Into the Woods

by Lyn Gardner

  Netta was walking to the door, the sea of people parting for her. At the exit she turned and looked back. ‘Fools,’ she said softly. ‘You think you can control the wolves, but they will control you. This is madness. Everyone knows you don’t invite the wolf into your house when he comes knocking. I fear for us all.’ Then she was gone.

  A murmur of anxiety passed around the gallery, but anxiety quickly turned to jeering led by Alderman Snufflebottom. Storm saw Dr DeWilde give a secret little smile of triumph. She scrambled to her feet, pushed her way out and followed the dignified figure of Netta Truelove, unaware that she was being followed by the boy. The crowd had begun to cheer for Dr DeWilde.

  Down in the town square, Netta climbed into a small trap drawn by a handsome dun-coloured Connemara pony. She gently flicked her whip, said, ‘Gee up, Pepper,’ and was about to drive off, when she saw Storm watching her.

  ‘You look like a young lady in need of a lift. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Eden End, please, if it’s not out of your way,’ said Storm.

  ‘Hop in,’ said Netta, and she turned the horse round and set off out of the town. Storm was so busy admiring Pepper the pony that she didn’t notice the boy lurking in the shadows. His extraordinarily coloured eyes, one of ice-blue, the other of emerald, glittered in the darkness as he watched them depart.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Netta after a short while.

  ‘I’m always hungry.’

  Netta produced two crisp red apples and some candied pumpkin.

  The journey back to Eden End passed quickly as Storm and Netta munched and talked companionably. Storm wanted to ask Netta why she had been so against the appointment of the exterminator, but every time she tried to raise the subject, Netta steered the conversation back to Storm. By the time the pony and trap drew up at the end of the drive to Eden End, Storm had told Netta everything about herself: her solitary life of adventures and her scrapes and run-ins with her sister.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said. Netta gave her a hug.

  ‘I am very pleased to have met you, Storm Eden, and I hope we’ll meet again one day.’ She leaned forward, and her arresting silvergrey eyes were soft. ‘If ever you need my help, you’ll find me in my cottage in a clearing in the woods beyond the first village after the town on the road out to the mountains. It’s clearly marked.’

  Storm stared at her. ‘But that means you’ve driven me all this way and it is completely in the opposite direction from where you live.’

  Netta smiled again.‘It was entirely my pleasure. If you ever pass my way, please come and visit me.’

  Back in the town, the meeting chamber was clearing, and the townsfolk were hurrying towards their homes, chased by the fear that had seeped into their lives and settled like damp in a wall. Dr DeWilde stood at the window and watched the people go, his eyes cold, blank and smooth. A movement made him aware that Alderman Snufflebottom was hovering nervously nearby. Dr DeWilde felt in his pocket and casually handed over a small handful of brightly coloured precious gems as if they were mere sweets. A few scattered on the floor. Alderman Snufflebottom’s eyes glittered with greed as he scrambled on his hands and knees to pick them up: emeralds, rubies, amethysts and sapphires. Dr DeWilde turned his cold gaze upon the alderman. Snufflebottom was a silly, greedy little man, but he was useful. At least for the time being.

  ‘Come, we have work to do.’ Dr DeWilde clicked his fingers and the wolves raised their heads and bayed, a long shivering cry of desolation that entered the bone marrow of all who heard it.

  Out in the darkening streets, mothers quickened their step, clasping their children’s hands tightly and clutching their babies to their breasts. Worry took up residence in every shadow, threat seemed to lurk behind every hedge and dustbin. People locked their doors and drew the curtains tight. All night the call of the wolves disturbed their sleep as the pack roamed the streets, catching and devouring the rats. By dawn every rodent was gone and it was raining heavily – washing away all traces of the blood that ran through the gutters and stained the streets.

  A Beginning and an end

  It was the very next day that Storm Eden first heard the wolves howl around Eden End. It was also the day that she found a sister and lost a mother.

  The morning began badly. From the way Aurora arranged her mouth into a thin line, Storm knew that her sister was suspicious about her absence the previous afternoon. But thanks to Netta, she had only been a few minutes late for supper, so Aurora had no proof that she had left the grounds of Eden End. She contented herself with setting Storm hideously difficult long division straight after breakfast and sighing loudly over her torn skirt.

