thought to needle him with notions of property and rightfulness and so forth, but he only sighed.
‘Fermion,’ he said. ‘Missing things only need finding.’ It was what he always said when something was lost.
Moo says to look with your eyes and not your mouth.
‘
Your mother’s right,
’ said the inside-voice.
Chapter Six
Wideawake
THE DAY AFTER THE BURYING me and Pa went back up the cut. He said the ground would soon be too wet and cold to work. We needed to lay up as much turf as we could before winter. Not just for us, he said. There were old ones such as Lily Fell depending on us. We took our sheep-bags so we could sleep out.
So, in the long twilight of the following day we swayed along the bodgeways into willow country where moonworts glow in the sod and every step bothers some small creature into showing itself. You can’t really call it
ground,
what the bodgeways pass over. It’s really just a skim of water over black mud. Up there the trees stretch out of the slime on reaching footings. Their bark folds like skin, they huddle together and they sound like a whispering choir. That’s where the speckle-moths live.
Speckle-moths are a pet lesson of my mother’s.
Or they used to be, before Boson.
Speckle-moths only live in dappled thickets. Their speckling is like light falling through trees, falling on the thicket floor in a mess of gold and black. As you walk through, the moths flutter up and beat in your hair and crawl down your neck. If you stand still long enough they will try to settle in the folds of your body.
When they do settle you can’t see them. They are speckled like the thicket and they disappear into it. Then the birds can’t find them to eat.
Sometimes, though, there’s a moth born who is speckled otherwise. Maybe it has red wing-spots, or a blue head, or maybe no specks at all. Those otherwise moths can’t find a hide in the thicket and so the birds eat them.
Moo says God made it this way. He made it so every good, true creature was fitted to its home-place. When I first heard about them I wondered why God let the otherwise moths be born at all. It seemed a cruel sort of thing to me. Moo said they were born to be lessons for the rest of us. It’s not for us to stand out in the world, and to learn from the monstrous unspeckled speckle-moths what happens to those who do.
Pa and me reached the end of the home-thicket and queached out into the twilight bog. As we stepped into the late light, we were whelmed in waves of bog-bean, sweet and strong. We stopped and stood like Mungo scenting the hare.
There was a heavy stream in the air; a stream of figs and pears, a stream of honey, a stream of hopefulness. It smelt of a good night coming on. Me and Pa both felt it at the same time. Pa only stopped to take the hedge-pig from our snare set at the thicket edge, then he took off into the rolling bog. I followed him.
We ran like hounds, panting over all the red and green and blue spreading before us. We went lightfooted across the fancy-work bog-moss with the mountains pinking up nicely just beyond. Pa was soon far ahead. I watched him running like he was a boy, like he wasn’t worried about falling. Like he would keep right on running.
I felt of a sudden to be a frightful small thing beetling about in the huge moaney.
‘Wait for me,’ I called to him. He didn’t. Maybe he wanted to get away awhile.
‘
What are you going to do about it?’
said the inside-voice in a small sulky tone.
‘Leave me alone,’ I told it and took off again, running harder, closing in on my father. I wanted to leave that voice far behind.
Pa leapt back onto the bodgeway. He looked over his shoulder, his face lightclad. There was a shiny forgetfulness about him that frighted me. He looked like he was happy.
And there was another thing. We weren’t alone. That lost crane was there too.
It was right out of the thicket this time; the only thing to be holding its own colours in the changeable twilight.
‘Fermion,’ he said. ‘Missing things only need finding.’ It was what he always said when something was lost.
Moo says to look with your eyes and not your mouth.
‘
Your mother’s right,
’ said the inside-voice.
Chapter Six
Wideawake
THE DAY AFTER THE BURYING me and Pa went back up the cut. He said the ground would soon be too wet and cold to work. We needed to lay up as much turf as we could before winter. Not just for us, he said. There were old ones such as Lily Fell depending on us. We took our sheep-bags so we could sleep out.
So, in the long twilight of the following day we swayed along the bodgeways into willow country where moonworts glow in the sod and every step bothers some small creature into showing itself. You can’t really call it
ground,
what the bodgeways pass over. It’s really just a skim of water over black mud. Up there the trees stretch out of the slime on reaching footings. Their bark folds like skin, they huddle together and they sound like a whispering choir. That’s where the speckle-moths live.
Speckle-moths are a pet lesson of my mother’s.
Or they used to be, before Boson.
Speckle-moths only live in dappled thickets. Their speckling is like light falling through trees, falling on the thicket floor in a mess of gold and black. As you walk through, the moths flutter up and beat in your hair and crawl down your neck. If you stand still long enough they will try to settle in the folds of your body.
When they do settle you can’t see them. They are speckled like the thicket and they disappear into it. Then the birds can’t find them to eat.
Sometimes, though, there’s a moth born who is speckled otherwise. Maybe it has red wing-spots, or a blue head, or maybe no specks at all. Those otherwise moths can’t find a hide in the thicket and so the birds eat them.
Moo says God made it this way. He made it so every good, true creature was fitted to its home-place. When I first heard about them I wondered why God let the otherwise moths be born at all. It seemed a cruel sort of thing to me. Moo said they were born to be lessons for the rest of us. It’s not for us to stand out in the world, and to learn from the monstrous unspeckled speckle-moths what happens to those who do.
Pa and me reached the end of the home-thicket and queached out into the twilight bog. As we stepped into the late light, we were whelmed in waves of bog-bean, sweet and strong. We stopped and stood like Mungo scenting the hare.
There was a heavy stream in the air; a stream of figs and pears, a stream of honey, a stream of hopefulness. It smelt of a good night coming on. Me and Pa both felt it at the same time. Pa only stopped to take the hedge-pig from our snare set at the thicket edge, then he took off into the rolling bog. I followed him.
We ran like hounds, panting over all the red and green and blue spreading before us. We went lightfooted across the fancy-work bog-moss with the mountains pinking up nicely just beyond. Pa was soon far ahead. I watched him running like he was a boy, like he wasn’t worried about falling. Like he would keep right on running.
I felt of a sudden to be a frightful small thing beetling about in the huge moaney.
‘Wait for me,’ I called to him. He didn’t. Maybe he wanted to get away awhile.
‘
What are you going to do about it?’
said the inside-voice in a small sulky tone.
‘Leave me alone,’ I told it and took off again, running harder, closing in on my father. I wanted to leave that voice far behind.
Pa leapt back onto the bodgeway. He looked over his shoulder, his face lightclad. There was a shiny forgetfulness about him that frighted me. He looked like he was happy.
And there was another thing. We weren’t alone. That lost crane was there too.
It was right out of the thicket this time; the only thing to be holding its own colours in the changeable twilight.
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