Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper Page B

slowly and looked at Will, but did not smile. “It’s … it’s … I can’t explain. Beautiful. Lovely. But—frightening, somehow.”
    â€œVertigo,” Simon said confidently. “You’ll feel better in a minute. Don’t look over the edge.”
    â€œCome on,” Will said, expressionless, suddenly remindingher of Merriman. He turned and continued up the path along the edge of Happy Valley. Simon followed.
    â€œVertigo, my foot,” Jane said.
    Bran said curtly, “Frightening, my foot, too. If you start listening to silly feelings, up here, you will never stop. Will has enough to worry about without that.”
    Astonished, Jane stared, but he had turned and was plodding up the road again with Simon and Will.
    She looked crossly after him. “Who does he think he is? My feelings are in my head, not his.”
    Barney stuck his fingers into the knapsack straps over his shoulders. “Now perhaps you’ll understand what I meant yesterday.”
    Jane raised her eyebrows.
    â€œUp on the hill over the sea,” Barney said. “That was sort of frightening too. When I was sure I’d been there before, and you both said rubbish. Only, I’ve been thinking—it’s really more like living inside something that’s happened before. Without its really having happened at all.”
    They went on in silence after the others.
    The rain began soon afterwards: a gentle persistent rain, from the low grey clouds that had been growing steadily larger and had begun to merge now into a covering over all the broad sky. They pulled anoraks and raincoats from the rucksacks and went doggedly on along the high moorland road, between open grassy slopes with no shelter anywhere.
    One by one, cars came back down the road past them. Round one last bend, the paved road ended at an iron gate, and a footworn earthen track went on instead, past a lone white farmhouse and away over the mountain. Five cars were parked tipsily on the grass before the gate; back down the mountain came a straggle of damp holiday-makers with drooping headscarves and complaining children.
    â€œThere’s one thing to be said for rain,” Barney said. “It does wash the people away.”
    Simon glanced back. “Gloomy-looking lot, aren’t they?”
    â€œThose two kids from the blue car are still thumping one another. I suppose anyone’d look gloomy with brats like that.”
    â€œYou aren’t long out of the brat stage yourself, chummy.”
    Barney opened and shut his mouth, hunting the right insult; but then glanced at Jane instead. She stood silent, unsmiling, gazing at nothing.
    â€œYou aren’t still feeling odd, Jane?” Simon peered at her.
    â€œLook at them,” Jane said in a strange small, tight voice. She pointed ahead to Will and Bran, trudging one after the other up the track through the grass: two matching figures in oilskins rather too big for them, distinguishable only by Bran’s cap and the sou’wester pulled low over Will’s head. “Look at them!” Jane said again, miserably. “It’s all mad! Who are they, where are they going, why are we doing what they want to do? How do we know what’s going to happen?”
    â€œWe don’t,” Barney said. “But then we never have, have we?”
    â€œWe ought not to be here,” Jane said. Impatiently she tugged the hood of her anorak closer over her head. “It’s all too … vague. And it doesn’t feel right. And”—the last words burst out defiantly—“I’m scared.”
    Barney blinked at her, out of the folds of an enveloping plastic mackintosh. “But Jane, it’s all right, it must be. Anything to do with Great-Uncle Merry—”
    â€œBut Gumerry isn’t
here.”
    â€œNo, he’s not,” Simon said. “But Will’s here, and that’s just about the same.”
    Surprise sang