The Bairn

Two

I don’t know what time I woke, but the sky was the colour of lemons. 

Someone had opened the window in the night; the room was cold and fresh. Birds sung and the wind rustled the trees, and far, far away, was the distant rumbling of trains, or construction work, or a faraway motorway. It'd been so long since I'd heard them that hard to tell.

I got out of bed and went to get dressed, but my clothes and bag had vanished. Searching about, I noticed someone had left a white dress on the other bed, and I put it on.  And as I did, a kettle started to whistle and I could smell bacon cooking, and I suddenly felt very hungry. I opened the door and headed to the kitchen. It was a very musty house and everything had a tired, worn-out look to it; the paint peeled, the floorboards creaked and the windows rattled in their pains.

I crept around the kitchen door and spied a spidery woman with short white hair in an ivy-green dress. She was busy getting breakfast ready; eggs and bacon on the stove; a mug of tea cooling on the side; fried bread in the pan. It was hot, steamy, and to my growling stomach, it smelled wonderful.

I walked in.

"Gosh, you're awake," she said, throwing down her brillo pad. "How are you feeling?"

How was I feeling? I didn't know. "Fine," I said. But a terrible thought kept creeping into my brain; of my parents beating apart against the shore, until all I could hear was the sound of  waves crashing relentlessly; wish – wash – wish - wash, and then the clattering of stones and the fizzing of water filled my head like a bucket so that I couldn't think straight anymore. And all I wanted to do then was to fall endlessly into the abyss that had opened up inside of me, but I didn’t. I thought of something else instead - like food.

"Oh, dear. I've upset you," she said. Walked over but stopped short of hugging me. "I'm so sorry. It must be very hard. Please." She pulled out a chair and I sat down. She fetched some bacon, fried toast, butter, jam and juice, setting them around me. “You should eat,” she said, folding her dish cloth and placing it on the table.

I cut a fork of bacon and scooped up some beans. It warm and juicy, and electrified the end of my tongue. I told her how good it was and she said thank you.

She watched as I ate, lips pressed into a line, her marble-like eyes rolling over me, like she couldn't believe what she saw. She had a pointy nose and a sharp chin, so that she looked like a witch. And h   er spindly hands had red painted fingernails. She scared me, a little.

          “Where am I?” I asked

          “The Wash,” she said

          “Where’s that?” I said, because I had never heard of the Wash before.

          “You're in England, and the Wash is in the east of England. Do you remember how you got here?"

"By boat."

"Gosh. By boat! That must've been very frightening."

I shrugged. "Why am I here?”

          "In England?"

    "Here, in this house, with you," I said. 

Her she gazed at me, as if they were trying to see something behind my face. “That’s not important right now. Do you know where he found you?”

          I nodded. “On a beach. He said my parents were dead.”

          She shook here head. “That is awful. That means you’re alone? No one’s looking for you?”

          I nodded.

          “Gosh that's awful, truly awful,” she said, holding my hand in hers. “You poor girl What were your parents thinking? I know, I know, I shouldn’t speak badly of them.” She smiled at me, tears in her marble eyes. “Here, let me show you something.”

          She led me out of the door and around the side of the house to the garden. The garden was wild and overgrown with tall trees and bushes looming ominously. She led me down a footpath to the back fence – under an old, knarred willow tree – and pointed.

Beyond the fence were fields of khaki-coloured, windswept grass and sparse breaks of trees. What I suspected to be a creek-dike passed by the house, too, and curved away to the east. And stepping over the flat wetlands were giant steel electricity pylons, crossing the creek and the dike and vanishing into the far distance.

I felt very small then, and lost. And as I looked out at the expanse, under a gun-metal sky, I thought of my parents and suddenly it all seemed very real. My parents were dead and I was lost and alone. The enormity of the fact flattened me, and begun to cry.

And then I saw it.

What I thought had been a distant copse of trees suddenly stood up. Birds exploded from its back. Black and shadowy. Colossus. It raised its head and howled. A wolf.

I stepped back, gripped the lady-in-ivy-green’s arm.

“His name is Beau,” she said, hands on her hips, looking out.

And I wanted nothing more than to run away from her, the house, and the giant wolf at the end of the garden.