Midnight Blue
Author: Fisk, Pauline
Date: 2011-11-01T04:30:00+00:00

ABOUT MIDNIGHT BLUE

‘As they rose, the sun rose with them as if they were racing for the top of the sky. Its warmth welcomed them, turning the dark skin of the fiery balloon a beautiful midnight blue. They flew straight up. Above them, the sweet, clear music of the lonely pipe, the only sound left in the whole world, drew them on until they prepared to hit the very roof-top of the sky itself. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside for them, like curtains parting. The music called again, and they passed straight through.’

This new edition of Midnight Blue celebrates the twenty-first anniversary of its Smarties Grand Prix win. Midnight Blue is the haunting story of Bonnie, torn between her young, single mother, Maybelle, and her grandmother from hell, the malevolent Grandbag whose cruelty and interference propels Bonnie into a dramatic escape.

Aided by a mysterious shadowboy and his magical hot air balloon, Bonnie finds a world beyond the sky – one she’s always dreamt of, never believing it could be real. Here a new home awaits her - a bizarre mirror image of the world she’s left behind. But just as Bonnie dares believe she might have found a better life, the cruelty of Grandbag reappears, threatening to destroy it, her new friends and all she’s struggled to achieve.

Unexpected help comes from Edric and Godda, the mythical and highly elusive lord and lady of Highholly Hill. But Bonnie has to face up to challenges - and make hard choices - which are hers alone.

Kindle edition 2011, published by Pauline Fisk

First published in the UK in 1991 by

Lion Publishing plc

American Edition published in the USA

2001 by Bloomsbury US

Copyright © 1991, 2011 Pauline Fisk
www.paulinefisk.co.uk

Pauline Fisk has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

The Smarties Grand Prix winner

21st Anniversary Edition

MIDNIGHT

BLUE

Pauline Fisk

‘Pauline Fisk throws an emotional knockout punch in this haunting tale, which is worth the price for its originality and style alone.’ Glasgow Sunday Mail

‘…springing from that rich central core of England that gave us Elidor, Puck, Middle Earth and Watership Down, this is fantasy at its best.’ Fiction Focus

Contents

COVER

ABOUT MIDNIGHT BLUE

PART ONE - Running Away

PART TWO - The House on Highholly Hill

PART THREE – Wild Edric

PART FOUR - Grandmother Marvell

PART FIVE - Getting Rid of Grandbag

PART SIX - The Magic Mirror

PART SEVEN -Midnight Blue

PART EIGHT – Maybelle

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MIDNIGHT BLUE REVIEWS

NOVELS BY PAULINE FISK

PART ONE

Running Away

1

It began as it always did with sweet, solitary notes of music that called to her from somewhere beyond the sky, a single piper's cry that reached down for her and scooped her over roof tops and streets, office blocks and electric pylons, railway stations, shops and parks. The world faded beneath her. It was a hot, clear day and she flew up till she could see none of it any more. As she rose the sun rose with her, as if they were racing for the top of the sky. Its warmth welcomed her, caressed her skin. Above her the music of the lonely pipe, the only sound left in the whole world, drew her on until she prepared to hit the very roof top of the sky itself. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside for her, like curtains parting. The music called again and she passed straight through.

Straight through, that is, into her bedroom. Bonnie came to herself and she was sitting on the floor surrounded by a litter of suitcases out of which her childhood possessions spilled. A raggedy doll lay in her hands. She stared at it, momentarily bewildered, and then she knew that this was her new home, that she had unpacking to do, that it was a hot, still day beyond the open window, that she'd lost herself daydreaming again.

She shook her head. The pipe music faded away. In its place she could hear the sound of Maybelle singing in the room next door, of furniture being dragged about, of the radio chattering in the kitchen. She got to her feet, put the doll upon the shelf, leaned out of the window. She could hear sparrows chattering, children playing, the droning of a vacuum cleaner next door now, traffic on the road outside the block of flats. She looked down beyond the balcony, at the tarmac forecourt and the sign that said HIGHHOLLY HOUSE Nos. 1-79. She followed the line of the orange brick wall along the road and behind the garages, past the cluster of trees in the corner, to the new shops.

There was something about those trees. Her eyes lingered on them. What was it? They were stiff, gnarled, spreading hollies. Perhaps it was their obvious age that set them apart. Their branches bristled in what seemed to be their own private breeze. They were lonely, like a distant island across the sea…

Bonnie's mother opened the bedroom door. Her hair was piled into a straggly yellow whirl on top of her head. Her cheeks were round and pink. Her eyes were smudged with yesterday's mascara.

'Come on Bonnie,' she said. 'Don't just sit there. There's lots to do.'

'All right Maybelle.' Bonnie turned from the window. 'I was just starting.'

'Well, hurry up,' her mother said. 'And think about colour schemes while you're at it. We'll go and buy some paint this afternoon.'

She rubbed her hands against her jeans and tilted her head thoughtfully to look the room up and down. Bonnie looked at it too. 'What d'you think of red and yellow, Maybelle?'

Maybelle opened her mouth to tell her, but something stopped her. A car rattled across the forecourt. It halted right beneath the bedroom balcony and the happy colour faded out of her cheeks. Bonnie looked out of the window. She'd recognized the sound as well. She knew what she'd see.

'It's Grandbag.'

'On her own?'

'No. Doreen's with her.'

'Oh.'

They looked at each other miserably.

'She's probably missing you,' Maybelle said.

'I've only been gone one day,' Bonnie replied.

‘I’d better go and put my make-up straight,’ Maybelle said. ‘She always says I look like I’m not coping when I don’t bother.’ She left the room. Bonnie heard her humping the vacuum cleaner into the hall cupboard. She turned off the kitchen radio and there was an awful silence. Bonnie looked out of the window again. Grandbag was hoisting straight the black-and-bead coat which she wore whatever the weather, and readjusting her hat. Doreen, thin, dark and as different from Maybelle as a sister could be, fluttered round her in a shapeless bundle of a summer dress. Grandbag strode towards the stairway. Doreen followed her. Like an army of two, they disappeared into the darkness below. Bonnie heard Maybelle in the bathroom now. There was a waiting hush, then the shrill ring of the bell.

'We can't stay long. We thought we'd better come and see how you're managing with the child. You can show us round as well. How's she getting on?'

Bonnie heard them coming down the hall. 'She talks to herself,' she heard Grandbag say. 'You'll have to do something about that. And she daydreams.'

Almost without thinking, Bonnie climbed out of the window onto the balcony. They entered the room. She crouched out of sight. Close to the window, she heard Grandbag's voice again.

'What a mess! She won't do a thing if you don't make her, you mark my words. Where is she?'

She could imagine Grandbag hauling her coat straight again, and folding her emphatic arms in that gesture of hers. She could imagine the make-up, thickly caked to hide her creeping age. She could imagine the thin lips, the wobbling hat, the eyes. She flattened herself against the wall and heard her mother say that she'd been here a minute ago, that she didn't know where she had gone.

'You should have left the child with me,' Grandbag said. 'It's not going to work, you mark my words. Now you can't even find her. Do you know what she said to me, before you came to get her? Do you? She said, "Is Maybelle really my mother?" That's what she said. You should have left her with me, where she belongs.'

Bonnie could imagine Maybelle's face, bright with hurt feelings. She hung her head with shame and tried to slide away. Grandbag wasn't lying. She had said it. But she'd only wanted to be sure. She hadn't meant any harm. She found the fire escape at the end of the balcony, and jumped onto it. 'The trouble with you,' Grandbag was saying. Bonnie's shoe hit the metal step, and rang out sharply.

Grandbag stopped. 'What was that?'

'I don't know.'

Grandbag and Doreen stuck their heads out of the window. Bonnie began to clamber down as fast as jumbled hands and legs would go. Grandbag's whole head shook with indignation, but she didn't call to Bonnie. She didn't ever speak to her, if she could help it. She shouted at Doreen instead.

'Get her, Doreen. Bring her back up here.'

Doreen clambered dutifully onto the balcony and began to wave her arms at Bonnie. 'Come back,' she called in her thin, uncertain voice. 'Come back to your Grandmother right away.’

Bonnie, for answer, jumped the last few steps onto the ground. 'Maybelle, what does the child think she's doing?' Grandbag shouted. 'You've only had her a day, and she's running riot.'

Bonnie didn't hear any more. New sounds rushed to greet her, little kids skipping, roller skating and kicking cans, a gang of girls laughing together behind their hands and boys riding up and down on bikes in front of them. Doreen began to clatter down the fire escape. Without really thinking, Bonnie ran between the children, heading for the corner with the holly trees.

The boys stopped kicking cans. The girls stopped laughing. Bonnie saw that the skaters had stopped skating, that all the children's heads were turned to watch her. Doreen was on the ground now, and shouting at her.

She reached the trees, and with some relief slid into their shade. They were dense and prickly and she struggled through. It was immediately quiet, as if she were a million miles away from children playing and the traffic on the road. It was as if she'd entered a forest, not a cluster of rambling city trees.

Bonnie came to a wall. There was so much ivy growing on it that at first she didn't see it there and almost stumbled into it. It was an old wall, not searing orange brick like the wall up the road, but grey, ancient, flinty stones that rose up over her head. She could see trees swaying on the other side of it and began to make her way along, looking without success for a gate. Doreen panted behind her and in a panic Bonnie tripped over a pile of stones. She was about to climb over them when she realized what they signified.

'There's only one reason why they'd be here,’ she thought. 'They must have fallen out of the wall!'

Bonnie began to dig into the ivy. Her arm plunged in right up to her shoulder. She could feel her fingers breaking free of wiry tendrils on the other side. There was a hole. She pulled her arm out and began to tear away at the ivy and thrust herself through. Doreen came crashing towards her, but Bonnie fell onto the ground on the other side and the ivy sprang back into place again behind her.

Doreen reached the spot, panting dreadfully. Bonnie held her breath.

‘Stupid wretched girl!' Doreen muttered. 'Where's she gone? I've gone and lost her. Why's she always got to be so difficult?'

It was a good question. Bonnie wondered too. It would have been so much easier if she'd stayed, and been polite, and promised to unpack her bedroom properly and said all the things Grandbag wanted her to say. Now, because of her, there was all this fuss, and Maybelle would be crying and Grandbag would be crowing, 'I told you so.'

Doreen began to push her way back through the trees. Bonnie sighed with relief. Up above her, she could hear blackbirds singing. It was quiet now. Doreen had really gone. She looked about her. She was still in a wood. But what sort of wood was it, shut away behind high walls in the heart of the city? Bonnie peered through the trees. In the distance stood a sunny clearing. She decided to explore.

2

In the clearing a man was digging. He paused, wiped his hot head with a handkerchief, and carried on. Behind him, a flint-faced, mushroom-shaped little house was set against the trees, its roof jutting over a wood veranda upon which languid, cream-coloured cats lay in the sun.

The man stopped. He cleaned his spade and put it aside. There was something purposeful about the way he moved, something that caught Bonnie's attention, much as the hollies had done from her bedroom window - something that made her want to know what he would do next. He began to walk towards where she was hiding. She shrank back, but he stopped without seeing her. He began pulling down dead branches and dragging them back into the clearing. Then he broke them into little pieces, crack, crack, and stacked them in the pit he'd dug, pausing now and then to wipe his forehead again, and fan away the heat of approaching noon.

Bonnie wondered how she could move closer without being seen. The man disappeared into a shed, and she thought she saw her chance, but he reappeared with a hammer and a bag of pegs. He pegged out a circle on the ground, right in the middle of the clearing. Then he dug out a second shallower pit. It seemed to take ages and Bonnie became very stiff, though she didn't dare move. When the man had finished, he went back into the shed and she stretched her limbs. He returned with a pile of cloth which he laid down with care and spread across the shallow pit. The cloth was a dark, rather strange colour. At first Bonnie thought it must be black. But when the man laid it out for the sunlight to catch she saw that it was a deep, rich blue. What could it be? Unable to contain her curiosity, Bonnie crept forward for a better view. The undergrowth rustled around her, and she stopped - not that the man seemed to notice. For a moment he stood admiring what he’d done, then he climbed the veranda steps and disappeared into the house.

But what had he done? Bonnie seized her chance and scrambled forward to find out. She could see a deep trench now, between the first pit with the wood in it, and the second pit with the smoothed-out cloth. What was it all for? She looked at the wood pile and the cloth. She looked at the hammer and pegs. She felt as if she'd walked straight down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. What was happening here?

Suddenly the man appeared, all cleaned up. Bonnie thrust herself down in the nearest greenery. He climbed down the steps, turned without seeing her and plunged away between the trees. She watched as he came to a gate in the wall and unlocked it carefully. The world outside rushed to greet him. Bonnie caught a glimpse of a busy street with traffic and shoppers. The man turned once to look at his garden and then he was gone. Even from her distance, Bonnie could hear the big key locking the gate again.

Bonnie got up straight away. She made for the house. 'You can't go up there,' she told herself out loud. But even as she said it, her feet seized the chance and she found herself climbing the veranda steps, picking her way across the wooden boards between the cats, and standing at the front door - which she expected to find locked, but was not.

'No,' she told herself – and then she walked straight in.

At once Bonnie was plunged into a green, leafy darkness. No sunshine penetrated the little windows and, as if to make sure it stayed that way, rambling plants grew in pots in front of them. Bonnie could smell stale coffee and tobacco. Her eyes became accustomed to the quality of the light, and she made out shelves that were heavy with books. There were strange things on the walls - weavings, paintings, maps, photographs. Bonnie found a carved head and a string of coloured beads. She crept forward, curiously. Her voice no longer said 'no'.

Bonnie explored the shelves, one after another. There were books on the sky at night and archaeology and ancient languages, books of geography and history, science and the story of manned flight, books on birds and farming, hang-gliding and…

Tap, tap! Bonnie started. It was only a cream cat sliding through the front door behind her, but it reminded her that the man would come back and she didn't have all the time she might have wanted. She turned from the books and delved quickly in the further depths of the room. She found a door through into a kitchen. She found a back room with a sewing-machine. She found stairs leading up into darkness.

'No, no, no.' Bonnie’s hand clutched the banister as if to stop her. 'You can't go up there.'

Even so, she began to climb. Something soft brushed against her legs. For a moment there in the darkness her heart pounded, then a streak of cream-coloured fur rushed ahead of her. Just a cat! It pushed open the door at the top and slithered through. Bonnie saw a chink of light and heard something too. But then the door swung shut again and it was gone. What had it been it? Music?

Bonnie pushed open the door too and stepped across bare, creaking boards into the brightness of noon. The sound was gone. Perhaps she'd never heard it. The room was sunny and fresh, with open windows on every side. It honoured the sky, its walls adorned with pictures of the stars at night, the stages of the moon, the rising sun. In its centre, in a pool of sunlight, a telescope pointed upwards through a glass dome.

Bonnie crossed the floor to stand beneath the dome. Then she heard it again. It was her music! She looked up and the lonely piper of her dreams called her. For an instant, she had that sense of flying again, of going up through the dome as if it wasn't there, into the sky. Then she stepped back, startled, and the sensation went away, taking the split-second music with it. She shook her head. What was the matter with her? Was she fainting? Was it the heat? Had she imagined it? The boards creaked as she stumbled to a window. She leaned against it and breathed the fresh air. Then something caught her eye.

On a desk by Bonnie’s side lay an open book that had been written in with bold red ink. She picked it up. It was a diary. Under the day's heading, it said, 'Pits are dug. The weather is perfect. Everything is ready. Practice flight tonight.'

Practice flight of what? Bonnie turned back the page. Her heart pounded again and she felt as if something that really mattered was about to happen. Then, right in front of her, in the same red handwriting, she read, 'A thousand years ago, people knew there was a land beyond the sky. They travelled to it and they came back again… '

Bonnie looked up through the dome and then back down again to the sunshine on the floor. Deep, deep inside her, in that place that daydreamed wildly about things that couldn't really be, a jigsaw piece fitted into place. Beyond the sky. All her life long, and though she’d never understood quite why, she'd known there was a land beyond the sky. She'd wondered how to get to it and what it was like. Beyond the sky. Not 'in outer space' or 'in another galaxy' but beyond the sky - the way she'd always thought of it, as if it were possible to peel away the edge of the blue and pass straight through.

The floorboards creaked. Bonnie jumped. The cream cat slid away again and she remembered she was a trespasser in the house of a man who would return. Reluctantly, she put the diary back on the desk, and made her way across the room. She climbed back down into the stuffy greenness of the living-room, and out on to the veranda, and over the cats and away into the wood. She turned once to look at the house, then plunged on to find the hole in the ivy, which she clambered through.

On the other side, Bonnie leaned against the wall and thought about it all. 'The practice flight tonight…’ 'A land beyond the sky…' Finally she pushed her way back through the hollies towards the tarmac forecourt. She was about to step out of their shade when, like strangers from another world, ancient enemies who hardly matter any more, Grandbag and Doreen appeared at the entrance to the flats. They didn't see her and climbed into their car. Grandbag pumped the engine into life, hooted a sharp goodbye and drove away. Bonnie watched them go. Then, shaking her head as she did after a daydream, she stepped out into the sun, and set her face for home.

When she got back, it was much as she expected. Maybelle was in the bath, the place she always went when she needed comforting. Bonnie could hear her crying through the steam. She tapped on the bathroom door and said, 'Hello. I'm back.' Then she went into the kitchen and put some lunch on the table.

Maybelle appeared in a bath towel, with a bright red face and red-rimmed eyes. She glared at Bonnie accusingly and sat down. She picked at her food.

'Why did you do it?'

'I don't really know.'

'Mother wasn't very impressed.'

'I don't suppose she was.'

'She says I can't control you.'

'Perhaps you can't.'

They stared at each other. Then Maybelle pushed her food aside and sighed. 'Life's too short for this,’ she said. 'Come on, Bonnie. Let's forget it. At least she's gone. Let's go out and buy that paint!'

Bonnie grinned gratefully. Maybelle disappeared to get herself ready. When she returned, her face was made up and her hair was brushed and shiny. She wore a sundress and high heels. 'We'll make a home for ourselves yet, won't we, Bonnie?' she said.

Bonnie didn't answer. She was gazing out of the window at the sky.

'Bonnie?' For all the cheery dressing there was a thin, brittle quality to Maybelle's voice which she always had when Grandbag was around. Bonnie turned her head. She knew with sinking dread what was coming next. 'You do love me, don't you Bonnie?' Maybelle said.

'Of course I do.'

'I just wanted to be sure.'

3

It was a close, stuffy night. Bonnie tossed on her bed and dreamed of fire. She half woke and lay in a flaming sweat, listening to the distant crackle and roar of the city. Her bedcovers were in a mess on the floor. Her sheet felt hot and moist. She stumbled onto her feet and into the bathroom, splashed her face and neck with tepid water, returned to open the window wider and leaned out.

Cars passed on the street. Somewhere below her, perhaps among the trees, a pinprick of red light flickered, something sharper and brighter than the neon of the street lights. She looked up into the sky above it. At first she thought that the stars were invisible tonight. But then, as they appeared suddenly and then disappeared again, she realized that it was smoke that was blotting them out as it drifted through the sky.

The words of the diary came back to Bonnie. 'The weather is perfect. We'll have the practice flight tonight.' She remembered the man breaking dry twigs in the garden next door and stacking them up into a pile, and then she looked back at the red pinprick of light. Not a dream fire, this time. It was a real one.

Without hesitation, Bonnie dressed and climbed out onto the balcony. A clock chimed four times as she inched past Maybelle's bedroom window. She climbed down the fire-escape and picked her way across the tarmac and among the hollies. When she came to the old wall, she felt for the hole. It took a while but finally she clambered through. The crackling undergrowth beneath her feet and the crunch of leaves as she pushed her way among them seemed very loud in the hush of night. But she pressed on, too curious to care.

Ahead of Bonnie, a bonfire burned. She could smell woodsmoke and hear its hiss and snap. She crept from tree to tree towards the clearing and at last stood close enough to feel its heat. She peered through the branches and saw something strange, a path of what looked at first like underground light coming from the bonfire. Suddenly she realized it was the dug-out trench. It had been covered, and the smoke and flames were rushing along it from the first pit, where the fire had been made, to the second shallow pit where… where what?

Bonnie stared, astonished. A dark monster bobbed with its greedy mouth over the shallow pit where the smoke came out. It staggered wildly and drank the smoke greedily, growing bigger as she watched. Bonnie suddenly recognized what it was. It was the cloth that had lain upon the ground. It had become a balloon. Huge poles on either side of it helped to hold it secure with a web of ropes tethering it to the ground. It bobbed at its mooring-place, angry with the tethers, impatient to get away.

The man appeared. He was fighting with it, trying to keep it down, to keep its mouth over the smoke, to control it. As the balloon filled out, it became harder to hold. Suddenly - from where Bonnie wasn't sure - other figures appeared. Dark like shadows, quick like flickering flames, they grabbed hold of the balloon and struggled with it too.

Bonnie leaned forward. What was it about those figures? She saw pale hands on the dark cloth of the balloon, eyes glittering in the firelight, bodies darting from side to side. And yet her eyes couldn't hold them properly. Their heads kept turning away and, like the flames, they were quick and light - one minute there, the next gone. Did these strange people, Bonnie wondered, know about the land beyond the sky?

The man gave a sudden shout. The balloon was as full as a midsummer moon. Its wide open mouth glowed red with heat. It was bursting beneath a sky which began to lighten. They couldn't hold it any more. It had to go.

As they cut the ropes and the huge poles crashed away on either side, Bonnie realized, surprised, that she'd got it wrong. How had she done that? There was only one shadowy figure working beside the man, racing up and down in the firelight with the speed and strength of ten. One boy pulling a few last dead branches off a tree, tossing them into the last of the fire. One boy.

'It works,' the man shouted. 'Look at it. It works!'

The untethered balloon shook free. It went straight up. Somewhere, not far away, a police siren moaned. Bonnie hardly noticed. She looked into the night sky that was turning now to morning. The balloon went up and up into it without wavering, long after the police siren had fallen silent. Up and up into the early morning blue. She watched until it was a dark, lonely inkspot and her neck ached with following it.

Then Bonnie looked down again. The fire was burning low. The man and the boy were gone. She waited to see if they would return, but when they didn't she turned to go as well - to rustle back through the dewy grass, and over the wall, and across the tarmac and into her bedroom where she could play with the pieces of the jigsaw in her mind, cast about within herself for understanding.

'It was a lovely sight, wasn't it?'

He stood behind her, smoking a cigarette, the man from the house. In the early morning light, she could see his face was dark like a gypsy's and his hair gingery brown, like a ripe nut. His eyes were grey and still and careful. Bonnie’s heart thumped with the sudden shock of his being there, but she didn't run away. Surprised at herself, she said, 'Will it come back?'

The man shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'It's far too dark.'

'What?'

'Midnight blue,' the man said, then added, realizing she didn't understand, 'The sun will keep the air inside hot because the cloth's so dark, and as long as it's hot enough, the balloon goes up.'

'Oh.' Bonnie looked up again. She couldn't see the balloon any more.

The man threw down his cigarette, stamped on it. 'Come and sit on the veranda,' he said. 'I'll get us some breakfast and you can tell me what you're doing in my garden.'

Bonnie gulped uncomfortably. He turned and walked away from her. The choice was suddenly hers, to turn and run away or to follow after him. And yet there hardly seemed any choice at all. There was so much she wanted to know. He climbed onto the veranda and, from behind him, puffing as she caught him up, Bonnie said, 'What happened to the boy? Where did he go?'

The man stopped. He turned round. There was the strangest expression on his face. 'What did you just say?'

'Your friend… ' Bonnie faltered uncomfortably. 'You know, the boy who helped you launch that thing.'

His pause was long enough for Bonnie to wonder if she'd got it wrong again and it hadn't been one boy but, as she'd first thought, many.

'Sit down,' he said at last, though without answering her. He turned again towards the house. 'I won't be long.'

Bonnie settled herself on an old sofa in between sleeping cats. The man came out again with a tray full of toast, fruit and hot coffee. He placed it on a little table by her side and pulled up a chair so that he was facing her. He picked up a cat and stroked it lightly, indicated that she should help herself to breakfast, and sat staring at her while she ate. All the while, he ran his fingers down the cat's back and kept his eyes on her face.

To her surprise, Bonnie found that she had an appetite, that his attention didn't put her off her food. She ate. He waited patiently, as if he had all the time in the world. When she'd finished and pushed the tray away, the man spoke at last.

'My name's Michael. Tell me about yourself.'

Bonnie didn't want to tell him anything. She wanted him to do the telling. But it wasn't a question, she realized. It was a demand and she'd intruded in his garden and eaten his breakfast, so she began. He gave her his whole attention and to her surprise the story blossomed. There was something about the way he looked at her, as if he could see what she was saying… She found herself telling him about living with Grandbag because Maybelle couldn't look after her and about getting their own home at long last.

'You'd like Maybelle,' she said. 'She's really fun. At least, she is when Grandbag isn't around.'

'What's she like when Grandbag's around?'

'Well, she can't make up her mind about things and she cries a lot. Things don't seem to work out the way she wants them to and she feels, well, useless, I suppose…'

Bonnie’s voice trailed off. She hung her head. Gently, Michael changed the subject. 'How did you get into my garden?' he said mildly. 'I keep it locked, you know, and the wall's very high.'

Bonnie told him about the hole.

'And why did you come through?' he said.

Why had she come through? It seemed to burst from her, without her control. 'I... I wanted to know about the land beyond the sky. I read your diary. I know I shouldn't. I know it was wrong. I know you'll be really mad at me. But I couldn't help it. And I'm glad I did, even if you are mad. I've always known inside myself, you see, that there’s a land beyond the sky.'

The man stopped stroking the cat. He lit another cigarette and drew on it a couple of times. ‘I’m sorry. You must be really cross with me,’ Bonnie said. ‘This is your garden, and I know I’ve got no right.’

The man didn’t answer.

'Look, it's light now,’ Bonnie said awkwardly. 'I'll have to go. I don't want Maybelle to know that I've been out. I just hoped you'd tell me how you know for sure…'

He got up. Threw down the cigarette. 'Come on,' he said.

'What?'

'Come on ... '

He was going to throw her out. Bonnie didn't blame him. She should never have allowed herself to be so easily caught. Now she was for it…

'It looks as if there's something I'll have to show you.'

The man wasn't throwing her out. He was marching across the veranda towards the house. Cats were scattering…

'Don't just stand there,’ he said.

Bonnie followed him indoors. He brought a big book off a shelf. It was a history of flight with a torn paper cover and yellow-edged pages.

'There are all sorts of things in here,' he said. He began to thumb through and photos, drawings and diagrams whirred before Bonnie's eyes. 'Here,’ he said, stopping suddenly and stabbing with his finger. 'I found this. It's just a short piece. Read it yourself. Most people would think it was just a story. But I did it. You saw me. I did it tonight. And just like the genie when the lamp is rubbed, the shadowboy appeared.'

Bonnie looked. There was a picture of a broken shard of pottery with a black balloon on it, and a red fire, and smoke and a soft grey shadow-figure holding a stick with which it poked the fire.

'Read it,’ said Michael again. 'It proves there’s nothing new under the sun. A thousand years ago – a thousand years - people did what we’ve just done.’

4

Bonnie woke. She heard Maybelle's bedroom clock strike nine and she could see that it was bright outside. The door was slightly open and from the kitchen came the sound of the radio and the smell of something cooking, something buttery and sweet and not at all like the burnt toast which was all she'd ever known Maybelle to produce at breakfast time.

Bonnie sighed. She wasn't hungry. She remembered breakfast on Michael's veranda and creeping home in the early light, back through the open window and into her bed. And then she remembered the rest - the ancient secrets Michael had unlocked, of flight and more than flight, of the land beyond the waving curtains of the sky, of the shed full of more blue cloth, mountains of bigger, fresh balloon that waited for the real launch tonight…

Maybelle stuck her head round the door. She wore an uncharacteristic apron. 'Wake up,' she said. 'Breakfast's ready. We've got a lot to do today.’

'I'm not hungry,' Bonnie said.

‘But I’ve made pancakes,’ Maybelle replied.

‘All right, all right, I’m on my way.’

When Bonnie entered the kitchen, Maybelle was sliding pancakes onto plates. She was slightly flustered, obviously not used to such early morning efforts. The recipe book was propped up on the shelf beside the stove. A chaos of pans and bowls lay all around her and piled up in the sink. The window was open and smoke was drifting out of it. But the radio sang and Maybelle hummed along with it. And the pancakes were crisp and curly on the edges and soft and brown in the middle where the sugar had been sprinkled.

Bonnie sat down, found her appetite and ate. All the while, Maybelle hovered attentively.

'You do like them, don't you? Are they warm enough? Are they nice and light? Would you like some more sugar? We could have them every day, you know.'

When she'd finished, Maybelle said, 'Do you realize, this is the first proper day of our life together? Isn't that exciting? Come on, let's get going.'

'Get going with what?' Bonnie eyed the dishes unenthusiastically.

'With this,' Maybelle said, and she hauled the pots of red and yellow paint out of the cupboard. 'We'll get it all done today you know, if we make an early start.'

Bonnie'd forgotten all about the plan to decorate her bedroom.

'I've been waiting for this day for years,' Maybelle said. 'Our own home. Isn't it wonderful?'

She hauled the paint down the hall and into Bonnie's room. Then she began covering everything in ragged sheets and shouting for brushes. 'Can you bring the radio?' she called, and started attacking the nearest bit of wall with big, carefree brush strokes.

Bonnie brought the radio and plugged it in. It was a hot day already and she pushed the window open as wide as it would go. Across the tarmac, she saw the hollies. They were thick and wild and she couldn't see anything of the house behind. It was hard to get excited about painting a bedroom when she thought of what would happen over there tonight.

Maybelle began to sing along with the radio. She bopped up and down. She'd already covered half a wall. There were paint spots on the carpet, but she carried on regardless and didn't seem to care.

'We can get them off afterwards. Bonnie, take the red. Make a start on the cupboard door.'

Bonnie found a little brush and a red pot of paint and began. The room began to look remarkably lively. She couldn't resist a twinge of pride. 'I told you red and yellow would look good together,' she said.

They paused for lunch. They'd finished one whole coat, all the way round. Maybelle said they'd let it dry for an hour. It was so hot, it wouldn't take long. Incongruously, she started talking about Christmas plans. It was hard to imagine Christmas with the windows open and the sun beating through them.

'I've brought you a present, actually,' Maybelle said. 'I couldn't wait for Christmas.'

She disappeared into her bedroom. Bonnie heard her rustling and thumping and the bedroom clock chiming. She reappeared, looking slightly embarrassed, with a ridiculous plant in a pot - a huge thing with green floppy leaves that drooped all over the place.

'I bought it this morning,' she said, 'when I went to get the stuff for the pancakes. Isn't it nice?'

She dumped it on the kitchen table. 'It'll go with the yellow walls,' she said. 'I know I shouldn't have, but it was reduced. Perhaps if we can't afford a Christmas tree, it'd do instead. If you look after it properly, we could use it every year.'

Bonnie stared at the plant, knowing she couldn't possibly have afforded it. ‘Oh, Maybelle, it's lovely,' she said.

'Put it in your bedroom,’ Maybelle said. 'Let's see what it looks like.'

Bonnie tried to pick up the plant but immediately started staggering beneath the weight. Maybelle helped her haul it down the hall. The doorbell rang. Maybelle helped her sidle the plant into the bedroom, then turned towards the unfamiliar shape beyond the frosted glass of the front door.

When she came back, Bonnie had shifted the plant over to the window and started painting again. 'You'll have to be careful not to splash it,’ Maybelle said.

'Grandbag would tell you off for spoiling me.'

They both grinned. Then Maybelle gestured towards the hall. It was next door, she said, wanting to know if they'd like a cup of tea. Bonnie said she'd rather get on. 'Suit yourself,’ Maybelle said. 'I think I’ll go. Get to know the neighbours. After all, we're going to be here a long time.’

When she'd gone, Bonnie sat on the bed and looked beyond the plant and the yellow walls and the red doors and skirting-boards. It was a relief to be quiet and on her own. Memories of last night, pushed away by the day, crowded back again. She thought of Michael's fire tonight and the big monster of a bag which he'd fill with smoke to lift him through the sky. She thought of the darting shadowboy. She thought of the inkspot in the sky — the experimental balloon. Where was it now? Had it passed through the veil, exploded in the atmosphere?

'At least we know it really can be done,’ Michael had said. 'We can, like the ancients, send bags of smoke up into the sky.'

'I wish I could go with him,' Bonnie thought.

The doorbell rang again. She supposed Maybelle had left her key. It rang again, impatiently. It wasn't like Maybelle to be impatient.

'All right, all right, I'm just coming… '

Grandbag stood on the doorstep in her black-and-bead coat, with Doreen behind her, clutching a suitcase. 'Don't just stand there. Let us in.'

As if in a dream, Bonnie stepped aside. Grandbag marched past her and down the hall towards Maybelle's bedroom. Doreen hauled the suitcase behind her.

'What are you doing, Grandma?'

'What does it look like?' Grandbag opened Maybelle's bedroom door and Doreen pushed the suitcase in. 'I've come to stay,’ Grandbag said. 'I've never been one to turn my back on my children when they needed me. Doreen, put my umbrella over there. Hang up my coat. Now you can go. Don't stand around there. Don't forget to feed the bird, will you?'

Doreen slunk down the hall and outside. Bonnie's abiding final memory was of her backing, all bony arms and legs and drab print frock, along the covered walkway towards the stairs. Her voice faded as she said, and said again, that she hoped she'd manage all right on her own, that she was sure she'd be all right really, that Grandbag mustn't worry about her.'

'Silly woman,' Grandbag said. 'Of course she won't manage. She never does. I suppose she'll have to move in too. Where's your mother?'

'She's next door,' Bonnie said. 'Having a cup of tea.'

'Well, get her.'

Bonnie stumbled along the walkway to the next flat. She thundered on the door and tumbled in. 'Maybelle, Maybelle, Grandbag's here! She's come to stay! She's brought her suitcase!'

'What!'

Maybelle dropped her tea on the carpet, and there were apologies while they tried to clear it up. Then they were outside, with a white-faced Maybelle muttering parting pleasantries. Then they were at their own front door, hand in shaking hand.

'You've got to make her go,' Bonnie said. 'If you don't do something now, we'll never get rid of her. Even if we move, she'll follow us. We won't ever escape!'

Grandbag opened the door before Maybelle could answer her. 'What have you done to that poor child's room?' she said. 'Those horrid colours - what can you have been thinking of?'

Maybelle let go of Bonnie's hand. 'I just thought… '

'Never mind what you thought. Make me some tea.'

Meek as a lamb, and ghastly quiet, Maybelle went into the kitchen and filled the kettle and plugged it in. Bonnie followed, hurling piercing, desperate looks at her, which she ignored.

'If you get a move on,' Grandbag said, 'you'll have time to go down to the shops and change the rest of that paint for white.'

Bonnie gave up, turned away. She crept along the hall into her bedroom. She shut the door, sat on the bed. She stared at the plant. Her foot felt something underneath the bed. It was her little cardboard suitcase, the one she'd always kept her night things in when Grandbag had, reluctantly, let her spend odd nights with her mother. She pulled it out. She thought of Michael. She'd ask him to take her too. It was timed just right. As if she were meant to go.

