There was a village, and it was the world, at least as far as the people living there were concerned. There were the farms, and the meadows, and the forest surrounding it like some sort of herbaceous asteroid belt, and everything beyond that was probably not worth your time, regardless of what those strange people that came wandering down the road kept saying. But that didn’t count, not really. The village was the world, and it was everything.
Well… not quite. There were some holes in that particular cozy mental framework, that had to be covered with less-than-liberally-sized blind spots.
One of them was Old Man Morris.
“So, is he real?” asked Simon at Charlie’s retreating back.
“Yup,” said Charlie. He slipped on a rock, sending a spray of gravel just past his friend’s face, then caught himself on a bush. A raspberry bush.
“He isn’t real,” said Simon, loudly over the inept cursing.
“Is so.”
“My daddy said so.”
“Well your daddy’s wrong.”
Simon glared at his friend’s foot, then hastily cut his malevolence short as a fresh wad of mixed soil and slender-rooted plants hailed downwards. Casting doubt on the word of a father was a serious thing. But Charlie did it without a moment’s hesitation. Clearly, this was worth exploring.
“Well, prove it,” he said.
“Doin’ that.”
“Howja find out anyways?”
“That time I got lost looking for the cows last week,” said Charlie, as they heaved themselves over the final yards of cliff face and onto the weedy, long-grassed, tree-shaded peak of the Big Hill. “Almost walked into him. Now shh!”
“What’re you –” managed Simon before Charlie slapped his hand over his mouth.
There were such things as desperate times and desperate measures, Simon knew. He could imagine a thousand things that would make Charlie do something like that. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything that’d let him stand it, especially right after his father’s all-knowing powers had just been disputed, and so instead of staying quiet he punched Charlie in the gut.
The resulting tussle, doomed to tininess as it was, ranged far and wide across the hilltop, with much energy and ruckus had by both. But not by all, because the third member of that distinguished group was less than pleased when they rolled directly through the basket of mushrooms he’d been picking.
“Eep,” said Simon.
“Hullo, Old Man Moss,” said Charlie.
“Hmmph,” said Old Man Morris.
He was tall and bent quite short and broken, a big man who’d spent too much time fiddling with small things. One of those small things was manifestly not at all his beard, which was so thick and tangly that it could’ve been a sweater.
His sweater, on the other hand, was rather threadbare.
Probably blue once.
“Hmmph,” repeated Old Man Morris. “That’s Morris.”
“Moss,” agreed Simon, companionably. It was true; seated where he sat on the old, old stump, the man looked mossy. He could’ve out-willowed a willow in full weeping.
“Hmmph,” reiterated Old Man Moss. “Go away, boys. Bad enough you bother me yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and all to last week with your spying. Bad enough. Now go away and stay away, and take your friends and acquaintances with you.”
Charlie picked his nose without malice. “My daddy told me,” he announced as he inspected the extracted particles, “that you’re a wizard.”
“Go away, boys.”
“A crazy old wizard that lives all on his own and talks to the bugs and the weeds.”
“I can do what I want. Leave me be.”
“And that my mommy smacked him and told him to Mind His Words, and that you were my grandpa’s uncle’s cousin. Once removed.” Examination complete, the mote was flicked away into the grass.
Old Man Moss’s brow wrinkled further, amazingly. “She a Nickel?”
“Nu-uh. Daddy’s a Clay. We’re Clays. But mommy said she used to be.” He grinned in gap-toothed triumph. “I’m Charlie Clay and this is Simon Adams and he’s my friend. You’re my grandpa’s uncle’s cousin”
“-once removed-“ reminded Simon.
“-once removed-“ agreed Charlie, “-and we want to see you do a magic trick!”
Old Man Moss sighed into his beard, setting it whistling and rattling like branches in the winter. “Like what?” He gathered up his mushrooms, palms a deeper dirt brown than the soil he’d plucked them from.
“Can you whistle?”
“Hmmph. Anyone can whistle.”
“The special whistle.”
Old Man Moss kept his back turned so they didn’t see his face. “Quit fooling around, boy Clay.”
