The Steps up the Chimney

by William Corlett

  ‘I’m Alice Constant,’ Alice insisted.

  ‘Well,’ Phoebe replied, wearily. ‘The baby can decide which name it wants. It can either be a Green or a Taylor . . .’

  ‘Taylor,’ Mary said again, thoughtfully. Then she clapped her hands. ‘Of course,’ she cried, ‘I bet once your family used to be called Tyler.’

  But neither of the others was listening to her. Phoebe had fallen once more into a troubled sleep and Alice was kneeling beside Spot, trying to calm him. He was pacing up and down, growling and barking and pawing the stairs impatiently.

  ‘It’s all right, Spot,’ she told him. ‘I hate rats as well. But honestly, we think this one is the Magician. So he’s probably a friend. You see, we’re being tested . . . oh, it all gets very confusing and I can’t follow some of it . . .’

  ‘The Magician isn’t the rat,’ Spot’s voice growled in Alice’s head. It gave her such a surprise that she stopped speaking.

  ‘All right then,’ the voice growled again – but only in her thoughts. She couldn’t hear anything exactly; she could just think-hear. ‘All right. Come with me. We’ll soon find out if the rat is the Magician’s friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alice in her mind. ‘I’m not sure about that. Rats scare me a lot.’ But as she spoke, she lifted her nose, sniffing the air.

  The scent of rat was strong. A horrible smell; the smell of fear and the gutter and decaying things. Alice pricked her ears, listening. The rat wasn’t moving; but she could hear it breathing and its heart beating.

  Quietly, Alice rose from the floor on to her four legs. Her tail was down; the hair on her back crackled with electricity. She stood, poised at the bottom of the stairs. Then slowly, step by step, she climbed up to the gallery.

  The stench of the rat grew stronger. But she wasn’t frightened by it. She felt only distaste and a deep anger. Reaching the landing she paused and looked down into the hall. Mary was bathing Phoebe’s brow again and seemed oblivious to what was going on. The firelight glowed in the half light and the figures on the hearth rug looked as if they were part of a picture; one of those old oil paintings, dark and shiny with age, with what little colour there was all in the centre and the edges faded and mysterious.

  ‘Right,’ Spot’s voice growled in her head, ‘any friend of the Magician’s is a friend of ours,’ and she looked stealthily round the newel post and along the uneven floor of the gallery.

  The rat was well hidden on a jutting stone that stuck out from the side wall of the hall and was one of the supports of the gallery. But its tail glinted in the distant firelight and its smell was too strong to hide.

  Alice growled, deep in her throat, and announced her presence. With a hiss the rat swung round, surprised and tense, its eyes flashing and its horrible teeth gleaming sharp and yellow in the thick light.

  ‘Well?’ Alice growled. ‘Are you a friend of the Magician’s?’

  ‘I’m a friend of a magician’s, yes,’ the rat hissed.

  ‘Say the password,’ Alice growled.

  ‘But not of your magician,’ the rat spat. And, as it spoke it leaped clean off the stone on which it was sitting and landed on Alice’s furry shoulder.

  With a furious yelp, Alice turned her head, biting at the animal that was trying at the same time to bury its teeth into her flesh. She swung her body, raising both her front paws and turning a complete somersault at the same time. The rat slithered to the floor, falling on its back, but before Alice had time to spring on to it, it turned tail and fled, screaming and hissing along the length of the gallery and disappeared into a hole in the skirting.

  Alice leaped at the hole, scrabbling at the wall with her huge front paws, tearing at the wood and barking ferociously.

  ‘Spot!’ she heard Mary shouting angrily from down below in the hall. ‘Alice! Can’t you stop him? Phoebe’s getting worse.’

  ‘Stop now, Spot,’ Alice said and, as she did so, she seemed to leap clear of the dog’s body and she saw it, lying on its stomach, legs outstretched fore and aft, barking crazily at the hole in the skirting. She reached forward, putting a hand on the back of its neck, and making calming sounds.

  Spot turned, mouth wide and with his tongue hanging out as he panted excitedly.

