They were warm now, and relatively dry, but darkness was falling on a day that had been without food, and it was plain that they could not live for long like this.
‘We could go back to the forest.’ Little-Marten voiced the thought that he knew to be in both their heads.
‘No,’ said Henty. ‘I’d rather be frozen here with you than alone there and warm. I shan’t go back – not unless my father should change his stubborn thinking. And I never knew that to happen yet.’
‘Heh. You be his daughter then, right enough.’
Little-Marten caught a dig in the ribs for this remark, but he’d already braced himself for something of the sort, and at least it showed that Henty’s spirit was far from broken. They would see what tomorrow would bring. In the meantime it had stopped sleeting outside, and the wind was dying down. It looked as though the worst of the storm had passed.
Chapter Nineteen
‘YES, IT’S A bit disturbing,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘All that business with the tree house and George’s rope ladder.’
‘Mm.’ Midge rubbed her elbow against the misted car window, and looked out at the sleet that came billowing across the moors. ‘He often does pull the ladder up, though. Maybe he climbed down the tree, last time he was up there, or jumped or something instead of using the rope ladder. And then just forgot.’
‘Well, yes. But that doesn’t explain all the mess, or the ruined sleeping bag. I’m a bit concerned, frankly. It looks to me as though we’ve had intruders.’ Uncle Brian glanced across at her. ‘Not that I’d want you lying awake worrying about that, mind. It’ll be just lads, probably. Half-term . . . kids with too much time on their hands . . .’
Lads. Midge smiled to herself. She knew better. Yes, it was pretty clear to her who’d been camping out in the tree house. She was sure she’d caught a glimpse of the culprits, scurrying away into the hedge. But where would they go now? she wondered. The passing countryside looked desperately bleak, a miserable prospect for anyone caught out in this weather. She hoped they’d managed to find somewhere – or better still come to their senses and gone back to the forest.
‘Can you smell something sort of . . . pongy?’ Uncle Brian was making a face and sniffing.
‘I think it might be me.’ Midge had her reply ready. ‘Sorry. I stepped in some compost. I needed it for a school project thingy.’
‘Ah. That’s OK, then. Thought something had crawled into the heater and died.’
Midge pushed her carrier bag a little further into the footwell.
It had only been a few days since she’d last seen Aunt Celandine, but her appearance had definitely worsened, Midge thought. She looked thinner and more frail than ever. And sadder too, somehow. Usually there was a big smile for her whenever she turned up, but today Aunt Celandine just seemed exhausted.
‘I haven’t been sleeping very well,’ she said. ‘And the truth is I don’t want to be sleeping all the time. The doctor comes round and tries to give me pills, but I don’t want them. I want to think, I tell him, not sleep.’
Midge took up her usual perch on the wing-backed chair opposite her great-great-aunt. ‘But you need to rest,’ she said.
‘No.’ Aunt Celandine’s voice was tetchy. ‘There’ll be time enough for that. I can’t be . . . peaceful . . . not in my mind, until I’ve untangled everything. I keep getting close, you know. I remember little bits and pieces of things that happened to me . . . faces and voices . . . sounds. But then they fade away again. Do you know what I wish now? I wish I’d spoken at the time. I wish I’d told people, whilst I still remembered, where I’d been and what I’d done. But I didn’t. I never even told Nina. And now it’s too late. I don’t think it’ll ever come back.’
‘Who’s Nina?’ Midge had never heard this name mentioned before.
‘Nina?’ Aunt Celandine looked at her for a few moments. ‘Nina was my . . . well, she was my friend. My very dear friend.’
Midge blinked, and in the silence that followed she thought that she understood something about her aunt that she had not understood before. Oh.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘And, er . . . and . . .’ But she could find nothing else to say about this, and so she picked up the carrier-bag bundle that she had laid beside the chair.
‘Aunt Celandine, I’ve got something here for you. It’s a present. Well, I think it’s a present. It’s not from me, it’s from someone else. I’ll, um, I’ll just see if I can get it out of these bags.’
Midge tore apart the knotted plastic bags, glad to be able to occupy her hands. She would look again, she thought, at that photograph. The one with the two young women on the beach, laughing and holding onto their hats . . .
