Scurl, once Captain of the West Wood archers, now banished from the forest by Maglin for his treachery. Scurl, who with his cronies had been cast out upon the lands of the Gorji, where it was assumed they would perish. Two seasons and more it had been since Scurl’s departure and all had forgotten him. Yet here he was, still in the area, still alive, and as terrifying as ever.
Little-Marten felt his whole being go weak as Scurl raised the bow towards him, and drew back the arrow.
‘Now then, Woodpecker. I don’t know what good fortune brings ’ee here to me, but I’ll tell ’ee this – I ain’t likely to waste it. Not this time.’
Chapter Twenty-two
THE PROSPECT OF an extra couple of days off school was always a good one, and Midge had intended to have a long and peaceful lie-in, with time to give some serious thought to the Orbis, and what she could possibly do next. But of course it was Monday morning – she’d forgotten that – and by eight-thirty the builders had well and truly arrived. The dumper truck was already roaring around the yard outside her window, and now it sounded as though somebody was trying to hammer his way up through the floorboards directly beneath her bed.
With a strangled squeal of fury Midge threw back the duvet. Was there never to be any peace around here? She stomped over to the shower cubicle as loudly as she could, her bare feet banging in time to the hammering below.
George was downstairs, she was quite pleased to discover, apparently having driven over with his mum.
‘We’re just here until lunchtime,’ he said, through a mouthful of toast and marmalade. ‘Thought we might go tobogganing. What do you reckon?’
The kitchen felt quite crowded. Midge’s mum and Auntie Pat were sitting at the end of the breakfast table, drinking tea and surrounded by the inevitable piles of paperwork, and Uncle Brian was on the phone, staring out of the window and saying, ‘Yes. Yes . . . will do . . . right-ho, Cliff . . . see you sometime this afternoon then . . .’
‘Tobogganing?’ said Midge. ‘Yeah, OK, then. I don’t mind.’ Anything to escape this mayhem, she thought.
‘Hiya, Midge. All right, lovey?’
‘Hi, Auntie Pat. Yeah, I’m fine.’
Her aunt smiled up at her, patting at the neat little lacquered hairdo that always looked to Midge as though it could withstand a tsunami. Midge smiled back and Auntie Pat returned her attention to the list of figures that lay before her. ‘So what’s this then, Chris? Oh, I see . . . you’ve done it that way. Right . . .’
‘I had a bit of a go yesterday,’ said George, ‘while you were out.’
‘What? Oh, the tobogganing . . .’
The room was too busy, and Midge just wanted to get away. ‘Come on,’ she said to George. ‘I’ll go and find my wellies.’
The snow didn’t look as though it was going to be around for long. Already the whitened slopes of Howard’s Hill looked a bit patchy, and the bright sunshine – such a contrast to yesterday’s weather – felt warm enough to begin melting what was left. But you could see where George had been playing the previous afternoon, a long flattened track that ran from the sheep-gate down towards the Field of Thistles, and perhaps this icy strip would resist the effects of the sun for a while yet.
‘But the weather was horrible yesterday afternoon,’ said Midge, as she and George trudged up the hillside. ‘It must have been freezing out here.’
‘Yeah, it was a bit.’ George had both hands behind his back, pulling the red plastic toboggan along by its length of thin rope. ‘Seemed a shame to waste it, though. I didn’t go out until it was nearly dark, and I could only stand it for about an hour. But it had stopped snowing by then. Pretty much.’
They reached the top of the slope, close to the wall where the sheep-gate was, and George said, ‘I’ll go first. Just to make sure it’s safe. It looks a bit more slippery than it did before.’ He manoeuvred the plastic toboggan out into the centre of the flattened track, straddled it and then plonked himself down on the moulded seat bit. ‘Give us a bit of a push, then, when I say “go”.’ He grabbed the rope, and put his feet up. ‘OK – go.’
Midge stood at the back of him, put her hands on the shoulders of his padded jacket and gave him a good shove. ‘Agh!’ She nearly overbalanced, and slithered a little way down the track before she could right herself. She looked sideways to see George bouncing down the hillside at quite an impressive speed. Blimey. Quite a scary speed . . .
