by Julia Green
“Not yet,” Tilly said. “Only that it’s about a cat. A very fat cat.”
“Is it a greedy cat?” Dad asked. “Does it eat doughnuts and candy all day?”
“No,” Tilly said. “It’s fat and tired because it’s going to have kittens.”
“Ah,” Dad said. He didn’t ask any more questions.
“How’s Mom?” Tilly said as they walked along the pavement.
“Very tired,” Dad said. The worried frown came back on his face.
Tilly was quiet after that, all the way home.
Chapter 10
Tilly was looking for Little Fox. She couldn’t find him anywhere. She crept into Mom’s room so as not to disturb her, and searched on the bed. She checked behind the curtains, in case he was on the windowsill. Mom stayed fast asleep, propped up against the pillows, even when Tilly stood right up close. The stray strand of dark hair curled across the pillow and Tilly smoothed it back, and still Mom slept on.
Tilly went along the hallway to her own room for another look under her bed. There was lots of fluff and a dried up roly-poly, but no Little Fox. He wasn’t in the kitchen. She even looked in the room where Dad wrote his books, although why Little Fox would be in there she couldn’t imagine. The table was piled high with pieces of paper, Dad’s computer perched precariously at one side. Transparent plastic boxes full of typed pages from his old manuscripts covered most of the carpet. All around the walls were shelves of books, going from the floor right to the ceiling. Some of them, Tilly knew, were old books, left behind in the house like the furniture and pictures and the dollhouse. Dad had been very excited when he found them. They had dusty old covers. Some even had black and white drawings inside, even though they were books for grown-ups. And why shouldn’t grown-ups have stories with pictures?
She found a stack of old pictures leaned against one of the shelves: framed photographs of people they didn’t know. There was one of a girl with long hair, in a buttoned-up coat, holding something in her lap—Tilly peered at the grainy old photo a bit closer: a kitten, perhaps? Or a small puppy? The girl stared back at Tilly, a sort of half-smile on her lips. Perhaps it was the old lady who had lived here when she was ten or eleven, Tilly thought. It was nice to think she might have looked like this once.
Tilly put the picture back with the others.
There was no sign of Little Fox anywhere. She gave up the search.
Tilly went into her bedroom and knelt down in front of the dollhouse. The father doll was sitting in the armchair near the fire. She moved the mother doll and put her in the other chair, and put the little girl doll upstairs in her room. Tilly had already made a pink cover for the bed, to match the roses on the wallpaper. She was going to make lots more things.
She remembered, suddenly, the little wooden cradle she had bought at the dollhouse shop. She’d forgotten all about it! She ran along the moss green strip of carpet and down the stairs to the hall, where her coat was hanging on its peg. She checked the pockets. The paper bag from the shop was there, but the cradle wasn’t. It must have fallen out when she’d been playing outside.
Tilly put on her coat and went to fetch her boots from the kitchen. She yanked the back door behind her. It was freezing outside! She pulled her hood up. Tilly retraced her steps around the garden, trying to remember exactly where she walked last time she played out here. Perhaps Little Fox would be in the same place as the wooden cradle?
But she didn’t find either.
She looked back at the house, at the closed doors and blank windows. Dad was busy with something, not looking out of the window, so he wouldn’t be able to see her. Tilly ran between the two silver bushes and opened the gate, pulled it shut behind her, ran across the grass lane to the wooden gate, and squeezed into the magic garden.
It was getting dark. Dusk. Tilly loved that word and the other one: twilight. She trod carefully through the tall grass, then along past the lavender hedge and the bramble patch, toward the oak tree. Her heart pattered against her ribs suddenly. There was her den, waiting for her. But what would she find this time?
It all looked different in the evening light. But the rose hips were still there, faded and a bit dried up, woven into the grass. She hadn’t imagined it, then. And there was more: someone had definitely been here. She looked over her shoulder quickly, to check again if she was being watched.
In front of her, laid carefully on the ground, a spiral of white stones wound around into the den, a bit like a maze.
Tilly crouched down to peer closer; the stones were all different sizes, pieces of gray-white flint, and someone had arranged them on purpose, so that the stones got smaller as you went farther in. She wriggled through the narrow gap between the lattice of branches, following the stones.
Where the stone trail ended, in the middle of the den, perched on the log table, was the little dollhouse cradle.
Tilly turned around quickly to see if the girl was there, watching her. Because it must be the singing girl who had found the cradle and left it for her, like that, wasn’t it? And she must have made the stone spiral, to show her where to look, guiding her in.
But no one was here now.
She picked up the cradle. It nestled, small and cold, on her palm. It wasn’t broken, or even muddy from the ground. She slipped it carefully into her pocket, well tucked in. Thank you! she said in her head, to the girl, or whoever it was who had found it for her. And then she thought, I should leave something here, to say thank you properly.
She rummaged in her pockets. Right at the bottom of one, covered in fluff, she found an old hair pin in the shape of a butterfly. She could leave that. It wasn’t much—it was a bit old and rusty at the edges—but it was still pretty.
Tilly settled down, her back against the tree trunk, peering out through the gap into the night garden.
