Greenwild, page 12
“That’s what happens when you become the commander,” explained the Prof. “Your magic is bound to the Heart Oak: stitched into the fabric of Mallowmarsh.”
“What’s the Heart Oak?” asked Daisy, feeling disoriented.
The Prof looked at her in astonishment, and even Acorn looked startled.
“Come on,” said the Prof. “This calls for a field trip.” They were already emerging from the woods onto the great lawn, and following a path that took them past the Great Glasshouse and down to the shores of the lake, where a vast oak tree grew beside the water. Daisy had seen it before in the distance, but up close it was awe-inspiring. The tree was as wide as a truck and as tall as a lighthouse, its bark twisted and green-mossed, its branches twined with mistletoe and strung with hundreds of bright ribbons and trinkets. White squirrels chased each other up and down the trunk, field mice burrowed among the gnarled roots and tiny robins and goldfinches darted in and out of the twisting branches. It was like standing inside a wildlife palace.
Daisy watched Botanists pausing on their way around the lake, tying ribbons and coins and gold thimbles onto the tree’s lower branches and pressing their foreheads against its trunk. Their faces reminded Daisy of the way she’d seen people look in old churches.
“The Heart Oak,” said Indigo, brushing his hand reverently against the bark. “The Old Botanists used it to anchor the magic when this pocket was created. It holds Mallowmarsh together.”
The tree looked splendid: ancient and vast and very dignified. Daisy pressed her own hand against its wrinkled skin and felt her heart beating in her palm. The bark tingled, like muted electricity, and she shivered.
“People come here for weddings,” said the Prof, “and funerals too, and if they want to make a wish for someone’s safety.” She nodded at all the scraps of cloth tied around the branches. “That reminds me.” She took a green ribbon from her pocket and handed it to Acorn. “For your dad.”
“He left for Brazil last night,” explained Acorn quietly. “He’s a specialist in rare cycads and he’s trying to protect them from loggers, but…”
She couldn’t quite finish, but Daisy understood, now, why Acorn had been so pale and quiet that day. The sooner they solved the mystery of the disappearing Botanists, the better.
“So,” she said as Acorn, lips moving silently, finished tying her ribbon, “the commander’s magic runs through the tree? Only hers?”
The Prof nodded. “That’s what it means to be Oak Bound. And it runs both ways: the tree’s magic is in her veins too. Sometimes when she’s in a really good mood, the Oak sprouts acorns and catkins in midwinter.”
A cold wind whipped over the water, and Daisy watched the ribbons and coins of the Heart Oak spin and dance as a ghostly barn owl soared from its branches over the dark grounds.
“I’d better go,” she said at last. “I’m late for dinner, and Miss Tufton does not like to be kept waiting.” Waving goodbye to the others, she scooped up Napoleon and hurried to catch a lilypaddle home to the Roost.
On the far side of the lake, she used the dandelion paperweight to light her way through the twisted roots of the empty orchard, wondering for the hundredth time what it was, and where it had come from. If it had belonged to Pa, did that mean he’d been a Botanist too?
Then she heard a twig crack behind her and spun around in time to see a sharp, pointed face in the gloom, and a pair of pale blue eyes fixed on the paperweight. Before Daisy could call out, Ivy Helix was gone.
* * *
Daisy was so worn out from her first day of lessons that she fell asleep at the table during dessert. Napoleon had to stick his tongue in her ear to wake her up long enough to get upstairs to her room.
She slept for two hours and woke at midnight to find the moon shining in through the window. Rubbing her face with tiredness, she staggered out to the hidden garden. Hal was already there, yanking up weeds, and for a few minutes they worked in a comfortable silence. Then Daisy lost her grip on a nettlespur and went flying, landing unceremoniously on her back.
“Nice,” said Hal, dissolving into wheezing laughter. “One–nil to the weeds.”
“All right, all right, O mighty one. I’d like to see you do better.” She tossed a clod of mud at his head and he ducked, still laughing.
