Bertie

“You have to wear your trousers!”

“I don’t want to wear my trousers!”

“And I don’t want to have this conversation, but here we are!”

“Has anyone seen Bertie?”

Bo turned away from her brother, clad only in a school shirt and Spiderman underpants, and looked at her sister on the stairs.

“What?” she asked. The unseasonable spring heat was doing a number on her mental processing. Currently, every window in the 16th century farmhouse was open, and at the long kitchen table several children of varying ages were eating breakfast.

“Bertie? Have you seen him?” Fleur asked her older sister again. She came into the kitchen proper from the narrow stairs, and gathered herself some cereal whilst Harry whined.

“I want to wear my shorts!” he stomped his small foot. Bo turned back to the washing up and looked out of the window above the sink. “Your shorts are dirty,” she said to the small demon behind her. “I would have washed them but you insisted that they were not dirty even though they are currently the wrong colour so now you will have to wear your trousers.”

“That’s not fair!” Harry yelled, crossing his arms and starting to go red in the face for good measure. Bo was sure he was about to ramp up to primal screaming when a low voice rumbled from the other side of the kitchen.

“Harry, put your trousers on.”

Harry turned to this new aggressor, but when faced with the large impassive face of his eldest brother backed down, and slunk up the stairs to find his trousers.

Bo looked at her twin and sighed. “How do you do that?” she asked, as Tim stomped the dust off his boots and put the kettle on for his third tea that morning.

“Easy, I’m not as highly strung as you.”

Bo snorted and passed him a cup.

“Tim have you seen Bertie?” Fleur asked through her cereal.

“No, can’t say I have.”

Fleur frowned into her Cheerios. “It’s not like him to be out all night.”

Bo raised an eyebrow at her sister whilst she dried a saucepan. “It’s not like the Barn Owl - a famously nocturnal creature - to be out all night?”

“Bertie isn’t a normal Barn Owl.”

“He’s your Witches famlar!” said Cleo, who until this point had been eating her porridge quietly whilst watching all her older siblings squabble.

“I’m not a Witch!” Fleur hissed at her younger sister.

“Nothing wrong with being a Witch.” Tim said, laying a massive calloused hand on her shoulder, “Granny’s a Witch.”

“She’s not a Witch she’s just an old lady.” Fleur mumbled, looking down at her bowl.

Bo huffed. “Sure. Just an old lady who can talk to bees.”

“Look I just wanna know where Bertie is alright!” Fleur snapped.

Bo scowled at her sister. “Well you’ll just have to find him won’t you.” she said icily, turning back to the rest of the washing up.

Tim and Cleo shared a look, “Hey smidge, why don’t I take you and Harry to school on the quad bike yeah?”

Cleo giggled. “Yeah! Can I go on the front?”

“Of course!” Tim picked her up and whirled around, forgetting the kettle.

“Lets go get your book bag and find Harry and we’ll go yeah?” He put Cleo down and she ran off to get her things, Tim lumbering behind.

Bo turned back to her sister. “You better get going if you don’t want to be late for school.”

Fleur looked up, “I’m not going, I have to find Bertie. And I don’t have a lesson till third anyway.”

Bo sighed as she went to put Cleo’s bowl in the sink. “Well you need to take Ollie and Max in this morning.”

“Can’t they get the bus?” Fleur asked, mentally checking all the places Bertie may have gone.

Bo slammed the baking tray she was drying down on the counter “No they can’t get the fucking bus! The bus has already gone! They would have been up to get the bus but you said last fucking night that you would take them and so you will.”

“But I need to find-“ Fleur began, careful of her sisters ire.

“I don’t care about your stupid owl!” Bo yelled. “Do you have any idea how close we are to having to leave? We have no money left - not a fucking penny - and you seem to be the only one who doesn’t give a shit!”

“That’s not fair!” Fleur said, rising out of her seat to face her sister.

“No, you know what’s not fair? The fact that our five-year-old sister was going to give me the contents of her piggy bank so that we wouldn’t have to leave our home but you can’t even be relied upon to drive your brothers to school after I paid for your test!” Bo threw the tea towel at her. “So you are going to get off your arse, and when you are not at school you are either studying, or you are working on the farm do you understand?”

Fleur crossed her arms. “So I should focus on making some money rather than my education?”

“Well you’re failing nearly every subject so you can’t be focusing that hard!” “At least I’m not throwing away my education!”

Bo froze.

Fleur stared, horrified.

“Its not my fault Mum and Dad died.” Bo whispered. The temperature had dropped palpably between them.

“I, I.” Fleur stammered, trying to make something right.

“Get out.” Bo hissed. “And take Ollie and Max to school like the fucking adult you think you are.”

Fleur ran out the house.

