The Green Children of Woolpit Today''s not the day to get lost in a story, Agnes Walter. Everything feels like a story today, though. It''s hot in this wheat field, which makes me think of deep, cool wells and the saints who look after them, or a delicious patch of shade and the shadows that play there, or the first snow of the year that brings all the kids in Woolpit outside to make tracks everywhere so Those Good People can''t tell whose house is whose, at least for a while. There are a thousand stories I could tell, but if you are a grown-up, now is never the right time for such things. My da is working ahead of me, swinging his scythe, shush-shush, cutting close to the base of the stalks so nothing is wasted. I follow him, stoop and gather, stoop and gather, stoop?--?ooooh, look at those thin slivers of wind chasing past like tiny threads of silver among the husks of wheat. I don''t talk about how pretty the wind is anymore. Not since Kate and Tabby started oinking at me and reminding anyone who''d listen that pigs are the only animals that can see the wind.
A cry rises somewhere distant. At first I''m sure it''s a bird, but it keeps spinning up and falling like a baby''s yowl but also like a dog that''s gotten its tail caught in a door. Birds don''t make that kind of sound, nor do beasts. Not even wolves. I trail to a halt and listen hard?--?not stooping, not gathering, not watching the wind?--?even though I''ve been warned twice already that there''s to be no shirking. No foot-dragging. Today''s not the day to get lost in a story, my da keeps saying, and the Woolpit mas have even less patience for stories than anything else, especially when my jammed-up words make everything I say sound like a falsehood. I''ll ask Glory.
She''s the best dog namer, straw braider, and butterfly chaser in Woolpit, and good at helping me stay in the here-and-now. She can''t still be angry about what happened at the Maying. That was months ago, and I''ve begged her pardon and she gave it and surely she''ll soon feel like making flower crowns again instead of always having a chore to do somewhere away from me. I gather in a rush, leaving behind big swaths of cut wheat stalks, so I reach the top of the row when she does. I tug her sleeve and say, "Listen." Glory jerks away. "What? What is it now?" "You . you said you weren''t angry anymore.
" "I''m not. It''s just ." Glory gestures at the long, narrow lines of cut stalks. "We''ve got all this work to do. And you missed a lot. Da won''t like that." Glory is gathering wheat behind her uncle instead of her da because her da is the reeve, and it''s his job to see that the work gets done. He''s the one hauled before Milord if it doesn''t.
She looks pink-cheeked and tidy like she always does. Not filthy and sweaty like me, even when I''m not in the wheat field. A pretty girl turns heads, she says, when she''s never said that before this year. It''s something those numbwits Kate and Tabby prattle, as if they have a single brain between them. "Someone''s crying. Far away. Don''t you hear it?" Glory muffles a groan. "I am not in the mood for one of your stories.
" I study my feet. So she is still upset about what happened at the May Eve feast. Or mayhap she''s thinking about her brother, even though we were both watching baby Hugh the day Those Good People breathed in his face and now he''s in the churchyard under a sad little heap of dirt. There''s only so many times you can tell someone you''re sorry. Only so many times you can hear them say that''s all right before you wonder what else you must do to make it so. My eyes sting. Just because no one else can hear the crying doesn''t mean it''s not there. I''m the only one I know who can see the wind curl past houses and fingers, through hair and leaves and fence posts.
If it''s not an animal making that sound, it must be a person, and the last person whose crying I ignored gasped his final breaths in shudders that grew ever slower, ever quieter. By the time I tried to help baby Hugh, it was too late. Today someone is clearly in trouble, and considering how everyone else keeps working, how the reeve isn''t blowing his horn all frantic and calling the name of someone missing from the field, I''m the only one who knows. Crying twists up my insides now like it didn''t before, but I can''t just leave the harvest. Not when everyone helps. Not when there''s no reason I can give that the reeve will see as a good one. Only moments ago, so many things felt like a story, but not this kind of story. If something is not as it should be, Those Good People are likely near.