Charlie put his fingers in his mouth, moved them around so they were plugging the right gaps in his teeth, twisted his tongue the secret way, and out came a cold clear whistle, the up-and-down slip of it as sweet as a songbird’s, any songbird, the one in the trees above. It warbled its approval and slid down to Charlie’s hand as smoothly as a diving leaf in autumn, which it inspected hopefully for traces of worms.
“Mommy taught me that,” said Charlie proudly.
Old Man Moss rubbed his back. He’d turned around very fast for someone so gnarled; it had been like watching an oak get up and dance a jig. “Your mommy, her name’s Edith?”
“Yup.”
Old Man Moss glared down at the boys from his head’s creaky old perch. “Scat. Both of you. And you tell your mommy to mind what she teaches, unless she wants more than she can handle. It ain’t anything to be proud of.”
Simon tugged at Charlie’s hand. He didn’t like what he saw in the old man’s eye. It was that nasty gleam grownups got when they had a new way to keep you busy. Charlie shook it off. “Show us a whistle-trick first then,” he said, stubbornly.
“Clays,” grumbled Old Man Moss, loamy as an apple orchard, gravelley as a coal mine. He puckered his lips and shook his head, and he gave a low, whirling whir, as dronesome as a bumblebee in a long fog. It made the boys’ teeth twitch and the air hum, and then it was been and gone, out over the forest.
They waited.
“That didn’t do anything,” complained Charlie.
“Takes a moment,” said Old Man Moss. There was a huffing and a puffing and a great big bear’s head burst through the bushes at his side. It shook its fur and grunted into the air, hot damp pouring out of its lungs. “Now scat.”
The boys scat, aided by the galumphing of the bear at their heels. They ran all the way home, and received a pair of hide-tannings apiece: one for going out all that way to bother that crazy old man, and one for lying about bears. There were no bears within a month’s walk or more, not since Simon’s great-grandfather had shot the last as it went for his cows.
The next day there were the two of them and Simon’s little sister Margaret, who’d wrestled the story out of her brother after bedtime and demanded to come along on threat of alerting their mother, a fearsome woman who would’ve led her own horde in another time and place. They waited for Old Man Moss at his mushroom patch. Far too long, as far as Margaret was concerned.
“You said he’d be here,” she whined.
“He was! He will. He’s just taking a while.”
“I’ll tell mom if you were lying. Liars get tanned.”
“You do that and I’ll tell her you made us bring you out here.”
“Wouldn’t dare!”
“Would so!”
They were interrupted by the thud-thud-rustle of big feet, and up came Old Man Moss himself, rising up through the greenery like the king of the marsh. It was a strange thing, seeing him on the move, like watching a hill tiptoe to one side. He stopped short his stumping as he caught sight of the children.
“You,” he said, flatly. “I told you all to scat.”
“This is my sister Margaret,” said Simon politely. “We call her Margie. She’s little, so she isn’t very smart. Say hi, Margie.” Margaret smacked him.
“Hrrmmph. Get going before I whistle up another friend at you.”
“How’d you do that?” begged Charlie. “There’s no bears here. Daddy said there’s no bears here.”
“I didn’t call that one from here. I whistled him in from… elsewhere.” Old Man Moss’s face moved under that beard in something that could’ve been a frown. “Now get going.”
“How far away can you do that?” asked Charlie with interest, picking his nose again.
“Scat.”
“How big a thing can you move like that?” asked Simon.
“Shoo!”
“You’re making that up,” complained Margaret.
“Pfah!” Old Man Moss eyebrows rippled together like fighting snakes as he glared down the children, mouth working in weird shapes. Out of that jumble of tongue and teeth came a short, sharp switch of sound, a slap across the ears, and up popped a blade of grass that shot straight up and smacked Charlie across the nose. He yelped and fell over.
“Told you,” he mumbled, pawing inside the stinging orifice. His finger had been driven somewhat deeper than he’d intended by the blow.
“Neat!” chirruped Margaret.
