The Little Secret (20 page)
Authors: Kate Saunders
Quarley and Staffa were waiting in the hall of the castle, underneath the huge portrait of Tornado. Quarley carried his mother's silver pickax.
“Are you ready, Jane?”
“Yes.”
“I'm afraid it's time to say your good-byes. It's not safe to take these girls any farther.”
This was a horrible moment. Jane looked at Staffa and Twilly, and could not bear to think that she would never see them again. They were all crying.
“Good-bye, Twilly!” Jane hugged her. “Thanks for being so kind to me â I'll always be particularly kind to field mice now!”
“Good-bye, Miss Jane!”
They clung together until Quarley gently tapped Jane's shoulder. “I hate to hurry you, but I'm anxious to get this job done as quickly as possible â you'll see why.”
Jane untangled herself from Twilly's skinny arms. She looked at Staffa.
“I'm going to miss you,” she mumbled. It seemed like a silly thing to say, when she wanted to say so much more.
Staffa said, “I'm going to miss you, Jane. Give my love to the boys. And to your parents. Please don't forget me. I should like to be remembered sometimes, in your world.”
Jane hugged her. “I'll never forget you! And however many friends I make at the new school, there'll never be another friend like you!”
“Good-bye, Jane!” Staffa kissed her and slipped something into the pocket of her jeans.
“What're you doing?”
“It's your coronation medal,” Staffa said. “If it's in your pocket when you go through, it'll grow with you. Then you'll have a souvenir.”
“Oh â thanks! Good-bye â good-bye, Staffa!”
“Come, Jane,” Quarley said, holding out his hand.
Jane sadly turned away from her two friends and took his hand. They walked to the gatehouse of the castle, where she had first entered the box. Beyond the tall gates lay a whitish-bluish swirl of light.
“The light is from your world,” Quarley said. “We're at the crossing point.”
The big castle gates opened. In walked an elderly pair of Eckers, each carrying a small suitcase.
“Ah, here they are, right on time. Jane, you remember Mr. and Mrs. Prockwald.”
“Bless her,” said Mrs. Prockwald. “She'd never seen us without our scarves! Hello, dearie. Oh, it's nice to be a decent size again! The king ran down to the farmhouse to fetch us the minute the queen was locked up. Wasn't that nice?”
Her husband said, “Hello, Miss Jane. Nice to see you.” He turned to Quarley. “I left the keys in the car, sire. We've brought the little talking thing, just as you instructed. We left it on the ground, a few inches from the box.”
“Thanks, you've done very well,” said Quarley.
“And there's a box of teabags on the draining board at the farm,” said Mrs. Prockwald. “And some nice, nourishing Mars Bars â can't send you home without a healthy meal inside you! Good-bye, dearie!” She gave Jane a smacking kiss. So did Mr. Prockwald. They picked up their suitcases and walked happily away into the castle.
Jane asked, “What're the Prockwalds doing here? Who's at that farm place?”
“Nobody,” Quarles said calmly. “I've closed down the farm â we won't be keeping any more of our people in the human world.”
“But â how will I get off the island?”
“You'll see. You mustn't be afraid, Jane.”
Quarley held her hand tightly. Together they walked through the castle gatehouse and stepped onto the drawbridge. Jane's stomach turned a somersault. She was a grain of sand in an hourglass, and the hourglass had just been turned over.
Suddenly, there was a new kind of ground beneath her sneakers.
She stopped, trembling. “Is this my world? What's that big silver building over there?”
“It's not a building, it's the cellphone,” said Quarley. “Left on the ground by the Prockwalds before they crossed. This is what you will use to get home. I have left a letter for your parents on the kitchen table of the farm, in which I apologize for deserting you on a remote Scottish island.”
Jane looked over her shoulder. There was the painted box. It looked rather like a huge movie screen â the painted trees waved, people swarmed around the painted turrets. But it was clear to Jane that she was looking into another dimension.
Quarley kept hold of Jane's hand â the one with the ring. “Keep still, and don't be frightened.” He began to saw at Jane's ring with the diamond saw. It seemed to take a long time. When the ring finally sprang apart, Jane saw why it was important to be outside.
