Copper

by Rebecca Lisle

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Questrid, helping himself to a slice of cake and sitting down by the fire. ‘But if Oriole and Robin wanted us to know, they’d tell us.’

  ‘Really, Questrid, aren’t you interested? Here’s a mystery and we need to solve it.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Yes. I want us to go up there. Now.’

  Questrid choked and spat out some crumbs.

  ‘But …’

  ‘Come on.’

  The house was strangely quiet. Even the floorboards were not squeaking and creaking in their normal friendly way today. Copper fancied it was because they were cross with her for spying.

  ‘But I have to,’ she told them.

  ‘Have to what?’ said Questrid. ‘Or are you talking to Ralick again?’

  Copper laughed. ‘To the stairs, actually.’

  They crept up the spiral staircase very slowly and onto the circular landing where three long windows, set between the three corridors, let in the sunlight. There was a big chest, a chair and a cupboard.

  ‘Now where?’ asked Questrid. ‘I never come upstairs.’

  ‘It can only be up,’ said Copper, ‘so we need to find another staircase.’

  They tiptoed along the first narrow corridor.

  ‘But this is just one of the branches,’ said Questrid, ‘it can’t go anywhere.’

  He was right, it got smaller and smaller towards the end, until it was nothing at all. There were two doors on one side, but when they opened them cautiously, they were only empty rooms. They went back to the landing.

  ‘That way is my bedroom,’ said Copper, ‘and there’s a tiny bathroom, that’s all. Let’s try the third corridor.’

  ‘There can’t be stairs there, either,’ said Questrid.

  Again he was right. There were just three tiny bedrooms along the third corridor and another bathroom.

  No stairs.

  Copper and Questrid went back to the landing.

  They opened the oak chest but it was full of blankets. The large cupboard with elaborate carvings of deer and mountains was full of clothes. The chair was just a chair.

  There were no trapdoors in the ceiling or mysterious cracks in the walls. There was absolutely no way to get into the room at the top of the house.

  ‘You and your funny ideas,’ said Questrid, grinning. ‘Now I’d better go and feed the horses. Don’t do anything else crazy while I’m out and don’t leave the house!’ He clattered back downstairs.

  Copper went back to the kitchen and flopped into her chair.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Oh, you’re talking to me again, are you?’ said Ralick. ‘I thought you’d forgotten me.’

  ‘As if I could.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s the problem?’

  ‘I couldn’t find the hidden room and I’m worried about Silver. I’m worried about Aunt Ruby being all alone. I’m worried because I’ve got an uncle and he’s my real uncle but I don’t love him like I do Aunt Ruby. I’m worried because the Rockers want to get me but no one knows why. I’m worried because I’ve got a real mother and a father … My mother may even be up in the mountains living in that horrid Rock place. My father may be there too … So much to worry about!’

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Ralick. ‘You haven’t done so much knotting recently, so you aren’t feeling too undone even if you are worried.’

  ‘Now that is true,’ said Copper brightly. ‘Ever since I got on that train I’ve been feeling more and more together. It’s like when you’re knitting and you get to the bit where you can start casting stitches off for the armhole. You start shaping it, getting fewer stitches and knitting gets easier and you can see the end of the thing. Well, that’s how I feel.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Ralick. ‘Trouble is, you’ve never in your life finished anything except this appalling hat which I hate wearing. I think there’s something wrong with it. It gets tighter and hotter and more and more tingly. Sometimes I think the gold inside is burning me up.’

  ‘You’ve got a strange imagination.’

  ‘I don’t have any imagination. I’m just a figment of your imagination. But the bracelet is hot.’

  Copper giggled. ‘That reminds me. I forgot to show this to you, Ralick. See, it’s another gold charm. It fell off the top of the curtains when I drew them.’

  ‘What a peculiar place to keep a gold charm.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how it got up there,’ Copper agreed. ‘It looks just like mine but it’s evil, isn’t it? So it couldn’t really be like mine, could it?’

