17

“You can sit on my branch if you want to.” Said Calum to the great man as he approached.

“Very kind,” replied Mr Armitage obligingly. His back lay against the trunk while his legs draped. The size of the tree made Mr Armitage look, for once, like a regular-sized man.

“The view from Ella’s branch is the best, apparently,” Calum said, “You can go there if you want, you can’t see much of anything from mine and Conor’s.” Mr Armitage regarded the thickness of the branches and decided that he ought to attempt it for the boy's sake. He wished to reclaim something for Calum. The man despised private property on principle, for the boy to feel that space in this tree was off-limits was a complete injustice. He rolled up the tattersall sleeves, reached up to Conor’s branch, wrapped his left hand as far as he could until most of his forearm was applying friction and threw his right leg up. He hopped and jerked awhile - not in the least gracefully - until he’d finally reached his leg the whole way over, leaning back against the trunk once more.

“It doesn’t belong to her, Calum,” he said - as he repeated his technique until he summited Ella’s branch. He sat once more in the strong joint, facing eastward. He could finally see more than frost on neighbouring trees and bushes. With the branches cleared, he looked out across the sister's field. He observed the messy mounds, the plots where he’d planted in years past. He revelled in its disorder; he’d never seen it from this angle, so clumsy, so human. He looked out beyond the field to the neighbouring woodland beyond. He was looking at the exact spot where his girls had been seen for the last time - by Ella. She’d never spoken to him about their disappearance, but he knew she’d seen them. It would have been July when she’d watched them go. The field full and beautiful. He was late to harvest that year.

Calum rejected the invitation to climb up and join him. Mr Armitage didn’t press. He hoped it had done some good for the lad to see him there, assuming it’s always good to break small curses whenever you can. But the boy didn’t think any curses were broken; more likely, they were activated - fury of the gods.

As Mr Armitage turned to climb back down the way he’d come, it oriented his view back towards their houses. Turnt that way, leaning over Ella’s branch, he could make out the bloody diamond in the distance alongside glimpses of Mrs Careen’s and his own home. But centre-line, glaring back at him, an unencumbered view of Number Seven. Pausing a moment, before purposing to return Calum home, insist on his grabbing a quick dinner and heading to bed, so that he could make a visit upon his long-silent neighbour.