Into the Woods

by Lyn Gardner

  ‘I was trying to save you, Storm!’ said Aurora, biting her lip.

  ‘I know, silly,’ said Storm, grinning. ‘But it was a close-run thing.’

  Aurora studied her sodden, bedraggled sister.

  ‘Storm, you are disgustingly filthy. You need a good scrub and a change of clothes.’

  ‘Aurora,’ said Storm wearily. ‘Just at this moment, cleanliness is the least of our worries.’ She shivered and rose shakily to her feet, leaving a trail of puddles behind her. ‘Come on. We have to find Any.’

  The Strangely Silent Village

  The sun was lower in the sky as Storm and Aurora followed the ragged road that the distant smoky peaks of the mountains far beyond. They were exhausted and hungry and they knew that there was no help in the town, only danger. Their only option was to follow the road taken by the covered wagon that had spirited Any and the other orphans away from the Ginger House.

  ‘At least it will feel as if we’re trying to stay in touch with her,’ said Storm.‘And maybe we’ll find someone who knows how to get to Pie Man’s Squeak.’

  They walked in silence for what seemed like hours and Storm felt more despondent with every step. Her clothes were soggy, and she couldn’t help feeling that both she and Aurora shared some of the blame for their little sister’s absence. If only she had planned their escape from the Ginger House better, and if only Aurora had resisted falling under Bee Bumble’s spell. But it was too late now. Any was gone and they might never see her again. Tears began to pour down her face.

  ‘Storm?’ said Aurora hesitantly. Angrily, Storm brushed her sister’s hand away.

  ‘Storm, let’s sit down for a minute. You’re completely exhausted,’ Aurora said gently.

  ‘Sitting down’s not going to help!’ yelled Storm angrily. ‘I’ve lost everything. My mother. My father. My home. My little sister and the pipe!’ She fell to her knees in the middle of the track and started sobbing. Aurora sat down beside her, put her arm around Storm and waited patiently until the sobs subsided. When Storm stopped hiccupping she said softly, ‘You haven’t eaten properly for weeks, Storm. You must be starving.’ She reached into her pocket and pulled out the tea cloth and opened it up to reveal the glorious pie, all yellow and buttery.

  ‘Have some. It’s just what you need.’

  ‘Need?! Don’t you ever think of anything other than cooking and cleaning, Aurora?’ Storm shouted angrily, and she brought her fist down violently upon the pie’s perfect crust, smashing it to smithereens. It disintegrated, and thick gravy poured over the edges and spurted across Storm’s already filthy dress. She stared into the centre of the devastated pie. Glistening amidst the gravy, broccoli spears and mushrooms was the pipe. Her fingers shaking, Storm reached in and took it. It felt wonderfully warm and comforting to hold. She licked off the gravy and slipped the pipe’s chain over her neck. Then, a little sheepishly, she turned to Aurora. ‘How?’ she asked.

  Aurora looked a little abashed and then said lightly, ‘Oh, you know me, I always enjoy cooking with new ingredients.’ She looked ruefully at the sodden tea cloth. ‘A pity we didn’t get to eat it. It was your favourite, Storm.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes and then Storm crooked her little finger and offered it to Aurora.

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Friends,’ replied Aurora firmly. ‘Friends and sisters.’

  ‘Aurora,’ said Storm hesitantly, ‘I need to tell you something.’

  Aurora looked seriously at Storm. ‘Is this some kind of confession?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Storm, and she told Aurora all about her first adventure in Piper’s Town, the appointment of Dr DeWilde as the exterminator and her journey home with Netta Truelove.

  Aurora listened wideeyed and then she said: ‘I knew you had been up to something you shouldn’t have been, Storm Eden. I can always tell.’ She took Storm’s hand in hers. ‘And from what you’ve said, I think you were right not to give the pipe to Dr DeWilde.’

  Storm chewed her cheek inside her mouth. ‘I’m not so sure,’ she said miserably. She pulled the pipe over her head. ‘I don’t think this useless old thing is worth losing Any for.’ Angrily she made to throw the pipe away, but Aurora stopped her.

