"But our parents," I said. I thought of my mother's warm hands and imagined her crying, distraught. "They're going to be really worried. They'll think-"
Jamie's mouth set. "Yeah, my mam won't. She doesn't want me around anyway."
"My mam mostly only thinks about the little ones," Peter said, "and my dad definitely won't care." Jamie and I glanced at each other. We never talked about it, but we both knew Peter's dad sometimes hit them when he got drunk. "And anyway, who cares if your parents worry? They didn't tell you Jamie was going to boarding school, did they? They just let you think everything was fine!"
He was right, I thought, light-headed. "I guess I could leave them a note," I said. "Just so they know we're OK."
Jamie started to say something, but Peter cut her off. "Yeah, perfect! Leave them a note saying we've gone to Dublin, or Cork or somewhere. Then they'll be looking for us there, and we'll be right here all the time."
He jumped up, pulling us with him. "Are you in?"
"I'm not going to boarding school," Jamie said, wiping her face with the back of her arm. "I'm not, Adam. I'm not. I'll do anything."
"Adam?" Living wild, brown and barefoot among the trees. The castle wall felt cool and misty under my hand. "Adam, what else are we supposed to do? Do you want to just let them send Jamie away? Don't you want to do something?"
He shook my wrist. His hand was hard, urgent; I could feel my pulse beating in its grasp. "I'm in," I said.
"Yes!" Peter yelled, punching the air. The shout echoed up into the trees, high and wild and triumphant.
"When?" Jamie demanded. Her eyes were bright with relief and her mouth was open in a smile; she was poised on her toes, ready to take off as soon as Peter gave the word. "Now?"
"Relax," Peter told her, grinning. "We have to get ready. We'll go home and get all our money. We need supplies, but we have to buy them a little every day, so nobody gets suspicious."
"Sausages and potatoes," I said. "We can build a fire and get sticks-"
"No, no fire, they'd see it. Don't get anything that needs cooking. Get stuff in tins, spaghetti hoops and baked beans and stuff. Say it's for your mam."
"Someone better bring a tin-opener-"
"Me; my mam has an extra one, she won't know."
"Sleeping bags, and our torches-"
"Duh, but that's not till the last minute, we don't want them noticing they're gone-"
"We can wash our clothes in the river-"
"-stick all our rubbish down a hollow tree so no one finds it-"
"How much money have you guys got?"
"My confirmation money's all in the bank, I can't get it."
"So we'll get cheap stuff, milk and bread-"
"Eww, milk'll go bad!"
"No it won't, we can keep it in the river in a plastic bag-"
"Jamie drinks chunky milk!" Peter yelled. He jumped at the wall and started scrambling up to the top.
Jamie leaped after him. "I do not, you drink chunky milk, you-" She grabbed Peter's ankle and they tussled on top of the wall, giggling wildly. I caught up with them, and Peter shot out an arm and dragged me into the scuffle. We wrestled, yelping and breathless with laughter, balancing dangerously half over the edge. "Adam eats bugs-" "Screw you, that was when we were little-"
"Shut up!" Peter snapped suddenly. He shook us off and froze, crouched on the wall, hands out to silence us. "What's that?"
Motionless and alert as startled hares, we listened. The wood was still, too still, waiting; the normal afternoon bustle of birds and insects and unseen little animals had been cut off as if by a conductor's baton. Only somewhere, up ahead of us-
"What the…" I whispered.
"Shhh." Music, or a voice; or just some trick of the river on stones, the breeze in the hollow oak? The wood had a million voices, changing with every season and every day; you could never know them all.
"Come on," said Jamie, her eyes shining, "come on," and launched herself like a flying squirrel off the wall. She caught a branch, swung, dropped and rolled and ran; Peter was leaping after her before the branch stopped swaying, and I scrambled down the wall and chased behind them, "Wait for me, wait-"
The wood had never been so lush or so feral. Leaves threw off dazzles of sunlight like sparklers and the colors were so bright you could live on them, the smell of fertile earth amplified to something heady as church wine. We shot through humming clouds of midges and leaped ditches and rotten logs, branches swirled around us like water, swallows trapezed across our path and in the trees alongside I swear three deer kept pace with us. I felt light and lucky and wild, I had never run so fast or jumped so effortlessly high; one shove of my foot and I could have been airborne.
How long did we run? All the familiar loved landmarks must have shifted, turned out to wish us good speed, because we passed every one of them on our way; we jumped the stone table and soared through the clearing in one bound, between the whip of the blackberry bushes and the rabbits poking up their noses to see us go by, we left the tire swing swaying in our wake and swung one-handed round the hollow oak. And up ahead, so sweet and wild it hurt, drawing us on-
Gradually I became aware that under the sleeping bag I was drenched in sweat; that my back, pressed against the tree trunk, was so rigid that I was shaking, my head nodding in stiff convulsive jerks like a toy's. The wood was black, blank, as if I had been blinded. Far off, there was a quick pittering sound like raindrops on leaves, tiny and spreading. I fought to ignore it, to keep following where that frail gold thread of memory led, not to drop it in this darkness or I would never find my way home.
Laughter streaming over Jamie's shoulder like bright soap-bubbles, bees whirling in a sunbeam and Peter's arms flying out as he leaped a fallen branch whooping. My shoelaces coming undone and alarm peals rising fiercely somewhere inside me as I felt the estate dissolving to mist behind us, are you sure, are you sure, Peter, Jamie, wait, stop-
The pittering sound was catching all through the wood, rising and falling, drawing closer on every side. It was in the branches high overhead, in the undergrowth behind me, small and swift and intent. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Rain, I told myself with whatever was left of my mind, just rain, though I couldn't feel a drop. Off at the other side of the wood something screamed, a shrill witless sound.
Come on, Adam, hurry, hurry up-
The darkness in front of me was shifting, condensing. There was a sound like wind in the leaves, a great rushing wind coming down through the wood to clear a path. I thought of the torch, but my fingers were frozen around it. I felt that gold thread twist and tug. Somewhere across the clearing something breathed; something big.
Down by the river. Skidding to a stop; willow branches swaying and the water firing off splinters of light like a million tiny mirrors, blinding, dizzying. Eyes, golden and fringed like an owl's.
I ran. I scrabbled out of the clutching sleeping bag and threw myself into the wood, away from the clearing. Brambles clawed at my legs and hair, wing-beats exploded in my ear; I shoulder-barged straight into a tree trunk, knocking myself breathless. Invisible dips and hollows flicked open under my feet and I couldn't run fast enough, legs crashing knee-deep through underbrush, it was like every childhood nightmare come true. Trailing ivy wrapped my face and I think I screamed. I knew beyond all doubt I would never get out of the wood, they would find my sleeping bag-for an instant I saw, sharp as reality, Cassie in her red sweater, kneeling in the clearing among falling leaves and reaching out a gloved hand to touch the fabric-and nothing else, ever.