AMARYLLIS

Like smoke Chicory’s shadow peeled away from the stairway wall.

The shadow-smoke clung to itself, making no sound; and no smell.

I didn’t dare move.

The shadow poured onto the ground and in less than a moment was stood before me.

It resembled Chicory’s shape down to the smallest details. Its eyeless face watching me as if it I had caught it sneaking.

The clapping of footsteps below broke the silence.

Whatever chance I might have had to speak with the shadow in that moment vanished.

The shadow turned and ran soundlessly up the stairs.

I gave chase to it, my bare feet making padding thumps against the steps.

My arms and legs struggled to move the way I wanted them to. From my neck to my fingers and toes I still wasn’t used to having an adult’s body. I forced myself to concentrate on each step not wanting a repeat of falling down the stairs.

It seemed as if the shadow were racing ahead and stopping at intervals to allow me to catch

up.

This irked me. But I couldn’t help but feel that if I could somehow reach it, talk to it calmly, it might listen to what I had to say.

Again I caught up to the shadow and again it disappeared round the upward bend.

It reached near the top with a handful of stairs behind it.

The shadow’s all-black figure obscured the bed framed by the doorway. Hadn’t Angelica, Chicory, and Suzuki heard me hurrying up the tower steps?

I thought about calling out to the shadow but then I thought of Chicory, and the way he screamed when woken from his walking sleeps. Would this shadow be the same if disturbed? With a sudden jerk the shadow sunk into the floor, becoming flat. Like how a bird’s shadow sweeps over the ground. The Chicory-shaped shadow soared then sunk beneath the nearest bed, mingling with the darkness there.

Racing up the final few steps, I forced myself not to scream out to Chicory because there was still a chance I might be able to speak with the shadow.

I came to a stop before the bed the shadow had disappeared under.

“Amary?”

It was Chicory, laying on his side on the bed, half covered by the sheet.

“It’s okay,” I said, “Don’t scream.”

“...I’m not,” he mumbled, coming out of his sleep more.

“Amaryllis?” said Angelica’s voice.

She sounded both close yet far away.

“Angelica?” I said, looking over the circle of beds and only seeing Suzuki stirring awake.

“Here,” said Angelica.

She crawled into view, her size the same as a fist-sized spider. She was stood atop the bed left of the one Chicory was on.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“There was a-a-” I struggled to find the right words, “--a shadow. But it was more than a shadow.”

I pointed beneath Chicory’s bed.

“It’s under there!” I said, finding myself panicking that something awful might happen at any moment.

Chicory began to cry for fear of what might be under his bed.

He climbed to his feet and jumped from his bed over to the one Angelica was stood on.

A moment later Angelica grew to the size of a large cat.

She stood atop the bed, her sharp teeth coated in a sheen of red.

There was a wet patch on her left forearm where she must have just bitten herself.

Suzuki was out of bed now, her hair dishevelled, the extra black stuff she put around her eyes not there.

“Wait here,” said Angelica.

“No wait!” I said, but Angelica was already in motion.

She bounded off the bed, scuttling across the floor before going under Chicory’s bed.

Then silence.

“Angelica?” said Suzuki, nervously.

No answer.

Chicory, Suzuki, and me exchanged worried looks.

“Everything alright?” said a voice to my right from the stairway.

It was Hress, with Guy and Albie right behind him coming up the stairs.

I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay,” said Angelica from beneath the bed.

She scuttled out from under the bed into view. She held several items in her furred arms.

“There wasn’t anything except for all this,” she said.

The items she held made me gasp.

A short while later everyone save for Bailey who was still somewhere outside the tower, was sat or stood around Chicory’s bed.

I had explained in detail everything that I had seen starting from seeing Chicory’s shadow, if that was what it was, rising out of the wall.

“What were you doing?” said Guy, with a hint of suspicion in his tone.

“I was feeling lonely,” I said, lying, “I wanted to see Chicory so I was making my way upstairs.”

Guy nodded, “Ah,” he said, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Hress was stood at the end of Angelica’s bed with his large arms folded.

He was looking at me. I wondered if he could see through my lie. That I had been eavesdropping on their men’s gathering.

