Metro Winds (18 page)

‘I am Willow,' I told him and I held out my hand.

Nullah took my hand in his own enormous warm grasp, and seemed to weigh it more than shake it. Then he smiled at me with the very same familiarity as the song walker in Dusty Town had done long ago. He released my hand, and said something to the inspector.

‘He wants me to tell you he greets you as an equal and invites you to walk about the land with him,' said the policeman. ‘It is an unusual compliment because Nullah is considered a leader among his people, a spirit guide.'

‘Please ask him whether he saw anything that will help us find Rose.'

But the policeman shook his head. ‘You misunderstand. I brought Nullah here to look at the footprints, but as soon as he set eyes on the park he stopped and said there was no point because the land there will not sing to him. He would have to learn to hear it and that would take many years.' The velvet man said something, and the policeman nodded and said, ‘He asks now why I summoned him when I have you to guide me.'

‘Tell him that he is mistaken about me. I am not a guide.'

The velvet man seemed to understand and shook his head. He spoke at length to the policeman, who asked several questions and was answered before turning back to me.

‘He says the park is not part of his land. It is a place where another land is pushing through. He says he cannot walk there because he has no link to that place, but that you do. He says he can feel it.' The inspector shook his head, looking suddenly younger in his puzzlement. ‘Maybe I am misinterpreting. Maybe he is just trying to tell me that he thinks you will be able to discover what happened to your sister.'

The velvet nomad spoke again, a few words, looking at me.

‘He asks if you love your sister,' the policeman said, then he answered without waiting for me to speak. The nomad nodded, pointed to me and then pointed towards the park.

‘I swore I would not go there,' I said, and heard fear in my voice. The velvet man spoke again, his eyes holding mine. The policeman exchanged a few words with him and then said, ‘He asked why your mother demanded such a promise. I told him that she feared for you, and he said that the mastering of fear is the first step a child must take away from its mother and father. He said if you are able to master your fear, he could teach you to hear the song of this land.'

‘What do you want of me?' I asked the policeman.

He sighed. ‘I did not know that Nullah would react as he did. I've never heard him talk this way before. To be honest, I wanted to see what you would make of his words, because he seems to see something in that park that I don't, just as you do.'

‘You want me to go there,' I said dully. ‘Perhaps I will disappear too. Then instead of solving one mystery, you will have another.'

‘I will come too,' said the policeman. ‘I will let no harm come to you.'

‘How can you go there?'

‘I will go with you. I need to understand what it is that this park meant to your family – at least to you and your mother and sister. Maybe then I can work out what happened to Rose.'

4.

I went to the kitchen and bade the cook prepare food for a journey, while the policeman took Nullah to the train station. I ordered a maid to find the trunk of winter clothes we had brought with us. Mine were too small, but I took out a heavy gown and a cloak of Mama's, as well as boots, muff and hat, weeping a little when I saw how well they fitted me. Upon his return, the inspector accepted one of the heavy coats that had belonged to my father, for Mama had kept these as well. How strange it was to see them inhabited again. I sat down to write a letter to my stepfather, explaining what I meant to do.

‘Love will lead me to Rose or to death,' I wrote baldly, then I sent my love to my stepfather and signed my name, sealing the silky sheet of writing paper into an envelope upon which I wrote his name. I propped it alongside my stepfather's pipe stand so that he would find it when he reached for the pipe before supper that evening. He would have to summon a maid to read it to him.

I felt numb with fear of what I meant to do, but I was resolved. Suddenly it seemed to me that my whole life had been shaped in order that I might enter the winter park. The policeman was not forcing me; he was merely an instrument of fate. I felt the heat of the day beating on my back as we crossed from the apartment to the line of ghost trees, but the cold from the winter park raked my bare cheeks.

‘Do you believe what Nullah said?' I asked the inspector when we stood at the edge of the park. ‘Do you believe the park is not part of this land?'

‘I believe this will bring us to the place where your mother's body was found,' he said.

