In Darkling Wood (16 page)

They’re everywhere: on the ground, in the bushes, on the lower branches of the tree. From the undergrowth more keep coming. Their colours blur together, not just the greens I’d imagined but a big, glowing trail of purples, pinks and pale blues. And when, for just a second, they do slow down, I see how each one looks different. They’ve got wings, but they’re not birds. They’re not insects either, though they move like butterflies. I’ve never seen anything like them. I must be dreaming. Yet when I rub my eyes and look again, they’re still there.

Flo’s beside me now, whispering in my ear, ‘Goodness! They’re putting on quite a show for you tonight, Alice.’

I don’t speak; I’m not sure I can.

Finally, when it seems every bit of woodland is covered with tiny, wing-beating bodies, the creatures
settle. As we gaze at them, I know they’re watching us too.

‘What are they
doing
?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. They’ve never behaved like this before.’

‘That’s not good,’ I say, nervously.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll sing to them,’ Flo says. ‘They’re supposed to like it.’

‘Not my singing they won’t.’

We settle on a Christmas carol because it’s the only song we both know all the words to. The fairies react like it’s a signal. They join hands, reaching up into the bushes, down onto the ground, until every single fairy is connected to another like a long, twisty chain of paper dolls.

Something stirs inside me, forcing me to keep looking though I can’t trust my eyes. The fairies are dancing now. They weave in and out of the trees. It’s like watching a trail of moving Christmas lights.
Fairy
lights
. An image of Theo flashes into my head. Not how I last saw him, but how I remember him best, his face lit up with happiness. What I’d give for him to see this.

Our singing speeds up. The fairies spin around us in a blur of colour. On and on they go, whirling and
twisting till it makes me dizzy. I shut my eyes. Now I really can’t watch any more.

Suddenly I sway backwards. My arms fly out, but there’s nothing to grab hold of. I feel lightness. Then terror. I’m going to fall. At the very last second, Flo seizes my coat.

‘Steady there,’ she says, and somehow I’m sat squarely on the branch again. It takes me a moment to catch my breath.

When I glance through the fairy door, everything’s normal again. The fairies have gone. The bushes and the grass look grey in the moonlight. Not far off an owl shrieks, a proper owl this time. I feel like I’ve just woken up.

‘Did that really happen?’ I ask Flo.

‘It did,’ she says. ‘I’ve never seen so many before, not all at once like that. And the colours! The fairies I’ve seen have always worn only green.’

We both go quiet. It’s almost too much to put into words, like everything I know has just been shaken hard and hasn’t fallen back into place. Gradually, though, my head begins to clear. I’m left feeling stiff and cold.

‘I’d like to get down,’ I say to Flo.

Back on solid ground, my legs are like rubber. Flo lands lightly beside me.

‘You most definitely believe in fairies now, don’t you?’ she says.

‘I do.’

I’m not entirely sure
what
I’ve just seen. Or how to explain it. When I glance at Flo, she looks a bit shaken too.

‘Well, if seeing is believing then you’ve given their magic the most astonishing strength!’ she says, staring at me in amazement.

‘Stop looking at me like that!’ I say, but it’s sort of nice and makes me glow inside.

‘Alice,’ she says. ‘Fairies only appear to special people. It’s linked to the day and hour of your birth.’

I smile. ‘My dad told me that myth. He says I’m a Chime Child, which means I can see fairies – and ghosts, apparently, though I haven’t.’

‘I hope you believed him. You
are
a special person, you know,’ says Flo.

My smile gets bigger. Perhaps that’s what Dad meant when he told me. I hope he’s there at the hospital now, telling Theo he’s special too, because it really helps to hear it. Yet as I take in Flo’s china-doll face, with its too-big, too-blue eyes, I think
she’s
the one who’s special.

‘Do you live with the Travellers, Flo?’

She tilts her head. It’s not a yes or a no.

‘I don’t know anything about you,’ I say.

‘You saw the fairies because you were ready,’ she says, not answering me. ‘Maybe in the morning you’ll see other things too.’

