When Stella woke up the next morning, the room was cold. In the greyish early morning light, it looked shabbier and less mysterious than the night before. Hortense’s bedclothes had been flung onto the floor and her bed was empty.
Stella climbed out of bed, tiptoed to the window and opened the curtains. It was misty and raining. She unlatched the window and pushed it open. Some little birds fluttered about, twittering, but when they saw her, they darted away. Below the window was an overgrown kitchen garden, tangled with brambles and nettles.
A loud squawk came from somewhere above. She poked her head out and looked upwards. Henry was perched on top of one of the stone pine-apples that decorated the edge of the roof. He frowned at her, then spread his long wings, swooped down and landed with a thump on the windowsill. Stella stepped back nervously. In daylight, she could see he was a handsome bird. His feathers were glossy and beaded with raindrops. But he was rather large, and his beak looked strong and sharp. She took another step away from him. He flapped in through the window and landed on the dressing table, knocking her hairbrush and comb onto the floor.
‘Salve,’ he said sternly.
‘Um,’ said Stella. ‘Good morning.’
He eyed the tumbled clothes in her open suitcase. He hopped down and jabbed at them with his beak. He tugged her bath bag out by its string and flung it onto the floor. He poked at her underclothes, muttering to himself, then dived into the suitcase and dragged out A Garden of Lilies, pages flapping.
‘No, no,’ said Stella hastily. ‘Please don’t.’ She tried to snatch the book from him, but he evaded her and pulled it under her bed, cackling. Stella lay down on the floor and peered at him. He was holding the book down with a huge webbed foot and tearing it apart. ‘No!’ she said, as firmly as she could manage. ‘No. Please stop.’
Henry ripped the spine off the book with enthusiasm.
Someone knocked on the door. ‘Stella. Are you awake?’
‘Come in,’ she said, scrambling to her feet.
Strideforth opened the door and entered the room. He was eating a ragged piece of bread and jam. Hortense followed him, carrying a cup. Anya, the ermine, was perched on her shoulder. Hortense placed the cup carefully on the mantelpiece.
‘Good morning,’ said Strideforth. ‘Did you sleep well? We brought you some cocoa. Your trunk’s outside here.’ He put his hand on the iron pipe. ‘It’s cold again. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. The heat must be going somewhere. It’s very interesting —’ He broke off, hearing the busy tearing sounds from under the bed. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Henry’s got my book.’
Strideforth pushed the bread and jam into his pocket, threw himself down and crawled under the bed. ‘No, Henry!’ he said. ‘Give it to me.’ There were sounds of a struggle, angry shrieking, more tearing, and then Strideforth came out backwards, clutching the remains of A Garden of Lilies to his chest. Bits of paper fluttered everywhere. He had a scratch on his cheek.
‘I’m sorry.’ He stood up and opened the injured book gingerly.
Henry sidled out from under the bed, looking dishevelled and annoyed.
‘Bad mollymawk,’ said Strideforth.
Henry clicked his beak and cackled.
‘It’s nothing to be proud of,’ Strideforth told him sternly. ‘You should be ashamed to be so bad.’
‘Are you hurt?’ asked Stella.
‘Not really.’ Strideforth rubbed his cheek. ‘I’m sorry about your book. Perhaps it can be fixed.’ He tried to shuffle the torn pages back together. ‘Henry is very bad.’ Hortense scowled at him, and he said, ‘Oh, you know he is, Hortense. He is very, very bad.’
Something slipped out from between the pages of the book and fell to the floor. It was the photograph. Stella bent and picked it up.
Strideforth looked at it curiously. ‘That’s here, at Wormwood Mire, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Who are they?’
She showed him the writing on the back. ‘P, S & L, Wormwood Mire. P for Patience.’ She pointed at the lady in the picture. ‘That was my mother. And S for Stella. And then L. Maybe my sister? I don’t know.’
‘A sister? Why don’t you know?’
Stella gazed at the picture. ‘I don’t remember anything. I was too little.’
‘Did you live here? But what happened to them?’
