Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild E-Book

Philip Reeve

• Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 324

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Utterly Dark has a special connection to the sea. But it is tested more than ever before, this autumn on the island of Summertide. Accompanying her uncle as he explores mysterious Summertide, Utterly is witness to strange happenings in the woods. Deep, old magic abounds, and threatens to steal those she loves most. Utterly must face truths about what lies beneath the land, and in her own past, if she is to save anyone. And she must make a sacrifice to the sea . . . An enchanting story of nature, magic and friendship, from the renowned author of Mortal Engines.

Leseprobe

Praise for Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep

‘Reeve is an exceptional writer and world-builder … A dark and deep adventure encompassing peril and self-discovery that will carry you away on its tide’

The Times’ Best Children’s Books of 2021

‘I was captivated by Utterly herself in this immersive coming-of-age narrative’

Books for Keeps Books of the Year 2021

‘In this tense and exciting supernatural thriller, readers are immediately immersed in the magic and mystery … a great edge-of-seat adventure for those who like a book to keep them guessing to the end’

BookTrust

‘A roller coaster of a story with the survival of orphaned Utterly Dark, one of the most charming and feisty young heroines, at its heart’

LoveReading4Kids Book of the Month

‘Reeve’s story has the weft and warp of myth … a slow-burning, darkly involving read’

Literary Review

‘A wonderful story, expertly told’

Peters’ Book Review

‘Magnificent … magical storytelling’

Jenny McLachlan

‘Utterly gripping … Another brilliant adventure from Philip Reeve’

Piers Torday

‘An absorbing, brilliant book. A glorious read. I loved my journey to Wildsea’

Lisa Thompson

‘Absolutely extraordinary writing, like Charles Dickens writing Ursula K Le Guin … I can’t think of anyone who does worldbuilding the way Philip Reeve does’

Ross Montgomery

To Liz Cross, for guiding this and so many of my other stories through the wild woods.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONMAP 1:THE STORM ON SUMMERTIDE2:THE WEDDING3:THE BLACK STAG4:AN INVITATION5:THE VOYAGE6:THE STARS LOOK DOWN7:BARROWCHURCH8:THE CIRCLE AND THE ROW9:THE RIVER AND THE OAK10:GENIUS LOCI11:A FAIRY DIARY12:THE DREAMING STONES13:THE LOST DOOR14:THE RECTORY15:THE RIVER’S EDGE16:THE LEGEND OF THE HUNTER17:NIGHT BOAT TO WILDSEA18:A FISH OUT OF WATER19:ANOTHER GREEN WORLD20:THE CASTAWAY21:A STRANGE AND TERRIBLE KNOWLEDGE22:THE WILD HUNT23:THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS24:SWIM WITH ME25:GONE TO GROUND26:THE REWILDING OF NUTCOMBE LODGE27:BREAKING COVER28:DEEP TIME29:NEW TIMBER30:HOMEWARD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT THE AUTHORALSO BY PHILIP REEVECOPYRIGHT

1

1

THE STORM ON SUMMERTIDE

Dusk was settling upon the downs as Figgy Dan came to the crest of the giant’s hill. Below him in the twilight, a tree-lined river snaked its way through the broad valley. On the far side of the river lay a village, and a big house with a lake in its grounds. Figgy had passed that way before. The village was called Barrowchurch, and the people at the big house had been kind to him; they had given him a hot meal and a hot bath. So he tugged his pink coat tighter to keep out the wind and started down the track, past the huge chalk figure that the people of olden times had carved into the hillside there.

The pink coat was a very shabby coat, but then Figgy Dan was a very shabby man. His hair was long and 2tangled, and his face was hidden by a straggling beard. Tin cooking pots dangled and jangled from the old sheepskin pack he carried. He walked in an odd, jerky way, and he stopped sometimes to strike his own head, or box his ears. ‘Oh, leave me be, won’t you!’ he shouted, although he was entirely alone up there on the downs. ‘Oh, won’t you never stop your banging and your booming, you old bullroarers?’

The pink coat had been red once, and Figgy had marched in it all up and down the Low Countries, fighting the French. Somehow, during all those battles, the noise of the guns had got inside his head, and when he went home to England it had stayed with him, booming and roaring inside his skull. He could not hear, he could not sleep, he could not hardly think. Trying to escape the din, he fled ever westward, to places more and more remote, until he fetched up at last on Summertide, among the Autumn Isles, a scattering of islands so remote they had been left off the maps entirely, and few people had ever heard of them at all.

