The Ice Garden

by Guy Jones

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a high-pitched beeping sound from her wrist. So soon? On her first visit Jess had been disappointed to learn that, unlike the magical realms she’d read about in books, time ran just as quickly in the ice garden as it did everywhere else. She had half expected that she could spend as long as she liked there and return to the real world to find only a few minutes had passed. This, annoyingly, wasn’t the case. She’d got home to find it was almost morning and so, this time, had made sure to set an alarm.

  As she turned away she caught a glimpse of something moving ahead of her. Or did she? Had there been a shape, there, running through the trees? She glanced back at the bridge. If there really was something in the orchard with her, then that might be her only escape. But on the other side was the forest . . . There’s no way I’m going there, she thought.

  There it was again! She was sure this time. A ripple of darkness behind the ice trunks and a sharp snapping noise. Her heart began to hammer out a frantic rhythm in her chest.

  ‘Hello?’ she said in a weak voice.

  Fruit falling? A tree creaking? If you pour water on to ice, you hear it spit and crack inside – perhaps it was something like that.

  Or someone stepping on a branch, she thought.

  Jess started back towards the heart of the garden, sure now that she was being watched. The cold had seeped into her bones and she shivered, hunching her shoulders. Constantly checking from side to side, she hurried on through the trees. Terror bubbled inside her, threatening to boil over. At last she made it back out into the open. From the top of the rise she could see the wall, rearing up into the purple sky and there, in the centre of it, the thin crack leading back to her own world. It seemed far away, surely further than she’d walked. Had the garden grown bigger or was her mind playing tricks? There was only one thing for it.

  She ran.

  She ran madly, full of fear. She ran down the slope, along the main path, winding through the flower beds and not stopping until she reached the gap. She rested her hand on it, feeling the laurel branches prick the cold skin of her palm. Real leaves, not ice. She looked back. The garden was as pristine and still as ever.

  But, she saw – stomach lurching – it wasn’t empty.

  There was a dark figure standing on the brow of the distant hill. She was right. Someone had been watching her all along.

  The next day was like a held breath. A suffocating blanket of heat descended on the town. In Jess’s house the mercury crept ever upward and, at last, her mother had no choice but to throw open the windows and most of the curtains. ‘We have to get some air running through,’ she said, ‘before we both roast.’ Jess was trapped in even fewer rooms than usual. She tugged at her collar and fanned herself as best she could with the Big Book of Tales.

  She did her lessons, as always. Today there was maths, history and geography. Triangles, Vikings and oxbow lakes. Her mother was distracted, repeatedly pausing to dab away the moisture that pooled at her throat. ‘Can’t wait until Christmas,’ she said at last.

  ‘Can we get a real tree this year?’ asked Jess.

  ‘As long as it’s cooler, you can get what you like.’

  After sandwiches for lunch, her mother settled down at the kitchen table. She worked for a copywriting agency who produced leaflets, brochures and manuals for their clients. Her job was to take whatever splurge of words she’d been presented with and turn it into something that someone might actually want to read. Today she was writing a leaflet that would be given to every new employee of a big bank. Welcome to the family! it proclaimed. The work made her brain dribble from her ears, she sometimes said.

  Jess went upstairs to do some writing of her own, but again no ideas came. Her pen nib rested on the paper, idle. A small circle of red ink soaked through the fibres and spread outwards. For Davey, she told herself. Davey, stuck in his hospital bed, who desperately needed to be taken away to some strange and magical world. She could do that for him. She just had to write a story.

  She created a bare, white room in her mind, with an entrance in each wall. Usually when she did this, someone or other would come in through one of the doors. They might be carrying something with them, or be dressed in a certain way. Once she had two people, they would almost certainly start to speak. Before long the white room would warp and change into something else. A story would begin. But today no one came.

  Instead, her mind rolled back to the night before. She’d hurried home through town, her skin tingling. Someone else had found her place. Who were they? What did they want?

