The Binding (16 page)

‘What about your granny's house?'

They looked at me as if I'd gone mad, so I said to Elspeth. ‘You go up there on your own. Why couldn't we all go?'

‘It couldn't be secret,' she said. ‘My mum and dad would have to know.'

‘But it would still be our own place,' said Hamish. ‘They wouldn't be there.'

‘Would they let us, though?' Tressa asked. ‘What about safety and all that?'

‘The electricity's turned off, but it isn't dark like the bothy so we wouldn't need candles.'

‘And it's just across the field from your house so we could easily get help if we had any problems.'

‘Yes but. . .I don't know.' Elspeth frowned. ‘What would Granny think?'

‘She loved having you there when she was alive,' said Hamish. ‘Why should it be any different now?'

Elspeth considered it. She slowly nodded her head.

‘Granny would like to have all of us in her house. She'd want Meggie to come too,' she said.

Milo jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and did a little dance of excitement at the thought of Elspeth's little sister joining in. We looked up and there behind him, coming down the beach, was Duncan.

He came straight to where we were sitting. You might have expected him to be sheepish, ashamed even, about what had happened the night before, but Duncan didn't do sheepish and ashamed. It was the same as after my punishment with the birds—something had been done that had to be done, and that was that. No inquests, no regrets.

‘I promised I would finish the Binding and I've done what I can.' He gestured towards the cold ash inside the ring of stones. ‘Now, if you agree, I think we should have a closing ceremony.'

He actually said, ‘If you agree'! He looked at us, one after the other, fixing us for a moment with those
piercing blue eyes before moving on, and when he saw that we all agreed, he took off his backpack and undid the string.

He took out a big tin camping mug and filled it with ash from the fire.

‘Page, for the last time, please serve the Lawmaker and carry this.'

Milo looked at the rest of us to check it was OK, before he took the mug, and then we all followed in a procession down the beach onto the hard sand near the water's edge under the sparkling sun.

Duncan told us to take off our shoes and socks. He rolled up his trouser bottoms; the rest of us didn't need to because we were wearing shorts. He asked Milo to put the mug of ashes down, took six large shells out of his backpack, and arranged them in a circle around it. After that, he brought out six smooth stones and placed one beside each shell.

The stones had names written on them in marker pen—Lawmaker, Teller, Deputy, Teacher, Joker and Page—so we knew where we had to stand. It felt strange, and wrong, but at the same time it felt right. Duncan had created the Binding; he was the one who knew how it should be ended.

We joined hands and slowly turned towards the left, while Duncan said:

In unwinding, round and round

What we unwind is unwound

What we unbind is unbound

The Binding.

We changed direction and repeated the words, finally coming to a stop and dropping hands. Then Duncan scooped some of the ash out of the tin mug with his shell, picked up his stone and walked slowly into the sea. When he was up to his knees, he scattered the ash on the water and dropped the stone into the middle of it.

Duncan turned and looked at Elspeth, and she copied exactly what he had done. One by one, we all followed him into the water, scattered our ashes and dropped our name stones into the middle of them.

The water was chilly and crystal clear, with hardly any waves. The ashes lay like a film of dust on the surface. We stood there for a while, until our feet were numb with cold, and it was Milo who broke the spell, splashing out to put his shoes on.

I thought Duncan would go away once we'd picked up our shoes because he'd done what he'd
come to do, but he hung around. Nobody actually asked him to join in, but when we played knock-the-bottle-off-the-rock, he picked his stones too, and took his turn throwing, though he sat a bit further away, to one side. We didn't invite him, but we didn't stop him either.

It was the same when we played French cricket, and when we went to lie down on the dry sand at the top of the beach, he tagged along too. We were lying in a line with our eyes closed when Elspeth said, ‘We're going to see if we can use Anderson Ground for our new den.'

Why was she telling Duncan? Surely he wasn't going to be part of it! But even as I had the thought, I realised that, of course, he was. In a tiny place like this, everyone was part of everything.

‘I know a story about Anderson Ground,' said Duncan. ‘It's the story of the last and first tree on Morna. I could tell it to you later, if you like.'

We all knew what ‘later' meant. It meant when we were all there amongst the gnarled old trees together.

‘Shall we go and check it out?' Hamish said, ignoring Duncan but not really ignoring him.

He and Tressa went on ahead, with Milo running at their heels like a happy puppy. Duncan followed a bit behind. He didn't have his stick any more. He'd probably burnt it with all the other things of the Binding.

Elspeth and me didn't stand up straight away, but rolled over on our fronts to watch them make their way up the beach.

‘How can you trust him?' I said. ‘What if it all starts again after Tressa and me have gone home?'

‘It won't. Me and Hamish won't let it. And anyway, I don't think Duncan would want it. I think things just got out of hand, he got carried away, and maybe he frightened himself.'

I didn't believe that for one minute, and I wondered if she really did. I glanced across at her.

‘Don't worry,' Elspeth said, seeing the look on my face. ‘We'll be in my place, on Anderson Ground, with my mum and dad just across the field, and everything will feel different, with Meggie and Christa joining in.'

‘Are you two coming?' Hamish shouted, from the top of the beach.

As we followed them back across the fields to the track, Elspeth told me she wished we weren't leaving at the end of the summer.

‘We've still got a couple of weeks,' I said.

‘And I suppose that when you go home, we can always Skype and message each other, can't we?'

That reminded me of a joke. I wasn't ready to tell jokes to the whole group again, specially not with Duncan still around, but I told it to her.

‘What do you call sheep that live together?'

She looked at me, groans at the ready.

‘You call them pen friends!'

Copyright

First published 2015 by

A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2015 A & C Black

Text copyright © Jenny Alexander 2015

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 4729 0873 5

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