The Secret of Kells (3 page)

But as he walked on, the sun went behind a cloud and a mist rose. The shadows among the trees became darker, and the path disappeared. The trees themselves became taller, and their branches seemed to have become more tangled up in one another, blocking his path. Brendan started to imagine things. Was that a nest of snakes, there to his left? No, only intertwined branches, covered in bright moss, seen from the corner of his eye. But that was surely a pair of green eyes watching through the branches? Or had it been just a trick of the light?

Now the forest no longer seemed so beautiful. The feeling of being caught in a web became stronger, as if the net of trees might pull him down and smother him in dead leaves. He found he was walking faster. Sharp, hidden branches tripped him and pulled at his hair and clothes. Pangur no longer played, no longer ran around. She walked straight in front of him, her tail held up stiffly and the fur on the back of her neck a white ruff of fear. Brendan took her up into his arms and hugged her tight.

The forest had become very silent. The birds had stopped singing and the breeze had died down. Even the trees were not making a sound. And it had become cold. Cold and dark and frightening. There could be anything at all watching him from the shadows. Was that another pair of eyes, red this time, glinting through the darkness?

And where was he? He had wandered through the forest without really paying much attention to his path. He looked around at the trees and all of them looked the same. He realised that he was lost. There was nothing to show him what direction he had come from, or how to find his way home. There was no sign of the Round Tower or the tall grey walls of Kells. No sign of the monastery, the monastery that no longer seemed like a prison but like a place of safety. He came to a stream – surely, the same one he had seen quite soon after he left home? Or could it be another stream entirely?

‘If I follow the water, I am bound to come back to the walls, amn’t I?’ he said to Pangur, who was walking by his side again, not looking at all happy. She just looked back at him.

‘But then if I do that, what direction should I go in? If I follow it the wrong way, it will just lead me further and further into the forest.’

Pangur had no answer. Neither had Brendan. ‘It’s so quiet,’ he said, more to hear the sound of his own voice than because he expected Pangur to respond.

‘Better get those berries, eh?’ he said, trying to make his voice sound braver. ‘Of course, it might help if I knew what an oak tree looked like.’

There was no sun to guide him. The forest was very dark now, and had become an unholy tangle of thorny branches and swampy earth, sucking him down and pulling him back with every step he tried to take. The mist became thicker, shrouding the trees in ghostlike shapes. Pangur was also very nervous; she had jumped up on his shoulders and was peering around her fearfully. The only sound was the harsh voices of the black crows that swept in flocks over the forest, darkening the sky even more.

Now he was sure it was not his imagination. There were red eyes watching him from the branches. More than one. The more he looked the
more eyes he could see. He struggled on, panicking, and heard himself sob with relief as he came to a clearing in the trees. There was a huge grey stone in the middle. He said to himself that if he climbed to the top of it he might be able to see over the mist and the trees, to where the Round Tower of Kells rose above its walls. And hopefully, he would be up so high that he would be safe from whatever creatures were watching him. But as he made his way across the grass of the clearing, the sky became darker still and the slitted red eyes moved out from their shelter in the trees. They surrounded Brendan and Pangur on all sides. He could smell them, a smell like the dogs of the monastery but much, much stronger. Pangur was hissing bravely, but she was as terrified as Brendan was himself. The creatures had started to snarl, dripping saliva from their great yellow teeth and red jaws, as if looking forward to a tasty meal. Brendan and Pangur were surrounded by a pack of black wolves.

T
he pack closed in tighter as Brendan tried to back away. But now he could go no further because his back was against the rock. Pangur leapt onto it and Brendan picked up a stick to defend himself, waving it madly, but it flew from his hand. His actions seemed to make the wolves angrier. Brendan clambered frantically onto the stone, scratching his arms and legs as he did so, and leaving a piece of his cloak caught in the snapping jaws of one of his pursuers. The red eyes of the wolves looked even more excited at the sight and smell of blood.

Suddenly, there was a high, piercing howl that seemed to shake the trees all around the clearing. The wolves stopped in their tracks, raising their heads. The sound seemed to be coming from behind the pack, and when Brendan looked over he saw the figure of what seemed to be another wolf outlined against the trees. It was much larger
than any of the pack that had attacked Brendan. It also seemed to be white, snow white. The wolves began to shake. Then they began to whimper like puppies. Within seconds, every last one of them had taken to their heels, racing in all directions as if something had frightened the life out of them.

Brendan caught a glimpse of bright green eyes and sharp shining teeth. He lowered his head and put his hands together. There was nothing he could do now but pray.

Someone was speaking. ‘Is this your cat?’ It was a girl’s voice, a young voice, and it sounded seriously annoyed.

