by Pauline Fisk
'I don't know why we came. We'll go back with you,' Arabella said.
The three of them parted ways where the sheep's path forked for Roundhill. Bonnie and Arabella struggled against the wind down towards the holly grove. At Batholes, Arabella stopped. Its mouth seemed to yawn even wider and darker now that all the brambles had died back.
'I always think I know only half the hill,’ she said wistfully. 'There’s another world down there and this is the gateway to its secrets. What might I find if I went down there? But I’d never go alone. Somebody would have to come with me.'
Bonnie looked into the sky where the afternoon was drawing in and low dark clouds were gathering. The necklace stung for the first time in a long while and she pulled it out and eased her finger round her neck. 'I wouldn’t come with you,' she said. 'I’d never shut myself away in the dark where there was no sky. Let's get back, shall we?'
Above them, on the brow of Roundhill, Jim waved. Bonnie waved back and he disappeared. Arabella tore her eyes away from Batholes' dark entrance. 'Oh, all right,' she sighed. ‘Let’s go.’
They climbed over the top gate into the field, and continued down to the holly grove. The wind had dropped but it was as cold as ever. The girls pushed their way between the hollies, Bonnie ahead. 'Someone's been here before us,' she suddenly said.
'What?' Arabella said.
'Look,' said Bonnie, pointing.
In the middle of the grove, two pits had been dug. One was shallow, the other was deep. In the deep pit, logs had been stacked and covered with polythene to keep them dry.
'Someone's been collecting logs, that's all,' Arabella said. 'I expect it was Dad. Why are you looking like that?'
Bonnie couldn't speak. A picture, so clear and real that it could have been projected right across the sky, had come into her mind. It was a summer picture with long grass, fresh and growing, and birds singing. It was a picture not of Dad but of Michael digging the firepit in front of the flint-faced house. Of the shadowboy stoking the fire…
'Come on,' Arabella said. 'Look at the sky. The clouds are gathering. I don’t know what you’re worried about. It's only a pile of sticks.'
Numbly Bonnie followed Arabella along the path between the pits and through the clearing to the other side. Her mind was spinning. 'He wouldn't do it again, would he?' she thought. 'He's not a shadowboy any more. He's Jim, and he wants to stay here. He’s said so. No, Arabella must be right. It'll have been Dad or Mr Onions collecting logs.'
Dad was in the kitchen brewing a pot of tea. Mum was up in bed and Mrs Onions said she'd have to go soon; she had things to do at home.
'It's raw out there,' said Dad. 'You'd best wrap up before you go.'
Mrs Onions left and Bonnie opened her mouth to ask about the pits. The necklace stung her neck and she plucked at it unhappily. Before she could speak, Dad turned to the girls.
'Has either of you heard anything about that old broken mirror someone’s stuck in the hedge down the track?'
Bonnie froze as if time had suddenly stopped.
'Seems a good mirror,' Dad went on. 'Gilt frame and all. I thought I might dig it out and bring it up here. It seems a waste down in the hedge. It's not even been put so that anybody could see if vehicles came up from the Dingle. All you can see is the track up to the house.'
'A mirror?' Arabella said.
'Yes,’ said Dad.
A mirror. A firepit. A smoke pit and logs…
The necklace. Stung.
24
‘It’s really thick out there,’ said Dad. They were in the living-room, and tea was over and he'd got up to draw the curtains. 'The wind's dropped and the valley’s full of fog. Look at it.'
The girls looked, though there was nothing to see beyond the edge of the yard. No twinkling lights across the valley. Nothing.
'You'd think there was no world beyond those fence posts, wouldn't you?' Dad said. 'That's what comes of living on a hill. Every wretched cloud that comes along, we get stuck in it. Specially at this time of year.' He drew the curtains. ‘You two all right?’ he said. ‘I've got accounts to do tonight, and Mum's asleep already. Have you got anything to keep yourselves entertained?'
'Plenty,' said the girls together.
'I'll go and get on, then.'