  It was her garden, wasn’t it? She felt colour rise in her cheeks. Other people had a whole world to play in – a world that she would never enjoy. How dare one of them come wandering in like that? And how dare she run? How dare she give up ground so easily? As if she were the intruder, not them.

  But she’d been frightened, and that was what stuck in her throat more than anything. Frightened. Frightened, like the night she’d run away from shadows in the playground, like the moment she’d looked over the chasm at the ice forest, like each and every time she went into hospital. Maybe she didn’t deserve the ice garden. Perhaps the stranger had come to tell her that she couldn’t visit any more.

  Her thoughts were pebbles thrown into a pool. They sent ripples through her mind and came to rest on the bottom, heavy and unwelcome.

  ‘Jess!’ came a shout from downstairs, and she heard the sound of curtain rings scraping on poles. ‘Full Hat please, now.’

  Being in the Hat was like being in a portable oven. They hurried to the other end of the road, where their car was squeezed in, nose to tail, amongst their neighbours’ vehicles.

  Once safely inside, Jess pulled off the hood. The engine coughed for a moment before settling into a throaty, contented rumble. Her mother pressed the button for air conditioning and turned the dial to full. Moments later a delicious stream of cool breeze began to snake through the car’s interior. Jess sat back in her seat and sighed.

  ‘I couldn’t stay in that house a moment longer,’ her mother said at last.

  The two of them sat side by side, relishing every tiny drop in temperature until they were genuinely cool for the first time that day. Her mother moved to turn the air conditioning down but Jess lightly touched her outstretched hand and shook her head. The cold air felt a little like standing at the top of the Sweep in the face of an ice-edged breeze.

  ‘Well, we can’t sit here all day,’ her mother said at last. She knocked the car into gear and see-sawed back and forth until they were clear of their space. The town centre was almost deserted. They rolled over endless speed bumps while a stream of chatter poured from the radio. Out of town they went, past the clusters of corrugated metal warehouses, past office buildings, past the gleaming retail park with its vast supermarket and clothes stores.

  ‘I love this one!’ her mother shouted and ratcheted up the volume. She began to sing along, missing as many notes as she hit. Jess couldn’t help but giggle and soon the two of them were in fits, so much so they had to pull over for a while.

  The countryside opened up around them. Little hedges crowded the lanes. Behind them fields overflowed with golden stalks coming to their full height. A heady scent of pollen was sucked through the air conditioning and dispersed into the cabin. But it was all in shadow, of course, as if seen from behind sunglasses. The specially tinted windows took care of that.

  They traced a large and meandering circle to re-enter town from the other side. The houses were large there – grand things hiding away behind their automatic gates.

  Jess recognized the route. She leant forward in her seat and sure enough her mother swung the car on to Weston Road. The engine grumbled as they started up the steep hill and Jess turned her head towards the park. There were a few people on the grass, some shaded by large beech trees, others lying under the full face of the sun. The playground was all but empty, just a solitary woman pushing a little boy on the swing. She was grateful not to see more
children playing. Grateful she didn’t have to feel jealous.

  They came to a halt at a pedestrian crossing part way up the hill. Jess almost gasped. From here she had a perfect view down on to the conifers ringing the playground and the laurel hedge behind them. She could see the gap that led into the ice garden. It looked so small, so unremarkable. On the other side of it was a pockmarked football pitch, sketched out in tired white paint. Who would have thought that it was the route to another world? The world of ice-apples, the Old Man and the Flying Elephant Mouse! The world only she had seen!

  Her thoughts derailed and mangled. The stranger. The stranger had seen it too.

  They pulled up at a set of traffic lights outside the hospital. Jess stiffened a little and glanced at her mother. ‘Don’t worry,’ she sighed, ‘we’re not going in. This wasn’t all some plot to get you here.’

  ‘But can we?’ The words were out before Jess had a chance to decide if she wanted to say them or not.

