Chapter 15

It was the dead of night. Tilly crept out of her bed, lifted her bathrobe from the hook on the back of the bedroom door, and wrapped it around her snugly. She slid her feet into her soft slippers and opened the door. Along the landing she went, quiet as a ghost; down the stairs, across the hall into the dark kitchen. Tilly didn’t stop to put on her coat or boots, although she did pick up a slice of cake from the plate on the table and put it in her pocket.

She slid back the big bolt at the bottom of the back door and turned the heavy key in the lock. She stepped down onto the path and tiptoed around the side of the house to the lawn.

Above her, the sky was crystal clear, lit by a hundred million stars and a silver moon. The air was brittle with cold, and every blade of grass and every leaf and twig and petal and bud glittered with frost. Tilly’s breath made smoke clouds. Her toes curled into her slippers, so cold and hard was the ground. She pulled up the fleecy hood of the robe and tugged the belt closer around her middle.

Her fingers almost stuck to the ice-cold metal of the garden gate when she opened it to go through. She warmed them with her mouth. She shivered and shook, but still she kept going, across the path and through the wooden gate, into her enchanted garden, through the high grass to her den. The moon and stars fizzled and glittered, loud enough for her to hear, like electricity humming along a wire. In the silver light, the frosted clumps of grass and plants and seed heads stood stiff and tall like sculptures. Her blood tingled along her veins, her heart pumped, as if it was scared it too would freeze stiff and still. It was beautiful and dangerous tonight in the magic garden.

Amber eyes gleamed from deep in the thicket of brambles. Fox eyes, Tilly told herself, and nothing to be frightened of. She fished into her pocket for the cake, crouched down near the place where the tunnel began, and held it out. She sensed rather than saw the fox lean forward, its nose twitching. It edged forward, little by little. The fox looked as if it too had been turned to frost: every hair on its coat gleamed silver. Not a white Arctic fox, but her own magical silver fox.

Her hand shook, holding out the cake. Now the fox was so close, she could smell him. His strange, strong, animal scent. Delicately, he stretched out his head, and carefully, so he didn’t hurt her, he took the cake from her hand and gulped it down. This time, he didn’t run off to hide in his den in the bramble thicket. He sat down. He looked at her with his golden eyes.

Tilly, as delicate as the fox, stretched out her hand and touched the fur on his head. He felt cold and surprisingly soft. She stroked the place between his ears, and the fox let her. And then he stood up and turned and walked away into the garden.

Tilly followed after the fox. The garden was secret and dark, full of the sounds of the night. Rustlings and stirrings in the thicket under the brambles. The flapping wings of a bird. Farther off, a car engine, and high up and invisible, an airplane traveling across continents. In the cold air, sounds seemed to carry more easily.

The fox went steadily through the frozen grass and Tilly went after it, brushing against the iced branches of the shrubs and overgrown bushes on either side. When Tilly’s robe got caught on a thorn, the fox waited while she unhooked it, then padded onward. All the time, its ears and tail twitched, sensitive to sounds too tiny for Tilly to hear.

The garden seemed vast, a wilderness. They crossed through the wood, darker than ever, and out the other side to a lawn Tilly had never seen before, and a frozen pond with a statue of a girl, laced with frost. There were other statues, dotted around the edge of the lawn: a stone hare, nose pointing to the moon, and a stone dove. Ahead of them now, Tilly saw the deeper shadow of a house. As they got nearer, she saw it more clearly, lit by moonlight: a tiled roof, two chimneys at each end; white walls; green-painted bay windows; and a green front door.

Tilly heard a voice singing. The girl’s voice, high and clear. It was the same tune she’d heard that very first time but much louder. This time she could hear the words. The song was about a dress with green sleeves…

The fox stopped.

Tilly stopped too.

The voice seemed to be coming from one of the evergreen trees close to the house. Tilly peered up. There was a dark shadow among the other shadows, something moving…swinging back and forth. A leg, ending in a buttoned-up boot.

The singing stopped.

The girl jumped down from the tree.

She smiled. “Hello, Tilly!”

“What were you doing up in the tree?” Tilly asked.

“It’s my tree house. See? Like a nest, up in the yew tree with the birds.”

Tilly stood right underneath the tree and peered up. Now she could see there was a small wooden platform, built onto the thick branches at the center of the old tree. “How lovely!” Tilly said.

“You can go up and see if you like. You have to climb up.” The girl looked down at Tilly’s feet in muddy slippers and frowned. “Maybe another time.” She smiled at Tilly. “Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?”

And suddenly Tilly was, though she hadn’t felt it before.

The fox barked.

The girl laughed and ran over to the fox. She took something out of her pocket and held it out. The fox took the food delicately in its teeth and swallowed it down. The girl ran her hand along his frost-silvered fur, right to the tip of his tail, and he let her. He sat down, scratched himself, and yawned.

Tilly shivered.

The girl peered at Tilly. “You look half-frozen!” she said. “I’d ask you in, except it is so very late, and I’m not supposed to be playing outside. Only it’s so beautiful, with the frost and the moonlight, I couldn’t resist…”

“What’s your name?” Tilly whispered, but the girl turned away just at that moment. A light had gone on inside the house.

The front door opened, an oblong of light. A woman stood on the front step, looking out into the garden, and behind her, Tilly glimpsed a hallway with rose-patterned wallpaper and a tiled floor.

Tilly stepped back into the shadows. The fox did too.

“Helen? What are you doing out there?” The woman’s voice was loud enough for Tilly to hear every word.

The girl turned back for a moment. “Wait here,” she whispered to Tilly. “I’ll come out again if I can…”

Tilly watched the girl go into the house. Framed in the doorway, in the light, she could see her red-brown hair, her green woollen coat, and her brown boots, same as before. Same as…what? Tilly couldn’t think what; she just knew they were familiar somehow.

The garden seemed darker now the door had shut out the light from the house. It was colder than ever. She shouldn’t be here.

Tilly thought guiltily about Granny; she imagined her waking up, coming to see if everything was all right, finding Tilly’s bed empty and the back door unlocked…But the girl—Helen—had said “wait.”

She waited. The door stayed shut. There was no sign of Helen.

Tilly wondered what time it was. She was shivering with cold. Tired. Now, all she wanted was to be back at home, warm and safe in bed.

The fox was sniffing at a pile of dead leaves at the edge of the lawn.

“Take me back,” Tilly whispered.

As if it understood completely, the fox started picking its way back across the silvery grass, past the stone statues and the pond, toward the darker line of trees. Tilly followed. It seemed to take forever. The fox made its way steadily through the trees, twisting and turning along paths that were invisible to Tilly, dipping and ducking under fallen branches that Tilly had to climb over. She was afraid the fox would leave her behind, but each time it waited patiently for her to catch up. She was exhausted and frozen, and still they had farther to go, until at last they were out the other side of the woods. She could see the wooden fence, and the rickety gate, and she was nearly home.

Far away, an ambulance siren echoed in the frozen night.