The guns in Figgy’s head still roared on Summertide, but the noise was fainter here, as if distance from the mainland muffled it a little. Or so it had seemed to Figgy, until this particular October night. Now the booming was louder than ever. ‘Shut your noise!’ he shouted, as he stumbled down the old chalk road to Barrowchurch, and he started to weep at the thought that all his travels 3had been in vain and he never would escape his private artillery.

Then he noticed how the wind was gusting over the brow of the down behind him, and how the fading light had taken on a brownish tinge. Glancing back, he saw bruised clouds sprawling across the western sky. A sudden blink of lightning lit the whole world white.

The thunder boomed, and Figgy began to run. He was glad the booming was outside his head this time, but the booming on the inside had left him with a terror of loud noises. Besides, when a man has only one set of clothes, he does not want to be caught out in a storm, and this storm looked set to be a tartar, rushing over the downs on a wind that seemed to have blown up out of nowhere. Figgy had heard strange stories of the haunted seas that lay west of the Autumn Isles. That was where this hurricane had been brewed; he would have wagered money on it, if he’d had any.

By the time he reached the hill’s foot and started out across Barrowchurch Common, the thunder was roaring like whole batteries of guns. Hail came down like grapeshot, stinging Figgy’s face and ears and hands, striking the road and bouncing high so it could fall down on him again. He would be soaked through or frozen long before he reached the big house.

Then, in a long flash of lightning, he saw the church ahead of him. 4

Figgy remembered this church from his first visit. It was a spooky sort of church, built on top of a wooded mound that rose out of the broad flatness of the common, unnatural-like. The church seemed to think it unnatural too, for it crouched on the mound’s top with the air of a man who’d climbed on the back of a sleeping elephant for a joke and now feared it might wake and throw him off. But it was closer than the village, so Figgy ran towards it.

This being October, the trees had mostly lost their leaves, so the rain pelted him as hard while he climbed the steep side of the mound as it had out in the open. Just as he neared the top and saw the lych gate into the churchyard ahead of him, a bright flash of lightning showed him a lady standing on the path not three yards away.

‘Lor’ bless us!’ said Figgy, and stopped short.

He thought he had seen a ghost. The wooded mound seemed just the place for wandering spirits, and this was just the sort of night they would be wandering on. Besides, it was easier to believe in ghosts than that a fine lady would be out here all alone in such a blow.

But the lightning came again, and reassured him that the lady was not a ghost. Not only that; she was a lady Figgy knew. She was Miss Inshaw, from the big house, where they had been so kind to him. The butler had told Figgy to sling his hook, but Miss Inshaw had come out and said no. Her late father would not have wanted her 5to turn away any man who had worn the king’s uniform, she’d said, and she had sent Figgy round to the stables, where the hot meal and hot bath had happened.

Standing there in the downpour, he felt a little less cold and hungry for just remembering it.

The lightning flashed. At the same instant there came a clap of thunder so loud and so close overhead it made poor Figgy cry out in terror. Miss Inshaw, who had been standing there in the wind and rain as if in a dream, turned and saw him. He backed away, ashamed of his dishevelled state, and made a little bow to show he meant no harm. He did not know if Miss Inshaw recognized him, but he was glad she did not seem afraid of him.

‘Can you hear it too, sir?’ she asked.

‘Meaning the thunder, miss?’ said Figgy. ‘How could I not?’

‘No, no – behind the thunder, and in the gaps between. Listen! Can you not hear fairy music?’

What with the thunder outside his head and his own personal cannonade still booming on within, Figgy could barely hear her voice, let alone any bloomin’ fairy music. But Miss Inshaw seemed happy about it, so he nodded, just to please her.

‘I knew it!’ she shouted, over another rending crash of thunder. ‘I have always said that Barrowchurch Knoll is a fairy hill. On a night like this, the fairy folk are sure to be abroad!’ 6

‘Begging your pardon, miss,’ said Figgy. ‘Shouldn’t you think about getting indoors? If you don’t mind me saying, you’ll catch your death out here …’

Miss Inshaw did not seem to hear him. She was pointing towards the lych gate. A huge, old oak tree stood next to it, ancient and evil-looking, but she was gazing at it like it was a vision of Paradise.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘Oh, look!’

