Seas of Snow Read online

  Gracie had scuttled across the floor to say hello. In May Close, everyone used to leave their front doors open when the weather was all right. A small cul-de-sac, but everyone knew everyone and that was no bad thing. The wives who had been left behind in the War did their best to help out with elderly neighbours, when they needed odd jobs doing. It wasn’t easy, but they did their best. Billy was lucky – he was proud of how his Da was big and strong and had one of those smiley faces you couldn’t help but like.

  His Da had always been round the other houses, helping out and laughing and being strong and big for everyone. But not right now – he was away with all the others. Billy always felt sad when he talked about his Da being away. But today wasn’t a day for being sad.

  ‘You coming out?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Mam says it’s okay,’ said Gracie.

  ‘Come on then.’

  He’d often delight her with new and exciting games. Life was like one long happy playtime, with different adventures tumbling into one another. Billy Harper was the best thing in the whole wide world, and she adored him.

  Yellow sunshine flowed everywhere. Twinkled through the trees and bounced off the grey stone walls of the houses. Sprigs of daffodils clumped together in the front yards and along the road. Pockets of dazzling brightness nestled in the grass and the dirt.

  He took her hand and they pottered off down the lane, oblivious to the click of a camera behind them. Her in a smock dress, him striding manfully by her side.

  Gracie looked at Billy and thought nothing in the world could make her feel like bursting with smiles more than her big friend.

  They walked into the woodland behind the Close and he led her into a dappled area with dark green trees all around. In the distance was her favourite bit – a small pond which caught the light on a good day and danced with glitter. It was like that today – dashes and darts of sparkles jostling for attention.

  ‘Right, we’re playing dragons and princesses today. I’m the scary dragon and you’re the princess and I’m really your friend but you don’t know it yet because I’m being all scary and frightening and stuff.’

  ‘What’s my name?’

  ‘What do you want your name to be? You can pick anything you want. I’m going to be The Dragon.’

  ‘Alright then. I’ll be The Princess. The bravest princess ever and ever!’

  He began to chase her through the trees, roaring convincingly. Billy had obviously put some thought into his dramatic portrayal. He let her run off a little to give her some space, then rushed at her, fast.

  ‘Stop, Princess, stop!’

  She squealed and ran, skipping over the gnarled roots and uncurling ferns. Jumped over shadows and aimed for the bright bits. Princesses in storybooks always expected princes to come along and rescue them, but not this Princess. She was concentrating on toddling as fast as her chubby little legs would carry her.

  Then, silence. She realised The Dragon had somehow disappeared. She looked around nervously.

  ‘Dragon?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Dragon?’

  Silence. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees softly, purple and yellow crocuses nodded gently in the breeze. Little midges buzzed around, their tiny wings diffusing light into a mish-mash of haziness.

  The pond seemed to be very far away – all she could see was the silhouette of the great big tree that Billy and his brothers would climb up to launch themselves into the water in the summer.

  ‘Billy, are you hiding? Are we playing hide and seek?’

  She looked around her, peering around tree trunks and squinting into the distance.

  Then she saw it. A black shadow. And out of the shadow, a beak, gleaming like polished, sooted metal. An eye, fixed on her. Claws gripping a branch, their pointed ends like pins and needles. A wing, raised slightly in anticipation.

  Her heart began to beat so fast she could hear it.

  The shadow shifted and the leaves parted slightly. A lone sunbeam filtered onto the shape, revealing the nightmare blackness within.

  The beak parted slowly. The talons tightened their grip, glinting in the sun. Feathers made of blackened iron lined up like armour.

  And the eye was looking at her. Intently. With a hunger that she couldn’t understand.

  She thought about the dead blackbird that had clung to her neck and wouldn’t let go and that familiar sense of dread bit into her. This bird was also black, but bigger, with a fierce black beak that hovered half open. Sharp. Pointed. Lethal. It let out a deep, gravelly kraaa.

  Paralysed, Gracie could do nothing. She tried to scream, but her throat was suffocating.

  ‘Billy!’ she tried to shout, ‘Billy.’

  Leaves

  The silence grew thickly around her, layers of fog hovering in the distance. She became aware of a startling pain on her hands and her face. Hot and stinging, as if a hundred barbs were prickling into her. She had no idea where she was.

  Rays of light were shimmering overhead, stirring softly through leaves. The brightness hurt her eyes. Puzzled, she realised she was lying down on her side. Fern fronds were tickling at her, and underneath the ground was warm but hard. A dizzy sensation overwhelmed her and she felt sparkles invading her eyes like tingles of light.

  She drifted in and out of dreams – there was a calmness about her. Curled up like a small woodland animal, she slept for days.

  When she stirred, the needles digging in penetrated her consciousness and ripped apart her calmness. She began to try to tear them out of her hands and her face, but realised, confusingly, that the needles weren’t actually there.

  ‘Gracie! Are you alright? What happened?’

  Billy’s voice felt familiar yet far away, even though he was standing practically on top of her.

