Missing Toby

by Jill Harris

  Sometimes everything went dark and Toby told her to stop and lean against the slope for a rest. He leant beside her with his arm around her. Luke wound the rescue rope round and round the stump as she inched closer. When her head and shoulders came level with the top, he grabbed her jersey and hauled her over the lip on to the track where she lay gasping and shivering, Toby on one side of her and Gus on the other.

  She wanted to go to sleep there, but Toby spoke to her: You must get up and go home now, Harriet, so she struggled to her feet and held on to Gus. Luke carried Max, who couldn’t walk, and they made their way down the track. Harriet wasn’t sure how she reached the car park though she remembered Toby telling her to sit down when they got there. Gus sat with her and she held Max tightly.

  “I’m going for help,” said Luke and he ran down the road towards home. Harriet wanted to follow him but she couldn’t get up.

  She had no sense of how long she sat there before Mrs Howard arrived in her car with Luke, wrapped a rug around her and helped her into the car with Max and Gus.

  “Are you coming, too, Toby?” Harriet asked, but he gave her his lopsided smile and walked away. Harriet started to cry and Gus laid his head on her lap.

  When Harriet woke up, her parents were sitting beside her bed. She remembered instantly what had happened and sat up.

  “Max!” she said. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s OK,” said her mother.

  Harriet felt sore all over. Her left hand had deep, red marks on it. Her left shoulder hurt when she moved her arm.

  How long had she been asleep? Her mother had made her get into bed as soon as Mrs Howard brought her home – she helped her out of her clay-smeared clothes, gave her some soup and told her that what she needed most was sleep. The sun was on the front of the house so it must be late afternoon. How come her father was home so early?

  “Why aren’t you at work, Dad?” she asked.

  “I came home when your mother rang.”

  “Come and have a shower, Harry,” said her mother, “and we’ll get some of that clay out of your hair.”

  Harriet climbed slowly out of bed. The water washed away some of the stiffness. She was content to let her mother wash and dry her and help her into her pyjamas and dressing gown. They went downstairs and sat in the sunshine streaming into the family room.

  The morning’s events were coming back in vivid pictures, and the feelings: fear, anger, desperation, pain, exhaustion. The realisation of the danger she’d been in grew by the second; Harriet wondered how much she should tell her parents.

  Sipping hot chocolate on the sofa, she waited for the questions.

  “Start at the beginning and tell us what happened,” her father said.

  “We went to see the slip and the wind from a helicopter blew Max over the edge of the track. His collar got hooked on a snag down the slope.”

  Harriet’s parents waited.

  “I tied the dog leashes and my belt and scarf together to make a rope so I could climb down. I hooked the rope around a stump at the top and wound the other end round my hand. I managed to reach a tree near Max and used a branch to lift him down.”

  Harriet’s voice was low and faltering as she relived the rescue. Her mouth felt dry and she took sips of the drink.

  “Then I clipped the rope to his collar and Luke pulled him up.”

  The next bit was the worst part and Harriet didn’t want to talk about it. She stopped.

  After a moment of silence, her mother asked: “How did you get back?”

  “Oh, I just climbed up – Toby helped me, and Luke pulled on the rope.”

  “How do you mean Toby helped you?” her mother asked quietly.

  Harriet sighed. “He told me to go up the slope not down to the stream, and to use the forked stick to dig into the slope. He said he’d help me. He told me when to have a rest.”

  “Did you actually see him?”

  “Not then – I just felt and heard him – sort of in my head. But I saw him in the car park. He smiled at me as he walked away.” Harriet felt tears pricking her eyes so she swallowed hard and looked at the ceiling.

  Her mother moved across to sit beside her on the sofa. She took her hand.

  “Were you very frightened?”

  “Only when I had to climb back up the slope. That’s why Toby came – he knew I was in trouble.”

  They sat in silence. Harriet leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Her head was exploding with pictures and sounds: Max slipping, his choking breaths, her feet scrabbling, the din of the helicopter, her anger with Luke – she opened her eyes suddenly. Her face went hot. Yes, she was so angry with Luke!

