He sat up in bed with a shout.
His bed. He was back in his bed.
Of course it was a dream. Of course it was. Again.
He sighed angrily and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. How was he ever going to get any rest if his dreams were going to be this tiring?
He’d get himself a drink of water, he thought as he threw back the covers. He’d get up and he’d start this night over again, forgetting all this stupid dream business that made no sense whatso–
Something squished under his foot.
He switched on his lamp. His floor was covered in poisonous red yew tree berries.
Which had all somehow come in through a closed and locked window.
GRANDMA
“Are you being a good boy for your mum?”
Conor’s grandma pinched Conor’s cheeks so hard he swore she was going to draw blood.
“He’s been very good, Ma,” Conor’s mother said, winking at him from behind his grandma, her favourite blue scarf tied around her head. “So there’s no need to inflict quite so much pain.”
“Oh, nonsense,” his grandma said, giving him two playful slaps on each cheek that actually hurt quite a lot. “Why don’t you go and put the kettle on for me and your mum?” she said, making it sound not like a question at all.
As Conor gratefully left the room, his grandma placed her hands on her hips and looked at his mother. “Now then, my dear,” he heard her say as he went into the kitchen. “What are we going to do with you?”
Conor’s grandma wasn’t like other grandmas. He’d met Lily’s grandma loads of times, and she was how grandmas were supposed to be: crinkly and smiley, with white hair and the whole lot. She cooked meals where she made three separate eternally-boiled vegetable portions for everybody and would giggle in the corner at Christmas with a small glass of sherry and a paper crown on her head.
Conor’s grandma wore tailored trouser suits, dyed her hair to keep out the grey, and said things that made no sense at all, like “Sixty is the new fifty” or “Classic cars need the most expensive polish.” What did that even mean? She emailed birthday cards, would argue with waiters over wine, and still had a job. Her house was even worse, filled with expensive old things you could never touch, like a clock she wouldn’t even let the cleaning lady dust. Which was another thing. What kind of grandma had a cleaning lady?
“Two sugars, no milk,” she called from the sitting room as Conor made the tea. As if he didn’t know that from the last three thousand times she’d visited.
“Thank you, my boy,” his grandma said, when he brought in the tea.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” his mum said, smiling at him out of view of his grandma, still inviting him to join with her against her mother. He couldn’t help himself. He smiled back a little.
“And how was school today, young man?” his grandma asked.
“Fine,” Conor said.
It hadn’t really been fine. Lily was still fuming, Harry had put a marker pen with its cap off deep in his rucksack, and Miss Kwan had pulled him aside to ask, with a serious look on her face, How He Was Holding Up.
“You know,” his grandma said, setting down her cup of tea, “there’s a tremendous independent boys’ school not half a mile from my house. I’ve been looking into it, and the academic standards are quite high, much higher than he’s getting at the comprehensive, I’m sure.”
Conor stared at her. Because this was the other reason he didn’t like his grandma visiting. What she’d just said could have been her being a snob about his local school.
Or it could have been more. It could have been a hint about a possible future.
A possible after.
Conor felt the anger rising in the pit of his stomach–
“He’s happy where he is, Ma,” his mum said, quickly, giving him another look. “Aren’t you, Conor?”
Conor gritted his teeth and answered, “I’m fine right where I am.”
Dinner was Chinese take-away. Conor’s grandma “didn’t really cook”. This was true. Every time he’d stayed with her, her fridge had held barely anything more than an egg and half an avocado. Conor’s mum was still too tired to cook herself, and though Conor could have made something, it didn’t seem to occur to his grandma that this was even a possibility.
He’d been left with the clean-up, though, and he was shoving the foil packages down onto the bag of poisonous berries he’d hidden at the bottom of the rubbish bin when his grandma came in behind him.
“You and I need to have a talk, my boy,” she said, standing in the doorway and blocking his escape.
“I have a name, you know,” Conor said, pushing down on the bin. “And it’s not my boy.”
“Less of your cheek,” his grandma said. She stood there, her arms folded. He stared at her for a minute. She stared back. Then she made a tutting sound. “I’m not your enemy, Conor,” she said. “I’m here to help your mother.”
“I know why you’re here,” he said, taking out a cloth to wipe an already clean countertop.
His grandma reached forward and snatched the cloth out of his hand. “I’m here because thirteen-year-old boys shouldn’t be wiping down counters without being asked to first.”
He glowered back at her. “Were you going to do it?”
“Conor–”
“Just go,” Conor said. “We don’t need you here.”
“Conor,” she said more firmly, “we need to talk about what’s going to happen.”
“No, we don’t. She’s always sick after the treatments. She’ll be better tomorrow.” He glared at her. “And then you can go home.”
His grandma looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Then she rubbed her face with her hands, and he was surprised to see that she was angry, really angry.