“Hrrmmph! Go away.”
“Can you do that with a whole bunch at once?” asked Simon.
“Bah!”
“What about one, but a reeeeaaallly teeny one?” asked Margaret.
“Agh!”
And so on and so forth went the day, with the children taking turns at pestering and bothering until Old Man Moss would give in with a grump and show off some thing or another that would make them gasp and gape and giggle. Charlie tried a few of the sounds, but they didn’t work. The puckers sent his tongue diving into the back of his throat and the very first whispers of sound made his lips tie themselves up in granny knots. The notes that managed to come out at all came out wrong.
“Just as well,” said Old Man Moss. “Shouldn’t do that sort of thing at your age. Not safe. Now go home! Scat!”
And then they asked him another question.
The next time, they brought along Charlie’s other friend, Thomas. And Thomas’s brother, Sam. And Christopher Petey, because he was desperate to hide from his father and they felt too badly to say no to him.
“Bah!” said Old Man Moss the moment he saw them, and he whistled up the bear at them. They ran away and got lost in the woods, and it was some time before they found their way back.
“No fair,” complained Charlie.
“I thought you’d gone home,” said Moss, testily. He was starting to wonder if the mushrooms on the Big Hill were worth the trouble they were getting to be nowadays.
“Why’d you go and do that for?”
“A bear not scary enough for you boys? Fine then.” The new whistle was wild and fresh, like a bowlful of ice cold lakewater to the face. The wind wooshed and howled and before the boys could so much as open their mouths to complain down came a great big eagle, claws wide, mouth open, shrieking the wild call that made the breeze seem small. It chased them all the way home, where they each received separate, individual tannings.
“Next time,” complained Simon to Charlie, “I’m bringing my sister. He didn’t make a bear chase her. She’s too little.”
Though Charlie’s pride was against it, his rear was for it, and so Margaret was re-invited with grudging politeness on the followup trip the next day.
“Hmph!” snorted Old Man Moss, and he didn’t take it farther than that. From then on Margaret was a permanent, smug fixture on their visits, a solid core with Simon and Charlie that the other children of the village dropped on and off of as the mood for adventure struck their fancies. Adventure mostly consisted of hurled tidbits of debris, endlessly being told to “go ‘way,” and at least one viciously channelled and directed beehive, but you had to take what you could get.
Charlie didn’t show up one week. Old Man Moss kept his voice lower and softer, and his gaze farther away. A thinking look. He kept ignoring questions, but with silence instead of words.
“Your Clay all right?” he asked Simon at the day’s end.
A blank stare answered him.
“Charlie.”
“He’s sick,” said Simon. “He’s in bed.”
“Hmm,” said Old Man Moss, trailing away the grunt that had been forming in his mouth. “Bad?”
“Dunno. We wanted to see him but his mommy wouldn’t let us.”
“Hmm. Hmmph.” Old Man Moss breathed in deep through his nose, as if to refresh its purpose and remind it of its station in life. “Right. Go away.”
They nodded and didn’t. He let them be until late on in the afternoon, when most of them started to remember chores that needed doing and drifted away awkwardly. Not being chased off or stomped away from was a new and unsettling thing for them.
Charlie was in bed that night, but not asleep. The things he saw whenever he shut his eyes were too alarming for that. So he lay there in bed, swamped in the covers and pillows, and he tried not to blink. The moon was full, and the light made his eyes burn.
There was a stomp-stamp outside his window, slow but sure, and then a shadow that smelled of leaves and mould.
“Charlie-Clay. You sick in there?”
Charlie made a noise that he guessed was positive. The air in the room felt dry and strange whenever he tried to speak with it.
“Ah, you’ve got it hard there, Clay. Not too hard though. I can fix that, but you have to let me. Listen careful now, Clay. You hear me?”
Charlie lolled his head around in something like a nod.
“That’s good. Now, listen careful here, Clay…”
It was strange, sitting there, half out of his mind with the new tune, the new tone rolling its way about his skull like a marble in a tight passage, but Charlie tried hard. The whistle was queer and sad, wobbling and wavering like an indecisive robin, but it slid through his throat more sweetly than any of his mother’s medicine had, and by the third go-round he was letting it slip as easily as breathing. Which was a lot easier, all of a sudden.
