nathaniel Smith had broken a leg cutting an old tree in the wood, so that he was unable to work, at least for a while. His wife – it was difficult to say what was wrong with her. In the villages of the northern Vale she was said to be sad and mad. She had not left the farm for many years – not since their son was young. But she had been known in the Vale years before her marriage as a village wise woman. These women were quite different to Mrs Van Dijk. There were still many of them in the Vale, making small charms for the farmers to help their crops grow and protect them from bad weather and accidents. They sometimes helped to heal people with minor illnesses. But Mrs Smith had lost all these powers because her farm and her husband continually had bad fortune. And she of course, herself, seemed very ill and beyond help.

************************************

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk had heard of their recent difficulty. Nathaniel found it hard to milk his cows with his broken leg – and impossible to transport the milk to the villages -  at least for a week or so. So they had offered to come to the farm each day and take the milk in a large wooden barrel on the back of an old cart around the nearby villages to sell and make a little money. Each day they arrived to find the farmer struggling to pour small jugs into the barrel, and the two would lift the barrel onto the cart and take the milk for sale.

The path passed along the edge of one of the meadows and they saw smoke coming from the small chimney of the cottage. The cows were walking in a long line back into the field from where they had been milked. Nathaniel did this single-handed every morning, even with his broken leg. He must have risen hours before to achieve this. Mrs Smith, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. They had not asked Nathaniel about his wife - to spare his discomfort - but she seemed not to leave her bedroom in the small cottage until after lunchtime. The boy, whom they had never seen, seemed to spend most of his time out in the fields. But rather than ask questions they thought it better to attempt to help Nathaniel as best they could and bring him the money and bartered items each day that they got from the milk.

They saw Nathaniel before he saw them. He was standing clutching his back, shielding his eyes from the sun. He was a small man with a fine boned face and large blue eyes, rather like a bird. It looked like a strain for him to do so much physical work, but he never complained, and moreover he seemed to have a quick and sharp intelligence. Howard knew that he could read and he would sometimes exchange books of poetry or stories with Nathaniel. Howard thought that if Nathaniel had not been a farmer he could have been a lawyer or teacher. He had a nice precise way of speaking.

He welcomed them with a wave.

‘Howard, Mrs Van Dijk, how are you? It’s nice to see you. Would you like some milk before you take the rest to the villages?’

‘No. We should sell it, not drink it!’ said Mrs Van Dijk. She liked Nathaniel as well and she joked with him in a way that she didn’t with the more ordinary people of the Vale.

They all shook hands. Howard glanced at the barrel which still needed its lid attaching. It was almost full of milk. Probably there were thirty pints in there. It would be a great weight to lift onto the cart.

‘We’ll go through Stathern, Redmile and Earls Court. Yesterday we’d sold all the milk after the first two villages, but today there’ll be enough for all three’

‘I need the money’ said Nathaniel. He clutched his hands together as he spoke. Howard knew that he suffered from arthritis so it must be a terrible pain to milk the cows every day, but he also knew that Nathaniel would not allow anyone else to do this. He had a close relationship with the slow gentle creatures that seemed so unlike him – he being so quick and small.

The three of them lifted the barrel onto the cart and fixed it in position with a strong rope that went through a loop in the lid. It was still cool in the early morning but as the sun rose, the milk would begin to warm, so they had to sell it before midmorning otherwise it would begin to go sour. But they couldn’t go fast in the cart partly because the horse that pulled it was so old, and because the milk would slosh about in the barrel and begin to curdle. It usually took at least two hours to do the round of the villages. But it was beautiful with the weather so sunny. Howard and Mrs Van Dijk both liked standing by the cart selling the milk to the kids, particularly because they would drink it up so fast and they would each have a curved moustache of milk above their upper lip. Sometimes they sold milk to people in the fields as they passed, because as the morning warmed up the threshers and the ploughmen became thirsty.

They thought that this morning they should leave very quickly because it would be warmer than ever. So they climbed behind the old horse and flicked his reins. Nathaniel went back into the house smiling, but they sensed - as they always did -  that there was some heaviness on him that he could not shake off.

The track on which they left was wider and easier to drive a cart along. It led northeast toward Stathern. To their right, a charming meadow of tall grass and wildflowers separated them from the trees of Collins Wood.

‘Is that one of Nathaniel’s meadows?’ asked Howard

‘I think so; he keeps his fields small for the cattle. But he’s not let them on this grass yet’

‘Perhaps saving it for later in the summer…Who’s that?’

Howard pointed beyond the meadow to the edge of the wood. A boy with white or blond hair stood watching them. As they moved slowly on, they saw him retreat into the trees as if he had never been there.

*********************************

Stathern was busy. Its small centre, a grassy irregular open space with a fine church behind, was bright with a few stalls and people standing talking and buying vegetables. It was a sort of market day. Howard liked this village because the houses and the church were all built of the limestone from beyond the escarpment – with a kind of creamy yellow colour – and some of the buildings near the church were quite tall, three or even four storeys. Once the village had been quite prosperous with wool trade with the eastern counties of England and even with Holland. Some of the houses seemed to have a Dutch influence.

When the two milk sellers arrived, people came quickly to buy the milk which was still cool from the barrel. Howard had a ladle that he could tip in and pour milk into the various bottles and cups that people offered to be filled. For each drink they charged a farthing – which was quite expensive, but they knew that the milk was very good and could fetch a very good price. Within half an hour they had made almost a shilling, and they thought that they would sell more in another village. So Howard stored the ladle and tied the lid very tightly back onto the barrel. Mrs Van Dijk who had been holding the horse all the while Howard had been selling and pouring milk, and taking the money, sat behind the horse and set him moving. Howard sat behind.

He knew that she liked driving the horse. She sat on the small wooden platform behind the horse with her back very straight murmuring to the horse now and then, hardly ever seeming to touch him. Howard thought that she simply talked to the horse to make him move and never needed to strike him.

‘Where to?’

‘To Earls Court’

‘We should go to Redmile’

‘Howard, you sold too much milk there’s not enough for both villages’, she admonished him. ‘Besides I want to get back to collect. I need some of those foxgloves. Can you take the cart and the money back to Nathaniel – when we’ve finished in Earls Court?’

‘Of course’

The foxgloves made a useful drink and mixture, he knew. There were other plants that she liked too. Sometimes when she went out collecting alone she would come back with a whole sack full of plants, or simply a single flower, a single petal. He climbed over the back to sit beside her and she moved over.

‘I was thinking of the boy – Nathaniel’s boy’

‘Do you think he was the blond boy we saw earlier?’

‘Perhaps. Have you ever seen him?’

‘No. What’s his name?’

‘Don’t even know that’

Mrs Van Dijk was quiet, watching the horse’s powerful back legs move back and forth. But she seemed to be thinking about something else.

‘I did hear that the boy was odd. Unmanageable. Wild. His parents can’t control him’ she said.

‘So he is in trouble. Does he steal?’

‘No not at all like that. I mean that he’s always out in the woods. He never helps with anything on the farm. You saw that he does nothing for his father?’

It was odd. Nathaniel worked very hard, and he was probably in pain, and the boy never helped. But sometimes that happened. Howard himself had been a village boy all his life, but he could understand that some children would be bored by farm work. He thought back, trying to picture the boy’s face and remembered something odd about him. Even though he had been far away, there had been a feral quality to him. He didn’t have an evil or lazy face, just a face that lacked a human expression, lacked human feeling.

Mrs Van Dijk and Howard swayed as the cart moved over a bumpy part in the lane between Stathern and Earls Court and Howard turned anxiously to see the barrel moving in the back. He hoped it would not tip over and lose the remaining milk. For the remainder of the journey he decided to sit at the back and hold the barrel lightly in his hands to stop it moving. Mrs Van Dijk remained silent at the front and continued her reverie all the way to their home village.

Even in the village she kept up her concentration, because when they arrived she immediately left Howard to set up the cart and sell the remaining milk on his own. She smiled as if in apology but said little and walked quickly up the little lane from the open area by the main gate of the village toward the church. Their cottage was on the right almost opposite the church.

Howard watched her walk quickly up the lane. She would sometimes do this – be very consumed by some idea. She would tell him about it later.

He lifted the ladle. Already four children were waiting by the cart with a collection of jars, cups and bottles -  waiting for them to be filled with milk.

*********************************

Howard drove the cart straight back to Nathaniel’s farm after selling the milk. He had nearly two shillings in his pocket. It had been a good morning. It was very warm. Howard thought that when he arrived at the farm he would help Nathaniel to wash the barrel out with boiling water or it would begin to smell. They would need the barrel for a while, at least until Nathaniel’s leg was better. Then he would be able to sell the milk himself. But it would still be a strain. Why couldn’t he get his wife and son to help him? What had gone wrong in the family? Howard liked Nathaniel. He was mild and intelligent. He could not have caused this problem in his family - a strange troubled wife and a wild son. He was just unlucky.

As he approached the farm he saw Nathaniel come from the house waving. His very light blond hair shone like his son’s - very noticeable in the bright sunlight – almost white. An unusual hair colour for the Vale.

‘Thanks, thanks’ said the farmer as Howard pulled up the cart. He was very grateful for the service they were providing. He would probably have paid them if he were not so poor himself and in need of the money. He stood beaming, looking up at Howard in the cart. He held a bottle filled with milk up to him.

‘Come and sit in the kitchen. It’s cooler. Enjoy some of the cool milk. I keep it cool by storing some bottles in cold water from the stream. Where’s Mrs Van Dijk?’

‘She went off somewhere. To collect plants. She often does’

‘Never mind. You can take a bottle home with you – for her’

They sat in the kitchen. But almost as Howard began drinking from the bottle, an adjoining door to the back of the house opened. It was dark in the back but Howard could see from her silhouette that the figure of a woman was entering the room.

Nathaniel became silent and the good mood that he had had evaporated. He stood, almost embarrassed. Howard thought he was going to ask him to leave.

The woman came into the light. She was tall – taller than Nathaniel – and thin. Her face was very white and darkly lined, but her eyes were a wonderful dark green or grey colour. Her face was troubled. She seemed only dimly aware of Howard’s presence.

‘Take the cows back out to the top meadow’ she spoke rapidly to Nathaniel. She did not acknowledge the visitor. Her voice was high and uneven. She spoke without politeness. It seemed like an order, an instruction.

‘Yes dear. I did that very early this morning’. Nathaniel spoke quietly, patiently, as if to a child. His face was soft and tolerant. He glanced in Howard’s direction, a slight smile of apology on his face.

‘Howard is here. He’s helping to sell our milk while I am getting better’

‘You’d better get better.’ The high voice now sounded like a threat.

The thin woman – Howard realised that she must be Nathaniel’s wife - sat opposite Howard and finally seemed to register his presence. She looked penetratingly at him and stretched her back, sighing loudly.

‘Do you have a child?’ she said, very directly.

Nathaniel interjected.

‘Howard, this is my wife Grace. Don’t worry if she seems a little abrupt. She’s not well at the moment’

Nathaniel stood behind his wife and put his hands on her shoulders. This seemed to soothe the woman and she inclined her neck slightly to his hands. She closed her eyes.

‘She becomes a little anxious sometimes, don’t you dear…’

Grace was still silent. She looked sleepy, but then suddenly opened her eyes, looking again directly at Howard. She brushed her husband’s hands off her shoulder.

‘Well’, she said, ‘do you have children?’