  ‘Can we what?’

  ‘Go in.’

  ‘You want to go to hospital today?’ The lights went green and her mother pulled the car up on to the kerb. ‘Usually I have to drag you kicking and screaming.’

  ‘That’s an exaggeration.’

  ‘Why would we go in? We don’t have an appointment.’ Dark clouds of concern scudded across her mother’s face. ‘Unless . . . is it your burn? Is it worse?’

  ‘There’s a boy,’ Jess blurted. Her mother’s jaw opened but no words came out. ‘I mean, I met a boy.’

  ‘You did? Right. I mean. Well, I wasn’t expecting . . . You met a boy.’

  ‘Well, not really met.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Unconscious, I mean. He’s a patient. I found his room sort of by accident.’

  ‘And when exactly did you sort of by accident do this?’

  ‘Two days ago. And then yesterday I read him one of my stories. He liked it, I think. Though obviously he can’t really say.’

  ‘Because he’s unconscious.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Her mother had the look of someone who has been completely left behind.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Can I go and visit him?’

  ‘Jess, you can’t just go wandering into other patient’s rooms!’

  Jess felt her skin prickle. Other patients. She was a patient, even to her mother.

  ‘I just want to see how he is. We’re right here. I read about it – it’s good for people like him.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘To be talked to.’

  ‘I’m sure he has plenty of family to talk to him.’

  ‘But they don’t have stories like mine.’

  Her mother frowned. ‘I could ask Doctor Stannard, I suppose . . .’

  ‘No!’ It was almost a shout. ‘No,’ she said more gently, ‘we don’t need to do that. It’s fine. We don’t need to ask his permission for everything, do we?’

  They pulled away and for a moment Jess thought her pleading had been in vain, but a second later they swung into the car park.

  ‘Hello, Davey,’ said Jess. Her mother had agreed she could pop her head in for a few minutes. ‘The Unfortunate Tailor’ was still on the table by the bed, she noticed with pleasure. She would have to write a new story as soon as she could. She went to fetch the chair but just then the door squeaked open and a woman came in. Jess recognized her at once from the photo. She looked almost as different to the holiday snap as the boy did, though. The laughter had died and vivid purple bags hung under her eyes.

  ‘What are you—?’ she started. Her voice was high and reedy. ‘You’re not supposed to be in here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jess, grabbing her hood to her chest. Neither of them moved.

  ‘You’re not meant to be in here,’ the woman said again. Her accent was soft and lilting.

  ‘I came to see Davey. To see how he was.’

  ‘How do you know Davey? He doesn’t know anyone around here, we only moved just before . . . just before.’ Her eyes darted to her son, lying in the bed.

  ‘I brought him a story yesterday,’ Jess explained, and immediately felt foolish. ‘I have to come for appointments here, you see.’

  The woman’s eyes flickered in half recognition and then all at once a smile cracked open, like sunlight breaking through cloud. She’s beautiful, thought Jess.

  ‘It’s you!’ said the boy’s mother. ‘You’re the one! I came in yesterday and saw it there. I didn’t know where it could have come from.’

  ‘I read it to him,’ Jess said. ‘I thought he might hear it.’

  ‘Yes! He does!’ The woman was nodding vigorously now. ‘I’m sure of it. He hears everything. “The Unfortunate Tailor”, is it?’ she went on. ‘I liked it. Thought it was very good.’

  ‘Is he . . . is Davey . . . is he getting any better?’

  For a moment the woman looked unsteady on her feet and Jess feared that she would cry, but she mastered herself and shook her head. ‘No. The doctors don’t think . . . well, they think he might never . . .’ She stopped, unable to continue.

  Jess felt a great wave of sympathy and pain rise up through her chest. ‘If you want to know what I think, it’s that doctors don’t know as much as they say.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. They’re always telling me that I can’t do something, but half the time I think they’re just doing it to be difficult. I told my mum that and she said I’m difficult sometimes, but she doesn’t mean it because I’m actually a delight.’

