[A.N. Just realised how unoriginal the title is. Never mind.]
2.
'Oi!'
The shout rang through the air. Startled, he opened his eyes, blinking at the bright light from a rising sun that was reflecting from the running stream and the parched grass. The world seemed to have turned golden and the sun was warm, but all of his bones and joints ached and his head throbbed. He moved his hand up to a place behind his ear and felt what he hadn't the night before – blood caked and dried in his hair and the tenderness of a spreading bruise. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and heard the shout again.
'Oi! You! Yer trespassing you are!'
He sat up very slowly, feeling the aches and pain running through his limbs as he moved. He clutched that black object he had been carrying against him like a precious stone. There was a man not far away over the field dressed in dull clothes and pointing at him with an outstretched arm. There was an instinctive need to run, but he didn't run. He knew he didn't have the necessary speed.
He stood with difficulty, spread one arm wide in a gesture of surrender and said, 'I am sorry. I was lost. I did not know where – '
His voice sounded hoarse, but he didn't know why. The man came closer, looking curious now. He stopped within a few yards and stared, then said, 'Blimey, what happened to you? You get beaten up or something?'
He shook his head, touching a hand to the blood-caked patch on his hair again.
'I do not remember,' he said, looking down at the bright blue of his torn top that looked suddenly strange next to this man's dull greens and browns.
The man took a step closer, and then said again, 'Blimey.' This time his voice was different, though. Thin and shaking. 'Blimey, what's that all over you?'
He looked down at himself, at his arm that was slashed and his sleeve covered in blood, and there came the realisation that there was something different about him. He was different to this very pink-skinned man that he faced. That skin-tone reminded him of something, but he couldn't think what.
'It is blood,' he said innocently.
'What in the Lord's name...'
The man took a step back, and he stepped forward, reaching out a hand, wondering. He needed help. He knew that. This man was a stranger, and was scared, but he needed his help.
'Please,' he said.
'Blimey, what are you?' the man asked, his mouth half-hanging open.
'I don't know,' he said honestly. 'I don't remember.'
The man stood very still, staring. He stared back, waiting for something to happen. The man staggered backwards and he tried to step closer again, dragging a leg that had become stiff and immensely painful with sleep. The man's mouth opened again, and then he turned and fled.
He stood and watched as the man's feet pounded across the dry field. Animals that he hadn't noticed during the night scattered and ran – sheep, he knew somehow. Sheep that had been shorn of their fleeces and were thin and ragged looking. Why did he know the name for sheep when he did not know his own name?
He walked forward slowly. It would be impossible to chase the stranger. He was running too fast. Anyway, what would catching him achieve? There was evidently something terrifying about his person. Instead, he walked slowly into the field, looking about himself and trying to gauge his whereabouts. The field was gently sloping and undulating and bounded by stone walls. There were other fields surrounding it, and the road he had walked up ran past to the left. He was in a region of hills and he seemed to be part way up one of them. There were woods nearby, and further down the hill he could see smoke rising from those chimneys he had seen last night. He could understand the language that the man spoke to him, but that didn't tell him much about where he was. Knowing he could understand a person didn't mean he remembered all he had learnt about geography and language in his obscured past.
He walked on up the field to where he could see a small shack of some kind built against the stone wall. It was a roughly built thing made of wooden planks and a rippled metal roof. The door seemed to be tied on with string where one of the hinges was broken. But it offered a dark and secluded place to retreat to – the kind of place a dog might go to lick its wounds. He opened it cautiously and found more than he had expected. Rather than just an abandoned shed littered with rubbish it seemed to be fitted out to sleep in, with a very rough sack bed at one wall and an old kettle and enamel mug on a low shelf attached to the wall. There was another shelf higher up that held a curious curved wooden item with a bowl at one end and a tattered book beside it.
It was the bed that took his attention most firmly, though. He shut the door with great care behind him and sank down on the sacking, which seemed very soft after the earth he had slept on last night. He was no longer in need of sleep, but he was desperately in need of rest. He felt as if he could barely see due to the throbbing in his head. He curled around the object he was carrying and closed his eyes against the pain.
Somehow he did sleep again. He wasn't aware of falling asleep, but he was aware of the dreams again, teasing at the edges of his mind. And then a voice saying, 'I was right. He's in here. Look. Be careful though...'