  “What is it, Harriet?” asked her father.

  “Luke wouldn’t stop! I kept trying to make him go back! He let Max off the leash – that’s why Max fell over the edge!”

  “But you didn’t have to go with Luke,” said her father.

  “I did! I did! He was dragging Max with him and the Search and Rescue girl said you have to stay together in the bush.”

  “Not when someone’s leading you into danger.”

  “But I didn’t know it would be so dangerous,” wailed Harriet. “I should have put Max’s leash back on again and held on to it. That makes it my fault!”

  “No!” Her mother and father said together.

  “It certainly wasn’t your fault,” her father said. “And I want to know why Luke didn’t climb down to rescue Max!”

  “He was too heavy for the rescue rope,” explained Harriet. “Anyway …” she faltered, “I didn’t trust him to do it. He doesn’t love Max as much as I do. Don’t you see, I had to do it – Max was choking, he would have died!” She jumped up from the sofa. “I have to ring up and find out how he is. He’s only just recovered from that terrible journey to the pound!”

  Her mother pulled her down and put her arm round her shoulders.

  “Listen, Harriet. What Luke did was reckless and stupid. The helicopter coming down low was bad luck. What you did was brave, but dangerous and foolish. If it comes down to your life or Max’s, you know who matters more.”

  Harriet stared at her parents. What could she say? Her only thought had been for Max. But, yes, she could see she had taken a big risk. What would her mother and father have done if she’d been badly hurt, or even …? She struggled with a half-formed thought. Would she always have to take extra care so that her parents wouldn’t be frightened about her all the time, thinking she might be in danger and they might lose her, like Toby? It was too hard to work that out right now.

  Her mother spoke again. “We’ll ring and find out how Max is.”

  “I’ll ring,” said her father. “I’d like to have a word with the Howards.”

  “Luke did help me with the rescue as much as he could,” said Harriet. “He pulled Max up very carefully, and me, too. He ran for help once we got to the car park.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said her father, not looking at all inclined to give Luke the credit for anything.

  Later at dinner, he was even more to the point. “That young man needs a good walloping to knock some sense into him! You should have turned round and left him to it, Harriet. What might have happened doesn’t bear thinking about. I don’t want you spending any more time with him.”

  In the Old House

  Harriet went over the events on the track again and again in her mind. She should have heeded her own uneasiness. But could she have stopped Luke? She didn’t think so. What would have happened if she’d stayed by the tape with the dogs and Luke had gone off on his own – and maybe not come back? If only she’d said “I’m not going any further …” If only she’d put the leash back on Max straight away … If only she hadn’t gone to the edge of the slip with the dogs … She didn’t like ‘if onlys’ – they left you with a horrible feeling in your stomach.

  She didn’t see Luke again for a time, which meant she didn’t see Max or Gus either – or hear any news about
Honey. Apart from a hoarse voice, Max was OK, her father passed on from his conversation with the Howards. Harriet herself ached all over for a couple of days and the purple-red marks on her hand took even longer to go away.

  Her mother arranged all sorts of school holiday things. She took Harriet and Amanda to the pool, and afterwards they went to McDonald’s for lunch. Another day they went to a Harry Potter movie. Nothing in the film was anywhere near as frightening as what had happened to her in real life, thought Harriet. And Harry Potter went chasing after danger, just like Luke. She thought they were both stupid.

  She chose one of Toby’s model tanks to take round to Tim’s place. She felt very embarrassed about how she’d pushed his chess set over in the library, but she managed to apologise. He seemed really pleased with the tank and said he had a set of soldiers he could use with it.

  Harriet even did some piano practice and tidied her room. Those moments on the muddy slope when she thought she might never see her parents again stuck in her mind, and she was content to stay close to home.

  Then, on his last day, Luke came to see Harriet.