  ‘As if there wasn’t enough to do already with a new baby on the way,’ she said grumpily as she carefully threaded a needle, holding it at a distance as if it was a highly dangerous weapon and not just an everyday piece of sewing kit.

  ‘Baby? What baby?’ demanded Storm, looking up from her sums.

  ‘Mother’s baby, you silly goose. Goodness, Storm, are you completely blind? Hadn’t you noticed that’s she’s having a baby? It’s due any day now.’

  Storm processed this interesting piece of information and felt incredibly stupid. How could she not have noticed that Zella, her beautiful although seriously neglectful mother, was having a baby? She who prided herself on being told nothing and yet finding out everything that was going on at Eden End, and who had personally seen Tabitha the cat through four litters of kittens. Still, as Zella favoured long flowing clothes and held the view that exercise was so harmful to health that she seldom moved, except between her bed and her chaise longue, perhaps it was not so surprising that Storm hadn’t noticed her advancing pregnancy. Particularly as in recent months Zella had been more remiss than usual in fulfilling any maternal duties. Whenever Storm had appeared in her doorway, Zella would fix her with a dazzling smile which made Storm feel as if she was being bathed in a sunbeam, and whisper exhaustedly, ‘Darling, how lovely to see you. Mama’s feeling a little tired. Why don’t you go out in the park and leave me to rest a little.’ Sustained by this flash of radiance, Storm would run off, although often with an unexplained gnawing in her stomach, even if she had just had breakfast.

  But this unexpected news was thrilling. A baby would mean a companion, and a companion would mean somebody to play with. Storm wouldn’t be so alone any more. She would teach the baby archery, fire-eating, synchronized swimming and how to make fireworks.

  ‘A baby. How wonderful,’ she beamed.

  ‘Well, I’m glad somebody’s happy,’ Aurora said in a crotchety voice.

  Storm looked at Aurora’s pale face and noticed how tired her big sister looked.

  ‘Ouch!’ A tiny dot of crimson blood appeared on Aurora’s finger where she had pricked it with the needle. Her pale face went ghostly white and she swayed in her chair as if about to faint.

  ‘Are you all right, Aurora?’ Storm asked, concerned by her sister’s deathly pallor.

  ‘My finger, I pricked it,’ whispered Aurora, staring at the blood, her eyes wide with horror.

  ‘It’s only a tiny drop of blood,’ said Storm unsympathetically. ‘Nobody ever died from pricking their finger.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped Aurora, turning from white to pink in a second. She glared at Storm, wiped her forehead with an exquisitely pressed handkerchief and gingerly picked up the needle again. Storm returned to the subject that really interested her.

  ‘Don’t you want there to be a new baby?’

  Aurora put down her sewing and said, not entirely convincingly, ‘Of course I’m pleased, sweetie. But a new baby is another mouth to feed and it will mean more work.’

  Storm knew that Aurora meant it would mean more work for her, for much as she adored her mother, with her beautiful kitten face and smile as mysterious as the Mona Lisa, Storm also recognized that Zella was lazier than a plump, pampered tortoiseshell cat. Her mother’s idea of vigorous mental and physical exercise was lying in bed ea
ting chocolate truffles and strawberries and cream while looking at herself in the mirror. She never rose before ten and spent most days painting her nails and reading ancient copies of glossy magazines with pictures of thin, miserable women on the covers. Storm could not imagine Zella getting up in the night to look after a baby, and she very much doubted that her father would be any help either.

  When Reggie Eden was not laughing and whispering with Zella, he was either away on one of his expeditions or busy planning the next one with a large DO NOT DISTURB sign pinned to his study door. Once, ignoring the sign, Storm had rushed excitedly into her father’s study to show him one of Tabitha’s kittens and, when he had eventually looked up from his work and peered at her over the top of his glasses, he had seemed dazed for a moment and then asked in a puzzled voice, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Storm, of course,’ she had replied indignantly, and a look of faint surprise had passed over his handsome face. He had run his fingers through his rumpled hair and said, ‘My, how you have grown,’ before looking down at his maps again and shooing her away.

