Clay by David Almond Page B

again. It yelps, whimpers, slithers away from me. It turns its head, looks back at me, I raise the stone again, it slithers on.
    I throw the stone away and hurry through the gate.

three
    “Stop!” says Stephen.
    He’s in the cave, surrounded by lighted candles. His hand is raised.
    “We got to do everything properly,” he says. “We got to turn this to a holy place.”
    I hesitate at the entrance.
    “You should cross yourself,” he says. “And ask for your sins to be washed away.”
    I do this; then I reel and shudder. There’s a body on the floor. Then I see it’s not a body. It’s a heap of clay, turning into the shape of a man: a bulk of torso, legs, arms, a clumsy head. I want to run. But Stephen laughs.
    “That’s him,” he says. “Or half of him. Say hello. And careful you don’t tread on him.”
    I daren’t look down as I step over him.
    “You got out the house okay?” says Stephen.
    “Aye. There was a dog or something outside.”
    “There’s always dogs round this place. You got the body and blood?”
    “Aye.”
    I pass him the locket. He clicks it open, inspects the things inside, sighs with pleasure.
    “I couldn’t get the whole things,” I say.
    “That don’t matter. The power’s in the tiniest bits of it.” He puts the locket on a shelf in the rock. “You done good. You’ll be rewarded. Now put this on.”
    He hands me a white shift. There’s a moon and a sun and stars and a cross painted on it. He’s got another for himself.
    “You just put it on like this,” he says. “I made them from one of Crazy’s sheets.”
    He pulls his over his head. It hangs down nearly to his knees.
    “Go on, Davie,” he says. “We got to do it all properly if we want it to work properly.”
    I pull mine on.
    “We look like bliddy priests,” I say.
    “Aye, but like the ancient priests.”
    “What do you mean, ancient?”
    “This is how it started, Davie. All the churches and the mumbo jumbo and the useless Father O’Bliddy Mahoneys. There was no Bennett Colleges back then. There was no St. Patrick’s churches. There was no soft soppy Masses and people in their best clothes saying stupid prayers. Back at the start it was priests finding their powers in the wilderness. It was folk like us, folk with power, folk in caves working magic, folk that was half wild, folk truly close to God. Tonight you’ll be an ancient priest, Davie. Tonight you’ll work your magic on the world.” And he rolls his eyes towards the sky and spreads his arms and says, “Allow the power of the universe to work through us tonight. On your knees, Davie!” He draws me down to kneel beside him. He takes my hand and rests it on the body of the half-completed clay man.
    “This is our creature, Davie,” he says. “Tonight we will make it, and make it live, and make it walk into the world.” And he leans down and speaks to where the creature’s head will be. “This is Davie,” he says. “He’ll be your master just like me.” He grins at me. “Now, Davie. More clay.”
    So we dig more clay out of the clay pond. We kneel and turn the sticky sloppy clay into the shape of man. And we become engrossed in it, and sometimes I forget myself and where I am, and I forget how crazy this would seem if someone else from Felling stumbled into the quarry tonight. We keep telling each other: “Make him beautiful.” We keep packing more clay onto the body. “Make him strong,” we say. We run our damp fingers across the surface of the man: “Make it smooth like living skin.” We keep leaning back from our work. We smooth out the flaws, we touch in details, we smile and sigh at the beauty of our work. Before we finish the man’s chest Stephen presses a wizened rose hip there to make a heart. We close the chest and rake the shapes of ribs with our fingertips. We put a conker inside the skull for a brain. We form the features of his face. Sycamore seeds make eyes, ash keys make the ears, dried-out hawthorn berries make