Night of the Animals(32)

“Be good to that goat,” Granny said. “And stay out of the forest—or be careful. They’ve adders in there, little noodle-like ones, but adders no less.”

The two Birmingham boys obeyed their grandmother—at first. They bolted from the house but stopped almost immediately upon encountering the goat close-up. They stared in silence for a minute at the chewing, imperturbable goat. (“It’s a funny old goat,” Drystan kept saying. “Easily the best one I’ve ever seen.”) They carefully clambered over hedgerows and ran across a barley field and one of Bewdley’s many overgrazed pastures. They finally arrived at the sundrenched southeastern flank of the forest itself. Local children would have scampered right in, and they often did—but Cuthbert and Drystan, out of their West Brom world of street kickabouts and corner shops, dawdled. They’d just have a little look, but not enter the forest.

“Oooooooh, it’s really smashing,” said Drystan.

“It’s all right,” Cuthbert said glumly. “Can’t see much, not from here.”

A stand of very old oaks festooned with huge shriveled globes of gray-green mistletoe stood on the forest’s edge. It had been raining hard in recent days, yet there had been no relief from the high temperatures. The flora seemed scorched, raving with energy, subtropical. Yellowish liverwort with designs as filigreed as fine necklaces hung everywhere in strands. Regal stems of pinkish purple betony and Scottish thistle grew at the feet of the ancient trees. The shiny leaves of the oaks, enmeshed in striated sunbeams and swamped in golden light, gave the forest’s boundaries a kind of honeyed radiance.

Cuthbert leaned over and picked up a gnarled old black stick. For reasons one can hardly conceive, two condoms, uncurled but evidently unused, had been tied upon its end like ribbons of skin. Neither sibling knew what they were. Cuthbert pulled one of the condoms back and let it snap back.

“This is a good stick,” he said.

“Might do,” said Drystan. “Let me coppit for a second?”

Cuthbert handed it to him.

Drystan crouched down and began swinging the stick at imaginary monsters. He said, in a retro-pulp TV-announcer voice: “And Dan Dare lands the Anastasia on northern Venus, surrounded by artificial tornadoes hatched by the Treens. He hunches down, gripping his Uranium Melt Sword.” Cuthbert squealed with laughter, showing his gappy baby-toothed smile. “Now Dan Dare begins slashing at horrible gangs of dinosauroid warriors, lopping off their scaled fingers, then bashing the bulbous head of the Mekon until the evil creature spins off on his Floating Disc.”

Cuthbert clapped his hands. Just turned six, he was beyond the patty-cake stage of entertainment, but Drystan could still charm him to no end with utter ease.

Drystan swung a few more times. Little hums came off the stick as the latex flapped in the air.

“Blasted,” said Drystan, in a normal voice. “It’s a noice stick.” He gave it back to Cuthbert. “Coppit good, Cuddy. We may need that.”

Dryst seemed to have braved himself up.

“Let’s conquer,” he said.

Then he remembered. Their granny had said “The Boogles ’as more full of nabs and tricks than Owd Nick. And by gum, thee canna be top’over-tail maskered* an’ confused at your age. Dunna stay late thar. The animals—the owd ancient animals, thay come out.”

The forest before them looked gorgeous and intimidating; Cuthbert felt pulled in. The sun had hit its zenith, and it wouldn’t be dark for hours. Drystan was generally protective of his younger brother, but he couldn’t help reciting a story Gran had told him the night before in Birmingham.

“Cuddy, you know Granny said something once before, she said ’er own old aunt, Millie—she’s dead now, roight, Cuddy?—well, she had come down off those hills where they’re all from, the Clees or Clays or what, and Aunt Millie and what ’ad got lost in the forest. For three days.”

“Liar,” said Cuddy. “You’re ’aving a go at me.” He whipped the condom stick through the air.

“I’m not. When Millie finally came out, Aunt Millie, Granny said, well she was doolally—off her head or what—and she never got any different. She sat in a birch wood chair, like, for thirty years, petting her white cat. It’s the truth.”

Cuthbert looked down at his stick and used his thumbnail to scrape off some of its thin, green bark.

Drystan continued, “Aunt Millie would sometimes say that she was looking for leftover charcoal from the charcoal makers, but what she found was the King of Night. The King of Night. Bloody hell—that’s all the reason I need to go in there. It must have been one of the prehistoric lions. Or that Welsh tiger.”

“Or them Boogles,” Cuthbert said sternly (his upper lip trembling).

“All right,” said Drystan. “Let’s nip along, then.”

But they didn’t move. For a while, they nervously kicked at a dead log and shouted nonsense words to hear their echoes and swatted at red damselflies and at each other.

“Googa maga waga maga!” yelled Drystan.

“Biggle flix!” screamed Cuthbert.

“Maga maga!”

“Shite!” said Cuthbert, with tingling boy-laughter ringing from him in tiny bright bells.

“Boogles!” Drystan said. Then, in a derisive, squeaky old-lady voice, he added: “Thee dunna want to hespel the Boogles.”