The Shapeshifters (2 page)

Towards afternoon the rain stops, and he gets excited. Now they can go out and look for the shielings! But his mother shakes her head. She says it is still raining in the forest. The trees will be dripping with water and it will be wet everywhere.

‘We'll be drenched in no time,' she says, turning the page.

Then she says:

‘You can go out on your own and play, can't you?'

He can.

He rolls mosquito repellent on his forehead and chin and over his hands, all the way out to the fingers. Even on his sleeves and the front of his jeans, just to be sure. Then he puts on his boots, pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt, opens the door and shuts it quickly.

The plot is not large, more like a little glade in the forest, and he has soon explored it. The door of the woodshed is open, and inside a grey ball is hovering. A wasp nest. It looks uninhabited, but he does not dare take a closer look.

The silence brought on by the rain is still hanging over the forest. From the top of the steep glistening wall of pine trees come isolated, experimental trills. He walks slowly along the trail, his face upturned, trying to catch a glimpse of the birds, but the trees reveal nothing moving within them. They have secrets.

The forest drops, drips and dribbles. Plips and plops. The glossy, weighted vegetation shines. He feels as if it is coming towards him like the big wet brushes that spin against the windows in the car wash. Here and there are streamers of pinky red. Those flowers are called fox's brush, he knows that. The name is not difficult to remember.

He is thinking he might reach the car soon, that the
chocolate-brown lacquer will flash among the trees. He is not sure what he will do there. Perhaps look at it, peer through one of the windows and then go back.

But then he catches sight of a ditch. The water is completely green, so the bottom is hidden, but it does not look deep. He wonders where the ditch is going and decides to follow it, stumbling over ground made bumpy by tussocks of grass. He tries as far as possible not to put his feet where it looks hollow and risky. With detours and small leaps from stumps to rocks he makes his way forwards. His ears are covered by his hood, so he cannot hear much, but the sounds come mainly from cones and twigs cracking beneath his boots and the wind slowly moving between the wet trees.

A shieling is an unpainted wooden shack—that much he knows, at least. Nobody lives there, but in the old days, long ago, animals lived there.
Alone
.

A house with animals. What would such a house look like? Has it got windows? If so, do the animals stand inside looking out, feeling bored? It was a strange thing to imagine. He is sure animals often feel bored, that they are so used to being bored they never even think how bored they are.

Occasionally the ditch disappears behind some impenetrable undergrowth and spiky clusters of reeds with long leaves. The grass swishes against his boots, and his trousers have gone dark at the front because of the water. It chills his thighs. His mother was right and he wonders if he should turn back.

Then he spots the footbridge and changes his mind.

A couple of dark tree trunks with planks nailed across them.

Is it a bridge to the shieling? Do the animals walk across this bridge?

He stands there with cold legs, hesitating a while.

The water beneath has a pea-green skin. It looks poisonous. A pine cone is floating in it. He could end up like that if he is not careful. He knows that. Someone floating, immobile, face down. Someone drowned.

Holding onto the rail he walks across the bridge. His mother's lips mouth a warning inside him, but he is already on his way into the sea of grass waiting on the other side. It is so tall that he disappears in it. When the wind blows the leaves bend and brush against each other. They become waves that whisper.

He can be just like an animal in the grass. A shrew, perhaps. Nothing is visible apart from strips of green slicing against each other. Holding his hands out in front of him he uses them to part the rustling reeds. This is what it is like for the shrew. Exactly like this.

The boy walks further and further out on the moss.

When he sees water in front of his feet he immediately steps to the side. He does not like the boggy feel of it. From time to time his boots gets stuck, as if the ground is sucking them down. It scares him, and after almost stepping out of one boot he has had enough and turns back. But instead of going back to the wooden bridge he cuts diagonally across the moss and wanders in among some birches he has spotted, and soon the forest is closing in around him.

Now he is walking on a carpet made of spongy moss. It is soft to walk on. It seems to want to spread everywhere and has even crept up the tree trunks. It covers the stones too, making them all as round as each other. He likes the look of that.

The branches fan out above him like a roof, so he does not feel any rain, and the wind that combed the gigantic grass cannot find its way in here.

He looks into the forest.

It is perfectly silent. It is actually odd how quiet it is. Nothing is moving, not even the small leaves on the bushes or the tops of the grass.

There is not much space between the trees. Narrow slits of light and that is all, it seems.

On the ground there is a lot to explore. There are dead things left lying about, a tree that has split open and whose insides are bright red, like meat, and just beyond it a rotted birch trunk that has fallen apart. Scaly shards of bark surround it. He digs the toe of his boot into the birch and presses carefully. It is soft right through.

Another tree trunk is dotted with yellow saucer shapes that look like ears. He tries to count them because there are so very many—how many ears can you actually have?—but he loses count when the mosquitoes fly into his face.

A hollow stump looks like a cauldron among the blueberry branches. A crown of moss surrounds the cavity. He looks down into the stump but there is nothing particularly interesting inside it, only dampness and pine needles stuck together in clumps. He would like to put his hand in and feel down to the bottom—perhaps a mouse is sleeping there—but he does not really dare.

Far, far inside the forest a bird flies soundlessly from one tree to the next, as if drawing a line between the trunks. The boy can see it out of the corner of his eye. He stands up and walks on, singing a little and talking to himself in a soft, jokey voice. His mother has told him there is nothing to fear in the forest, so he is not particularly afraid. No wolves, no bears, nothing that wants to eat him. Apart from the mosquitoes.

Still, when the roots of an overturned tree loom above him his stomach lurches because he almost imagines it is an old man standing there waiting for him. A man who will not move out of the way.