But maybe not at him.
He took out another cloth and started wiping again, just so he wouldn’t have to look at her. He wiped all the way over to the sink and happened to glance out of the window.
The monster was standing in his back garden, big as the setting sun.
Watching him.
“She’ll seem better tomorrow,” his grandma said, her voice huskier, “but she won’t be, Conor.”
Well, this was just wrong. He turned back to her. “The treatments are making her better,” he said. “That’s why she goes.”
His grandma just looked at him for a long minute, like she was trying to decide something. “You need to talk to her about this, Conor,” she finally said. Then she said, as if to herself, “She needs to talk about this with you.”
“Talk to me about what?” Conor asked.
His grandma crossed her arms. “About you coming to live with me.”
Conor frowned, and for a second the whole room seemed to get darker, for a second it felt like the whole house was shaking, for a second it felt like he could reach down and tear the whole floor right out of the dark and loamy earth–
He blinked. His grandma was still waiting for a response.
“I’m not going to live with you,” he said.
“Conor–”
“I’m never going to live with you.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you are. And I know she’s trying to protect you, but I think it’s vitally important for you to know that when this is all over, you’ve got a home, my boy. With someone who’ll love you and care for you.”
“When this is all over,” Conor said, fury in his voice, “you’ll leave and we’ll be fine.”
“Conor–”
And then they both heard from the sitting room, “Mum? Mum?”
His grandma rushed out of the kitchen so fast, Conor jumped back in surprise. He could hear his mum coughing and his grandma saying, “It’s okay, darling, it’s okay, shh, shh, shh.” He glanced back out of the kitchen window on his way to the sitting room.
The monster was gone.
His grandma was on the settee, holding on to his mum, rubbing her back as she threw up into a sma
ll bucket they kept nearby just in case.
His grandma looked up at him, but her face was set and hard and totally unreadable.
THE WILDNESS OF STORIES
The house was dark. His grandma had finally got his mum to bed and then had gone into Conor’s bedroom and shut the door, not asking if he wanted anything out of it before she went to sleep herself.
Conor lay awake on the settee. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, not with the things his grandma had said, not with how his mother had looked tonight. It was three full days after the treatment, about the time she usually started feeling better, except she was still throwing up, still exhausted, for far longer than she should have been–
He pushed the thoughts out of his head but they returned and he had to push them away again. He must have eventually drifted off, but the only way he really knew he was asleep was when the nightmare came.
Not the tree. The nightmare.
With the wind roaring and the ground shaking and the hands holding tight but still somehow slipping away, with Conor using all his strength but it still not being enough, with the grip losing itself, with the falling, with the screaming–
“NO!” Conor shouted, the terror following him into waking, gripping his chest so hard it felt as if he couldn’t breathe, his throat choking, his eyes filling with water.
“No,” he said again, more quietly.
The house was silent and dark. He listened for a moment, but nothing stirred, no sound from his mum or his grandma. He squinted through the darkness to the clock on the DVD player.
12.07. Of course it was.
He listened hard into the silence. But nothing happened. He didn’t hear his name, he didn’t hear the creak of wood.
Maybe it wasn’t going to come tonight.
12.08, read the clock.
12.09.
Feeling vaguely angry, Conor got up and went into the kitchen. He looked out of the window.
The monster was standing in his back garden.
What took you so long? it asked.
– • –
It is time for me to tell you the first story, the monster said.
Conor didn’t move from the garden chair, where he’d sat himself after he’d gone outside. He had his legs pulled up to his chest and his face pressed into his knees.
Are you listening? the monster asked.
“No,” Conor said.
He felt the air swirl around him violently again. I will be listened to! started the monster. I have been alive as long as this land and you will pay the respect owed to me–
Conor got up from the chair and headed back towards the kitchen door.
Where do you think you’re going? demanded the monster.
Conor whirled round, and his face looked so furious, so pained, that the monster actually stood up straight, its huge, leafy eyebrows raising in surprise.
“What do you know?” Conor spat. “What do you know about anything?”
I know about you, Conor O’Malley, the monster said.
“No, you don’t,” Conor said. “If you did, you’d know I don’t have time to listen to stupid, boring stories from some stupid, boring tree that isn’t even real–”
Oh? said the monster. Did you dream the berries on the floor of your room?
“Who cares even if I didn’t?!” Conor shouted back. “They’re just stupid berries. Woo-hoo, so scary. Oh, please, please, save me from the berries!”
The monster looked at him quizzically. How strange, it said. The words you say tell me you are scared of the berries, but your actions seem to suggest otherwise.
“You’re as old as the land and you’ve never heard of sarcasm?” Conor asked.
Oh, I have heard of it, the monster said, putting its huge branch hands on its hips. But people usually know better than to speak it to me.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?”
