“I see,” smiled Jalli. She stood up and looked around her. “You have a big house!” exclaimed Jalli as Jack’s mum returned with the tea. “I like it. Your world is very different.”
“How is our world different from yours?” Matilda was intrigued by this girl’s accent.
“Ours is hot and dusty. Yours is cool and soft and green. The gardens have lots of flowers. It is much quieter inside your house. The walls are thick.”
“So where is it you come from?” Jalli told Matilda all about Wanulka and her grandmother, her school and her interests. Jack didn’t have to say anything. It was clear that they were going to get along because his mum was growing easier. She was definitely impressed with Jalli.
“You see, she does come from another planet!” cried Jack. Jalli talked about the white gates just as Jack had done and described it from her angle.
“Well, I must confess I found that bit the hardest to believe but I shall believe it now, even if it’s because I want to. Now let’s eat.” It was Jack’s favourite, “toad in the hole” and greens and potatoes followed by ice-cream.
Plain, thought Jack after Wanulkan fare, but Jalli seemed to really enjoy it. For her it was quite as different as Wanulkan food to him.
The visit ended with a tour of the house, a kiss in Jack’s bedroom(!), and a promise by Jalli to call again. It was clear that Jack had his mum’s blessing in pursuing this relationship. Later, after Jack had seen Jalli back to the garden, his mother privately wondered how he had found such a superior being.
“Must be something about me you hadn’t noticed before,” expressed Jack.
“Oh, you’ve got ‘it’ – what it takes to attract a girl. Just you look after her! You behave yourself and make sure you deserve her!” she entreated.
“I will, Mum. I promise. I know she is good.”
“So you be good too!”
“Yes, Mum. Don’t nag!”
Matilda suddenly felt the way the conversation was going and caught herself from saying anything more. “I just think,” she said, “you have made an excellent choice.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
10
A couple of days after the visit to Persham, Jack and Jalli met as they had arranged, with the object of doing “nothing special”. They had had so much excitement and much to talk about. “Let’s just bring a picnic and ‘chill’,” suggested Jack. So they had brought their favourite foods to share with each other. When they had laid it all out on a cloth on the lawn it was an impressive spread.
“I hope you’re feeling hungry!” exclaimed Jack. “There’s enough here for ten people.”
“I reckon that if we start now we’ll make quite a dent. We needn’t eat tomorrow!”
“Life is great! I am pleased I met you!” laughed Jack.
“Do you mean you are glad you met me, or my grandma’s pie?”
“Both. Definitely both. And at the moment I reckon it is touch and go which I love the most!”
Jalli chased him round the garden and shouted that she wouldn’t let him near the food again until he had paid proper attention to her! After several minutes of strenuous activity spent in this game in which Jalli’s sporting skills denied Jack even one opportunity to get back to the food, he eventually grabbed her and swung her off her feet and they fell in a giggling heap. He admitted defeat and kissed her tenderly. She allowed him to crawl back to the food so long as he agreed only to eat things as she gave him permission. They had much fun exploring the various names for things. They had a wonderful picnic which included pies and tarts, meats, fish, cheese and fruits of all kinds.
After they had finished, they used the cottage toilet. Jack emerged from the house and there he saw, across the grass, a new white gate – and a small shed beside it, exactly like before. He waited for Jalli to join him. She caught the direction of his gaze. “I wonder where that one leads?” he asked.
They had had such a pleasant morning eating their picnic and just enjoying each other’s company that the new white gate came as a bit of an unwelcome intrusion. It sort of said, “OK, you’ve had a good time ‘doing nothing’ now it’s time to do some work!” The Owner had a new place for them to visit.
They looked over the gate. It was quite a different looking land with dark green pine trees in view and meadows with what looked like snow in places. The shed contained piles of thick clothing, fur hats and two large rucksacks – the hiking sort.
“This looks like energetic work!” exclaimed Jack as he checked out a pair of heavy duty hiking boots.
“Doesn’t look like just stuff for two days either,” commented Jalli as she pulled out several sets of thermal underclothes and five pairs of socks! Jack put on a fur hat, to Jalli’s great amusement. She readjusted it for him, making sure his ears were properly covered.
“If we’re going on this,” said Jalli, “then I’m going to have to phone Grandma.”
“And I’ll contact Mum. Jalli, I don’t think we have much choice in this, do we?”
“You know, Jack. I’ve been thinking about all this business of choice. Yes, we do have choice here. I don’t think the Owner will force us if we decide just to ignore this gate. He or She didn’t make me get out of bed and come here this morning. I am sure I came because I chose to, I didn’t have to. I was invited to play a ball-game over near Parmanda Park. But I really wanted to come to be with you. That’s the thing, I want to do what He or She seems to want me to do.”
Jack was more doubtful about going through the gate. He found trusting the Owner more difficult than Jalli did. How could they be so sure of all this. It was a strange situation, all of it. He was reminded of the line in the film Notting Hill when the heroine says of her unexpected new encounter in the house with the blue door, “Surreal, but nice!” But what evidence was there to say it would stay like that? What if the Owner were putting conditions on their access to the garden. “If we decided not to go through this gate,” ventured Jack, “we may not be allowed to come back here again.”
