The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam Page A

rushes, the spider webs, the tall great fearless thistles. You could pull the tubes of ice off the long wands of the loosestrife. You could lift them off like hollow needles. You could look right down them like crystal test-tubes. You could watch them twist like fairy earrings. And as the sun reached them they all turned at once to every colour ever known—rose and orange and blue and green and lilac—and Harry and Bell watched them until the sun slipped down a little and left them icicles again.
    â€œIt don’t happen often,” Bell said. “Once before I seed it when Grandad brought me years back—your age. It happens when there’s a temperature change—very quick. Snap-snap. It freezes sudden. Turns them all to ice in mid-flow. All the grasses an’ all—just as they’re standing or bending.”
    â€œJust like a spell. Like
The Snow Queen
.”
    They stood on.
    â€œCan we pick some?”
    They began to pick. Not very bravely at first. It seemed a sin to spoil it. “But it’ll all be gone tomorrow,” said Bell. “Grandad says they don’t often last a day.”
    They took the tips off the rushes and pulled. They broke off the water icicles like peppermint rock or toffee. They took all thicknesses and laid them carefully in the snow. Somewhere they found in a pocket some bits of John Robert twine to bind them and parcelled together a heap of the thickest. Then Harry collected some of the very fine threads into his hands and they slowly climbed over the wall and walked, not feeling the cold at all, back down the road.
    It was growing quite dark now but the road was shiny enough to follow. When they reached Bell’s bike, they fastened his sheaf at the back across his panniers, where it stuck out at either side like glass firewood. Harry walked in front, carrying his delicate bundle upright like a bouquet. They walked for ages without talking.
    â€œHere’s mine,” said Harry, looking at the dying Indian track-bike. “But if I push it, what do I do with these? I’d best leave it. My father can fetch it tomorrow. It’s no good without brakes and there’ll be nobody much passing to pinch it. I want to get these home safe. I’d like my mother to see them.”
    â€œAye—I want Grandad to get a look at mine,” said Bell, “and we’ll have to look sharp for it’s warmer.
    â€œFunny to get warmer when the sun’s gone down,” said Bell, “but it’s been a funny day altogether. Magic rather like as if there’s something watching.”
    Â 
    â€œIt
is
warmer,” said Bell later. They had passed Wild Boar, the railway bridge and the empty dog kennel, the school and the chapel, all dead and dark. “It must be because it’s snowing a bit.”
    By Outhgill village it was snowing a lot. There was a light here and a light there in the looming dark. Bell knew someone at the shop, which wasn’t that far off if he could find it, he said. But then—the icicles. If they stopped now they wouldn’t get them home. Already they had a more slithery, softer sort of feel—like the road ahead.
    â€œWe’ll press on,” he said.
    â€œMy mother said to ring from Hell Gill phone box. Where’s Hell Gill phone box, Bell?”
    â€œI think we’ve passed it,” said Bell. “Come on. We’re getting on. We’ve passed the place where she kept her goats and we’re nearly at the chapel.”
    â€œWe’re way past the chapel,” said Harry, “and the school.”
    â€œAre we? I’m getting muddled.”
    â€œWell, I seed a building.”
    â€œSaw—”
    â€œSaw a—Bell, I think we ought to go back. To the shop at Outhgill. It’s snowing like feathers.”
    They turned to go back, gasping a bit into the snow, and found that the lights of the few cottages at Outhgill had disappeared. The night had fallen and