The Children of Hare Hill (3 page)

Part Two

The Hares

Chapter 7

Ben was the first to open his eyes. The world was different, and he went through the differences one by one.

The sky wasn't blue; it was black, and speckled with starlight. The air wasn't thick with the heat of a summer's afternoon; there was a slight chill that made the hairs on his arms and legs stand up. And his head wasn't resting on his mother’s tummy any more; he could feel the hard ground beneath him.

He sat up. He was still in the walled garden, but he saw it in a way that he had never seen it before. Lit only by moonlight, pitch black shadows of trees snaked across the grass and the garden felt much larger than it ever did in sunlight. He looked down and saw his sister lying on the grass behind him, with their backpacks neatly placed next to where the picnic mat used to be. Their mother and the bags she had brought with her, including their father's urn, were nowhere to be seen. Ben felt a pang of fear.

"Charlotte, wake up!" he said as he shook his sister awake.

She rolled over, mumbling something incoherent that Ben took to mean, "Get lost," but he kept shaking her until she sat up and took in their surroundings.

"What's going on?" she said with a shiver as she rubbed her arms, adjusting to her sudden change in temperature.

"Mummy's gone," Ben said. Charlotte saw the empty space behind her where their mother had been lying.

"Don't worry," Charlotte said, regarding the concerned look on her brother's face. "She'll be around here somewhere. I guess we just overslept."

Her immediate thought was to ask, "What time is it?" but she realised they had no way of knowing. Neither she nor her brother wore a watch and they had nothing with them that had a clock on it; they always relied on their mother to tell them where they needed to be and what they needed to do at any given time. If they had been characters in one of the adventure books she liked to read, where kids a little bit older than she was thwart dastardly schemes by pirates and thieves on their summer holiday, they would have been able to look at the moon and stars to work out what time it was. Or was that how they worked out where they were? Either way, Charlotte and Ben weren't those kids—they were two regular school kids from Cheshire who, for some reason, were alone in Hare Hill's walled garden in the middle of the night.

"Come on," Charlotte said, getting to her feet in the knowledge that she would have to take the lead. "Mummy won't have gone far. Let's go and find her."

"Okay," Ben said as Charlotte pulled him to his feet. His confidence had grown in a matter of seconds. They made their way across the lawn and through the metal gate, which seemed to squeak and clang louder in the darkness than it ever did in the daytime. The twelfth wooden hare stood outside the gate, but they paid it no attention as they made their way through the trees to the path that circled the walled garden.

They shouted for their mother all the way round, but the only reply they received was the occasional hoot of an owl in the trees.

"Let's head back to the car," Charlotte said as they walked along the path that led back to the car park. Ben nodded in agreement, but they were both shocked to hear a third voice. In a deep, booming tone, they heard the words, "The gates are locked!"

They both screamed and shouted, "Who's there?" as they spun around, searching for the source of their shocking interruption.

But there was no one around. All they could see were the trees and flowers bathed in moonlight, a grassy clearing with a couple of metal benches, and a large stone ornament, shaped like a jug with a man's head carved into the side. Charlotte and Ben had never paid the ornament much attention in the past, but now Ben was transfixed by it, staring at the stone face in the side.

"What is it, Ben?" Charlotte asked.

"It was the face in the jug," he whispered.

"What? Don't be crazy!" she said, but she found she couldn't stop looking at it too. Ben gripped her hand and they took small, tentative steps forward. They moved in front of the ornament and they couldn't believe what they saw.

The stone face in the ornament moved. Then it spoke to them. "Ah, there you are. I could hear you moving around but I couldn't see you. You are Charlotte and Ben, are you not?"

They said nothing. They stood with gaping mouths, dumbfounded at the strange scene they found themselves in.

"It's okay," the face said, "I won't hurt you. I mean, how could I? I can barely see you, being stuck in here like this. Come on, move round a bit further so I can see you."

Charlotte and Ben side-stepped to their right until they were looking directly into the stone eyes before them.

"That's better. Now, let's start again," the face said, turning to Charlotte. "Your name is Charlotte, is it not?"

Charlotte nodded. The face looked at Ben.

"And your name is Ben?"

Ben nodded.

"Good. So the introductions are out of the way—"

"Wait!” Charlotte heard herself say.

There was the dull sound of stone scraping against stone as the face frowned. "Yes?" he said.

"You know our names," Charlotte said. "But we don't know who you are. We're not supposed to talk to strangers."

"I don't have a name," the face said. "Or if I did, it was a long time ago and I've forgotten what it was. I am the Guardian of Hare Hill. I am here to help you on your quest."

"What quest?" Charlotte said.

"I know that which you seek, even if you do not know yourselves, and I will help you."

"We're looking for our mummy," Ben said.

"She is no longer here," the face said. "The gate to the park is locked and you are the only ones here." He paused for a moment, then with a sly smile said, "For now."

"So how can we find her?" Charlotte asked.

"You have a map, do you not?"

"It's just a silly map our daddy drew for us a long time ago. How is that going to help us?"

"Look again."

