Where No One Can Follow
Where No One Can Follow
by Alison J. Littlewood
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.