‘No, Mrs Smith’

‘Don’t. They are strange and difficult. Ever since….’ She looked as if she was about to talk but then shut her mouth so abruptly that her teeth knocked together. She looked suspiciously at Howard.

‘I am not talking to you’ she said pointedly and quickly got up. She went through the dark door at the back. As she went, Howard noticed that her dress was almost completely black, very sombre and dark. It was like a mourning dress.

Nathaniel’s kind face looked distressed.

‘She means no harm. She’s been ill for a long while. She means no harm, Howard’

Howard smiled, trying to reassure Nathaniel. But he had been surprised by the vehemence of the woman’s reaction. He took the cup of cool milk and drank, hoping to give an impression of contentment.

There was a silence. Nathaniel seemed to be waiting to see if Grace would again emerge. But she remained in the room beyond. Howard thought he could hear her talking and singing to herself quietly. It was depressing and sad in the room and Howard thought he would like to get out and walk in the sun. He felt sorry for Nathaniel, but couldn’t see anything he could do. There was something deep about the woman’s sadness that Howard could not understand, but also there was something rational about her. She seemed not to be mad: more like someone in an intense situation, an intense quandary which had no solution. She was amongst mild quiet people that didn’t understand her.

Howard thought that he would talk to Mrs Van Dijk later, when he got home. It was after lunchtime and he should be getting home to Earls Court. Perhaps she was already home.

*********************************

Mrs Van Dijk was not at home. It was sunny and quite hot, now in the mid-afternoon. Howard took some cheese from the big cooking pot in the pantry and some bread and jam. He sat on the front step as was his habit when the weather was warm. His long legs stretched across the tiny front garden almost to the small gate that separated the cottage from the lane. As he ate, he looked at the big trees swaying in the light wind in the church yard.

He had eaten a lot of cheese and bread by the time he saw Mrs Van Dijk coming up the lane, carrying her grey collecting bag over her shoulder. She was smiling, but he could see from her stride that she was tired and had probably walked a long way. Howard went inside to make a cup of tea. He took one of the stools from inside as well and stood it in the strip of grass by the front step. Because the water was boiling he was able to make the tea quickly and gave her a big cup as she appeared at the gate.

‘Thank you Howard’

‘You’ve walked a long way. I thought you’d like it’

‘Miles and miles. I’m exhausted’

She sat on the little stool and dropped her bag in the grass. She took the tea and tested the edge of the cup, because it was hot. From the bag, a sheaf of half-wilted foxgloves protruded.

‘So you collected something’

‘Yes in the early afternoon. I collected a pile soon after I left you’

‘What did you do the rest of the time?’

‘It’s strange. You won’t believe me if I tell you’

‘Tell me’

‘Wait until we’re inside. Let’s have tea first. I’m thirsty. Is there any milk? Did you bring some from Nathaniel’s?’

Later when it was cooler and the insects began to come out flying in little clouds around their heads, they went inside. Howard was still ravenously hungry and wanted to make soup. In the gloom inside the kitchen he took two large pots and rinsed them with water from the big bucket.

‘It’ll take a long time to make soup, Howard’

‘I don’t mind’, said Howard. She sat in the low chair by the unlit fire.

‘Did you go looking for lots of other plants?’

‘No, Howard, I went looking for the boy, Nathaniel’s son’

‘Why?’

‘I was curious. After we had seen him. He seemed strange. It’s very hard for his father that his son never helps in the farm’

‘So you wanted to talk to him? Persuade him to be more dutiful?’

She looked uncertain. When he described it like this it seemed ridiculous.

‘I’m not sure Howard. I went looking for foxgloves first, then I saw the boy watching me as he’d watched us leave the farm with the milk’

‘So?’

‘He disappeared almost as soon as I began to follow him. He moved very quickly. I could hardly keep him in sight for more than a minute. He went through Collins Wood. When I reached the far side, he had gone. He couldn’t have crossed the fields - I would have seen him. The grass is quite short – I would have seen him crossing the field’

She seemed sad. After Howard finished making the soup, they ate it quietly in the gathering dark.

At night Howard woke and lay, eyes wide in the dark, trying to remember a vivid dream. He remembered only hearing the rush of water in a valley and the smell of oak woods.

Mrs Van Dijk beside him moved and her breathing changed to something shallower and quicker.

Eventually she said: ‘Did you dream, Howard?’

‘I was in a forest of dark trees, in a mountainous place. There were rushing streams everywhere’

‘You moved’ she said sleepily, ‘and you were kicking out with your feet’

*********************************

They slept but Howard woke again and there was a glow of light in the window. He lay awake listening to the trickling of water over the stone pathway outside. In the time while they had slept, the weather had completely changed and rain had come, driving the warm clear weather away. In that time of change Howard had slept without dreaming.

It was an entirely different country in the morning. The trees and the hedges were dripping with water and the usually light coloured stone of the church tower was stained dark. Rain had come in through the window and wet Mrs Van Dijk’s skirt, where it was folded over the chair. The window was covered with large plump raindrops like pearls. The rain had stopped but the sky was richly coloured with shades of grey. It looked like folded grey velvet.

It was good that it wasn’t raining because they had a three mile walk to Nathaniel’s farm, but walking through wet grass most of the way, their boots became quickly wet. The paths through the wheat, yesterday so light and dry, were corridors of mud between the dark drenched wheat.

They walked in silence, wishing that they had brought dry boots with them. Howard thought that at least they’d be able to drive the cart – and not walk - back home. Collins Wood, ahead, was very dark with the rain. Curiously it was silent. On sunny days the sound of birds was usually loud from within, but the rain had silenced the birds.

Emerging from the sodden wood, they saw Nathaniel’s cottage ahead; its low thatched roof also looked dark and wet, but white smoke billowed from its chimney.

Mrs Van Dijk walked a little slower than Howard who was impatient this morning to begin the delivery. He had an idea that it would rain again and didn’t want to be caught in the storm.

‘Come on. We’ll get wet if we hang around’

She walked a little quicker. Her expression was slightly troubled. Her trousers were very wet from walking through the grass, but Howard got the impression that this was not the reason she was unhappy.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I was looking for the boy again’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No’

They walked together through the smaller meadows to the cottage. Nathaniel was not waiting for them as he had been on the other mornings. The barn, where the cows were usually milked was also shut. It looked like no one was about. Howard wondered if they were still asleep. He knocked on the door.

Nathaniel did not open the door. Rather it was Grace. It was a shock to see her. She wore the same intense expression and the deep lines of her face seemed to frame her strong features. Howard noticed that her nose was hooked and quite long, birdlike. Her eyes in the bright light of day were lighter grey or green than he had thought. Her hair was thick and brushed back from her forehead into a severe bun.

She didn’t speak, but retreated from the door as if to let them in. Behind in the gloom Howard saw Nathaniel sitting hunched over by the fire, his blond hair like a white cap.

‘He’s hurt himself, again’

Grace blurted this out. Her voice was loud and gruff. But Howard could see that there was a lot of emotion in it. Grace was shaking, either with anger or grief, he couldn’t tell.

Nathaniel lifted his head, and his face was white with pain. His large eyes were rimmed with red.

‘Howard’ he croaked. His voice was different, slower and more tentative than usual. He was fighting pain.

‘I twisted my other knee trying to milk the cows. I couldn’t finish’

‘You hardly started!’ said Grace. Her voice was hard.

‘I’m sorry.’ Nathaniel said this to everyone. ‘Sorry that you’ve come so far for nothing. Sorry’

‘Don’t worry Nathaniel.’ Mrs Van Dijk’s voice was kind.

Nathaniel rose to his feet, uncertainly.

‘You’ll stay for some tea, some breakfast? At least you can dry your boots by the fire?’

He walked unsteadily over and pushed two chairs back from the table encouraging them to sit.

‘This is Grace, my wife. Mrs Van Dijk, this is Grace’

Mrs Van Dijk held out her pale hand and Grace took it. Grace was momentarily calmed by this gesture. She even smiled a little. She sat down and poured tea from a big teapot for all four of them. She pushed a cup over to Howard watching him intently. Her eyes showed curiosity all of a sudden. Howard wondered at the speed at which her emotions seemed to change - as if she experienced emotions faster and more deeply than ordinary people.

‘Grace was very pleased to meet you Howard, yesterday’ Nathaniel said gently. He looked over at his wife.

She smiled briefly and looked modestly at the table.

‘I wanted to talk to you - about children ….’ Grace’s voice said this hesitantly. She was unused to talking to people she didn’t know.

‘Also…Mrs Van Dijk. I wanted to ask you’

‘What would you like to ask?’

‘It’s about the boy’

She looked at Mrs Van Dijk, her eyes wide and filled again with emotion.

‘What’s your son’s name?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk, quietly.

Howard watched Grace. She was in a very agitated state. She sat forward, straggles of her hair not held in the tight bun fell over her brow. She held a cup of tea but had drunk nothing from it. It was warm and humid in the room mainly because of the fire, and because both Howard and Mrs Van Dijk were drying their boots close to the grate. But they both felt that they should wait for Grace’s answer. There was something troubling her, but she plainly found it hard to speak of it.

‘His name is Christopher’ she said. She drank some of the tea and Nathaniel looked up. Things relaxed a little in the room.

‘Where is he, today?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk

Nathaniel answered: ‘He’s out. He spends most of his time outside. He’s a good boy, but he’s always out’

He was interrupted by Grace whose brows were suddenly darker; the lines in her forehead were deep.

‘He’s not a good boy. He never helps. He’s wild. We see him early in the morning; and late in the afternoon or evening he returns, only when the sun is setting. He comes back to eat. And he eats ravenously, like an animal. It’s disgusting’

‘Where is his room?’

‘He stays in the room behind’. Grace gestured at a second doorway to the back of the room. ‘But he’s not there now’

‘We think we saw him the other day, at the edge of Collins Wood. He has blond hair’ Howard said.

‘He looks like his father’ said Mrs Van Dijk, encouraging.

This last point made in a kindly spirit by Mrs Van Dijk elicited an extraordinary response. Grace, sighed loud and struck the table with her fist. Howard thought she was going to cry. She was clutching her teacup very tight and looking intensely at the floor.

Nathaniel recognised that some threshold had been crossed. He stood up slowly and painfully and came to stand beside Grace, holding her shoulders in the same way as he had before, gently massaging them.

It seemed that their visit was at an end. There was nothing more to be said. They stood in a mood of slight embarrassment and Nathaniel took them outside. The sun was bright again and the rain was beginning to dry up. The meadows of the farm were very bright and green against the black sky of the departing rain.

‘I am sorry about Grace. She finds it very hard to speak about Chris. She takes his strangeness very hard. I know he’s odd, but he’ll be alright when he’s older. Maybe he’ll take over the farm when I can’t work anymore’

He smiled ruefully at his strapped-up leg.

‘Though sometimes I think he should take over now!’

‘How old is Christopher?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘He’ll be thirteen in a few days’

‘As I said, we saw him the other day. A blond boy, near the woods’

‘Yes, he likes Collins Woods. He spends a lot of time there. He sometimes brings home fruits, even a truffle or a trapped pheasant. He sometimes eats fruits and berries in the day. You know we don’t feed him at all in the day. It’s amazing that he can survive. I’ve told him many times that he should come and eat his lunch here, but he rarely comes’

‘Does he not listen to you when you ask him to help on the farm, or to come home for lunch?’

