Season of Secrets (15 page)

 

 

 

 

Tonight, I take my conkers down from the window
sill. They've got smaller and kind of shrivelled; dark
and hard. They remind me of the bits of wood and
stone that Mum used to collect, and it makes me
happy to think that I've brought a little piece of my
mother into my bedroom. I sit on my window sill
with a conker in each hand and try to feel the spark of
life that Miss Shelley told us about. I imagine it like a
seed, buried deep under the layers of conkerness. I
poke at it, trying to hurry it up.

Hurry up
, I tell them, in my head.
Wake up. Grow.

 

When I fall asleep, I dream.

I dream that there's someone in our garden. It's a
boy, wearing nothing at all. I can see his bare back in
the moonlight. He's kneeling in the snow, shivering.
More than shivering. His whole body is shaking. He's
kneeling there, bent over with his arms wrapped
around his chest, shaking and shaking and staring and
staring all around him like he's never seen frost or
trees or gardens or the moon before.

I kneel up in bed and push my head out under my
curtain, and I watch him. The moon is big and bright.
The sky is full of stars. Frost glitters on the branches
of the trees. There's absolutely nothing making any
noise at all except this boy, gasping and shaking.
Everything else is still.

The boy holds up his hands and stares at them. He
turns them over and over in the moonlight like he's
never seen hands before. He looks up to my window
and I duck my head back behind the curtain, so he
can't see me. I'm trembling. I know exactly who he is,
the way you do know things in dreams. It's my man,
my green god, come back as a boy. I'm frightened, but
I'm also full up with excitement. He ought to be dead
and he isn't. He's come back.

I open the curtains very slightly and peer through.
He's standing up, walking round the garden. He's not
shaking now. He's almost exactly the same size as me.
He touches the branches of the trees and they shiver
under his fingers. He kneels under the tree at the
bottom of the garden and he touches the grass, here
and here and here.

What's he doing? I press my face up to the window
to try and see, but it's too dark, it's too far away.

He's standing under the trees, looking at the grass
that he's touched. Is there something there now? I
can't be sure. He turns and looks up to my window
again, a bare, beautiful boy in the moonlight.

Then he's gone.

 

 

 

 

Next morning, when I take the crusts out for the
birds, there are footprints in the frozen grass. They
start in the middle of the lawn and they go all around
the edge of the flower bed. Then they stop.

In the frost under the oak tree, where the boy was
crouched last night, there are little flowers.
Snowdrops.

“Well!” says Jack, smiling at me from his kitchen
window. “Did you make those, little witch?”

I blink at him. I don't say anything.

“Haven't you ever seen snowdrops before?” he says.

I don't answer. I touch the flowers very gently,
making sure that they're real.

 

 

 

 

Coming down the hill to school, I'm singing.

“There is singing in the desert, there is laughter in
the skies—”

“Shut
up
,” says Hannah.

“No,” I sing. “No, no. Hey – hey, Hannah? Have
you ever had a dream that came real?”

“Have I
what
?”

“Have you ever dreamt something then had it come
true?”

“Yes,” says Hannah. “I dreamt I had a little sister
who wouldn't stop singing, so I
grabbed
—” She
pounces. Normally I would scream, but today I just
laugh and wriggle free and run off down the road.
Hannah chases after me and grabs me by my coat.

“You'll never catch me,” I sing. “Never, never.”

I tear free and run down the hill to school.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so much
with Hannah.

 

All day at school, I look for signs that he might have
been here. New flowers, growing where they weren't
before, green spikes of grass, new leaves on the trees.

There's nothing.

As soon as I get home, I go into the garden. I look
for him in all the hiding places, even silly ones where
he couldn't possibly be.

I can't find him.

Over in his house, Jack sticks his head out of the
window.

“Lost something?” he calls.

“Have you seen a boy?” I call back. “My size, with
no clothes on?”

Jack laughs.

“Oh, aye?” he says. “Who's that – Alexander, or
one of those Haltwhistles?”

“Not them,” I say. “A special boy. He's magic, I
think.”

“I see,” says Jack. “Well, if I see any magic boys
with no clothes on, I'll let you know.”

 

I go back to the barn again, but it looks the same as it
has all winter.

Empty.

“Hello?” I call. “Boy? It's me – Molly.”

I have no idea if he'll remember me or not. He's a
whole new person now, after all.

Not that it makes any difference. He's not there.

I sit on a bag of concrete and wonder where else to
look. He could be anywhere. If he's even real. Maybe
I
was
dreaming.