  ‘No. Your charms are bursting with nice feelings … though since we got up here in the mountains they’ve changed or the bracelet has changed. It seems to be buzzing and …’

  Suddenly Oriole and Robin called: ‘We’re back!’

  Oriole appeared carrying boxes of food and Copper helped her put them on the table and began unpacking them.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Copper. Goodness me, I was so worried but of course you’re all right. Is Silver back yet? She’s always there to meet the sledge.’

  ‘There’s no sign of her,’ said Copper.

  ‘Dogs do sometimes go off to hide and have their pups,’ said Oriole. ‘They don’t always choose the best places either.’

  ‘We’ll organise a proper search for her this afternoon,’ said Robin. ‘Questrid will find her, you know how good he is at tracking.’

  ‘Yes. I hope you’re right. Ring the bell for Uncle Greenwood to come up for lunch will you, Copper?’ said Oriole. ‘We’d better eat quickly. Silver has never disappeared like this before.’

  14

  Copper Investigates the Dumb Waiter

  So later that afternoon, Copper found herself alone again – except for the birds and Ralick.

  She found her eyes were drawn to the dumb waiter again and again. Who did it carry food to? Where did it go?

  ‘Why not find out?’ said Ralick. ‘No one will know.’

  Copper sidled over to the dumb waiter and quickly, guiltily, pressed the button.

  The machine hummed into life with a distant rumble and soon the lift appeared and shuddered to a halt. Copper dragged a chair across to it and climbed in. By bending her knees up and squashing her head down, she could just squeeze in. Then she reached round and pressed the up button.

  Immediately, with a jerk and a shudder, the lift began moving upwards into the dark.

  Dark! I never thought it would be dark, she worried, as the lift inched its way up into the stuffy woodiness. This is a bad idea, this is a silly thing to do. What if it gets stuck? What if it drops to the ground under my weight?

  The ropes whined and the lift rumbled and squeaked.

  Where’s it going? What’s up there? Why do I do these things and where’s Ralick when I need him?

  At last a chink of light appeared, then more and seconds later the lift shuddered to a halt. It had stopped in the middle of a round room with small windows facing out in all directions: the top of the house – at last!

  A pair of pigeons cooed and trilled from a shelf and stared down at her with interest. There were chairs and a table and the curved walls were lined with books.

  Gingerly, Copper eased herself out of the dumb waiter.

  Can’t see anyone, she thought, but there’s Oriole’s tray and the food’s gone.

  Copper crept round. Behind the lift, on the other side of the room, she found a fixed wooden ladder going up through a hole in the ceiling to the floor above.

  ‘OK, here goes,’ she said.

  She climbed the ladder slowly, her heart pounding in her ribs, her breathing fast and hard. Just before she poked her head out through the hole, she called out:

  ‘Hello! Ready or not, here I come!’ and pushed her way into the room above.

  She couldn’t believe what she saw …

  There were two of them. TWO Uncle Greenwoods!

  15

  Copper Runs Away

  The men hurried over to Copper as sh
e scrambled through the hole in the floor and dusted herself off.

  ‘Hey!’ she cried as she was scooped up in some long arms and hugged tightly. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Copper, my dear,’ said the owner of the arms. ‘Copper.’

  Copper wriggled free angrily and stepped back. ‘How dare you!’ she heard herself say. She stared up at the two identical faces until they began to swim and skid before her eyes.

  ‘I think you should explain,’ she muttered weakly. ‘I have this dreadful feeling that one of you is my father and I think I’m going to faint.’

  Before she hit the floor, the Uncle Greenwood who had hugged her, caught her and lifted her gently onto a sofa.

  ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘You’re right, Copper. I am your father. I’m Cedar.’

  ‘But you can’t be, you’re dead, or disappeared and went away. What are you doing here?’ And as she spoke she knew the answer. ‘You couldn’t have been hiding here all the time?’ she gulped. ‘You couldn’t have, but you have, haven’t you? It was you spying on me, wasn’t it? And it was you that Robin sent the message to last night?’

