I remember reading once that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake is born in a cloud when tiny ice crystals stick together until they become so heavy that they start to fall to the ground. Any change in temperature or the amount of moisture in the air as they make their journey down gives the snowflake its unique shape.
And then it’s gone.
I shiver again, my school uniform offering little protection against this biting cold. Looking ahead, the drifts of dead leaves have disappeared beneath a fresh white bandage, the track transformed into a carpet of sparkling snow, illuminating the world from below.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I say, clapping my hands against my arms to try and drive the cold out. “If we stay here, we’ll freeze to death.”
We press on, wading through the rising snow as the flurries continue to fall. It’s almost up to my ankles now, impossible as it seems. The falling snow smothers every sound, but I can’t help feeling that I can hear something else at the very edge of my hearing.
Another tread of footsteps following close behind.
I glance back over my shoulder, but as I peer into the darkness I can only see three sets of footprints.
There’s nobody following us.
I turn back, wrapping my arms around myself as we walk into this frozen world. I feel the snow crunch beneath my shoes, my feet cutting fresh tracks for anyone to follow. Then I hear an echoing tread, each footstep falling a split second after mine.
Feeling the fear, I glance across at Dizzy and Johnny in turn, wondering if they’ve heard this too. But they don’t show any sign that they have, their faces set against the falling snow as we breathe out clouds of icy air.
The footsteps are right behind me now.
I stop dead in my tracks, spinning round to try and surprise whoever’s following us. But the path between the trees lies empty. There’s nobody there.
I think I’m going mad.
“Come on, Charlie,” Dizzy calls, turning back to see where I’ve gone as Johnny pushes on ahead. “We need to stick together.”
Blinking back my tears, I hurry to catch them both up.
The path is narrowing now, forcing us into single file as it twists through the trees. Even though the snow is still falling, somehow it doesn’t seem quite so cold any more. I try and peer through the undergrowth that hems us in on both sides, straining to see a way out as the path turns sharply again.
Then I almost crash into Dizzy’s back, my friend standing stock-still next to Johnny as the path opens out into a shadowy glade. I push past to see where we are.
This clearing looks the same as the one we left, a stand of eight trees surrounding us in a tight circle. These trees look ancient, their broad trunks furred with moss while, at the tops, spiky dead boughs rise up at strange angles against the darkened sky.
I gaze up through these leafless branches to see the moon shining down, the smoky clouds scudding away as a last few snowflakes drift through this silvered darkness.
“It’s another dead end,” Johnny says, his voice despairing as he stands by my side. Dizzy joins us there in the centre of the clearing, the three of us looking in vain for any way out. But as I stare at the leafless trees, I suddenly realise that this isn’t another dead end, but exactly the same one.
“The way forward is the way back,” I murmur, the words mocking me as I speak them out loud. I glance down at the ground, the bone-white sticks and pebbles that spelled out this message now buried beneath the snow. It’s as though every path we’ve taken has been bringing us back to this place.
Then I hear the soft crunch of footsteps, breaking through the crusty snow.
“Can you hear that?” I whisper, my heart freezing in fear again.
Dizzy shakes his head.
“Hear what, Charlie?”
“There’s someone coming,” I say, keeping my voice low in case I’m overheard.
The crunching sound is getting louder now, but I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from. I spin around, searching the trees for any sign of the person who’s following us.
“I can’t hear anything,” Johnny says, his voice sounding as worried as Dizzy’s now. “Charlie, are you sure you’re all right?”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
“Why can’t you hear it?” I ask, panic swelling like a rising tide deep inside me. “It’s getting closer.”
The shadows cast by the trees reach towards me, and as my eyes flick over them something seems to click inside my mind. My gaze flits up to the stag-headed branches, their shapes silhouetted against the silvery light. I’ve seen these shapes before. Dazed, I turn round slowly, trying to catch this fleeting memory as it dangles out of reach.
The trees almost look like people, standing with their crooked arms outstretched. I stretch my own arms out, mirroring their shapes as the memory sharpens into view.
“Charlie, what’s wrong?”
As well as using Morse code, scouts can use semaphore to send messages. A scout holds up two flags with his arms stretched out, each letter of the message made by the angles he holds his arms at. I remember standing in my bedroom with Dad’s scouting book open on the desk in front of me, my arms stretching into different shapes as I practised these semaphore signals.
I do the same again now, the world slowly turning as each tree turns into a letter in my mind.
“It is time.”
As the words leave my mouth, the world seems to stop. Silence fills the woods as a falling snowflake hangs suspended in front of my face. I stare at it in astonishment; the delicate star of snow crystals frozen in the air. I look around to see Dizzy and Johnny are frozen too, Dizzy’s hand motionless as it reaches out towards me.
Then the silence is broken by the sound of crunching footsteps. My heart thumps in my chest as I turn round to see the dark shape of a man step out of the trees.
He wasn’t behind us. He’s been ahead of us all the time.
“Hello, Charlie,” he says.
The man is dressed in what looks like a dark suit, his jacket buttoned up against the cold.