‘A present?’ Aunt Celandine leaned forward in her chair, trying to see. ‘But what on earth is it? And who’s sent it?’
‘Here you are.’ Midge lifted the leather pouch and placed it in Aunt Celandine’s outstretched hands. ‘It’s from Maven-the-Green.’ Midge came right out and said it. She watched her great-great-aunt’s face – to see if there was any reaction.
‘Maven the . . . what did you say . . . Green? Maven-the-Green?’ Aunt Celandine rested the bag in her lap, and sat staring down at it. ‘Maven-the-Green . . . Maven. Maven . . .’
Midge said nothing, but she could feel her heart beating faster. Was there a glimmer of recognition there?
Aunt Celandine lifted the bag a little higher towards her, and sniffed at it. She closed her eyes, and remained like this for a while, slowly breathing in and out. ‘Caves . . .’ she said at last. Midge noticed the tremor in the pale mottled hands. ‘Yes – I can smell the caves! And horses. The little horses. Lavender . . . and camomile . . . wild garlic . . .’ Aunt Celandine raised her head, but still kept her eyes closed. ‘And mushrooms . . . nettles . . . wet leaves . . . oh, and all the forest. It’s all here in my hands. So clear, now. So clear . . .’
The old lady sat as though transported to another time and place, her eyes closed, a smile of pleasure on her wrinkled face.
Midge was amazed at this sudden breakthrough. She waited for a while, then said softly, ‘There are things in the bag for you, Aunt Celandine. Gifts.’
‘Gifts . . .’ Aunt Celandine murmured. ‘Thee’m one wi’ a gift . . . a gift to be given. Who said that? Maven-the-Green. Yes, Maven. I was so frightened. But she was there to help me. I had a gift, she said. A gift to be given . . .’ A slight frown crossed Aunt Celandine’s face. ‘But there was another gift. A gift to be hid, till better times than these, she said. Thee shall know the day. And I can’t . . . I can’t remember what that was, or what it meant.’
‘Shall we look inside?’ Midge was really excited now. She should have brought some scissors, though, to cut the twine that had been used to fasten the bag shut. Stupid. Aunt Celandine was beginning to look agitated. Her eyes had opened, and the spell was in danger of being broken.
Midge didn’t want to disturb the moment by asking where a pair of scissors might be found. She stood up and quickly scanned the room. There had been a penknife somewhere – she remembered it. Yes, over there, on the shelf next to the cricket ball.
‘I’ll use this,’ she said, not waiting to ask for permission, and grabbed the little knife. The thing was ancient and it was a struggle to get the blade open, but she managed it.
‘Shall I, er . . .?’ Midge stooped to gently take the bag from her aunt’s hands, and began to hack through the bits of string. Her fingers were impatient, and she was lucky not to stab them with the rusty blade. Finally she got the bag open, and placed it back on the old lady’s lap.
But Aunt Celandine was staring off into space now, her mouth silently moving, and Midge had to prompt her.
‘The bag, Aunt Celandine. Don’t you want to see what’s inside?’
‘I was running away, and they were after me. All of the . . . all of them. Chasing me through the darkness. Through the vegetables . . . like an allotment. And tapping with sticks, the way that beaters do to drive the pheasants.’ Aunt Celan
dine was still somewhere else, still remembering. Midge was desperate to find out what was inside the bag, but she had to be patient. And this was good, wasn’t it? She could see that Aunt Celandine was actually back in the forest, talking about what had happened to her.
‘And they were so close, so close . . . and then this wonderful little person . . . Maven-the-Green. She helped me. I climbed a big tree. It had been struck by lightning.’ Aunt Celandine lifted the bag and breathed in its odour once more, as though this was the fuel for her memory. ‘I thought they were all coming up the tree after me . . . the little people. Yes, the little people. Tap-tap-tap. And I jumped down from the tree, and escaped. And then it was hailing. I ran down the hill. Hailing like bullets, it was, as though I was going over the top, like all those poor boys.’ Aunt Celandine put the bag back in her lap and sat there nodding. ‘Poor boys. That’s all they were. Just boys. Ours and theirs.’ She looked down at the leather pouch. ‘And I was carrying a bag. Just like this one.’
