And I could see, with perfect clarity, the patterns the glinting blades were carving as she skated overhead. Entombed in the freezing water, I could hear the slick and slather of the ice as she slid over and over my face, laughing as she went. And a million little bubbles floated up past me, filling with the sound of her laughter until all the oxygen was gone and I was drowning.
Framed in the brittle, brattling leaves of the wind-listed trees, the lane wound away from my eye, laced in snow. This was Winter Lane. Again! I didn’t see how it could be. I had walked away from it in the opposite direction, along several meandering hedgerows. Yet, here it was before my eyes, even whiter and colder than at my last glimpse.
It lay delicately sparkling, like a Christmas card with frosted edges. Little Anne's words echoed in my head. It was a cold place, she had said; lonely and dangerous, and always cold. She had left me here and run off home because she was afraid of it. But it looked so attractive, in its frilly white dress, the arms of its trees cuffed in winter mink. It softly twinkled, all its lovely snow untrodden.
But, there it was, the thing that really unnerved me: the snow. It hadn’t snowed! Certainly, no-one at the farmhouse had mentioned it snowing overnight. And even if they had, how come it lay only on Winter Lane? And how come Winter Lane seemed always in view though just beyond reach?
Suddenly, a high, sweet, girlish voice came to my ears. She was singing: "Old cock robin went bob, bob, bobbing... bob, bob, bobbing along." Someone was coming down Winter Lane. I froze in my elevated spot, peeking down through sagging boughs.
It was her! It was little Anne, singing and skipping merrily down the lane. Only she was very differently dressed from when I'd seen her moments ago. Her shiny boots crunched in the snow. Her hands were tucked inside a muffler and perfect ringlets bounced under her fur-trimmed hat. Her previous ragged curtain of hair was completely transformed. She wore a sky-blue coat and matching skirt, edged in the same elegant, white fur as her hat. I'd never seen anyone dressed like that except in history books! Her formerly washed-out face glowed pink with the cold. She looked altogether altered, all polished and pretty, like a porcelain doll.
Shaking myself, I called down to her. She met my gaze with glittering eyes and giggled: a sound like a glass bell jingling. I shouted for an explanation. Without any reply, she turned and skipped off, this time beginning a Christmas carol: "In the bleak mid winter, frosty winds made moan..." Her high, sweet voice was too sweet for the sad words she sung, too sweet and mocking for my liking. I made up my mind I was off back to the farm without delay!
But as I pushed myself upright, the branch underneath me let out a fearsome growl and snapped, pitching me head first down the bank. I splashed into the soft sheath of snow and tumbled, over and over, to the bottom. I clambered to my feet with my hair full of twigs and tights in tatters. Bruised and shaken, I glanced round to see if Anne had come back to help me. She was long gone, though. Her voice was no longer audible and I stood alone on the lane.
Above my head, mad stallions of cloud were charging in across the sky. Daylight was choking. My teeth began to chatter as the temperature plummeted. My hair crackled like the radio searching for a station. Inside my pockets, my hands were tingling.
Silently, with intent, snow began to descend.
It fell upon and smothered the last of my courage. I dashed at the bank I had just slid down, scrabbling at the crumbling drifts, desperate to get back up. Panic galloped in my stomach and I flung myself again and again at the shifting bank. Nowhere could I get a grip! The fresh snow on the surface was impossibly deep now, turning the stuff below to ice. Each time I tried, I came slipping and sliding back to the lane.
Thoroughly soaked and defeated, I began walking along Winter Lane. I went the other way to Anne, with her strange clothes and her bauble-shattering voice. Somewhere along here, there had to be the part of the lane I had passed earlier, where there had been no bank to climb. Somewhere, I reasoned, there had to be a gate or a stile.
I started to walk more quickly, the snow deepening all the time. My old school shoes were a hopeless defence against the wet and gnawing cold. I blinked back tears because crying wouldn’t help. Instead, I stopped and took a good look around me. Looking back, looking forward, it was all the same. Exactly the same...
My heart began thumping. I felt like I was trapped in the twinkling picture of a Christmas card that never changed. Before I knew it, I was running as fast as I could. The snow spluttered, sucking at my useless shoes, slowing me down. I would just get round the next bend, see where I was, find a gap in the hedgerows. It didn’t have to be a gate; I would get off this lane any way possible.
But the bend, once conquered, produced another, and that, another. And every bend was snared in steep banks of snow-clad brambles or impenetrably crowned with hawthorn. As I stood there wondering what to do, the flakes expanded and multiplied, whirling round me in a billowing blindfold.