As soon as Dad had gone, the girls rushed through the house and out into the scullery to find their coats and boots. They struggled with the scullery door and tiptoed out onto the terrace. It was murky, damp and still bitterly cold. They padded like slinky farm cats down the yard, climbed over the farmyard gate and already could see hardly anything of the house. They took a few steps down the bumpy track, and then they couldn't even see the gate. They could have been anywhere. Apart from a few sheep curled up among the roots of hawthorn hedges, they were alone.
'We'll be all right,' Arabella said. 'We're safe as long as we stay on the track.'
Bonnie followed slowly down towards the Dingle. She couldn’t feel safe, not with the necklace gnawing at her neck. Besides, she knew she wouldn't feel safe again until they'd found the mirror, hidden it, destroyed it, done something to it. She followed Arabella past blackberry hedges and dead elders and rowans and hawthorns in what seemed a never-ending journey. In the fog, everything looked the same. Her hands became numb. The fog never seemed to lift. It was as if they took it with them.
'It feels,' Bonnie thought, 'as if we've been out here for years.' Her face felt raw and cold. Her ears hurt. Her nose was sore and her neck, beneath the necklace, hurt. She didn't want to find the mirror. Despite what she was doing she didn't want ever to see it again. And she was angry with herself for not having realized Grandmother Marvell would be back. She should have known.
At last they dipped between the banks of the twisty canyon. The trees of Hope Dingle surrounded them. Bonnie, stumbling after Arabella's disappearing back, tripped on the deep ruts of the track.
'Wait for me, Arabella!'
Arabella waited, eyes sliding from side to side while Bonnie caught up.
'We must be near it now,' Bonnie shivered. There was something eerie in the foggy greyness of the Dingle. 'It must be somewhere along the hedge here. We’d better be careful.' She remembered Jake - the old, real Jake - and that fairground door with its mirror behind it, and the way he'd tumbled into it. 'We could tumble into it too if we're not careful.’
Arabella shivered too. 'I can't see anything,' she whispered. Why was she whispering? Who did she think might be down here?
'You look that side,' Bonnie said, nodding at the trees hanging over one side of the track. 'I'll look over here.'
They crept forward again, stumbled round a bend in the track. There was no mirror to be seen. The track plunged deeper. Now they heard the brook below them. The track took another turn. The white bridge loomed ahead of them. There was still no mirror.
'Dad did say in the hedge, didn’t he?'
'Sshh…'
'What?'
'SSHH
Bonnie tilted her head. Something was bothering her. Her gaze took in thick, dead brambles and a tangle of young hazel trees. Nothing stirred except the brook, which rushed noisily beneath the bridge, down towards the valley.
'Look there.'
The nose of a car peeped out at them from between bushes. Its lights were off. They were almost upon the thing and yet they could have walked past it in the murky gloom and never have noticed that it was there.
Arabella huddled close to Bonnie's side.
'It's all right,' Bonnie whispered. 'It's empty.'
They crept closer. Bonnie recognized the car. It was the rattling machine Grandmother Marvell had driven up the hill. She'd have recognized it anywhere. It was just like Grandbag's cars.
'She must be here somewhere… '
Looking around her, Bonnie could see nothing but the car, the track beneath her feet, bits of overhanging branches and the nearest end of the bridge. Beyond that narrow little world, Grandmother Marvell could be anywhere. The mirror, too, could be anywhere.
'Let's get out of here, Bonnie.'
'But we haven't found the mirror. We've got to take it down. We've got to hide it, break it, throw it in the brook. One way or another, we've got to get rid of it!'
'But where is it?'
'It must be over there.'
The two of them stared down the bridge to where the tall hedges of the Dingle rose on either side. Grandmother Marvell could be down there watching them even now. Or up above them, among the trees. Or between some gap in the hedge. Or behind the car. Or over the brook…
'Come on.'
They edged onto the bridge. The brook was full with winter water that drained off the hill. It rushed noisily beneath them while they crept forward. Bonnie rubbed her neck uncomfortably. Unpleasant things could be waiting for them beyond the bridge. She inched forward, Arabella at her side. All she could see was the far end of the bridge and a bit of clear, empty track rising beyond it with nobody in sight.