Grandbag called her. She pushed the suitcase under the bed again. Grandbag's voice informed her that there was some shopping for her to do.

5

A cream-coloured cat rattled the window-pane. Bonnie sat up, consulted her watch and got out of bed. The flight would be at dawn, but Michael said it would take all night to fill such a big bag with smoke. She looked out of the window. The cat had gone. She could see the light of fire already, over the wall.

Bonnie dressed, crept into the kitchen and helped herself to a small, light breakfast. On the way back to her room, she paused to look at sleeping Maybelle in her bed, her face pale against Grandbag's arm, which was slung across her like a shadow. Grandbag snored contentedly. Maybelle tossed, helpless to get free.

Bonnie turned away to her own room. She made her bed and packed her suitcase as she would for staying away overnight. She looked about her, at the plant and the yellow walls and the raggedy doll that had followed her everywhere else, but not this time. Then, clutching her suitcase, she opened the window and climbed out onto the balcony and down to the ground.

The cream cat was waiting for her. It strutted across the tarmac and disappeared among the hollies. Bonnie followed it. An eruption of red, volcanic cinders rained gently down around her. Smoke filled the air. The atmosphere seemed more intense, explosive, urgent than it had the night before. Bonnie hurried on and wondered how the people in the flats could sleep through it all.

She found the wall and struggled through. The fire was enormous. It crackled and roared. Even from this distance the heat hit her. She pushed between the trees and entered the clearing. The dark bag, too, was vast, many times the size of last night's balloon. Bonnie saw the shadowboy. He was one boy. If she really strained her eyes, she could see that now, although he moved like twenty. He opened the balloon's mouth wide to catch the smoke; he shook out its cloth to help it fill; he clutched it as it grew, straightening it as it toppled from side to side. He seemed to be everywhere. He seemed to have the strength and speed of a whole team of men. He wasn't an ordinary boy at all. Just what was he?

'Hey, Bonnie. Over here… '

Michael's voice came to her above the roar of the fire. She looked up to the veranda and he waved to her. Forgetting the shadowboy, she put the suitcase down, and climbed the steps. Michael was tying something together with rope.

'What's that?'

'It's the gondola. It'll go beneath the balloon. It's what I'll travel in.'

Bonnie touched the wicker hammock. Michael tied the last knot and threw it down. That's done,' he said. He looked beyond the veranda, at the balloon towering above the tree-tops now. The shadowboy had tethered it all down. 'Good, that's done,' he said. 'Just look at it!' They both watched it bounce against the ropes. 'I've given it a name,' Michael said. 'I'm calling it Midnight Blue. It looks black now, but you wait till the sunlight's on it. It'll turn the darkest, richest…

'Michael.'

'Yes?'

'I want to come too.'

Turning from the balloon, he saw the suitcase behind her on the ground. He sighed. 'Come and sit down.' He led her to the chairs and, sitting opposite her, eyed her gravely. 'How do you think Maybelle would feel,' he said, 'if she woke up and found you gone?'

'You don't understand,' Bonnie said. 'Things are different now. Grandbag's come to live with us and it's awful. It won't spoil things if I go. It won't make any difference at all. They're already spoiled.'

'But how would she feel?'

'Oh, Michael. Please let me come. I'm packed. Besides, it's what I've always dreamed about.'

'What would she do if you didn't come back?'

'I will come back.' Bonnie almost shouted. 'It'll be like stories in books when people return to find they were only gone for a moment in time. Nobody misses them. It's always like that.'

Michael shook his head. 'Oh, Bonnie, sometimes they come back a hundred years later and everyone they knew is dead and the world's completely different. This is an experiment, Bonnie. We've never done it before. We don't know what to expect. All we know for sure is that it's not a story in a book.'

'You mean..?'

'I mean if this were a story, it wouldn't matter what Maybelle thought. You could just go. But it's real life, and it does matter, and you can't.'

Michael looked up. It was getting light.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I really am. But the weather's right. The time's right. The balloon's ready. I've got to go now or I've lost the chance.'

Bonnie hung her head.

'You're still a part of it,' he said. 'I hope you'll be here to share it with, when I come back. Maybe we'll go together another time.' He got to his feet. 'I'm sorry. Come on. Let's fix the gondola.'

Hardly aware of what she was doing, Bonnie followed him down the steps. He dragged the wicker hammock towards the balloon. As they passed the fire, she put up a hand to protect her face from the heat and to wipe away the tears. They came close to the balloon. The shadowboy circled round it, struggling with the ropes that held it down while its grasping mouth drank the last of the smoke.

Michael attached the gondola, which was hard work, cursing himself for leaving it until now instead of doing it first. Without the heart to help, Bonnie stood to one side. She looked up, as she always did in times of trouble. The sky was delicate and light. Last bright star-drops melted in the morning. They called to her and she sighed. All she had now were the old daydreams, poor, empty things that would never be the same again. She lowered her sights. The balloon stood, a moon-shaped monster, bursting its cords in eagerness to get free. She lowered her sights again. The shadowboy was watching her.

'That's it,' Michael said. 'We're ready.' It was very quiet. The struggling seemed to be over, the fire to have burned low. 'Won't be a minute,’ he said. ‘I'll just get my things.'

Michael ran back towards the house, up the steps and inside. Bonnie looked up at the balloon towering like a giant above the tree-tops. It was an awesome sight. She wondered if anybody out there beyond the walls looked through their windows and saw it too. And then she heard something.

The first note of it she thought was birdsong, the dawn chorus. But the second note sang out, and she knew that it was not. Then the third note rang. She knew what it was. The lonely piper called her with the slow, compelling music of the high sky.

Bonnie picked up her suitcase. Her heart thumped, but her head was clear. She passed before the fire. The shadowboy seemed to be waiting for her. The balloon towered above them both, its gondola swinging like a cradle beneath it. He took her suitcase and threw it up and took her hand and lifted her in. Then he jumped up beside her, light as air, and began to tie her in. She felt his hands flickering across her body till she was secure. Then something strange began to happen.

'What's going on?' Bonnie asked, but the boy didn't answer. 'The ground's running away.'

She saw ropes hanging loose, poles falling away, tree-tops sinking beneath her. It was flight. She saw Michael on the veranda with his bag in his hand. Then she was over the tree-tops and the flint-faced, mushroom-shaped little house disappeared between the closing trees. She could see the tarmac forecourt and her bedroom window and even a flash of yellow wall. She could see the road with its street lights fading in the morning, and the tops of the shops and the roof over the flats.

As they rose, the sun rose with them, as if they were racing for the top of the sky. Its warmth welcomed them, turning the dark skin of the fiery balloon, as Michael had named it, midnight blue. They flew straight up. Above them, the sweet, clear music of the lonely pipe, the only sound left in the whole world, drew them on until they prepared to hit the very roof-top of the sky itself. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside for them, like curtains parting.

The music called again, and they passed straight through.

PART TWO

The House on Highholly Hill

6

Arabella dangled her legs out of the bedroom window and closed her eyes. She felt a butterfly brush against her knee, rubbed her heel against the mortar and bricks, drank in the warmth of the morning sunshine on her face, her arms, her feet. She heard dogs barking down in the valley and the rumble of tractors in fields and the curling cries of Florence in her pram as she talked herself to sleep. She heard the steady pulling of sheep at the orchard grass at the side of the house, the swish, swish of footsteps through the long grass, the clicking of the little side gate. She heard the pattering of Jake's restless paws upon the terrace beneath her, and opened her eyes. He and Mum were back home.

'Arabella, you'll fall and break your neck! I'm always telling you that. Get back through that window. What can you be thinking of sitting out there like that?'

'I'm bored. I don't know what to do.'

'Come and help me make a chocolate cake.'

'Cakes are boring.'

'Come and arrange these flowers.'

‘Oh Mum, must you, flowers.'

'I'm going to make lunch for the workers. You can take it up to them.'

Arabella looked at the valley and the hills beyond, patchworks of field that were in the midst of being harvested, pale in the hot sun and woven together with ribbons of river and road. She looked at Mum, who removed the sunhat from her head and fanned herself gently with it.

'Oh, all right then…' She climbed back through the window.

'Pull the curtains across, will you?' Mum called after her. 'Make a bit of shade.'

Arabella looked across the room, from the paisley curtains and sunlight on the wall, to the bed beneath the sloping window, with its crisp, white, turned-down sheets. Bright particles of dust hung immobile in the air. Last winter's ashes lay still in the fireplace. The dolls sat in a row upon the mantelpiece, ancient dolls that had belonged to Mum and Grandma and unknown little girls before them.

She sighed. 'It's like it's all frozen in time, and me with it,' she said out loud. 'Like this is how things have always been and always will be. Oh, how boring.'

She drew the curtains and crossed the floor, pausing beside the bed to look up through the sloping window at the hawthorn hedge, the meadow and the craggy white standing stones on what everybody called ‘the top’.

'Nothing ever changes.'

Down the corridor, the staircase was decorated with paintings of them all - her and Mum, Grandma and Grandad and countless other faces that all stared at her and reminded her, as she climbed down beneath them, that men and women may come and go, be born and die, but the family goes on and stays the same for ever. She made her way past them all and through the door at the bottom. Here she found herself in the kitchen with its hissing stove which Mum kept going even on the hottest days, its open windows with their little breeze and its cool flagstone floor.

'There you are. Pass me the butter. Good girl. It's over there.'

Mum was slicing bread and chopping up salad. Arabella brought the butter out of the pantry and slapped it down on the table. Mum indicated that she should sit down too and help.

'I guess it’s always been like this,’ Arabella sighed.

'What's that?' said Mum.

‘Lunches being made for the workers,’ Arabella said. ‘Baskets being filled with food to take out to the harvest. The stove hissing like this. The little breeze at the window. Cats all over the floor hoping somebody’ll drop crumbs for them.'

She sat down and began to butter the bread, which Mum filled with wedges of crumbling cheese and thin, moist slices of cucumber. The cats rubbed against the table legs and waited patiently. Mum put the sandwiches into a large basket, along with a handful of sweet red tomatoes and a small, nutty fruitcake. Then she disappeared into the pantry and brought out from the cool shelf some bottles of beer and a large, cold meat pie.

'Put these in too, will you?'

Arabella thrust them in. She looked up, and Mum was watching her. 'I'm sorry you haven't got brothers and sisters nearer your own age,' she said. 'I'm sorry life's so dull for you. I know Florence is only a baby, but she'll be some sort of company one day.'

Arabella fiddled with the handle of the basket. Mum always seemed to know.

'I had the strangest dream last night,’ she said. 'I dreamt I was lying in bed looking up through the window. It was early, getting light. A dark blue moon fell out of the sky into the holly grove.'

'The holly grove?' Mum tilted her head to one side. 'I used to have dreams about the holly grove, when I was young. How strange that you should too.' She put the last things in the basket. 'You can take it up now. It's ready. And they might need help up there. Perhaps you could stay.'

Arabella pushed her way through the darkness of the scullery with its smells of mouse and freshly chopped logs, past the old stone sink in the corner by the window and out into the sunshine. Jake bounded up to her and wove his silky body between her legs. Arabella crossed the terrace and slipped through the gate into the orchard. She half skipped, half ran between the apple trees and long grass, scattering bees and sheep and smelling the grass and pollen and earth. Every now and then she stopped to put down the basket and rest her arms. She heard the steady mumblings of the harvester on the hill above.

'Come on Jake! That's a good boy! I'll beat you there.'

She climbed over the stile into the garden meadow and began to run again, up towards the holly grove. She could see the harvester on the field above it, moving up and down. She could hear the shouts of men. Jake ran ahead of her. He plunged into the dark shade of the holly grove. She hesitated before following him, putting down her basket to rest again, aware that if there was any other way up to the top, she would have taken it.

The holly grove was ancient. The trees were twisted and dark, their branches tortuous. They formed a dense, gnarled ring, with a large mossy clearing in the centre. You slipped into that ring and it was as if you'd entered another world. Arabella looked towards it now. Long strands of fleece hung like listless washing on a line. Last dots of pink foxglove wilted in their shade.

She started pushing her way between the trees. Nothing else moved. Not a branch or bird, an insect or the smallest leaf. Quickly finding herself caught up in branches, Arabella was forced to stop and put down her basket. The buzzing world seemed to stop like her and hold its breath. Up above her, near the top, she could hear Dad’s harvester. It seemed a million miles away. She could have stood here, caught up, for the rest of the day.

'What's the matter with me?' Arabella’s words fell like pebbles into a pond. They rippled and then everything was still again. 'Whatever's the matter?' she said again and despite the day's heat she found herself shivering. 'Come on Arabella, let's get on. They must be starving up there. And thirsty too.'

She picked up the basket. 'I'm talking to myself again,’ she said. 'Talking out loud. Mum says I mustn't do it, but she does it too.'

Dad was down off the harvester, cursing at it because something had gone wrong and it always happened when you most wanted it. Mr Onions was trying to help him work out what to do, and Ned and Henry were trailing across the field, delighted with the chance to stop work.

Mrs Onions appeared over the top of the hill with her husband's lunch. She like the rest of them lived beyond Roundhill, down in the cottages at the back. A small cat followed her. It rushed away in fear when Jake came bounding up.

‘Jake, you rogue,' Mrs Onions said. 'Look what you've gone and done.' She pulled his ears playfully and ran her hand down his back. 'Where's that girl of yours?' she said. Jake pulled away from her as if he didn't have time to waste. 'I beg your pardon, Jake,’ she said. ‘Is something wrong with you?'

Dad lifted his head out of the engine. ‘Is something wrong with who?' he began. But before Mrs Onions could answer, he saw something beyond her heading their way - Arabella running up the field towards them all.

'Dad! Oh, Dad! Help!' she called.

They all started running towards her. Jake bounded ahead. He leapt and wove his way through the harvest, Dad fast on his heels. Arabella fell into Dad’s arms, shiny with sweat, completely out of breath. ‘Dad! Oh, Dad! You’ve got to help!’ she said. Dad got hold of her. She tore herself free.

‘You’ve got to come,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘A girl,’ she said. ‘Down in the holly grove. She’s just lying there. She looks dead.’

7

Bonnie drifted in and out of sleep, and the clock ticked and it comforted her. Gradually she became aware that she lay in a large bed, that her head was supported by a soft pillow smelling of roses, that light, crisp sheets rustled around her as she moved. Through a haze she heard voices, but her eyes were too heavy to open and she couldn't see who spoke.

'Poor little lovely,’ said the first voice.

‘Will she be all right?' said the second.

‘I’m sure she will, but I’m glad you found her.’

‘Yes, but what’s wrong with her?’

One of the voices, weirdly, was Maybelle's. 'I don't know what's wrong,’ it said. ‘I’m fairly sure there are no broken bones. She appears to be sleeping, so that must be what she needs. I think the best thing we can do is keep an eye on her to make sure she’s all right.’

Bonnie fell asleep again. She felt safe, comfortable now. The clock ticked. It was the clock in Maybelle's bedroom. She felt the golden glow of sunshine on her face. But what had happened? As her mind drifted away, Bonnie saw a huge balloon falling through the sky, a world rushing to greet her, ropes, a swinging gondola, a boy's face leaning over her...

She woke again, briefly. The sun had moved round. The tick of the clock was louder and closer. She struggled to open her eyes and stared at the tulip motifs carved upon the base of the bed. They meant she wasn't home after all, for this wasn't Maybelle's bed. She'd never seen this bed before. Where was she?

'I've got to go and get Mr Onions' tea now. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?'

Bonnie struggled to find the person behind the new voice but her eyes wouldn’t stay open. She began to drift away again and dimly heard Maybelle again.

'Don't worry, Mrs Onions. Everything’s all right. I've got a spare hour so I’m going to sit with her. Everything’s in hand downstairs.'

When Bonnie woke again, the clock was striking the hour. She opened her eyes. The room was dark, the day long over. She lay still, gradually taking things in. She'd never been inside a room like this before. The ceiling sloped above her, criss-crossed with black, craggy wooden beams. It sagged and the walls bulged, plaster crumbling off them revealing bits of ancient stone. Beyond the bed, an old black hearth reminded her of the row of antique shops in the road behind Grandbag's flat. There were china dogs upon the mantelpiece and books on shelves.

Suddenly, over by the open window, a seated figure moved. Bonnie started. It had been so quiet and still she'd not known anyone was there. Her bedcovers rustled, but the figure didn't seem to notice. It looked up at the sky. There was something about it.

Then the head moved slightly, tilted to the side. Bonnie recognized the gesture. She stared through the moonlight of this unknown room. It was Maybelle's way of tilting her head, Maybelle's way of resting her shoulders, Maybelle's chin now on Maybelle's hand.

What was Maybelle doing here?

'Hello, Mum. Is she all right?'

Bonnie's skin went cold all over. Why could she hear her own voice when she wasn't speaking? The figure at the window turned. It was Maybelle's face too, but she wore a cotton, tightly-buttoned, rosy nightdress which Maybelle never would have worn, and her face was tired.

'Yes. She's all right. She's only sleeping. She'll be fine again by morning. Have you fed those cats yet, Arabella?'

'Not yet. I'll do it now. I can't help imagining - I mean, you look at someone and they’re a stranger, but I can’t help imaging that we might become friends. Does that sound silly? I mean, I don’t even know her.'

Bonnie's heart thumped so loudly she couldn't believe they didn't hear it. She moved her head slightly, anxious that neither of them should know she was awake. Who was it who spoke with her own voice? Through slits of eyes she stared towards the doorway. A girl stood there, shining in the moonlight. Bonnie bit her lip so as not to cry. She was staring straight at herself.

Up in the holly grove, it was dark now. Sheep rustled among the dusty roots. Up above the circle of spiky branches, a first star shone with a light that seemed to call from other worlds.

The shadowboy slithered under and between the holly branches and out onto the hillside. Night animals carried on their business all around him. Owls swooped over the roofs of the farm buildings below him. Bats chattered in the evening air. Mice ran along hedgerows. A thin, light-footed cat stalked its prey.

The boy began to pick his way down the meadow. The navy sky was filling with glassy bits of stars. He came down at the back of the house. This was where they'd brought the girl. To one side of the house was a fenced orchard with a little stile and sheep paths that snaked up from it onto the hill. To the other was a farm gate and a yard and the barns. He crept down to the gate. The grass beneath his feet hardly rustled as he walked over it. The birds and animals around him moved about as if nobody else was there. He swung his thin, pale body over the top bar, prepared to slink across the yard, but a side door opened, throwing out a patch of yellow light, and a figure appeared.

'Come on... come on... come on…'

It was a young girl with yellowy-blond hair. Her hands were full of dishes of food and she rattled them together and called again.

From out of the barns and the long grass of the meadow and under the gate as if he weren't there, from along the terrace and over the yard and from the orchard on the side of the house the farm cats appeared. The girl put down her bowls and disappeared. She returned again with a jug of milk. The cats meowed and lapped and rubbed themselves against her legs and lapped again and she laughed at them all.

'Arabella, get a move on. You ought to be in bed.'

'All right, Dad.'

Out on the yard, the boy heard the door rattling shut. The cats continued to lap. The boy looked right across the valley at the little dots of other farmhouses that brightened all the time, as the darkness grew. He slithered across the yard so quietly that not a cat turned to see who was there, not a cat noticed as he slid the latch and slipped into the barn.

There was fresh grain waiting for the merchant to come for it, and bales of straw and new-mown hay. The thick, musty smell nearly overwhelmed him but the shadowboy had a job to do. He tiptoed forward. He heard rats scampering in corners. His hands felt their way along the straw until he felt something that did not prickle, that did not crack beneath his touch, something soft as a woman's dress, handfuls of the stuff.

The shadowboy held it up before his face. In the darkness it seemed as black as night. It was the balloon, laid out upon the straw where they had put it when they'd brought it down from the hill. His hands crept over it carefully, felt the fine, strong weave. When he was satisfied that it wasn't torn, he felt and checked the ropes. Then he reached beyond the ropes and found the wicker gondola. Everything was there.

Suddenly there was a din outside. The shadowboy crept to the door. Something dark was running across the yard. He peered between the cracks in the barn door. Agitated owls swooped and shrieked and fluttered. Squawks of distress came from the henhouse. The side door was flung open and a man appeared. The boy heard a shot ring out. He saw the fox, with a broken, mutilated chicken in its mouth, escaping.

The man swore at his failure to hit it. ‘Damn and blast,’ he said, then he went back in and slammed the door.

The shadowboy slithered out into the yard again. He'd done what he came to do. With the gun's explosion ringing through his head, he began to follow the fox's trail back up the hill. He followed it up the sheep's path, back through the holly grove and over the half-harvested top meadow. He followed it over the stone wall and among the bracken and whinberries and wild rambling heather of the top. Then the path divided. One way led to the white stones on the very top. The other led to a lower, softer bulge of a hill.

The fox climbed this lower hill and the boy followed him down the other side. The fox knew its path well. In the darkness the shadowboy saw a cluster of cottages tucked in beneath the brow of the hill. He crept towards them. They were bleak, brave little places ringed with rowan trees, hawthorn hedges and crumbling stone walls. Smoke drifted to greet him. Yellow dots of lights shone out of windows.

An old man sat out in the porch of the first cottage, cleaning his garden tools. A woman appeared round the side of the cottage, from her own henhouse. ‘Have you shut ‘em in?’ the old man said. ‘Fox is out. I seen him running by.’

‘Course I have. I wouldn’t let him get ‘em,’ she replied.

It was a grand night. She stopped and said as much, looking up at the sky. ‘I wonder how the little girl’s doing,’ she said. ‘I wish they’d brought her back here. I’d like a little girl to nurse.’

The old man laughed. ‘Silly woman. You’ve got me to nurse.’

‘You, Onions, you?’

'And the cats and the hens and the sick hare and the hedgehogs and that silly fat sheep of yours.'

Laughing, they both turned into the house. 'I'll get us a bite of supper,' the old woman said, to which the old man replied, 'That'll be nice. Harvesting makes me awful hungry. Do you know, I think it's turning chilly.'

They shut the door. The shadowboy wondered what it must be like to be a person, to need to eat to stay alive. He wondered what it was like to feel cold, to want to close yourself indoors away from the great, wide, open sky. It was different for him. He never felt cold. He never felt tired. He didn't have a lifespan. He simply did what he had to do.

8

It was light when Bonnie woke again. The chair by the window was empty. She was alone. She sat up. A dressing-gown had been thrown across the counterpane, and she plucked at it and wrapped it round herself. She got out of bed and began to explore, first the half-opened wardrobe with clothes peeking out of it, then the mantelpiece with its plants and ornaments. Her little cardboard suitcase leaned against the dressing-table. She turned to pick it up, and then she saw, on the dressing-table top, a silver frame with a photograph of Maybelle and herself in it.

'I don't understand.'

Bonnie said the words out loud and a cream cat jumped off the bedside chair and ran away. She leaned across the dressing-table and picked up the photo, staring from it to herself reflected in the mirror and then back again. The clothes were different, and the hair. But the likeness was enough to make her shiver.

'I don't understand.'

Bonnie remembered the woman in the chair and the moonlit girl in the doorway. She turned her head and there was Maybelle's clock, Maybelle's own bedroom clock, ticking its way towards the chiming of another hour. She shivered again and dropped the photograph back quickly where she had found it, and crept away from it towards the door. Where was she, and what was going on here? She opened the door and half expected to find the hall to Maybelle's flat on the other side of it, to hear the radio's murmur in the kitchen, Maybelle crying in the bath, Grandbag shouting crossly from the bedroom that she wanted her early morning cup of tea.

But it was a strange world on the other side of the door, a dark, heavy-timbered, stooping, sagging corridor with doors off on either side, the sort of place you only ever read about in books.

'I feel like I'm Alice,' Bonnie whispered to herself. 'I haven't gone down the rabbit hole but I'm surely dreaming all the same.’

She began to creep down the corridor, pausing carefully at each doorway in case boards squeaked. She came to the staircase. The walls were full of portraits that bore her likeness.

'I am Alice,' she thought. 'This is Wonderland! Who are these people…?' She turned nervously away from the paintings and followed the corridor to its end. In the dark she saw a flight of narrower, more tortuous stairs. 'I wonder what's up there?' she said. She began to climb and, as she did so, she remembered another flight of stairs, another day, the flint-faced house, the room with the glass dome at the top.

Bonnie’s progress was halted by a hatch. She pushed and it slid open. With ease she climbed, not into a light and airy room but into the stuffy darkness of a long, low attic full of packing cases and tea chests, old books, bits of furniture and rolled-up carpets.

At the far end sunlight filtered through a sloping roof-light. Bonnie padded towards the light, just able to stand straight beneath the ridge beam. The floor was uneven and in places it was broken. She stooped down and looked through one hole into the bedroom where she'd slept. Then she looked through another hole. She could see coat-hangers and clothes and a wardrobe door that was half open and a corner of a bed beyond, with a sleeping girl in it.

Getting up again, Bonnie peered out of the window. The roof sloped down and there was a flat bit with a wall around it and she thought, 'Let’s get out there and take a look around. Get an idea of where I am.'

She pushed open the window, showering her face and hair with dust. Then she slid out onto the roof, slithered down onto the flat bit and leaned over the wall. A fresh breeze gently stirred her hair. She looked up into the sky. It was streaked with orange sunrise stripes and the clouds were pink. She looked down. The valley was pale with morning mist. She'd never seen such an empty landscape. No houses, no cars, no kids on bikes, no shops or buses.

Suddenly the ground seemed to come up at Bonnie. She thought, 'It's a long way down there,' and felt giddy. She turned back towards the sky-light and began to scramble in again. The attic was warming up for the day. The air was still. She felt as if she couldn't breathe properly, began to pick her way back carefully between the holes in the floor…

And then she saw something. What was it? An open box on the top of a tea chest contained a coil of wooden beads. Bonnie had seen them before. She was sure she had. She picked them up - and then she saw the bits of telescope beneath.

'Hello.'

A face poked through the hatch.

'Michael,' she said.

'Yes?' A body climbed up into the attic. It was Michael. He looked at her with grey, still eyes.

'What… what are you doing here?' Bonnie said.

He smiled. 'That's just what I was going to ask you,' he said. 'There's really nothing to see up here. Do you want to come down and get some breakfast?'

She stared at him. He didn't seem to know her. 'The telescope… ' she said.

'I never use it,' he replied. 'Don't know what to do with the thing. Are you feeling better?' He peered through the gloom as if she were a perfect stranger. 'You certainly needed a lot of sleep.'

'Y-yes,' she said. She put the beads back down. 'I don’t know why, but there’s nothing to worry about. I'm fine now.'

He stood, head bent beneath the ridge of the roof, running his fingers through his rumpled hair. 'We were really worried for a while,' he said. 'But Mum thought that rest would do the trick. She sat with you. You couldn't have been in better hands.'

Bonnie looked at him through the dusty air. 'You ought to have some breakfast,' he said. 'You still, if you don't mind me saying, look very pale.' He wore workman's overalls and shabby carpet slippers, and his hands were pitted and dark like well-worn tools. Michael's hands were like that too, but this man was different from Michael. Bonnie couldn't explain how. He wasn't the man who'd watched her escape in his balloon. Just as the Mum wasn't really Maybelle and the girl wasn't herself.

'We can talk more after breakfast,' he said.

'W-where are we?'

'Highholly House,' he said.

Bonnie had heard that name before.

9

Arabella woke excited and didn't know why. It was the same bedroom as usual. Nothing had moved, nothing changed.

Why was her heart beating so fast? Why did she have that birthday feeling, as though there'd be presents at the breakfast table, cards on the mantelpiece, a cake waiting in the pantry?

Then she remembered. There was a strange girl in Mum and Dad's bed. She'd come out of the sky. That falling, blue moon hadn't been a dream - it had been a hot air balloon. A strange girl… Mum had said - if the girl was interested and up to it - that Arabella could show her over the hill. She’d even agreed that they might end up friends. At the thought of it, Arabella's excitement shrivelled to awful, ordinary shyness. It was a lonely life on Highholly Hill. She didn't know how to make friends.

'I'll go and see if she's awake. I won't talk to her. I'll just peep at her through the crack in the door. I don't have to talk to her if I don't want to.'

Arabella got out of bed, struggled into shorts and T-shirt and tiptoed to the room next door. She pushed the door till she could see through the crack. The bed was empty. Suddenly, awfully, she thought, 'Something's gone wrong. She's run away or died in the night.'

But then she heard a burst of voices below her in the kitchen. The stair door swung open as a cat pushed its way through. Breakfast smells rose to greet her, bacon, sausages, fried tomatoes. And everything had to be all right. Mum would never be cooking breakfast and singing and laughing if the girl had gone and died.

Shy again, Arabella climbed down the stairs. At the bottom she pushed open the door.

'Ah, there you are,' said Dad. 'Awake at last. Come and meet Bonnie.'

He took her elbow, as if he knew how hesitant she felt, and led her in. The girl was sitting at the table picking at her food. Arabella nodded at her, feeling foolish. She couldn't think of a thing to say. The girl nodded back. She was pale-skinned and fair-haired like herself, maybe her own age. Arabella sat down opposite her. The girl lowered her eyes. Arabella realized that she was nervous too.

'She's shy like me,' she thought.

Mum brought her some breakfast. 'Eat it quickly, won't you, Arabella? Then you can take Bonnie out.'

Arabella cast Mum a silent, appealing look for help. But Mum ignored it. She turned her attention to Florence, who was agitating for her feed. The girl glanced at Arabella again. It was a strange, searching, awkward stare. She seemed to take her in from head to foot. She looked now at her hair, now at her eyes and nose and mouth, now at the way her hand lifted her fork.

'What's so strange about the way I look?' Arabella thought. 'Why's she staring at me like that?'

She pushed her food around her plate and stared back at the girl, who looked away again. Neither of them could think of anything to say. The silence, as they fiddled with their food, became uncomfortable.

'I can't take her out. I won't know what to say,' Arabella thought. She pushed her plate aside and followed Mum into the pantry where she was looking for jam.

'Can’t you come with us?' she said. 'You know the old stories about the hill. You’d make a far better guide than me. I won't know what to talk about.'

'You’ll manage,' Mum said. 'Don’t worry. You'll think of things to say. It’ll come to you.'

'But she makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't know who she is,' Arabella said.

Mum looked out of the tiny pantry window up the back of the hill. 'For now, it doesn't matter who she is,' she said. 'The thing that matters is that she's what you wanted. Isn't that exciting? You were looking for change, and this could just be it.'

Arabella frowned. 'What do you mean?'

Mum turned her gaze from the hill and looked at her daughter. 'I know what it's like to watch the still dust hanging in the air, and to be lonely and to think that nothing's ever going to change. I know what it's like to want a friend.'

Dad pushed his head round the pantry door. 'Mr Onions is here,' he said. 'I'm off. I'll see you later.'

He kissed Mum and Arabella and then disappeared, slamming the kitchen door behind him. 'When I first met Michael, I was too shy even to speak to him,' Mum said. 'It's hard making friends at first, but you'll be all right. Shyness goes away. Now stop making a fuss, and get on with it.'

They did the house first. Arabella showed Bonnie the dusty living-room with its inglenook fireplace full of cobwebs and dried flowers.

'We hardly ever use this room in summertime,' she said.

Bonnie stooped and peered through the cobwebs. Benches were fixed to the wall on either side of the hearth. A great beam held up the weight of the chimney-breast. A mantelpiece sagged beneath plates and candlesticks.

'Mum says chimneys were always built first in the olden days,' Arabella said. 'If you got your chimney up in a day, then the land you built on would be yours.'

Bonnie hardly heard her words. She'd never seen such an old house. She stared up at the criss-crossing of oak beams above her head. Arabella crossed the room and opened a door which led into a lighter room. 'This is where I have my school lessons.'

'You mean you don't go to school?'

'It's so far down to the village. You wait and see. It's just impossible getting in and out in winter, unless you walk. Mum was taught up here too when she was a girl.'

'But what about other children?'

'Other children?'

'Don't you have friends?'

Arabella shook her head and looked uncomfortable. 'I see people when we go down for the Bank Holiday Show and when we have our harvest supper or go to market. But it takes so long getting up and down, and there aren't other children up here any more. Mum says the cottages at the back of Roundhill used to be full of families. They worked up here and over the back in what used to be the mines. Mum says all the children used to come for school here. But now there's only me.'

'It must be great, having school at home.'

'It does get lonely.’

They worked their way back through the kitchen and along the upstairs corridor. Arabella paused at the attic stairs. 'There's nothing up there,' she said. 'Just an attic, and the floor's not safe. I'll show you our bedroom.' She led Bonnie on to the room at the end. Bonnie looked at her suitcase on the bed.

'Mum says you can sleep in here with me,' Arabella said.

They stood side by side, their reflections caught in the dressing-table mirror. 'Don't you think,' Bonnie said nervously, 'that we look a bit… alike?'

Arabella peered at their reflections. ‘A bit, I suppose,’ she said. 'We're the same height and have the same colour hair, but that’s all. Why do you ask?'

'Oh, I just wondered,’ Bonnie said.

They came down the main stairs. 'We never use the front door,' Arabella said. 'Or the hall.' She opened a door at the back of the hall. 'This is the last room you haven't seen. This is Mum's sewing-room.'

They stepped into a neat little sitting-room with flowers in vases and velvet curtains tied back from tall French windows and a beautiful treadle sewing-machine inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A dressmaker's dummy was half-draped with a calico frock. In a corner sat a spinning-wheel, beside a basket of oily fleece. A couple of sinking armchairs were set before a shiny, tiled fireplace.

'It's Mum's special room,' said Arabella, making for the French windows. 'She spins in here as well as sewing, and knits us sweaters by the fire in the winter. You can shut your eyes and almost feel that she's present. Come on. We'll go through here. I'll take you up the hill now.'

They climbed up the garden meadow behind the house. The holly grove loomed closer. Long strands of fleece shook like bony, white fingers in the breeze. Bonnie stared. It reminded her of other, different hollies somewhere else. 'What is that place?' she said.

'It's the holly grove,' Arabella replied. 'It's where we found you.'

Bonnie pictured the trees between the tarmac forecourt and the old wall. 'More hollies,' she thought. She followed Arabella up, and into, and across the grove. The air in it was hot and still. The breeze had died but Bonnie shivered.

'Are you all right?' Arabella said.

'I... I feel, oh I don't know… like someone's watching me,' Bonnie replied.

'I feel like that sometimes, as well,' Arabella said. 'I usually run as fast as I can.'

They both broke into a trot, only stopping, breathless and hot, half-way up the top field. Arabella led Bonnie through the gate onto the open hill. Here there were no more fences and walls. The sheep's path led them up through a mass of bracken and heather, brambles heavy with green berries, and whinberries.

'What's that?' Bonnie asked. She stared at a decrepit, broken sign that said DANGER! KEEP OUT!

Arabella pulled away the brambles in front of the sign to reveal the dark mouth of what seemed to be a cave. 'It's called Batholes,' she said. 'There used to be mines here. I told you that, didn't I? They say one of the passages came out here. I'd love to see what lies beneath this hill, but no one'll come with me.'

She looked at Bonnie almost hopefully, but Bonnie was looking above Batholes now, to the standing stones on top of the hill.

'And what are those?'

'We call that Edric's Throne,' Arabella said. 'There's a smooth stone in the middle of it. It's like a seat. You can sit up there and see everything. It's the highest point for miles around.' They began to climb again. 'It's very old,' she said. 'Mum says it's the oldest bit of the hill.'

