Pog, page 8
‘Pog,’ said Penny.
David rolled his eyes.
Penny leant over Pog again. ‘Would you like to come downst—’
Like a whip being cracked, Pog was off. He was a blur of speed as he leapt up and slid down the banister, landing on the floor of the hallway below with a satisfying thump. He looked up at David and Penny:
‘Who woulds like to follow Pog?’
They followed Pog downstairs, and when they reached the bottom, Pog looked at David and tapped the side of his head. ‘Pog hasn’t forgotten that you hurt Mouse.’ David looked slightly uncomfortable on being reminded of this fact, and Pog looked thoughtful. ‘But David was protecting. Pog understands. So David can be forgiven.’
Pog smiled at David, and a relieved-looking David returned his smile. Penny could feel herself warming to Pog more and more.
‘What’s to do now, Pog?’ she asked.
‘Pog will do what Pog does and guard the Necessary.’
‘The Necessary. You keep mentioning that. What is it?’
Pog seemed to consider things for a moment. Then, clasping his paws together, he seemed to come to a decision.
‘Best not to say. Best to show,’ said Pog. He beckoned them down the hallway.
Part of Penny wasn’t surprised when she realized he was leading them towards the cellar door. She felt that odd feeling again, as if shifting from one world where all was clear and defined to one where things were slightly muffled, as if everything – sound, sensation and light – was wrapped in cotton wool.
They reached the door. Pog gestured towards the symbol at its base. He turned to them and smiled. ‘This meaning is clear. The Necessary is locked and scissioned.’
Penny looked at David. He frowned at her and shook his head.
‘That symbol,’ said Penny, pointing at the base of the door, ‘gives me a headache.’
‘’Course,’ said Pog. ‘’Tis a warding glyph. It pushes. Sends nosy ones away.’
‘It’s not completely successful though, is it? I mean, we’re standing here looking at it,’ said Penny.
Pog stroked his chin. ‘True enough. Penny and David have come closest. Most others avoid the Necessary. Most never make it down the hallway.’
‘How do you open it?’ asked David.
Pog’s eyes widened. ‘Pog almost mostly never opens it. The Necessary must remain locked.’
‘Why?’ asked David.
‘Things come through,’ said Pog.
‘What things?’ said David.
Pog just patted the door.
‘Almost mostly never?’ said Penny, with a raised eyebrow.
Pog looked at her.
‘That means you do open it sometimes.’ Penny smiled.
‘Could you open it now?’ asked David.
Pog blinked rapidly. ‘What’s that?’
‘Could you open it?’ Penny asked.
Pog started to shuffle slightly, and his fingers worked together fretfully. ‘Now then, ’tisn’t safe.’
‘Are you sure? We only want a quick look,’ said Penny.
Pog looked wary, but Penny noticed the doubt in his eyes.
‘If you open it sometimes, then that must mean it is safe sometimes,’ she said.
Pog seemed to reconsider. He muttered to himself. ‘Quietest during the day. ’Tis only at night that things come and try to pass through.’ Pog finally nodded to himself, then looked at Penny and David. ‘A moment so, but only a moment.’
Penny felt a little ripple of excitement.
‘Do you have a key?’ asked David.
‘A key? A key, David says?’ said Pog, looking highly amused. He unstrapped his staff from his back and held it two-handed, parallel with the floor, and pressed it against the door.
David and Penny exchanged a look, and Penny was about to say something when the runes on Pog’s staff started to glow a brilliant white, and the whole hallway started to hum.
‘What’s that?’ David gasped.
‘’Tis the Necessary opening,’ said Pog, concentrating on the door.
The door itself now started to shimmer with a white luminescence, until very soon Penny and David had to shield their eyes.
Just as they thought the brightness was becoming too much, it suddenly winked out of existence.
The door was gone.
There was an opening where it had been. It led out on to a marshy plain fringed by bare trees. Sickly-looking clouds slid across the sky, turning it a dirty smoky grey. As a breeze blew in through the opening, they smelt a sour stench. Both of them covered their noses.
