Free Garbage Man by Joseph D'Lacey Page B

you’re up to?’
    â€˜It’s nothing to do with them.’
    â€˜Give me one reason why I shouldn’t tell them what you’re thinking of doing. Do you think they’ll approve?’
    â€˜Don’t do that.’
    â€˜Then don’t be stupid.’
    â€˜This is such bollocks. ’
    She was crying. The little girl had been unmasked. She governed herself quickly, wiped the few tears away.
    â€˜Mr. Brand,’ she said. ‘I came here for your help. I know I can trust you so don’t mess me about. I need a portfolio. A really good one.’
    Mason shrugged, not understanding.
    â€˜I want you to photograph me. I know who you are. With your name all over my photos, I’ll bypass all the sharks when I get to London.’
    Mason held his hand out towards the door, gesturing for her to open it.
    â€˜You have to leave. Now.’
    ***
    The farmer wasn’t as sick as he looked.
    He came to visit Mason often. Sometimes walking down the steep, treacherous track with help of a long, warped stick. Mason would hear him coming long before he arrived. The diseased wheezing and the knock of his staff finding purchase on stones, the uneven footsteps of a limping man, the footsteps of a determined man. Stealing over the greasy stones, over the mossy stones, through air hanging wet even when it wasn’t raining, he came. He came through woods either angered by wind or resisting the unmoving light above them. He passed through the mug and cling of summer and through the nerveless hands of winter with pain in its bones. To him the world was a gateway. He need pay no fee for entry, showed no fear of departure. Bearded, ragged, staring, he walked like he was already a soul slipped from its shitty human moorings, a living man with the knowledge of the dead. And then he would be there, beside Mason and silent, watching the world with him, leading Mason’s eye to what he saw, how he saw.
    Other times he came in Mason’s dreams. No less cumbersome or telegraphed an approach. No less fanfaring of his power. No less a shell of a man and still no less a mage.
    Whether conscious or not, the farmer tutored Mason. He was a demanding master, a cruel one, and yet occasionally more caring than Mason’s own parents. His lessons were stories sometimes, tales of people who lived in times lost to memory and history. His lessons were visions of those ages and visions of the future. He taught about the Earth and the land.
    â€˜You came here to forget who you thought you were,’ he’d said one day. ‘That was the right decision. You thought you’d find yourself here but you won’t. That would be an insignificant pursuit, a waste of very precious time. You must learn about how things are, not what you believe them to be. You must become a blank, a forgetting.’
    This hadn’t been what Mason wanted. He’d wanted only to be left to himself.
    â€˜It doesn’t matter what you want, fool,’ said the farmer.
    â€˜But I’m paying you to let me stay here. I came to be alone.’
    â€˜I don’t need your money. Leave if you want. Leave now. But if you want to stay here, if you want this sweetness -’
    He’d made the woods silent then, like a conductor, and creature by creature, sound by sound, mood by mood, he’d brought it back to life and Mason’s soul was enchanted.
    â€˜- you’ll heed me. You’ll work hard to discard what you thought you knew and who you used to be. You’ll understand - the way the old ones did.’
    Mason didn’t even see the farmer’s hand seize the back of his head. The old man knelt and Mason was forced down with him. The hand, like the claws of a huge falcon, pushed his head onto the ground. Fallen gorse needles punctured his face. Moss and weeds mingled with his beard. Plugs of damp peat entered his nose. He panicked, tried to push back. The claws were too powerful. Trying to avoid