‘This is one of his problems. He speaks poorly and he doesn’t understand everything we say. It’s as if he never learned the language – even though he can read and write well. When he was young I told him stories, but I never knew if the stories went in’

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘When I saw him, he was on the edge of Collins Wood. Then he disappeared. He was walking east and so I should have seen him in the fields but he simply disappeared’

‘He knows a lot of ways that we don’t. Sometimes he seems like a badger or a fox. He knows the fields, the hedges, the woods very well’

‘Do you think we could meet him?’

‘It’s difficult. He’ll be back later, just as the sun goes down. But if you see him in the fields you can call to him. Call his name. He’ll probably come to you unless he’s frightened’

*********************************

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk walked east along the track from the farm amongst the meadows.

‘He didn’t say whether we should come back tomorrow’, said Mrs Van Dijk

‘I think we’ll have to help him. We’ll come earlier so we can help him milk the cows. By tomorrow they’ll desperately need milking’

‘She’s strange – Grace’

‘She is. Very tense. Why did she react so much when you said Christopher looks like his father?’

‘I don’t know. Howard I feel very guilty about this. I feel like everything was going alright until that point. I really said a stupid thing’

‘I don’t think it’s your fault. She’s very sensitive. But why did she react?’

‘One explanation - which is hard to believe - is that the boy isn’t Nathaniel’s’

‘You mean he’s another man’s?’

‘Maybe’

They came to the place where the meadows were narrow and the large wood came close to the track. This was where they had seen the boy the day before. Howard remembered the blond hair, almost white in the sun.

‘I saw Christopher near here later in the morning too. He was walking parallel to me in the field there’

She pointed to the north where the fields were larger and recently ploughed.

‘…but then he disappeared. It was amazing’

‘How could he? Nowhere to disappear to’

‘Howard. Can we try something? Before we go back home? I have an idea’

‘Alright but what can we do? It’s a terrible problem for Nathaniel, having a strange son and wife. But there’s nothing much we can do, except help him in the fields, help him sell his milk’

‘I don’t know Howard. I just think we should help him more, help her. She’s very anxious and it’s a deep anxiety – unusual in women like her’

Mrs Van Dijk climbed a gate next to the track, which was almost hidden by dense cow parsley and nettles. In the freshly ploughed field they stood in the sun looking north across the ochre soil to the distant hedge. The smell of soil was strong in the air.

‘Probably he just went behind the hedge, when you weren’t looking. Then continued on the other side’

She said: ‘the reason I was so tired the other day was because I walked a lot. I checked. I quickly walked across from here on the track that joins the one we just left. You can see into the field beyond as well. He wasn’t there!’

‘Did you look for tracks?’

‘I did. It shocked me. I found a track in the soil. He goes barefoot!’

‘Really!’

‘Yes. His feet must be dirtier than yours!’

Howard ignored her joke.

He said: ‘let’s go and look. Did you look in the field, at the precise place he disappeared?’

‘No. I wasn’t sure’

‘We’ll look now. Show me where’

‘It was over there. That was the last place I could find his tracks. But the track was very poor. The soil was getting dry. We’ll not see anything now’

But Howard was already striding across the field over the dry soil furrows. She struggled to keep up.

After a few minutes he shouted back.

‘Look. I’ve found it’

*********************************

She hurried with difficulty over the unstable soil and nearly fell once as her foot slipped through a deep furrow. Howard was waiting for her near the tall hedge at the margin of the field.

‘So where did he go?’ she said.

Howard was pleased with himself.

‘Look at the hedge!’

‘It’s just a hedge’. She looked up. It was tall, taller than the roof of their cottage in Earls Court.

‘Look closer’

She stepped over a few more furrows and into the long grass. She peered into the hedge holding the thorny branches aside.

‘Ah I see! Do you think Christopher did this?’

The most simple way of describing the hedge was that it was hollow. Its inner part had been cleared of large branches and leaves, so that most of the hedge was supported by its outer part. In the centre a very narrow path or passageway, slightly lower than the field level, ran between and amongst the twisted roots and cut trunks. The path was smooth as if someone regularly passed that way. It was difficult to see far along the hedge in the gloom because of the branches and trunks, but it seemed like the path probably went a long way.

‘Maybe. He spends so much time away. Perhaps this is what he does?’

Mrs Van Dijk pushed a little through the outer hawthorn and hazel branches and carefully let herself into the interior of the hedge. The path smelt of soil and damp and thorny leaves, but it was very cool. Howard, standing outside in the sun seemed huge and tall.

‘It’s strange in here. Christopher must have disappeared into this hedge and walked on out of sight. I wonder which way he went. Have a look Howard’

‘It’s a bit low for me’

Howard ducked his head and pulled his shirt close to him to stop it being torn by the thorns. He let himself carefully into the leafy space.

‘I think he probably went ahead’

‘You mean east?’

Mrs Van Dijk started to move ahead. It was difficult at first, particularly for Howard, but within a few paces, the roof of the path rose so that Howard no longer had to duck his head, and the hedge seemed to be dominated by hazel and ash, the hawthorn having been left behind. The path became a little wider too. The hedge was very large at this point, but Howard could imagine that it would still be impossible for someone to see them moving behind the screen of dense vegetation. It was pleasantly cool to walk like this and strange to feel that he was perfectly concealed. For a secretive boy like Christopher, this must have been a great fascination.

But the passage went on and on. They soon had walked the full length of the field which itself was large, and as they neared the hedge that crossed in front of them, they realised that the passageway went left and right and straight on as well. The route left and right went along a much narrower, lower hedge and so the pathway was narrower and lower too, very difficult for Howard and Mrs Van Dijk to negotiate. But the one ahead maintained the height and width. In fact it was even wider in places so that they could see a long way ahead, like a cool green tunnel. You could even run along this pathway, thought Howard. It probably went northeast. Perhaps the tunnels went as far as the river, almost five miles from here.

It was delightful to think that they might be able to pass all the way to the river without ever being seen. Only one thing seemed strange to him and it troubled him more and more as they moved along in the green light. Had Christopher made the passageways? If he had, why?

*********************************

They continued perhaps half a mile along the large hedge passage passing across two more field boundaries. In places the path’s well-trodden soil was perhaps a few feet below the field level so it was like walking in a ditch and showed signs that water sometimes flowed there, but the margins of the hedge either side were always dense so that it would be difficult for an observer, even if he were only a few steps away, to see them. The passageways were a remarkable creation. Howard knew that such things didn’t exist in the eastern Vale where he usually worked. In that area the hedges were lower, less well established; probably much younger. Some had been planted when he was a boy, when farmers had wanted to subdivide their fields. But here in the western Vale close to the river, the hedges were very old and tall. The trunks of the trees that formed the hedge were thick and twisted and distorted from being planted in such close proximity. They had probably been growing for centuries.

There was no sign of the boy. They stopped when the path turned a right angle to follow another hedge this time to the east. There was no point in just following the hedges unless they had an idea about what they should do.

Howard was hungry.

‘If we follow the hedge back a little way’ he said, ‘I think we’ll be near one of the lanes that goes past Hickling to Earls Court. We can join the lane and walk home’

‘I suppose it’s a waste of time. But I’m really curious. Which way do you think the path is going? At the last crossing point did you notice that the path went only one way?’

‘You mean that not all the hedges have paths?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Perhaps it means that the paths are a route, mainly. A route from one place to another’

‘From the Vale to the river. Or the river to the Vale. But there are lanes, paths and roads’

‘But travelling by the paths you can be seen’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

*********************************

It was still quite early, and although it had begun wet, the day quickly turned to a glorious Vale summer day. They walked silently along a narrow lane between very long grass back towards Earls Court. It was hot and the air was still. The air seemed heavy with pollen and smells of flowers that they passed that grew in hedges and in the grasses either side of the red soil tracks. The sounds, apart from the sound of passing bees and insects, were slow and lazy. Howard thought that the word ‘summer’ was perfect to describe it. In the sound of those two syllables was the buzzing of bees but also the heaviness and pleasing stillness of long days under the sun.

They were pleased to see the church tower at last, rising over a bank of dark trees. But the village was still and few people were out. An old lady, who occasionally baked bread that Howard and Mrs Van Dijk bought, sat on her doorstep in the shade of a hawthorn bush. It was too hot to do much work. Most people were probably lying in the cool inside, or working in their yards and gardens.

Inside the cool dark of the cottage they drank water and lay on the bed. Howard felt the pulsing of the blood in his body from walking so far in the heat. He was sweating still even though it was cool.

The heaviness of sleep came down on them. It was very unusual for either Howard or Mrs Van Dijk to sleep in the afternoon, but this day it was irresistible. Howard found that after very little time – or so it seemed – he was back in the woods of his dream of the night before, and it was getting dark.

Later he woke. It was warm in the tiny bedroom and his brow was wet with sweat. His neck was sweating as well. He wished he’d taken off his shirt before lying down. Mrs Van Dijk was still asleep, breathing heavily. He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. She was cool. Perhaps the dream had stimulated him in some way. He hadn’t felt frightened while he was dreaming, but now after waking there was a general feeling of undefined dread.

He stood and took off his shirt which was a little damp. Mrs Van Dijk began to wake. She never slept when he was moving in the bedroom, even when he tried to be very quiet. She seemed to know that he was awake.

She sighed quite loud and leaned over onto her side.

‘Did you dream?’

‘I did’

‘The same dream? You were whispering and kicking your feet out again’

She chuckled.

He got dressed again in another shirt and Mrs Van Dijk went into the kitchen. Outside the window, the evening was darkening – like in the dream – and night was coming.

She was sat at the table when Howard came into the kitchen. She had books on the table and was sipping from a large cup of water. She brushed her hair back from her forehead as she read.

‘You need a candle Lotte’

He brought one and he sat beside her. He realised he was still a little shaken by the dream. It was odd because the dream itself was not threatening, but he felt dissatisfied and uneasy after waking.

He looked at what she was reading: something in Latin about illness in children.

She stood up and closed the book abruptly.

‘What are you going to do?’

Howard had the feeling that she had already decided something. She would often think very hard while reading. Something would come to her while she was concentrating.

‘I’m going to make bread’

He hadn’t expected this reply.

*********************************

She waited for the oven to heat up and mixed the dough.

While the bread was baking she went back and opened the book periodically. She’d been given it in Wales - a gift from the abbey at Cymer. It was hard to read because it was selection of translations of Latin texts on health and disease – from several writers including Galen, the Romano Greek physician. The selection had been made by an English clergyman and published here in England. It was good to see what the writers said, but she was frustrated by the lack of detail and the way that the English compiler had sometimes made stupid choices. But she had got something interesting from reading.

Galen believed in the idea of melancholia, characterized by depression and withdrawal. In another selection in the book there was doctor describing symptoms of withdrawal that seemed to fit Grace and perhaps Christoper too, a refusal to make eye contact, a tendancy to misunderstand mood, abrupt changes of mood and strange and sudden outbursts. Mrs Van Dijk remembered that Grace had said some strange things to Howard about having children, and then suddenly had said that she didn’t want to talk to him. The same account by the doctor described children that found it hard to make friends, that became loners, solitary. But these solitary children could be intense and creative.

Howard had gone into the yard and was cutting wood and stacking it under canvas. He smelt the bread as he came in. Howard knew it wasn’t for him, and that Mrs Van Dijk had some kind of plan for the bread. So he sat breathing its rich smell. He was hungry but had to content himself with two old apples from the pantry.