  ‘Let me explain,’ said Cedar.

  ‘You can try,’ said Copper, sitting up and looking at him grimly, ‘but it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘But I’ll try. Copper, it’s so wonderful to see you … Just to know you’re alive, after all these years is so, so incredible. I wish I could explain how it feels. How am I ever going to make you understand?

  ‘I’ll go back to when Granite wounded me in that fight, all those years ago,’ said Cedar. ‘He swore he would kill me if he saw me again. And he meant it. If he ever knew I was alive, I’d be dead – if you see what I mean. So I had to hide. That’s why I’m hiding now.’ He was staring at Copper anxiously but she wasn’t going to help him. ‘Greenwood and I look so similar,’ he went on, ‘we devised this plan: one day I come out and do all the things Greenwood would do and the next Greenwood comes out and does them. One of us is Greenwood all the time.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Copper. ‘Mad. But now I see why Questrid thought you were so odd: different people on different days …’

  ‘It was all that we could think of. Without Amber … without you … I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Did Aunt Ruby know? No, she would never be so cruel.’ Copper stared at Cedar. ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve dreamt about having a real father and a real mother but not one like this. Not one that hides from me.’

  ‘Copper, don’t say that. You must realise that the letter from Aunt Ruby was the first we ever knew about you being alive. Before that I had always assumed you were dead, like Amber.’

  ‘And when you did know I was alive,’ said Copper, ‘why didn’t you come and see me? How could you stay up here when I was down there? How could you go on hiding when those Rockers nearly got me? And everyone lied to me. Everyone! How could they?’

  ‘I did come and see you. I watched you …’ he began, but Copper got up from the sofa and began backing away from him.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said, as Cedar reached out to her. ‘I can’t stay with you. You’re not my father. I want Aunt Ruby.’

  She turned and ran.

  She fled down the ladder and burst through the first door she saw, completely forgetting about the dumb waiter.

  She found herself racing down a tiny spiral staircase and it was only when she got to the bottom and found a rack of coats blocking her way, that she wondered where she was. She plunged on through the coats, pushing them aside, until seconds later, her fingers touched a handle, pushed it and a door swung out in front of her.

  She had opened the doors from the inside of the cupboard on the landing and now she was standing at the top of the stairs.

  So that was where the stairs were hidden! But she couldn’t stop to think, she was escaping, running away.

  Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry. She knew she would if she set eyes on Robin or Oriole or even Questrid’s silly grinning face, but they were out looking for Silver and the kitchen was empty so she rushed in and grabbed Ralick.

  ‘Ralick,’ she said, picking him up and kissing him. ‘This is all so awful.’

  ‘Being squashed and kissed you mean?’

  ‘No, no, finding a father.’

  The sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs towards her, spurred her on. She stuffed Ralick up her jumper, pulled on her coat, hat and boots and ran out into the snow.

  Cold, cold air splashed against her hot cheeks like iced water and Copper staggered back as if she’d been hit, but she put her chin down and stormed off, ploughing through the newly fallen snow.

  ‘I’m never going back, never!’

  The sky was deep purple and snow was falling; massive soft flakes like soap suds which caught in her eyelashes and melted on her lips.

  ‘I’ll never forgive Cedar,’ she hissed to Ralick as she stamped under the arch and into the garden.

  ‘You will,’ his muffled voice came back from deep inside her coat. ‘He’s your father.’

  ‘But how could he do that? How could he hide from everyone? Why didn’t he come and see me?’

  ‘He did. He watched you, you know he did, he was watching everything that was happening.’

  ‘He should have come to meet me,’ said Copper. ‘To talk to me.’

  ‘I expect it’s very hard to meet a girl who’s your daughter and you haven’t seen her since she was four years old and you’ve been stuck in a treehouse all those years watching out for mad Stone people.’

  Despite herself Copper giggled. ‘But not impossible. He should have come to see me. He should.’

