by Kerstin Gier
Arthur had the upper hand again. “Don’t let anything take your mind off it,” he told Mia in that flattering voice of his, and she turned away from us and looked back at him. My sky and moon had disappeared; the room with the unplastered brick walls was back right in front of Mia, looking even more tempting than before. “It’s your very own mystery, and it’s up to you—”
To solve, he had probably been going to say, but he never did. Because suddenly, right before our eyes, Arthur disappeared.
Just like that, without warning and without a sound. One moment he was there, the next he wasn’t.
“What on earth…?” whispered Henry, coming up beside me.
Bewildered, I raised my head and looked around the room. Still there was no sign of Arthur. Was this some new kind of mischief, or was the danger really over?
“He must have woken from the dream,” said Henry, pulling me to my feet. I hadn’t even noticed that I was still crouching on the floor where the impact of the wall had sent me flying. Nor had I felt the tears running down my cheeks.
Arthur’s energy field had disappeared with him, and so had the illusion of the room beyond the window.
Mia was still sitting on the windowsill. Ready to jump down. Confused. And I realized that it wasn’t over yet.
“You must wake from the dream and get her down from there,” said Henry urgently. “Now. At once.”
“I can’t.” I hardly knew my own voice, it sounded so hysterical. “I’ve been trying to do that all this time.” A huge sob escaped me. “I must wake, I must…”
“Then do it,” said Henry. “Liv, wake up!” He took me in both his arms, turned me to face him, and kissed me hard on the mouth.
30
WHEN I WOKE in Mia’s bed, still half sitting, my face wet with tears, and gasping for air, I didn’t waste any time checking whether I was really awake or not, but jumped out and ran. Only to stumble and fall after five steps, because I’d forgotten the rope tied around my ankle. At least I was sure now that I wasn’t dreaming. My knee hurt too much for that.
Without a thought for the others in the house, I raced out of the room, along the corridor, over the creaking floorboard, up the stairs, and into Lottie’s bedroom. I felt for the switch, my hands flying nervously, and turned on the ceiling light. Mia was standing in the corner of the room beside the open window, staring wide-eyed into nothing. Buttercup sat beside her, panting, but when she saw me, she came over, wagging her tail.
The window was wide open, and icy air came streaming in. Lottie was lying in bed wearing her sleep mask, just as she had been in Mia’s dream, snoring softly.
I felt weak at the knees with sheer relief that Mia wasn’t perched on the windowsill anymore.
I tried to say “Mia!” but all that came out was a hoarse croak.
She didn’t hear me, anyway. She only went on staring into the void. I hoped she was talking to Henry there. I simply wasn’t going to contemplate the possibility that Arthur had come back from wherever he’d gone. At least my legs would still carry me as far as the window. I closed it with a loud bang. Buttercup twitched and pricked up her ears, but Mia was still staring at nothing.
And Lottie was quietly snoring.
On the spur of the moment, I reached for the glass on her bedside table, swung my arm back, and threw the contents into Mia’s face. Then, at last, she stopped staring at the void and screeched out loud.
Her screech, which probably loosened a few tiles on the roof above us, also woke Lottie. She snatched off her sleep mask and blinked at the light, scared to death.
Buttercup barked. (Now she barked? Now! What had she been doing earlier? Had she accompanied Mia to the window, wagging her tail and panting anxiously? So much for the theory that the blood of gallant rescue dogs flowed in Buttercup’s veins.)
And I rushed over to Mia, who was dripping wet and looked bewildered, hugged her as tight as I could, and sobbed incoherent remarks into her hair.
I’ve no idea how long I stood there in tears, clinging to Mia, but after a while she pushed me away.
“You’re squashing me, Livvy,” she said. Her teeth were chattering. “And something in here smells.”
Lottie sniffed. “That’s only my valerian tea,” she said, looking at the bedside table. “It was standing … oh!”
“I had to wake Mia somehow.” I sniffed hard.