But at the end of almost an hour Mrs Van Dijk took it from the oven and laid it on a tray on the table to cool. It was light in colour and the seeds were grainy inside. It was dense bread that would be good with butter and soup.

They stayed up late, Mrs Van Dijk still reading from the clergyman’s book, and Howard looking into the fire.

*********************************

Just before dawn, fear and dread came to Howard’s dreams again.

‘Howard, Howard… are you alright?’

He found that he was sitting up, Mrs Van Dijk looking up fearfully at him. There was early dawn light coming through the window.

‘Are you alright?’

He was breathing heavily. He put his hand out to stabilize himself. But he felt like he might fall from the bed.

She said: ‘you were calling, even shouting. Something about children’

‘I was dreaming’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. It was horrible, unsettling’

‘Howard, why did you shout out?’

‘There were small people like kids in a row dancing. A row of kids dancing’

‘But they weren’t kids?’

‘…and?’

‘They weren’t children. They were little people wearing masks. I couldn’t tell at first. The faces looked all the same - white – with a fixed smile. Then I saw that they were masks and as I realized this, they lifted the masks’

Howard looked out at the light coming through the window. The early day grey light. It looked terribly sad. He was saddened by the light of morning, even fearful of it.

‘They were not human. The faces were strange, long, distorted. Long noses, huge wide eyes; but not human eyes. Long teeth, in a kind of fearful smile’

Mrs Van Dijk was stunned. She sat stroking Howard’s shoulder looking into his sad face, his eyes staring out in front.

Later the mood of the dream began to recede. He sat with Mrs Van Dijk drinking tea at the table looking with longing at the newly baked bread.

She said at last. ‘I’ll make another later. This is for Grace. I’ll give it to her. You talk to Nathaniel this morning while I talk to Grace. I’ll give her the bread. It will get her talking. I’ll ask her about Christopher – try to find out what she believes’

She took her boots from beside the door and began looking for a bag to carry some fruit and the loaf.

‘But you’re alright now?’ she said.

‘Yes. Sorry to shout out’

‘It’s alright’ She patted his leg. ‘We’ll go now, to Nathaniel’s. The weather looks like it will be nice. We’ll take the milk to Stathern and earn some money for Nathaniel. But after I’ve talked to Grace’

*********************************

It was sunny again, but there had been a strong dew in the night so the long grass along the lanes - and the wheat  - was wet. The wheat had lost its dry yellow colour and was now the colour of damp sand. There were towering clouds rolling over one another in the distance, but they looked like the back end of a rain storm that was raging far away over the sea in the east. Mrs Van Dijk carried the bag of food. Howard walked behind, still thinking of his dream but not affected by it so much. The daylight was bright and burned away the fear and dread.

He wondered what Mrs Van Dijk was thinking as she strode ahead. He watched her boots make prints in the wet reddish mud on the paths between the wheat stems.

‘What is the loaf for?’

‘When I take her the bread I think she’ll want to know how I made it. Talk a bit about herself, perhaps. I’ll ask her about Christopher’

‘There’s some resentment of the boy. Maybe he isn’t Nathaniel’s son’

Howard watched the trees getting closer, and saw the clouds ahead recede even further as if they were being chased by the wind. Crows flew chaotically from the tree tops crying harshly. Perhaps Christopher was about somewhere. It was amazing, thought Howard, that neither he nor Mrs Van Dijk had even spoken to the boy yet. Perhaps they’d see him today, when they collected the milk.

But he was not there. As usual Nathaniel stood in the yard of the small cottage. He waved. He smiled politely and said hello in his mild way.

‘It’s nice to see you’

‘Your leg looks better’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Oh it is. I’ll be able to take the milk tomorrow.  But it would be nice if you could help today. I’ve milked the cows. There’s a lot of milk today’

‘Yesterday’s and today’s’ said Howard.

‘I have a present for Grace’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘I made her special bread with seeds’

Nathaniel was very happy. ‘Really? That’s nice of you. A loaf for Grace! She’ll love that. She used to cook, but since she’s been ill, I’ve cooked everything. And I’m a terrible cook’

His blue eyes shone. ‘Perhaps you could teach her how to bake again. I think she’s forgotten. You are really very kind’

He gestured to Mrs Van Dijk to follow him into the house. Howard waited and tried to lift the big milk barrel that was completely filled with milk. It was too heavy. He sat on the back of the cart to wait for them to return.

Nathaniel re-emerged.

‘They’re talking together. Mrs Van Dijk is very kind to help Grace. Grace has been so unhappy for so long. I never thought that something so simple would please her so much’

‘You’ll have to learn how to bake’ said Howard laughing.

Nathaniel laughed loud. He looked happier than for a long time.

They lifted the milk barrel onto the back of the cart. It rattled as they tied it to the cart’s deck with leather straps. Howard waited, sitting on the front seat behind the horse while Nathaniel drove the cows back into the meadow. The milk was beginning to warm up. He looked back at the cottage. There was no sign of Mrs Van Dijk. He called to Nathaniel.

‘I’ll go now and take the milk. It’ll get warm otherwise. Tell Lotte I’ve gone. I wonder what they’re talking about?’

He hoped that Mrs Van Dijk was talking about Christopher, but didn’t say this to Nathaniel. Howard thought more and more that the key to this unhappy family was Christopher.

*********************************

Howard didn’t see Mrs Van Dijk until he returned in the late morning with the cart and the empty milk barrel. It was now hot again, and the dew from the wet grass and the fragrant soil was rising in the air making the atmosphere very humid. White mist hung over the fields, and the woods were very dark in the shadows of the hot sun. Mrs Van Dijk was sitting outside on a bench with Grace in the shade of the overhanging thatch. They sat as though they were talking, but Howard couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the noise of the horse’s hooves on the cobbles.

When Mrs Van Dijk saw him she rose and spoke to Grace and patted the seated woman on her shoulder. They both smiled. Grace waved at Howard, stood then turned and went into the house.

‘Did you talk to Grace?’ asked Howard almost whispering.

‘A lot. She’s not mad just anxious - with a strange boy for a son’

‘Why is he strange?’.

‘Let’s talk when we walk. We’ll walk home’

‘Where’s Nathaniel?’

‘He’s out in the meadows, looking after one of the cows. Let’s go’

They walked through Collins Wood and set forth across the big wheat field on the far side. The field was magnificent. Like a huge enclosed space with the big trees behind and to the side. The diagonal path was like the centre aisle of a great church or cathedral. The sun was strong and the wheat had returned to its beige-yellow colour. The reddish soil was baked hard on the path, but Howard could see their tracks from the morning, so no one had come that way since. Christopher had not been on the path.

‘What did you find out?’

‘She thinks that Christopher is a substitute –  what in folklore is known as a changeling. She says that years ago, ten years ago, when the boy was about three, she and Nathaniel left Christopher in the house on his own for several hours because one of the cows had fallen in a stream and was drowning. They had to lift the cow with ropes and pull it from the water. It took hours, she said’

‘And what happened? Why did she think the boy was substituted?’

‘She says she thought he was different. The boy was distraught when they returned. She thought he seemed different’

‘Perhaps the boy was just nervous - anxious that his parents had left him?’

‘Yes I think that’s a likely explanation. But she thinks different’

‘She thinks that the boy changed from that day onward?’

‘Yes. She thinks he’s not her boy’

‘Did she describe him after they had returned from pulling the cow from the river? Did she explain the exact circumstances?’ asked Howard.

‘She doesn’t remember everything. She’s lived for years with the idea that a changeling - a substitute - lives in the house with them. I think she’s unstable’

‘But she still loves the boy?’

‘I think she does. She showed me his room. Filled with things that she made for him, knitted clothes and covers for the bed’

‘Was he there?’

‘No he’s rarely in the house in the daylight hours. She said that for months in the spring and summer, he doesn’t set foot in the house while it’s light and even stays out when the moon is full’

‘…and the boy’s mannerisms…what exactly does she say proves that he’s a changeling. Apart from being outdoors all the time’

‘She says he’s difficult, bad-tempered, unpredictable, melancholic, wrapped up in himself. He says nothing for days. Only eats at the table and goes to his room. She has some very old ideas about changelings. Probably because she learned some of the wisewoman’s tricks before she was married, she knows something of folklore. She has a book – by an old folklore writer – that describes the ways to recognize the changeling. Even how to treat him or her’

‘Treat him?’

‘Yes in the book it says that you can drive away a changeling by offering him beer in an acorn cup’

Mrs Van Dijk chuckled at the thought.

‘It says also that a bath in water with pansy flowers will drive away the changeling’

Howard laughed too imagining a boy in a bath full of flowers.

‘Can she see him at all, as just a boy?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, Howard?’

‘I mean… I know that he’s strange – being away all the time, never talking, uncommunicative. But this is the way that some young boys are.’ He smiled thinking of himself: ‘I was difficult sometimes – I spent hours outside – never coming home until evening. Maybe he’s just an ordinary boy?’

‘But you played with other boys, didn’t you? He’s always alone’

She stopped walking and looked ahead at the fields, trees and hedges between them and Earls Court.

‘… and what about the tunnels in the hedges?’ she said.

*********************************

The oppressive, humid heat made the cool interior of the cottage very inviting. Howard was quite tired after selling the milk around the villages, and as soon as they arrived he took the big bucket and poured himself several large cups of water. Mrs Van Dijk sat at the table and immediately began reading from her folklore book, The Magic of England. Howard sat beside her. The front window of the small cottage, that looked out on the lane and across to the churchyard was very bright with the sun and a shaft of light beamed onto the floor beside them. Dust spiraled in the beam. Howard sat idly, wondering if the air in the cottage was so full of dust everywhere.

After a while she read out loud:

A changeling is a creature in west European folklore and folk religion, typically described as the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. Changelings can be identified by their voracious appetite, malicious temper, unpredictability and solitary ways. A human child might be taken by fairies in order to act as a servant, or simply out of malice or hatred for humankind. In Wales, the changeling child (called plentyn newid in Welsh) initially resembles the human it substitutes, but gradually it grows uglier in appearance and behaviour: ill-featured, malformed, ill-tempered, given to screaming and biting. It may be of less than usual intelligence, but may also be wise and cunning.

She looked up. ‘Something like an old explanation for an illness of the mind’ she said.

She turned a few pages idly, her intense concentration seeming to wander, but then she began reading out loud again slowly and deliberately.

‘It says that some of these creatures – changelings – can be very creative and though they can’t communicate with words very well they can communicate by writing, by stories, by acting in plays. It seems that they need to adopt another character rather than themselves to be able to say what’s on their mind’

She put the book down and looked through the window at the trees in the churchyard. She was thinking.

‘What do you want to do?’ asked Howard. He knew that she could stay like this for hours.

‘We could go and talk to him, to Christopher’

‘Now? It’s already getting dark – maybe he won’t be there’

‘We can try. It’s not far. I feel some desperation between Grace and her son. I’m worried that something will happen’

*********************************

The sun was setting in the west and the wind blew up and they heard distant thunder. Great towering clouds were lit by short lightning flashes in the east – like floating lanterns blowing across the sky. Howard watched from the small window of the cottage, counting the seconds between the flash and the sound. Years ago his father had taught him that this was the way to tell how far the storm was. Each second in the time gap was a mile, his father had said. There was no rain on the window, but probably it would rain later.

