CHAPTER 1
Prelude
A boy stumbled up the hillside, half-blinded by tears. He fell and, for a time, choked and sobbed as he lay in the sun but presently blundered on. A lark sang overhead. Farther up the hill he could hear the multiple chatter of running water. The children down by the jetty still chanted after him:
Warty-hog, warty-hog
Put your puddies in the bog
Warty Walter, Warty Walter
Wash your warties in the water.
The spring was near the top. It began as a bubbling pool, cascaded into a miniature waterfall, dived under pebbles, earth and bracken and at last, loquacious and preoccupied, swirled mysteriously underground and was lost. Above the pool stood a boulder, flanked by briars and fern, and above that the brow of the hill and the sun in a clear sky.
He squatted near the waterfall. His legs ached and a spasm jolted his chest. He gasped for breath, beat his hands on the ground and looked at them. Warty-hog. Warts clustered all over his fingers like those black things that covered the legs of the jetty. Two of them bled where heâd cut them. The other kids were told not to touch him.
He thrust his hands under the cold pressure of the cascade. It beat and stung and numbed them, but he screwed up his blubbered eyes and forced them to stay there. Water spurted icily up his arms and into his face.
âDonât cry.â
He opened his eyes directly into the sun or would have done so if she hadnât stood between: tall and greenish, above the big stone and rimmed about with light like something on the telly so that he couldnât see her properly.
âWhy are you crying?â
He ducked his head, and stared like an animal that couldnât make up its mind to bolt. He gave a loud, detached sob and left his hands under the water.