Fire and Hemlock

To Laura

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Part One New Hero

Part Two Now Here

Part Three Where Now?

Part Four Nowhere

Coda scherzando

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

Polly sighed and laid her book face down on her bed. She rather thought she had read it after all, some time ago. Before she swung her feet across to get on with her packing, she looked up at the picture above the bed. She sighed again. There had been a time, some years back, when she had gazed at that picture and thought it marvellous. Dark figures had seemed to materialise out of its dark centre – strong, running dark figures – always at least four of them, racing to beat out the flames in the foreground. There had been times when you could see the figures quite clearly. Other times, they had been shrouded in the rising smoke. There had even been a horse in it sometimes. Not now.

Here, now, she could see it was simply a large colour photograph, three feet by two feet, taken at dusk, of some hay bales burning in a field. The fire must have been spreading, since there was smoke in the air, and more smoke enveloping the high hemlock plant in the front, but there were no people in it. The shapes she used to take for people were only too clearly dark clumps of the dark hedge behind the blaze. The only person in that field must have been the photographer. Polly had to admit that he had been both clever and lucky. It was a haunting picture. It was called
Fire and Hemlock
. She sighed again as she swung her feet to the floor. The penalty of being grown up was that you saw things like this photograph as they really were. And Granny would be in any minute to point out that Mr Perks and Fiona were not going to wait while she did her packing tomorrow morning – and Granny would have things to say about feet on the bedspread. Polly just wished she felt happier at the thought of another year of college.

Her hand knocked the book. Polly did not get up after all. And books put down on their faces, spoiling them, Granny would say. It’s only a paperback, Granny. It was called
Times out of Mind,
editor L. Perry, and it was a collection of supernatural stories. Polly had been attracted to it a couple of years back, largely because the picture on the cover was not unlike the
Fire and Hemlock
photograph – dusky smoke, with a dark blue umbrella-like plant against the smoke. And, now Polly remembered, she had read the stories through then, and none of them were much good. Yet – here was an odd thing. She could have sworn the book had been called something different when she first bought it. And, surely, hadn’t one of the stories actually been called ‘Fire and Hemlock’ too?

Polly picked the book up, with her finger in it to keep the place in the story she was reading. ‘Two-timer’ it was called, and it was about someone who went back in time to his own childhood and changed things, so that his life ran differently the second time. She remembered the ending now. The man finished by having two sets of memories, and the story wasn’t worked out at all well. Polly did not worry when she lost her place in it as she leafed through looking for the one she thought had been called ‘Fire and Hemlock’. Odd. It wasn’t there. Had she dreamed it, then? She did often dream the most likely-seeming things. Odder still. Half the stories she thought she remembered reading in this book were not there – and yet she did, very clearly, remember reading all the stories which seemed to be in the book now. For a moment she almost felt like the man in ‘Two-timer’ with his double set of memories. What a madly detailed dream she must have had. Polly found her place in the story again, largely because the pages were spread apart there, and stopped in the act of putting the book face down on her rumpled bedspread.

Was
it Granny who minded you putting books down like this? Granny didn’t read much anyway.

“And why should I feel so worried about it?” Polly asked aloud. “And where’s my other photo – the one I stole?”

A frantic sense of loss came upon her, so strong that for a moment she could have cried. Why should she suddenly have memories that did not seem to correspond with the facts?