Page 46 of The Secret Christmas Library

The effect on the group was electrifying. Esme darted over, her sore foot forgotten. Theo managed to swallow down whatever had been threatening to reappear. Jamie looked up, his face full of hope.

They all shuffled forward. The leaves had moved a few centimetres to the right, but no further; the mechanism was obviously old, and stiff. Jamie pushed it further, until it hit a point where the hole was large enough to insert a wrist; a slender one, at any rate.

‘Mirren,’ he said. ‘Would you like to do the honours?’

‘No chance,’ said Mirren. ‘I’ve seen Indiana Jones. That thing is fizzing with snakes.’

Jamie laughed, surprised. ‘Living on what, exactly?’

‘Other snakes! They’re cannibal snakes! I’m not doing it!’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Esme. She pulled off her gloves, just as Theo hissed loudly and she started. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’

‘Let’s drop a stick down,’ said Jamie, ‘if you guys are really that scared.’

‘What’s the use in that?’ said Mirren. ‘They’re cannibal snakes. They’ll eat it or have sex with it or both.’

Jamie shone his torch into the hole. ‘See. No snakes.’

‘Yeah, obviously they’ve gone quiet now.’

‘I’ve got thin wrists,’ said Theo, rather annoyed he had to own up to this. ‘I’ll put my hand in.’ He looked at them. ‘Would your grandfather booby-trap it, though?’

Esme and Jamie looked at each other, and Jamie shook his head decisively.

‘He was eccentric . . . and unhappy . . . but he wasn’t cruel. Not deliberately.’

Theo rolled up his sleeve and stuck his hand all the way down into the middle of the pineapple. They watched him as he groped around.

‘ARGH! SNAKES!’ he shouted, his hand dropping and his shoulder heading down to the stone as he suddenly got pulled in. Mirren gave a small shriek before he burst out laughing and she gave him the V-sign, even as he very carefully brought up . . .

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Esme. ‘Seriously. Grandfather. GIVE IT A REST!’

‘He wouldn’t have put a valuable book out here in the wind and the weather,’ said Jamie, taking a worried glance at the clouds.

Theo had withdrawn another wrapped pile of letters, thickly encased in wax paper, presumably to protect them from the elements.

‘We live like this now,’ he said ominously. ‘Tramping about, picking up old rubbish.’

‘It’s not rubbish!’ Jamie and Mirren said at the same time.

‘What if there are forty-five clues,’ said Theo. ‘I bet they’re all just school reports.’

‘Come on,’ said Mirren. ‘This is great! Jamie, your locket was right!’

Jamie carefully closed the pineapple’s crown back over. ‘I know,’ he said, shaking his head.

Esme looked up. ‘Oh, crap,’ she said.

First one snowflake, then another. Then, suddenly a thicket. They headed forward, instinctively, but the snow came down thicker and thicker.

‘Hang on,’ shouted Jamie. ‘We have to reverse the instructions to get out.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Esme. ‘We’ll find it!’

But Esme was dangerously wrong. She charged off down a promising-looking passage – only to hit a thick dead end, just as Mirren had. Visibility was so bad, they lost sight of her.

‘Can’t we follow our own footsteps back?’ said Theo.

And indeed, that would have been an excellent idea, had the snow not been covering every trace of their paths the second they stepped onwards.

‘ESME!’ hollered Theo.

‘I’m here,’ she said sulkily. ‘Stupid bloody place.’

‘Torches on,’ ordered Jamie. ‘Come on, let’s be organised. Let me see . . . if it was third on the right, that must be . . .’

Hands shaking, they set off and trooped down a path.

Before too long, though, it became obvious, as they hit one dead end after another, that somehow Jamie had miscounted or they’d got turned around, because they weren’t getting out of there; they couldn’t see the end, and on one turn they got straight back to the pineapple grotto again.

The pineapple was almost totally obscured by snow.

If they’d been ten minutes later, they’d never have found it at all.

They set out again, but with, hideously, the same result, no matter how carefully they tried to reverse the instructions, or how many times Esme announced she was sure she recognised this or that path, or Theo kicked at the undergrowth to try to find more hidden entrances. Visibility was genuinely very poor now.