  ‘It was Mother’s special gift to you. She wouldn’t have given it to you if it wasn’t very important. You know Zella, she wouldn’t have wasted her breath.’ Storm smiled wanly and put the pipe back around her neck, where it tingled as if in greeting.

  ‘Come on,’ said Aurora brightly, rising to her feet. ‘We’ve got a sister to rescue.’

  The track through the forest was rutted and overgrown. A grass pathway had sprung up along the middle of the road, and mallow and buttercups, queen’s lace and shepherd’s purse waved cheerily in the breeze, their heads nodding up and down as if encouraging the girls onwards. After a while a distinctive silvergrey hare lolloped across the road and sat on the green ribbon of grass watching them intently, its ears pricked and its curious silvery eyes alert. As the girls neared, it bobbed elegantly ahead, then sat in a patch of speedwell, seemingly waiting for them to catch up. This happened several times. Storm watched the animal. It seemed strangely familiar. She had seen those bright silver eyes somewhere before.

  ‘Have you noticed anything strange about that hare?’ asked Storm.

  ‘It does seem unusually sociable.’

  ‘It’s behaving very oddly. Hares are shy creatures. Hare today and gone tomorrow. They don’t like human company, but it is almost as if this one is human. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘All I’m thinking is that it’s a pity we don’t have a cooking pot, a fire and a few bay leaves. I know an excellent recipe for jugged hare.’

  ‘Aurora!’ said Storm, shocked.

  ‘All right, all right, I wouldn’t dream of eating it,’ said Aurora crossly. ‘I was only joking. Although I am so ravenous I’d even consider eating a woolly mammoth right now – if one turned up with apricot stuffing on the side.’

  The hare stopped licking its fur and cocked its head on one side as if listening to this conversation. It stood up on its hind legs, raised its nose to the air and sniffed. Then it turned and headed towards the side of the road, constantly looking back at the children as if encouraging them to follow. Storm ran after it.

  The hare plunged into the thicket and Storm pushed her way through the brambles in pursuit.

  ‘Storm, come back! I can’t see you!’ Aurora cried fearfully from the track.

  Storm took no notice. She was convinced that the hare knew where it was taking her and she followed with mounting excitement. She was disappointed when she reached a small clearing, only to find the hare sitting on a large hollow log washing its fur.

  Storm waited, hoping that the hare would move off, but it sat contentedly licking its silvergrey coat all over.

  Storm felt a fool. She had been so certain that the hare was more than it seemed; that it had magical powers like the animals in her storybooks. But just as she resolved to go back to Aurora, her eye caught something red in one of the bushes on the far side of the clearing. She ran to investigate. It was a wild raspberry bush, thick with juicy berries. Storm crammed a handful into her mouth, the juice spurting down her chin. They were the most scrumptious thing she had ever tasted.

  ‘Aurora!’ she roared. ‘Come here!’

  Her sister came struggling through the undergrowth and Storm pulled her joyously across the clearing.

  ‘Shut your eyes, Aurora,’ she ordered as they drew close to the bush. ‘Now stand still and open your mouth.’ She plucked a handful of heavy berries and popped them in her sister’s mouth. Aurora chewed for a second and then beamed a huge red beam.

  ‘Oh, Storm, this is so much better than woolly mammoth. I should never have doubted you or the hare. Where is it, by the way?’

  Storm looked around but the hare was gone.

  ‘It’s just a great pity that it didn’t arrange some cream to go with the raspberries before hopping it
,’ said Aurora, laughing, her hands and clothes sticky with fruit and her face alight with a fragile, fleeting happiness.

  The laughter was short-lived. The sunlight hardened. Night bore down fast, and a dampness filled the clearing and clung to the girls like a ghostly companion.

  Suddenly they heard the rattle of wheels and hooves back on the path. Ignoring Aurora’s frantic looks, Storm crept nimbly to the edge of the clearing, lay on her stomach and peered through the bushes just in time to glimpse a horse and carriage. The horse’s mouth had a sherbet foam ring, and its soft dark flanks were striped with blood where it had been driven too hard.