‘Who-oh-oh-oh-oh . . .’ George’s fading yell was like that of someone riding a roller coaster, half terror and half excitement, but the sound was broken by every bump that he hit, and there were a lot of them. His head was jiggling about as though it was being used as a cocktail shaker. The toboggan shot way past the point where the icy track petered out, and ploughed on almost to the hedge that bordered the Field of Thistles before hitting a final big hummock and stopping dead. George tipped neatly forward and fell face down in the snow.
Midge could hear him cursing from where she stood. He picked himself up and stomped about rubbing his backside. ‘What’re you laughing at?’ he shouted back up the hill – and it was true that now Midge had started she could hardly stop. She clutched at her stomach and bent over double, seriously worried that she was going to wet herself.
‘Sorry . . . sorry . . . ahhhha! You just looked so . . . funny! Ohhhh . . .’ Midge straightened up and tried to regain some control, but then the sight of George’s angry red face started her shrieking again. ‘It was your . . . your . . . head! It looked like it was going to fall off!’
‘Oh, hilarious . . .’ George’s voice drifted towards her as he began hauling the toboggan back up the hill. ‘Yeah that would’ve been really funny if my brains were all splattered about in the snow . . . what a laugh . . . teeth and eyeballs everywhere . . .’
But by the time he’d climbed to where Midge stood his temper had improved a bit. Now he was grinning again, and there was a glint in his eye . . .
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Your turn.’
‘Ah, but George, no pushing, OK? Let me do it by myself.’
‘Oh, but you’ll need a little push, just to get you going.’
‘No, I mean it. You let me do it by myself or I’m not doing it at all.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Well, you just keep away from me.’
‘OK.’
Midge pulled the toboggan over to the ice slide, and gingerly lowered herself onto it.
‘Hey, how do you steer this thing anyway?’
‘Use the rope – look.’ George came across and leaned over her shoulder. ‘Hold it with your hands a little way apart. Bit more – that’s right. Then you sort of pull the corner up . . . left or right.’
‘Like this?’
‘That’s right,’ said George, ‘Like this!’ and Midge felt hands on her shoulder blades, shoving her forward. ‘No, George! No-oh-oh-oh . . .’
In an instant she was flying down the hard icy slope, and as helplessly out of control as if she were riding a runaway horse, unable to do anything but cling onto the rope. Her feet were too far forward, so that every jarring bump of the toboggan shot straight up her spine and made her teeth rattle. Bump . . . b-bump-bump . . . bump . . . Midge hauled on the rope, more with the desperate idea of somehow making the thing stop than in any attempt to steer it, but then with a sideways judder the toboggan veered from the track and went bounding into fresh snow. There was a final thump as the toboggan disappeared from beneath her, the world did a quick flip, and Midge found herself staring dazedly up into an unbroken expanse of blue sky. She remained spreadeagled on her back for a few moments, catching her breath. Nothing above her but pure clear blue . . . no edges, no boundaries. Like an endless computer screen . . .
George was laughing. She could hear him in the distance, but the sound was funny somehow. Midge sat up and realized she had an earful of snow.
They experimented and found that by starting from about three-quarters of the way up the slope, there was a reasonable chance
of staying on the toboggan. The compacted snow track had obviously frozen overnight, so that now it was far more slippery than it had been the day before. Again and again they took it in turns to make the exhilarating run, until they were finally exhausted and could climb the hill no more.
‘Kills your bum, though,’ said George as they headed, limping, for home. ‘We should have brought a cushion or something.’
‘Yeah, I can just see Mum letting me use one of the sitting-room cushions. But it was great.’
Three hours they had been out there, Midge realized, and in all that time she hadn’t given a single thought to anything but the toboggan and the next ride. All her troubles and her worries had disappeared. This was how things should be, wasn’t it?
When they got back to the farm they saw a big flat-bed truck standing in the yard. It looked very flashy.
‘Chevrolet,’ said George. ‘Left-hand drive too. Whose is that?’
