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  “Did I interrupt somethin’?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” I said hastily, only making her smirk increase.

  “Right.” She winked. “I believe you.”

  “Not that she needs your approval.” Andrew jostled her. “Come on then, let’s go shovel some straw. You know you want to.”

  Kitty flashed us one last smug, knowing grin, then jogged ahead.

  The trousers felt awkward, as did the boots, but luckily Andrew could not walk very fast and I could easily keep pace with him. The ground crackled with each step, but even the frost couldn’t mask the awful stench of manure as we approached the barns.

  “This smell is really quite foul.” I wrinkled my nose, sounding like my old self for once.

  “Yeah,” Kitty agreed, hands on hips as she surveyed the area. “The animals smell bad too.”

  I didn’t see the joke until Andrew batted her over the head, at which point I laughed, embarrassed at the delayed response.

  Andrew pushed open the doors to the horse stalls and limped inside. Kitty and I followed. But no sooner was I in, I was running back out again and gasping with panic.

  Horses. I had never been in a small space with them before, and I hadn’t realized just how enormous they were! Great, powerful legs stomping around in the straw, swaying heads thicker than I was, and I was supposed to be working with them?

  “Evelyn?” Andrew came back out in alarm. “What on earth is the matter?”

  “Don’t make me work with those,” I begged, pointing a trembling finger at the horses. “Please, Andrew, don’t make me. I’ll do anything else, absolutely anything, but those things are just an accident waiting to happen, and I wouldn’t know where to start anyway. Please say that I don’t—”

  “Steady there.” He raised a hand to stop my ramble, his face gentle. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. How about you bring us the fresh straw from the barn, and Kitty can help me do all the dirty work inside?”

  “I’m sorry.” My head fell forward, ashamed. “I don’t know why the headmistress sent me here, when really I’m no help and afraid of everything.”

  “No, no, you’re helping,” he insisted. “It’s strenuous work. I can barely do it myself at times.”

  I smiled shyly.

  “Just use the pitchfork, load the bales into the wheelbarrow, and bring them over to us,” he instructed clearly. “Got it?”

  I nodded unconvincingly, but went over to the loft to give it my best shot. Horses…I shuddered at the thought.

  The barn seemed friendlier in the daylight, for even the weak, clouded sunshine we had today made the grassy contents glow a soft bronze. The pigeons had flown away to do whatever birds spent their time doing, and it was oddly peaceful inside. The presence from the previous night had disappeared as well.

  Self-consciously, I took hold of what resembled a giant fork, and testily prodded the straw with it. A rusty red wheelbarrow waited by the doorway, frost shimmering upon the peeling paint as if laughing at my weak attempts. After several stabs, I found I couldn’t lift the bale. I gritted my teeth and tried again, determined not to mess this one simple chore up as I has all the others.

  “We’re ready for the fresh straw!” Kitty called from the stalls. “You doin’ all right?”

  “Fine!” I shouted back, blowing a sweaty strand of hair out of my eyes. If I was going to wear trousers, then I might as well go all the way.

  I threw down the pitchfork and dragged down the straw bale, heaving it up and throwing it heavily into the wheelbarrow. Fragments stuck to my clothes and itched terribly, but I merely took a deep breath and dived right back in for more. I managed to lift a second one on and was ready to go.

  Now I had to figure out how that worked. Push or pull?

  I groaned in irritation. For the moment I had tried to lift the contraption, it had buckled over sideways and spewed the contents of my labour all over the ground.

  You’re a clever girl, you’ll figure things out.

  Would I, though? Think, Evelyn, think. The wheelbarrow had one small wheel at the front, and two legs at the back for stability, right underneath the long, wide handles. This made it very steadfast when immobile, but wobbly when moving. All I had to do was find the balance. Well, that and patience. I at last managed it, though feeling embarrassed at the length of time it was taking.