‘My mother died when I was young. I don’t know what happened. My Aunts never answer questions. I do want to find out, though.’
‘What about your father?’ asked Strideforth.
‘I don’t know.’ Stella sighed. The only thing she really knew about her father was that the Aunts had disapproved of him. Was it from her father she had inherited her strange ability to fade and disappear? If he had done anything like that, the Aunts would have been horrified. They detested anything out of the ordinary. She said, ‘Do you think anyone would remember? Someone who was here about ten years ago?’
‘Perhaps Mrs Burdock might know. But she is always very —’
Suddenly, with a flap of his wings and a triumphant scream, Henry snatched the photograph from Stella’s hand.
‘No!’ she gasped, and tried to tackle him, but he was too quick. He flew up onto the windowsill and then soared away, over the treetops, with the little picture clasped in his beak.
Six
‘Quick!’ Strideforth flung open the door. ‘Come on.’
Stella shoved her bare feet into her boots and laced them up with fumbling fingers. She pulled her coat on over her nightgown and dashed after Strideforth and Hortense, along the passage, down the stairs, along another passage, past the kitchen and outside into the mist and rain.
In the kitchen yard, an old man was trundling a wheelbarrow full of coal.
‘Good morning, Mr Burdock,’ Strideforth panted, as he ran past. ‘Did you see —?’
The old man jerked a thumb to the treetops beyond the house and grunted something.
‘Thank you.’
They raced across the yard, through a broken gate and the overgrown kitchen garden, between shaggy hedges and flowerbeds, and around the side of the house to a mossy terrace. A marble gentleman with the tail of a fish reclined in the middle of a stagnant green pond. He looked as if he had once been a fountain, but now he wore a straggling birds’ nest on his head as an unlikely hat.
Hortense pointed into the mist.
‘There!’ said Stella.
Henry was perched at the top of the tallest tree.
‘Come on,’ said Strideforth. They ran down the wide steps from the terrace and across the wet lawn, between the garden beds. Mossy steps led up the hillside. They climbed up, ducking under overhanging branches, pushing through spiky plants. Twigs and thorns caught in Stella’s hair. A large plant with leaves like umbrellas arched overhead. Raindrops pattered down.
Stella shoved her way through a particularly prickly bush and found Strideforth and Hortense peering up into the branches of a huge tree. High above, Henry shrieked.
The tree towered above them, reaching up into the mist. The trunk was green with moss and tangled with vines. Hortense took off her boots and stockings. She scrambled quickly up the vines, grabbed a branch and swung herself up like a monkey. She was soon out of sight.
‘Come on,’ said Strideforth. He pulled off his boots. ‘Hortense is very good at climbing. She climbed all the cliffs on Tribulation Island to visit the seagulls. And right up the masts on the ship. Right to the top, with the sailors. It will be easier if you take off your boots. You can grip with your toes.’
Stella had never climbed a tree. There had been no trees at the Hotel Majestic. She had once climbed out of a third-floor window, but that had been to save her Atlas, and the height had made her dizzy. She unlaced her boots and took them off. She tucked up the skirt of her nightgown.
Strideforth clambered up onto a branch and reached down to her. ‘Come on,’ he said again.
Stella looked up. Letty wouldn’t hesitate. Letty was always brave.
She took a b
reath, jammed her fingers and toes in between the vines and started to climb. Strideforth gripped her hand and heaved her up onto the branch. ‘It is easy,’ he said. ‘You’ll see. But don’t look down.’
The branch felt reassuringly solid. Stella pulled herself to her feet and climbed up to the next branch, and then the next.
‘Hold on here,’ said Strideforth. ‘Put your foot there.’
The branches grew close together, rather like a staircase. Stella climbed higher and higher. Dark, prickly leaves scratched her legs and snagged in her hair. Somewhere above, Henry and Hortense were squabbling and shrieking at each other. Stella looked down once, but the glimpse of the ground so far below made her head swim, so she kept her eyes up, gripping with her fingers and toes, pulling herself up with determination from branch to branch, up and up.
