Chapter One: The Bumble Bee Kite
Updated: Febuary 12th
It was the Bumble-Bee kite that started it all- though at the time I would have blamed Kara for being so disobedient. For two sisters only three years apart, there were never two as different as us. Back then we were still just kids.
Our village lay in between the stark moors and the clusters of farmland that were almost equally as barren. Our homes were small and low to the ground. Anything made of timber or stone that stood more than two storeys tall ended up battered and torn apart when the wind storms came.
The moors stretched a mile out, and marking the end of it was the sinister, grey mass that we knew as the Dark Forest. Beneath the shadows of the thick, dry canopy dwelt a race of creatures who delighted in all things wicked. Daddy said that nine tenths of all the evils in the world come from inside it.
It scared me to no ends as a child, when the moon was bright enough to see across the moors, I would peek out my window late at night and swear I could see the creatures sneaking through the tall, dry grass towards the village. In my worst nightmares I would hear creaks and noises around my room, and the Creatures would be standing there, tall and pale. I didn't know what they would do. Children don't understand as much as adults, and I always regarded the evils in the forest as things that marked in me the same anxiety I had when I knew that something was scaring Daddy. Children don't understand, but anything that scares a father is most definitely worth being afraid of.
Why they never came to our village was something I didn’t know at the time, and so it just seemed logical that as we stayed in our own village, they stayed in their forest. Of course, what just seems logical brings little comfort.
On the other side of the village where the farmlands, where we kept a few animals and grew crops. It was hard. The soil was lifeless and few of the plants grew anything that could be harvested. It would have been impossible for any one person to survive by their own means, and so we worked together and everybody looked out for each other - which meant that at least our community was much sturdier than our wind-battered houses.
Daddy taught me that you should always be brave, because the more you give into fear the less able you will be to face it. Everyone in our village was brave, maybe because we were taught to be brave from such a young age. Nobody was afraid of small spaces or spiders, or bedbugs or snakes.
It wasn't until I was older that I understood that the adults actually were afraid of the forest, in a way. They learned to put that fear aside. Spiders and small spaces were foolish things to be afraid of with nine tenths of all the worlds evils sitting on your doorstep.
Perhaps that's also why, as I realised later, learning to not be afraid was so crucial in our little culture. Fear has a way of getting inside your head.
As my sister and I stood on the outskirts of our village I looked across at the forest and felt a strange sense of nervousness make my stomach feel tight. I would have sworn that day that I could see something hovering by the edges, watching us. It was foolish though, since at such a distance we could barely see anything except the shadow.
Kara was a few metres ahead of me. Her flowered dress that inflated in the wind and yellow wellies made her the brightest thing on the moors, so she wasn’t hard to lose.
I moved to stand behind her, put my arms around her and held on to the strings of our new bumble-bee kite. I knew she wouldn’t blow away, not in this wind, but every time a strong enough gust came along it would drag her a few steps closer. Sometimes I even tricked myself into believing that it was the Shadow Creatures manipulating the winds, dragging her towards them a few steps at a time. We were still over half a mile away, but I couldn’t ignore it.
‘We should go in soon.’
‘I want to stay out here,’ Kara said. The kite jerked and snagged a few times. We had made it using sticks from the dry old trees of the moors, old scraps of rope that we had been collecting for months and a bright sheet of fabric that had cost all of our pocket money to buy. We made it as strong as we could, but against those winds the bright little kite didn’t stand much of a chance.
‘Bring the kite in then, the wind is too strong. It’s going to break.’
Her objection was silent, but obvious. She turned her head away from me and rolled the kite out further. I slapped her hands out of the way so hard that she let go, and started reeling the rope in as carefully as I could.
‘Stop it!’ She snapped.
‘Kara, it’s going to break!’
