Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

Jodhpurs.

  The jodhpurs were extremely dirty. They were covered with patches of mud, and there were several burrs and twigs snagged in the fabric.

  But that wasn’t the strangest thing about her. The strangest thing was that she was all in black and white.

  Daisy blinked and shook her head. The girl was too solid to be a ghost. And she wasn’t like Tar or Little Charles or any of the other people that Daisy spoke to. They lived in the gap between real and not real. This girl looked as if she had stepped right over that gap. Daisy knew she didn’t exist, although the girl didn’t seem to care what Daisy thought. She was right there in her bedroom, and by the look on her face, she didn’t seem terribly impressed by what she saw.

  Daisy wondered whether she was a hallucination. She closed her eyes and counted to three, but when she opened them again, the girl was still there, as solid as ever.

  Daisy had once read a story about a little boy who had a dog that only he could see. She searched her mind for the phrase.

  “Are you . . . are you an imaginary friend?” Daisy ventured.

  The girl didn’t answer. She had a knife stuck into her belt on one side. A metal container hung on the other. Daisy thought it might be for water.

  “So this is the Lost City of Valcadia,” the girl said in a brisk voice. She looked around, her eyes bright in her dirty face. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”

  “It’s not the Lost City,” Daisy protested. “It’s not lost at all. I live here!”

  “Of course it’s not really lost,” the girl said with a touch of impatience. “These places never are. Not to the people living in them at any rate.”

  The girl paused. “Can I be perfectly honest?”

  Daisy nodded, although she had the feeling that the girl wasn’t really asking a question and would have gone on talking whether Daisy agreed or not.

  “The only thing in the world that’s really lost,” the girl continued, “is Sir Clarence himself!”

  She stepped forward. “He’ll be pleased if he ever does get here,” she commented. “There are enough artifacts in this place to keep him going for ages.”

  “Artifacts?”

  The girl swung her arm over the cluttered room.

  “Artifacts! Sir Clarence is very fond of them.”

  Daisy was about to ask her again what she meant, but she stopped herself. It was absurd how quickly she had accepted this strange girl’s presence. Even the fact that she was in black and white didn’t seem odd any longer. A long time ago, Daisy had seen a television show that had been in black and white, and had gotten used to it after a moment or two. This was exactly the same.

  “You’re not in the photograph with Sir Clarence,” Daisy said, trying to assert herself. “I don’t even know who you are!”

  The girl gave her a scornful look.

  “Of course I’m not in the picture! I was the one who took it.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said, feeling crushed.

  “You can’t be in two places at exactly the same time,” the girl said as if she was explaining something to a child.

  You can’t appear out of thin air or be in black and white either, Daisy thought. For somebody who wasn’t real, the girl had no right to be so bossy. But she didn’t want to point this out. She didn’t want the girl to disappear and leave her on her own again.

  At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

  “I thought . . . ”

  “You thought you’d get him? Sir Clarence?” The girl tossed her dark head. “You’re better off with me. By far.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Polly Frank. You can forget the Polly bit. I’m just Frank. Sir Clarence’s chief guide, chief tracker, and chief navigator. In charge of provisions, maps, and all staff.”

  “All staff?”

  “Well, there’s just the two of us,” Frank admitted. “But I do the work of ten. If it weren’t for me, Sir Clarence would be dead a hundred times over. I’ve saved him from everything. Quicksand, cannibals, worms in the gut, alligators, landslides, animal traps, flash floods, human sacrifice, and heatstroke. The man is an idiot. Brave of course, although still an idiot.”

  “I don’t think that can be true,” Daisy protested. “He was a famous explorer. He almost became the first man to get to the top of Mount Everest!”

  “Oh certainly!” Frank cried, “if by ‘almost’ you mean crippled by diarrhea down at base camp while I was busy on the summit.”

  “You mean . . . you were the first person to get to the top?”

  “It’s a little-­known fact,” Frank said, brushing the front of her grubby shirt with an air of unconcern. “I’m not one to boast . . . ” She strode over to the window and stood looking out over the darkening water. “So what have we got here?” she demanded. “An intruder, I take it?”

  Daisy nodded.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He must have come upriver,” Frank commented. “I took the jungle route myself.”

  “It’s not a river, it’s a lake,” Daisy said. “And he came in a car.”

  “Particularly hazardous, that stretch of jungle,” Frank continued, as if Daisy hadn’t spoken. “You can hack through the undergrowth all day and still only travel a hundred feet. Easy to start walking in circles. I believe that’s what’s happened to Sir Clarence.”

  “It’s not a jungle!” Daisy cried. “It’s just the meadow and trees and stuff—”

  “What is he doing here?” Frank interrupted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?”

  Frank swung her leather bag to the front of her body, reached inside, and pulled out a pair of ancient binoculars.

  “What else have you got in that bag?” Daisy asked.

  “I’ve got everything in here,” Frank said with satisfaction.

  “Everything? For what?”

  “For survival.”

  DAY THREE

  TEN

  The first thing Daisy thought when she woke up the next morning was how much she would have liked to see inside Frank’s bag. She hadn’t gotten the chance, because the minute she took her eyes off her, the girl had vanished. Perhaps Frank was bored with talking to Daisy—or she had heard Sir Clarence calling.