The sheep's path divided. 'That's Roundhill,’ Arabella said, pointing away from the stones. 'Over the back's where the cottages are. Some of them are ruined now. The Onions live down there, and Ned and Henry. This hill's Highholly Hill.'

'Highholly Hill, with Edric's Throne on top of it,' said Bonnie. She stopped and looked down upon the farmhouse roof and the smoking chimney between trees.

'Look,' Arabella said. 'You can see why I don't go to school.' She pointed out the long snake of a track that started at the farm gate and wound its way down between fields and hedges towards a distant cluster of roofs and a church spire. 'It's terribly steep,' she said. 'And so long. It goes down into the Dingle. Do you see? It's very rough down there. And then it goes over Hope Brook, up the other side, and all the way beyond it, carrying on for miles.'

Above them, a skylark sang. 'This is the quietest place I've ever been,' Bonnie said. 'I've never seen a real farm before. I've never been anywhere so… empty.'

'Sometimes you can hear the hill humming,' Arabella said. 'If you listen carefully.'

They both listened. All Bonnie could hear was Dad's tractor somewhere on the hill. 'Come on,' Arabella said. 'Mum says I'm not to take you on to the top. She says I'm not to tire you. Let's go down to the barns.'

They picked their way down, down, down to the side of the house at last, where Arabella led them over the stile into the orchard. 'Do you see that there?' she said. 'It's blocked up now. It used to be our well. We have mains water now, but we didn't even used to have electricity. The well water was wonderful. It's a shame it's blocked up. Dad did it when Florence was born. He said it wasn't safe.'

She led Bonnie through the gate onto the terrace. They both looked across the yard at the barns. 'Come and see where we've put your balloon,' Arabella said.

Bonnie hadn't expected it. You could tell that from her voice. 'My balloon,' she said. 'You've got my balloon?'

'Of course we have. Don't just stand there. Come and see.'

Arabella unbolted the barn door and led the way in. It took a minute in the musty light to see anything clearly but when they did there was the balloon, spread-eagled upon the straw. The ropes hung loosely down it. The gondola lay on the ground.

Bonnie pushed past Arabella. She took up handfuls of the material and held it as if it was a distant memory from another world. Arabella watched her curiously. From across the yard, Mum's cool, fresh voice cut through the heat and mustiness of the barn.

'Arabella, Bonnie, lunchtime…'

'We'd better go,' Arabella said. 'Mum'll be cross if we're late.' She heard the tractor in the yard, and men's voices and Jake's bark. The two of them made their way back to the door. 'They can't afford to waste time when they're harvesting.' Arabella explained.

Bonnie put the cloth back on the bales. Together they came out into the sunlight. Suddenly Arabella realized she wasn't shy any more. Mum had been right. It had gone away. She looked at Bonnie by her side.

‘She's not shy, either. We're both all right,’ she thought.

PART THREE

Wild Edric

10

The sun climbed down the sky and the hill cooled. Up on the field, the workers carried on, but Bonnie crept away from them. She followed the teatime shadows along the bare ground behind the harvester and down the meadow. There was so much to think about, so many questions, so many feelings to understand.

Standing up above, Mum saw her go. The silky dog began to follow, but Mum called him back again. She heard her say, 'No, Jake,' as if she knew Bonnie wanted to be alone. The harvester began to whirr again. By the time she reached the back of the house, it sounded very far away.

Mum's French windows were open. Bonnie slipped between velvet curtains into the shade of the sewing-room. As she moved through it, different smells rose up to greet her. Here tea roses, here polish, here sunshine, woodsmoke from the ashes of the fire, the earthy dankness of unspun fleece.

Bonnie stood in front of a mirror on the wall. 'Why don't they ask me who I am and where I come from?' she asked herself out loud. 'I don't know how I'd tell them — I don't think I want to tell them — but they seem to take my being here for granted. My suitcase is unpacked. My bed's made up. No questions asked.

'Why can't they see I look like Arabella? And like all those people in the paintings down the stairs? Why do I look so much like them, and why've they got the same clock in the bedroom, the same cream cats, the same telescope and holly trees, and even the same name of the house?

‘What is this place? Why did I come here?’

Bonnie thought of the balloon falling through the sky, of it out in the barn. The shadowboy flickered through her memory. The shadowboy. Until now she’d forgotten all about him. 'Where are you?' she said out loud. 'You must be here somewhere. You brought me to this place. You must know all about it, and where we are and why.'

Bonnie looked about the room as if she expected the boy, having been remembered, to appear. But he didn’t. 'Perhaps you've done your job and gone,' she said, wondering if he’d ever come back. Would he take her home again? She didn't know. Bonnie didn't know anything.

Wearily she sank into an armchair. Tucked down the side of it, she found a bag of knitting. She pulled it out and held it on her lap and imagined Mum sitting in this chair knitting through the winter afternoons. Suddenly, briefly, she imagined Maybelle too. Maybelle in this pretty room with its French windows and velvet curtains, with its decorated sewing-machine and spinning-wheel and sinking, lazy chairs. Oh, how Maybelle would have loved all this – a man to share her life with, and a baby, and a big, old house and Mrs Onions, to help her with the things she had to do.

'Poor Maybelle, life's not fair.'

Above the mantelpiece, a painting of a man and woman looked down at Bonnie. Their hair gleamed, their clothes foamed about them like fairy wings and their jewels glittered. They sat on white horses beneath a haloed moon. Bonnie stared at them and forgot Maybelle. She wondered how she hadn't noticed them before.

'Hello,' said Mum. 'Don't let me disturb you. I've just come down to make some thermos flasks of tea. We're going to carry on while it's still light.'

She stood by the French windows shaking straw out of her hair and fanning herself with her sunhat. Jake padded past her, looked up into Bonnie's face and wagged his feathery tail. Bonnie stretched out a tentative hand and Jake allowed himself to be stroked.

'He likes you,’ Mum said. 'You're honoured. He doesn't often make new friends.' She looked up at the painting too. 'Do you like it?' she said.

'Like what?' said Bonnie.

'My painting,’ Mum said.

'I think it's great,' Bonnie said.

'I do too. My grandfather painted it. Michael doesn't like it much. That's why I keep it in here. It's rather sentimental, isn't it? Hardly a farmer's painting.'

'Who are those people?' Bonnie said.

'That's Lady Godda,' Mum said crossing the room. 'And he’s Wild Edric and that’s his Throne. See, there in the background. That mound of stones.'

‘Yes, but who is Wild Edric?' Bonnie said.

‘He and Godda are supposed to be the guardians of Highholly Hill,’ Mum said. 'The old miners used to say they could hear them knocking in the darkness underground. They live down there, you see. Only come out to sit on the Throne when it's covered in clouds. Or when the hill's in danger and they've got to warn us. The story goes that the thunder roars and the lightning cracks and the very hill itself shakes when they appear.' She smiled. 'We say they keep us safe up here,' she said. 'All these years, just the one family. We say they keep us on this hill.'

Bonnie thought of the family faces in their frames on the stairs. Just the one family… 'You've always been here then?' she said.

'Arabella doesn't know what it is to live anywhere else,' Mum replied. 'And nor do I, and nor do any of us.'

A pang of envy shot through Bonnie. She thought of the times she and Grandbag had moved house. And now she and Maybelle had moved to what was supposed to be their proper home, only she’d run away. How could she explain her life to these people who could never understand?

'You don't have to tell us where you come from,’ Mum said unexpectedly. 'We'll never ask, you know. You'll find this isn't like anywhere else you've been. You're safe up here. We're glad to have you. If you've come, it's because we need you. Edric and Godda always give us the things we need. And maybe, who knows, you might need us too.'

You're safe up here... It was as though the whole world had been spinning and suddenly everything stopped still and the ground was firm. 'You talk…' Bonnie said, quite unable to express her true feelings, 'you talk as if you believe Edric and Godda are really down there somewhere.'

Mum smiled. 'I'd like to,' she said. 'It's a nice idea, isn't it? I've never seen them myself, but I like to think my grandfather must have seen something to paint a picture like that. Yet lots of people look for Edric and Godda and never see them. Do you want to sit here on your own, or would you like to come and help me make some tea?'

They made up sandwiches and put them in a basket. Mum filled the thermos flasks with tea and Jake rested beneath the kitchen window watching them. Mum hummed to herself. She wrapped a fruitcake in a napkin and put it in the basket too. She took a huge pot of casserole out of the fridge and put it in the oven and said it would be cooked and ready when they came back down. Harvesting, she said, was very hungry work. 'All food and fields and nothing in between.'

They climbed up the hill again. 'You mustn't push yourself,' Mum said. 'You mustn't do too much. If you're tired you must go straight back down.'

Bonnie promised that she would. Mum began to talk again.

‘It's nearly time for the Bank Holiday Show,’ she said. 'We always work like mad to get the harvesting done so that we can attend. It means a lot when you don't get off the hill much. There are sideshows and stalls and prizes for everything, but we wouldn't be able to enjoy them if the harvesting was only half-done. This can be a bad month for summer storms. You just have to work when the weather's good. And talking of storms, I hope we get finished soon. Something's on its way.'

'How can you tell?'

'It's too still. Look across the valley. It was crystal clear all afternoon, but now it's soft and mellow. I’d say rain’s on the way.'

Bonnie looked, but found it hard to take in what Mum was on about.

'This is me,' she thought. 'Climbing this hill with this thermos in my hand. Me, belonging in this strange, amazing place and looking for signs and talking about weather. Me, being made welcome with no questions asked.' She looked at Mum and wanted nothing but to be Mum's own girl, to share the hill with her forever, to make this magic place her own.

'We thought you were never coming.' Arabella ran down to greet them. 'We're starving for food and panting with thirst.'

Her face shone with husks of grain and sweat. She grabbed Mum's arm and pulled the basket towards her to see what it contained. 'Fruit cake! That looks wonderful. And Bonnie, oh great, you've brought some tea.'

Arabella slid between them and slipped her arm in Mum's. They climbed the last few steps as a threesome and stopped in the shadow of the harvester. Then, with Arabella's help, Mum began to distribute the tea.

Bonnie woke in the night and couldn't remember where she was. Then she saw Arabella moving across the floor like a little ghost in a long white nightdress, and realized she was crying. Bonnie stared at her. In the shadows of the night, in the same nightdress and without all the tiny, subtle differences, she might have been staring at herself. How many times, after all, had she looked like that when she was crying?

'Arabella, what's the matter?' Mum stood in the doorway in her dressing-gown. Arabella ran to her, sobbing that she’d had a nightmare. 'It's this awful weather,' Mum said. 'It's too hot and still. There's no air. Quiet now, you mustn't wake Bonnie.'

She led Arabella away and shut the door after them. Bonnie lay for some time waiting for Arabella to return, but she didn't. At last, and not knowing quite why, she climbed out of bed, crossed the room, opened the door. There was not a sound anywhere. Mum's and Dad's door was ajar. Bonnie crept up to it and peered through the crack.

They were all asleep. Mum and Dad, and Arabella between them. Mum's hand was in Arabella's hair, Dad's arm across her body. The moon lit their faces.

Bonnie went back down the corridor. She got into bed and stared at the cold comfort of wide-eyed china dolls and teddy-bears with glassy eyes. She shut her own eyes, but even in the dark she could see the three of them in the bed together, and she thought, 'Every good thing I've ever wanted is here, and my place in it is hers because she's their daughter.' And a feeling came over Bonnie - one she'd had this afternoon when Arabella took Mum's arm, and again when they served tea together, and again before that, when she and Arabella first met over breakfast. It was just like, well, just like the way Bonnie felt when she thought of Grandbag. Just like hate.

'I didn't just run away from Grandbag,' she thought, 'I ran away from hate.'

It was one of those bits of self-revelation that hits you as you drift off to sleep and you wonder if you'll remember in the morning. How could Bonnie not have known? It was the monster that had towered like a dark balloon above her head for years. A monster with a red and fiery mouth that drank people's sadness like smoke to make it grow, to fuel it till it had the strength to carry them away beyond their will to choose where they would go or what they would do.

And if she hated Arabella, what would it make her do?

11

Arabella was up in the barn watching Dad stacking bales when Bonnie went down the yard and out onto the track.

Dad looked up as the gate rang shut. The day was horribly hot and close. He wiped his shiny face. 'Where's Bonnie off to?'

A shadow fell across Arabella's face. She picked at her dress which stuck moistly to her.

'I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She woke up and she was coming up the hill with us again, and we were laughing about something. I can't remember what, but suddenly she said she'd changed her mind. It was as if she'd remembered something. I know it's silly, but she frightened me. She said she wanted to be on her own so I... I came down without her.'

'It takes time to make friends,' Dad said. 'It'll take time for both of you. You must be patient.'

'I stopped feeling shy,' Arabella said. She climbed down off the bales. 'And then I thought it was wonderful. But now, oh I can't explain. There's something about her...'

'Open the top gate for me, will you?' Dad said.

Bonnie sloped down the hill as fast as she could. Fearful of the hate in her heart, she knew she had to put as much distance between herself and Arabella as possible. She felt as if she’d break with bitterness, but she had to do it now, quickly, before she changed her mind. She realized, miserably, that she'd left her little cardboard suitcase behind, but she couldn't go back. The track twisted and turned. It seemed to take the longest, most tortuous route down to the road, so Bonnie decided to cut across the fields. Sheep ran away from her. She passed right down one field, climbed over a stile, picked her way down another. Here she found herself where the track bent almost double and dipped into what Arabella had pointed out as Hope Dingle.

The Dingle was far more than the little clump of trees Bonnie had seen from above. It dug down deep. Trees rose up on either side and leaves hung limp in the airless morning. As she scrambled down into the twisty canyon, Bonnie heard the tinkling of the brook. The track here was deeply rutted. It was stony, with great slabs of the base substance of the hill rising above the softer covering of earth and grass. Bonnie began to really understand why Arabella didn't go to school, and why a once-a-year Bank Holiday Show was such an event. It was difficult getting off Highholly Hill.

The track twisted again and the white wooden railings of a narrow bridge stood out against the dark banks on either side. Bonnie clattered over the bridge. Briefly she thought of climbing down to the water below to bathe her sticky, hot body. But if she paused, she'd think. She'd ask herself where she was going and what she planned to do when she got there.

Bonnie climbed up the crumbling track, out of the Dingle on the other side. The banks folded back. Finally she was clear of trees. The valley lay below her, close and clear. She could see the main road and houses in the village and tractors and harvesters in the fields up on the other side. She could see a garage with a petrol sign and cars.

'Now where shall I go?'

The track looped again. Bonnie scrambled into another field and despite the sticky heat, began to run. If she followed the hedge line all the way down, she'd hit the road long before the track finally got to it. She came to a stile, got over it, stumbled through the next field and was near enough to the road to hear the rumbles of a milk lorry as it went by. She plunged into the trees that made a boundary to the field, expecting to squeeze out the other side of them onto the road itself. But they were thicker than she had expected. Once she'd pushed her way in she couldn't find the way out again. Low branches scratched her legs. She couldn't hear the milk lorry any more. She pushed on and saw yellow, stormy sunshine ahead of her. She wiped the sweat out of her eyes, made the last effort and got through.

'Oh…!'

Bonnie wasn't by the road after all. She was up the hill again, just below the holly grove, with the house below her and the skeleton stones of Edric's Throne above.

'But I can't be...!'

She had no sense of having climbed again, no sense of having struggled back up through the Dingle. She couldn't be up here. She must be imagining it. Or had she only dreamed she'd climbed down the hill? Had she been up here all along, simply imagining doing it?

'But I went through the Dingle. I crossed the brook. I couldn't have imagined all that.'

Bonnie got up. Her legs felt very weak. A voice inside her seemed to laugh, 'You can't escape. You can't escape.' She remembered Mum commenting, 'We say he keeps us on this hill. All these years, just the one family…'

She began to force herself back down the hill. She found it hard to breathe. The air was so close. She ran down past the house and the farmyard and through the fields and through the Dingle and over the bridge and down the track this time, so that there couldn't possibly be more mistakes. She was hot. She was exhausted. Round and round the loops in the track she went — and then she stopped. The farm gate stood ahead of her and the yard just beyond and the house beyond that.

'But it can't be…!'

It was.

'It can't be…!'

The sky was yellow and storm flies stuck to her skin. Sweaty tears rolled down her cheeks and she put up a hand to wipe them away. 'What's wrong with this hill? Why won't it let me go?' She looked up at the white stones that dominated everything.

'You'll find this isn't like anywhere else you've been.' That's what Mum had said.

Bonnie sat down in the ditch beside the gate. It was too hot for crying but she did it all the same. She wanted someone, Edric, Mum, the shadowboy, to sit down by her side and explain. But no one came. She thought of getting up and doing it all again, slowly this time, carefully. But she couldn't bear for all of it to happen again. And it would, it would…

Bonnie climbed over the gate into the yard. She dragged herself up to the house, which was empty, and stood in the kitchen waiting for Mum and Dad and Arabella to return, arm in arm and all together. Jake stirred himself from his place beneath the kitchen window. She held his head and looked into his eyes.

'Oh Jake, I tried to get away. I did. But I’m back again and what will happen now?'

12

Mum woke up. The curtains were blowing about. The room, which had been so still, was full of a horrid muggy breeze.

'What is it?' Dad stirred from the depths of sleep.

'The curtains,’ Mum said. 'Their rustling woke me up.' She got up and closed the window. 'What a horrid night. Even though there’s a breeze, there's nothing fresh about it. Do you know what I mean?'

Dad grunted. Mum climbed back into bed and curled her body up close to Dad’s. It hadn’t just been the curtains that had awoken her. There was something else, she said, but she didn’t know what.

'Jake would bark if something was wrong.'

'I suppose you're right,'

'Go back to sleep.'

'I hope I will.’

Arabella woke with her head full of dreams of thunder crashing and lightning ripping like an earthquake along the ground. Her heart beat fearfully. She had a horrid, full, frightened feeling in her chest. Somewhere out on the hill, real thunder murmured. She laughed at herself.

'Fancy getting in a state over some silly storm!' She fell asleep again.

Bonnie woke to the sound of thunder too. She got out of bed and peered out of the window over Arabella's sleeping body. The wind was up and the sky was alive, a patchwork of clouds round a moon that was first bright and then hidden and then bright again. Bonnie watched the shadows come and go upon the landscape. She saw Edric's stones shine like white bones. She saw — right in the midst of them, whilst the thunder mumbled again —something dark moving. Then clouds swooped down, the thunder died out and the scene was lost.

'He sits there when the clouds come down,' Mum had said, 'when the thunder roars and the lightning cracks and the very hill itself shakes.'

'I'd like to know why I can't get off this hill,' Bonnie thought. 'I'd ask him to tell me that, if he existed.'

She turned to climb back into bed, telling herself it must have been a sheep up there on the stones. And suddenly the hill shook. It was like lightning running right through the ground. Like an underground train beneath the hill. It was as Bonnie imagined the first shake of an earthquake might be.

'If he existed.’

Scarcely thinking what she was doing, Bonnie pulled on her clothes. The hill shook again, this time more gently. She tiptoed past Arabella, who never stirred, along the corridor and through the silent house. Down in the kitchen Jake arose and followed her, and when she got outside she was glad of his company, for the wind was loud and the hill unwelcoming and the thought of climbing alone, especially through the holly grove, was chilling despite the heat of the night.

They climbed up together, ran across the holly grove, tripped through the shaven stubble of the top meadow, clambered over the gate onto the wild brow of the hill. Here Bonnie stumbled through the bracken. Long fingers of cloud swooped down for her and she couldn't see the moon at all, or Edric's Throne. She heard distant thunder again. Jake cowered by her side.

'Come on,' she said. 'Come on, Jake!' He wouldn't move. Low clouds swirled around them both. 'I'm walking into a thunderstorm,' Bonnie thought. 'And I could go back. My bed is warm and empty and I could still go back…'

But then she heard something. Something different to before - not thunder this time, more like horses' hooves. Bonnie tilted her head. With the blustering of the wind it was hard to tell where it was coming from. She heard it again, softer this time, and it could be thunder, she told herself, but it could also be the legend of Edric and Godda spilling out of the shaking ground onto the hill.

Jake shivered against Bonnie’s legs. She touched his warm fur, glad of his living presence by her side. The noise was overwhelmed by the other creaks and groans of the night, and then it was gone and she and Jake stumbled forward again. The cloud was thick about them now and the path had become stony. Bonnie tripped and fell and got up again. She carried on. Crashed into something. Pulled herself off it and saw the sign. DANGER! KEEP OUT!

It was Batholes.

Bonnie pulled aside the nest of brambles and barbed wire and peered into the cave's mouth, remembering Arabella's wistful declaration that she'd love to explore down there. 'I never would,' she thought. 'I could never shut myself away from the sky.'

She searched the ground for horses’ hooves, imagining the mouth cracking open into an eerie grin to let its riders out. But perhaps it had been thunder that she'd heard. Certainly Bonnie found no evidence of anything else. Bonnie looked up to Edric's Throne, which loomed over the hillside like a giant ghost. 'Come on Jake,' she said. 'If Wild Edric is anywhere, that’s where he’ll be.'

Jake pressed his body unwillingly against her legs, but still he followed as Bonnie set off. She paused to touch him. 'You're a great dog, Jake.' And then she ran.

The stones of Edric's Throne towered above them. Bonnie had never imagined they'd be so thick and wide, so fortress-like. She walked around their outer edge, looking for a way in to that smooth stone at the heart of them where she'd seen… What had she seen?

‘There’s no such person as Wild Edric,' Bonnie thought. ‘This whole thing is ridiculous. I won't find horses' hoof-marks. I won't find anything.'

Bonnie put out her hand and touched a stone. It was cold as death. In the darkness she felt a crack running down the stone and saw a shadowy, black jagged finger which seemed to point a way in. Her shoulder slid into this crack. She held out her hand and let it lead her on like a pale, fluttering butterfly. She was in a pitch-black corridor with stone on either side and nothing to guide her but one pale hand. She heard the wind somewhere outside. Her crushed body was frozen now and she couldn't believe that the night, the hill, even the wind had ever felt muggy. 'This,' she thought, 'is what it's like to be a fossil. If the stones moved even slightly I'd be entombed for ever.'

But they didn't move. The passage opened out and Bonnie, unprepared, found herself spat onto the smooth white stone where Edric was meant to brood over his domain, hidden by clouds or mist.

The Throne was empty. He wasn’t there. Bonnie hardly had time to take this in, however, before a blast of stormy wind knocked her sideways and she almost fell over. It whistled like an angry ghoul, forcing its way through cracks in rocks and out the other side of them and over the top. Jake clung to Bonnie’s side, lifting his head, sniffing the angry air. She tried to step forward, but he rushed in front of her, blocking her way.

'What is it, Jake?'

Bonnie tried to get past, but Jake howled and howled and wouldn’t let her, and suddenly the clouds parted and she realized that she was standing on the edge of a chasm, with only him between her and the hillside below.

'Oh...!' Bonnie cried. The wind buffeted her and she could hardly stand up. She turned to get away. Edric’s Throne was no place for her, but it seemed to have her in its grip. Clouds swirling between her and the hillside below. Long fingers of storm reaching out for her from a cloudy cauldron that was awful in its emptiness.

'Oh, Jake, oh…!'

The lightning cracked above Bonnie’s head. Jake's ears flattened and he let out a low, demented yell. In her panic to get away, to squeeze back between the rocks and onto the open hill where she’d be among growing things again - bracken, hawthorn hedges, grassy meadows, orchards - Bonnie turned. The wind got hold of her. It tottered her towards the chasm. She felt herself begin to fall.

And then a pair of arms reached out and grabbed her...

13

They ran over stones and down through furious, shaking bracken. Bonnie stumbled and fell, and the shadowboy pulled her up and dragged her on. She cried and the wind lashed her hair across her face so that she couldn't see where she was going. Jake wove a path around them, and the boy stumbled over him and they all fell down. The storm was overhead now. It was so close you could reach out a hand and almost drag it down.

'Get up,' the boy said. 'Come on. Quickly.'

'I can't.' Bonnie said, gasping for breath.

'Yes you can. Come on.'

'I can't.'

He dragged her down to the edge of the holly grove. Behind them, Edric's Throne was electric with livid greenish lightning. Where everything had been dark before, it was suddenly illuminated. Thunder crashed right over their heads. Jake howled. The boy grabbed Bonnie from behind and pushed her straight into the tangle of holly leaves, down on the ground among the earth and roots and last late foxgloves. She screamed. Her face was scratched, her hair was dishevelled. He caught and pushed again until they were through. The three of them tumbled onto the moss in a heap of sweat and skin and arms and legs and fur.

The ground was soft. Unlike the hill, the grove was very, very still. It could have been a moonlit midsummer night with not a blade of grass stirring and a faint sheen of dew on the moss. Out on the hill, the storm roared on, but the grove… Inexplicably the grove was safe.

Bonnie sat up. Her breath came evenly again. 'You saved my life,' she said to the boy. 'I don't know how to thank you.' She reached out to touch him. He looked down at her hand, all heavy and hot and human, drawing back as if its touch might make him cumbersome and earthbound too, as if it could contaminate him with — what was it — humanity? Bonnie didn't seem to notice. She put her hand on his arm and he felt the weight of it even through his sleeve. On top of the hill, the lightning cracked again.

'It would have struck us if we’d been up there.'

'Not quite.' The boy shook his head.

'What do you mean?'

'It wouldn't have struck me.'

Bonnie let go of the boy. Beyond the grove, sheets of rain fell as loud as thunder down from the sky. She drew her knees up to her chin, hugged her legs and, ignoring the storm, tried to make the boy out. He seemed to flicker as she looked at him. He seemed to come and go. She remembered thinking he was twenty men. Even now she could understand why.

'What are you?' she said, cautiously.

'I don't know,' he answered.

'You're not a person, are you?'

'People feel the cold,' he said with distaste. 'They feel the heat. They're heavy and solid and they get wet in the rain. They can't get out of themselves. They can't stop feeling. Their feelings make them do things and then they're not free.'

'You think you're free?' Bonnie wanted to laugh, but what he said had touched her somewhere all the same. 'You're just a genie in a lamp. Someone digs the right pit, or makes the right balloon, and you appear.' She got up. Shook off his words. Looked around her at the hollies.

'What do you know about this hill?' she said.

'Nothing,' he answered simply again.

'But you must know where we are,’ Bonnie said, ‘and why we came here. I can't get off this hill, you know. I've tried my hardest and yet I can't.'

He shook his head. He was sorry, he said. But that wasn’t good enough for Bonnie. 'You brought me here,' she said. 'Not just anywhere, but here. Can’t you even tell me how long I’ll be staying?'

'No.'

'You don't know much, do you? You're not as different from me as you'd like to think. And you must have feelings. Everyone has feelings. Don't you get lonely?'

It was only a small stupid thing, but he thought of her fleeting touch on his arm.

'I'm lonely,' she said. 'I've got everything I could ever want, and yet I know I don't belong. You must get lonely too. Out here all on your own, not knowing where you are or why you do the things you do.'

'Of course I don't.'

But Bonnie wasn't listening any more. At least not to him. The rain stopped beating and the wind dropped and she turned her head, her whole body stiffened.

'What's that?' she said.

The boy listened. He heard something too, but it was hard to be sure.

'Horses' hooves!' Bonnie said. 'Can't you hear them? Down there by the house.' She got to her feet. 'I've got to go,' she said, and then she was gone, running down the sheep's path and through the lower rim of hollies. 'Thank you,' she called back. 'Thank you for rescuing me.'

The boy looked around him. The holly grove was shadowy and grey and still and lonely now. Lonely… She'd planted the word and now she'd gone.

'I wouldn't want to be like them,' he said. 'Always wanting, always feeling things.'

But her human hand had touched his arm and his words sounded thin and hollow.

The hill was sodden and the grass flat. Battered branches littered the ground like the debris of a major disaster. Bonnie squelched and stumbled her way down the meadow. Her ears strained for the sound of horses' hooves again. The sky was clearing and she stopped and looked all around her. Rainwater babbled in rivulets down the field. But whatever she had heard was gone, and the noisy wind was gone as well, both disappeared like conjuror's rabbits back into their hat. Gone!

Dejectedly, Bonnie made her way down towards the house, over the stile, into the orchard. She threaded her way between the fruit trees and Jake scrambled after her. She hardly noticed him, however, because something had caught her eye shimmering like a dewy spider's web between the smallest finger branches of an apple tree.

What was it? Bonnie walked on and it grew brighter. In the dark orchard it seemed to have a light of its own. She tripped over the stones of the covered well. The thing was right above her now, hanging from a branch. She squinted and reached up and took it in her hand. Everything, the storm, the shadowboy, horses' hooves, Wild Edric and the Lady Godda, even her own plight, were momentarily forgotten.

It was a silver chain, with a glittering flower pendant hanging from it. Jewels were set in the chain like a string of stars. Bonnie cupped her hands around the flower, spread out the chain, touching it, stone by stone. It was hard to see what they were in the dark. Were they diamonds? Were they rubies or emeralds? They were so light, and yet she'd always thought that jewels were heavy and solid and weighed you down. She turned it over. Its clasp was a tiny pair of silver hands.

Bonnie slipped it round her neck and joined the hands together. She fingered the flower as it settled over her t-shirt. She'd found a treasure and she felt like a queen.

Jake stirred impatiently. Jewels meant nothing to him. 'All right. I know. It’s getting light. Come on, then.' Bonnie tucked the necklace under her t-shirt where nobody would know it was there but her.

'Whose is it?' she thought. 'Why was it hanging in a tree? I hope it's not something Arabella's lost. She's got everything. I want this to be mine.'

She crept down to the orchard gate. It creaked as she opened it and she stopped and looked up at the front windows, but no lights came on. She tiptoed along the terrace, past the living-room window, past the bulge of the kitchen, round the side to the scullery door. Here a pair of silvery eyes glinted at her in the first glimmer of dawn. Bonnie stifled a scream. Dad shifted slowly from one foot to the other. He was leaning against the kitchen wall.

'Good morning, Bonnie.'

'Oh. You made me jump. I never saw you. You frightened me.'

The last of the moon shone on Dad and he looked so much like Michael that Bonnie couldn't believe, just for a moment, that he wasn't. Then he drew on his pipe and nodded down into the valley in a way that was totally his own.

'They're getting ready for the Show,' he said. 'I thought the storm would ruin it but it's cleared up now. Everything’s going to be all right.'

Bonnie followed Dad’s gaze. Tiny lights were moving up and down. A Land Rover was throbbing. A pale marquee rose between hammering men.

'Never can sleep,' Dad said, 'before the Show.'

Bonnie looked again. Tractors squelched. Lamps bobbed on long poles. Far away it might be, but she heard voices carried in the clear air. Dogs barked and cocks crowed. 'Is that a fair down there?' she said. Can I see swings, a big dipper and a roundabout?'

'That's right,' said Dad. 'And over there, do you see, that’s the judging marquee where people exhibit their paintings and poems and home-made produce and home-made wine. And next to it, there are the pens where the animals are kept. And there’s the showing ring. Do you see? '

'You'll be going?'

'We always do.'

'Can I come too?'

'Why ever not?' Dad looked from the distant fields to the wet, rain-sodden yard and then to Bonnie. 'What a strange thing,' he said. 'It’s been raining all night, but you're not wet.'

Before she could think what to say, he tapped out his pipe and stretched himself.

'Don't know about you, but I'm cold and stiff. I'm going to make breakfast. It's nice eating early. It sets you up for the day. I hope you're not going to make a habit of wandering off up the hill every night. '

Bonnie sat out on her own. Dad had gone. The kitchen light shone onto the terrace. She hardly noticed it. Jake sat by her side. She hardly noticed him. What would happen if, when they attempted to go to the Show tomorrow, none of them could get off the hill? If they all finished up in the yard again, or up by the holly grove?

Bonnie looked down at the bustle in the valley. Tents were springing up like August mushrooms in the field. She fingered the necklace beneath her t-shirt. It chafed slightly against her skin, and there was something about those tents that chafed her too. What was it? She couldn't explain, even to herself. The boy's words came back to her. 'Feelings make you do things and you're not free.' And she thought — what made her think it? — 'I could do something really terrible. I know I could. It's why I ran away from Grandbag. I could have killed her. People read in newspapers about children doing things like that and they can't believe it's true. They think it's all made up. But I could have. And to Arabella too. In fact, I still could…’

Oh, she was tired. She'd been out half the night and she'd thought and felt and done and seen so much. She got up to go in, and then she noticed Jake. His ears were flattened. His body was stiff and still.

'What's wrong with you, Jake?' she said. He stared down at the valley. He didn't move. 'You're tired too. Silly dog. The storm's over now. Everything's all right,' she said. But he still didn't move.

'You can stay here if you want to, but I'm going back to bed.'

PART FOUR

Grandmother Marvell

14

There were four bars. It was dark and there they were, yes, four of them between Bonnie and the door with the strip of light under it. She reached out a hand. Why was it so small? Why was it so hard to reach the bars? She stretched and wriggled and at last got her fists round them. They were so large. It was difficult to hold them. She tried to pull herself up. Her legs felt weak. It was hard to stand. What was wrong with her? She heard footsteps outside. They came closer, closer.

Then Bonnie knew. This was a dream. She'd dreamed this bit before. She was a baby in a cot, but it was only a dream - she was all right. She didn't need to struggle, to be afraid. Still locked in the dream, her tiny legs gave way. She fell onto her back. The door opened and the light clicked on. It was all right.

In the dream room, two beds faced each other in the corner, discarded clothes heaped all over them. A chest of drawers stood between them with nappies piled on top. Bonnie saw a dressing-table with a pair of tights over the mirror and pots of cream and make-up and bottles and brushes scattered everywhere. Next to the dressing-table a metal painted desk was cluttered with piles of magazines and pens and homework books. Above it, a poster was tacked onto the wall. A school uniform was draped over a chair.

Two girls came in. The girls who shared Bonnie’s room - the thin, nervous one she didn't like, the soft, pink, nice one who played with her. The thin one sat before the mirror. She fiddled with her hair and unscrewed the pots and made up her face. The pink one sighed.

'I wouldn't do my hair like that,' she said. 'And the make-up's all wrong, you know. Oh, I wish I was as old as you. I wish I could go out.'

'Well, you can't. You've got homework to do.'

'I never have any fun.'

'You know what Mother said.'

'It isn't fair.'

'Oh shut up, Maybelle. Life isn't fair.'

'You’ll be sorry you’re so mean one day.'

'If you don't get on with your work, I'll tell.'

The pink one settled reluctantly at the metal desk. The thin one pulled a limp, grey, sagging frock over her head, frowned with dissatisfaction at herself in the mirror and went out. As soon as she'd gone, the pink one came over to the cot and poked her soft, warm fingers through the bars. She leaned over and lifted Bonnie out and held her close against herself. 'Doreen can have her going out. Least I've got you. I love you, Bonnie, love you, yes I do.'

The door opened.

'What do you think you're doing?'

'Oh, Mother…’

A black-garbed, solid woman pounded across the room. She removed Bonnie from the soft arms and put her back behind the bars. Her voice was cold and angry.

'I've fed her,' she said. 'She's meant to be asleep and you've got work to do. Haven't you wasted enough of your life already? You'd better come downstairs where I can keep an eye on you. You're not to be trusted. You'll never change. Come on. Downstairs.'