“I think we’ve done a pretty good job, actually.” Hal was sitting back on his heels and surveying the area in the center of the garden. Their rescued sapling was spindly but upright, and, in the space they’d cleared, there were masses of violets unfurling like tiny flags across the grass.
“Mm,” said Daisy, glancing around. “This garden must have been beautiful once. I wonder why it was abandoned.”
“There are all sorts of forgotten corners at Mallowmarsh,” said Hal with a shrug. “I expect someone long ago lost the key, or went away exploring and never came back.” He looked wistful for a moment, then shook himself. “It feels sort of like we have a responsibility, though. Like maybe we should try to bring it back to life.”
“Yes.” Daisy nodded, swept up in that “we.”
“Don’t laugh, but … I want it to be a surprise for my mother,” said Hal. “If I can make this garden good, maybe it will show her that Father is wrong: that I can do something worthwhile.”
Daisy was quiet for a moment. She felt as though she’d been handed a brightly colored balloon, and that it was very important that she didn’t let it go.
“Okay,” she said. “What do we do next?”
* * *
Daisy left the garden near dawn, exhausted but happy, and promising to be back the next night. It was only when Napoleon meowed that she looked up and spotted a dark figure moving around the banks of the lake, beneath the frosty branches of the orchard. She saw him glance swiftly to each side, as if checking he wasn’t being followed, before hurrying off again.
“Look,” Daisy whispered urgently, and Napoleon hissed.
Once again, there was no mistaking what she saw.
Sheldrake was on the move. And this time, she was going to follow him.
Chapter 26
She had to move fast to keep pace as the figure hurried past the Roost and into the Mallow Woods. He was heading for the Sighing Forest.
Daisy took a deep breath and kept going.
The woods were hushed and the earth seemed to swallow the sound of her feet as she walked. At last, Sheldrake stopped beneath the pines, and Daisy ducked behind a tree to listen. He was talking to someone who Daisy couldn’t see; their face was lost in shadow.
“Aaaaah,” sighed the trees. “Aaaaaah, aaaaaah.” They released great dragon-puffs of mist into the air, and their sighs obscured the sound of Sheldrake’s voice. Daisy shifted closer, darting behind a giant leaf for cover, until she could just make out a few words.
“I’ve got her where I want her. She trusts me.”
The rumble of the other person’s voice was lost amid the sighing of the pines, and then Sheldrake spoke again, sounding angry now, his voice louder:
“One more month, then we act. The Grim Reapers won’t wait.”
And he turned on his heel and hurried out of the forest, passing within a few meters of Daisy. He was frowning, too intent on his own thoughts to notice her giant leaf trembling in the gloom. Brutus sniffed twice at the air, but then Sheldrake called to him curtly, and with a last quiver of his nose the great dog disappeared after his master.
Daisy’s whole body felt cold. Who had Sheldrake been speaking to? Had he really said Grim Reapers? She felt a drowsy numbness creeping upward from her toes. If only she could get to the bottom of this. If only she had tried harder to stop Ma from going away …
“Aaaaaaah,” sighed the pines, and Daisy sighed too.
She felt very sleepy, and very sad, and lay down underneath her leaf. She just needed to sleep for a little while. The mist was very thick now, a soft white cloud blocking out the world.
She’d failed Ma, and it was no use fighting anymore. Daisy turned her face to the ground and felt something bright go out of her.
Then, slowly, she became aware of a scorching heat in her pocket. The dandelion paperweight was blazing like a beacon, or a white-hot star. Blinding light speared between her fingers: silver-bright, star-striped, incandescent. Suddenly her mind was clear and sharp as broken glass, and she could hear Ma’s voice in her head. Courage, joonam.
She lurched to her feet, and then there was Napoleon yowling, and on his heels came a huge dog, licking her face from chin to eyebrows, and a tall man with white hair carrying her out of the forest.
* * *
Sheldrake dumped her on her feet as soon as they were out of the trees.
“What do you think you were doing?” His eyes glittered dangerously in the moonlight. “Didn’t I make it clear that wandering around the pocket at night is strictly forbidden?”