Aunt Celandine put her hand inside the bag. Her movements were slow, and shaky. Midge struggled to contain her impatience.
‘Oh . . .’ Aunt Celandine drew out what looked like a handful of old leaves. She lifted them to her face and sniffed at them. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Feverfew. I used to use this a lot. And lavender, of course . . . groundsel . . . and here’s a bit of silverweed. Very good for the kidneys, is silverweed, and also, well . . . ladies’ problems.’
Midge wriggled in frustration. Was that it? Just a bunch of smelly old plants? No, Aunt Celandine’s hand was in the bag again, and this time she seemed to have got hold of something more interesting.
‘Ooh. What’s this?’
She held up a round object, about the size of a small coconut. At first glance it looked like a scrunched-up bundle of oily canvas. But there was apparently something wrapped in this material – the thin strips of it, wound round and round.
‘Oilskin,’ said Aunt Celandine. ‘Yes, I remember they had a kind of oilskin. It does go a bit rancid after a while, though.’ She picked at the end of one of the strips and began to pull it away, unwinding it, slowly and carefully.
There seemed to be an awful lot of it. Midge was agog, wondering what could possibly lie at the centre of all this stuff. But then Aunt Celandine stopped pulling at the material. Her face looked puzzled. ‘I’ve seen this happen before,’ she said. ‘I know I have. It’s . . . oh, it’s . . .’ She resumed her work, untwisting the lengths of oilskin. It reminded Midge of a black-and-white film she’d once watched, where somebody was unwrapping the bandages from somebody else’s head, and then in the middle there was nothing at all. Something about an invisible man.
But this wasn’t invisible. Aunt Celandine pulled the last bit of oilskin away, and held up a . . . pine-cone.
Midge couldn’t have been more surprised. Or disappointed. A pine-cone? She stared in disbelief at the thing, and was then startled as Aunt Celandine let out a hoot of laughter.
‘A piney-cone!’ she squealed, and for a moment she sounded just like a little girl. ‘I remember now! They all thought it was going to be the Orbis, and it turned out to just be an old pine-cone! Oh, you should have seen Corben’s face. Ha! He was furious. And that’s when I fell out of the tree, and had to start running. And of course, it was me that had the Orbis all along, though I never knew it till later. Yes, a pine-cone, just like this one.’ Aunt Celandine rocked back and forth in her chair, gurgling away, and fumbling in the sleeve of her cardigan until she found a hanky. She wiped her eyes, and tucked the hanky away again.
Midge just gawped at her. ‘You remember that?’ she said. ‘About having the Orbis and everything? It’s really true?’
Aunt Celandine had calmed down a bit. ‘Yes,’ she said, and now there was surprise in her voice, as though she’d only just realized what this meant. ‘Yes, I do remember. Isn’t that funny? The Orbis was in my bag – a bag just like this one. They’d put it there without my knowing. It was the cave-dwellers who did that. They wanted me to carry it away and keep it safe for them.’
‘You took it away with you? Well, then . . .’ Midge asked the big question. ‘What did you do with it?’
‘What did I do with it?’ Aunt Celandine was looking horribly blank again. Her dark filmy eyes moved around the room, as though searching for clues. ‘I . . . don’t know. It’s gone.’
Midge had suffered so many setbacks in this quest that she had almost grown used to it. And she had learned that there was no point in getting upset, or in trying to push Aunt Celandine along any quicker than she was able. Nevertheless it was very hard to have come so far only to fail. She desperately wanted to move forward, but for the moment there was no alternative but to take a step back.
‘Oh well. Perhaps it’ll come eventually,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else in the bag?’
Aunt Celandine sighed and shook her head, obviously confused and disappointed with herself. She rummaged around in the leather bag, pulled out a few more leaves, or herbs, or whatever they were, put them back and rummaged some more. Midge watched her and thought how tired she looked. Perhaps it was time to give up and call it a day. They really had made some progress, and so this visit could hardly be written off as a failure.
Something else had appeared from the bag. Midge couldn’t quite see what it was . . . feathers?
