Elizabeth and Zenobia

by Jessica Miller

  ‘Danger?’ said Tourmaline. ‘I was never in any danger. The King and Queen were as nice as could be. They were going to make me their Princess.’

  ‘But that’s just it, Tourmaline,’ I said. ‘They wanted to make you stay with them forever.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have stayed forever,’ said Tourmaline. ‘Just until Henry’s birthday.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter,’ I said, trying to think of a way to explain.

  Tourmaline looked doubtfully at her feet in their red shoes. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘You were to be grafted,’ said Zenobia. ‘Your feet were to be cut off—snip-snap!—and your legs, or what was left of them, tied to a tree with a strong set of roots. And you would have grown into the tree and the tree would have grown into you until, in the end, you were the tree and the tree was you.’

  Zenobia’s gruesome description turned Tourmaline pale. She looked to me and then to Zenobia and then, once more, down at her feet. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I could stay here a while.’ Her face brightened. ‘After all, we hardly ever have visitors to Witheringe House. Especially’—she gave Zenobia a shy smile—‘visitors as queer as you.’

  ‘Queer indeed,’ sniffed Zenobia.

  ‘Oh don’t be displeased!’ said Tourmaline. ‘I think you’re just delightful!’

  Zenobia blanched.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone as pale or as—as wobbly looking,’ Tourmaline continued. She grabbed Zenobia by the hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Ooh!’ Tourmaline shivered. ‘And you’re just wonderfully cold.’ She dragged Zenobia to the corner of the nursery. ‘I could show you my toy soldiers, if you’d like.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ Zenobia’s voice was strained, ‘will you detach this child from me?’

  But I was too busy looking at the wallpaper to reply.

  I wasn’t imagining it. It was greener than I had seen it before. And, right in front of my eyes, it was growing greener still. Now, the whole nursery was lit with a sickly green light. It bounced off the mirror shards and made strange green rainbows.

  And that wasn’t all.

  It was moving.

  I couldn’t see it moving, but every time I blinked, the plants and vines in the paper shifted around. They crowded close to the wall, pressing against it. Almost like they wanted to get out.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ said Zenobia.

  The tree was moving, as well. It was taller every time I looked at it. Its leaves reached out over all four walls of the nursery.

  I looked at the lichen that sprouted like a beard from its trunk. I looked at its two big branched hands. I looked at the leaves that wound like a crown. And below the crown, I looked at the two knots of wood that looked almost like eyes.

  The tree looked almost exactly like—

  And then, one after the other, the two knots of wood creaked open, like eyelids.

  The Plant King stared straight at me.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ hissed Zenobia.

  ‘We need to leave,’ I said. ‘We need to leave this room right now. Bring Tourmaline with you.’

  ‘I could hardly fail to bring her,’ said Zenobia, holding Tourmaline at arm’s length, ‘as she has practically glued herself to me.’

  I felt better once we were outside the nursery and I had pulled the door firmly shut behind us. I felt better still once I had found, in another room off the dusty corridor, a chest of drawers covered by a dust sheet and, with Zenobia’s help, had dragged it across the corridor to jam the nursery door shut.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Tourmaline impatiently. ‘I thought we were all going to play together in the nursery. I could have showed you my soldiers, or my dolls—’

  ‘Dolls,’ Zenobia shuddered.

  ‘Or we could have had turns on the rocking horse.’

  ‘I just thought,’ I said to Tourmaline, ‘it might be even more fun to play something out here.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You mean an outside game!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘I know plenty of those! We could have a round of leapfrog.’

  Zenobia clutched her stomach. She looked genuinely unwell.

  ‘Or,’ said Tourmaline, ‘I could fetch some cups and saucers from the kitchen and we could play tea parties!’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Zenobia’s voice turned strangely pleasant. ‘What about a game of Hide and Seek.’

  ‘No,’ I rushed. ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’

  Zenobia ignored me. ‘Tourmaline,’ she smiled down at her, ‘you hide.’

  Before I could stop her, Tourmaline scampered down the hall. ‘I know every secret place in the whole of Witheringe House!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You’ll never find me!’