  “Not bad, not bad.” Andrew wiped his dirty brow as I came stumbling in, arms straining to hold the weight of the wheelbarrow. He took it off me and my arms fell limply to my sides. I watched carefully as he opened the bale and dumped the contents into the stall of a horse, and observed how his muscular arms handled the pitchfork as he spread it evenly around. Kitty held the horse’s bridle as he did this, cooing to it as if it were human, as she had with the dogs.

  Then, Kitty handed the wheelbarrow back to me, and I went back to the barn to repeat the tedious process.

  We worked like this for a couple of hours, until James came out to bring us a sandwich that Julia had made for us.

  “Is this it?” Kitty wrinkled her nose. “What’s in the sandwich, vomit?”

  “Blackberry jam,” James said anxiously, as if it were his reputation on the chopping block. “The last of it for now. Mummy said that because of the rationing, we have to use all the odd bits of food up.”

  “They’re lovely.” Andrew took a big bite just to prove it.

  James beamed at his brother.

  After the quick break, Kitty skipped off with Charlie, leaving only two of us to cover the remaining animals.

  “You’re doing chickens,” Andrew told me. “I’ll do pigs. Just sprinkle the feed around and collect the eggs.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut in, “Or are you too scared?”

  “Of course not,” I spluttered, but I didn’t believe myself.

  “Good. I’ll see you when you’re done.” Chickens, it turned out, were actually not that bad, as they did nothing more than flap about and never flew. They seemed just as confused and panicked as I was, perhaps it was the almost human intelligence I had seen in certain animal eyes that had scared me, that or a wildness lurking just behind a thin layer of trained control. The chickens’ tiny eyes held nothing of these qualities, and I found myself laughing as they strutted around and bumped into the mesh fence in haste to get out of my way. Some of them even had pretty coloured feathers, and the clucking noises they made were quite funny.

  The smell was awful, but I was used to it by now. I took a handful of the seed given to me and gently sprinkled it over the ground, laughing out loud as the chickens began pecking at it like clockwork toys. Inside the henhouse, the stench went from really bad to really really bad. I had to hold my breath and fumble around for the smooth, speckled eggs before withdrawing, inhaling some fresh air, and then diving back in again.

  “Golly, that smells.” I gagged, having finally taking the last egg. “There’s poo everywhere! For such precise little creatures, I’d expect you to take better care of your personal hygiene!”

  They clucked indignantly.

  I glanced down at my outfit, smeared with muck, chicken excrement, and straw. “All right, perhaps that was a bit hypocritical of me. Friends?”

  They clucked again, and I giggled to myself. I was sixteen, acting about eight, but that was beside the point; I had just completed a farm task involving animals without any error.

  “See, Fred.” I smiled, gathering my basket of eggs and stepping out of the coop, an action made much easier by my trousers. “You were right.”

  I handed the basket to Andrew proudly, feeling a flush of satisfaction at the surprise on his face that I had entered a pen of feathers and beaks without disaster.

  Chapter Seven

  After Madon’s visit, two major things happened before October came to a close.

  The first involved Andrew. I suppose part of me had been expecting it, but it had been that vain part I was trying to ignore. To cut a long story shor
t, he’d confessed to have a ‘crush’ on me and wanted to know if I would go to the pictures with him. Girls at school had talked about the pictures or cinema but I’d never been and didn’t quite know what it entailed. Then had come the even more awkward part of explaining my heart still belonged to someone else, someone who the world had decided didn’t exist.

  “Fred?” Andrew had scrunched up his nose as if recalling a particularly unpleasant memory. “Fred who?”

  “Just Fred. No last name.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes.” Why was I embarrassed?

  Andrew laughed, a bitter laugh without humour. “You confuse me. I don’t understand how someone like you could just appear out of nowhere, without any history, without knowledge of anything, and—”

  “What do you mean, ‘Someone like me’?” I asked, stung by something in his tone.

  He insisted that he hadn’t meant it as an insult. I stood out, he said, in a good way, and people like that usually didn’t remain as invisible as I obviously had for the previous part of my life.

