by Hilary McKay
‘Yes.’
‘And I said I thought he’d come out of a book and said you hadn’t read any books.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘But books have pictures as well as words. You remember Max in your room yesterday? All covered in chalk dust? After he got you down the ivy, and we pushed the door open, and Iffen jumped out of the window?’
Louis nodded.
‘That chalk dust was from the world Esmé drew in her art book. Max saw it. He was there. He told us about seeing the animals running.’
‘Yes,’ said Louis.
‘Louis,’ said Max, joining in. ‘It was a big herd of bison, young ones and old ones, so close I could feel the ground shaking. The track was dry and there was chalk dust like a cloud and after they’d passed me I saw why they were running like that.’
‘Why were they?’
‘There were three big cats hunting them. Two running alongside, one behind, I saw them just for a moment, outlined in the dust. Big cats, lion-sized, like Iffen.’
‘Like Iffen?’ repeated Louis in a suddenly husky voice.
‘Yes. Big, like him. Powerful. Not spotted, but big cats like him.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘There wasn’t time to be scared.’
‘You’ve seen Esmé’s art book dozens of times,’ said Abi. ‘That’s where he’s come from, I’m sure. And he’s got so big. You’ve got to let him go back, Louis.’
Outside and alone, Louis had been terrified at the thought of Iffen in the dark. Inside, his fear had faded. ‘I love him big,’ he said obstinately, not ceasing to rock. ‘When he gets bigger, I love him bigger.’
‘He’s wild,’ said Max. ‘He’s meant to be wild. This is his world. Look!’
He began turning the pages of Esmé’s portfolio. In the dimly lit, pale room, Louis’ shadow rocked across an outline of a stag, a bison with a lowered head, more horses, a herd of running antelope.
‘That’s where he belongs,’ said Max. ‘Abi’s right – you know she is. You have to let him go. We’ve only got Esmé’s book for a little while. I’ve got to take it back. Listen, I’ve been thinking, if we put it in your room, with the window wide open, maybe with some food around . . . Will you do something really brave?’
‘What?’
‘Call him.’
‘Call him?’ Louis’ voice went very high and not at all brave, and his rocking became suddenly frantic. ‘Call him? On my own?’
‘No! No!’ said Abi. ‘We’d stay with you, right beside you.’
‘And as soon as we hear him coming we’ll get outside and block the door,’ said Max. ‘Wedge it. We’ll have things ready. There’s that blanket chest . . .’
Max’s voice stopped, like a radio switched off. He stood quite still, staring at the window. Nothing about him moved except the pupils of his eyes. They dilated into wideness.
‘What?’ asked Abi, puzzled, and then she saw as well.
Iffen.
Iffen had arrived.
Iffen’s wild, watching face was staring in at the window. Exactly where Max had first seen Esmé, but ten times larger, filling the whole space. His great amber eyes were gazing into the dimly lit cave of a room, at the huge image of running deer and the rocking shadow over them. It was an alert, hunting gaze.
Terror gripped Max, and it held Abi, too, with her heart flopping like a caught fish, hard against her ribcage.
Only Louis moved.
Louis forgot all plans and all fears, and saw only his dear Iffen, shut out in the night, and he jumped down from Rocky so quickly he left his shadow still rocking behind him, and pushed open the window wide in welcome.
‘Iffen!’ he exclaimed in delight.
‘Tcha!’ said Iffen, and for the last time Louis felt the rough silken fur, the lithe, muscled warmth, and then Iffen surged past, and in a lion spring sailed clear over Rocky and streamed in dark outlines and charcoal blots and gold and grey amongst the running herd and the rocking shadows, and vanished.
‘Wait!’ screeched Louis, and he plunged after Iffen, and tumbled through thirty thousand years, and after him came Abi and Max.
Then the room was empty. Iffen was gone, and Louis was gone. Max and Abi were gone. There was nothing left except the smell of green magic, and Rocky and his shadow moving more and more slowly.
Max and Abi landed in a heap amongst long grass. Frightened crickets sprayed away like an explosion of green sparks. A little distance from them, Louis stood on narrow white track, squinting into the sunlight. Much further away, where the chalk cliffs rose, a great spotted cat leaped from ledge to ledge, higher and higher, until it was almost out of sight.
