by Hilary McKay
Clare listened to all this.
“This lynx, it’s gone,” said Binny. “It’s traveled out of the story. But Rupe. Did he die in the war, or not?”
“You don’t go to church,” said Clare.
“No.”
“Outside the church is the war memorial. With all the names on it of everyone who died. Everyone from this town. In the first war and the second.”
“There were two?”
“Don’t you know anything?”
“I don’t know everything,” said Binny. “Come on!”
The wind helped. It came buffeting across the country, straight from the south. It blew them back over the moor and it was behind them on the long road into town.
They crossed the star shaped marketplace and there was the high wall that surrounded the church, with the gate at one end.
And suddenly there was the war memorial, a high granite cross on a great gray plinth. Words were carved on the cross, and lists of names on the plinth. Long columns, all four sides covered.
Binny was shocked. She hadn’t expected so many names. Of course Rupe must be there. Why should he have escaped, when so many others had not? She caught sight of an R and turned her eyes away and then looked again.
COBLEY R.
Not Rupe, then, good.
Although not good for R. Cobley, whoever he was, thought Binny guiltily, and read further:
COBLEY T.
COBLEY W. A.
All at once Binny couldn’t read anymore. She ached for the stricken Cobleys. She didn’t want to find PENROSE R.
Clare was not hurrying to search the names either. She was squinting to make out the words carved on the cross. She read them aloud. “‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ I don’t know about not yielding,” she said, sounding just like her mother. “I’d probably have yielded. I do it all the time at home. Are you looking for Rupe, or not?”
“I don’t know now. It feels like snooping,” said Binny uncomfortably, and was relieved when Clare said at once, “That’s exactly what it feels like! Like at school when you read the register upside down to see everyone else’s marks! Do you want to come inside and see my font where I was christened?” She headed to the church door without waiting for a reply.
Binny did not follow. A movement had caught her eye. Inside the high wall the churchyard was sheltered from the wind. The wall itself was lined with bushes. They had greeny gray leaves and long triangular flower heads hanging down like purple bunting. They were butterfly bushes and the movement Binny had seen was butterflies. Dozens of butterflies. Brown and amber, black and scarlet, peacock patterned, paper white, checkered, splashed, and streaked and silver.
“Clare!” she shrieked.
There before her lucky eyes was a butterfly much larger than the rest. Lemon yellow.
“Clare! Clare!”
“What?” asked Clare, shooting out of the church door. “What is it? Stop shouting! You’re not supposed to shout here.”
“Look!”
“Oh!” exclaimed Clare, suddenly seeing. “It isn’t! It is! It’s huge! It’s gorgeous!”
“It’s one of Clarry’s butterflies,” said Binny. “It’s a Swallowtail.”
Sometimes, once or twice every hundred years or so, when necessary (perhaps), when the wind is from the south, yellow butterflies arrive in Cornwall, blown from France like messages.
Time stopped while Binny and Clare watched the Swallowtail cruise between the flowers, pausing for moments, rising again.
“Perfect,” whispered Clare, and even as she spoke, it lifted on the air and was gone. Binny sighed. Clare looked over her shoulder at the war memorial.
“He’s not there,” said Binny, “that was to tell us,” and they looked, and he wasn’t.
For a while they were quiet, silent with thoughts.
“But where did it come from?” asked Clare at last.
“From the wind. From the sky. From a hundred years ago.”
“I’m glad he was all right,” said Clare.
They wandered home. Across the old tennis courts where the echo of balls was like a rhythm in the air, even though the courts had been a car park for nearly forty years. Pausing at the haunted book shop to watch the boy with the limp push back his dark hair, turn a page, drop his head again. The wind, that had blown itself into a gale, had blown itself out again, and dropped to stillness. A kestrel passed overhead with a call like a small bell. They walked more and more slowly, and they talked of the future now, not of the past.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Clare. “Do you think the lynx might meet another lynx?”
For a moment Binny was silenced by this lovely thought, and then she said, “It’s sure to do! In all that space, it’s got to do! Probably has already!”
“Lynx cubs!”
“Lynx kittens! Gareth will be pleased!”
“Could it really happen? Would it fit into the story?”
“Oh,” said Binny. “Easily! That’s the best thing about stories. Once you start to live in them, anything can happen.”
HILARY McKAY is the award-winning author of the Casson family series: Saffy’s Angel (winner of the Whitbread Award, an ALA Notable Book, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book, and a School Library Journal Best Book), Indigo’s Star (an ALA Notable Book and a Publishers Weekly Best Book), Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After, Forever Rose, and Caddy’s World. She is also the author of Wishing for Tomorrow, a sequel to A Little Princess. Hilary lives with her family in Derbyshire, England. Visit her at hilarymckay.co.uk.
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster · New York
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ALSO BY HILARY MCKAY
Saffy’s Angel * Indigo’s Star
Permanent Rose
Caddy Ever After * Forever Rose
Caddy’s World
Wishing for Tomorrow
Binny for Short
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MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Hilary McKay
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Micah Player
Published by arrangement with Hodder Children’s Books,
a division of Hachette Children’s Books
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder Children’s Books
First U.S. edition, 2015
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The text for this book is set in Bembo Std.
The illustrations for t
his book are rendered in ink and watercolor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKay, Hilary.
Binny in secret / Hilary McKay; with illustrations by Micah Player. — First U.S. edition.
pages cm
“First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder Children’s Books”
—Copyright page.
Sequel to: Binny for short.
Summary: While getting bullied at school, twelve-year-old Binny investigates the disappearance of her brother’s chicken and tries to save an endangered lynx.
ISBN 978-1-4424-8278-4 (hardcover) * ISBN 978-1-4424-8280-7 (eBook)
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Bullying—Fiction. 4. Lynx—Fiction.]
I. Player, Micah, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.M4786574Bj 2015
[Fic]—dc23 * 2014033545