Charlotte opened her backpack and fished around inside, then pulled out a piece of paper. She opened it, expecting to see the old hand-drawn map, but it looked different. It was incomplete. The lines showing the paths and the outlines of the garden and other features of the park were there, but only one hare was drawn on there—hare number one, near the entrance to the park.

"What do you see?" the face asked. Charlotte described the map to him.

"I suggest you visit the first hare," the face said. "He will help send you on your way."

"What are you talking about?" Charlotte said. "It's just a wooden hare!"

"Is it, indeed?" With that, the face stopped moving, its features seeming to set back into solid stone in an instant.

"What's going on?" Ben asked Charlotte, who offered him no explanation. He ran up to the stone face and shouted at it. "What's going on? Why is this happening?"

The stone face said nothing.

"Come on," Charlotte said, waving the map in the direction of the first wooden hare. "Let's follow the map."

Chapter 8

The wooden hare identified as number one on the map looked exactly the same as it always had, standing at the end of the path that led from the entrance gate at the car park down to the main park, silently greeting visitors and wishing them a pleasant day. There was a sign next to the hare, which read "There are 12 more hares in the garden. Can you spot them all?" The sign had always been there, but Charlotte and Ben had never really taken notice of it before. For some reason they couldn't put their finger on, the message now had greater significance.

"So what do we do now?" Ben asked.

"I have no idea," Charlotte said. "We've already had a chat with a man made of stone today, so I guess anything could happen."

They stood in silence staring at the wooden hare, but nothing happened. The hare didn't move; it was standing to attention over their father's ashes and a patch of daisies.

"You always patted them on the head," Ben said.

"What?" said Charlotte.

"When we used to come here with Mummy and Daddy. I can remember – you used to do it. You did it this morning too—you patted the hares on the head when we went up to each one."

"Okay," Charlotte shrugged, as if to say,
this is no crazier than anything else that's happened to us today
. She walked up to the hare, reached a trembling hand out, and lightly patted it on the head, then held her breath and quickly stepped back.

Nothing happened. A moment of silent frustration passed between them. They knew they had to do something, but they didn't know what that was or what would happen when they had done it.

"What did the guardian tell us to do?" Ben asked.

"He told us to visit the first hare," Charlotte said. "He said, 'He will help send you on your way.'"

"Send us on our way where?"

"I don't know,” Charlotte said, and pointed at the sign telling them to find the rest of the hares. “I think maybe we need to visit all the wooden hares."

"To get back to Mummy?"

"I guess so," Charlotte said, shrugging again. She could feel her little brother getting frustrated and scared. He stepped onto the grass, grabbed the wooden hare by the neck and shook it, shouting, "What do you want from us? Why are we here?"

"Ben..." Charlotte said. He ignored her and shook the hare even harder.

"Ben!" she shouted. This time it got his attention.

"What?" he screamed, his face red with exasperation.

She pointed at his feet and said in a more measured tone of voice, "You're standing in Daddy's ashes."

He let go of the hare and jumped back in horror. He looked down and saw the pattern from the sole of his shoe had been imprinted in the ashes. In a frenzy, he rubbed his foot on the grass, desperately trying to get his father's ashes off the sole of his shoe. In doing so, he cut up the grass and daisies under his feet. He began to sob. Charlotte ran over and put an arm around his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," he said to the pile of ashes. With arms around each other, they sank to the ground and sat on the grass.

"It's okay, Ben," Charlotte said. "Think about where we are, what we're doing. If Daddy was here, I bet he would love it. It's like a real adventure with real magic, isn't it?"

Ben didn't reply. Instead, he pointed at the grass he had cut up with his shoe and said, "Oh my God, Charlotte. Look at that!"

"What?" She followed his gaze and couldn't believe her eyes. Ben had wrecked that small patch of grass, chewing up the turf and uprooting the patch of daisies, but now, in front of their eyes, the garden was repairing itself. Lumps of soil rolled back into the holes in the ground by themselves, new blades of grass sprouted and rose to fill the gaps, and fresh daisies burst from the ground and opened in the moonlight. It was like they were watching a documentary about plant life, where a time lapse video shows a lawn growing over the course of a month, only it was happening in real time before their eyes.

"I just thought of something," Charlotte said as she reached for her backpack. She found the map of Hare Hill and looked again at the first hare. "Look," she said to Ben, pointing at it. The drawing of the wooden hare had something around its neck. They looked closer and the penny dropped.

"It's a daisy chain," Ben said. "Does that mean we have to make a daisy chain for the first hare?"

"Yes, I think so," said Charlotte. “Let's try it.”

"I've never done that before," said Ben. He was going to add,
because that's what girls do
, but decided not to.

"Come on, I'll show you how." Charlotte picked two daisies from the grass, but didn't do anything with them immediately. Instead, she watched the spots on the grass where they had been growing and, after a few seconds, shoots sprang up and opened into fresh new daisies. Her mind and body filled with hope and she turned her attention to the daisies in her hands. She took her time, showing her little brother what she was doing as she slit the middle of each stalk open with her thumbnail and fed the end of the second daisy into the hole in the stalk of the first.

"Got it?" she asked. Ben nodded.

"Okay, Ben. I'll pick them and make the holes; you put the chain together."

