A FEW DAYS pass in stony silence. Then, just as things start to feel more normal again, the boy’s family comes.
They don’t come charging over the hills with clubs and spears – they come quietly, like Joe said. It’s before dawn when they surround the house – the best time to attack.
Your attic bedroom window shatters. A burning branch lands on your bed. The curtains go up in flames. You peer out and see the warriors outside through the heat haze, rippling like light on water, a circle of spears and eyes.
There is the noise of more windows breaking. Burning branches light the house from every direction. You hear screaming, and doors banging, as Molly, Joe and the master run from room to room in a panic, finding no way out of the circle of flame. The flinging doors fan the flames, until the place is an inferno. Your door is closed, and you are too terrified to leave your room.
Your bed is ablaze. You try to smother the flames with your spare dress, but it isn’t working. Smoke is pouring under your door. You’re fighting to breathe.
Through the shattered window, you see Joe, running from the house yelling, with an axe in his hand. He is felled by a spear before he has taken three steps.
That’s how it starts, you hear echoing woozily through your mind, as you cough wretchedly from the smoke and drop to your knees. Just a chicken.
And this is also how it ends: a chain of theft and retribution. Everything is a chain – a circle. A circle of warriors, drawing tighter around the house. A knotted rope of song. A noose; a leg-iron; a shining bracelet. Circles that wind around you, binding you to this moment. Repeating circles, which you didn’t break, which will now, finally, break you.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 25.
You feel the palms of your hands grow clammy. You wipe them down on your apron.
‘Nothing,’ you lie to Molly. ‘I’m not muttering about anything.’
‘Well, go out and get me those chickens, then. Get a move on!’
Why did I just do that? you ask yourself. Lie to protect a stranger – and a thief, at that.
You sigh. You know from the look on his face and from the playful pats he gave Bruno that he meant no harm.
Your whole life has been battered and twisted and shaped by punishments for things you’ve done where you’ve certainly meant no harm to anyone. As has your da’s life. You can’t damage a young boy’s life and family just for that – you can’t encourage this unfairness to continue. You just want things to be simple.
You go to get a chicken, and when you come back into the kitchen, a rusty-red beauty under your arm, you say: ‘It looks as though one of the chickens is missing. Perhaps it was a tiger. I’ve overheard the master say they’re a menace around here.’
Molly furrows her brow, too busy to question you, and seems to accept the lie.
But the next week, the curly-haired boy is back again. Again, he waits until Molly and Joe are not around. Again, Bruno grins delightedly as the boy enters the coop and comes out holding one of your last three chickens.
‘Hey! You’re not having that one too!’ you shout through the kitchen window, and without even thinking, you rush out there and snatch the hen from his arms.
This takes the boy so much by surprise that he just stands there watching as you put the hen back in its coop and shake your finger at him like your ma always did to you when she was cross.
He grins and shakes his finger back at you, teasing you.
You’ll be able to tell if a person’s all right or not by looking in their eyes, your granny used to say. This boy has friendly eyes. He looks right into your face for a while, and there’s a playful challenge there. Then he seems to get embarrassed and looks away.
Bruno rolls joyfully at the boy’s feet. ‘That’s Bruno the dog,’ you tell him. There is a long pause, where he looks at you curiously. You try again. ‘What’s “dog” in your language?’
He looks puzzled. ‘Breunoth erdog.’
‘That’s a funny word for a dog. Say it again? Breu … what?’
‘Breunoth erdog,’ he says, pointing at Bruno.
You try to repeat it, feeling baffled. ‘Breu … breunoth … erd – dog!’ You suddenly realise your mistake and burst out laughing. ‘You’re saying “Bruno the dog”!’
The boy joins in with your laughter. Soon you are both shouting, ‘Brunothedog! Brunothedog!’ and Bruno is leaping around you, yelping with excitement. You laugh until you have to wipe away tears.
YOU DON’T SEE the boy every day after that, but you always hope that you will. You learn that his name is Waylitja, and that this is also the name of a type of bright-green bird that looks like a small parrot.
When you have time to be together – when the others are not nearby – he points out the noisy green birds as they fly overhead, or brings you a gift of homemade string, and you show him soap bubbles, and how the buckle on a belt works.
Sometimes he speaks his language, and you love the way it sounds. You wonder if you could learn it.
In the olden days, you know that all the Irish people spoke Gaelic, before the English came with their language and their guns. There are whole worlds inside our language, your granny would tell you, and then she’d sing a song in Gaelic that you can’t quite remember now.
There must be whole worlds in Waylitja’s language too. You wonder about all the things he knows.
Your fourteenth birthday comes and goes. No one knows