“Sleep now there, Charlie-Clay. And you keep that tune safe, hear?”
Charlie did. And the sleep came quick.
He was better the next day. Point of fact, he was so much better that his mommy said that if she hadn’t seen his fever the night before, she’d have called him a faker and tanned him. As it was he was shoved out the door to play all day under firm instruction not to hurt himself and give her another fright like that ever again.
Charlie went up the Big Hill late, after a leisurely breakfast had been thrust upon him. Most of the others were already there, talking and poking. One or two were helping Old Man Moss gather up mushrooms, under the unhelpful supervision of Margaret.
“Thank you very much,” he told him, as politely as he could recall his mother telling him.
“Mmm,” said the old man through his beard, and said no more of it. He showed them how to whistle through a grass blade that day, and the next he showed them how a cricket dances. The rhythm and feel had changed on the Big Hill, and after a few suspicions of poisoning later that month, when he gave them apples to take home, they adjusted happily. A little clearing was worn into the hill’s crown from pacing feet, and a crude trail blazed up its side, a path of hand-and-toe-holds and smoothed surfaces polished by slipping grips.
It was about that time that the families of the village finally started to notice their children vanishing every afternoon, especially since some had taken to doing it during chore time. Lips were kept sealed and earnest lies unfolded, but eventually someone got around to spilling the beans – Russell Petey’s youngest son, Malcolm, under threat of a leathery backhand – and Russell was none too shy to share the news with the rest of the village.
“Who knows what kind of devilry’s afoot up there?” he told the other parents, after all the scoldings and stay-in-that-house-until-I-say-sos had been said. “Nothing good. Teach ‘em all a lesson and make them stay home, I say, and warn off that old vagrant while we’re at it too.”
There were murmurs, but as much against as for. Charlie’s mother was tapping her foot pointedly – the mention of her father’s uncle’s cousin once removed being up to any sort of no good irked her – and the words being spoken, however appealing, were coming from Russell Petey. The best thing that could be said about the man was that he never struck any harder when he was sotted than when he was sober. And even then, he never struck any lighter, either.
In the end, a few of them went up to talk to Old Man Moss. There was Charlie’s father, and Russell Petey, and Simon’s uncle.
“It is getting in the way of their chores,” said Charlie’s father.
“Damned waste of time, should’ve run him out long ago,” muttered Russell Petey.
“They keep talking about whistling,” inquired Simon’s uncle. “What’s that about?”
“Hrrmph,” said Old Man Moss, and he glared at Russell Petey, and he put two fingers to his mouth and did something complicated that made a sound like a bell being eaten by a parrot. Then a trio of mice ran out of Russell Petey’s pant legs.
“Now cut that out! Make ‘em go away!” he screamed, stamping and swearing. More mice peeked out from his pockets, and dropped out of his shirt.
“Hmm.” This whistle was scratchy, clawing at the air, and it produced a cat. Inside Russell’s shirt. He ran home yelling, tripping on the underbrush.
“Just try not to teach them too much of this… stuff, will you?” asked Charlie’s father, before they left.
“Don’t worry any. They can’t manage it. Except your boy. Damned Nickels, always could carry a tune, even when it does them no good.”
“Well, at the least we can give you a little in return for keeping them out of our hair,” said Simon’s uncle. “I’ve got some eggs spare to hand every few days, and I expect you could use a loaf or two of bread. I know for a fact Harriet makes the best around, right Bill?”
“Hmmph,” said Old Man Moss, waving them off. But he didn’t send back the eggs when they arrived with Simon the next Wednesday, or the bread that Charlie brought in after the Saturday baking.
The next month, Thomas and Sam complained of an ill turn that had hit their father’s cow. The poor thing had sunk up to its knee in a burrow something careless had left in its meadow, and snapped its leg quite properly.