Then I look up and see it.

His oak tree.

I can feel the happiness bubbling up again inside
me. I go over and touch it; the tree I thought was
dead. I reach out and touch the green place in the
bark, where new wood is beginning to show through
the old.

 

 

 

 

I'm too full up with jittery excitement to go back
home.

I go to the wood behind the houses, where the
youth hostel is. It isn't a proper forest, like the
Forbidden Forest or the wood with the lamp-post in
Narnia. It's not the sort of wood you'd think a god
would hide in. It's full of dead wood and ivy and
squelchy patches and nettles and you only have to
walk for about ten minutes before you hit an edge.

But I can't think of anywhere else he might be.

“Boy?” (Very quietly.) “Boy?”

And there he is.

He's hanging upside down from a tree. He's got
some trousers from somewhere – brown, leafy, Peter-Pan-type trousers. Maybe he's magicked them for
himself. He's wearing a wreath of ivy leaves, but it
doesn't look girly. It's all mashed up in his hair, which
is wilder than I remember; big, messy curls sticking
out in all directions.

“This place is
great
!” he says.

He's exactly the same size as me. I think his eyes are
the same colour as before, but they're different. My
man's eyes were gentle – this boy's look more like
Josh's when he's excited about something.

“Do you remember me?” I say.

The boy screws up his eyes.

“Of course I do,” he says. “You were there last
night, weren't you? You were hiding, but I saw you –
that's where I know you from.”

I bite my lip. I'm not at all sure this counts as
remembering me.

“Where did you come from?”

“Somewhere,” he says. “Somewhere
you've
never
been.”

“You were—” I hesitate, not sure how to put it
politely. “Do you remember what happened? At
Christmas?”

“Of course,” he says. But he looks uncertain. “Why
are you asking all these questions?” he says. “Who are
you, anyway?”

“I'm Molly. Molly Brooke.”

He still looks puzzled.

“You look like one of the house-people, but you
aren't a house-person, are you?”

“I am,” I say. “But I'm your friend too.”

“Everyone's my friend.” He laughs at me, upside
down. “Look—” He holds out his hand and a green
shoot curls out from between his fingers and twists
around his hand and up his arm. “Can you do that,
Molly Brooke person?” he says.

“No,” I say. “No, I can't.” I chew on my lip. “You
do know not everyone's your friend, don't you?” I say.
“You do remember about the Holly King?”

“Of course,” he says airily. He flings himself
forward off the branch and lands on his hands.
“Look!” he says, upside down, balanced on his hands.
“Can you do this?”

“Yes,” I say, “I can, actually. But you have to
remember about the Holly King. He tried to kill you!
And he's still after you! You have to be careful—”

“Be careful, be careful,” says the boy. “Who's afraid
of the Holly King? I've got work to do!”

He walks towards me on his hands, then drops his
feet back down to the earth. He crouches in the grass,
touching it with his fingertips. Little green sprouts
push their way up through the earth. Flowers appear;
snowdrops, frail and white.

“Can you do
that
?” he says.

I don't answer. I'm looking at his trousers. They're
made of brown planty shoot, all woven together. You
can see his legs through them. They're smooth and
brown and strong, but slashed across them are the
marks of old scars, deep and white.

The sort of scars you'd get from the bite of a dog.

Or a wolf.

 

I run down the last bit of lane home. There are
green shoots under the hedges where daffodils are
going to come soon, and a cold blue sky above me.
When I burst into the kitchen, Dad's there. He's
started coming round unexpectedly since Christmas.
He's drinking tea and playing thumb wars with
Hannah.

“One, two, three, four, I declare thumb war.
Thumb war!”

Thumb wars are a Dad thing – me and Mum are
rubbish at them. Hannah's very good. She kneels up
on her chair, twisting Dad's arm all the way up and
round. I'm not sure if she's really that strong, or if
Dad's letting her win.

“Hey, hey, love, be careful,” he says. He looks up
and sees me. “Hey, Moll! Where've you been?”

“Up in the woods,” I say. “I saw—” I stop.

“Who'd you see?” says Hannah. Her face is red,
strands of hair sticking to her forehead. “Josh?”

I hesitate. Dad's smiling. He's come all the way
from Newcastle to see us.

“No one,” I say. I sit down on the other side of
Dad. “Just trees and stuff. Can I have a go?”

“Let's pick something we can all play,” says Dad.
“Cards, maybe?”