  I sprinted after her down the stairs. Tourmaline slipped through the tapestry. When I pushed it aside and stepped into the front room, she was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I cried at Zenobia, who followed after me.

  ‘You heard the girl, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Playing at tea parties—what a monstrous suggestion! Something had to be done.’

  ‘Now we’ve no idea where she is.’ I started pulling aside curtains and peering under armchairs.

  ‘That was rather the point,’ said Zenobia. ‘She was starting to irritate me.’

  ‘Help me look, Zenobia!’

  ‘I fail to see why you’re so desperate to find Tourmaline. She’s not in the Plant Kingdom anymore. She’s safe now.’

  ‘But what if she’s not safe? I think she could still be in danger.’ I started to tear the cushions frantically from the sofa.

  Zenobia took a pink brocade cushion from my hands. ‘And why would you think that?’

  ‘Because of something I saw in the nursery. The wallpaper was very green—’

  ‘That’s hardly unusual,’ said Zenobia.

  ‘And it seemed to me that all the plants and vines and flowers were moving around.’

  Zenobia frowned.

  ‘That’s not all,’ I said. ‘There was a tree in the wallpaper, too. A tree with big, branched hands and a lichen beard and a crown of thick dark leaves and’—my voice was soft as a whisper now—‘and eyes,’ I said. ‘I think it was the Plant King. I think he wants Tourmaline back.’

  ‘But he’s not going to get her back, is he?’ she reasoned. ‘Not as long as he’s on one side of the wallpaper and she’s on the other.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said and I pointed to a patch of wall behind Zenobia’s head. The wallpaper in the front room was cream satin with a pale pink stripe. But, crawling out from a part of the wall hidden by a grandfather clock, I saw a flash of green: a tiny, coiled vine shoot.

  Zenobia put her shoulder to the clock and started to push it away from the wall. I saw what she meant to do, and I leaned in against the clock’s mahogany case, too. When there was a large enough space between the clock and the wall, we peered into the gap.

  Here, the wallpaper was vivid green. Its pink and cream satin stripes were overgrown with thick green grass and glittering green flowers.

  My stomach sank.

  The Plant Kingdom was growing, creeping, spreading through the walls of the house.

  ‘Tourmaline!’

  ‘Tourmaline!’

  ‘You can come out now, Tourmaline!’

  ‘Stop hiding, Tourmaline!’

  We raced through the rooms of the house, calling her name.

  In the music room, we lifted the lid off the grand piano and looked for her among its strings.

  In the schoolroom, we pulled the atlases and encyclopaedias from their shelves to check she wasn’t hidden behind them.

  In the parlour, we overturned the ottomans and upset the tea-trolley.

  We crawled under the dining room table and even turned up the carpets in the hope that Tourmaline had somehow concealed herself beneath them.

  But she was nowhere to be found.

  And everywhere we went, the Plant Kingdom followed, creeping and crawling th
rough the wallpaper, turning it green.

  Finally, we burst into the front room once more. We stood, gathering our breath.

  The wallpaper plants around us grew thicker and thicker. I started to wonder if I would ever see Tourmaline again.

  ‘Of course you’ll see her again,’ snapped Zenobia. ‘We only need to find her.’

  ‘We wouldn’t need to find her if you hadn’t told her to run off and hide.’

  ‘In my defence, Elizabeth, she had proposed a game of leapfrog—’

  I interrupted Zenobia. ‘That’s no reason to—’

  She interrupted me right back. ‘I don’t know what leapfrog is—’

  Now, she was making me really angry. ‘Of all the thoughtless things—’

  ‘And I certainly don’t intend to find out!’

  Before our bickering could explode into a proper argument, a tearing sound came from above us. Plaster flakes rained down onto the carpet.

  A thick green vine had pushed right through the wallpaper. It crawled up along the ceiling. And it wrapped itself through the chandelier before our eyes.

  ‘It’s coming out of the wall,’ I breathed, half in wonder, half in fright. ‘It’s coming in here.’

