The Time Of Green Magic

by Hilary McKay

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Where are they, then?’

  ‘I posted them in the letter box by the school gate. To be nice presents for the postman.’

  Abi groaned.

  ‘Don’t you like the postman? He’s very kind! He brings you letters from Granny Grace! I would love him if he brought letters from Granny Grace to me!’

  ‘Please stop talking rubbish and listen to me, Louis!’ begged Abi. ‘I think Iffen came out of a book.’

  ‘How could he?’

  ‘I don’t know, but things do. Remember the snow, and the shell that I found?’

  Louis nodded.

  ‘So we need to know which book.’

  ‘Why do we?’

  ‘Louis, he can’t stay. He’s getting more and more dangerous.’

  Louis’ face crumpled.

  ‘Do you know what he’d be doing, in his real life? He’d be hunting. Goats, perhaps, or wild pigs. Deer, for sure. Crouching in the long grass, watching the herds race past. The sunshine and shadows all mixed up in dapples on his spotty coat, so he’s nearly invisible. Out in the wild, where he used to be.’

  ‘Did Iffen use to be out in the wild?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not in London?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which do you think he likes best?’

  ‘Which do you think he likes best?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Louis sadly, and turned away. Abi watched his shoulders move, shakily at first, and then more slowly and steadily as his snuffles stopped, and all the while she thought, Which book? Which book? Which book?

  But it was Max who found the book.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sunday morning began early with Theo being called into work. He had shouted the news to the family upstairs, made an emergency phone call, and rushed out to collect Esmé in Polly’s old car. Before anyone was up she was being unloaded on the doorstep, laden with books and art materials.

  ‘You are an angel,’ Theo told her.

  ‘I charge extra three pounds an hour for Sunday,’ said Esmé, smiling angelically.

  ‘Bargain!’ said Theo, and was gone.

  The arrival of Esmé got them all out of bed. Abi wrapped herself in her dressing gown and went down to say hello. Max took over the bathroom, cleaned his teeth twice and practised, ‘Bon jour! Ça va? Très cool to voir you,’ in the shower. Louis wandered, shivering and sleepy, down to his bedroom in search of his clothes and found he couldn’t open the door.

  He pushed and pushed and it was like pushing a wall. It didn’t move a millimetre.

  He lay on the floor and tried to look under the gap at the bottom, but there was nothing to be seen except darkness.

  He joggled the door handle.

  Nothing.

  Louis lay back down again and prodded under the door with an ivy leaf from out of his sock. There was something there; he could feel it.

  ‘Iffen,’ breathed Louis through the keyhole.

  There was no reply and Louis knew why. It was because he, Louis, had deserted his friend. Needed him, loved him and then deserted him.

  ‘Iffen, I’m coming,’ he whispered, and then crept downstairs and outside in his pyjamas. He hesitated, dancing from foot to foot on the damp ground beneath his bedroom window, and then began to climb the ivy. At first he managed quickly, finding handholds and toeholds easily amongst the knotty stems. He moved higher and higher, until he reached the overhang of his bedroom windowsill.

  Where he stuck.

  All in a moment, Louis had gone from not frightened at all to frozen with fear. Now his feet refused to move and his fingers would not unclamp. For a long time he hung there, like a small pyjama-clad starfish plastered against the leaves, first not looking down, and then looking down, which was terrible. Wobble, wobble, wobble, went Louis’ bottom lip, and he cried wet tears on to the dark green ivy.

  In the kitchen Abi ate toast and honey, Esmé spread her drawing book over more than half the table and Max appeared, smelling very strongly of a variety of products that he had acquired at school from the PE lost-property crate. They all had exotic, untamed names like Lynx and Savanna and Urban Rebel and Wild, Wild, Wild.

  ‘Ouf!’ said Esmé, sneezing.

  ‘Bonjour,’ said Max, only slightly put off. ‘Ça va?’ he continued, waving his arms about like he assumed French people did. ‘Très . . . What’s the matter?’

  ‘Everything is good,’ said Esmé, sneezing again, and she ducked firmly back into her book and was lost.

  Max abandoned his French and said, ‘I’m having some cereal,’ in a rather cross voice, as if someone had said that he couldn’t. Abi made coffee, enough for all three of them, and Max mellowed a bit at that. It wasn’t until they’d drunk it, and searched the fridge for yoghurt, and found the TV remote in with the salad, and switched on and off several cartoons and the news, that anyone asked, ‘Where’s Louis?’