She stepped off the path and started across the gnarled web of roots that covered the slope below the tree. Afraid for her, afraid for himself, afraid of being left alone with the dreadful thunder, Figgy went after her. Light seemed to be coming from beneath the tree. It was not the jaggedy, fleeting light of the storm but long red-gold shafts. They shone out from a place between the tree’s roots as if a door had opened there and somewhere inside the hill the sun was setting on a better day.

‘Oh, come see!’ Miss Inshaw called, as if Figgy were one of her genteel friends and not just a raggedy tinker man. Figgy started to wonder if she was quite right in the head. But he shyly scrimble-scrambled his way across the wet roots to join her. ‘Look!’ she said.

The sky split open above them.

Side by side, they stood in the light and stared at something wonderful.

7

2

THE WEDDING

The wedding had been the talk of the island of Wildsea for months, ever since the excitement of last autumn’s awful storm had faded. So many people had come to watch the ceremony that the little church behind the dunes at Marazea was packed to bursting, and the congregation spilled out into the churchyard, and stood upon the churchyard wall, straining to catch the words of the marriage service drifting from inside.

But Utterly Dark heard the service very clearly, for the bridegroom was Utterly’s guardian, Uncle Will, and the bride was her friend Aish, and so she had been appointed Chief Bridesmaid. Her friend Lucy Dearlove and Lucy’s little sister Emily were bridesmaids too, and they all three stood by Aish’s side at the altar, with floral 8crowns perched on their heads, and the rest of their persons clad in new dresses of sprigged muslin, which Uncle Will had ordered all the way from Bristol for the occasion.

Some of the grander islanders, who lived ‘over the hill’ on Wildsea’s sheltered east coast, had been shocked when Uncle Will and Aish announced their engagement. They had declared it a most scandalous, unsuitable and ill-advised match. After all, the Darks of Sundown Watch had been Watchers on Wildsea for countless generations, and were one of the island’s most important families, while Aish was just a troll-woman from the Dizzard hills, and did not even seem to have a surname! But most people rightly sensed that Aish was important too, in her own way, and besides, they knew she had rescued Will Dark when he was washed ashore from a shipwreck the previous year. Since Wildsea people believe that what you save from the sea is yours for ever, it seemed only right and proper they should wed. When Reverend Dearlove read the banns on Easter Sunday there had been a friendly cheer from the rougher elements of the congregation, a murmur of satisfaction from everyone else, and Utterly had been able to nudge Lucy and whisper, ‘I told you they would soon be married,’ which had been extremely gratifying.

‘Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, deliberately, soberly and 9in the fear of God,’ said Reverend Dearlove, trying to sound stern but not really succeeding, because Will and Aish were among his dearest friends and he was delighted to be marrying them.

Uncle Will looked really almost respectable, thought Utterly, in his new plum-coloured coat and his good white breeches and buckled shoes. As for Aish, her large, strong-featured, somewhat hairy face had grown very much prettier since Utterly first met her, but then perhaps all faces did when you grew to like their owners. Today she looked perfectly beautiful, standing in the sunbeam that came in through a high window to light up the altar. Utterly had been slightly afraid she would wear her head-dress of antlers, which would not have been at all the thing for church, but she had left the antlers off, and the wreath of spring flowers, which Utterly had helped to weave, looked lovely on her dark red hair. She wore a dress of cream silk, which was a gift from Will, and very well it suited her, with Utterly, Lucy and little Emily holding up the train. And if she still had rather a lot of strange trollish charms and ornaments hung around her neck, and carried an unusual bouquet of moss and oak-twigs, nobody minded, for she looked so radiantly happy.

Even Egg, who had been far from delighted when Mrs Skraeveling made him put on shoes and comb his hair flat with water, had brightened when he saw her. ‘The 10whole island is blooming and so is Aish,’ he said, and nodded his approval. Egg was only eleven, and Aish was no one quite knew how old, but Egg regarded himself as her minder all the same.

‘If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter hold his peace,’ said Reverend Dearlove.

Silence fell. The congregation held its breath, praying that no one would know of a reason why the wedding should not happen, but also just half hoping that someone might, because wouldn’t that be thrilling?

And for a moment, Utterly thought someone was going to speak, for she heard a sound that was a little like a throat being cleared, or perhaps a roll of far-off thunder, or the low growl of an animal. It was the sort of sound you felt as much as heard, trembling in the cool old granite flagstones beneath her slippers, and thrumming through the wood of the pews.