  The air split with the crack of shattered porcelain. The palm trees were growing out of their ornamental pots, sending showers of soil across the floor. Their trunks sprouted up. Soon their fronds reached the ceiling.

  Grasses, blooming with wildflowers, sprouted up from the fibres of the Persian carpet.

  And over all four walls, leafy tendrils started to slither out from the wallpaper. They twined around chairs and tables. They swallowed up the grandfather clock.

  I stood as if glued to the spot.

  I felt a cold hand wrap over mine. ‘We need to find Tourmaline,’ said Zenobia grimly. ‘And quickly.’

  We waded through the grass. It grew as high as my waist and rustled when I walked through it. Zenobia pulled me free when a sheaf of grass coiled itself around my ankle. Then I untangled Zenobia when she got caught in a thicket of vivid purple wildflowers. ‘Ugh,’ she said, shaking their tendrils from her. ‘Flowers. Hurry, get them off me!’

  Finally, we were through the grass. We started up the staircase. I hoped we would find Tourmaline somewhere on the second floor. And I hoped the Plant Kingdom wouldn’t follow us.

  But we had only climbed the first few steps when the banisters either side of us became slender-branched saplings. They grew taller and wider. By the time we reached the top, the staircase was shaded by a grove of trees.

  We ran from room to room looking for Tourmaline. The plants followed close behind. We came into the library. ‘Tourmaline!’ I called. ‘Tourmaline, please come out!’ My voice was raw from yelling.

  I looked for her in the corridors, between shelves and behind Father’s desk and under the globe of the world. Zenobia spread her hands wide and shook her head. She hadn’t found her either.

  There was a low rumbling sound. We stood and watched as one by one, the bookshelves lining the walls warped and twisted and grew branches and leaves, until we were standing in a forest where books grew like fruit from the trees.

  We edged out of the library and down the corridor, until we came to the flagstone staircase that led down to the kitchen.

  Zenobia started down the steps. I took one last look over my shoulder at the thickening forest, and followed her.

  At the door to the kitchen, Zenobia hesitated. Perhaps she was wondering, like I was, what we would find behind it.

  With a burst of resolve, she pushed the door open.

  The kitchen, it seemed, was safe from the Plant Kingdom. Sunlight fell through its windows and onto the copper pots that bubbled on the stove and the strings of onions and frilled heads of cabbage that lay on the table.

  And while the rest of the house was filled with the rustling of grass and leaves and the creaking of tree branches, here it was quiet. Almost silent.

  Almost.

  Zenobia tilted her head towards the bread basket and lifted one eyebrow.

  I moved closer.

  From the basket came the soft but unmistakable sound of a small high voice, humming to itself.

  I lifted the basket to see Tourmaline, covered in flour and wearing a wide smile on her face.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ she said. ‘I know all the very best places to hide!’

  I squeezed Tourmaline’s hands. ‘I’m so glad we found you,’ I said.

  ‘Well of course,’ said Tourmaline. ‘That’s how the game works.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ Zenobia’s voice was low and tight. ‘Look.’

  A vine was pushing through the gap between the door and the floor.

  It was only a slim tendril, but it was crawling very fast over the flagstone floor. And it was reaching out towards Tourmaline.

  I looked around wildly for a way out, and I spied a door that led outside. ‘Into the garden,’ I said, and we tumbled out, into sunshine.

  At least the Plant Kingdom hadn’t crept into the garden. The trees and bushes here were just as dead and grey as ever. Even the weeds were well-behaved.

  ‘It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?’ Tourmaline tugged on Zenobia’s hand. ‘And look at those fluffy white clouds! See how that one looks like a pony? And that one there is exactly like a Christmas tree!’

  ‘If she says one more word to me about clouds,’ hissed Zenobia, ‘I will cut off her feet myself.’

  I looked back at the house. Most of its windows had been smashed by branches. Vines as thick as rope were wrapped around it. They had dislodged one of the stone gargoyles that I so disliked and toppled it to the ground where it now lay in pieces.

  The house looked like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, only the bushes here had not taken a hundred years to grow—they had sprung up in minutes.

