Crow Dene

James was dead. Spotted, outflanked, outgunned. Now the spent hero looked into a buzzing blue, heavy with taunting life. He had fought hard, elbowing through the scrub and a tangle of barbs, to stage a selfless diversion from his hunted team’s excited flight. He breathed the honey-baked coconut fug of the sun-warmed gorse, and let tired muscles melt. A beetle crawled over the odourless crust of a desiccated cow pat.

He had done his best death. He’d answered the shrill hail of gunfire with shuddering shoulders. His bullet shredded body had dropped to grazed knees and flopped forward, with a last second face-saving twist. No denials, no bulletproof jackets, no flesh wounds. They got him, fair and square. No cheating.

“You’re on our side now,” said Daniel. “Come on, get up. We’ve got to get the rest.”

“I’m still dead. You shot me loads,” said James, watching the beetle retreat through the livestock-cropped blades.

“You’re letting them get away. That’s cheating!” accused Daniel.

James gave up on his beetle and sat up. “No, I’m not. I’m tired. I was running for ages, and doing proper army crawling.” He peeled his t-shirt from his sweaty back, clambered to his feet and retrieved his stick, so dramatically dropped in the throes of his most recent death.

“There they are!” shrieked Marc, pointing at the three escapees now galloping down the slope that fell away from the gorse bushes. They thudded flat-footed down the steepest part of the field in a daredevil bid for cover in a nearby stand of trees.

“Bang!” said Daniel. He knelt, weapon to his shoulder, looking down its length. The end of the stick tracked his target and kicked up with the recoil of the shot. “Got one of them, I got Craig. CRAIG I GOT YOU!” he yelled at the trees.

“They’re too far away,” said Marc.

“No they aren’t, ‘cos I’m a sniper,” said Daniel.

“Your stick’s too short,” said James.

Reincarnated, James jolted down the slope with his forgiven killers. Their stealthy conga slid along a fence, diving distance from the cover of the long grass, always alert to sun-dried land mines. They were nearly at the trees when the air rattled with the pneumatic clacking of a raspberry blown through clenched teeth.

Craig’s stick strafed them from a bushy bunker at the base of the closest tree. In admiration of the hiding skills, and the first-class machine gun impression, James and Marc fell dead. James solemnly gave his shudder-flop-twist, while Marc opted for an immature but spectacular forward roll into starfish.

Daniel let fly with a startled “BANGBANGBANG!” and Craig sportingly slumped over his weapon. “I got him!” said Daniel to his fallen comrades, who had both managed to fall with their hands folded comfortably behind their heads.

“Bang,” said Andrew with clean decision, from a branch half way up the tree. “We win. Me and Tom are both still alive,” he said, jumping down from his own head height.

“It’s not fair ‘cos Tom’s the fastest and you can climb trees!” appealed Daniel.

“Well Tom and Andrew are both on the same side, so they’ve won,” said Craig, crawling out of the bushes inspecting dust-ground palms and wiping them on grass-stained jeans. Tom was jogging quickly back towards them from the hedgerow at the boundary of the battlefield.

“Well I’m going home,” pouted Daniel. “I need a drink anyway, it’s too hot.” He threw his stick into the bushes, denying it to the enemy, and stalked off to the stile at the corner of the field.

“We’ll start a new game, with new teams,” Andrew called after him, but he was over the stile and gone.

“Let’s go to the dene.” It was Tom’s suggestion. Daniel was the only one who was not allowed to cross the big road to get to the dene, and his war was over.

“There’s only five of us,” said Marc. “We can’t do fair teams.”

“We’ll play Manhunt,” said Tom, as the day’s first cloud was projected onto the field. Daniel’s dishonourable discharge had very slightly raised the average age and “Armies” had immediately matured into “Manhunt”. The overlooked field, with it’s two decent hiding places, would have to be swapped for the new theatre of the dene.

They walked through their hot tarmac streets, resisting the domestication of bedrooms and snacks.  Later it would be time for nettle-thrashed legs to be lowered into soon-to-be-grey bathwater. Flannel and nail brush would carry the battlefield from tired bodies to bathtub tidemarks, but now it was time for hunting.

They assembled at the curb of the big road, still respectful of the risks posed by the former boundary of their adultless activities. They crossed with serious caution, showing their absent but still present parents the sensible behaviour that had bought them the freedom of the dene. They passed under cables which bounced with the croaked threats of clacking crows. They passed the small, roofless brick building that had once marked the entrance to the long-gone brickworks. Thick braken veins burst from its single peeping window and weeds boiled from the doorway, sluicing away a tide of bleached butts and rusting cans. The sun-cracked yard of the old brickworks stretched between the road’s verge and the foot of the dene. Not far from where they stopped, dusty red clay gave way to a steep, green slope.

