Two Kings

 

 

Him!

It is him. He’s half-sitting, propped up against the tree, grey shadows falling across his face.

“You’ve come back!”

I’m so pleased, I forget to be shy. I jump up and hug him, as well as I can with his back against the tree.

“Where’ve you been?”

He doesn’t answer. I pull away.

And, for the first time, see him properly.

He looks awful. His face is much thinner than I remember, with hollows where his cheeks ought to be and dark shadows under his eyes. It’s an awful greyish, white colour. It’s hard to tell, in the darkness, where he ends and the tree begins.

He’s shivering.

“Are you all right?” I say. And then, when he doesn’t answer, “What’s wrong with you?”

He shudders. I touch his hand. It’s icy.

He’s still dressed in nothing but his strange trousers. I take off my coat and drape it over his chest. He doesn’t move.

“You can’t stay here,” I say. I may not know much, but I do know that. I put my arms around him and try and lift him. He gasps and cries out and I let go, helpless. “You have to come back with me. You have to.”

“No,” he says. He puts his hand on my arm.

“But. . .”

There’s a noise in the doorway, behind me. I turn, too quick to be frightened, and draw in my breath.

It’s the Holly King.

He’s standing there in the doorway. He’s bigger than I remember – taller, and stronger too.

Frost shimmers on the doorframe where his hand rests.

I bite my lips. Did he follow me? Did I bring him here?

Is this my fault again?

I look sideways at my man, my Oak King. He moves his hand across to mine and squeezes it gently. He’s shaking with the cold, but he can still speak.

“Not yet,” he says.

The Holly King doesn’t answer. He turns his black eyes on to me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“Leave her alone,” gasps my man. That’s what it is, a gasp. His hand is still shaking, over mine. “Go home,” he says.

“No,” I whisper.

It’s quiet in the barn, except for the rasp of his breathing.

“Listen,” he says, and I bend forward, trying to catch his words. “You asked me once. . .” he says. “About bringing people back from the dead—” He shudders. I grip his hand. In the darkness of the barn, his words have a sinister edge, and suddenly I’m afraid. “For you—” he says, “I can—”

“What do you mean?” I say. “What for me? What are you going to do?” Is he going to bring my mother back? How? As a zombie? A ghost? For real? Terror rises inside me sudden as water.

“What are you going to do?”

Behind me, the Holly King stirs, frost crackling on the doorway. My man stiffens. He squeezes my hand.

“Go home,” he says.

I squeeze his hand. I don’t know what to say. I love you? It sounds silly and overdramatic. Will you be all right? What would I do if he wasn’t? Call the police? And what does he mean by “not yet”? How much longer can he last?

I lean forward and pick up my bit of sharpened rock that I was drawing with. The Oak King, the Green Man, lets go of my hand. The beast-man steps aside in the door, leaving me room to pass. I think my man looks up, but it’s so dark it’s hard to be sure. He’s in the shadowed side of the barn; a grey ink-shape merging into the trunk of the tree; in the darkness, you can’t be sure where one begins and the other ends.

I walk very slowly past the Holly King. I’m shaking. Neither he nor my man moves. I’m holding the piece of rock cold against my palm. If I threw it straight into his eyes, could it blind him? Could it kill him?

I’m close beside him in the doorway. His strong, animal smell is all around me. All I would have to do is pull back my arm and throw.

I don’t throw. I keep walking out of the door and the moment’s passed. I stop and drop the rock in the mud, and suddenly I’m running, a small girl running beneath the great black arc of the sky, across the old familiar fields, to home.