  Storm was certain that looking after the new baby would fall entirely to Aurora, who already ran Eden End with the efficiency of a sergeant major faced with a particularly unruly company of troops.

  ‘I’ll help you look after the baby, Aurora, I promise.’

  ‘You? Help?’ said Aurora, not unkindly but with a note of scepticism in her voice. ‘Like when you helped with the chickens and forgot to put them away at night and a fox got them all, except Desdemona and Othello? Or when you offered to do the washing up and left both taps running full on so that the kitchen flooded?’

  Storm flushed with shame and anger. She hadn’t meant to forget the chickens. It had just happened. As for leaving the taps running, she had been distracted by seeing a kestrel out of the window and had pursued it into the park to see if she could find its nest. It wasn’t her fault – she had been as amazed as anyone to return to the kitchen several hours later to find the tables and chairs trying to float out of the door. It was just like Aurora to bring up things she would rather forget. It was so unfair.

  An unlit coal suddenly blazed in Storm’s stomach. Fury swept through her body like a searing pain and hot tears throbbed behind her eyes. ‘The trouble with you, Aurora Eden,’ she said, ‘is that you don’t think that I can do anything. Well, I’ll show you, bossyboots!’ She picked up a heavy tray full of breakfast plates, bowls and cups and marched across the room.

  ‘No, Storm, no!’ exclaimed Aurora, rising to her feet. ‘I left that tray there because the handle is crack—’

  Too late. As Storm swept imperiously towards the door, the tray handle gave way and half-eaten bowls of porridge and jugs of milk and apple juice smashed to the floor.

  ‘Oh, Storm, why do you never listen?’ cried Aurora, nervously eyeing the sea of milk that was seeping across the threadbare Persian carpet around islands of greengage and damson jam and broken crockery.

  ‘Because as far as you’re concerned I can never do anything right!’ screamed Storm. ‘I always know exactly where I am with you – in the wrong!’

  ‘Oh, Storm, that’s not true, sweetie, I didn’t mean—’ began Aurora. But she was wasting her breath. Storm had run from the room, trampling spilled milk and jam and slamming the door behind her.

  Aurora sighed as she got down on her hands and knees and picked up shards of broken china. She wished that she and Storm got on better, but they always seemed to rub each other up the wrong way. They were so different, and sometimes her little sister was just downright irresponsible. Why did she never think before she acted?

  Aurora stood up wearily. Through the window she caught a glimpse of Storm running through the park like a wild thing, followed by Desdemona and Tabitha. She wrinkled her nose in disapproval but, as she watched the small solitary figure leaping through the air and punching her fist at the sky, Aurora felt a smile tilt the corners of her mouth. She felt in her pocket and pulled out one of the many lists she always kept there. It read:

  To the bottom of the list she added:

  She put the list back in her pocket and set off quite happily to get a dustpan and brush.

  It was long after lunch before Storm dared return to the house. She was starving as usual, and hoped to snatch herself a hunk of bread and cheese without running into Aurora. But creeping inside, she was astonished to hear her mother’s raised voice. Zella always spoke in a husky whisper, believing that it conserved essential energy. Storm raced up the stairs, shaking her unruly red curls as she ran, slid headlong across the polished gallery floor and skidded to a halt with an expert forty-five-degree turn outside her parents’ room. She pressed her ear against the door. Her mother was agitated, gasping, ‘I can’t, I can’t.’

  Storm then heard Aurora’s stern voice.‘Nonsense, Mama. Of course you can.’ Aurora sounded exasperated, using exactly the same tone she employed when she was trying to explain fractions to Storm. Her voice became louder and more insistent. ‘Oh, do try to make a little effort, Mummy. Push!’

  Then Storm’s father spoke. ‘Please, Zella, my darling. Push, I beg of you.’

  A few minutes later she heard a kitten-ish mewling and her father opened the bedroom door with such force that surprise and the sudden rush of air knocked Storm backwards onto her bottom. Her father thrust a small bundle into her arms.

  ‘Look after that,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your new sister,’ he replied curtly, and shut the door abruptly.

  Storm stared into the baby’s dark currant eyes and the tiny screwed-up face with its mop of dark hair and, perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but for a split second it seemed as if the baby was smiling at her. Storm’s heart swooped and she experienced a strange tickling sensation in her tummy. Storm had fallen in love with her little sister.

