2

  Pog listened and Pog waited above in the attic. When darkness came he knew the humans were asleep. He could tell because the house was quiet and all he could hear was the tall one’s and two not-so-tall-ones’ regular breathing. Tall ones were always sleeping when it got dark. Grandfa told him it was because they were afraid of the dark and couldn’t see very well in it, not like First Folk could. Not like Pog.

  Pog stood up straight, his ears twitching, holding his breath. He’d sensed them even before they’d arrived at the house. It was like a special pressure in the air, or a cloud rolling in from far away, soft and smooth, but dark. No one had come to the house for a long time, not for many years.

  Pog prepared himself. He sheathed his sword in its scabbard, clipped his rope and grappling hook to his belt, and took his staff from where it leant against the wall. Pog smiled as he gazed upon the staff. Grandfa’s staff, handed down to him as it always had been handed down, Lumpkin to Lumpkin, from generation to generation. Looking at it never ceased to fill him with pride. It was made from black wood, its length covered in carved whorls and glyphs.

  Pog strapped the staff to his back and raised himself up to his full height, which was probably no more than two feet. With Grandfa’s staff on his person he was more than just a simple forest dweller. He was Pog Lumpkin of the Burrows to the North, before the Far Reaches, Keeper of the Necessary, Guardian against the Dark, Pog of the First Folk.

  Grandfa would be proud, he thought, then the voice inside his head corrected him.

  Grandfa is proud, Pog.

  Pog looked up into the dark and smiled. He took in a deep breath and his chest ballooned at the sound of his grandfa’s voice.

  But there was another voice now. Sly, insidious. But Grandfa is gone, Pog. All are gone. Many years now, Pog. Pog is alone.

  Pog felt his throat tighten, and his eyes stung. ‘Hush now,’ he whispered, ‘Pog has things to be getting on with. None of this nonsense now.’

  He had to ensure that the Necessary was locked.

  He lifted the attic door – soft as you like, with barely an effort – and down he went, swinging himself from the lip of the opening, letting go, and tumbling over and over until he landed with a muffled thump on the landing.

  He was nervous, and yet there was a lightness in his chest, a tingling sense of giddiness that seemed to creep upwards and tickle his throat. Pog didn’t understand this strange excitement. He supposed it might be exciting because this felt like an adventure of sorts, now that the tall ones were here.

  He crouched for a moment and twitched his ears. His broad, flat nose snuffled as he sniffed the air. Nothing in the darkness, just low soft breaths, the sound of tall folk dreaming.

  Pog wondered what they dreamt of as he padded through the dark. He dreamt lots, mainly of Grandfa and the Burrows and the time before he had been entrusted with his task. Most of the time he didn’t want to wake from such dreams. The ache he felt when he did wake seemed to be deep within his bones. He could hear Grandfa’s voice even now as he crept along the landing.

  Good Pog. Silent Pog.

  Pog smiled to himself and thanked his grandfa.

  Careful now, Pog, said Grandfa. Things are in the dark. Always be keeping careful.

  Pog nodded and said he would be just that.

  Pog passed a bedroom door. The girl was in there. He could hear her breathing, soft and low. He padded past the next room. The boy was in this one, but his breathing was slightly ragged, and Pog thought he heard a whimper. He’d watched them closely from the roof when they’d first arrived. The boy had stood by the girl’s side when they had looked up at the house for the first time. The girl was talking and smiling, the boy was just looking sullenly at the house.

  Then the bigger tall one had arrived. He had hair on his face, which confused Pog. Why have hair just on your face and head? He thought the tall one looked silly. Having hair all over your body was the most natural thing in the world. Pog thought that having some just on your face and head was very strange indeed.

