Their father sat up. "I've missed you both so much," he said. "I can't believe we're here together again."
"But how could this happen?" Charlotte said. "You were dead. We scattered your ashes with Mummy. And Mummy, where is she?"
"Mummy is fine," Michael said. "She's asleep in the secret garden. Do you remember—you all fell asleep after you had your picnic?"
"But we woke up and everybody had gone."
"No. You’re still there, sleeping next to Mummy."
"Is this a dream?"
"I don't think so, not quite. Our souls have been brought together."
Ben stopped hugging his father for a moment to say something. "Why can't Mummy be here with us?"
Michael held his children close. "Mummy needs to say goodbye," he said. "Her life will go on without me. I will always love her and she will always love me, but I haven't been her husband for two years. Time is easing her pain and it will continue to do so. The difference with you two," he hugged them tighter than ever, "is that I will always be your Daddy. From the day you were born until the end of time."
Ben cuddled his father and Charlotte sniffed to stifle a cry.
"Hey," he said, getting to his feet. "Enough moping around. Do you want to build a snowman?"
The situation felt real and unreal at the same time. Real, because they were there with their father, Michael—they could feel his embrace and talk to him as if he were still alive—but also unreal because they knew deep down they had scattered the ashes of his body and they were about to build a snowman in summer clothes with snow that didn't feel cold to the touch. Without gloves on, their fingers should have felt like they were going to get frostbite and fall off, but they rolled the enormous snowball that would be the snowman's body without a shiver. Then they started on the head.
"It's too tall," Charlotte said as they rolled what was supposed to be the snowman's head up to its body, which they had made taller than Michael.
"We'll have to make the body smaller," Ben said.
"After everything you did to get to Pistol Pond, are you going to let this beat you?" Michael said.
"How do you know what we had to do?" Charlotte said.
"I know what you had to do, because I set it up."
"You set it up?" Charlotte was floored by his words. "How?"
"I'll tell you all about it. First things first—how are we going to get the snowman's head onto his body?"
"It's too high," Ben said. "We can't reach the top."
"Remember what happened at the bridge, Charlotte," Michael said. "You can do anything."
Charlotte thought back to the moment the woman was coming for her over the bridge. The hares had gathered round and somehow she had called on some kind of special magic powers to do what she knew in her heart she had to do.
"Okay," she said. "I know what we can do. Daddy, please can you lift me onto your shoulders?"
Michael bent down and picked up his daughter, lifting her high in the air and sitting her down on his shoulders. He grunted and said, "Hey, you're a bigger girl now than you were two years ago."
"What do I do now?" said Ben, standing next to the giant snowball.
"Throw it up to me," Charlotte said.
"I can't. It's too big."
"You can, Ben. Remember—we're not in the real world. We're in some kind of dream world where we're in charge. Just imagine yourself doing it."
Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. As soon as he breathed out, the hares hopped into view. From her vantage point, Charlotte saw them as they hopped over from all directions, forming a circle around the family and the giant snowman they were trying to build. They were all staring intently at the snowball.
"You can do it," Charlotte said as Ben opened his eyes. He bent down and gripped the underside of the snowball with his tiny hands. As he did so, the hares began to glow with the golden light that never ceased to dazzle and amaze them.
With all the strength in his small body and letting out an almighty roar, Ben stood up and threw the giant snowball into the air. It flew directly up towards Charlotte, who wobbled as she caught it, then in a single fluid move set it on top of the snowman's body. Michael lowered her to her feet and all three of them high-fived each other. They took a step back and admired the snow giant they had created.
"It's enormous!" Charlotte said.
"It needs a face," Ben said.
The hares had stopped glowing, but they remained standing in a circle around the snowman. Charlotte was starting to realise the power the hares gave her in this dreamland.
"What should we use for his eyes?" she said.
"You're supposed to use pieces of coal, aren't you?" Michael said.
"Coal?" Ben said. "Where can we get coal around here?"
"What's your favourite magic word?" Charlotte asked her brother.
"Alakazam," he said, seeming a little unsettled by the sudden change in the conversation.
"Okay," she said. "Get ready to say it on the count of three. Ready?"
Ben nodded and shrugged at the same time, thinking his sister was going crazy.
"Ready?" she said to her father, who nodded.
"One... Two..."
The hares began to glow.
"Three!" With that, they all shouted, "Alakazam!"
Charlotte pointed the palm of her hand at the snowman's face, and at the instant they said the magic word, two bolts of golden light shot from her hand. Two pieces of coal magically appeared, giving the snowman a pair of eyes.
"Wow, that was amazing!" Ben said. "How did you do that?"
Charlotte turned to her father. "Is this something you've done?"
Michael smiled. "You always wanted to be a witch when you were a little girl. You used to dress up in your witch's outfit, jump on your broomstick, and ask me to lift you up and fly you around the house. You would cast spells on all of us and we'd pretend to turn into a frog or be asleep. Then you'd wave your wand again and break the spell."
