Where No One Can Follow

My brother said he didn’t know who followed him around the most, me or the dog, Wolfie. Sometimes he patted me on the head and said “there doggie. Good doggie.” I’d just stare at him, tears rising, and he would toss his head in disdain or despair, and walk away. Most times, Wolfie went with him.

Wolfie was the family dog, or supposed to be, but we all knew he was really Joe’s. Dogs choose their own masters, my mother said, and that’s how I knew it wasn’t going to change, no matter how many scraps of meat I saved from my plate and fed him. I hoped that greed would somehow become loyalty, but my mother was right. It never did.

Joe was like Wolfie, he went his own way. He did the tasks my father set him; he’d mend the thatching, or repair the wheel on the wagon. He’d clear up leaves in the autumn and sweep snow in winter. His arms were strong, his fingers short and blunt. He knew how to fish and carve and hunt. Sometimes he was kind to me, he'd sit with me and talk, or help me with my letters, or tell me stories. But he wasn’t really there; it was as though his eyes focused only on some path that was in his head, that one day, would take him away from us.

In spring, the year Joe was sixteen, he started to look at girls from the next village. He said the ones from our own were stupid, and when I said "what about me, Joe, you don’t mean me, Joe," he just rolled his eyes.

Spring was late that year, and somehow, I wished it had never come. I think the ground wished it, too; each morning the sun shone white, as though it wanted to be the moon. And mists rose from the ground, like sighs, or late snow that had lifted into the air and hung there, reluctant to leave.

Joe went away whenever he could. I followed him sometimes, through the woods, until he reached the wheel; the standing stones that lay between our village and the next. Then I'd grow afraid and go back. I told myself it was because Joe would see me, or Wolfie would catch my scent. But really it was the circle itself, the great ring of stones that seemed to be watching. I daren’t cross through the centre, fearing that eyes were looking at me from every side, hiding behind the stones; or maybe it was the stones themselves that watched. The circle led to the road into town, too, although some said it led to other places, ones you couldn't see.

The wheel was where the mist lay thickest and winter lasted longest. They said in the village that strange men came sometimes, men in grey robes who partook in strange chants and rituals. They said the symbols carved into the stones were their writing, the spirals and whorls I didn’t understand. They said the fey folk came here at night and danced in the light of the full moon. That it was home to wolves, to trolls, to a witches’ coven. Some said it was home to a woman with beautiful long red hair, who would sing to men and lure them away from their homes and their families. A woman who was part ghost, part fairy, part witch. I think that was why I followed Joe, even though I was afraid. I thought if she would want anyone, to steal away and call her own, she would want my brother.

Joe wasn’t afraid, though. He walked straight through the centre of the circle, never looking back, sometimes whistling. Wolfie chased after him, neither encouraged nor discouraged; he simply went. I watched them both disappear into the trees, always hoping that they would come back.

As spring passed into summer, Joe made the crossing to the next village less and less often. I would go and sit by him, ask him if he wanted to walk in the meadow or fish in the stream. He just laughed at me. He knew I couldn’t fish. I asked him about her, Emily she was called, and sometimes he told me.

“She has yellow hair,” he said, “that shines in the sun. She wears white dresses. I make her laugh, and her laugh is pretty. Her skin is smooth and freckled. Her hair is long and flies out behind her when she runs. She wears it in a plait, but sometimes, she takes it down for me and I run my fingers through it.”

I thought about my own unruly brown plait, that went in knots as soon as it was undone. I wished someone could run their fingers through it, but I knew their hand would just catch and pull.

“What then?” I said to Joe, but he looked at me as though suddenly realising he was talking to me, his little sister, and he’d find he had something to do, helping my father maybe, or walking the dog. But much as he seemed to think of her, he didn’t go to see his perfect Emily.

“Will you marry her?” I asked him once. “Will you live there, or here?” I hoped he would say here, so I wouldn’t have to cross the circle, the sentinel stones. It didn’t occur to me that he might visit us.

“I can’t stay here in the villages,” he said. “I can make money, in the town. I can be someone.”