Daisy scrambled desperately for an excuse. “I was only—I thought I heard—”
But Sheldrake’s eyes had fallen to Daisy’s left hand, clutched by her side. Too late, she remembered the dandelion paperweight. She tried to hide it behind her back, but Sheldrake was already lunging forward. He snatched it from her grasp and held it up so that it shone in the moonlight.
“Where,” he seethed, “did you get this?”
“It was my father’s,” said Daisy desperately. “Please, it’s mine. Give it back.”
“So! You’re a thief and a liar, as well as a spy. Ivy Helix told me you were carrying something suspicious, and she was right.” Sheldrake slipped the paperweight into his pocket, and turned to leave. “I’ll take this, girl. It will be safe in the Perilous Glasshouse.”
“No!” cried Daisy. The word seemed to fill her whole body, and half the sky. “It’s mine!” It was the only thing she had that had belonged to Pa.
“Not any longer,” said Sheldrake. He was almost snarling. “Back to the Roost, now. Or you’ll be thrown out of here faster than you can say ‘thief.’”
Daisy swayed and when she opened her eyes, he was gone.
* * *
She didn’t think things could get much worse, but she was wrong.
“Let me get this straight,” said the Prof the next day. She looked furious, and her elbows looked particularly sharp. “Craven chased you through London because of a mysterious paperweight your mother gave you? And you didn’t bother to tell us?”
“It’s not like that,” said Daisy. “Ma wanted me to keep it secret. I thought if anyone found out they’d take it away. And I was right! Ivy saw it and told Sheldrake.”
“Ivy’s different,” said the Prof impatiently. “Everyone knows she’s a snake. But you could have trusted us; we wouldn’t have told.”
Daisy’s pause was just a moment too long.
“Oh,” said the Prof, her spectacles glinting dangerously. “So that’s how it is! Well, maybe Ivy’s right. Maybe you are a spy, after all. You’re certainly good enough at hiding the truth.”
The words hit Daisy like a slap. Being called a spy by Sheldrake or Ivy was one thing, but hearing it from the Prof felt like being knifed in the back. The Prof was already stalking out of the shed, grabbing Acorn’s hand and towing the smaller girl behind her.
Indigo looked stricken. “She didn’t mean it,” he said quietly. “You didn’t have to tell us about it right away—you only met us a few days ago. The Prof’s worried about her grandfather. She’ll come round, you’ll see.”
Even so, Daisy lay sleepless for a long time that night, hearing the Prof’s words in a loop in her head. She turned over restlessly, and this time she heard the words Sheldrake had spoken in the Sighing Forest.
The Grim Reapers won’t wait.
Hadn’t Indigo said the Grim Reapers were storybook ogres, made up to scare small children? She shivered. Something in Sheldrake’s voice had made them sound very real indeed.
Chapter 27
The following day was her fifth in Mallowmarsh, and the worst since she had arrived. The Prof wasn’t talking to her and studiously ignored her in their lessons that day. It was raining sideways, Artemis still wasn’t back from the Bureau and Miss Tufton’s bunions were making her even grumpier than usual. On top of this, Napoleon seemed to have caught a cold and kept sneezing miserably into Daisy’s ear from his perch on her shoulder.
To add insult to injury, Daisy’s second lesson in the Great Glasshouse had been even worse than the first. No matter how hard she’d tried, her vine remained stubborn and unmoving. There had been one glorious moment when she thought she’d made it move—but it had turned out to be nothing more than a dung beetle surfacing for a snack. Ivy Helix had been watching, and her snickers had haunted Daisy for the rest of the day.
Everyone else had moved on to something called Binding, which was the opposite of Weaving. It allowed you to stop the movement of a magical plant, and was, according to Wildish, an essential skill for any Botanist. He demonstrated on a fanged tulip, freezing and unfreezing its tiny jaws at will. Daisy looked on dully, feeling more useless than ever.
Worst of all, though, was the loss of the dandelion paperweight, and the knowledge that she had failed Ma. Her pocket was cold and empty, and she felt as if a small mouse was gnawing at her heart.