  “I came to say goodbye,” Luke said. “Look, I’m sorry I got us into trouble. I should have taken more notice of you.” His face was pink. He looked straight at Harriet. “When you made that rope so fast and climbed over the edge – well, I thought that was incredibly brave and I was very glad it was you doing it, not me.” He gulped. “I didn’t think you’d be able to rescue Max, and I didn’t think you’d get back up. It was awesome.” He turned round quickly and walked back down the path.

  Later that morning there was another parcel for Harriet in the letterbox. When she took off the tissue paper, she found a small, oval picture frame. It had silver grape leaves entwined around it with amethyst-coloured stones for grapes. It sat comfortably in the palm of her hand.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I could put a photo of Toby in it.”

  Her mother pulled out the photograph album and they chose a photo which had Toby in. It showed Toby looking sideways at the camera with his one-sided smile. Harriet’s nose tingled. It was the smile he gave when he looked up from reading or making a model and found her watching. It was how he’d smiled at her in the car park.

  Having her own photo of Toby would be another way of not forgetting him, she realised. Sometimes she couldn’t see his face or hear his voice any longer and it felt as though she was letting him down, letting him drift away into a mist until he disappeared forever. And yet he’d come back when she most needed him. Would she have been able to climb back to the track without his help? She wished she could talk to her mother about this without upsetting her. If only her grandmother lived nearby.

  She lifted out the thin, wooden back of the picture frame, placed it on top of the photo and ran a pencil around it. Then she cut the oval shape out and after cleaning the glass, put it in the frame.

  She took it up to her bedroom with a picture hook and hammer. She hung the photo next to the dressing-table mirror above the other presents. The sun gleamed and winked on the amethyst. It shone on the glass and the picture disappeared. When Harriet looked at it from another angle, the picture came back. Like Toby himself, she thought.

  Max and Gus lay in Max’s special corner of the garden. It was a tight fit for two dogs but companionable.

  “It was a close thing,” mused Gus. “Too much longer dangling there and you wouldn’t have come through.”

  Max lifted his nose. “I tell you, Gus,” he said, “I thought I was a goner. The jerk to my neck when my collar caught was very painful. At first I was grateful I hadn’t slipped to the bottom but then I realised I was still in trouble. I couldn’t look up so I didn’t know whether anyone was going to rescue me. It wasn’t till I heard Harriet’s voice from the tree that I thought I had a chance. By then, I was seeing stars.”

  Max hadn’t spoken about it until now. Gus understood it was hard for him.

  “That Harriet,” Max continued, “she’s like one of those rescue dogs – top of the line. Smart, brave, tough. She put herself in danger to save me – me! What if she’d fallen, perhaps hit her head, maybe drowned in the stream.” He fell silent.

  “It’s just as well Luke’s gone,” he said. “I found it hard to go on being pleasant to him. You can imagine what kind of an owner he’ll grow up to be – thoroughly unreliable.”

  “One of those strange human beings,” Gus said, “a mixture of OK and not so OK – you’re never sure what it’s going to be. You can smell it straight away. I feel a bit to blame for what happened. I should have sat down and refused to go past the tape – it didn’t feel right. But I thought I was helping Harriet.”

  “Was Toby there or not?” asked Max. “I couldn’t see him.”

  Gus licked himself thoughtfully. “I can’t be sure. Harriet thought he was and that’s what mattered. I do know when I tried to lie down beside her after she’d climbed back up, something stopped me – something strange. Just on one side – it wasn’t there on the other. We’re surrounded by mysteries, Max. We dogs can sense them even more than human beings. Most of the time you just have to let the mystery be.”

  He continued. “It’s like the Old House. Now there’s a place which shimmers with mysteries.”

  Max was worried. “If that’s where Girl is, she might be in danger. We must try to rescue her again. What about tonight? And I’m coming, too, by the way.”

  “I s’pose we could.” Gus felt reluctant. He was bothered by the thought of going back up that road to the Old House. “Don’t you think Girl would’ve come back if there was something really spooky going on?”