  Then, after a bit of calling and hunting, they discovered that his bedroom door was jammed.

  ‘He’s wedged it,’ said Max, and shouted, ‘Oi, Louis! Open up!’

  At first they heard nothing, but when Max tried again, Louis’ voice came quavering back from far, far away, much further than the other side of the door, ‘I’mstuckontheivy!’

  ‘What?’ they called, one after another.

  ‘Stuck!’ replied Louis.

  ‘Stuck?’

  ‘Où es tu, Louis?’ called Esmé.

  ‘On the IVY!’ wailed Louis in reply, and with that Abi and Max and Esmé all raced down the stairs and out of the front door and round the house, staring upwards at the walls, and there, sure enough, was Louis, stuck on the ivy below his bedroom window.

  ‘Louis, you mad kid!’ exclaimed Max, while Abi exclaimed, ‘Cushions!’ and sprinted back inside. She and Esmé collected an armload each and returned to find Max already climbing.

  ‘Be careful!’ begged Louis.

  ‘Me be careful?’ repeated Max, already quite far off the ground, elbow deep in leaves, searching for handholds. He was climbing well to the side of Louis, so as not to put weight on ivy that his little brother might be holding, digging his toes into crevices, and dislodging dust and leaves with each step.

  ‘I’m going to fall!’ whimpered Louis.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Max. ‘Keep still! Don’t twist round to look at me! I can nearly touch your foot! Whoa!’

  Abi gasped. Esmé covered her mouth with both hands. A whole huge stem of ivy detached and swung down from the wall.

  Max dropped two metres, and for a moment or two, hung by one hand.

  Louis gave a sob.

  ‘Shut up, I’m fine!’ growled Max. He launched himself sideways and upwards, attached himself to the wall again, and carried on until he could call to Louis, ‘I’m right underneath you. Hold tight to the windowsill, and then you’ve got to sit down on my shoulders.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Tough. Get on with it. Lower yourself slowly . . . Now, let go with one hand and grab on to some ivy . . . Now the other . . .’

  Below, Abi and Esmé anxiously rearranged cushions.

  ‘OK, now we’re going down like a ladder,’ Max told Louis. ‘Keep holding the ivy to balance. Your knees are flipping bony! You needn’t grip on so tight.’

  He lowered himself carefully, foothold by foothold.

  ‘Halfway!’ called Abi, a few minutes later. ‘Well done, Louis!’

  ‘Well done, Louis?’ demanded Max. ‘Wow, this ivy is loose! Get out of the way in case I have to jump!’

  ‘Jump?’ squeaked Louis, letting go of the ivy and grabbing two handfuls of hair instead.

  ‘OW!’ yelled Max, and skidded vertically downwards in a shower of leaves.

  Esmé grabbed Louis, just in time to stop him tumbling. Max leaped the last stretch. Abi exclaimed, ‘Brilliant! Brilliant!’ and Louis said, ‘Thank you, Max, thank you, thank you!’ and hugged him.

  ‘’S OK,’ said Max, unused to being treat
ed like a superhero, and stomped into the kitchen to finish his breakfast.

  As soon as Louis was back in the house, he bolted upstairs, with Abi behind. This meant that Max was left alone with Esmé, and for once she was smiling and looking at him. To cover his sudden awareness of this frightening and yet wonderful situation, he pulled her art book his way and began studying the pages.

  Some were collages: notes in French, tiny colour blocks, photographs, and maps copied out of books. Others were huge double pages, entirely filled with sketches of animals. Max paused at a great herd of bison racing across two full pages. As he stared at them, trying to fathom their distant, unfamiliar power, he was aware of Esmé just behind him, not sneezing now, or saying, ‘Ouf!’, just standing quietly as he looked at her work.

  Presently she said, ‘You did so good, Max, helping Louis,’ and leaned over and picked a stray ivy leaf out of his hair. ‘Très cool,’ she added, with a laugh in her voice as she tucked it behind her ear. ‘Très cool,’ and she pressed the back of his neck very gently, with two warm fingers. Very lightly, and only for a moment, but enough that Max knew then, once and forever, that there was such a thing as magic. For down into the dizzying deepness of time slid Max, leaving everything behind except the echo of Esmé’s fingers like two warm prints upon his skin. And although he could not look up, could only stare into the book and feel the strange shaking of his heart, he gradually became aware that a warm new world was opening all around him.