‘I think it must be that friend of your dad’s,’ said Midge. ‘Cliff Maybank? Come to pick up all the junk from the Stick House.’
‘Oh right. Well that’s where I keep the toboggan. Better make sure they don’t take it by mistake.’
They found Uncle Brian and Cliff Maybank struggling to manoeuvre a huge piece of furniture through the rickety doorway of the Stick House. Midge was startled to recognize it as being the old wardrobe that had once stood in her bedroom. The wardrobe was tilted towards her, so that she could see the top of it, and her heart jumped at the memory it brought back. That was where she had hidden, crouched in terror high up on that dusty bit of planking, hoping and praying that she would not be discovered . . . Scurl and his ugly crew searching the empty room below . . .
Ugh! She blinked and shook the memory from her.
‘To me . . . to me . . . OK, now your way a bit.’ Uncle Brian was sweating with the strain, and from inside the Stick House there came a muffled reply. Not so muffled that it couldn’t be heard for what it was, though, and Uncle Brian said, ‘Kids out here, Cliff. Watch your language.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
Bit by bit the wardrobe was jiggled and coaxed through the doorway, until finally it stood in the sunlight, a shabby old monstrosity.
‘Good-oh.’ Uncle Brian dusted off his hands, and Cliff Maybank emerged blinking from the dark interior of the Stick House. ‘I’ll back the truck up then.’
‘I’m just going to put my toboggan away, Dad,’ said George. ‘Didn’t want it disappearing along with everything else, that’s all.’
‘No, no, that’s fine, son. Make an empty corner somewhere. It’ll be OK.’
Midge felt something brush against her leg and looked down.
‘Hallo, darling! I haven’t seen you for ages.’
It was the Favoured One.
The kitten of last summer had grown into a young cat now. Sleek and smooth her baby fur had become, and there was a wildness about her that reminded Midge more and more of her father, Tojo. Cats were not allowed in the house, and so the Favoured One lived out in the barns along with her sisters. Sometimes she was happy to be picked up and cuddled, sometimes not. Midge crouched down and stroked the pretty head, watching the eyes squeeze shut in brief appreciation. The moment didn’t last, though, and as soon as Midge tried to get her hand beneath the cat’s body, she skipped deftly away, trotting into the Stick House, tail up in the air.
I bet that’s where you live now, Midge thought. It would make sense, what with all the work that was going on elsewhere. She stood up and followed the cat into the darkness. George was already in there, clearing a corner of some curtain poles in order to make room for his toboggan.
‘Baby-baby-baby . . . where are you?’ Midge peered around the cluttered gloom of the little outhouse. ‘Aha!’ She caught a glimpse of white fur, the Favoured One’s tell-tale bib, and then the shape of the cat grew around that. She was sitting on a tall box, tucked away between an old laundry mangle and a milk churn.
‘Poor baby. Is this your home now, darling? And are we messing it all up for you?’
The Favoured One seemed less jittery in the safety of semi-darkness. She allowed herself to be stroked and petted – she even purred a little.
‘You’re lovely. Yes you are. Lovely-lovely-lovely. Yes.’ Midge picked the cat up and cradled her, tickling her under the chin, feeling the soft fur against the backs of her fingertips. But this time she would put her down on the box again, before she grew restless or tried to escape. Maybe that was the trick of it: not to try and force anything.
She saw that the top of the box was covered in soft material, a shiny swirl of raised patterns. And it was padded. A nice warm place, then, for the Favoured One to rest her head.
But what was it exactly? Midge stepped back, still cradling the cat, and considered the box. It was made out of wicker – thin woven cane – and it had obviously seen better days. Some of the cane had become unravelled, and the whole thing looked slightly lopsided, as though somebody far too heavy had tried to sit upon it.
It was the image of somebody sitting upon it that made Midge gasp out loud. The Favoured One wriggled out of her arms and slid to the ground, but Midge was barely aware of it. She just stood there, staring at the wicker box . . .
‘OK. All done.’ George’s voice made her jump, but Midge still couldn’t look away.
‘What’s the matter? You all right?’