She was soaring into the air. The sky rushed to meet her, so fast she was afraid she would bang her head against it. She felt herself screaming, but no sound came out. She was at the center of a great howling, whirling wind.
And then everything was silent â only it was a new kind of silence, one that made Jane's heart leap hopefully. There were no forests of grass, no gigantic insects. She was lying on the bare hillside, and the painted box gleamed between the two boulders.
She was big again! She was back! She wanted to laugh and shriek and turn cartwheels.
Quarley was beside her, brushing dirt from his uniform. He had slipped off his ring, and was now the same size as a normal human. He didn't look quite normal, however â his skin was too hard and too white, and in the common daylight of our world, his hair had a dull, plastic sheen.
He picked up the cellphone. “You will take this phone thing, Jane â which I presume you know how to operate. You will walk to the Prockwalds' farm and telephone your parents. You will then dial nine-nine-nine and ask for the Coast Guard, who will take you off the island. Please help yourself to food and drink while you're waiting to be rescued. And if there's any money left in the car, please keep it. Oh â and don't forget all those new human clothes my mother bought you. They're in two suitcases in the hall. Do you understand so far?”
“Yes.”
“Dear Jane, before you leave this place, there is one very important thing you must do for me.”
He handed her the queen's silver pickax. Jane staggered under the unexpected weight of it. “When I shrink again,” Quarley said, “I want you to count to a thousand. When you have counted, take the silver pickax and smash the box to smithereens. Do you understand?”
“I think so. You're sort of closing the door.”
Quarley smiled. “Exactly. It's been a pleasure to know you, Jane.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
And he was gone. Jane was alone on the empty hillside, listening to the wind and the cries of the gulls.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
She did not move for a long time, because she was so afraid of accidentally squashing the king on his journey back to the box. She counted to five thousand, to be extra sure she had given him enough time. Then â looking carefully at the ground with every step â she walked the few yards to the heap of boulders.
She pulled the box out into the open. Its colors were like stained glass with the sun behind it. She stood staring at it for a long time, trying to print the pictures on her memory. It was time to destroy this beautiful thing, so that the kingdom of Eck could shut out the dangerous human world and live in peace. She mustn't worry that she was smashing a world â this was only a meeting point between two worlds.
“Good-bye, box,” she said aloud.
She took a mighty swing with the silver pickax. The box splintered into a dozen pieces. She swung the pickax again and again, until it lay in a hundred fragments, scattered across the rough grass like paint-stained matchwood.
Jane tucked the silver pickax under one arm. Just before she began her walk to the deserted farm, she picked up one painted fragment. Despite all the fear and danger, this had been an incredible vacation. She knew she could never tell anyone about it â her memories of the world inside the box were already fading. There couldn't be any harm in keeping a souvenir.
As she put it in her pocket, she remembered the coronation medal. Her fingers closed on something hard and round, wrapped in a scrap of paper. Jane stared at her gold medal for a long time. It was now about the size of a quarter, on a chain of astonishing, shimmering delicacy. Jane had never owned anything as beautiful as this. She fastened it around her neck.
Then she smoothed out the piece of paper, and saw that Staffa had written something. The letters were a little distorted, but perfectly clear â “Love You Always.”
Jane cried a bit at this, yet found it oddly comforting that someone in another dimension would love her always.
The real world rushed to meet her as she walked back to the farmhouse. She was going to have quite a job explaining it all to the Coast Guard â she didn't even know the name of the island she was on. And how on earth were Mom and Dad going to fetch her from the north of Scotland? How could she tell her brothers that they would never be seeing Staffa again?
Not that anything really mattered â it was lovely to have ordinary little worries again. Jane hurried down the steep path on the stony hillside, her long hair whipping in the fresh sea breeze, and there was no happier girl in this or any other world.
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Kate Saunders
is the author of the novels
The Marrying Game,
Bachelor Boys
, and the children's book
The Little Secret
. She has also written for the
Sunday Times,
Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph,
and
Cosmopolitan
. She lives in London with her son. You can sign up for email updates
here
.
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CONTENTS
The House at the Edge of the World
An Imprint of Macmillan
