Stone Cradle Read Online Free Page B

they’ve been and if they’ve news of them.’ He was thinking we might have to put the word out we had gone to Corby. The folk we were stopped with wouldn’t tarry.
    So I set off across the fields and I was happy as a little lark because it had got me out of butter.
    We had the use of a milch cow at that time, a fine roan-coloured one, as I remember, and Dei was making butter that day. It took sixteen buckets of water for each churning and guess who had to fetch them sixteen buckets from the village well?
    I was halfway there when I realised I had the carrot in my apron pocket. This was unfortunate.
    We had finished off the carrots last night, when we had had dumplings and a bit of warmed-up gravy. As she dished up, Dei had passed me a piece of carrot and said, ‘Put that in your pocket and keep it safe, it’s for the butter.’ You got a much better yellow with a bit of carrot added. I had forgotten all about it in my haste to get off and now I did not know what to do. Dei would be wanting that piece of carrot for the churning. I stopped and looked behind me. I had gone so far it was a bit late to turn back.
    I was stood in the middle of the field. It was one of those fields that had a rise to it, as if the earth was breathing. I was right on the top of the rise and could see in all directions: the dip and lift of the world around me, distant trees looking grey and green and smoky and not a soul in sight. Before me, the ridges and furrows of the fallow earth tumbled and clambered. If I stopped still, then rocked on my heels, it looked as if the field was moving. It was a warm day, but with a breeze, a lovely day for walking to try and find your cousins. I looked up at the sky, closing my eyes to squint at the sun, as if there might be answers up there and something should happen to tell me whether to go on or go back.
    I usually find that if you ask the sky to tell you something, it answers back, sharpish.
    I had just dropped my gaze from the sky when I saw it. In the near distance, something was moving against the hedge. At first, I thought my sight was maybe a little squinty on account of the sun, so I closed my eyes and opened them again. I was right, something was moving to and fro in the hedge no more than thirty yards ahead of me.
    At this I began to feel a little afraid, as I could tell it was an animal of some sort, yet it was too large for a dog, too small for a cow and too nimble for a sheep.
    A terrible thought came to me. What if it was Bafedo Bawlo, the Ghost Pig? (That is the thing I am most afeared of next to being locked up and will tell you about some other time.)
    Whatever it was, it was moving restlessly from side to side along the hedge, as if it was looking for something in the undergrowth. I thought maybe I should just turn and run but whatever it was must be able to see me plain as I was standing right there in the centre of an empty field and I reckoned most animals could probably catch me in a chase. I did not want to approach it, neither, so I took a middle course and started to walk to the corner of the field that was to its right. This way I was a-signalling that I was no threat to it but was not afraid of it neither.
    Then a heart-stopping thing happened. It started to lollop alongside the hedge so that it would catch up with me at the corner. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around but there was no help for miles around and I knew I must find out what this thing was. So I walked calmly, keeping my eyes on it, until after a few paces it became the shape of a man.
    I say a man: it was as much beast as man. It was on all fours, but crouching on its haunches and using its knuckles to walk itself along. It was dressed in a shabby shirt and trousers of the same colour, which should have warned me of something. It had no shoes upon its feet and there was soil in its beard and on its hat. It was nothing but a tramp, a poor, filthy mumper come on hardtimes, and I did my best to take pity on it