She sounds so calm, yet I’m still dreading what’ll happen when Mr Giles comes back. I wrap my arms around myself to stop me shivering. We can’t lose the wood now.

‘Alice, trust me,’ Flo says. ‘You must go to school like normal. You’ll get into trouble if you don’t.’

And I’ll be in trouble if I do, I think, remembering the history homework I’ve still not done.

‘Don’t you have school too?’ I ask Flo.

She doesn’t reply. Instead she turns and walks off through the trees. I half think about following her, but I don’t know where she’s heading because, once again, I didn’t think to ask where she lives.

On my way up to bed, I stop to listen for sounds from Nell’s room. Everything’s quiet. The door behind the curtain must be shut because there’s no light coming in; the passage is pitch black.

All is as it should be.

Except it isn’t. I’ve seen something extraordinary tonight and my brain is still buzzing. I can’t go to bed, not yet.

I tiptoe along the passage. Down two steps and I lift the red curtain to one side. Behind the door, the room’s lit by moonlight. It makes the keyhole easy to spot. The door’s locked; I don’t have a key. Searching my coat pockets, I think how in books people use hairpins to open doors like these. All I’ve got is the pen Max lent me at school.

At the first try the pen makes a splitting sound. I must have broken it because the ink part is sticking out, but actually this bit is smaller. More bendy. I’m able to poke it right through the keyhole. Amazingly, the lock clicks. I ease the door open.

The first thing I see is a great wall of words. It’s actually the boxes with names written on their sides, but in the moonlight they glow white – ‘Campbell’ mostly, but near the bottom of the pile are more labelled ‘Waterhouse’ than I’d noticed before.

Peering under the table, I look for the jar that once had Jacob in it. It’s the only thing left of the uncle I never knew. I want to hold it, just for a moment. But the jar isn’t here. What catches the light instead is the
pretty box of letters. I don’t know why but I’m a bit intrigued. Tucking it under my arm, I close the door behind me.

Once I’m in bed, I open the box, hoping a bit of reading might help me get to sleep. The letters seem to be in date order. They go from mid to late November 1918.

1918. The end of the war.

I sit up, more alert now. Some letters are in envelopes, some aren’t. They’re addressed to a person called Alfred Waterhouse at an army base in France. They seem to be written by his sister in Darkling Cottage, and Bexton gets mentioned too. She describes a library, an attic room with awful wallpaper, a warm and cosy kitchen with a door that leads out to the garden.

It’s this house.

There’s mention of stubborn people – people set in their ways. How being practical and sensible isn’t always the best way to be. And how sometimes it might take something big and awful to convince people that the impossible
can
happen. Most of all though, there’s mention of fairies. It’s a sad story. Yet as I read on, a warmth spreads through me, which I think might be hope.

Dad phones first thing to say Theo is stable. ‘A small step,’ he calls it, but it feels such a massive relief. So I go to school like Flo says, because it beats waiting for Mr Giles to arrive. First lesson, Max greets me with a bigger than usual smile.

‘You’re here!’ he says. ‘So the news from the hospital is good, right?’

I nod. Relief flashes across his face. It makes my nose tingle like I’m about to cry, but then his smile comes back and it makes me smile too.

‘Hi Alice,’ says Ella. ‘Everything okay?’

She means Theo, of course.

‘Yes, Theo’s a bit better this morning, thanks.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ she says. ‘Now, is it okay
for me to sit with you two or am I going to feel like a gooseberry?’

Max laughs, but I blush to my hair roots. Then, as Ella sits next to me, I see she’s still wearing her ‘Save Darkling Wood’ badge. She notices me looking at it.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says, serious now. ‘We won’t block the lane while your dad needs to get to the hospital. But we will be back, you know.’

My stomach flutters, though this time not for Max.

‘I know. It isn’t over yet.’

After lunch, it’s History. Before the lesson even starts, Mrs Copeland comes over and crouches down by my desk so her face is level with mine.

‘Good to see you, Alice,’ she says. ‘We’re doing more of the project talks today, but if you’re not ready to do yours – and I know you had a chat with Mr Jennings about homework – it’s fine. You’ve had a tough few days.’