A twig snapped. Something rustled in the bramble patch. Was she going to see the girl at last?
Tilly sat very still and waited. Her eyes adjusted to the half-light. Like an animal, she thought. I’m just like one of the other creatures living in the wild garden.
Outside, the dark shadow solidified and became an actual animal. The fox was less than three feet away, his head dipped low, nose sniffing the ground where her boots had flattened the grass as she crawled into the den. Could he smell her? Almost immediately, the fox slipped back into the shadowy undergrowth. She had been that close to him this time. Her own real, wild fox! Close enough for her to see how thin he was, to make out the line of his bony rib cage, and notice his moth-eaten, scraggy tail. The fox looked hungry. Hungry and even ill, perhaps.
In the far distance, Tilly heard a voice calling her name.
The fox must have heard it too. That’s why he’d disappeared again so soon.
Dad was calling her. Quickly, she crawled out of the den and picked her way back through the grass, around the gate, back to their regular garden before he could discover where she’d really been hiding.
She ran across the lawn to the back door.
“There you are!” Dad ruffled her hair. “What are you doing out here in the dark? I thought the night garden had swallowed you up!”
“I was looking for Little Fox,” Tilly said. “He’s lost.”
“He’s probably in the house somewhere,” Dad said. “We’ll look together later.” Back in the warm kitchen, he helped Tilly tug off her boots. “You’re going to need new ones soon!” Dad said. “You’re growing up fast, Til!”
Tilly put her arms around his middle. His woolly sweater was warm and scratchy against her face.
“Now. Supper,” Dad said. “Pasta again or French toast?”
“Pancakes,” Tilly said.
Tilly fetched the little cradle from her coat pocket and took it upstairs with her. She opened the front of the dollhouse. She couldn’t decide where to put it. She tried i
t in the mom and dad’s room, and then next to the single bed in the little girl’s bedroom, and then downstairs. It didn’t seem to fit anywhere. In the end, she left it in the attic room, under the eaves, by itself. She touched it with her fingertip, to set it rocking.
Outside, the fox called its strange, harsh cry into the night.
All night, Tilly twisted and turned in her bed, worrying even in her dreams. In her sleep, she reached out her hand for the comforting softness of Little Fox, but her hand stayed empty.
Chapter 11
It was Christmas Eve.
“Do you want to come with me to choose the Christmas tree?” Dad asked Tilly at breakfast time. “Soon as I get back from shopping?”
“Yes please,” Tilly said. Inside her, a little bubble of happiness was growing. There was no school because of the holidays, and they were going to have Christmas at home, and Mom was going to come downstairs and have a bed on the sofa, so she could be there too. Tilly had made a list of presents she wanted, because Dad was having to do all the shopping and getting-ready-for-Christmas things without Mom this year.
Once Dad had gone off to town, Tilly went upstairs.
Mom was awake, propped up against the pillows. She smiled at Tilly. “What are you going to do today, Til?”
“I’m making more things for the dollhouse. Pictures for the walls and some rugs and things for the bedroom, and a tiny Christmas stocking.”
“Why don’t you bring it all in here?” Mom said. “We can chat while you’re busy working.”
Tilly brought Mom’s sewing basket upstairs. She pulled out odds and ends of fabric. Mom helped her choose which pieces would be best for each thing. She showed Tilly how to sew tiny, neat stitches to hem the edges so they didn’t fray.
“How will you make the pictures for the walls?” Mom asked. “Maybe you could cut things out of a magazine, or print some tiny pictures off the computer.”
“I’m going to draw them,” Tilly said. “I want them to be like the old pictures that belonged to this house.”
“Miss Sheldon’s pictures?”
“Yes.”
Tilly had worked it all out. She had found some thin pieces of wood that she could cut to the right size and colored pencils to draw with. It was tricky, making it all tiny enough to fit the dollhouse.
“I’ve got some gold pens somewhere,” Mom said. “You could make the edges look like old-fashioned gold frames. Take a look in the bottom drawer in that chest under the window.”
Tilly pulled out the heavy drawer. It smelled musty and old and delicious. She found the pens and some thin brushes and paints which would be perfect, and more fabrics and thick paper in rolls. “It’s your artist’s drawer!” Tilly laughed.
“It’s my secret box of delights!” Mom said.
“You could do some drawing in bed,” Tilly said. “I’ll get everything for you, so you can just stay there.”
Mom looked sad. “My head hurts too much, Tilly. I need some sleep, really. But you can stay here quietly working if you like, until Dad gets back.”
Choosing a tree was one of the best things ever, Tilly thought. The courtyard at the back of the garden center was filled with trees, like a strange forest. It smelled of Christmas: pine and spice and something she couldn’t quite name.
“We can have a tall tree for the first time ever,” Dad said. “What with our high ceilings and all.”
But Tilly had already found the one she wanted: a small tree with perfectly balanced branches, dark green needles, and a straight tip at the top which would be just right for hanging the star. “This is the one,” she said.
It was already dark when they got home. Tilly went through the house, switching on the lights in all the rooms while Dad went out to the garden shed to search for a pot for the tree to stand in.
“I’ll go and find the decorations,” Dad said. “They’ll be in the attic in one of those boxes.”