They came off the bridge and began to search among the trees and hedgerows. Still there was no mirror to be seen. ‘We’ve missed it,' Arabella said. 'We've come too far. Dad said — don't you remember — that it pointed up the hill to the house.'
'Of course.'
They turned to go back over the bridge. Then Godda's necklace bit at Bonnie's neck and Bonnie stopped. Arabella whispered what she already knew. 'We can't go back that way. There's someone waiting for us at the other end. I can feel their eyes… '
'I can feel them too,' Bonnie whispered back. She looked round helplessly. 'I don't know what to do.'
Arabella looked around her. She put a finger over her lips and pointed down among the ghosts of trees. 'We'll go down there,' she whispered.
'Down where?' Bonnie whispered back.
'Underneath the bridge. Over the brook. Up the other side. We'll go back up to the house across the fields. With this fog, she’ll never see us if she's waiting on the track.'
Bonnie listened to the rushing brook. She shivered. She couldn't think of anything else to do, but she didn't want to wade through the fast-flowing water.
'She'll hear us,' she whispered, searching for an excuse not to go. 'And like you said, we're only safe if we stay on the track. We'll get lost if we try to cut across the fields.'
'Better lost than caught,' Arabella hissed back. 'And she won't hear us. The brook's so loud she'll never hear a thing.'
'We haven't found the mirror yet.'
'And we're not going to with her sitting on the track.' Arabella began to squeeze through the hedge and cut down between the trees. 'We don't have any choice,' was the last thing Bonnie heard.
She followed Arabella. They did have a choice, of course. But what a choice it was! The thought of Grandmother Marvell's eyes settling gleefully on them again made shudders run up and down Bonnie's body. She slid down the soft bank in Arabella's wake, ducking and diving under and between branches while the sound of the brook became louder and closer. Suddenly she saw the brook and rising out of it the white posts of the bridge.
'This is the place,' Arabella mouthed. 'I've crossed here lots of times. It's all right in the summer.'
But it wasn't summer now. Bonnie heard Arabella gasp as she slid into the icy water, then bite back the gasp as if afraid that someone might hear. Bonnie followed after her. She was quite unprepared for the brook's depth. Two steps and she was up to her waist. The water that rushed at her was so strong it nearly knocked her over. Two steps more and she collided with Arabella. They clung to each other and stumbled forward, gasping at every step.
Suddenly they found themselves sinking in soft mud. Bonnie struggled desperately. Her reluctant boot, with accompanying sucking noises, came out clean and she secured it upon a solid, flat stone while she dragged the other foot free.
'I'm stuck,' Arabella whimpered. 'I'm sinking.'
Bonnie turned. Arabella was up to her chest. Desperately, she pulled and tugged at her until Arabella came free too, though without her Wellingtons. They both fell backwards, onto the bank.
'Your boots!' Bonnie said.
'Never mind them. Let's get away.'
They tried to climb up the bank but, as they reached out, their hands shook so much that they could hardly lift themselves. Arabella's teeth chattered violently. Bonnie's were hardly any quieter. Arabella bit back her cries as her bare feet stubbed against tree roots and sharp stones.
At last they came out of the trees into a field. 'If we go up there,' Arabella whispered between juddering teeth, 'if we go up straight, we should find a stile into the next field and, if we go up straight again, we should come out on the track beneath the house.'
They began to climb. The field was ploughed and the heavy soil clung to Arabella's feet, weighing them down and making it harder still for her to move. Bonnie moved more easily, but with a dreadful, squelching noise inside her boots that she was sure Grandmother Marvell could hear two fields away. They still couldn't see a thing ahead of them. They seemed to climb for hours.
'Where's that stile?' Bonnie chattered through blue lips.
'We must have missed it.' Arabella was growing stiffer by the minute. She kept falling down and it hurt her to get up again. 'We can't have walked straight after all,' she said. 'We must be going round and round in circles. I can't even find the hedge.'
'What's that?' Bonnie said.
They both squinted. Distant lights flickered. They couldn't be the lights of the house. They couldn't be the stars. They were moving. They couldn't be anything but…
'It's Grandmother Marvell.'