Brendan opened his eyes and in front of him, instead of a slavering wolf, was a child. Pangur was in her arms and did not look too happy about it. Brendan stared at the girl, too surprised to answer her. Instead he tumbled down behind the stone, grabbed a twig he found there and waved it in the air, saying, ‘I’ve heard about creatures like you. You’re a fairy!’

The girl gave a snort and demanded, ‘What are you doing in my forest? You’ve come to spoil it,
haven’t you?’

Brendan came out from behind the stone and stared at the girl. She was smaller and slighter than he was. Her hair was so long it swept to the ground. It was the colour of snow. The girl had bright green eyes, which were now slits of angry fire. She did not look at all pleased to see him.

Still stunned with shock, Brendan asked, ‘What happened to the white wolf? Where did it go?’

‘There’s nobody here but me,’ said the girl. ‘And your cat.’

Pangur regarded the girl quietly, then went to Brendan and rubbed against him. The girl asked, ‘What are you doing here? You were probably sent here by your family to get food, weren’t you?’

Mist swirled around the clearing. The fairy-like figure jumped on top of the stone Brendan thought he had never seen any one able to jump like that – and continued, ‘Well, you can go right back where you came from! If you don’t, I’ll make the wolves get you! You have no right to come here, disturbing the animals and the birds!’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Brendan, his nerves in tatters from the way the girl kept jumping around
the clearing, disappearing into the mist and then reappearing again.

‘Look, I’m sorry, right? I’m not here to get food for my family. I’m here to get things to make ink. And I don’t have a family and we have food in Kells! So I wouldn’t come here for it anyway! I was just a bit lost and …’

The girl, who had been walking away from him with her nose in the air, suddenly stopped.

‘You don’t have a family?’ Her face seemed to soften a little. ‘No mother?’

Brendan shook his head.

She said quietly, ‘I’m alone too.’ And then she disappeared into the trees.

Brendan ran after her, saying breathlessly, ‘But my uncle looks after me. He’s the Abbot of the monastery of Kells. And me and this other monk, his name is Aidan, we want to make a book, you see, and I need to get berries to make ink. Berries like this.’ He opened his hand and showed the girl the berries Aidan had given him.

‘What’s ink?’ asked the girl.

‘It’s hard to explain; it’s like liquid colour and you put it on pages … you would have to see it. But
I have to get the berries.’

‘Well you can’t. You must leave.’

Brendan’s mouth set into a stubborn line. ‘I’m not leaving the forest until I get what I came for. I won’t do any harm, I promise you. It won’t hurt your old trees just to take a few berries. It’s really important. The book we will make is so beautiful! We just need the berries to do it.’

The girl seemed to consider for a few moments, then said, ‘Oh, all right then. I’ll help you get the berries. If I don’t help, you will probably spend ages rampaging through the forest and annoying the trees and unsettling everyone. But if I help you, you must promise me one thing.’

‘What is it?’ asked Brendan. He was a little bit afraid of this girl. He was sure she was one of the magical creatures he had been warned against. If she was magic, who knows what she might ask him. He had heard stories about the bargains magical beings made with humans. They never worked out well for the humans.

‘I don’t want you or your cat to come into my forest again. I don’t want to see either of you here. You must promise me that you will not come
back.’

Brendan didn’t want to make the promise, and by the look on Pangur’s face, she didn’t want to either. But they really didn’t have a choice, if they wanted to get the berries for Aidan. So, reluctantly, Brendan nodded. Then he said, ‘My name is Brendan. What’s yours?’ But the girl just laughed and started to lead the way through the trees. Where there had just been grass before, there was now a carpet of snowdrops.

The sun had come out again, and they seemed to be following a path through the light. The girl was definitely magic, thought Brendan; otherwise how could she dart ahead so quickly? Sometimes she leapt halfway up the trunk of a tree as if she had wings; sometimes she glided along their upper branches like a squirrel. He would catch sight of her face looking down on him through a cradle of branches, laughing at his frightened expression.

‘This is one of my favourite times in the forest,’ she said. ‘It’s still very quiet, like it is in the winter, but everything is starting to grow and come to life again. I’ll ask the forest where your berries are.’

As they made their way through the wood, she
showed him many things that he had not noticed when he had been on his own. Walking with her was like having another pair of eyes, eyes that could see all the little things that it was so easy to miss: two beetles greeting each other on the stem of a fern, a nest of field mice snuggled in the bole of a beech tree, the hole in the earth where a badger lived. Finally, they came to a great tree, which seemed to stretch up high beyond all the others. Brendan could not even see the top.

