The Time of the Ghost

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Imogen? said the voice. Long ago. Lost. Long gone.

  Oh, no, she said, hoping it was not a prophet lying there under the long mound. My sister’s alive. She has fair hair, and she’s dressed in yellow.

  There was a pause. The voice spoke somberly. That one. Corn yellow and running, came past me just now, the one bearing within her the power to give life in the realms of death. I took her for the harbinger of my summoning. Am I needed among you now?

  I—really don’t think so, she said. Er—who are you? A king?

  There was a longer pause. Then the voice said, I have forgotten.

  She knew how that felt. She was sorry for it. I’m sure you will be needed in the end, she said. Tell me, do you know Monigan?

  This time the pause was long and cold. Finally the voice said, Leave me in peace.

  She knew it would not speak to her again. It knew Monigan all right. Still, she thanked it politely. It had given her more hope than she had had since she woke up in hospital. The power to give life in the realms of death, she repeated, as she set off down the cool aisles of the church wood. It was so open in here that she would have seen Imogen at once had she been there. But Imogen was not in the wood.

  Imogen was outside the wood at the other end, where a bank sloped down into a field. There was a mass of wild strawberry plants there. Imogen was squatting among them, having an eating orgy. It was a thing she did when she was not happy with herself. Her mouth, and her hands, and the front of her trouser suit were stained pale pink with strawberry juice. She was eating strawberries as fast as she could pick them. “Very exquisite flavor,” the ghost heard her saying as she came upon her.

  The relief of finding her was so great that for a minute or so the ghost simply hovered, watching Imogen eat.

  Then she remembered that she was supposed to do something when she had found her. It took her another minute to recall that she was supposed to raise one hand in the hospital so that the others could help in some way. She hovered there, trying to raise her hand. She tried mightily, but there seemed no way to do it. She did not seem to be in touch with her seven-year-distant body at all. For five frantic minutes she struggled to find some way to work those distant muscles, while Imogen ate strawberry after strawberry. Then it was too late. The tree beside her stood out green in a double blink of lightning. A moment later, thunder crashed.

  Imogen dropped a handful of strawberries and sprang up under the first patter of rain. “Oh—oh!” she cried out. “I mustn’t stay near trees in a thunderstorm!”

  Lightning came again. Imogen heard it and screamed. Her scream was drowned in the thunder, but the ghost knew she was screaming because her mouth was open, pale in the lightning. Then she had almost vanished in a wall of rain. In the rain Imogen turned and ran, out into the field. The ghost almost lost her. She streaked after, and found her by the merest luck, running and floundering and trying to hold up her trouser legs in blind panic. The ghost kept up with her, in a panic quite as great. Where they went, neither of them knew. The rain drowned everything. The ghost did not dare do anything but keep Imogen in sight. She knew she could only move her hand in hospital by going back there, and that would mean losing Imogen. Imogen did not dare stop running. Once she tore through a hedge, screaming, “I mustn’t stay here! It’s wooden!” And then she ran again until her foot slipped on a wet slope and she rolled down it, wailing.

  Foreign. There was a dim mutter through the pelting of the rain. Tell … beacon lit… No chance … negotiations… Warn—

  Now the ghost knew where they were. The slope Imogen had rolled down was one of the round barrows. And its occupant had noticed they were there. Monigan was alerted. She had sensed trickery. The ghost, despite all her efforts to stay beside the crouching shape of Imogen, felt herself being pushed away. At the same time she found lying beside her a floppy, heavy thing, which seemed to be somebody’s hand. She dropped it with a shudder.

  Ned’s voice said, “She’s found you! Concentrate.”

  She was lying in the hospital bed again, too dejected to tell them it was no good. And she seemed to be more firmly and definitely there than before. She could feel the weight of her hoist-up leg. The rest of her hurt quite badly.

  Cart said, “I don’t believe this!”

  All four of them were staring at something on the other side of her bed. Sally turned her eyes that way. There was a blurred yellow shape there. It was a soaked and waiflike little girl in a yellow trouser suit. Phantom rain was lashing down around her, soaking her further, and she was staring at them all in evident terror.