After a while he plucks up enough courage to approach the fallen tree. The underside is a mass of twisted roots, and on the ground is a gaping void, covered in bracken. It is black between the fronds, unpredictable and very deep. Someone lives down there, he is sure. A badger, perhaps. Badgers are underground creatures, piggy-eyed and bad-tempered. They only come out at night to nose around and whisper.

As he stands there, peering down into the bowl below the roots, he hears a crack.

Small furtive footsteps, very close.

Quickly he tugs at his hat so that he can see properly.

His eyes wander between the columns of pines. Someone was there, he is convinced of that.

He takes a little step sideways, at the same time craning his neck to see what is behind the upturned roots. He hardly dares to look.

A movement. A streak of grey fur.

That is what he sees.

And then he runs.

Runs away towards the light where the forest thins out.

Undergrowth and branches whip against his boots.

He follows the forest edge, tripping and stumbling his way forwards.

Not until he has staggered out onto the trail does he dare to stop and look around. He beats at the mosquitoes circling his face. His fear seems to have made them even more excited.

His mother is sitting curled up on the sofa with her book, and when he comes in through the doorway she looks up at him with a sharp little crease between her eyes. She has folded the book so that she can hold it in one hand. Around the fingers of the other she is twisting her chain. It digs into the skin of her neck.

She asks where he has been, and when she notices how wet he is she puts the book aside and helps him take off his jacket. His hair is standing on end in damp little tufts and his jumper has ridden up over his stomach in wrinkles, but he hurries to pull it down as he tells her. That he has seen an
animal
.

‘What kind of animal?'

‘An animal!'

She twists off his boots roughly and finds his socks squashed up, the toes wringing wet. His feet have turned red. ‘Oh, Magnus,' she sighs.

To get his jeans off he has to lie down while she pulls and tugs at the legs because the wet fabric has glued itself to him. The boy thumps his head against the floor, and that makes them laugh.

‘Let go!' she shouts.

‘I can't,' he giggles.

Finally he has to stand up and stamp the trousers off instead. She picks up the jeans and asks him if he has been swimming. He didn't go near the pool, did he?

In the bag, which is open on the floor, he finds a pair of dry underpants patterned with roaring hot rods and motorbikes, and after he has put them on he climbs up onto the sofa and buries himself under the sleeping bag. The zipper is a track of cold steel teeth against his thigh and he changes position to avoid the feel of it on his skin. The knobbly sofa fabric is rough against his legs
and it is warm where his mother has been sitting.

He hears his mother rustling behind the log basket, stuffing wads of newspaper into his boots and hanging up his clothes on the chairs around the table.

He wants to tell her about the animal. That it was grey.

‘But what
kind
of animal was it?'

He sits with his mouth open for a while as he thinks.

‘I think it could have been a lynx.'

His mother shakes her head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘A wolf then?'

‘It was probably a bird. It generally is a bird.'

‘No. It wasn't a bird. Birds don't have fur.'

She has come to sit beside him. With her index finger she lifts a thick lock of hair from his forehead. He stares out through the window and is still in the forest.

‘It was an animal, Mum.'

She nods.

It has started to rain again, and soon it is thundering on the roof.

The fox's-brush flowers down by the path are lying on the ground after the downpour. Everything is flattened and changed and glistening moistly. It is still raining slightly and now a wind has started to blow. It can be seen in the swaying pines and the other trees that flicker and reflect the light, and every so often small gusts of wind hurl handfuls of raindrops at the windowpanes.

Groups of dead insects have collected on the windowsill. They have crawled close together to die—flies, mostly, but also wasps grown brittle. A butterfly with closed wings. It has shut itself up like a book. It would not look dead otherwise because it has kept
all its colours. He asks his mother what the butterfly is called, but she does not know.

‘A peacock butterfly, perhaps. Or a small tortoiseshell. I don't know . . .'

He reaches for the little box made of bark that is standing on the table. He knows it is empty but looks inside anyway. Something ought to be kept in it, but he does not know what.

Then he has an idea. He picks up the folded butterfly and lays it in the box. He takes great care, and when he has replaced the lid he shakes the little box to hear the butterfly inside.

Darkness has deepened in the forest, and around the glass lamp beside the door moths are flitting about. They rustle against the illuminated globe, entranced. It looks as if they want to get inside. His mother reads to him from one of his comics. In the middle of a speech bubble she stops because the boy has lifted his head from her arm and is looking open-mouthed at the window.

‘I heard something!'

His mother raises herself up on one elbow and also listens. The grasshoppers are making their rasping sound, and the shadows under the bunk bed make her face pale and turn her eyes into dark pockets. A gap has opened between her lips.

Then she sinks down again.

‘It's nothing.'

The boy does not want to believe her. He jumps down to the floor and pulls aside the towel hanging as a curtain at the window. He rests his hand on the mosquito mesh and cranes his neck, looking down the path.

‘It sounded like something was walking out there. Something big.'

His mother has laid her head on the pillow.

‘It was nothing,' she says.

So he wriggles down under the quilt again.

Lies there alert.

Listening.

‘Shall I carry on reading?'

He sniffs and nods.

Afterwards, when they have turned off the light, they hear a faint rustling on the roof.

The rain is falling softly. As if practising.

He can hear a mosquito moving about the room, but it seems unable to find its way to the bed. It goes quiet from time to time. He thinks it is waiting.

‘Mum,' he says, but he can hear from her breathing that she is already asleep.

After flicking through the comics and looking at the pictures on the last page that show what the next comic will be about, he wanders into the main room.

Outside the window he sees a movement. His mother is standing out there, her hair a shining curtain in the morning light. She is bending over something.

When he pushes open the door she instantly straightens up. ‘What are you doing?' he asks.

She is wearing a thick jacket. One of her hands is stuffed inside a large gardening glove.