The Star will come up soon.
These lies—
Oh what am I going to do?
To be in this mess and to be blamed for it and to be lied about—
The signature. I didn’t say yet. Well, this was how their letter was signed. It was signed ‘We’. That was all. We.
MY ENEMY
Perhaps I could write some of it up now. I haven’t been able to touch this, not for a while.
(Even now, with this book propped on my knees, I feel ……)
After the Scene in his room, some more time passed, sliced into days and nights. I kept thinking now really was the time to go. After all, I’d seen, it was simple to get out. But the vrabburrs and other possible things put me off. Which wasn’t brave, but perhaps sensible.
I started to think about a weapon, and wondered if there were any rifles or other guns in the Rise. But I can’t fire a gun, and anyway don’t like the idea of shooting at things, even things with nine-foot-long pointed teeth.
Also I thought I was at my wits’ end. If only I’d known—!
One thing. I said to Jotto, ‘I’m not comfortable in this room. It may move again, and all this pink is making me feel queasy.’
‘It is a bit ukky,’ agreed Jotto.
He was definitely more concerned about the colour scheme than the moving-around stuff, and actually got down to it, and by that afternoon I’d been put into a kind of pavilion on the lawns, which is all pillars, and rather good tiles in the bathroom, and always, they say, stays still.
Treacle came at once and watered some pots of flowers on the steps (in the usual manner).
‘I wish you could talk,’ I’d tactlessly lamented.
She just did her wriggle-giggle, didn’t care.
That evening, which was four days after the Scene, Jotto brought me some supper.
‘You’re forgetting to eat. You’re still in a mood, aren’t you, dear?’
‘You bet I am.’
‘Tsk,’ tsked Jotto.’ And him all funny and off his food too. Like my chickens, frankly, both of you. It really is the end. It’s so difficult, getting any food, and then making it look appealing. I mean, I could just slop it all down in a heap, but no, I arrange it in patterns, and put orchids (please note the orchid, dear) by the plates, and choose glasses that match – and what do I get? Does anyone swoon with joy? No. You nibble or gobble or sulk and won’t eat it, and then the wildlife gets it. And now he’s prowling round and round up there in his tower, and that owl ate his lunch – I know, I saw some nut-butter on its feathers – and it’s not supposed to do that – Oh, it’s too much.’
‘What a shame your prince isn’t eating,’ I said sweetly, ‘if he ate something he might choke on it.’
‘There you are, you see. This unfriendly atmosphere.’
I thought, Venn’s decidedly not upset about me, so what’s got to him now? Or is he just in a state because he had to talk to me for five minutes?
Nothing happened that day, I just wandered about, climbing up small hills and peering into pools with golden fish in them. (Hrald would probably have run to get a fishing-net.)
The gardens are beautiful, it’s true. Like the House Garden, but better, more genuinely wild, more interestingly cultivated. I saw the Gardener once. He was shouting at some monkeys in the trees. Maybe wishing them fleas or something.
At dusk I saw a great trail of bats go over from the real cliffy parts below. Then, on the twilight, the white owl sailed across, just before the Star came up and blotted everything with its too-harsh light.
I never thought I’d say a star was horrible.
But the Wolf Star is.
It’s revolting. Too bright, too large, too there.
I’ve never seen it come up from the eastern horizon, always missed that. It’s always suddenly just looming up over the gardens, slowly going on across the sky and away behind the Rise, and then gradually slinking back – it seems to set in the east, where it rises – just as too-big and too-bright, in the last night hours. In the pavilion, whose windows are clear and only veiled with muslin, it woke me every night.
If the moon is up when the Star comes, the moon looks like a poor blue ghost beside it.
However. After the owl soared off over the trees, I went in. I had another bath and went to bed, because I couldn’t think of anything at all to do. I didn’t write in this book, hadn’t written anything after the last bit. The bit that ended ‘We.’.
During the night the Star didn’t wake me, coming back, for once. Instead I dreamed the owl flew in at a window I’d left open. It flew round the room and I thought, I’m dreaming about the owl flying round the room, and that was all.
In the morning I did notice a window I’d thought I’d shut was open. Then Jotto arrived and I went out and had breakfast with them, Grem and Treacle and some cats, under the huge flowering tree.
When I came back, I pulled the bag out from under the pavilion bed. I wanted something I’d left in it. I don’t remember what it was, because I never found it. Which was because I didn’t look for it. And that was because, in the bag, what I didn’t also find, and that at once, was this. I mean this book.
I mean, it was gone.
Naturally I turned the pavilion’s three rooms upside down. Even the bath-chamber and the little side room full of old gardening things and a statue of a large porcupine.
I hadn’t brought much with me and most of that I’d left in the bag. I had this sense always now of just making camp, whatever room or apartment
