Mordion rose up on one elbow. The field will take care of him. He belongs to it. Or you could. Hes half yours, after all.
I have to go home for lunch! Ann snarled. You know I do! Is there anyone else in this wood who could take care of him?
Mordion was getting that look Dad had when Ann went on at him. Ill see, he said, clearly hoping to shut her up. He sat up and raised his head in a listening way, turning slowly from left to right. Like radar operating, Ann thought. There are others here, he said slowly, but they are a long way off and too busy to be spared.
Then get the field, said Ann, to make another person.
That, said Mordion, would take more blood and that person would be a child too.
Then someone who isnt real, insisted Ann. I know the field can do it. This whole wood isnt real. Youre not real
She stopped, because Mordion turned and looked at her. The pain in his look almost rocked her backwards.
Well, only half real, she said. And stop looking at me like that just because Im telling you the truth. You think youre a magician with godlike powers, and I know youre just a man in a camelhair coat.
And you, said Mordion, not quite angry, but getting that way, are very brave because you think youre safe up a tree. What makes you think my godlike powers cant fetch you down?
You cant touch me, Ann said hastily. You promised.
The earlier grim look came back into
Mordions face. There are many ways, he said, to hurt a person without touching them. I hope you never find out about them. He stared into grim thoughts for a while, with his eyebrow hooked above his strange flat nose. Then he sighed. The boy is fine, he said. The field has obeyed you and produced an unreal person to care for him. He lay back on the bank again and arranged the rolled blanket-thing at his shoulder as a pillow.
Really? said Ann.
The field doesnt like you shouting at it any more than I do, Mordion replied sleepily. Get down from your tree and go in peace.
He rolled on his side and seemed to go to sleep, a strange bleached heap huddled on the bank. The only colour about him was the red gash on his wrist, above the hand clutching his staff.
Ann waited in her tree until his breathing was slow and regular and she was sure he was really asleep. Only then did she go round to the back of the tree and slide down as quietly as she knew how. She got to the path with long tiptoe strides and sprinted away down it, still on tiptoe. And she was still afraid that Mordion might be stealing after her. She looked back so frequently that after fifty yards she ran into a tree.
She met it with a bruising thump that seemed to shake reality back into place. When she looked forward, she found she could see the houses on the near side of Wood Street. When she looked backwards to check, she could see houses again, beyond the usual sparse trees of Banners Wood. And there was no sign of Mordion among them.
Well, thats that then! she said. Her knees began to shake.
There were still hailstones under the big grey car, but they were melting as Ann hastened past on her way to the path to Banners Wood. She did not stop for fear Mum or Dad called her back. She admitted that setting out to climb a tree in a tight skirt probably was silly, but that was her own business. Besides, it was so hot. The path was steamy-warm, full of melting hailstones winking like diamonds in the grass. It was a relief to get into the shade of the wood.
Grass almost never grew on the trampled earth under the trees, but spring had been at work here all the same while Ann had been ill. Shiny green weeds grew at the edges of the trodden parts. Birds yelled in the upper branches and there was a glorious smell in here, part cool and earthy, part distant and sweet like the ghost of honey. The blackthorn thicket near the stream was actually trying to bloom, little white flowers all over the spiny leafless bushes. The path wound through them. Ann wound with the path, pushing through, with her arms up to cover her face. Before long, the path was completely blocked by the bushes, but when she dropped to a crouch, she could see a way through, snaking among the roots.
She crawled.
Spines caught her hair. She heard her anorak tear, but it seemed silly to go back, or at least just as spiny. She crawled on towards the light where the bushes ended.
She reached the light. It was a swimming, milky lightness, fogged with green. It took Ann a second of staring to recognise that the lightness was water. Water stretched to an impossible distance in front of her, in smooth grey-white ripples that vanished into fog. Dark trees beside her bowed over rippled copies
of themselves, and there was one yellow-green willow beyond, smudging the lake with lime.
Ann looked from the foggy distance to the water gently rippling by her knees. Inside her black reflection there were old leaves, black as tea-leaves. The bank where she was kneeling was overgrown with violets, pale blue, white and dark purple, spread everywhere in impossible profusion, like a carpet. The scent made her quite giddy.