  ‘Now do you believe me?’ the voice growled in her head. ‘That rat is no friend of the Magician.’

  ‘Spot!’ Alice exclaimed out loud. ‘I was . . . inside you. Somehow. I was. Or it was like . . . almost as if . . . I was you. But . . . how? I don’t understand.’ Then she turned and leaned over the balustrade, calling excitedly, ‘Oh Mary! Mary, the most incredible thing ever has just happened . . .’

  But at that same moment Mary herself started to shout desperately, and so she didn’t hear her sister.

  ‘Alice. Oh, help me, somebody please. The baby, Alice. The baby is coming. Get Uncle Jack. Oh, please get somebody to help us.’

  ‘Come on,’ Spot said, scuttling down the stairs to the hall, with Alice running after him.

  ‘But,’ she shouted as she almost tripped down the stairs in her haste, ‘we can’t leave them, Spot. What if the rat comes back? I’m sure it means to do some harm.’

  ‘Let it try,’ an indignant voice hooted above her head, and the owl sailed down from the rafters of the hall roof, and perched on the lintel above the hearth, glaring down at them with big round eyes.

  ‘The owl,’ Mary cried, relief in her voice.

  ‘Ooo-ooo!’ the owl trilled.

  ‘Now, owls really do scare rats,’ Spot barked. ‘Come on, Alice. The sooner we find Jack and William the better.’

  ‘Will you be all right, Mare?’ Alice asked, uncertain what was the wisest thing to do.

  But Mary wasn’t listening, she was busy getting Phoebe into a more comfortable position.

  ‘Off you go,’ the owl hooted. ‘Find the fox. He’ll show you the way.’

  ‘You will look after them?’ Alice called, as she followed Spot to the front door.

  ‘Little girl,’ the owl hooted, ‘I eat rats for breakfast, remember? And as to delivering babies – there’s nothing to it. It’s as easy as laying an egg. Off with you. And travel as fast as your paws will carry you.’

  Spot was waiting in the porch and then, with a mighty bound, Alice leaped out into the blizzard, as she and the dog became one again.

  21

  A Day We’ll Remember for the Rest of Our Lives

  JACK PULLED HIMSELF along the ground, forcing his body to slide over the rough, uneven surface. He had managed to get hold of one straight branch. Now he needed a second to go with it. There was plenty of dead wood under the trees, but finding a sufficiently long piece was the problem. He had to move with care. If he accidently used his left leg, then a spasm of pain shot through his body which made him gasp and cry out.

  But he couldn’t just lie there, waiting for William to return. He felt useless and ashamed. Of all the stupid accidents: to fall and break his leg at a time like this, just when Phoebe needed him to be strong.

  Reaching out with his hand he caught hold of another piece of wood and pulled it towards him. It was a bit too long, but it was the same sort of straight branch of fir as the one he had already procured. Clasping it in both his hands he broke off a piece of about equal length to the other.

  Then he clamped these two bits of wood, one either side of his injured leg, below the knee, and taking a length of string, which he had luckily found stuffed into the pocket of his anorak, he wound it round and round and tied it tightly. It was a difficult operation to accomplish in a lying position, but at least the activity got his circulation moving again. The cold, while he had been lying idle, had been so intense that he’d been afraid he was going to turn into a block of ice.

  The wind still howled and rattled in the high branches above his head. He looked at his watch and saw that it was well into the afternoon. Night would be coming soon. He was desperately worried about William. The whole expedition had been foolish and dangerous. He should have known bette
r than to set out. It would have been far wiser to have stayed at Golden House and somehow managed to deliver the baby himself. If indeed the baby was on its way. It wasn’t due for three weeks. Probably the whole thing had been a false alarm.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he shouted aloud to the silent woods. ‘And I’m a fool for saying so,’ he muttered, embarrassed by this useless show of emotion. ‘Come on, Jack,’ he told himself. ‘No point in wallowing in self pity. That’s not going to help anyone.’

  He had already selected a branch to use as a walking stick. Now, with its aid, and grasping on to the lowest branches of a tree with his other hand, he hauled himself laboriously up into a standing position.