I looked away from him, feeling guilty. I forced my gaze to stay focused on Chicory’s bed where Angelica was sat.

Beside her was all the items she had found beneath Chicory’s bed.

There was a dead red robin.

Recently dead by the looks of it but showing no sign of being harmed. And there were the pieces of something I thought I would never see again.

I had noticed them for what they were right away.

Smothered in dirt, they were the pieces of Miss Waxwood’s discarded doll.

The one she had decided to burn in the cottage fireplace. The body had burnt, but the head had rolled out of reach of the flames. The same doll’s head which Birch, Rowan, and Willow had taken turns keeping in secret whilst we all were waiting for Miss Waxwood to return to us. The same head I had stomped under my foot breaking into pieces before burying in the mud outside Miss Waxwood’s cottage. And now those fragments of an unwanted memory were before me.

And the last item was the most surprising.

It was a turtle carving.

The same one Old Gus had carved. The same I had assumed Cauliflower had decided to burn along with all the other carvings.

Had he not burnt them? Had he kept them instead? I couldn’t remember seeing with my own eyes any of the statuettes being burnt, only the bear statuette being flung close to the fire.

“What is all this?” said Guy, with the skeletal fingers of his right hand pinching his bony blue chin.

“That’s a robin,” said Chicory, pointing to the dead bird that was small, mostly brown, but with a red patch on its chest.

Chicory scooped it up as gently as he could.

His mouth tugged down at the corners because he was sad to see it dead.

“I don’t remember seeing any robins on Wish Mountain,” said Angelica, “Anyone else?”

Everyone in their own time hummed a little to get across that they hadn’t either.

“There’s lots at Rootwork,” said Chicory.

“So it flew all the way here from Rootwork?” said Guy.

“No,” said Hress, “It wouldn’t be able to get into the tower. Not unless one of us brought it in.”

“That’s possible,” said Guy, “But I think it was brought in some other way. Remember when Chicory found those medical supplies for Amaryllis?”

“Yes,” said Hress.

“Well,” said Guy, “We had assumed he either found the supplies, or he might have conjured them up. Like a you-know-what.”

“A wizard?” Albie squeaked.

“Yes,” said Guy, “But, from what I know about--” he hesitated for a moment,

“--wizards, I don’t think that’s how Chicory brought these items here.”

Guy pinched a fragment of the doll’s head from the bed.

It was a bit of the doll’s face.

Her eye and cheek.

“It’s a doll’s head of some kind,” he said, “Does this mean anything to either of you?”

Chicory’s eyes slowly moved over to me with a questioning look. It occurred to me then that Chicory, as young as he was, was old enough to know that it might be the time to lie.

The last thing I wanted to do was explain where the doll’s head and turtle carving had come from.

Maybe it wasn’t important. Maybe it would be easier to just leave it all a mystery.

I couldn’t bring myself to not tell the truth to everyone. Not when the only reason to lie was my own reluctance to not think back on my life at Rootwork.

“I’ve seen these before,” I said, pointing to the doll’s head and the statuette.

Everyone looked at me. It wasn’t much different to having all the orphans under my care looking at me for an answer to their problems or as an obstacle to what they wanted.

“The pieces of that doll’s head used to belong to a woman called Penelope Waxwood. She was a guardian at Rootwork. That carving of a turtle was made by another guardian at Rootwork called Old Gus.”

The more I explained, the more there was to explain.

Those that were standing, like Hress and Albian, took seats on Angelica’s bed to listen. Angelica sat with Chicory, and Guy remained squatted down on the floor between the beds.

Suzuki was sat beside me.

I talked about Miss Waxwood.

And Old Man Gus. And Cauliflower. And Birch, Rowan, and Willow. And how I had first met Chicory.

All the memories spilling from my mouth.

Never had I had adults ready and willing to listen to what I had to say like this.

Minutes of me talking turned into a full hour.

When I explained everything I thought was relevant to the items on the bed I stopped and then fell into silence.

Suzuki had her hand on my shoulder.

She’d put it there about ten minutes into me talking about mine and Chicory’s life at Rootwork.

Without meaning to I shrugged Suzuki’s hand away from me. She gently released her grip and didn’t try to put her hand there again.