The Hidden World Read Online Free PDF

saying goodbye.’
    â€˜That Ringo’s a nice boy,’ said Grannie, sifting flour onto her pastry board. ‘You should ask him around more often.’
    Jessica said nothing, but sat down at the kitchen table and started to draw patterns in the flour. This is the secret sign that shows you the way to the fairy kingdom. A circle, and a knot, and a pattern of evening stars. Whenever you see this sign, you will know that the Fairy Kingdom is closer than you think. But whether you’ve got the courage to go there, that’s a different matter altogether.
    â€˜Jessica, will you stop messing around with my flour, girl!’
    Jessica brushed away the secret sign, and then clapped her hands together to get rid of the flour. Clap your hands once and the fairies will hear you. Clap them twice and the door will open. Clap them three times and you will always get more than you bargained for.
    She went back up to her bedroom and stood at the window. The snow was hurrying down all over the garden, so thick that she could barely see the statue of Pan. ‘Strange pretty’, Renko had called her. She pressed her forehead against the window-pane so that she could feel the cold in her brain. For the first time in a long time, she felt desperately lonely.
    Jessica lay in bed and listened to Grannie and Grandpa Willy go through their usual pantomime performance of going to bed.
    â€˜Did you lock the back door, Willy?’
    â€˜No, Mildred, I left it wide open with a sign saying, “Come on in, burglars, and help yourselves!”’
    â€˜Have you washed your teeth yet, Willy?’
    â€˜I would if I could find the dang things.’
    They opened and closed the bathroom door about twenty-eight times, and flushed the toilet over and over, as if a flush-toilet was a novelty. They had an argument in the corridor about who was getting in whose way, and then they closed their bedroom door, still arguing, and then they opened it again to switch off the landing light.
    â€˜You never remember to switch off that light!’
    â€˜Well, why didn’t you tell me it was on?’
    â€˜Why should I tell you? You’re not blind!’
    â€˜No, but the way you nag, I’m practically deaf!’
    Eventually there was nothing but the feather-soft pattering of snow against the window, and the eerie light of a late-November night. Jessica waited for nearly half an hour, and then she climbed out of bed and put on her bathrobe. In the top drawer of her dressing-table, under her neatly folded panties, was Grandpa’s big red flashlight, which she had borrowed from the closet in the kitchen.
    She carefully opened her bedroom door, and listened. The landing was almost totally dark, except for the faintest reflected light from the hallway downstairs. At this time of the evening, the house was talking to itself about the day gone by. The ashy logs in the living-room fireplace suddenly lurched and dropped. The range in the kitchen started a slow, regular ticking as the hob cooled down. The clocks chimed; the plumbing rattled as the tanks in the attic filled up. And on winter nights like this, with so many pounds of snow on top of the roof, the whole house would creak and complain, an arthritic old man in a heavy overcoat.
    At the far end of the landing stood a tall bureau and on top of the bureau was a vase with ostrich feathers in it, with an oval mirror behind it. In the darkness, the vase looked like the head of a giant vulture, with a scrawny neck and a hooked beak. Jessica stared at it before she opened the attic door, just to make sure that it wasn’t a vulture, but even when she stared she didn’t feel sure.
    Jessica crossed the landing to the attic door. She lifted the latch, opened the door and shone the flashlight up the narrow wooden stairs. She could smell dust, and something else, like faded pot-pourri. There was a light switch there, but she didn’t want to turn it on in case Grandpa