  If he put his weight on his injured leg then the pain was unbearable but, thanks to the splint he had made for himself, he found that he could hobble slowly forward, supporting himself on his walking stick.

  He decided that the best route to follow would be the path that William had taken, in the hope that he’d meet his nephew coming back. William would be certain to be looking for him, so with any luck they would find each other.

  But, of course, what Jack did not know was that William was travelling with a fox and that foxes, like all wild animals, take the most direct route between two points, which often means going over ground that would be impossible for a human. Consequently Jack, following the rough track, passed the place where the fox had turned and gone downhill through the trees, and he found his way going gradually upwards instead, deeper and deeper into the forest, away from the valley road where William had found the telephone box.

  William had asked to be put through to the police. He didn’t want the fire brigade and an ambulance would be useless in this snow.

  He explained to the man who answered that Phoebe was about to give birth to a baby at Golden House and that Jack had broken his leg while trying to get through the storm to the telephone. The policeman asked him where he was speaking from and told him to stay put until he managed to get some help through. But William knew that that could take a considerable time; although the wind was not so savage now and the snow was less blinding, it might be ages before conditions settled sufficiently for any form of rescue to be mounted. He decided to go back for Jack, in the hope that he could manage to get him down to the phone box as well. It would at least give them both some protection from the cold and it would also mean that they’d be together in an easily locatable place once the helicopter, which he was sure would be sent, could get off the ground.

  The fox was waiting for him at the side of the road, its long, sleek body a dazzling red in contrast with the grey and white of the snow.

  William walked towards it, extending his hand, rather as you would when approaching a dog, in a gesture of friendship. But the fox was no dog. It watched William with suspicious eyes and shied away before he got close enough to touch him.

  ‘Here, boy!’ William said, surprised by this reaction, and trying to make his voice sound enticing. He crouched in the snow, his hand still extended towards the fox, trying to coax it towards him. But the fox only slunk further away from him and then turned and scampered round behind a mound of snow that covered a low stone wall. There it paused and William could see it skulking at a distance, watching him still.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ William called out. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

  But the fox only stared, body tense, ready to run if William made a move towards it.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ William shouted, crossly. Then, when he still got no reaction, he turned his back on the fox and looked instead at the long line of tree-covered hills where Jack was lying waiting for him.

  The footprints of the fox were still just visible in a vague line, leading across the snow-covered field to a distant grey stone wall.

  William remembered the sensation of flying as they leaped that wall. Then he frowned and shook his head. How could he have? The fox could have leaped the wall. But not him. And where were his footprints? True it was still snowing quite hard and they could have been covered by now but, in that case, why weren’t the prints of the fox covered also?

  ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ a voice in his head said.

  ‘Know what?’ William asked, aloud.

  ‘How you got here,’ the voice whispered.

  ‘Of course I do,’ William replied, feeling hot.

  ‘Talking to yourself?’ the voice in his head whispered.

  William looked around uncomfortably, hoping that no one had been listening to him. Talking to oneself was, after all, the first sign of madness.

  The fox was sitting in the snow, at the side of the wall, watching him. William thought it had a rather sly expression.

  ‘What are you waiting for, anyway?’ William shouted at it.

  The fox stood up on its four legs, its tail held aloft like a burning flame, and stared at him impassively.

  ‘Well?’ William demanded, feeling uncomfortable. The fox had a superior air that was most unnerving.

  ‘Go on,’ William shouted again, waving his arm. ‘Go away. I thought you’d help me. Well, if you won’t, just go away.’

  The fox yawned, and stretched its body. The breath from its mouth smoked on the frosty air. Then it lifted its head, listening.

  ‘Please,’ William called, in a contrite voice, ‘I really do need your help.’

  Slowly the fox turned and looked at him. They stood staring at each other, surrounded by the vast expanse of gleaming white. The clouds were higher now and the falling snow was turning from big cotton wool blobs to a fine powder. The wind had dropped and a profound silence had settled over the countryside; that silence that only the snow brings, the sort of silence that you think you can touch, the sort of silence that clings to you and covers you and wraps itself around you.