  ‘Is this some new kind of game, where The Princess goes hiding away from The Dragon?’ he chuckled.

  His voice felt as if it was echoing around her ears.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ replied Gracie, truthfully. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and started streaming down her cheeks.

  Billy looked at her, and thrust a manly arm around her. That’s what Da did when he was trying to make his Mam feel better. Beyond that, he had no idea what to do or say.

  ‘I think I’ve been asleep,’ gulped Gracie, between tears, ‘and my face and hands hurt, but there’s nothing there. And there was a giant black bird and it wanted to eat me and it flew right on top of me and it killed a mouse and I’m scared.’

  The last bit she gabbled so fast he could barely keep up.

  ‘I only lost sight of you for about two minutes,’ he said gravely, ‘how did you cram all that in?’

  She held out her hands to him, sobbing.

  ‘Why am I hurting?’ she asked. He looked carefully at her tiny, outstretched paws and the beginnings of some bumps were poking up, pinkly.

  ‘Oh Gracie, look, I think you’ve fallen into some stinging nettles, no wonder you feel proper horrible.’

  ‘What’s stinging nettles?’ she asked.

  He showed her a clump, and pointed out the tiddly fronds that stick out of them.

  ‘You’re not supposed to touch them,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Come on, yer Ma’s going to kill me.’

  Dragons and Princesses would have to wait for another day.

  ‘I’ve not been a very brave princess, have I?’

  ‘You’ve been the bravest princess that ever lived. Ever,’ he said, with extra emphasis on the ‘ever’.

  She smiled gratefully, then glanced skywards once more.

  ‘The bird wanted to hurt me,’ she said again.

  Books

  The fat, luscious raindrops were interlacing down the smoothness of the glass. Outside, the misty rain showed no sign of relenting.

  The reassuring patches of yellow spring flowers offered a smile to her heart, but nothing would raise the gloom within.

  She sighed, slowly.
r />   It was a small room. Lavender paint on the walls. A glass vase of wilting daffodils sitting on the cabinet. Reminding her of something. A collection of old photographs jumbled together on the side. An empty tumbler. A couple of drab faux impressionist paintings on the walls. Like one of those grotty hotels that dressed itself up as better than it was.

  There was a small bookcase. Her solace. She tried to sit up, and tentatively put some weight onto her feet. The pain shot through her like needles. She paused. The rain sputtered onto the ledge of the window, mockingly.

  Another sigh. Another go. Come on you, you can do it, she muttered under her breath.

  Her frail bones could barely carry her these days. Her body had become a sunken husk. Wispy white hair trailed down her back. Hands criss-crossed with dark green veins and distended knuckles. Her torso had become so light and shrunken, even the child-size knitted cardigan hung loose, dangling as helplessly as her life.

  Mustering all the strength she could call on, she shuffled along the bed, slowly, towards the books. The rain beat down, harder. She couldn’t even distinguish the green and the yellow anymore – obliterated now with a thousand droplets.

  At last, her fingers reached for the small, brown book. Golden letters embossed on the spine. The familiar feel of leather and the scent of the pages – almost like cinnamon – transported her to another time, another place.

  Her greatest comfort had always been books. Escaping to other worlds was the only way she could cope with living in this one.

  Today, she wanted to reread an old poem that had been her companion for many years. It transported her back to the time she began to make sense of the three-year-old Gracie. The beginning of the rest of the story.

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  That heartfelt sense of loneliness, that ache. That wistful feeling of casting adrift, aimlessly. And then – suddenly – a sense of hope, of beauty. A shining array of yellow, bursting onto the scene like sunshine. Imbuing the landscape with colour and brightness and energy. The lightness of touch – fluttering and dancing…

  There was a cheery optimism, a sense of freshness and delicacy. Of transience. How a rain cloud had blossomed out of its solitude into a new dawn of companionship – see the words ‘crowd’ and ‘host’ bundling together and giving an atmosphere of bustle and busyness. And even more explicitly, the word ‘company’ – right there on the page…

  The emotion it prompted touched something profound within her. A longing, and a deep felt pain.

  Her fingers flickered through the leaves of the book and the pages fell open at another familiar passage. Unlike Wordsworth, master craftsman and well known to school children up and down the land – this second one was from an obscure Bohemian-Austrian poet practically no one had heard of. It didn’t stop the words lifting off the page and softly singing to her, their lyric loveliness hanging in the air like a spell.

  How should we be able to forget those ancient myths

  That are at the beginning of all peoples.

  The myths about dragons

  That at the last moment turn into princesses.

  Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses

  Who are only wanting to see us

  Once beautiful and brave.

  Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being

  Something helpless, that wants help from us.

  So you must not be frightened

  If a sadness rises up before you

  Larger than any you have ever seen.

  If a restiveness like light and cloud shadows

  Passes over your hands and over all you do

  You must think that something is happening with you,

  That life has not forgotten you.

  That it holds you in its hand.

  It will not let you fall.