  Max found he could raise his head and there was sunlight. His senses filled with summer: a dry grass and chalk smell, the glare of ultraviolet, bees humming, crickets whirring and a rumbling dust cloud coming closer and closer. Bison, twenty or thirty at least, with lighter coloured young ones galloping beside. In a moment they were pounding past, so close that in a few steps he could have reached out and touched them. They were dark shapes, and brown flanks, curved horns and snorting muzzles, racing down a sunlit valley. Behind them, nothing more than faded golden shadows in the dust cloud, a glimpse of two pursuers, leaping cat shapes.

  They were gone.

  Max bent and touched the ground, and it was gritty and real. The grasses were waist height, thin and yellow where he stood, greener under the shadow of the white chalk cliffs. Overhead, as the dust cleared, was pale, achingly blue sky, where half a dozen hawks rose in lazy spirals on the thermals. There was no wind. The crickets, or whatever they were, grew electric shrill. Gradually he realized that he was standing on a track of beaten earth and he turned to see it rising upwards towards the cliffs.

  The heat was dizzying.

  ‘Très cool,’ said Esmé, very clearly. ‘So.’

  The summer colours faded, sunlight withdrew and the sounds diminished. He was back in his own world again.

  ‘So,’ repeated Esmé, reaching for her book. ‘What a morning!’

  He stared at her, speechless.

  ‘You saw?’

  Max nodded, and knew then without her saying, that whatever he had seen, Esmé had seen too. Perhaps many times. How else had she drawn those pictures?

  He shook his buzzing head, but his thoughts would not untangle themselves.

  ‘You OK, Max?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Max huskily. ‘Yes. Oh yes. Yes.’

  ‘Louis should come down and eat breakfast.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Food. For Louis.’

  Max nodded. She wasn’t making sense, but he thought he’d better agree.

  ‘Please, Max, go and fetch Louis, because Theo said, “See Louis eats,” ’ said Esmé patiently, and this penetrated and Max knew where he was and jumped to his feet and then paused.

  Esmé was already at work on a new page, her smooth dark head bent, her slim brown hands busy with charcoal and crayon, but she looked up when he asked, ‘Esmé, how long ago?’

  ‘Louis? Ten minutes, more, since he went up with Abi.’

  ‘Not Louis. These pictures you draw. How long ago, when they were drawn the first time?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Esmé. ‘I think maybe you say thirty thousand years?’

  ‘Thirty . . . Those animals running? Those . . . What is that you’re drawing now?’

  ‘Ours, bear,’ said Esmé.

  ‘There were bears?’

  ‘Bears, yes, bison. Horses, deer. Cats, hyena, rhinocéros . . .’

  ‘Rhinoceros!’ Max rubbed his eyes, and his hands were dusty, his jeans, his shirt, his arms, all white with dust. ‘And it was thirty thousand . . .’

  ‘Years,’ finished Esmé. ‘Oui.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Meanwhile, upstairs, nothing had changed. Louis’ bedroom door was still immovable.

  ‘Help me push!’ he begged Abi, but Abi wouldn’t. Whatever Iffen was, she thought – green magic, illusion, dappled prowler of unknown pages – he was, most of all, a creature that shouldn’t be pushed.

  ‘Leave him!’ she told Louis. ‘Let him go when he’s ready. Come down to the kitchen with Esmé and me.’

  ‘I can’t. He might need me!’ said Louis, once more on the floor peering into the dark. ‘He might be trapped!’

  ‘Nothing could trap Iffen!’

  ‘Well then, he might be dead!’

  ‘Who might be dead?’ asked Max, coming up the stairs behind them.

  Louis didn’t reply. Instead he scrambled to his feet and launched himself at the door one last time. This time it flew open as if no weight had ever held it. It flew wide open, so that Max clearly saw a huge spotted cat spring lightly on to Louis’ bed, pause to glare over its shoulder, spit out an indignant ‘Tcha!’ and take a great curving leap through the window.