  The blurred lips moved. Sally heard what they said, but no one else did. I shall look upon it as some fiendish futuristic experiment. I refuse to think I’ve gone mad.

  Poor Imogen! she thought. It must be terrifying for her.

  Fenella, with great presence of mind, dug her beautifully manicured hand into the grown-up Imogen’s back. “Quick! Explain to her.”

  Before the grown-up Imogen could do more than lean forward, ready to speak, the nice-looking nurse appeared in the doorway. “Five o’clock—” she began briskly. She looked at the blurred yellow apparition. She jumped slightly. Then she turned round and went out again, with the quiet, shut look on her face of someone pretending something has not happened.

  “Get on, before she comes back!” said Cart.

  “Imogen,” said the grown-up Imogen, “please believe this. I’m you. You grown up. You’re seven years in the future. Do you understand? This is how you’ll be then.”

  The blurred blue eyes turned to look at her. The ghostly Imogen seemed to understand, but she did not seem to like what she saw.

  “And this is Cart and Fenella and Ned Jenkins,” grown-up Imogen said hurriedly. The blurred eyes moved from face to face and seemed to recognize them. She’s doing better than I did, Sally thought. “And this is Sally,” said Imogen. “Monigan’s trying to take Sally.”

  The blurred Imogen considered Sally. Her lips moved again. It’s not Sally. Her hair’s wrong.

  Fenella leaned over the grown-up Imogen. “I know what’s the matter. It is Sally, honestly, Imo. Her hair went dark as she got older. Lots of people’s hair does that. Do you believe me now?”

  So that’s why I thought I had dark hair! Sally thought. The blurred Imogen was nodding and looking carefully at her. She believed Fenella.

  “You’ve got to stop Monigan,” the grown-up Imogen said. She was so anxious that she looked ill. “Only you can do it. You’ve got to go to Monigan now and give her something—you know what. Can you do that? For all our sakes.”

  This seemed to strike the blurred Imogen as rather a good idea. A faint smile spread on her waiflike face. She nodded again, firmly and cheerfully. Everyone let out a long sigh of relief. And as their concentration went, the blurred shape of Imogen blurred further and dissolved away like paint in water.

  Sally leaped to follow her. How she did it she did not know. She seemed stuck in her aching body like someone stuck in tight clothes. She struggled out of it frantically and managed to catch Imogen crouching between two barrows with her hands over her face.

  “Oh, ghosts!” Imogen was saying.

  There were ghosts but not the ones Imogen meant. Raiding party, said the old ghost in the mound. Hostile band war-party … sentries report—

  Oh, be quiet! Sally snapped at it. We’re not hostile. We come—come bearing gifts.

  Merchants from the East, muttered the ghost, and to Sally’s relief, it went on to mumble about corn and jewelry as if it had forgotten them.

  Imogen climbed to her feet, shivering. By this time the thunder was rolling back into the distance. The rain was slackening, but it had by no means stopped. Imogen’s hair was gray with it and plastered to her head. Her yellow trouser suit was so wet that her body shone through it, in pink streaks. But she was looking very determined, in a frightened, hectic way. She pulled her sopping trouser legs from under her soaking shoes and plodded through the barrows to Monigan’s va
lley. She knew the way. She must have been here with Cart when Cart first found it. Over the edge of the hill she plodded through the rain, under the chains and across the gallops.

  As Imogen started going down into the gray, drizzling valley, Sally hung back, afraid that Monigan would notice she was here again, trying to cheat her. Monigan was watching Imogen coming. She was filling her valley, but not very strongly. The posts and the phantoms were faint behind the rain.

  At that Sally understood a little how things like Monigan worked. For Monigan all times ran side by side, but there were times—like the time of the barrow people—which were in front of her, and other times, like this one, which were off at the edges of her attention. At these edges Monigan only sopped up all she could get. She did not give them her full attention. She had a greedy interest in what Imogen might give her, but she had not noticed that Imogen had been, for a few minutes, seven years in the future. The ghost of Sally did not bother Monigan at all. She thought there was nothing more Sally could do.