I followed him through the ghost trees and the moment we were on the other side of them, the heat and noise of the town was cut off and a thick, soft silence fell about me. I looked at the policeman, but his expression had not changed so I knew he did not feel the cold as I felt it. Indeed, his forehead shone with perspiration, for he had no need of the coat he wore.

I looked down and saw two sets of footprints in the snow, one belonging to an adult and the other to a child. They were as fresh as if Mama and Rose had just walked there, and yet the policeman did not look at them. He was clearly finding his way by memory. I turned my attention back to the footprints that progressed side by side into the winter park, and knew that Rose had not come in first after all, nor Mama. They had walked side by side, almost keeping pace, save for the additional skip Rose had made every few steps to keep up. My heart ached at the memory of the jerk she had given my hand whenever she had executed that little skip. And then we were entering a clearing. I stopped, seeing the unmistakeable imprint of Mama's form.

I was not aware of having cried out, but the policeman looked at me sharply. ‘What do you see?' he asked.

I pointed to the outline and for a fleeting moment I saw the red earth and the leaf litter among twisting tree roots that the policeman was seeing. I said, ‘I can see the outline of where Mama lay, in the snow. I see Rose's footprints leading away!'

‘In the snow,' he repeated. ‘Can you see the two sets of footprints leading to where the body lay?'

I nodded. ‘And I see Rose's footprints going away there.' I pointed deeper into the park.

‘You can see her footprints in the snow?' he asked and I nodded. ‘My people saw scuff marks and footprints in the dust when the body was first found, but those have long since faded.' He gave me a considering look and then pointed some way to the left of the prints. ‘You see where the body lay there?'

‘It was there,' I said, pointing to the depression in the snow. Then I saw the look on his face and realised he had been testing me. ‘Did you think I would lie?' I asked.

He frowned. ‘You would be surprised what people make themselves see when they are desperate. Let's find out where the prints lead.'

I did not move. ‘I think if you and the others could not see Rose's footprints leading away from Mama's body, you won't be able to go with me if I follow them.'

He did not look at the ground but into my eyes. ‘I see you,' he said. ‘I will follow you.'

Very deliberately, he reached out and took my arm. I did not know if he was humouring me, but I was glad he was by my side. I took a deep breath and set off following Rose's footprints, comforted by the weight of his hand.

We had not gone far before it was clear she had walked an erratic zigzag path, which always seemed to change direction at the foot of a tree. Almost all of the trees about us now were pine trees or unfamiliar black-trunked skeletons with complex many-tined branches.

‘Could she be playing a game?' said the policeman.

I shook my head. ‘I think she is following something. A squirrel maybe.'

‘A squirrel?' He shook his head. ‘It's hard to imagine a child running after some small animal if her mother had just died. Maybe your mother didn't lie down until after Rose left the clearing.

I said nothing. The policeman was still trying to fit what we were doing and learning here into his world, and yet he was with me as we went on, following the steps that continued their erratic progress until they came to a stream running black as ink through the whiteness. I stopped.

‘The footsteps stop at the edge of the stream,' I said.

‘There is a stream?' asked the policeman. He was gazing about in the same vague, groping way as my stepfather. I noticed that the sweat had dried on his forehead and he was holding the edges of the coat together.

‘What do you see?' I asked him curiously.

‘Only the mist,' he said.

I stared at him. Then I looked around at the glowing white snow, radiant in the sun whose light reached us but not its heat. The pine trees wore shapeless hoods of glistening snow, and the black-trunked trees were sugar frosted. The park ran away out of sight, still and snowy, seemingly empty of life. I could hear nothing save the trickle of the stream whose current must be swift enough to keep it from icing over, and the occasional creak of a branch or the huffing sigh of snow slipping to the ground. There was no birdcall, nor the chatter of squirrels foraging, nor the delicate nibbling of deer grazing. But I could hear the faint soughing made by the wind in the bare branches of the highest trees. I sniffed, but my nose was too cold to smell anything.

‘I think,' the policeman said presently, ‘that I can hear water, but it sounds far away.'

I said nothing, for I had remembered something. Once, when Rose had spoken of entering the park, she had mentioned a tower. I had taken no notice of it at the time, but I ought to have done, for Rose was not in the habit of inventing things. I concentrated upon the memory and it grew clearer.