“That so?” asked Old Man Moss. He thought for a moment as the breeze washed his beard in the wind. Margaret futilely attempted to jump atop him from behind and failed, as was her wont.
“Let’s go look,” he decided, and stood up and left almost before the children could follow him, a noisy entourage through a quiet wood. They sent all the songbirds fleeing, and drew every eye in the village as they marched through its center, a pilgrimage of rags and sticks.
The whistle he used down there at the farm of Thomas and Sam’s father was a sturdier, simpler version of a tune that rang bells in Charlie’s head. He didn’t say a word, as promised, but he tried to remember it too. Just in case.
“She’s good,” said Old Man Moss, as the cow took a wobbly step, surprised at its own daring. “Just let her rest for a bit before she goes trotting around like normal again.” And he was out and gone, before the farmer had time to say so much as a thank-you-kindly.
That was the beginning of the third time, the longest one, and the best one, and it got better as it wore on. The children visited the old man in the hills in the afternoons, after his morning walks, the grownups asked for his help with this-or-that in the late-day and evenings, and as night fell he walked back off into the woods, off to who knew where. The only complaint (from anyone that wasn’t Russell Petey) that was had of him was that the tunes he used that caught the mind so easily were impossible to mimic by any mortal tongue – save that of Charlie, who took much smugness from it, and the occasional cuffing.
“Everything wants to move,” he explained to his sister self-importantly, “it just has to hear the right tune to get it up and motivated.”
Margaret pinched him, making him yelp.
The first signs of the downfall happened in late autumn. The children still followed Old Man Moss as he walked around village – still looking as out of place as a sheep in a bedroom – if in fewer numbers than before, and so it was that a few witnesses were on hand for it. The procession was on its way over to see about loosening a stubborn tree stump lodged in the fields of Simon’s uncle when a call came floating across the way, a call from Russell Petey. He was leaning against the fence on his run-down property, swapping tobacco with his hand, Devon. The big man barely ever talked, barely made any noise at all. When he wasn’t around, the grownups would say that was because with Russell near, he didn’t need to. The children never said anything about him. Ever. Those big ears were all too listening, and that little smile that never left his face all too knowing. He had too much time on his hands, Devon did – nothing on that land was fixed or mended, not by him or anyone – so what did he do with it all? And none of the cats in town liked him. Not even the old tabbies that had drunk so much milk in their lives that they’d sopped up all its mildness into their furry tummies for all time and beyond.
“On your way, hey, on your way?” he asked, half-joking in a voice that sounded too hearty to come from him. He laughed. “Given any more thought to my questioning?” he asked.
“No,” said Old Man Moss, curtly.
Russell’s smile stayed, but the face behind it seemed to close up some. “You sure about that, ol’ friend? I wasn’t joking around with those numbers. I could bump ‘em up a mite, even.”
Old Man Moss turned his back and walked away, children in puzzled trail, looking back hesitantly. Devon grinned at them, and they quickened their pace.
Up came the first snows, and the visits to the Big Hill started to lessen. It was a tough climb in the snow, and a cold one. Old Man Moss was busy as always, walking into the village without an escort now, attracting the children from every doorway like a magnet still, but not from so far. He cleared chimneys, helped mend fences, helped colds. He was everywhere, anywhere, and he was talking more and more now, even to the grownups. Margaret claimed she saw him smiling once under that beard, but everyone dismissed it as an idle boast, a baited hook for attention.
They waited at the gate while he mended Russell Petey’s dog, Brutus. Russell said that he’d chased a rat too hard and too close, and knocked half the woodshed on himself. Having heard some of Malcolm and Christopher’s stories, the children were disinclined to believe him.
“Still have your mind made up?” asked Russell. Devon was holding the dog still, each hand practically swallowing one of Brutus’s legs. He wasn’t a small dog, but he looked it then.
“Yes,” said Old Man Moss, as the last whispering whistle left his lips. “It’s no good.”
This time Russell couldn’t hide the anger, even if it was just for a moment. “An’ why would that be, eh?”
