‘But – when the badger baiters were in the valley, you couldn’t wait to get at them. You were on our side then,’ William exclaimed.
‘Side?’ Dan asked, frowning. ‘What side? There aren’t sides. There are just different opinions. You lot see it one way – and I see it another. We can all have our opinions. Besides, what have the badger baiters got to do with it? I’m against cruelty. That’s why I hated the baiters. I don’t see your argument. There’s nothing cruel about opening a holiday camp, is there?’
‘Except that half the wildlife will be wiped out and the place will cease to exist in the way that it has done for centuries,’ Phoebe said. ‘Isn’t that a form of cruelty?’
‘They’ll look after the wildlife,’ Dan said, pointing at the paper, which was now spread on the table in front of them. ‘It says so here . . .’ he leaned over, reading slowly from the page, ‘“the natural beauty of the place will be preserved and the animal and bird life will be encouraged, giving countless holiday-makers the chance to observe at close quarters and in a natural habitat the wonders of nature. . . .”’
‘Can’t keep a place to yourself, you know,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s selfish, that is.’
‘So instead,’ Phoebe argued, ‘you’re going to side with some city businessmen, who’ve hit on a way of lining their wallets at the expense of destroying one of the last really wild and natural areas in the country?’
‘Places can’t stand still,’ Arthur blustered. ‘You have to move with the times . . .’
‘Oh, give me strength!’ Phoebe said, and she went quickly out of the kitchen.
‘Besides,’ Dan said in the silence that followed her departure, ‘we don’t know the final plans yet. We don’t know exactly what they’re intending. It’s just a planning application. They won’t be able to do anything we don’t like . . .’
‘Anything who doesn’t like?’ Jack demanded.
‘They can’t put up any buildings,’ Dan said, ‘or chop down trees or . . . anything, without us having a say. That’s democracy. That’s the law of this country. The people speak.’
‘Politics!’ Arthur grumbled, blowing his nose loudly on a dirty handkerchief. ‘Nothing but trouble!’ He raised a finger to stab home his considered opinion; ‘Politics, the law and religion are at the bottom of every disagreement that ever was. No good comes of them.’ And then he blew his nose again.
‘Well, it looks as though we’re going to be on different sides over the next few months then, Dan,’ Jack said mildly, stretching and scratching the back of his neck. ‘Because there’s no way I can sit back and let this happen without a fight.’
Dan shrugged.
‘I don’t want to fight with anyone. All I’m saying is it sounds like a good idea to me. They say it could rival Disney World. Nothing wrong with that. Bring a lot of trade to the area. Everyone’ll profit from it. Including you, Mr Green . . .’
‘Dan . . .’ Jack groaned.
‘You will though. Just think about it. Your hotel will be right on the doorstep.’
‘I don’t want it on the doorstep!’ Jack bellowed.
‘So – because you don’t want it, you think you have the right to stop it for everyone else?’ Dan jeered, scoring a point. ‘That sounds really selfish to me, that does.’
Jack sighed and threw up his hands.
‘Let’s drop the subject. We’re getting nowhere,’ he said, wearily. And, rising from the table, he started to clear away the mugs, putting them on the draining board, beside the sink.
‘I’ve always fancied going to Disney World,’ Dan said, speaking more to himself than to any of the others.
Alice stared at her hands and said nothing. She felt a bit embarrassed that he was voicing precisely her own thoughts on the subject. Although she hadn’t joined in the discussions much, since the night Jack and Meg had first heard the plans from the solicitor, she had listened carefully to all that had been said. And, if she were ‘asked, she would have to admit that she still thought the idea of having an amusement park so close to them was exciting.
She hadn’t said anything to William about her feelings, because he was obviously against the scheme. But she’d tried once to talk to Mary about it. It was the evening after Jack had seen the solicitor. She and Mary had been sitting in the walled garden. Mary was drawing and Alice was bored:
‘I think Disney World would be fun,’ she’d said. ‘Better than just sitting around all the time, doing nothing.’
