The 1,000-year-old Boy

The woods were shady but not quiet. So far, the spring had been much warmer and drier than usual, and the leaves and twigs crunched loudly under our feet; when we stopped, I could hear a bee, and Roxy breathing. If I cocked my head, I could just make out the traffic on the A19 shushing past – a comforting sound: a reminder that, even though it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, we actually weren’t.

Then Roxy stopped and crouched down. ‘There. Can you see it?’

‘See what?’

‘There, man! You blind?’

Lower down the steeply sloping forest floor, between the silvery-grey trees and about as far away as I’d be able to throw a pine cone, I saw it: a mossy, slate-covered roof.

I glanced over at her to check if she was joking. I mean, a roof. So what? Roxy clocked my doubtful expression.

‘It’s better when you get nearer. Come on,’ and she was off through the trees. She was no longer bashing the nettles with her stick, and she advanced quietly, glancing back to check that I was following. Then she stopped.

We had a better view of the roof. It seemed to be level with us, which was odd, till I realised it was just because we were on a steep hill: it led down to a stone-built house surrounded by thick, spiky bushes – as if someone had planted the area especially densely to discourage intruders.

‘Careful here,’ whispered Roxy, and she pointed inside a bush at a coil of rusty barbed wire; the branches had grown around it. Further along, the bushes thinned out very slightly and there was a sign, one of those ones you can buy in hardware shops that says:

BEWARE: THE DOG ALWAYS ATTACKS

‘Erm … Roxy?’ I said.

She flapped her tiny hand dismissively. ‘There’s no dog. Don’t worry. Come on!’

I followed, feeling like an obedient puppy.

We came to a gap in the bushy barbed-wire defences. It would have been easy to squeeze through it had I been Roxy’s size. All I could do was lie absolutely flat on my belly and try to shimmy forward, following her flip-flops.

Her feet and lower legs were scratched all over and stung by nettles, but she didn’t seem to care.

Then the gorse bush cleared and we were in long grass: long enough to hide us if we lay flat. That’s when I saw the house properly.

The sloping ground extended another couple of metres and then dropped away sharply to become a brick wall about the height of a person. There was a neat, paved yard with a round fire-pit made of stone. A smouldering log gave off a thin wisp of smoke that rose up straight in the still air, and a few chickens pecked around on the ground. Next to the fire-pit was a round, metal pot, blackened with age and smoke.

The house itself was made of stone bricks, mottled and misshapen with age, and topped with a roof of the mossy slates I had seen from a distance. We were looking at the back of the house; the door was one of those ones that’s split in half. The top half was open but I couldn’t see inside. The paint on the door and window frames was a bit flaky; in fact, everything about the house looked old and dry and worn.

‘So, Roxy …’ I began.

‘Shhh!’

I lowered my voice. ‘So, Roxy. It’s someone’s house.’

‘Yes!’ she whispered back excitedly.

‘And this is a big deal?’

‘Well … yeah!’

‘Why exactly? People have houses, you know. They live in them.’

‘You don’t know who lives in this one.’

Roxy paused and took a breath, building the suspense. Then she stopped, both of our eyes drawn to a movement inside the doorway.

A woman appeared, framed in the open half of the door, and scanned the bushes and grass where we lay hidden. Instinctively we both shrank back.

I only got a quick look at her before she went back into the house. How old was she? I couldn’t tell. Long skirt, headscarf, sunglasses.

‘That was her,’ said Roxy.

‘That was who?’ I know this sounds like I was being deliberately uninterested to tease Roxy, but I just could not work out why she was so excited about some woman in a house. Big deal.

‘The witch.’

And, at that point, I forgot all about being quiet, and said – louder than I should have, probably – ‘Oh, Roxy!’

I was genuinely quite annoyed. Disappointed as well.

Annoyed with Roxy because I was lying in the grass, a bit scared, and covered in forest gunk and nettle stings, spying on someone’s house, probably breaking some law or other, and all for nothing. And disappointed because, well …

I’d thought Roxy might be a bit different. Someone fun to hang out with. Especially with Spatch and Mo in Italy.

And then she mentioned witches, for heaven’s sake. If I want witches, or unicorns, or animals in clothes, I just need five minutes with my little sister.

‘Shhh! She is, I’m telling you. She’s, like, two hundred years old and she lives in a cottage in the woods. She even has a black cat – look!’

Right on cue, a cat – not entirely black but anyway – strolled along the top of the wall right in front of us. It flashed us a look with its striking yellow eyes, then leapt gracefully down into the yard, mewling loudly, causing a chicken to flap out of its way.

‘Have you tasted it? The house?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is it made of gingerbread?’

The glare that Roxy gave me could have melted an ice lolly, but I didn’t care. This was just a silly fantasy.

‘I’m going back,’ I said, and I started to get up.

‘Get down!’ hissed Roxy. ‘She’ll see you.’

‘What? And turn me into a toad? I’ll take the risk, thanks.’

What happened next may have been my fault. I’m not really sure.

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As I got to my hands and knees, Roxy grabbed my collar, and pulled me back down really hard, and, for someone so small, she had plenty of strength.

‘Stop it!’ I whispered, and struggled from her grasp and, as I did so, I pushed her. She rolled down the bank, scrabbling for my hand or for grass, or for anything to stop her tumbling into the yard, which was where she was headed.