The sound gave Utterly the feeling that Mrs Skraeveling called ‘someone walking over your grave’, but which Utterly thought was a certain sign of magic in the air. She looked quickly at the scrubbed, expectant faces of the congregation, but no one else seemed to have heard it. Even Aish, who had sharper ears than most, was gazing lovingly at Will, quite unconcerned.

So perhaps I imagined it, thought Utterly. But she didn’t think she had. 11

‘I require and charge you both …’ said Reverend Dearlove, breaking the silence, and the service went on its sonorous way until at last Will and Aish were married, and the vicar was able to say in his own everyday voice, ‘You may kiss the bride, Will!’

‘Ugh!’ whispered Utterly, Lucy and Egg, looking away. They all thought kissing was perfectly disgusting, and felt quite certain they would never go in for that type of thing when they were grown-ups.

But although Will and Aish’s kiss was warm and loving, it did not go on for too long. Soon they were outside in the sunshine, accepting the congratulations of neighbours and well-wishers. Then Utterly and her friends were able to look forward to the most important part of the day, which was the food. Utterly and Egg had helped Mrs Skraeveling with the preparations for the wedding breakfast that morning and, as Egg kept telling anyone who would listen, it was going to be a feast fit for Nebuchadnezzar himself. (Egg was not entirely sure who Nebuchadnezzar was, but thought he must be someone pretty grand because he had two Zs in his name.)

So everyone went up the long track to Sundown Watch, the bride and groom riding on a flower-bedecked wagon, the children running beside it, the villagers following, and two of Aish’s Dizzard friends playing old, old songs on a fiddle and a flute. The track was steep, the climb hot, but at the top long trestle tables had been set 12up in the gardens of the Watch, with awnings to shade them, and there was cider, and small beer, and lemonade. The next few hours were mostly talk, and laughter and eating.

But you could have too much of talk and laughter, Utterly discovered, and it turned out that even eating palled after a while – or, at least, there came a point when it seemed wise to take a break from it, in case you burst. The fiddler and the piper were playing reels now, and a few couples were already venturing out to join Will and Aish upon the portion of the lawns that had been set aside for dancing. Utterly left them to it and slipped off alone. She went around the house to the seaward side, then followed the steep cliff-path down into Blanchmane’s Cove, wondering what the sea made of it all.

The sea was where Utterly had come from. She had been washed ashore in a basket on the 21st of February twelve years before, when she was just a tiny baby. She had grown into a girl with such dark eyes and such straight silk-black hair that it was generally believed on Wildsea that her parents had been a Chinese merchant and his wife whose ship had foundered in the Western Deeps. But lately she had come to doubt that story. For during the great storm of the previous October she had 13somehow been washed or carried away from Wildsea and had adventures on the Hidden Lands, those islands that appeared mysteriously sometimes out on the western sea. Those were the islands the Watchers of Wildsea were supposed to watch for, for they were the home of the mysterious and powerful Gorm, who haunted Wildsea’s oldest legends.

How she had reached the Hidden Lands exactly, and what she had seen and done there, Utterly could not quite recollect. Nor could Uncle Will or the boy called Egg, who had ventured after her to fetch her home. All the memories of their visit to the Hidden Lands had faded like dreams as soon as they set foot on Wildsea again. But Utterly had been left with the oddest feeling ever since, that her parents had not been merchants at all, and that the ancient power that dwelled in the western deeps had some profound connexion with her. The Gorm cared for her. How else could she, and Egg, and Uncle Will have been allowed to come safely home, riding a little frail boat over that angry sea which drowned all ships?

The sea did not look angry as Utterly scrambled down the cliff-path to it on the evening of the wedding. It had been unusually quiet ever since the storm, and today it looked as meek as a kitten and as sleepy as a sloth. It 14had barely enough energy to push its little wavelets up the sand. Tangles of kelp washed limply in its shallows, and it made no effort to weave them into terrifying weed-men, which it had delighted in doing not so long ago. The white-clad lady who was the Gorm’s human form did not rise from the gentle swell offshore to smile at Utterly. And when Utterly stood on the wet sand at the water’s edge and announced, ‘Uncle Will and Aish are married now,’ the sea did not answer her, or show the slightest interest.

Utterly missed it. She missed its moods, and its rages. She missed its terrors. Last October it had risen in such a fury that it had torn down the cliff outside her bedroom window and flattened the vicarage, and people had found seaweed hanging from the trees three miles inland. Now it had grown so lazy that the fishermen of Merriport were starting to talk about sailing their boats around Gull Point and fishing in the western deeps. None of them had mustered the courage to actually do it yet, but they were talking of doing it.