Something touched my hand. I jumped and cried out, though it was the slightest cobweb of a touch. A small figure stepped out from the white mass of snow. It was Anne... no longer in her fine blue hat and coat. She was back in her worn and raggy clothes. Her hair dangled like dank weeds. Her frosted eyes stared up from a thin, ashen face.
"You shouldn't be on Winter Lane," she spoke, startling me again. "It's too cold." Her voice sounded shrill and brittle. Then a sudden strong gust splayed her old flimsy cape out behind her like wings and whipped a strand of hair over her head like a halo. For a moment, I saw an angel; a frozen, angel child.
But the wind was not done. It whipped snow crystals into our faces, making us shield our eyes and stagger for balance. I felt Anne's hand slipping from mine, tried to snatch it back. My fingers grappled something, small and wet and cold. But, as I pulled it towards me, I couldn't feel any weight. Full of dread, I uncurled my fist. It contained nothing but a clump of snow, compacted in my grasp.
"Where are you?!" I screamed. "Anne! Don't leave me!"
Skittish squalls swung the rocking-horse flakes, up and down, to and fro, across my vision.
I don't know how long I went on calling and waiting for an answer. Anne was gone. I was dazed and desolate, trapped in Winter Lane like a frozen figure in a snow globe.
Suddenly, I heard her singing. "We clap our hands to keep them warm, keep them warm, keep them warm. We clap our hands…"
I blundered towards the voice, yelling her name. I called and called but her voice went on untroubled, delighting in its own charm.
"Want to play with my dolls?" That was the first thing Anne said to me. I'd just fetched the eggs for Mrs. Finny and was passing the cowshed when she drifted round the corner. She looked like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards, though she wasn't dirty, as such.
"Sorry," I yawned, holding up the basket of eggs. "I have to take these back to Mrs. Finny."
She looked so crest-fallen. "You can name one of them if you like," she wheedled. "I’ve got two. I call them Catherine and Winifred, but you can call them anything you want. They won't mind a bit."
"Suppose I could have a quick look, then," I relented. "Better just drop these eggs off at the house first though, alright?"
Positively beaming, she said: "Meet me in the big barn. That's where they live."
It was gloomy in the barn; cold too. Pale, damp October light stole in with me and sulked in the shadows. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and whilst I stood there squinting, I felt Anne's hand tugging at my elbow.
"This way!" she said, beckoning me to the ladder that led to the hayloft.
"I'm not going up there!" I cried. "I've got me wool tights on. They'll be ripped to shreds!"
Little Anne's face fell and she muttered: "But I've told them you're coming. They're expecting you for morning tea."
I sighed, putting a foot on the bottom rung. "Well, if I get into trouble I'm blaming you."
"You can if you like," she agreed, benevolently. "I don’t mind."
Up in the loft, she had arranged bales of straw in a semi-circle. She had a few bits of chipped and mismatched crockery and the spout from a tea-pot; just the spout, no sign of the rest of it. In the far corner, propped against the bales, were the two dolls. I say dolls, but really they were just blocks of wood which she’d wrapped in scraps of material, and stuck hen’s feathers on for hair. She'd put some dots of black and white paint on for eyes and each had a red smudge for a mouth. I looked at those crude faces and felt so sorry for the poor little thing. Like the rest of us, she must have come away from home with nothing but a suitcase. She'd probably had lots of dolls back in the city, and teddy bears and tea-sets. But you couldn't take all that stuff with you. They only let you bring what you could carry.
"You going to be mother, then?" I said, swallowing back the familiar wave of home-sickness.
She picked up the severed spout and made a great performance of pouring the imaginary tea then offered me an imaginary bun that some imaginary person named Mrs. Berwick had baked. She was the best bun-maker in the entire district, according to Anne, if not the world!
"Bet they cost a few rations in eggs and flour, eh?" I joined in, conversationally.
She looked at me blank.
"You know, on account of there being a war on," I prompted, a bit sharply because she couldn't be too young to understand rations. Everybody understood rations.
She just ignored me and turned to her dolls. "Here you are, Catherine. And one for you, Winifred, dear."
"So who's who?" I asked. "They're very similar. Are they twins?"
She held one of them up and showed me a dirty piece of wool tied round the bottom of the wood. "This one's Winifred. I have to be very strict with her. She's a bit wayward sometimes. Catherine is always well-mannered though and never slurps her tea!"
"Well, Winifred and Catherine, I am very pleased to meet you," I said, reaching over and shaking their imaginary hands.
Anne said: "Sometimes, Winifred is very good too and then I can hardly tell them apart."
"That what the wool's for then?" I asked.
She nodded. "But sometimes it falls off and Winifred pretends to be Catherine and I get them mixed up."
"Well, that's very naughty of her!" I laughed.