  “Maybe she can’t,” said Max. “And she doesn’t know that Harriet will give her a home – we need to tell her that.”

  He imagined himself running up the road to the Old House, with Gus reluctantly at his heels. “Don’t worry, Gus,” he said, “I can handle this – you stay behind me.” Undaunted by the dark, winding drive, he sped on. He could hear Girl’s despairing howls coming from deep within the house. “Hang on, Girl!” he barked, “I’m here!” … He came to with a jolt. For goodness sake, Max, he thought, get real!

  It was raining when they finally set out. The grass was muddy and the road greasy. Neither of them liked going back up that road after what had happened in the reserve. Their ears were angled sideways to catch every sound, but they heard nothing to alarm them. Once or twice they saw the gleam of cats’ eyes in the bushes.

  Gus passed on what Girl had told him in the shed one night: how she had never been fed regularly or given a place of her own to sleep; how she’d been left inside all day without anywhere to let go until she’d had to do it in the kitchen, and been hit for it by her owners. Eventually, she’d been driven somewhere and tossed out the window of the car. She described the miracle of finding some bread by the park gates, and how there was more further on, and more after that. Like a trail, she said: it led to the Old House.

  As they came nearer to the long, overgrown driveway, Gus barked: “Girl, it’s Gus. Can we talk?” There was no answer.

  They stopped at the entrance and sniffed. The rain made it impossible to pick up scents. The street lamp lit up the driveway as far as the first bend. Max called out to Girl again. He wished she would come trotting round the bend out of the shadows towards him. This is nothing compared with the journey to the dog prison or the fall down the slope, he told himself, so with the hair along his back standing up, he padded forward with Gus.

  Beyond the bend it was dark. The trees on either side were full of rustlings, but their noses told them nothing. Are you here, Girl? Gus thought. This is no place for a small, lame dog. He growled at whatever was in the bush.

  And then, as they rounded the next bend, Max stopped. There were lights on in the Old House. Gus was right – there was someone living there.

  They stood deep in the shadow, not knowing what to do next. Then Gus caught a whiff of Girl’s scent. He gave a soft “Rrrufff!” and a glimmer of wh
ite in the undergrowth turned into Girl as she came towards him.

  “Dear, dear Gus and Max,” she whispered. “I am so glad to see you.” Her short tail wagged fast. “There’s something wrong in the house. I’m sure I heard groaning, but I’m too scared to go any closer.”

  “I thought nobody lived there,” Max whispered.

  “I always wondered about the trail of bread,” said Girl, “and this time someone’s been filling a water bowl and leaving out food.”

  “We have to investigate.” Gus raised his tail. They circled the house, trying to see inside, but the windows were too high. Gus nudged a door but it stayed shut. As they returned to the front, a groan came from inside. Max’s skin prickled and Girl shivered.

  “We’ll have to fetch help. Harriet will know what to do,” said Max.

  “But she’ll be asleep,” said Girl.

  Gus wondered if he should fetch his owner, but he knew that once he went to sleep, it was almost impossible to wake him over the sound of snoring.

  “We’ll have to bark Harriet awake,” said Max. “Come on, there’s no time to lose.”

  Awesome Foursome

  Harriet stared at the brooch and the book on her bedside table. Bridge to Terebithia had been published in 1977 – twenty years before Harriet was born, but it didn’t feel like an old book when she read it. It was about a boy whose best friend drowned in a flooded stream. At first, the boy didn’t believe his friend was really dead, and Harriet understood that. She knew why someone had given it to her – somebody who knew about Toby.

  When she went to bed that night, she held the brooch in her hand for a while. “Tell me where you’ve come from,” she whispered, “tell me in a dream.” She put it by the book and snuggled down …

  She dreamed she was with the boy in the book. The boy looked like Toby and she felt deeply happy. He pointed to a stream running through some trees at the bottom of a slope. “That’s where it happened,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. Harriet saw something glinting in a branch across the stream. She scrambled down for a closer look.