Free Clay by David Almond

heard it. She looked at me.
    “A hedgehog,” I said.
    She nodded.
    Hundreds of tadpoles were swimming in the pale water. Already lots of them had lost their tails and were growing legs. Maria stirred the water with a stick and giggled at the way the tadpoles twisted and turned and flickered around it.
    “There’s dead dogs in here,” she said.
    “So they say. And dead cats.”
    “And sacks of puppies and kittens.”
    “It’s what the tadpoles live on.”
    “And the fish and the beetles.”
    “Dead things,” she whispered.
    “Death.”
    She stirred more quickly and the water swirled and splashed, and as we watched, a frog swam up from the murky depths.
    “Oh, look!” she said.
    “We called him out,” I said.
    “Hello, Mr. Frog,” she said.
    She giggled.
    “Look at him,” she said. “What a funny thing. Just an ordinary frog! Even the ordinary things can seem dead weird, can’t they?”
    I watched it swim to the edge and perch on a stone and it glistened in the sunlight.
    “Aye,” I said. “Dead weird.”
    We could see the throb in its throat, the throb of its heart. It seemed so peaceful sitting there, so ugly, so lovely, so strange.
    “Look, ickle tadpoles!” she said. “There’s your big daddy.”
    Then the grass snake came. It darted out of the darkness of the undergrowth. It took the frog in its jaws. It bit and crushed and gripped. The frog struggled and kicked but there was nothing it could do. The snake started to swallow the frog headfirst. It was over in minutes. The snake closed its jaws. The frog was just a great lump in the snake’s body. The snake was dead still for a while; then it slithered sluggishly back to where it had come from.
    “Oh,” breathed Maria. “Oh, my God.”
    Our hands were clenched tight together. We goggled into each other’s eyes.
    “That was…,” I said.
    “Astonishing,” she said.
    We shuddered. We looked at the dark surrounding undergrowth, at the quarry’s dark rim, at the silent still figures around us in the cave.
    “I think we should go,” whispered Maria.
    We edged around the pond. High above, the clouds were turning red. I narrowed my eyes. The angels you could imagine up there were thinner darker things now. We stumbled away from the quarry towards the entrance. We heard snorting behind us. We looked back. Nothing. We laughed. But we moved more quickly. The snorting came closer. There was the noise of undergrowth being pushed aside as something hurried through it. We laughed again, but we started running, hand in hand. We ducked through the thorn trees. The thorns caught our hair, caught our clothes. We pushed through towards the gate and we hesitated there. We giggled. We looked back. Nothing there.
    “Silly us,” said Maria.
    We leaned against a rusted gatepost and kissed each other. We held each other tight and pressed our lips together hard. I tasted her tongue and my head began to reel and when we parted my voice was low and cracked.
    “You’re beautiful,” I whispered.
    She stroked my cheek.
    “And you,” she said.
    We kissed again; then she pushed me away. She grunted.
    “Look.”
    I turned. Stephen was at Crazy Mary’s front door, watching us.
    “Creepy weird,” she whispered.
    He came towards us.
    “Hello, Davie,” he said.
    He looked past us into the garden.
    “What was after you?” he said. His eyes widened. “Get back!” he yelled. “Get back, I tell you!”
    We looked behind, but there was nothing there, of course.
    “Just nowt at all,” said Stephen. He smiled. “You were deceived.”
    He looked at Maria.
    “Who’s this?” he said.
    “My name’s Maria, if you must know,” said Maria.
    She turned away from him and stepped away from the gate onto Watermill Lane. Stephen caught my arm and held me back and breathed his words into my ear.
    “I know what I need you for. I know your purpose, Davie.”
    I tried to pull away.
    “Don’t bother with the lass,” he said.
    He passed his hand before my