He steps towards me, his footsteps crunching through the fresh snow as I stand here frozen. As the shadows from the trees fall across his face, the man looks impossibly old, but then he steps again into the moonlight and I see with surprise that he’s only a young man, maybe not even twenty years old.
A standing chill creeps up my spine, the hairs on my neck prickling as the man steps closer still. This is the very heart of the woods and I know who lives here. I can’t stop my voice from shaking as I speak my fear out loud.
“Are you Old Crony?”
The man cocks his head to one side, my eyes struggling to focus as I stare into his fathomless eyes. It’s as though he’s standing at the very edge of my vision, even though he’s right in front of me. My gaze keeps sliding off to the side, his face blurring in a way that makes him look young and old at the same time.
Silence hangs in the air between us, every second that passes feeling like a lifetime to me.
“I have been given many names,” he says finally, each word as crisp as snow. “Some used to call me Cronos. But Old Crony seems to fit this place, for now.”
I should be more frightened than I am. My very worst fear is standing right in front of me. But I never thought Old Crony would be wearing a suit.
My eyes dart to Dizzy and Johnny again, looking for help, but the two of them just stand there motionless. It’s as if they’re stopped, just like the snowflake that still hangs in the air in front of my nose.
“Johnny says you eat children.”
Old Crony smiles in reply.
“Your friend is quite right,” he says. “I eat everything in the end.”
My heart hammers in my chest.
“You’re just trying to scare me,” I say, fixing Old Crony with my fiercest glare even though I only want to turn and run. “And Johnny’s not my friend.”
Old Crony stops in his tracks, his brow furrowing slightly as
he stands facing me in the centre of the clearing.
“Oh, but he will be,” he replies. “Or he once was. It’s difficult to keep these things in order sometimes. Everything changes, you see. I have watched this land rise from beneath the waves and seen its mountains crumble into dust. I have seen the seas flood in and watched the forests grow until they reach from shore to shore. I was there when your ancestors climbed down from the trees and I have seen the stars go out across the universe.” Old Crony peers up into the silvered sky, the twisted boughs behind him rising like antlers from his head. “I think I like the trees the best.”
I stare at Old Crony open-mouthed. What he’s saying makes no sense, but somehow I believe every word.
“Who are you?”
Old Crony drops his gaze to meet mine.
“I am Time.”
I can’t stop myself from laughing out loud.
“That’s ridiculous,” I splutter. “Time is what you tell from a clock on a wall – it’s not a person.”
“Look around you,” Old Crony says, spreading his arms wide as the snowflakes hang suspended. “What time is it now?”
Out of habit, my eyes flick down to my wristwatch, the hands on its face still frozen at half past six. Suddenly this feels like a very long time ago.
“My watch got broken when I fell,” I say, my voice faltering as I glance up to meet Old Crony’s gaze. “I can’t tell you what time it is now.”
“Oh, but that is the time,” he replies with a knowing smile. “That is always the time. The time is now.”
His dark eyes glitter in the moonlight and for a second it looks like they’re full of stars.
“But there is no single now,” Old Crony continues, his voice soft in the hushed silence. “You see the world from the place you are standing, but when you move, time and space change too. What is now for you may lie in someone else’s future, while an event that is just a memory for you may be someone else’s now. It all depends on where you are looking from and the direction you are travelling.”
I stare at Old Crony, struggling to make sense of what he’s telling me, but my thoughts feel as frozen as the snowflakes that surround us.
“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible,” I say, shaking my head to try and clear my muddled mind. “How can what’s happening now be in the future or what’s happened in the past be someone else’s now? That’s not how things work.”
“There is no need to apologise,” Old Crony says, reaching out to pluck a snowflake from the air. “It is difficult for you to comprehend. You experience time as something that flows – constantly moving from the past into the future – but this is just a fiction. A story stitched together from an endless succession of frozen moments. Time is not a river but a vast ocean. Every event that has ever happened and every event that ever will – not just here on Earth, but all across the universe – exists side by side in an infinity of nows. And I can see them all.”
I stare at him in confusion, expecting to see the snowflake melt between his fingers, but somehow it stays frozen in his grasp. I watch as Old Crony lifts it to his lips and then with a soft puff of breath he sends the snowflake soaring into the air.
“A man called Albert Einstein once said,” he continues, “or will say – it’s hard for me to remember exactly which now – that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. The laws that govern the universe do not care which direction time flows in. If time suddenly started flowing backwards, from the future into the past, then this world would keep spinning around the Sun.”
I stare up in astonishment as I watch every snowflake that has hung suspended in the air suddenly start to rise; a flurry of ice crystals falling upwards into the darkness. Next to me, I hear Dizzy and Johnny start to move and turn towards them in the hope that they’ve broken free of whatever force has been keeping them frozen.
But their eyes stare straight ahead as they begin to walk backwards through the clearing. The snow scrunches beneath Dizzy’s and Johnny’s feet as they trace their steps in reverse, each footprint erased, the sight of this so strange that it makes my head hurt. I watch as the two boys disappear into the trees, leaving me alone with Old Crony.