The letters are here with me in a carrier bag. All day I’ve had the handle hooked over my arm because I mustn’t lose them, though I don’t think Nell’s noticed they’ve gone.

Behind me, someone mutters, ‘Detention.’

I take a big breath. ‘I am ready, miss.’

But she’s on her feet again, glaring at the back row.

‘Stop that!’ she says firmly.

Turning round, Ella joins in. ‘Yeah, shut up, you lot! Alice’s got a flipping good reason for missing her homework so don’t start on her, all right?’

The class goes very quiet.

‘Thank you, Ella,’ says Mrs Copeland. She looks daggers at the back row boys. ‘Any more stupid, ignorant remarks and you’ll go straight to Mr Jennings, do you hear me?’

No one speaks.

‘Good. Now, Max, would you do your talk first, please?’

He strolls up to the front and does a little bow. A few people whoop. Mrs Copeland glares; the class settles down again.

On the screen at the front, Max shows us an old sepia photo. It’s of a very young-looking man in an army uniform that’s clearly too big for him because he’s had to roll up his sleeves.

‘This is my great-great-grandfather, George Giles,’ says Max proudly. ‘The war was over before he was old enough to join up, so he joined the medical corps.
When all the injured soldiers came home, he trained to be a nurse.’

It’s hard to imagine so many young people sick or dying. And yet there’s George grinning at the camera. Amazing. I think of Theo’s nurse, Jo, who stayed so calm and cheerful, and of Mum trying to be positive. It seems to help get people through.

There’s clapping when he finishes. Max sits down again, catching my eye as he does.

‘Well done!’ I whisper.

He smiles. It’s a lovely smile.

‘You two, honestly!’ Ella groans.

Next a girl talks about war medals. Afterwards, her friend goes up to talk about the Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed even more people than the war. It goes on like this – more students taking their turn – until I think Mrs Copeland’s forgotten me.

I put my hand up. ‘I haven’t had a go yet, miss.’

‘Then come on, Alice,’ she says.

Getting out of my seat, I walk to the front. Mrs Copeland claps for quiet. By now, though, the class is getting bored. Two girls are drawing on a pencil case. A boy at the back has already put his coat on: Mrs Copeland swiftly tells him to take it off.

She nods to me. ‘Ready?’

It’s dead silent. My throat goes tight. Did I really think I could stand up here and talk about fairies?
I
might believe in them, but still.

I look at Mrs Copeland. I’m stuck.

‘What’s in the bag?’ she says, helpfully.

The carrier bag’s still wrapped around my wrist. It takes agonising seconds to get it off. Once I have, I shake the letters out onto the table and put them into date order.

‘Are they love letters?’ asks a girl sat just along from Ella.

A giggle ripples round the class. I try not to go red.

‘No,’ I say. ‘They’re from a girl to her brother who’s coming home from the war.’

Mrs Copeland leans forward. ‘Original letters? How interesting! Where did you get them?’

‘I found them in my grandmother’s house …’ I hesitate. Thirty faces stare back at me.

‘What does she write about?’ Mrs Copeland asks.

‘How she misses her brother, what it’s like to be a girl in 1918, how her mother expects her to be more ladylike.’

A boy in the front row starts doodling on his book. Mrs Copeland clicks her fingers. Reluctantly he puts down his pen.

Then a hand goes up. It’s Max. ‘What about her dad? Did he fight in the war too?’

‘He did, though he was injured. He got into photography as a hobby, and one day someone really famous came to talk to him about his pictures.’

Now the class are interested.

‘Who was it?’ Max asks.

‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’

Mrs Copeland’s mouth drops open. ‘Gosh!’ she says. ‘He wrote the Sherlock Holmes series. He was very interested in photography. In fact, he believed that it was possible to photograph fairies. It was a huge story at the time.’

I nod.

‘Two girls took some pictures of what they claimed were fairies. Some people thought they were fakes but a lot believed they were real.’

‘Oh,’ I say, shuffling the letters. ‘I didn’t know that.’

