Lucy stood with Jimmy and Lulu and waved goodbye as Tom drove off with Mr and Mrs Showers to catch the train in town.
When they disappeared around a bend in the road, Lucy felt her body slump with misery. Jimmy glanced across at her with a worried expression.
‘Lulu and I were about to go riding, up to Pulpit Rock, you know, up at the top of the valley. Do you want to come?’
‘Up to April’s Empire?’
‘April’s what?’ asked Lulu.
‘Never mind,’ muttered Lucy.
She was glad to hike up to the stable with Jimmy and Lulu to saddle the horses. Why had she imagined that Tom would listen to her? Even if she could walk through walls and travel through time, she only seemed to change things by accident.
There was a new horse in the stable, a beautiful white pony that Lulu saddled. Lucy rode Smoke and Jimmy took Midnight, who was less skittish than on that first spring day when Lucy had watched April galloping him across the valley. Everything was changing. Although it was less than a week since Lucy had first walked through the pictures, nearly three years had passed inside the painted world.
As they rode up the winding track that led to Pulpit Rock, Lucy felt as though everything that had ever happened in the valley was going on around her: as if just on the other side of time, Claire was playing beneath the big old wattle tree, her mother was driving down into the valley to bring her father to meet Big, Lucy was climbing out of the car with her dad, as if every moment that had ever been and every moment that was yet to come was unfolding around her, and she was powerless to stop any of it.
April’s Empire looked abandoned. The little hut was missing part of its roof, and the bush had begun to creep back to take over the glade. Moss lay thick on the logs around the old campfire and ferns sprang up outside the hut’s doorway.
The children tethered the horses and began to climb. The rocks were smoother, slipperier in the cool of winter, and were speckled with damp lichen. Lucy felt a little breathless as they approached the top. Jimmy turned around and offered her his hand. She looked up into his face, so kind, so familiar, so like her brother Jack’s. Her hand felt small in his. Jimmy had changed too.
The three of them sat on the edge of the sheer rock face. Beneath them, stretching out in all directions, lay the valley in winter. The river was as blue as the sky, and the bush was a soft grey-green with flashes of gold where the wattle bloomed.
‘I never want to leave this valley,’ said Lulu. ‘Not even to go to Sydney. I want to live here forever and ever.’
Lucy stayed quiet. She knew that Lulu would leave the valley. That she’d leave and hardly ever return. It would be April, not Lulu who would stay. It all seemed so upside down.
‘April says she’s never coming back here. How can she say that!’ said Lulu.
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ said Lucy.
‘You don’t know my big sister. Maybe you don’t even know what it’s like to have a big sister. If you had a big sister, then you’d know that nothing you ever do will match up to what they’ve already done. There’s no point in me going anywhere. April will think I’m copying her.’
‘No she won’t!’ said Lucy. ‘And I do know what it’s like to have a big sister, but even big sisters can break sometimes. And sometimes their lives don’t turn out the way you think they will.’
‘Have you got a big sister?’ asked Lulu, softly, because this time, she could see that Lucy was upset.
‘Yes. But she was in a terrible accident. And she’s in a hospital, and no one knows if she’s ever going to wake up. And if she does wake up, she might never be the same. She might be broken forever.’
Jimmy and Lulu looked at each other and then at Lucy.
‘I’m really sorry, Lucy,’ said Jimmy. ‘I wish there was something we could do to help you.’
Lulu put one hand on Lucy’s knee. ‘There is one thing we could do. I don’t know if it will help but it might make you feel better.’
Lulu scrambled to the hidden stairway through the rocks and disappeared down into the crevice. A few minutes later she came back up with a load of twigs tucked under her arm. Then she began to lay a fire, right on top of Pulpit Rock.
‘April taught me this. We used to do it down on the banks of the river. It’s a secret ceremony for sisters. But we’ll let Jimmy be part of it, just this once.’
Carefully, Lulu built a little tent of sticks on top of the rock. Jimmy pulled out a booklet of matches and lit the dry leaves that Lulu had placed beneath the twigs and bark.
‘Give me your pocket knife, Jimmy,’ said Lulu. When Jimmy had flicked the knife open, Lulu took it and cut a long ringlet of her curling gold hair. Then she reached over and Jimmy allowed her to cut one of his red curls. Last, she cut a honey-blonde lock of Lucy’s hair. She twisted the three lengths together until she’d made a long, thin braid of glowing hair. She held it over the fire for a moment before dropping it into the flame.
‘Now we have to all hold hands,’ instructed Lulu. She reached out and took one of Lucy’s and one of Jimmy’s hands. The three made a perfect triangle around the small fire. The white smoke curled up out of the flames and rose in a pale line, high into the blue sky.
Below them in the valley, the wild bush lay thick and dark in the shadow of the hill. On the other side of the river, a patchwork of soft green-and-gold fields stretched to the far horizon. They sat in silence for a while until Jimmy broke the stillness. ‘What are we meant to be doing?’
‘We’re thinking. We’re thinking of Lucy’s sister and we’re holding her in our thoughts. We’re holding her above our valley and sending her all our love and sharing every bit of magic we can muster to make her better,’ said Lulu.
The sun moved behind a cloud for a moment, muting the light. When it came out again, it shone through a haze of soft rain that was falling on a distant field. A double rainbow arced over the valley.
Lucy felt all her longing, all her hopes for Claire and for Tom, pouring out into the winter sky. She looked over at Jimmy and Lulu, sitting so still, their eyes shut, their faces serene. A faint memory stirred in her of two radiant old people, whom she had lost before she could even get to know them properly.
When the smoke from the fire died down, Lulu carefully broke up the coals and extinguished the embers. Lucy put her hand over her bluebird brooch, clutching it tightly. The three children climbed down through the crevice in the rocks. Lucy nearly lost her footing and caught herself against the granite, sliding down to the soft earth. A light, cold sun-shower fell on them as they rode back down into the valley.
It was only when the horses were stabled and they were trudging up to the house that Lucy realised she’d lost the bluebird. She clutched the empty place on her shirt where Tom had pinned the brooch. She pressed her palm against her chest as if she needed to stem a flow of blood.
Tom was going to go and fight in the war and die, no matter what she did. She wished she’d never come back. She had broken her promise to Big for nothing.