‘This is an oak. It’s the oldest and tallest tree in the forest, and has special powers.’

She picked up a leaf that had fallen to the ground the autumn before.

‘See, look, it has curly edges. And the berries you are looking for are growing on the tree. Though they are not really berries, they are just things that grow on the oak.’

She stopped and looked at Brendan’s face.

‘The berries, as you call them, are up at the top,’ she said. ‘It’s a big tree. You have climbed a tree before, haven’t you?’

Brendan paused. This girl was smaller and younger than he was and the thought of climbing the tree didn’t seem to bother her at all. How hard can it be? he thought.

So he said, ‘Yes, of course. It’s easy.’

He soon discovered it was not easy at all; in fact, climbing the huge oak tree was one of the most difficult things he had ever tried to do. Twigs and branches scraped his arms and legs and poked him in his eyes. His feet slid on the wet bark, unable to get a foothold. The one branch that he wanted to catch in order to go higher always seemed just a little beyond his reach. And the further up he climbed, the further there was to fall …

The girl, on the other hand, scampered up the tree with the ease of a squirrel. Now she was really starting to irritate him. Why did she have to go so fast? He tried to climb more quickly, so that he could catch up with her, and found himself sliding and stepping onto thin air. He was falling down through the branches, and just when he thought his heart was going to stop, he managed to catch hold of a branch, which he clung onto for dear life. He looked up to where the girl was peering down at him through the leaves. She jumped easily onto the branch he was clinging to and pulled him up to
safety.

‘You’re useless at this,’ she said crossly. ‘I thought you said you knew how to climb trees!’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘Smaller ones.’

‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘Like bushes?’

At last they reached the top of the tree. As the girl had said, the oak was the tallest tree in the forest. When he looked down, Brendan thought the ground was rushing up to meet him. His stomach turned over and he was sure he was going to be sick. Once again he could feel his legs going, his body lurching towards the ground below … and the girl had to push him back against the trunk of the tree.

‘Don’t look down,’ she told him, holding his arm tightly. Brendan shut his eyes and tried to breathe.

After a moment, the girl said, ‘Come on, Brendan, open your eyes now!’

He shook his head grimly and kept them shut.

‘Come on,’ she said again. ‘Open your eyes and I’ll tell you my name.’

Brendan opened his eyes.

‘It’s Aisling,’ the girl said, ‘and this is my forest.’

He looked down. He could see far into the
distance in every direction. Away to the west, he could even see the encircling wall of Kells, with the great stone Round Tower rising in the centre. Inside the walls, he could make out the tiny figures of the monks, scuttling around as they worked. It reminded him of an anthill he had once disturbed. But the monastery was only a small break in the greenness that surrounded him on all sides.

‘Have you ever been over there?’ Brendan pointed over towards the monastery. ‘That’s Kells. That’s where I live.’

Aisling shook her head. ‘Never. I never leave my forest. I stay in the trees, and I never go inside walls. This is my place. And you had better be getting back to yours … Look, the sun is already going down.’

She jumped down to a slightly lower branch and Brendan followed, much more slowly and cautiously. He suddenly noticed that there was a nest of wasps on the branch and pulled back, afraid he would be stung.

‘They won’t sting you!’ said Aisling. ‘I asked them not to!’

The wasps flew away and there, in a cluster,
were the little brown berries that Aidan had shown him. It was hard to believe, thought Brendan, as he started to gather them and fill his satchel, that they could make the lovely green ink he had seen on the pages of the Book.

Aisling picked one and grimaced. ‘They look like wild boar droppings!’ she said.

‘And they are really stinky!’ added Brendan.

When he had finished gathering the berries, they scrambled down the tree, Brendan falling the last bit and feeling embarrassed by his clumsiness in front of the girl. But she just laughed.

To his surprise, Brendan discovered that he did not really mind her laughing at him any more.

‘Now, I will lead you back,’ Aisling said. ‘We had better go the short way. But be sure to stick with me; there are dangerous things along the way …’

She led the way along a different route back through the forest. This path was more difficult to follow. The trees grew more closely together and let in less light. Brendan and Pangur stayed close to the girl, who found her way as if it was the easiest thing in the world to make a track through
the trees.

After a while, they came to a clearing. It was a strange place. Although there were no trees, there seemed to be even less light here than there had been among the thickets. On one side of the clearing, there was a wall of black rocks. Brendan stopped, fascinated by the sight of two great stone figures on either side of a dark opening in the rock. Pangur mewed loudly. Aisling, who had run ahead, looked back.

‘Come away, Brendan,’ she said, in a voice that suddenly sounded full of fear.

‘Come away from this place. This is a place of suffering.’