  Soft, silent tears began to drop onto the page. This poem was like a prayer for the young Gracie. A Secret Key. She remembered all those times they had sat together, mother and daughter, reading this strange but lovely poem the little girl had been given by Mr Hall at school. What had started as a homework project took on a different guise. The words sang deep into their hearts, binding them together. Creating a thread to the past of an invisible optimism buried deep in the child she once was.

  She remembered trying to be brave … more times than anyone could possibly imagine. Even before the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke had come into her life, his philosophy connected to something in her.

  Eight years old, pigtails. Scratchy grey school skirt and a white blouse with rolled up sleeves. A long time ago.

  Gracie, Tish and Jo had been asked to pack up the hall after morning assembly. It was one of those jobs you just groaned at when you’d been picked. Okay, so it was something you could tell your Ma and Da and they’d be proud of you, being all grown-up and that. But it also meant you were a swot or a teacher’s pet.

  The girls had mixed feelings. They didn’t want to be teased when they went back to class. Who would? Tish and Jo started whispering and giggling. They were really tight with each other. Did everything together.

  Gracie wasn’t part of the in-crowd really. She had Billy out of school but she hadn’t made much headway with girls her own age. She didn’t know why.

  Humming to herself, she carried on putting away the books and stuff, oblivious to the others. The melody of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ was barely audible, but it was in her head and now it was floating softly into the hall.

  English started in a few minutes’ time so she concentrated on collecting up the remaining books. But where had Tish and Jo gone?

  Gracie made her tenth trek back into the store cupboard, loading up the shelves. Then something strange happened. The door closed. The light switched off. There was the sound of laughter bubbling up in front of her. Disembodied giggles penetrating the darkness.

  She couldn’t see anything. It was completely dark apart from a tiny window covered in moss and mildew up in the corner.

  Gracie felt herself being bundled onto the floor.

  ‘Shut up, don’t squeal, Pastie Gracie,’ said a voice. Tish, probably.

  She felt her arms being held. Hot breath hovering over her. She felt like she imagined The Little Girl Lost must have done in William Blake’s famous poem. Giggles of innocence morphing into brutal experience.

  Lost in desert wild

  Is your little child.

  How can Lyca sleep

  If her mother weep?

  Then a short, stabbing feeling down her left arm.

  ‘What are you doing? Let me go!’ she begged, as the little stabs bore down on her skin. ‘Please stop, please!’

  Remembering her pleases, even in the midst of attack, Gracie had no idea what else to do. Then in an instant, she felt herself being released. The door opened with a judder – blinding daylight flooded in. Two figures bustled out, laughing helplessly. There was the sound of a slam and the purple-black darkness once again ate the light.

  Gracie was still sitting on the ground. She crossed her legs and thought. As her eyes grew accustomed to the blackness of the cupboard, she detected a lizard-green gleam filter through the moss above her.

  She got up and tried the door. Even before she pushed, she knew. Locked.

  She sighed, and felt tiny tears prickling in her eyes and a tightness grip the back of her throat. She rubbed her sore arm, wondering what on earth had happened, and why.

  There was nothing to be done but pray, she supposed. Nobody at school would be able to hear her – the store ­cupboard was at the back of the hall and no one was having PE until the afternoon. She would have to sit. And wait. And pray.

  Gracie wasn’t terribly sure who or what God was, but she knew he was the thing
Mam turned to when she needed something. Well, Gracie needed something now – she needed to leave this horrible, reeking place with its sickly, black-green muskiness.

  ‘Dear God,’ she began. ‘I don’t know why I am in here, I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. But please let me out of here, please, please, please.’

  She waited, but nothing happened. A fleet of angels failed to appear, and the door failed to open.

  ‘Please God, I want to get out. Please don’t leave me in here …’

  She sat cross-legged and wondered what she should do now.

  The darkness took her back to another time, when a shadow became a raven. Briefly, she wondered, fear flickering in her blood, whether there was any possibility that there were any birds in the cupboard.

  She listened intently. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Trying to stop the sense memory of what happened in the glen was futile. It crowded into her head, taunting her with the possibility of being. She remembered the way the beak and claws had leapt into life, swooping down towards her. She remembered the throbbing of her pulse rushing through her, dizzying her. She remembered trying to move, trying to scream.

  The bird had brushed over her head, the tips of its wing and tail scraping at her head. Her babyish curls were lifted, swept skywards, as the black shadow dived to the ground in front of her, pounced on a small, furry mouse, then launched back past her again.

  She would never forget the sound of its beating wings for as long as she lived. A harsh, almost noiseless, whirring and slashing. Sitting here quietly now, locked in the darkness, all she could think about was the petrified mouse, gripped in the talons of a shadow’s vice, settling into stillness. Death hung in the air above her, and somewhere the raven cawed a low, guttural kraaa.

  The greenish sheen began to imbue the whole space with a cloying mossiness. The blackness of before faded into what looked at first like a peculiarly comforting den of leaves. Like one of Billy’s dens.