The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes Read Free Book Online Page B

Hogarth and Lucy were up early. They planned what they were going to do. Lucy left a note for her parents:
    When the TV people come to interview me, tell them I’ll be at the factory gate at 12 o’clock sharp.
    Soon they were climbing up towards the woods behind the town. They scrambled over a brambly bank and were among the trees.
    ‘Look!’ hissed Hogarth. He was pointing at the ground. Lucy gazed at the deep, huge prints in the soft mould. ‘The Iron Man. No toes, you see. Your Iron Woman has toes.’
    The track led up through the woods to the fieldabove, that climbed to a hilltop. And there they were, sitting facing each other, two colossal figures, their backs to the boles of great cedars that grew among the ancient stones on the hill’s very crown.
    ‘We’re here,’ yelled Lucy, and ran towards them. ‘It’s us.’
    The immense heads turned.
    ‘Iron Man!’ shouted Hogarth. ‘I knew you’d make it.’
    Lucy told them everything that had happened: the fight in the offices, the journalists, the television crew coming today. The enormous eyes glowed. The Iron Man’s glowed amber. The Iron Woman’s glowed black. But not a sound came out of either of them.
    ‘Why don’t you come and let the TV people see you?’ cried Hogarth. ‘You could give them the screams, on television . Then they’d have to believe. Everything would have to change.’
    ‘Oh yes, you must come,’ cried Lucy. ‘Just the sight of you –’
    A humming started up within the Iron Woman. ‘Nothing would change,’ came the deep, rumbling, gentle voice.
    Lucy and Hogarth stared at her. What did that mean? Weren’t the screams going to change everybody? And the sight of the Iron Woman, as a giant scream-transmitter – wouldn’t that change everything?
    ‘It needs something more,’ said the great voice, up through their shoe-soles.
    Hogarth and Lucy were baffled. How could there be anything more?
    ‘So what do we do?’ asked Hogarth.
    The rumbling started again. And the voice came again: ‘Do?’ Then again, louder: ‘ Do? ’ Then, with a roar: ‘DO?’
    And Lucy and Hogarth almost fell over backwards as the Iron Woman, in one terrific heave, got to her feet. Branches were torn off as she rose erect among the cedars. And her arms rose slowly above her head. Her fists clenched and unclenched, shooting her fingers out straight. Then clenched again. She lifted one foot, her knee came up, then:
    BOOM!
    Her foot crashed down. The whole hilltop shook and the sound echoed through her great iron body as if it were a drum. Again, her other foot came up – and down:
    BOOM!
    Ripping the boughs aside, her fists clenching and unclenching, her feet rising and falling, Iron Woman had begun to dance. There in the copse, in a shower of twigs, pine cones, pine needles and small branches, she revolved in her huge stamping dance, in front of the Iron Man whose eyes glowed bright gold. And she sang, in that deep, groaning, thundering voice of hers: ‘Destroy the ignorant ones. Nothing can change them. Destroy them.’
    She went on repeating that over and over, in time toher pounding footfalls, as she turned round and round. Lucy hid her mouth behind her clenched fists. The Iron Woman was terrifying. She was overwhelming. She was tremendous.
    ‘Give them a chance,’ Lucy screamed. ‘Let’s see what they say today. They might have changed already.’
    She just yelled it out at the top of her voice. Her father was one of the ignorant ones, according to the Iron Woman. But it was no good. The giant dancer’s eyes were glowing a dark red. She stamped each foot down as if she wanted to shatter the whole leg.
    ‘Nothing will change. Only their words change. They will never change. Only their words change. Only their words only their words only their words …’
    Then her voice became simply a roar. And now it seemed to Hogarth that inside her roar he could hear the scream, the wailing and the crying of all the creatures , roaring out over the