It was too dark to see anything properly.  For all Sandy knew, there were a hundred thorns and ice patches up ahead, or a sharp bend in the branch that would send them both plummeting to the ground.  Anastasia was just a shadow up ahead.  Sandy couldn’t see whether or not her arm was still bleeding, but she could see her shiver.  But every time Sandy asked about it, she pretended nothing had happened.

Sandy was trailing behind her.  She didn’t know if there was enough room on the branch for them to walk side-by-side.  But as she walked on, an idea formed in her head, and she finally worked up the nerve to try and catch up.

“Listen,” she told Anastasia as soon as they were level, “Did I ever tell you how my mum died?”

Anastasia stopped.  “No?”  She turned to face her.  “I didn’t know she had.”

“Well, she did,” said Sandy, with a shrug.

For a moment, Anastasia didn’t say anything.  “I did always wonder why you lived with your grandparents.  I never really knew how to ask.”

“Oh.”  Now that Sandy thought about it, there were probably a lot of people at school who’d been wondering about it.  Sometimes people asked directly, but usually they were just too polite.  “Well, um, my dad actually died before I was born.  My mum when I was about eighteen months old, I think.”

“Do you remember her at all?”

Sandy had to think about it.  “I… maybe?  Sometimes I think I do, but it’s hard to know if I’m actually remembering something that happened or just the stories everyone’s told me for years.” 

“Does it…”  Anastasia shifted from one foot to the other.  “…um… make you sad?

“It’s more something that people are sad about at me.”  Sandy felt she’d probably rushed through the last few things she’d said, but that was because none of that was the important bit.  She needed to think carefully about what came next.  “But this is what my gran told me:  She was working at a café, and there was some heavy stuff she needed to take down to the cellar…  They had these really steep stone steps, and they had a rule saying that if you had to move something over a certain weight, you were meant to either ask someone else for help or take more than one trip.  But she tried to do the whole thing at once, and she tripped.”

Sandy couldn’t see the expression on Anastasia’s face.  That was probably just as well.  She’d have wanted to say something to reassure her, and then she might never have got back on track.  “They had an investigation, to see if anyone at the café was at fault, but my gran says she knew from the start that they weren’t.  She said, ‘It was sheer stubbornness that killed her.  And the worst thing of all is, where did she get it from if not from me?’”

If the light had been better, she might have looked pointedly at Anastasia’s bleeding arm.  Then again, maybe not.  She couldn’t think of any way to do it that wouldn’t have been stupid and obvious.

For a little while- probably only a few seconds, but it felt longer- all Sandy could hear was Anastasia’s breathing.  It was the kind of breath that made you sound like you were gearing up for something.  “Well,” said Anastasia, “my mum’s not that stubborn, but she’s been with this loser for the last year and she still thinks he’s going to turn into…”  She shook her head, and let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.  “Not even ‘turn into’!  She thinks he’s already sodding perfect!  She thinks he’s the only thing keeping us from starving to death!”  She held out her hands and shook them in frustration.  “Anything bad you say about him, it’s like she hasn’t even heard it!  I might as well…”

She broke off.  Sandy didn’t see if she looked at anything before that.  It was too dark.

“Is your arm still bleeding?” asked Sandy.

“No.”

Sandy took a deep breath.  “Really?”

Anastasia looked at her arm and moved it up and down.  “I don’t know.  It’s not stinging like it was, but…”

And then she shivered.  It was a deep, racking shiver that seemed to come right from the centre of her body, and for a moment it looked like it was going to shake her right off the branch.

The words came out before Sandy could even think about them.  “We need to go back.”

“What?  It’s not that bad…”

“It’s freezing!  And we can’t see where we’re going!”

“Yeah, but it can’t go that much further.”  Anastasia pointed upwards, towards the other end.  If there was an end.

“You don’t know that!”

“Like you said, there’s only so far you can go before you’re in space.”

“We don’t want to be in space!”

“Anywhere’s better than…”

“It’s not!”  Sandy hadn’t meant to scream.  It just came out that way.

She still couldn’t see the expression on Anastasia’s face, but she could see the way she stood, the way her shoulders went back and her back went stiff.   

“You don’t know anything about it,” she snapped, and strode off.

(To be continued)