They wore jackets ready for the rain but immediately felt hot. The temperature had not dropped at all despite the sun going down. When the wind blew hard, they could both smell the fresh sharp smell of lightning somewhere in the east. Now and then a single stray rain drop plummeted to earth, perhaps lost from a storm high up.

On the diagonal path across the wheat field they watched the wheat move back and forth violently and the tree branches to their left and ahead flying around. Howard thought that if the wind blew any harder the farmer would lose the wheat because it would be flattened, especially if heavy rain fell. He felt sorry for the farmers –always worried about what the weather was going to do to them.

The Smith’s cottage was dark. It was strange to be there at night. Howard had grown used to seeing Nathaniel in the yard, or the pastures near the cottage, calling out to them. But tonight it was silent. There was no smoke from the chimney either, so the stove was not burning. The black storm clouds were nearer and flashes from the west illuminated the sky every five minutes. Soon the rain would come.

They stopped in the yard, staying very quiet. Mrs Van Dijk looked around. It was very still. She knocked quietly on the door and it opened surprisingly quickly. Howard saw Grace’s white face in the dark, framed by the door. She murmured something to Mrs Van Dijk that he could not hear, but her face was troubled and she seemed to be shaking. She blinked rapidly and held out her hand to touch Mrs Van Dijk’s shoulder. Then she shut the door. Howard realized that Grace had been sitting in the dark in the room by the door.

‘What did she say?’ hissed Howard.

‘Christopher is not at home. He didn’t come home. She’s worried’

‘I’m not surprised. Where’s Nathaniel?’

‘He’s asleep. He doesn’t know’

‘Does Grace know which way the boy went?’

‘No. She just says he didn’t come home’

‘What do we do?’

‘Go to where we last saw him, where we know he goes a lot’

‘To the hedges?’

‘Yes. The rain’s coming. We are unlucky tonight’

*********************************

They walked in silence through the wind which was getting wilder every minute. Even the branches of small trees by the path were being thrown around, and the low grass was threshing this way and that. The clouds above were dark, and for a while there was no lightning, but they both thought that the rain was coming and when it came it might be better to be inside one of the strange hedge paths. They knew that they’d get wet wherever they were but at least the wind would not be so fierce.

The big ploughed field over which they had walked the day before was like an obstacle course in the dark and they stumbled over the furrows and felt the still-dry soil crumble under their boots. The tall hedge loomed in front like the steep side of a dark valley. It was still, even in the wind, but then the hedges were old and very rigid, made of the tangled stout roots and trunks of many small trees. Some of the hedges were older than the villages themselves, older than the farmers and their fields. This one ahead seemed strange and dark to them, but it was a place to shelter so they kept going.

The dark branches held an even greater darkness within, but squeezing between them they entered the tunnel and stood quiet. There was no one there. They looked up and down the dark pathway, just being able to see its tangled roof, and saw nothing.

But outside it began to change. The wind dropped. They could hear the sound declining, and peering out between the branches they could see the trees move more slowly and the grasses begin to stop swaying. Even stranger - above - the clouds that had collected in the last hour seemed to dissipate, almost as they watched. The black sky between was suddenly revealed. Gleams of moonlight edged across the clear dark and the curve of the moon came into view. It was milk white and they could see only part of it, but because of its slight curve, they imagined that the moon on this particular night would be huge, the size of the sun. Its light, greenish and silver, lit the passageway in front and behind through the tangled web of black branches. The path was clear. The smooth earth floor even shined as if many feet - bare feet - had passed that way. Howard and Mrs Van Dijk walked forward to the east following the route they had taken the day before, the moonlight guiding them.

They walked a long way until they reached a junction and turned northwest toward the river. The day before they had not reached the river, and they had no idea if the hedges went that far, but they both felt that the pathway was leading them to the river. It was perhaps two miles across fairly flat country, and the fields became bigger closer to the water. The sky continued to clear so that miraculously by the time they had reached half way across the flat river plain the sky had cleared completely, and it was like daylight.

Where the hedge path neared a wood they stopped, knowing that they had come further than ever before. They sat for a while, and talked in whispers. Neither of them knew why, but it felt that they were in a foreign country and they wanted to remain inconspicuous. They looked back along the pathway they had come. It was wide, wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Howard peered the other way trying to make out the condition of the path. He saw a globe-like light flicker, a brief bright spot, almost a flash.

‘Look’ he hissed. ‘A lantern?’

She narrowed her eyes.

‘Not a lantern. Not bright enough. Our eyes are used to the dark now. Something reflecting the moon?’

‘Quick. Be quiet.’

They rose and pursued the flash of light.

*********************************

After perhaps twenty rapid steps toward the light, or the reflection, it disappeared.

‘Keep going’, said Mrs Van Dijk.

They came to the place where the light must have been. It was a little darker at this point in the passageway, because the network of branches in the roof was very dense. A large trunk also grew up from the centre of the path.

Howard wondered if it was the right place. It was hard to judge distance in the dark, in the confined space of the hedgerow.

But there was a sound to the right of them through the dense undergrowth. They saw a little light, like a silver globe amongst the dark branches, like a little moon. But it wasn’t a moon, because it began to move. The bright object was a child’s head or his bright hair. The child stepped from the branches into the passageway and they saw how the moon’s light caught his hair so that it almost shone. It was remarkable.

Then the boy stood before them, curiously not looking into their faces but down at the ground before them. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his head tilted sideways slightly.

They were startled into silence. The boy had an extraordinary presence. He was so small but so quiet, and with his bright hair.

‘We were looking for you’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

The boy lifted his head and they saw his face for the first time. He was indeed just a boy, with fair skin, brown eyes, quite an ordinary face. The strangeness - the aura - came mainly from the hair which was so white as to be almost colourless. His face was chubby, his expression uncertain. There was no malice there at all. In fact both could see the kindness of Nathaniel in this face, and knew that this must be his son.

‘I am Christopher’, said the boy, as if reading their minds, understanding their realization.

His voice, even in the three short words, was faltering and curious. The boy spoke like he was speaking for the first time. He raised his hand to his lips and wiped them. Then looked down again. The light shone off his hair.

Mrs Van Dijk lowered herself, half sitting, half kneeling in front of the boy. She took his shoulders.

‘Your mother is looking for you’ she said firmly.

‘Yes’

‘Why are you out now, so late?’

‘I thought I would come out. She is angry about me. Usually my mother doesn’t know that I come here’

His speech was still very slow and deliberate, like a new, just-learned language.

‘Why? It’s late Christopher!’

‘I’m not like other boys. I know it and my mother knows it’. He raised his head and looked into their faces for the second time. Then looked down again.

‘I’m not like other boys’ he repeated.

*********************************

Mrs Van Dijk pulled from her pocket a large shiny apple. She held it out to Christopher who took it, almost snatched it. He bit into it and a little shower of moonlit apple juice arched from his biting teeth. He munched on the apple while Howard and Mrs Van Dijk tried to find a place to sit on the roots, next to the boy.

He ate the apple, not stopping to talk or look away until he had finished. He wiped his mouth finally and let the apple core fall to the floor of the passageway. He stood silent waiting for them to speak. He seemed polite, like a little school boy. There was nothing of the malignant changeling about him. He was perhaps smaller than a typical thirteen year old, and his way of standing was quite submissive, like he was used to being admonished. He never looked up.

Mrs Van Dijk tried to put him at ease.

‘Did you like the apple?’

‘Yes’

‘There are many more in my cottage in Earls Court. You can visit us if you like. You can eat as many apples as you want’

The boy’s face brightened. He licked his lips which must have been sweet.

‘Sit here Christopher’ said Mrs Van Dijk kindly. She patted a root next to her.

The boy seemed to like her immediately. He sat beside her and stretched his legs out across the floor of the passageway. His small hands grasped his knees.

‘Why did you come tonight?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Sometimes I like it here. It’s quiet. I walk a long way’

‘Did you make these passageways?’

‘Yes. I started a long time ago. Just cutting and moving branches. Only around here. This is as far as you can go in the passageways’

‘Where do they go?’

‘They were meant to go as far as the river, but it’s too far. I got tired and I stopped’

‘The passageways are for you?’

‘Yes. Perhaps for others too’

‘Which others?’

‘Well I’ve never seen them, but I believe there are others. My mother thinks so. They might come, bringing someone with them, so I made a passageway so that they could come without anyone knowing, or hearing their flapping feet’

‘They would come from the river, is that right Christopher?’

‘Yes. But I didn’t complete the tunnels to the river. I was tired’

*********************************

Though he was now quicker in his speech, the boy rarely looked at them and he seemed only half engaged, as if he would simply get up and leave at any moment. Mrs Van Dijk grasped his hand each time she asked him a question. She felt he wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t listen, unless her presence was clear to him.

Mrs Van Dijk asked again who the others might be, but Christopher said nothing. He started to hum a tune to himself and looked down at his hands. His hands were quite scarred and the nails were short and dirty. You could see that he spent much of his time outside.

Howard thought that since Christopher didn’t want to talk, they should perhaps begin walking back along the passageway to the farm. He stood. But Mrs Van Dijk held up her hand to stop him. He sat back down again.

She said: ‘Christopher, can I tell you a story?’

‘Alright’, came the reply. Christopher still didn’t look up and continued to study his hands.

‘If I tell you a story will you tell me one back?’

‘Alright’

‘What story would you like?’

‘A story of animals’

Mrs Van Dijk shifted on the tree root which was hard and uncomfortable. She tapped her foot thinking of a good story and then nodded.

‘Alright I’ll tell you the story about pigs’

She began:

There was once an old mother pig with three little pigs, and as she had not enough food to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune. The first pig that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him:

“Please, give me that straw to build a house”

The man did, and the little pig built a house with it. Presently there came along a wolf, and knocked at the door, and said:

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in”

To which the pig answered:

“No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin”

The wolf then answered to that:

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down”

So the Wolf huffed, and puffed, and he blew the house down, and ate the little pig.

The second little pig met a man with a bundle of sticks, and said:

“Please, give me those sticks to build a house”

Which the man did, and the pig built his house. Then along came the wolf, and said:

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in”

“No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin”

“Then I’ll puff, and I’ll huff, and I’ll blow your house down”

So the wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he huffed, and at last he blew the house down, and he ate the little pig.

The third little pig met a man with a load of bricks, and said:

“Please, give me those bricks to build a house with”

So the man gave him the bricks, and the last pig built his house with them. So the wolf came, as he did to the other little pigs, and said:

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in”

“No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin”

“Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in”

Well, he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and huffed; but he could not blow the house down. When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said:

“Little pig, I know where there is a nice field of turnips”

“Where?” said the little pig.

“Oh, in Farmer Smith’s field, and if you will be ready tomorrow morning I will call for you, and we will go together, and get some for dinner”

“Very well,” said the little pig, “I will be ready. What time do you mean to go?”

“Oh, at six o’clock”

Well, the little pig got up at five, and got the turnips before the wolf came. When the wolf arrived he said:

“Little Pig, are you ready?”

The little pig said: “Ready! I have been and come back again, and got a nice potful for turnips for dinner”

The wolf felt very angry at this, and thought that he would still like to catch the little pig somehow or other, so he said:

‘Little Pig, since I can’t blow down your house I’m going to climb down the chimney and eat you’

The wolf climbed onto the roof of the sturdy little house.