A dizzy Penny started to look around her in an attempt to orient herself, but try as she might, she couldn’t grasp the fact that the cellar door was looking out on to somewhere that shouldn’t exist.
‘Where is that?’ she asked.
‘Someplace else,’ said Pog.
‘A good place?’ asked David, and it was clear from the slight tremble in his voice that he already knew the answer.
Pog’s eyes narrowed, and he looked grimly out on to the dead landscape. He shook his head, leant on his staff with both hands and shifted his weight. ‘Once, long ago, even before tall folk came here, the first of the First Folk sensed an opening from another world. A crack ’tween this place and someplace else. Things came through. Bad things. Horrid things. The first of the First Folk fought the monsters what passed through, and using the Lore the crack was sealed.’
Pog raised himself up proudly.
‘From thence, a Lumpkin was always assigned as Keeper of the Necessary, to guard against ingress, to stop the monsters from gaining a hold in this world.’
Penny looked out into the wasteland. A feeling of dread descended on her so powerfully that she felt the irrational urge to run.
‘But if your people sealed it, why do things keep getting through?’ she asked.
Pog sighed. ‘Magicks were worked, but they’s weakening as time passes. Now things squeeze through.’ He looked at them both and saw their nervousness. ‘On occasion,’ he added hurriedly.
‘It’s like an old plaster,’ said Penny.
‘A what now?’ asked Pog.
‘A sticking plaster,’ said Penny. ‘It’s getting weaker with age.’
‘How weak will it eventually get?’ asked David.
Pog patted the frame where the door had been. ‘Strong the Necessary is, always.’ He shuffled nervously. ‘Always.’
‘Pog?’ said Penny.
Pog tried to look her in the eyes and failed.
‘Always?’ said Penny.
Pog bit his lower lip. ‘Once ago, long after the first ingress, something else came through. A great evil. Powerful. It led creatures here, and the First Folk fought a second terrible battle. The Necessary was damaged, but there were those who healed it, and the evil was banished.’ Pog swallowed hard, and his voice was husky. He lowered his eyes. ‘Many were lost.’
‘Including Grandfa?’ asked Penny.
Pog nodded, but he wouldn’t look up. Penny bowed down in front of him and tilted his face up. There were tears in his eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Pog,’ she said.
Pog nodded in gratitude and wiped a hand across his eyes. He took in a deep breath. ‘Best to close it now.’
He stood before the opening and jabbed the staff towards the entrance. The shimmering began again. Penny was shocked when David suddenly grabbed her forearm.
‘Pen! Look!’
It was hard to see through the ever-increasing brightness, but by the trees on the horizon Penny could make out dark shapes. Long, slow undulating shapes that seemed to be rolling towards them. The back of her neck prickled with heat, and David’s hand squeezed harder.
Hurry, Pog. Hurry, was all she could think.
The door reappeared, and Pog stood back and gave an ‘Ah’ of satisfaction. Penny ballooned her cheeks and pushed out a relieved breath. David let go of her arm.
‘Sealed and safe now. No ingress here,’ smiled Pog.
Penny looked at the edges of the door. She was convinced there were more cracks now. Pog noticed her look of concern, and he gave the door a hearty slap.
‘No ingress,’ he repeated.
He was smiling, but Penny saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes.
A sticking plaster, she thought. It’s just a sticking plaster.
They walked back down the hallway. Pog seemed to have grown in stature a little since revealing his secret.
‘How does that stick work?’ asked David.
‘’Tis a staff,’ said Pog, looking slightly offended. ‘A staff handed down from Lumpkin to Lumpkin. It remembers.’
‘It what?’ said David, stopping in surprise.
‘Remembers, holds memories from those who did wield it. ’Tis what gives it its power.’ Pog spun the staff around like a marching baton. ‘’Tis a key, a weapon – it glows with memories of those who came before. Within the wood and runes are those—’
Pog stopped himself for a moment and his eyes seemed to be elsewhere.
‘Those who came before or some small part of ’em,’ he said quietly. He suddenly straightened up and beckoned them on. ‘Pog will explain.’