The pink girl held the side of the cot.

'I'll have her one day,' she said in a low, shaking voice that even a baby could recognize as frightened. 'I won't always be too young to make a home for us, you wait and see.'

The woman's eyes glinted. 'You're such a fool,' she said. 'God help her if you ever had her to yourself. You're useless, Maybelle. Useless.'

'I know I'm useless,' the pink girl said. 'I know I've made a mess of things, but…'

The woman wouldn't wait for any more. She whisked up the school books from the table, took Maybelle's arm and propelled her sharply through the door. She turned off the light and shut the door behind them. Bonnie heard their footsteps fading. She was on her own again. She began to cry. She wanted the pink girl to come back and play. Nothing happened and she cried louder. She didn't like the dark.

Suddenly the door reopened. It was the woman again. She didn't turn on the light this time. She came across the room like a fast, black shadow. She leaned over the cot and this was the moment… this was the moment when Bonnie knew it wasn't all right, that she didn't want to dream this dream. It wasn't all right at all… She struggled to wake and couldn't. She struggled to get away from the woman and couldn't. She stopped crying. It dried up somewhere inside of her. She shuddered instead. She couldn't stop shuddering.

The woman in black reached out a hand. She had such a big hand and the skin was so hard. She thrust a bony, pointy finger into Bonnie's side and began to tickle her with it. Only it wasn't a gentle, friendly tickle that comes in play. The finger prodded ferociously. Bonnie squirmed. She tried to get away from it, but she couldn't. Then the face leaned over her, closer and closer. She could see right inside the mouth and smell the breath. 'I've brought you up this far,' she whispered. 'You're good as mine. Don't think I'll ever let you go.'

Bonnie saw a small, wet dribble trickling down the woman's chin.

'No, Grandbag, Grandbag no!'

The words screamed inside her head. Then the bony finger tickled her again and she screamed out loud this time and the mouth was laughing…

Bonnie sat up. The bed was wet. She could feel it underneath her in a warm patch. She clambered out and surveyed the patch in horror. It was ages since she'd done that. But it was ages since she'd had the dream. She dragged the sheet into the bathroom, rinsed it out, dragged it back into the bedroom and hung it over a chair in the sunshine. It was only a dream. It wasn't real. She mustn't get upset. She looked around her. Reality was sunlight bursting through curtains and pretty dolls in a row over the fireplace and rugs on shiny oak floors. It was Arabella's empty, neat bed. It was Arabella.

Bonnie heard laughter at the breakfast table downstairs. Arabella's excited voice rose above the others. Everything, Bonnie thought, would be all right if it wasn't for her. She began to dress. All her thoughts, and all the things that had happened to her, whirled as mad as last night's storm inside her head. She stood before the mirror. It was hard to believe that such a still, quiet face hid so much turmoil.

Finally Bonnie noticed the necklace. It chafed her neck and she tried to pull it off. The clasp wouldn't undo. She twisted it round and looked at the clutching silver hands. There seemed to be no point where they joined. She twisted it round again. In the light of day she saw sky-blue enamel between the dots of diamond stars, and a lump of smooth, fantastic gold right in the centre of the jewelled flower. She dropped the flower back against her neck, looked at it in the mirror. It reminded her of something. What was it?

'Bonnie!' Arabella's head poked round the door and Bonnie thrust the necklace underneath her shirt. 'You must come down now. It's nearly time to go.'

Go? Of course, it was the day of the Bank Holiday Show! Arabella's face was bursting with impatience and excitement. Bonnie buttoned her shirt.

'All right. I'm ready. I'm just coming.' She followed Arabella downstairs. The kitchen was a mess of pots of jam and pickle and flowers and vegetables in baskets. 'Ah, Bonnie,' Mum said. 'I've left your breakfast on the side. Be very careful not to knock the chocolate cake.'

She wore a best dress, hat and high-heeled shoes. Bonnie stared and she laughed at her surprise. She was poking flowers into a china vase. 'What do you think?' she said. 'Will I win the flower arranging?' Then, before Bonnie had time to answer, she whisked the flowers away. 'Arabella, will you clean up Florence?' Her voice trailed back through the darkness of the scullery. 'Her fresh frock's by the stove…’

Arabella wiped Florence’s face, brushed her hair and thrust her into her frock. Mum trekked back and forth to the Land Rover. Bonnie ate her breakfast, then dropped her bowl in the sink and went out to where Mum's careful packing was nearly finished. Over by the barns, Dad was securing a trailer door. Something inside the trailer made its protests heard.

'That's Bess,' Mum said, looking up. 'She's the best cow we've ever had. She's bound to get a prize. That's a nice necklace you're wearing. Where did you get it?'

Bonnie looked down. The top buttons of her shirt had popped open. The necklace looked splendid in the sunshine, and she felt like a thief. She flushed. Mum's eyes were full on her. 'I... I found it.’ Bonnie said.

'Oh?'

'It was out in the orchard.' Bonnie’s face was bright with embarrassment. She hoped it wasn’t Mum’s, she said, or Arabella’s. Mum looked at the necklace thoughtfully.

'It's very fine,’ she said. 'It’s definitely not ours, but I'm sure I've seen it before. How strange to find a thing like. Where did you say it was?'

'Can you reverse the Land Rover?' called Dad. 'I need to hook on.'

'We'll talk about it later,' Mum said. 'We don’t want to be late.'

She jumped into the driver's seat, fancy hat and all, and reversed to the trailer, which Dad hooked on. Then she made back for the house and Bonnie was left on her own standing amid the debris blown down by last night’s storm.

The air was clear but she didn't feel the way she usually did when a storm was over and things were fresh and safe again. The necklace chafed. Bonnie had an awful, sinking, quiet sense of almost doom. She looked down at the white marquees and remembered Jake with his ears drawn back and his stiff body. Then she thought of her dream. Why had she dreamt it now?

'Out of the way. That's a good girl.'

Dad moved Bonnie aside and swung himself up into the driver's seat. Mum appeared with Florence and Arabella and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, Bonnie knew where she’d seen the necklace before. At least, she thought she did. 'I won't be a minute,’ she called, and started running back towards the house. 'Hang on. I won't be long.'

Bonnie headed along the terrace, through the big front door that nobody ever used and into the dark front hall. The sewing-room door was open. She entered and stood in front of the fireplace staring up at the painting. And there it was, Godda's necklace, sparkling down at her. Bonnie fingered the jewels around her neck - the blue enamel, the diamond stars, the flower with the golden heart… What did this all mean? They were the same.

15

'I wish she'd hurry up,' Arabella said.

'Here she comes,' said Mum.

'Mr Onions went an hour ago,' said Arabella. 'I know nobody goes as early as him, but all the same… '

'We'll be all right,' said Dad, and opened the door. Arabella moved across and Jake slithered under the seat. Mum put Florence on her lap and Bonnie squeezed in.

'All right?' said Dad. 'Then off we go ... '

'I'm sorry I kept you,' Bonnie said.

They drove along the hill. It was a fine day, so clear now that the storm had gone that you could pick out every tree on the hill opposite. The track plunged down towards Hope Dingle and Arabella shivered excitedly as the showground grew bigger before her eyes. She could see a main ring with bales all round it, and cattle pens and flags. The Land Rover lurched into the Dingle. Dad slowed it right down. It tipped and turned and Dad eased it over the little bridge.

'You'll have to walk this bit,' he said. 'It's going to be a bit of a job getting up the other side.'

Once they were out, Dad forced the engine forward again. They climbed up the track behind him. Mum took off her high-heeled shoes. When they came to the top, Dad was waiting for them. Bonnie, Arabella noticed, hung behind. She was pale and quiet. She fiddled with the collar of her shirt.

'Come on,’ Arabella called. 'We don't want to miss anything.'

The Land Rover rolled down into the village. It was spread out in front of them, a cluster of rooftops and a spire and the tops of yew trees in the churchyard. Arabella noticed Bonnie's hands clenched together as if something here bothered her. The track turned into a proper, made-up road, with cottages of brick and stone on either side. They passed a farm and a pub. White dotted lines appeared in the middle of the road and they saw a telephone box and a yellow AA sign that said TO THE SHOWGROUND.

'We're down!' whispered Bonnie, as if she almost hadn’t expected it. Arabella frowned, puzzled, but Bess mooed as if she knew that they were down too, and Jake's head poked out from under the seat.

'That's right,' said Dad. 'All in one piece. That's not bad going. That track gets worse and worse. We'll have to do something about it one of these days.'

'Is my hat all right?' said Mum. 'I hate the silly thing, but everyone wears them. After all, it’s the Show.'

They crossed the main road, passed a garage on the corner with a row of petrol pumps. Dad steered them onto the end of a queue of Land Rovers and trailers all much like their own. At last a steward directed them in through the gates, and Dad drove up behind the large white marquee.

'We're just in time,’ he said. 'Let's get the stuff out, and I'll go and park.'

Mum and Arabella began to unload. Jake jumped out and raced round and round. Bonnie stood and stared and Arabella wondered what she was thinking. There were crowds everywhere, boys on motorbikes, teenagers with headphones on, the smell of hotdogs wafting through the air…

'Come on, Bonnie,' said Dad. 'Put those flowers over there.'

'Be careful,' Mum said. 'Put them down gently. Arabella can you get those carrots? That's right. Oh, Bonnie, can you grab Florence? She's got the chocolate cake!’

Dad leapt back into the Land Rover and drove away.

'Can I leave you with Florence while we take the produce into the judging marquee?' Mum said to Bonnie. 'We won't be long, and we can't take her with us. The way she’s going she'll wreck the place. Can you look after Jake too? They don't take dogs inside the marquees.' She thrust Florence into Bonnie's arms and filled Arabella's with flowers and cake.

'Come on, come on,' Arabella said, hopping from foot to foot. 'We'll miss the judging.'

'No we won't,' laughed Mum. 'We're in good time.'

She followed Arabella, tucking her arm in hers. 'I want to find the man who sells boots… Remind me, will you? I really think we stand a chance with the flowers this year… Here we are. Come on, Belle… '

Bonnie held tightly onto Florence. Jake looked up at her. The minutes dragged by and the others didn't come back. Bonnie turned away. The words 'Come on, Belle… ' rang in her head and she thought, 'I don't belong with them. It doesn't matter how hard I try.'

'Shall I have Florence, then?' a voice behind her said. She turned and Mrs Onions, resplendently attired in best suit and pink net hat, held out her arms. 'You're only young once,' she said. 'You didn't ought to stand round here. Go off with you and enjoy the Show.'

Her body seemed the perfect shape for holding babies. Bonnie willingly let Florence go. 'Take this,' Mrs Onions said. 'You won't get far without money.' She handed Bonnie a crisp note.

'Thank you.' Bonnie took the note and Mrs Onions smiled. 'It gets awful noisy,' she said. 'I don't suppose you young ones think so, though. I'll take Florence to the tea tent. It's nice and quiet in there.’

'You can almost smell the hill on her,' Bonnie thought, as Mrs Onions went away. 'Straw and earth and animals…' Behind the tea tent, she saw the distant silhouette of Edric's Throne against the sky. She turned away from it, from the tea tent, from Florence, Mrs Onions, Mum, Dad, Arabella. From them all. She was off the hill this time, and she wasn’t going back.'

Bonnie pushed her way through the crowd. There were mums and dads and kids, and gangs of teenagers with candyfloss, and stallholders selling wares. She got onto the nearest ride, the bumper cars. The music screamed and the cars crashed until she'd had her money's worth. Afterwards she bought a hotdog and covered it with mustard. She didn’t know where she was going, or what she would do next, but she started to look for the way out of the showground.

And that was when the necklace began to sting. Bonnie stopped and undid buttons and rubbed her neck. 'I wish I'd never put the stupid thing on,' she thought, twisting it round and trying to undo it. It stung her more and she pulled it angrily. She didn't care if it was precious any more, or how she'd found it, or if it really had been Godda's. She didn't want Highholly Hill any more, nor did she want the legend of Godda and Edric hanging round her neck.

Bonnie tried one last time, putting her hand up to her throat, clutching the flower pendant and pulling as hard as she could. For the weirdest moment her hand seemed to stick. A terrible pain jerked through it, up her arm, into her shoulder, into her head itself. It was like an electric shock. She cried out, and 'No!' the pain cried back. 'No. You can't get away from me. There's danger, danger, and I'm warning you. You've got to take notice.'

Suddenly Bonnie saw everything in a different light. All around her things seemed unpleasant and sinister. Bonnie pushed through the crowds again, through the shrieking voices on every side, through the sea of jostling faces. A tall man with a dark face and the blackest eyes leaned towards her and shouted 'Come and have a go, two goes for a pound.' She turned her back and ran away from him, and that was when she lost Jake. One minute he was there, then she was carried by the crowd until she broke away in front of a rifle range, and he was gone and there was nothing she could do about it.

Bonnie had never shot at anything before. But in her mind's eye it was Arabella, not the targets, that she saw rowed up on that range — Arabella whom she couldn't get away from, no matter how she tried. It was even Arabella’s fault that Jake had gone. So she paid her money and raised the gun. 'It would be lovely if you weren't there any more,' she said out loud. BANG! BANG! 'Mum would have me instead. She doesn't want two of us.' BANG! BANG! 'Dad could teach me about the farm and I could be their girl.' BANG! BANG! 'No one's ever given me a pet name. You don't know how I felt when she called you Belle.’

BANG! BANG!

Bonnie handed back the rifle and stood brushing bright tears out of her eyes. She walked away, not seeing where she went. All she knew was that the necklace had started stinging again and the air was full of something coming, coming… Bonnie turned a corner and found herself in front of a large, striped tent. A fluttering sign announced:

GRANDMOTHER MARVELL'S MAGIC MIRRORS

Come and See Yourself as You've Never Seen Yourself Before!

MIRROR SPECTACULAR!!!

A woman lifted the loose cloth of the tent door and stepped out into the sunlight. Her hair was dyed. You could see the white bits at the roots, could see beneath the powder and the lipstick and the flashy jet earrings that she was old. Godda's necklace jumped on Bonnie's neck and bit so hard that she cried out. The woman raised her eyes and looked at her.

It was the look Bonnie remembered from the tickling dream when her grandmother had said she'd never let her go. The look she'd had on that last day when Bonnie had opened the new flat door, and there she'd been on the doorstep with her suitcase in poor Doreen's hand. It was gloating. Triumphant.

'Well, well, well,' she said. 'And how are you…?’

It was Grandbag.

16

Bonnie should have expected it. There was, after all, another, different Maybelle on Highholly Hill, another Michael and another of herself. Why not Grandbag too? Perhaps she had expected it. She remembered her dream and everything suddenly seemed so pointless - all the running away and the struggling and the pain.

You couldn't escape things, could you?

The woman looked past Bonnie, completely ignoring her, and smiled a smile that Bonnie knew and that never changed. 'Magic mirrors, my dear,' she said. 'Real magic that can change your life.'

Bonnie looked back to see who the woman was speaking to. That was when she saw Arabella. She'd emerged from the crowd, accompanied by Jake, and stopped dead. The woman looked at her with quiet satisfaction, and her eyes said, 'I'll never let you go...'

'I haven't any money,' Arabella said.

'A free go, then,’ the woman said. 'You can't miss Grandmother Marvell's Mirror Spectacular. You'll never again see mirrors like these. You'll wonder for the rest of your life what they were like.'

Arabella stepped forward, taking Bonnie by the arm. 'Come on,’ she hissed. ‘Even if they're not really magic, at least they’re for free. '

The woman glanced at Bonnie without interest. 'That's right,' she said. 'And your friend can come too if she wants. You can both have a free go.'

Bonnie felt a drilling pain around her neck. Through it she thought, 'Grandbag doesn't recognize me. She wants Arabella. She came for me. I know she did. But she's found Arabella instead. I'm safe.' And as if it were inevitable - as if she had no choice about it, and this was what she’d always known hate would make her do - she said in an oily, cunning voice quite unlike her own, 'You go ahead, Arabella. I'll take Jake and tie him up.'

Grandmother Marvell lifted the tent flap, and Arabella stooped beneath her arm and disappeared. At this, Jake suddenly came alive. He made to rush forward but Bonnie caught him by his collar and dragged him back. He lashed at her, but determination made her deft. She grabbed his lead and knotted it tightly to a post leaving him to howl.

From inside the tent, Arabella's voice called, 'Bonnie, Bonnie, come and look at this!' Jake stopped lashing. He just looked at Bonnie, appealing with his eyes.

'You don't understand,' Bonnie said. 'You don't know what you're asking. I can't stop now. Stop looking like that. Oh, I hate you, Jake. I do.' She got up and started walking towards the tent.

'I'm coming,’ she called, and Jake howled again.

Entering the tent, Bonnie couldn’t help but gasp. A glittering world lay behind its drab canvas exterior. Hot lights twinkled above mirrors, creating an unexpected dappled brightness like sunlight on water. The mirrors lined the walls and reflected each other. Bonnie had the impression of standing in an oriental palace where doorway led into doorway, room into room. Suddenly Arabella appeared in front of her.

'There you are.' said Bonnie. She stepped forward - into a mirror against which she banged her nose. Arabella's voice, behind her, shrieked with laughter. A long row of repeating Arabellas laughed too. Bonnie turned and the real Arabella stood with her hand over her mouth and her eyes dancing.

'Isn't it great? It does look magical, doesn't it? It's all done by the way she's placed the mirrors. Come over here. Come and look at yourself. Why's Jake howling like that?'

They stood in front of a mirror that made them tall like princesses, with long, long hair. 'He's just being a pain,' Bonnie said. 'He wants to come in here but he knows he can't.'

'I don't like to hear him cry,' Arabella said. 'I'll go and tell him that we won't be long.'

'You can't go yet.'

They both jumped. Grandmother Marvell, tall as a giantess, stood behind them with her arms folded in front of her. They turned, relieved to find that in real life she was cut down to size.

'My dog's barking,' Arabella said. 'I ought to go and see what's wrong.'

'But you haven't seen the Special Room,' Grandmother Marvell said. You won't have another chance. I’ll be closing it in a couple of minutes. It’s so special that I only keep it open an hour a day.'

Arabella hesitated, and Bonnie couldn't stop herself. The words came out of her in that wheedling tone again that wasn’t her own.

'Jake'll be all right just a minute longer. We don't want to miss the Special Room.'

'That's right. And it won't take long,' Grandmother Marvell said. She lowered her voice as if she didn't want even Bonnie to hear. 'Only the lucky few get to see my Special Room. Not everyone appreciates the real magic of my show.'

Arabella blushed, curious and flattered. 'It really won't take long?'

'Just as long as you want,' the woman said. 'You'll soon be out again. And you needn't worry about your dog. I'll take care of him.'

'Quickly then,' Arabella said. The pitch of Jake's howls rose but she couldn’t bear the thought of missing anything. ‘We'll see the Special Room.’

The woman led them in triumph down the tent between the mirrors. She held up a flap at the end. Behind it, Bonnie could see a dark interior.

'Why does she want Arabella?' she thought. 'Why did Grandbag ever want me? But what does it matter anyway? Nothing can change the way things are.’

Her feet stumbled forward. She followed Arabella, ducking under Grandmother Marvell's arm. She heard Jake's last howl.

'Through the door at the end,' Grandmother Marvell said. She dropped the canvas flap behind them, and there was silence. They were on their own, the two of them in the dark. What had she meant, the door at the end?

'Where are you, Bonnie? I can't see a thing.' Arabella bumped into Bonnie and grabbed her hand. 'It's funny in here. Can you see where we came in?'

'There's danger in here,' thought Bonnie. She could almost put out a hand and touch it. 'There's danger in here, and Arabella won't ever come out again and maybe I won’t either.'

'It smells funny,' Arabella said.

'It smells like darkness,' Bonnie thought.

'What's that?' Arabella said.

'Where?'

'Over there.'

Bonnie's eyes made out a distant, grey, light. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Let's find out, shall we? She said we had to look for a door.'

She stepped forward, taking Arabella firmly by the hand. Suddenly the necklace seemed to rise up all round her neck. For a minute she thought that it would strangle her. She felt hot pain. She felt it like a pair of angry, murderous hands. Bonnie stopped. Gasped. Chewed into her lip to stop herself screaming. She tasted blood in her mouth.

'What is it?' Arabella said.

'It's… nothing.' Arabella couldn't see Bonnie’s face. She couldn't see the bright tears or the sweat. And what were the tears for? Were they just for the pain, or were they for her — because she couldn't stop now, however bad she was being, she had to go on?

'Come on.'

They edged their way towards the light. Bonnie's heart pounded. Her body roared with pain. She didn't know how she kept herself from crying out, how she kept them moving forward. Sweat rolled down her face. If ever there was a moment when she should turn about, take Arabella away, surely this was it. And yet she didn't. She saw the outline of the door, flush with the wall and painted black so that you hardly knew it was there.

'We've found it,' she heard her voice say.

Arabella peered through the gloom, and suddenly the thundering pain round Bonnie's neck went away. Everything became quiet and still. Bonnie pinched her hand. She was real. She could think clearly again. Whatever happened next, she would have no excuses.

'You go first,' she said. She put her hand on the door and it swung open. She saw a huge, grand mirror in a gilt frame, glinting out at them like secret eyes beneath closed lashes. She stepped behind Arabella. Then, distantly, she heard an angry cry which reminded her of Grandbag. She heard something rushing towards them both…

'It's too late,' she thought with her new, dreadful clarity. 'Whatever it is, it's too late. Arabella's gone.'

But she was wrong. Something rushed beneath the tent flap, bringing momentary light with it. Arabella, on the threshold, hesitated. It rushed towards them and then past. It brushed their legs as it tumbled through the door.

It was Jake. Bonnie watched him go. He ran wildly, howling, into the mirror. She watched him go, go, go. She heard his scream becoming fainter, saw his body grow small, small, small. And then, in a split second, but as if it had taken minutes, he was gone, leaving behind him only the faint smell of, what was it, death…?

Arabella screamed. Bonnie felt her hand go out and this was the dreadful thing she'd always known she could do. This was what she'd come here for. She knew, as she watched herself in fascinated, clear slow motion, that she was reaching for Arabella's back, that she was pushing her into the mirror after Jake, that she was going to get rid of her for ever. Her head was no longer full of the fuzz of pain that made everything unreal. This was really her, and she was really doing it.

Then her hand gripped Arabella by the shoulder. It pulled her back. Pulled her away. She heard a distant, unexpected voice, and it was her own voice, shouting, 'Come on, Arabella, come on, we've got to get away.'

They ran together down the dark room, bursting through into the blinding brightness of mirrors and lights. Grandmother Marvell crouched, reflected a hundred times on every side, nursing her hand where Jake had bitten it. They pushed her out of the way and stumbled back into the world they’d come from.

Here in the showground, with crowds around them, they ran as neither of them had ever run before. Past the rifle range, back towards the judging tent, round behind the animal pens, into the car park and finally back to the Land Rover, which they tumbled into, safe again amongst the smells and familiar sights and bits and pieces of home -Florence's jacket, Mum's bag, Dad's spare tobacco pouch...

'What happened, Bonnie?' Arabella asked, when she could speak at last. 'What happened to Jake? What happened in there?'

Bonnie looked at her. The stinging round her neck was gone. She waited till her breath came evenly again. She was still possessed with awful clarity.

'I nearly killed you.’ she said. 'I nearly killed you.'

PART FIVE

Getting Rid of Grandbag

17

They sat up in the back of the barn, high among the bales with the soft material of the balloon tumbling between them onto the stone floor. Mice scuffled in a distant corner and farm cats prowled between lean shafts of sunlight, looking for the next meal.

Bonnie told it all: Maybelle and Michael and the midnight blue balloon and Grandbag. How she felt about Mum and Dad, about Highholly Hill. How she'd felt about Arabella, felt when Mum said Belle. About the night she'd seen them all together in the bed, about the rifle range and the way she'd put her hand on Arabella's back to push her into that last mirror…

She couldn't stop it now. She couldn't spare herself, and now Arabella would hate her. She'd tell Mum and Dad and they'd hate her too. Bonnie’s life upon the hill fell about her like a house of cards. This, not running away, was how it would end. She told about Wild Edric and the Lady Godda. She told about the necklace, unbuttoned her shirt to show it off. Arabella's drooping head looked up.

A shaft of teatime sunlight fell on the gold heart of the flower and the blue enamel. They shone with all the richness of autumn leaves and the brightness of a clear sky. There was more to this story than just hate. Arabella leaned across and touched the necklace lightly, nervously. Its diamonds glinted like rainbow tears.

'Now I know why you kept fumbling with your collar,' she said.

Bonnie nodded grimly and twisted the necklace round. 'It's cooled down now,’ she said. 'It doesn't burn any more.' She struggled with the silver hands again. 'I still can't get it off. You ought to have it. It's your hill, not mine.'

She tugged again and Arabella imagined Godda's necklace lost for ever in little bits down amongst the straw. 'Be careful,’ she said. 'You might break it.' She touched the necklace again. Godda's necklace. She thought of the painting in Mum's sitting-room. Thought of the Throne on the top of the hill.

'They're real, aren't they?' she said.

'What?' said Bonnie.

'Wild Edric and the Lady Godda. They gave you the necklace and it helped save us both. They did what Mum's stories say they do. They guarded their hill. Looked after us. They're really down there somewhere underground.'

Bonnie remembered the shaking hill. She remembered how she'd tried to get off it and how she'd failed. They'd made her find that necklace, hadn't they - she the only one who understood what it warned about, she the only one who knew Grandbag…

'Yes.’ she said. 'They’re real.'

They looked at each other. Out beyond the barn door, Dad whistled in the yard, but there was no pattering of Jake's feet following him. No matter what had happened, what Bonnie had felt, no matter how things were between them still, this wasn't over yet.

'All that woman’s got is a dog, and if she's really like Grandbag — and she surely is — she'll be furious because she hasn't got you. You've no idea how mad she'll be. She's bound to try again.'

'But why? There seems no reason.'

'If you knew Grandbag, you'd understand. She catches sight of things, you see, and they have to be hers. And not just things either. People too. If someone's hers, she'll never let them go. She wouldn't let me go. And she wouldn’t give a chance to Maybelle either.'

'Perhaps she loved you both too much.'

'Oh no. It wasn't like that. She doesn't love anything. It's greed.' Bonnie's face was lined and tight and tired now. 'Maybe Grandmother Marvell has seen the hill in your face and wants what she’s seen,’ she said. 'Or maybe it's you she wants. I don't know. But it won't stop there. Don't you see? She'll want Mum too, and Dad and Mr and Mrs Onions. Maybe even Edric and Godda. She'll want the house. She'll want the barns. She'll want the sheep and the cattle and the holly grove and the stones on the top. She'll want everything… '

Arabella shivered. 'What'll we do?'

Bonnie looked through the long shafts of sunlight, through the cracks in the door, up towards the house. There was only one thing to do - and then Mum and Dad would know all about her, know the horrid things she'd done.

'We'll have to tell them what happened,' she said, swallowing hard. 'We'll have to warn them.' She slid forward and scrambled down the bales. When she got to the ground she brushed herself down and stretched her stiff limbs. 'But will they believe us?'

'I don't think Dad will,’ Arabella said, following her down. 'He doesn't dream of magic things. The holly grove, for instance. It's just a grazing site for him. A bit of pathway up the hill. Nothing strange at all. But Mum might. She belongs to the hill, you see. It's where her family's always been. She was brought up with Wild Edric. She knows there are funny things about this hill.'

'Well, we'd better tell her then,' Bonnie said. 'Grandmother Marvell won't waste any time and neither should we.' She made for the door, anxious to get the awful moment over. Arabella watched her.

'You won't go, will you Bonnie?' she suddenly said.

Bonnie turned and stared in surprise. 'What was that?'

'When this is all over,' Arabella said, surprised at herself too. 'When Grandmother Marvell's gone and everything's safe again, you won't fly off and leave us, will you? You know…' She held up the blue stuff of the balloon and managed a shaky smile, 'fly off in your balloon.'

'But I hated you.'

'I know.'

'I could have killed you.'

'But you never did.'

Cats and mice scrambled. Sparrows chattered outside. Arabella was saying that, despite it all, things between them were all right. It couldn't have been easy for her. Bonnie thought, 'But I don't deserve to stay. It isn't all right. She might forgive me but I can't forgive myself.'

A voice broke into their thoughts. 'Arabella, Bonnie…' It was Mum up on the terrace.

Bonnie tugged the barn door. It shuddered open. 'We'll talk about that later,’ she said. 'In the meantime, there are more important things to do.' And she walked away.

After tea, Mum went straight to bed. Her face was pale and strained and despite her reluctance Dad insisted.

‘This always happens after the Show,' he said. 'It's a lot of work what with all you do for it, and then there’s been all the work on the harvest too. Come on, don't argue. I'll see to Florence and the girls will clear up tea.'

'I feel so pathetic,' said Mum. 'I ought to be going down to look for Jake.'

'He'll look after himself,' Dad said. 'He's no fool, that dog. You couldn't really lose him. You wait and see, he'll be back again in the morning.'

Bonnie had hoped this might be their chance, but Dad got hold of Mum and pushed her through the door and up the stairs. She began washing the dishes instead, not knowing whether she was sorry or relieved. She wiped the wooden table and set Mum's prize-winning flower arrangement in the middle of it. Arabella put Dad's trophy for the best milking cow up on the shelf next to the stove. Dad disappeared with Florence and her nightdress towards the bathroom. Arabella looked at the empty place beneath the window where Jake always lay.

‘Perhaps we should go and talk to Mum,' she said.

'Maybe.' Bonnie found herself hesitating.

'Or leave it till the morning?'

'I don't know.'

'Will Grandmother Marvell come in the night?'

'I don't know!'

Arabella sighed. 'Nothing feels right,’ she said. ‘It's not like Mum to go to bed so early. And it’s not like her to fail to notice when something's wrong. Why has it got to be like this tonight?'

Before Bonnie could answer, Dad reappeared. 'Florence fell asleep before I even got her into her cot,' he said. 'Let's go and light a fire in the sewing-room. It's always the same after the Bank Holiday Show. There's a definite hint of autumn in the air.'

'I'd like to go out,' Bonnie said. 'If that's all right. I'll join you later.'

'Of course,' said Dad. He filled his arms with kindling from the firebox, and newspaper and matches. 'But don't be long. You may have forgotten, Bonnie, but I haven’t forgotten how early your day started. You must be every bit as tired as Mum.'

It was a relief to stand out on the terrace in the clear, fresh air. Good to get out of the house, and to be quiet, and to hear the owls fluttering above the trees and to watch the harvest moon rising.

Bonnie slid through the gate into the orchard, up between the trees, over the stile, up the meadow. It was cool now, and getting dark. She reached the holly grove, stooped between low branches.

'Where are you?' she called. There was no reply. 'I know you're here,' she called again. 'You have to be. Look, I need to talk.’

There was still no reply. Bonnie looked all around her. Nothing stirred. Not a shadow flickered. If she'd thought the shadowboy would know what she should do - if she'd thought he'd be a friend when she needed one - she'd been a fool.

'Of course,' she whispered angrily. 'You're not a person. You don't care what happens. I forgot.'

Bonnie climbed back out of the grove. The farmhouse lay below her. Smoke was rising from the chimney and she thought of Dad and Arabella round the fire and Mum and Florence in bed. She looked at the bright lights of the fairground shining like stars in the dark valley and, as she made her way back to the house, she thought of Jake as well.

18

Arabella woke up. She stumbled out of bed, heady with sleep, and fumbled her way, hardly knowing what she was doing, into her dressing-gown. In the back of her mind she knew it wasn't really morning, wasn't time to get up yet. But all the same, she made her way down the stairs. There was something, wasn't there, something that had woken her up, something she didn't want to think about and yet it had forced her out of her bed…

The kitchen was full of steely dawn. The first of the grey morning light caught the kettle by the side of the stove. Everything was still and quiet. Arabella stooped and opened the wheel that let the air into the stove. She lifted the big lid and set the kettle on the hob. The pipes began at once to hiss with the new day's life.

What was it that Arabella didn't want to think about? She didn’t know because she couldn't get her head out of the clouds of sleep. She tightened the dressing-gown around her and fumbled with the latch. She tiptoed through the scullery and struggled with the bolts and crept outside.

The hilltop was clear, but the valley was smudged with thick, white mist, out of which only a church spire and the tallest trees protruded. Arabella sighed. What was she doing out here? She called Jake. She didn't know what made her do it, because she wasn't dressed for a walk and her feet were cold and bare. But she called, 'Jake, Jake, come here boy… ' and he didn't come. And then she knew.

It was as if Arabella had swallowed a lump of ice and it had got stuck halfway down. As if she were sinking like a bag of drowning kittens in a pond. She stared at the misty valley. Was there really a showground down there? Were there marquees, the remains of yesterday's pens and stalls and a tent of magic mirrors? Or had she, please, had she imagined it all?

She called Jake again. Once more there was no reply. The sun broke over the top of the hill on the far side of the valley. It would be hot later. It always was after mornings like this. Its rays lit up the yard and the fields around it, making them alive – shiny with dew, and green and fresh and even the mist in the valley started melting away. Arabella made out roofs and hints of hedgerows. She saw Hope Dingle. She made out flags and the top of a roundabout and the marquees…

There had been a Show. She hadn't dreamed it. There had been a tent of magic mirrors…

Back in the kitchen, the kettle bubbled cheerfully now. Jake's place by the window was bare. Leaving the boiling kettle to steam the windows, Arabella crept back through the house and up the stairs. She found Bonnie lying in bed, her fingers twisted round Godda's necklace. 'There you are,' she said. 'I wondered where you'd gone. Have you seen Mum?'

Do you know what time it is?' Arabella said

Bonnie squinted at the clock. A quarter to six. ‘Your feet are blue. What have you been doing?’ she said.

Arabella pulled off her dressing-gown. She didn't want to talk. She didn’t even want to think. She got back into bed. 'What are you doing now?' Bonnie said. 'I'm cold,’ she replied. ‘I'm going back to sleep.’ She lay looking out of the window by her bed. Above the meadow, Edric's Throne was on fire with pink morning light. Even if she had seen Mum, it would make no difference. Jake was gone.'

When Arabella awoke again, Florence was crawling across the floor.

'Hello, Florence,' she said. 'Come here. That's right. Come here, you clever girl.'

She sat up and pulled Florence onto the bed. Florence kissed her with her wet, red lips and put her soft head against her cheek. Arabella thought of Grandmother Marvell getting her too, like she’d got Jake. She thought of the mirror in the Special Room, and held Florence hard.

Bonnie was up and pulling back the curtains, looking out and pronouncing it the brightest and best of days. Arabella got up too, Florence still in her arms, and peered over Bonnie's shoulder. The mist was all gone. The sun was bright and breakfast high. The morning birds were singing. But it was not - they both knew it - the brightest and best of days.

'Let's go and find Mum,' Arabella said with a heavy heart.

'All right,' Bonnie sighed.

But Mum’s bedroom was empty. Arabella frowned, surprised. There was no sign of Mum and the house was never usually quiet like this. You could always hear Mum singing and the sound of laughter and voices downstairs.

'Something's not right.'

Bonnie and Arabella tumbled downstairs. 'There you are,' said Dad when they reached the kitchen. 'And Florence. Give her to me. I was just coming to get you. Breakfast's ready. Sit down.'