The memories came back to Charlotte. They were good memories, happy memories. That witch's outfit was still at home somewhere, buried in a toy box or at the back of her wardrobe.
"I wanted you to have a chance to be a witch and use your powers in a good way. Remember the woman at the bridge?"
Charlotte nodded.
"I did that because I knew you were old enough and clever enough to decide that you shouldn't trust her."
Charlotte thought for a moment. "But what if I had trusted her?" she said. "What if I had gone with her?"
"Then we would have seen each other a bit earlier."
"You mean it was you? You were the woman?"
"Yes," he said. "In disguise, of course. It was more fun than those Stranger Danger films they make you watch at school, wasn't it?"
Charlotte laughed. "We just watched that at school last week."
Michael smiled. "I know," he said.
"What about me?" Ben said. "Can I do magic too?"
"You were crazy about dinosaurs and monsters," Michael said. "Your favourite toys were dinosaurs and there were weeks when Mummy and I couldn't take your T-Rex t-shirt off you."
"Is that why I had to spot those monsters in the hut?"
"That's right. I wanted you to see that real animals are beautiful things, but dinosaurs aren't here any more and creatures like unicorns and werewolves aren't real."
Michael watched his son's face as he processed this information. "And yes," he said, "you can do magic, just you’re your sister."
"Really?" Ben held his hands in front of his face, imagining the power that was literally at his fingertips. The hares began to glow as he said, "Let's finish off the snowman, Charlotte, starting with a hat."
He shouted "Alakazam!" and the golden light burst from his hand, shooting through the air to the top of the snowman's head, where a huge tweed flat cap appeared.
They both smiled and Charlotte said, "Okay, it's my turn. Let's give him a nose. Alakazam!"
An orange appeared in
the middle of the snowman's face.
"I'm going to make him smile," said Ben. "Alakazam!"
This time, Ben blasted a sustained burst of light from his hand and used it to carve a smile in the snowman's face. "There," he said as he finished, "now he looks happy."
"He does," said Charlotte, "but he needs a scarf. Alakazam!"
A long, green wool scarf appeared and tied itself around the snowman's neck, as if it was guided by invisible hands.
"Okay," Michael laughed, "I think that's enough. That's a good-looking snowman."
It was better than any snowman they had ever built before; maybe better than any snowman they would ever build again in their lifetime. A silence hung over the scene as they admired their work. The hares twitched their noses and hopped away into the trees.
"So you really did all of this?" Charlotte asked her father. "How did you do it?"
"This place is magical,” he said. “Children have been coming here with their parents for a very long time. It's almost impossible to imagine anything bad happening here, isn't it?"
Charlotte and Ben nodded.
"Well," Michael continued, "it's something to do with all the love and happiness that fills the park whenever people come here that makes it so magical. I've learned that I wasn't the only parent who made special maps for his children and I'm not the first to have my ashes scattered here, either."
"What do you mean?" said Charlotte.
"Come with me," said Michael. "It's easier if I show you."
Chapter 22
Michael took their hands and led them away from Pistol Pond. They walked back down the hill and watched in wonder as the snow and ice melted all around them. Huge clumps of snow fell from tree branches and landed with a wet splat on the ground, but the melted snow didn't gather in pools and create muddy puddles. Instead, it seemed to evaporate, leaving the ground as dry as it had been on the sunny afternoon they had left behind.
Then the light changed. Where the world had been bathed in the cold light of the moon all night long, the light of their surroundings was getting brighter. Charlotte and Ben looked up. Through the branches above, they watched the sky as the colour changed from black to purple, to pink, to orange, to yellow, and then to blue. Small wisps of white clouds hung in the daytime sky. In less than a minute, their world had transformed from a winter midnight to a summer afternoon.
They felt their father's grip on their hands tighten. He smiled at both of them, anticipating that they would ask him where they were going, but the sound coming from inside the walled garden distracted them. Charlotte and Ben stopped in their tracks when they heard it. It was the noise of a playground, the sounds of children playing and parents laughing with them, the air of families having fun together.
But how could this be? They had been alone in the park all night, hadn't they?
The shaded path led them to the gate on the west side of the walled garden, where the twelfth hare had once stood. Michael opened the gate and they stepped onto the sun-drenched grass. Charlotte and Ben were awe-struck by the sight before them.
The garden was filled with children and adults playing together. All over the lawn, boys and girls were running around, playing croquet and badminton. In one corner, three children and their mother were playing with a tower of wooden blocks that must have been at least ten feet high. The tower wobbled more and more as they removed the blocks one at a time, and they cheered when the mother removed a supporting block and the whole thing came crashing down to the ground. The children all shouted, "Again, again, again!" and began reconstructing the tower to play the game once more.
In another corner, a father and his daughter were blowing bubbles. They each had a small wand and a bottle of bubble mix, but the bubbles they blew were enormous—first the size of a football, then a beach ball, then bigger than even the little girl herself. Other children ran over to see the magical bubbles, and they created giant clouds of tiny bubbles, which everyone chased around the garden, trying to pop each one.