  I wanted to correct him. I hadn’t been invisible at all, I’d been living a much grander and fantastical life than most people ever would…but then I remembered turning around after crossing the Boundary and seeing nothing but trees. Invisible.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said when he asked where I came from.

  “Try me.” He folded his arms stubbornly, but his face was soft.

  I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. “I can’t.”

  “I understand. And I’m not just saying that.” He exhaled through gritted teeth. “When people ask about my leg, I freeze up. I’m not sure if I could even tell you.”

  So we made a pact. It was my suggestion, echoing something Penny had done way back when. We promised that one day, we’d work up the confidence to tell our stories together, and when we did, the other would listen without judgement.

  Even though I knew I could never return Andrew’s feelings, I went about my work with a renewed happiness. There was something cosy about knowing somebody cared about me.

  The week before Halloween the second incident happened.

  “Mummy, can we carve a turnip?” James had asked as he scoffed down his breakfast. “Please?”

  “Sorry, we can’t waste food.” Julia shook him off abruptly, clearly in one of her more depressed moods. Her face was buried in a newspaper, which she had been reading for the past hour in utter concentration.

  James’s face fell, but he didn’t argue.

  “We got a letter!” Charlie shouted, bursting through the front door, waving the envelope excitedly. “From the boys!”

  Andrew reached out for it, but stood up so quickly that his stool fell back.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Julia swatted his hand away taking it herself. Out of the envelope she slipped out a thin letter, covered with scrawled handwriting. Her eyes scanned it for a moment before they dulled. She handed it to Andrew.

  “Peter got into trouble for pranks,” he summarized for the benefit of his siblings, who were crowded around him expectantly. “Robbie’s kept him in order apart from that, though. They haven’t completed their fighter pilot training yet. There’s still a huge threat of bombs in London.”

  We all left for the fields in surprisingly good spirits, thanks to the letter and the absence of bad news. I abandoned the quiet, pensive group for the chicken coop, and began scattering the feed in a pattern that resembled the little dipper. Andrew had taken to teaching me about the stars in the evenings, which was quite fascinating. I’d taken to naming the chickens: Ursa Minor, Cygnus, Sirius, Andromeda, Ursa Major, Cancer, Orion…

  I felt eyes on my back and froze.

  “Please, don’t stop on my account,” someone from behind me said. “Do what you have to do.”

  I whipped around and took in the figure who had been leaning casually against the hen house.

  He was of medium stature, well proportioned and handsome in classic sort of way. His hair was a light auburn, but his skin slightly tanned, so that the dark shadows under his heavy-lidded eyes didn’t stand out so much. I felt as though I should have known him, and yet I didn’t. A complete stranger.

  “Who are you?” I managed to say, perplexed.

  “Finish your chores, please.” He nodded at the empty egg basket. “Then we can talk. I’m in no hurry, and these things should be done first—wouldn’t want you getting into trouble because of me.”

  He was younger than I first assumed—my age, certainly no older.

  Unnerved, I finished feeding the chickens and collected the eggs as quickly as I could, glad that the smell no longer made me gag. I knew I had heard that voice before—it was distinctive, yet I simply couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I stepped out of the mesh and faced him with as much confidence as I could muster.

  “Would you like to sit down?” he offered politely, gesturing to a woodpile a few meters away.

  “Who are you?” I repeated, wishing suddenly that Andrew was with me.

  “I’m surprised you don’t already know.” He smiled, but there was nothing malicious about the movement. “I’m Deio. Deio Farthing.”

  Oh God.

  The egg basket went crashing to the ground and the eggs tumbled out splashing yolks all around my feet and wasting about a dozen. Julia would kill me, but perhaps Deio would get there first.