His eyes snapped open. There was light shining in around the edges of the door and the inside of the little hut was hot enough to ease some of the pain out of his limbs. There was a face there, and he recognised the man he had seen before. Just below that head, trying to see, the face of a woman.
He lay still, uncertain as the door opened wider. Then the man said, 'I were right shook up before – that's why I legged it. I never seen anything – well – '
'Come on, Jim, there's always a reason for everything,' the woman said in a soft voice.
Jim. He blinked at that word. He recognised it somehow.
'Jim?' he repeated.
'That's my name,' the man nodded. 'So what's yours then?'
He shook his head, confused. 'I do not remember.'
'You've had a bang on the head, ain't you?' Jim asked. 'Look, this here is Elsie. She's a nurse. Well, nurse in training, anyhow. Started up training hoping to help out in the war, but then that got finished – '
'Like that's a bad thing, Jim?' the woman said with a slight smile, pushing past him.
She stopped as soon as she saw the dishevelled, injured man on the bed more clearly, her eyes widening.
'Told yer I'd got something rum up here, didn't I?' Jim asked her slyly.
He sat up, looking between the two strangers, trying to understand. He was a man with no name. A man with no place, no past, no memories. He was lost, utterly lost.
'I mean no harm,' he said in a faltering voice.
The two strangers exchanged glances.
'Think we can get him back to the house, Elsie?' Jim asked.
''''''
It was a low, dark place with beamed ceilings and a stone floor. He looked around it in wonder as they helped him up the stairs, feeling sure that he had never seen a place like this before. Everything here seemed elemental, attached to the ground on which it was made. The road he had walked up in the light this time was barely metalled, and ridged with ruts from narrow wheels. The mud on it had been turned to cracked cakes that were powering into dust. He looked at lot at the ground as he walked, needing to see to keep himself steady.
'Worst summer we've had for a long time,' Jim had said as he stared at that desiccated ground. 'We're in need of rain badly.'
The heat was so pleasant on his aching back that the thought of rain was anathema. The cool and dark inside this low-ceilinged house sent chills through him. But the room they took him to upstairs was lighter and warmer, the sun pushing directly through the sloping ceiling and shining through a window let into the roof. He sank down onto the bed they took him to and let that sun ease out the pain again.
'What's that you've been carrying like your first-born all this time?' Jim asked as he tried to slip the dense object he carried into the folds of the sheet beside him.
'Let him alone, Jim,' Elsie said in a low voice. 'There's time for questions like that later.'
He looked down at the object, looking at it properly now for the first time. Still the outward form meant nothing to him. It was important. He knew it was very important. But he didn't know what it was or where it came from.
'You need a name,' Jim said. 'What are we going to call you?'
He stared up at the two of them, empty of answers. Then something moved into his mind.
'Grayson,' he said slowly. He didn't know where it came from, but it felt like it belonged.
'Grayson?' Jim repeated. 'That it? No Christian name?'
He shook his head. 'I do not know.'
'Jim, that's enough,' Elsie protested again, pushing past him to kneel by the bed.
She looked closely at him – Grayson as he now was – and the same kind of flinching look passed over her face that had come over Jim's when he had first seen him.
'Let's get you cleaned up,' she said briskly, giving no voice to whatever thoughts had passed. 'Jim, come with me, will you? Help me get the water boiling and find the carbolic.'
Grayson lay on the bed and watched as they left the room. They spoke in low tones on the stairs, but he could still hear them quite clearly. His hearing was evidently sharper than they expected.
'...but what is he, Else? I mean – '
'I don't know, but he's hurt,' came her low, resolute reply.
'Those ears. You ever seen ears like that except in a book of fairies? Eyebrows to match. And that green... You think he's some kind of – some kind of science experiment or summat?'
'Let's get him clean, Jim, then ask questions,' Elsie insisted, and Grayson felt a surge of gratitude towards her. He had no answers. Questions only made the chaos in his mind more real.
He pulled out that black object from beside him on the bed and looked at it properly for the first time. He had no idea what it was. It looked as if it had been ripped from something. There were raw connections at one end. It was asymmetrical and shiny, and every protrusion had a different colour to it. He lifted it closer to his eyes, turning it in his hands, discerning that those colours were perhaps lights beneath a clear covering. He wondered why the object was so heavy. He wondered why it was so important. It was the one material thing that seemed to connect him to the time before, though. The one thing he carried. His pockets were empty. His clothes were beyond saving. Even his boots were ragged with wear.