  Copper kicked against the snow. It was falling fast, the flakes black in the dark sky and it was getting harder to see.

  ‘It’s not the way I would have done things,’ she said. ‘I would have come straight down and hugged me and, and just filled in all the gaps and the missing time we’ve had …’

  ‘But he’s not you,’ said Ralick. ‘He does things his way and even if you don’t like it much, you’ll have to accept it. He is your father.’

  ‘I know. Just not quite the father I’d planned on having. Other people have time to get to know their fathers. They learn to love them over years and years. The father I’d imagined for myself was so different …’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Oh, he was more handsome – now I come to think of it, he looked very like Action Man. And he carried me about when I was a baby and built me a dolls’ house. And he held my hand as we walked through the park. I suppose that’s what all orphans imagine …’

  ‘This one might do those things …’

  ‘He might. If there was a park and if I’d let him hold my hand … I’ll have to go back, I suppose,’ she said, more calmly. ‘But I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I wish I’d never come – but I love it here … Oh, dear …’

  Then she stopped.

  ‘Look. Look, Ralick, it’s Silver!’

  Silver was standing beside a small gate that led out of the garden. She looked like a dirty smudge against the snow, almost a shadow, hardly there at all.

  ‘Silver?’

  Silver heard her, her ears pricked up, but then she shrank back, as if she didn’t want to come.

  ‘I’ll have to go and get her,’ said Copper. ‘I wonder what’s happened?’ She trudged across the snow. ‘Here, Silver! Here!’

  But as she got nearer, the dog backed further away and slunk back deeper into the shadow of the gateway.

  Something was very wrong.

  She glanced back at Spindle House; it was blurred by the snow and looked dim and unreal.

  ‘Maybe it was just a dream, Ralick,’ she said. ‘I haven’t really got a father and an uncle at all. Spindle House doesn’t exist, see how it’s disappearing in the snow! If I turn my back on it, it’ll go forever.’

  ‘Well don’t then,’ growled Ralick.

  ‘But I’ve
got to get Silver. I mustn’t lose the house. I’m scared.’

  She took three steps backwards, watching the house, defying it to vanish in the swirling snow.

  ‘Silver!’ she called. ‘Silver!’

  But even her voice was being sucked away. If I’m not careful there’ll be no house, no dog and no me, she thought.

  Suddenly, Silver stepped out of the shadows and it was dreadful … Copper staggered backwards and gasped out loud, as shocked as if a snowball had hit her full in the face.

  Because Silver wasn’t Silver anymore. This dog had eyes that blazed yellow and fiery. Her fur was rough and ragged and silvery grey. Her lips were curled back in a growl, showing pointed, dangerous teeth. She angled her nose up to the sky and howled: a terrible noise, a nightmare noise.

  ‘She’s not a dog … dogs don’t do that,’ whispered Copper. ‘Oh, Ralick, she’s a … wolf.’

  The word dropped out of Copper’s mouth like a stone. ‘Wolf!’

  As she spoke, as if on cue, the alarm bell on the roof of the stables suddenly began ringing its warning. Copper turned and ran, crashing with such force into the men who had crept up behind her, that she toppled backwards.

  There were four men with swords and rope. They were on top of her immediately, clamping her hands to her side, covering her mouth with a foul leather glove and tying her hands together. Copper tried to scream, but only choked. She struggled, kicking wildly, but within one minute she was being bundled onto the sledge.

  Silver? Where are you, Silver? Why isn’t she helping me? thought Copper. Why isn’t she attacking the men? Has she gone for Questrid and Robin?

  The men took up the ropes and pulled the sledge swiftly out through the garden.

  Copper twisted her head from side to side. She caught sight of Silver’s glimmering fur as she trotted beside the sledge. She was there, with them … why? Then Copper knew. A coldness, heavier and harder than any she’d ever felt before, clogged her heart.

  Silver had led the Rockers to her.

  Copper felt the hot tears on her face and could do nothing to wipe them away as across the black snow, the strange group plodded upwards towards the Rock.