The Game

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Hayley looked across the street, where the sunlight blazed on shoppers and glinted off shop windows. She had often vaguely wondered why the musician always stood here, on the shady side of the street. She turned back to ask if the brother was a musician as well.

But here Martya dashed up in a panic and seized Hayley’s arm. “You don’t go, you don’t go! Your baba kills me! So sorry,” she gasped at the musician. “She bother you.”

He smiled his blue-eyed smile. “Not at all,” he said.

Martya gave him a flustered glare and dragged Hayley back to the shop, where she and Mr Ahmed had settled the argument by getting Grandma both oranges and orangeade. Grandma was not pleased when they got home. She had wanted orange juice.

Thereafter, whenever they went to the shops, Hayley always tried to tempt Martya to walk on the sunny side of the street, in hopes of meeting the musician’s brother. Martya nodded and smiled as if she quite understood, and then stayed on the usual side of the road. Nodding and smiling turned out to be a habit with Martya. She used it instead of understanding English. She used it particularly when Grandma told her to clean the silver or sweep the stairs. Grandma soon began saying Martya was a lazy slattern.

“Now let us see,” Grandma said, one afternoon a few days later, “if you can manage to do one simple thing, Martya. No, don’t nod, don’t smile. Just look at Hayley’s shoes.” She pointed. Martya and Hayley both looked down at Hayley’s neat black shiny shoes. “Now go to the shoe shop,” Grandma said, “with this note and this money, and get Hayley another pair just the same but half a size larger. Can you do that?”

“I can do that, Grandma,” Hayley said joyfully. The shoe shop was on the sunny side of the street.

“I’m talking to Martya,” Grandma said. “Martya is doing the buying. I want the same kind exactly, Martya. No other colour, no fancy bits. Have you understood?”

Martya nodded and smiled vigorously and the pair of them set off towards the shops. On the way, Martya said, rather helplessly, “I don’t know how is shoes. What is fancy bits?”

“I’ll show you,” Hayley said.

The shoe shop was quite a long way down the road from The Star, where the musician was playing as usual. Hayley waved to him across the street, but she was not sure he saw her. When they reached the shoe shop, Hayley led Martya in front of the window and pointed to the various different shoes inside it. “Look – those pink ones with cowboy fringes have the fancy bits, and so do those with a flower on front. Do you see?”

While Martya pulled her hair aside in order to bend down and stare at the shoes, and then did her usual nodding and smiling, Hayley suddenly began hearing sweet distant snatches of music. It was not violin music. She was not sure what instrument it was, but it flowed and stopped and flowed again, in some of the loveliest sounds she had ever heard. “It’s his brother,” she said to Martya. Martya just nodded and smiled and looked at shoes. Hayley said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and walked sideways away along the fronts of the shops, tracking the music. “Like the Pied Piper or something,” she said aloud, as the sounds led her on, and on, and then round a corner into a small side street.

The musician was there, standing in blazing sunlight and, to Hayley’s delight, he was actually playing a pipe, the kind you held sideways out along one shoulder to play. Hayley dimly thought it might be a flute. She had never heard such lovely sounds as those that came pouring out of it, although she did wish that he would keep to one tune, instead of playing in snatches. One moment he would be playing something wild and jolly. Then he would break off and start another tune, this one melting and sad. Then it would be music you could march to. She stood and surveyed him and rejoiced.

He had hair like Martya’s, quite long, but not as long as Martya’s, that blew around his head in fine white strands, and he was as tall and thin as the violin-player, though nothing like so neat. His clothes were green and baggy, and a green, green scarf fluttered from his neck. A baggy green hat lay on the ground by his bare feet, waiting for money.

He was watching Hayley watching him while he played. His eyes were the same green as his scarf. Hayley had never seen eyes that colour before, nor had she ever looked into eyes that were so direct and interested and kind. It was as if he and Hayley knew one another already.

“I’m sorry I haven’t any money,” she said.

You couldn’t play a flute and talk. He took the flute away from his mouth to smile and say, “That doesn’t matter.”

“Are you the violin man’s brother?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Hayley Foss,” Hayley said. “What are you called?”

He grinned, the same sort of youthful grin as his brother’s, and asked, “What do you want to call me?”

All sorts of names flooded through Hayley’s mind, so many that she was surprised into taking a deep, gasping breath. “Flute,” she said, in the end.

He laughed. “That’ll do. And I suppose that makes my brother’s name Fiddle. One of us had better warn him. What can I do for you?”

“Are you a magician?” Hayley asked.

“In many ways, yes,” he said. “I don’t live by the usual rules.”

“I have to live by rules all the time,” Hayley said wistfully. “Can you show me some magic?”

Flute looked at her consideringly – and quite sympathetically, she thought. He seemed to be going to agree, but then he looked up over Hayley’s head and said, “Some other time, perhaps.”

