When Shirley went up to check on her granddaughter, it was quarter past midnight, and she was more embarrassed about that than she’d ever have admitted.  Dozing off on the sofa was one thing (especially after the steady flow of snowballs the last few days), but for four hours?  Without even a thought for Sandy’s bedtime?  This wasn’t like her.  Not like her at all.  She must be getting old.

Naturally, Bernie and the girls wanted to be off so they could sleep in their own beds, but Shirley had insisted on checking on Sandy before that.  She hadn’t been in the living room when they’d all gradually come to, so it was a safe bet that she’d gone upstairs, and if she wasn’t already in bed then she needed to be.  Shirley knocked at Sandy’s door, and, hearing no objection, opened it.

Sandy was not in bed.  Sandy was standing, fully-clothed (shoes and all), by the window, just turning the handle to shut it properly, and standing next to her was another girl.

Sandy slowly turned round, her eyes wide.  Rabbit in headlights, thought Shirley.  “Um…”  She looked from her grandmother to the other girl.  “Gran, this is Anastasia, from school…”

Now that she’d said the name, Shirley found that she recognised the other girl- the one whose father had ruined the carol concert.  And as to how she’d ended up in Sandy’s bedroom without waking up anybody downstairs, Shirley thought that Sandy’s shutting the window explained that.  Anastasia had decided to play secret agents and shin up the drainpipes instead of trying the front door like a normal person.  Shirley knew that she should really be telling her off for doing something that dangerous, but if things were so bad that the poor girl would rather skulk around the streets on Christmas Day than spend time with her family, then she probably had bigger things to worry about than her friend’s granny.

Shirley made a decision.  “Well?” she asked Sandy, “Aren’t you going to invite her downstairs and get her something to eat?  You’ll have her thinking we don’t know how to treat guests!”

Sandy’s face lit up (as if she’d thought that Shirley was going to turn the girl out into the snow).  Shirley sighed.  “Anastasia.  I can do you a cup of tea or a hot chocolate, and we’ve got plenty of mince pies and leftovers downstairs.  How does that sound?”

“Sounds great, thanks.”  The girl smiled meekly.

The three of them went out together, and Shirley shut the door behind them.  Anastasia could stay the night- no point in her going home this late- and they’d figure something out in the morning.  See if there was anything they could do about the bloody howler monkey back at her house.  No guarantee that there was, but Shirley had dealt with one or two men like him in the past.  There were ways.

Halfway down the stairs, with Anastasia a little way ahead of them, Sandy put her arms round Shirley’s waist and squeezed.  “Thank you!” she whispered.

Shirley patted her head.  “Don’t mention it.  It’s Christmas.”

The End

Anastasia was only going at a moderate speed, but it seemed as if Sandy couldn’t keep up with her no matter how fast she ran.  She wasn’t even being careful about staying on the branch anymore.  She just didn’t want Anastasia to disappear.

She stumbled on another icy patch.  She didn’t fall over this time, just fell back some more.  Anastasia went on ahead. 

“You’re freezing!” yelled Sandy.

Anastasia turned around.  “It was your idea to climb up this thing in the first place!”

“I didn’t think we’d end up in the dark!  I didn’t think there’d be all that ice and thorns!”

“It’ll be worth it!”  Anastasia had turned all the way around now.  From the sound of her voice, Sandy almost believed she was smiling.  “If we get to the end, and it takes us somewhere better, then it’s worth a few risks, right?  If there’s even the slightest chance…”

And Sandy couldn’t tell her it wasn’t.  If she had to choose between going home to that guy from the carol concert and carrying on to the end of the branch, she knew what she’d pick.  Even if that might mean falling off, or freezing to death, or being cut and poisoned by the thorns.  Sandy couldn’t convince her to stop feeling like that, and she couldn’t lose her temper and walk back on her own.  Her only hope was to think of something else she could offer.

It was something about the thorns that made her think of it.  “What if we go back, and it turns out that a whole ten years have gone by while we’ve been up here?”

Anastasia stared at her.  Sandy didn’t need to see her face to know that; she could just tell.

“Ten years.  With everyone thinking we died or disappeared.  And when we get back, everything would be different.”  She swallowed.  “Your mum and her boyfriend will have split up by then.  Maybe even moved away.  You’d never have to see him again.”

Anastasia took a step towards her.  “And what makes you think that’s what happened?”