“But that would be awful! How dreadful if we couldn’t get through to see each other!”
“This is the point about the choice thing. We can choose to be part of all this, or not. But are we permitted to pick and choose the bits we like from the bits we don’t?”
“I suppose we can. If we did pick and choose though, it might not come out as well as it should… I mean, if we only did what we thought was going to be good, in advance, we might not even be here. We have gone along with it up to now, and it’s been great. And, looking back, I wouldn’t have changed any of it.”
“No, exactly. But there will be times, perhaps, like this one, when we’re having a great time and suddenly we are asked to do a job. When we’re started we’ll probably be glad we did it. But, right now, in this lovely garden that backpack doesn’t look terribly inviting.”
“But the prospect of having a couple of weeks with you on an adventure holiday is a great idea though!” exclaimed Jalli.
Jack smiled. To have this great girl by his side without having to go home and check in with Mum each day would be cool. But, then, he was not entirely convinced. Jack hadn’t forgotten that until the day he went through his white gate, he had decided that life sucked.
“Bet it’s not a holiday!” he said in a negative tone.
“I bet it’ll be fun though. Like last time at the beach resort… OK. So we may be able to turn down this new white gate. But I think we could be silly if we do,” affirmed Jalli.
“And I know what my mum will say. She’d reckon we’d be stupid to let ourselves in for something without thoroughly checking it out first. She’d basically be telling me to think very carefully about this.”
“And my grandma would certainly be worried.”
“So, what are we going to do?” queried Jack.
“This is what I think,” said Jalli decisively, “the Owner here wouldn’t ask us to do this if it wasn’t important. And I think we might regret turning anything down that He or S
he has asked us to do, because it’s all been great so far. Actually, I think Grandma would agree with me. If she were here she would go.”
“My mum wouldn’t. But some of that is because too many people she has trusted have done things to her that turned out wrong. OK. So are we agreed we’re going?” Jalli nodded. “I’m going because you are too good to resist, and because I’m getting really curious about what’s beyond that gate! I’ll pop out to Persham to ring Mum.” And Jalli did the same in Wanulka. Soon they had the older peoples’ permission – provided they were sensible and looked after themselves and each other. In fact Grandma was quite positive Jack would look after Jalli, and Matilda was so impressed with her son’s choice of Jalli she was quite ready to accept his logic about “having to go”. “Mind you look after that girl,” she had pressed upon him. Jack had assured her that he certainly would, and, to his amazement, she seemed to believe him. He was so used to his mum not trusting him to do what he said he was going to do, even when he meant it. What he had not reckoned with this time was that Matilda had seen so much change in him since he had met Jalli and, so long as Jalli was with him, she was ready to trust him.
They ate some more food and then packed up the rest of it to put in the top of their backpacks. They laid out everything neatly on the grass, took note of the contents, and then re-packed them carefully, item by item, making sure they had lined the packs with the waterproof plastic provided. They then took off their jeans and T-shirts and put on the cold weather clothing, beginning with the layers of thermals. They trusted the Owner on this. If they were given this stuff, they would need it. Jack was more used to winter things than Jalli because Wanulka never really became cold. Snow was something Jalli had only seen in pictures. This adventure was clearly going to be more of a challenge to a warm weather girl than a resident of Britain!
They surveyed each other in their new outfits and decided that, apart from their faces, they were in total disguise! They helped each other on with the backpacks, adjusting the straps. Like the rest of the gear the fit was perfect, and they quickly became confident as they walked around a bit.
“OK! Let’s go!” said Jack unlatching the white gate.
The cold fresh air hit their faces like a blast from a freezer. They stood beside a path at the edge of a pine forest with cones and dried needles beneath their feet. On the other side of the rough path there were tufts of grass, dead and brown but with tiny green shoots around the base. In front of them was an open area covered in low scrub beyond which was a shallow valley with more evergreen forests on the low hill beyond them. They could identify a lighter green area at the lowest point which hinted of water. Splotches of white snow could be seen in the hollows of the land that rose again beyond it. Nearer to them further down the path, there were more patches in the places where the trees gave deeper shade. From a distance their white gate could easily have seemed like one of these.
“We need to take special note of this place,” stated Jack thoughtfully. “Let’s take great care we do not lose our way back to the gate.”
“Can we mark this tree?” asked Jalli.
“I can’t see it will do any harm to draw a mark on the trunk but I think a rock would be better.” Jack took a whitish coloured stone and quickly discovered it was like chalk. Handy, he thought. He drew a circle on a darker coloured outcrop just up the path, and on another just below the gate. “There, now we need to make marks as we go. They need not be obvious but they should be where we will look for them.”
“And here are three big trees closer together than the others,” observed Jalli getting excited by this awesome place. So far she was delighted they had come. They looked out across the valley and lined up various land marks.
“Which way?” asked Jalli.
“Downwards? To the left?” suggested Jack. The path wound slightly downhill around the edge of the forest.
“Fine. Is that snow?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve only seen it in pictures before.”
