It had been a long, dusty walk from Great Ayton already and he had come only about halfway. His bundle was not particularly heavy for he had few possessions to bring with him. He was headed for the village of Staithes on the Yorkshire coast, but he wished that he weren’t. He was a child of the open air and the rolling downs west of the farm. He hated the prospect before him of standing behind a counter in a dark shop measuring out lengths of ribbon for sharp-tongued and impatient housewives.
But that was his future and it had been arranged before he had time to really understand what was happening. Letters had been exchanged between his father and Mr Sanderson, who was by all accounts a kind, god-fearing man. He might just have well been a monster, though, for all the pleasure the boy took in thinking about his life to come.
A cramped shop, a cramped village, a cramped and endless existence, the minutes measured out in thimbles and pins.
He had come upon a stream tumbling over a succession of small dams and the pathway followed it for some way. There was a bend in both path and river and when he turned the corner he saw a small mill built into the bank and shaded by ancient alder trees. The wheel creaked and splashed as it turned in the stream and the water fell into a deep dark pool below.
The shade was welcome and the boy walked to the side of the pool and shrugged off both bundle and jacket. After supping at handfuls of the clear cold water he lay back in the sweet grass to rest. He contemplated a mouthful or two of the bread and cheese his mother had wrapped for his journey but decided to preserve it for a time when his need was greater.
He heard footsteps and looked up to see the miller, patting at his dusty smock.
They shared a few words pleasantly and the boy asked whether he was on the right road to Staithes and how far he had to go.
The miller tugged at his beard, offered directions and suggested a distance and time, which was more or less what the boy suspected.
When the miller added that he could be hard-pressed to complete the journey before nightfall, the boy thanked him and stood up. He pulled his jacket back on, gathered his bundle and picked up his walking staff.
He said farewell to the miller and although he would have preferred to have rested for a longer time in the softness of the butter-sweet grass, he set off on his journey again.
Soon he had left the stream and the trees behind him and was walking between hedgerows of hawthorn still in flower even though spring was all but over.
When he turned a bend at the top of a small rise, however, he stopped in astonishment.
Had he not been frozen by the sight before him he would have turned on his heel and fled.
As it was, he dropped his staff with a clatter and his bundle fell from his shoulder.
Sitting on a stump to one side of the path was a strange creature, the strangest creature the boy had ever seen.
He was wearing filmy garments of green that fell like birch bark down his arms and legs.
But strangest of all were the great green wings that were folded on either side of his shoulders, beautiful wings with iridescent green feathers that gleamed and shivered as their filaments caught the sun.
Their beauty was so startling the boy almost forgot his fear, the initial horror that he may have stepped in front of the devil himself, and wondered instead whether he had been visited by an angel. With this thought he raised his hands in awe, knowing that angels could be bringers, no less than devils, of dreadful things. A burst of sufficient courage came to him, enough so that he could turn and flee back down the path, and he was about to do so when the creature spoke in a clear, ringing voice.
‘Stay!’ he cried. ‘Stay! You must stay!’