  The carriage came to an abrupt halt. Storm froze. Dr DeWilde climbed down the steps to the ground, carefully avoiding a patch of nettles. He stood just metres from her. She dared not move or even breathe. His dead eyes flicked lazily around, then he raised his head and sniffed the air.

  ‘They came this way,’ he growled to himself. ‘But they won’t get far. I have the baby sister, and I will have the girls and the pipe too.’ He grinned wolfishly up at an exhausted-looking Snufflebottom. ‘Pipes have the odd habit of turning up in the most unexpected places, and I have every confidence that this one will make its way to me. And when it does I will destroy that little family. I will make those girls wish they had never been born!’

  He leaped back into the carriage, which surged away to the heavy crack of the alderman’s whip and the terrified neigh of the horse.

  Storm felt sick, as if something repulsive had just crawled up her spine. She fingered the pipe. It was as warm as fresh buttered toast.

  She decided to spare Aurora the details of what she had heard, saying only that they were on the right road to find Any. Reluctant to venture any further that night while the doctor was on the prowl, Storm suggested they try to sleep in the hollow log. Shivering, they crawled in – after Storm had done a quick recce to assure Aurora that there were no earwigs, spiders or other beasties lurking there. Once settled inside, she wrapped her arms around her sister. ‘We’ll get through this, the three of us alone, the three of us together. For ever and for always,’ she said.

  ‘But there are only two of us now, Storm,’ said Aurora in a small, exhausted voice.‘We’ve lost Any.’

  ‘We’ll find her again,’ Storm insisted. ‘I feel it, just as I can feel my heart beat or my breath on my hand. The three of us are like bits in a jigsaw puzzle. We belong together. It makes us complete.’

  At the first grey light the children awoke, stiff with cold. In the mean dawn, the dew-drenched raspberries were less inviting, and Storm thought longingly of the Eden End kitchen on frosty winter mornings, with Aurora standing at the range stirring honey and cream into bowls of steaming porridge. But it was raspberries or nothing and both girls ate until they could eat no more.

  Back on the track with the sun warming their backs, the children felt their spirits revive. The trees began to thin and gave way to open countryside, across which they could see the track winding up a distant hill. Huffing and puffing, they climbed to the top of the escarpment, sat down and gazed around. It was as if the whole world was spread out like a quilt below them. There were handkerchief fields of brown, green, yellow and gold intercut with hillocks, small copses and streams that glinted in the sun like silver thread. The track meandered lazily across this idyllic picture-book landscape towards a distant village, complete with a church with a needle-thin spire. Its weather vane winked merrily in the sunlight.

  ‘It’s gorgeous. It looks like a dinky little toy village, a giant’s plaything,’ said Storm, turning delightedly to Aurora, who was staring intently across the landscape with a puzzled look on her face, as if searching very hard for something she had lost.

  ‘Come on,’ said Storm, all tiredness forgotten. ‘Let’s go down to the village and get help.’

  Aurora didn’t move.

  ‘Aurora, what are you waiting for?’ asked Storm impatiently.

  Still her sister didn’t move.

  ‘Aurora, have you turned to stone?’ yelled Storm angrily.

  Aurora looked calmly up into her sister’s frowning face. ‘Wait, Storm. Sit down and take a really good look.’ Something authoritative in her tone made Storm sit grumpily by her sister’s side. She glared across the valley.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Aurora.

  ‘Exactly what you can,’ glowered Storm. ‘I see fields, streams, a river, houses and a church …’

  ‘And what don’t you see?’ asked Aurora.

  ‘What do you mean, what don’t I see? You can’t see something that’s not there!’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Aurora. ‘There is an absence.’

  Storm looked at Aurora as if her sister had gone mad. ‘Aurora,’ she said in a dangerously sweet tone that her sister recognized from the arithmetic lessons of old as heralding an explosion,‘could you please tell me exactly what you mean before I dash your brains out and bury you in a shallow unmarked grave.’

  ‘Well, think about it another way, sweetie,’ said Aurora patiently. ‘Can you hear anything?’

  Storm listened intently for a second. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. Nothing, and then more nothing.’

