about their earlier clash, but also because his thoughts kept turning to the hound in the churchyard and the strange Shop of Things. His mind was filled with images of the dark hound and, more excitingly, the endless warren of parcels and packages, the amazing flight of birds beneath the mobile and the peculiar runes of the Samarok. But he knew it would be some time before he would get back to its pages: the filing would take as long as it would take. Tobias Tate’s old grandfather clock tick-tocked its way through the endless minutes and chimed the passing of interminable hours.
Finally, as the clock struck nine, his uncle sat down in the chair in his favourite corner, ate a quick dinner (which he reserved entirely for himself), put his hands behind his head and fell asleep. He drew breath in long, deep snores of rasping snorts that built to a crescendo of clucks and splutters and then began again at the bottom of the scale.
Sylas could not believe his luck – this was his chance to escape. But he must not be hasty – his uncle’s finely tuned ears might hear him leave. He replaced the pile he was sifting through and edged closer to the desk, then picked up some papers by the window and rustled them loudly. His uncle snorted and spluttered, but his eyes stayed closed and the metronomic drone of his snoring resumed. Sylas smiled quietly and replaced the papers, taking care to leave them exactly as he found them – his uncle had not asked him to check this pile.
As he drew his fingers away, he froze.
He blinked, certain that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
In the header of the topmost letter was a logo: a stark, black-and-white fern leaf coiled into an almost perfect circle, with the words Winterfern Hospital for the Mentally Ill emblazoned below in silver lettering. Sylas had seen that logo before, on the white coats of the doctor and nurse who had taken his mother away. But it was the date on the letter that had made his blood run cold.
Two weeks ago.
His stomach turned. He picked up the letter, seeing as he did so that there was another beneath it dated three months before. A cold sweat formed on his brow. Now he could see the letterhead of another jutting out further down the pile, bearing a date of a year before. He turned his eyes back to the one in his hand – the one from just two weeks ago – and began to read, his heart racing. The room receded – all he could see was the stark black type.
Ms A. Tate: Clinical Report
Dear Mr Tate,
Amelie has shown some continued improvement under the revised regime of sedatives and occupational therapy and is responding particularly well to her new surroundings in the garden room. She has developed a keen interest in botany and spends extended periods reading and walking in the hospital grounds. Nevertheless she continues to experience severe psychotic episodes throughout the night and some hours of the day.
We recommend a continuation of the current course of treatment. As we have indicated previously, while her guardian’s visits are extremely helpful, we feel that family visits would also be beneficial.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Adrian Kopenhauer
Supervising Psychiatrist
Sylas’s hands began to shake. He took up the next letter and the next. Each was another Clinical Report, each dated three months before the last. He turned slowly to the sleeping form of his uncle and stared at him, his chest heaving, tears in his eyes.
Tobias Tate continued to snore, oblivious.
Sylas shook his head in disbelief. How could this be? His mother, still alive? And his uncle knew all along?
He grabbed the pile of papers, whirled about and rushed from the room.
“… we wake to sounds that assail the senses and crowd the mind, like dreaming that will not end.”
SYLAS SAT LISTLESSLY ON his mattress, papers strewn about him, tears pouring down his face. His wonderful room, his sanctuary from the world, was suddenly cool and dark, hollow and soulless, for surely it was part of this great lie, the sham that lay in scattered pieces around him, typed in hard black letters for anyone to see. It too had hidden the truth from him, for had he not lived in it every day of the past four years? Had he not grieved in it? Had he not looked down from its window into the churchyard and thought of his mother? Given her up? Let her go?
His eyes shifted back to the mattress, to the scores of Clinical Reports, Review Meeting Reports, Annual Statements, and then finally to the document in his trembling fingers, the Order of Committal, the document that gave the doctors the right to take his mother away against her will, the document that had started it all.
At the bottom were two signatures. One of these he knew all too well.
It was his uncle’s.
Sylas felt nauseous. He forced himself to look away, but everything he saw around him seemed to be part of the lie: the familiar walls of his room, his meagre furniture, the crooked beams of the old building, even the picture of his mother. Even that. It was no longer what it had been to him – a piece of her, a way to feel close to her. Instead it was just a snapshot, because it was not how she was today, not how she looked in her ‘garden room’, or walking around the hospital grounds, or how she would look at him if he was with her now.
He sat like that for some time, he had no idea how long. Eventually he stirred, his eyes slowly finding focus. They drifted around the room until they fell on something that could be no part of the lie, had no place in the conspiracy. He saw his flock of colourful, bird-like kites hanging on the wall: meaningless but also innocent – things that he himself had created.
When he had first moved to Gabblety Row, he had yearned to be far away, far from his uncle and the news he had brought. From his windows he had watched the distant birds flying above the hills at the edge of town and they had become his dearest dream, his favourite escape. Inspired by their beauty and freedom, he had become a creator of his own birds: an ever-growing squadron of kites, all painted in the brightest colours arranged in odd but beautiful designs.
And they were more than just works of art. When he finished one of his kites, he would clamber out of the window on to the roof, where he could sit with one leg on either side of the ridge and launch his kite into the air. It would soar over the town as he yearned to do, escaping normal life, dazzling the residents of the housing estate over the road and brightening the day of those caught in the endless traffic jams below. He dreamed that one day he might create one so beautiful that it might even tempt its sisters to journey from the hills and across the grey town to fly over Gabblety Row. But so far the only visitor he ever received on that breezy rooftop was Herr Veeglum the undertaker, who would often lean out of his garret window at the other end of the row and raise his sallow face to watch.
Sylas had no real urge to move, to do anything, but the sight of his kites made him think of something. He ran his sleeve over his face, pushed himself up from his mattress and went over to his only piece of furniture – a three-legged dresser with many ill-fitting doors and drawers. He pulled the top drawer off its runners and carried the whole thing back to his mattress, laying it down on top of the papers.
Inside were the most important things in the world.
This is where he kept the gifts his mother had given him when he was young, before she went away. Most of it looked like bric-a-brac: a jumble of worn and threadbare toys, an old glove, birthday cards, half a plastic tiara (“broken, but magical,” she had told him with a girlish smile), faded photographs, the key to their old cottage. And nestled among all these things were his most beloved possessions of all. First, a large pigment-stained wooden box, containing two rows of small glass jars set snugly into a felt base, each with a little cork stopper. Inside every jar was a dazzling paint: red, the colour of molten rock; orange, like tongues of fire; silver, like fish scales in water; green, like the forested hills, and many, many more. Each was labelled in silver ink by his mother’s own measured