  Pog reached the top of the stairs and hopped up on to the banister. He slid right down, swift and silent, and landed in the hallway between some boxes. He ambled around and started sniffing each box. They were full of things that only tall folk had use for. Metal things, and soft fluffy things, and plates and dishes with pictures on them. Why would you have pictures on something you were eating off? Pog thought. Pog had never seen so many strange objects, not since the old tall folk who had lived here once. They’d left and taken everything with them. These new visitors had so many things. Books too – they had lots of those. Some of them were bigger than Pog and had pictures on the front of tall-folk buildings and great steel bridges. Pog flitted between each box, sniffing them and pawing quickly through their contents. Where to start? he wondered.

  He heard a sound.

  Pog whipped his head round and his hand went to his sword. The sound had come from the room to his right. He tensed and pressed himself up against the side of a box.

  Pay attention, Pog.

  Pog cursed himself for being so lax. The sound came again. It sounded like someone clearing their throat.

  He let a few moments pass before looking out from behind the box. The door of the room the sound had come from was slightly ajar. There was a dim light coming from the room. Pog shook his head at his own foolishness, and he could almost hear Grandfa tutting in disapproval.

  Pog crept towards the door. He peered through the gap.

  The man was sitting on a couch with his back to the door. He was hunched over, and Pog thought there was something strange about the way he was sitting. Then Pog noticed the man’s shoulders were going up and down, and he was making strange sounds.

  Pog realized the man was crying.

  For a moment Pog was so surprised he couldn’t move.

  He shook himself and, taking advantage of the man’s distressed state, rolled into the room and behind the couch. Pog was fascinated now. He wondered why the man was so upset.

  The man continued sobbing for a while, until his crying became little more than sniffles. He started to mutter things to himself. Pog heard the word ‘stupid’ used quite a lot. Who was he talking to? There was no one else in the room. The whole thing was very confusing. Mouse poked his nose out from a crack in the skirting board and looked at Pog curiously. Pog put a finger to his lips and winked at him.

  After a few minutes Pog felt the couch shift as the man stood up. There was a great honking sound which almost made Pog jump out of his pelt, then the man headed towards the door.

  The light went out, and Pog heard the door close.

  He waited a few moments before coming out of hiding. He crept around the couch to where the man had been sitting. There was a low table in front of the couch, and on the table was a selection of books, including one very large one which lay open.

  Pog hopped up on to the table and peered at the book. He flinched for a moment and shied away from it, but then plucked up the courage to peer at it again. What he saw amazed him. The book was filled with pictures of the man and the two children, and there was a woman with them. The pictures looked real, as if the tall folk had been taken from real life and put on the page, but lots and lots of times. Pog blinked and tentatively reached out and touched one of the pictures. He exhaled in wonder, and he spotted Mouse by the couch now, nibbling on a crumb. Pog scratched his head.

  ‘It’s a mystery, Mouse, and no mistake.’

  Pog turned back to the pictures. The smaller tall folk were in lots of them, but there were others in which the man and the woman appeared. In all of them the tall folk were smiling. There was one in which the woman sat on a couch with the boy on her right and the girl on her left. She had her arms around both of them. Pog noticed that the woman had curls just like the girl, but that she seemed to be a mixture of the boy and the girl. Her green eyes shone, and so did those of the children. Pog frowned. Both the boy and the girl looked different now to the way they looked in the pictures. He couldn’t tell exactly how, but he knew they somehow looked the same but changed. How could that be? Looking the same, yet not?

  Pog looked more closely at the picture. The woman and the girl looked alike. There was something about them both that made him frown all the more. They seemed strangely familiar to him. Pog’s lips moved soundlessly, as if he was trying to translate their images. They weren’t like the tall ones who had originally lived here. The old man and old woman had never ventured out much. They sat in most days and did what they called ‘cross words’. Pog had no idea what this was. These tall folk were different. There was something sad about them, as if they were all burdened by a terrible weight. Pog also wondered why the woman wasn’t here. It was all very curious.

