Magic Hands Read online

  Magic Hands

  By Lyndsey Smith

  I wish that I could tell you about all of the hands I have known in this world. I wonder how many you have known, held, shaken, squeezed, or perhaps accidentally brushed against in a fleeting moment. Every one of them different, telling their own stories, making their own memories. It is quite overwhelming is it not, that no two hands are the same, that they all touch and feel in their own unique way? I often think of all the work that I have seen hands do, every day creating masterpieces, but more than this, through the years I have witnessed the sheer emotion that the touch of a hand can bring to those around it. There must be magic inside those fingertips, a magic that I can only dream of having.

  You see, hands have not always been kind to me, in fact the first hands I remember frightened me to my very core. They were large hands, strong and rough looking, and belonged to a tall, gruff sounding man. His hands always had a layer of dirt on them, I think it was some kind of dust, bricks perhaps? I never did quite work it out. The fingernails were filled with grime and the skin around the knuckles was dry and chapped. I tried to clean them for him, wiping each of his finger nails with my tongue to reveal a momentary shine on the surface, but the hands always swatted my face away accompanied by a grumbling of get off I said NO. I think I must have annoyed the man for always trying to clean his hands, but I was young and I couldn’t help myself.

  I was often left by myself, waiting for hours and hours for him to come home. Sometimes I would cry, long mournful cries. Please come home. I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good. It would get dark and I would be hungry and desperate for the toilet but unable to get outside. I shouted as loud as I could, over and over, hoping somewhere he would hear me and come to me. I could hear the neighbours shouting every bloody day that damn thing barks. Most days I wet myself. I hated it, feeling so unclean and knowing how angry he would be but when I would finally hear the key in the door I was always so happy I would jump for joy, yelping my pleasure that I was no longer alone. I would try to say sorry for the mess that I had made, I was so ashamed I would hang my head and cower. I never meant to make a mess, I just couldn’t hang on.

  He would always shout before he hit me. I had noticed markings on his hands. Black shapes across all of the knuckles that never washed off. He had them on his arms too and across his neck. The shapes on his hands were all different apart from two of them which looked like E. When I was very small he grabbed me, forcing me to sit and pressing my nose against the shapes. This hand says LOVE and this hand says HATE. You’d better not give me a reason to hate you, mutt, or there’ll be trouble. You be good and we’ll get along just fine. I couldn’t understand what he was saying so I would just try to kiss his face or clean his hands, but every time I made a mess or I cried or shouted too loudly he would come at me. Once he grabbed me by the back of my neck, picked me up and threw me against the fridge. I screamed, but it only made him angrier, so I would try and make myself as small as possible, curling up as tight as I could into a ball in the corner.

  Another time I had got so hungry waiting for him that I chewed part of the door mat. I hoped he wouldn’t notice but he came striding towards me down the kitchen. I ran between his legs trying to find an escape, but the doors were shut. He took a slipper from the worktop and beat me on my back legs with it over and over. I stayed as quiet as I could, knowing that if I made a sound it would only make things worse. After all, it was my fault, I should never have chewed the mat; I knew I wasn’t supposed to, I had just been greedy not waiting for him to come home and throw me the crusts of his sandwich like he usually did. I watched his marked hand rise and fall and rise again, every time the slipper whipped my skin I saw the HATE on his knuckles flash past me.

  One day he held me on the ground and tied a piece of rope around my neck. We hadn’t been on a walk for so long I was excited to get outside. I pulled on my rope but it burned my neck so I was wheezing before we even made it around the first corner of the road. He yanked the rope hard shouting stop pulling you stupid animal and it choked my throat. I gasped for breath and he spanked my bottom, dragging me across the roads until I no longer recognised where we were.