“I don’t think that’s what happened.  I think I can do it.  I think I can move us ten years forward in time.”  Sandy looked down.  Nothing but darkness.  Nothing to suggest that the world below them wasn’t completely as they’d left it.  But Sandy had a feeling.  At the very least, she could try.  “I’ve… done things before.  Much smaller things, but I could stretch myself.”  She looked back at Anastasia.  “Maybe the plant could help.  The fact that it belongs to me.  Or even…”  Sandy remembered how she’d felt earlier, walking through the cool, quiet house.  “Well, Christmas is a strange time, right?  It always feels different.  Maybe you can do things on Christmas that you can’t usually.”

Anastasia laughed.  She’d moved a bit closer.  “How many hours have we been up here?  It’s probably Boxing Day already.”

“Or, it might be a completely different Christmas.  Christmas ten years from now.”  Sandy was starting to hope a bit.  She could afford to be firm.   “Look, the point is, I really need you to be back on the ground.  Not bleeding and shivering and not bothering to watch where you step.  I need you to be safe.”

“And you’d move us ten years in the future to get that?  What about your family?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“But you’d do that?  Just to get me back on the ground?”

Sandy nodded, then realised that Anastasia might not have seen her do it.  “Yeah.  I would.”

There was nothing to see or hear.  They were caught in a pitch-black sheet of ice, hanging in the air.  But then Anastasia came up and put her hands on Sandy’s shoulders.  “Well, everything you’ve just said sounds completely nuts,” she told her, “But if you really want me to come down that badly, then I’ll come down.”

They turned around.  There were miles of branch ahead of them, miles of possible thorns and ice patches, but they’d been through it once before.  They’d be fine.  “You know,” said Anastasia, “If it really has been ten years by the time we get back, then Mrs Ingram will definitely have retired.”

“Yeah.”  Sandy smiled into the darkness.  “There’ll be flying rocket cars and everything.”

(To be concluded)

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)

As they went on, Sandy found herself talking just so Anastasia would look her way and she could check to see whether her lips were actually turning blue.  But no matter how many times she looked, the light wasn’t good enough to tell for sure.

“So…” she said this time, “At the carol concert…”

“Ugh.  Don’t ask.”  Anastasia pressed her (possibly-blue) lips together in a scowl.  “Him.”

Sandy stayed quiet for a moment, then asked.  “How long’s he been living with you?”

“Oh, he’s not living with us,” said Anastasia, falsely light-hearted, “We’re living with him.”

“What do you mean?”

Anastasia nodded to something behind her (definitely the wrong colour).  “Well, that’s his house back there.  Not ours.”

“OK.  How long have you been living with him?”

“A few months.  They’re supposed to…”

And then she slipped.  She seemed to disappear into the night.

Sandy ran ahead- stupid, she knew, but she was panicking- and didn’t see the icy patch until she’d already slipped on it herself.  Her foot went sideways and she grabbed at the branch, forgetting all about the thorns and what Keeley had said, seeing nothing but darkness above and below until she finally caught hold of something.

Sandy was gripping the underside of the branch.  Anastasia was a little way ahead of her, legs dangling over the side.  And if they fell, they’d be falling for miles.

Anastasia moved first.  She wriggled from side to side, and then, just as Sandy was about to yell at her to stop, she got hold of something (one of the thorns, most likely) and pulled herself up.  There were a few seconds of her getting her breath back, and then Sandy felt Anastasia’s hand on her arm, pulling her upwards.

It seemed to be going well for a moment, but something went wrong- maybe when Sandy tried to grab Anastasia’s arm with her free hand- and they both went down again.  Sandy was upside-down, her hair hanging down below her, and she was only attached to the branch by her legs, still clamped around it like a vice.

Something wrenched at her arm, and Sandy flew upwards.  Anastasia was kneeling on the branch, with both hands on Sandy’s arm, and she was pulling for dear life.  Sandy felt as if her shoulder was about to dislocate, but within seconds, she was laid out across the branch.  She was on solid ground again.  Or as close as you were going to get all the way up here.

Anastasia sat with her hands on her calves, breathing deeply like an Olympic athlete after the event was finished.  It took Sandy a moment to notice the blood on her arm.

As soon as she had enough breath to talk, Sandy asked, “Did you do that on one of the thorns?”

“Hm?”   Anastasia checked her arm.  “Oh, yeah.  I guess I must have.”

Prick your finger on one of them, your hand’ll swell up and explode.  “We should go back.”

Anastasia waved a hand.  “What?  No.  I’ve had worse than this.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know what’s on those thorns.  We just…”

“It’ll be fine.  If there was something dangerous about it, we’d know by now.”

“But…”

“It’ll be fine.  Come on.”  Anastasia stood up and walked on.  But before she did, Sandy got a good enough look at her to say for sure.  Her lips were definitely blue now.

(To be continued)

It was getting darker.  All the artificial lights were back down on the ground, so all they had was the moon and the stars.