And then I knew that Emily had lost him, because she was here, but in his mind, Joe was already there. “You are someone,” I tried to tell him. “You’re my brother.” But he wasn’t listening.

One day, Emily came to visit us. But her face wasn’t perfect, at all. It was red and puffy, as though she’d been crying. A man was with her, who pulled a shawl tight around her shoulders as they approached. A tall man. He looked angry.

Her belly was round, all swelled up.

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My father became angry, too. He shouted at Joe. I’d never heard him shout like that before, at me or him. He sent Joe inside while he spoke to the man. My mother warmed some milk and fetched it to Emily, sat with her while she drank it. Wolfie stayed outside, looking from one man to the other, his ears down and his head ducking as though their words were blows. Eventually, he just lay there, nose on his paws.

Later, I climbed into the attic where Joe slept. He hadn’t eaten supper. His face was turned to the eaves, but I tapped him on the shoulder anyway.

“ What’s happening, Joe?”

“ I’m staying here,” he said, his voice all breathy and muffled. “I’m getting married.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it, Joe? We can be neighbours. One day I’ll get married, and then I’ll live next door, and we’ll see each other all the time.”

He didn’t say anything. There was only his back, turned to me like a wall.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I don’t think Wolfie could either; I heard him padding about downstairs, restless. I think we both knew that Joe was leaving.

Eventually, I heard him stir. Then his step on the ladder. I heard his muffled voice when he reached Wolfie, and the door opened and closed. I sat up, my heart beating faster. I pulled on my boots and overcoat.

Outside, the moon was nearly full, and it looked sick and yellow, like milk turned sour. Everything was damp with late rainfall or early dew. There were dark gouges in the grass where Joe’s boots had flattened it, a trail where Wolfie had brushed his way through. I followed them both, towards the road. But first, they would reach the wheel.

Everything seemed much further in the dark, as though the world had grown. Or maybe it was that my steps were shorter, more careful. I kept peering into the trees, afraid of who might appear: the witches maybe, or fairie folk, or the woman with red hair. I told myself I had nothing to fear from them. Then I thought of the hooded men that were said to come here sometimes, to read their strange writing and chant beneath the moon. An owl hooted somewhere in the trees, and I jumped. Everything was different. Nothing had colour any more, or shape; the world was made of grey shadows with no depth, no surface. For a moment, I thought I heard someone singing.

I told myself that I had to bring Joe back. I knew how angry father and mother would be if he left, and how sad. So I went on, and after a time, I began to see shapes; not so tall as the trees but darker and thicker, more solid.

It was the stones. And then I stopped, because something was there, after all; a shape, silent and motionless, right in the centre of the circle.

It wasn’t a man. It was a low shape, crouched close to the ground.

I waited, knowing that I would stand here all night if I had to, because I dare not go on. Not while the thing stood between me and my brother.

Then the dark shape rose, but not like a man. It got onto all fours. It raised its head in the air, as though to pick up the scent of something that was gone, and it let out a mournful sound. A long wail, a lonesome howl.

It was Wolfie.

And I knew then that Joe had gone.

I went over to the dog, braving the stones. I stroked his ears and he turned, once, to lick my hand. Then he lay down again, rested his head on his paws, and whined.

I pulled at his shoulders, his haunches, but he wouldn’t move. And so I went back alone, to the house where only my mother and father slept, now. Where they would grow old, and so would I, and none of us would ever really know where Joe had gone.

They could look for him in the village where Emily lived, or the one after that, or the one after that. My father would go to the town maybe, ask in the marketplace or the church, but I knew he wouldn’t find him. Because a dog chooses its own master, and it stays with him, and follows him to the end; and Wolfie had chosen my brother.

Joe had gone to the circle, and that was where it ended. And I thought again about the fairie, and the witches, and the stones that watched; but most of all, about the woman with red, red hair, whose song could bewitch a man, and make him forget about everything but her. I imagined Joe’s fingers running through her hair, like a deep red river, over and over, while she sang her song and spirited him away, where no one else could follow. And I remembered the way his eyes were; all the while somewhere far away, while he worked or fished or played. Set on his own way, his own path, on something only he could see.