When the little pig saw what the wolf was doing, he put the turnip pot full of water, on a blazing fire. Just as the wolf was coming down, he took off the lid, and in fell the wolf. So the little pig put on the lid again in an instant, boiled up the wolf, and ate him for supper, and lived happy ever afterwards.

While Mrs Van Dijk told the story, the moon climbed the dark sky, and Howard become aware of time passing. He began to fidget which he knew would annoy Mrs Van Dijk. It must be late and they should think of getting home. But Christopher was very quiet, completely absorbed.

After she had finished, Mrs Van Dijk watched to see Christopher’s reaction. His hands grasped his knees again.

He said: ‘Why did the wolf want to eat the pigs?’

‘Because he was hungry. Just like you are sometimes, like we are’

‘But pigs don’t live in houses!’

‘They might sometimes, but they’re not able to build them’

They laughed a little at the thought of pigs living in a house.

‘I think the story’s about people’

‘What do you mean, Christopher?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘I mean that I think that the pigs are really people’

‘But why have pigs rather than people?’

‘I don’t know, but I think the story is about people being ready for things. Some people are ready and some aren’t’

‘Maybe you’re right, Christopher’

Mrs Van Dijk asked Christopher if he wanted to tell a story. The boy looked down again and scraped his bare heels on the mud floor of the passageway.

The boy opened his mouth to speak but then was silent again. He rose to his feet, and looking out over the fields behind, lit by the moonlight, said: ‘I should go home. It’s late’

The boy took the lead walking swiftly, his bare feet padding on the smooth mud ground. They followed the four or five hedge passageways taking two right angled turns back to Collins Wood. Both Howard and Mrs Van Dijk were very tired. They no longer took much notice of the strange silvery beauty around them. Howard thought that there were no beings, no fairies, in the tunnels, only this small boy. Though the boy was strange, he was not strange in a supernatural way. He seemed simply complex, maybe repressed. It was not what he had expected at all.

The front room of Nathaniel’s cottage had a small light burning, a candle. Probably Grace was waiting to see the boy. To Howard and Mrs Van Dijk’s surprise, as they neared the cottage, the boy’s pace quickened. He ran to the front door and went in quickly. They came to the door after a few seconds expecting to see Grace, but the door was already firmly closed and locked to them, and the light was already out. The cottage was silent.

Rather than call in, they left the cottage and set forth the last mile in the woods and across the big wheat field. But in the dark and the descending moon they hardly noticed the towering trees all around and the ink-black spreading shadows. They only wanted to sleep.

*********************************

Late in the morning, Howard walked down to one of the houses by the main gate to buy some bread. He took the bread back to the cottage. He thought he would sit in the back yard and read one his books. It was now almost lunchtime - they had slept long into the morning – so it wouldn’t matter if he and Mrs Van Dijk simply rested the day through, after all it was Sunday.

But not long after lunch, while Mrs Van Dijk was in the back yard cutting parsley for a recipe in the evening, Christopher arrived. They could tell someone was there but he was so small that you could miss him, standing on the doorstep. In the daylight, without the moon, his hair was less bright, less supernaturally luminous. Just as before he didn’t look up when he talked but spoke downward toward his feet.

‘I’ve come to tell a story’ he said.

Howard couldn’t help smiling to himself. The boy seemed so serious. He must have slept as little as they had. But nevertheless he seemed bright and alert. The boy’s presence was quite insistent as well. If the boy had been any other child, Howard would probably have sent him away saying that he should come back tomorrow, but there was no denying his intensity.

Christopher sat at the table. He looked with wonder at the many books on the shelves in the small room. The Smith family had books but not as many as were housed in the cottage in Earls Court. Howard assumed that with all his problems Christopher would not be able to read.

But he reached out and took the big book on the table, The Magic of England. He asked, looking down at its leather surface if he could open it. Howard said yes. He watched as the boy opened the pages and then followed a line of text with his finger. His lips moved.

‘You can read?’ asked Howard, surprised.

‘My Dad taught me to read to start with - and to write - and told me a lot of stories. Then I taught myself to read more difficult books. I can read one or two books’

‘You didn’t attend school – the school in Stathern?’

‘It’s too far and we don’t have enough money’

Howard looked around for Mrs Van Dijk. She would be surprised by this. She was in the yard. He waved at her through the window and she came in.

‘Hello Christopher’ she said. She was pleased to see him. ‘What are you reading?’

‘I don’t know’ The boy mumbled. It was difficult to hear his words sometimes. ‘Something about trees’

She looked over the boy’s shoulder.

‘It’s a book about healing with plants’ she said.

‘My mother has books, as well. She can read, and my father’

‘Does she know that you can read?’

‘I never told her but I think she knows’

‘Was she angry when you came home so late?’

‘Yes. I went straight to bed’

Mrs Van Dijk gave Christopher a cup of water from the big bucket. He sat quietly and drank. Then he pushed the open book back over the table.

‘I will tell you a story if you tell me another one’

‘Alright’, said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘You begin. But first can I ask you, do you have a lot of stories?’

‘I write them’

‘So you can write as well?’

‘I taught myself to write stories’

It was strange to be told a story by a boy, but Christopher was clear about his story from the beginning. It was as if he had told it many times before – either to himself or to others – or had rehearsed it while walking from Collins Wood to Earls Court.

The story was called The Stolen Woman. He began:

There was a boy who lived with his father by the sea on a remote coast far to the north. The trouble was that the boy’s mother had disappeared one night when she had gone out of the small house by the beach to collect beach wood for the fire.

The boy and his father lived for a year together, and although they were sad, they were able to survive without her.

On one stormy night the boy was out on the hills behind the beach in search of his few goats, and he met a band of goblins who were walking on one of the high windy paths. He was frightened at first, but then he saw that they were small, though their voices were loud. Two of the goblins carried a large object in a sack. The boy wondered whether the sack contained treasure and remembered that goblins are forced to exchange whatever they carry with anyone who offers them anything, however low in value. So the boy - thinking quickly - threw down his old battered hat on the path between them. He said the words that should make the goblins exchange their goods: ‘mine is yours and yours is mine’. Then he waited.

The goblins dropped the sack and took the old hat grumbling loudly because they knew they had been tricked.

The sack began to move around and a voice cried from inside. The goblins ran off into the stormy night, their big bare feet flapping on the path, leaving the boy with the treasure.

The boy opened the sack and realized happily that his mother was inside. He helped her walk home and while they walked she told him that the goblins had stolen her to sell her to a goblin king and that she was being taken that very night to be given to him.

‘But you’ve been away for a year’ said the boy.

‘No, only for a few hours’ replied his mother.

Just then the boy realized that in the human world time passes more slowly than in the supernatural world, and that for him and his father a few hours in the goblin world had been a year of human time.

But this didn’t matter because his mother was back. He helped her into the house by the beach, lit with a bright fire in the stove, and there the family lived together, happy ever after.

Howard was astonished by the clarity and simplicity of the story, and the assured way that the boy told it. Howard himself sometimes told stories to the children in Earls Court and he wasn’t sure that he could tell a story better than young Christopher. The boy was a born storyteller. But as soon as he had finished speaking, he returned to silence and characteristically looked down at the floor watching his feet which were now enclosed in shabby boots.

‘It’s a wonderful story, Christopher. Is it your own – did you make it up?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk quietly.

‘Yes. There are similar stories in my mother’s books. But this one I like because something that the fairies stole is returned’

‘What’s the meaning of the story?’

‘That you should look after your mother and not let her go out into the storm at night alone to gather wood - and that the goblins can be made to return what they’ve stolen’

Howard grinned at Mrs Van Dijk. She had expected a more symbolic answer.

But Christopher was already thinking ahead. With determination he said:

‘But now I want another story from you. Can you tell me one?’

Mrs Van Dijk sat down on the stool by the stove and smoothed her skirt over her knees. She thought for a moment and then told the story of Hansel and Gretel. She told it slowly in a soft voice and sometimes she used her hands to give emphasis to the words. When she described the ugly witch that lived in the gingerbread house she made a long nose by gesturing with her hands.

The boy sat transfixed and even looked up to see Mrs Van Dijk’s face as she spoke. He silently followed every word.

She finished the story, describing how the father found the children again after they had escaped from the witch. Christopher brought his hands to his face and silently clapped because the story had turned out so happily.

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘did you like it, Christopher?’

‘Yes. But I was scared’

‘The witch frightened you?’ said Howard. ‘Fattening up the children to eat’

‘No. I was most frightened by the stepmother. That she would allow the children to be left in the forest, to be abandoned, to be left alone. It was evil, a terrible thing’

*********************************

Christopher said very little after the story had finished. He looked at the books on the bookshelf beside the table, and then periodically at his muddy boots. Mrs Van Dijk offered him a book to read, a book of stories of the Greek myths, and the boy took it feverishly, as if he were worried that she would withdraw the offer.

He left the cottage soon after.

It was a beautiful day. It was hot and humid and the monotonous drone of bees outside was the only sound.

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk sat in the tiny backyard. In the midafternoon most of the inhabitants of Earls Court were asleep, because it was Sunday and because of the heat.

Howard was still intrigued by the boy, and confused about what was going on between him and Mrs Van Dijk.

‘What do you think of him?’ he asked.

‘Who?’

‘You know who I mean. The boy. Christopher’

‘Are you jealous?’ She grinned.

‘No. Of course not. But I don’t understand what’s going on. These stories’

‘Neither do I, Howard’

‘But this story telling…’

‘He’s experimenting. I think the boy rarely communicates’

‘But his story was very clear and thoughtful. He’s clever’

‘Very’

Mrs Van Dijk was quiet. She looked up at the sky and then plucked a grass stem. She was thinking.

‘He’s trying to communicate. He tells us things through stories’

‘Why?’

‘It might be because he can’t say things that he feels, like his anxiety about his mother. I’ve heard of this once before’

‘A boy that told stories to communicate things?’

‘No, even stranger. It was a boy that spoke through a puppet, a farm boy from an isolated farm, years ago. He held a glove puppet and he pretended that the puppet spoke. A strange case’

‘Why did he become like that?’

Mrs Van Dijk sighed. ‘I don’t know. But Christopher is different, I think – not a lost cause. I think that his mother, Grace - who is very sensitive and maybe unstable – decided for some reason that he is not normal. That he is in fact this thing – a changeling. She decided when he was young. Perhaps after they left the boy in the house to rescue the cow. Perhaps Christopher was very unsettled and upset about being left. He behaved oddly. When Grace returned the boy seemed different to her. Probably he was always a little strange – solitary, quiet, a little bit inert’

‘He does seem that way. Inert. Unemotional’

‘So Grace decided at that moment that he was a substitute, a changeling. Perhaps to assuage her guilt or to distract her from worrying’

‘What guilt?’

‘The guilt at having left the boy on his own for so long, and because he is so quiet and withdrawn’

‘But it wasn’t her fault. They had to save the cow’

‘All mothers feel guilt. Perhaps she also felt some guilt or unhappiness at his strangeness, even before the incident with the cow. He’s probably always been quiet and solitary’

‘So she covered it, made it bearable, by blaming fairies. By saying he was a changeling?’ said Howard.

‘It might be. I think this is an old habit, an old tradition. Like long ago leaving children in the forest when the family can’t afford to feed them. That story, Hansel and Gretel, has some of this old horrible truth in it’

Howard was stunned. He picked up the thread of Mrs Van Dijk’s idea.

