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ffice:smarttags" />Willow felt alone, apart but always and forever part of something bigger, older, much wiser than herself.  Strange thing for a twelve year old girl she knew, the very idea of otherliness but it had always lived within her and gave her the reassuring sense that she was special.  Standing outside of everything freed her gaze, even of herself and allowed her to see her existence as recurrent, emergent.  There had always been a haltering stillness within her drawing her mind to her source, the tree.  Willow was small for her age with chestnut brown hair catching up red glints of sunlight with eyes the colour of the tree whose name she bore.  She was lean and agile although in almost everything she did she was nothing less than ponderous, sometimes even still.  Her teachers often teased her that where she occasionally seemed alive it must have been through the inspiration visited on her in her lost world of daydreams. 

It came to Willow that this stillness had its source in her spirit self which had existed within the tree for deep rooted ages.  Movement was, had been always around her without the need for pursuit; stillness counterbalanced by the passing, swirling air shifting over the surface of everything and bringing everything within her grasp, scented, tasted even felt through the very pores of the bark and tongue-like leaves.  Such ethereal wonderings fell to the back of her mind when play came to call and the stillness seen in school and quiet moments vanished like morning dew.  “Will” loved to play above everything else in a world of adventure and self discovery.  Four doors up from Will’s large suburban home lived a family full of mystery, energy and heroism; The Park family.  This was a family of many children:  of olive-skinned, brown-eyed, raven-haired beauties alive with a heady mix of Mediterranean charm and Irish vim.  Where they’d emerged from Will couldn’t fathom, couldn’t unpick from half-whispered adult dissection, cared less only that they stay and soak everything in their wicked, gorgeous energy.

Mercy stirred her tea. Outside her grandma was talking on their only phone, throwing her tiny left  hand in the air and gesturing towards the hill. More worries about the Taylors. Again. More cold tears.three years since they arrived. Even the sunshine had betrayed her that day. Jacob Taylor's ready smile. His casual betrayals.  Mercy sipped her drink and closed her eyes. Breathed in hope. She wished for a new word today. A new voice. Her own was hoarse, throaty with disappointment and the steady erosion of bad luck. Back to black indeed.

She heard the dull thump of the back door and then her grandma was back, breathing slowly, sweating tiredness. This was becoming too much. Correction, this was too much. The girl was looking at her steadily, waiting for release. Come on.

Black eyes sometimes that girl. Lashes that shaded her absolute gaze. One day someone would fear those eyes, they would meet more than themselves. Not for  the first time Gertie wondered at the wisdom of her name. Mercy. The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Gertie looked through the kitchen window and saw her daughter's hand searching, crawling towards her mother's. Bitten nails.Never a painter of nails.  Catching up grief this. She could taste that sediment still. The weight of certain desertion low in her stomach. My God. My small God.Sometimes life appalled her even more than death. The hours without her. 

The black eyes widened and took her. ' Grandma.You know Mum wants to come in. You must know she does. Just Look at the rain, even our hill has disappeared. Promise I'll cook. How many eggs have we got left today?  '

It had started to rain. Grey lonely rain that stirred up the earth below the garden and coated Mercy's old boots. Each step muttered something about the past; promises, feuds, diluted loves. Mercy had never fallen in love. She had never found a glance returned. She walked slowly along the edge of the field, measuring one boot after another, checking faces , rehearsing words for conversations she might have. No one bothered her at school. She edged around her school day as if it belonged to some one else and indeed(and how much she needed the word indeed) it did belong to another girl. A girl perhaps called Mercy, perhaps with long red hair and pale blue eyes and hands that loved the back of animals' necks. But this girl had loved deeply and finally and without control and now she slept carefully in the village church yard; five foot six inches  of bleached bone in a slate lidded box over a hundred and fifty years old.

Mercy watched the sea from her room.  Brine and seagulls.  Her hands moved over the damp coldness of the ancient sill, drawing her name.  She was aware of the secret weight of time.Mercy Jones. 12 years old, wearing an old tartan wool dress waiting for her grandma to come back from the funeral.  Mercy was used to waiting. Golden light gently died  out on her hair. She touched at its lingering heat. Warmth. Trust.  Her truth would lie there some where below in those stones. When she closed her eyes she could hear them returning. When she opened them, then there they would be. Slow sad steps leading to the last corner of their land. Night figures. Inky shapes smudged against lonely walls. All life, and death, was in those stones. Incubating  time. 

