by Guy Jones
Owen raised his arm and pointed a single, trembling finger.
She didn’t see it at first. She was about to ask what she was supposed to be looking at when all at once it hit her: there was a steady drip of water splashing from one of the high leaves.
She understood.
Water. Liquid water.
The tree was melting.
And if the tree was melting, then it was the end of the world.
If you weren’t looking for it, you’d have thought nothing in the garden had changed. Flowers still glinted, the air was still sharp on the tip of Jess’s tongue, and the grass still crunched under her feet. But now they were looking, Owen and Jess found signs of the melting all over. There was a trickle down the trunk of a fruit tree, a shallow puddle hidden deep in a flower bed, a sheen of moisture on the surface of a pebble. They even saw running water. It wasn’t much, no more than a hand’s breadth, but it snaked down the Sweep in a certain, continual stream.
The two of them watched for a long time, as if by doing so they could simply will it out of existence.
‘What are we going to do?’ Jess asked, at last.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Owen replied, simply. ‘So we just wait?’
‘Maybe it will stop?’
‘Or maybe it gets worse. Maybe the stream turns into a river. Maybe everything melts away. Every single thing. Even . . .’ She stopped.
‘Even me,’ Owen offered.
‘This is impossible.’
‘No.’
‘Owen—’
‘It’s not impossible, Jess. It’s happening, isn’t it? So it’s not impossible.’
‘Why are you being so calm?’
‘How should I be?’
‘There must be something we can do.’
‘There isn’t.’ Owen dragged his hand through a hedge, sending up clouds of tiny ice crystals that swirled like motes of dust in a sunbeam.
‘You can’t just say that,’ she said.
‘Say what?’
‘There isn’t, and leave it at that.’
‘Take my hand. See? Ice. I know what this means. I told you, the garden’s my home. I know how serious it is. And there’s still nothing we can do.’
‘That’s not good enough,’ she snapped.
Owen shook his head. ‘What would happen if you fell off a cliff?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘I mean, if you slipped and fell, what would you do?’ Jess looked at him blankly.
‘You’d do nothing,’ he said. ‘You’d just fall. And for those few seconds you’d know that it was all about to end but there wouldn’t anything you could do. Flapping your arms, shouting, screaming – none of it would make any difference. That’s what this is. It’s just that I’m falling slowly.’
She felt a surge of anger towards her friend. How could he not see how bad the situation was? ‘We have to think,’ she said.
‘Jess . . .’
‘Why’s this happening? That’s the question. Why now? What’s changed? What started it?’
‘Jess, just stop!’ His face twisted in frustration and the snow whipped around his ankles.
‘If we figure that out, then we might be able to stop it.’
‘Jess!’ Owen’s brow creased and he clutched his temples, as if to grab some pain inside his head. ‘There’s no way. No point.’
‘You’re not giving up, Owen, I won’t let you.’
‘My head hurts.’
‘The world’s falling apart and you’re complaining about a headache?!’
‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. Jess took a step back, alarmed. Owen was shaking his head from side to side, moaning slightly under his breath. His blue eyes seemed almost grey now. ‘No, no, no . . .’ he slurred. ‘Not this, not this.’
‘Owen?’
He focused on her for second. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘go and don’t come back. Go! Please! Jess, please!’ He doubled over in pain, his body trembling violently.
She took a few steps towards him and bent to look at his face. It was as if dark clouds had gathered in the blue sky of his eyes. Without warning, he screamed. It was deafening – the howl of a mountain storm. All at once she was engulfed by a raging blizzard. Everything around her turned white and she had to grip a branch to stop herself being blown off her feet. A razor wind lashed her face. The noise was deafening and the cold unbearable, but worst of all she could feel the violence of Owen’s anger, fear and grief swirling all around her.
And then it was gone. Her ears were ringing. Her face was crusted with frost. There was no sign of him, only a light set of footsteps in the snow marking where he’d turned and run.
‘Owen!’ she shouted, starting after him. ‘Wait!’ She heaved her rucksack on to her back and broke into a sprint, following his trail.
She hurtled up the path, pumping her arms and gasping for air, but knowing perfectly well she couldn’t catch Owen in full flight. On she went, into the orchard. She caught her foot on a root and went sprawling to the ground. The eyes of a Flying Elephant Mouse peered out at her from under a leaf. She dragged herself up once more, emerged into the open and saw footprints heading over the bridge.
Not the forest, Owen, anywhere but there.
She couldn’t stop, though. She couldn’t leave her friend.
Jessica, no! It was her mother’s voice in her head, but she ignored it and hurried on to the bridge, barely breaking stride. The ice was slippery and the chasm yawned on either side. She felt as if she were balanced on the tongue of some vast beast and could almost hear the gurgling of its hungry belly below, could taste its cold breath around her.
With a blast of relief, she stepped off on to the far bank and, finally, paused. From the end of the bridge a narrow path cut directly into the forest. A path.