They followed him as he scampered towards the sitting room.
As they entered the room, Pog stood before the fireplace, looking up at the urn.
‘What’s that now?’ asked Pog, pointing up to the urn.
‘That’s M-Mum,’ said Penny, stumbling over the first ‘M’, hating herself for the way the word came out like a muffled yelp.
Pog’s eyes narrowed. ‘Mum? Like Ma?’
‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘It’s another way of saying mother.’
Pog frowned. ‘Penny and David’s ma?’
They both nodded.
‘In there?’ said Pog, pointing upwards.
‘Well, yes, sort of . . . it’s hard to . . .’ Penny didn’t know how to answer. Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips.
Pog nodded for a moment, then said brightly: ‘It remembers!’
‘What?’ said Penny.
‘It remembers,’ said Pog, ‘the way what Grandfa’s staff does.’ Pog rubbed his chin as he looked up at the urn. ‘Take Mum down from there.’
‘Why?’ Penny asked.
‘Take Mum down,’ said Pog gently, fixing her with a look that was kind but firm.
Penny nodded and stepped towards the mantelpiece. She gently took the urn in her hands, terrified that it might slip because her palms were sweating so much. She placed it on a table by a bookcase, and when Pog saw this was accomplished, he closed his eyes and smiled and nodded to himself.
‘What’s going on?’ David asked.
Pog tilted his head as he studied the urn in its new location. ‘Best to have Mum closer. That which remembers must always be held close.’ Pog stepped towards the urn and he swept his hands over it gently, as if feeling for the faintest trace of cobwebs. ‘We looks at things and holds them close. Things what remind us of family. Powerful they become. Memories of those who have gone before, laid down they are, like layers of silt on riverbeds – and they sway, this way and that with the current, and we hold, and we remember. ’Tis our duty to remember.’
Penny was holding her breath. She looked at David. He was barely moving; his eyes were transfixed on what Pog was doing.
Pog turned to them both. His eyes were glittering with tears, but he smiled:
‘Them that’s dead is never gone.’
18
Penny and David and their father had gone to something called ‘the super market’. It had been a couple of days since his confession, and the guilt Pog felt about revealing the Necessary was gnawing away at him. It was his choice as Keeper, but he still wondered if it had been the right thing to do. He was a bit ashamed when he realized he might have just been showing off. He hadn’t heard Grandfa’s voice since that day, and he wondered if that was Grandfa’s way of showing his disapproval.
Grandfa is gone, said another voice.
Pog rubbed his nose agitatedly and gave a long hard sniff. ‘Quiet now. Pog is thinking,’ he said to the darkness in the attic.
He tried to ignore the words, but there was no denying the sudden ache in his chest. He blinked his eyes; they were stinging, as if irritated by smoke.
Smoke and fire, Pog, said the insidious voice. Smoke and fire and screams. Remember?
‘Hush now,’ Pog shouted.
His voice echoed in the dark. Pog felt suddenly alone. He tried to think of something else.
Penny.
Penny was nice.
Penny was always smiling and friendly, but Pog noticed that there was also suspicion clouding her eyes when she asked him questions. It hadn’t helped that whenever they spoke these days, Pog couldn’t seem to keep still. He moved from one foot to the other, and always found himself looking towards the nearest window. One day he’d scampered up to the kitchen sink, his hackles raised, while Penny was mid-sentence. He’d wrinkled his snout and sniffed the air. ‘Something’s up!’ he’d shouted all of a sudden, surprising even himself. He supposed it was instinct, and that he just couldn’t help himself. He’d turned around slowly to find both Penny and David gawping at him.
‘What’s up, Pog?’ Penny had asked.
Pog panicked. ‘Rain,’ he’d said brightly.
The sun was blazing outside. Penny and David looked bemused.
Pog gestured back towards the window. ‘Soon. Quite soon . . . maybe . . . rain. Pog knows . . .’ he said weakly, and he turned his face away and tried to think of something else to say.