‘So he’s an ordinary boy – perhaps not quite ordinary – but he got stranger because of the way his mother treated him?’

‘And his mother being a wisewoman – was very sensitive to these old ideas of changelings and fairies’

‘So now the boy is even odder’

Mrs Van Dijk sighed again at the sadness of it. She continued: ‘Every day of his life in recent times his mother has treated him as if he is some kind of substitute. Of course she’s very strange herself. No wonder he can’t communicate. Poor boy - I think he believes he’s a changeling’

‘Yes. Poor boy’

‘We should wait to see what his other stories say’

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’

‘I’m sure he will. He’s very interested’

But it was several days before Christopher returned.

*********************************

The weather changed in the night. Before sleep, Howard heard the wind swirling around the house and distant thunder. Finally he heard drops of rain on the window. With this reassuring sound he slept properly, and his sleep was empty of dreams – a long journey down into the dark and then back up, but without incident. In the early light he returned to the waking world to hear more steady rain. Howard had slept in the room for so many years that he knew from the quality of the light coming through the window how the sky was. Today it would be low and grey and filled with water ready to fall on the fields and the woods.

But it was Monday, and he had to work.

He rose early, trying not to disturb the sleeping Mrs Van Dijk. In the dark, he banged his knee (which he did nearly every morning) trying to find his trousers and boots. He opened the adjoining door between the bedroom and the living room and this allowed enough light for him to see what he was doing. The slow grey light spread across the stone floor as he walked quietly in feet clothed in woolen socks.

In the kitchen he drank some water and ate an apple and some bread. He put on his jacket and boots and opened the door.

Water was falling from the lintel over the door in a thin curtain. The front garden was green and washed bright by the rain. Water droplets hung like silver beads in the hedge and the stone doorstep was dark with rain. There was the kind of quiet that steady rain brings, and a kind of intimacy from the low close sky.

He set out into the rain.

He was going a few miles to a wood that enclosed a very small pond. The pond had been a place to water cattle and sheep in the years gone by, but the farmer had stopped keeping livestock, and preferred to grow wheat and barley. So now the pond was surrounded by a few dense trees and this little island was itself surrounded by a vast monotonous sea of wheat.

Howard knew that the farmer wanted the wood - the few trees that remained - to be cut back even more, so that he could increase the amount of land for his wheat. Howard was sorry, for though he liked the wheat, he loved the trees more. Moreover the pond - which he remembered from when he was a boy - had been a place where small fish could be caught and was a quiet place in the sunshine where hundreds of big dragonflies flew.

But he had a job to do and would be paid, probably in potatoes or apples or bread, at the end of the week. He’d cut back the bigger branches and cleared some of the grass between the trunks.

It was very wet. The rain became heavier and perfectly constant as if were being thrown down rather than falling naturally. Half way along one of the lanes, Howard stopped because he thought he would be wet through even before he started work. He stood under a wide-spreading willow tree with dense low slung branches of yellowish strap-like leaves. In the green, dark canopy he watched the rain drench the fields and listened to it rattling the branches above his head.

As he watched, he thought of Christopher. He wondered what the boy would do on a day like this. He was probably, like him, sheltering under a tree. The boy spent most of his time outside in the summer and so probably knew well how to keep dry. Probably he was now only a few miles away in one of the hedges that was like a corridor between columns in one of the great cathedrals. He wondered what the next stories would be that would pass between him and Mrs Van Dijk. But he wasn’t sure about the use of the stories, and didn’t understand why people just couldn’t be straight with each other. It would be a lot simpler.

He looked around under the canopy of leaves at the bright green fields and the woods bowed low under the rain, and began to wonder at the landscapes that inspired the stories that made people think and dream, and also the cruelty of the land that would make parents so cruel to their children.

The stand of trees was very dark and seemed smaller than the last time he had visited. Perhaps the farmer had already been cutting? In the low hollow between the trees, the pond -  which was no bigger than the small square in Earls Court - was dark green and its surface decorated with a lacework pattern of algae and fallen leaves. No fish moved below that green crust today. They were under the surface out of the rain too, thought Howard. No dragonflies flew.

He began to clear the grass and the bushes close to the edge. It was wet and his boots dropped several times into black smelly mud. He disturbed sleeping frogs, and a large bird flew off making a repetitive noise like an outraged shout.

The morning went slow, and though the rain was weaker than before it was still persistent and penetrative. Even with his jacket, Howard was soon wet. Water poured down his neck and back. His boots were like filled cups, and water ran from his sleeves over his hands. Normally he would have found some shelter and eaten some lunch to continue work in the afternoon, but because it was so wet Howard decided to work through his lunchtime and go home early. He would do everything he had to, but would avoid another hour under the rain.

It became drier in the early afternoon and by the time Howard was well on the way to Earls Court the sun began to emerge from thick banked clouds to make a weak milky light. His clothes began to dry out a little but his boots sounded like squashed fruits.

Entering the cottage and wondering where he would put his wet clothes, Howard stood for a minute in the doorway and called for Mrs Van Dijk. He thought she could light the fire to dry his boots and trousers. But she came from the bedroom holding a sheaf of papers in her hand, with a puzzled expression on her face. She must have been reading. She held the papers out to him.

‘Howard - a strange story from Christopher - I think you’ll recognize it’

*********************************

Howard sat down and took off his boots. His jacket dripped around him. But Mrs Van Dijk had lit the fire as well as the stove, so the room was very warm. If he left the jacket and the boots by the fire, they’d soon be dry.

Howard put the papers on the table not wanting them to get wet. They were covered with an indistinct dense scrawl of writing. There were a lot of pages too.

‘What’s the story like?’

‘Very strange. Read it Howard’

Ignoring the dampness of his trousers around the knees and cuffs, he began to read:

A man and a woman had a child that they loved very much. They had high hopes for him. The father wished the child would help him on his farm and eventually become a farmer. The mother wished for the boy to grow up tall and strong and also to be able to look after her and talk to her when she and her husband grew old.

They lived on a farm in flat farm country in England, a long way from the sea. The country was beautiful.  There were great broad fields of wheat and barley, and between were woods of thick ancient trees. There were small villages where many of the farmers lived, and lanes that had existed for centuries led between them and to the small towns. A large lazy river drained this land and wound slowly to the east where it joined a cold grey sea on a flat coast lined with lonely sand dunes.

In the summer the man and woman worked hard with their wheat and barley and few cows and goats, and the woman grew vegetables in a small kitchen garden. The summer was long and warm. They tried to make sure they had enough for the winter. But the winter was always a struggle because it was also long and cold and sometimes the weather seemed to have frozen everything, even their own will and strength to make the farm a success.

This is why the new child – a boy – was so important to them. Apart from the joy of seeing him each morning in his cot, they also thought of him as big and strong in a few years - and how the farm would prosper. But the boy was still young. His hair was bright blond and most of the time he lay on his back smiling up at his mother or making gurgling sounds of contentment to his father.

One morning the mother and father were called away because an animal was sick in one of the fields. There was no one to look after the child, but the mother thought that she and her husband would only be away for a little while, and that they would only be a few fields away. So they went, leaving the boy in the cot asleep.

It took longer than they thought to tend to the animal, and so it was not until many hours later that they returned.

There was a terrible noise in the little cottage. They heard it approaching the front door and rushed in fearing some terrible accident. At first they were relieved to see that the boy was still there in the cot.

But he was not at all the quiet boy of before. He was standing up rattling the cot’s bars, and looking fiercely over the side at the two shocked parents. His hair was still pure and blond and long, but his face, transformed by pure anger, was pink and hot.

The mother tried to calm the baby that day, but later and over a period of time she realized that the boy had changed. He was no longer placid. He had become angry. He shouted and screamed most of the time. He slept for short periods, then woke raging at something or someone. But there was never anyone there.

They were frightened and worried and so the woman, who was a believer in magic, called a wise woman to the cottage to see the boy. The witch took one look and pronounced that he was a changeling, a substitute. The fairies had left a being that looked like their child, but taken their real child with them.

When the worried parents had paid the wise woman with a few pennies, she told them that there were a few things that could be done. The changeling could be treated to destroy it. When it was destroyed, the old woman said, the real child would return.

The mother asked how.

There were many ways. The changeling could be bathed in water soaked in flowers. He could be made to drink beer from an acorn cup.

But then the witch shook her head saying that in her opinion, these ways were unreliable. There was another better way.

The mother and father, now very distressed and willing to try anything, asked frantically what the other way was.

‘Why’, said the witch, ‘the only other way is to go and find the fairies that took your boy and steal him back’

*********************************

Howard stretched his legs and raised his eyes from the paper. He felt the warmth of the fire reach across the room, warming his knees and slowly drying his trousers. Mrs Van Dijk had remained quiet all the while he had been reading. Unusually for her she was not doing anything, and seemed focused on Howard’s reaction.

‘It’s amazingly well written, for a boy’ he said.

‘I don’t think he wrote it in one go. There are some spelling mistakes but I think he wrote the story elsewhere and copied onto this sheet. Continue – I want to hear what you think’

Howard looked down at the closely written sheets again:

The couple asked the wise woman where they should go to retrieve their son, and she replied that almost all fairies lived in Wales, and this was because they originated in Ireland and had come across the sea centuries ago to try to colonize Britain. But the fairies had been confined in the Celtic parts, west Wales and Cornwall, and had never been able to penetrate far eastwards. They lived in the thick woods at the base of mountains and were afraid of open country.

So the father and mother decided to travel to west Wales, which was many many days away. They left their substitute boy with the wise woman who put him to work in her herb garden immediately, and a few coins for his upkeep. They boarded up the windows of their farmhouse and locked the doors. They asked a nearby farmer to look after the goats and cows and set off for the far west.

They travelled for days, sometimes on farmers’ carts, sometimes in coaches, but most often simply walking on endless lanes between fields. They slept in farmers’ barns, or if they were lucky in a friendly farmhouse. A few times they slept under the trees or in the shelter of hedges. But the couple were poor and so needed to save what money they had for when they arrived in Wales.

The flat lands of England slowly gave way to rolling, tree covered gentle hills with high pastures on top. In these places - though they seemed foreign -  English was still spoken. They had heard that in the far west, where they were heading, only Welsh was spoken – that and fairy languages.

A long valley led amongst these hills, and they walked along a tree lined lane for almost two days until they saw that the valley sides had become higher and higher. The lane began to rise steeply and now to the side there were no trees, only open grassland and great grey boulders and rushing streams. This was the gateway to Celtic Wales, the last place where English was spoken.

At the top of the gateway they stood and looked down into Wales. It was a cloudy and mountainous place. In the far distance was the blue sea, but all around them were thick woods of low twisted trees and these clothed the hills in deep darkness, and the steep slopes plunged into the sea in the west. It was in these woods that the fairies lived, and where their boy was kept captive.

They stayed for days in a smoky village of Welsh people who were neither friendly nor unfriendly. They tried to communicate with their hosts, explaining that they had come to get their boy. But the hill people were frightened of the fairies and avoided the dark woods, trying only to gain a living from the meadows along the streams and rivers and above the windy beaches.

An old man told them that they might find their boy and retrieve him – if they could offer something in exchange. But they would have to go amongst the woods every day calling their boy’s name and shouting to the fairies. Only then would they reveal themselves.