I turn back towards him. Nothing makes any sense. Nothing’s made any sense from the second I hit my head.
“I don’t understand.”
Old Crony stares at me, his gaze suddenly terrifying.
“You people chase time, you waste time, you borrow time and you lose time. You say time flies, time heals and time will tell. You are in time, you are on time, you have all the time in the world and then you’re out of time, but you never really understand what time is. You are blinded by the moment in which you live, but fail to realise that each passing moment contains both its future and its past. Can’t you see this now, Charlie?”
My head spins with thoughts of all the things that I’ve seen. The man in the water and a sky filled with fire. All constellations gone as the woods stretched on forever. Mum and Dad arguing, the strange typewriter hidden inside the tree, a baby crying as the world lay in ruins. I think about what Old Crony has told me, but when I try to speak the words seem to catch in my throat.
“All the things that I’ve seen tonight,” I ask, fighting back my tears. “Are these glimpses of the future or the past? I don’t know what any of this means.”
In reply, Old Crony takes a step towards me, gently resting his hand on my shoulder.
“Every life is a series of moments,” he says. “This is what you have glimpsed. Moments in time.” I feel the warmth spread from his fingers, driving the cold from my bones. I look up at his face, Old Crony’s expression now as calm as a waveless sea. “The future is shaped by the decisions you make and the actions you take will change the world.”
Old Crony’s words take a second to sink in.
“How can I change the world?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief. “I’m only eleven years old.”
“I can see the whole of you, Charlie,” replies Old Crony, “stretching through time – all that you have been and the versions of you still to come. You will be so many different people, but somehow remain the same. Perhaps it is only when you look back that you’ll be able to make sense of this. But you will change the world, Charlie. All you need is time.”
The sudden sound of flapping wings turns both our heads to the sky. I watch as a bird flies backwards through the air, its wings beating in reverse before it lands on the topmost branch of the nearest tree. The small brown bird hops from foot to foot on this leafless perch, the grey-white feathers of its chest puffed up against the chill. I recognise it straight away, the same bird that I saw in the pages of Dizzy’s notebook.
It’s a nightingale.
Perched erect, the bird peers down at us with black beady eyes, its tail twitching as if thinking of taking flight again. Then it opens its beak wide and I hear the nightingale sing.
“This is time,” Old Crony says as a rich stream of whistles and trills pours out of the bird. “Every note of this bird’s song is a frozen moment. You only ever hear a single note at a time, but your brain turns it into song. As one note fades into memory your mind anticipates the next. You are trapped in a now, but you still hear the music.”
Silhouetted against the silvered sky, the nightingale’s body quivers as it sings a long drawn-out note, the sound of this filling the clearing.
“The song of time lives inside your mind, Charlie. It is your memories, the good and the bad. It is your dreams for the future and the fears that you hide.”
I can feel the tears running down my face, the nightingale’s song almost too beautiful to bear. My mind is filled with more questions than answers, but there’s only one thing I can ask now.
“Why me?”
Lifting his hand from my shoulder, Old Crony’s finger softly taps the side of my head.
“You were here and I was passing,” he replies with a gentle smile. “Time lives inside your mind. W
hen you fell and hit your head, you caught a glimpse of its great ocean and now it is time for you to find the furthest shore.”
He glances towards the tree where the nightingale is still singing.
“There’s someone that you have to meet.”
Beckoning me on, Old Crony starts walking towards this tree. Not wanting to be left behind, I hurry to follow him, the snow crunching beneath my shoes in time with the nightingale’s song.
Resting his hand against the gnarled tree trunk, Old Crony turns to me.
“This tree may look old, but it is only a fleeting moment in the universe. Once upon a time it was a seed, then a sapling and, in another time and place, it will be something else again. The wood from the trunk used to make a floorboard or maybe even a door.”
He pushes at the trunk and I gasp in surprise as this suddenly swings inwards, revealing a perfect rectangle of darkness.
An open door.
“Follow me,” Old Crony says, and then he steps into this darkness.
I stand stock-still for a second, feeling my heart thump in my chest. Then, taking a deep breath, I follow Old Crony through the door and into the darkness.
For a second I think everything is still covered in snow, the room that I find myself standing in completely white beneath the soft lights. But then I realise that this is just a colour scheme, the furniture matching the clean white walls. A white chair and sofa are tucked against one wall, while on another, long white curtains are drawn against the night. And in front of me I can see a bed, spotless white sheets covering the figure of the old woman lying there, a snow-white bandage wrapped around her head. I think she’s asleep.
I take a step back, feeling like an intruder. But as I move, my shoes squeak against the polished floor and I see a woman turn and step forward from the corner of the room. Her white-and-blue uniform was keeping her camouflaged, the open cupboard behind her filled with soft white towels, but as she stares at me quizzically, I realise that she’s a nurse.
“Visiting time doesn’t start until nine,” she says, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the woman on the bed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”
The Longest Night of Charlie Noon Page 9