“Do you think it’s leading us somewhere?” asked Anastasia.

Sandy was doubtful.  “Somewhere up in the air?”  The only thing she could think of was the giant’s castle from “Jack and the Beanstalk.”  Even as a little kid, she’d wondered how the castle stayed up on the cloud.  If anything, having giants there should have made that more difficult.

“Like, another dimension, or something,” explained Anastasia, “Not another planet, because then we’d have to walk through space and we can’t do that.  Another dimension, that you can reach through the sky.”

Sandy looked down.  They were definitely aeroplane-height now- the little they could actually see looked more like a patchwork of indistinct fields and towns than anything else.  She vaguely remembered that the air was supposed to be thin this far up, but so far they could breathe just fine.  Maybe Anastasia was onto something.  Maybe they were heading somewhere where the rules didn’t apply.

“What do you think it’d be like?” she asked, “In the other dimension?”

“Anywhere’s better than this place,” declared Anastasia.  She stopped in her tracks, then looked down and pointed at something.  “Hey, look at that!”

It was too small to be an aeroplane, but it was bigger than any bird Sandy had ever seen.  It was like a giant shadow passing under them, between the branch and the land below.  And in its wake was a cloud of yellow lights.

“They look like fireflies,” Anastasia murmured, “Do you think we could catch them?”

Don’t, thought Sandy, It’s too dangerous.  You don’t know what those lights are.  You don’t know what they’d do to you.  But Anastasia looked completely enraptured, so all she could say was, “Maybe, if they get close enough.”

They tried, but even with their arms stretched out full-length, they couldn’t get anywhere near the lights.  Instead, they just sat there for a while and watched the shadow pass by.

(To be continued)

After that, the branch really began to climb.  Sandy went from feeling like she was walking up a gentle slope to wondering how steep it would have to get before her legs started aching too much to go on.  Below them, the town shrunk from the streets and houses they recognised to a bunch of lights and patterns in the dark.  And they still weren’t anywhere near the end.

“You really don’t know who gave you it?” asked Anastasia.

“No.”  Sandy thought a little, then added, “Well, there was this old lady I met just before Halloween, but…”  If it was Mrs Jaeger who gave you this plant, then you’re an idiot for climbing it. “Well, I don’t know why she’d be giving me presents, but she’s the only one I can think of who’d have something like this.” 

“Something magic,” said Anastasia- quietly, as if she was worried somebody might overhear her.

“Well, yeah,” said Sandy, “I guess.”  There wasn’t anything else to add to that.  There was only one word for a plant that grew like this.

Anastasia squinted up at the plant ahead of her.  “How far up do you think it goes?”

“Dunno.”  Sandy thought of something.  “How far up do you have to go before it stops being sky and starts being space?”

“We’ll know when we stop breathing.”  Anastasia said it light-heartedly, but Sandy could really have done without having to think about that.  “What’s that up there?”

Sandy looked ahead.  There was a strange, shadowy thing about twenty yards up.  “Um…  An extra branch, I think?  Or maybe…”

They moved ahead, and she saw a few more details.  It was a thorn, Sandy was sure of it.  A red-cabbage-purple thorn with dark spots, so big that the branch had to swell in the middle to accommodate it. 

It looked about five foot tall, and it was right in the middle of the path.

“Is it safe to touch?” asked Anastasia.

“I don’t know.”  Keeley’s words suddenly came back:  You watch- prick your finger on one of them, your hand’ll swell up and explode.  “I hope so.  I don’t know how we’re going to get around it if we don’t.”

Anastasia paused for a moment, analysing the giant thorn ahead of them.  Then she skipped forward and went right up to it.

Sandy thought she was going to touch it.  She was positive- Anastasia would give it a playful tap, then announce that it was safe and Sandy could come up after her.  But that’s not what happened.  Instead, Anastasia leaned backwards as if she was doing the limbo, and moved around it.

She looked as if her whole upper body was hanging off the branch, and Sandy suddenly wondered why she hadn’t been more worried about them falling until now.  They had to be at least a few hundred feet up by now.  Nearly aeroplane height.  Sandy looked down at Anastasia’s shoes- little black ballet flats, not much grip at all.  One slip and slide of the soles, and she’d be falling through the air.  But there she was, dancing around the thorn as if she knew there was a safety net.

On the other side of the thorn, Anastasia straightened up and waved.

Sandy moved slowly, one foot in front of the other, one hand on the side of the thorn.  She still wasn’t sure if touching it was a great idea, but there was no stinging or tingling in her palm as she did it, which was probably a good sign. 

Anastasia caught her eye, and shook her head.  “Tch.  Where’s your sense of adventure?”  And she skipped ahead again.

(To be continued)