by Leanne Hall
Jordi had found a white cross spray-painted on a windowsill. There were other markings nearby: squiggles, circles and numbers.
‘I think the developers have been here,’ Iris said. ‘They’re marking the building, for demolition probably. Knocking the house down, I mean.’
‘This is not right.’ Jordi’s brow furrowed. ‘They think they can own everything.’
Iris had to agree. She hadn’t seen Jordi since running into Zeke Dangercroft in town, so she filled him in on what she’d learnt. Jordi was so furious Iris had to talk him out of going around to the Dangercrofts right then and there to grill him.
Iris knew how Jordi felt. Even when they were back on the horses, she couldn’t help imagining what would happen to Bosque de Nubes if the developers took over.
How could the magic survive in the middle of a theme park?
It would be like a slow leak on a bicycle tyre—with the magic spilling out until nothing was left.
Iris had never seen a bridge so old before. Jordi called it an ‘aqueduct’ and said that it dated to the Roman Empire.
The towering bridge—two levels of elegant arches stacked on top of each other—spanned a whole valley, in a thin wedge of public land between part of the Freer and Dangercroft properties. It was so solid and perfect it was difficult to imagine it had stood there since Roman times. Iris wondered if her awe was what her dad felt about buildings and bridges. He never really talked that way about his work so it was hard to say.
Jordi tied Turrón and Miró securely to a tree. They were high on the east side of the valley, following a path that Jordi said was used by religious pilgrims in certain seasons.
Jordi led them down the dusty, gravelly slope to where the crossing began. There was a narrow notch built into the top of the bridge that ran all the way to the other side. Iris wasn’t a fan of heights, but the edges of the bridge came almost up to her armpits—it would be impossible to fall off.
They walked along the sunken channel until they reached the middle and looked out over the valley. By now they were at least thirty metres up in the air.
‘Good place of tiger watching,’ commented Jordi.
He jumped up and leant over the barrier, a move that made Iris feel queasy with nerves.
‘Get down, Jordi!’
Iris scanned the different greens of the valley and sighed. It was weird that Marcel had seen the eyeball tree beyond the estate’s boundaries. They had no chance of finding an eyeball tree here, or spying a small tiger slinking through the trees.
‘Look.’
Jordi pointed at the red car parked at the entrance to the valley. It was well camouflaged under a stand of trees.
‘Will they be putting crosses on el acueducto? Ruin something that has been here for two thousand years?’
Iris observed the two surveyors perched high on the valley wall, right up the other end. They were struggling to drag their equipment over the steep incline. The man was particularly agitated, looking around as if afraid they would be noticed. The woman took lots of photos.
Iris felt Jordi’s resentment. A half-formed idea came to her.
‘Jordi. There’s a lot of mud and dirt and leaves and stuff down there, isn’t there? And the surveyors are so far from their car…’
‘You’re right.’ A grin spread slowly over Jordi’s face. He raised his fist into the air. ‘Protest! Revolution!’
‘You sound like Aunt Ursula. It’s scary.’
Together they walked back to the near end of the bridge, then made their way down to the lowest part of the valley. On this side there were concrete steps built into the slope, with a metal handrail. Iris kept her eye on the surveyors. They were far away now. The man took measurements with the tripod thing; the woman talked on her mobile, gesticulating wildly.
Once at the bottom they ran from shrub to shrub, keeping low. Jordi began to bubble over with laughter.
‘Shh!’ Iris grabbed his arm and dragged him to the car. ‘Be serious or we’ll get caught!’
But she, too, could not help laughing as they grabbed handfuls of mud from the nearby slick and smeared it all over the windscreen.
There were envelopes and brochures and maps on the back seat of the surveyors’ car, lying in a messy pile. Iris couldn’t see them clearly enough to make out anything useful. Jordi checked the doors and the boot, but they were locked.
Iris’s jeans were caked with mud, but she didn’t care. She would never, ever have dared do this at home, but here it not only seemed right, it seemed necessary. It was people’s homes at stake, and history—and magic too!