  ‘What was that? What the heck was that?’ screeched Max, rushing into the room. ‘LOUIS! Answer me! What was that just then?’

  ‘Iffen,’ said Louis, as calmly as Esmé had said, a few minutes before, ‘Rhinocéros’.

  ‘Iffen? Iffen?’ repeated Max, now hanging out of the window. ‘What d’you mean, Iffen?’

  ‘That’s his name.’

  ‘Did you know it was there? Have you seen it before? Crikey, Louis!’

  ‘Max, he’s not real,’ said Abi.

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean! He looked bloody real to me! Aren’t you bothered that something the size of a . . . of a . . . LION just shot out of my brother’s bedroom window?’

  ‘Course I am.’

  ‘Where’s it gone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, where’d it come from?’

  ‘Out of a book, I think.’

  ‘You’re mad. You’re both mad,’ said Max, staring. At the window, at Abi and Louis, at the place where Iffen had been. And then, without quite knowing why, at the white dust fading his black jeans to grey, his red sweatshirt to pinkish . . .

  ‘I’m going to ring the police before that thing kills someone,’ he said, but he spoke much less certainly than he had a moment before. His panic had passed. He didn’t know what to think, hadn’t really known what to think since Esmé’s warm touch on the back of his neck.

  ‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ he begged, and allowed his spine to slump against the bedroom wall, and then to slide down until he was sitting on the floor, with his knees hunched, and his eyes closed, and the bumping of his heart gradually slowing.

  ‘You couldn’t see him before,’ said Louis. ‘Neither could I, because it was dark and I wanted a nowl. I could see his ears, but nowls have them too sometimes – ask Abi. He’s been coming for ages, bigger and bigger. Sometimes with squirrels. Dead.’

  Louis stopped and looked expectantly at Max, as if to say, I have explained everything. Be pleased.

  Max banged his head against the wall to see if he was in the middle of a mad, jumbled nightmare, but he didn’t wake up into a fresh, sane world, so he knew he wasn’t. He could smell crushed ivy. The window was still open. He had been to a place where Esmé said there were rhinoceroses and there were definitely bison and whatever was chasing them; he knew, becaus
e he’d seen them himself. He was covered in incomprehensible white dust. He closed his eyes again. Abi was talking.

  A balsa-wood raft on the Pacific Ocean. An attic in Amsterdam, and horse-chestnut leaves. The lurch of the bus. She was talking about books. Usually she just read them, and never said a word. But now she was saying really weird things about books and a blizzard . . .

  Max opened his eyes and looked at her.

  ‘It was like a dream,’ she said. ‘One moment I was here in the house, the next I was there. I know it’s impossible. It doesn’t happen always. You have to be reading . . .’ Abi paused, and glanced at Max, expecting to be called insane, but his eyes were looking at her almost as if he understood. ‘You have to be reading . . . deeply . . . with all of you . . .’ she said. ‘You know, how you read so everything else goes away . . . ?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘On the raft I slipped and dropped my book and a wave splashed over it. It’s still a bit damp. It tastes of salt. Later there was white sand. Hot white sand, and I picked up a shell. Another time it happened when I was just looking at a picture.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Max.

  ‘You’re there, in the book world, and then, without choosing, you’re not. You hear a voice, and it calls you back. You called me back from the bus, Max. Louis called me out of the blizzard.’

  ‘Esmé called me,’ said Max. ‘From . . . I don’t know what from. She said thirty thousand years.’

  Max still couldn’t make any sense of those thirty thousand years.

  ‘It’s happened to you too?’ asked Abi, and was surprised at the sudden jealousy that hit her. Yet another private world to be shared.

  ‘Just now,’ Max said, and described the racing herd, the cricket-screeching valley with the white chalk cliffs, the dust that had billowed. He said, ‘Look, I’m still covered,’ and showed them, and he was.

  ‘I’ll show you Abi’s shell,’ said Louis suddenly, and, without asking if he could, raced up to Abi’s room and fetched it. He plonked it down in front of Max, who instead of picking it up looked at Abi and asked, ‘Do you mind?’

  Third time’s the charm, Granny Grace used to say, and then the change.

  Max had made the rocking-horse joke. He had said, This can be Abi’s room, because of the books. Now, for a third time, he had warmed her heart with his hesitant Do you mind?