James looked into the web of overlapped limbs and leaves. Dinosaur trees rose from dense nests of curling ferns. The sun still worked hard on the dry apron of the brickworks, but the dene only admitted a soft light, which was slowly swallowed by the cool reaches of the darkening passage of layered greens. 

“Me and James will run. You three come and get us,” said Tom.

“Are you allowed to hide together?” asked Marc.

“Yes,” said James too quickly.

“But we won’t, that would be too easy,” said Tom. “We get five minutes start,” he ruled. Five minutes. Real time. Watch time, Craig wore one. “Ready?” said Tom to James, who still clutched his stick, still a soldier.

“Go!” said Craig, and Tom flew stickless into the green. James crashed after him, but was alone by the first curve of the path.

A few scrambling seconds threw a living screen between James and the clay of the brickworks. The rustle of Tom’s trail quickly died and James was a solo, panting target. He ran in a crouch up a shin-whipping path which climbed the steep bank side.  The edges of the narrow gulley were ribbed by the protruding roots of overhanging trees. His back prickled with electric sweat as excitement denied the first aches of tiring legs. Playing the role of the pursued, he ducked behind a tree. He was the hunted, he was the man. Him and Tom. The oldest, the best. He dropped his stick at his feet where it was swallowed by the ferns. He didn’t need his gun anymore. It would not protect him in the dene. There would be no thrashed paths to give his route away, no childish bangs thrown back at his pursuers. They wouldn’t see his pretend death again today.  

The crocodile bark of the tree pressed into his sweat-cooled back. He stopped breathing and listened to the silence. He rolled his head back against the bulk of the tree and looked up the trunk into a sun-pricked infinity of foliage. A puckered yellow sleeve of lichen crept over an ancient bough above his head. The bough reached out in the direction of the dwindling path that snaked away into the steepening tangle. A single shriek from below and behind. They had caught Tom.

A crow fell flapping onto the bough above James. It assessed him with a critical head tilt, and disappeared in a clapping of black wings. James swung up the slope after the swooping bird, the strength of his legs and grasping hands driving him to hiding places only a hunted man could reach.

 He stopped to swallow his own ferrous breaths and listen for the sounds of pursuit. He held himself still, until the blood surging in his ears filled the noiseless vacuum. The lack of sound loaded every snapping twig or suddenly rustling blackbird with the power to stop his heart. Then the dene drew him on, legs pumping, through leaf-filtered light and air thick with the scent of nature’s turgid blooming.  

The ground levelled under him; the path had stopped climbing. It turned and dropped to corkscrew around the trunk of a huge twisted tree. As he rounded the tree the path fell away into a slope which he knew must eventually lead back to the warmth of the cracked clay. He paused to consult the silence. There was no hint of his pursuers, but the hunted could not relax. His senses were his only friend in the steep sided coolness. Instinct was his parent here. It was not the presence of danger that pricked his neck, but the roots clawing out of the fallen path sides, and the surrounding lattice of fat stemmed bramble, warned silently of the absence of safety. The seconds of solitude stretched out between James and the game. He was a creature alone in timeless nature. There was nobody there to share the weight of being in this place. No voices to challenge the dominance of silence. At the point he felt the creeping awareness of the growth of his living surroundings, the black eyes of a crow fell beadily on his back. They spun him to face the tree that marked the path’s turning.

A stave of rust-thickened barbed wire grew from the age-swollen folds of the fat trunk’s bark. The lament to a fence that had once marked a path now swallowed by the hungry dene. The tree leaned towards him. The arthritic knuckles of time-warped limbs arched over him. The splayed hoof of the trunk split into hooked roots which tumbled over the edge of a great slab of rock. The root claw gripped the slab, suspending it over a soft, moss-gummed cavity. The rolling fronds of beckoning ferns edged the short path to the adventure of the opening.

The toes of his trainers scuffed over moist stone as he wheelbarrowed himself backwards into the irresistible portal. Not a single human being on the face of the planet knew that he lay there alone in the danger of that space. He could pause time in the living earth.

A spit of fine, spongy grass and lichened twigs carpeted the floor before the mouth of his hide. He watched a hard black beetle soundlessly leave the soft, littered tongue to join him in his soil-sided den. There they waited as the old trunk groaned above them. The leaves of its high canopy applauded as it bowed in the tugging wind.

From their creaking haunt James and the beetle considered the potential of a strong slender tree on the other side of the path. Unscarred by rusty piercings, still free of the ruinous embrace of cluttering ivy, it stood in sturdy simplicity. This is where he would end the game. 

A lifetime passed before the four friends rounded the bend, their defenceless backs to the looming scars of the old trunk. The sudden rasp of a crow turned them jumping to face the dark cave. It grinned out at them from under its palate of root crowned rock.

Bang … bang … bang … bang, thought James, as he spied on the curious group from the cover of the strong young tree.