Old Man Moss stood up. Bent as he was, he was still bigger than Russell, and his glare matched his. “It isn’t. Leave off.” He stomped more than usual as he left. A dog yelped as they passed the half-toppled fence, and for a moment he nearly turned to go back. Then a laugh drifted out across the snow, and he shook off his shoulders and walked back into his woods, each angry footfall launching a hundred snowflakes from his beard.
Spring’s first runnings came at the end of it all, just as the celebrations were beginning. Praises over the end of the snow, the opening of the ice on the river, the congratulations-you-must-be-so-happys of Charlie’s new little brother, they all took up time. The party for little Michael took up all the village by the time it was through, and as the night wore on and the grownups drank grownup drinks and spoke of grownup things the children grew bored and wandered away to do interesting things, under the light of the shooting stars that made Michael’s birth oh-so-lucky. And the first interesting thing, the thing that popped into Margaret’s head, was to go see if Old Man Moss was at the Big Hill again.
“That’s stupid,” scorned Simon. “It’s nighttime. No one gets mushrooms at night.”
Margaret’s little teeth shone all the wider and whiter. “Then we can find out where he sleeps! Come on, aren’t you curious? We owe him a visit. Let’s give him a visit!”
“Yes, let’s!” piped up all the younger of the children, and Simon and Charlie and Christopher and the other older, wiser heads knew they were outnumbered and despaired.
So they walked into the woods, all of them, past the quiet, darkened farms – all of everyone was at that party, really! – and into the trees. And with the time that had passed since their last visit, and the way they were looking for something they’d never seen before, a bit of turning around happened. Besides, it was awfully dark. The light of shooting stars, while pretty, isn’t all that good as a guide.
“Where’s Margaret?” asked Simon.
“Here,” said Margaret, behind him, and he jumped. She laughed.
“Where’s Malcolm?” asked Charlie.
“I’m here,” piped up Malcolm, from inside a nearby thornbush.
“Where’s Charlie?” asked Simon of Margaret, and realized she wasn’t there anymore. Nor was anyone else.
“Hello?” asked Simon. No one answered.
“Hello?” asked Simon, voice wobbling. No one answered, and he heard something move.
Simon ran, and strong hands grabbed him, grasps rougher than any rope coiling around him and wrapping his arms and kicking feet tight. There was a smell of tobacco and sweat and old, unwashed clothing, and the strange, gurgling chuckle that he’d never heard before was as good as a signed autograph: Devon.
He was dragged away at impossible speed, long pale legs lurching through the slush that was left of the year’s snow like a spider’s. Up and up they went, Devon’s feet scaling slopes that took minutes to scramble up in less than seconds, and with a thud and a cough Simon was dropped down to the little patch of dirt that was the clearing on top of the Big Hill. A hand fell upon him right away, yanked him tight to his feet and to Devon’s side. Something nasty and sharp glinted in its knuckle, held with loving threat near to him as the hand waited.
“Got yours then?” called out a familiar voice, rough with excitement and malice. Russell Petey struggled up over the edge of the ledge, wrestling with a wriggling, bucking bundle that Simon recognized from the coat must be Charlie. Russell flung him to the ground with a curse and kicked him in the ribs, only furthering his resolve.
“Nasty little bugger, he is. Bit me hard and clean here on the wrist. Should take some of his teeth out for that, but no time, no time! We’ve got a meeting to arrange, some deals to strike!” Russell glared about him, staring out over the forest beneath and the sky above with blinded eyes. “Come out, come out, you old bastard! Where are you at? We’ve got something you should see right here, someone you should meet!”
“Here,” said Old Man Moss.
Russell nearly jumped out of his skin, and Simon felt Devon start a little, the metal in his hand dipping uncomfortably near to his neck before the hand recovered. Old Man Moss stood at his stump, his seating-place, all but invisible. He looked as near to be a part of it as anything, face unreadable and immovable in the dark.