* * *
Alone in her room that afternoon, Daisy paced back and forth for a few minutes before collapsing onto the bed. She looked at the room upside-down, her hair trailing back onto the floor. That was when she saw them, lying in the dust under the bedside table: a pile of books with dog-eared edges.
There was one called When Roses Roamed: Travels in Central Asia, another titled The Age of Orchids: a Journey Across Botanical Bhutan and a third emblazoned with swirling letters that read The Adventures of Ajax von Halle: through Byzantium on a Bicycle. The turned-down pages all had illustrations, as if their owner had lingered over the pictures and skipped the words altogether. Last was an old notebook with a battered leather cover. It was full of smudged pencil drawings: sketches of leaves and flowers and butterflies, along with some that were more improbable: pumpkins with teeth, and trees with eyes, and porcupines sketched in hot pink. She flipped to the front page and noted the year penciled on the faded flyleaf: thirty years ago. Beneath it was a name, written in an adult’s smooth, looping hand: The Logbook of Hal White, age twelve and a half.
Daisy stared for a moment, then shook herself. “Hal” was probably a common name in the Greenwild. The Hal she knew from the hidden garden was her own age, and the owner of the notebook would be grown up now: forty at least, and probably off exploring somewhere.
She glanced at Napoleon. “It’s just a coincidence,” she told him sternly. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
All the same, she had to know. She found Miss Tufton in the kitchen, clattering pans at the sink and listening to something operatic on the pink gramophone. Daisy tried to sound very casual as she asked her question.
“Have you ever heard of someone called Hal White, Miss Tufton?”
“Hal?” Miss Tufton looked as if someone had trodden on her foot. She took a long time to answer. At last she said, “Hal White was one of the most famous Botanical explorers in history.” She paused. Then: “He was the commander’s son.”
“Was?” Daisy felt her heart pounding.
“He died, many years ago now. Killed by his best friend.” Miss Tufton’s weathered face wrinkled up, and Daisy saw her wipe away something that looked suspiciously like a tear. “He was the one who called me Tuffy.”
“Oh.” Daisy didn’t know what to say. “So … there’s definitely no one called Hal who lives here now?”
“No.” Miss Tufton sounded very sad. “Not for thirty years.”
Daisy drew in a breath. Suddenly, there was no time to waste. “I’ll, um, be right back!” She sprinted down the stairs, whipping past the larder tree and upending a bowl of broad beans on the counter.
“Sorry!” she yelled. She had to check; she had to see. She ran to the crumbling wall in the dandelion meadow, running her hands back and forth across it until she found the door. Except it wasn’t the fresh, shining door that had always greeted her before. It was lichen-stained and rust-hinged and—she yanked at the handle—completely impossible to open. It looked ancient and forgotten, swollen shut, as if it hadn’t been used for decades.
Daisy staggered back to the Roost, feeling dazed. Could it be true? Could Hal—her Hal of the hidden garden—be the same boy who’d filled that notebook with sketches? Could he be Artemis’s son? She remembered the writing on the flyleaf: The Logbook of Hal White, age twelve and a half—and below it, a date thirty years in the past. But why hadn’t the door opened for her just now? Did it only open at night?
“This can’t be happening,” she muttered, glancing at Napoleon. He stared back at her impassively and licked his left paw. “How is it even possible?” She looked down at her shaking hands, and realized that she had thirty-year-old dirt stuck under her fingernails.
She hurried back up the stairs to her room, grabbing the notebook and flicking desperately through its pages, looking for confirmation.
Then—wait. What was that? She flipped back, smoothing the page open with her palm. There, beneath a drawing of a monarch butterfly, was a quick pencil study of a boy’s loosely curled hand. And there, on the left wrist, was a pattern of five moles in the shape of a stretched-out W.
Daisy stopped breathing.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again slowly.
Cardew, here at Mallowmarsh, thirty years ago.
Daisy shut the notebook with a snap. It was the clue she’d been waiting for. She had to ask Hal what he knew about Cardew. Ma’s life could depend on it. She needed to go back to the hidden garden, now: as soon as possible. She braided back her hair, shoved her feet into their boots and waited for night to fall.
