The Gathering, page 7
But it wasn’t the trees that had made Erin get out of the car, or the wind, or the birds, or the oak leaf in her hand. Her frown knotted tighter, she turned and walked back the way she’d come, not sure what she was doing, but feeling her way to…something.
When she looked, there was nothing strung across the road.
But she felt it, right…there…and it made her hand tingle when she held it out.
The tingling rode up her arm, into the bones of her shoulder, spread along and through her. She swallowed, breathed deeply in, because something in her recognised this…this…magic.
Yes. It was magic.
The wind whipped over to her and tugged at her jacket, wrapped itself around her ankles. The bird cried out again, and its mate answered it. They sang a duet.
It felt…like a thickening in the air. It made her head swim slightly and Erin shook herself, setting her long hair swinging. She stepped back, then towards the invisible barrier again, tuning her senses ever more tightly to the sensation. Astonished by it.
But she was dreaming it. Surely. Magic belonged in fairy tales. And in her drawings. That’s where you found magic these days; the only places she’d been able to discover it.
On the village side of the – whatever it was – the air felt cooler…busier. In the other direction, towards where her Mini was parked slightly askew in the leaves at the side of the lane, the air felt…
Erin struggled to articulate it. How did it feel?
Concentrated.
She stood still, her body humming with the discovery. Not knowing what to make of it. Another bird piped up from the trees, spun out a song. Erin gazed off into the forest, felt an urge to walk into the woods, touch the rough bark, rest her head against a tall, solid trunk. Breathe in the safe, calming scent of leaf and loam.
But, suddenly self-conscious, she hurried back to her car and put her hand on the door handle. It was cold under her fingers, but that wasn’t what sent a sudden frisson of excitement through her like a shiver. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she lifted her hand to that instead, lifting her head to look around. Trees. Wind. Birds. Empty road.
But inside, a new sensation filled her. Something waking up. Stretching. Smiling in recognition.
Erin stood still, holding herself rigidly in place, digging deep inside herself, trying to divine what was going on. What was happening to her?
She glanced suddenly over her shoulder. Was there someone there?
The road was empty, and yet…
In her mind – was it in her mind? There was someone standing there, just behind her right shoulder. She could almost see them. Could feel them. Her. It was a woman.
How old she was, although not in years. In time. How ancient. Her mouth dry, Erin stood stock-still, looking over her shoulder out of the corner of her eye.
Yes. Someone was there, someone strong, sure. Familiar. Somehow familiar.
And then, the woman was gone. As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone and Erin shivered in the breeze that tugged at her hair, plucked at her clothes. What had just happened?
Had she seen a ghost? Was that what it was?
Erin didn’t know if she believed in ghosts. She swallowed and her throat clicked. It was painfully dry. Forcing herself to move, she turned around, looked at the place where she’d been so sure the – ghost? – had stood, just inches from herself.
Behind her, the bird called out again, weaving a melody out onto the wind and now, with knowledge she didn’t know how she’d come by, Erin knew the bird was a Redwing, and she could almost feel him, the heat of his skin under the insulation of his feathers.
The ghost was gone. Still gone.
Erin looked down at the oak leaf in her hand and traced her thumb over the veins, the reddened leaf like soft leather. When she looked up again, at the trees, she didn’t just see them – she felt them, the weight of their branches, the twiggy knobs on them where their leaves had grown, withered. Deep inside herself, she heard a long, low hum, and shook her head because somehow, she knew that was the voices of the trees, humming themselves to sleep for the long winter.
Except the winter wasn’t long for them, she knew. It was just a breath, just a slow inhale and exhale. Just a dream.
Shaken, Erin opened the Mini door and slid into her car, then realised she was still holding the oak leaf. For a moment, she thought of tossing it out onto the road, where there were a hundred more, a thousand more. But she didn’t. Instead, she put it carefully between the pages of the sketchbook that lay on the passenger’s seat and closed the covers on it.
Her coffee was where she’d left it and Erin picked it up, took a sip. It was cold now, but wet on her throat and she took another sip, a gulp.
There was no one around. Did this road not lead anywhere? Did no one come this way? She’d not seen another person since leaving the village. Erin put the drink back in the cup holder and rested her hands on the steering wheel, looking around at the stretch of road, littered with leaves.
It was time to start the car again. The GPS flashed on, her route indicated with a red line. Frowning at it, Erin reached out, touched the screen, and put a waypoint where she was parked, then sat back and stared at it.
There. She’d marked the spot. Where she’d felt the…barrier.
The magic.
And the ghost.
Or spirit. Or whatever it had been. The woman.
She looked at the clock. It was afternoon. How long had she spent standing there in the middle of the road? Erin didn’t know, and she rubbed at her eyes. The day had taken on an unreal cast. And yet…
In the midst of that unreality, everything seemed somehow more real than ever.
Perhaps she was getting sick again, but she shook her head at that thought. She didn’t feel lost, the way she did when she disappeared inside the dreams.
She felt…not lost, but found.
Erin turned the wheel, touched her foot to the accelerator, and followed the red line on the GPS.
Towards her cottage.
