Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (2 page)

Ellie called the number that evening, as soon as she'd finished her homework. A woman's voice answered. It sounded a little shaky.

ʺHello?ʺ

ʺI'm supposed to ask for Welly.ʺ

ʺSpeaking. And you must be Ellie. You want to come on a nature trail?ʺ

ʺIf that's all right.ʺ

ʺWell, so many people ask. . . . Is there anything you particularly want to look at?ʺ

ʺOh . . . I'm interested in the birds and animals, of course, but really it's the trees. You've got some lovely old ones, haven't you?ʺ

ʺIndeed, yes. In that case . . . it'll have to be in the morning, so get here as early as you can. We do parties in the afternoons. Just call me the evening before.ʺ

ʺThat's wonderful, if you're sure. Oh, wait, please. I wanted to say thank you to Dave. He was terrific! I'd have been in a real mess without him.ʺ

ʺYes, he told me. I'm thankful he was around. I'm afraid you can't talk to him now—he's trying to photograph an owl. But I'll tell him. Oh, just one thing. Did you tell your parents what happened?ʺ

ʺEr, no, I thought . . . but I suppose . . . I mean, those boys might—ʺ

ʺThat's all right. I called the security people and they picked them up at the gate. They'll deal with it. They may want Dave's photograph, but he says your face is completely hidden. With luck you won't be involved. But perhaps you'd better bring your mother at least as far as the gate this time, so that she can decide for herself if we're safe people to leave you with. The tour takes about three hours, tell her.ʺ

ʺAll right. You'll say thank you to Dave for me, won't you?ʺ

ʺOf course.ʺ

Welly and Dave were waiting for her at the gate into the wood. Welly was in an electric wheel-chair, an old woman with white hair and wrinkled and blotchy skin. She had a really nice smile. Ellie couldn't guess how old she was—older, she thought, than either of her own grannies. Welly's hands trembled slightly all the time, but her eyes were bright with life. Dave seemed just the same as before, about ten, a bit short for that age, but stockily built without being fat, and with that strange, calm look as if nothing that happened was ever going to faze him. They all shook hands.

ʺThis is extremely good of you,ʺ said Mum. ʺWe bought a ticket at the gate. Two pounds. It didn't seem nearly enough to pay for your time. You said three hours, Ellie told me.ʺ

ʺOur time is our own, and we can do what we wish with it. I assure you, Mrs. Ford, it'll be a pleasure. We are both passionate about our wood, and Ellie seems really interested. I hope she can stay the whole three hours.ʺ

ʺYes, of course, if that's really all right. I've made up a picnic for her.ʺ

ʺWe wouldn't have let her starve, you know.ʺ

Mum laughed uncertainly. Ellie guessed that she didn't know what to make of Welly, any more than Ellie did of Dave. But it was only twenty minutes to the library, so she'd get over two hours' book-choosing and book chat. And everyone was happy.

ʺDave will take you round,ʺ said Welly. ʺWe've got two parties this afternoon, and I get tired stupidly soon these days.ʺ

It wasn't a trail at all. They left the marked path almost at once and checked the whole wood out, almost tree by tree. The birds and animals seemed not to notice them, even when they climbed an immense old oak to which Dave had attached steps and handholds so that he could keep an eye on a bat colony that roosted in the hollow of its trunk, as well as the nest of a green woodpecker in a rotted limb. Astonishingly, the bird stayed on its nest, untroubled by the flash, with a chick's head poking up beside its wing, while Ellie took several photographs.

ʺUsed to me,ʺ Dave explained.

Unlike normal guides, he talked very little, just showed her things and let her decide for herself, though he answered her questions willingly enough, for instance when she asked how long the bat colony had been there.

ʺLet's see now,ʺ he said slowly. ʺGreat storm, eighteen ninety-seven, that's what took 'er top out. Give 'er time to rot 'ollow, forty, fifty year, maybe. An' the bats were there, definite, come nineteen seventy, and maybe twenty year earlier.

ʺDessay it'll be in the diaries,ʺ he added after a pause, as if by way of explanation that he hadn't been working it out from memory.

ʺI trust you've had a good time,ʺ said Welly, when they returned to the cottage in the clearing near the middle of the wood, where they'd left her over two hours before.

ʺOh, it was wonderful!ʺ said Ellie. ʺI wish it had gone on for ever! And you've got two parties this afternoon. That's six hours.ʺ

ʺParties don't get three hours,ʺ said Dave.

Welly paused from ladling stew into three bowls and looked at him.