  Once again, as had happened several times recently, William felt peculiarly displaced. Perhaps it was the thick layer of snow that gave the country such a strangely anonymous blankness. Perhaps it was the extreme exertion that he had just been through that made William dizzy. Or perhaps . . .

  ‘Perhaps it’s the Magician’s magic,’ the fox whispered.

  ‘You feel it too?’ William asked.

  ‘Always,’ the fox replied. ‘But I belong to the Magician, and not to you, little boy. I’m a wild creature. No use trying to train me like a farm dog. Understand? I hunt to survive. There’s nothing soft in my life. My vixen and her cubs need me to be strong and sharp. Let me tell you, little boy, if you travel with me, it will be danger all the way.’ The fox stretched again and licked its flank in a nonchalant way. Then it stared back at William with piercing eyes. ‘There’s a hunt round here,’ it whispered.

  The words made William tremble and look over his shoulder. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck stirring.

  ‘Now?’ he asked, in his head. ‘Is the hunt out now?’

  ‘No, not now,’ the voice in his head continued. ‘The weather’s too harsh for the humans. But we have to be careful. Come on, I’m hungry. There are some hens along the way.’

  As the voice spoke, William sprang forward and a moment later he could feel his paws lightly skimming across the surface of the snow.

  But what about Uncle Jack? he thought.

  ‘Can’t do anything till we’ve eaten,’ the fox told him.

  William could hear the hens before he saw them. They were in a wooden house, with a wire-mesh cage in front of it. There was a gap in the wire.

  ‘No!’ William cried out, just in time. And he did so with such force that the fox sprang away from him, surprised, and somehow the two bodies became separate again.

  ‘I couldn’t eat a raw chicken,’ William explained.

  The fox sighed and stared at him pityingly.

  ‘Humans!’ it said in a withering voice. ‘Call yourselves animals? You’re neither one thing nor the other,’ and without another word it squeezed under the wire and prowled towards the door of the hen house.

  William backed away. He wasn�
��t squeamish about the sight of blood. But the thought of what now was going to happen appalled him. He didn’t mind hitching the odd lift with the fox, but he refused to guzzle raw chicken with it. He couldn’t do that for anyone. Not even a magician.

  So he turned his back and let the fox get on with it on its own.

  The farmhouse was across a yard. And beside the back door leaned a sledge, half covered with snow.

  William ran up to the door and banged on it with his fist. Distantly a dog barked. But no one came to answer his calls.

  He felt in his pocket to see if he had any paper and a pencil. If he had, he would leave a note explaining that he was just borrowing the sledge. But, of course, he had none.

  Instead, William wrote ONLY BORROWED in the smooth snow that covered the yard and hoped that, whoever the owners of the house and the sledge were, they would get back before the snow had melted and taken his message with it.

  As he passed the hen house once more, he noticed a trail of blood that led from the door of the hut, under the gap in the wire and disappeared into the undergrowth at the side of the lane.

  William shuddered. He hadn’t even heard a sound. He didn’t like the fox much, he thought. It was a cruel creature. Then he set off up a track that led from the farm towards the tree-covered slopes, dragging the sledge behind him.

  Spot raced across the snow, keeping his nose low. The scent of William and Jack wasn’t very strong. It would have been easier on real earth. Ice and snow didn’t hold smells satisfactorily.

  ‘Not that we won’t find them,’ he assured Alice. ‘But it might take a bit of time.’

  Alice was enjoying the way they ploughed their nose through the loose surface of the snow and then, every so often, they would look up and shake their head and sneeze.

  ‘It’s lovely, Spot,’ she told him. ‘Being a dog is much much much more fun than being a girl.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Spot. ‘It’s not all beer and skittles, you know. Dogs have a very hard life sometimes.’

  ‘So do girls,’ Alice assured him. ‘At least you don’t have to sit exams and go to the dentist. And you never have to wear a skirt.’ If there was one thing that Alice hated, it was wearing a skirt. She thought it the silliest invention. Boys didn’t wear skirts – except in Scotland – so why should girls? However, she decided not to bother Spot with the problems of being a girl just then. They had more important things to deal with.