"Sounds like a plan, Stan," Ben said, and they both smiled. That was something they used to say with their father, but they had stopped saying it around their mother; it always made her cry.

One by one, Charlotte picked the daisies and made holes in them, Ben added them to the chain, and they both watched in ceaseless amazement as each daisy they picked grew back only seconds later. In no time, they had made a long chain and Ben linked the two ends together. He held their delicate construction in his hands and looked at the wooden hare.

"Go on, put it on," Charlotte said.

Very carefully, Ben approached the hare and slipped the daisy chain over its ears, letting it drop down around its neck. They looked at each other as if to say,
what now?
and they got their answer. The ashes at the hare's feet began to glow; not the red and orange of embers, but a shining golden warmth that grew stronger and stronger until they had to shield their eyes from its dazzling brilliance. Then the ashes rose from the ground and started to spin around the hare. Round and round the glowing ashes danced, faster and faster, until they reached a crescendo and there was a blinding flash from the wooden hare itself.

They opened their eyes and blinked away the spots before them. The golden glow had gone and the ashes had disappeared. The hare was still there, but it wasn't made of wood any longer. It wasn't made of anything; it had turned into a real hare. Its silky brown fur shone in the moonlight and they noticed it was still wearing the daisy chain around its neck. The hare rubbed its eyes with its paws, then looked up at Charlotte and Ben, twitched its nose, and leapt from the place it had stood for so long and ran into the darkness.

"Oh my God!" Charlotte exclaimed. "Can you believe what just happened?"

"It's a real hare," Ben said, still staring at the spot where the hare had disappeared in the distance. "How did that happen?" Then he thought for a moment and said, "What does the map look like now? Are the others on there?"

Charlotte opened up the map, but it looked exactly the same as it did before; the paths were marked and the first hare was there, but the others were all missing.

"If we had to find all the hares, wouldn't the map show us which hare to go to next?" Ben said.

"Come on," said Charlotte, grabbing Ben's hand. "Let's ask the Guardian."

They returned to the sculpture but the Guardian of Hare Hill's face was still frozen in stone. No matter how much they said his name, asked nicely to talk to him, or shouted at him, his face didn't move.

"I think we need to work this out ourselves," Charlotte said. "Now, can you remember what we did with Daddy when we came here? He always made a map for us like this one..."

"I remember something!" Ben said. "He always said the wooden hares were real hares that had been turned into wood by an evil witch a long, long time ago."

"That's right! And if we completed the challenges they would turn back into real hares for one night after we left the park. Then they would turn back into wooden hares at sunrise."

"And they would be waiting for us to come back the next time, and we could turn them back into real hares for another night!"

"So that's what we're here to do, isn't it? We have to find all the wooden hares and break them out of their spell."

Ben looked worried. "Does that mean the evil witch is here?"

"I don't know," Charlotte said. "Maybe, so we have to stick together. Let’s find the next hare."

They looked at the map, but it still just showed the first hare. Charlotte pointed down the path leading into the park. "Don't worry about the map. I remember where hare number two is; it's just down there."

They walked down the path under a canopy of blossoms until they reached a left turn, where the second wooden hare sat. Or rather, where the second wooden hare usually sat, because now there was just a circle of ashes where the hare should have been.

"Hey, where has it gone?" Ben said.

Charlotte stood in silence for a moment, frustrated that the solution to the puzzle around them was not coming to her.

"Where has it gone?" Ben asked again, this time pulling on his sister's arm.

"Let go!" she said. "Be quiet for a second, I'm thinking."

She paced backward and forward, talking to herself. "What are we doing wrong? We saw the first hare and set it free. Maybe the second one has been freed too? Maybe all of them? But the map still only shows the first one, so we must have to go round the park to find all of them..."

Then it hit her. "That's it!" she exclaimed. "We need to roll the dice to work out where to go next!"

She unzipped her backpack and reached in to search for the two plastic cups with the dice they had used to find their way round the park with their mother. Her hand found the cups and a brilliant white glow burst from her backpack. As she took out the cups, she saw that they were shining brightly, as if light bulbs had been illuminated inside the empty cups.

"What's that?" Ben asked.

"I think we've got magic dice!" Charlotte said, squinting as she handed a glowing cup to her little brother. They held their cups at arm’s length with both hands, averting their gaze from the dazzling light that bathed their corner of the park.

"So what do we do?" Ben asked.

"Let's roll them," Charlotte said.

“But there's nothing in my cup,” Ben said.

“Just pretend there's a real dice die in there, okay? On the count of three. One, two, three!"

They tipped their cups and thrust them forward. The brilliant white light burst forth and two enormous dice made of white light bounced along the path. They left a trail of dancing white flecks of light in their wake and came to a stop. The spots on the top of the dice glowed to tell them the numbers they had rolled.

"I rolled a two," Ben said.

"And I rolled a one," Charlotte said. "That means we're going to hare number three next."

She unfolded the map, and hare number three had appeared, drawn by an invisible hand on the other side of the walled garden. The light from the dice faded and they were left with the plastic cups in their hands, which they put back into Charlotte's backpack.

"Let's go and find the third hare!" Ben said, and grabbed his sister's hand.