Suddenly Louis began running, heading across the valley.
‘Louis!’ shouted Abi. Her voice was thin and empty, like a voice in a dream, but Louis must have heard, because he hesitated long enough to give Max time to sprint and grab him. It seemed to Abi then that Louis’ shrieks of protest woke the whole sun-flooded landscape. There were movements, just out of sight, and there was the feel of watching eyes. Most of all there was the knowledge of being in a place they should not be.
And, Abi realized, as she ran to join the boys, they had left behind an empty house.
There was no one at home to call them back.
‘Iffen!’ screeched Louis, and the tiny, moving shape on the distant chalk cliff seemed to pause.
‘Louis, no!’ said Abi. ‘Please be quiet! Hold my hand! Max, there’s no one home!’
But even as she spoke, a noise grew all around them, faint, and then louder, a familiar sound: the rustling of green ivy.
Then a great crash, Max’s bike tumbling down in the hall.
Wind above the chimney in the rocking-horse room.
Rocky’s slow rhythmic creak . . . creak . . . creak.
The house was calling them back.
It was as if the landscape withdrew. The ground felt insubstantial. The colours leached away, and with them the heat and the cricket sounds. It seemed to Abi that, above all things, she must hang on to Louis. Max had hold of him too, and with his other hand he was gripping the top of Abi’s arm so tightly that it hurt.
Rocky came to rest, a painted shape in the thin light from the lamp outside in the street. Cold December air blew through the open window. They could smell the ivy and the dust sheets and the soot from the chimney, and it was over.
Max was the first to move, and he was very fast. He let go of Abi and Louis, grabbed Esmé’s book, closed it shut and gathered it up – antelope, bison, dust, ancient chalk, bears, lions, great spotted cat and the small bright prints of Louis’ hand.
‘I’ve got to take it back,’ he said.
‘No!’ begged Louis. ‘Not yet! Not yet!’ but Max was already gone, and Abi and Louis were alone. They gazed around like travellers after a great journey, half bewildered, limp, blinking to see once more the unbelievable familiar doors and walls and windows of home.
‘The window,’ said Abi, and closed it shut.
‘I wish I hadn’t opened it,’ wailed Louis. ‘Iffen! Iffen! Why did I open it?’
‘Because you loved him,’ said Abi. ‘That’s why.’
Max reached Danny’s house in record time, texting on the way. Danny was watching out for him from his bedroom window.
‘Can you come and get this without your mum seeing?’ called Max in a hoarse sort of whisper.
‘Mate,’ said Danny, who had been waiting for this moment, ‘I can do better than that.’
Then from the window fell Danny’s old Spider-Man duvet cover, attached to a knotted rope made entirely of socks. All Max had to do was post the book inside and watch as it was hauled up, and out of sight.
‘Impressed?’ asked Danny, reappearing. ‘Now bash on the door, and when she answers keep her talking while I sneak down and put this in the kitchen with the rest. She’s got them all piled up on the table.’
He gave Max a double thumbs-up and disappeared. Max obediently bashed on the door, there were
footsteps and then Danny’s mother exclaiming, ‘It’s Max! Don’t stand there in the dark, Max! Come in this minute! I’m making soup. Danny!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Max is here! Have you all got on well with my lovely Esmé, Max? Isn’t it a shame she’s leaving so soon? I bet Louis will be pleased to have Polly back, though! Are you all rushing around tidying?’
‘Tidying?’ asked Max weakly. ‘Yes. I suppose.’
He did suppose returning a thirty-thousand-year-old full-grown spotted mountain lion to its rightful place in time might be called a sort of tidying.
‘I don’t know why Danny’s taking so long! Now, Max, could you manage a Christmas tree? One of Danny’s brothers is selling Christmas trees this month, and we’ve got all the not-quite-straight ones stacked up by the wheelie bins. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. It does seem a waste. Could you carry it, do you think? Oh, here’s Danny at last!’
‘Stop trying to give everyone who knocks on the door bent Christmas trees, Mum,’ said Danny. ‘It’s embarrassing. All right, Max?’