‘Owen!’ she shouted, and heard her voice echo through the trees, losing power with every repetition. The quiet was broken by occasional rustles in the undergrowth. What’s in the forest? What’s waiting in there? ‘Owen!’ she shouted again. How had this happened? How had the day on which the very thing she’d wanted her entire life – to be cured – finally come to pass, turned into this crawling nightmare? ‘Owen!’ she screamed, pouring every drop of power into the word until it turned into a sob that she had to choke back.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
She was startled by a loud beeping. Her watch. It sounded so artificial here. She shut it off and closed her eyes. It was time to go back. But how could she? How could she leave him in this awful place?
He’ll calm down, she thought. I’ll come back tomorrow and he’ll be in the garden and we’ll work out what to do, how to fix this. And if not . . . She couldn’t finish the thought. If not would have to wait until tomorrow.
Jess reached her house and slipped inside. She hadn’t gone more than two steps when she realized that something was very wrong. The lights were on. It was a few more seconds before she understood what that meant, and felt her heart drop from her body. She turned from the stairs towards the living room just as her mother appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were sunken and red, her skin as pale as paper and stretched tight. There was a stranger by her side. The stranger was a policewoman.
First there was relief, and a hug so tight Jess thought she might never escape it. She smelt the dying flowers of old shampoo on her mother’s hair, felt the warmth of her body through dry skin.
Then came anger, its heat enough to scorch the walls.
‘How dare you?’
Jess knew better than to respond.
‘How dare you just sneak out like that?’
And in any case what would she say?
‘I went in to check on you. Jess, are you listening to me? I said I went in to check on you! Do you know what that was like for me? Seeing you were gone and having no idea . . . no idea!’ The shout clanged around the room. ‘I thought you’d been taken. Do you hear me?’
Jess felt a new kind of sickness settle inside her. It wasn’t a
feeling she could remember ever having before. It couldn’t be placed in a neat little box labelled with a word like ‘guilt’. Guilt was when you took the last piece of cake when your mother wasn’t looking. Guilt was something that came and went like a sudden gust of wind, whipping up debris behind it, for sure, but soon to be forgotten. This was different – deeper somehow. This was a wish that the things she’d done could be undone. That time could be rewritten so her mother never had to feel like this. So that her mother didn’t have to look at her the way she was looking at her now.
She found a name for the feeling. Regret.
‘I pray to God you never have to go through what I went through tonight, Jessica. That you never even have a taste of it. If anything happened to you . . .’ Her mother pinched at the skin between her eyes. ‘After everything I’ve done for you! And you just go walking off in the middle of the night where anything could have happened. Where anyone could have found you and . . .’ She gave a sigh that was almost a moan, as if the last part of the sentence was too terrible to utter, as if she couldn’t bear the ideas in her head.
What kind of a daughter would put their mother through that? Jess asked herself. What kind of a person does that make me? But even as she thought it, she knew that she would have to hurt her mother yet again. Because Owen was in danger, and his world was falling apart. She couldn’t stay away and let that happen. She’d have to go back to the ice garden. Somehow she’d have to find a way.
The policewoman left them alone. They sat across the kitchen table, not speaking. There was no anger any more. A heavy blanket of sadness had fallen over the house and snuffed out those flames.
Say something, Jess thought. Make it better. But she realized that words alone couldn’t help with that. Only time could.
Her mother made herself a cup of tea. One of the blinds had come away from its fixing and the washed-out glow of morning light began to creep through. Out of habit Jess got up and rearranged it. Only when it was done did she realize that perhaps she hadn’t needed to. The thought sent her skin crawling. Could it really be true?
‘Being out there, not wearing the Hat,’ Jess began. How to say it? ‘It feels different. It feels like . . . like something I need.’ Keep going. You owe her. She needs to understand at least some of it. ‘I don’t do anything much,’ she lied. ‘I just wander around and think about what the places I see would be like in the day. There’s a playground in Weston Park. I sit on the swings there.’
‘As far as the park?’
‘It’s like I’m . . . like I’m getting out of my cage. Like I’m an animal who gets to escape for a few minutes.’
Tears welled in her mother’s eyes. ‘I never wanted you to feel that way.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I’ve tried, Jess. I’ve tried to make things be as good as they can for you.’
‘I know.’
‘I tried so hard.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘How long? I mean, how many nights?’
‘Just this last week.’
‘And I had no idea.’
‘Why would you?’
‘I’m your mother. I should have known that something was different. I should have sensed it. Shouldn’t I?’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me.’
‘Why tonight, little one?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It might all be over. You might be . . .’ Jess knew the end of the sentence. She might be better, so why risk sneaking out at all?
‘You heard Doctor Stannard. Tests. More doctors. More people telling me what I can and can’t do.’ As she said it she realized it was true. She wanted to be cured but she dreaded what that meant. She was pleased she could be honest with her mother, even as she lied by not mentioning the ice garden.
‘Don’t you want to know what’s happening to you?’
‘Of course I do. But it’s . . .’ she tailed off. ‘I understand, little one.’
There it was, unspoken. Jess was frightened of the tests that would begin that day. But her mother would make sure she went, just as the doctors had commanded. That was the right thing to do. The adult thing to do. You couldn’t just accept a miracle and leave it at that.
