As she got older, Blue would be punished again and again for disappearing alone, walking out onto the moor, talking to outsiders. Her arms would be streaked with scars, etchings of Spike Walk nights, and we got used to seeing her bandages. After that first time, she never cried in the Spike Walk. She held her arms out as though spinning on the moor for fun, holding Freya’s eye. It was always me, in the end, who looked away. At Meeting, it was agreed that me and Toby were to keep watching her, and never let her out alone. But so often we lost her, slipping away over the stone wall and running so fast we could only wait for her to come back, a sickness rising, waiting for the night, for Freya to balance things again.
We knew, me and Toby, deep down, what it was that called her away again and again, and leached away when she bled in the Spike Walk, only to build again, because it was so old and rooted so deep; it had touched her when she was so very tiny, grown around her like a vine around a tree. We never betrayed her. Even she didn’t know. When Freya would scream at her Why do you do it? Blue could only shake her head, and me and Toby held each other’s eye.
Around a Solstice after her first Spike Walk, Blue had a bad run of them, her skin never seeming to heal by the time the next Walk came. So me and Toby taught her maze-making, one of our favourite games, to try to keep her attention with us, to hold her for a while. She’d kept watch while we stole the cogs of thread from the sewing box, fiddling with the fresh bandage on her arm. Toby showed her how to snap the line with her teeth, running the tongue over the tender parts of the mouth, avoiding the rot.
—Where do you chew? Show me, he said. Blue arched her head back and pointed.
—That one then, Toby said, and flicked at a tooth on the top of her jaw.
I remembered, briefly, those teeth coming through: the screaming, the sudden sharpness of her bite on my fingers. She’d lost many by then, sat twisting the loose ones in Meeting. Freya kept them in an old jar, with mine.
—Wrap the thread like this, Toby said, —and cut, and you have to be quick, because the chasers are coming for you through the grass!
Maze-making was best played on the sloping moorland near the Standing Stones. You had to catch the right time of the year: when the grasses were grown over our heads. A couple of dogs had followed us down, and flopped in the sun where the grass was lower.
Toby was the best maze-maker. He went in first, trailing a bright red thread, and disappeared into the green. The end was tied around the stile post, and the knot bounced and slipped as Toby made his path. The grasses crashed and snapped. Then a yell, —Now! and we plunged into the maze, following the thread line, the ground marshy beneath our feet, the crushed grasses like a carpet, and stones tipping us off course. Blue was faster than me, pivoting and making the quick turns with ease, leaving me squeezing through the grasses behind, trying to follow Toby’s path. His counts carried over the air, and my very skin strained to get to him before the seconds disappeared, then suddenly Blue parted a wall of grass and fell upon him, as he yelled Fifteen!
—You did it! he yelled, rolling Blue onto his stomach, the thread still hanging from his thumb; she’d got to him before he could cut the thread on his teeth.
—Too slow, too slow! she cried. —My turn!
Toby solemnly gave the thread over to her with a little bow. He was tall now, so his jeans stopped at his shins, and it had made a kind of gap between us, as though it was him alone, then me and Blue lumped together, the smaller ones. Teaching Blue our game was another small ending of the world of us, of me and Toby.
Blue curled Toby’s thread around her thumb as she collected it from the grass and we picked our way out of the maze, ready to start again. Through the green, I glimpsed a figure hovering near the stile.
The man was wearing a brown suit and his white hair was short, his face shaved. A smile played around his mouth as he took us in.
—Hello, he said.
Toby put his hand on my shoulder.
Blue tilted her head and waved. He copied her, making her laugh, then she danced, and so did he, waving his briefcase in the air.
—Playing a game? the man said.
Toby found his voice. —Are you lost? he said.
—Ah, no, just arrived, the man said, taking off his shoes. He perched on the old wooden gate, rolled off his socks, wiggled his toes in the sun.
—So nice here, the man said.
Toby looked at me, silently saying, What now?
The man had closed his eyes and was holding his face to the sun. I wondered if he’d forgotten we were there.
I shrugged back to Toby, and mouthed, Just keep playing?
There were no rules for outsiders who popped up on the moorland like spirits. We knew most of the locals by sight, and avoided them if we could. The thought that held me and Toby still and kept our hands on Blue’s wrists to stop her shooting to this new plaything was that the man could even be a moor spirit, or the Bad, dressed up in a suit.
The man opened his eyes and his smile faded. —Oh, he said, —don’t be frightened.
