Jigsaw, Page 2

  Chapter Two

  When they arrived back at the house, Toby carried the carton into the sunroom where he and Rachel began unpacking it.

  ‘Look, there are two plates here,’ said Rachel and flashed Toby a shy smile when he gave a heartfelt, ‘Great.’

  ‘Now I don’t feel so bad about breaking one,’ he explained. ‘And there’s a spare in case I break another one.’

  Rachel pulled out a slightly bent potato masher, which she looked at doubtfully before putting to one side. She pounced on an old book that was lying at the bottom under a pile of tattered boxes.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ protested Toby. ‘You’re spilling everything.’

  He was too late. As Rachel pulled the book out, the carton tipped and deposited a pile of jigsaw puzzles, a plastic cup, what appeared to be a broken motor for a small machine, two rusty garden forks and a yellow plastic frisbee onto the mat in front of them.

  ‘Lunchtime’ called Aunt Phoebe, and seeing the mess said, ‘Oh, jigsaw puzzles. What a good idea. That will be lovely for you two to put together this afternoon while I go to my WI meeting.’

  ‘What’s WI?’ asked Toby with interest. He was hoping it would be something mysterious and exciting.

  ‘Woman’s Institute.’

  ‘Oh.’

  After lunch the rain set in with a vengeance and any hope Toby had of going outside and throwing the frisbee around vanished.

  ‘Not that Rachel would have joined in anyway,’ he thought gloomily.

  ‘Now I want you two to tidy away that mess and sort those puzzles out. They are no good mixed up like that,’ announced Aunt Phoebe brightly as she prepared to go out.

  Rachel murmured ‘Okay,’ and promptly curled up in a chair with the book she had found in the box. It was a very old book, hardcover and bound in red and dark green. Gold lettering, worn and faded read Fairytales of Many Lands.

  ‘Aren’t you too old for fairytales?’ asked Toby scornfully as he started sorting through the jigsaw puzzles. ‘Bother. These are completely mixed up. The only way to separate them out is to put them together.’

  With a sigh he lay down on the mat and started to put pieces together hopefully, deciding that anything was better than trying to talk to Rachel.

  Rachel looked up indignantly.

  ‘Fairytales are for all ages. You can never outgrow them.’ She watched Toby for a few minutes.

  ‘No, no. That’s wrong. Look that bit goes over there.’ She put down the book and picked up a piece of jigsaw. ‘It’s part of a wall. See – it’s all grey and stony. It might even be a castle.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ muttered Toby, but he looked for more pieces of wall.

  After what felt like hours a small section of wall had appeared on the mat in front of him while Rachel had filled in a blue sky with white clouds and a flag waving from a spike.

  ‘It’s a castle,’ said Rachel. ‘This is the top of a tower.’

  Toby groaned inwardly and sorted through more of the pieces looking for grey stones. The last part of the puzzle went together surprisingly quickly and soon the picture took shape. It was a dark grey castle standing against a blue sky and surrounded by grey ground.

  Toby frowned at it.

  ‘It’s fairly boring,’ he said critically. ‘Nothing’s happening at all.’

  ‘Jigsaws don’t usually show things happening,’ said Rachel in disappointment. She had felt so excited when building the puzzle but now it was completed she had to agree with Toby. It was boring.

  ‘I guess it’s taken from a photograph somewhere,’ she said with a shrug.

  ‘Oh well, we’ve seen it now. Let’s put it into a box and that’s one done at least.’ Toby picked up a piece of puzzle from the edge just as a ray of sunshine blazed in through the window.

  ‘Hey look, it’s stopped raining at last.’

  Rachel looked up. ‘So it has. And there’s a rainbow.’ She ran to the French doors and pointed outside where a large rainbow arched over the sky.

  ‘It ends in our garden,’ gasped Rachel. ‘Do you think we’ll find a pot of gold there?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Toby, humouring her. ‘The rainbow ends on that little bridge over the fish pond. We’d better hurry before it fades.’

  Shoving the jigsaw piece into his pocket he flung open the sunroom doors and ran outside to the bottom of the garden with Rachel calling ‘Wait for me,’ breathlessly from behind.

  They ran onto the bridge and across to the other side. As they crossed over, the rainbow colours lit them up so they became first purple and then blue green as they dashed along.

