The Jack Hansard Series: Season Two

Episode 5.3

'Way ahead o' ye!'

She was already bounding into the undergrowth, hacking a ferocious path with her ladle.

Iron is a fantastic repellent to certain old magics. Something about the way the metal has been wrought, an ancient magic of its own that's all tied up in human belief and superstition. Back when everyone used to hang iron horseshoes on their doors, it wasn't just to honour tradition. It was common sense. It turned away the things you didn't want to come inside.

So what happens when you drop a long piece of iron into the middle of a pool of piskey dust?

Like a tidal wave, it frothed up behind us. It spilled over roots and gushed through ferns with a rushing, tinkling noise, a cross between glass and sand and certain doom.

'Up a tree! Up a tree!' I yelled.

I caught Ang by her collar and swung her up onto a mass of clinging ivy. I scrambled up it and hooked my arm around the lowest branch just as the flood of piskey dust came whistling by. It lapped at the tree and a good splash hit my right foot – and suddenly I was no longer wearing a shoe, but a large orange pumpkin.

'Gah.'

Ang grabbed me from her perch on the branch. 'All right, gwas? Did it get ye?' She peered down and muttered a Welsh obscenity. 'Yer half vegetable!'

'Got lucky.' I grimaced. My foot felt distinctly slimy inside the pulpy shell. I tried to bash it against the tree, to no avail. 'Bloody thing's heavy.'

Piskey dust continued to stream by below, though it looked to be slowing down. Ang's sharp eyes followed its path into the shadowy undergrowth. 'Why ain't it changed the trees, gwas?'

'I think it has, actually.'

Now that the level of dust was settling, the glen's vegetation gradually resurfaced. Luscious green leaves unfolded like yawning blossoms and sparkled with dew-drop diamonds on their smooth, rounded edges. It wasn't a carpet of tangled weeds that poked through the twinkling layer of piskey dust, but fresh, bright blades of grass and rainbow-coloured wildflowers swaying in a breeze that I definitely couldn't feel, but which looked very inviting from the humid atmosphere up in our gnarled and still rugged tree-sanctuary.

Thorns and rough bark bit into my fingers where I tightened my grasp. The ground below looked unnaturally soft. It beckoned to be touched.

We looked back to the middle of the glen. The clearing had widened, where the throttling vines had turned to dainty curtains of wisteria and honeysuckle. The crowbar lay in the middle of a silky green earth; what looked like spongy moss heaving and rolling across the ground. And it was no optical illusion.

The crowbar dipped as the ground breathed.

It slid towards the centre of the glen where a gaping orifice was blowing hot, clammy air into our jungle prison. After pitching up and down a few more times, the crowbar fell in.

It was followed by a guttural, gasping sound from deep within the earth.

'What is that hellish thing, gwas?'

I gulped. 'I think . . . it may be the Green Man waking up.'

'Bad, is it?'

'I should expect so.'

Ang tutted. 'What ain't, these days.' She rolled up her sleeves, secured the stolen fruit to her belt, and yanked a section of vine away from the tree trunk. I followed her determined gaze. She was eyeing up the path to the next tree.

'Don't,' I said dully.

'Gunna stay here, are ye?' She tugged on the vine, which frankly looked quite brittle to me. Might stand a coblyn's weight, perhaps. She doffed her cap. 'Give me regards to the green bloke, then.' And pushed off.

I groaned. Ang stuck the landing and waved as she swung the vine back to me. I looked between the ground – now trembling, causing the layer of piskey dust to jump in the air – and the spluttering orifice, out of which a thick, green mass was now emerging like a serpentine tongue.

I shut my eyes. 'I don't want to turn into a vegetable.'

I wrapped the vines tightly around my forearms and launched off the tree.

They snapped mid-swing.

'Argh!'

My face smacked into bark and ivy. My right foot felt suddenly light, on account of the pumpkin smashing upon impact.

Ang's sniggering penetrated my leaf-filled ears. 'Quickly, twpsyn. Up, up! Bluecap can't hold ye fer long.'

I found some handholds and Ang's bluecap detached from my collar where it had apparently caught me mid-flight. 'You could have warned me that was your plan,' I muttered.

'Tables turn, eh, gwas?' Ang said smugly. She pointed across the next gap. 'Reckons we can jump it, I do.'

'Only if it stays still.'

The ground-tremors were intensifying. Trees toppled behind us. Our target swayed to and fro as if tossed by a storm.

As we tried to line it up the ground buckled violently and our own tree uprooted.

'Hold on!'

We crashed slowly downwards. Sparkling meadow rippled below. Just a few feet away it merged back into unwelcoming nettles – which were rearing up, standing on their roots as if they were legs, and crawling across the woodland floor.

We landed among them, relatively gently despite the stings, and took off in the direction of the stone doorway that would lead us back to safety.

The whole glen was crawling with movement now. An initial recoil from the piskey dust swung back and in on itself, prowling round the newly formed piskey meadow and clawing at its edges. The giant green tongue lapped at the sky, tickling what remained of the leafy canopy. Was it tasting the air, trying to trace the whereabouts of its former meal?

New, sinewy plants were sprouting all around us, a furious bid to reclaim territory – or perhaps a sign of the Green Man's growing wakefulness. Creepers fell into our faces; vines raced us along our path. The stone tomb loomed large out of the undergrowth and we plunged wholly into darkness.

* * *

Author's Note

Of frying pans and fires, eh?

Here's a request: Originally I wanted to liken the flood of piskey dust to something like the effect of a magnet repelling iron filings - except I don't think iron filings actually react in the way I envisage for this. Can anyone think of another easy example of repelling forces/materials I could compare it to instead? To give that effect of a substance being instantly repelled by a material dropped into it. I'm looking for something we might have feasibly seen in a classroom growing up... I feel like I've seen something akin to what I want but no idea what the experiment would have been. So suggestions are super welcome!