Jan Siegel - Prospero’s Children

Despite the fear that seemed to invade the very air around her she felt a flicker of indignation. She cultivated it, gritting her teeth, smothering cowardice, not forgetting but rejecting Ragginbone’s advice. This was her place, her home, if only temporarily, and no intruder, canine or feline, mongrel or monster, had the right to terrorise her here. She had not formed any specific plan for driving it off but she was determined at least to see it, to face it down, to prove to herself once and for all that it was merely a stray dog, half savage maybe but solid, flesh and blood and smell, and no bodiless hunter from a dimension of shadows. She sat up, picking up the torch which she now kept beside her bed. She thought she had closed the window but it had to be open: the snuffling sounded so loud and near. And then she froze. The noise wasn’t coming from under her window. It was outside her door.

She sat absolutely still, all resolution forgotten. It can’t come in, Ragginbone had said, but it was in. In the house, in the passage; she could hear it scraping at the floorboards, rucking the worn drugget. Her thought stopped, her limbs seemed to petrify, but she could not control the violence of her pulse: it must be audible even through the barrier of the walls. The door was not locked: something which had no hand to grasp rattled at the knob. For a few seconds, Fern ceased to breathe.

It moved on. She heard the gentle pad-pad of stealthy paws, receding down the corridor, the guttural hiss of hoarse panting. When the sounds had died away she sat for what seemed like hours, waiting and listening. The thudding of her pulse did not abate. Gradually, the tension in the air around her appeared to diminish: the house settled into a nervous quietude. Fern got out of bed so cautiously the duvet barely rustled, feeling her way to the door without switching on the torch. It took an effort of courage that made her sweat to turn the handle and peer into the passageway. Her vision was well-adjusted to the darkness and for an instant she thought she saw something, not a black animal shape with glowing orbs but something much smaller, furtive, skulking in a corner by the end window, shrinking into invisibility even as she caught its eye. Her heart leaped into her mouth—but whatever it was, it had gone. The corridor was empty. She could sense its emptiness. She groped her way along the wall to Will’s room and entered without knocking.

‘ Who is it? ’ He was awake.

‘Me. Shush.’ She closed the door carefully, switched on the torch. ‘I don’t want to make too much light. Move your legs: I’ll sit on the bed.’

‘Did you hear it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was inside . How could it be inside? Did we leave a door open?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Fern said. They were talking in whispers and the torch was on the table; little light reached their faces. She found she was holding his hand for mutual reassurance, something He would never have allowed if he could see it. ‘It can’t come in unless invited. That’s the ancient law.’

‘What law? How do you know?’

‘Never mind. I just do.’

‘Laws can be broken.’ Will sounded sceptical.

‘Maybe.’ Ragginbone, after all, had not been sure. ‘Maybe not.’ She glanced upwards towards Alison’s room; Will saw the whites of her eyes gleam, followed her gaze.

‘You think she —?’

‘It’s too much of a coincidence. The day she arrives, it comes inside. She invited it in. She must have done.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘There’s more,’ she persisted, adhering to her train of thought. ‘There was something in the corridor when I came out of my room—something else, I mean. It was quite small and it vanished very quickly but there was definitely something there.’

‘It’s too much,’ Will said. ‘Alison Redmond and the Sniffer and the Seawitch and the chest and the rock that isn’t there and the missing treasure…and now this. Whatever it was. It’s too much. I can’t cope. Do you think…do you think we should try to tell Dad?’ She knew from the note in his voice even more than his words that he was struggling not to betray the level of his terror. Despite her own fears, she was comforted to feel herself the stronger. If she could only be strong enough.

‘Pointless,’ she said. ‘For one thing, there’s a limit to what you can say over the phone. For another, what would we tell him? That we heard some unknown creature sniffing inside the house and we can’t find the keys to the treasure chest and we think his girlfriend could be a witch? He’d probably assume we were both on drugs—or raving. And even if he did come home, there’s nothing he can do. Alison’s a lot smarter than he is. We’ll have to handle it ourselves.’

Will’s soft gasp might have been sudden laughter. ‘You’ve dealt with all Daddy’s girlfriends to date,’ he said.

‘This might be a bit more difficult,’ Fern admitted.

There was a short pause. She reached for the torch but did not move from the bed. ‘I think you ought to stay here for the rest of tonight,’ Will said with an air of selfless chivalry which deceived neither of them. ‘We’ll be safer together.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Move over.’

The bed was large but they curled up, back to back, each warmed by the other’s nearness, falling swiftly and unexpectedly into sleep.

III

Fern got up early the following morning and returned to her own room. Instinct warned her that it would be preferable if Alison did not suspect they were on their guard. However, although it was barely seven she was no longer sleepy, and she dressed and went out into the garden, her footsteps leading her inevitably towards the back gate and the path up the hill. The sun had not yet risen far above the eastern horizon and the shadow of the house lay long and black across the grass, but the slope beyond glittered with dew. There was no sign of the Watcher; he seemed to have been gone so long she had almost ceased to believe in their meeting. As she climbed higher emptiness stretched in every direction. A few sheep grazed across the valley; cloud-shadows mottled the upland moors; a lone bird soared, its whistling call like the music of some unearthly piper, summoning errant spirits back to their hollow hills before the gates closed on the mortal day. The Day—the Day to Man! thought Fern, remembering her Kipling. The wind that touched her cheek felt totally clean and free, a wind that knew neither bonds nor boundaries, which might have blown straight from some virgin height, over grass and gorse, rock and river, to be breathed only by her. The skyline above was unbroken, except where she saw the twin tufts of a wild plant poking upwards like the cocked ears of a couched animal. Below, the valley opened out, a river-delved cleft in the rolling plateau, still cupping the last shades of retreating darkness, winding down towards the coast and the distant blue glimmer of the sea.

She was nearly at the brow of the hill when the animal rose up in front of her. One moment there was only turf and that telltale glimpse of ear-tufts, and then the grass shivered into fur and the creature was on its feet, pink tongue lolling between ragged teeth, amber eyes fixed unblinking on her face. It was a dog: it must be a dog. It had a pointed vulpine muzzle with a ruff around its neck not quite long enough for a mane and a lean body built for running. Its coat was matted and dew-draggled, white-streaked, grey-flecked, shaded with brown, stippled with black. It might have been part sheep-dog, part Alsatian, part vixen, part wolf. But Fern reminded herself that there had been no wolves in Britain since the Middle Ages. She knew immediately that it was female, though she could not have said how. Its unwavering stare was filled with latent meaning.