Usually, it was Mom and Tilly who decorated the tree together, and Mom put on her CD of Christmas carols to make it feel special, and for Tilly it was the magical moment when Christmas really started.
After supper, while Dad did the washing up, Tilly went back to the living room. The tree was standing there, bare and mysterious. For just a second, Tilly thought how beautiful it was without any decorations at all. She opened the box and took out the first ornaments, and the star, and the birds made of feathers, which had been a present from Granny one year, and started to hang them on the branches. She hung up the glass bell; it tinkled when she touched it and swung softly, like a real bell. She unwrapped the tissue around the old glass ornaments, silver and pink and gold, which had been handed down, one generation to the next, from Nana and Granny to Mom and Dad. She hung them all up, so they spun and shone in the light. Last of all she fished the tree lights out of the bottom of the box and draped them around in a spiral, like Mom usually did.
Tilly turned off all the lights except the ones on the tree. Shadows moved across the wall, tracing the shape of the branches. Tilly sat on the sofa and breathed in the smell of pine forest. She shivered with excitement.
At bedtime, Tilly hung up her Christmas stocking at the bottom of her bed. She knelt down and opened up the dollhouse so she could put the tiny stocking she had made earlier on the end of the pink bed cover in the girl’s bedroom. She straightened one of the tiny gold-framed pictures she’d hung up earlier in the day, her favorite one, the portrait of the girl with long hair. She closed the dollhouse door and set the china dog/fox back in his place outside.
Tilly climbed into bed and snuggled under the blanket. Her feet were cold. Mom and Dad’s voices drifted along the landing, rising and falling as they talked to each other. She heard Dad go downstairs to the kitchen.
It was so hard to get to sleep. She got out of bed again and went to the window. It was too dark to see anything; the moon had not yet risen. She thought she heard the bark of the fox. It was as if it was calling her…come out…come and see the garden this magical Christmas night…
She climbed back into bed. She turned her pillow over to find a cool place for her hot head. She wished Little Fox were here, soft against her cheek. She thought about the fox and the garden and the mysterious girl…and as she drifted toward sleep at last, she was already dreaming…
Chapter 12
When the moon first rose above the trees it looked huge, like an enormous silver saucer. It spilled its strange, silvery light over the grass and trees, as if it was showing the way across one garden, through the gate, across to the other garden, and all the way to Tilly’s den.
Under the trees it seemed darker than before. The trees seemed bigger than ever, and there were more of them, as if a forest had sprung up. It smelled of pine and spice, that mysterious, delicious Christmas smell. Tilly crept under the trees, her white dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, her feet in pink slippers feeling their way over the frosted grass and dead leaves and bits of broken branches.
Ahead of her, something glowed with a soft light—not moonlight but something else, a light that flickered and moved. Candles, Tilly suddenly realized. Small candles in silver candle holders attached to the lower branches of a small fir tree next to her den. She stopped and looked, mesmerized by how beautiful it was.
She could hear something. A humming sound, as if someone was singing under their breath while they were busy doing something, and then a girl’s voice, laughing, called out softly, “Tilly! Merry Christmas!”
Tilly went forward, her heart fluttering with excitement. She pulled back the bracken and grass from the door of the den, so she could crawl in.
In the flickering light sat a girl about Tilly’s age, with long hair, dressed in a green woollen coat with a velvet collar, and brown laced-up boots, smiling at her.
“Oh!” Tilly whispered. “At last! I’ve sooo wanted to see yo
u!”
“Come on in!” The girl patted the ground next to her. “Sit yourself down.”
Tilly hardly dared breathe. She crept inside, trembling. She sat down next to the girl. She smiled shyly.
The girl smiled back.
The den had been transformed. Like the decorations on a Christmas tree, the branches of the den were hung with silver ornaments and a pink glass bell, and a small silver trumpet which spun around, slowly, shining in the light from the candle on the small table in the middle.
“Do you like it?” the girl asked.
“It’s beautiful!” Tilly said. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome,” the girl said in her old-fashioned voice. She started unwrapping things from the basket by her side: slices of cake, russet apples, two small oranges, a thick slice of meat bread, and cheese wrapped in a piece of cloth.
“A midnight feast!” Tilly said.
“Of course. A feast for Christmas Eve. Are you hungry?”
Tilly didn’t think she was. But the cake looked delicious, and she nibbled at the thick white icing, and then she had an apple, and a sliver of cheese…
“We could give the leftovers to the fox,” Tilly said, when they had both had enough. “Do you know about the fox?”
The girl laughed. “Yes! Of course. It’s still getting used to you, though. Foxes are shy creatures.”
They put the meat and the cheese and the rest of the bread outside the den and waited for the fox to appear. They waited for ages. Tilly began to feel cold, shivery.
“Perhaps the fox won’t come while we’re here,” Tilly said. “And I’d better go home soon, in any case.”
“I’ve seen you in the garden lots of times,” the girl said. “But you’ve never spotted me before, have you?”
“I’ve heard you singing,” Tilly said. “But you’re very good at hiding. Is this your garden, then? Did you mind about me making the den?”