  Toby jumped off the bridge first and stopped with a gasp as Rachel landed beside him.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Rachel in awe.

  Under their feet were rough wooden planks leading in through a pair of immense wooden gates.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Toby.

  ‘It must be magic,’ breathed Rachel.

  ‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ said Toby automatically, even though he was beginning to be a bit doubtful about that. He looked back to the bridge he and Rachel had crossed, but instead of a small wooden bridge he could see a wide river beside which there stretched a huge dark forest. A faint mist hung cold and clammy over everything, giving it a ghostly appearance. The water in the river looked black while the trees had twisted branches in odd shapes, which somehow looked menacing.

  Rachel looked back as well then gave a shudder.

  ‘Looks awful, all spooky and dark over there. Let’s go through the gates and see what’s inside.’

  ‘Might as well,’ agreed Toby, and taking a deep breath he reached up to open the black iron latch that was holding the gates shut. After a few minutes of pushing and shoving at the latch he had to admit defeat.

  ‘Come on, open it’, called Rachel impatiently, hovering behind him.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Toby in disgust. ‘It must be locked.’ He aimed a savage kick at the gates.

  Rachel looked disappointed then gave a cry of surprise.

  ‘There’s a little door here in one of the gates. It’s open, come on.’

  Toby could now see that what had seemed to be part of the gate was a small wooden door. He quickly ran after Rachel as she eagerly walked through it.

  ‘Wow, look at that,’ breathed Rachel. ‘I was right. It is magic.’

  Towering in front of the children was a huge stone castle with bright flags fluttering in the wind from the pointed peaks of its towers. The dark stone, with its narrow slitted windows, looked very forbidding but the courtyard in front of it was a riot of colour. Men and women in brightly coloured clothes danced to the music of pipes and drums, played kicking games with a ball, or helped themselves to tankards of what looked like ale from huge barrels. Toby and Rachel were astonished by the noise. It had been completely silent outside the gate but now there was an amazing chatter of voices, loud music and an assortment of animal sounds. Toby saw hens scratching in the dirt while a cockerel crowed loudly, and the neighing of horses and bray of a donkey came from the direction of what he guessed were the stables. Rachel tugged at his arm.

  ‘Don’t eat or drink anything,’ she advised him.

  ‘What? Why?’

  Rachel turned to look at him. ‘You shouldn’t eat or drink anything when you’re on a magic adventure,’ she said earnestly. ‘Otherwise you get enchanted and have to stay there. Or you have to do tasks for a wizard, like emptying a lake with a thimble.’

  Toby looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘I’ve never heard anything so feeble minded in my entire life. If this is a magic adventure, and I’m not admitting it is magic, then why shouldn’t we enjoy it? I’m going to.’

  He marched off towards the nearest group of boys who were kicking around a misshapen ball which looked a bit like a battered balloon.

  ‘Mind if I play?’ he asked.

  The other boys gave him a grin and one punted the ball over to him with h
is bare and somewhat grubby foot. Toby kicked back and was soon lost to sight in the midst of the group as what seemed to be two, or even more, opposing groups competed for the ball.

  Rachel could see Toby from time to time as the crowd briefly parted, but she stood feeling left out and miserable. All around her people were roaring with laughter or excitedly wandering round in clusters from one activity to another.

  With a yell of triumph one of the boys kicked the ball into a large wooden bucket at one end of the courtyard. This was evidently the signal of a break in the game as the boys streamed over a large trestle table set by the castle wall. There they began stuffing themselves with large handfuls of cakes and pastries, and gold and red fruit. Toby went with them and gratefully accepted a piece of pie and a large tankard of drink, which he discovered was a slightly tangy apple juice. He took a long drink followed by a mouthful of pie while Rachel watched in dismay. But her hands were grasped by a couple of young men who whisked her into the dance and before she knew it she was having a wonderful time. The dance itself was fairly simple and seemed to consist of moving along hand in hand in a snake like line, stopping to stamp and clap from time to time while some of the young women skipped in circles and the men gave high kicking leaps.

  Rachel lost sight of Toby but decided that she had done her best to warn him. After a while she began to get very hot and took advantage of a lull in the dancing to skip away to one side. The noise was starting to make her feel light headed and she glanced around her to see if there was somewhere a bit quieter she could go. She passed under an archway and through into another courtyard.