A dog bounded over and the man welcomed it with a kiss on its muzzle. She was Toby’s favourite, a bitch with soft brown fur turning grey around the eyes. We both remembered her as a puppy, but Toby would play with her and try to teach her tricks, gave her a few different names that never stuck. When he saw the dog licking the man’s face, Toby’s grip on Blue relaxed and she rushed over to sit next to him.
—Why are you here? Do you have a name yet? We’re playing a new game, she said. —It’s with threads and you have to catch the maze-maker before he cuts the thread and I just won, how old are you?
—How old do you think I am? he said. He held up his chin and pushed back his hair, so she could look at his face. Toby and I went over to crouch in the grass.
—Old, she said. —Eighty Solstices.
—No, older, I said to her. —Look at his white hair.
The man laughed. Up close he was very real, with mud on his trousers, brown spots on the back of his hands.
—Do you live outside? Blue said. —We live at Foxlowe.
The man smiled. —I wondered if you might, he said.
I felt better. He wasn’t a real outsider at all, but knew home.
—We should take you up to the house, said Toby, like it was a question.
The man gestured for him to lead the way.
We almost broke into a run, taking him back over the stone wall. We three had a huge secret, a gift, maybe even new family, and we’d met him first. The man kept stopping along the way to look behind us, to where the Cloud sat on the horizon.
When we reached the stone wall behind Foxlowe, the man’s scalp under his white hair had burned red. He stood for a while gazing at the house, windows flashing in the sun. The garden was in full summer bloom; the sweet pea were bright, the fruit trees swollen. We three waited for the man to say something, about how he knew our home, but he only stared, then vaulted over the stone wall and dropped into the gardens, so we had to scramble to follow him.
Toby flung the kitchen door open and yelled into the house, —Everyone! Hey!
Egg and Pet were already in the kitchen, their arms around each other, Egg kissing Pet’s forehead. They were always fighting and making up in Freya—Richard seasons, which this was. Mostly, it made life easy when Freya and Richard were together: Blue and I had the attic to ourselves, could whisper into the night. We’d find Freya every morning in the kitchen, where she’d kiss us both, though Blue would duck her head away, and give us pancakes soaked in apple syrup. She even laughed when Toby dropped a case of eggs when he tripped on the steps near the fountain. Toby had gone white, but Freya just made sketches of the mess, foamy yellow and the raw white like spit on the marble. But Libby spent her days with Egg in the ballroom, playing the tapes on the tinny stereo, and slept wrapped in his arms, making Pet’s eyes raw.
They broke apart, stunned. I grinned; it was hard to surprise the grown. It took a second for Egg to recover. He strode forward, holding out a hand to the stranger.
—Hi, he said. —Are you lost?
—We found him out by the Stones, I said.
—He was just there, said Toby.
—We thought he was a moor spirit, I said to Pet, who’d told us stories about them, how they led you to bogs and marshes, told you riddles, made promises with hidden stings.
Noise drifted down from the house as the others caught the scent of gossip and clattered towards the kitchen.
—If only I were so magical, said the man. —I’m parked over at Ipstones.
Richard, Freya and Dylan burst in, followed by the others. Freya stood for a second, her eyes flicking from the outsider, to us, and then settling on Blue. She had her by the hair before me and Toby could move, and dragged her out of sight, towards the goat shed. The man’s smile disappeared. Richard bounded over next to Egg.
—Hi, he said. —Welcome. Glass of water?
Pet filled a jar.
—We don’t usually sell from the house, said Richard. —We have some goats’ milk, jam and wine, if you’re—
—Unless you’re from a gallery, Dylan said. —We have some new craft pieces ready for market that you’re welcome to look at, and our higher end stuff is in the back.
—Sculpture and pottery mostly, Richard said. —Some paintings.
—Are you lost? Egg asked again.
—Is the girl all right? said the man. —What’s going on?
Folded arms and silence to this. Ellen and Libby were whispering to each other. Toby and I moved closer together. Valentina mouthed Okay? to Toby and he nodded.
—It’s all right, I said.
The man studied Richard’s face. —You’re the owner, he said, not like a question.
—We live as a commune, said Egg, so who owns what doesn’t really —
The man spoke to Richard again. —You’re Ralph’s boy, aren’t you? Same nose, and the clothes—
—Oh, said Richard, and straightened up, grew taller. —You knew—
—I lived here for a while, when I was very young, the man replied.
A ripple went through us. Someone who knew old Foxlowe, before us — not an outsider, but something else, like an old friend we’d forgotten.
The man held up his briefcase.
—I’m supposed to mark them, he said. —Papers. I was on the train. I’ve kept on working, you know. Never wanted to retire.
