After breakfast, Sally disappeared upstairs with a few slices of orange to feed to the moth that had appeared in her room last night. She’d spent the whole meal asking Rube and Jeanette what moths ate and how to treat their injuries, and neither of them had had the heart to tell her that moths only had a life expectancy of about a fortnight. Rube waited a minute or two, listening out for a sudden cry of grief upstairs. When she didn’t hear one, she assumed that the moth was OK for now, and went for a walk out front.
Uncle Colwyn still wasn’t here.
Rube climbed down off the veranda and looked out at the gardens at the foot of the hill. Those little white walls really were everywhere, forming twisting paths that seemed to begin and end at random. She wondered who’d designed it that way in the first place, and what their reasoning behind it had been. Maybe there was a pattern she hadn’t seen yet.
There was a noise behind her, and Rube turned round to see Jeanette on the front steps. “Sally’s still upstairs,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “So, tell me what you’re not telling her.”
Rube’s first instinct was to say something like, What do you mean?, but that would probably just have made Jeanette angry. Rube knew exactly what she meant, and they both knew it.
“Come on,” said Rube, gesturing to the path in front of them, “Let’s go for a walk.”
Jeanette got the hint, and followed Rube a little way down the hill. It was funny- you ended up following the routes picked out by those little white walls whether you meant to or not. After a minute or two, Rube said, “Mum’s been getting phone calls from Dad again.”
“Ah,” said Jeanette, “I thought it would be something like that.”
Just breathing made Rube feel as if she was lifting a huge weight. “I don’t know what he said, but I’m pretty sure she was crying one night last week. I came downstairs to get some paracetamol, and her eyes were all pink.”
Jeanette frowned. “But she knows he’s all talk, right? Remember when he kept threatening to go to court and get custody of all of us? But then when I say I might actually want to move in with him for a bit, suddenly he disappears for six months and never mentions it again.”
“He’s not always just talk,” said Rube, remembering the time he’d got drunk and stood outside their house for two hours, yelling things, until Mum had had to call the police. “Besides, talk can be upsetting enough on its own. You know- sticks and stones.”
“I’m pretty sure that means the exact opposite of…” Jeanette broke off and looked around. “Have we gone over to the opposite side of the hill? I don’t recognise any of this.”
Ruby shrugged. She couldn’t tell one part of the gardens from another yet. They were gorgeous, she would never deny that, but they weren’t her top priority at the moment.
They walked on a little further. “How scared is she?” asked Jeanette.
Rube sighed. “Scared enough to send us away. Not scared enough to come with us.”
“Well, she had work.”
“I know. But if…”
And then they saw the staircase. It came into view as they turned a corner, long and white and stretching up into the clouds.
“What the hell is that?” asked Jeanette, squinting ahead.
“I don’t know,” said Rube. It was about twenty yards ahead of them, blocking off the path, as if it was the next logical step for anyone who had followed it this far. As far as Rube could see, it didn’t lead to anything- it was angled away from the hill, not towards it. They hadn’t seen anything like this from the house. But how could they have missed it? It was taller than anything else around.
Jeanette ran ahead, reached the bottom of the staircase, and circled it. “There’s nothing supporting it!” she called back.
“What do you mean?” asked Rube, running to catch her up.
“You can see right under it! Look!” She led Rube to the side of the staircase. When Jeanette touched it, Rube saw that each step was about twice the height of her hand- and that was all there was. Underneath, it was just a white, diagonal line leading up as far as they could see.
“We shouldn’t try and climb it,” Rube heard herself say, “It’s probably not very stable.”
“‘Not very stable’?! It’s physically impossible!”
“There must be a kind of trick to it… Some kind of balancing trick… If we put our weight on it, it’ll collapse.”
Jeanette rested her elbows on the fourth step, and- without warning, because she was apparently out to scare Rube to death today- hoisted herself off her feet, using it like a chin-up bar.
“Don’t do that!” screamed Rube.
Jeanette let herself down. “It looks pretty solid to me.”
Rube was getting a headache. There had to be a trick here. An optical illusion, maybe. “I’m going back to fetch Sally,” she said, because it seemed like the only sensible thing to do, “She needs to see this.”
*
Sally didn’t know how to tell whether a moth was eating something or not. She just put him on an orange slice and hoped for the best.
She turned back to her bed and pulled the duvet straight so that she could sit on it. She still had all the books she’d been trying to read last night piled up on the beside table- maybe she’d have better luck with them this morning. She definitely didn’t feel like going out yet. At least this room was hers, full of her own things. She could make a familiar little nest in the middle of all this weirdness.
She picked up a Goosebumps book with three grinning pumpkins on the front. Not much chance of that making her homesick. She opened up the first page, and began to read about a bunch of American kids having daft, creepy Halloween adventures that didn’t remind her of anything she didn’t want to think about.
She’d just finished the first chapter when she heard an unfamiliar voice. “You’re one of Colwyn’s nieces, aren’t you?”
Sally sat bolt upright, the book dropping onto the bed, completely forgotten. She drew her knees up to her chest as she looked around for the intruder.