It was as if the Gorm was sulking. Or perhaps she was so lonely out there in her half-imaginary Hidden Lands that she had given way to melancholia, and no longer had the heart to brew up storms and tear tall sea-cliffs down?

Perhaps I should go to her, thought Utterly, feeling suddenly sorry for the lonely and terrible old Gorm. All she need do was wade out into those little waves and set 15off swimming for the far horizon. The Hidden Lands would be waiting for her there, just out of sight.

For a moment, the temptation was very strong. She even took a step or two towards the sea’s edge. But before the gentle waves could touch her slippers, a voice from behind her called, ‘Utterly!’ and she looked round to see Egg waving frantically from the clifftop.

‘Utterly!’ he yelled, ‘Aish and your uncle are setting off to ride to the Dizzard. And I have saved you a helping of that fruit pudding!’

16

3

THE BLACK STAG

Aish was not about to spend her wedding night beneath a roof: neither the slate roof of Sundown Watch, nor even the good mossy thatch of her own longhouse at Dizzard Tor. Instead, she and Will left their horses at the Trollbridge Inn and went up by secret ways through clefts in the crags and down to the tarn that lay cupped in the Dizzard’s heart, hidden from the sea by steep, wooded slopes. Aish kept a tiny boat there, tied up to the tree roots on the lake shore.

‘I did not think that you approved of boats,’ said Will, when he was settled on its single thwart and the boat was gliding out from the shadows of the trees.

Aish, standing in the stern with the one long oar, looked fondly down at him and said, ‘I do not fear good 17fresh water. I would never set out in any boat across the old Gorm’s salty, restless, and revengeful sea. Not that we have heard much of the old Gorm since you defeated her.’

Will laughed, a little nervously. ‘I wish I could remember that. You make it sound most heroical.’

‘But you were heroical that night, Will Dark. Do you really not recollect how the Gorm, in all her rage and enormousness, came wading ashore, and how you and I met on the dunes, and near got trampled by her, and how you struck her down with Egg’s little hunting spear?’

‘I remember something,’ said Will, knitting his brow with the effort of it. ‘I remember the wind, and the driving spray, and the dune collapsing under me so I was half buried. I remember you digging me out, and being so strong and such a comfort to me. But as to the rest …’

‘You must remember how the Men o’ Weed stole Utterly away, and you went after her in the witch’s boat? How you got her back I do not know, since I could not go with you over the cold old sea, but get her back you did. You must remember.’

‘I remember ruffians attacked Sundown Watch, and the Skraevelings were never able to describe their faces. I remember that Utterly was washed away … I remember a grand building somewhere … Or was it only a sea cave?’

‘It was the Hidden Lands, my love,’ said Aish. ‘It was the home of the Gorm, and you were so brave for going 18there. But that place is like the land of dreams; it is hard to bring clear memories home with you.’

There was an island in the tarn’s centre, a dome of old trees which seemed to float upon the layer of mist that hung just above the water. The boat’s keel grounded on the shingle at its edge. Will scrambled out and turned back to help Aish out, but she was not the sort of lady who required much help, and she was already wading ashore with her wedding dress hitched up to keep it dry. He followed her a little way through the trees, and there in the middle of the island was a deep pool, filled with reflections of the afterglow that was still gilding the edges of the clouds high above. In the middle of the pool was a small island, where white flowers showed among the grass, and there, blankets and rugs had been laid upon the ground and an awning pitched over them to preserve them against the evening dew.

‘Is this place a dream too?’ asked Will.

‘It is a place of power, Will Dark,’ said Aish. ‘An island on a lake on an island on a lake on an island … This is my place, and nothing can trouble us here. Now, do you want to stand all night talking? For it is getting late, and look, the evening star is peeking through the trees at us, and won’t she be disappointed in us if all we do upon our wedding night is talk?’

19The evening star very bright in the west, the sea perfectly empty, wrote Utterly. She was sitting upon her high stool on the platform that Mr Skraeveling had built beside the ruins of the Watcher’s Tower, demolished by last autumn’s storm. She had watched the western horizon through Uncle Will’s telescope until the sun set, and she had seen nothing except the long light changing on the sea and the first stars coming out. She knew the Hidden Lands were out there, but it seemed they were hidden even more completely than before.