When she reached the top of the tree, she was trembling and out of breath. Hortense was sitting on a branch, clutching the photograph to her chest and frowning at Henry. She passed the little picture to Stella.
‘Thank you,’ she gasped.
‘Bad mollymawk,’ Strideforth said to Henry.
Henry cackled happily and snapped his beak.
Stella sat cautiously astride a branch. The photograph was battered and bitten and spotted with raindrops, but still in one piece. She flattened it gently and patted it dry as well as she could, with the wet hem of her nightgown, and looked at the little faces. One of the babies had almost disappeared. She put the photograph carefully into the pocket of her coat.
It was a strange feeling to be so high up, looking down on everything. She remembered a story from A Garden of Lilies. Jesephany and Keziah climbed into the low branches of a cherry tree, and later that day were swallowed up unexpectedly by some quicksand.
Good girls should never laugh or shout,
Or climb up trees or run about.
The Aunts would have been horrified had they seen her up here, right at the top of a tall tree, dressed in her nightgown, wet and scratched and muddy.
More than horrified.
But now the Aunts were many, many miles away, and A Garden of Lilies had been torn to bits. Cautiously, Stella leaned back against the trunk of the tree and swung her bare legs in the cold rain.
Below in the mist were the complicated roofs and towers of Wormwood Mire. Smoke curled up from one of the chimneys. In the yard behind the house, Mr Burdock looked no bigger than a toy soldier. Three little parrots sped through the trees like green arrows, whistling to one another as they flew.
Strideforth pulled the half-eaten piece of bread and jam out of his pocket, wiped off some bits of fluff and took a big bite. He said, pointing, ‘Look, you can see everything from up here. The railway line and the village. There’s the wood. There’s the gatehouse, where Mr and Mrs Burdock and Jem live. There’s the wall. It’s very high, with spikes on top, because of all the animals that used to be in the garden. And there’s the fernery. And the orchard. And the kitchen garden. And look. Down there is the lake.’
Through the branches of the trees and the tangled undergrowth, Stella could see dark water gleaming in the mist, covered with weeds and water-lilies.
‘Eels and frogs live in there,’ said Strideforth with his mouth full. ‘And goldfish. Big ones. It’s very overgrown, like a jungle.’
Something moved in the water. A dark shape, sliding between the water-lilies. Stella gasped. ‘What was that?’
‘What?’
‘There. Just there.’ Stella pointed.
Below, the water-lilies shifted, the water swirled and settled.
‘A fish?’ Strideforth peered down through the branches.
Something splashed, out of sight. From below the surface, a dark shape lunged.
Strideforth pushed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth, clambered further along the branch, leaned out, nearly lost his balance, yelped and clutched at the branch. Hortense squeaked. Henry screamed.
Stella grabbed Strideforth’s arm and yanked him back.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He began to scramble down the tree. ‘Let’s go and see.’
Stella followed Strideforth and Hortense down the tree as quickly as she could. From branch to branch, down and down. She scraped her legs and broke her fingernails. She clambered down the final few branches and jumped to the ground. Strideforth and Hortense had gone. She could hear them crashing through the bushes. Stella pulled on her boots and followed them down the hillside.
Ferns and creepers grew tall and wild. Stella put her arms over her face and pushed through prickly thickets. She climbed between the low, spreading branches of a tree, ducking under dangling seedpods as large as cucumbers. She struggled through a tangle of clinging vines and came out onto an overgrown path. She stood for a moment, listening for Strideforth and Hortense, but she could only hear raindrops pattering on wet leaves and Henry shrieking somewhere overhead. The path led down towards the lake. She followed it as it wound around rocks and ferns, then through a misty grove of bamboo. She passed a spiky plant growing in an enormous mossy urn. A large snail was making its way along a leaf. Further on, something grey loomed beside the path. Stella jumped, but it was only the stone statue of a fox, crouched as if it were about to spring.
She took another breath and went on, down steep, mossy steps. Through the undergrowth, she could see glimpses of water. The path came out onto an arched stone bridge.