“Over here,” said the voice. It was coming from over by the window.
Sally stared at the moth. He looked like he was propping himself up on his front legs.
That can’t be it. There must have been someone outside. A window cleaner, maybe? Sally’s room was three floors up, but a window cleaner would have a ladder, or maybe one of those hoist things that pulled you up on a platform. She took a step towards the window, meaning to open it and look around… and this time, she actually saw the moth’s mouth move.
“Look, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said apologetically. (It was definitely a “he.” Sally thought he sounded a bit older than Rube.) “I just thought I ought to check where I was, that’s all.”
Sally nodded. “You’re at Dovecote Gardens,” she told him, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, “And yeah, Colwyn’s my uncle.”
The moth’s head drooped. “Thank. God.”
“Um.” Sally swallowed. “How come you can talk?”
“I had a good education,” said the moth. Sally was pretty sure he was grinning.
*
The longer Rube was gone, the greater the temptation became. Jeanette really, really wanted to find out what was at the top of those stairs. Or at least find out how high you could go before the air got too thin.
The air down here was warm and still around her. The only sound was a few insects buzzing and a couple of birds squabbling in the distance. Jeanette sat on the grass, resting her elbow on one of the lower steps, which felt nice and cool against her arm. Rube was taking her sweet time getting back. Sally must have wanted to talk about something. Hopefully it wasn’t because the moth had died.
Rube hadn’t wanted Jeanette to put her weight on the staircase in case it collapsed and she hurt herself. And Jeanette didn’t want to make Rube worry (any more than her natural baseline level of worry, which was honestly pretty high.) But Rube wasn’t here. And what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?
By way of experiment, Jeanette pulled herself up against the staircase, using one the higher steps as a chin-up bar. She didn’t quite dare to leave the ground- Rube had kind of had a point- but she got onto tiptoe before relaxing back into position. She tried it again, pushing down on the surface of the step beforehand to see if she noticed any shaking or cracking. Nothing.
Feeling a little guilty, Jeanette stepped away from the staircase and looked at the path to see if there was any sign of Rube and Sally yet. She watched it for three whole minutes, counting out the seconds in her head, before turning back to the staircase and putting her foot on the bottom step.
Jeanette had spent the previous day hot, uncomfortable and sticky in the back of a series of cramped vehicles. She’d spent most of the three months before that either in school listening to lectures about smart targets and positive attitudes, or sleeping over at Zainab’s and listening to Monessa sing that song about Yogi Bear having a cheesy knob for the eightieth time in a row. Now that she finally had access to something new and interesting, she intended to make the most of it.
She went slowly, spreading her arms out slightly to keep her balance. If it started to creak or wobble, she could always turn around and go back the way she came. And as long as it didn’t…
The thing was, Jeanette had imagined things like this when she was little. Climbing u an enchanted beanstalk until you reached a giant’s kingdom in the clouds. Shooting up to the sky on the back of a dragon or a Pegasus or a giant bird. Leaving the land behind and climbing up to something better. She’d never thought she’d actually be able to do it, but she’d always hoped.
There were no clouds in the sky. There was nothing ahead of her but pure blue.
At some point, she stopped for a rest. There still wasn’t any creaking or swaying, and the air still seemed breathable (Jeanette assumed that if it wasn’t, she’d find out pretty quickly.) If her legs hadn’t started aching, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to her to stop at all.
At a guess, she’d have said that she’d been climbing for more than five minutes, but less than twenty. She knew better than to swear to that, though. Every story she’d ever heard about places like this said that they could make time work differently whenever they liked.
Supernatural places. Magical places.
Jeanette sat down on the stairs, and looked over the side. She could still see Uncle Colwen’s house. She couldn’t see the streets and roads that were supposed to be around it, though. Instead, there were just walls, and paths, and the places they led to.
A lot of it was green- rolling hills and fields, like a solid background keeping it all together. But to the left was a dark, tangled forest where the trees didn’t seem to have a single leaf between them, and a little way behind it was a wide blue lake surrounded by little cabins. To the right were buildings that looked as if they were made out of diamonds. Behind them were mountains, blending into the sky with blues and whites and purples, and cable cars travelling from peak to peak. And all over the place, things were flying. Jeanette could see colourful flecks trailing across the landscape, too far away for her to make out any details.
She thought, I want to stay here looking at this for the rest of my life.
She couldn’t, obviously. She needed to get back down before Rube got back, and tell her and Sally what she’d seen. But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Because what if she left, and by the time she got back with Rube and Sally it was all gone? And then she spent the rest of her life thinking about it, doing her best to remember every detail, but she never got to see it again?
She could just wait here. When Rube and Sally got to the bottom of the steps and found her gone, they were bound to work out where she was and come up to find her.
No. Bad idea. Even if they did work it out eventually, Rube would have two or three nervous breakdowns before they did. Jeanette didn’t want to do that to her.
She stared at the landscape for a few more minutes, committing it to memory. Then she stood up and made her way back down.
(To be continued)
camelwithout 