Tilly's Moonlight Garden

by Julia Green

  “Little pictures and pots and pans and beds and everything! Let’s put it all in the house.”

  Tilly opened the front up. “It’s all a little dusty,” she said.

  “Wow! Wallpaper! With roses on!” Susila said. “That’s like in that story you wrote, about the girl. She had rose wallpaper.” She picked up the table and the chairs and arranged them in the kitchen. She put the beds upstairs. She found the tiny cradle at the bottom of the box. “This is so sweet! You should get a tiny baby doll to go in here! Like your real baby. When’s he coming home?”

  “Saturday.” Tilly’s face felt hot.

  But Susila didn’t notice anything. She was too busy, getting the furniture out, rearranging things, putting the dollhouse people together into the kitchen, around the table, playing happy families.

  And now Dad was calling them down for lunch.

  Susila had gone home. Dad was working in the study: “My last chance,” he said, “before Mom gets here tomorrow with the baby, and all our lives change forever.”

  Tilly lay on her bed to think about what would be different.

  Mom would be up and about. Granny would go home. Mom would have the baby to look after, but babies sleep lots, especially to begin with, Dad said. So Mom would have time to spend with Tilly again. And when the baby grew a bit bigger, Tilly could help look after him. She could play with him, show him things. She could read books to him and tell him stories and make him laugh. And at school, now, there was Susila to be friends with.

  Tilly pulled out her notebook from under her pillow and leafed through the pages of her story.

  Make it have a happy ending, Susila had said.

  She picked up her pen and turned over a fresh page and began to write.

  Outside, the sun came out, briefly—a pale wintry February sun, like a promise of spring.

  Chapter 27

  Tilly woke up very early. The first birds were singing their hearts out, and it was beginning to get light. The room was full of gray, soft shadows; the familiar shapes of her bookshelves and the toy chest, the wardrobe and her table and chair and the dollhouse all looked slightly different, like ghosts of their real selves.

  Tilly’s heart was beating fast, like it did when something amazing was about to happen. She crawled out of bed and pulled back the curtains to look out.

  The pearly light transformed the garden too. The grass was silver; the tree a dark presence, its arms stretched out against the sky. The flowers under the tree were pale yellow stars.

  Something moved through the gray bushes near the gate. Tilly watched.

  The fox stepped onto the lawn, head down, tail level with her back. She sniffed and stopped and waited. She looked up at the window, right at Tilly, and Tilly looked back.

  I’m coming! Tilly mouthed silently.

  She got dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt and a thick sweater and socks, and then she opened the bedroom door very quietly, and tiptoed along the landing, past Mom and Dad’s room. The door was ajar; she glimpsed their sleeping shapes close together under the blanket. On the floor next to the bed was the baby’s basket and the white mound of blanket and one tiny hand, poking out, next to his small head with its funny fluff of dark hair. Today was the day baby Toby should really have been born. A kind of extra birthday, Tilly thought.

  Tilly crept downstairs into the kitchen and pulled on her new waterproof boots—a good-bye present from Granny. She turned the key in the lock and opened the back door and went out. She walked as quietly as she could, stepping on the damp grass, leaving silver footprints. The light was already stronger; the sun was coming up, and the garden was alive with birdsong. It was like stepping into another world—a place which belonged to birds and wild things, not to people, Tilly thought—all busy with its own life. She was a visitor there.

  The fox had gone, but it was easy enough to follow the silver prints of its feet over the grass, through the gate, turning right up the grassy path to the field.

  She stopped at the stile. The horses were back; one stood motionless, one foot slightly raised on the edge of its hoof, as if it had been frozen like that, a statue, except that its warm breath made clouds around its muzzle, and the air fizzled and steamed like a halo. Every hair on its back was lit up by the early morning sun.

  She heard the fox bark, and then, like a reply, high squeaks and whimpering sounds. She held her breath.

  Ohhh! At last! There they were: first, the vixen, followed by one, two, three small furry cubs, bounding and tumbling at the edge of the field. She watched the cubs play like puppies, until finally the vixen trotted on and they rushed away after her, toward the trees and out of view.

  Tilly smiled. How amazing was that?

  She waited, but they didn’t appear again. Her hands and face were freezing. She turned away from the field and walked back along the path. She hesitated a moment at the rickety gate and then slipped into the wild garden, even though it belonged to someone else now. They hadn’t repaired the wall or the gate yet; she didn’t think they’d mind.

  The sun warmed her back. She crossed the grass; under last year’s dry, dead, old grass, new shoots of green were beginning to sprout. Beneath the lavender hedge, snowdrops were already in bloom, as were papery thin white flowers like a delicate, smaller kind of daffodil. Small pale red leaves were unfurling at the end of the twigs on the old rambling rose. The wild garden was springing into life.

  She went to have a look in the old den. It smelled of damp earth inside. Part of the roof had collapsed. Next time, Tilly thought, I’ll make a tree house, high up with the birds, with air and light all around. Me and Susila can make one in the apple tree at the end of our garden.

  Something caught her eye. What was it? It looked at first like a small dead creature with matted fur, half-buried in the dead leaves. Tilly crouched down to look properly.

  After all this time! Little Fox, tattered and moth-eaten and frayed at the edges, looked back at her. She picked him up, brushed off the dirt, smoothed him down, and kissed his threadbare head. “Welcome back!” she whispered.

  Tilly traced her steps back to her own garden. She began to notice all the things changing here too. Flowers pushing up through the dark soil, like Granny had talked about. The tree next to the shed was covered in small white buds, ready to burst into blossom. She knelt down to pick one of the yellow star flowers under the big tree: eight fine yellow petals and a green-gray leaf in the shape of a small, perfect heart.

  Mom was in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. She looked up, startled, as Tilly came in the back door. “Whatever…?” Then she smiled. “You’re an early bird!” she said. “I thought I was the only person in the whole world awake so early! What have you been doing, Tilly?”

  Tilly placed the little yellow flower on the table and put her arms around Mom. Mom’s pink dressing gown was soft and warm against her cold face.

  “A celandine!” Mom said, looking at the little flower. She kissed Tilly’s head. “So pretty! So full of hope!”

  Tilly squeezed Mom tight. “I saw three baby fox cubs, for real, in the field at the end of the path,” she said. “And look who else I found!”

  She opened out her hand to show Little Fox’s face peeping out.

  “Your funny old toy fox! He looks as if he’s had a few too many adventures!” Mom said. “He needs a good wash and mending. He’s getting very old! But I’m glad he’s come home at last.”

  “Yes,” Tilly said. “Everyone’s home now.”

  Mom poured tea into her best blue cup.

  Tilly frothed up the warm milk for her with Dad’s whisk, and she poured the rest of the milk into her own favorite pink mug with roses. She settled down next to Mom at the table.

  Nestled up close with Mom, in the sunlit kitchen, Tilly felt the warmth begin to tingle back into her cold
fingers and toes.

  On the wooden table, the celandine flower glowed, a small golden sun.

  About the Author

  Author photograph © Kim Green

  Julia Green is the author of more than ten novels for children and teenagers. As a child, Julia lived in a village called Ashtead, in Surrey. She received a degree in English at the University of Kent and an MPhil in English Studies at Oxford University. Julia lives in Bath and is Course Director for the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. She has two sons. You can find out more about Julia by going to her website at www.julia-green.co.uk.