'What do you two think? Should your mother tell her story while she can?'
'Yes,' they cried.
'Don't let your imagination go back to sleep,' he told her, and gazed at her until she nodded. 'Get ready for the cold, you two, and we'll be on our way.'
'Bathroom first,' Mummy said.
'No need to rush,' he called as Johnny raced upstairs. 'We've all the time in the world.'
Johnny tried to be patient while his sister took ages to brush her hair. He zipped up his fat anorak and dashed out of the house. The sky above the moors was frustratingly clear, and the bright blur above the forest had to be a kind of mist, something to do with all the snow which had stayed on the trees. Johnny squinted at it as he marched ahead of his father and Margaret. It could hide something as big as the forest, he thought, and imagined a huge flock of birds or insects, millions of them with just enough space between their bodies to let them hover. He imagined them exploding out of the mist like a blizzard, and stopped short of imagining what they would look like – not like birds or insects at all. He stumbled on the track and touched the icy skull of a figure as tall as himself, which jolted him out of the daydream.
He must have been like that while he was sleepwalking, he thought, and that was why he couldn't remember doing so. His mother was smiling through the kitchen window, Margaret was ducking in case he meant to fling snow at her; neither of them appeared to have noticed anything unusual above the trees. His father had overtaken him and was striding past the allotments towards the forest, above which was only a misty blur. Johnny avoided looking at it as he tramped across the crunchy grass to the trees.
The hovering mist steeped the forest in a twilight in which the treetrunks, which resembled scaly bones, appeared to glow. As soon as Johnny set foot on the path between them he saw his breath. He ran along the path, searching for trees he could shake to dislodge snow from them, trying to run far enough to be out of sight of his family and lie in wait for them. But the trees wouldn't shake; when he threw his weight against a trunk, that didn't bring down even so much as a snowflake. For a moment he thought the others had sneaked behind him, and then he saw them approaching on the path, his father's eyes gleaming in the forest twilight, Margaret rubbing her arms with her mittened hands. She looked ready to suggest going home out of the cold, and so Johnny shouted 'Let's play hide and seek. Daddy can be It.'
Their father went to the nearest marker post, which was painted with a blue arrow, and stared brightly at them before closing his eyes. 'You'll be found, I promise,' he said in a voice like a wind through the trees. 'Off you go.'
When Johnny saw that his sister was staying near the post he raced on tiptoe into the forest. By the time his father had counted thirty aloud, johnny had run far enough for the path and his family to be invisible for treetrunks. He darted behind two trees which grew very close together, and crouched to peer between them. He heard his father shout 'Fifty' to announce that he'd finished counting, a shout which sounded tiny in the silence. Johnny crouched lower, waiting to catch sight of his father. He was still watching, and listening for movements in the hush which felt as if it was pinned down by all the trees, when he sensed that his father or Margaret had crept behind him.
No, not them. Their breath on his neck wouldn't be so cold, and even if both of them were standing there, their presence wouldn't feel so large. He swung round, sprawling on fallen needles. There was nobody to be seen, only trees like an enormous cage, but for an instant he felt as if whatever he'd sensed at his back had just hidden behind all of them at once. It had to have been the twilight, and the breath on his neck must have been a stray breeze. All the same, he was glad when he heard his father shout 'I see you, Gretel' and Margaret's squeak of dismay, because then he was able to dash back to the marker post without fear of being made It.
When Margaret began to count he ran off the path. Though she was almost shouting, her voice immediately sounded even smaller than his father's had. Johnny dodged away from his father, who was also heading deeper into the forest, and hid in the midst of a circle of five close trees. He saw his father vanish among the trees to his left, and could just hear Margaret still counting, and so surely he was wrong to feel as if he wasn't alone in his hiding place. He glanced all around him, and then up. Of course, the mist was as close as the treetops to him. The pale blur above the branches laden with snow made him think of a patch of a face – a face so huge that he was seeing too little of it to distinguish any features. The thought of a face as wide as the forest and hovering just above it sent him fleeing towards the marker post as soon as he heard Margaret stop counting.
'I see Johnny,' she called almost at once, and beat him to the marker, though without much enthusiasm. When he skidded onto the path, kicking needles across it, she said 'I don't want to play any more.'
Now that she'd admitted it, he didn't need to. When he shrugged so as not to seem too eager she called 'Dad, we've finished playing.'
Perhaps Daddy thought she was trying to trick him, because he made no sound. Was he stealing towards them or standing as still as the forest? 'We aren't playing any more,' they shouted more or less in chorus, but the silence seemed to cut off their shouts as soon as the sound reached the first trees. 'He's going to scare us,' Margaret wailed.
Johnny couldn't tell if he shivered then or if the forest did. For a moment he thought the trees had somehow drawn together, then that something had inched towards him and Margaret between far too many trees. He could hardly see beyond the nearest trees because of the fog of his breath. When a figure appeared to his right, between trees so distant they resembled a solid scaly wall, he wasn't sure that he wanted to see what it looked like.
He sucked in a breath which tasted like a stream of ice, and saw that it was his father. It must have been the cold which had made him look different – the blurring of the air – but as he advanced deliberately towards the children, his face was so blank and pale that Johnny felt anxious for him. Then his father saw that Margaret was shivering, and an expression of concern developed on his face. 'Is the cold getting to you?' he said. 'We'd better speed up our progress.'
'Can't we go home now?' Margaret said.
'Why, we haven't got anywhere yet. We've hours before it's dark.' He turned along the path, walking so fast that the children had to trot in order to keep up with him. Johnny supposed that was meant to keep Margaret warm, or was his father in a hurry to be somewhere? His father's face had become expressionless yet purposeful, and Johnny wondered if it was possible to sleepwalk while you were awake.
Now they were almost at the point where the path began to curve out of the forest. Daddy left the path without breaking his stride and headed deeper into the forest, into the maze of pines which reminded Johnny of giants or insects, thin scaly bodies rising to bunches of legs with claws of ice beneath their blank white heads. Their stillness made the entire forest seem about to pounce. He would have followed his father if Margaret hadn't stopped on the path, protesting 'Daddy, you'll get us lost.'
'No need to be afraid.' He twisted round and beckoned, his feet moving in an odd little dance as if he was unable to keep still. 'This is the last place on earth I'd lose you. Quite the opposite.'
'Mummy wouldn't want us to go where there aren't any paths.'
'There are paths, believe me. You'll see.' But her mentioning Mummy had affected him. At first he looked angry and then, as he glanced at the poised silent forest, his face cleared. 'She ought to be here,' he murmured. 'It should be all of us.'
He returned to the path so abruptly he might have been pushing himself away from something. He looked bewildered, and on the way to renewed blankness. 'We'll go back for your mother.'
'She'll be busy,' Margaret told him.
His eyes gleamed a warning; then he smiled, so vaguely that he mightn't have known why. 'Perfect,' he said. 'If we wait there'll be more to see.'
As he led them along the path towards the moors he kept glancing behind him into the pines, though he appeared to have forgotten what he was looking for. Johnny didn't like to speak until they were well along the path. 'What are we going to see if we wait?' he said at last. 'More snow?'
His father beamed at him as if Johnny had solved a problem. 'Snow like you've never seen,' he said. 'The winter to end all.'
THIRTY-FOUR
