‘Now where’s he gone?’ Joe dreamt he was dreaming and he knew he was.
He opened the door and crossed the white step into the yard. The sun scudded from clouds and the wind was gentle. He went to the pear tree and sat in its shade. He looked up into the branches. The blossom had dropped long since. The pears were small and it was too early for wasps to be about.
He looked through the gateway, across the top of Big Meadow. The alders along the brook were burnished in the light. He saw the copse below.
Joe drowsed in his dream. There was the leaf smell of young poppies. Later the flowers grew tall everywhere all over, bright and different colours, for the one day before petal fall and the green of the heads then the brown rustle of seeds.
He looked down at the slope to the gate. There were marks in the ground; hoof marks; silver on the grass and cobbles. He stood up. The line of them went to the gate. Joe followed into the field, stepping on each silver hoof. The hooves turned at the hedge and out across the top of Big Meadow onto House Field and down to the brook. They went towards the railway and the tunnel to Common Dean. Joe followed.
The tunnel was high and dark. The hoof marks glowed on bare earth. The arch of the far end showed. Noony rattled by overhead, and the tunnel boomed.
Brambles hung in a curtain from the embankment. He pushed his way through the sharp strands and came out into Common Dean. It was moonlight. The path passed flooded marl pits on either side among alders. The hoof marks were brighter. He followed them between the waters.
They went into Rough Hollow and crossed the brook by a plank bridge to Well Meadow, up into Big Sand Field and Little Sand Field to Round Meadow. Round Meadow was three-sided, and in it was a hillock. And at the foot of the hillock the hoof marks stopped.
Joe walked about the hillock, thinking to himself what it might be. Then he went and sat on its top and looked over the land in the moonlight. And as he sat, beneath him, under the ground, there was music. A pipe played. It was a tune he had never heard, yet he knew it. It played on bone.
‘You!’
His shout woke him. He woke from the drowse of the dream in the dream. He was not in his bed on the cupboard by the chimney but at the hillock in Round Meadow. The sun was bright. And the hooves were lost.
‘Wait! Wait for us! Wait! Wait! Wait on!’
Nothing. No one. Only loss.
Joe went about the hillock again. It was all smooth turf. He climbed to the top. There was nobody.
He went back down, by Little Sand Field and Big Sand Field, Well Meadow, over the plank bridge into Rough Meadow to Common Dean, along the path between the marl pits’ black and flat waters without life.
He parted the brambles at the tunnel and walked on the bare earth. Noony rattled overhead and the tunnel boomed.
Then he went up House Field, along Big Meadow and into the yard.
The white pony and the cart were under the pear tree. Joe ran to them and took hold of the bridle. ‘What are you doing? Where is he? Where?’ The pony snorted. ‘Is he here? Has he come? He must have.’ The pony whisked its tail and put its head down to graze. It shook its ears against flies. ‘I bet he is. Inside. Cheeky beggar. He knows he should’ve asked first. It’s that chimney. That chimney. He can’t get enough of it.’
Joe set off across the yard towards the house. Down in the alder bog a cuckoo called. He reached the door. Inside he heard Treacle Walker’s voice, but he could not catch what he was saying.
Joe turned the handle, lifted the latch, and opened the door. He crossed the step.
Treacle Walker was sitting in the chimney, and there was someone else there, opposite, but until he was further into the room Joe could not see who it was. And then he could. It was himself.