The Game. Diana Wynne Jones

instead. There she wandered about among the dark, crowding laurel bushes, thinking about her parents, longing for the mythosphere and wondering if Grandma really was a monster. Sometimes, when she was right in the midst of the laurels and knew she could not be seen from any of the windows, she crouched down – careful not to get her knees dirty – and secretly built bowers out of twigs, castles made of pebbles and gardens from anything she could find. “Mythosphere things,” she called them to herself.

      She was building a particularly elaborate rock garden about a week later, made of carefully piled gravel and ferns, when she looked up to see Flute standing among the laurels with his hands in his pockets. He was staring up at the house as if he was wondering about it. Hayley could not think how Flute had got in. There was a high brick wall round the garden and no way in except through the house.

      “Hallo,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

      Flute had obviously not known she was there. He whirled round, thoroughly startled, and his green scarf blew tastefully out among his hair. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you. I was wondering what went on in this house.”

      “Nothing much does,” Hayley told him, rather dryly. “Grandpa works and Grandma makes rules.”

      Flute frowned and shook his head slightly. The green scarf fluttered. His eyes stared into Hayley’s, green and steady. “I know you,” he said. “You were with the Russian lady and the shoes.”

      “Martya. She left,” Hayley said.

      “That doesn’t surprise me,” Flute said. “This house isn’t for the likes of her. Why are you in it?”

      “I’m an orphan,” Hayley explained. “They bring me up.” Flute nodded, taking this in, and then smiled at her, with some little doubtful creases beside his mouth. Hayley found herself adoring him, in a way she never adored even Grandpa. “How did you get in here?” she said. “Over the wall?”

      Flute shook his head. “I don’t do walls,” he said. “I’ll show you, if you’ll just follow me for a few steps.” He turned and walked, with a soft clatter of leaves, in among the laurel trees.

      Hayley sprang up from her rock garden – it was finished anyway – and followed the swishing and the glimpses of green scarf among the dark leaves. There had to be a gate in the wall that she had never found. But she never saw the wall. She followed Flute out of the laurels into a corner of the common. Really the common. She saw cars on the road in the distance and Grandpa’s familiar red house in the row beyond the road. “Good heavens!” she said, and looked up at Flute with respect. “That’s more magic, isn’t it? Can you show me some more more?”

      Flute thought about it. “What do you want to see?”

      There was no question about that. “The mythosphere,” Hayley said.

      Flute was rather taken aback. He put his hands into his baggy pockets and looked down at her seriously. “Are you sure? Someone has warned you, have they, that things in the mythosphere are often harder and – well – fiercer than they are here?”

      Hayley nodded. “Grandpa said the strands harden off when they get further out.”

      “All right,” Flute said. “We’ll take a look at some of the nearest parts then. It’ll have to be just a short look, because I wasn’t expecting to see you and I have things to do today. Follow me then.”

       Chapter Four

      Flute turned and strode back among the laurels, green scarf streaming. Hayley pattered after him in the greatest excitement. Not much happened at first, except that they came out into proper woodland where paths seemed to run in several directions. Flute looked this way and that and finally chose a path that was lightly strewn with brown and yellow autumn leaves. After a short way, the leaves were in thick drifts and the trees overhead were yellow and brown and apricot, and rattled in a sad, small autumn breeze. Hayley – and Flute too – began to enjoy shuffling the leaves into heaps and then kicking them, until Flute put a hand out for Hayley to stop.

      Someone was coming along a path that crossed theirs, whistling merrily.

      Hayley stood nearly knee deep in leaves and watched a splendid young man go striding past, crunching coloured leaves under his sandals. He was obviously a hunter. His main clothing was a big spotted leopardskin that draped over one shoulder and fastened around his hips to make a sort of skirt, and he carried an enormous longbow almost as tall as himself. The arrows for it hung in a long leather box over his left shoulder. His muscles bulged and gleamed. Grandma would have called him a dirty savage, but to Hayley he looked neat and crisp, like an actor dressed up as a hunter for a film. She could see that his neat little beard and his chestnut curls were shining and clean.

      “Who is he?” she whispered.

      “Orion,” Flute whispered back. “He’s a hunter.”

      There seemed to be a group of ladies in long dresses suddenly, in among the trees. The hunter stopped whistling, peered, and whipped an arrow, long and wickedly sharp, out from his arrow-holder. Then, holding it ready beside his bow, he broke into a fast, striding run. The ladies all screamed and ran away.

      Hayley did not blame them. “Can’t he see they’re not animals?” she said.

      “Not always,” Flute said, as hunter and ladies all disappeared among the trees.

      Flute and Hayley turned a corner and came out beside a lake then, where it seemed to be nearly winter. All the trees and bushes around the bleak little stretch of water were brown and almost empty of leaves. A young lady in a white dress came down the bank towards the shore. When she was right beside the water, she looked around, grinning mischievously, and crouched down. Her white dress melted into her all over and she was suddenly a swan. Off she launched, white and stately, and sailed across the lake.

      Hayley saw a hunter then. She thought he was not the same hunter as the first one, but it was hard to be sure. He was in dark clothes, but he had the same sort of huge bow and a case of arrows. He was coming stealthily down to the lakeside with an arrow ready beside his bow. When he saw the swan lady, he put the arrow in the bow, raised it and, very slowly and carefully, drew the arrow back until the bow was a great arc.

      Hayley cried out, “Oh no! Don’t!”

      The hunter did not seem to hear her. He let the arrow fly. Out in the lake, the swan collapsed into a white, spouting turmoil.

      “Let’s move on,” Flute said sadly. He took Hayley’s hand and pulled her away from the lakeside. But before the bushes hid the lake, Hayley had to look back. She saw the hunter wading in the water, dragging the white floppy shape of the lady to the shore. He seemed to be crying his eyes out.

      The next part they went through had swans in it everywhere. Three swans with crowns on their heads glided on a sudden sea. A group of young women ran down to the beach a bit further on and then took off as swans in a white beating of huge wings. More wings beat and some swans came in to land beside a big bonfire. As they landed, they turned into young men. This happened several times. Sometimes there was just one swan, sometimes a whole flock. Then Flute and Hayley arrived at a place where a young woman timidly held out her hand to a huge swan, as big as she was. There was something about that big swan that Hayley did not like at all.

      “I think,” Flute said, “that we’ll take another strand now. All right?” When Hayley nodded, he turned off along a way that was greener, where the sun shone among forest trees that seemed to be putting out new spring leaves.

      They passed through a sunny clearing where golden midges circled under a big oak tree. When Hayley looked at the midges closely, they were very small winged people. She cried out with pleasure.

      “More like it, eh?” Flute said, grinning.

      The midge people all flew away as he said it. They seemed to have been frightened by a growing noise,