She leaned on the crumbling parapet. The bank below the bridge was thick with reeds, and further out, the lake was covered with water-lilies. The leaves were larger than dinner plates, curled up at the edges, fringed with spikes. Several flower buds poked up, as big as turnips.
Water trickled from the wide mouth of a mossy marble dolphin. On the other side of the lake stood a little summerhouse like an Egyptian temple. Tendrils of mist drifted. A bubble burst with a sucking, popping sound. From somewhere in the garden came the mournful cry of a peacock. Above the trees was the jagged shape of the tallest tower of Wormwood Mire.
Suddenly, something moved. A dark shape sliding through the water-lilies.
Stella caught her breath.
A large goldfish jumped from the water and splashed down. The dark shape swam towards it. The gleaming fish jumped again, and then again. The dark shape lunged. Stella gasped. For an instant, the creature’s huge head broke the surface of the water. Rows of needlelike teeth glistened in a wide, gulping mouth.
Just as it was almost swallowed, the goldfish made a frantic leap. It flung itself right out of the water and crashed into the reeds below the bridge.
Stella climbed over the parapet and half-jumped, half-fell down into the reeds. She landed on her hands and knees in the mud and struggled to her feet. She tried not to think of the huge creature in the water nearby.
The reeds rustled. Something slithered.
Heart hammering, Stella said, ‘Come on,’ to Letty, and shoved her way through with determination. She pushed the reeds aside, searching the muddy ground for the stranded, gasping fish.
She stumbled over a stone and looked down.
She felt her insides lurch.
It was not a stone. It was a stone goldfish.
It lay amongst snapped and broken reeds, as if it had been thrown there. Stella crouched down and touched it gingerly. It was hard and cold.
A stone goldfish, wet and glistening, mouth gaping, fins outstretched.
Swimming for its life.
Seven
The stone goldfish was very heavy. Stella staggered as she picked it up. She cradled it in her arms and struggled back through the reeds.
‘Stella! Stella! Where are you?’
‘Here,’ she called, ‘I’m here.’
There were crashing sounds in the undergrowth, and then Strideforth and Hortense appeared on the bridge above her. They were scratched and muddy. Strideforth climbed onto the parapet and reached down. Stella scrambled up the bank, clutching the fish awkwardly to her chest. She gripped his hand and clambered back onto the b
ridge.
‘Thank you,’ she gasped.
He grinned. ‘We didn’t see anything, but heard something big splashing. A pike, or an eel. Or perhaps a foreign fish. Did you see it?’ He noticed the stone goldfish. ‘What’s that?’
Stella told them what she had seen. ‘It was alive. I saw it jump out of the water,’ she said. ‘But when I found it down there, in the reeds, it had turned into stone.’
Hortense looked into the stone goldfish’s face and made a sad gulping sound to it. Anya darted out, her back arched and her fur standing up in spikes. She squeaked at the fish. Her teeth clicked against stone, and she recoiled, chittering angrily.
Strideforth tapped the fish with his finger. ‘But that is not possible. Fish do not turn into stone.’
‘I know,’ said Stella. Of course it was not possible. But all the same, she had seen it happen.
Strideforth shook his head, frowning. ‘It must be a statue that was lying there. The real goldfish swam away. That is certain. There are statues everywhere in the garden. Look. There’s one, just there.’ He pointed at a small stone turtle at the edge of the water. Further along the bank was a stone duck.
Stella nodded doubtfully, remembering the huge creature with its wide mouth full of glistening teeth, lurking in the dark water under the weeds and waterlilies. She shivered.
Strideforth looked out at the lake for a moment, then said, ‘Well, we are very late for breakfast, I think. Are you hungry? Come on.’
An overgrown path skirted the edge of the lake, snaking between trees and rocks. They passed the waterfall and found winding steps leading towards the house. Climbing up, they ducked under branches, pushed through clumps of spiky palms and brambles, and emerged onto a terrace above the lake. They crossed an orchard and went along a row of empty stables.
Wormwood Mire Page 4