  Or perhaps she had been nothing but a dream.

  Daisy got out of bed and went to the window to look for the rowboat. The sky was overcast and a low mist hung over the lake. But she could see that the boat was moored on the far side, which meant the man must still be at the boathouse.

  Daisy hurried downstairs for breakfast, suddenly ravenous. She had eaten hardly anything the day before. Little Charles’s voice was a thin pipe as she went by.

  “More space!”

  “I can’t. I have to find out what the man is up to.”

  “Set the dogs on him,” Little Charles advised. “My father set the dogs on a poacher once. They tore him to pieces!”

  “That’s terrible,” Daisy said.

  “It was all right,” Little Charles said. “He was only a commoner, you know.”

  “You’re not being very helpful,” Daisy told him.

  Tar wasn’t very helpful either. He scurried up onto the kitchen counter as soon as Daisy had cut herself a thick slice of bread.

  “Smells good,” he remarked, his nose twitching, ignoring her attempts to bat him away. “There are five kinds of smell in the world. First comes rich and then comes ripe. Perfectly good smells, but rank is better. After rank comes rancid. I’m very partial to rancid . . . ”

  “I can’t be thinking about smells now,” Daisy protested. “I have to eat and then I have to go out and . . . confront that man. I’m scared, Tar. I’m really scared.”

  Tar made a dive for the crust of bread on Daisy’s plate. “Last stage is rotten,” he announced with his mouth full. “Nothing better than a good rotten smell. Brings tears to my eyes.”

  “Do you want to come with me?�
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  But Tar was gone. He was only a friend when there was food to be had. It wasn’t his fault. It was just the way rats were.

  She unbolted the kitchen door, slipped outside, and made her way to the front of the house to have a look at the man’s car. But there was nothing to be learned from it. It was perfectly ordinary looking, apart from a long scrape down the left-­hand side.

  The mist was still thick over the lake. Daisy could barely see the surface of the water, and the Wilderness beyond it was just a green haze. She waited at the base of the Hunter’s statue.

  “Are you frightened?” she asked him.

  “Mine heart is all courage,” the Hunter muttered in a terrified voice.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him, feeling a little braver by comparison.

  There was a movement out on the lake. The mist had formed a clump that seemed to writhe and swirl. Then the boat emerged with the man at the oars. He was far too big for the vessel and he handled it clumsily, with scooping, uneven movements that sent the boat lurching along. Despite this, he made surprisingly quick progress across the lake, and in a few moments, he was drawing close to the little jetty, barely twenty feet from where Daisy stood. He lunged forward, looping the boat’s rope around the post at the end of the jetty, and then hauled himself out onto dry land.

  Daisy stepped out from behind the Hunter so suddenly that the man staggered back with surprise.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, advancing towards her. “This is private property.”

  Now that the moment had come to say something, Daisy couldn’t summon a single word. Apart from her mum, she had never been near a real, living person in her whole life. The man was so close she could see into his eyes. They were light blue and she couldn’t stop staring at them. It wasn’t their color; it was that there was so much color. The black bits in the middle—the pupils—were barely any larger than pinholes.

  They reminded Daisy of something, although she didn’t know what it was.

  “How did you get in?” the man demanded.

  Daisy had no good answer for this. She had gotten in by being born. But that seemed so obvious that it felt stupid to point out. She had taken all night to come into the world, and there had been nobody in the house to help her mum. When she’d finally arrived, her mum had cried. Not because she was sad, but because she was so happy. It was the happiest moment of her whole life, she said.

  “Are you deaf?” the man said. “What’s your name?”

  “Daisy,” she whispered.

  “What did you say?”

  “Daisy. Daisy Fitzjohn.”

  He stared at her. “That’s not true,” he said. “There’s no such person.”

  “There is,” Daisy said. “It’s me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Daisy felt tears pricking at her eyes. She didn’t understand why he was questioning her. “It is me,” she insisted. “I live here. There’s a picture of me in the hallway. My mum painted it.”

  The man said nothing. His pale eyes were expressionless and his big hands hung loosely by his side.

  “How old are you?” he said at last in a low voice.

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven? It’s not possible.” He paused. “Unless . . . ”

  “Who else lives here?” he asked. “Who looks after you?”

  Daisy didn’t know why he seemed so agitated.

  “It’s just us,” she said. “Just me and my mum.” There was no stopping her tears now. “Do you know where she is?” she cried out. “Do you know why she hasn’t come back?”

  He was silent, watching her.

  “No,” he said at last. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Then . . . why did you come?”

  “I was just passing by,” the man said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “You broke the lock on the gates!” Daisy protested.

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. He gazed at her thoughtfully. The sun came out, evaporating the mist on the lake, and the man’s face darkened in the sudden shadow of the Hunter.

  “Where do you go to school?” he asked.

  “In the ballroom,” Daisy said.

  “The ballroom?”

  “My mum teaches me. We’re learning about the Romans . . . ”

  “But you do go out? To the doctor for checkups or to play with friends?”

