aside the fur and went to pick her up, although on closer examination, she seemed less terrified than amazed. Javitz, on the other hand, had come to a halt with his back against a tree and was staring white-faced and shuddering at the flames. Our rescuer-our rescuer was nowhere to be seen.
I set the child down next to Javitz, thinking that comforting her might at least distract him for a moment, then scrambled in a wide circle around the pulse of flames. I expected to find our Good Samaritan either aflame or impaled-but the dirt-coloured boots came into view, waving from the shrubbery beneath a slab of propeller quivering from a tree-trunk. The boots sank, and a head took their place. He stared open-mouthed at the propeller, the fire, and at me. His eyes, I noticed with the peculiar clarity of the concussed, were the very shade of Damian’s
Then he laughed. “Ha!” he shouted, a bark of pure joy at the ridiculousness of life. “Ha ha!”
His head disappeared into the shrubbery, which convulsed madly until he emerged from their back side, brushing half a bushel of dried leaves from his clothing. He retrieved his cap from a branch, slapping it against his leg before pulling it onto his hair, then climbed onto the dirt track to stand, hands on hips, grinning at the dying flames. He looked like a village lad at a Guy Fawkes bonfire; I half-expected him to gather some branches to toss on.
“Ha!” he barked again.
Then his head turned to find the three of us and the beard parted in a wide grin, which seemed remarkably full of very white teeth. “Who knew this day would hold such drama?” he said cheerfully.
My brains were so thoroughly scrambled, I could only grin back at him. We watched the flames for a while-they were, in fact, remarkably interesting-until I reluctantly woke to my responsibilities and looked around me.
Estelle was patting our blood-soaked, terror-stricken pilot on the head, comforting him instead of the other way around as I had intended. His eyes were tightly shut as he struggled for control, and I kept my distance while this strong man pasted on a deathly smile, dismissing her services when what he wanted was to curl over and howl with terror. I gave him time, and when he was restored, I approached.
Estelle had sat down on the bedraggled fur. She was holding the tea-cup in one hand and an acorn-cap about the same size in the other, scowling between the two. I shook my head in wonder: I’d been in charge of this small life less than twelve hours, and I could already feel an ulcer coming on. How did parents survive?
I dropped to my knees beside Javitz. His face was contained, his left hand clamped around his upper thigh. Fresh blood oozed around the fingers. The once-white scarf had all but torn free, but I did not think this patch of roadway was the best place in which to examine his injuries.
A pair of dirt-coloured boots came into the corner of my vision, and I said, “He needs a doctor. Is there a town nearby?”
“No!” Javitz protested. “If there’s a town, there’ll be police.”
I glanced upwards to see what impression this statement had on the bearded man-expecting, perhaps, that a man who reacted to flames with childish glee would be childish in all things-but his raised eyebrows spoke of a mind quick enough to put together the situation. Although he did not seem alarmed.
“Three master criminals fleeing the law in an aeroplane,” he reflected. “I have fallen into a
His voice. I peered more closely at him, trying to see beneath the herbage. He might look like a resident of the wilderness-a charcoal-burner, perhaps, or a rat-catcher-but he sounded like an Oxford don.
I opened my mouth to pursue this oddity, but a small groan brought me back.
The hairy man dropped into an easy squat, and a pair of surprisingly clean hands gently pushed aside the larger man’s blood-stained fingers. He looked into the pilot’s eyes and asked, “The bone’s not broken?”
“No,” Javitz answered through clenched jaws.
“This didn’t happen here.”
“I was shot.”
The green eyes travelled from Javitz to me and over my shoulder to Estelle, who had turned her back, literally, on the adults and was laying out a tea-party, supplementing the porcelain cup with acorn-caps and leaf-plates. He frowned, then jumped up and walked around to face her. She raised her head, and the green eyes went wide.
I found I had got to my feet and taken a step towards him, but he did not notice. Slowly, he lowered himself to his haunches. I watched, uncertain, as the two of them studied each other for the longest time. I could see his face clearly, but I could not begin to guess what he was thinking. He studied her face as if its features contained a message coded just for him.
Eventually, his gaze shifted, and he turned to scrabble at the leaf-mould, a small noise that startled my ears into noticing that the incessant engine noise was gone, that the noise of the flames was dying, that the ringing in my ears had given way to silence, blessed and profound.
He found what he was looking for, and held it out for Estelle’s approval: an acorn cup. After she had accepted it and added it to the others, he broke the stillness with a question. “Would you like to come to my house?”
“Yes, please,” she answered, without hesitation.
“Put those in your pocket, then. We’ll make some tea to go in them.”
“Thank you, Mr…”
“Goodman,” he supplied, and held out a hand to her. “But you can call me Robert.”
“My name is Estelle Adler,” she announced, and gave his hand two solemn shakes.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Adler,” he said, and helped her to her feet.
Then he came back to us, with Estelle trailing after. He told Javitz, “If it’s not broken, there’s no point in a splint. Grit your teeth, friend.” And without so much as a grunt of effort, the small man slid his hands under the big American and lifted him like a child.
Goodman took half a dozen steps and vanished among the trees. I retrieved the fur coat, helped Estelle stash the last of the acorn cups in her pockets, and led her to the place where the men had disappeared. The narrow path between the trees would have gone unnoticed unless one had seen them go in. I glanced back at the now- smouldering wreck and took Estelle’s hand.
Three steps inside the green, she dug in her heels. With an ill-stifled groan, I bent to pick her up. She was not, in fact, heavy, and my tired arms forgot their bruises to welcome her.
Perhaps that was the answer to my earlier question, of how parents survived.
“It will be all right, Estelle,” I said. “I’m here.”
“But,” she piped in a worried voice, “shouldn’t we leave crumbs, so we can find our way out again?”
So it hadn’t been just my concussion: It would seem that we were actually setting forth into a fairy-tale.
Chapter 17
The fairy-tale impression only grew stronger as we followed our rescuer, whom my abused brain insisted on calling Mr Green. I had not known that England still possessed areas of ancient woodland such as this. The light, here in what could only be called a forest, was so dim that I followed him more by sound than by the occasional glimpses I caught of his back. Once, when the child in my arms grew heavy with sleep, I stopped to wrap the fur more securely around her; when I stood again, the noise ahead of me resumed.
It began to rain lightly, more a background susurration than actual drips through the leaves. We travelled through the green nowhere, never seeing more than a few feet to either side, following the rhythm of firm footsteps. The journey was timeless, the landscape featureless, my companions noisy ghosts.
Then the noise ceased. In moments, I stepped into a clearing, and glanced involuntarily upwards to check the sky: yes, still cloudy, which meant it was the real England. And despite the heavy grey, I thought no more than an hour had passed since the crash.
Goodman’s home confirmed the sensation that Hansel and Gretel could not be far away-or perhaps Titania and Oberon. The structure-hard to think of it as a house-stood off-centre in a lush meadow encircled by forest and punctuated by one magnificent oak tree. Once upon a time, the dwelling may have been a woodman’s hut, but was now a gallimaufry of elements: A yellow-brick shed leant against a lichen-blotched stone hut butting up against a
