Lucy cried herself to sleep. Twice, after Big had gone to bed, Lucy went into the dining room to see if any of the paintings were alive, hoping to cross over, but though the paintings were beautiful in the moonlight, none of them contained movement or the magic she needed to allow her to enter them.
Some time after midnight, a sound woke her. It was the sound of music wafting through the still night air. Lucy sat bolt upright and listened. Someone was playing the piano. Lucy knew the old piano in the front room was horribly out of tune and some of the keys were broken. Yet the strains of music were clear and in tune.
Lucy climbed out of bed and walked into the hall. As she’d suspected, the music wasn’t coming from the front room but from across the hall – from the outside–inside room. Quickly, she dressed and strapped on her sandals.
It wasn’t until she’d entered the outside–inside room and shut the door behind her that she saw that the painting of autumn was alive with colour. Spread either side of the doorway were fields of brown and gold. Swelling clouds in a pale blue sky pressed against the ceiling. The river was fuller, darker and more mysterious than ever, and fog lay across its surface. Down the hillside, where the orchard grew, the leaves of the trees had turned to brown and were scattered in the long, dry grass. Where the cool air met the warm ground, mist rose from the dales. A scattering of golden leaves and the last petals of the drooping wisteria lay in a patchwork across the lawn in front of the house.
From somewhere deep inside the painting, music came floating over the landscape like the mist. Lucy took a deep breath and stepped through the wall.
She found herself standing outside the house. The clouds that had looked so full and majestic in the painting were darker now, settling low over the river. Beyond the grey mists she could see a hazy smudge of charcoal where it was raining upriver. She turned back to the house and crossed the front lawn, the damp autumn leaves squelching beneath her feet.
Lucy didn’t bother to knock. She had to talk to April. Urgently. She had to find out about Tom, and warn her that her dreams of Paris and adventure wouldn’t happen unless she could change the future.
The music drew her to the front room, but it wasn’t April at the piano; it was Jimmy Tiger, his hands racing up and down the keys. He didn’t hear Lucy come in. It wasn’t until she was standing right next to the piano that he looked up. That was the moment Lucy recognised him. Something about watching his hands at the piano brought a flash of memory to her of someone else. Someone she had only met a few times when she was very small. An old man whose hands flew like wings across a keyboard, even though his body was hunched and his hair thin and shining white. Lucy knew that Jimmy Tiger wasn’t an ordinary boy. Jimmy Tiger was going to grow up to be her grandfather.
‘Why, it’s April’s twin, the other Lucy,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time. You haven’t changed a bit.’
When Jimmy stood up, Lucy realised he had grown.
‘I’m looking for April,’ she said. ‘I have to talk to her.’
‘You’re not the only one. I came up here to see her too, but she’s nowhere to be found. I’ve spent half the morning scouting around for her. I’m starting to feel worried.’
‘Why?’ asked Lucy.
‘The rain. Rain upriver. There’s talk of flooding. Mr and Mrs Showers and Tom and Lulu are in town.’
‘Tom! He’s in town!’ said Lucy, her heart singing with relief.
Jimmy raised his eyebrows. ‘Where else would he be? They can’t come back because the road’s washed out. April doesn’t know. I rowed across the river to tell her but I can’t find her.’
They walked out onto the verandah and Jimmy pointed to the smudgy grey rain clouds. The river looked fat and swollen, slowly rising above its banks, washing around the trunks of the rivergums.
‘But surely the water can’t get up this high. It won’t reach the house.’
‘I hope not. But who knows how long it will be before the road’s clear again? April could be stuck out here for days. Where could that girl be?’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time left. Once that rain reaches here and the water comes washing down from upstream, we’ll never get out. I should go but I don’t want to leave without April. You need to get out of here too, Lucy. How did you get here, anyway? Have you moored your boat somewhere safe?’
‘I didn’t come by boat. I sort of walked here. But I think I know where April will be,’ said Lucy.
‘Where?
‘Her Empire.’
‘Her what?’
‘There’s a place, up on the hillside, a secret place where April goes to think.’
‘That girl does too much thinking,’ said Jimmy.
‘It takes about half an hour to walk there. Or we could ride there in fifteen minutes.’
‘That’s another half hour…’ said Jimmy, biting his lip.
‘C’mon, let’s be quick about it.’
The two children ran to the stables.
‘Can you help me saddle Banjo?’ asked Lucy.
Jimmy shook his head. ‘Old Banjo is too slow. We’ll take Midnight. We’ll be there faster.’
They galloped up the track as heavy clouds descended over the valley. Mist swirled in the hollows, and Lucy felt a flicker of alarm course through Midnight as they charged through a thick bank of it. Then they were moving up the winding path through the bush. Lucy held onto Jimmy with one arm and pointed the way to April’s Empire with the other.
They arrived in the grove in a swirl of leaves and bark, and slid from Midnight’s back. Everything was different. The bark hut had been replaced by a rough lean-to of branches and the grove was edged with blackened trunks.
April stepped out of the shadow of Pulpit Rock, her face a mixture of fury and amazement. Like Jimmy, she’d changed. Her hair was even longer and she had grown taller than Lucy.
‘I thought it was Jimmy and Lulu. But it’s you! We haven’t seen you for more than a year! Tom said you’d probably gone back to Sydney forever.’
Then her eyes narrowed. ‘How could you! You’ve brought Jimmy Tiger to my secret place. I told you, the very first time I brought you here two years ago that no one was allowed here. Especially not a boy. Especially not Jimmy Tiger. I swore you to secrecy.’
‘Don’t yell at the nipper!’ shouted Jimmy. ‘I’ve been looking for you for hours. The river’s about to break its banks. Your folks are stranded in town. I came to help you.’
‘I don’t want your help. You think I’m stupid? I saw the river rising this morning. That’s why I came up here. I’ve got things here that I have to save from the rain. I lost everything in last year’s fires. I’m not going to lose another year of paintings. I’ve been packing.’
‘You and your stupid pictures,’ said Jimmy.
‘You and your stupid music,’ April spat back.
‘Whoa!’ said Lucy. ‘Stop it, you two. April, we’ve come to help. Sometimes you have to let people help you. You can’t spend your whole life pushing away people who love you.’
April glared at her. ‘My whole life? I’m thirteen! And Jimmy Tiger doesn’t love me!’
Jimmy blushed, scarlet right to the roots of his fiery red hair.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Lucy said. She stomped into the lean-to and saw that April had piled her precious art materials and some rolled-up drawings into an old potato sack. April followed her.
‘Let’s go,’ said April, snatching up the sack.