The girls stared. Mum sat at the table, weakly stirring a cup of tea. Dad stood over the stove, smoke rising from a pan of overcooked bacon and eggs. The kettle boiled. The toast burned. Mum didn't move.

'What's wrong, Mum?' Arabella said.

Mum looked up at her and smiled weakly. 'Nothing's wrong,' she said, reaching out to touch her flower arrangement in the centre of the table. 'Which of you put it there? It looks nice, doesn't it? I'm tired, that's all. You may not have noticed, but we've had a harvest the last couple of weeks, and yesterday we had the Show.'

'The grain man will be here in a minute,' Dad said. 'I'll have to go. Will you be all right? Perhaps you girls could help get the food on the table.'

They piled breakfast onto plates. Mum wrinkled her nose when one was given to her. 'I can’t,' she said. 'I think you should,' Dad replied. Mum reached for an orange from the fruit bowl instead. 'This will do for me,' she said. 'Don't look like that. I'm quite all right. All I need is to wake up properly. Bonnie, could you feed Florence for me?'

There was the sound of an engine chugging into the yard. Dad flung himself into his overalls. Then there was the scraping of the scullery door and footsteps beyond the kitchen door and then its latch lifting. Mr Onions' face appeared.

'Evans is here.'

'I'm just coming,' said Dad. 'Girls, you stay and help Mum.' He took a few quick mouthfuls of breakfast, then made for the door.

Bonnie put Florence in her high chair. Dad called that he’d ask Mrs Onions to come down and help. Mum smiled wanly. Then Dad was gone.

Bonnie fed Florence and finished her own breakfast. She watched Mum eat the orange and lick her fingers clean. She still wore her dressing-gown. And her hair, usually so carefully pinned and combed, hung over her shoulders in untidy tails. Maybelle's hair was always like that, and she always wore a dressing-gown at breakfast time, and she always slouched over the table as if she couldn't wake up, and sniffed at food and stirred and stirred her cup of tea…

Arabella stared at Bonnie. They were alone. Now was their chance. Bonnie took a deep, nervous breath. It had been easy telling her story to Arabella in the first relief of their escape. It had all just tumbled out. But this was different. She didn't know where to begin. Her mouth went dry. What should she say?

'Jake's not back,' Mum said, helpfully. 'I can't understand it. I thought he would have been by now. I'm feeling quite bad because I didn't go down again last night to look for him.'

'Jake isn't coming back.' Bonnie seized her chance. Her voice came out all harsh and lumpy. She hardly could believe that it was hers. 'We didn't just lose him like we said. We didn't want to tell you. You see, something happened.'

Mum stared foggily at her. 'What do you mean?'

'And it could happen to us all,' Arabella said. 'You, Florence, Dad, Bonnie, me… '

Out in the yard, there was a sudden din of tractors turning and men shouting, engines revving, vehicles negotiating. Mum frowned. She got up and closed the window. 'Say that again…’

'Jake's not coming home,' Bonnie said. 'You see…' Mum turned from the window with a puzzled frown. 'Jake's dead,' Bonnie said. 'We saw it happen. We saw him die.'

The scullery door scraped again. There were footsteps. 'No,' said Mum, shaking her head as the latch lifted on the kitchen door. 'No, Bonnie, you've got that wrong.'

Arabella went to say she hadn’t, but was interrupted. 'Is anybody home?' called a voice. And Jake came bounding in.

19

Bonnie recognized the voice straight away. She could see the black-and-bead-coat in her mind's eye seconds before the kitchen door opened properly and Grandmother Marvell appeared, wearing, as it turned out, not Grandbag's famous coat, but a searing green, gaudy summer dress.

'Didn't mean to startle you,' she said, twitching at the neckline of the dress. 'Found him this morning underneath my trailer. Someone said he was yours. He is yours, isn't he? People get so attached to their animals, don't they?'

The old woman stood hesitantly on the threshold. Her voice, Bonnie realized, was struggling to be soft and nice. She smiled round at them, even at Bonnie, whom yesterday she'd more or less ignored. If it hadn't been for the bandaged hand where Jake had bitten it, Bonnie might have wondered if her distrust was misplaced. That, and the sudden stinging pain around her neck, and a quick dart of the old woman’s eyes that took in everything, so that Bonnie could imagine her - just as Grandbag might have done - adding Dad's silver cup and Mum's flower arrangement and the hanging lamp and the old copper pans to some nasty, greedy jackdaw's hoard somewhere.

Jake sniffed his way round the room. He stopped at Mum's feet. Mum ruffled his hair. Her tired face smiled over his head at the visitor.

'Yes, he's our dog. How kind of you to bring him home. Come in and sit down. Come on. Don't just stand there. We were getting a bit worried because he never usually runs away.'

'You're busy,’ Grandmother Marvell said. 'There's all that going on outside and you haven't even finished breakfast. It's not a time to call, I know. I'm sure you've got lots to do, and I don't want to hold you up. What a lovely baby you have. How old is she? What a lovely house this is.'

'We're not busy,' Mum said. 'Of course you're not holding us up. I'll put the kettle on. It's the least I can do after you've come up here all this way. It is a nice house, isn't it?'

Grandmother Marvell allowed herself to be persuaded in. She sat down at the table and looked around. Her cold eyes throbbed with good will but there was something behind that good will, wasn't there?

'We don't often get visitors,' Mum said. 'The track, you know. Did you come up with the grain man?'

'I brought my car,' Grandmother Marvell said. 'It wasn't too difficult.'

Bonnie stared out of the window at an ancient car. It was just Grandbag's sort of vehicle. She remembered a succession of rusty Cortinas and a creaking Hillman that smoked on every hill. She stared beyond the car, at the twisty track and the distant valley. How had Grandmother Marvell got it up here, especially with that huge wrapped bundle tied onto the roof-rack? It must have been terrible trying to get up the bumpy track, over the little bridge and between the deep ruts of the twisty canyon.

And what was that bundle on the roof-rack?

Arabella was sitting at the table now and Mum was telling Grandmother Marvell their names. She poured boiling water into the teapot. The surprise of a visitor had stripped her of her earlier weariness. She looked like herself again. That was more than Bonnie could say for Jake. He stood awkwardly on the rug by the stove as if he didn't know what to do, or where to go. He looked so lost...

'He's not himself,' said Mum.

'Poor thing,' said Grandmother Marvell. 'He missed you all. He was really unhappy. That's why I thought I'd better bring him back as quick as possible.'

'He's feeling ashamed,' said Mum. 'That's what's wrong with him. He's never gone off overnight like that before.' She glanced across at Bonnie. 'He loves going out with you,' she said. 'Why don't you take him for a run? Let him stretch his legs and get the feeling of being back at home again.'

'But… ' Bonnie began.

'Arabella, get the teacups will you?' Mum went on. 'Bonnie, we'll save you a cup. You don't have to take him on a real walk or anything. Just let him run up and down.'

Bonnie hovered. How could she go? What would happen when her back was turned? What would Grandmother Marvell do? Her eyes met Arabella's. 'I don't know what to do,' they said, and Arabella's eyes said the same.

'Go on,' said Mum. 'Or the tea will get cold.'

Out on the terrace, Jake began to sniff and explore. Bonnie followed him away from the busy yard, up into the orchard. She talked to herself. 'I don't understand it,' she said. 'We saw him go. He died. I’m sure he did.'

The necklace stung her neck again.

'Oh, wretched, wretched necklace,' she thought. 'Why can't you tell me what'll happen next? Instead of just stinging, why can't you tell me what to do?'

Bonnie sat on the edge of the well, where she could see up between the trees towards Edric's Throne. 'If you're really there, why can't you come and help us? A stupid, stinging necklace is useless on its own. We want to see you galloping to the rescue with horses, flowing hair and flashing jewels…'

Her eyes turned back to Jake. He was standing very still. He didn't seem to look at anything. He didn't, somehow, seem like Jake.

'Jake,’ Bonnie called. 'Jake, come here!'

He came up to her, but not as though in answer to her call. His response seemed detached, almost accidental. He lifted his head and stared at her. It was as though he'd never seen her before. As if he was a stranger.

'What's the matter with you?' Bonnie said, and as she said it she knew. As she put out her hand and felt the dog that looked like Jake, she knew he wasn't. He didn't feel the same. He didn't smell the same or behave the same. He only looked the same. And, when you lifted his face and looked into those pale, limp eyes, he didn't even really look the same. Bonnie let the dog go. Relieved that the scrutiny was over, he turned away and began his half-hearted explorations again.

'You're not Jake!'

At that moment, Dad turned the tractor in the yard. Bonnie looked up at the noise, and caught a brief glimpse of him between the trees. 'Would he know,’ she said to herself, 'if Mum and Arabella disappeared, the same as Jake, and Grandmother Marvell sent back empty shells instead?'

'Of course he would,' she said right back. And then, 'No, he wouldn't. Oh, he'd know something was wrong. But he'd never think, nobody would, that they were really gone.'

Bonnie got up and began to run back towards the house. So where was Jake really? What had Grandmother Marvell done with him? If she captured Mum and Arabella and Florence, where would they go too? Would they be dead? Would they be in some dark, bodiless, terrible place, never to be set free again?

'No one would ever come and rescue them. No one would know. It would be worse than death, and all the time there'd be... ' Bonnie looked towards the Jake-creature, 'things like that, here in their place. And no one would know.'

Frantically Bonnie squeezed through the orchard gate and ran along the terrace, through the scraping scullery door, through the darkness and back, with pounding heart, into the kitchen.

Mum sat at the table, with her tea. Arabella leaned over her. Grandmother Marvell was laughing the ordinary, friendly laugh of one who enjoys good company and has not a bad thought in the world. Postcards were spread in front of them. They were all looking and laughing and turning them over. It was a happy scene. Grandmother Marvell's jet-shiny hair bounced as she laughed, her red lips parted. She smoothed down her dress. But as Bonnie got close she saw that the hair was dyed, the smooth face was powdered thickly, the skin beneath the lipstick was wrinkled and coarse. That things were not what they seemed to be.

She too peered over Mum's shoulder. The postcards were of exotic places. Arabella, by her side, hardly seemed to notice that she was back, but Grandmother Marvell looked up and wrapped her long fingers round her cup of tea and said in a voice that had an edge to it, 'How's that dog, then? Settled down, has he?'

Bonnie looked at the stringy fingers, the long, painted nails. The fingers were just like the ones in the tickling dream. Grandmother Marvell's nails clacked against the china cup. Clack, click! She smiled at Bonnie, and Bonnie remembered how Grandbag loved to taunt. She remembered those nails digging into her and she thought, 'Maybe it was a dream, but once it was something more, wasn't it? It really used to happen.'

Clack, click!

Arabella turned a flushed, unnatural, excited face - a face that made Bonnie feel cold inside - towards Grandmother Marvell. It was as if she'd been bewitched. As if she'd forgotten what had happened yesterday. She brandished a postcard. 'Have you really been there?' she said.

'Of course I have,' Grandmother Marvell took the postcard and looked at it. 'I've been everywhere.'

'You’re lucky then. I've never been anywhere.'

Grandmother Marvell smiled as if this was exactly what she'd been waiting for. 'In that case, there's something outside you might care to see,' she said. ‘Something far more interesting than postcards.’ She turned to Mum, and so did Bonnie. Mum looked flushed, just like Arabella. What had Grandmother Marvell done to them? 'I wonder if that nice husband of yours would help me get it down,’ she said. ‘Then we can unwrap it together and you can see what it is.'

Arabella jumped up. Suddenly Bonnie knew, even without Godda's necklace leaping warnings round her neck, what Grandmother Marvell was talking about. It was the magic mirror, wasn't it? She tried to warn to Arabella with her eyes, but Arabella refused to look at her.

Bonnie cried out in a panic.

'What is it?' Mum said.

Before Bonnie could reply, Grandmother Marvell leaned across the table and focused on Mum's eyes. She spoke very softly, as if just between the two of them. 'You’d like to see the future, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘To see the world beyond this kitchen and this point in time. Don't deny it. I know. You've got things on your mind. I saw right away when I walked in that there are things you'd like to know.'

Mum's face flushed. It was as if Grandmother Marvell had tapped some spring of secret things inside her. 'You can't really tell the future, can you?' she said. But behind the lightness in her voice, secret words pleaded, 'Please, please do.'

Grandmother Marvell tapped her nails together and smiled her best smile. Mum got up to go. 'Wait!' cried out Bonnie. They all stared at her. What could she do to hold them back? 'Wait for me,’ she said. ‘I want to come too, but I’m not dressed. I haven’t even got my shoes. Will you wait for me? I’ll just be a minute…'

For the first time Grandmother Marvell's eyes lost their battle to be nice. They became Grandbag's angry black eyes and Bonnie thought, 'If I beat her now, I'm beating Grandbag too. If I can get rid of her, I'm getting rid of Grandbag. Whatever do I mean by that? I don't know. What am I going to do? I don't know!'

'Well, hurry up then,' said Mum. 'I'll wash up the cups while you’re gone.'

'I won't be long.'

Bonnie raced upstairs. She could halt the process for a minute, but she'd have to come back down again and what would happen then? In her panic, as if trying to put as much space between herself and Grandmother Marvell, she climbed the attic stairs too. She hadn't been up here since the first day, hadn't even thought of it, but the stinging necklace seemed to drive her on. It weighed a ton and was hot like fire. Oh, Edric! Oh, Godda! Where were they now?

Bonnie slid through the attic hatch, picked her way along the holes in the floor and peered out of the window at the end. No Edric on horseback stood in the apple orchard ready to rescue them. No Godda. Was this the best they could do?

'Edric, Godda, tell me what to do.'

Bonnie opened the skylight, slid out onto the roof and down onto the flat bit. Over the little parapet wall she saw that the Bank Holiday Show down in the valley was being dismantled. Marquees were collapsing, rides were being taken down, lorries were driving across the showground onto the road. Oh, it was a long, long way down there, and yet something from it had struggled all that way up the hill to get them. It was here in the yard tied to the top of an old car. Bonnie looked down. It was a long way to the ground.

Bonnie's heart fluttered. She swallowed hard. If she fell, she'd break something - her back or legs or head, no doubt about it. But they'd have to rush her off the hill to hospital and there’d be no time for unwrapping magic mirrors. Grandmother Marvell’s spell would be broken. In the panic she’d be forgotten.

Bonnie swallowed again. It might be a crazy idea, but there were no Edric and Godda to come to her rescue. She had no choice, she reckoned. Suddenly it was just like being in the tent again. Like when she put out her hand to push Arabella into the mirror and her arm had gone ahead of her and she’d felt detached from things. Everything became incredibly slow. Bonnie climbed onto the little wall and watched herself doing it. Quickly, before she changed her mind. She slithered along the edge. She watched her body go.

This time no hand reached out to grab Bonnie back. Then the film changed speed. The terrace rushed at her. She never knew before that, when you fell, you did it so fast…

20

There was a thud outside. It wasn't like any of the other sounds out in the yard already, the reverberating tractor engine or the clatter of the gate or grain tumbling into Evans' truck with its succession of small sucks and echoes. It was softer than these sounds and yet they all heard it, muffled, flat and sore as a bruise.

Mum looked up sharply. The strange flushed look disappeared from her face. Arabella shook her head as if a spell had been broken. Outside someone switched off the tractor engine.

'What was that?' said Mum as if she knew it was something dreadful.

There were shouts in the yard, and footsteps coming up onto the terrace. Dad rushed past the kitchen window, followed by the grain man and Mr Onions and Henry and Ned. Mum dropped everything and made straight for the door. Arabella followed her. They stumbled through the darkness of the scullery, tripping over each other in their eagerness to get outside. Mum hauled back the scullery door. Arabella chased her down the step. The crowd of men at the end of the terrace looked up at the sight of them. What was it, down there between them? They shifted slightly, and Mum and Arabella saw…

There, on the ground between the men, lay Bonnie. Her eyes were closed. Her body was strewn across the stones like an unloved rag doll that had been thrown away. Her hair was spread around her and her head lay right beside a great stone flower trough. Another inch, and it would have been split open.

Mum pushed between them all. Arabella did the same. Bonnie's face was parchment white. There was not a movement, not even a breath. Arabella remembered that first morning when Bonnie had been a stranger lying exhausted, weak and dew-drenched in the holly grove. This time it was different. Bonnie wasn't a stranger any more. This time was different. She was really dead.

'Mum,' she said. 'Oh, Mum...!'

Mum leaned forward. Dad got hold of Arabella by the shoulders and held her tight. Mum began to scrape Bonnie up into her arms. Her face too was ghastly white. She touched the necklace and looked up questioningly towards the open attic window. Then she looked down at Bonnie's face, with not a mark on it.

'Help me,' she said to the men. 'She's not dead. Help me get her indoors.'

Dad put Arabella aside. He reached down and with gentle hands took Bonnie from Mum. Mum stood aside and let him carry her back along the terrace.

They reached the scullery door in a little procession. And Grandmother Marvell greeted them. She came out of the darkness like a farm rat comes from its lair. All the niceness was stripped away and the bright light of day was cruel to the face beneath the powdery makeup. Her eyes swept impatiently over the men and the bundle of Bonnie. As Mum and Arabella made to pass her by, she plucked at Mum's arm.

'Leave it to the men,' she said, in a wheedling voice. 'Don't fret. They'll take her in, they'll sort her out, they don't need you, she'll be all right.' She plucked again. 'Come and see my mirror. You mightn't have another chance. Come on, do... '

Mum stared at Grandmother Marvell. Really stared at her. As if she'd never seen her before. As if she recognized her for what she was, even if she didn't know the half of what she was.

'Get off me,’ she said, and she pulled her arm away. 'What's wrong with you? Can't you see what's happened?'

'But this matters more.' Grandmother Marvell said as if she truly couldn't see what had happened. She smiled blindly, awfully, from one to the other of them, and there was no kindness in her voice now. 'You don't understand. This matters more.'

'It doesn't matter more,' Mum said in a voice that anyone who knew her would never have argued with. 'It doesn't matter at all. Get away.'

There was a flicker of a pause while Grandmother Marvell registered surprise, rejection, failure. Then the smile disappeared like sunshine behind dark clouds. The black eyes shone like headlamps in a storm. The hand reached out again. Arabella recoiled. The hand was reaching for her. What was it about those fingers?

'You'd better come with me instead,' she said, fixing Arabella with her eyes. 'They don't need you in there. Come on. My magic mirror… '

Mum pushed Arabella ahead of her into the scullery and slammed the door behind her. She locked and bolted it. Locked the door with Grandmother Marvell on the step outside. What was she doing? This wasn't like her! She picked at her arm where the old woman had touched her, as if trying to pluck even the memory of the touch away. Her hand shook. She looked up at the shut bolts.

'I've locked her out, Belle,' she said. 'I've locked her out.'

A furious knocking began outside. Mum felt as if she could almost see those burning headlamp eyes through the thickness of the wood. She could almost see the knuckles hammering.

'Let’s go and see to Bonnie,’ she said firmly.

Arabella looked uncertainly at the door. The bolts were shaking.

'She can't get in,' said Mum. 'Hundreds of years of storms have never knocked that door down. The best thing to do is to forget she's there.'

'But…’

'Forget she's there, I said.' Mum turned her back on the door, and led Arabella away to where Bonnie was laid out on the settee in the cold, unused living-room.

'Michael,’ Mum said to Dad, 'open out the sofa bed in the sewing-room. Arabella, go and get some blankets…'

Mum sat with Bonnie while they were gone. She didn't even notice that the knocking had stopped. The men hovered anxiously by the fireplace. Mr Onions said he'd go for his wife. Mum didn’t even answer. Her shoulders had sunk and she looked drained and tired. Bonnie's eyes flickered and she moaned. Mum felt her all over for cuts and bruises and broken bones. The side gate creaked outside, and footsteps faded away. Then the shaky old car turned, screeching in the yard, and clattered off.

'Who was that?' Dad said, returning to the room. Mum shrugged. 'It doesn't matter. I don’t know. All I know is she's gone.'

'I’d best call for an ambulance,' Dad said.

Mum looked down at Bonnie. 'I don’t think we need it,’ she said in a strange voice. ‘Her bones aren’t broken. I’m sure of that. And I’ve got the weirdest feeling that nothing else is wrong. Look, she’s coming round. I know this sounds crazy, but I think she’s all right.’

'How can that be?'

'I don’t know.'

Bonnie was carried through to Mum’s little sitting-room. When she came round, the first thing she saw was Edric and Godda looking down at her. Edric and Godda, who had caught her as she fell, who had saved her, hadn’t they — and here they still were. Bonnie looked up and tried to thank them. Godda's necklace shone down at her from round Godda's neck, and her hand was outstretched, and Edric’s hand was on Godda’s shoulder and both of them were smiling…

Then Bonnie saw the cracks in the paintwork across Edric's face, and the gilt frame. She realized she was in the sewing-room on the sofa bed. She was looking at a painting, not the real thing. And yet she had a memory of the earth coming up at her and hands as light as angels' wings – Edric’s and Godda’s hands - bringing her down. She closed her eyes and lived through it all again. The open attic window. The slide down to the flat bit and the wall. The hardness of that parapet wall. The almost-taste of her heart beating in her mouth as she pushed the bricks and mortar away. Then Edric and Godda and their hands. Then the darkness. Bonnie went through it again. And then again…

Somewhere close, someone was crying. Bonnie opened her eyes. Arabella was by her side. She felt something gently moving. It was Arabella's thumb rubbing the back of her hand. She turned her head and Arabella looked at her, wiped her eyes and smiled. Why had Arabella been crying? What had happened? All she had was the memory of falling. No memory of anything before. No understanding of what it had all been about. What she wanted was peace, to go to sleep again. But how could she when there were things she was plainly missing? Bonnie tried to speak.

'She's gone,' Arabella whispered. 'She's gone away. It's all right now. Oh, Bonnie, she'd have had us both if it wasn't for you. I'd never have had the courage to do what you did. It was crazy, but you were so brave. And it worked. Oh, Bonnie, Mum hated her. She showed herself for what she really was, and now she's gone and Mum will never let her back.'

Bonnie frowned. She didn't understand. She didn't know what Arabella was talking about. All she knew about was the fall. Every time she blinked, every time she closed her eyes…

The door opened. Mum came in. ‘You’re awake,' she said and smiled with relief. She sat down on Bonnie's other side. Bonnie struggled to speak to them.

'Don't,' said Mum. 'Not yet. There's plenty of time later. You fell out of the window but by some miracle you seem to be all right.' She smiled again and patted Bonnie on the arm. 'Your bones don't seem to be broken,' she said. 'They should be, you know. You've been very lucky and you've got to rest.'

'I... I can't… remember… '

'You won't yet. Don't worry. You knocked yourself out,' Mum said. 'You're going to feel a bit confused, but it'll all come back when it's ready.'

Bonnie fell asleep again and dreamed. She woke and slept and woke and slept again. Distantly she became aware of Mrs Onions and Mum and Arabella. Then she came round and Dad was leaning against the fireplace, just looking and looking at her.

‘This has happened before, hasn't it?' Bonnie thought, and a picture of herself in the bed upstairs came into her mind. She saw Mum sitting by the window, looking for all the world like Maybelle, and Arabella standing in the doorway looking just like her.

Then slowly Bonnie began to remember other bits and pieces too. Pictures came back to her of the house, the yard, the orchard, the meadow, of the dusty attic with its telescope, of wooden beads and books in trunks, of Dad standing in the dark with his pipe, his eyes glinting as he looked down the valley. Looked down the valley at what?

Something was still missing. Something important. Bonnie looked around. Dad was gone. Arabella sat in the armchair by the fireplace. And suddenly the memory of Grandbag's face slithered out of Bonnie’s mind. She heard her emphatic voice say, 'Well, well, well, and how are you?' She saw her lift a tent flap and step outside wearing her special, gloating, triumphant look.

Of course! Bonnie cried out.

'Bonnie, what is it?' Arabella said

'Grandbag… ' Bonnie said.

'I told you. Remember? She's gone.'

Bonnie stared at Arabella. Grandmother Marvell and Grandbag flickered in green-summer, black-bead pictures through her head. Grandmother Marvell, Grandbag, Grandmother Marvell, Grandbag, Grandbag… Unwelcome memories rushed forth demented from Bonnie’s brain, all the memories that made up her life tumbling forth like circus acrobats. Bonnie couldn't see Edric and Godda shining above the fireplace any more. She couldn't even see Arabella. It didn't matter what she was saying about Grandmother Marvell being gone. It didn't make any difference if she was. The hot balloon of hatred hovered above Bonnie’s head, drank the smoke of her pain. Hatred of life, of people, of everything. That hadn’t gone.

'Things can seem so pretty, so nice,' Bonnie found herself shouting at the mellow, soft room. 'But underneath it all there's nothing you can really trust.'

It was like her real voice speaking for the first time, something deep inside herself daring to come out and make itself known. Bonnie closed her eyes tight and held her hands together over them as if she was in pain.

Then Arabella's voice cut softly through her darkness, swelled with unexpected confidence.

'You're wrong, you know,' she said, leaning forward urgently. 'It doesn't have to be like that. Not everyone’s like Grandmother Marvell, you know. Not everyone’s like Grandbag either…’

Bonnie heard the new tone in Arabella’s voice. Her hands didn't move. 'What do you mean?'

'Not everybody’s out for themselves,’ Arabella said. ‘Take Mrs Onions. She looked after me when Mum was expecting Florence. She did it for ages because Mum was ill. When Florence was born, she told me she'd love to have a baby too, and I said, "Why don't you?" and she laughed and said, "Some things aren't meant to be. Besides, I'm too old now."’

'I don't see what you're getting at,' Bonnie said.

'If anyone could have turned all bitter and greedy and nasty, you'd have thought it would be her,' Arabella said. 'But it never happened.'

The words dripped into the darkness inside Bonnie's head. A picture began to form of Mrs Onions with Florence in her arms making for the tea tent down at the Show. Mrs Onions, with her baby birds and sick badgers and once, it seemed, Arabella too.

'You can trust Mrs Onions,' Arabella said. 'You can trust Mum. You can trust Dad. You can trust me…'

The door opened. It was Mum again with a drink of some kind in her hand. 'Off you go, Arabella. I'll sit with Bonnie now.'

Arabella left, and Mum sat down and offered the drink. Bonnie's head spun. She wanted peace. She wanted peace. She didn't want the drink, or Arabella telling her she could trust people. And there was still something… some final, unhappy memory that struggled to get free… something that had not returned to Bonnie yet. What was it?

'Come on, Bonnie. Have this little drink. Open your eyes. Take your hands away. Come back to us. Don't leave us,' Mum said.

And then Bonnie knew. For Arabella had said it too, out in the barn. 'Don't leave us, Bonnie,' she'd said. Those exact words, full of forgiveness when it could so easily have been anger. 'When it's all over, don't, you know, fly off with your balloon.'

And in her mind how had Bonnie responded? 'She may forgive me,’ she’d thought, ‘but I'll never forgive myself. I will have to go.'

'What's the matter?' Mum said.

Tears began to splash down Bonnie's cheeks. She thought of Mrs Onions with somebody else's Florence in her arms. 'Life's not fair,' she said, and then, 'Oh please, oh please, I don't want to go… '

Mum put her arms around Bonnie and held her tight. She didn't say 'don't cry'. 'You don't ever have to go,' she said instead.

'Don't ever have to go?'

'We love you, Bonnie, you silly girl.'

'But you don't know what I've done. You don't know the danger I brought into your lives.'

'I don't want to know. It's over now. It's gone,' said Mum as if she understood. And, as she said it, the strangest thing happened to Bonnie. The memories seemed to fade, slide, slither away as if they weren't real any more, as if they didn't matter.

'They've both gone,' thought Bonnie, though she didn't quite know why. 'Grandbag too... '

PART SIX

The Magic Mirror

21

They sat in the meadow eating blackberries and looking down on the farmhouse roof. Smoke from the kitchen chimney rose, straight and thin, into a morning sky. Bonnie tilted her head and followed its path up, up, up…

'I haven't looked at the sky for ages,' she said. 'Not the way I used to do. Funny how things change.'

Arabella looked all around her. ‘They do, don’t they?' she said. 'I used to be so lonely and bored. Even when Florence came along. I can't imagine life without you now.'

'It's only a month since the Bank Holiday Show,' Bonnie said. She looked beyond the farmhouse roof at the showground which had become a farmer's field again. ‘Yet it seems so long ago.'

'The leaves aren't yellow yet,' Arabella said, 'But autumn definitely is here. Funny how things change.'

Mum came up through the orchard towards them. She leaned on the stile, Florence in her arms, and called. 'Bonnie, Arabella!'

She wore a thick cardigan over her frock and Florence wore a coat. The morning air was more than fresh. It was sharp. Things were changing. Arabella got up brushing blackberry crumbs out of her lap. 'She'll want us to help,' she said. 'There'll be lots to do with harvest supper tonight.'

They ran down the meadow and climbed over the stile into the orchard, heavy now with apples and plums. Mum had set Florence down to crawl through the grass. She'd seated herself on the low wall of the blocked-up well and, as they approached, she patted the stones by her side.

'Sit down,' she said. 'There's lots to do today. Mrs Onions will be down soon to help me cook but, before she comes, I wanted to talk to you.'

There was something in her voice. 'It's school,' Arabella hissed. 'She's going to start school again. I thought we wouldn't get away with it much longer.'

They sat down. Florence crawled to them and pulled herself up. 'There's no simple way to tell you this,' Mum said. 'Dad wanted me to make an announcement at breakfast time, but I'm not much good at things like that. I'd much rather just slip it out while we're piling logs or picking plums or getting ready for the harvest supper. But, even then, it doesn't come out easily.’

She clasped and unclasped her hands. This wasn't about school.

'You must have noticed I haven't been quite myself,' she said. 'It's a bit like last time. Doctor says I've got to be very quiet, and I might have to spend a lot of time in bed. I hope he's wrong, because I hate it. I'm not used to being ill and I get so cross with myself. It's going to be hard for you, Arabella. You've already put up with it once. I'm having another baby.'

Another baby? The girls sat, stunned. Then Florence stood all on her own, announcing in the only way she knew that she wasn't a baby any more. Another baby!

Bonnie fell upon Mum. She'd never thought she'd be part of a family where the Mum had a baby. 'Mum, oh Mum… Another baby? That's just wonderful…' Her eyes shone with excitement and Mum caught hold of her and wobbling Florence too, and looked over their heads at Arabella.

'When Mum?' was all Arabella said.

'March, April… If all goes well, of course. I mean we nearly lost Florence. You know that. And we don't want to lose this baby.' Mum shivered.

'But we won't,' Bonnie said. 'I mean, you won’t. There's two of us to help this time. You won't have to worry about a thing. We can cook and clean and help with Florence, and Mrs Onions will help too.'

'I am pleased, Mum,' Arabella said. 'It's just… '

'I know,' said Mum. 'It was hard with Florence. Who'd have thought it would happen again. And so soon.'

'Are you pleased, Mum?' Arabella said.

'Yes, I am,' said Mum.

'And Dad?'

'He's delighted.'

Arabella's face broke into a smile and suddenly she was in Mum's arms too and all four of them were hugging each other and clinging on tight.

'You shouldn't have to teach us this term,' Arabella said. 'It'll make you too tired. And we won't have time for lessons anyhow. We'll be too busy helping.'

Mum laughed. 'You're an opportunist,' she said. 'Do you know what that means? You can look it up in the dictionary when we go in. It can be your first task. Of course I'm not letting you off school. It's important and you've got to do it. You'll understand how much it matters some day.'

'I hope it's a boy this time,' Arabella said.

'I don’t mind what it is,' said Mum.

They sat very quietly. The sun rose in the sky. Mosquitoes hovered over the well. An apple fell off a tree, thudding in the long grass. Florence began to crawl again.

'Every life changes the world,’ Mum said suddenly. 'It's frightening really. It makes you cling to what you've got. It makes you fear the future.'

'That doesn't sound like you, Mum,' Arabella said.

Mum stretched and smiled and got up. 'Oh, I'm not so different from you. Impatient for change, yet anxious when I see it coming. Sometimes I want to make time stand still. Sometimes I can't wait for tomorrow to happen. Funny, isn't it?' She picked up Florence. 'Let's go and get that harvest supper ready.'

When they returned indoors, Dad had the trestle tables down from the attic and in pieces all over the living- room floor.

'It's the same every year,' Mum said. 'Dad can't remember how to put the bits together, and I can't believe how dusty the place has got.'

She disappeared and returned with a vacuum cleaner, then mops and buckets, tins of polish and dusters. 'It always gets like this,' she said to Bonnie. 'It's because we hardly ever use the living-room in the summer months. It's a great room for the winter, though. We always have the Christmas tree in here. And it's certainly the only place on Highholly Hill that's big enough for a supper like this.'

'Who's coming?' Bonnie asked. The first trestle table was up. It looked very big and there were two more to come. Dad had gone back into the attic to find the missing bits.

'Oh,’ said Mum, 'there'll be Henry and Ned and Evans and Mrs Evans, and friends from the village and all the people who still live up behind Roundhill and Mr and Mrs Onions, of course… In fact, has either of you seen Mrs Onions? Dad said she'd be down first thing. I haven't seen her for days.'

The girls shook their heads. They stood on either side of Mum's dilapidated vacuum cleaner, surveying the size of the task in hand. Bonnie clutched a feather duster.

Arabella valiantly said, 'We can do all this. You ought to rest.'

Mum smiled. She had a feeling it was the first of many times she'd hear those words. 'That's very kind of you,' she said. 'I'm going to take you up on that. But there's a lot of cooking I ought to do before I rest.'

Distantly, they heard the kitchen door scrape open, and a voice call. It was Mrs Onions. 'Good,' said Mum. 'Now I can get on. We're in here,' she called back.

Mrs Onions' footsteps rang on the kitchen floor. Her face peered round the door. There was something flustered about it. 'I meant to come down earlier,' she said. 'I meant to come down yesterday as well. I'm really sorry.'

'That's all right,' said Mum. 'Don't worry.'

'I... I want you to meet someone,' Mrs Onions said. 'I've got him out in the kitchen. He'll be very helpful. You could do with another pair of hands. He'll have those tables up and scrubbed in no time.'

Mum stared curiously. There was something odd about Mrs Onions this morning. Mrs Onions turned her head and called.

'Jim!'

Bonnie, not knowing why, slipped secretively into the shadows of the inglenook. As she did so a boy appeared. He sidled round the doorway as if afraid of meeting people. Mrs Onions hovered over him, proud and strangely nervous. He wore grey trousers and what must have been one of Mr Onions' checked working shirts which had been cut down. He had shiny, brown, untidy hair, rosy cheeks and bright brown eyes. He looked wild and strong and shy, like Mrs Onions' badgers and rabbits and wounded birds. His gaze went round the room, but passed by Bonnie in the shadow of the fireplace.

'I've found a boy,' Mrs Onions said. 'He hadn't got anywhere else to go, so he's staying with Mr Onions and me. He’s been making himself really useful. He can do all sorts of things. He’s really quick and strong. I've never seen anything like it. He says he doesn't even have a name, you know. So we’ve called him Jim, after Mr Onions' dad.'

Mum smiled a welcome. She didn’t hesitate. She crossed the room and took the boy's hand. He tried a shaky smile in return, but didn't speak.