“Right, yes you are,” grinned Russell. It was fake, but it was an effort, a recovery. There was a strain underneath there, a tension years in the building that was all winding up to now, to snap or release, no other choices. “Yes you are, you are. And you’re going to give now, you are. We’ve got your pets, you’ve got your tricks. Which do you think is faster, eh? Your throat or our hands? You’ll do as you’re told or I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen.”
Old Man Moss made that noise he made, that same sound he’d warned off Simon and Charlie with so many times. “Hrrrmph.” There was something different there now. “Do what?”
Russell waved his arms to either side, trying to grab something bigger than he was. “Make me – make us rich. Pucker your withered old lips and whistle us in some gold, some silver! Whistle us away to a plot of fine land! Bring me wealth, you crazy old sheep-curer! I asked you nice, and I asked you sweet, and you told me down like all the rest did!” Russell’s face was torn between exultation at a long-awaited moment and fury at held-back slights. “All the same! Even you, out here in your damned woods, living like a beggar! Why look down on me, eh? I’m better than you! I deserve this! I deserve to leave here forever and never have to see one of those damned bumpkins look down their noses at me again. All the gold and silver and, and land I can carry and more! Give me what I deserve!”
Old Man Moss turned his head in the night, this way and that, little crooks that reminded Simon and Charlie of an owl. “Yes,” he said. “But put them down first.”
Devon hesitated, but at a nod from Russell slowly, reluctantly released his prize. Simon and Charlie lay on the ground, but held fast still, forced down with boots on their backs.
“No one’s going anywhere ‘till I get what’s mine,” said Russell. “’Till we get what’s ours.” Simon felt Devon’s boot twitch at that, right through to his spine, and he couldn’t stop himself from shivering. He didn’t want to think about Devon getting anything he wanted.
“Hrrrrrrrrmm,” repeated Old Man Moss, and Charlie, who’d learned the whistles with careful ears, heard that difference there for what it was. A growl, a low rumble.
And then Old Man Moss began to do something strange. He tilted his head back, back, up, straight up at the skies and the light from above in the inky black. His mouth gaped open, wide open, so wide even the beard couldn’t hide it, so broad it barely seemed human. His tongue protruded, his teeth clenched, his eyes rolled and gleamed in the starlight, and a strange sound that wasn’t there leaked out from him, roiling over the hilltop and across the ether. Strange bones jumped in both the boy’s bodies, resonating to rhythms unheard by ears, and there, at the midst of the highest, hardest note of that unhearable tune, Devon slammed his hands over his ears and shrieked in a voice that was barely there, unable to bear the sound any longer. Russell was a moment ahead of him, flailing his injured head, clutching at it.
“Scat!” called Old Man Moss, and the spell was broken. Feet scrambled under themselves as Charlie and Simon bolted for the edge, tumbling headfirst down slopes half-remembered and bruising themselves on forgotten rocks. Above them, Russell was yelling something, but it was all lost in the roar from above, the great, earth-shattering boom that rattled their grips out from underneath themselves and sent them rolling the rest of the way to the bottom, where they chanced to look up.
Big Hill was on quiet fire, its top asmoulder, its sides strewn with broken earth. The air was quiet. There were no voices. There was no sound.
“Meteor,” judged Simon’s uncle, as they all gathered round the peak of the hill the next day. “One of the shooting stars brought down to earth.” No one said anything about Russell, or about Devon. Simon and Charlie’s tall tales were just wild enough to believe for once, especially with the absence of the farmer and his hand.
Everything wants to move, thought the children. And they all held hands just a little tighter than before.
Charlie’s father looked around. The peak of the Big Hill was a mess – stump shattered, bushes charred away, grasses and dirt and stone pummelled into a dent, a shiner that would do any prizefighter proud. “We haven’t found anyone,” he declared.
The village nodded.
“It’ll stay that way,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re all gone. All three. Well, maybe just the one.”
The village agreed.
“I think,” said Charlie’s father, “that we ought to leave well enough alone. And maybe he’ll do the same for us.”
“Still,” he said to Charlie as they all walked home very quietly, “best do as your mother asks and keep practicing those tunes. Just to be safe.”
“Clear as a Whistle,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.