Before the light died altogether she added another note to her entry in the Log. Mr William Dark, the Watcher on Wildsea, was Married today to Aish of Dizzard Tor. She drew a heart beside the words to celebrate. After eight months of perfectly empty seas, it felt nice to have an item of interest to enliven the pages of the Watcher’s Log.

Aish dreamed that she stood on the shore of her little island, looking out across the water. The mist had gone. The tarn was a mirror, and the trees on its far shore were very still and dark. Even Aish, with her sharp eyes, stood looking for a while before she made out the shape of the big black stag that stood watching her from the water’s edge.

‘What have you come back for?’ Aish spoke firmly, but 20if Will or Utterly had heard her they would have recognized the faint tremble of uncertainty in her voice, as if she were afraid. But only the black stag heard. It took a step into the clear water, as if it intended to swim out to the island. Aish had forgotten how big it was, how wide its antlers, like the crown of a dead tree. There were no stags like that left in the world any more, although they had been common once.

‘You are out of fashion,’ she told it. ‘Run home, wherever your home is nowadays.’

The stag dipped its antlers, as if in respect, but really just to show her how very sharp they were, and how very many points they had. Its eyes burned with a golden light that was somehow both cold and fiery at once.

Aish awoke. The awning glowed gently with the light of the new day creeping across the sky above the tarn. The memory of her dream was very real. She rose, careful not to wake Will, and went through the trees to the place where she had stood in her dream. There were no hoofprints on the far shore where the stag had stood; no spreading ripples in the water; no trampled grass or broken branches to mark the place where such a large animal had made its way down to the tarn. So the stag had not been real. But Aish knew that did not mean it had not been there.

‘You old villain,’ she said. ‘Wildsea has done well enough without you all these many years. Where were 21you when the old Gorm came rampaging, eh? We might have used you then. But not now. Stay out of my dreams. Stay out of my woods. Stay in your own world. Leave this one be.’

22

4

AN INVITATION

There followed honeyed months of golden sunlight, with the bees all a-buzz among the buttercups and bluebells. The newlyweds spent whole weeks up in the Dizzard woods or exploring down the coves and cliffs of the east coast, very much delighted with each other’s company. The rest of the time they stayed at Sundown Watch, where Will still had to oversee the repairs to the house and the rebuilding of the Watcher’s Tower.

With so much going on, Utterly’s schooling somehow got overlooked, which suited Utterly very well. The Dearlove family was still living at the Watch while they waited for their new vicarage to be finished, but Mrs Dearlove’s time was taken up with choosing wallpapers and carpets, and her husband had many more weddings 23to perform, for it was turning out to be a famous year for weddings on Wildsea. Their children, Lucy, Emily and Horatio, were left as free as Utterly. As for Egg, he had never had much time for schooling, and came and went between Sundown Watch and the Dizzard as he pleased, so the five of them were able to run wild together. They built themselves a camp in the spinney on St Chyan’s Common. They invented a game called Urgles, which combined elements of cricket, hurling, tag and croquet, and played it for hours in the lengthening evenings on the flat piece of garden where the dancing had been. One day, they traced Stinlake Brook all the way to its soggy beginnings among the bog-cotton and curlew nests on Owlsbarrow Beacon, and planted a flag there in the peat to claim it for King George. Utterly sensed the time was coming when she would be too dignified and grown-up for such pursuits, but it had not come yet, and she was determined to enjoy childhood while it lasted.

And in the end, it was not growing up that put a stop to the games and expeditions. It was a letter, delivered one afternoon by a boy who had ridden over from Merriport.

Letters were something of a rarity at Sundown Watch, especially letters like this one, written on heavy, thick-woven, creamy paper, and sealed with a blob of red wax on which a coat of arms had been impressed. Everyone gathered around Will in the drawing room as he broke the seal. 24

‘It is from my cousin,’ he said, after a moment.

‘I did not know you had a cousin, Will,’ said Reverend Dearlove.

‘Yes – although he lives on Summertide, and I have not seen him since I was quite small. His name is Francis Inshaw. He had a sister, Elizabeth, but she died last autumn. I believe Francis is still in mourning, and that is why he could not attend the wedding. He sent us his good wishes, though, and a handsome present – it was Cousin Francis who gave us the silver milk jug, Aish.’

‘And why is he writing now?’ asked Aish. ‘Does he want it back?’