She tried to pull the stick and string from me. The kite pulled in the wind and jerked twice before the decayed string snapped half way up. For a few moments we stopped quarrelling and watched the kite toss and tumble in a high current of wind that shook it around like a bored dog with a new stick to destroy. It took a sudden turn and, at fifty miles per hour, soared towards the dark shadow of the forest. Kara made no haste in pelting forward after it.
I ran after her and snatched her up before she could get too much of a head start. At first she kicked wildly, then clung on to me in despair and watched the bright colours of the bumble bee kite crumble behind the thicket of trees.
‘My kite…’ She whimpered, and her voice softened to a sweet tone. I lowered her carefully to the floor. ‘Come on Ollie, let’s go get it.’
‘It’s gone into the Dark Forest.’
‘But… I want my kite back.’
‘ ‘I want’s never gets. Come on, we’ve got to go home now.’
‘No!’ She kicked away from me and looked towards the forest. She tried to make a break for it, but I had already anticipated the movement and grabbed her by the lace of her collar. ‘I want my kite!’
‘We can make a new one.’
‘I want the my kite!’ She whined, then started to cry.
‘You’re so spoilt, come on!’ I switched from her collar to her sleeve and started dragging her across the moor.
'Ollie, we can get the kite back you know,’ she said in the way she did when trying to sound grown up. ‘It hasn't gone too far in.'
'We're not allowed near the forest, you know that.'
'But it's not far, we can run in and out before the monsters even notice.'
'We not even supposed to go near it. They're already waiting for us to take a few steps too many.' I caught myself before saying too much that might scare her - and I didn’t want her going back and repeating to Daddy what I had said. Of course my thoughts were nonsense, but that didn’t stop me from listening hard, as if I actually could pick up on the difference between normal and spellbound wind.
'I want it back, I want it back!' She screeched suddenly. I clipped her over the ear, which made her press her lips tight together and puff her cheeks out like an enraged monkey.
'That's not temperament of a young lady, Kara. Stop it... If you keep pulling that face your eyeballs are going to pop out.'
She released the breath of air that she had been holding and scowled. I clipped her ear again.
'I didn't even say anything!' She whined.
'You were thinking it.'
She tucked her chin into her chest and stared at the ground, as if trying hard not to think about anything. Then she looked up at me and spoke with a sweet tone in her voice, the kind she used when she wanted extra jam in the scones we got from the baker.
'If we get it back, I'll do your chores for a week.'
'You struggle to do your own chores.'
'I'll do my own, and yours.'
'Kara,' I growled. I couldn't imagine how Daddy would react if he knew how disobedient she was, but she had a knack for getting away with anything around him.
'I'll even give you my desserts after dinner, and my pocket money.'
'Kara!' She flinched a little when I lost my temper. That's when I said the most hypocritical thing I was ever to say over the next few weeks. ‘You should know better than to go making deals with the devil.'
It was just an expression. It meant don't go offering things you may not be able to give, because the devil will make sure they're taken from you. ‘Why can’t you grow up and stop acting so foolish!’ I was only twelve at the time, but being Kara’s older sister and constant watch (since Daddy worked most days) I often thought myself to be older. Kara was nine, and acted like she was six.
After my outburst she broke down into an endless wail. I kept hold of her coat and dragged her the rest of the way home, and eventually she fell into a silent weeping during which the tears still streamed from her eyes.
We were a few steps from our home before she finally quietened. I knelt down on the rough, pebbled path of our garden and used my sleeve to wipe the tears and dust trails from her cheeks.
‘Brave face for Daddy, okay?’
She nodded in response and once I was sure she was calm we went inside. Daddy was sitting on the floor by the fire that flickered with the wind from the chimney, playing marble hop- his favourite game that we always played when he got a day off. We kicked off our wellies and crossed the room to sit by him.
‘I thought you took your kite.’ He said lightly.
Usually Kara and I would exchange glances in a silent argument as to whom was going to tell Daddy that we had done something wrong. This time she didn’t even look at me though, and I knew the cogs in her head were turning.