He sighed, resting his aching head back on the pillow, feeling the sun pushing into his bones and the stinging cuts and grazes. That black thing should be put somewhere safe, but he was too tired to think of somewhere right now. The room he was in was not replete with hiding places. Besides the bed there was a low chest of drawers with a mirror propped on top of it, and a chair near the window. The floor was bare board covered with a threadbare rug. For now he would just have to keep that black thing within his sight.
He heard footsteps coming back up the stairs, and then the door opened to admit Elsie and Jim again. Jim... Why did that name resonate in his mind? The appearance of the man – dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked, in those rough clothes – meant nothing to him. But the name...
'Are there other people called Jim?' he asked, startling the two as they entered the room with water and towels.
Jim grinned, shooting Elsie a glance. 'Thousands, I reckon,' he said with good-humour. 'James's my given name. Jim's a short. I know a good five other Jims round here alone, counting Ayckthorne and Wetherby village, too.'
Grayson blinked at that. None of those names meant a thing to him.
'It seems that I was born on the hill last night,' he said, inwardly chastening himself for the leaning towards romanticism, but feeling the truth of the statement all the same.
'Well, maybe you were,' Elsie said pragmatically. 'Jim, shove that chair over by the bed, will you?'
As Jim moved the chair she hefted a large bowl of hot water across the room and set it down on the seat. She unscrewed the lid from a small jar of dark ointment, and smiled.
'This may hurt a bit,' she warned him, 'but I need to get those wounds clean and dressed. I don't have much but I can be sure you're clean. I need you to get your clothes off. No need to be bashful. I'm a nurse – or close-as.'
He regarded her for a moment, then surrendered to the logic of the situation. It was painful removing his clothes. In places the fabric was stuck and dried into his wounds. But soon the ragged clothes he wore were in a pile on the floor and Elsie had spread a towel down on the bed for him to lie on, and was carefully easing crusted blood and dirt from his skin.
As she worked she became more silent, and Grayson watched her intently, seeing her facial expression change. Jim stood behind her, watching, but he sensed a kind of coiled readiness in the man.
'I am different, am I not?' Grayson asked.
'You could say that,' Elsie said through thin lips. Her face was pale. 'This is blood, isn't it?'
He looked down at his arm, at the swollen gash there that had started to ooze again now that she was cleaning the dried blood away.
'Yes, it is,' he said. 'I – am different. Am I right?'
'Jim and me – and just about any folk I've ever come across – our blood is red,' Elsie told him.
Grayson's eyes flicked to Jim. His hands were pressed over his mouth and he looked the same colour as the wall behind him. Abruptly he left the room and pounded down the stairs, and the sound of retching could be heard.
'Don't mind him,' Elsie said, intent on the wound on his arm. 'He's always been a lightweight.'
'Where do I come from?' Grayson asked blankly.
She looked up and smiled. 'If you don't know, I don't know,' she told him gently. 'But we'll find out. Maybe someone – '
'Tell no one,' he said quickly, instinctively. 'Please.'
'You're on the run from somewhere?' she asked him, her eyes fixed on his wounds again. She finished cleaning his arm, smeared some of the dark, greasy ointment on the cut, and started to wind a tight, clean bandage about it.
'I don't know,' he faltered. 'But – '
'I won't tell anyone,' she promised him. 'You're not the first to have a secret. Why, Jim and me – we were married a whole year before anyone even had an inkling.'
He looked into her eyes. They were greyish blue, honest and kind. She pushed a loose strand of her light brown hair away from her face, and smiled.
'When Jim was in the army and I was training for a nurse, and the war was still on, it didn't seem right,' she confessed. 'But we got married anyway. My mam never would have stood for it, me marrying a farmer. But here we are, married, and it's too late now.'
He nodded, wondering what had prompted that confession. Perhaps it was because he had no secrets to confess himself.
'Will your husband be all right?' he asked.
She laughed. 'You think you could come out of the trenches without fainting at the sight of blood, but – '
'My blood is different,' he said, looking down at his pale skin and the numerous crusted, green-tinged cuts. There was nothing odd about his own body. He wondered if he would suffer a similar reaction to Jim's if he saw their blood. Somehow he didn't imagine that he would.