'What a crowd we're becoming. Boys and girls appearing from all over the place,' Mum said. 'Well, Jim, you couldn't find a better place to stay than with Mrs Onions. I'm sure you'll be very happy there. Now if you really would be prepared to help us... '

She led the boy off to the trestle tables. Mrs Onions said she'd get on with the pies and Arabella volunteered to help her. Once he’d got something to do, the boy seemed to relax.

'What world is this,' thought Bonnie from the inglenook, 'where children like us can be plucked off the hill and no questions are asked?'

'We'll be in the kitchen if you want us,' Mum said when she was sure the boy had everything he needed. She headed for the door, leaving behind the distant echoes of other words at another time: 'This isn't like anywhere else you've been. It doesn't matter where you come from. We don't ask questions here.'

When the room was quiet, Bonnie came out of the shadows. The boy stared at her as if he’d known all along that she was there. Close up, he seemed all muscles and flesh. Real blood ran through his veins. He looked so different.

'I've never put a table together before,' he said. 'You'll have to help me.'

He was, of course, the shadowboy.

22

Bonnie took him in from head to foot. 'You've changed so much,' she said. 'I hardly recognize you.'

He looked down at his own hands with their lifelines and branching blue and pink veins. 'I hardly recognize myself… '

'I came for you,' Bonnie said. 'I came up to the holly grove. You must have heard me call. I swore after that I'd never look for you again. I'd never speak to you again. I’d needed a friend and you wouldn't answer me…'

Her voice shook. She was surprised at herself. Was it anger? Or was it the unexpectedness of it all?

The boy sighed. 'That seems so long ago,' he said. 'You went away. I was so lonely. I did want to be friends, but the wanting frightened me. I'd never felt anything like that before, you see. The hill seemed cold and empty and hard after you had gone. And I was frightened. I could feel things in me changing, changing! I didn't feel like the same boy any more and I couldn't stop it happening…'

'It sounds like being born,' Bonnie said, thinking of Mum and the hidden baby she was having, locked away in a secret, dark world inside herself. No choices, no understanding who he was, or where he was, or where he came from or why he did the things he did. 'It sounds like growing up as well. Don't ask me what I mean. I don't really know, but Maybelle always said growing up was terrible. How did Mrs Onions find you?'

Jim’s face lit up like a real boy's, with no shadows anywhere. 'I was walking down towards the cottages. It was very early. Mr Onions was going to work and Mrs Onions came down to the gate to see him off. She turned to go back in, and then she saw me beyond the wall. I couldn't get away from her. She leapt on me and called me a poor little thing — I suppose I must have been damp with dew or something, and pale and cold — and she dragged me in.'

'Dragged you in? Mrs Onions?'

'Well, I suppose I could have got away from her if I’d wanted. But I was curious, and so lonely. Before I knew where I was she'd got me inside and fed me. I kept telling myself I'd go next time she turned her back, but I liked the ticking clock and the smell of fire and food, and the warmth, and by the time she'd rubbed me with a towel and got me into clean clothes I wasn't afraid of human hands any more. I don't know what happened then. I think I slept.’

'And all the time the blood was moving through your veins and you were changing?'

'Well, yes, I suppose so. I looked at myself before we came down this morning. I couldn't recognize the boy I saw. Mrs Onions asked if I had anywhere else to go and I shrugged as if to say ‘no’ and she said, “You can be our boy, then. Mine and Mr Onions'. You can stay with us. We'll call you Jim.”’

'I wanted to be warm too,' Bonnie said. 'And stay in the same place forever and belong. So it looks like we've both got what we wanted.'

'I don't want to go back to how things were.'

'Nor do I. I don't even want to talk about it.'

'Nor do I... '

The table was heavy with decorated glazed ham pies, huge bowls of salad, crusty rolls, slices of cold lamb and beef and steaming baked potatoes dripping with butter. Bonnie stood looking at it all. There were voices behind her. Visitors were coming through to eat. She stared between the long candles at the blackberry and plum tarts with their criss-crossed latticed tops, and the jugs of thick cream and the huge cake that Mum had made this morning. She didn't want the visitors to come in. She didn't want to share this special moment. What had Mum said out in the orchard?

Bonnie looked at the chains of elderberries and leaves strung up between the beams, making extraordinary shadows in the candlelight… 'Sometimes I want to make time stand still.' That was what Mum had said.

The door burst open. Dad led everybody in. There was a rush of conversation and the room was suddenly full. 'Ah, Bonnie,' said Dad, coming towards her. 'You sit over here.' He led her to the table and sat her down. 'You look beautiful,' he said. Then he was away again, showing all the others where to sit.

Bonnie settled herself. She wore Arabella's long party frock and for the first time in her life she actually felt beautiful. She could have been one of the ancestors in the paintings on the stairs. She stroked the jewels on Godda's necklace, which she still, strangely, couldn't get off. The frock framed it perfectly against her neck and if sometimes she asked herself why Godda hadn't wanted it back, she certainly wasn't doing so tonight. She was glad she'd got it, glad to show it off.

Jim, down the table, looked at her with admiration. Evans, the grain man, smiled and said he was pleased to see her well again. She smiled, pleased with herself, and began to help herself to Mrs Onions' glazed ham.

Everybody else began to eat as well. They laughed and drank and told jokes. Mum sat in the soft light at the end of the table, beaming upon them all. Dad sat at the far end where the wine was kept. His jokes were the worst of them all; he was always full of fun but Bonnie had never seen him quite like this. In no time at all the cream jugs were empty, the latticed tarts were gone, the logs had burned low and new logs had been piled onto the fire. Mum lit fresh candles. Arabella had a blob of blackberry juice on the end of her nose. The laughter now was waning.

It was the perfect moment for Dad to get up and make his speech. 'I think I might have drunk a bit too much,' he said. 'I think we all have, but we've got so much to celebrate.' He looked round at them all. Mum sat back behind the candles. Her face was soft in the warm light. Everyone became very quiet.

'It's been a good year,' Dad said. 'We've had the best harvest for years. The flock's in good shape. We won some prizes at the Show. But there's more than that. Much more…'

He looked down the table. His eyes rested on Arabella, on Bonnie, on Florence, who had crawled into Mrs Onions' lap, on Mum. 'Where the old farms are falling into disrepair,' he said, 'and the old ways are dying and the young folk all go away to work in the cities and only the old ones are left, we've got young blood. We've got young life. We've seen the safe birth of Florence. She's even walking now. We've seen the coming of Bonnie, and now of Jim too. We've watched Arabella blossom forth with all the benefits of friends at last. And, to add to all of this, we're waiting for another child in the spring.'

Mum smiled at him. He reached for his glass and lifted it. Mum got to her feet and lifted her glass as well. 'God bless the children!' Dad said, eyes fixed on Mum.

'And God bless us too!' Mum said.

They drank, and their eyes never left each other's faces and there was not a person at the table who would have joined with them. This toast was just for them. Then Dad lifted his glass again.

'God bless Highholly Hill!'

They all clattered to their feet.

'God bless us all!' said Mum.

Their glasses rang against each other as they repeated the words and drank the toast. Then they all fell back into their seats. Only Mr Onions remained standing. He wore a dark, ill-fitting best suit. Bonnie realised she'd never really looked at him before. He had soft grey hair in a thatch all over his head, a drooping moustache and huge, calloused hands which looked strangely out of place beneath his narrow shoulders.

'I'll sing you a song,' he said.

He folded his huge hands over his chest and closed his eyes. Bonnie expected something rough and tuneless and strong but the fragrance of his song rose like smoke and curled around the shadowy beams, lingering long after the words had gone. Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. It was a perfect ending to the supper. His voice was sweet, and as fresh as roses.

23

The last of the summer days tumbled like ripe plums, and everything changed. Dry leaves fluttered down the fields into heaps along the bottoms of hedges. Days became darker and shorter, and patches of dank, cool fog crept into the valley. Dad ploughed and did his winter planting. He pulled up decaying garden debris and lit huge bonfires in the orchard.

Mum began school lessons again. Now she had a class of three, for Jim came down and joined them. 'You can't even read,' Mum would say. 'I can't understand it. You don't seem to know anything. It's as if you've never been taught. And yet you're such a bright boy.'

On good afternoons, after school, they'd run up with Jim as far as Roundhill, and wave him off as he blew down the other side. On wet, cold days, they'd sit with him in the inglenook and read to him, and draw and play and listen to the wind outside.

Some days the wind blew so hard and angrily that the whole house shook. Soot blustered down chimneys and the wind got under doors and through cracks in window-frames. It lifted carpets, shook curtains, forced them all to huddle between the stone walls of the inglenook while blast after blast hit the house like waves against a shore.

Some nights Bonnie would lie awake and listen to the wind. She'd pull the curtains back and watch arthritic trees tremble violently. She'd hear branches creak all over the hill, hear them crash down. She'd wonder how Highholly House took it all, how it still stood there, year after year, against such batterings.

Then the weather would change. The fog would come down, not like the delicate mists of summertime with their pastel shades and mysterious shapes, or even the dank coolness of autumn mornings, but lifelessly, murkily, a nasty blanket that settled upon house and hill and wouldn't go away again for days.

Then, unexpectedly, the sky would become clear and freezing blue and Bonnie would feel as if she could reach up and put a finger on it and it would crack like icy puddles and there would be jagged patterns all over it. There would be sunrises that took her breath away. The meadows would creak with frost and Dad would ferry in provisions, in case of snow. Jim would slither on polythene sacks down the ice-encrusted meadow for school. He'd look like a huge sack himself, wrapped from head to foot in layers of clothing with his pinched, steaming face hardly showing at all.

It was really winter now. Mrs Onions helped with Christmas cakes and puddings. Mum conducted lessons sitting in a chair with a cushion against her back, her feet up on a small stool and her hands folded over the growing bulge that took over her lap. After lunch, she would go to bed and Jim would go home, or the three of them would run together up the hill to play.

'Let's go up to the Throne,' Arabella suggested one restless, boding, blustery afternoon. They flung on their coats. 'Why don't you take Jake?' Mrs Onions called, but they shook their heads and rushed away.

‘Poor Jake,' Mrs Onions said. ‘No one seems to want him any more.’ The dog stared at her coldly. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn't much want him either. It was almost as if something about him had changed.

The children climbed the hill. Arabella, carried by the wind, rushed ahead. Jim struggled behind her. His cheeks were red with exertion and he shivered and wrapped his coat round himself. The wind beat at the back of his head and his hair blew into his eyes. 'I can't stand this,’ he said. 'I feel so cold.'

Bonnie, blowing up behind him, laughed. 'Arabella says that this is nothing. She says it'll get a lot worse before winter's through.'

'I never used to feel cold or hot. The wind never pushed me over. I didn't used to feel a thing,' Jim said.

'It's the price of being human,' Bonnie teased. She looked up. Above them Arabella had found the crack between rocks which led to the seat of the Throne. Bonnie remembered the deep drop on the other side of it.

'We all ought to stay together,’ she said. 'Come on!'’

When they reached the Throne, Arabella had disappeared. Bonnie found the crack between rocks and squeezed her way in too. 'Arabella!' she called, but the wind whipped her voice away and there was no reply. Bonnie struggled through the long crack with Jim behind her. Finally she came out on the white, smooth stone where Edric was meant to sit above the valley.

'There you are,' she said. 'I was worried the wind might have blown you over the edge.'

Arabella stood alone and thoughtful. 'Do you think they really caught you?' she said. 'Edric and Godda, I mean. You know, when you fell. Do you think they really want to help us? Perhaps I shouldn't say it up here, but could we simply have imagined it?'

Bonnie felt the necklace beneath her coat. It was real enough, but Edric and Godda seemed far away now. 'Even up here they seem far away,' she said.

'I’ve always hoped I might see them, especially here. But I never have,’ Arabella said. 'I even wonder if they're real. They could be just a made-up story.’

Jim appeared behind them, his teeth chattering. 'I've never felt so cold. I can't stand it. I can't bear it up here. I'm going back.'

'I don't know why we came. We'll go back with you,' Arabella said.

The three of them parted ways where the sheep's path forked for Roundhill. Bonnie and Arabella struggled against the wind down towards the holly grove. At Batholes, Arabella stopped. Its mouth seemed to yawn even wider and darker now that all the brambles had died back.

'I always think I know only half the hill,’ she said wistfully. 'There’s another world down there and this is the gateway to its secrets. What might I find if I went down there? But I’d never go alone. Somebody would have to come with me.'

Bonnie looked into the sky where the afternoon was drawing in and low dark clouds were gathering. The necklace stung for the first time in a long while and she pulled it out and eased her finger round her neck. 'I wouldn’t come with you,' she said. 'I’d never shut myself away in the dark where there was no sky. Let's get back, shall we?'

Above them, on the brow of Roundhill, Jim waved. Bonnie waved back and he disappeared. Arabella tore her eyes away from Batholes' dark entrance. 'Oh, all right,' she sighed. ‘Let’s go.’

They climbed over the top gate into the field, and continued down to the holly grove. The wind had dropped but it was as cold as ever. The girls pushed their way between the hollies, Bonnie ahead. 'Someone's been here before us,' she suddenly said.

'What?' Arabella said.

'Look,' said Bonnie, pointing.

In the middle of the grove, two pits had been dug. One was shallow, the other was deep. In the deep pit, logs had been stacked and covered with polythene to keep them dry.

'Someone's been collecting logs, that's all,' Arabella said. 'I expect it was Dad. Why are you looking like that?'

Bonnie couldn't speak. A picture, so clear and real that it could have been projected right across the sky, had come into her mind. It was a summer picture with long grass, fresh and growing, and birds singing. It was a picture not of Dad but of Michael digging the firepit in front of the flint-faced house. Of the shadowboy stoking the fire…

'Come on,' Arabella said. 'Look at the sky. The clouds are gathering. I don’t know what you’re worried about. It's only a pile of sticks.'

Numbly Bonnie followed Arabella along the path between the pits and through the clearing to the other side. Her mind was spinning. 'He wouldn't do it again, would he?' she thought. 'He's not a shadowboy any more. He's Jim, and he wants to stay here. He’s said so. No, Arabella must be right. It'll have been Dad or Mr Onions collecting logs.'

Dad was in the kitchen brewing a pot of tea. Mum was up in bed and Mrs Onions said she'd have to go soon; she had things to do at home.

'It's raw out there,' said Dad. 'You'd best wrap up before you go.'

Mrs Onions left and Bonnie opened her mouth to ask about the pits. The necklace stung her neck and she plucked at it unhappily. Before she could speak, Dad turned to the girls.

'Has either of you heard anything about that old broken mirror someone’s stuck in the hedge down the track?'

Bonnie froze as if time had suddenly stopped.

'Seems a good mirror,' Dad went on. 'Gilt frame and all. I thought I might dig it out and bring it up here. It seems a waste down in the hedge. It's not even been put so that anybody could see if vehicles came up from the Dingle. All you can see is the track up to the house.'

'A mirror?' Arabella said.

'Yes,’ said Dad.

A mirror. A firepit. A smoke pit and logs…

The necklace. Stung.

24

‘It’s really thick out there,’ said Dad. They were in the living-room, and tea was over and he'd got up to draw the curtains. 'The wind's dropped and the valley’s full of fog. Look at it.'

The girls looked, though there was nothing to see beyond the edge of the yard. No twinkling lights across the valley. Nothing.

'You'd think there was no world beyond those fence posts, wouldn't you?' Dad said. 'That's what comes of living on a hill. Every wretched cloud that comes along, we get stuck in it. Specially at this time of year.' He drew the curtains. ‘You two all right?’ he said. ‘I've got accounts to do tonight, and Mum's asleep already. Have you got anything to keep yourselves entertained?'

'Plenty,' said the girls together.

'I'll go and get on, then.'

As soon as Dad had gone, the girls rushed through the house and out into the scullery to find their coats and boots. They struggled with the scullery door and tiptoed out onto the terrace. It was murky, damp and still bitterly cold. They padded like slinky farm cats down the yard, climbed over the farmyard gate and already could see hardly anything of the house. They took a few steps down the bumpy track, and then they couldn't even see the gate. They could have been anywhere. Apart from a few sheep curled up among the roots of hawthorn hedges, they were alone.

'We'll be all right,' Arabella said. 'We're safe as long as we stay on the track.'

Bonnie followed slowly down towards the Dingle. She couldn’t feel safe, not with the necklace gnawing at her neck. Besides, she knew she wouldn't feel safe again until they'd found the mirror, hidden it, destroyed it, done something to it. She followed Arabella past blackberry hedges and dead elders and rowans and hawthorns in what seemed a never-ending journey. In the fog, everything looked the same. Her hands became numb. The fog never seemed to lift. It was as if they took it with them.

'It feels,' Bonnie thought, 'as if we've been out here for years.' Her face felt raw and cold. Her ears hurt. Her nose was sore and her neck, beneath the necklace, hurt. She didn't want to find the mirror. Despite what she was doing she didn't want ever to see it again. And she was angry with herself for not having realized Grandmother Marvell would be back. She should have known.

At last they dipped between the banks of the twisty canyon. The trees of Hope Dingle surrounded them. Bonnie, stumbling after Arabella's disappearing back, tripped on the deep ruts of the track.

'Wait for me, Arabella!'

Arabella waited, eyes sliding from side to side while Bonnie caught up.

'We must be near it now,' Bonnie shivered. There was something eerie in the foggy greyness of the Dingle. 'It must be somewhere along the hedge here. We’d better be careful.' She remembered Jake - the old, real Jake - and that fairground door with its mirror behind it, and the way he'd tumbled into it. 'We could tumble into it too if we're not careful.’

Arabella shivered too. 'I can't see anything,' she whispered. Why was she whispering? Who did she think might be down here?

'You look that side,' Bonnie said, nodding at the trees hanging over one side of the track. 'I'll look over here.'

They crept forward again, stumbled round a bend in the track. There was no mirror to be seen. The track plunged deeper. Now they heard the brook below them. The track took another turn. The white bridge loomed ahead of them. There was still no mirror.

'Dad did say in the hedge, didn’t he?'

'Sshh…'

'What?'

'SSHH

Bonnie tilted her head. Something was bothering her. Her gaze took in thick, dead brambles and a tangle of young hazel trees. Nothing stirred except the brook, which rushed noisily beneath the bridge, down towards the valley.

'Look there.'

The nose of a car peeped out at them from between bushes. Its lights were off. They were almost upon the thing and yet they could have walked past it in the murky gloom and never have noticed that it was there.

Arabella huddled close to Bonnie's side.

'It's all right,' Bonnie whispered. 'It's empty.'

They crept closer. Bonnie recognized the car. It was the rattling machine Grandmother Marvell had driven up the hill. She'd have recognized it anywhere. It was just like Grandbag's cars.

'She must be here somewhere… '

Looking around her, Bonnie could see nothing but the car, the track beneath her feet, bits of overhanging branches and the nearest end of the bridge. Beyond that narrow little world, Grandmother Marvell could be anywhere. The mirror, too, could be anywhere.

'Let's get out of here, Bonnie.'

'But we haven't found the mirror. We've got to take it down. We've got to hide it, break it, throw it in the brook. One way or another, we've got to get rid of it!'

'But where is it?'

'It must be over there.'

The two of them stared down the bridge to where the tall hedges of the Dingle rose on either side. Grandmother Marvell could be down there watching them even now. Or up above them, among the trees. Or between some gap in the hedge. Or behind the car. Or over the brook…

'Come on.'

They edged onto the bridge. The brook was full with winter water that drained off the hill. It rushed noisily beneath them while they crept forward. Bonnie rubbed her neck uncomfortably. Unpleasant things could be waiting for them beyond the bridge. She inched forward, Arabella at her side. All she could see was the far end of the bridge and a bit of clear, empty track rising beyond it with nobody in sight.

They came off the bridge and began to search among the trees and hedgerows. Still there was no mirror to be seen. ‘We’ve missed it,' Arabella said. 'We've come too far. Dad said — don't you remember — that it pointed up the hill to the house.'

'Of course.'

They turned to go back over the bridge. Then Godda's necklace bit at Bonnie's neck and Bonnie stopped. Arabella whispered what she already knew. 'We can't go back that way. There's someone waiting for us at the other end. I can feel their eyes… '

'I can feel them too,' Bonnie whispered back. She looked round helplessly. 'I don't know what to do.'

Arabella looked around her. She put a finger over her lips and pointed down among the ghosts of trees. 'We'll go down there,' she whispered.

'Down where?' Bonnie whispered back.

'Underneath the bridge. Over the brook. Up the other side. We'll go back up to the house across the fields. With this fog, she’ll never see us if she's waiting on the track.'

Bonnie listened to the rushing brook. She shivered. She couldn't think of anything else to do, but she didn't want to wade through the fast-flowing water.

'She'll hear us,' she whispered, searching for an excuse not to go. 'And like you said, we're only safe if we stay on the track. We'll get lost if we try to cut across the fields.'

'Better lost than caught,' Arabella hissed back. 'And she won't hear us. The brook's so loud she'll never hear a thing.'

'We haven't found the mirror yet.'

'And we're not going to with her sitting on the track.' Arabella began to squeeze through the hedge and cut down between the trees. 'We don't have any choice,' was the last thing Bonnie heard.

She followed Arabella. They did have a choice, of course. But what a choice it was! The thought of Grandmother Marvell's eyes settling gleefully on them again made shudders run up and down Bonnie's body. She slid down the soft bank in Arabella's wake, ducking and diving under and between branches while the sound of the brook became louder and closer. Suddenly she saw the brook and rising out of it the white posts of the bridge.

'This is the place,' Arabella mouthed. 'I've crossed here lots of times. It's all right in the summer.'

But it wasn't summer now. Bonnie heard Arabella gasp as she slid into the icy water, then bite back the gasp as if afraid that someone might hear. Bonnie followed after her. She was quite unprepared for the brook's depth. Two steps and she was up to her waist. The water that rushed at her was so strong it nearly knocked her over. Two steps more and she collided with Arabella. They clung to each other and stumbled forward, gasping at every step.

Suddenly they found themselves sinking in soft mud. Bonnie struggled desperately. Her reluctant boot, with accompanying sucking noises, came out clean and she secured it upon a solid, flat stone while she dragged the other foot free.

'I'm stuck,' Arabella whimpered. 'I'm sinking.'

Bonnie turned. Arabella was up to her chest. Desperately, she pulled and tugged at her until Arabella came free too, though without her Wellingtons. They both fell backwards, onto the bank.

'Your boots!' Bonnie said.

'Never mind them. Let's get away.'

They tried to climb up the bank but, as they reached out, their hands shook so much that they could hardly lift themselves. Arabella's teeth chattered violently. Bonnie's were hardly any quieter. Arabella bit back her cries as her bare feet stubbed against tree roots and sharp stones.

At last they came out of the trees into a field. 'If we go up there,' Arabella whispered between juddering teeth, 'if we go up straight, we should find a stile into the next field and, if we go up straight again, we should come out on the track beneath the house.'

They began to climb. The field was ploughed and the heavy soil clung to Arabella's feet, weighing them down and making it harder still for her to move. Bonnie moved more easily, but with a dreadful, squelching noise inside her boots that she was sure Grandmother Marvell could hear two fields away. They still couldn't see a thing ahead of them. They seemed to climb for hours.

'Where's that stile?' Bonnie chattered through blue lips.

'We must have missed it.' Arabella was growing stiffer by the minute. She kept falling down and it hurt her to get up again. 'We can't have walked straight after all,' she said. 'We must be going round and round in circles. I can't even find the hedge.'

'What's that?' Bonnie said.

They both squinted. Distant lights flickered. They couldn't be the lights of the house. They couldn't be the stars. They were moving. They couldn't be anything but…

'It's Grandmother Marvell.'

They collapsed on the ground. What was the point of trying to hide? They were in the middle of a field. There was nowhere to go. The lights grew bigger. They were coming towards them, searching them out as if they smelt — as if they knew — where they were. The field was cut in half by twin arcs of light. They'd tried so hard, and now Grandmother Marvell had got them.

'We couldn't have stopped her anyhow,' Bonnie thought. 'She'd have found some other way to get us in the end.'

The lights stopped. In a dream, or so it seemed, a figure stepped out in front of them. Its black bulk crunched across the field towards them. As if to remind them of what they soon would be, the Jake-thing, sleek and cold, with empty, bored, dead eyes, slunk down by its side.

‘Dear God in heaven, what have we here?'

The voice awoke them from their dream. They recognized the Land Rover's engine running. It was Dad.

25

Bonnie and Arabella sat tucked up in their beds drinking the last of their cocoa. Their teeth had stopped chattering, but their skin was still as white as death. Dad hovered by the light switch.

'You haven't yet explained what you were doing,' he said. ‘What am I to tell Mum?’

They both thought of Mum, asleep and nursing her growing bulge. How could they explain about the awful things that might happen? They didn’t want her to worry. This was something they had to sort out on their own.

'We were just stretching our legs.'

‘Just having fun.’

'We got lost.'

'We're sorry, Dad.'

'Really we are.'

'We won't do it again.'

'You'd better not,' said Dad in a voice that had to be taken seriously. 'I don’t know what came over you. You didn't even keep to the path. Well, I won't tell Mum. And you, in turn, won't ever be so foolish again.' He turned out the light.

'Goodnight.'

They heard Dad’s footsteps fading along the corridor and down the stairs. 'We failed,' Bonnie said, bleakly. ‘We haven’t got the mirror and Grandmother Marvell's still out there somewhere. We were fools to think we’d seen the last of her. We should have been prepared for this. We should have expected it. Even if we get the mirror, that won't stop her. She's just like Grandbag. She'll always think of something else.'

'What'll we do, Bonnie?'

'I don't know.' Despite her anxiety, Bonnie yielded her face to the softness of her pillow. She wriggled down the bed and felt her tired limbs melting in the warmth.

'If you ask me, our only hope is that Edric's real,' came Arabella's anxious voice. 'The chance is slim, but he's all we've got. I think we should go and look for him. Go to Batholes, I mean, and call for him. If he's anywhere, he'll be down there. The miners used to say they could hear him knocking. It's supposed to be his job to look after the hill.'

Bonnie’s thoughts returned to her epic jump. She remembered her heart beating as she made it. Those hands she’d felt, as soft as angels' wings — how slim was the chance that they’d been real? She thought of Batholes yawning blackly even on the brightest day, and slunk further down the bed.

'I've done one horrid thing tonight. I'm not doing another.'

Suddenly even thinking about Grandmother Marvell out on the hill couldn't keep her awake. The warmth and softness of bed lulled her. She'd had a hard night. Waves of exhaustion that she'd held at bay broke over her. Arabella was speaking again, but her voice was so distant…

Arabella woke up. The remains of Dad's cocoa lay beside the bed. She stared through the darkness. Everything was very quiet and she didn't know what had woken her. The glassy eyes of the dolls on the mantelpiece glinted at her. Bonnie breathed up and down beneath a mountain of bedcovers. An owl fluttered, swooping close to the house and then away again. Its cry echoed through the night. It was the anxious, warning noise the owls made when foxes were round the henhouse.

Perhaps that was what had woken her. Arabella waited for the sound of Dad next door. Waited for the click of the light and the opening of the bedroom window and the thump of the shotgun as he positioned it in readiness. But she heard none of these sounds. She heard something above her instead. What was it? Arabella heard it again. Where was it coming from? Was it over Bonnie's bed? It was hard to tell in the darkness. It was a scratching, scuffling noise. It was in the attic. That was it. In the corner of the attic above the wardrobe. 'It's only mice,' Arabella whispered to herself.

'No, it's not.'

'You're awake,' Arabella said.

She stared at the spare bed where Bonnie sat scratching her neck. 'The necklace woke me up,' she said. 'It really hurts and it doesn't do that for mice, does it? Grandmother Marvell's in the attic. Can’t you hear her scratching with her fingernails?'

As Bonnie spoke, Arabella heard a gnawing, picking sound. Pick, pick, pick, up in the ceiling. Much too loud for mice. The sound reached out for her through the darkness of the half-opened wardrobe door. 'Don't be silly.' she hissed at Bonnie. 'Of course Grandmother Marvell isn't up there. There's no way she could get into the house.'

A chunk of plaster fell inside the wardrobe. It may only have been a small piece but in the darkness it sounded enormous and, in the darkness, too, it wasn’t hard to imagine Grandmother Marvell making a hole and trying to slide the mirror through.

'You know what she's doing, don't you?' Bonnie whispered. ‘She’s going to set that mirror up at the end of the bed, or inside the wardrobe when you open the door, or over the dressing-table mirror…’

'Stop it, Bonnie. Stop it right away. You only think that because it's dark. It's because you’re tired. It makes everything seems bigger and more frightening. There are only mice up there. What you’re thinking isn’t possible.’

'Like getting that old car up the track wasn’t possible? She did it, Arabella. She brought it right up into the yard with that huge mirror on top of it. She can do things, Arabella.'

'You're imagining it, Bonnie. You're tired. There are always mice in the attic at this time of year. Dad'll go up in the morning and put poison down. He'll send up the cats. I'll shut the wardrobe door. That'll make us both feel better. And then…’

‘Then what?' Bonnie watched as Arabella slipped out of bed.

'Well, we're both awake. We could spend the time talking. We've got to plan for what happens next.'

Arabella padded across the floor, but when she came to the wardrobe door curiosity got the better of her. She’d intended to shut it but she took a quick peep inside instead, anxious to prove there really was nothing to worry about.

'Arabella, don't!'

The interior of the wardrobe was pitch dark. Arabella pulled the coats and dresses aside, and stepped in. Her feet stumbled over chunks of fallen plaster. She rubbed up against dresses she’d half-forgotten about and glanced up between them. Unexpectedly, a face stared down at her. It was herself reflected.

Bonnie heard the stifled scream. She heard hangers flying, dresses falling everywhere. Then there was silence.

'Arabella, are you all right?'

There was no answer.

'Arabella!'

Bonnie got out of bed. Cautiously tiptoed to the wardrobe door. Opened it and looked inside. She could see nothing. Nothing. 'Arabella!' she called again, but no one answered her and no one moved. She too stepped inside the wardrobe and put out her hand. 'It's me. It's Bonnie. What’s wrong?’

She began to feel about. No one was there. No one was there! Bonnie explored the wardrobe from one end to the other. Still no one was there, but she heard a sound above her head and suddenly - in a flash of inspiration - the words came into her head: Don't look up.

Bonnie stood very still. She heard the dragging sound of something heavy being pulled away. Something like a mirror in an ornamental frame. The sound faded and Bonnie stood in the silence and knew what had happened. There was a hole in the ceiling above her head. The attic was full of holes, and this was one of them. She didn't need to look up to see it. She could imagine the mirror lain across it and Arabella sucked up into it...

Grandmother Marvell had won. Grandbag had won too. You couldn't run away from the clutching grasp of hate and greed. Arabella was gone.

PART SEVEN

Midnight Blue

26

Bonnie climbed over Arabella's bed and looked out of the window, knowing there was only one thing she could do. Thick fog still wrapped itself around the hill and her mind went to the even greater darkness of Batholes. She thought of crawling down there, shutting herself away beneath the soft skin of the body of the earth, discovering its secrets, not like the busy surgeon with his knife, but like the shocked layman who never knew all those passages, tunnels, chambers, orifices, were even there…

Bonnie shuddered. She didn't want to go. But what else could she do? She peered through the clouds, towards the holly grove.

'There is a choice, you know.'

What did that mean? Bonnie swore blind that she didn’t know. Even so, she got off the bed and dressed in warm layers topped with waterproofs. Then she crept through the house to the kitchen. Cream cats stirred and stared at her, but the sleeping, uncaring Jake-thing never moved. She found a torch on the pantry shelf, and spare batteries for just in case. She found a block of cooking chocolate and took it too, imagining the need she'd have for it underground in some nasty passageway where there’d be nothing else to comfort her.

'There is a choice, you know…'

It came from a voice inside herself. But what did it mean?

'In the holly grove…’

‘I don’t understand.’

'Oh yes you do ... '

Bonnie let herself out through the scullery door. Out on the hill, the fog was thick as ever. As she felt her way up through the orchard, memories crowded in. Mum collecting plums, Florence crawling in the long, summer grass, Mum telling them about another baby, Jake bounding happily between the trees and Arabella chasing him…

Bonnie climbed over the stile into the meadow. Being on her own again was a return to the old days and the girl she used to be. It felt really strange after getting used to doing things with Arabella. Bonnie’s feet found the ridges of the sheep's path. She began to follow it, moving as hurriedly as possible. Did Jake and Arabella still exist somewhere beyond that awful mirror? Were they dead, or could they be brought back? Even if she found Edric and Godda, could they save the situation? Or was it already too late?

'Oh, where are you, Arabella? What are you going through now? What are you feeling?'

Bonnie came to the outer hollies of the grove. Here a thud caught her attention, followed by the crackling of branches. It would be a sheep, she thought, its fleece tangled up in holly leaves. She pushed her way through, careful not to get caught up herself. Entering the grove, she felt its stillness and strangeness as she did every time. She heard the sound again. But it wasn’t a sheep. She let out a cry.

'Jim!'

A trench had been dug between the same two pits she’d discovered earlier. Staves had been erected and Jim was breaking fresh logs to pile up, so engrossed in what he was doing that he failed to notice Bonnie’s approach. Her voice made him drop a log and flush - not like a flickering shadowboy but a human one.

'What are you doing?' Bonnie said.

Jim looked completely lost.

'So, let me get this straight,’ said Bonnie. ‘You’re the one who dug these pits, and now you’re stocking them with fuel. But fuel for what? Fuel for a launch? Surely not. I thought you liked it here. I thought you didn’t want to leave!'

Jim hung his head. He didn’t want to leave, he said. He didn’t know why he was doing this. ‘I don't understand, myself,’ he said. ‘I just feel as if I have to. I can't sleep at night. I have to come here. Something keeps making me.'

Bonnie stood over the firepit. She wanted to pull out all the logs and throw them away. Jim's voice kept saying 'I'm sorry' over and over again. But she couldn't bring herself to answer him.

Surprised at herself, Bonnie began to cry. She thought of Arabella lost, and the pain that Mum was going to feel when she found out. She thought of the whole hill and everybody on it in danger from whatever Grandmother Marvell might do next, and her faced with the choice of doing the only thing that might save them - crawling down into the one place in the whole world she'd never choose to go – and all the time, behind her back, Jim doing this as if the time had come for them to leave.

Jim came to her. He put his arms round her and held her tight. He didn't feel like a shadowboy. It was as if he really was a son of Mrs Onions. He didn't seem embarrassed the way some boys might be. He didn't mind Bonnie’s tears. He just stood there and held her tight for a long, long time while she struggled with the knowledge, unrecognized until now, that it was she who’d triggered Grandmother Marvell's arrival.

‘You won't understand,’ she said. ‘I'm not sure I do myself, but it should have been me in that mirror, not Arabella. My coming here has turned Highholly Hill upside down. There's another me here, another Michael, another Maybelle. There had to be another Grandbag too. If I were to fly back home, my guess is that everything here would go back to how it was. Arabella would be set free, and so would Jake. And Grandmother Marvell would lose her power. She’d just be some old fairground crone. She wouldn’t have the power that she does now.' Bonnie looked around her, at the logs and pits. 'That’s why you're doing this. Because you know, somehow, what I have to do.'

'I don't understand,' said Jim

'Nor do I.'

'I don't want either of us to go anywhere.'

'Nor do I, Jim, nor do I.'

