She waited until the chasm had mended completely – and then, still holding the toy boat, she began to clamber up the mound.
She saw him at once, standing to one side, his back towards her.
Everything had changed: the ground was smooth and flat and the outline of the boat had disappeared beneath a covering of fresh new grass. All that remained of what had been was a light scattering of soil in the centre of the mound.
Rose approached her cousin, her footfall soft upon the grass, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
He spun round. “Rose!” he gasped. He stared at her, his face chalky-white. “I … I thought you were someone else. I thought…”
“You thought what?” said Rose. “It was only ever going to be me, wasn’t it?”
“Yes … yes … of course… Ignore me. I…”
Rose’s expression softened.
“You thought it was that silhouette, didn’t you?” she said. She squeezed his shoulder. “I honestly don’t think you’ll be seeing that again, Phoenix. It’s all over now. Whatever miracle you’ve managed to work up here, everything’s gone back to normal.”
Phoenix bent his head.
“You’re right,” he said. “I won’t be seeing it again.”
He sank down to the ground.
“The trouble is, part of me wishes I still could. Part of me wishes it was here this minute, scaring the living daylights out of me like before.”
“But—”
“It was my mother, Rose. She was the silhouette. She’d been watching me from the moment I set foot on here.”
“Your mother?”
Phoenix sighed.
“I came back to have one more look at the treasure,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself. But then the mound went crazy and I suddenly realized what I had to do. I needed to return the last iron bolt.”
He looked up at his cousin.
“The pit started to suck me towards it and I was almost dragged in. But I managed to get myself back, and just as I’d found the empty hollow and was about to drop the bolt inside, I saw her. The child-ghost of my mother. Exactly as she had been when she lived here.”
Rose stared back at him, open-mouthed.
“She’d obviously spent her entire life believing she was to blame for Lorenzo’s death,” went on Phoenix. “That’s why she ended up here when she died, unable to rest in peace.”
He reached out in front of him and broke off a blade of grass.
“Of course, when she saw what happened to me, she must have realized the same thing had happened to Lorenzo. But I think she needed my blessing too. It was as if she needed to hear it from me that it hadn’t been her fault – that most of what had taken place that day had been beyond her control.”
He held the grass taut between his fingers, then snapped it in two.
“I was only with her for a few minutes and then the rumbling started up again and I had to put the bolt back into the earth. And … and when I turned round she’d gone.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the cry of a solitary curlew circling above them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Phoenix at last. “You reckon I dreamed up the bit about my mother, don’t you? You reckon it’s just what I want to believe.”
Rose sat down beside him.
“I don’t think that at all,” she said. “I believe what you say completely. Why shouldn’t I?”
She turned Lorenzo’s toy boat round in her hands.
“If you really want to know, I think you’re pretty cool. To have worked it all out like that. And to have made everything all right again.”
Phoenix flushed.
He shot his cousin a quick grin. “You’re just about OK, you know. For a girl, that is.”
Rose lunged at him, and the little boat jerked out of her hands and landed on the ground between them.
“What are you going to do with that, then?” she said, gesturing towards it. “Will you take it home with you?”
Phoenix shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I reckon it belongs here at Gravenhunger.”
He picked up the boat and ran his finger over the sweep of the hull.
“I guess Lorenzo never did get to sail it that day, did he? Perhaps we should do the job for him and let it go on the river. What do you think?”
Rose smiled. “I think it’s exactly what he would’ve wanted.”
“Then let’s do it,” said Phoenix, pulling himself upright.
He turned and started to walk towards the edge of the mound.
“Hang on a minute,” said Rose, halfway to her feet. “Phoenix, wait! What’s that over there in the middle?”
Phoenix looked at where she was pointing.
“It’s just a bit of earth, that’s all. The pit had a sort of crazy last-minute fit and chucked up a load of loose soil…”
He trailed off as a brilliant ray of sunlight illuminated something small and bright lying in amongst the scattered earth.
The next moment he was darting forward.
“The silver angel!” he cried, scooping it up. “How did that get there? It’s like it’s been given back to me.” He pressed his mother’s keepsake into his hand. “It was Lorenzo’s, you know. At least, I think that’s what my mother was telling me. It feels as if I’ve got a bit of both of them now.”
He rejoined his cousin and together they made their way down the side of the mound, basking in the welcome heat of the sunshine.
When they reached the riverbank, Phoenix knelt down and settled Lorenzo’s boat on the water.
“There,” he said, giving it a gentle nudge. “Go, little boat. Go where you belong.”
They watched as it bobbed away down the sparkling river, heading for the open sea.
“Time to get back,” said Phoenix, making for the tree-trunk bridge. “You never know, Dad might change his mind about leaving when he sees what’s happened to the weather.”
Rose glanced at him. “Is that what you want? To stay?”
Her cousin nodded.
“Just so long as we don’t go messing about on the mound, I reckon we could have a great time here this summer.”
They shuffled across the bridge and set off through the forest, pausing as they heard an engine purring down the track towards them.
“It’s Dad!” cried Phoenix. “Come on! I’ll race you!”
He charged onward, shielding his eyes against the flashes of sunlight streaming between the trees.
Bursting out of the pines into the stillness of the hot July afternoon, he let out a low cry.
From the branches of the old apple tree, the two wooden swings hung as they had always done.
But they were no longer still.
They were moving together in perfect harmony, backwards and forwards…backwards and forwards…
And above the noise of the approaching engine, Phoenix and Rose could hear the unmistakable sound of faraway laughter.
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
Text copyright © Harriet Goodwin, 2011
Cover copyright © Stripes Publishing Ltd, 2011
Original house image copyright © iStockphoto.com, 2011
Inside illustrations copyright © Richard Allen, 2011
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2012.
eISBN: 978–1–84715–291–6
The right of Harriet Goodwin and Richard Allen to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of
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Gravenhunger Page 12