“Robin! How come you know that song?” Salvia was totally taken aback.“The first Roku used to sing it to us.” Robin said that as if it should be obvious. “You said you’d sing different songs to Rowan, but we all know that one.”
Ash came over, with Jay following.“That was the one she always sang to us. Right up until she died. I think there were others that I can’t remember any more.”
“What about this one then?” Salvia tried to keep her voice from shaking, but she felt as if her world was turning upside down. How could this be? She took a deep breath to steady herself and sang again.“The wind goes whoo, whoo and whoo.
And the clouds go blowing by.
Then they stop and sit and the get very fat.
And the rain goes pitter pitter pitter pitter pat.”
Jay laughed out loud at the song.“I don’t think I remember that one, but it makes my tummy feel all funny.”
And again, Salvia’s stomach lurched within her. Because that song had actions – and on the pitter pitter pat part, you drummed your fingers lightly on the baby’s bare tummy.
Salvia tucked Rowan in his cot and sat down at the table with all the children.“I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the first Roku. Was she young, like me?” Maybe that was what had happened to Sambucus’ youngest sister. Maybe she hadn’t just walked away and left her family grieving. Maybe she’d ended up here.
But the children were shaking their heads.“No, she was old, old, old, I think,” said Willow.
“Her hair was white as snow,” Primrose added, “and she walked all bent and creaky.”“She used to say, ‘I wasn’t always as old as this,’ ” Jay added.
“She always told us she loved us – and that we all loved each other. She helped us lots. And we used to help her too. In the mornings, when she could hardly get out of bed, we’d all help pull her up.”
Salvia went on listening to Willow, and a picture formed in her head of the small children helping this old lady heave her creaking body upright again.“Then she’d lean her head against the wall and slowly she’d stretch and feel a bit better.”
But the children must have been so young – about three or four – no older. Salvia had to blink back the tears.
“This is just another mystery,” she said, when the children had told her all they could remember.“Your Roku must have come from my world – and the stone everything is made from here is from my world – but I still don’t understand why or how.”
“Can we go to your world?” Ash asked.“If I ever find a way to go there, I’ll take you with me if I possibly can. I won’t choose to leave you behind. But it’s not always possible to do what you want…” Salvia’s voice tailed away. She knew that she couldn’t guarantee taking the children with her – even if she ever found a way home. But she wanted them to know that if she was pulled away from them that it wasn’t her choice to leave them.
“I think there might be an answer in that maze – but I can’t go looking until the springtime – until it’s warm enough for Rowan to be outside all day. We’ll just have to wait until Spring.”
The winter was long and hard, but with Salvia’s help the children enjoyed it for the first time in their lives. She taught them how to play in the snow and how to make a snowman.
“We never did this with the first Roku,” Willow said. “She said the cold ate up her bones. Are you having fun?” Salvia laughed. “My bones aren’t so old. And yes, Willow, I am having fun!”
Ash came out to admire their snowmen, and reached up to hug Salvia.“You are the best thing ever in my life. You and the first Roku. Your world must make lovely people because you are both so kind.”
Salvia wrapped her arms round his body and kissed the top of his fair head. “If only you knew,” she thought. “I was anything but lovely.”
“It’s you,” she said aloud to him. “You children – you’re so lovely, you make the people around you lovely.”
“No,” he said, looking up at her with a grave expression on his face. “Only you and the first Roku. The other Rokus all came from this world and they were cruel to us. I think it’s because you come from another world.”Salvia smiled down at him. “Well it definitely is you children who’ve helped me become nicer.”
But not nice enough, she thought. The marks were as clear and as dark as ever on her body. And until she had erased them, she couldn’t go home.
Finally, Spring came, and once again Salvia could begin to clear the rubble in the strange maze. As soon as it was warm enough for Rowan to be outside all day, Salvia went into the maze with him when the children left for school, and came out again when they came home. Clearing the rubble was sheer hard work.
And each time she cleared some more away, the gate behind it vanished too – to reveal, as often as not, another dead end. But Salvia was becoming more and more convinced that this maze held the secret to getting her home – and hopefully taking the children with her.
It wasn’t possible to work every day, but little by little, as Spring went by, Salvia was clearing her way through the maze. She was spurred on by her worry about what would happen to Rowan if any of the people from this world found out that he was there.
The children were sitting at the table, just back from school and finishing their homework.“Can we play before tea?”
“Did you get much further through the maze today?”
“Willow, do you want to play Roku?”
“What is for tea? I’m starving!”