  When it was dark we stopped at the bottom of an embankment next to a busy road. I could see lights moving above me and it was very noisy. I watched as his hands tied my rope to the fence. His fingers worked methodically pulling the rope in circles and loops, passing through one another until I was mystified at how they had come together to form the knot. He pulled the rope in two final tight jerks and I think it burned him too because he stood flexing his hands and clenching and unclenching his fists, the words LOVE and HATE rippling before me. He turned and walked away and I tried to follow but I couldn’t break free from the rope. I shouted and shouted but I don’t think he could hear me because he never looked back. I cried for him, I told him I was sorry, that I would be quiet, that I wouldn’t pull on my rope anymore and I would never let him down again, just please forgive me and take me home. I was scared in the dark. It was cold and I didn’t know where I was, but no one could hear me above all the noise from the road. I tried to pull off my rope but it hurt my neck so much and the more I pulled at it the tighter it became. It started to rain and my back legs began to shake uncontrollably from the cold, and it was then that I realised this must be a test. He was testing me on how to be good. If I could be quiet and still and show him that I knew how to behave, he would come back and get me. I lay my belly on the cold, wet ground and tucked my legs around me and I watched the blackness that he had disappeared into, waiting for him to reappear. I knew he must be watching me so I kept as quiet as I could. Sometimes there would be a roaring sound from up on the road when a big lorry rumbled past. Lights would flash and the ground would tremble and make me whimper.

  I waited and waited for him just like I did at home. Four sunrises came and went but still he did not come for me. I was so hungry I dug at the earth around me eating the grass and hoping I would find some food buried in the mud. My neck was still sore from the rope. I tried to scratch it off but I couldn’t break through it and my nails were soon covered in blood where I had torn my skin. I had no room to go to the toilet and my body ached from lying on the same piece of cold ground. Soon it hurt too much to stand at all, so I lay in the mud and filth and slept as much as I could.

  In one of my dreams I heard a voice, soft and far away, like an echo. It kept repeating the same word. Maureen. I don’t know what it meant but I kept hearing it over and over until it got louder and louder. Maureen. MAUREEN. Oh my god it’s alive. Maureen get the blanket from the car, quick. Oh my god you poor thing. You poor, poor thing shhhhhhhh.

  Confused, I opened my eyes, and there, there it was in front of me. A hand. It didn’t belong to the man I knew as there were no markings on it, instead this hand was old. The skin that covered it was thin and creased like the tissue paper in the box that my man’s slippers had come in. I knew how delicate the paper was; it had disintegrated when I had picked it out of the box one day and run up and down the kitchen with it and I’d received a beating. Perhaps this was another test I had to pass. I mustn’t mess up again. I tried to lift my head to see the owner of the hand but I was too weak. It was a risk but I tried as gently as I could to give the hand one small lick, not enough to hurt it, just to let it know I was friendly and please don’t hurt me. The hand tasted of lavender flowers and peppermint. I closed my eyes and waited quietly for the first strike. When I felt the fingertips softly touch the base of my ears I whimpered and my body shook, but they stayed, slowly, gently stroking my head. Shhhhhhhh now that’s good, it’s ok, shhhhhhh.

  ***

  I first saw your hand through the bars of my kennel. I liked to sit at the back against the wall, far away from
the metal door where no one could reach me. Though I thought of it every day in the kennels and whenever we walked past lavender flowers, I never saw the old hand that stroked my head again. I kept to myself and remained quiet even though I could hear lots of others shouting around me. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in case I made another mistake. I had a bed with a blanket laid out in it and I was given a ball that squeaked if I chewed it, but I didn’t touch it because it was a trick to get me in trouble. I was always in trouble when I chewed things at the man’s house.

  You sat on the floor outside my kennel and stretched your arm through the bars. You didn’t move or speak, you didn’t even look at me, you just sat quietly. Strangers walked past you and said you’ve got a lost cause there and why don’t you try kennel twelve instead, that one’s much friendlier? But still you didn’t move. I started to look at your hand in more detail. It didn’t have any markings like the man, and it wasn’t creased like the hand that found me on the embankment. Your hand was pale and smooth and had two gold rings on it, and there was a small mole on one of your knuckles. Every now and then you would turn your hand over and open out your palm for a little while, then close it and roll it back. I’m not sure why you kept doing this, but each time you opened your palm I stretched myself forward to take a look. I was hypnotised by this simple move; I must have fallen under your spell.