‘It is not so late,'
Rose had said.
‘By dusk we could be at the tower.'

‘There is a tower,' I said. ‘I can't see it, but I have just remembered that Rose once mentioned it. She wanted to go there.'

I began to walk, and the policeman followed, still holding my elbow.

We walked for several hours, always moving uphill and mostly in silence, then the policeman stopped. ‘I still can't see snow, but my blood is turning to ice,' he said. He sounded shaken but not afraid. I reminded myself that he had summoned Nullah, which told me his mind was not limited by reason and logic; even so, I hesitated a moment before drawing my elbow from his grasp. He did not vanish as I had half expected. He slipped off the pack he carried and got out the thermos of hot chocolate that the cook had made. His hands shook as he poured it into the enamelled cups and I saw that his fingers were white as marble. When he drank, his teeth chattered a little against the rim of the mug.

‘Why aren't you married?' I asked.

He smiled. ‘I never married because as far as I could see, marriage was the end of the mystery of love. Or the beginning of the end. And I like mysteries.'

‘But you are a policeman, so you must like solving mysteries, which ends them. That is a paradox.'

‘I like paradoxes even better than mysteries,' he said.

We packed away the mugs and the thermos, then as we continued, he asked me to tell him exactly what Rose had said of the tower. Somehow he was able to be a policeman in the midst of all the strangeness he was encountering, or perhaps he became his policeman self in order to cope with it. Either way, I liked how seriously he asked questions and listened to my answers, never telling me this or that was impossible, and how he sometimes smiled reassuringly at me. I explained that Mama had often told me stories when I was a little girl, and that I had passed them on to Rose. ‘Her stories were full of towers and princesses and princes.'

‘And wicked witches?' he guessed.

I laughed a little. ‘Of course! The witch was the most important character. It was she who gave something and then demanded a terrible price, or who was offended and cursed the hero or heroine or locked them up. Without the witch there would be no story.'

‘Do you think this story has a witch?' he asked.

I frowned, sobering. ‘I don't know . . .' I stopped, because the policeman was looking past me, his eyes widening with surprise. I turned to see that we had come to the top of the snowy incline we had been following. Now the land fell away sharply to a deep valley, which was white with snow at the upper edges but green and undulating at its base. Rising above one of the hills was a roof.

‘The tower,' I said, my heart quickening.

But it was not a tower. An hour later, when we had got down into the valley, we saw that the steep-pitched roof we had seen belonged to a solitary little hovel, half built into a hill. It was sheer chance that we had been at the right angle to catch sight of it. We could see smoke drifting out of its crooked chimney.

‘What should we do?' I asked, whispering.

‘Knock at the door and ask for directions to the tower,' the policeman suggested. ‘Unless you think it might be the witch's cottage.' He sounded almost giddy and I wondered if he was telling himself that he was dreaming. But when I looked at him properly, his eyes were alight with determination and curiosity.

We made our way to the cottage door and banged its heavy knocker. The door opened after a long moment, and a wizened little woman peeped out, squinting short-sightedly at us.

‘We are seeking directions to the tower,' said the policeman courteously.

‘I will ask my mistress,' offered the crone and hobbled away, leaving us standing on her doorstep.

‘There is our witch,' he said.

‘You must not joke,' I said sternly, for I had the idea it might be dangerous to disbelieve the story you were in.

‘I have surrendered to mystery,' he said. ‘That is when I began to see what you see.'

The old woman returned and bade us enter. We followed her down a dim, ornately carved corridor that seemed too long and grand to be contained by the little cottage. The policeman made a ghastly face at me as we entered and I had such an urge to pinch him in vexation that I was shocked. The hall brought us to a door where a carved fox leered at us, baring its teeth in a knowing smile. Then the door opened and though the room ought to be deep inside the hill against which the hut leaned its stolid rear, the first thing that met my eye was a large bay window with an arresting view of a forest that blazed with autumn colour. A fire crackling energetically on a wide hearth echoed the bright shades of the leaves, as did the red hair of the woman seated in a chair facing the fire.