Lottie put her arm around me and looked at Mia and me sternly. “Okay,” she said. “Whatever just happened, the first thing you need now is Lottie’s hot chocolate.”
“Oh wow, if you’re talking about yourself in the third person, things must be really dramatic,” said Mia in a subdued voice. “I mean, I was only … sleepwalking a bit. Wasn’t I?” She nudged me. “You should have tied those knots tighter.”
“I did tie the knots tightly! You…”
“Hush,” said Lottie. “No quarreling now. Now is chocolate time, and then we’ll see.” She turned to her wardrobe and handed Mia a flowered nightdress. “Put this on, or you’ll catch your death in those wet things. And the two of you could do with these as well.” A pair of thick socks knitted by Lottie herself and a woolen blanket came flying our way.
Five minutes later, Mia and I, wrapped in the blanket, were sitting on the upholstered bench under the kitchen window. The kitchen clock told me that it wasn’t nearly morning yet, and I was far too tired to work out how long the whole nightmare had lasted. In any event, much less time than it had felt like while it was going on.
Lottie switched on the coffee machine to froth milk for the hot chocolate. Although Mia’s scream a little while ago had been bloodcurdling, no other member of the family had shown up, and I was glad of that, because I wouldn’t have known how to face them. I still felt absolutely shattered (and I looked it, too, as a glance at the hall mirror in passing had shown me). I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to give anyone a sensible account of what had happened.
I couldn’t even explain it to Mia. When she heard that she’d been about to jump out of the window yet again, she went what for her was unusually quiet.
“How stupid can a person be?” she murmured, obviously cross with herself. “And from the third floor this time!”
Lottie quickly put the hot chocolate down in front of her, and then, in spite of the early hour, she got butter out of the fridge, and then found flour and sugar. Her expression was very anxious, and her hands were shaking slightly.
“I’m going to bake vanilla crescents,” she muttered. “And then everything will be all right, my little elf-girls. Then everything will be all right again.”
“From the third floor!” Mia was still shaking her head.
“You couldn’t help it,” I assured her, but I was glad she didn’t ask any more questions.
She said she couldn’t remember much of her dream, only that it had been very odd, and for the moment I was happy with that. It was bad enough for one of us to have been sent almost insane with terror.
Lottie began weighing out the ingredients for vanilla crescents, humming German Christmas carols—to calm herself down, or so it seemed to me, anyway. As she reached “Silent Night” and slit the vanilla pod open, her hands stopped trembling. It had a good effect on us too. Mia moved a little closer to me on the bench and nestled against my shoulder. “This is comfy, isn’t it?”
I had to get myself under control so as not to hug her again. Even though her hair still smelled strongly of valerian tea. Only now, sometime after I’d finished my mug of hot chocolate, was I able to grasp the full extent of what had happened. And I realized that, in spite of everything, Mia would probably be lying on the garden path with several bones broken if Arthur hadn’t woken from his dream at the crucial moment. Who was to say that he wouldn’t try again the next night? This time with an even more horrible plan.
I groaned quietly. I didn’t think I’d survive another night like that.
“The dough ought really to rest for an hour.” Lottie was looking undecidedly from her
mixing bowl to us. Her brown curls were standing out all around her head. She looked like a Hobbit woman from the Shire, and I loved her so much at that moment that it almost hurt. “But considering the situation, let’s miss that bit out for once.”
I was all in favor of that. The situation really did call for exceptional measures.
At that moment someone knocked on the kitchen door that opened onto the terrace, and I jumped so violently that Mia almost fell off the bench.
“Don’t worry. It’s only He … Henry?” Lottie raised her eyebrows in surprise and stared incredulously at Henry, who was standing on the other side of the window looking out on the breakfast terrace, waving. “At this time of … What is the time, anyway?” She snorted. “Men! There’s no understanding them! Do I let him in, Liv? He obviously has something on his mind, and I strongly suspect it’s to do with you.”
I didn’t say a word. How could I? Any answer would have made Mia and Lottie doubt my sanity.