11
Driving along the lane, through the woods, towards the cottage, Erin thought of Goldilocks.
Then shook her head. No, it wasn’t Goldilocks, was it, who had trooped through the forest on the way to her grandmother’s house?
She smiled. It was Little Red Riding Hood, of course. Erin glanced out at the trees again. And hadn’t there been a Big Bad Wolf in that story? Hadn’t the Big Bad Wolf eaten Grandma?
She blinked out at the woods. If there was a wolf among those trees, she thought, it would be watching her now. Ears twitching. But when she tried imagining it, a fox wandered into her mind instead, and Erin smiled.
She loved foxes.
The trees backed away from the road and Erin found herself peering at a driveway. She slowed and glanced at the map route, then back at the rutted dirt track with the wooden gate across it.
This was the place.
Erin pulled up in front of the gate and got out of the car.
The gate swung back on well-oiled hinges, much to Erin’s surprise, and there was a letter box, and a sign on it. Her heart beat faster, her lips curving in excitement.
Ash Cottage.
She glanced at the trees, scanning for ash. She’d go out later, she thought, and wander around looking properly. For now all she could see were oak. She’d learnt her way around the trees when she was teaching herself to draw. The YouTube artist she’d learnt from had told her she needed to know what she was drawing to do them justice. Erin agreed wholeheartedly. She stood now, the breeze cool as it played with her hair, looking out at the trees like they might be friends.
The ash was in danger from disease. Thousands were likely to die from ash die-back. Perhaps some of that charity work her mother was so keen for her to do once the children came along could be helping to save the trees? She entertained for a moment the vision of trooping through forests armed with notebooks, sketchbooks – and what else? The children, of course, she supposed.
Well. She’d teach the children the names of all the trees. They’d collect fallen leaves, do crafts or whatever with them.
She’d teach them the tree’s songs.
The tree’s songs. Her mind went blank for a moment, stuttering into static over the thought. She’d never considered that trees had songs before.
Jeremy wanted to live in the city – needed to, for his job, Erin reminded herself. He worked in finance. Banking. Erin closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the land. Sighed.
She’d reminded herself that she couldn’t get too comfortable here. She had to go back to town soon, in a few days. She had a life there. A real life, not a fairy tale one. Definitely not a fairy tale one – or not to her specifications, anyway. She knew she was the cossetted envy of some, with the allowance, the wardrobes full of fashionable clothes, the credit cards, rich mummy and daddy. The flat in the city, the handsome fiancé, life all mapped out for her – beautiful house, beautiful things, beautiful children who would also just be beautiful things.
Erin squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the threat of tears. She gulped at the damp air, clenching her hands into fists until she had herself under control again. Then she got back into her car and drove through the gates, some of the day’s shine gone from her. She stopped the Mini, got out again and closed the gates behind her. No point advertising her presence to anyone driving past. Since she didn’t have the key to the place yet.
But then Erin remembered telling the woman – Lucy – in The Copper Kettle who she was, and knew that probably the news was all through the village already.
Come here to see her grandmother, she’d said. The lump was back in her throat and she wondered if the cottage had been cleared out. Probably, she decided, remembering the date of the solicitor’s letter. Wouldn’t it have been cleared out? She didn’t know how these things worked, but she guessed so.
She would know tomorrow, when she’d have the key, as soon as the solicitor’s office opened. She’d be there on their doorstep waiting.
There was still the matter of the somewhat unusual conditions but Erin had given up puzzling over what those might be in the first hours of her journey. She didn’t know what they could possibly be. Perhaps it was a listed building? Perhaps she had to agree to keep on a beloved and elderly gardener? That was the likeliest she could come up with, and if that was the case, then she didn’t see the problem with it. Even if – or when – she sold the cottage, she could write that into the sales agreement, surely?
Her parents, once they found out about this place, would pressure her to sell it, Erin knew. But maybe it would make a nice holiday house. It wasn’t somewhere fancy, like the Cotswolds, and the village hadn’t been terribly picturesque, but it was a free house, wasn’t it? She wondered what Jeremy would think of it.
Then pushed that thought away because another had taken its place, and too quickly.
She didn’t want to tell Jeremy.
She didn’t even want to tell her parents.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. She didn’t want to tell them yet, she amended. Because of course she would have to. Her father would take charge of the place. Of getting it valued, of finding a buyer for it.
Things like that, she thought vaguely. She’d need him to do those things, since she had no idea about them.
But first, she would spend some time here on her own. Secretly. She’d think of something to say to Jeremy or tell him what had happened and swear him to silence. He’d keep it secret for her, perhaps, if she begged him to.
She had about a week, Erin reckoned, before people started fretting after her. Her mother was planning a shopping trip for them both in a week, buying new clothes ready for the start of the university term.
A week. A week to investigate her past. Her real past. To get to know her grandmother, her mother, her blood family.
To draw some of these trees. Learn their songs, find the ghost.
She shivered.
Erin came upon the house suddenly, unexpectedly, the trees pushed back into a wide clearing, in which stood a stone cottage, slate roofed, windows mullioned. The stone was a quiet grey, and Erin’s lips curved in an unconscious smile at the quaint little covered entrance.