‘Read a book,’ Mary had said, her voice offhand as she concentrated on trying to get a bit of perspective right.
‘I don’t want to read a book,’ Alice had complained. ‘I want to go on a really exciting big dipper. Or one of those bomber things that make me feel sick. You know the one I mean, Mare . . .’
Mary had turned and looked at her.
‘Why d’you want to make yourself feel sick?’ she’d asked.
‘I don’t. But I’m bored,’ Alice had complained.
‘We can’t be bored,’ Mary had said, quietly. ‘More things happen to us than they do to anyone else I know.’
‘You mean because of the Magician?’ Alice had said, throwing a pebble at a stone. ‘But when he isn’t here – then it’s boring.’
The girls relapsed into silence again, until Alice couldn’t bear it any longer.
‘I’d still like to go on a big dipper,’ she said, in a sulky voice. ‘Or . . . a ghost ride!’ The thought cheered her up at once. ‘Yes, that’s what I’d really like. I want to go on a really scary ride . . . You know the sort of thing. When you have to have your eyes closed half the time and creepy things come out of the dark and brush your cheeks. And things jump out and make your scream . . .’ And she’d got so carried away by her fantasy that she’d made herself scared just sitting there in the garden.
Now, as they prepared to go for the picnic and another day spent swimming and lying in the sun up at Goldenwater, she still thought she’d prefer to be setting off for the best fun fair in the world and that, once there, what she’d like most would be to go on a really scary ghost ride. ‘It’s just one of those things I enjoy,’ she thought with a shrug, ‘being so scared that shivers run down my back and I wish like anything that it would stop. I can’t help it. It’s the way I am. I like being scared!’
6
Ducks and Drakes
IT WAS WILLIAM who started it.
The children were lying on the flat stone beside the lake, where they usually picnicked. When they’d finished eating Phoebe decided to take Stephanie to Four Fields, to visit Meg. The sun was hot and she was worried that the baby was getting too much of it on her delicate skin. Meg’s little farm was only a short distance from the lake, through the woods behind where they’d all been sitting. It would be cooler walking in the forest, she said, and she hadn’t seen Meg since the night of the solicitor’s meeting and wanted to know that she was all right.
Spot got up from the shade of a bush, where he’d been lying with his tongue hanging out, and followed Phoebe. Alice almost decided to go with them as well, but she was feeling lazy and said that, although she might join them later, for the moment she was feeling so full she couldn’t possibly move, not even if she wanted to.
‘Perhaps,’ William suggested, as he stretched out on a flat piece of ground and put his empty back-pack behind his head for a pillow, ‘perhaps if we just wait here, the Magician will come and we can tell him what we’ve discovered. That’d be best, don’t you think?’ And he sighed blissfully.
‘So long as he doesn’t come too soon,’ Mary agreed. Mary, who liked nothing better than lying in the warm sun, was already drifting off into that delightful state, halfway between waking and sleeping, where sounds recede and dreams hover on the edge of consciousness.
So, as the food and the heat worked on them, making them drowsier and sending each of them into a delicious, hazy sleep, William – whose mind always took longer to surrender than his sisters’ – said dreamily: ‘There isn’t a r
iver.’ And that’s how it began.
‘A river?’ Mary murmured, without any real interest. ‘A river – where?’
‘Out of the lake,’ William said, sounding more alert and sitting up as he spoke. ‘There must be.’
‘Oh, William!’ Mary protested. ‘Stop thinking and go to sleep.’
‘No, listen a minute!’ William insisted, scanning the view with shaded eyes.
‘What, Will?’ Alice asked, yawning and then sitting up reluctantly.
‘The water comes in at the top of the lake, right?’ William said, using his working-out voice. ‘Where that waterfall is . . .’
‘Shall we go and look?’ Alice asked, eagerly. ‘We still haven’t explored up there.’
