‘What is this place?’ asked Lucy.
‘It’s my secret place,’ said April. ‘And you are honoured with being my very first guest.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lucy, uncertain that visiting a bark hut in the shade of a mass of granite was much of a privilege.
‘That’s Pulpit Rock above us,’ said April. ‘When we’ve had a cuppa, I’ll take you up there.’
Outside the hut was a circle of stones where April had laid the makings of a campfire. Lucy followed April into the hut. It was really no more than a cubby. There was an old Arnott’s biscuit tin full of coloured pencils lying open on a stump of wood that served as a table, a battered tin trunk in a corner, a makeshift shelf where several spiral-bound sketchbooks lay in a pile and a tin billy hanging on a hook. And there were pictures. Dozens of pictures. They lined every wall of the cubby from floor to ceiling. There were pictures of flowers and trees, people in long flowing gowns, horses and strange beasts, rivers and hills, birds and bright sunsets.
‘Did you do all these?’ asked Lucy. ‘They’re awesome.’
‘I love to draw,’ said April. ‘But at home my little sister always wants to borrow my pencils or make me play with her.’
‘Don’t the pictures get ruined up here?’
‘I change them all the time. And I put my favourite ones in that tin trunk, if I’m worried about rain getting in.’
April rummaged around in her pencil tin and took out a box of matches. Outside, she lit a fire while Lucy fed it dry leaves to keep it going. Then April brought out the billy and a jar of water that she emptied into it. She set the billy over the flames and gestured for Lucy to sit on a sawn-off log beside her. All around them, the bush was still and mysterious. A thin column of blue-grey smoke curled up from the fire and rose above the trees.
‘We should do something to officially welcome you to the Empire of Pulpit Rock.’
‘The Empire of Pulpit Rock?’
‘That’s what I call it. C’mon up and you’ll see why.’
April jumped to her feet and began climbing up the rock through a crevice. Lucy followed. It was almost as if the rocks had formed a natural staircase up and around the side of the huge cliff. Green ferns sprung out of cracks in the granite and patches of moss and silvery lichen peppered the walls and the crevices. In a couple of minutes, they were both standing above the open glade, with a view across the entire valley. The house looked like a postage stamp, nestled deep in the heart of the green landscape. The river was a blue ribbon, weaving its way through the dark bush. A spring breeze swept Lucy’s hair out behind her and something deep inside her thrilled to the beauty of the valley.
‘See, it’s like being at the top of a cathedral and the valley below is a special, sacred place.’
Lucy looked into April’s eyes. They were the brightest, fiercest blue she’d ever seen.
April stretched her arms out to either side. ‘Now that you’ve been welcomed into my empire, you have to swear an oath that you will never tell a living soul its true location.’
‘I swear. I swear I’ll never tell anyone about the Empire of Pulpit Rock.’
‘And now we have to have a feast, to honour your pledge.’
April drew a circle around them, scratching a pale line on the surface of the rock. Then she took out a small paper bag from her pocket and showed the contents to Lucy. Inside were shiny black boiled lollies.
‘Do you like cannonballs?’ asked April, popping one of the black sweets into her mouth and offering one to Lucy on the palm of her hand. Lucy hesitated for a moment then picked up the black ball and licked it. It tasted sweet and tangy at the same time. She rolled it around inside her mouth and it clanked against her teeth.
April put another two cannonballs in her mouth and her cheeks looked lumpy. She gave two more to Lucy and they sucked on the cannonballs while they sat side by side on the edge of the rock, swinging their legs, the whole world at their feet and their mouths crowded with sweets.
April spat one of the balls back into her hand. ‘Mine have turned white already,’ she said, looking pleased. Then she stuck her tongue out at Lucy. ‘Is it black?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely. And your teeth have turned grey,’ said Lucy.
Lucy took one of the cannonballs out of her mouth. It was a greyish blue.
‘Your teeth are blue-grey and I bet your tongue is black too. Once it’s black, then that means you’ll never break your pledge because if you do, your tongue will turn black forever.’
Lucy laughed and crunched the cannonballs between her teeth so they shattered into little pieces in her mouth.
April smiled and reached out to touch the dimple in Lucy’s left cheek. ‘You know, when you laugh, you really look like me. It’s so strange. If you had your hair in plaits like mine, we’d really look exactly like twins. Turn around.’
Lucy loved the feeling of having her hair braided. It was something Claire always did for her when she came home from Paris. She gazed out over the valley as April gently tugged at her hair, combing it with her fingers and separating it into strands to braid. It was as if April was weaving Lucy and herself together, as if they were being fused to each other as they sat high above the valley in the spring sunshine.
‘Do you know the story of Persephone?’ asked April. ‘It’s a Greek myth. It’s where I got the idea of cannonballs being good for a pledge. See, Persephone was stolen from her mother by the god of the underworld, who was madly in love with her, and her mother went searching everywhere, all around the world, to find her, but Hades had taken Persephone to his kingdom in the underworld. When her mother, Ceres, found her there after searching and searching, Hades said that Ceres could have her back as long as Persephone hadn’t eaten anything. But Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds. And so she was only allowed to spend six months of the year with her mother on earth. The other six months she had to spend with Hades in the underworld.’
‘I know that story,’ said Lucy, swallowing the last bits of the cannonballs. ‘But pomegranates aren’t like cannonballs. Pomegranate seeds are red.’
‘Only until you suck the juice off them. Then the pomegranate seeds are little and black. So we’ve shared six of them and now we’re bound together. That’s how that sort of magic works. That’s why I drew a circle around us too. Because anything that happens inside a circle is sacred.’
When all the cannonballs were eaten, they clambered back down the rock and squatted beside the campfire. April leaned forward and threw a handful of tealeaves into the billy and stirred the pot with a twig. Then she poured some tea into a pair of chipped enamel mugs. ‘Now you have to drink to seal our bond forever.’
Lucy sipped on the tea and it cleaned out her mouth after the sticky sweetness of the cannonballs. She didn’t really believe in magic. Jack and Claire had told her that there were no fairies, no magic, no Easter Bunny and no Father Christmas when she was still in kindergarten, and ever since then she hadn’t been able to believe in anything she couldn’t see. But how could she still think that, now that she had walked through a wall? If this wasn’t a dream, it was the strangest magic anyone had ever invented. And there was something about this place, this girl, and the thick bush that ringed the camp. It really did feel as though powerful magic lived here, the sort of magic that could hold you in its grip forever. Lucy put down the tin cup and stood up.
‘I think I’d better go back down to Avendale now,’ she said. ‘I have to go home.’