But they spent days in the woods amongst the twisted roots and the lichen that grew off the branches like ancient beards. They called and called and held out the little gifts that they had bought in the village that they hoped to exchange for their boy. They sat by streams watching for movement, watching for the beloved blond hair of their boy. They waited until after dark and sometimes stumbled back in the darkness to the village exhausted. Their money was running out and they would have to leave soon.

But one morning when the rain began to fall , they were in very deep woods, where the trees were taller than usual. Below them was a deep ravine and they could hear the loud rushing of water. After a while stumbling amongst the boulders and after calling their son’s name, they began to hear music.

Howard stopped reading. It was extraordinary! A shiver of strange realization moved up his spine. He looked across at Mrs Van Dijk who was smiling a little, watching his reaction.

‘You’ve got to the interesting part’

‘Yes’ he said.

He began to read faster returning to the manuscript.

The music came from all around. Not from a single source. It filtered through the trees. The path on which the couple had been walking appeared to stop at a slightly open area, a natural bowl shape. At the back of the bowl was a wooden structure covered by a thick rich curtain. The music was louder now, coming from above and behind the structure.

The couple were astonished, because they had never seen anything so strange or beautiful since they had come to the wild woods of Wales. In front were lines of seats, made cunningly from the stumps of cut down trees and branches. Without thinking they sat - to listen to the music – and because they felt, somehow that their journey had come to an end

Howard murmured: ‘Like I dreamed’

‘Yes’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘It’s amazing. What happens in the story?’

‘Read Howard and find out!’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

*********************************

The music floated from the trees around and from the structure which they realized was some kind of stage, part of a woodland theatre. Drops of rain began to fall and it began to get dark. Thunder called across the hills.

All at once the music became a little louder and lanterns started to drop from the trees around on very thin silver cords. The two were entranced, and even began to forget for a minute why they had come to Wales.

At last the curtain began to move and they were sure that there were people behind. The music began to fade and the curtains divided in the middle. The two couldn’t see at first, and all appeared dark on the stage behind the curtain. But in the widening gap they saw the polished floor of the stage and the back of the structure which had been decorated with a scene that seemed like an English village. There were drawings of a thatched cottage and a tree. But the scene was strangely unreal and looked false. The cottage was smaller and lower than a real English cottage and the tree was rounded and bright green, more like a child’s drawing of a tree than the real thing.

When the curtains were wide, they could see nothing but the stage and the painted scene.

After a moment, a small figure walked onto the stage from the back. Its face was not clear but the clothes were typical of a farmer of the Vale or a countryman of any part of England. The figure wore a battered old hat that had a steep wide brim that hid the face. But even without the brim there was an indistinctness about the face.

The figure moved around waving its arms, running and jumping. It was silent and there was no music. They could hear the thumping flapping sounds as the big wide feet of the figure pounded the stage. But the figure was small, tiny. No bigger than a child.

The two observers were dumb struck. They stared silently at the antics of the figure. They held hands silently, not moving their eyes from the action.

Then another figure appeared. This was plainly supposed to represent an English country woman. It wore a long dress and a head scarf and rather than jumping and striding about the stage, the figure twirled in the dress in a slightly ridiculous grotesque way, as it were trying to imitate some notion of femininity. The second figure was silent too, even its huge paddle-like feet made no noise.

The spectators moved uncomfortably, trying to grasp for meaning.

‘It’s a play’, whispered the man.

‘Who are they supposed to be?’

Both were silent, but both realized simultaneously that the grotesque figures - the tiny man and woman - were supposed to represent them.

After a minute the dancing was finished. It was still silent. The two figures stood either side of the stage. They didn’t look at the spectators but into the distance.

An even smaller figure stepped from behind a screen at the back the stage. It walked unsteadily between the two. It had a large hood.

The female figure took the hooded figure – which seemed to represent a child - in its arms. It twisted and turned with the child and made a low moaning sound.

The observers suddenly became aware of their surroundings as the female figure moaned, holding the figure with the hood. It was almost dark. Only the lanterns around provided light, and that light was fitful and weak.

Even the lanterns now darkened, and the stage was just visible with its three tiny figures.

A fourth figure appeared, completely silently. It was dressed differently, in greens and browns, like wood or leaves. Its face was ugly and long; even in the dark it was frightening and strange. But the figure moved fast. In a second it had grasped the small hooded child. It took the child from the mother in a rapid movement and moved to the back of the stage. As it did so the hood fell back in a quick movement and bright blond hair flowed out. It was so bright in the lantern light.

The two spectators stood, triggered by the light from the blond hair, suddenly galvanized by the memory of their own child. The man, overcome with emotion and grief, howled and shook his fist at the stage and moved forward to climb onto its polished surface, but as he did so the lights disappeared instantaneously as if they had never been.

The two felt for each other in the deep dark. There was no one else there. No stage, no light, no music. They were alone in a dark valley, far from home.

The two climbed and crawled back to the village at the base of the wooded slope, and arrived freezing and wet.

In the morning, after sleeping long, they got up and sought the advice of a wise man in the village. The old man looked at their tired, unhappy faces, scratched with the cuts of thousands of branches and thorns, and felt terribly sorry for them.

But he had to tell them the truth.

The truth was that the fairies had heard their sad calls in the woods day after day. The fairies had indeed taken the child in England and brought him here to the dark woods. But the little play was the fairies’ way of telling the unhappy parents that the boy had been taken forever, and would never be returned.

The woman was devastated by this news. She cried and raged in the old man’s hut, saying she wished she had never come to Wales.

Her husband calmed her.

The old man continued, saying that the fairies had taken pity on then. It was gracious of them to try to explain what they had done with the strange play at night in the woods. They would usually not do this. The fairies were powerful. They could hide themselves so that no human would ever see them. They only revealed themselves to humans when they wanted to.

The old man said solemnly that the couple should go home. The child would never be returned to them. They would be better going back and living with the changeling.

The tearful woman looked at the old man and asked if the little hooded figure with the blond hair had indeed been their own child.

The old man replied that it was unlikely. Their boy would be changed. Perhaps he would be somewhere out in the woods. But he would be part human, part fairy now, and maybe he would not even recognize them.

The two parents of the boy left Wales heartbroken and lived for many years mourning the loss of their blond boy. But in time they took kindly to the changeling and grew to love him so that he was like a son to them.

Howard finished reading and looked up from the damp paper with its scribble of writing. Mrs Van Dijk was still sitting opposite him, but there were tears in her eyes.

*********************************

‘Are you sad?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know’ she murmured. Her eyes were luminous and shiny.

‘Because the boy was gone forever?’

‘Maybe’

Howard said: ‘Why did Christopher write about his parents accepting the changeling’

‘Maybe he thinks he is a changeling. He wrote about what he hoped would happen, perhaps in the future’. Mrs Van Dijk sniffed loudly: ‘Maybe not so sad. After all, the boy was free. Free as one of the fairies to roam the hills, to walk in the woods or by the sea’

Howard laughed. ‘Which boy do you mean, now? Christopher or the boy in the story?’

‘Perhaps both’. She sniffed again but more hopefully.

‘Why does he write these stories? So odd, to speak – to communicate – like this’

‘It is. Not only that…’ Mrs Van Dijk got up and walked to the bedroom and returned with more closely written sheets of paper. ‘See - there are other stories. He brought them today’

‘He’s clever like his father’ Howard said.

‘His mother thought his self-absorption, his reticence, was the sign of a changeling. And it got worse after. He can’t communicate in a normal way with his mother, so he began to write stories, where he imagined his mother’s mind’

‘Do you really think he believes he’s a changeling?’

‘Don’t know. Remember he said I am not like other children’

Reading the story had taken a long time. Howard looked out of the window and he could see that the sun was lowering in the west behind the church tower. The sky was bluish green and there were streaks of luminous silver clouds. He knew already that outside it was beginning to get cold. Even inside he could feel cool air gathering on the stone floor. It would be a while before it was dark, and the room, the village, had an autumn melancholy. But it was not unpleasant.

‘It will be cold tonight’ he said.

‘We can light the fire in the bedroom’

It was the first night they had lit the fire for months, and so this marked the beginning of autumn. Howard thought that he should perhaps read the other stories, but his eyes were sore from trying to follow the small writing.

They sat beside the fire as they always did: their legs outstretched. The fire took quickly because the wood from outside was warm and dry from the sun. They stared into the flames and watched the light fade from the window.

‘Did you read the other stories?’

‘Some. They’re good. Always about lost or abandoned children. The one you read was the best’

‘I don’t know how we can help him, or his dad – or his mum’ said Howard sadly.

But in the months that followed they did help the family. Howard could not afford to help Nathaniel with the milking or on his farm because in the autumn and winter he had to work harder in the woods to earn some money and buy food and because there was more demand for wood. But Mrs Van Dijk regularly went to the farm in the autumn and winter months.

She discovered that Grace had never read one of her son’s stories and had no idea even that he wrote them. It was Mrs Van Dijk that read her one, in the late afternoon of a rainy late autumn day when the dark had descended quickly and Howard was still in the woods.

Grace was astonished to hear the story and to realize that her wayward boy had written it. She didn’t really hear the subject or understand it much at first, being absorbed by her surprise that the boy could write at all, but Mrs Van Dijk encouraged her to think of the story’s meaning, and as she did, her attitude began to change.

Christopher still went out most days and no one saw him much, but as the autumn became cold and wet he came home earlier and took to sitting quietly by the fire by his mother. He also came sometimes to the cottage in Earls Court. He rarely brought stories and seemed not to be writing them anymore. But when Howard asked about this, the boy simply said that it was too cold in the autumn to write, and that his hands were too cold to hold a pencil, or that the rain made the paper too wet. Besides he found that he talked to his mother more.

After the New Year passed, Mrs Van Dijk said that Christopher had stopped going out all day, and in the short winter days had started helping his mother with cooking and his father with distributing hay for the cattle. He came a little less to Earls Court. When he did, Howard and Mrs Van Dijk were surprised by the speed of his growth and by the way that his speech was more assured.

Mrs Van Dijk was still friendly with the family and for years after, sometimes called at the farm. Christopher became known as Chris and grew into a tall farmer. He married a local girl and ran the family farm for his mother and father for many years. But he stopped wandering alone in the woods and never - as far as Howard and Mrs Van Dijk knew - ever wrote another story. Also he never again mentioned the changelings or the fairies in the woods in the far west of Wales - as long as he lived.

Secretly Mrs Van Dijk was a little saddened by the way that Chris had become a simple farmer transformed from a strange troubled boy, and often used to wonder how he might have become a great story teller. But she knew also that sometimes creativity came from adversity, and from strangeness, and that ordinary things could never hold or tolerate magic. The two were opposed and one could not occur with the other.

But there was one thing that pleased her that autumn. It was not long after the evening when Howard had read Christopher’s story. Howard had left the cottage to collect wood from across the fields to replenish their stock in the yard. It was very dark and there was an uneasiness about the countryside. She felt it, and even Howard did. He returned an hour later with wood under his arm, breathing heavily. His face was red from walking fast, and his eyes looked alert.

In a hurried voice he told Mrs Van Dijk how he had just ordered the main village gate to be shut and locked firmly. While walking across the fields on the way home he had seen a shape moving very fast across the grass. The shape had been very dark. He had heard a noise that he was familiar with, and knew that he had to return to the village to warn people quickly and get the gate shut.

The wolves had returned to the Vale.

© M H Stephenson 2025