Crahera

The girl sat curled up on the frayed sofa, spine twisted uncomfortably so that she could stare out of the window and watch shadows lengthen over the cobblestones. Rain spattered lightly down from the greying sky, as it always did, and smoke from the open fireplace coiled past her eyes, making the view more dreamlike than ever. Through the gleaming windowpane was a ghost world without colour, where the distant hills sweeping down from the horizon were the edge of the map and the hay spilling from the barn was a spidery mess of sharp edges.

Inside the farmhouse, her aunt bustled around in the warm light and the television flashed Coronation Street in a lightshow across the room. The girl wondered what the dog thought about being shut outside. Did he look up at the comfortable orange glow and wish he could curl up by the dying embers? Or would he rather be in the cold, where he could do what he wanted, skidding away under thin new electric fences and running with the bitter wind across the rugged landscape, where strange ice-green lights might signal the Little People out dancing? She smiled vaguely with tired contentment and a mental vision of the dog wreathed in the first March flowers, singing and whirling around the fairy ring.

Food was laid out on the little table and they crowded round. Plates were carried to the best chairs by the fireplace where her great-uncle and grandfather ruled the room without talking, and she tucked her legs up on the chair, watching as the tea was poured. It was the only place she would drink tea, and not coincidentally the only place where she could have as much sugar in it as she wanted. The chipped, miss-matched china was grown-up and she glanced at her sister, three years younger and with flaring red hair, who was beaming happily at her own milky mug.

They had cold meat, chicken and turkey, and once upon a time, her father said, it would have been made on the farm itself. Now they even bought in their own milk, despite the dairy herd gathered in the gloom outside. The bread was home-made though, thick odd-shaped chunks of soda bread and salty butter, followed by fruitcake with the same. The visitors ate all they could eat; it was a meal only available once a year and as with Christmas dinner they made the most of it. Talk around the table was mostly of the family and the two girls stayed quiet, eyes roaming about the room and picking up on old photographs; their grandmother as a young girl, pretty even in faded monochrome.

As she let the talk and lilting accents flow over her tired mind, she thought idly about the day; playing with her sister in the thick loamy mud, wrapped up well against the chill. They had ran the length and breadth of the farm, down steep tussocky slopes and up powdery grey walls of stone. The donkeys, almost wild in the marshlands below the farmhouse, had eyed them warily with big liquid eyes and trotted away. The farm was springing to life again after the harsh winter; fresh green shoots were peeking up from black, churned dirt and the air smelled full of green life and growth.

There was sparkling red lemonade to drink, as well as tea, and she examined the colour as the adults added whiskey to theirs and the atmosphere changed to old familiarity, with laughter and poor table manners as the long time apart dissolved into insignificance.

After the knives had ceased to clatter across plates and the few scraps of meat left were tipped into a bowl for the dog, they had to leave, to take the grandfather home before he grew too tired. They stood in the darkness with honey light spilling across the doorstep and the dog bouncing around in delight, saying long goodbyes. The girl’s kaleidoscope green-brown eyes watched the night hopefully, longing to see a tiny gleaming figure on the tiled roof, or perched on the dry stone walls among moss and lichen, evening winds whipping through long hair.

She saw nothing, of course; but that didn’t mean the Little People didn’t see her.