He looked at the briefcase and down at himself. In the silence Freya’s voice floated, No more said about it. It was her soft voice and so we parted a little as she came back with Blue at her side, hiding her hands in her sleeves, where the new scratches were. I pulled gently at her earlobe, and Toby squeezed her hand.
I found Blue’s ear. —So, how old, do you think? Guess, I whispered.
She sniffed. —A hundred Solstices.
It was the oldest we could imagine. Freya was our eldest grown and she’d lived eighty-two Solstices, summer and winter.
The outside man spoke. —And then. I just, I don’t want to, and I thought, it’s so simple, and I realised I wasn’t far from, well the train was coming through, and I just thought. I always wanted to come back and visit. Silly, really.
He trailed off and looked up at the archway and the old stone there, then looked back, smiling, like he was pleased to find something there. —I always meant to, he went on. — I was ill when it was Ralph’s funeral, and then, well, I didn’t know. You never know, do you, if you should go back, you know, to places you’ve … He spoke to Richard again, —Oh, you’re so like, he said.
Richard pulled at his shirt sleeves.
—Then it just kept playing on my mind, kept thinking about it, on the train, how much I loved it here. Your granddad and me … He nodded at Richard. —Oh we had some laughs, when I was sent up here —
—Maybe more, I whispered to Blue.
—Um, said Richard, —well, I suppose, if you want to look around—
—I heard everything went to you, the man said. —I remember hearing about all that, and it’s Ralph too, isn’t it?
—Richard, Freya corrected him.
—How old are you? asked Blue.
—I am three hundred and fifty-seven today, said the man.
She laughed.
—Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday? he said.
—You say, Happy birthday, said Richard.
We did, copying the way his voice flew up and down on the words.
On his first day we didn’t talk to Kai much. He told us his old name, and we tried to forget it, in case he stayed. He took a t-shirt from Jumble and wore overalls over it, leaving the brown suit folded in a carrier bag on the back of the kitchen door, ready to be cut up for patches. His first evening with us, he sang with Libby and Dylan; he was good at guitar. He found a mattress in one of the back corridors and Richard said he could have that room, if he wanted.
Days passed. Richard came into our attic and pulled out cobwebbed boxes from the eaves, things we didn’t know were there. He and the man spread out photographs on the kitchen table, and the man found himself, so he said, a boy standing on the back lawns, wearing shorts, his hair cut short, squinting into the camera. He and Richard stayed up late together talking and sifting through pictures, writing things in pencil on the backs. Richard called us to look at them, Blue and me, pointed at dead faces, told us names, but they were like Leavers, just ghosts, and I said so, said, —But they aren’t like us, they just used to live here, and Richard snapped the box of photographs shut. Freya packed them away again, put them back into the eaves. I didn’t like them there, watching us sleep.
The man taught Toby how to play a game with an old ball he’d found in the sheds. He asked Valentina if she minded, and she shrugged and said she didn’t care, then watched them from the kitchen windows. He told me and Blue stories about where he’d come from, Oxford, where there were books buried under the streets, and buildings made out of yellow stone, and Freya let him even though usually we weren’t to talk about old lives, but she said his voice was nice, and she liked listening to it lilt and fall while she worked.
At the end of his first week the weather turned cool, and we made a hot dinner. I dipped bread in egg, pushing it under to make it soggy. Freya took the eggshells and smashed them in her fists.
—So witches can’t use them, she said, and winked at me.
—Can’t we have tomatoes? Ellen said.
—Yeah, no veg all week, said Dylan.
—We’ll all get scurvy, said Pet.
There was a murmur of agreement from Libby and Egg, painting their toenails with tippex.
While we ate, Kai held the conversation. When others spoke, adding anecdotes, we all listened, but when Kai took up the thread again we leaned forward with our forks hanging. He didn’t talk about the outside much but kept coming back to Foxlowe’s old life, and how there had been fires lit in every room, and books covering the walls, and people who brought you things, who just lived there to bring you things, and how he and the man called Ralph had played games on the stairs that sounded like ours, using sacks to race to the bottom. Freya leaned on her hand and watched all this, chewing her eggs, smiling.
—Thing is, Freya said, as she took Kai’s plate.
—Yes, yes, I know, Kai said, smiling. —I’m not an artist, I can’t draw! Not at all! he added, cheerfully. —I heard in one of the villages that’s what it is here now, an artists’ place. Ralph used to paint, you know, he said.