  Storm rose to her feet angrily.‘So?’ she screeched with a hard edge of sarcasm in her voice.‘Is nothing plus nothing, more nothing or less nothing?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Nothing at all. Not even the song of a bird. Not the buzz of a bee. Now, what can’t you see? What’s missing from the landscape?’

  Storm looked again across the serene scene, and as she did so her heart somersaulted down into her big toe. Her legs folded as snappily as a deckchair and she sank down beside Aurora.

  ‘No smoke from the houses,’ she whispered. ‘No animals in the fields. No people, no carts on the road. No birds, no butterflies …’ Her eyes scanned the view desperately. ‘It’s empty. Completely empty.’

  ‘Lifeless,’ said Aurora with a hard finality.

  ‘Why? What does it mean?’ asked Storm quietly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Aurora. ‘All I know is that I don’t like it. It’s unnatural. Spooky.’ She shivered as if something cold and clammy had brushed her skin. ‘Come on, let’s go and investigate. But slowly, and very cautiously.’

  The village was much further away than it appeared, but long before they reached it they knew that something was terribly wrong. The lack of noise was oppressive. Storm had never realized that silence could be so loud. She wished she could turn it down. She spoke in a whisper, as if afraid of disturbing the still air and unleashing some terrible force.

  Eventually, the road stopped snaking back on itself and they found themselves within sight of the first houses. Without speaking, they both stopped and sat down by the hedgerow. Aurora rubbed a blister on her toe and Storm absentmindedly picked some daisies and twisted them into a chain.

  ‘So, are we going on?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t see that we’ve got much choice,’ replied Aurora.

  ‘We could always skirt around the village.’

  ‘We could, but it will add on miles, and why bother? We know the village is deserted. We haven’t seen any sign of life.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Storm, rising to her feet and putting the daisy chain around her neck.‘Let’s go on.’

  As they started down the road lined with the first buildings, a soft breeze rippled around them. They crept past the little pink and white houses, their doors closed and their windows shuttered and blind. They heard nothing except their own soft footfalls which the silence seemed to magnify, so that once or twice Storm cast a fearful look back, thinking that perhaps she had heard a third set of footsteps.

  There was never anyone there.

  Storm had to concentrate hard on putting one foot in front of the other. Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion, but it felt more as if so much vanished presence made walking through the streets like wading through glue. She sensed all around her the absence of those who had
lived, worked and played in these small houses. It was as if the air was full of hidden laughter and vanished voices, just as her head was full of Any’s vanished smile and voice. There was nobody to see her, but Storm felt incredibly self-conscious, as though she was an actor on a giant stage or the guest of honour at a surprise party and sooner or later the villagers would all pop up from behind a wall and chorus, ‘Surprise! Surprise!’

  Slightly apart from the other houses, and atop a small rise, was a tiny whitewashed cottage, its windows unshuttered. Ignoring Aurora’s whispered protests, Storm ran to the window and, standing on tiptoe, pressed her nose against the diamond panes. She could see an unfinished game of checkers laid out on a side table next to two halfdrunk glasses of juice. On the floor a sad-eyed doll flopped sightless across an open book of fairytales. Someone had been in the middle of reading Rapunzel. It looked as if the inhabitants of the room had been called away by a sudden emergency and would shortly return to pick up their games and book and carry on where they had left off.

  Storm’s gaze took in more of the room. A child’s rocking horse stood in the corner, and with a little gasp Storm realized that it was still gently moving, as if its rider had only just dismounted. In the grate a fire burned merrily. On the table a meal was laid out on a checked tablecloth: corn-on-the-cob glistening with butter, steaming mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, parsnips and onions. Storm pressed her nose harder against the pane. Her tummy rumbled. She was so hungry: she felt as if she could smell the food. She wanted to devour it. She put her hand on the door handle and the door swung open. The room seemed to be whispering to her to step inside. She moved over the threshold and reached out a hand towards one of the buttery corn-on-the-cobs and raised it to her mouth.

  Suddenly the corn was knocked out of her hand by a furious Aurora.

  ‘Storm!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t be a fool. Don’t eat the food! Have you learned nothing from the Ginger House?’ She pulled a reluctant Storm back out onto the front step.