Will studied the letter. ‘He says, My dear Cousin, I give you joy of your marriage – etcetera, etcetera – ah, here is the meat of it, listen: I write in the hope that you may be able to assist me with some Druidic monuments which are sited on my land. Our parson, Dr Hyssop, advises me that these relics of the distant past may be of interest to antiquaries and, further, that they may mark sites where our heathen ancestors buried their dead and, indeed, that they may contain gold, jewels and other valuables. I know nothing of these matters, but I collect that you have made a study of such relics, and so I write to suggest that you and the new Mrs Dark might be so kind as to pay me a visit here on Summertide and give me your opinion of our various earthworks …’

‘What does all that mean?’ asked Egg, who had grown rather lost among all the long words.

‘It means Uncle Will and Aish are invited to 25Summertide!’ said Utterly. (And how exciting that sounded! And how she wished she were invited too!)

Will looked happy at the prospect, but only for a little while. When he lived in England he had developed a great enthusiasm for antiquities, and geology, and astronomy, and all the other mysteries that gentlemen of science were learning to unravel in this exciting new nineteenth century. Returning to Wildsea, his enthusiasm had prompted him to make a detailed description of the stone circle that crowned St Chyan’s Head. In his eagerness, he had written up his discoveries in a hasty letter and mailed it to the Island Post on Lamontane. But by the time it was published, St Chyan’s Head had been destroyed, taking the circle with it, and Will had learned that some mysteries were a great deal more mysterious than gentlemen of science imagined.

‘My cousin Inshaw must have seen my foolish letter in the Post,’ he said. ‘That is why he thinks me an authority on such matters.’

‘So will you go to Summertide and advise him on these stones?’ asked Mrs Dearlove. ‘I remember you were all afire about antiquities and Druid temples when you first came home to us from London.’

‘Until I learned not to meddle in such things,’ said Will.

There was a brief, uneasy silence. Everyone was thinking of what had happened the previous autumn. Mrs Dearlove suddenly remembered how the old vicarage had been flattened, not by the wind, but by a vast, angry 26woman woven out of weed. Utterly was recalling strange glowing figures she had seen in the depths of the sea. Will had a vision of a beautiful palace on an unknown shore. But here in the drawing room, with the summer sun shining in, those memories seemed so hazy, and so unlikely, that they must surely be only the memories of dreams, and everyone felt too shy to speak of them.

Aish chuckled and said, ‘Well, I think you should go, Will Dark.’

‘You do?’

‘I do! There can be no harm left in old graves and mounds on Summertide, for magic does not linger on those soft eastward isles the way it does on Wildsea.’

‘And shall you come with me, Aish? We might take a tour of all the islands on our way …’

Aish laughed. ‘Not I, Will Dark! What, leave my woods, and travel over all that wide restless wobbling waste of sea? You know I cannot. I am of the land, and I always shall be. But I do not want to keep you prisoner here, my love. I have business to attend to in my woods, so go you to Summertide, and come back to me, and I shall welcome you home with a heart grown even fonder for the absence.’

‘Well …’ said Will doubtfully, wanting to make it clear that he would miss her, and would not go unless she was absolutely sure.

‘I am sure,’ said Aish.

‘I will come with you, Uncle Will!’ Utterly said eagerly. 27‘I have never had a holiday before. I have never visited another island …’ (Her voice trailed away then, because she was thinking of the Hidden Lands, but her memories of them were so foggy that she did not think they had counted as a holiday.) ‘You cannot possibly go alone. I will come and keep you company.’

‘That is a very good idea,’ said Aish.

‘The voyage may be uncomfortable,’ Will warned. ‘Why, the last time I ventured aboard a ship it was wrecked beneath me …’

‘And it was me who found you all blue and bedraggled on the sand, if you recall,’ said Aish. ‘But with the sea in its present mood of meekness and mildness there is little danger. And though the old Gorm does not have much power over those eastward seas, she must have some, I reckon, and that is another reason to take Utterly with you. The Gorm has a kindness for Utterly, and if Utterly goes with you I am sure no harm will come to you upon the waves.’

‘But …’ said Uncle Will, and Utterly knew he was thinking up further reasons why they should not go, but she could also tell he really wanted to. She clenched her fists by her sides, and hopped from foot to foot with impatience, until he turned and caught her eye.

‘Well, Utterly?’ he asked. ‘What is your opinion? Do you really wish to make this trip to Summertide?’

‘I should like it above all things,’ said Utterly, and she nodded very firmly.