—That’s really not the point, said Freya. —We all contribute something. Richard and I, we can sell our paintings and sculptures, Dylan too, he just got a big commission from Liverpool — here everyone cheered —And I do most of the cooking and sell the wine and the jam and so on, and Valentina sews, Ellen brings in her contribution from the markets down in Leek, and Egg does lots of the goats work, and the garden …
—And I’m an artist too, snapped Libby.
Freya held Kai’s plate out. —I mean, you just ate my eggs, and that’s fine, but what do you put in?
—We’re happy to take in anyone who can contribute, said Richard.
—I’m a teacher, a professor. I can teach the girls and October, Kai said.
Toby looked up from the eggs and caught my eye. —Like school?
—That’s a great idea, Libby said.
—Who asked you? Freya said. —They’re not your children.
—Nor yours, said Libby. —Right?
—Don’t be a bitch, Liberty. Richard, tell your lady love it’s unattractive to be such a bitch, it might make you lose interest, said Freya. She turned to Kai. —I hope you had a nice holiday.
Richard held up a hand and said mildly, —All right.
Freya went on, —You have to contribute, so we can buy the stuff we can’t always grow ourselves.
—Well, Richard said, —it’s not about money. It’s about any kind of contribution. Want to learn some stuff? he asked Blue, who shrugged, slurping her milk.
—Freya’s going to teach me how to make pots, I said.
—We should all talk about it, said Ellen. —I thought we were against institutionalising them, sending them to school.
—But this would be here, said Libby. —I never thought we were against learning, just—
—The point is they have the best education here, said Dylan. —They learn what’s important, about how to live, how to be self-sufficient, so they don’t have to worry about—
—Why don’t we ask them? said Libby.
Everyone went quiet and Richard opened his hands, gesturing for us to speak. I tried to catch Freya’s eye, to see what she wanted me to say, but she was licking egg yolk from her fingers.
—I don’t know, I said.
—Blue’s too young, anyway, said Richard.
—She must be seven or eight now, Richard, Libby said.
—We could learn to read, said Toby.
—Would you like that? Ellen said.
Toby looked at Valentina, who shrugged.
—I’ve got plenty of money. I’ll contribute towards everything, Kai said.
There was a long silence. Richard rapped his hands on the table, playing it like drums, and Egg took up the beat.
Kai cleared his throat. —I’d really like to stay. I like it here. I feel better here. The money’s just sitting there, he said.
—Well then, smiled Richard, and called Meeting, where Freya named the man after the crows that nested in the roof, and he was made our new brother.
That same night, after Meeting, we stayed out late on the moorland behind the house, watching the sunset. Me and Blue lay in our favourite way, spreadeagled on the grass, looking at the sky. We couldn’t see the others and their voices gently buffeted us. Sweet smoke curled in the air. Cold seeped over my limbs but I stayed lying there, letting the shivers run up and down until I couldn’t feel them any more.
Libby and Freya bickered lazily and their slurred words drifted over each other, like lyrics to Richard’s guitar.
—I got it from the Oxfam in town, I remember, I got a sack of stuff, and you took a jumper, and I said I’d have this—
—You’re too fat for it, look how it wrinkles on your arse!
Dylan’s gentle voice rose. —Well, it’s no one’s, is it, it’s not your stuff—
—Shut up, Dylan, you keep your stuff. Who else wears those jeans? And didn’t you have a go at Richard for taking your boots? I heard you!
Snorts and laughter. Blue shifted next to me. Her raised arm came into view.
—What’s that?
I didn’t look. —The moon.
—Not the moon. You didn’t even look!
I kicked her.
—Ow! She pointed again. —That.
—I dunno. A star, I suppose. Toby! I called out, and flung my arm up. —What’s that?
Libby’s voice floated across to us. —They’ve gone back to the house, him and Bitter Bambi.
—Why?
Silence.
—Hello? Libby, why’s he gone?
—I dunno. Hungry?
Kai’s face loomed in the sky.
—Hello, dear ladies.
—Hi, Blue said.
—Kai, what’s that? She wants to know. It’s a star, isn’t it? I told her a star, I said.
Kai eased himself onto the grass with a sigh, and lay between us.
—Show me? Ah. That’s … no idea. A star.
We laughed as though this was the funniest thing in the world.
—What a giggler you are, Blue, said Kai. —Where’d you get that from, I wonder. My mum, she was a terrible giggler. She used to cry with it, her mascara would run all the way down her cheeks.
—I don’t know, said Blue.
—Maybe it’s your mum too.
—Kai, will you tell us about the outside?
I knew I shouldn’t ask, but with just the sky above me, it was like I was asking myself, or a blank space, and not really Kai at all.
—The outside?
—Outside Foxlowe, I said. —Where the Bad is.