ʺShe'd do,ʺ he said. ʺGiven she's willin'.ʺ

Welly returned to her ladling. She seemed not to notice the way her hands trembled. Dave carried the bowls to the table.

ʺBest you sit there,ʺ he told Ellie. ʺJust let old Vick take a sniff—she won't 'urt. Likes to know who's what, an' she don't see much no longer. All right, girl!ʺ

Ellie sat. An old spaniel heaved herself up from beside the stove, limped across and sniffed at the hand Ellie offered.

ʺVick the Fourth, she is,ʺ said Dave as the dog went back to her snooze. ʺ'Nother name as runs in the family.ʺ

That sounded like a private joke. Ellie didn't get it.

ʺTake your jersey off if you want to, my dear,ʺ said Welly. ʺI'm afraid I need it warmer than most people can stand. Now, you can have your picnic if you prefer, but this is very good. Dave makes a lovely stew. The rabbits are out of the wood.ʺ

Rabbit stew! More and more Ellie felt she was in some kind of dream. Mum could do without cooking any more than she had to, so mostly at home they ate microwaved stuff out of packets. Mum would have been horrified by the mere idea of rabbit, too. But here she was with her mouth already watering at the smell, in this wonderful old cottagy room with its log fire burning on the huge open hearth and its Aga and its long-lived-in feel, and this strange, strange couple.

Welly spun her chair deftly back to the table. Dave took a large bib out of a drawer and tied it round her neck, then sat opposite Ellie and hacked three chunks of bread from what looked like a home-made loaf.

ʺNow,ʺ said Welly, ʺyou're right. Not everyone that calls and asks to visit us gets this kind of treatment. The fact is that we have been looking for someone like you, to help us. This wood is rather special. You'll have seen at the gate that it's a conservation area, but there are plenty of those these days. What makes it special is that it has been one now for almost a hundred years, and, uniquely, diaries have been kept of everything that happens in the wood, including an annual tree census and a five-year census of all the wild creatures that live here. It is now time for both. I can no longer do my share, and Dave can't do it all, so we need a helper. We could no doubt find one by advertising, but that would mean an adult and there are various things against that. They'd probably have ideas of their own, rather than being content to do it our way—ʺ

ʺNever work level along of a kid,ʺ said Dave, ʺ'lowing I might maybe know best. An' the birds an' animals, they're used to me—saw that, didn't you? You won't bother 'em, neither, not like a grown man's going to.ʺ

ʺThat's certainly the case,ʺ said Welly. ʺIt makes the task so much easier if the creatures don't keep hiding from you. But at the same time, any helper has to know what she's looking at, as you appear to do—ʺ

ʺKnew a beech from an 'ornbeam,ʺ said Dave.

ʺSo, my dear, are you prepared to help, if it can be arranged?ʺ said Welly.

ʺOh, yes please!ʺ said Ellie.

That was how she came into the story, and so late on. From their very first meeting, she had felt that there was some kind of a mystery about Dave, and a story to go with it, and as time went by, she became more and more curious, but she was afraid to ask in case they were offended and she wouldn't be able to come again. On her fourth visit, her resolve cracked.

By now it was the school holidays and she had come for the middle of a week, three whole days with the two nights in between. This also meant that Dave didn't have to be careful not to show himself on weekdays. Officially, he lived with his father in London during the week and went to school there, then came up and stayed with his grandmother at week-ends and in the holidays, while his father went mountain-climbing. Since there were no school parties to be guided round, on weekdays he and Ellie had the wood to themselves. They spent the whole of the first day working through a single section of it, doing the trees systematically, filling in the forms that Welly had prepared for them and adding the animals and birds as they came across them. Ellie would do one tree and Dave a neighbouring one, so that Ellie could call to him if she needed help. In the evening Welly entered the results on her PC.

Ellie slept in a small room at the top of the stairs. She guessed that it was Dave's, though it was far too tidy to feel like a boy's room—like her brothers' at any rate—and that he had moved in with Welly on the other side of the landing so that she could have it.

Next day they went on with the census and were busy and happy until late in the afternoon, when they were measuring the girth of an oak tree. This was the immense old fellow in whose hollow branch Ellie had photographed the woodpecker's nest. It had in fact lost more than that single limb, and they had both spent almost an hour up in its crown recording the progress of its decay. Now their joined tapes met round the base. Ellie held their ends together on one side, and Dave drew them taut on the other and read off the inches. He couldn't be bothered with centimetres, he told her.