Martya was rushing up the small street, waving a pair of large pink shoes with cowboy fringes, and a lady from the shoe shop was rushing after her. Martya was so agitated at losing Hayley that she forgot to speak English at all and shouted a torrent of her own language, while the shop lady kept saying, “I don’t care where you come from. You haven’t paid for those shoes.”

Flute twisted up one side of his face, so that half of it seemed to be smiling at Hayley and the other half looking seriously at the shop lady, and said, “I think I’d better sort this out for you.” He said to the lady, “It’s all right. She thought this little girl had gone missing, you see.” Then he spoke to Martya in what was clearly her own language.

Martya replied with a gush of Darkest Russian, clapping the pink shoes together in front of her bosom, as a substitute for wringing her hands. They were very big shoes, much more Martya’s size than Hayley’s. Flute spoke to her soothingly while he collected his hat and shut his flute into a long case. By the time they were all walking back to the shoe shop, he was wearing rather battered green boots that Hayley had certainly not seen him put on.

He did do some magic! Hayley thought. Quite a lot of it! she added to herself, as she watched Flute calming everyone in the shop down and making sure that Martya counted out enough of Grandma’s money to pay for the large pink shoes. Then he smiled at Hayley, said, “I’ll see you,” and left.

Martya and Hayley went home, where Grandma was far from pleased. Hayley said repeatedly, “It wasn’t her fault, or Flute’s, Grandma. They both thought you meant the shoes were for her.” While Martya nodded and smiled and hugged the shoes happily.

“Be quiet, Hayley,” Grandma snapped. “Martya, I have had enough of this nodding and smiling. It’s just an excuse for laziness and dishonesty. You’ll have to leave. Now.”

Martya’s ugly face contorted inside her beautiful hair. “Laziness I am?” she said to Grandma. “Then of you, what? You do nothing all day but give orders and make rules! I go and pack now – and take my shoes!” She went stumping up the stairs, scowling. “Your baba is a monster!” she said as she stamped past Hayley. “You I pity from the depths of my chest!”

It startled Hayley. She had not thought of Grandma as a monster – she had just thought life was like that: long and boring and full of rules and things you mustn’t do. Now here was Martya actually pitying her for it. She wondered if it made sense.

But there were no more walks, to the shops or out on the common, for a while after that. Until a new maid was found to clean things and take Hayley out in the afternoons, Hayley was sent into the back garden instead. There she wandered about among the dark, crowding laurel bushes, thinking about her parents, longing for the mythosphere and wondering if Grandma really was a monster. Sometimes, when she was right in the midst of the laurels and knew she could not be seen from any of the windows, she crouched down – careful not to get her knees dirty – and secretly built bowers out of twigs, castles made of pebbles and gardens from anything she could find. “Mythosphere things,” she called them to herself.

She was building a particularly elaborate rock garden about a week later, made of carefully piled gravel and ferns, when she looked up to see Flute standing among the laurels with his hands in his pockets. He was staring up at the house as if he was wondering about it. Hayley could not think how Flute had got in. There was a high brick wall round the garden and no way in except through the house.

“Hallo,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Flute had obviously not known she was there. He whirled round, thoroughly startled, and his green scarf blew tastefully out among his hair. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you. I was wondering what went on in this house.”

“Nothing much does,” Hayley told him, rather dryly. “Grandpa works and Grandma makes rules.”

Flute frowned and shook his head slightly. The green scarf fluttered. His eyes stared into Hayley’s, green and steady. “I know you,” he said. “You were with the Russian lady and the shoes.”

“Martya. She left,” Hayley said.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Flute said. “This house isn’t for the likes of her. Why are you in it?”

“I’m an orphan,” Hayley explained. “They bring me up.” Flute nodded, taking this in, and then smiled at her, with some little doubtful creases beside his mouth. Hayley found herself adoring him, in a way she never adored even Grandpa. “How did you get in here?” she said. “Over the wall?”

Flute shook his head. “I don’t do walls,” he said. “I’ll show you, if you’ll just follow me for a few steps.” He turned and walked, with a soft clatter of leaves, in among the laurel trees.

Hayley sprang up from her rock garden – it was finished anyway – and followed the swishing and the glimpses of green scarf among the dark leaves. There had to be a gate in the wall that she had never found. But she never saw the wall. She followed Flute out of the laurels into a corner of the common. Really the common. She saw cars on the road in the distance and Grandpa’s familiar red house in the row beyond the road. “Good heavens!” she said, and looked up at Flute with respect. “That’s more magic, isn’t it? Can you show me some more more?”

Flute thought about it. “What do you want to see?”

There was no question about that. “The mythosphere,” Hayley said.

Flute was rather taken aback. He put his hands into his baggy pockets and looked down at her seriously. “Are you sure? Someone has warned you, have they, that things in the mythosphere are often harder and – well – fiercer than they are here?”

