The Hawkweed Prophecy (18 page)

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

P
oppy had intended to look for Leo before now. She had intended to find him, thank him, hold him so he knew how much his help with Minx meant to her. But yesterday had disappeared so quickly. She had awoken late in the afternoon, dazed and distressed. Then her meeting with Ember had left her even further drained, and she had returned to her bed and cried for Minx some more. As she sunk back into sleep, she promised to herself that she would get up early to find Leo before school, but she had overslept and only woke when her father was banging on her door, shouting that she was late.

Poppy spent classtime memorizing spells. She became so lost in them that she didn't hear Mr. Reed ask her a question, then ask if she was listening, then ask if she'd listened to a single word he'd said all class. In fact, she didn't hear a thing until Mr. Reed was right in front of her, hands on her desk and leaning forward until his face was only a few inches from her own. Only then did she hear the class snickering and Mr. Reed furiously ordering her out of his classroom to the principal's office.

After that, Poppy heard everything. The scribble of Mr. Jeffries's pen on paper, the bell ringing, the chairs grating on the floor, the doors opening, and the gossip chiming down each and every corridor, rippling into every room. Each time her name was mentioned, Poppy felt it like a little pinch. It actually made the task of eliciting Mr. Jeffries's sympathy easier as, while Poppy talked of her grief for her pet cat, the constant sting of the pinches caused her to shift in her seat, her breath to catch in her throat, and finally her eyes to actually tear up.

Mr. Jeffries offered up a conciliatory box of tissues, and as Poppy went to take them, their hands touched for the briefest of seconds. Suddenly Poppy knew Mr. Jeffries was a dog lover. She had no idea how she knew. She just did. So as she sniffed into one of the tissues, Poppy talked of her hope that she could now persuade her father to get a puppy . . . a black Lab . . . her favorite breed.

“I have one!” Mr. Jeffries declared proudly, as Poppy knew he would.

In the end Poppy was awarded the rest of the day off so she could mourn in peace, for “A death of a pet is a death in the family.”

As soon as she left school Poppy went not to the dell but to the stream behind the graveyard. Calling Leo's name, she searched the garden, and when she didn't find him, she ignored the urge to go and sit by Minx's burial spot. Instead of lingering there, she hurried back through the hidden door, down the church path, and through the gate. Heading directly into town, she scoured the streets for all the spots her eyes usually wouldn't think to stray upon—doorways, benches, under bridges, by the trash cans down
the backstreets, along the railroad tracks. There she found an invisible community of old men with beer cans and bottles in paper bags, kids tucked into ratty, old sleeping bags, and a lady with newspapers tied around her feet, pulling a shopping cart stacked high with all her worldly possessions. But no Leo.

Her feet aching, Poppy rode the bus home. She pressed her face up against the window, her breath steaming a small, oval patch onto the glass as she stared out in hopes of spotting him. When she got inside the house she sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to meditate. She thought it might help her reach that place in her mind that could fathom information, impossible information like about Mr. Jeffries's dog. How was it she could know that trivial, useless fact and not know the things that really mattered to her?

Frustrated, she tried to empty her mind of all other thoughts. It was hard to do with everything that had happened recently. She visualized a lake, with waters still and serene, but then a thought would bob up about Leo, or Ember, or school, or the fact that she had missed lunch and her stomach was rumbling. She tried focusing on Leo. She tried to picture him outside in the cold. She tried to see the landscape around him—outside or in, town or country? Nothing came to her at all, just the flat, emptiness of the lake.

Then Poppy remembered how her and Mr. Jeffries's hands had touched and how that had caused her to see into his life. She rushed to the hall to pick up the bag that Leo had touched, then all the items within that might hold a trace of him. She still got nothing, not an inkling. Poppy felt so powerless that it almost made her laugh to think she had proclaimed herself a witch.
What's the use of magic
, she thought,
if I can't control it?

Poppy was so used to her powers being random and unprompted that it didn't occur to her until much later that night that she simply might find a spell to aid her. As it turned out, Ember's books contained several methods for locating people. Some for enemies, others for strangers, and some for loved ones.

With a deep breath, Poppy went for loved ones. If she wanted the spell to work, she reckoned that she had better be truthful. A couple of the spells demanded ingredients she didn't have. Another required her to boil a concoction in a cauldron over a fire (Poppy hoped a nonstick saucepan on the stove would do). However, the smell was so putrid Poppy had to abandon her cookery halfway through, open all the windows, and flush the vile mixture down the toilet. Finally she thought she'd try to divine Leo's presence using sticks. She didn't have a glass ball, her dad never bought loose tea so she couldn't read the leaves, and they had run out of coffee, but sticks she could collect from the garden.

Spin, turn, around and around

If the person must be found.

Quicken, quicken, until you drop,

Then throw your hand to read your lot.

The sticks in their landing show

All it is you seek to know.

Open your eyes and you will see

Where it is your loved one be.

Poppy spun on the spot like a whirling dervish, arms outstretched, head tilted back, eyes closed, lost in motion. She felt
silly at first, self-conscious, even though she was alone in the house and had shut the curtains so no one could see her. But then the sensation of turning began to feel familiar. As she built up speed, Poppy felt transported back to a time when spinning until you were so dizzy that you couldn't stand anymore and bumping into furniture and stumbling across the carpet until your brain went straight again was a totally normal thing to do. Whipping through the air, Poppy recalled her mother's voice telling her to stop and she heard her young voice shouting back as she spun, “I want to go home! I want to go home! I want to go home!” Poppy remembered feeling weightless, like she was flying, until her mother's hand yanked on her arm, pulling her to the floor.