  In the middle of the valley Imogen stopped to pick up a sopping piece of paper. It was Ned’s drawing. Howard’s tiepin was lying not far off, but Imogen missed seeing it. “What’s this?” she said, and unfolded the wet paper.

  Sally came boldly down beside Imogen and looked over her shoulder. She saw herself. It was unmistakable, even faint and spread by the wet. Ned’s drawings were always so like the things they were meant to be that she knew it was herself. Now she knew why Ned was always so ready to sit drinking coffee with her. And she hoped Imogen would be able to cheat Monigan very thoroughly indeed.

  “That was very careless of him,” Imogen said. “I must give it back to him.” She held the paper up in one hand and recited the invocation. She knew it almost as well as Cart. She only stumbled twice.

  Monigan did not draw herself together in answer to Imogen. She was only going to do that if she was likely to lose something. She simply waited, greedy.

  “Can you hear me, Monigan?” said Imogen. It was the special clear, quick voice she used when she was very much in earnest. “Listen. I’m going to give you something you’re going to like very much. I’m going to give you the supreme sacrifice.” Monigan began to be interested. So did Sally. Imogen flourished the drawing and began walking up and down in the rain, making a speech. “The supreme sacrifice,” she said. “It’s better than a life. I’m going to give you honor and glory, Monigan. You’ll get cheers from the masses and the applause of huge audiences. You’ll win prizes and have people writing your life story, with all sorts of glorious experiences for you and other people. I’m going to give you years of hard work, Monigan, and the prospect of my serene profile contemplating beauty and relaying it to others—”

  Imogen paused dramatically, pointing Ned’s picture to roughly where Monigan was. She was certainly doing some good hard advertising, Sally thought. But what did it matter? Imogen thought she was alone, and it was definitely the way to talk to Monigan. Monigan’s greed filled the valley.

  “The supreme sacrifice,” said Imogen. “The rise of my beauty into the limelight. I’m giving you my musical career, Monigan. Do you want it?”

  Yes, said Monigan, and moved in and took it.

  Sally could have cheered. She wanted to hug Imogen. But Imogen had turned away, shivering again, looking thoroughly deflated. “I think Monigan might have the politeness to answer, at least,” she said. “And it was the supreme sacrifice, too!” With that she burst into tears and ran away up the side of the valley.

  Sally longed to be able to go after Imogen and tell her that Monigan had answered, and had said yes into the bargain. But she was sure Imogen would not be able to hear her. And while Monigan’s attention was still on this time, she had to speak to Monigan for herself at long last.

  Monigan, she said. You can’t take me. I’m not a perfect offering now. I’m all in bits. You’ll have to make do with Imogen’s career. That’s perfect because it’s all in her imagination still.

  Monigan pushed her aside, peevishly wondering why those two leap year days had got in the way and prevented her having Sally already.

  Sally was pushed, rejoicing, seven years on, into the hospital bed again. “You did it!” she said to Imogen. “You gave Monigan your musical career! And she took it!”

  The relief on their faces astonished her. Imogen astonished her even more. Imogen flung back her head—losing the last few hairpins in the process—and laughed. “Oh, marvelous!” she said. “What a joke! She can have it. It’s no good to me. I was never any good, anyway. I only took up the piano because Phyllis said I looked beautiful playing it. I hoped Monigan would take it. I took a chance and resigned from the music college just after I first saw you, but I was afraid it hadn’t worked. Now I can go and do something I want to do!” She was looking like the Imogen Sally knew as a child. The drabness was gone. The keen and vivid light was back in her eyes. Sally knew, just from looking at her, that Imogen was truly capable of doing great things. She wondered what the great things would be.

  Then she looked at Ned, wondering what had become of that rain-sodden drawing, and found that the change in Ned was almost as great. That worried her. “Are you sure it was worth it—all you’ve all done—just to rescue me?” she said.