Kai was quiet, and I thought about how it must be hard to describe, like trying to see your own face.
The voices and guitar notes drifted in the air near us, and the height of the sky made my stomach swoop, and I tried to feel the earth turn. Dylan had told me once how it spun, and I wasn’t sure it could be true.
Eventually Kai asked, —Don’t you know your stars, Blue? That’s not a star at all. It’s a planet. Venus. You can tell because she’s close to the sun. Venus and the sun are in love, you know, but if they were ever to touch, the sun would burn up little Venus. So she stays just as close as she can.
—But it’s night time, Blue said.
—You’re making it up! I said.
I was delighted. He wasn’t a teacher at all, just another storyteller.
—And what’s that one? Kai pointed to another speck, glittering in the dusk.
—Ah, that’s … no idea. A star! Blue cried, and we laughed again helplessly.
Libby’s scent, apple and wine, drifted over our heads as she lay down next to us on the grass.
—Green, you remember me taking this skirt from Jumble, don’t you?
—We’re stargazing, said Kai. —Do they know their stars?
—Ah! Now that’s one of my stars, said Libby, pointing. —I’m an Aries, and that there is the tip of my ram’s nose.
—Aries, I repeated. I liked the sound. I thought of air and flying. —That can be one of my stars too.
— No, no. You’re definitely a Leo, like Freya.
And Libby growled and jumped on my shoulder, making me squeal and laugh.
—Leos are fiery and have terrible tempers, she teased.
I laughed. —I don’t!
—You do, said Blue. —Kai, look at my leg where she kicked me. And yesterday she made Toby’s ear bleed.
—He hit me first. Look at the mark on my arm!
Libby’s hand came into the sky, silencing us.
—And you are a little Cancerian, Blue.
—How do you know?
—Well, it depends on when you were born, said Kai.
—But we don’t know our birthdays—
—But your traits are so pronounced it just must be so, said Libby.
Blue wriggled happily on the grass. —Cancer.
—It means you’re connected to the sea, said Libby.
—Blue’s never been to the sea, I said jealously.
That night Libby conjured up a world we’d never seen, of tides and the surface of the moon, all tinged with silver and green and the milky shine of moonstone and pearl. Blue became quiet, and I knew her eyes were closed and she was pinning the colours and the images to herself like new names. We’d heard about fire and earth and water and air signs before, but Libby said that was mostly rubbish and the stars were what mattered and they couldn’t tell you the future but they could tell you more about yourself, and then we told Kai about Blue’s name and how I’d given it to her, and Kai sang some of Blue’s own song, of love and sadness.
When we stumbled back to the house, mud on our skin and clothes, grass in Blue’s hair, it was late and quiet. We hadn’t brought the torches, and no candles were lit, so we bashed into things in the kitchen, giggling, following the starlight across the flagstone floor. We jumped as one when we saw the figure, hunched in a sleeping bag at the foot of the staircase. Toby. Ellen shrieked and laughed, and we followed, started chattering to him. What are you doing, you made us jump, why don’t you have any candles lit? Where’s Valentina?
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes were huge and startled. Blue went to him and put her arms around his neck, and the grown ups scattered through the house, calling Valentina’s name. I kept asking, trying to make him speak. Is she gone? Is she a Leaver? Toby? Is she a Leaver, then? Are you all right? He just looked at me, and when the grown ups came back, shaking their heads, tears running down Libby’s face, he curled up, as though to sleep, when they asked him about the Leaver, Tell us how she went, tell us why. In the end Richard said to just let him sleep, and Dylan carried him, like a smaller ungrown, into the ballroom, away from the hallway draughts.
Over the next days and weeks we talked over the signs. We knew there would be a story Toby would have for us, about how the Leaver went, what she said, but he was still telling it to himself in silence, getting all the details right. We told and retold the way the Leaver had called Toby in from the goats’ shed weeks before, where we three ungrown were daring each other to uncover and spoil the curdling cheese. They’d spent the day together in one of the old bedrooms, and at dinner we’d heard their laughter as they came down, her arms around his neck, her thin hair the exact shade of his, breathing in the skin behind his ears. We talked of how the Leaver had missed Meeting, claiming a headache.
She’d left a pile of things for Jumble: clothes, books, her notebooks full of sketches and scrawl. Richard relaxed the rules, so things were held back for Toby — the notebooks, especially, no one was to take. But Toby didn’t claim them, and they stayed in Jumble until Freya tore up the pages for kindling.
We waited and waited for Toby to tell. But Toby’s words were gone. Valentina’s Leaving story was never told.