Salvia smiled at the barrage of questions, the lively chatter. The children had changed so much from the way they’d been when she’d arrived.
“Yes, you can play, but get changed first. I got quite a bit further today, thank you. I haven’t decided about tea yet, Jay.”
As Salvia chopped vegetables for their evening meal, she listened with one ear to Primrose and Willow playing Roku. Since they’d talked to Salvia about the first Roku, they’d started playing out their memories, and Salvia kept hoping for more clues about her.
Ash preferred painting, and was producing another amazing picture for Rowan to look at while he lay in his crib. Not that he’d be just lying there for much longer!
Rowan was indeed growing fast – like all children with magic in them – and so were his wings. The children were fascinated.“Why does he have wings? We don’t – and you don’t.”
“But his father has wings like this – and I had them, once.”
There was never any shortage of people to play with Rowan and keep an eye on him. Salvia could actually go and take a bath without having to worry about Rowan’s safety – for the moment. But there was still so much she didn’t understand. The theta-stone that surrounded them couldn’t affect her – Rubia had taken all her magic away. And it wouldn’t affect the children as they had none anyway. So how was it that Rowan was thriving – and plainly magical? Why wasn’t the theta-stone affecting him? And – more to the point – how was she ever going to get these marks to leave her body?
Since she had no-one else to talk to, she asked the children for their advice on this problem.“So,” Jay said thoughtfully. “You got them because you broke the First Five laws. So maybe you need to keep them – properly. Sort of unbreak them. What were they?”
“Protect the weak.”
“You’ve done that,” Willow said, without even raising her head from the book she was reading. “You’ve protected us. And Rowan.”
“Speak the truth.”
“You’ve never lied to us,” Ash said from the floor, where he was playing with Rowan. “You told us that you might not be able to take us back with you. I could see that you wanted to promise that you would do it, but you just promised you would if you possibly could.”
“Keep your vows.” But even as the children debated what this one meant, Salvia knew that she’d done it. She had promised herself that she’d make life better for these children, and she had.
“Neither covet nor steal.”
All right, there wasn’t any chance to steal here, but Salvia knew that she could never do that again. And coveting things seemed so silly, so pointless, compared to losing your freedom as they all had.
“And the last one was Tend the Land.”“What does that mean?” Jay asked.
“It’s about growing plants – and taking care of the gardens, the forests, the lakes…it can be huge or it can be tiny.”
“Then perhaps you need to grow something.”
But how? There was no earth visible here at all. Everything was theta-stone, the blocks laid so close together that nothing could get between them. In the morning, Salvia thought, I’ll look and see what I can find.
At the end of an hour’s exhaustive search, Salvia stood, defeated, in the yard. There was no so much as a square inch of bare soil anywhere. There was no way anything could grow here. She’d even tried prising up one of the stones, but her fingernails were not up to the task.
She went to the fence, and looked out, but all she could see was huge rocks and the skeletons of dead trees. No seeds were going to blow in here and take root in a tiny crack. The only thing left was to finish clearing the way to the heart of the maze, and see if that held any answers.
And finally, Salvia was doing just that! This was the last pile of rubble. The whole maze was clear – every dark theta-stone passage. The dust rose in clouds around her as she bent her back to the task in hand.
This gate looked different.
Salvia walked through it, and there, at the very heart of the maze, was the thing she had been seeking. A small pot, with some earth at the bottom of it. But she had no seeds.
Salvia told the children that evening of her discovery.“But I have no seeds. If only I could get out and find something to plant…”
Jay and Willow stopped in the middle of their game of rock, paper, scissors and looked at each other, hard.
“Salvia. No! You mustn’t!”“What do you mean, Jay?”
“If you go out, they’ll put one of these masks on you. You’ll never get it off again. And it makes it hard to think, when you’re out there. In here, it’s different, but out there – we feel all sleepy and it’s hard to concentrate.”
“You think the masks affect your mood?”
Willow nodded.
“I remember. When they took us out to put them on, everything was different afterwards. But when we get back in here, it wears off.”
“No,” said Jay. “It’s more like it switches off.”
Maybe this was the theta-stone at work again. Salvia didn’t know. But it would suggest that the masks were magical and the theta-stone was negating the spell.“So I could go out to look for seeds, to tend the bit of land I’ve found. But they’d put a mask on me if I want to go out. And you think I’ll forget what I’m doing once I’m outside the gates?”
“Yes,” Willow said. “And people will be scared of you. They might hurt you.”
What was Salvia to do?
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