  Zella had put more effort into giving birth to her third daughter than she had put into anything else in her beautiful, lazy life. The exertion proved too much. ‘I knew I had it in me,’ she whispered, and fainted.

  After several thwarted attempts to enter the bedroom, and being shooed away by her father, Storm spent an anxious afternoon pushing the sleeping baby around the overgrown knot garden in the dilapidated pram in the company of Desdemona and Tabitha. Her throat felt sore, as if a piece of unbuttered granary toast had stubbornly lodged there. The animals clucked and purred sympathetically.

  She had wrapped the child in the blanket that she herself had been given when she was a tiny baby. It was a gossamer-soft piece of midnightblue material upon which the young Aurora had painstakingly sewed little silver stars so it looked as if the blanket was a patch of dazzling night sky cut from the starry heavens. The baby needed its warmth – the wind had got up and was lashing the trees and the sky had turned suddenly overcast and threatening. Storm was surprised to catch a snowflake on her tongue, and even more astonished to discover that it tasted strangely sugary.

  Feeling increasingly anxious about her mother, but hardly daring to discover the truth, Storm returned to the house, cradling the little bundle in her arms as if trying to protect her not just from the weather but from all the woes of the world.

  In the kitchen Aurora was making up a bottle of milk for the baby. Her beautiful face was blotched with tears and she was uncharacteristically sniffly. Unlike Storm, who frequently found it necessary to resort to her sleeve in times of upset or sneezing attacks, Aurora was never without a perfectly pressed pocket handkerchief. As she was fond of telling her sister, when testing Storm on some obscure aspect of geometry or on how to correctly spell useful words such as blancmange, ‘A failure to prepare is preparing to fail.’

  ‘So, there you both are,’ said Aurora as if Storm had been wilfully hiding herself and the baby away, rather than trying to make herself scarce. Seeing her sister’s stricken face, Aurora softened her tone. ‘You’re a good, helpful girl, Storm, to look after the poor little mite,’ she said kindly. ‘Do you want to feed her?
I’ll show you how.’

  She took the baby and the smudge of a child was soon sucking greedily at the milk, smacking her lips in delight. Storm watched and marvelled at the perfectly designed sucking machine but also at her older sister. Why was it, she wondered, that Aurora was so good at anything she turned her hand to, while she, Storm, was so useless and clumsy at most things? Aurora seemed to have the knack of everything, while Storm had the knack of nothing except climbing trees, lassoing, riding bareback and making fireworks. It was no surprise, she thought sadly, that her mother and father always had time for Aurora and none for her. Indeed they seemed almost uncharacteristically protective of Aurora while ignoring Storm, happy to let her run wild all day in the park.

  ‘Here, you try,’ said Aurora, offering Storm the baby and bottle. The baby let out a roar of disapproval, but when nestled in Storm’s arms, the teat of the bottle back in her mouth, she settled. Presently she burped politely, her lashes fluttered, she curled a tiny finger around Storm’s thumb and fell fast asleep, snuffling like a hedgehog. Storm felt her insides turn to pink melted toffee.

  ‘Come,’ said Aurora. Storm rose and, with the baby in her arms, she followed her sister up the staircase and along the gallery into her parents’ room. Zella was lying on the big canopied bed, her black tresses – so long she normally wore them coiled around her head – spread out over the embroidered lace pillow. She looked as beautiful as Sleeping Beauty waiting to be awoken by a kiss from a prince. The children’s father sat by the bed, his head sunk into his hands. He looked as if he had shrunk several suit sizes in less than a day.

  Storm glanced at the photograph of her parents that hung over the mantel. It showed them at their wedding, which had taken place just days after Captain Reggie Eden, the daring and handsome explorer, had rescued Zella from a tall tower atop a high mountain where, according to their mother, she had been imprisoned by a hateful old crone. Storm wasn’t sure how true that was – and she was pretty dubious about her father’s claim to have shinned up the tower using Zella’s hair as a rope. But there was no doubt about how much her parents loved each other. In the photograph, the bride and groom glowed as if they had been kissed all over by the sun. Her mother was looking up at her new husband and Captain Reggie Eden was looking back with rapt adoration.