Hayley nodded. “Grandpa said the strands harden off when they get further out.”

“All right,” Flute said. “We’ll take a look at some of the nearest parts then. It’ll have to be just a short look, because I wasn’t expecting to see you and I have things to do today. Follow me then.”

Chapter Four (#u8a2c11cb-2e12-5336-bc92-4cf84ffacc9a)

Flute turned and strode back among the laurels, green scarf streaming. Hayley pattered after him in the greatest excitement. Not much happened at first, except that they came out into proper woodland where paths seemed to run in several directions. Flute looked this way and that and finally chose a path that was lightly strewn with brown and yellow autumn leaves. After a short way, the leaves were in thick drifts and the trees overhead were yellow and brown and apricot, and rattled in a sad, small autumn breeze. Hayley – and Flute too – began to enjoy shuffling the leaves into heaps and then kicking them, until Flute put a hand out for Hayley to stop.

Someone was coming along a path that crossed theirs, whistling merrily.

Hayley stood nearly knee deep in leaves and watched a splendid young man go striding past, crunching coloured leaves under his sandals. He was obviously a hunter. His main clothing was a big spotted leopardskin that draped over one shoulder and fastened around his hips to make a sort of skirt, and he carried an enormous longbow almost as tall as himself. The arrows for it hung in a long leather box over his left shoulder. His muscles bulged and gleamed. Grandma would have called him a dirty savage, but to Hayley he looked neat and crisp, like an actor dressed up as a hunter for a film. She could see that his neat little beard and his chestnut curls were shining and clean.

“Who is he?” she whispered.

“Orion,” Flute whispered back. “He’s a hunter.”

There seemed to be a group of ladies in long dresses suddenly, in among the trees. The hunter stopped whistling, peered, and whipped an arrow, long and wickedly sharp, out from his arrow-holder. Then, holding it ready beside his bow, he broke into a fast, striding run. The ladies all screamed and ran away.

Hayley did not blame them. “Can’t he see they’re not animals?” she said.

“Not always,” Flute said, as hunter and ladies all disappeared among the trees.

Flute and Hayley turned a corner and came out beside a lake then, where it seemed to be nearly winter. All the trees and bushes around the bleak little stretch of water were brown and almost empty of leaves. A young lady in a white dress came down the bank towards the shore. When she was right beside the water, she looked around, grinning mischievously, and crouched down. Her white dress melted into her all over and she was suddenly a swan. Off she launched, white and stately, and sailed across the lake.

Hayley saw a hunter then. She thought he was not the same hunter as the first one, but it was hard to be sure. He was in dark clothes, but he had the same sort of huge bow and a case of arrows. He was coming stealthily down to the lakeside with an arrow ready beside his bow. When he saw the swan lady, he put the arrow in the bow, raised it and, very slowly and carefully, drew the arrow back until the bow was a great arc.

Hayley cried out, “Oh no! Don’t!”

The hunter did not seem to hear her. He let the arrow fly. Out in the lake, the swan collapsed into a white, spouting turmoil.

“Let’s move on,” Flute said sadly. He took Hayley’s hand and pulled her away from the lakeside. But before the bushes hid the lake, Hayley had to look back. She saw the hunter wading in the water, dragging the white floppy shape of the lady to the shore. He seemed to be crying his eyes out.

The next part they went through had swans in it everywhere. Three swans with crowns on their heads glided on a sudden sea. A group of young women ran down to the beach a bit further on and then took off as swans in a white beating of huge wings. More wings beat and some swans came in to land beside a big bonfire. As they landed, they turned into young men. This happened several times. Sometimes there was just one swan, sometimes a whole flock. Then Flute and Hayley arrived at a place where a young woman timidly held out her hand to a huge swan, as big as she was. There was something about that big swan that Hayley did not like at all.

“I think,” Flute said, “that we’ll take another strand now. All right?” When Hayley nodded, he turned off along a way that was greener, where the sun shone among forest trees that seemed to be putting out new spring leaves.

They passed through a sunny clearing where golden midges circled under a big oak tree. When Hayley looked at the midges closely, they were very small winged people. She cried out with pleasure.

“More like it, eh?” Flute said, grinning.

The midge people all flew away as he said it. They seemed to have been frightened by a growing noise, over to the left. It was a sound of yelping, pattering and panting. Shortly a whole crowd of dogs burst into the clearing, excited, long-legged hunting dogs with their tongues hanging out. Hayley could see that they were all little more than puppies. They saw Hayley and Flute and rushed towards them, so that in seconds they were surrounded by curved, waving tails, big floppy ears and wide panting mouths with long pink tongues draping out of them. One puppy reared up to put both paws on Flute’s stomach. Flute laughed and rubbed its ears. Hayley, a little timidly, stroked the head of the nearest hound. This caused all the rest to clamour for attention too. Hayley had to laugh. It was like being in a warm, boisterous bath, full of excitement and affection.