  “Oh, come off it, Sally!” all her three sisters said together. They sounded so bored that Sally gathered that this kind of self-doubt was as well known in her as grieving was in Imogen. Perhaps there was no need for either now. She, like Imogen, had taken a wrong turn—a very wrong one, in her case. Both of them had wanted something to cling to, and they had both clung to something which was no good to them. She could go and do what she wanted now, too.

  And what did she want? Unlike Imogen, she wanted what she had always wanted: to paint, to paint well, to paint better and better. And she had seen so many things in her time as a ghost that were just itching to get painted: the Dream Landscape, Fenella waving the knife over the bowl of blood, Cart in her morning fury, Imogen dangling from the beam and later holding the fungoid candle, Himself like an eagle, and those queer times when the world had split into ribbons, to name just a few. She was so excited at the thought of all she could paint that a sort of flush ran through her, bringing a kind of easiness with it. And that easiness told her that she was going to get well.

  The nice-looking nurse was back, this time determined to send all the visitors away. “It really is time—”

  But someone else was trying to push past behind the nurse, saying in a tired, flurried way, “But I’ve driven all the way up from the country to see my daughter. Please let me just say hallo.”

  Phyllis was there. Sally stared at her. Phyllis was a silver angel now, hollowed and lined like a silver tool from long, long years of heavenly battling. Here was another thing she must paint, Sally knew. But she was surprised that Phyllis’s eyes should be full of tears.

  “Five minutes then,” said the nurse, and she stood there to make sure.

  “Hallo, everyone,” said Phyllis. “Sally, darling.” She bent and kissed Sally. It hurt rather. “I had to come,” Phyllis said. “It’s almost the end of term, and I got the trunks packed, so I can stay in your flat till you’re better.” The flat was going to be crowded, Sally thought. “And I brought this,” said Phyllis. “I know how you used to love it.”

  She held out the Monigan doll. It was only a doll, dry, floppy, gray, and stitched, with very little face and badly knitted dress. A faint scent of long-ago mold breathed off it. Sally rather wished it was not there.

  “Where did you get that?” she said.

  “I’ve had it for years in the towel cupboard,” Phyllis said. “I found it in the School drive that day you were all sent to Granny’s in disgrace.”

  She turned away to tell Ned she remembered him very well. Sally found Fenella had been pushed by the crowd round to the other side of her bed. “What do you want done with that?” Fenella whispered, jerking her head to the doll.

  “Burned,” said Sally.
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br />   “Shall do,” said Fenella, and then looked up, along with all the rest.

  Mrs. Gill burst excitedly into the glass room, waving a newspaper. “Listen! I bought the evening paper,” said Mrs. Gill. “You’ll forgive me a minute, dear,” she said to the nurse. “I’m just coming in to say good-bye.”

  “I give up,” said the nurse.

  “It says here,” said Mrs. Gill. “Oh, hallo, Mrs. Melford. Fancy seeing you here. Listen, everyone. That boyfriend of hers got himself killed. It says, ‘After a long car chase—’ I won’t read it all out, my eyes won’t stand it, but he ended up almost next door to the school, up on Mangan Down. Went up that dead end and hit a post by that wood there. Crashed the car. He was dead when they got to him. Now what do you say to that!”

  Nobody said anything. Monigan had got her life after all. She had cheated again. Perhaps she had meant to have Julian Addiman all along. He had been hers as much as Sally.

  In the silence, while Mrs. Gill stood enjoying the impression she had made, the nurse pulled herself together and told them they must all be going now.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DIANA WYNNE JONES wrote more than forty award-winning books of fantasy for young readers. For her body of work, she was awarded the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award for having made a significant impact on fantasy and the World Fantasy Society Lifetime Achievement Award.

  www.dianawynnejones.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  OTHER WORKS

  Also by Diana Wynne Jones

  Archer’s Goon

  Aunt Maria

  Believing Is Seeing: Seven Stories

  Castle in the Air

  Dark Lord of Derkholm

  Dogsbody

  Eight Days of Luke

  Fire and Hemlock

  Hexwood

  Hidden Turnings:

  A Collection of Stories Through Time and Space