Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

  But Frank came only when it suited her, and when Daisy opened her eyes, she saw nothing except darkness.

  She started to cry, too terrified to brush the tears away in case even this tiny movement dislodged her perch among the leaves.

  “What are you blubbing about this time?”

  The voice came from above. Daisy looked up. Frank was sitting on the edge of the well with her legs dangling down. Silhouetted against the sky, her black-­and-­white had faded to gray. In places she was almost transparent. Daisy could look right through her body and see the dim shapes of drifting clouds.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Daisy said, still crying.

  “You’ve gotten yourself into a tight spot,” Frank said.

  “I didn’t get myself in here!” Daisy protested. “I was pushed!”

  Frank’s outline seemed to flicker against the sky.

  “Don’t go!” Daisy cried. “Tell me how to get out of this . . . What would you call it? A cave? Another tomb?”

  Frank shook her head in a pitying way. “It’s a well,” she said. “Anyone can see that.”

  For a split second, Daisy felt so irritated that she forgot to be afraid. “I do know that,” she muttered.

  “Why did you call it a cave, then? It doesn’t look anything like a cave.”

  Daisy’s leg hurt worse than ever. She reached down cautiously and felt her trousers. They were wet and sticky.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “That?” Frank snorted slightly. “It’s barely a scratch.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’ve got to pull yourself together,” Frank said.

  “I can’t move!”

  “Reminds me of when Sir Clarence wandered into some quicksand,” Frank remarked. “The more he thrashed about, the deeper he sank. Poor Sir Clarence,” she added. “How he squealed!”

  “Did you pull him out?”

  “Certainly not!” Frank said. “I didn’t go anywhere near him. He’d have dragged me in too. I told him that in a quicksand situation, you’ve got to widen the space between your legs and then bring them up to the surface until you’re horizontal.”

  Daisy stared at her blankly.

  “Not many people know that,” Frank said.

  “I don’t know what that’s got to do with me,” Daisy said. “I’m not stuck in quicksand.”

  “You can bring your legs up, can’t you?”

  Daisy considered the suggestion. If she braced her feet against one side of the well and her arms against the opposite side, she might be able to move upwards in much the same way she had traveled through the blocked corridor after discovering her mum’s old bedroom.

  But it was a long way to the top. Daisy doubted she could make it even if her leg hadn’t been hurt.

  “If I fall,” she said, “I’ll probably crash right through this layer of leaves. I’ll fall to the bottom of the well.”

  “Probably,” Frank agreed.

  “You don’t have to sound so casual about it!”

  “Can I be perfectly honest?”

  “No!” Daisy shouted. “No, you can’t! I’m not doing it. It’s too risky.”

  Frank swung her legs over the side of the well. “I’ll be off, then. It’s been nice knowing you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got places to get to,” Frank said. She glanced briefly down at Daisy.

  “Hey!” Daisy yelled.

  But Frank had disappeared.

  “Hey!” Daisy called again. “Is that it? Is that all the help I get?”

  For a moment, she felt so angry that she didn’t have room to feel scared. Without thinking about it, she jumped. She braced her feet and arms against the sides of the well and began furiously shifting herself upwards, inch by inch.

  THIRTY-­ONE

  Daisy had no idea how long she had climbed. The instant she braced herself against the sides of the well, her leg began to hurt twice as much as it had before. By the time she had moved up a few feet, it felt as though she had a knife stuck there. She heard herself groaning as she sweated her way up, the skin on her shoulders rubbing raw against the stone.

  Well before Daisy was halfway to the top, most of the feeling had gone from her arms. She kept her gaze fixed on the lip of the well and the circle of sky, although it seemed she was getting no nearer—and after a while, she lost the hope that she would ever get out.

  Now Daisy climbed simply out of fear. If she slipped, she would fall through the leaves and branches, down to the very dark, where nobody could reach her and there was no hope of escape.

  She would never get to the top. She would climb forever, halfway between earth and sky. Her lungs hurt and a tremor started up in her legs, the sign of muscles pushed to the limit of their strength. Yet she couldn’t stop to rest. Braced as she was against the walls, even staying still would use up what little energy she had left. She closed her eyes and kept going.

  At last, Daisy sensed fresh air. The top of the well was suddenly within reach. A few more inches and she was there, her feet scrabbling against the upper stones, her shoulders heaving over the edge.

  She lay in a heap by the side of the well for a long time, too weak to move. Then she got to her feet and began to head back through the Wilderness, aiming for the place where the undergrowth gave way to lawn.

  Her leg had grown numb, and although the pain had lessened, Daisy couldn’t rest her full weight on it. She limped along as best she could. Thorns tore at her trousers and she hesitated, unsure of the way, before stumbling on again, her throat aching with thirst, her hands smeared with dirt and tears.

  It was a relief when the trees began to thin, and she pushed through the last bushes to find herself on the edge of the lawn, with the topiary on her right and the meadow stretching ahead of her.

  If she hurried, she could be at the main gates in a few minutes. She was just about to set off at a limping run when she instead stopped abruptly.

  Gritting was in front of her, barely fifty feet away.

  They saw each other at exactly the same moment.