The truth was, there was indeed something on the air. He couldn’t place it, but it was a raw, sour scent. It came from the forest, particularly at night, moving from one spot to the next as if something was probing for an opening. But nothing had passed through the Necessary recently. Pog would have known. Some nights Pog found himself in the kitchen, his right hand gripping Grandfa’s staff fiercely, snarling to himself, his snout quivering, and him muttering, ‘Pog is here. Pog is waiting. Come to Pog if you dares.’
But nothing came, and the smell shifted and changed, and sometimes disappeared altogether.
‘Something’s up, Mouse,’ he said, shaking his index finger. ‘And Pog will found out what it is.’
Pog climbed up the attic wall and crawled up on to the ceiling. He squeezed between a gap in the tiles and wriggled out on to the roof.
He sniffed the air. There was a scent on it, one that shouldn’t be there, and he thought he heard something faint on the breeze.
‘What’s this now?’
This was different to the strange scent he couldn’t place. This was something familiar.
Pog climbed down from the roof and headed across the road and into the forest. The smell was stronger here, and the sound he heard was getting louder. Pog’s heart started to quicken – and the sight of something moving by a tree made it pound.
Pog pulled up just before the tree. There was a badger nuzzling something at the base of the tree. She was chittering agitatedly, and as Pog slowly stepped forward he saw she was nudging the corpse of another badger. The badger nuzzling her fallen mate turned and hissed at Pog, her eyes red-rimmed with grief and rage. Pog held a hand up.
‘Easy now. Pog is here to help.’
Slowly the badger moved aside. Pog knelt before her mate. The badger was cold and lifeless; blood matted his grey fur and his eyes were glassy. The badger had clearly been ripped apart by teeth and claws. Pog patted his fur, and said, ‘There there, now,’ all the while feeling utterly useless.
He helped the badger bury her fallen mate. A squirrel slipped along the branch of a tree and watched them, followed quickly by another. Pog looked up at them, hardly seeing them through his tears of rage. ‘Pog will find who did this, and Pog will make them pay,’ he said hoarsely.
When his task was completed the badger nuzzled and licked the palm of Pog’s hand, then she turned and waddled off into the forest. Pog watched her go, clenching his fists and wiping his eyes.
‘Pog will find who did this,’ he said again.
He made his way back to the house, fury tightening every muscle of his body.
Smoke and fire and screams.
Pog shook his head. Enough, he thought to himself. He climbed back up into the attic.
Mouse was scuttling around in a corner. Pog sat cross-legged with his staff in his lap and looked at him. He tried to say something about what he’d seen in the forest, but he suddenly felt terribly weary.
The car was loaded up with shopping. It was when they were about a mile from the house that Penny decided to ask her dad the question. She’d been trying to ask it for ages, and now she was fit to bursting. It was passing through the village that had finally decided it for her. In particular it was the last building they’d passed on the way out that had brought it to mind.
‘Have you decided on a new school for us, Dad?’
David’s head whipped around and he gave her an incredulous look. Penny ignored him.
‘School? It’s the summer holidays, and you’re asking about school?’ Dad said, giving a half-hearted chuckle.
‘It’s just . . . we should probably start looking soon, and besides, we missed a couple of months. We haven’t been back since . . .’
This time David looked at Penny with real fury. She saw her dad’s shoulders stiffen and he just ever so slightly pushed his back into the seat.
Since Mum died since Mum died since Mum died. The phrase kept going around and around in Penny’s head.
The atmosphere in the car had changed. There was a hot silence that just seemed to stretch on and on.
‘Look, Penny—’
Penny couldn’t help herself. She felt a quick sting of anger. ‘Dad, listen, I just want to know—’
‘When you’re ready I’ll start asking arou—’
‘We are ready. Once summer is over . . .’
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. She could see the white points of his knuckles.
‘I’ll decide when—’
‘It’s just that you need to start looking. It’s really not fair—’
Her dad exploded. He never shouted at them, but he shouted now, and the sound of it inside the confined space of the car made their ears ring.
‘Not fair? Not fair? Well, I think if life has taught us anything in the last few months it’s that life is not fair.’