The smell of wild garlic permeated the bluebell woods down in the valley. Bo took the scissors out of her foraging bag and cut large bunches of healthy leaves, ruminating on her argument with Fleur earlier that morning. Quietly she continued, careful not to take the whole plant so she could harvest more next week. The leaves broke and the sap ran onto her fingers, causing her eyes to water.

“Hey-ooo”

Bo looked up from where the call came and saw Tim standing by the stream.

He waved.

She snorted and walked up to him, careful not to step on any plants.

Tim smiled at her. “You harvesting?”

“What gave it away?” She asked, smiling up at him.

He grinned back. “What’s this stuff for?"

“Pesto. Gonna sell it at the farmers market with the honey and whatever kindling Max collects.”

Tim nodded, “Nice.”

“Do we have any more meat?” Bo asked, as the birds twittered in the trees, untroubled by the human’s problems.

“Still got half a pigs worth of sausages, some pork belly, some beef-“

“What cut?”

“Steak and roasting joint.”

“Hmm.” Bo said, the dappled light from the trees highlighting the different colours in her hair. Tim traced the furrow in her brow, it seemed to have gotten deeper since they had taken on the farm.

“Do we have any lamb? Easter will be here soon and people like lamb.”

“I could send some to the abattoir.” Tim suggested.

“We don’t have enough money to send to the abattoir, not unless we get payment up front from buyers.”

“We can take orders at the market?”

“With payment.” Bo said. “We need payment.” Bo’s worry troubled Tim. When they were younger she never worried at all. All they would do was run and play together in these fields and woods, and knew them like the back of their hands.

And then the car accident happened and it turned out their father had mortgaged the place up to the eyeballs and there was nothing of this land that was theirs that they legally owned. Every penny that they had went straight to paying the debt.

“I spoke to Millie Robinson’s dad at the school gates this morning.” Tim said, as the twins began to walk back up the valley to the top fields where the sheep were.

“Oh?” Bo said, mind far away in spreadsheets and overdraughts.

“Yeah. He’s a roofer. Said he’d fix the barn roof for free if we gave him a whole lamb.”

“A whole lamb? Does he want it dead or can we walk it over to him? I’m sure it would make a really nice lawnmower.”

Tim barked out a laugh and slung his arm round his sister.

“It’ll be alright. Look around you, we have all this!” He gestured to the woods. At the moment it was carpeted in bluebells, their little heads nodding in the breeze. The birds ahead twittered as they made nests. The trees were the sort of fresh green you only ever got in spring and the air smelled like promise.

Bo smiled sadly. “The only problem with that is that it’s not ours. It is currently owned by the Halifax Bank. And at this rate we’re gonna have to sell to pay our debts. And then what are we gonna do? Be tenant farmers?”

Tim sighed and squeezed her closer. “How bad is it really?”

Bo looked at the trees and the bluebells and the soft ground underfoot that three months ago was ankle deep mud and in three months time would be dry, dusty, nothingness and sighed. “We’d need a Celtic Hoard to get us out of this.”

Tim shrugged. “Weeeelll. You never know, Uncle Roger found one.”

Bo rolled her eyes. “I’d highly doubt there’d be two, don’t you?”

A low hooting came from deeper in the woods. The twins stopped and looked at each other.

“Was that?” Tim asked.

“Bertie?” Bo finished.

They turned towards where the hooting was coming from, and saw a small white shape in the trees. It flapped its wings, seemingly waving at them. They walked towards him.

“Bertie where have you been?” Bo called up to the trees, “Fleur’s been worried sick about you.”

All they got was another hoot in response. They made their way over to the tree Bertie was in. He was sitting in a branch just above Tim’s head. Something shiny was in his beak.

“What’s that you got there, Berts?” Tim said, holding out his hand.

Bertie dropped the thing into it, and Tim brought it to his face to examine. It was a small, round disk, possibly copper. And it was covered in dirt.

“It looks like a coin.” Bo said.

Bertie squawked loudly and took off, weaving between the trees. Tim took off in a sprint after him, Bo not far behind as they traversed the uneven ground.

“Where is he going?” Bo yelled, panting behind Tim as he thundered through the trees.

“I don’t know but I suggest you keep up!”

Soon Bertie landed at an old oak tree that had come down in a storm that Tim hadn’t had time to clear. Its roots had been deep and had brought up a lot of dirt as well as some brambles and saplings not strong enough to stay rooted. In the small pit the roots had created were more of the coins. Bertie strutted around and squawked loudly as the twins panted and gazed on, throwing coins at them with his beak like a child throwing toys out of its pram.

“What the hell is that?” Bo asked.

Tim clambered into the roots, spotting what looked like a broach and some rings caked in the mud. “This, my dear Boudicca,” he said, picking up a ring and beginning to laugh, “Is a Celtic Hoard.”