Bonnie wiped away her tears. Incongruously, she remembered the cooking chocolate in her pocket. She took it out, broke it up and offered some to Jim, then ate the rest herself. It comforted her. It gave her what she needed to raise her head and look around. There was no fog in the holly grove. Everything was clear, and yet she could feel it waiting for her outside. She looked up into the sky. What did she want - the darkness of the sky and a long flight home, or that other darkness - the darkness of Batholes?

'Look, I'm going to take a chance,' she said. 'I’m not leaving here unless I really have to. I’m not giving up Highholly Hill unless I’m absolutely sure there's no other way.'

'What can I do to help?' Jim said.

'Do you mean it?'

'Of course I do.'

‘You’re telling me you want to stay?'

Jim looked round at the pits he'd dug and the logs stacked up. It mightn’t look like it, he realized, but he nodded his head. Bonnie brushed the last few crumbs of chocolate off her hands. 'If you do want to stay,’ she said, ‘then come with me.' But she couldn’t bring herself to name the place.

'Come with you where?' Jim said.

'Follow me. I'll show you.'

Jim followed Bonnie out into the foggy night. They climbed up through the top meadow and over the gate. They found the sheep's path between the bracken, and Bonnie insisted that they stick to it. Every sound in the fog - a sheep running away, a stone dislodged, a distant farm dog somewhere barking – seemed magnified a hundred times. The ground smelt raw and dank. Eventually they found themselves at Batholes. The warning notice loomed out of the gloom.

'There,’ Bonnie said, looking at the black hole beyond the notice. 'That’s what I’m on about. It's the only hope we've got. You won't understand and I don't have the time to explain, but Arabella's gone and we've got to find Wild Edric — and if he's anywhere, he's down there.'

She shivered. Jim shivered too, and looked up. 'You’re saying that if we don't find Wild Edric,' he said, 'then it's back up there for us. Back home for you. Back to how things used to be for me.'

'I’m not telling you anything except what I’ve got to do.' Bonnie scrambled over the tangle of brambles in the cave's mouth. Got out her torch and flashed it into the darkness. Everything she was doing felt so unreal. So dreamlike. This couldn't be her, could it, embarking on this ridiculous course of action?

'I don't want to, but I've got to. Will you come with me?'

'Yes,' said Jim.

27

They tore down the spiders' webs which had festooned themselves like strings of pearls across the entrance. Even then, barring their way were the bones of a dead sheep. Bonnie stepped around it with a slight shudder. Batholes' roof sloped steeply down. She stooped. Her torch shook as she got onto hands and knees. She crawled forward. The dark hole seemed to suck her in like a hungry mouth, and she wanted to turn tail. But she forced herself to crawl on instead, until she knew that the sky and the great open world weren't behind her any more and she was underground.

The hole turned into a long, thin tunnel. It turned sharply downwards and narrowed some more. There was no way Bonnie could turn round now. No way of getting out again unless she came out backwards. She wanted to be out, but Jim behind her blocked her escape. She could hear him breathe. She wanted to be sick.

'You've got a torch, haven't you?' he said.

'Of course I've got a torch!'

'Well, hold it steady, then!'

Jim’s human boy's voice comforted Bonnie. She held the torch up so that the light cut through a misty atmosphere. The ground beneath her was cold and muddy. The rocks shone with the hidden moisture of the hill. The tunnel sloped downwards.

'I think it gets a bit wider down ahead,' Bonnie said, and her words came out in clouds of condensation. 'At least I hope it does. I feel like the weight of the whole hill's on my back. I feel like I can't breathe… '

They crawled downwards and the ground beneath them became boggier. Bonnie was glad for waterproofs, but even through her layers of gloves her hands became numb. She found it hard to crawl and at the same time hold the torch. The roof of the passage sloped towards the floor and she realized, with horror, that she was going to have to lie down in the mud in order to get along. What would happen if the passage continued sloping downwards? What were the chances of them being able to slide up it again? Would they — again she wanted to be sick — would they get stuck?

Bonnie lay down in the mud, and it was the worst moment in her whole life. She began to slide down head first, realizing what a mistake she’d made when she first entered the tunnel by not going in the other way round. The blood pumped to her head. The roof came down lower. The passage became steeper. Then, when she thought that she could bear no more, it opened out. The roof rose starkly. The walls on either side of Bonnie were swept away.

'Oh, Jim, oh help, oh no... '

Bonnie was propelled, gasping and unprepared, into a huge, dripping, terrifying void. Jim tumbled after her. She caught his face in her torchlight as they both hit the ground. Like her he was breathless. His eyes bulged with the rush of blood and his whole face was bright red. Slowly he got to his feet and looked around in the thin beam of Bonnie's torch.

'But this is beautiful,' he said, his voice full of surprise, too astonished to be scared. 'Look at these rocks. They've look scrubbed clean. And here… ' He directed the torchlight. 'Look at these drops of water in the air. They look like jewels.'

Bonnie followed his gaze. She wanted to cry because it wasn't beautiful to her. It was awful. This whole place was awful and she wanted to get out of it. She thought of Godda and Edric and her heart went out to them that this should be their home. She'd rather die than have to live down here. She almost hoped, for their sakes, that they weren't real after all. If they were, how did they bear it, sleeping down here through the centuries till they were needed above ground? Did rocks encase them, hold them fast? Were there fossil marks where their beds had been? Had Godda looked at the blue enamel sky, at the diamond stars of her necklace, and longed for the open air? And did she now miss her precious necklace which was still fixed - as tight as ever - round Bonnie's neck?

Bonnie found it hard, now that she could see the squalid inside of the earth, to believe that anything could live down here amongst the wet rocks and the blackness. She listened carefully. There was no tap, tap, tapping like the miners used to say they heard. No shaking of the ground. Nothing.

Nothing? Bonnie strained to listen. Something was there. What was it?

'I can hear it too,' Jim said. 'It's water.'

'Water?'

'A river or something. Let's go and see.'

Bonnie shone the torch up through the void. Jim stepped forward and she followed him. The mud beneath their feet turned into a stream. They splashed through it. Water oozed out of the rocks all around them. The sound ahead of them grew louder and Bonnie took Jim's hand.

'At least we haven't got to crawl any more,' Jim comforted her.

'But how long for?' Bonnie replied. The void was narrowing into a passageway again. She didn't like the way those rocks closed in. They turned a corner. Suddenly the rushing sound was very loud and close. It sounded like a torrent's roar. Bonnie had a picture of them both swept away in the path of a great, unbounding, underground river. She turned to run, but Jim held her tight.

'Look Bonnie, look… It's all right. Look!'

He got her hand with the torch in it, and pointed the beam. Ahead, in the thin light, the stream became a dark pool into which a huge, white, foaming waterfall fell.

'Oh!' cried Bonnie.

It was like an unexpected wedding veil hanging in the dark back of a wardrobe, a ballerina's frock flickering upon a television screen.

'You can't say that's not beautiful,' Jim said.

Bonnie stood transfixed. She couldn't, could she? Then, as if one shock wasn't enough, a fleck of something fluttered out of the darkness at her. She caught it briefly in the torch light, then it struck her cheek and flew away again. An albino moth!

'Oh,' said Bonnie again. Hope stirred within her. Maybe Edric and Godda were down here after all. There was life in this place. There was beauty. There could be hope…

'Come on,' Jim said.

They waded round the edge of the pool and followed the river path on its other side. The passage was long and thin again. Even shining the torch up high, they couldn't see a roof to it.

'I wonder what bit of hill we're under now?'

The passage sloped up. The stream slid away from them. They found themselves squelching through mud again, and realized that the walls on either side of them were folding in over their heads. Bits of rock seemed to have become dislodged and fallen in their path. They found themselves scrambling. The passage, like a roller-coaster, plunged back down. They found more boulders, turned a corner and stopped. The way was blocked with a great pile of stones. As Bonnie looked at it, her brief, brave hope faded again.

'We can't get through,' she said.

Jim went up close. 'Yes we can. There's a hole down there. Between the stones. It's not very big, but then neither are we. There's been a fall of stones, that's all. Once we've got through, it'll be all clear again on the other side.'

Bonnie pointed her torch and found the hole and wished she hadn't. 'I can't,' she said.

Jim looked straight up at her in the torch light. 'We've got to,’ he replied.

Bonnie's stomach lurched. She wanted to be sick, because he was right. She wanted to cry but instead, without a word, she got down on hands and knees and peered into the hole.

'I'll go first if you'd like me to,' Jim said.

'Oh no,' she replied. Her voice shook. 'If you went first, I might get left behind. I mightn't be brave enough to follow you and then I'd be stuck here on my own, in the dark.'

She took a deep breath, pushed her head into the hole and started wriggling. She shifted, inch by inch and from side to side, till she was in up to her waist. Jim touched her on the ankle. 'You're doing great,' she heard him say. His voice was flat and close, but he might have been a million miles away. She was in a dark world of her own. She felt the stones around her shift and she thought, 'They're all loose. They're not fixed at all. I could move one of them and some great boulder would come down and crush my head or, even worse — because at least I'd be dead then and wouldn't know any more — it could come down and trap me and I'd die here slowly.'

'I'm coming out,' she called.

'What?' Jim cried.

'I'm coming back.'

She began to wriggle but nothing moved.

'Help me!'

Jim didn't hear. The boulders shifted.

'HELP ME!!' Bonnie screamed. And then she felt Jim’s hands on her ankles. She felt him tugging at her. She felt the whole hill, the whole, great hill upon her back. She couldn't breathe. She wriggled furiously. He tugged again. And then she was out!

Bonnie lay on the ground for a long, long time, in the mud, in the slime, in the clinging cold. She couldn't speak, and a million hopes, dreams, aspirations for the whole rest of her life on Highholly Hill faded away in the darkness of that hole. She knew she'd never find Wild Edric, knew she'd have to help Jim light that firepit. Knew she'd have to make the journey back up into and beyond the sky.

'I can't go on,' she said.

28

'It's all right. You did your best. You were very brave, but I think we'd better find our way out of here,' Jim said.

Bonnie got to her feet. She was stiff with clammy mud. It seemed to have got in everywhere, through the zip of her waterproofs, into her trousers, through her gloves, in her hair. In the thin light of the torch she stood looking utterly wretched. Jim reached out a hand and touched her lightly.

'You did your best,' he said again, and they smiled sadly at each other. 'Let's get out of here. That torch of yours is getting a bit faint.'

Bonnie handed it to him. 'You lead the way this time,' she said dejectedly.

They struggled together, back the way they'd come. Up and down the switchback passageway. Through the stream. Past the waterfall again. It didn't look like a bridal veil now that hope had gone. It looked like an ordinary waterfall. The air was still full of sparkling droplets, but the living, fluttering albino moth might never have been.

'Just like Edric and Godda,' Bonnie thought, and she remembered something Mum had said once. It seemed so long ago. 'Lots of people look for Edric and Godda and never find them.’

Suddenly the torch went out. They stood in the dripping, splashing darkness. 'I've got batteries,' she heard her voice say, woodenly. 'It'll be all right.'

She unzipped her waterproof, found the other batteries and she and Jim fumbled to put them in. Jim flicked the switch on, and nothing happened.

'But they're new batteries.'

'They're wet.'

'You mean…'

'We'll have to feel our way home.'

Bonnie remembered the way up ahead - the great void in which it would be so easy to get lost, the little, narrow tunnel with its low roof which would force them to slither flat on their faces through the mud. The thought of doing such a thing in utter blackness made her shiver all over. She thought of eels and frogs and slimy things that might be up there. She thought of Grandmother Marvell loose somewhere out on the hill. What if she'd followed them in here? What if she waited somewhere up ahead in the darkness?

'Stay close,' Jim said. 'We can't get lost. There's only one way out. We just keep following the passage.'

He inched his way forward through the splashing stream. Bonnie did indeed cling close, but even though she felt Jim, she couldn't see him. The water beneath her feet turned to squelching mud. 'We must be in that big cave now,' Jim said, and then, 'I think I've found our tunnel. You'll have to bend down.'

Bonnie felt Jim’s body bend down. She felt his heels ahead of her as she bent down too. She smelt the dank, soft mud beneath her hands and knees.

'Jim! I can't bear this! How do we know we’ve got the right tunnel? Don't go so fast. Wait for me…’

Bonnie was crawling through a nightmare, a black, close, awful dream. 'It's black like Grandbag's coat,' she thought. 'That's what it's like. And we'll never get out of it. We'll crawl round here for ever till we die.'

She pushed herself forward all the same and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, began to realize that she could see something. What was it? Bonnie blinked, stared and recognised Jim's heel right in front of her face. It moved away. She followed it. Then she found that she could see dim, gleaming walls as well.

'You've found another torch,' Jim said, relief ringing in his voice.

'No, I haven't,' Bonnie replied.

With difficulty, Jim turned his head. Bonnie could see his streaked, dirty face. She could see his muddy hair. 'What's that underneath your waterproof?' he said.

'What’s what?' Bonnie said.

'Something's glowing underneath your waterproof,' Jim said.

Bonnie looked down. Jim was right. She rolled onto her side, unzipped the waterproof and Godda's necklace fell out. It didn't sting her. It didn't hurt. It just glowed in the darkness like a chandelier, and the whole tunnel burned softly.

'We can see again, we can see!' Jim cried.

Bonnie gazed at the jewels, finding herself reminded of the angels' hands that had once softened her fall.

'Edric and Godda!' she whispered in amazement. She looked around her. She saw colours in the rocks that the torch beam hadn’t shown. Reds, yellows and pinks encrusted on the walls amongst flowing lines of grey.

'Look, Bonnie, look,' said Jim, pointing at silver rivulets that had cut paths in the coloured rocks.

Bonnie looked and looked and looked. It was as Arabella had said. There was another world beneath the hill. They did only know the half of it. She struggled, but couldn't find the right words. 'I'm still cold,' she said instead. 'I'd still give anything to see the sky.'

Jim laughed at her. She wondered if these deep passageways had ever heard laughter before. 'Yes, of course,' he said. ‘I’m cold too. Come on.'

He started crawling again. After a few minutes, the tunnel roof shot up and they were able to walk side by side. The cave roof above them was streaked with yet more colours. Everything seemed so different now that the darkness had been banished.

'This isn't the way we came,' said Bonnie.

'Yes, it is.'

'But we had to crawl on our hands and knees.'

'There’s no other way we could have come.'

Bonnie told herself Jim had to be right. She kept on walking and heard more water ahead of her. The passage bent sharply. She followed it round and a shower of fine spray burst out of the rock in front of her - a rainbow of fine colours caught in the soft light of the necklace. She stopped and looked at it, puzzled.

'We never passed that.’

'No,' Jim agreed.

'We're lost.'

‘I'm sorry, Bonnie. You’re right.'

Bonnie felt her sickness return. The spectacle of the rainbow spray failed to comfort her. What if they were lost forever under the hill?

'There's something here,’ Jim suddenly said. 'Look...'

Bonnie followed his gaze. Halfway up the rocky wall, clear in the necklace-light she saw a hole. Beyond it she could hear the gurgling of an underground spring. Jim began to climb.

'Jim, you don’t know if it’s safe!'

Jim ignored her. He hauled himself up through the hole and out of sight. Bonnie heard him shout - and then she heard a splash, and then everything went silent.

'Jim, Jim!' Bonnie scrambled up towards the hole herself. Before she could reach it, however, Jim's head appeared, his teeth chattering with the cold, a big grin all over his face. 'We've found a well!'

'We’ve what?'

'I'm in a well,' Jim said. 'A proper well, made of bricks, and it's got rungs up the side. I can't see the top, and it looks climbable. Come on...'

His head disappeared. Bonnie squeezed through the hole after him. The necklace illuminated a dark pool beneath her, and small red bricks and Jim's disappearing body up above. She followed his lead, reaching for the rungs then climbing steadily until they surely should have reached the top.

Suddenly Jim stopped.

'What is it?' Bonnie called.

'I can't go on.'

'Why not?'

'There's a cover here which I can't move.'

It was too cruel. The outside world, the hills, the open sky could be just feet away. 'We’ve got to get out!' Bonnie cried. 'Shout! Someone might hear us.'

Jim didn't shout. Instead he bowed his head and set his shoulders against what, for all he knew, could have been the whole weight of the hill. He heaved. The cover moved. Bonnie saw a starlit shaving of sky before it was all too much for him and he let the cover down again.

'Jim, Jim, you're nearly there! Don’t give up. Come on... '

Jim shoved again, Bonnie pushing from behind him. The cover trembled, then flew skyward in one great burst which took him by surprise and sent him shooting after it. It clattered onto the ground and Jim tumbled out on top of it. Bright light flooded down upon Bonnie. A circle that seemed as wide as the world itself shone above her. It was the circle of the sky.

29

Jim got to his feet. He was in the orchard. The fog had gone and so — just — had the night. A new, clear morning struggled for life between the branches of the trees and the cold was fearsome. He turned back towards the well to offer his hand. But without his help, Bonnie had already scrambled out.

In the early morning light, the world was sweet despite the cold. Bonnie looked with new understanding at the crisp grass beneath her feet. How many times had she run up and down the orchard and never known about the tunnels underneath, the streams, the waterfalls, the rainbow sprays and white moths? She peered between the trees at the valley. What did she know of that world too? What other valleys, other farmhouses, cities, teeming streets, busy millions lived out there beyond Highholly Hill? And up in the sky, beyond the planets and the stars, beyond even the world she'd come from, what lay up there?

'You’re turning blue,' Jim said. 'I think you'd better get back indoors and change your clothes. You oughtn't just to stand there.'

Bonnie broke off dreaming and looked at him. He was blue too. His teeth chattered and he squelched every time he moved. She managed a shaky smile. 'The price of being human, hey Jim?'

He didn't smile back. His eyes fell on the holly grove up the meadow. Bonnie looked too. She knew what went through his mind. 'You don't have to go with me,’ she said. 'I've been thinking. You could stay, you know. It wasn't your coming that brought the cruelty of Grandbag to this place. It was mine. You should stay, you know. Think how poor Mrs Onions will feel if you go. And when Arabella returns from wherever she’s gone and finds I'm no longer here, she's going to be very lonely. I'd feel so much better if she still had a friend.'

Jim looked hard at her. 'I mean it,' Bonnie said. 'All you have to do is help to launch me. I'd be all right then, wouldn't I?'

'It's the sun and smoke that flies you, not me,' Jim agreed. 'You couldn't get off the ground without me. But once you're up... '

Once she was up. The thought of soaring up through the sky again made something within Bonnie - despite all her distress - tingle with excitement. She stared at the holly grove. If she had to go, she wanted to go now while she felt able to do it. After all, it had to be done before Mum realized what had happened to Arabella.

'Let's make a start. Let’s go and light the firepit. Let’s get the balloon out of the barn before anybody gets up.'

'We can't do it now,' Jim said. 'It's a night job filling a balloon like that. It'll take hours. We'll do it tonight if the weather conditions are right. What we want is another clear, bright dawn to launch it. And thank you, Bonnie. About me staying, I mean.'

'It would make it easier for me if you did.'

'You're sure?'

'I'm absolutely certain.'

Jim nodded. It would have been unthinkable once, but here he was with a choice. He was a real boy, and he made his choice freely and now here was Bonnie hugging him for it, both of them squelching together, clammy with mud.

‘Go indoors and change,' Jim said again. 'You look dreadful. If you stay like that you'll end up catching a chill, then you won't be well enough to go at all.'

Together they hauled the cover back over the well and piled on the few stones that Jim had knocked over when he fell. Then Jim said he'd see her later. Bonnie watched him squelch up through the orchard before turning, herself, back to the house.

'If Dad finds out I've been on the hill again, he’ll be wanting to have words with me,' she chattered through her teeth. 'Let's hope no one's awake yet. Let's hope I can get back in without anybody seeing me.'

In the scullery Bonnie peeled out of her waterproofs, hid them behind the log pile and surveyed the cold, damp mess which the rest of her clothes had become. Listening at the kitchen door, she heard no sound of life, so she opened it cautiously and tiptoed in. The kitchen was empty. The clock ticked half-past seven. She felt as if she'd been gone not hours but days. She removed her soggy socks and dried her feet and crept past the cats, up the stairs.

Mum was dressing Florence. The door was ajar and Bonnie could hear Florence's baby talk as she tiptoed past. She shut herself in the bathroom. How was she going to explain Arabella’s disappearance? Her brain was frozen. Her whole being was one lump of pain. She filled up the big white bath, climbed into it and melted the pain away. When she could think again, felt human again, she dried herself, wrapped a towel around her and returned to the bedroom to contemplate the problem properly.

'Oh, there you are,' said Arabella. 'I was beginning to think you'd gone somewhere. I was getting worried.'

Bonnie's stopped, shocked, and felt her new-found warmth drain away. Arabella sat on her bed brushing her hair. The bed was made. She was dressed.

'But you... I mean… ' Bonnie pointed weakly at the wardrobe. 'I... I thought…’

Arabella stopped brushing. For a flicker of a moment, empty dull eyes like the Jake-thing's eyes searched Bonnie's face. Then she started brushing again and a flurry of uncharacteristic chatter poured out of her.

'I'll just finish my hair. There. It's done. I'll go and see if Mum and Dad are up. I'm hungry. I'll open out the stove and start the breakfast. Have you noticed the fog's gone? Mum says we won't do any more lessons till after Christmas now. Did I tell you?’

'You're not Arabella!' Bonnie said.

The chatter went on.

'You're not Arabella.'

'Have you thought about Christmas presents? You know, it's really time. I thought I’d make sweets for everyone. Wrap them in silver foil and make pretty boxes. We could do it today if we haven't got any lessons. If you want to help, that is…'

Bonnie sank down on her own bed. The words went on and on. Her eyes looked out of the window to the path where Jim had gone. How long she sat like that, she didn't know. Nor did she know what she thought in all that time. Suddenly the Arabella-thing got up and touched her with a stone-cold finger. Bonnie nearly jumped out of her skin.

'Are you coming down for breakfast then?'

'Oh. Yes.'

Bonnie flung on clean clothes and they both made their way downstairs past the portraits of the ancestors. Did they know, Bonnie wondered, the abomination that walked past them? Did they care?

Dad was eating breakfast. Florence was playing with the cats. Mum looked up as the girls came in and the Arabella-thing began chattering again.

'I'm almost glad that this time tomorrow I'll be gone,' Bonnie thought. 'This is going to be a long hard day.’

Mum asked Bonnie to pick up Florence, put her in her chair and give her breakfast. Bonnie thought, 'This is the last time she'll ever ask me to do that… '

And so it continued all day, and it was a long hard day. Bonnie ate her last lunch, watched her last afternoon shadows on the wall, lit a fire in the inglenook for the last time, saw her last sunset. And, through it all, the Arabella-thing chattered incessantly as if the emptiness inside her would be revealed if she dared to stop.

After tea, Mum departed to do what she described as 'Christmas things' in her sewing- room. Dad drew himself and his account book close to the fire and said he still had some catching up to do. The Arabella-thing announced her intention of going to bed. She looked exhausted. Plainly she couldn't keep up the chatter any more.

After she'd gone Bonnie strode about restlessly, eventually announcing that she was going up to bed too. She couldn't bear the last chiming of the clock, the last embers on the last fire, the last sight of Dad's head bowed over his books…

'All right,' said Dad. 'Good idea. After last night’s nonsense you could do with an early night.’

'How little he knows of last night's nonsense,' Bonnie thought and, if she hadn't been so sad, she'd have smiled. She lingered in the doorway. Despite herself, she drank in the end of her very last day.

'What is it?' Dad said.

'Oh, nothing.'

Instead of going through the kitchen and up the stairs, Bonnie went out into the hall. Something drew her to Mum's sewing-room door. For a moment she stood outside it, then realizing she didn't know what she was doing there, she turned away and began climbing the hall stairs.

'Are you off to bed? It's very early.'

A patch of light was thrown across the hall. Mum stood in her doorway.

'I'm tired,' Bonnie said, and it was true. She was tired of pretending, tired of smiling, tired of the pain inside her. She saw beyond Mum into the sewing-room, saw the thick, velvet curtains. She caught a glimpse of packages and wrapping-paper. Mum pulled the door behind her to keep her secrets hidden. They stood now in semi-darkness. Mum's face was tired too.

'I feel I've let you down,' Mum said.

'I don't know what you mean.'

'I think you do. Something's wrong, isn't it, and once I’d have picked up what it is. I know I'll be myself again when the baby's born, but I hate being like this. What's the matter, Bonnie? And what’s wrong with Arabella?'

'Arabella's… she’s tired like me,' Bonnie blustered. ‘That's all. Last night we stay up talking till late. There's nothing else wrong.'

It sounded lame and they both knew it. 'Do you mean I'm worrying about nothing?' Mum said as if she didn't think she was.

Bonnie felt like spilling it all out but knew she couldn't. 'That's right,' she said. There’s nothing to worry about. Besides, you've got to take things nice and easy.'

Mum sighed. ‘It's all right. You don't have to tell me if you don't want. You surely know by now that I never pry.'

Bonnie tried to protest, but Mum changed the subject. 'Did you know, there's soon going to be snow?' she said. 'Dad says that he can read the signs. We've got skis somewhere in the scullery. In a couple of days’ time we’ll have to teach you how to use them.'

Bonnie felt wretched. 'I like the snow,' was all that she could manage. Mum turned back towards the sewing-room and she felt herself weakening. She wanted to change her mind. Why shouldn’t she unburden herself to Mum and tell her the whole, awful truth?

'Good night,' said Mum. She shut the sewing-room door behind her. The hall was plunged into darkness again. Bonnie stared wretchedly at the door and wondered what to do.

'Good night,' she whispered at last.

It wasn't the farewell she would have chosen.

30

In the bedroom, the Arabella-thing was breathing deeply. Bonnie got into bed. She couldn't sleep. She got out again, looked out of the window, up the hill. There was no fire yet. It wasn't time. She dragged her cardboard suitcase out from beneath the bed, opened her drawer quietly and plucked out the few clothes that were really hers. She tossed them miserably into the case, and climbed back into bed. Mum's clock next door struck ten. Still Bonnie was awake. It struck eleven. She tossed and turned, trying not to remember all the good things Highholly Hill had brought her. It struck twelve. Had ever a midnight, ever a dark tunnel out of Batholes, ever a night sky or even Grandbag's coat been as black as this? At last, exhausted, Bonnie fell asleep.

When she awoke again there was light up on the hill. She saw it straight away, a red smudge between the hollies. She sat up. It was no dream. It was really there, and the sky was the midnight blue colour of the balloon, and morning was on the way.

Bonnie got out of bed. Her toe stubbed against the cardboard suitcase. Tears sprang from her eyes. Now it had come to it, she couldn't go.

'There has to be another way,' she whispered. 'There has to be another way. I won't go. I won't.'

She strode up and down and the Arabella-thing stirred. Briefly her eyes opened, and Bonnie stopped and looked at her. It was as if she was empty - as if nothing was there. Her tongue fell out of her mouth as if there was no active mind at home to keep it in. A silver dribble rolled down her chin.

'Oh, Arabella, Arabella, Arabella…’

Bonnie looked up through the window into the lightening sky. Suddenly it seemed as if this was the moment that everything in her life — all those years of dreaming of a land beyond the sky, and all the things she'd done since coming here — had been pointing to. As if this was what she’d been waiting for. Not to jump heroically out of a window, or look for Wild Edric in a thunderstorm, or save Highholly Hill by finding Edric underground — but to perform this boring, quiet, act of self-sacrifice.

Bonnie almost laughed out loud. So, it was her lot in life to go back to chip papers and orange neon lights out on the street, Maybelle crying when things didn't go her way, and Grandbag…

'Beat her here and you’ll beat her there too.'

But could she? Could she really?

'You know you can…'

Bonnie dressed quickly and looked at herself for the last time in the dressing-table mirror. Godda's necklace glittered on her neck and she touched it.

'At least I've got you,' she whispered. 'I've got something that'll prove it all really happened when I get back home. A real treasure of my own. Not one I’d sell or ever give to a museum. It'll be like owning a famous painting. I've never had anything like that. Most people never do.'

Picking up the suitcase, Bonnie left the bedroom without another glance at Arabella and passed through the house. She was good at creeping now. She knew which floorboards to avoid, which doors creaked, which stairs had to be stepped over.

Bonnie came down into the kitchen. The Jake-thing lay as still as death. He too was dribbling and Bonnie longed for the real Jake to bound up the hill with her the way he used to do. The cream cats were awake. They watched her with round, yellow eyes. When she lifted the latch they came and rubbed themselves against her legs and miaowed as though saying 'won't we do instead?' and slid out into the scullery ahead of her.

'Goodbye,' Bonnie said to the kitchen, but only the kettle on the stove hissed back at her. She passed through the scullery, out into a crisp winter frost. The cream cats hung around the door for her.

'What is it?' she said. 'Why don't you go back in?'

But she knew why not. They were a reminder of Michael - a first step on the long journey home. Bonnie only had to look at them to remember the flint-faced house with its mushroom shaped roof. She remembered the veranda and Michael's cats. She remembered the thick smoke as it filled the tottering, monstrous balloon, and the flickering shape of the boy Jim used to be, struggling with Michael to straighten the balloon, control it, hold it down over the fire as it filled to capacity and then reached for the sky…

'You're off then, are you?'

Someone moved out of the shadows of the house. Someone with still, grey eyes that glistened in the dark, leaning against a wall that glittered with frost. Bonnie dropped her suitcase. She couldn’t take another step.

'Dad, oh Dad…’

'I wouldn't let you go without saying goodbye,' he said. His words made great white clouds of breath. Bonnie tried to step towards him but her weak knees began to sink. Dad grabbed her hands to stop her going down, and held her tight.

'How did you know?' Bonnie said.

Dad laughed. 'Oh, I mightn’t know the half of it,' he said. 'I mightn’t know what it's all really about. But I do know how you got here. And Jim too. I've smelt the smoke on that balloon of yours, and seen the soot inside. I'm not a fool. I've seen those pits in the holly grove, and the logs piling up and the staves. And I've seen your face, Bonnie, when you didn't know anyone was looking. I watched you tonight, striding up and down… '

Bonnie hung her head. She'd thought — and Arabella had thought, too — that they couldn't tell Dad things, that they had to keep what was happening to themselves. What fools they’d been.

'Enough of this,' Dad said. He picked up the suitcase. 'Come on. Let's go. Jim removed the balloon from the barn hours ago. He’s nearly got it full now. There's something very strange about the way that boy can move. Shall we go and join him?'

For the first time, Bonnie recognized a smell of woodsmoke about Dad, and understood that Jim hadn’t worked alone.

'Mum said this place wasn't like anywhere else I'd been,' she said. 'She was right, too. But I'm still not sure what kind of place it is.'

Dad laughed. 'I don't think any of us knows what kind of place this is,' he said. 'Sometimes it seems like just anywhere else. And then sometimes it's quite different from the rest of the world.' He squeezed Bonnie’s hand. The sky was lightening fast. 'Come on,' he said again and led her along the terrace, through the orchard and up into the meadow where the great shape of the balloon towered above the circle of holly trees.

‘If there was a land beyond the sky would you be surprised?' Bonnie looked up at the stars. So did Dad, who wouldn’t be surprised at anything, he said.

'When I've gone…’ Bonnie said.

'Don't worry. I'll tell Mum you’re all right.’

‘And that I said goodbye?’

‘That too.’

The grass crunched beneath Bonnie's feet. Her breath made great white clouds. She climbed and didn't speak again. As they came to the holly grove, the roaring of the fire reached out to them. Bonnie stood with a cold white world at her back and a furious red one at her front. In the red one Jim dashed back and forth, and there was indeed something very strange about the way he moved. This, Bonnie guessed, had to be the last vestige of his being a shadowboy. He looked like twenty men. He looked as if he was everywhere. All on his own he had the balloon tethered and staved and its mouth over the smoke pit. The smoke was filling it and his hands - which seemed to reach every side of the balloon, all at the same time - struggled to hold it down.

'Here, let me help you,’ Dad called. He dropped the suitcase and pushed through the trees, leaving Bonnie alone between worlds. She watched their silhouettes as they struggled to complete the final tasks. Her face stung in the heat. Flakes of ash filled the air. She smelt something. What was it? Something beyond the smell of fire. Flakes rained down around her and she found herself remembering the night she'd run away from Grandbag and her home.

The smell beyond the fire was the smell of home.

It was like the end of the holiday when you remember where you come from. Bonnie remembered Maybelle. Really remembered her. She remembered the red-and-yellow bedroom and the floppy plant and her raggedy doll, which she'd never left behind before. And she wanted Maybelle. She wanted the long-promised home they'd begun to make together. She picked up the cardboard suitcase, clutched it in her arms and felt surprised. This couldn't be her, could it, feeling like this? For the last time she looked down to the back of the house and across the valley beyond it.

'Come and help us will you, Bonnie?' Dad called.

As Bonnie made her final choice, ducking between the hollies, the necklace slipped off her neck. It fell onto the earth, its silver hands unclasped at last. Bonnie stopped and stared. Godda's blue enamel substitute for sky, her diamond stars lay at her feet. She picked up the necklace and held it in her hand. She was going to be like ordinary people after all, who never had a treasure of their own. She should have been sad. She would have cried once at life's unfairness.

'It's really over,' Bonnie said, and her eyes drank in the necklace, knowing she’d always remember it.

'Bonnie,' Jim called. 'It's time for you to go. Come on ... '

Bonnie hung the necklace in the nearest holly tree and struggled into the heart of the grove where everything seemed to be roaring and furious. The balloon was full, raging to be away. Dad, and what seemed like a dozen spinning Jims, had pegged it down and were clinging onto the gondola as it bobbed impatiently, waiting for her to get into it. Jim shouted at Bonnie to come and stand with them beneath the balloon’s great, greedy mouth.

'It's time,' he said when she got close. His body had stilled to that of an ordinary boy who'd never do a thing like this again, and whose last connection with his old life tore at its tethers to get free. 'Take my hand. I'll help you in.'

Bonnie threw her suitcase into the gondola. Jim handed her in after it and began to strap her into what she now knew was the safety position for take-off.

'Sun's up,' Dad shouted. 'Look at the sky!'

Bonnie's heart began to pound. She gripped the sides of the gondola. The air was perfectly still. Above her the sky was pink, and between the hollies she could see it turning to gold. Dad copied Jim and began cutting ropes free. The gondola bobbed and shook. Jim cut the last ropes and the staves crashed down. Dad didn't say goodbye. He didn't reach out and touch Bonnie, and she was glad. He stood with his arms folded, his face lifted and his steady eyes watching her go. Jim raised a hand.

Bonnie felt Highholly Hill falling away. First the holly grove. Then Highholly House. Then the sheep's path to the top, and Batholes, and Edric's Throne, and Roundhill and the cottages down the back. Bonnie saw a light in Arabella's bedroom. Saw a figure open the window to look out. She clutched the gondola. For a moment the thinnest veil of tears hid the figure from view. But when she wiped her eyes she knew it couldn’t be the drooling Arabella-thing. Not with a hand raised up triumphantly like that.

The balloon passed up through the cloud. Briefly Bonnie was unable to make out Highholly Hill among the other hills and valleys. She strained her eyes and finally picked it out again, with its craggy outcrop of white stones. Looking down at them, she thought of Edric and Godda.

'Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?’ she called out loud. ‘Arabella’s back, and Jake as well, and you’ll take care of them like you always have done and you always will…’

Like an answer, the sun appeared. The last of the cloud was torn away and Bonnie could see the rim of the earth beyond it. 'Oh God in heaven,' she cried out, ‘I can see the Earth's curve.’

Then, unexpectedly, Bonnie heard music. It was sweet pipe music that she'd forgotten about. The music of the skies. It was up there with the last of the stars. Above her, Bonnie could see the balloon, the richest, darkest blue now in the sunlight, and the planets above them both and summertime right round the other side of the earth. The sky above her parted. It opened for Bonnie and let her through and for a moment the brightness was so great that she couldn't see at all, and then she found that she was falling - that the music was gone, that the brightness had faded and a breeze stirred the gondola as though a change of weather was on the way. The murmur of a different world rose up to greet Bonnie.

She dropped through an ordinary, early-morning sky into grey clouds. The gondola shivered and the cold bit at her cheeks. She stared and stared, waiting to see what would happen next. Then she smelt something. What was it? It came from below. It was a strange, flat, grubby smell that she couldn't identify and yet it was familiar.

The clouds parted. Bonnie made out the shape of a new world beneath her, which was an old world too. Sounds drifted upwards. They were the sleepy sounds of early morning traffic on busy roads. Bonnie sniffed again and felt anxious. The sun wasn’t shining down there. It was a dull, grey morning, and she recognized the smell. It was the smell of a city - and she was heading straight towards it.

PART EIGHT

Maybelle

31

The balloon slipped immaculately between power lines and telephone wires. Only at the last minute did Bonnie recognize the flats and tarmac forecourt of her old home, and the holly trees and Michael's garden and the clearing in the middle of it. The trees around the clearing reached up strong, bony fingers and the balloon became entangled in them.

Bonnie was jerked about as the gondola swung precariously above the ground. Then branches snapped and Bonnie and the gondola came down. They were both flung onto their side. The monster that had carried them became ripped and deflated. It hung torn among the branches, a wrinkled bag of dull, dark cloth.

Bonnie struggled with the knots that tied her in. Everything around her in the clearing was very still and the traffic sounded far away. She rubbed her sore bones and looked up at Michael's house. The curtains were tightly drawn. There were no cats on the veranda. The summer chairs and tables were gone and the veranda was bare.

As Bonnie untied the last knot, she remembered saying, 'It'll be like stories in books, when people return to find they were only gone for a moment in time… ' She looked around her. The ground was covered with fallen, rotting leaves. Between the bare branches of the trees, she saw the garden wall. She'd got it wrong, hadn't she? This was more than just a moment in time. This was winter – and what was she going to tell Maybelle?

Slowly Bonnie stood up. She turned away from the flint-faced house and Michael, whom she promised herself she'd see later, and began to make her way between the trees. The world was dull and grey and bitterly cold. A flake or two of snow began to fall. She found the hole in the wall and clambered through. How could she ever get Maybelle to believe her story, she wondered as she pushed between the prickly hollies on the other side.

Bonnie reached the tarmac forecourt. Beyond the flats she could see traffic lights changing colour on the road, and a row of tinsel-decorated shops decorated for Christmas but closed because it was still early or maybe this was a Sunday. Bonnie saw empty pavements and wheelie bins lined up in front of the flats, waiting for refuse collection day, and stray dogs around the bins at the end next to the orange wall. She saw the sign by the road which said HIGHHOLLY HOUSE Nos. 1-79. It had been graffitied over. It was hard to read the words. She looked beyond the sign at the flats themselves. Which dark entrance hole was hers? She couldn't remember. They all looked the same.

Then Bonnie recognized the fire escape leading to her balcony, with the entrance directly beneath it. She remembered Grandbag's car parked right there. Of course. She crossed the forecourt. Made for the entrance and headed for the stairs up to her level. They were dark and smelly. Huge rude words were scrawled in fantastic colours up the wall. Bonnie climbed past them to the first floor and began to make her way along the walkway, reading the numbers on the doors.

At last she stood outside her own front door. Her heart beat very fast. She looked over the balcony rail. Down in the courtyard she saw a mass of washing-lines and a solitary bare tree. Quiet snowflakes were falling out of what was now a nasty, yellow sky.

Bonnie turned back to the door. It sounded very quiet inside. She rang the shrill bell hard because she knew that, if Maybelle didn't hear, her courage would fail and she'd run away again. Someone moved. Through the little bit of frosted glass Bonnie saw a light go on and a shape come down the hall. She heard footsteps. The door opened. Someone stood there blinking. Bonnie almost thought at first that it was Grandbag.

'Well, well, well, ' the someone said in Grand- bag's voice.

'Doreen!' Bonnie said. 'Doreen, is that you?'

Doreen folded her arms. A cold unwelcoming smile lit her eyes. Dragged around her thin shoulders was the sort of fancy dressing-gown that Grandbag always used to wear. Bonnie remembered Doreen's shapeless, ugly dresses and her nervousness. What had happened?

'Yes, it's me,' Doreen said. 'So you're back. You'd better come in. It's freezing with the door open. I'll make a cup of tea. I’m useless till I've had my cup of tea.'

'Where's Maybelle?' Bonnie said uncertainly.

Doreen didn't answer. She tottered down the hall to the kitchen. Worried that she might be making a terrible mistake, Bonnie shut the front door and followed her. When she entered the kitchen, she couldn't believe her eyes. Everything was as different as it could be. Gone were all Maybelle’s personal things, replaced with clutter which could only be Grandbag’s. Bonnie’s legs went weak at the sight of it all. She moved a pile of newspapers off a chair and sank onto it. There were no pretty, fanciful, silly things. Not a single sign of Maybelle any more.

Doreen made the tea. She stood by the kettle with arms folded while Bonnie looked around. What had happened? She didn't seem like Doreen any more. Perhaps it was the dressing-gown that did it. Doreen poured a cup for just herself, drank it in a single gulp and said accusingly, 'Where've you been, then?'

'I…I'd rather tell Maybelle, if you don't mind.'

Doreen's eyes glimmered. 'You'll have a long wait then,' came her tart reply. 'They’ve had a row and Maybelle’s gone. She said some nasty things. Mother'll never be the same again. You mustn't mention her to Mother. I'll wake her and tell her you're here. I'll take you in to see her, but you mustn't tire her. She's not what she was, you know.' Doreen poured a second cup of tea. 'I have to do everything now,' she said, and marched off with it.

Bonnie's dread of seeing Grandbag again, and even her anxiety about finding Maybelle, became swallowed up in curiosity. Why was Doreen so different? Where was the meek, nervous person she’d once been? It was as if the world had turned upside down.

Finally Doreen reappeared. 'Come on,' she said. 'I've woken her up specially. She’s ready for you.'

Bonnie was hustled down the hall to what had been the door to her own bedroom. Doreen opened it and pushed her in.

'Here she is, Mother,' she shouted. 'Don't talk to her too long. You'll tire yourself. I'll go and get your breakfast. Don't try and get up. You know it's not good for you.'

The room was desperately stuffy with the window closed, the curtains almost completely drawn and a little side-lamp by the bed illuminating the dust. Grandbag lay in bed. The black dye had come out of her hair and she wore no make-up. She looked about a hundred years old. She lay back on the pillows. Her nightdress was grubby. She looked so small. The cocky, triumphant look was out of her eyes, but the bitterness was still there. Bitterness and anger.

'Well, you're back,' she said.

'Yes, Grandma.'

'Good. You can make that fool of a woman stops feeding me brown bread. I hate brown bread. She does it just to annoy me. You can bring me the newspapers. I hear them drop through the letterbox every day, but she never lets me have them.'

'Where's my mother?'

'Your what?'

‘I want to know where my mother is.'

Grandbag stared. 'Your mother?'

'I'm talking about Maybelle,’ Bonnie said.

'Such a pretty name,' Grandbag said, with a humph. 'I used to know a girl called Maybelle… ' She peered at Bonnie cautiously, fumbling for her glasses but she couldn’t find them. 'Do I know you?' she said.

'I'm Bonnie,' Bonnie said. 'Look, Grandma, it's me.'

Grandbag began to struggle up in the bed, but she couldn't do it. She clawed unsuccessfully at the covers, but slid back down again. ‘It used to be so different,' she muttered to herself, as if the effort was too much for her. 'I didn't used to be like this.'

'Grandma,' Bonnie said, moving round the bed, so Grandbag could see her again. 'What's happened to you? And what's happened to Doreen? I don't understand.'

'She treats me terrible now,' Grandbag said. 'She knows I'm too weak to pay her back. I know what she's doing. She's getting her revenge.'

'But Maybelle…’

'We had a row, Maybelle and I. After all the years of things I've done for her. After looking after that child for her. After all my care. She said terrible things. I don't know where she got them from. Terrible things they were. I can't forget them. I dream about them at night. They make me shake when I think about them…’

'And they're all true, aren't they, Mother?'

Doreen stood in the doorway gloating. 'You know it, Mother. Every word she said was true. That's why it makes you ill to think of it. I've got your breakfast ready. Come on. Sit up. Here you are. Brown bread and butter.'

Bonnie pushed past Doreen and ran down the hall.

‘Where are you going now?' Doreen called.

Bonnie struggled with the front door. She stumbled outside. It was snowing properly now, but the cold air was wonderful. Maybe it was full of city smells and noises, but it was fresh and true and Bonnie gulped it down. The stale breath inside that flat was the very air of hate.

'There she goes. Off again,' said Doreen. 'Isn't that a shame?' She didn't run after Bonnie. She shut Grandbag back into her airless room and closed the door. Then she stood in front of the hall mirror and stared long at her changed face.

Bonnie clattered down the stairs and sank in a heap on the last of them. So that was her home. That was what she'd come back to. That awful airless room which didn't bear any resemblance to the singing, lively, red-and-yellow bedroom she and Maybelle had painted. And where was Maybelle? Would she ever find her? Bonnie stared out at the thickening snowstorm and began to cry, covering her face with her hands.

'It's all right,' a voice said. ‘Nothing’s as bad as it seems. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Come and have some breakfast.'

Bonnie looked up. It was Michael.

32

Michael brought Bonnie toast and coffee on a tray. She sat in front of his paraffin heater surrounded by shelves and books and remembered that other morning when he'd given her breakfast. It all now seemed so long ago. It had been the day he'd told her about the land beyond the sky.

'You still have the flying book?' she said.

'Of course I do.'

He got it down and thumbed through the yellow-edged pages till he found the right one. She peered where he pointed, at the broken pottery with its balloon-and-fire decorations that no longer held any mystery for her.

'Maybe you'll write your own story one day,' he said.

'Nobody will believe it really happened.' Bonnie shut the book. 'Do you know, my Aunt Doreen is terrible now. She's terrifying. She's just like Grandbag used to be, and Grandbag's…’

'Grandbag's had it.'

'That's right. How did you know that?'

'It's what Maybelle said. Her exact words.'

'Maybelle? You've seen her? Where is she?'

'Oh yes, I’ve seen her,' Michael said. 'I’ve seen her several times, and she called on me before she left. They'd had a big row, she and what do you call her – Grandbag? She thought she'd never see you again, and she blamed your grandma for driving you away. She said, "I shouted at Mother. I told her the truth. It's what I should have done long ago. She crumpled, you know. I think she's had it. She'll never be the same again. Not with Doreen looking after her. She’s got all the malice of a liberated prisoner towards her former jailer…”’

Bonnie didn't care about Doreen any more, or Grandbag, who was just some person from the past. What she cared about was that Maybelle — brave at last — had stood up for herself. 'Where is Maybelle?' she said, looking round as if expecting her mother to spring out of the nearest cupboard.

Michael laughed. 'She's not here,' he said. Don’t look like that. Finish your breakfast and I'll take you to her. We'll make up a thermos of coffee and it might be a good idea to take hot water bottles too. The heater in my old car's not up to much.'

Bonnie couldn't bring herself to finish her breakfast. 'Does Maybelle know where I've been?' she said.

‘Nobody knows where you’ve been,' Michael said. 'But at least I could explain the means by which you left. It wasn’t a very likely story, but for some weird reason Maybelle believed it. Nearly every day she phones, asking if you’re back. I go and visit her as often as I can, to make sure she’s all right. She’s a remarkable woman, Maybelle. In fact, she’s not unlike you. She believes completely in where you’ve gone, and she believes in you. You may have run away, but she has faith that you’ll return. I’ve never met anybody quite like her.’

Bonnie leapt to her feet, impatient to leave. Outside demented snowflakes danced through the air. 'We’re in for a bit of a bad journey,' Michael said. 'But I don't mind if you don't, as long as we’re prepared.' He began gathering together scarves, gloves and hats. He found pairs of Wellington boots. 'Pass me those blankets, will you?' he called.

A couple of tartan travel rugs were draped over a crate. Bonnie picked them up. 'What's this?' she said, looking into the crate.

'It's my telescope,' Michael said.

Bonnie remembered Michael's perfect observatory with its glass dome pushing up into the sky. 'But Michael, what’s your telescope doing all packed up?’

Michael stopped rushing about and looked at Bonnie. 'Things have turned out all right and you're back again,' he said. 'But I never should have let you get involved. I must have been mad. Your mother was heartbroken, you know. After you went off, I swore I'd never look into the sky again.'

Bonnie touched the telescope. 'You must set it up again,' she said. 'I was meant to go. The way it happened was nothing to do with you. I'll explain it all later when we get to Maybelle.'

Thick snow blocked two lanes of the motorway. More of the stuff tipped out of the low, grey sky and the wind blew it this way and that like powdery sand dunes on the edge of the sea. The motorway signs flashed that thirty miles an hour was the maximum speed, but the long convoy of traffic limped along much more slowly than that.

Michael had been right about the heater in his car. It didn't work. As they crawled out of the city and into the countryside, passing between white flanks of fields, Bonnie began to freeze. They stopped at a motorway service station, drank soup and refilled hot water bottles. Then Bonnie climbed back into the car, buried herself under the travel rugs again and clutched the hot water bottles tight. Michael steered a course back onto the motorway.

'On a good day this wouldn't take much longer,' he said. They were driving through another city now, passing huge cooling towers and a ruined factory with hundreds of broken windows. The snow was still tipping down. It was hard to see through the windscreen.

Finally they came out the other side, back into the countryside. But Bonnie didn’t see it. An awful thought had come to her. What if Maybelle too - like Doreen – had all the malice of a liberated prisoner? What if her past with Grandbag had made her bitter and cruel and the Maybelle they were crawling towards wasn't the one Bonnie remembered?'

'This is our junction,' Michael said.

They slipped off the motorway. The road sign, half covered in snow, told them it was twenty miles to the nearest town. The road was completely empty. Bonnie looked around her. They were driving into an almost alpine landscape of valleys and hills, and the sky was lightening and the falling snow was beginning to thin.

'Where are we, Michael?'

Michael hunched over the wheel as if frozen to it, peering through the small gap made by the wobbling windscreen wipers. 'It's special where your mother is,' was all he said. 'Just wait and see.'

After what felt like hours, Michael turned the car off the main road onto a smaller one. They drove through snowbound villages, between sculpted white banks of hedgerow. A snow-plough passed them on the other side of the road, its lights flashing. It was the first vehicle they'd seen for a while. They drove through a deserted town, then out the other side, down a hill, then up another one. At the top, a whole new valley opened out in front of them. The snow had almost stopped. In the distance, against the brighter sky, Bonnie saw the silhouette of a high hill with a rocky outcrop on the top.

‘Is something wrong?' Michael said. 'You're not feeling car sick, are you? It's been a long journey. We'll stop and have another drink if you like.'

He pulled up the car. Bonnie's face had gone the colour of the sky before the snowstorm hit. He poured out the last of the coffee and coaxed it down her throat.

But Bonnie hardly noticed. She stared through the windscreen. Watery pink sunlight struggled to break through the snow clouds above that distant hill, lighting up a handful of standing stones which Bonnie recognised. How could she not?

'Don't know what they call them, but they’re quite a sight, aren't they?' said Michael.

'Yes,' said Bonnie weakly.

'That's where your mother’s staying,’ said Michael. 'You wouldn't believe it, would you? Right up there. Do you think you're better now? We ought to get on. The last bit of the journey is definitely going to be the worst. We’re likely to get stuck you know. We could end up walking and it’ll soon be dark.’

'Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.'

Michael looked at Bonnie’s pale face.

'Really,' she insisted.

Michael started up the engine. In my opinion,' he said, 'they make a better job of clearing these little roads than they do the big ones. The road was gritted for the rest of the way and he drove fast. The sunset behind Highholly Hill said that the day was ending. Michael drove as if he was racing it.

Soon the hill was right above them. The car spun on a corner but afterwards the road was straight. They passed a village sign and a warning about tractors crossing. Michael slowed down. Bonnie saw a garage that she recognized, and a road down to where a showground had once been, and a lane which she knew led up to the bumpy track to Higholly House.

'We're here,' she whispered dreamily.

Michael looked at her. 'That's right,' he said.

'Turn here,' she said.

'How did you know that?'

Michael turned where she pointed. Bonnie didn't answer him. They drove up between cottages. The lane hadn't been cleared and he had to slow right down. The car wheels skidded and they came to a halt. A woman outside a house was shovelling snow. Michael wound down the window.

'You can't go up there,’ she said, looking the car up and down. 'Leastways, not in that.'

'I suppose not, but we can't go back,' Michael said. 'We've come a long way.'

'Then you'd best walk,' the woman replied. 'You won't get lost if you keep inside the lane between the hedges. Long as it don't snow again.' She looked up at the sky, which was darkening, though more from the end of day than from fresh snow on the way. 'Have you boots? Would you like to borrow my spare shovel?'

They got out of the car. Michael accepted the offer of the shovel but got out their own boots.

'She's mad up there, you know,' the woman said as he began to change out of his shoes. 'Up there alone. What she’s doing there, nobody knows. But she'll never stick it out all winter.’

A flurry of wind blew snow against the side of the car and up into Bonnie's face. Was it just Maybelle up there, she asked herself, or were they all there – Dad and Arabella too, and Jake and the Onions family and all of them? She put on the thick socks that Michael offered her, slipped into his spare boots. She was impatient to get the village behind her, impatient for the hill. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. She wanted to laugh out loud.

'Put on another pair of gloves,' Michael said. 'It's a long way. We've got to keep you warm. That's right. And how about this blanket?' He tied one of the travel rugs round Bonnie’s shoulders. 'Not too bulky for you?' he said.

Bonnie shook her head and jumped up and down, banging her hands together. 'It won't be as hard as it looks,' Michael said. 'We'll be all right.'

'I know,’ Bonnie said.

They began the climb. At first it wasn't hard at all, despite the big boots and heavy clothes. As the track wound and the hedges bowed beneath the weight of snow, Bonnie caught continual welcome glimpses of Highholly House below the brow of the hill, with a light in a window that beckoned to her like an advent star. Her legs began to ache. She pulled them out of the deep snow, one after the other. There was a wonderful stillness everywhere. They both climbed quietly. The only sound was the crunch, crunch, crunch of their feet.

At last they dipped down into the Dingle. The banks rose and the trees thickened on either side. Bonnie heard the brook before they came to it. She stopped at the wooden bridge and leaned against its side and banged her numb hands together. Snow fell from a branch. A bird flew up into the sky. She peered down at the fast flowing water. In the world of memory, two girls had waded through that brook…

They climbed out of the Dingle on the other side. The landscape opened out. 'Look at it all,' said Michael. The sky was that magical midnight blue again. The moon was up and full and shining on the snow. A glittering, pale-blue sheen hung over everything. 'This is a special place, isn't it? Do you know what I mean?'

Bonnie looked at the valley, which she knew so well - the twinkling lights, each one in its right place, and the hills she'd last seen from the gondola.

'I know what you mean.'

They climbed on. This was the long, hard bit of the journey, which seemed to carry on for ever. The stars were all out now. The light of the house at last was close. Bonnie shivered and gasped for breath. The yard gate loomed ahead of them and suddenly she couldn't, just couldn't, believe that everything was all right - that something terrible wouldn't happen when they arrived to spoil it all. 'Maybelle will be like Doreen. She will have changed. She will be awful,' she thought.

Michael reached the gate and opened it. They forced their aching bodies up the yard. It stood empty and abandoned. The big barn door was off its hinge. There was no straw inside. There were no animals any more.

'Sad, isn't it?' said Michael. ‘It must have been a good farm once, and now it's been left to go to ruin. What a waste.’

Bonnie looked beyond the barn. The terrace gate had come off. The paint on the scullery door was peeling. An upstairs window-pane – Mum and Dad's bedroom window, she thought - was broken and had been covered with polythene.

But it was beautiful, all the same. Beautiful and perfect. Bonnie didn't mind its state of disrepair.

Michael squeezed her arm. 'Come on!' He led her through the creaking gate, onto the terrace. 'This is the way.' He led her to the scullery door, which shuddered as it always had done, as he pushed it open. He directed her through the scullery with its smells of logs and dust and mouse. He banged on the kitchen door and lifted the latch.

‘In you go.'

The kitchen was unlit, but full of moonlight through which Bonnie saw everything clearly. The kettle on the stove hissed at her, just the same as ever, but that was where the similarities ended. There was no fine old table any more, no dresser, no stocked pantry with its laden shelves, no armchair on the rug by the stove. A row of old plates was set up on a shelf by the stairs' door. Some cups hung from hooks beneath it. A small, red, Formica table stood in the middle of the floor with the remains of a single meal on it. A pile of washing-up sat in the sink. On the shelf where Dad's silver cup from the Show had been placed sat Bonnie's raggedy doll.

A dog lay beneath the window. It rose to its feet and shook itself all over. Its hair was silky and soft, like Jake's used to be. It didn't bark. Bonnie crossed the floor to look at it. It lifted its head. It was the sort of dog you could imagine galloping across hills.

Someone walked across the living-room next door. Bonnie heard a very distant buzz of television and a far door being shut. She heard footsteps coming closer. 'Oh,' she gasped. She couldn't help herself.

'Who is it? Who's there?' Maybelle's voice called nervously. Bonnie couldn't bring herself to speak.

'It's all right, Maybelle,' Michael said.

'Michael… ' Maybelle’s voice softened. She was surprised and pleased. The door opened and a yellow square of light was thrown across the floor.

Bonnie stepped forward. No longer could she see the things she’d loved about this place - the sagging beams, the flagstones, the inglenook fireplace in the distance. All she could see - all that mattered - was the unchanged shape of Maybelle in the doorway. Maybelle, with her untidy hair, blobs of make-up, sagging sweater and holey slippers. Maybelle, a teapot slipping between her fingers and crashing to the floor. Maybelle, her face as white as death, her eyes staring, round and wild…

'Bonnie, dear God, Bonnie! My Bonnie…’

For a moment, neither of them could move. Maybelle stared at Bonnie, bundled up like a refugee in a rug, her head poking out of the top of it, bright tears in her eyes. Then the two of them fell upon each other like fierce wild animals. Maybelle pulled the rug off and held Bonnie tight. She held her head in her hands. She clung to her daughter. She wept into her hair. She kissed her cheeks, her head, her hands, her eyes, her mouth. She kissed it all.

'Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie.’

'Maybelle, oh Maybelle, I love you... '

Bonnie held Maybelle as if she'd never let her go. She smelt her soap and lipstick. Smelt her skin. She wouldn’t let her go. She shut her eyes tight, and everything was all right.'

Everything was all right.

'You wretched, WRETCHED, WRETCHED girl,' Maybelle said. 'I love you so. You've grown. You've changed. Just look at you now. Where have you been? Wherever have you been?’ She looked past Bonnie to Michael standing in the doorway. 'You said she'd come back,' she said. 'You said she would.'

'I promised she would,' Michael said.

They sat together on the sofa in front of the little fireplace in what had once been a sewing-room with a special painting on the wall. A small bright rug lay before them on the bare floor and in the corner, in a pot, stood Bonnie’s plant with floppy leaves, which Maybelle had decorated with silver Christmas balls. The fire crackled and blazed, fed with logs piled up in a broken cardboard box. At their feet, a dog looked up at Bonnie as Jake once had done before he knew her and they became friends.

'He makes me feel safe up here on my own,' Maybelle said. 'What do you think? Do you like my new home? And this little sitting-room? It’s the only place small enough to keep really warm. Do you like my velvet curtains? I bought them at the Christmas sale down in the village. I've only just finished hanging them.'

Michael sat a little way apart, his head against the fire-breast wall. He smoked and watched them both. When Maybelle looked at him he looked away and said nothing. Maybelle reached for a fresh log and threw it on the fire.

'I sawed this log,' she said to him. 'You said you didn't think I’d be up to it. I saw logs every morning out on the terrace. And I mend the roof when the slates come off. And I don't mind being on my own. I even made a loaf today. Look…’

Maybelle reached among the remains of tea for a heavy lump of bread, which she held aloft. Michael laughed at it and she laughed as well. Michael shook his head. Maybelle turned to Bonnie, who was laughing too but swore she was impressed. 'Oh, I'm so happy,’ she said.

‘You've changed after all,’ Bonnie thought. ‘And it isn't awful. like I worried it might be. It isn't like Doreen. You can run from hate. Once I didn't think you could, but I know now. We've both done it.’

'How did you find this place?' she asked, pulling off the end of the loaf and eating it.

'I don't exactly know.' Maybelle shook her head. 'It has the same name as our block of flats. Certainly I noticed that. But the farmer whose advert I answered doesn’t even make me pay rent. He says he's glad to have someone living here to keep the place warm and stop the roof falling in. He lives in a bungalow in the village. He thinks I'm crazy for staying here. All the village does.

'I don't know how long I'll stay,' Maybelle said. 'The novelty may wear off, or the farmer may decide he wants the place back. And now you’re here, we’ll have to figure out how to get you down to school without any transport. It's such a long way, and you’ve seen how bumpy the track is.'

Michael threw his cigarette onto the fire. He got up. 'I'll leave you two,' he said. 'It's time for me to go.' He stretched himself.

'Go where?' Bonnie said, astonished to see Maybelle disappear only to return with his coat and boots.

'Back down the hill, of course,' Michael said. 'Back to see if my poor old car will start. Back home.'

'But Michael…' Bonnie leapt to her feet. He was part of this. He belonged up here. Didn't he know that? 'You can't go,' she said feebly. 'It's… it’s too cold.'

'I've brought you home,' Michael said, throwing on his coat. 'It's what I promised, and I don't mind the cold. I like the snow. I'll enjoy walking in the dark and, like that woman in the village said, if I keep to the track between the hedges I’ll be all right.'

Maybelle handed him his boots and he put them on.

'But you've got to stay,' Bonnie insisted. 'I haven't told you yet about the land beyond...'

Michael shook his head. 'There'll be another chance for that.' He dug into his pockets for his gloves. 'This time's for just you two,' he said.

Maybelle allowed him to walk out the door. Bonnie followed him into the hall, then to the big front door which, judging from the struggle he had opening it, wasn't often used.

‘Thank you, Michael,’ Maybelle said, and Bonnie couldn't believe it. Maybelle was showing him out. Michael, who'd made everything happen – she was letting him go.

'You can't do this, Maybelle,' Bonnie said as Michael passed through the door and started stamping along the terrace.

'Michael will be back,' Maybelle said. ‘Don't you know that?'

They stood and waved till Michael had passed down the yard and disappeared through the gate at the bottom. Then Maybelle shut the door, and it was just the two of them and Bonnie understood. Maybelle led Bonnie back towards the warm light of the sitting- room.

'We're on our own,' she said. 'Like we always planned to be.' She stood in the half-open doorway with a backcloth of velvet curtains and flickering firelight. Bonnie remembered another night, somebody else's mother, questions she couldn't answer then.

'I think,' said Maybelle - and Bonnie knew it would be different now - 'the time has come for you to tell me where you've been.'

Author’s Note

From childhood onwards I’d been writing all my life, but ‘Midnight Blue’ was my first attempt at a novel. With five young children under the age of eleven, I couldn’t have started it at a worse time, but my sense of urgency was overwhelming. This was a story that demanded to be written.

Getting up early to write every day before the family awoke, I never imagined that my solitary slog would end up winning the prestigious Smarties Grand Prix Award. The writing was its own award, I reckoned. Book prizes didn’t even figure in my thinking. Getting published was enough.

The Guardian’s Stephanie Nettell called 1991 my anus mirabilis - and indeed it was; my own special year of miracles. I’ve been a published author ever since, and every book is special in its own way but ‘Midnight Blue’ will always be the book which fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a successful author. Not only that, it’s a celebration of a place I love.

Shropshire is the unspoken hero of ‘Midnight Blue’. There would be no book without it. Its landscape, people and mythology shine throughout. The hill which Wild Edric and Lady Godda sleep beneath is the south Shropshire range known as the Stiperstones, and there really is a Highholly House - though not by that name. My family and I were privileged to live in it one memorable winter. Whilst there, I read the book which set me imagining a children’s story based on hot-air ballooning, particularly of the smoke-filled sort.

Everything I know about smoke-filled hot-air ballooning comes from ‘The Flight of Condor I’ by the extraordinary adventurer, Jim Woodman. It tells the story of an experimental flight which he made with Julian Nott, one of the founding figures of modern ballooning, over the Nazca desert in Peru. Adapting a primitive launch method last used by fairground balloonists in the early twentieth century, they set out to prove that, with locally available materials, such flights could have been possible a thousand years ago.

If you want to know more about that flight, you can read about it on http://www.nott.com/Pages/projects.php. It’s a fascinating story in its own right. If you want to know more about the writing of ‘Midnight Blue’, go to my website, www.paulinefisk.co.uk and follow all the links.

About the Author

Pauline Fisk started writing when she was a child, and has produced eleven novels for children and young adults and numerous short stories and poems. Her most recent novel, ‘In the Trees’, saw her heading off to Belize - supported by Faber & Faber, the Arts Council and the Authors’ Foundation - to trek in the rainforest and research the subject of gap year volunteering.

Pauline Fisk describes herself as a great believer in the power of imagination. ‘My family motto is to ‘Be Brave and Reach for the Stars,’ she says, ‘and I’ve always tried to live up to it.’ As well as writing, she enjoys visiting schools, libraries and festivals, meeting young people and encouraging them to read and write. She’s proud to be the Chancellor of the Children’s University of Shropshire, and encouraging young people to develop their talents and believe in themselves is an important part of her life. She’s the mother of five grown-up children. In her spare time she weaves, reads and enjoys exploring the hills and valleys of the border country between England and Wales where she has her home.

More information about Pauline Fisk can be found on http://www.paulinefisk.co.uk, including her writer’s blog and serialized extracts from her jungle adventures in Belize.

Some Reviews for Midnight Blue

‘Midnight Blue’ was first published twenty years ago. It won the Smarties Prize, even trumping Esio Trot, that wonderful love story from Roald Dahl. And it's no wonder. This is a singular book, full of contrasts. Kitchen sink drama sits beside fantasy, and warmth and love sit beside the darkness that comes from both within and without… It's about growing up, about self-knowledge, and about the redeeming power of love. It's imaginative and magical. And just a little bit scary. What more could you want? …It has a gorgeous new cover image and lots of interesting stuff about the various inspirations that led her to write the book. Here's hoping it gives this lovely and unforgettable book a whole new generation of readers.’ Jill Murphy, The Bookbag

‘Pauline Fisk’s Midnight Blue is one of the most exciting fantasies I’ve read for a long time. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down. I especially admired the way the book showed the darkness within Bonnie as well as that without. Her awareness of her own potential for evil, and her conquering it, is beautifully conveyed.’ Madeleine L’Engle

‘Reading this extraordinary first novel, I found myself recalling my first meeting with the work of Philippa Pearce… The story is, in every sense, marvellous… Pauline Fisk has a poet’s feeling for the importance of words an she uses them with great precision and a sharp awareness of their meaning and music. Literally every page of this novel has an example of great felicity in evoking a scene, a season or a person. Here is an important novel, one in which adults and children will find a shared and profound experience, one that is as moving as it is richly enjoyable.’ Junior Bookshelf

A hauntingly written fantasy, Midnight Blue tells the story of Bonnie, a girl with a fair share of life’s problems, who is transported via a hot air balloon into a world beyond the sky where she finds the ideal family and new friends…. The skill of the writing is to reflect the escapist longings of an age group where the magic of childhood fades in the face of the demands of everyday life.’ The Daily Mail

‘Roald Dahl would have been generous about conceding the Smarties Grand Prix to a first novel of outstanding merit. Midnight Blue, by Pauline Fisk, is haunting, rare, rewarding and wonderfully imagined and executed.’ The Sunday Times

‘A lovely book… Pauline Fisk is a fine writer and her story is not only exciting and mysterious, but makes a strong emotional point and is wonderfully rich in every detail.’ The Guardian

‘One of the most promising first novels I’ve read in a long time… an exhilarating read.’ Chris Powling, BBC Radio 4

‘This is a richly coloured fantasy, whose story grows from the hopes and fears of Bonnie, its central character… The warmth and reassurance that Fisk conveys throughout, even when dealing with the most difficult emotional situations, makes the book suitable for children as young as eight.’ Books for Keeps

‘Pauline Fisk’s haunting and beautifully written Midnight Blue stands out as gold among the dross. It’s a deeply satisfying, long read, complex and haunting and one of the year’s best imaginative novels. Midnight Blue is the kind of book that casts a life-long spell over the imagination.’ Susan Hill

‘Midnight Blue is impressive. It is a rich, complex story written with a sure hand. There are fairy-tale echoes of George MacDonald and Alan Garner, but one always hears the author’s own distinctive voice. The age-old good/evil struggle is presented with total originality, and the narrative never fails to spring surprises. Surely a book to be read and savoured.’ Ann Pilling

‘I have just read and reviewed Midnight Blue with equal delight and admiration. During a long life of reading and writing about children’s books I find that just a couple of handsfull of books stand out as utterly memorable among the many thousands that have come my way. I feel confident that Midnight Blue is going to be one of that select and precious few.’ Marcus Crouch

‘This is fantasy at its best and is highly recommended to readers of all ages from eleven upwards.’ The School Librarian

‘Pauline Fisk throws an emotional knockout punch in this haunting tale, which is worth the price for its originality and style alone.’ Glasgow Sunday Mail

‘To my embarrassment, this book made me uncooperative and uncommunicative until I had finished it. It certainly has an appeal far beyond the juvenile fantasy category. It is intriguing, beautifully written and keeps the reader wondering until the very last page. The suspense of disbelief is not merely willing, but eager; the fantasy becomes reality in one’s mind, springing from that rich central core of England that gave us Elidor, Puck, Middle Earth and Watership Down. This is fantasy at its best.’ Fiction Focus

‘This books is very exciting. I enjoyed it immensely as you never know what’s round the next corner. Nail biting to the end! A good read.’ Fantazia

Other Books by Pauline Fisk

Telling the Sea

Tyger Pool

The Candle House

The Beast of Whixall Moss

Sabrina Fludde

The Red Judge

Mad Dog Moonlight

The Mrs Marridge Project

Flying for Frankie

In the Trees

Table of Contents

ABOUT MIDNIGHT BLUE

PART ONE - Running Away

PART TWO - The House on Highholly Hill

PART THREE – Wild Edric

PART FOUR - Grandmother Marvell

PART FIVE - Getting Rid of Grandbag

PART SIX - The Magic Mirror

PART SEVEN -Midnight Blue

PART EIGHT – Maybelle

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MIDNIGHT BLUE REVIEWS

NOVELS BY PAULINE FISK