  ‘And that cloud over there,’ I heard Tourmaline say, ‘looks like a sweet little—oh! Oh!’

  I spun around.

  My heart clenched.

  The dead garden was filled with life.

  Dry, grey grass shot up around us. Trees pressed close and blotted out the sun. Weeds and thistles slithered over our feet and pulled at our ankles.

  Only a narrow path in front of us was free of overgrown weeds.

  Before we could decide if we wanted to follow it or not, the earth rose up, rippling with tree roots, under our feet and sent us falling forward, onto the path.

  Tourmaline, bewildered, started to run. Zenobia ran after her and I followed, running as fast as I could until I saw where the path was taking us.

  I stopped dead.

  ‘Wait!’ I cried.

  We were heading for the hedge maze. It was even thicker now, even more tangled. Its hedge, once bare, was covered in dark, spiky leaves. The same dark spiky leaves that wound, like a crown, around the tree that was growing up, up, up—and showing no sign of stopping—from the centre of the maze.

  ‘Wait!’ I yelled even louder, now. ‘Come back!’

  Zenobia turned. She pulled Tourmaline back with her.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ I said. I pointed up at the tree, at its crown, at the two branches that were growing like arms out either side of its trunk.

  Zenobia looked around her. ‘Follow me,’ she said, and she crouched and pushed aside an armful of dense undergrowth, making a gap just wide enough to crawl through.

  We slithered along on our bellies. Zenobia went first, and I went last, with Tourmaline in between. Twigs snagged at my hair. Rocks pierced my palms. My mouth filled with dirt.

  At last we reached a place where the garden didn’t grow quite as quickly.

  ‘We’re nearly free,’ said Zenobia. Her voice came back to me in ragged snatches. ‘I see the nursery up ahead. Perhaps we’ll be safe there.’

  But, before I could reply, I found myself caught on a branch. I shouted for Zenobia, but she and Tourmaline had run ahead.

  As I fumbled myself free of the thorny branch, I squinted back down at the garden. The
Plant Kingdom had swallowed up nearly half of the hill. When I looked the other way, I saw a thin strip of garden that was still free and, perched on the edge of the hill, the nursery. Zenobia and Tourmaline grew smaller and smaller the closer they came to it.

  I remembered the last time I was in the nursery. I remembered the red shoe. I remembered the very special grafting the gardener had been practising. And the way he had sharpened the shears. And his words to me, as I went out the door. ‘I’ll see you again before too long, Miss Elizabeth.’

  And, all at once, I understood. Tourmaline was in terrible danger.

  ‘Stop!’ I cried after them. ‘Stop!’

  But Zenobia and Tourmaline were very far away. Before my voice could reach them it was carried away on the wind.

  11

  THE HEDGE MAZE

  With my hands pressed against the soil-streaked windows, I peered into the nursery. Inside, the plants were neatly ordered, contained in pots and planters. The worktable, usually covered in seedlings and cuttings, was bare except for a film of dirt, the rusted shears, and a green shrub that had been pulled from its pot. The plant’s leaves were flat against the tabletop. Its dense network of roots reached like a hand into the air.

  The gardener stood behind the table.

  I needed to warn Zenobia about the gardener. I needed to get Tourmaline out of the nursery. I needed to do both these things without the gardener seeing me. But he was facing the door. So I stayed where I was and waited for my chance.

  I watched the gardener talking with Zenobia and Tourmaline, with a smile oozing over his face. I watched him opening his shears. I watched him slice the shrub’s roots from its leafy top. When sap dribbled over his glove, and he turned away to shake it clean, I saw my chance.

  I eased the door open. It moved so soft on its hinges it was nearly silent. I slipped inside.

  I crept around behind the gardener, trying to catch Zenobia’s eye. But she was looking, transfixed, at the gardener.

  ‘I can assure you,’ he was saying, ‘you’ll both be safe as long you’re here in the nursery.’ He turned to Zenobia. ‘I believe we have met before,’ he said. Then he looked at Tourmaline. ‘But I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’