‘Oh . . . oh my word . . . I never imagined I’d see this again! Oh but this is wonderful. Just wonderful! Look, Midge.’ Aunt Celandine held out her cupped hands. Midge peered at the object in front of her. It was a little homemade toy, a walnut-shell boat with a tiny figure sitting in it. The figure looked as though it might be made of wax. It had wings – two feathers sticking out of it – although perhaps these were supposed to be oars. The figure might be flying or it might be rowing. Either way it was beautiful.
‘Oh, that’s so sweet,’ said Midge. ‘It’s lovely.’
Aunt Celandine pressed the object to her chest for a few moments, but then she had to search for her hanky again. ‘This means so much to me,’ she said, and this time she was really crying. ‘So much. I just can’t tell you.’ She dabbed at her tears, and cradled the strange little toy to her.
Midge sat and looked at her, dumbfounded. What should she do?
‘I lost it years ago, you see, just after I’d left home. They made it for me as a leaving present – the cave-dwellers. It meant so much to realize that they cared about me, when I thought that they didn’t care at all. And then I lost it. All the other things I just put in my jewellery box and forgot about, and I’d meant to put this in there too, but I didn’t. I kept it with me, just for a little while. And then it simply disappeared, somehow, as things do. And I suppose I must have missed it at first, of course.’ Aunt Celandine wiped her nose on the hanky. ‘But since then I’ve forgotten all about it, the way I forgot about everything else, and haven’t given it a thought. But I remember now that this was one thing that really mattered to me at the time, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see it again. Oh dear.’
Midge felt her own eyes prickle with tears, and she wished that she had a hanky too. But she quickly drew her sleeve across her face, and then said, ‘I’m really glad, then, that it’s come back to you. And it is lovely.’ At the same time she couldn’t help wondering how this could possibly be the same little toy. Perhaps it was better not to point this out, or question it.
‘Tell me about the cave-dwellers,’ she said. ‘Is that where you stayed, in the caves?’
‘I read stories to them . . .’ Aunt Celandine was staring into the distance again. ‘And we had singing. I wrote letters on the walls, with chalk. The alphabet. And songs. I showed them how to make words from the letters . . .’
Midge remembered something. ‘Was there one called Lor . . . Lorril . . . Loren?’
‘Oh . . . yes! Loren. Of course . . . Loren! He was so clever. But how did you know about him?’
‘I’ve got something he wrote,’ said Midge. ‘And a drawing he di
d – of you. But it’s in my other jacket. Next time I’ll bring it, though.’
‘Little Loren. Oh, he was a marvel. I wonder what happened to him.’
Midge thought of Tadgemole, and the sad expression on his face. Loren had died young, so Tadgemole had said. But again it might be better not to mention this. Instead she said, ‘I’ve met his brother – Tadgemole. Did you know him?’
‘Tadgemole . . . Tadgemole. Yes! He was the baby! A tiny little scrap. Is he really still there?’
‘He’s the leader of the cave-dwellers now. He looks pretty old.’ Midge was thinking of something else as she spoke. She wanted to ask so many questions about Celandine’s life among the Various, but there was something more important niggling at her . . . yes, she’d got it.
‘Aunt Celandine, you said that you’d kept the little toy boat, but that you’d put everything else that they’d given you into a box . . . a jewellery box?’
‘Yes, I did. I called it my jewellery box, although I can’t remember that there was much jewellery in it. It was mostly ribbons and hairgrips . . . one or two little bracelets, perhaps . . .’
‘But’ – Midge tried to stay on track – ‘the Orbis. Did you put that in there too?’
‘Um . . . yes, that’s right. I did. Yes, the Orbis . . . and a letter. A little wooden comb, I think. But I kept the boat with me, for a while.’
Midge took a breath, and tried to keep her voice steady. ‘And what happened to the jewellery box? What did you do with it?’
‘Oh, that’s easy enough.’ Aunt Celandine’s voice was confident. ‘It stayed on my mantelpiece. I’d always kept it there, because there was a mirror above it. I never opened it again, though, not after what happened.’
‘Oh.’ Midge’s heart was beginning to sink again. ‘So you didn’t take it with you when you left home?’
Winter Wood Page 20