‘All right,’ said Max. ‘I just came to say thanks for the . . . for . . . for the sock thing.’
‘Sock thing?’ asked Danny’s mum, and then there was an erupting, hissing sound from the kitchen. ‘Soup!’ she cried and ran.
Danny and Max sighed with relief.
‘The book’s back in the pile,’ said Danny. ‘Did you get whatever it was fixed where it should be?’
‘Yeah. In the end. Thanks. Danny?’
‘What’s up?’
‘I had a text from Esmé just now, on the way here. It said, Can you manage without me?’
‘Mate, you do know she was probably, almost certainly, talking about babysitting your brother?’
‘Yeah, she was. I do know that. Because he left school without her and we had to message to say he was safe home. It’s what I replied I wanted to ask you about.’
‘Shoot!’ said Danny, sticking his thumbs in his belt and leaning back like a cowboy.
‘I sent back, Yes, but not forever. In French.’
‘In French?’
‘Yep.’
‘How’d you manage that?’
‘Google Translate. So d’you think it was a bad move?’
‘I think it was brilliant,’ said Danny. ‘Google Translate! Saves all that messing about with dictionaries.’
‘I mean saying it.’
‘I think that was brilliant too.’
‘Thanks,’ said Max, and meant it. ‘I’d better go. Thanks.’
‘Wait!’ said Danny, and pushed something into his hand.
It was Max’s lost Nike trainers in a carrier bag. ‘Cleaned,’ said Danny. ‘Washed the laces, even. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Max, quite overwhelmed, and on his way out he chose the biggest bent Christmas tree, balanced it on his shoulder, took the bag in his other hand, and set off for home.
It was a long and prickly journey, but at last he arrived, wrestled his tree through the front door, dragged it into the rocking-horse room, propped it silently in the window and slumped down beside Abi and Louis, now both fast asleep on the sofa. He thought he would wait quietly until they woke up, but after the day that had just happened and the night on the stairs before, it wasn’t very long until he was asleep as well. He woke up to the smell of hot chocolate and Theo folding dust sheets and humming. ‘Hello, Max. Abi. I see we have a Christmas tree. Louis, I need a word . . .’
‘Not now,’ said Louis, and closed his eyes again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The school term ended, and Esmé went back to France. For a day or two Max wandered around feeling lost. He didn’t know where Esmé was – sometimes it felt as if he didn’t know to the nearest thirty thousand years. At first there seemed to be no cure for this. The book from the library with pictures of the Chauvet Cave didn’t help. Writing poems in English and putting them into Google Translate, and then distrustfully looking up all the words in a dictionary afterwards, didn’t help either.
Danny helped. Danny said, after a day or two of this moping, ‘Mate, listen! Next summer, is there any reason – apart from the parents, we’ll talk them round – why we shouldn’t go hitchhiking in France for a few weeks? Maybe say hello?’
Max cheered up a lot at this suggestion and said he could see no reason at all (apart from the parents, and there was months to talk them round), and then he thought a bit longer and asked, ‘But what about money?’
Danny said money would not be a problem if they relaunched the bike-repair and car-cleaning business as soon as possible. In the great collecting of equipment that followed, of buckled wheels and dirty sponges and chains and cables and graphite lubricant, Max began to feel very much better. With the setting up of a proper accounts system with a petty-cash box and a book with expenses and income listed, and a biro tied on with string, he improved even more. He began practising hair styles and cool, but non-smiling, expressions for passport photos. He and Danny both agreed not to mention it to the parents till they’d got the first hundred pounds together. Max had the genius idea of selling car-cleaning vouchers as Christmas gifts. Theo bought two straight away, one as a thank you for his chimney-sweeping friend, one for Polly.
Theo could not stop smiling because Polly was coming back.
‘You said that before,’ said Louis accusingly. ‘You always say it and she never, ever comes.’
Louis was in an empty, needy, grumpy mood. Theo had nit-combed him. Max and Danny had told him in blunt words that he was underage for bike repair and car cleaning, and they would only reconsider his application in six years’ time if he shut up going on about it now. Granny Grace had sent Abi a soft, soft beanie, knitted in shades of gold. Louis had been so jealous when she opened it that he’d cried. He was sick of the world. His heart ached at the sight of the rips in his rug. He didn’t even have his polishing to do because the rocking-horse room was finished.