“I want to go home!”

“You
are
home!” Poppy heard her mother scream.

Poppy was whirling so fast now that the memories floated up with her hair and blurred with her arms and the room around her. Then, unexpectedly and all of a sudden, Poppy stopped. Just as the spell instructed, her fingers released the sticks as she fell to the ground. Her head was a mushy, mindless mess. Her temples throbbed. “I want to go home!” she heard in the far-off, remote, unreachable past. As her brain began to settle, Poppy slowly raised her head and opened her eyes.

It took a moment to focus. The sticks seemed to sway on the carpet in front of her. Poppy blinked and then they stilled. She had wondered how she would read them. She had thought she would have to study the book to decipher their meaning. But she saw it instantly, where Leo was. In her mind flashed an image of Leo, lying down, curling up against the cold, and shutting
his eyes against the dark. She glimpsed the shadowy shapes and structures surrounding him.

Leo was in the playground at the park.

With the spell completed, Poppy grabbed her coat and was hastily putting on her boots when her father opened the front door.

Without a hello, he immediately said, “Uh-uh. You're not going anywhere. Not at this time.” Poppy put on her other boot. “And I had a phone call today from your principal recommending me a dog breeder.”

Poppy paused, then straightened. “I just thought . . . ”

“What did you just think, Poppy? That you can fool me like you did him?” Poppy noticed her dad looked more weary than angry, but she didn't have time to answer before he continued, “What did you do this time to end up in his office?”

“Nothing. Nothing big. I just wasn't concentrating in class. I was tired.”

“Tired! I could hardly get you out of bed this morning.” Poppy felt her father's eyes scan her face with worry. “If you're so tired, you better get to bed quick then. We'll see how you feel in the morning.”

Poppy took off her coat, then her boots. She knew there was no persuading him. She couldn't bring herself to attempt any magic or clairvoyance on her dad. Somehow she sensed it wouldn't work anyway. As she walked up the stairs to her room, he called after her.

“Poppy!” She turned around and noticed suddenly how small her father seemed to her as she looked down upon him. “You've
been doing so well since we moved. Don't let what happened to the cat . . . don't let it spoil things.”

Poppy felt a pang of pity for her dad, for all his regrets, for ending up here on the edge of the country so far from home, for having a daughter like her, and so she nodded in understanding. Her dad sighed and padded off to the kitchen, and Poppy climbed the rest of the stairs to wait it out until it was safe for her to leave to see Leo.

By eleven o'clock Poppy could hear the low rumble of her dad's snores rolling across the landing. She waited another half an hour to be sure, then slipped silently out of the house. The cold night air felt fresh and illicit, and Poppy ran down the street, the adrenalin picking up her feet and making her feel more awake than she had been in days.

She reached the park more quickly than she'd anticipated. She climbed over the iron fence and jumped down the other side, her knees and feet soft for the landing. She had seen the playground from afar but had never been inside before. Her eyes pierced the darkness, looking for movement or just the shape of him. The place was eerie at night, like it was never meant to be empty or so very quiet. The slide, swings, and merry-go-round looked sad and desolate without any children on them. It felt to Poppy like it was the end of the world and she was the only person left upon it. Then she saw him, curled up beneath the climbing frame, nestled on the woodchip floor.

Leo didn't wake, not even when Poppy lay down beside him and got underneath the old blanket, burying her face in the back of his neck. He seemed to feel the warmth, though, and in his
sleep, his hand took hers and tucked it underneath his chin. Poppy felt the tears form in her eyes that such a gesture could come so easily and naturally in sleep. She pressed her whole front against his back, her legs curling behind his, and let herself lie there peacefully, feeling this was where she should be. Nowhere else in the world but here.

Nothing was going to wake Leo that night. His day had been full and tiring. He'd walked across the hills to the next town inland to sell the bits and pieces he'd scavenged from the dell. A scrap-metal merchant, round as a truck tire, weighed Leo's paltry pieces of iron and copper and offered him a pittance for them. Leo took the money gratefully and said he'd be back with more. The man gave him a look of indifference, but Leo held the five-dollar bill up in the air triumphantly and told him he'd be seeing him soon. On the walk home Leo kept his hands plunged into his pockets, rubbing the five between his finger and thumb, thinking he would feast at lunch time. As it turns out, the chicken pot pie and the candy bar made him sick, and he threw them up down an alley, so his stomach was back to being empty once again. Leo had lived off leftovers for so long, it seemed he couldn't even eat normally anymore.

After gulping down some water he found in a half-finished bottle in a trash can, Leo took Ember's clock to Mr. Bryce. In all the drama with Poppy, Leo had forgotten his offer to Ember until late last night, when he had used his bag as a pillow and felt the edges of the clock digging into his head. Now that it came to it,
though, heading off to the other side of town was the last thing Leo felt like doing. But a promise was a promise, and Mr. Bryce was the only person Leo knew who might be able to do the job.

His workshop, Bryce's Restorations, was a tiny antiques place on the corner of a terraced street of houses. It seemed a miracle that Mr. Bryce ever did any business from such an unlikely location, but his place was always full of ancient pieces of furniture and ornaments that people wanted him to repair. A few months back Mr. Bryce had found Leo sleeping in the back of his van. Leo, who had found the doors unlocked, had taken shelter there for the night, planning to be gone before dawn. Mr. Bryce was a very early riser. But instead of being angry or calling the police, he'd calmly made Leo a proposal—a little breakfast in return for a little help. He hadn't interfered or offered any pity or any charity—just a simple business transaction.