“Never mind, Liv!” Mia wriggled out of the blanket and went to open the door to the terrace. “Can’t you see that he’s freezing out there? He doesn’t even have a jacket on. Come on in, Henry. There’s hot chocolate, and in ten minutes’ time, there’ll be Lottie’s comfort vanilla crescents.”
“For all the year round,” Lottie added.
Mia nodded. “You look as if you needed them. You’d better sit down on this bench with your ex-girlfriend.” She turned to me, with an eloquent grin. Then she slipped past Henry and went over to Lottie to taste some of the dough.
Lottie slapped down her fingers. “Hands off. You can help me to shape the crescents.”
Henry sat down beside me with a deep sigh. “Thank goodness,” he whispered. “She’s herself again. I came as soon as I could after her dream collapsed.”
Yes, that was obvious. He hadn’t even taken the time to put on a jacket. He was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, and I pushed the blanket over to him in silence.
Mia was looking at us with her head on one side. “Now I remember,” she said. “You two were kissing in my dream.”
“Really?” Henry looked at me seriously.
I swallowed. “It was only a dream,” I said. “That doesn’t count, Mia.”
“What a shame.” Mia turned back to the dough that Lottie had now rolled into a long sausage shape on the work surface.
“Oh, so it doesn’t count?” asked Henry quietly. “I had the impression that—”
“I don’t want to talk about that kiss right now,” I whispered. “Goodness knows we have plenty of other problems! I can’t stand it, Henry. He’ll try again.… By the way, what kept you so long?”
“I … I was held up.” Henry shook his head unhappily. “I’m so sorry. But I promise you—”
“No!” I forgot to whisper. “Don’t make any promises you can’t keep. Next time you may be held up again, or the time after that, and then…” I was on the point of bursting into tears again. Lottie and Mia were staring at me, wide-eyed. They were probably wondering what drugs I’d taken before going to sleep.
“And then Arthur will put his threat into practice,” I said all the same, ending with a sob, although it was cut short by the kitchen door banging open.
“No, he won’t!” It was Grayson, standing in the doorway and breathing heavily.
I felt guilty because I’d completely forgotten him since he broke into a thousand icy splinters in the dream. But it was good to see him. Now we were all together.
He came closer and dropped something on the table in front of us.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Henry slowly.
“Yup,” Grayson said grimly. “It is.”
We were looking at Mia’s spotted gray glove.
Lottie put her hands on her hips. “Is this some kind of competition? Finding out who can wander around out of doors the longest without a jacket in the middle of the night? Do you boys know how stupid that is? Apart from which, you have school tomorrow!” Shaking her head, she turned back to her vanilla crescents.
“And what were you doing with my glove, Grayson?” asked Mia, bewildered. “It won’t fit you. Anyway, there isn’t a complete pair because I lost the other one.”
“This is the other one,” said Grayson, dropping into a chair.
“What? Really and truly? Where did you find it?”
Grayson was opening his mouth to answer, but I quickly interrupted him. “Mia, could you make Grayson and Henry some hot chocolate?”
“Sure. I’d like some more myself. How about you, Lottie?”
“No, thanks,” said Lottie, turning to us. “But would you switch the oven on, Mia dear? Three hundred and seventy-five degrees.”
I waited until Lottie and Mia were busy again, and the coffee machine was hissing and bubbling loud enough. Then I leaned forward and asked quickly, “Have you been with Arthur, Grayson?”
Grayson nodded. “I’d had about enough of it, understand? I’d really had enough of it.”
“You got the glove away from him!” For the first time that night, I saw Henry smile. “Grayson, you’re amazing!” He held his hand out, palm facing Grayson, and they did a high five.
“But how did you do it?” I asked breathlessly. “What happened?”
Grayson leaned back. “Well, I went there and I punched him on the nose. End of the show.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
I began to laugh, and after all those tears, it felt peculiar, almost a little painful. And very likely hysterical, because I couldn’t stop.
