Foxlowe. Eleanor Wasserberg
in ages!
She gripped my wrists and we spun around, throwing our heads back so our mouths filled up with rain, and spouting the water out like fountains. Screaming happily in the wet gusts, we slid around on the muddy grass, throwing clods at each other and for the dogs to catch. Numb skinned, we gasped and pushed streaming water out of our eyes, ran and whooped across the back lawns, through walls of nettles, not feeling the stings in the wet. We darted straight into the copse and stood panting under the cover of a clutch of trees. I called for Blue again.
—Let’s race, Freya said, and sprinted out towards the Standing Stones. The rain plunged in bursts when we rushed into spaces not covered by the trees, the soil churned under our feet, released its scent, making me hungry. Freya caught me and scooped me into a hug. I breathed in her skin, knowing I might not get her all to myself again, perhaps for years or ever.
—Well, she’s not here, said Freya, panting.
—She might be at the Stones, I said. I didn’t want to go back to the house yet, to the Family.
—Past the stone wall? Freya said.
—She might, I said.
Blue wasn’t allowed past the stone wall alone. But she loved to clamber onto the Standing Stones, or try to loosen them with all her weight. Once, leaning down so his hair brushed her cheek, Toby had told her that he could move the Stones around like empty boxes, arrange them in patterns, that she could do the same when she was big and strong. Then we lay against the biggest stone, me and Toby, our feet resting atop one another, shuddering with laughter, watching Blue’s toes slide on the grass, trying to shift the ancient markers, their stone roots running deep.
We were both quiet for a while, thinking about Blue getting bigger. Then we headed for the stone wall, made long before the Founders’ time, spilling rocks onto the moor like broken teeth. From there we looked back at Foxlowe, lying under the rain like something glimpsed at the bottom of the fountain. Candles were lit in the storm-gloom, and the small shapes of dogs huddled against the back walls, shaking out their fur.
—Looks just like when I came, Freya said. —It was raining then, and I came this way, over the moor. She smiled at me, a full, open smile, and squeezed out my hair for me. —Come on, tramp, she said, and we set out towards the Stones.
—What’s a tramp? I said. I had to shout over the rain and the rumble of the sky.
—An outside thing.
—Why am I one?
—You’re not really, she said. —You have a lovely big home and everything you’ll ever need. You’re a scruff, that’s all. Sometimes, Freya said, —sometimes I wonder how you’d look, if we, if you were outside, all scrubbed and dressed like them.
Then Freya was quiet, so I asked if we could play All The Ways Home Is Better, and I remembered them all, in the correct order:
1. We are FREE
2. We are a NEW BETTER KIND OF FAMILY
3. We have a NEW BETTER KIND OF EDUCATION
4. We are CONNECTED to the ANCIENT WAY OF LIVING and to the ANCIENT LANDSCAPE
5. We are SAFER because we know THE BAD and call it by name.
Beyond the stone wall, our copse merged with the moor and turned into a steep climb. You could hear the outside roar from here: a strip of road, the edge of the world. Today the rain cloaked the sound, and we climbed in silence, tugging at grasses.
The Standing Stones were eight stones, green with algae and moss, so they seemed to grow out of the grass. The Stones were as tall as Dylan, broad and solid, immovable. From here we could see the double peak of the Cloud, and the moor rolling down in valleys all the way to the road. We ducked under the barbed wire — disgusting, illegal, Freya called it. And there was Blue, sitting on the centre stone, with a man and a woman on either side of her.
I wrenched free of Freya’s hand and ran, kicking up clods of earth, slipping into the Stones. I knew Freya would overtake me so I wouldn’t have to speak to the outsiders.
The man smiled at me. He had a shaved face, his skin shiny where his beard should be, and wore a bright plastic jacket. I looked back for Freya, but she was walking slowly, her hands rammed into her skirt pockets, and then I lost her behind one of the Stones. The outside woman had lifted Blue into her arms. They’d wrapped something plastic around her, a brutal zip cutting under her chin.
—She was out alone, the woman said. Her hair was done in a way I’d seen before, an old Leaver had it like that, in sausages. Dreads. —In the rain, she said. —We were here taking photos and—
Blue stretched her arms out to me, and the woman put her down.
—She doesn’t like to be carried, I mumbled. Blue was chattering. —It’s raining, I got wet, my legs are all covered in mud, look—
The man was staring at my feet, so I looked there too, mud-caked in my socks. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t known we were coming to the moor. A pair of boots from Jumble fitted me almost perfect.
—Is that your mum? the woman asked, and I looked to see Freya coming, shook my head.
Freya’s cheeks were red, and her hands, released from the pockets, fluttered between her hair, her skirts, and wiping the rain from her forehead. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t see what I’d done. It was right, wasn’t it, to run to Blue, and I hadn’t spoken to them, just answered questions. Freya ducked her head as she came close, and tugged at Blue.
—All right, the man said. —You from the big house, are you? That commune place?
—Are these your kids? the woman said.
When Freya spoke her voice was different, soft and sorry. —Thank you, she said.
—She was out all by herself, the woman said, angry.
I waited for Freya to tell them she was a Founder, you can’t speak to her like that, but she was looking at the ground, so I said, —She ran away. We live just behind that rise. Foxlowe.
—Foxlowe, the man repeated.
And then the three of us were striding, breaking into a run, catching glimpses behind of the outside people, who were calling after us, hands held up to their eyes, still calling to us, until their voices faded. I grazed a Standing Stone as we rushed away, sharp pain in my elbow. When we reached our stone wall, Freya lifted Blue over roughly, knocking her bare legs against the rock. She tossed the plastic zipped thing into a bed of nettles in the copse.
We didn’t speak the whole way up the back lawns to the house. The rain had drained away into drizzle. Blue’s hand was sticky in mine, and I wondered if they’d given her outside food, like the chocolate we’d had once, brought by Ellen from a shop run. I lifted Blue’s palm to my lips and licked, but I couldn’t taste anything. I scrambled to make sense of all the details, assembled questions to ask her when we were alone. I’d seen outside people before, out on the moor, knew some of them by sight, the people who lived on the farms, and yelled at us if we jumped their fences. I’d never spoken to one though, or seen Freya with one so close, seen her turn into someone else, someone afraid. I tightened my grip on Blue’s hand. On the other side of her, Freya strode, her face closed. Blue knew not to speak — we’d taught her, me and Toby, to be quiet when our nails dug into her skin, for times like this. I drew blood this time, spooked by Freya’s lost voice and stooped back.
Meeting that night dragged on for hours. Cocooned together in the patchwork blanket, the warm weight of a dog across our laps, Toby, Blue and me nodded asleep, woke to more words and circling arguments, or were pulled awake by our own names spoken, calling us back to listen. The smell of coffee and smoke and, later, that day’s leftovers, potatoes and leeks, reheated and passed around in mugs, floated over us.
Libby was speaking. —Never formalised things, about the children—
—But that’s the point, Ellen’s voice. —A new, better kind of education,