  There were lots of empty bookcases up against the walls of the room. Pog leapt off the table and walked towards one. He looked at it while scratching his chin, then he turned and walked to the door. For a moment he stopped and looked back at the books. He frowned, then shrugged and left the room. He had his duty to attend to. Pog crept down the hallway and headed to the back of the house to the Necessary.

  Pog smirked to himself as he felt the tingle of air at the end of the hallway. There was an enchantment laid here. Deep and powerful. One that the tall folk had never suspected. It was an enchantment so strong they had even built their house around it without knowing.

  He reached the door at the end of the hallway and laid his right palm down on the wood. He looked at the symbol that had been inscribed in blue dye near the base of the door. Pog closed his eyes and concentrated. His lips curled up slightly in the ghost of a smile, then he placed his left cheek against the door and felt the low steady thrum in his bones.

  The Necessary was fixed. Pog could feel it. Locked and scissioned.

  Pog stood away from the door and sighed with satisfaction, then with a quick twirl of his staff he headed for the stairs.

  He was at the bottom of the stairs when he felt the slight prickle on the back of his neck. He turned to look at the door to the study. He could hear Mouse scurrying in there. Pog debated with himself for a moment. He had a strange thought. Maybe there was something he could do to help the tall folk. Moving somewhere that wasn’t home wasn’t an easy thing to do. Pog knew what that felt like. He mulled it over for a moment. He finally gave a rueful smile and shook his head as if he was a tiny bit exasperated with himself.

  ‘Best be quick and about it so, Pog,’ he said to himself.

  Pog headed back towards the room.

  It took him some time to accomplish his task. When he was finished he felt satisfied and had to resist the urge to whistle a jaunty tune as he made his way back upstairs.

  Inside the attic he divested himself of his sword, but kept his staff. He crept into his den, a ramshackle heap of old blankets, paper and bits of wood in a corner, and he lay down.

  He placed the staff by his side and gently traced the whorls with his finger.

  Pog felt a sudden great weight on his chest. He closed his eyes tight, tight as could be, and he eventually drifted off to sleep.

  In his dreams, Pog travelled. Pog went back.

  He was by a stream. The sun was shining. He was holding his fishing rod, and he could feel the weight lift from his chest because he knew that he would turn and Grandfa would be standing there beside him.

  And there he was, not much taller than Pog, but stocky and big-boned.

  This was the day Grandfa had taught him how to fish.

  Grandfa smiled at him, and Pog felt a warmth that was like being swept up in a great big wave.

  ‘Pay attention now, Pog,’ said Grandfa, his mouth clamped around his pipe.

  ‘Pog will,’ said Pog.

  Grandfa smiled at him, and Pog thought in that moment that his heart would burst with happiness.

  ‘Always be paying attention,’ said Grandfa, and Pog mouthed the same words just as Grandfa spoke them.

  In the attic, in the world outside his dreams, a sleeping Pog smiled.

  And a single tear rolled down his cheek.

  3

  David sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath.

  For one panicked moment he could still feel that sensation of something cold and wet pressing in around him, tight to his chest, forcing its way down his throat, until he had to struggle for air.

  David leant over the side of the bed, the blanket bunched tight in his fist, as he kept gasping. He couldn’t remember the dream exactly, just that terrible drowning sensation. And the voice . . .

  David straightened himself up and took in deep breaths, letting them in and out slowly until finally he felt calm enough to look around him.

  The room was silvered by the pale moonlight that shone in through his window. The window was almost floor-length, and it didn’t have any curtains yet. It made him feel exposed.

  He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself that bit more. It was then that he heard a creaking sound just outside his door. He opened his eyes and listened.

  Something was close by. He could sense it.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he whispered. He rolled over and looked at the door. He held his breath.

  It had come from outside his room. He was sure of it.

  Mustering all his willpower, David moved his legs and slid them out of the bed. He swallowed hard as he looked at the door.

  Just open it, he thought. It’s probably nothing.

  He lowered his legs off the bed, and his bare feet touched the floorboards.