It''s one more reason not to say too much about seeing the wind. The Woolpit mas are very careful about keeping Those Good People at a polite, cautious distance. No one wants their cow to go dry or their granny to get a fever. If there''s a shiny coin in a puddle or beautiful music just beyond the path, you''ll do well to think twice before picking it up or peeking through the brush. It could be just what it seems?--?or it could be a trick meant to tempt you into promising something you don''t want to part with. Never call them by their name, Granny would say. Speak respectfully of them always. With any fortune you will never meet one, but if you do, there will be no doubt what it is you see.
When the story is about a girl, you meet her doing ordinary things. Then the story part comes, and she must think carefully whether she should do the safe thing and keep feeding the pig, harvesting the wheat, and being an ordinary girl who stirs the beans sunwise just like her ma showed her so Those Good People can''t sprinkle in thorns. Deciding isn''t as simple as it might sound. The story part can lead to treasure as surely as it can lead to ruin, and at the very least she will get a scolding?--?and likely a smacking?--?if she leaves the wheat field when every soul in the village must help with the harvest. The rest of Woolpit works on steadily. The reapers step and swing, step and swing, and wheat stalks fall around them like panes of sunlight. Girls and women rush armloads to older men who draw them into tight golden shocks and prop them up together. My dress is soaked with sweat.
From today and yesterday. And the day before that. My hands are well bloodied, cuts atop cuts, from slips of chaff. Most of the time the story''s not about a girl at all. When it is, the girl has shiny yellow hair and clean feet and her da is the reeve. She is clever with her words and all the Woolpit mas fuss over her like a late-season peach. Everyone will notice her whether she does the safe thing or not. But if the girl does the safe thing, there''s no story.
At midday, I always go home and put the evening meal on the fire so it''ll be ready when we stumble in late and exhausted. I''m supposed to go straight back to the wheat field and my stoop-and-gathering. All the way out to the house I hear the crying. All the time I''m getting the beans together and settling the pot on its little stand in the coals. The sound is faint but steady, gliding around corners and across fields like it''s made of wind. Glory told me to ignore baby Hugh. He''ll cry forever if you keep picking him up. Ma says to let him calm himself.
We thought baby Hugh growing quieter was him going to sleep. That his gasping was the last of his cries. It was, but not how we thought. I cover the pot, pull the door closed, and follow the crying. I follow like Milord''s dogs after a fox until the field is somewhere behind me and the heath opens out like a scratchy brown bedcover tossed gentle and wrinkly over a pallet. Beyond is the greenwood, dark and dangerous. The crying drifts like a fog across the scrub-scattered plain. It''s not just any voice.
It''s a girl''s voice, and it''s coming from the wolf pit. The last time I was anywhere near the pit was two summers ago when Kate and Tabby dared me to get close enough to look in. Glory was there too, and she hissed and did urgent eyes at me because Kate and Tabby were older and they were talking to us and did I want to look like a baby? The pit is a neither-nor, Granny would say. Neither on the heath nor in the greenwood, and neither-nors are places you must watch yourself in. When something is neither one thing nor another, anything is possible. It was cold by the pit then, even for summer. Colder than it should have been such a short way into the greenwood, and as I edged near the long, jaggedy gap in the earth, there was a smell that hit me like a stone to the forehead. A damp, decaying smell, like old leaves pushed against a yard fence in November.
Like blood. There were bones at the bottom. From wolves, of course, poor beasts who met their ends there, trapped where they could neither eat lambs nor cripple cows. But wolves did not have long, bleaching leg bones. They did not have skulls round and cracked like fruit. That day two summers ago, I fled bawling and gibbering past Kate and Tabby as they pointed and laughed, as Glory stomped her foot with fed-up, helpless frustration. I flung myself away from all of them?--?toe-stubbing, lung-aching, skin-tingling?--?and I swore on every saint listening that I''d never go near the pit again. Only someone else is crying today, and it'.