"What happened?" Ben said. "Where did all these people come from?"
"They're just like you," Michael said. "They're the children of Hare Hill. They all lost someone close to them and they've come here to be with them again."
"I don't understand," Charlotte said. "There was no one else in the park apart from us, even when we were with Mummy. Where did they come from?"
"You might be a little young to understand this now, but at Hare Hill things don't work the same way as they do in the real world. When you woke up in the garden, you woke up in the world of the map I made. When you had set all the hares free, the thirteenth hare brought you into this world with all the other children. All of these children come here to see loved ones they lost."
It was a lot to take in. Charlotte didn't want to think about it too much. The most important thing was that they were here, with their father, and they should have fun while their time together lasted. Ben was watching the other children chasing bubbles around the garden.
"Can we go and play?" he asked.
"Of course," Michael said, and grabbed each of them around the waist. With one child in each arm, he ran head-first into a cloud of bubbles. He set his children down and all three of them joined the group of boys and girls and parents who were laughing and jumping around, popping bubbles from the almost never-ending stream the girl and her father were blowing.
Hours seemed to pass in the space of a few minutes as they played in the garden, joining in with the others and playing more games of hide-and-seek than they ever thought possible. For all three of them, it felt like they had never been apart. Two years of pain and bickering were lost to Charlotte and Ben. They took their father on a walk around the park, showing him what had happened at each hare, and he explained that he had wanted the puzzles and challenges to help them develop their abilities to solve problems by themselves, to have fun, and most of all to appreciate being with each other. That was something they had lost, and now they had found it again. But the day was now tinged with sadness. Charlotte and Ben shared the same thought, but they were too scared to ask it in case they got an answer they didn't want to hear.
What happens at the end of the day?
As they walked past the stone statue near the first hare, they heard a voice they recognised.
"So you did it? Well done!"
They turned round to see the stone face of the Guardian of Hare Hill smiling at them.
"Yes, we did it!" Charlotte said. "Thank you for your help."
"Don't thank me," he said. "Thank your father. He's the one who set your challenges. I just do what I'm told. You will come back and see us, won't you?"
"You mean we can come back?" Ben said.
"Of course," the Guardian said. "The children of Hare Hill can come back to this world as often as they like."
Charlotte said "How?" at the exact moment Ben said "When?"
The Guardian and Michael laughed together.
"As a child of Hare Hill, you can come back any time you want,” the Guardian said. “All you have to do is go into the walled garden, close your eyes, and make a wish to be here."
"And I'll be here waiting for you," Michael said.
"But you must remember something very important," the Guardian said. "You will lose the ability to come here when you reach your eighteenth birthday. The magic of this park is only for children."
They were filled with mixed emotions. Their father had been given back to them; he would be here, waiting for them to come and see him. It was a miracle, and it would be their miracle to share for a long time to come. But that time would come to an end. Charlotte had ten years left to spend with her father, and Ben had thirteen years.
"What about Mummy?" Charlotte said.
"What about her?" Michael said.
"We've got Mummy, and we can come here to be with you, but is there any way we can all be together again?"
"I'm sorry, Charlotte," Michael said. "It doesn't work like that. Mummy understands, thou
gh."
"What do you mean?" Charlotte was taken aback by her father's words. She thought she and Ben would have to keep their discovery a secret from the whole world, including their mother.
"This was all her idea," he said. "I'm sure she'll tell you all about it when you go back to her, but we discussed this before you were born. When she first told me, I thought she was crazy, but I loved her and I trusted her, and now I know that everything she told me was true."
Charlotte and Ben were dumbstruck. Had this really been their mother's idea?
Michael continued. "She wanted to wait until she thought you were both old enough to deal with it, and when she was ready to deal with you two seeing me when she couldn't."
"But how did she know about it?" Charlotte said.
"When Mummy was a little girl, she was a child of Hare Hill. Her mummy died when she was very young and her daddy – your granddad, who I'm sure will tell you lots of stories about this now—brought her here to scatter her ashes, just like you did with mine."
It was all too much to take in. Charlotte and Ben's heads were spinning.
"Did Mummy have to follow a map and do puzzles like we did?" Ben said.
"That's right," Michael said, "but she was an only child. She didn't have a brother or sister to help her out. That's why it was always so important to her that you two should be friends who help each other out."
Charlotte and Ben looked at each other with the realisation of how painful their bickering and fighting over the last two years must have been for their mother. But they had learned so much during their time at Hare Hill, about the world, about each other, and about themselves, and even though they were with their father again, they wanted to go back to the real world to see their mother. It showed on their faces. Michael said, "Go and see her. Remember, you can come back to me any time you want. I'll be waiting here for you."
"How do we get back?" Ben said.
"The same way you got here," the Guardian said. "Go into the walled garden, close your eyes, and wish to be back in the real world."
"Thank you for your help," Charlotte said as they headed down the path to the walled garden.
The Children of Hare Hill Page 8