‘Bugger,’ said Jamie.

‘Shit,’ said Esme. ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to freeze to death out here!’

Mirren didn’t say anything. She was too cold.

She felt rather strange, as if she was floating; barely there at all, a ghost in the maze.

It wouldn’t bother her, she thought, if she were to tear her clothes off; run barefoot, a nightgown flapping around her, nothing more; exploring the maze, getting further and further in, deeper and deeper down.

That, in fact, seemed to be a very delightful idea indeed.

Sleepily she pulled the zip down a little on her jacket.

Beside her, the boys appeared to be having an argument, even as the snow continued to come down.

‘Come on,’ Theo was saying, holding up a lighter. ‘Come on. We’ll just burn a hole that we can crash through.’

‘You’ll burn the entire damn thing down,’ Jamie was saying. ‘It’s been here for hundreds of years!’

‘Yes, and so will our corpses if we don’t get out of here quickly!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Jamie, but he didn’t sound convinced. ‘Come on, let’s go again, one more time. We’re back at the start. Third on the left . . . ’

He turned round and caught sight of Mirren, who was swaying slightly, then made a decision.

‘Christ,’ he said to Theo, who was still waving his zippo around. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Okay. Try it.’

Theo bent down and flicked at the lighter, which made a tiny spot of yellow light in the darkening afternoon, in the thick snow.

He held it to the wall of the maze. One tiny stem caught, and then another, coaxed by Theo, who tried to keep the snow off it.

Jamie and Esme joined in, trying to make a barrier against the wind.

The tiny stalks crackled, until a large pile of snow collapsed on them and put them out.

Theo frowned and started again. ‘Have we got any kindling? We really need something a bit more flammable.’

Jamie looked worried. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s the letters . . . ’

‘Use the envelopes,’ said Esme, impatiently.

‘But it’s someone’s personal mail . . . ’

‘I feel warm already,’ said Mirren in a slightly dreamy voice, and they all looked at one another.

‘Fuck it,’ said Jamie.

‘Actually . . . ’ said Esme and pulled out a hip flask.

‘Esme!’ said Jamie, disapprovingly.

‘Oh, yeah, like you’ve got a better way than watching your future fall apart in real time!’

They scrunched up some envelopes, doused the roots in alcohol, and the old paper, fine as an onion skin, blazed immediately.

Enough little branches caught for them to enjoy the blaze – Jamie pushed Mirren out in front of it, and she felt herself swim in and out a little, not sure why there was a fire there – until there was finally enough burning for them to start kicking at it.

The fire reared back like an animal, and grabbed other branches and roots inside the hedge, the ones inside that were protected from the snow and had stayed dry.

It was surprising how fast they caught, and Theo shot them a worried glance.

But there wasn’t time; he had to boot through.

Very nervously, the men used their gloved hands to pull ashy branches apart, as Esme hopped from foot to foot and told them to hurry.

Crawling through the bottom of the hedge with fire on either side of her to get out of the castle maze confirmed to Mirren that this was a very strange dream of some kind.

Jamie was concerned and kept prodding her to go faster, and she didn’t know why he was doing that; she didn’t mind being there.

She wouldn’t be surprised at this point if a white rabbit turned up and she had to play croquet with a flamingo.

Once they were all out and found themselves on the far east side of the maze, miles away from the entrance, or the hole on the other side, Esme set out apace to the castle. Jamie looked back, worried, at the smouldering ruins of his hedge.

‘The snow will put out the flames, right?’ he said.

Theo was already heaping snow on the remaining fire. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You keep moving. I’ll make sure it’s out, and it’ll be easy to repair.’

‘I’ll add it to my list,’ said Jamie. ‘You know the way back?’

Theo nodded towards the direction of the house.

No electric lights could be seen – the world around them was dark, lit only from the fire and the torches – but they could just make out – only just, through the thick snow – a tiny flickering glow: candles, it must be.

But not one or two. All of them. Bonnie had lit all of the candles she could find, to light their way home.