Shirtshire{Part one}

by Obi in London

Shirtshire Part one

I sat up in the rustling leaves of the oak, watching the mystique setting sun light the once placid blue sky on fire with colours. I was wearing cyan jeans with my favourite Manchester United shirt, I'd been wearing it every weekend since my dad bought it for me. It had my name ‘Gabriele' inscribed on the back. My dad didn't get that you put your last name on the back of a football jersey, but I still like it. This forest, this tiny dense wedge of land in the middle of the estates is mine. Nobody comes here anymore except me, it's fenced off by barbed wire and high fences and the briars and branches are so thick, nobody would think that in its core lay a secret paradise. I held a chilled bottle of coke in my left hand, it frosted my fingers to the point of numbness, but I didn't care. I didn't care about anything here. So many little things have been left undiscovered by archaeologists who think it unlikely that they'll find anything in a green patch around the estates. I filled a tree hollow with treasures I found, not stupid treasures authors think kids find and treasure for sentimental value but real  golden, silvery treasure. The best one is a gauntlet, glowing silver edged with gold, it was in a chest so it was in perfect condition. I wear it sometimes, like a crown that you wear on your hand, it fits perfectly, just like the secret forest. The briars were rustling underneath me, it wasn't a pigeon. I took something else out of the hollow. It was a blunt mace, a metal ball on a silver stick. It was an expensive item like the gauntlet, except it's shine was worn away from centuries under dirt. Before the handle met the ball there was a golden engraved circlet in Latin. I'm yet to translate it. I carefully  slid down the tree, mace and gauntlet in hand like a neo-classical warrior or a modern gladiator. I trod carefully on my Vans canvas shoes. I saw the flash of white trainers and the snort of blocked nose breathing. Bishops used to use maces, men of the cloth are not allowed to shed others blood so they took a blunt mace and hit them skilfully in the temple so to crack their skull and indent the fragments in their brain. Those men who said ‘Thou Shalt not Kill' were the most skilful warriors on the battlefield. I wandered if it would come to me having to use this terrible weapon. The boy was now clear as he emerged from the bushes, he had crew-cut blond hair and cruel mixed-hazel eyes like an artists palette and was wearing a Liverpool shirt with Diadora tracksuit bottoms. He froze when he saw me and drew a penknife, I brandished the mace and let the gauntlet shine in the dying light. He swore blue murder under his breath, spitting ‘bloody hell' and ‘where'd he get that thing'. We stared each other in the eyes for a second that lasted ten minutes, the penknife was quite long, he'd be able to shank me and slit my throat just as I could give him internal bleeding and fracture his skull. The boy charged forward, it was like a gladiator fight. He was agile from football probably, and light with the knife like the retiari gladiators of Roman times. I was skilful and heavily armed like the murmilliones who were best against them. The retiari were armed with a net, no armour to make them light and a sharp trident. Murmilliones was armed with heavy armour, medium swords, shields and helmets. The boy loomed with his long penknife, I narrowly sidestepped it and swung my mace. It missed and embedded itself spherically in the trunk of a sycamore. I tried to pull it out but the shockwave had injured my hand. I dropped the mace, but I still had the gauntlet on my hand, the metal glove was as good a weapon as any. I was light now and I done free-running so I bounced of the trees and clambered up onto to a  bow like a ninja. The boy through rocks at me until I back flipped off. He was like an assassin, he bounded forward and nearly had the knife through me. I lurched leftwards and it just grazed my chest. I swung the gauntlet and it connected with his shoulder. He was sent hurtling back into the bushes, nursing his shoulder, he couldn't get up. I grabbed my mace and looked at him with reluctant but present fear in my eyes. The boy got back up without his knife, which had flown into the bushes and charged crazily. I raised my mace almost unwillingly, ready to strike him down. However he tackled me! I was lifted off the ground, painlessly and quickly and landed with a agonising thud. I groaned.
"My wallets in my jeans pocket," I moaned, "take it and go, never come back." I tried to sound as brave and insistent as possible. The boy looked at me quizzically.
"Aye mate, you came into my forest with those weapons and crap and expect me to go," he said. I gaped at him, but regretted it as I had bruised my cheek when I fell.
"Your forest?" I scoffed. The boy flicked me off. He turned round to see where his knife went. I caught the name on his shirt, ‘Jay'.
"Jay," I muttered, the boy turned round surprised, then realised I read it from his shirt.
"Gabriele," he said sarcastically. I got up and done three back flips back using my four years of gymnastics and two and a half years of three running. Flips sure beet running, and look better too. I clambered up the tree like squirrel quickly. He grinned. I grinned wider and secretly plotted my next move, know my enemy.
"How'd you tackle me like that," I asked.
"I do rugby," said Jay, "my school supports football and my friends think I'm weird for doing it, but I play at a club." I nodded. He was one great player the tackle was  like martial arts.
"How long have you been coming to this forest?" I asked.
"Two years," said Jay, "I've found so many things in this place, I found a WW2 army knife, a harpoon, a medieval short-sword."
"You sure know your stuff, you Google it?" I asked.
"Yeah," Jay answered. Suddenly a thought popped into my head. I took of the gauntlet and put it back into the box in the tree hollow.
"How about we share the forest, work together to protect it from anyone  else coming in here," I proposed. I jumped down from the high bough of the tree and made a flawless landing in a crouch position. I offered my hand. He shook it and agreed. We talked for a long time and we managed to find his knife too. He showed me his stash of stuff and we deposited it all into the safer location of the tree hollow. We met in the forest every day after school, it didn't ruin the mystique of this tiny isle in the middle of the concrete peninsula. It was someone I could share it with, someone who felt the same.
We talked about our troubles: The credit crunch was hard on both our parents, my parents were artists and so their art business was slipping into the bankrupt graveyard of small businesses. Jay's single dad was a drug addict, he was trying to kick the habit, he wasn't a bad man. However kicking a drug addiction takes time and money, and Jay's dad had slipped into dept and couldn't afford time and naturally didn't have any money.
We talked about finding a treasure in this forest that would let us buy our parents out of this slow spiralling nightmare but we dug and dug and nothing came. All we found was yew longbow, it was rotting and battered but using my dads varnishing and carving tools I got it back to working condition.
Sadly, both me and Jay were honestly terrible at archery.
But one day as arrows whined through the leaves and we seemed to be under fire, we feared we'd fund someone who was good at the old bow ‘n arrow...