  Daisy was silent.

  “Perhaps your mother takes you out for trips,” he said.

  “My mum says she’s going to take me when . . . when I’m older.”

  He stepped forward out of the shadow and she saw his eyes again, the blue very pale in the bright light.

  “You mean you’ve never been out? Not even once? You must have tried, sneaked out by yourself from time to time?”

  Daisy lowered her head. He made it sound as if it was strange that she hadn’t gone out, as if she’d done something wrong by not trying. But she had only been doing what she’d been told.

  “I’m not allowed,” she whispered, feeling her cheeks grow hot.

  “How about visitors, then?” the man said.

  The tears rose in Daisy’s eyes once again. How many questions was he going to ask her? Why wouldn’t he stop? She was the one who was meant to be finding out about him. He had turned it the other way around.

  “Surely you have visitors,” he continued. “Other children perhaps? Friends of your mother?”

  She shook her head desperately, helplessly.

  “Plumbers?” the man persisted. “Repairmen . . . ”

  “We don’t need that,” Daisy said. “When something breaks, we get a new one.”

  “Are you saying you’ve never been outside and you’ve never . . . you’ve never even had a visitor?”

  For a split second, she saw his eyes flood black. Then his pupils shrank back again.

  “Nobody knows you’re here,” he said in a wondering voice. “Nobody knows you exist.”

  ELEVEN

  Daisy felt herself start to tremble inside.

  “I just want to find my mum!” she cried. “I have to go and find her!”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the man said quickly. He paused and then smiled, as if it was an afterthought. “We should both wait here until your mother gets back. I think that would be the most sensible thing to do. What do you say?”

  Daisy opened her mouth to say she didn’t care what he thought and she didn’t want to wait anywhere with him. In fact, she wanted him to leave right that minute. But the trembling had reached her throat and she couldn’t utter a single word.

  Instead, Daisy turned and ran away.

  “Hey! Come back!” he shouted. He ran after her and she ran even faster: Around the back towards the glasshouse and then left, straight into the Wilderness, through nettles and bramble bushes, barely feeling the stings and scratches.

  The trees grew thick and Daisy slowed down, stumbling over roots, branches whipping at her arms and face. At last she stopped and stood with her back to the trunk of a tree, as if she had reached the very end of the world and could go no farther.

  Her face was wet. She was crying. She could hear her own quiet sobbing and the sound of the wind in the topmost branches.

  Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody knows you exist.

  The moment the man had said it, she had known it was true. And she realized that she had always known. She had known without speaking about it, or even thinking about it. It was so obvious, how could she not have known? Her life wasn’t normal. It was peculiar, perhaps even wrong.

  Her face burned with shame. Far off she heard the sound of clanking metal. It came from Brightwood Hall’s old stable yard, abandoned for a hundred years in the deepest part of the Wilderness. Daisy hated the stables, with their double doors hanging agape and their ancient darkness. The clanking came from a huge, rusty chain that dangled from a post and swayed in the wind, turning and twitching like something that should not be alive but was.


  She crouched down and pressed her hands tight against her ears.

  All this time, she had thought of the outside world as a strange place, hard to imagine. But it wasn’t. It was the other way around.

  It was Daisy herself who was strange and hard to imagine.

  “Can I be perfectly honest?” Daisy looked up. The girl, Frank, was standing on the far side of the clearing. She still appeared in black and white, and the contrast was even clearer in the dappled sunlight, as if her outline had been sharpened by a knife.

  “You don’t want to be sitting on the ground like that for any length of time,” Frank said. “Not in terrain like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Where do I begin? You’ve got your army ants, your vipers, and your venomous spiders, just for a start. Then there are the leeches. You ever heard of the saber-­toothed leech?”

  Daisy shook her head.

  “Not many have,” Frank said. “It’s more of a biter than a sucker. It burrows. Looks for points of entry.” She paused and made a face. “Your ears, your nose, your mouth, your b—”

  “That’s disgusting!” Daisy scrambled to her feet.

  Frank patted her survival bag. “I’ve got most of the anti­venoms in here, but if you’re bitten by a saber-­toothed leech, you’re on your own.”

  “Even Sir Clarence knows that,” she added.

  Daisy decided it was time to put her foot down. “I don’t live in a lost city and this isn’t a jungle,” she said firmly. “There aren’t any army ants or leeches lurking around.”

  “Army ants don’t lurk,” Frank said. “They march. Sometimes in a straight line, sometimes in a fan formation.” She slapped an invisible insect on her arm and then flicked it off with a matter-­of-­fact gesture. “Why are you sitting around blubbing, anyway?” she asked.

  Daisy’s shoulders drooped. “Nobody knows I exist,” she said.

  Frank let out her breath in a long, exasperated sigh. “Like I said, I’ve got a lot of things in my survival bag. I’ve got a penknife with fifty-­nine blades, water purifying equipment, first aid kit, compass—not that I need it, because I can make my own out of a plain old pin and a plain old leaf anytime I want—matches, flint, peppermints, collapsible hat, collapsible cooking pan, collapsible stove.”