‘George – look!’
‘What?’
‘It’s the box. The box from the photograph. You know the one . . . with Aunt Celandine sitting on it. When she was a girl.’
‘What photograph? You mean that one that used to be in the kitchen? Nah . . . it can’t be.’
‘It is. I’ve looked at it a million times. It’s hanging in my bedroom now, and I see it every day. It’s the same box. This one.’
‘Coo. Wonder if there’s anything in it.’ George tried to see if the top would lift up, but although it shifted slightly there was something stopping it.
‘Oh, I get it. There’s a sort of loop . . .’ George fiddled around for a moment, then raised the lid of the box and looked inside. ‘Pillow,’ he said, and hauled out a sorry-looking object. It was black-and-white striped, quite badly stained, and the downy feathers that now twirled in the light of the doorway told of its contents. George delved into the box and had a quick rummage. ‘Yeah, just a couple more pillows. It’s like a laundry basket, I suppose. Phew! Pretty mouldy down in there, though.’ He took his hand out and wiped it on his jeans.
‘I can’t believe this!’ said Midge. ‘It’s just amazing.’
‘Yeah? Well I suppose it is.’ George didn’t seem particularly impressed. He put the pillow back in the box and shut the lid. ‘Amazing that nobody’s slung it out before, anyway.’
‘I’ve got to have it,’ said Midge. ‘I mean, I’ve just got to. Do you reckon your dad’d let me keep it?’
George shrugged. ‘Dunno. Don’t see why not. Well, not unless it’s worth something. Ask him.’
Uncle Brian was watching the truck as it reversed towards the Stick House.
‘Come on, Cliff . . . bit more . . . bit more . . . OK.’ He banged his hand against the side panel and the truck came to a halt, engine dying abruptly away.
‘Uncle Brian, can I ask you a huge favour?’ Midge ran across and grabbed at her uncle’s arm. ‘I mean a really massive favour. I’ll . . . I’ll pay for it if it’s worth anything. Save up . . .’
‘Eh? What is it, love?’
‘There’s an old wicker box in the shed. It’s the box in the photograph, Uncle Brian, you know – the one with Aunt Celandine sitting on it . . .’
‘What?’
‘Come and see.’
Uncle Brian followed Midge and George into the outhouse.
‘This one.’ Midge kept her hand on top of the box, willing it to be hers. She could already see where it would stand in her room, directly beneath the picture of Aunt Celandine sitting on this very same wicker box. It would be so perfect.
‘Hey – I think you’re right, you know,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘It must have been kicking around the place for donkey’s years, but there’s so much junk about that you just don’t notice any of it in the end. I suppose it’s been up in the attic and then brought down again at some point. It does look like the one in that old photo, though, I’ll admit. Anything in it?’
‘Nah. Couple of mouldy pillows,’ said George.
‘OK,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘Keep it then, Midge, if you like it so much. Bit of an heirloom, I suppose. Sling the pillows, though. Take them across to the house and put ’em in a black sack or something – saves me having to sort it.’
‘Yes! Ooh – thanks, Uncle Brian! Thank you. I’m going to put it under the photo. It’ll be great. Help me carry it across, George, will you?’
‘OK.’
‘Better get a move on, then, George. I think your mum’s about ready to go,’ said Uncle Brian.
‘’K.’
The thing was heavier and more awkward than it looked, and Midge and George had to pause for breath halfway up the stairs.
‘Blimey. What did they used to put in those old pillows,’ said George, ‘whole chickens? Hey – I’ve had an idea, though. We could use the pillows as cushions for the toboggan! One of ’em, anyway . . .’
They dragged the box up the remaining stairs, bump-bump, one at a time, and then carried it into Midge’s bedroom.
‘See?’ she said. ‘It’ll go in this corner, right under the photograph.’
‘Yeah.’ George sounded a bit doubtful. ‘Maybe you could paint it or something.’
The old object did look scruffy, it was true, in contrast to all that was new and modern in the room. Midge didn’t care. It was the very same box as the one in the picture above it, and that was what counted. Magical.
Winter Wood Page 23