  Without wasting a second, he rushed towards her, plunging heavily through the long grass.

  At any other time, Daisy would have been able to dodge him and still reach the main gates. He was too large to be nimble on his feet. Now, with her injured leg, she couldn’t risk it. Instead she turned and fled in the other direction, towards the house.

  She had only a small lead, and by the sound of Gritting’s thundering feet behind her, it was getting smaller by the second. She staggered over the gravel and nearly fell, but managed to regain her balance and get to the front door. There was no time to shut it. She raced through the Marble Hall, plunged into one of the passageways, and then, with great difficulty, scrambled up a shelving unit. She scuttled as fast as she could across the tops of the shelves until she reached the pile of Day Boxes she had built the night before.

  Daisy lay flat on her stomach behind the boxes, her chest heaving.

  Gritting didn’t shout or call her name, although Daisy knew he was somewhere below, perhaps still trying to figure out how to enter the maze. Then she heard his steps coming at a rapid trot down the first cleared passageway. He turned the corner, and the steps came louder as he passed her hiding place.

  Daisy rose to her knees, moving in perfect silence. Slowly she peered around the boxes. Gritting was below her and to the left, in the central clearing. As she watched, he turned his head and looked around him, then stepped forward so carefully that his feet made no noise.

  His white shirt was a perfect target, even from this distance and this angle. Daisy reached for her knife. She could hit him—she knew she could.

  Her grip tightened on the knife. Then she paused.

  What was it True had said?

  In the end, the only thing that matters is to keep your Shape.

  Daisy exhaled slowly. She wasn’t a killer. The Crazy had skipped clean over her.

  I have to keep my Shape, s
he thought.

  She lowered her arm, abandoning the knife, and glanced at the pile of boxes. There was still the temple trap. In a few seconds, Gritting would realize that there were no more cleared passageways and he was at a dead end. Then he would retrace his steps and her only chance would be gone. There was no time to waste and no point in being quiet any longer. She jumped to her feet and threw her shoulder against the pile.

  It gave way at once, and Daisy almost lost her balance for a moment. She teetered back, half blinded by flying dust as the boxes tumbled to the ground, blocking the narrow passageway. The noise was far louder than she had expected: a whole orchestra of crashes and thuds, of shattering glass and bursting cardboard and the sharp, machine-­gun patter as a thousand objects were hurled in all directions.

  And then, before Daisy had time to gather her wits, she heard another, quite different sound: a long, dry, creaking groan that seemed to reach her bones and make them shudder.

  A dark crack was running across the broad white ceiling of the Marble Hall. The avalanche of falling boxes must have found a weakness in the ancient walls, shifting the structure of the house itself.

  It took only a heartbeat for Daisy to see that the crack was spreading, running with inexorable speed towards the chandelier. It was no bigger than a thread, although it was growing wider and pieces of ceiling plaster were already breaking away.

  Daisy threw up her arms to shield herself, but it was too late. A chunk of plaster the size of her fist struck the side of her head, and she lost her footing on the narrow perch. She would have fallen straight to the ground except that as she fell, she grabbed at the top of the shelving unit and her fingers caught on a tiny ridge right on the edge.

  She hung from her arms, more than fifteen feet above the ground.

  Daisy instantly realized just how unlucky she had been. If she had fallen on the far side of the blocked passageway, she might have hurt herself dropping to the ground, but she still would have had a chance of getting out of the house while Gritting struggled to clear boxes out of his way.

  Instead she was on the other side.

  She turned her head. Gritting hadn’t moved from the clearing. He stood still, his face oddly calm as he stared up at her.

  “Now what are you going to do?” he said.

  Daisy tried to swing her lower body up to reach a nearby shelf, but her injured leg was as stiff and as heavy as wood.

  “It seems to me that I have two options,” Gritting said in a thoughtful voice. “I can use some of those boxes to climb up and pull you down. Or I can just wait here until you fall all by yourself.”

  Daisy didn’t have the strength to reply. Her arms, weakened by her long climb out of the well, felt as if they were being pulled slowly but surely out of their sockets.

  “I think I’ll wait,” Gritting announced. He folded his arms across his chest and gazed at her with an interested expression. “Question is, what will you do? Will you give up at once, or will you hang there for as long as you possibly can, even though you know it’s useless?”

  Daisy wondered briefly whether she could inch along the top of the shelving unit until she was safely on the other side of the blocked passageway. Yet she knew it was impossible. Her fingers were already cramped. If she moved them even slightly, she would fall.

  But she would fall anyway, sooner or later. Perhaps falling would be better than this pain.

  “My partner in Australia hung on for over two minutes,” Gritting said. “I timed him. I don’t think you’ll last nearly that long.”

  Daisy gritted her teeth. She wondered whether she could hold on for even ten seconds more. Ten seconds suddenly seemed an impossible stretch of time. The noise of the plaster cracking above her had stopped, and apart from her own dry, desperate breaths, silence filled the Marble Hall.

  Then, as she hung there, her will almost exhausted and her strength quite gone, she heard a familiar sound, faint at first but growing louder as it grew nearer. It was the tinkling rattle of a chain, swaying gently from side to side.

