"He might have told his father about that, because they frightened him more than the thought of being beaten, except that just as his father came home with a deer across his shoulders his mother started having the baby. She cried out all night, and in the morning it still hadn't come, so because they had enough meat for a week the father stayed with her and the boy had to tend the fires even though he'd had no sleep. So he made them so high he thought they must be able to melt the ice on the mountain, and then he watched his shadow turning and listened to his mother crying out, until his shadow looked like a giant that could swallow his father in one mouthful, because that was the shortest day of the year and the sun was lowest. And just when the sun touched the horizon he heard someone calling his name in a voice that sounded like a snowfall talking, and the fires were so hot and he was so tired that it hushed him to sleep.
"He didn't wake until he started shivering, and as soon as he did he knew that one of the fires had gone out. He ran to the forest to get some wood, but there was just one branch left from all the wood they'd cut, because he'd been building the fires so high. And when he ran back with it he saw that the fire wasn't just out, it was covered with frost as thick as a finger.
"So he ran to the hut to tell his mother and father, but he couldn't hear his mother crying out or his father singing to her, it was quiet as a snowdrift in there. And when he looked in he thought he saw two white bears that must have eaten his mother and father, but they were really his mother and father covered with frost that had caught them when they'd tried to run. The only living creature in the hut was a baby as white as a cloud. So the boy went to pick it up, but when it opened its eyes he saw they were made of ice. Then he was going to kill it with the branch, but it started to cry, and its breath was like a blizzard so fierce it cut his skin and froze his blood when he started to bleed, and the last thing he ever saw was the world turning white. So that's one story about what happens when the ice comes out of the dark…"
Ben's voice trailed off. He felt light-headed with talking, and awkward now that he'd finished. The fire was almost out, he saw. Then Mr Milligan came to himself with a start and shovelled coal from the scuttle onto the embers until the fire flared up. "That was a tour de force, Ben," he said. "If I were you I should write all that down and try sending it to a publisher."
Ben's aunt slapped her knees and pushed herself to her feet. "Come along, Ben. I've let you stay longer than you should have. I'll put the light on if I may. I like to see where I am."
The Milligans were still narrowing their eyes at the light when she brought Ben's coat from the hall and caught his arms in the sleeves. She said nothing further to him until the Milligans had closed the front door. "Where did you get that from?"
She meant the story. "Granddad told it to me," Ben said, which seemed as if it might be close to the truth.
"Well, I hope you'll forget it. You shouldn't be dabbling in such things at your age. You'll be giving yourself nightmares, and me as well. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask your teacher what kind of books he thinks you should be reading." "Mummy and Daddy wouldn't mind what I read." "Don't you be so sure about your mother," she said, and more gently: "I can't look after you properly if you keep making me afraid for you, can I? You've been through enough without putting silly stories into your head. You can read them when you're older if you must, but I'm sure you'll have grown out of them by then."
She was wrong, Ben thought, in more ways than one, though he wasn't sure which. Even if she told him what to read, she couldn't reach the stories that were in his head. There were others which would tell themselves to him in their own time, he was sure. The mist was extinguishing the streetlamps around him, turning the distance into a dark mystery which he couldn't reach by walking. The sight and his thoughts made him feel breathlessly expectant. Perhaps he didn't need to find Edward Sterling's last book. Perhaps he had leafed through it so often that its burden was inside him, waiting to be understood.
SEVEN
On Guy Fawkes Night weeping willows of many colours appeared in the sky, blotting out the stars. Christmas was already in the shops, sprinkling the windows with imitation snow like a promise of the real thing. Christmas had come early to the school too, bringing little goodwill but multiplying the questions which the children had to answer instantly if they weren't to be shouted at or worse. It would be Ben's first Christmas without his family, and he felt as if his grief had been waiting for him to realise. Some nights as he prayed in front of the photograph, his lips were quivering so much he couldn't even whisper.
In the weeks before Christmas his aunt did her best to console him. During the first weekend in December she hung the decorations, wavering on top of a stepladder while Ben clutched the legs. For the first time in her life she bought a Christmas tree, a Norway spruce no taller than Ben. It lent the house a chilly scent of pine and sprinkled the carpet with needles as the trees from Sterling Forest had done in the Star-grave house, but it wasn't the same – Ben wasn't sure how. Nor were the Father Christmases she paid for him to visit in the department stores – a fat man who sneezed as often as he chortled and a thinner whose beard was too big for him – quite able to invoke the anticipation he'd begun to feel around this time of year in Stargrave, though both of them patted him on the head and murmured noncommittally in the manner of their species when he asked to be brought an astronomical telescope. He knew they were dressed up as someone who didn't exist, but that wasn't the difference; he would have known that last Christmas.
Soon Mr O'Toole set about preparing the school for the festivities. When they opened their presents and ate their Christmas dinner, he yelled, they should be thinking of the child God sent to earth to suffer because people were so sinful that nothing less could make up for their sins. He dabbed spittle from his lips with a large stiff handkerchief and glared red-eyed around the assembly hall. "Have you no souls?" he demanded, his voice rising almost to a shriek. "File past that crib, the lot of you, and think of Christ's blessed mother having to see her only son whipped and crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross to die with vinegar to drink. I'll see a few tears before this assembly's over, or I'll know how to get them."
The crib was the size and approximately the shape of a rabbit hutch. The cradle in the straw was surrounded by three identical sheep from a toy farmyard, two plaster shepherds and a Virgin Mary whose hair a trace of dust was greying. A star cut out of silver paper hung above the scene, one of its points drooping. The cradle and the swaddled baby it contained were too big for their entourage, and Dominic had claimed to Ben that if you picked the baby up it would cry ma-ma. When Dominic shuffled alongside the crib now, however, he emitted a loud sniff. "Use your handkerchief, boy," the headmaster snarled, low enough to suggest grudging approval of Dominic's performance. There were just three girls in front of Ben, sniffing almost in unison, and suddenly Ben knew that he would be the first child to fail to weep, unable to respond to the crib whose incongruities seemed to have been arranged as a test of faith. It wasn't just those that troubled him, it was the sight of the headmaster glaring across the crib. If what the crib represented were real, how could it need someone like Mr O'Toole to terrorise people into believing in it? How could it bear to have anyone act that way on its behalf? The questions frightened him even more than the headmaster did, and so he began, rather to his own bewilderment, to weep as he came abreast of the crib.