After the mud, they covered the car in leaves, pressing them into the muck. Jordi gave Iris two stripes of mud on each cheek and she did the same to him. Then they ran, breathless, up the stairs to where the horses were waiting for them.
‘On the way home there is one more place we look,’ Jordi said.
Iris checked the paling sun, drawing ever closer to the treetops. She was parched and tired and her bum hurt from the hard saddle.
Jordi was paranoid that the surveyors would detect them if they took the highway, so they were back on the old village trail again, parallel to the main road. They passed over the fence line into Aunt Ursula’s land.
‘Don’t you think it’s too late? The light will be gone soon.’
They hadn’t found a hint of a tiger or the eyeball tree. Jordi kept pointing to droppings or crushed bushes as evidence, but Iris knew he was just humouring her.
She was disappointed.
‘There is at least one hour left,’ Jordi said.
‘But the tiger could be in the house or gardens,’ Iris reasoned. ‘It’s not as if things here make sense, like tigers belong in forests…maybe the tiger will be in the bathroom.’
‘That is a terror-frying idea,’ Jordi replied. ‘But I was thinking. To make a painting there are many things to carry. You must visit again and again. But the trees in the painting are very old. So we should look for a place that is not far, with easy path, plus old trees. I think of somewhere.’
‘I suppose that’s sensible,’ Iris said. Jordi had told her that he got terrible marks at school, but there was no doubting that he was smart.
The horses picked their way across a rocky stream that was hardly more than a trickle. Iris hugged Turrón as he lurched over, following Miró’s swishing tail. She’d lost her bearings completely, and could only hope they were travelling towards the mansion. Once more, she was staggered by the size of the Freer estate. If she’d been on foot she would have picked up a handful of stones to leave behind, Hansel-and-Gretel style.
‘You won’t leave me, will you, Turrón?’ Iris patted the horse’s neck. They’d bonded now.
Finally Jordi pointed out another trail through the ground ferns. After a few minutes they broke into a dim glade. This part of the forest was brown and peaceful. The ferns had given way to a carpet of russet leaves. The shallow basin was more than pretty enough to be the setting for a painting.
Down the middle of the clearing was a long narrow pond, flanked by an avenue of trees. After draping the horses’ reins over a birch tree, Jordi took Iris on foot to where the path forked into two.
‘I take this way, you take that.’
Iris was pretty sure the first rule of adventure was ‘Don’t split up’.
‘We can see each other, all the time,’ Jordi insisted.
Iris slapped at the mosquito feasting on her arm. ‘Sure. But no wandering off—promise?’
‘I promise! Call if you see anything.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, you’ll hear me scream,’ muttered Iris as she took the path downhill. She could see Jordi walking on the parallel path, a slight shadow moving in and out of the trees.
There was comfort in the fact that the glade wasn’t completely wild. Someone had planted the avenue and built the pond. The pine needles were soft underfoot. Once or twice Iris thought she saw something in the corner of her eye, but it always turned out to be a weirdly shap
ed tree, or one of the dozens of red-winged birds that lived on the estate.
When Iris stepped over a raised tree root her gaze snagged on an unexpected object. In her distraction she didn’t notice the figure darting up the slope to her right.
The stone slab poked up from the dead leaves. The words chiselled into it were dark against a coating of bright green moss.
IN MEMORY OF
BELOVED BROTHER
JAMES THOMAS FREER
28TH JUNE 1910—2ND NOVEMBER 1990
Iris stepped to the right, so she wasn’t standing on top of Uncle James’s grave.
It’s a long way from the house—a strange place to bury him.
A few steps along was another headstone, this one smaller, older and almost collapsed into the earth. Iris pulled on the vine covering it. She whispered the epitaph out loud.
‘In loving memory of Iris Freer, who suddenly departed this life the 31st day of May, 1961, aged 41.’
Iris shivered. Forty-one is not that old. Mum is forty-three and Dad is forty-seven.
Iris was so absorbed that she didn’t hear Jordi’s whistle.
‘Eh! What you looking at, Iris?’
Jordi was a blob on the other side of the clearing. Iris moved to the right to see him better. There was a shape moving behind him through the trees.