They collapsed on the ground. What was the point of trying to hide? They were in the middle of a field. There was nowhere to go. The lights grew bigger. They were coming towards them, searching them out as if they smelt — as if they knew — where they were. The field was cut in half by twin arcs of light. They'd tried so hard, and now Grandmother Marvell had got them.
'We couldn't have stopped her anyhow,' Bonnie thought. 'She'd have found some other way to get us in the end.'
The lights stopped. In a dream, or so it seemed, a figure stepped out in front of them. Its black bulk crunched across the field towards them. As if to remind them of what they soon would be, the Jake-thing, sleek and cold, with empty, bored, dead eyes, slunk down by its side.
‘Dear God in heaven, what have we here?'
The voice awoke them from their dream. They recognized the Land Rover's engine running. It was Dad.
25
Bonnie and Arabella sat tucked up in their beds drinking the last of their cocoa. Their teeth had stopped chattering, but their skin was still as white as death. Dad hovered by the light switch.
'You haven't yet explained what you were doing,' he said. ‘What am I to tell Mum?’
They both thought of Mum, asleep and nursing her growing bulge. How could they explain about the awful things that might happen? They didn’t want her to worry. This was something they had to sort out on their own.
'We were just stretching our legs.'
‘Just having fun.’
'We got lost.'
'We're sorry, Dad.'
'Really we are.'
'We won't do it again.'
'You'd better not,' said Dad in a voice that had to be taken seriously. 'I don’t know what came over you. You didn't even keep to the path. Well, I won't tell Mum. And you, in turn, won't ever be so foolish again.' He turned out the light.
'Goodnight.'
They heard Dad’s footsteps fading along the corridor and down the stairs. 'We failed,' Bonnie said, bleakly. ‘We haven’t got the mirror and Grandmother Marvell's still out there somewhere. We were fools to think we’d seen the last of her. We should have been prepared for this. We should have expected it. Even if we get the mirror, that won't stop her. She's just like Grandbag. She'll always think of something else.'
'What'll we do, Bonnie?'
'I don't know.' Despite her anxiety, Bonnie yielded her face to the softness of her pillow. She wriggled down the bed and felt her t
ired limbs melting in the warmth.
'If you ask me, our only hope is that Edric's real,' came Arabella's anxious voice. 'The chance is slim, but he's all we've got. I think we should go and look for him. Go to Batholes, I mean, and call for him. If he's anywhere, he'll be down there. The miners used to say they could hear him knocking. It's supposed to be his job to look after the hill.'
Bonnie’s thoughts returned to her epic jump. She remembered her heart beating as she made it. Those hands she’d felt, as soft as angels' wings — how slim was the chance that they’d been real? She thought of Batholes yawning blackly even on the brightest day, and slunk further down the bed.
'I've done one horrid thing tonight. I'm not doing another.'
Suddenly even thinking about Grandmother Marvell out on the hill couldn't keep her awake. The warmth and softness of bed lulled her. She'd had a hard night. Waves of exhaustion that she'd held at bay broke over her. Arabella was speaking again, but her voice was so distant…
Arabella woke up. The remains of Dad's cocoa lay beside the bed. She stared through the darkness. Everything was very quiet and she didn't know what had woken her. The glassy eyes of the dolls on the mantelpiece glinted at her. Bonnie breathed up and down beneath a mountain of bedcovers. An owl fluttered, swooping close to the house and then away again. Its cry echoed through the night. It was the anxious, warning noise the owls made when foxes were round the henhouse.
Perhaps that was what had woken her. Arabella waited for the sound of Dad next door. Waited for the click of the light and the opening of the bedroom window and the thump of the shotgun as he positioned it in readiness. But she heard none of these sounds. She heard something above her instead. What was it? Arabella heard it again. Where was it coming from? Was it over Bonnie's bed? It was hard to tell in the darkness. It was a scratching, scuffling noise. It was in the attic. That was it. In the corner of the attic above the wardrobe. 'It's only mice,' Arabella whispered to herself.