Mrs Copeland goes to her computer and types something in. Seconds later a black-and-white picture flashes up on the projector screen.

‘This photograph’s the most famous one,’ she says.

The class immediately starts talking about it.

‘That’s not real!’ someone says.

‘They’re made of paper, anyone can see that!’ says a boy at the back.

The photograph shows the head and shoulders of a girl about my age. Chin resting on her hand, she’s gazing at a group of little people. They’re right in front of her on a leaf or something, holding hands as they dance in a ring.

It’s a stupid picture. The so-called ‘fairies’ are obviously paper cutouts. Even the girl is looking past them, not
at
them. It’s like the whole thing’s been botched together for a joke. Perhaps the pictures taken in Darkling Wood were like this. Maybe my letter-writer played a prank on the world, and we’ve all been taken in.

I don’t believe it, though. Not after what I saw last night.

Max puts his hand up again. ‘I don’t get it, miss. If he invented Sherlock Holmes, who’s a genius, why did Arthur Conan Doyle think this picture was real? I mean, he wasn’t exactly an idiot, was he?’

‘It wasn’t just him. Thousands of other people believed it too,’ Mrs Copeland says. ‘Any idea why?’

Hands go up.

‘Because he’d make money,’ Ella says.

‘He was rich enough already,’ Mrs Copeland says.

‘Because he was weird,’ says someone else.

The class laughs. Mrs Copeland pulls a face.

‘Think about it,’ she says. ‘Why would people believe in fairies, especially just after the war?’

The girl in the letters said fairies brought her hope. Just like Max’s great-great-granddad smiling for all those injured soldiers. Just like me hoping Theo will get well again and Dad and Nell will make peace. And just like Flo leaving daft notes up trees. It might not be real but it gets us through.

Before I know it, my hand’s in the air.

‘Yes, Alice?’

‘Did Arthur Conan Doyle lose anyone in the war, miss?’

‘Yes, he lost his son and other relatives too. Many people did.’

‘So maybe, with so much horrible stuff going on, well, perhaps no one knew what was real any more. And it made them feel better if they could hope for something different and better. It made them less miserable.’

Everyone looks at me like I’ve just spoken French.

But Mrs Copeland nods enthusiastically. ‘Yes, that’s a really good point.’

Then Max says, ‘What happens in the end, Alice? Does her brother come home?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say.’

Another class, already dismissed, charges past our window. People start putting their books away, and Mrs Copeland asks us to tuck our chairs in as we leave. Max is the only person still listening.

‘Why did you do your talk on fairies?’ Max asks, once everyone else has gone.

I hold up the carrier bag. ‘Actually, it was about these letters.’

‘Which happen to be about fairies.’

‘So?’

‘My dad’s gone back to cut down your grandmother’s wood today and you come to school full of fairies.’

I’m not sure what he’s getting at. I wish he hadn’t mentioned the wood either. Despite what Flo said last night, I’m still scared the fairies’ magic won’t be strong enough to stop Mr Giles today.

‘You know the stories about Darkling Wood, don’t you?’ Max says. ‘About how certain trees there are magical?’

I shoot him a look. ‘What if they’re not stories?’

‘Aren’t they?’

I look at him again, properly this time. His eyes are brown with gold flecks in them. They’re not reason enough to trust him. But he’s the son of a tree surgeon so maybe he does know stuff: I decide to tell him.

As we walk to the shed where Max’s bike is locked up, I talk about last night. What I saw in the woods. How it felt. He’s wide-eyed and silent. I’m not quite sure what I expect him to
do
exactly, but he listens carefully.

By the time I’ve finished, I’ve completely missed my bus and have to catch the public one out on the main road. As the bus pulls away, I’m feeling nervous again – about the woods, about Theo, about everything really.

We drive past Max, who’s on the pavement, bike against his hip, talking into his phone. I wonder who he’s speaking to because he looks so serious. Probably just a friend.

Yet a nasty voice in my head says I should’ve kept quiet. Telling people about fairies didn’t help the girl in the letters. Maybe Max is already spreading it around, and he couldn’t even wait till he got home.