It looked wonderful. The sheets were gathered up, there were curtains in the window and a fireguard over a real fire in the hearth. Max’s tree was still bare and dark, waiting till Polly came home.
It was time to decorate the house for Christmas.
Abi took charge. They began in the rocking-horse room with paper snowflakes, gold and silver bells, and great strands of ivy. Rocky had a garland of ivy, and there was another hung on the door. Its green stars were Esmé to Max, ever since she’d untangled the leaf from his hair and tucked it behind her ear. Wherever she was, she was still close enough to affect the beat of his heart. His screen saver now was a map of France, and the day before he’d sent her a text:
Très Cool Noël, Esmé!
Mx
And, straight away, one had come back:
Très Cool Noël à toi aussi!
x
He’d shown it to Abi, and mentioned the hitchhiking idea. Abi had said, ‘Brilliant,’ and that she’d back him up if he needed. She was a lot more use than Danny’s big brothers, who’d unanimously agreed he was mad.
She was being very bossy about the snowflakes and bells, but Max didn’t mind at all.
‘Wow, looking good!’ Theo exclaimed when he came in to see how they were all getting on. ‘Now, I’ve got to go out to pick something up . . .’ He nodded at Max and Abi, and they nodded back and gave each other significant and secret looks over Louis’ head. ‘So,’ Theo continued, ‘no climbing the walls, no biking down stairs, no frostbite, no touching the fire – Louis, that’s you! Be good, and I’ll bring us back pizza.’
Louis, who was slumped gloomily on Rocky not helping with anything, said he couldn’t touch the fire because they’d put it in a cage and he didn’t like pizza any more.
‘What do you like?’ asked Theo, and Louis said, ‘Nothing, only rocking,’ and he rocked very slowly, with his face half buried in Rocky’s garland. The leaves were Iffen again, pouring through the window in his cloak of crushed green scent, but Iffen was gone and the magic was gone too. Esmé was gone, Mrs Puddock was gone, r
ecent extensive investigation had shown that even the black from his nose was gone, and Louis was feeling deserted.
Theo looked at him dubiously and said, ‘Perhaps you should come with me. Only you might have to wait around quite a while, and you hate that.’
‘And Abi and Max would do things without me,’ said Louis.
‘True,’ agreed Theo.
‘I’ll come if I can bring Rocky, and if Abi and Max promise not to do anything good till I come back,’ offered Louis.
‘Totally unreasonable,’ said Theo. ‘Impossible. No room for negotiation at all.’
‘What does that mean?’ demanded Louis.
‘No!’ said Theo, Abi and Max altogether, and Abi added to Theo, ‘Just go, in case . . .’
‘In case, what?’ asked Louis.
‘Traffic,’ said Abi vaguely, but behind Louis’ back she mouthed to Theo, ‘in case it’s early!’
‘Much more likely to be late,’ said Theo.
‘What’s more likely to be late?’ demanded Louis.
‘Me,’ said Theo. ‘I’ll be late, if I don’t get going. Max, Abi, sure you’ll be okay? I could take him, but . . .’
‘He’d be a nightmare,’ said Max, and Abi nodded in agreement.
‘Text,’ ordered Max, indicating his mobile phone. ‘When . . .’
‘I will,’ said Theo, beaming so cheerfully that Louis noticed and lifted his sad head to say no one cared about him and he didn’t love any of them, and at that moment the letter box rattled. Abi jumped up as if it was something she’d been waiting for and rushed out of the room. She came back a minute later with a pale blue envelope from Granny Grace and showed it to Theo.
Theo touched two fingers to his lips and bowed to Abi. Abi held the letter out to Louis, and said, ‘Look!’
‘Why?’ asked Louis suspiciously.
‘Because it’s got your name on.’
‘No it hasn’t,’ said Louis, turning his face away.
‘Don’t be pathetic, Louis!’ ordered Max, so Louis looked after all, and it was true. There was his name.