‘No point in sleeping now, I suppose. I’ll make us some breakfast.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Jess blurted out. And I’m sorry I’ll have to leave you again, she thought.
The hospital had insisted she still come in Full Hat. Until they knew what was really going on, it was better that Jess took no risks.
The needle stung as it punctured her arm, but she didn’t look away. Instead she watched her very own blood flow up into vial after vial at the end of the syringe. There were more tests afterwards: things that scraped inside her mouth and lamps that shone on her skin.
‘She’s doing very well, Mummy,’ said Doctor Stannard. ‘Isn’t she doing well?’
Her mother gave a thin smile. They hadn’t spoken on the way there. There was too much to say and yet nothing at all.
Nurses came and went. The minutes swelled into hours. Another doctor was there, asking Jess all sorts of questions. He had a very deep voice, and bushy eyebrows that rolled away from his face like a pair of waves. Doctor Stannard sat in the corner of the room during this part, looking much smaller than usual. Jess started to write a story in her head about a giant who wakes up one day to discover he’s become ordinary human size, which is all he’s ever wanted. But instead of letting him enjoy it, the other humans keep him in a cage so that they can do tests and figure out what’s happened to him.
Most of all, though, her thoughts went to Owen. Through all the talking and the poking and the prodding, she thought of her friend. Had he made it back to the garden or was he running still, deeper and deeper into the forest?
They handed her mother a piece of paper. Jess leant over to look. It was a timetable. The next few weeks of her life were laid out in a series of boxes and bullet points. How can they expect me to do all that? How can they think that’s OK? This, then, was the price of wellness: not to be left alone until they’d taken all the joy of it away.
‘Can I go outside?’
‘Not for now, Jess. Not until we’re sure there isn’t still some damage happening that we just can’t see.’
‘Mum?’
‘Listen to Doctor.’
‘But—’
‘I said listen to Doctor.’
‘So, I’m better, but I can’t enjoy it? I still need to hide away like some thing.’
Her mother’s face flickered, as if she were flinching from a blow. ‘Jess—’ she began, but didn’t get a chance to say more.
‘I’m better. I’m cured,’ Jess shouted. ‘But I’m still not normal, am I? I’ll never be normal to you.’ She stood so quickly her chair fell backwards, clattering into the silence of the room. Without another word, she turned and left, but the moment she was in the corridor a wave of something unpleasant came over her. You’re making it worse, she thought. Why was she snapping at her mother for something that wasn’t her fault? But then why wouldn’t she stand up to Doctor Stannard? Why wouldn’t she take Jess’s side just this once?
She realized she’d been staring into space only when there were shouts from behind her and she had to press herself against the wall to avoid being trampled by a pack of doctors and nurses who came hurtling along the corridor. She saw them all vanish through a door. All of a sudden, her blood went cold.
It was Davey’s room.
She’d been so wrapped up in what was happening with Owen and in her argument with her mother, she’d barely thought of the sleeping boy. But now her fear for him came bubbling back up and she sprinted to the doorway.
There was a crowd of people clustered around his bed. Orders were shouted and actions carried out, but to Jess it seemed like nothing but awful, desperate chaos. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of him and was shocked to see how pale and broken he looked. The machin
e at his side was wailing a single, high-pitched note.
She eased into the room and stood in the corner, unnoticed. Her body felt as if it would turn itself inside out. Every sinew was drawn as tight as could be and her mind screamed, Please let him be OK, please let him be OK. All at once her head was flooded with the stories that she could write for him. Stories of genies being born from rocks amongst the desert sands. Stories of a child who could turn into a crow. Of a house that ate the people who came to live in it, of a girl who found a magical garden made entirely of ice. She would give everything, every ounce of soul, every drop of energy, every last spark of thought and kindness that she had inside her, if only he’d be all right. If only he’d be better. He had to be all right. He had to wake up. He had to hear the stories that she’d write for him.
Please let him be OK. Please let him be OK. Please let him be OK. Please let him be OK.
There was a hand on her shoulder. She jolted, as if woken from a nightmare. The room had emptied a little. A smaller group of people milled around the bed but they moved without the frantic urgency of a few moments before.
Beep, beep, beep, went the machine.
‘What are you doing here, Jess?’ It was Davey’s mother. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I saw them . . . I saw them all running in.’
‘I know.’
‘Is he? Is he all right?’
The woman trembled. She looked swamped by such sorrow that Jess could barely stand it. It was the same look she’d seen on her mother’s face that very morning.
‘Will he be all right?’ she asked again.
‘It happened yesterday for the first time. Days and days with nothing – no change at all. No better, no worse. And then yesterday, from nowhere, he started to crash. And now again today. The doctors don’t know why it’s happening all of a sudden. They say they’re doing their best, but . . .’ Davey’s mother was silent for so long that Jess didn’t think she’d continue. But eventually she spoke, in a voice that was barely a whisper. ‘They say every time it happens it’s less and less likely that they’ll be able to save him.’