‘Just a minute, Al,’ William said frowning and looking, not in the direction of the waterfall, but towards the standing stone and the distant outline of the yew tree at the bottom end of the lake. ‘That really is very odd,’ he said, speaking to himself.
‘What is?’ Mary asked, getting drawn in against her will.
‘Well, the water comes in . . . but it doesn’t go out anywhere.’
‘It must do,’ Mary told him, sitting up and scanning the shoreline.
‘It’d overflow otherwise,’ Alice said, scratching her cheek, ‘Like leaving the tap running into a bath, when the plug’s in.’
‘So – where does the water empty out of the lake then?’ William asked in a puzzled voice.
‘Somewhere over on the other side,’ Mary suggested, but even as she spoke she could see that that wasn’t possible. The far shore revealed an undulating landscape of rising ground, covered with dark fir trees.
‘No, I don’t think so. It’s got to be the bottom end, Mare,’ William told her. ‘That’s the only place where the ground is fairly flat. Although, come to look at it, even there it rises towards the yew tree.’ Then he turned and stared at the girls. ‘In fact,’ he continued, in a surprised voice, ‘this lake is surrounded by higher ground. It’s in a complete hollow.’ He rose to his feet. ‘This lake isn’t possible.’
‘Oh William, don’t be silly,’ Alice said. ‘Of course it’s possible. We can see it, can’t we?’
‘Was there a current?’ Mary asked, getting up and standing beside her brother. ‘When you swam far out – the other day, when we thought you’d disappeared.’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, not particularly,’ William replied. ‘Why?’
‘Because it would show which way the water is flowing.’
‘Well, it must be flowing away from the waterfall,’ her brother said, beginning to sound irritated.
‘The best way to find out,’ Mary said thoughtfully, moving away from him, ‘would be to walk right round the edge of the lake. Sooner or later we’d be bound to find where the water flows out. It shouldn’t take too long. It isn’t very big.’
But it took them longer than they thought. For one thing, the heat was intense. It bounced off the ground and shimmered over the surface of the water. There was no breeze and every step they took was exhausting.
‘Do we really want to know?’ Alice complained, after they’d only gone a short distance.
‘You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to,’ William told her.
But Alice didn’t want to be left behind in case something interesting was discovered and so she continued to trail along behind them, complaining about the heat and sighing a lot.
After a short while they reached the bottom end of the lake. Here the ground rose gradually towards the standing stone and the yew tree.
‘D’you remember the line?’ Mary said.
‘What line?’ Alice asked.
‘When we first came up here last holiday. We noticed that the tree and the stone and the lake were in a straight line with the dovecote and the house down in the valley and . . . there were other things as well, weren’t there? I can’t remember them all.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ William said. ‘I’d forgotten all that. There was a gap in the trees as well . . .’ and, as he spoke, he turned and scanned the distant skyline above the waterfall at the top end of the lake. ‘There!’ he cried, pointing, ‘there’s the gap.’
The girls turned, looking in the direction of his finger. Just visible at the top of the cliff, immediately above the waterfall, there was a break in the trees.
‘Funny how you get things all confused until you know the lie of the land,’ William observed. ‘That gap up there is probably where the stream flows that becomes the waterfall, that fills the lake . . .’
‘It’s still in a straight line, though,’ Mary insisted. ‘And,’ she continued, warming to her subject, ‘the Magician told us there were three lines up here. There was the Silver Path . . .’
‘The Dark and Dreadful Path,’ Alice murmured, remembering the night of the badger bait. ‘It was me who made it silver again.’
‘We all did, Alice,’ William said, grumpily and, as he spoke, he picked up a flat stone and flicked it, skimming and jumping, across the smooth water of the lake.
‘You weren’t there,’ Alice said defiantly. It had been her deed. The Magician had said so. He’d said she was brave. He’d said he was proud of her. It was so typical of William to make out it was all of them.