  The woman was about to reply but at that moment Jess’s mother appeared at the door. ‘I couldn’t find Doctor and I . . .’ Seeing her daughter had company, she swallowed her words mid-sentence and shifted from one foot to the other. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, in the absence of anything else to explain the presence of two strangers in the room.

  ‘That’s OK,’ the woman replied. Then, ‘Your daughter’s very talented.’

  Jess’s mother stopped for a second and a little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ she said. ‘And I’m so terribly sorry about your son.’

  Davey’s mother bobbed her head.

  ‘Come on, little one, time to go,’ said Jess’s mum.

  As they left the room the woman called out, ‘You’ll write more, won’t you? Promise me you will? I’m sure he likes hearing them.’

  Jess nodded, then paused a moment. ‘I think he’ll wake up soon,’ she said.

  ‘Well, then, we’ll keep our fingers crossed, you and I.’

  ‘Full Hat, Jessica. Now, please,’ said her mother. She sounded stern, but on the way down she put an arm around Jess’s shoulder and didn’t stop squeezing until the doors had opened to the foyer.

  The tension that had built all day broke just before the sun went down. Heavy clouds bullied their way across the sky, locking arms and casting the day into premature darkness. They paused for a second to gather their strength then tore themselves open, hurling great sheets of rain on to the streets below. It bounced up ankle-high from the tarmac. A violent, gusting wind rampaged around the town.

  It was dark enough that Jess could open the curtains and look out, although she still sat back from the window. There was something beautiful about it. Something fierce and strong. A man skittered down the road, struggling to stay upright in the gale. He held a blown-out umbrella above his head. Causes more problems than it solves, Jess thought. Lamps flickered to life all along the street.

  Every now and then flashes of light would tickle her eyes and she’d count the seconds – one, two, three, four, five – until there came a report of distant thunder. It would get louder, the number of seconds dropping fast, until the flash and sound were almost together and the lightning was right above them. Then it would move off until the next wave came.

  They ate in near silence, conversation and radio replaced by the boom
ing and hammering of the storm.

  ‘You’re not scared, are you?’ her mother asked her later, as Jess started up the stairs towards bed.

  She curled her lip and snorted but didn’t feel as certain as she seemed.

  ‘You used to come running into my room, you know. Come jumping right into bed with me. Every time there was a storm.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Jess. And then, after a pause, ‘I don’t think I’ll need to do that tonight.’

  Her mother smiled a small smile. ‘No, I don’t suppose you will.’

  She climbed a few more stairs.

  ‘You know, the first time you saw fireworks . . .’ her mother called. ‘You were scared out of your wits. Kept asking if they’d fall on you.’ She gave that little half-smile once more and Jess turned towards bed.

  The wind continued its banshee howl but the rain eventually stopped. Jess was relieved – she hadn’t fancied exploring the ice garden while completely soaked through.

  Later, there were footsteps on the staircase and in time the light under the door went out. Minutes went by and then Jess climbed out of bed.

  She was halfway into her clothes when an almighty clap of thunder rattled the windows. Seconds later a light came back on. Jess scrabbled at her clothing, tearing off what she could while a shadow moved across the hallway towards her. She jumped under the covers, taking her bundled clothes with her and hoping they weren’t obvious.

  Her mother knocked twice and the door swung open. Jess blinked, as if just waking from a deep sleep.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she was asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Jess yawned and stretched. Don’t overdo it!

  ‘I thought . . . I thought you might be frightened. That was a big one.’

  ‘Big one what?’

  ‘The thunder! You didn’t hear?’

  ‘I wondered what woke me up.’

  ‘Deep sleeper, like your mother.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t scared.’

  Something stabbed at Jess’s heart and turned a little. ‘Thanks for looking in on me,’ she said. Her mother smiled. A proper one this time.