The monster shook its head, but not in answer to Conor’s question. It is most unusual, it said. Nothing I do seems to make you frightened of me.
“You’re just a tree,” Conor said, and there was no other way he could think about it. Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.
And you have worse things to be frightened of, said the monster, but not as a question.
Conor looked at the ground, then up at the moon, anywhere but at the monster’s eyes. The nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he’d been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did.
“I thought,” he said, but had to cough before he spoke again. “I saw you watching me earlier when I was fighting with my grandma and I thought…”
What did you think? the monster asked when Conor didn’t finish.
“Forget it,” Conor said, turning back towards the house.
You thought I might be here to help you, the monster said.
Conor stopped.
You thought I might have come to topple your enemies. Slay your dragons.
Conor still didn’t look back. But he didn’t go inside either.
You felt the truth of it when I said that you had called for me, that you were the reason I had come walking. Did you not?
Conor turned round. “But all you want to do is tell me stories,” he said, and he couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice, because it was true. He had thought that. He’d hoped that.
The monster knelt down so its face was close to Conor’s. Stories of how I toppled enemies, it said. Stories of how I slew dragons.
Conor blinked back at the monster’s gaze.
Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
The monster looked up and Conor followed its gaze. It was looking at Conor’s bedroom window. The room where his grandma now slept.
Let me tell you a story of when I went walking, the monster said. Let me tell you of the end of a wicked queen and how I made sure she was never seen again.
Conor swallowed and looked back at the monster’s face.
“Go on,” he said.
THE FIRST TALE
Long ago, the monster said, before this was a town with roads and trains and cars, it was a green place. Trees covered every hill and bordered every path. They shaded every stream and protected every house, for there were houses here even then, made of stone and earth.
This was a kingdom.
(“What?” Conor said, looking around his back garden. “Here?”)
(The monster cocked its head at him curiously. You have not heard of it?)
(“Not a kingdom around here, no,” Conor said. “We don’t even have a McDonald’s.”)
Nevertheless, continued the monster, it was a kingdom, small but happy, for the king was a just king, a man whose wisdom was born out of hardship. His wife had given birth to four strong sons, but in the king’s reign, he had been forced to ride into battles to preserve the peace of his kingdom. Battles against giants and dragons, battles against black wolves with red eyes, battles against armies of men led by great wizards.
These battles secured the kingdom’s borders and brought peace to the land. But victory came at a price. One by one, the king’s four sons were killed. By the fire of a dragon or the hands of a giant or the teeth of a wolf or the spear of a man. One by one, all four princes of the kingdom fell, leaving the king only one heir. His infant grandson.
(“This is all sounding pretty fairy tale-ish,” Conor said, suspiciously.)
(You would not say that if you heard the screams of a man killed by a spear, said the monster. Or his cries of terror as he was torn to pieces by wolves. Now be quiet.)
By and by, the king’s wife succumbed to grief, as did the mother of the young prince. The king w
as left with only the child for company, along with more sadness than one man should bear alone.
“I must remarry,” the king decided. “For the good of my prince and of my kingdom, if not for myself.”
And remarry he did, to a princess from a neighbouring kingdom, a practical union that made both kingdoms stronger. She was young and fair, and though perhaps her face was a bit hard and her tongue a bit sharp, she seemed to make the king happy.
Time passed. The young prince grew until he was nearly a man, coming within two years of the eighteenth birthday that would allow him to ascend to the throne on the old king’s death. These were happy days for the kingdom. The battles were over, and the future seemed secure in the hands of the brave young prince.
But one day the king grew ill. Rumour began to spread that he was being poisoned by his new wife. Stories circulated that she had conjured grave magicks to make herself look far younger than she actually was and that beneath her youthful face lurked the scowl of an elderly hag. No one would have put it past her to poison the king, though he begged his subjects until his dying breath not to blame her.
And so he died, with still a year left before his grandson was old enough to take the throne. The queen, his step-grandmother, became regent in his place, and would handle all affairs of state until the prince was old enough to take over.
At first, to the surprise of many, her reign was a good one. Her countenance – despite the rumours – was still youthful and pleasing, and she endeavoured to carry on ruling in the manner of the dead king.
The prince, meanwhile, had fallen in love.
(“I knew it,” Conor grumbled. “These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love.” He started walking back to the house. “I thought this was going to be good.”)
(With one swift movement, the monster grabbed Conor’s ankles in a long, strong hand and flipped him upside down, holding him in mid-air so his t-shirt rucked up and his heartbeat thudded in his head.)
(As I was saying, said the monster.)
The prince had fallen in love. She was only a farmer’s daughter, but she was beautiful, and also smart, as the daughters of farmers need to be, for farms are complicated businesses. The kingdom smiled on the match.