‘Jordi! Behind you!’
Iris yelled as loud as she could. It was hard to see if the thing was moving on all fours, or two legs.
But Jordi misunderstood and waved.
Iris shouted the word she’d only ever said twice in her life and ran.
Across the glade, jarring her knees on the uneven ground. Through the mud and the line of cherry trees. There was no time to go around the pond, so Iris jumped it. Turrón and Miró both reared into the air, hooves madly pedalling.
‘Behind you! Behind you!’ Iris screamed as she reached him.
Jordi finally got the idea and sprang into action.
‘It goes for the road!’ he yelled back.
Together they ran to the top of the hill and beyond, crashing through the undergrowth. The horses pounded near them with a whinny, then away.
Iris had never run so fast, for so long. By the time they’d reached the driveway, they were both gasping. The driveway was empty.
A thin, beaded scratch ran across Jordi’s cheek. ‘The tiger?’ he wheezed.
‘I have no idea.’ Iris tried to catch her breath. The sun had dipped below the trees, bringing a chill to the air. ‘I didn’t see it properly.’
Jordi walked in circles, puffing. ‘Dios mio, the horses.’
‘Where will they go?’
Iris pictured Turrón and Miró jumping the fence and galloping along the highway to Sant Joan.
‘If we are lucky, they run to the stable. If we are not lucky, then Papa—’ Jordi mimed having his throat slit.
Iris retied her shoelaces and they slowly walked back. Jordi believed more in her tiger sighting than she did.
‘We have evidence,’ he said. ‘And we must keep hunting. Perhaps I will be sick from school all week.’
‘Your dad will never agree to that. Especially now that we’ve lost his horses.’
‘They will come home. Eventually.’
Iris remembered the date on Uncle James’s lonely gravestone and realised that she would leave Spain on 2nd November, the anniversary of his death. It wasn’t a good omen.
‘I leave so soon,’ she said. ‘We won’t find the tiger in time.’
‘You will come back. Señorita Freer will give the house to you, for when she die.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Iris kicked a rock. The fountain and the roundabout were visible in the distance.
‘Papa thinks you can be the new owner of Bosque de Nubes and then you would never let anyone touch it.’
‘Aunt Ursula isn’t going to die soon. She’s not that old.’
‘She was already old lady when my parents move here.’ Jordi stopped and twitched. ‘Iris…’ he squeaked.
Iris didn’t see it at first. The road was empty, but a dark shape skulked near the left edge, 100 metres in the distance.
The tiger.
A spark of electricity ran down Iris’s spine and set her feet in motion. She sprinted towards the animal.
This isn’t going to be like the Loch Ness monster, she resolved. I’m going to see this thing properly.
Her sneakers slapped against the road. The tiger hadn’t spied her yet, but she saw it leaving the safety of the trees.
Iris was twenty metres away when she realised that everything about the tiger was wrong. It walked on two legs. It had no tail, or stripes. It was dark brown, not yellow.
As if sensing her confusion, the creature turned and stared. Iris’s legs failed as quickly as they’d first made themselves useful. She slammed to a halt.
She was now close enough to see brown tufts of fur and opalescent scales. Eight arms waved from its sides in a confusing tangle.
The creature wasn’t a stranger—she and Jordi had created it. Bear’s head, spider’s body, reptilian legs, high-tech running shoes. Only it wasn’t texta and paper, it was real. Three-dimensional, flesh and blood, real.
The creature fixed on Iris calmly with its yellow eyes and snorted. One thin spider arm unfurled from the many and hovered through the air towards her.
Iris stepped back. The limb ended in a fine curved hook.
The creature retracted its arm and loped out of the way on its serpentine legs, fast and sure, into the forest. Seconds later there was nothing to show it had been there.
Iris stopped holding her breath.
Jordi was kneeling where she’d left him, with his hands clasped in front of his chest. When he saw Iris looking, he got to his feet and jogged towards her.
‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’
Iris grabbed onto Jordi when he reached her. Her lungs were going to burst right through her rib cage.