  With a huge effort that almost dislodged her grip on the top of the shelving unit, Daisy twisted her head and looked up.

  THIRTY-­TWO

  Among all the things that had been stored away in Brightwood Hall, Daisy had once found a collection of tiny books, each no larger than two inches wide. They had pictures inside. When she held one in her left hand and flipped through it very fast with her right, the pictures in the book all joined together in a single movement. It was only when she flipped through a book slowly that she saw that each of the pictures was actually separate from the others.

  It was exactly the same as she looked up now. As if every tiny fraction of a second were a separate picture being slowly flipped. Daisy saw Tar running along the chain towards the chandelier. Then she saw him pause, struggling for balance as the chain swung wide.

  The Marble Hall had stood strong for over two hundred and fifty years. Now Daisy watched the crack in the ceiling widen to a chasm as Tar added his weight to the chandelier.

  Gritting was frozen below, his face turned up in astonishment. A great wrenching noise filled the air like something huge being pulled up by the roots, and the chandelier swayed and rang as fragments of masonry struck its shivering glass.

  Then, with a groan so deep and sorrowful that it shook the house, the wheel and pulley ripped from the ceiling and the chain snaked free.

  For a split second, Daisy saw Gritting, his eyes wide, his body trying to pivot away. Then the chandelier fell with all the weight of its ten thousand crystal tears, and Gritting disappeared.

  Daisy must have fallen at the same time, although she had no sense of it. She lay curled on the floor, her arms covering her head. The enormous, thudding crunch of the chandelier hitting the ground was followed by the silvery tinkle of hundreds of pieces of glass flying and shattering in all directions.

  But it wasn’t the end. The end came with a splitting of wood and a violent rumbling that made Daisy scream. She flung herself back, scrambling over boxes and broken china. The floor had collapsed under the weight of glass and twisted metal. She heard a shuddering crash as the chandelier burst through hidden layers of wood and brick and landed on the floor of the basement far below.

  Daisy gaped at the huge hole where the central clearing had once been, hardly daring to move. Gritting was nowhere to be seen. He must have fallen with the chandelier. Daisy knew he was surely dead.

  An accident had killed him. The Hunter would have said there was poetic justice in that fact. But Daisy couldn’t feel any satisfaction. Only a deep sickness in her stomach.

  The passageway behind her was blocked with boxes. Moving with great caution and taking care to keep as far away from the hole in the floor as possible, Daisy inched around the closest shelving unit and slipped into the next passageway. She turned sideways, navigating through the stacked shelves like a crab, and after a few moments, she emerged safely at the other end.

  Walking slowly now, her mind dazed, Daisy went up the great staircase to her room. There was nothing left to do except pack her bag.

  THIRTY-­THREE

  Daisy put what she needed into her bag and turned to leave. Out in the Portrait Gallery, she took a last look at Little Charles.

  “You can’t go!” His voice was a pleading whisper. “You said you’d give me more room. I want to see my nanny.”

  It hardly mattered now if she made a mess with the books.

  “I love my nanny,” Little Charles said. “She’s the only one I love.”

  Little Charles’s painting was not particularly large. In a few moments, Daisy had cleared the books that had been hiding it. There he stood with his hoop and his dog, Minette. A man and a woman were behind him in the room. The man wore tight trousers and a jacket with a lot of buttons. The woman was dressed in a shining white gown that covered her feet. They both had long noses and a proud, haughty look.

  “Is that your mum and dad?”

  Little Charles nodde
d, his face woebegone. “They’re very grand. I have to call them ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam.’ It’s only Nanny who hugs me.”

  Daisy examined the painting carefully. She could see no other figure in the room.

  “She’s not there, is she?” Little Charles said. “I hoped and hoped she would be, but she’s just a commoner and commoners aren’t good enough to be painted.”

  “You’re a terrible snob, Little Charles,” Daisy said.

  “I know,” he said with great sadness. “All the best people are.” His eyes glistened.

  “Don’t cry, Little Charles.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “I miss her so.”

  “I know where your nanny is,” Daisy said.

  “You do?”

  She nodded.

  “Where is she?”

  “You can’t see it,” Daisy told him, “but there’s a door painted in the back of the room you’re standing in.”

  She leaned forward, gazing at the little scene. “The door is closed. But your nanny is right behind it. She’s got her hand raised to knock.”

  “Does she have bread and honey for me?”

  “Yes,” Daisy said. “Three whole slices. And after you’ve eaten, she’s going to take you out to play. You’ll be able to run with your hoop, Little Charles.”

  He gazed at her, his eyes wide. “Promise?”

  “Promise,” Daisy said. She touched his painted face with the tip of her finger. “Good-­bye, Little Charles.”

  As she walked away, Daisy thought she heard the click of a door and the murmur of voices behind her. Then—quite clear and distinct—a cry of joy.

  Daisy didn’t turn to see. She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and went down the great staircase without looking back.

  She paused halfway. A dark shape was crouched on the bottom stair.

  “Tar!” Daisy cried, running down. She reached for the rat and picked him up carefully. “I thought you must be dead.”