  David crept towards the door. He reached a hand out and wrapped it around the doorknob. It was one of those old brass ones, and it wobbled in its setting. He held it with two hands to compensate for its shakiness, and he turned it. Slowly.

  His throat was dry, and he licked his lips as the knob turned. There was a barely audible creak, but it was a sound that went on too long for his liking, and David tried to combat it by opening the door swiftly and smoothly. He opened the door fully.

  He half expected something to crash in on top of him – something huge and dark – and he hunched his shoulders in fear and expectation, but there was nothing out there.

  David stepped out into the hall. He looked left and right, and listened.

  There was nothing, not a sound.

  David wasn’t convinced. He knew he’d heard something.

  ‘Hello?’ he said to the dark. When the dark didn’t answer he said, ‘Hello?’ again, feeling stupid. The back of his neck tingled. He had the peculiar sensation that he was being watched.

  After a few moments of straining to listen, he sighed and turned to go back into his room.

  That was when something scampered past.

  David wheeled around, his heart pounding. He was just in time to see something dark and many-legged scuttle down the stairs.

  For a moment he couldn’t breathe, then he bolted after it.

  He got to the top of the stairs just in time to catch a glimpse of something disappear round a corner. He strained his ears and listened. He thought he heard scampering again, but he couldn’t be sure. He debated about whether to follow whatever it was, but it was dark down there, and now he was shaking, and he could feel his heart just thumping faster and faster.

  He went back into the room, closing the door behind him. He got back into bed and pulled the blanket up to his chin. His chest was tight, and he allowed his breathing to return to normal as he focused on the ceiling. There was only a slight improvement. His shoulders were still tensed, and now he gripped the blanket with two hands. He decided that what he’d seen was a rat. It had to be. After all, it was larger than a mouse.

  But it had too many legs, he thought.

  As his breathing and his heart slowed, David eventually remembered what had woken him in the first place.

  He’d been dreaming about the dark part of the forest, the part that had so unnerved him and Penny. In his dream it was night, and he was alone. There was the stench of something decaying on the air. He was just about to plunge into the trees.

  He hadn’t told Penny the full truth about their experience in the forest. He hadn’t told her what he’d heard, because he was afraid she would think he’d gone mad.

  He’d heard it in his dream too, and it was clearer now, more insistent.

  It was the sound of someone’s voice.

  And that voice had been calling his name.

  4

  ‘Right, own up. Which one of you was it?’ Penny looked up from the grey watery gloop that her dad proudly called his ‘special super-duper porridge’ to see him grinning at her and David across the kitchen table. His grin was a bit too manic for her liking. It was the kind of grin that made his eyes look wide and desperate, as if he was trying too hard to play the happy-go-lucky parent.

  ‘Which one of us was what, Dad?’ asked Penny.

  Dad looked at her and at David and back again. He wagged his finger at them. ‘You two,’ he said, chuckling and shaking his head.

  ‘Us two what?’ said David. A little too irritably, thought Penny.

  ‘The books,’ Dad said.

  Penny and David looked at each other.

  ‘The books,’ Dad said again, as if it was obvious what he was referring to.

  Penny and David both frowned at him.

  Dad folded his arms and leant back in his chair. ‘It was one of you, or both of you. Come on, confess.’

  David sighed impatiently and stirred his porridge. Penny hated it when he sighed like that.

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ she said.

  Her dad raised an eyebrow.

  Penny shook her head. ‘We don’t even know what you mean by the books.’

  Dad smiled again. ‘You two,’ he said, and he chuckled again and started to clear up some breakfast things.

  When her dad turned his back to go towards the sink, Penny looked at David again. David scowled as if to say, ‘What are you looking at me for?’ and went back to prodding his so-called porridge with the tip of his spoon.

  ‘He did it,’ said David.

  He and Penny were standing in the room that their dad had designated as his study. The bookshelves were packed with books. The empty boxes were stacked neatly in the hallway.

 

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