  I got to my feet and came a few steps closer. Still you didn’t look at me. I walked to within a few inches of your hand and finally you turned your face to me and smiled. What’s it to be? You looked down at your hand, turned it over and opened your palm. I bent my face down and breathed in the scent of your hand. You had marked your wrist with a sweet smelling floral perfume that had freesias in it, and I could make out a hint of saltiness underneath your nails from when you had made a ham sandwich an hour earlier. But more than this, there was another smell that I could not recognise. It had the sensation of a summer breeze or the warmth of a glowing sunset and seemed to envelope your whole body. I breathed you in and before I could control myself I licked your hand and wagged my tail. Well. It looks like you’ve made your choice.

  I came to your house a few days later and discovered to my joy that the smell which I had yearned for ever since you walked away from my kennel, was now all around me. I learned it was the smell of home. You lived with a man and at first I was very frightened of him. He had a pair of slippers just like the man with the marked hands. One day he came in holding them and I screamed and hid underneath a chair at the dining table. You sat with me for an hour until I was ready to come out. The man came back with different shoes and sat on the floor next to me. I saw that he also had a gold ring on his hand like you and you both held hands and stroked me together so I knew I did not need to be scared of him anymore. I never saw the slippers again.

  We’ve had so many adventures over the years. Filled with laughter, play, kisses, food and surprises. You bought me a new rope and taught me how to walk with it around my neck so that it wouldn’t hurt me again. You even took me to the beach and I swam in the salty sea! We walked for miles together in wind, rain and snow. Do you remember when you slipped and fell on some ice and couldn’t get up? I stayed with you until the man came and found us, keeping you warm and nuzzling your neck. I watched him carry you home and rub your swollen foot until you could walk on it again. I realised then the magic of hands. The lavender hand that saved my life when it stroked my head on the embankment. Your hand that opened its palm to me when I had no one in this world. The nice man’s hands that I watched caress your tummy making it grow hard and round. The new tiny hands that reached for clumps of my fur and screwed them into tight fists.

  Yes, I am positive that you must be some sort of wizard, for there is magic in the touch of your hand. Only your hands can calm the sorrow in your child’s cries, and ignite a special smile that I only see between you and the nice man. I have tried to be a wizard like you, to touch you all in the way I see you touch others. I jump up and offer you my paws every morning and you laugh and tell me good boy. When I saw the little girl crying in the garden, underneath the swing with scraped knees and a rip in her dress, I called for you. I ran to her, licking her face, and patting her as best I could with my feet, but I could not stop her tears, only you were able to do that, taking her in your arms and stroking her hair. You gently rubbed her back in small circles and the crying vanished, your spell complete! You smiled at me and ruffled the top of my head and the little girl put her arms around my neck and kissed me. You said aren’t you a good boy calling me like that, yesss you arrre, what a good boy you arrre. I was so proud to have been your apprentice that day, helping my wizard spread her magic.

  So now I must ask your magic hands to cast one final spell, for me. We have come to the room where the lady wears blue gloves. I always remember her hands because they are cold and the gloves smell strange, like the round balls you put in the house that year when there was cake and candles and one of the balls burst with a bang and I hid upstairs for the afternoon. You see, I would like to go now. I’m old and so very tired that I don’t think I can carry on anymore. I wish I could tell you how much I love you and how grateful I am to you for saving my life, but all I can do is look up into your tear-filled eyes and hope that you understand. Please don’t be sad. Every day that I have spent with you has been filled with joy, from the moment I lay eyes on you each morning to the time when you ruffle my ears and whisper goodnight. You have loved me more than I ever knew possible, and I am completely devoted to you, and so this is what I ask. Please take my head in your magic hands and let me kiss them one last time. Then hold me tight and say goodnight, and send me to a sleep where I may dream of you forever, my faithful wizard friend.

  © Oxfordshire County Council for a period of 12 months at which point it reverts to the author

 

 

  Smith, Lyndsey, Magic Hands

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