She followed the driveway to a small garage and parked there outside the closed doors, getting out of the car, and looking around in bemusement.
It was so quiet. No traffic sounds. Nothing but the birds and trees and wind. Above, the sky was a brilliant autumn blue, clear and crisp. Erin took a deep breath in and tasted soil and tree and plant on her tongue. The property was fragrant, alive. Excitement grew inside her, burned there.
She gazed around. This property was far smaller and certainly not cultivated within an inch of its life like the house and grounds where she’d grown up. Veronica would wrinkle her nose, despite the pretty stone. She’d scowl at the slate roof and shake her head. Her mother liked modern, clean, contemporary styling. Her mouth would turn down over this mossy stone house.
Erin was charmed by it.
She closed the car door and walked back around to the front of the house, her excitement in full bloom. This place was hers? Could that possibly be?
She’d never had anything of her own before, not really.
Her car, bought by her parents, and a compromise at that. She’d wanted the fully electric Mini, but Veronica had put up such a fuss over not wanting her daughter broken down in some strange place in the middle of the night all for the want of a charging station, that Erin had shaken her head, agreed to the compromise of the hybrid Countryman.
The flat – that wasn’t hers, either. The whole family used it when they came to the city.
Oh, she supposed her clothes, and her books, and her generous allowance was hers. The credit cards, even though her father paid off the balances.
She had a fiancé. He was hers. She had a job lined up for her. That was hers. She had – almost – a degree in business. That would be hers.
And yet.
And yet.
The only thing Erin felt was really hers was the sketchbook on the front seat of the Mini. That was hers.
That was her. The real Erin.
But this house.
This house felt like the real Erin too.
Her head spun.
There was a low stone wall at the front, and a sweet little gate in it. She touched her hand to the wood of the gate, and it swung open easily. She stepped onto the path and gazed up at the cottage.
‘Hello House,’ she said in a low voice, not thinking about what she was doing, saying. ‘Hello.’ She paused. ‘Have I dreamed of you?’ she asked it. ‘You look familiar.’ She frowned but couldn’t recall any dream of this house. She dreamed of many things. Many places. And perhaps she’d dreamed of this one. Perhaps.
The path led straight to the little entranceway, two squares of grass, neatly mown, on either side. Erin noticed them and thought of her gardener. Perhaps she’d been right about that notion. Someone had been taking care of the place.
On the left, the lawn spread out around the side of the house, and in a minute, Erin was going to walk around there, see the place from all sides, familiarise herself with every angle she could.
There were two windows on the ground floor, one to each side of the door. Three windows above it. Rimmed in bright, white-painted wood. The glass lead-lighted rectangles. The left side of the house had a lower roof, and she wondered if it was a later extension. The roof itself sprouted chimney pots in glorious abandon and Erin looked at them and wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself in growing happiness.
‘Hello House,’ she said again, then remembered the sign on the letterbox by the gate. ‘Hello Ash Cottage.’ She swallowed, felt vaguely silly, talking to the house. ‘I’m Erin,’ she said anyway.
The front door had a knocker in the middle of it and she touched a hand to it and laughed.
Here was the big bad wolf, she thought, letting her fingertips stroke the brass snout before falling away. There was a little wooden bench in the entranceway, and set neatly under it, a pair of wellington boots. Erin nudged them with her toe. Had they been her grandmother’s?
She backed away from the front door and retraced her steps to look at the house again. Stepping up to one of the windows, she cupped her hands around her eyes and squinted in through the glass, then pulled back, startled. The room she’d peered into was fully furnished.
Leaning forward again, she took another look. It was a sitting room, dim and shadowed, but she could see an armchair, bookshelves – full of books – and art on the walls. Erin twisted her head to try to see what all the framed pictures were, but it was too dark inside the room and she couldn’t make any of them out. She drew back to stand on the square of lawn, dazed.
She’d thought it would be empty. She shook her head. Why hadn’t the place been cleared of things? These were her grandmother’s things? Erin bit at her lip, brow wrinkled in thought.
Perhaps, she realised finally, there had been no one to take the things away. The gardener wouldn’t after all – he, or she, would just do the gardens, obviously. And if she herself was the only relative left…
Where was her mother? Her birth mother? Erin looked around as if the woman would miraculously appear, then shook her head at her idiocy.
But still. It was a good question. She looked at the window again – it was a question that might well be answered, if she could get in there, have a proper look around.
Perhaps there was a key. Erin blinked and looked around at the strip of garden, at the sweet little shingled entranceway. Didn’t people sometimes leave a spare key under a rock or flowerpot?
They didn’t at home; her mother would never have thought that was safe. And the flat was opened by punching in a pin number.
There weren’t any flowerpots, and Erin’s mouth drooped. She tipped the wellington boots upside down, hoping a key might miraculously fall out of one, all the while shaking her head at the ridiculous notion.
She ran her fingers around the top ledge in the little entranceway, came away with dust and cobwebs but no key. And the door was definitely locked. She’d at least thought to check that first.