Jordi’s knees were dirty and the whites of his eyes were showing. After a confused pause he started laughing so hard that, within seconds, he was almost as out of breath as Iris.
‘We made it. We made that animal!’ chanted Iris. ‘Be serious, Jordi, please! Gracias!’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ Jordi wiped his eyes. ‘It was not a tiger.’
‘Exquisite Corpse,’ said Iris, with all the energy she had left.
Beyond the dining room where the dinner party had been held was the corridor that led to Aunt Ursula’s bedroom. Iris hastened that way, carrying her Exquisite Corpse drawing.
The walls were painted cream to match the carpet in this part of the house, creating a snowstorm effect. Light showed through an open door at the end of the corridor.
‘Aunt Ursula?’
Iris collided with Elna at the bedroom door. The maid had her usual headphones around her neck, a tinny boom-boom-boom blasting from them. She had a hairdryer in her hands.
Iris frowned.
‘Señorita Freer must rest.’ Elna was as blunt as ever. ‘No can disturb. She’s very tired still.’
A voice came from inside. ‘Stop fussing, Elna, and let her in. Take the hairdryer to Reynaldo, he’ll know what to do.’
Elna screwed her mouth up.
‘Do you have something to say to me, Iris?’
‘No.’ Iris frowned even harder and shuffled her feet.
‘Oh.’ Elna tilted her head. She had dark circles under her eyes. ‘Because I think you like to tell me how much I am an idiot. An idiot who drink too much and says many stupid things?’
‘Maybe…’ said Iris.
‘I thought so, little Australian.’ Elna picked up Iris’s hand to check her polish. ‘Still no chip, muy bien,’ she said with approval. ‘I owe you another manicure now, for apology. Anything you want. You want real diamonds? Zigzag? No problem.’
She pointed the hairdryer at Iris then slunk down the hallway.
Aunt Ursula’s bedroom was lit by the buttery glow of a lamp.
The wallpaper was cream striped with gold. Aunt Ursula sat on an old-fashioned four-poster bed with a newspaper by her side. She removed her reading glasses.
‘Are you sick?’ Iris asked.
Aunt Ursula looked tiny on the grand bed and was ghostly pale. She peered at Iris.
‘Perhaps I should be asking you the same thing?’
Iris remembered that she was covered in mud and probably had leaves in her hair. She hurried to her great-aunt’s side.
‘It came to life! The picture—it came true!’
Aunt Ursula’s whole body tensed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘What Jordi and I drew! It came to life!’ Iris held out the picture frame. ‘It’s real. Part-bear and part-spider, part-lizard too, on the driveway. I chased it, but it got away.’
‘Ohhh…’ Aunt Ursula seemed relieved.
Iris tried to untangle her words.
‘The Exquisite Corpse, Aunt Ursula. It’s a real living and breathing animal, out there in the forest. I have no idea how it happened, but we drew it—and it came to life!’
Aunt Ursula finally spoke. ‘So, it wasn’t a moving drawing, as in an animation…and it wasn’t an apparition?’
‘No, it had fur like a real bear. And when I got closer it smelt of wet jumpers.’
Iris took the frame from Aunt Ursula.
‘I thought Uncle James painted what he saw here, at the estate. I figured that was how it worked. But this means it can also work the other way—draw something and then it becomes real.’
Aunt Ursula blinked once, twice, three times. A strange atmosphere hung in the air.
‘Are you all right?’
Aunt Ursula snapped into focus. ‘I apologise, Iris. I’m very excited, I only wish I could have observed it myself. Tell me, is it a friendly creature?’
Iris pictured the creature’s clear gaze, and the springy, natural way it moved.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And healthy?’ Aunt Ursula enquired.
‘I suppose. Maybe we could do an Exquisite Corpse drawing together and see if it comes to life too?’
Aunt Ursula crossed one hand over the other. ‘And what if, next time, the creature is neither healthy nor friendly?’
Iris dwelt on that for a moment. ‘You know, in books when people use magic, there’s always a price. Like, if they get something good through magic, then something bad happens as well.’