“Well, it isn’t very good snow. It’s not fresh. It looks like it’s melting now for the spring. Look,” he said, putting his foot into a medium sized patch, “it’s wet and coarse.” But for Jalli it was a big deal. Real snow for the first time in her life. She picked up a handful and felt the cold seep into her finger tips. What is it about snow and the young? It is a mystery, but wherever they are in the universe it seems, they have to make snowballs and throw it at their friends! It took Jalli just three minutes to make and throw her first snowball! Jack retaliated. They might be seventeen or eighteen, thought Jack, but it was good to be children. (They were just emerging from that period of teenage life when being sophisticated mattered. At seventeen it’s generally cool to be childlike again.) And, anyway, here, there was no-one else from among their acquaintances to notice. In fact, they didn’t care if anyone thought they were being childish! After half an hour they resumed the path – hands, numb with cold, now stuffed inside their furry mittens!
The walking was enjoyable along the well trodden path and they quickly began to appreciate that exercise is the key to keeping warm in cold lands. Eventually they emerged, rosy cheeked, from the path onto a wider track. Jack marked a small rock by the junction. They continued on down the gentle slope. A hundred yards further on, they came across a fork. They pondered whether to bear left or right. Eventually deciding to go right, Jack stepped off the road to mark another rock. Then a man came running up the left fork shouting at them. “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled. But before they could make any response he demanded Jack come back onto the road at once.
“Don’t you know anything? You cannot leave the road for any reason. You risk instant death. Don’t you know there are mines all over the place here?”
Jack froze. A short middle-aged man dressed in rough farmer’s clothes – a woollen jumper tucked into a pair of thick trousers held up by a broad leather belt – was shouting and gesticulating wildly.
“Sorry, I didn’t know. Mines? Why?” asked Jack hesitantly – terrified.
“Where are you from? What kind of accent is that? Whose side are you on?”
“We’re new here,” interjected Jalli. “We’ve only just arrived.”
“Arrived! Arrived from where? Nobody just arrives in this part of Tolfanland… You don’t appear to be armed,” he said more softly.
“Armed!” declared Jalli, “What with guns and everything? Of course not!”
“You have just arrived haven’t you? I can’t imagine how you’ve got this far without knowing what you’ve got yourself into. You’d better come this way.”
Jack returned to the road in one bound, and breathed a sigh of relief. He and Jalli then followed the countryman. He led them down the road along which he had come.
“Looks as if we’ve stepped into the middle of a war!” remarked Jack when he judged the man was out of hearing.
“This is scary. Do you thing he’s OK. He’s not going to do anything to us, is he?”
“I don’t know what he plans to do, but if he was going to do us in he probably wouldn’t be so concerned about me stepping on a mine.”
“That’s true.”
After about three hundred metres they caught sight of a low croft that stood some way off the road at the end of a narrow footpath to the left. Proceeding down this path with some determination, the man turned and checked the couple were following. They hurried after him. As he got to the croft the man shouted something. He bade the couple stop and wait. A moment later a woman appeared at the door dressed in what appeared to be the female equivalent of the man’s country clothes, a brown woollen long-sleeved dress and a beige shawl about her shoulders. A sturdy, practical looking sort of person, thought Jalli.
“They look innocent enough,” the woman declared. “Foreign that’s for sure. They haven’t wintered here either. Just look at their skin.” And, addressing Jalli and Jack directly she spoke in a gruff but not unpleasant tone, “You’d better come in. Take
off those packs. My, they look hardly used. Very fresh all round!” she assessed.
When Jack and Jalli had removed their boots, hats and outer fleeces and were seated together on a wooden settle in front of a fire that served both as a kitchen range and source of heat for the whole croft, the questioning began. They explained how they had come down the track that led beside the wood after arriving from a different land.
“We don’t doubt you’ve got here from somewhere quite foreign,” declared the crofter.
“Do you know what is happening here? The rebels are a few kilometres down the road you were about to take, and in that direction” – he indicated the way they had come – “the government soldiers are re-grouping. Where they’ll meet this time we just don’t know.”
“What’s the fighting all about?” asked Jack.
The crofter looked at his wife. Were these two spies? He decided they were not, they were very convincing if they were. So he began to explain, “That way, in the west, they speak a different language from those in the east. Always have. There are some among those from the east that are fed up with being ruled by westerners and they have rebelled.”
“And some of us that just want to get on with our lives and don’t care who rules!” asserted the woman. “The rebellion has made things so bad for us.”
Her husband continued, “One lot of soldiers after another come making demands – east and west. They mostly demand food. Last winter we barely had enough to survive on ourselves. I’ve just managed to save them” – he gestured to a sack of tubers – “to plant for the new season, if they will let us alone long enough to plant them.”
“But the worst thing,” said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, “is that the rebels have taken two of our sons barely old enough to look after themselves to fight in their army. No more than thirteen the younger one,” she sighed.
“Thirteen!” exclaimed Jalli, “but that’s criminal. How can they ask a child to go out to fight?”
The Kicking Tree (White Gates Adventures Book 1) Page 11