It was such … such a stroke of genius! While Henry and I were fighting off stupid energy fields in the dream world, Grayson had done the only right thing. Punching Arthur might not work in a dream, but in reality it was totally different.
“I was just so angry.” Grayson’s eyebrows came grimly together. Like Henry, he looked really disheveled and frozen at the same time. The milk-foaming device was still hissing loudly enough for us to go on talking undisturbed. “When I came out of the dream because that bastard had turned me into an ice sculpture, for God’s sake, I simply had to do something. So I got on my bike, rode off to Arthur’s place, and climbed the wall. I took the key to the back door out of its hiding place in the swimming pool building, and I—well, I didn’t mind if I was caught. I’d just have said I was drunk. Arthur was lying in bed asleep. The bastard!” Grayson picked the glove up from the table and shook it. “He was wearing this. And he was smiling in his sleep—I swear he was. I’ve never been angrier in my life.”
I could understand that. I could understand it very well indeed.
“And then?” asked Henry expectantly.
“Then?” Grayson repeated. “Like I said, then I grabbed hold of him and gave him a punch on the nose.” He rubbed the palm of his left hand over the knuckles on his right hand. “Well, to be honest, not just one. Could be that I broke it for him.” He grinned. “After that I picked up the glove and went back the same way I’d come.” Here he glanced expectantly at the door. “So don’t be surprised if the police turn up to arrest me for breaking and entering. And grievous bodily harm,” he added.
Henry looked as if he could kiss Grayson, but I did it for him. I stood up, put my arms around Grayson and dropped a kiss on his hair as he sat on the bench. And then another, and another. “Guess what—you’re my hero.”
“Mine too,” Henry told him.
I let go of Grayson, who was looking slightly embarrassed, and sat down again. “But what does that mean?”
“It means that Arthur will leave Mia in peace for the time being.” Henry linked his hands behind his head. “He doesn’t have any personal possession of hers now. Which isn’t to say he won’t find ways and means of getting another one.”
“Or something belonging to someone else,” said Grayson. “But I think we’re in the clear for the moment. Although we’ll have to keep a very close eye on Arthur. And on all our own belongings.” He looked up and glanced at the sto
ve. Lottie had just put the first baking sheet into the oven. “Oh God, that smells marvelous. What is it?”
“Lottie’s all-the-year-round comfort vanilla crescents.” Mia put the steaming cups of chocolate on the table. “And let me make one thing clear, she’s baking them for me, and Liv can have a couple as well because she was so worried about me that she burst into tears. I walked in my sleep again, you see, and I almost jumped out of the window. I only woke because Liv threw some smelly valerian tea in my face.” She sat down and grinned cheerfully at the company. “So if you can’t top that, I’m afraid you’ll just have to watch while we eat the vanilla crescents.”
Henry was grinning as well. “Oh, no, we can’t top that,” he said. “Can we, Grayson?”
Grayson shook his head. He was looking very satisfied. “No, no one could top that story. But if I don’t get a vanilla crescent, I’m afraid I’ll burst into tears too.”
“There’s plenty for everyone,” said Lottie, putting another sheet in the oven.
31
“INCREDIBLE,” SAID MIA, staring at the polished black stone slab in the front garden of the villa in Elms Walk.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. So that was what the Boker had bought with our savings: a tombstone for the topiary peacock.
She didn’t call it a tombstone—she called it a memorial tablet. All she wanted, she claimed, was to be constantly reminded of the transitory nature of plant life, the destructive power of certain individuals, and the necessity of opposing that destructive power energetically.
“In memory of Mr. Snuggles, Buxus sempervirens ‘Myrtifolia,’ slaughtered in a single night after twenty-five years of tireless growth,” Mia read aloud. “I suppose we should be glad she didn’t have our names carved on it as well.”
“No, Buttercup! Bad dog!” I hastily hauled Buttercup out of the flower bed, although she was in the middle of lifting her leg to do the only right thing to the memorial tablet. “We’ll have to find another way to the park when we take her for a walk. I’ll never be able to look at this tablet without dreaming of our phone.”