‘It really was Alice mostly,’ Mary said, springing to her sister’s defence and adding to William’s annoyance. She watched him as he picked up another stone and bent his body to throw it. ‘And there was a golden path, as well, wasn’t there?’ she continued. ‘That was over towards Four Fields, where Meg lives. Then, between those two paths . . .’ William’s stone skipped twice and sank. He selected another and aimed again. ‘. . . between them, the Magician said there was a third path without a name, marked by all these things in a straight line . . .’
William’s stone skidded across the surface of the water and then, in mid-air . . . it disappeared.
‘Oh!’ Mary gasped.
William turned and looked at her, an equally surprised look on his own face.
‘Did you see that?’ he asked.
‘Do it again, Will,’ Mary said.
‘What? Do what? What happened?’ Alice asked.
‘Don’t tell her, Will. Just watch, Alice. See if it happens for you.’
Alice turned and stared at the lake.
‘Watch what?’
‘William’s stone.’
William took another stone and flicked it across the surface of the lake. The direction it went was at an angle, crossing their line of vision. As the stone, in mid-air between two skips, crossed the invisible line that ran the length of the lake from the waterfall to the standing stone and the yew tree behind it . . . it vanished from their view.
‘It’s done it again,’ William whispered.
‘What did you see, Al?’ Mary asked.
Alice pulled a thoughtful face and scratched her cheek.
‘Well?’ Mary prompted her.
‘It disappeared,’ Alice replied, making the fact almost sound ordinary. Then she turned and looked at her brother and sister. ‘That’s exactly what happened to you, William.’
‘What?’ William asked. ‘When?’
‘William, she’s right!’ Mary gasped. ‘When you were swimming the other day . . .’
‘I told you, I went underwater.’
‘Yes, that’s what you probably did . . .’ Mary agreed, reluctantly.
‘But all the same, to us,’ Alice insisted, ‘you just . . . disappeared.’
A splash caught their attentions, making them all look once more at the surface of the lake. A series of tiny disturbances on the surface plopped away into the distance.
‘Fish jumping,’ William remarked to himself.
Then, as they were all watching, not far out from the shore, a stone fell from nowhere on to the surface of the water and ducked and draked, the hops getting weaker, until it sank from view. And immediately another stone appeared, followed almost at once by a third and then a fourth.
‘Where ar
e they coming from?’ Alice gasped, searching the shoreline to see if there was anyone there, throwing the stones.
‘Out of nowhere,’ Mary whispered.
‘But always appearing at the same point,’ William cried, excitedly. ‘You see? They appear in the air at exactly the same point . . .’
‘How d’you mean, Will?’ Alice asked.
‘Watch! Where my stones disappear . . . the others appear,’ and as he spoke, he picked up another flat piece of rock and flicked it out over the water. It skimmed the surface until it reached the imaginary line . . . and then went . . .
‘Where?’ William asked, his voice hoarse with frustration.
‘Maybe into another time,’ Mary said simply. ‘The Magician’s time. Why not? We’ve got quite used to the Magician coming and going – why should we be so surprised if a stone can do it.’
‘But how?’ William cried, desperately, his face creased with the effort of trying to understand what was going on.
‘We’re not supposed to ask “how”. We’re supposed to just let things happen,’ Alice said, a little smugly. It was a lesson that she had learnt well on their last visit.
But this wasn’t good enough for William.
‘No, Al. That might be right for you. But it isn’t for me. It’s not good enough – just to say it’s magic. I have to know how it works. There must be some logical explanation . . . there must be rules that the magic obeys . . . There must be some reason to it . . .’
During this exchange, Mary had been silent. She turned her back on the lake and looked at the standing stone. Then, staring at it thoughtfully, she walked up the gently rising ground towards it.
The stone was as tall as a man and leaned sideways into a holly bush that seemed almost to be supporting it. There was no carving on it. It was just a single slim pillar of rock, roughly squared into an oblong. Any hard edges that might once have been fashioned by the stonemason’s tools had long ago been worn away by centuries of wind and rain and frost.
The Tunnel Behind the Waterfall Page 4