Mud calmed her these days. And she had also pledged to read the Fall of the Roman Empire before he came back from Gaul. Everyone at school seemed to think she had something going on with the OU and her weekends were spent visiting museums where dusty clay soldiers stood around wearing tunics that never moved. Even the mere mention of the word tunic made her rather warm these days and she found herself browsing travel agent windows for a limb- loosening glimpse of anything Italian. Bar-do-lino she breathed.

She tried to talk to her best friend Carla but Carla was in love again  and this time with an older man with no  hobbies. And really she couldn't find a way of talking about Titus without making their relationship seem a little unlikely. So she sat neatly as always on a very clean pine chair and watched Carla blush her way through two nights of heaven, one hurtful row and a recuperative trip to Kendal. Not for the first time, Amy wondered whether Carla had ever recovered from the rule of three. Three seemed the main dynamic of her world. Three children, three marriages, three brothers, three topics of conversation,  three coffees. Amy excused herself and headed for the cool white tiled toilet at the back of the shop. She watched the lemon wall carefully checking for a sign of Titus. But he was obviously tied up somewhere on a campaign, so she spent the time alone, making sure that she only used two pieces of loo paper and flushed  just the once.

Soaked in perfume, two girls were talking tearfully -close by the wash basin. Amy fixed her eyes on the liquid soap, trying to be as thrifty as hygiene allowed. She mumbled an excuse me to the taller girl who was leaning against the dryer and the girl nodded and moved with a flick of her hips into the body of her friend who had clearly forgotten what she ever had to forgive. Nowadays a connoisseur, Amy watched them kiss and decided they were at least an  8/10.  Plenty of delicacy and just the right pressure at the right moment with a gratifying surge towards the end. Amy left them to it. Even  the word 'it' made her smile rather wickedly she thought.

Amy went back  to Carla who was texting someone whilst blowing her nose. Amy handed her a tissue and dipped her chocolate mint finger into her coffee. Thank God for Walter Raleigh or was it Francis Drake?

She first saw him one Sunday afternoon when she was remembering those magnolias. She had finished with the paper and was sitting as neatly as she could(angles were important to her) in the corner of the garden where all the pets were buried in rows. Each Sunday she would remember each pet and the plants above them, trying to see if the concentration involved would make her cry deeply and freely again. So she had just got to Timothy who was beneath some sprawling pink bush, when she noticed a short figure step out  through the fence whistling, wearing dark muddy sandals. He nodded quickly at her and turned his head as if checking whether he had been followed. Then he strode forward and held out his more than capable hand.

'Titus' he suggested, in a lilting cavern-deep voice. So  Maggie let out just one perfect tear and swooned.  It wasn't everyday she met a perfect Roman Soldier whilst thinking of the dead.

(What -if -indeed you might say).

So the soldier pressed his firm thumb against her cheek and caught at the lovely wetness, annointing her forehead with a sign; smiling as only lonely ghosts can once they find home.

He was Australian they said and wore shorts that touched his knees. She couldn't remember his name but today she watched her friend's hands moving quickly over the kitchen and thought of him. He had only stayed at her school for a year. And his very tall friend used to walk behind her to the new school after they left that place. It had been made of grey tin or something like it and the pipes that ran around the cloakroom and corridors were fat and hot. Did they huddle together on those pipes? She liked the comfort and intimacy of that word; huddle. It reassured her.

So today she could notice the length of her friend's thumb and sense its capability, its industry. And she  could glimpse ( because she was not looking straight ahead) the long, steep walk to High School with a boy just behind her, smiling because he was not Australian and had never seen the Barrier Reef.   He had big feet and read books about planets.

Perhaps the shiny wet word was belief. Or was it openness? The  hand swept past her and tousled her hair.Somewhere beyond the fridge her friend was laughing.  She could build a shrine to that hand. With small matches, slowly like a prisoner  coming back to life. The hand carried a pink cloth to her face.

'Blow on the bubbles and make a wish.'

The boy and his red haired friend shared stale onion breath and would try to stand very close to girls in my class. At break time they would try to pick off those girls  who were left on the edge of the playground. Poor Barbara tried to be nice to them,to speak to them, but their sweat and eager eyes made me feel sick. A friend Karen had an older sister called Christine whose cleverness was the talk of the school . One Friday, she invited  me to play Treasure Island with her. She suggested we could ride white horses, very, very fast.  The boys tried to watch us, but she shooed them away. They lowered their heads and sloped off behind the  wall into the shadows.

They never bothered me again cowering before  Christine's power,  that made them  smaller; more furtive, defeated.  

  Even today I can conjure up that  feeling of exhilaration again; the liberation of galloping around my  playground, pretending to be a noble pirate!  I would ride  a fine, white horse, rescuing Karen from danger, elated at being a boy; knowing  somewhere; everywhere - Christine was guarding us all.