  I couldn’t believe it. This was D, one of those mysterious, deadly forces in Boundary that had fought for power against Madon and sneaked inside our minds at night, probing our thoughts and altering our dreams. The D who had lead Penny to near success, and who had caused Madon to flee after that hadn’t worked. How was it possible that such a vicious, powerful, inhuman being, rivalling Madon, could also appear as this pleasant young man standing in front of me?

  “My sister sends her apologies,” Deio was saying. “She wanted to be here herself, but something came up and she had to rush to Cardiff.”

  I swayed on my feet. Deio wasn’t scary, not one bit, and despite the withdrawn, guarded look in his eyes, I felt less scared than perhaps I should have.

  “You are Evelyn, aren’t you?”

  I nodded thickly.

  “Do you remember me, at all?”

  I shook my head. Madon had warned me that this would happen, that they would track me down. But I could sense no menace, no reason to be afraid.

  “That’s unfortunate.” He sighed. “It would have been so much easier. Madon has already spoken to you, has he not?”

  “He told me you were angry I got out instead of Penny,” I explained, staring at the mess of eggs upon the ground. “That I should stay away from you.”

  Deio rolled his eyes, which made him seem even younger. He crouched down and began sifting through the mess of yolks and shell, picking out the few eggs that could still be salvaged and plopping them back in my basket.

  “So, do you believe him?” he asked, ice blue eyes serious.

  I hesitated.

  “Because he was right.” Deio said it so easily, I had to think back to remember what he was affirming. “Demitra especially was…well, to put it lightly, beyond angry that you escaped. Mainly at Madon, but also at you. I think if I hadn’t restrained her, she would have killed both of you on the spot.”

  I swallowed, eyes wide.

  “I would like to think we’ve cooled off a bit since then,” he said, almost apologetically. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Yet, here I am, asking you to trust me.”

  “Who are you?” I repeated for the third time. “Really?”

  Deio cocked his head to the side, evaluating my question thoughtfully. “That’s indeed a tricky one. It doesn’t really matter, as my offer doesn’t change with my identity.”

  “Offer?”

  Sensing he’d piqued my curiosity, he smiled even wider. “Yes. A little something to do with Boundary, and getting all your friends out.”

  “You can do that
?” I gasped, stumbling backwards and nearly falling into the chicken coop. “How? Safely? What…what…no conditions?”

  “Careful.” He winced as I wobbled against the mesh fence. “Details are still being figured out, but if you help us then yes, it is possible.”

  Was it really possible for us all to be together again?

  I was about to say yes, yes, and yes again, when Andrew came limping around the corner

  “Evelyn, have you finished yet? Gregory needs help…” His voice trailed off as he took in Deio. “Who’s this?”

  “Deio Farthing.” Deio offered a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Andrew.”

  Andrew’s frown deepened at the sound of his name. He looked thoroughly unnerved. “How do you know my name? Have we met before?”

  Deio grinned, showing a set of perfectly straight, white teeth. Then he turned back to me. “So, are you in?”

  “Wait, what’s going on?” Andrew jerked his head in my direction. “Evelyn?”

  “It’s really none of your business,” Deio pointed out.

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Andrew snapped. “And yes, I think what you’re doing on my mother’s farm is actually very much my business!”

  Deio surveyed the speaker, something like recognition flashing behind his eyes, before he answered coolly, “Still living with your mother? As charming as that is, Evelyn and I are discussing something much more important, and it would be within your best interests to leave us alone.”

  Andrew flushed, fists clenching. I supposed that I should intervene, but what could I say? I was still trying to make sense of everything myself

  “Is that a threat?” Andrew glared.

  “Would you like to stick around and find out?” Deio said, a small smile betraying his enjoyment of the situation. “I would never intentionally hurt you, naturally, but—” Andrew’s eyes widened as a peg in the coop fencing worked its way loose, and before he could react the metal had flown free and shot a just few inches from his face before falling back down again. “—accidents do happen,” Deio finished, grinning.

  “Get off our land,” Andrew ordered, shaken. “Before I call the police.”

  I was reeling. Deio had just Ripped, here, in the real world.