She stared up at me for a moment, all light-heartedness gone. Her blue eyes watered and her lip trembled. So, I put my arm round her shoulders. Her hair was damp against my cheek.
"Don't cry," I said. "You homesick?"
She sniffed.
"I'll let you in to a secret, shall I?" I said. "Me too! I miss my mum something terrible; even my sister, Maggie. Maybe we'll get a letter tomorrow, eh?"
"I don't get letters," she sniffed. "There's no-one to write them."
That caught me a bit off guard and I blurted out: "You're an orphan? That's terrible. I didn't think they evacuated orphans. How come I haven't seen you in the farmhouse, then?"
She shrugged.
"You don't live in the barn, do you?" I said, jokily. However, glancing at her poor apparel and unkempt hair, I did wonder.
"I live with my brother. He's a lot older than me," she replied.
"Works on the farm, does he?"
"He looks out for me," she said, arranging the dress on her doll.
Rather annoyed by her vagueness, I said "Well, you're lucky, then, aint you? Lucky he aint gone off to fight. Did he have flat feet or something?"
Abruptly, she rose and exclaimed, in a pretend-posh voice: "Oh, how terribly rude of me! I haven't shown you the grounds yet. Come along, dear, you'll simply love them!"
She was down the ladder and out the barn before I'd had time to pull my skirt straight. Behind her, where she had sat, she left a little wet shadow. I didn't say anything because I knew what she was feeling. It made you nervous, being with strangers; it weakened your bladder a bit. But you didn't want to tell anybody, even if it was the same for them.
She was skipping out the driveway and I followed because I didn't really have anything better to do.
"Aren't these rose beds divine?!" she cried, sweeping her hand in the direction of the barren fields we were passing.
"Oh yes, lovely," I grumbled. "How about you show me where you live with your brother, then?"
She began to walk faster. I had to jog to keep up.
"And the cedar is magnificent, don't you agree?" She pointed up at a diseased elm.
"Well, at least tell me your name!" I gasped, stopping for breath.
She danced back to me then and said: "Anne Huntington. Pleased to meet you!" She held her hand out for me to shake. When I did, it was very cold and damp and I was about to ask her if she had any gloves when she said: "And that is my brother, Albert Huntington."
I whisked round in the direction she was indicating, and there with his back to us, an old man was leaning over a gate. We must have passed him only seconds before, but I had not noticed him. Because he was clearly too old to be her brother, I assumed this was more make-believe and started walking again.
She didn’t follow. Instead, she said, loudly enough for the man to hear: "Well, how rude! Walking off without saying 'how d'you do' to my brother!"
Astonished, I whispered angrily over my shoulder: "It's you who’s being rude! Come away before he hears. Do you even know who he really..."
Before I could finish, the man had turned his head to look at us. I thought we were going to get a right telling off but he just leaned back against the gate and studied us both.
My face went very hot and I muttered: "Sorry, sir... Her imagination got the better of her... She's only a kid."
The man turned his watery eyes on Anne and without a smile, he said: "Aye. It's not the first time, is it, Anne? I've told you to be careful who you..."
"It's alright, Bert. She isn't from the village. She's a refergee," Anne told him.
"Ref-u-gee," Albert and I corrected her in unison.
"Yes, yes, but it's alright then, isn't it?" Anne rushed on. "I can have her to play with. For a while. Please... kind, sweet brother... Please!"
She called him brother and he did not correct her. Yet, he was old enough to be her granddad. I was considering this when he said to her: "Very well. You don't take her on the lane, though, Anne. Promise me!"
"I wouldn't!" she cried, sounding genuinely shocked. "I just want her to play with."
"Well, I've said yes, haven't I?" Albert grunted. "Just be good. You know she'll go home when the war's done?"
I felt a right Charlie standing there whilst they discussed me like this. Besides, I'd never said I wanted to hang round with a little kid all the time – a little nutty kid, at that. But then, Anne skipped to my side and made a big thing of formally introducing me to her brother, with such ridiculous airs and graces, I couldn’t help laughing.
After that, she persuaded me to go and see the pigs with her. I didn't want to at first because well, you've seen one pig, you've seen them all. But she took me to see the sow with her nine maggoty piglets and I had to admit they were quite cute. Leaning over the split-door watching them, I asked her how come her brother was so much older than her. She wouldn't say a dickie-bird, so I asked her about the lane he had mentioned.
"Winter Lane," she responded this time. "It's a cold place. It's really, really cold, all the time."
"Nowhere's cold all the time," I scoffed.
"The lane is!" she insisted. "It's cold all the time. Because someone died there once and they say the lane never got over it."
"That'll be an old wives tale," I smiled, knowingly. "It’s the sort of thing they say to stop you doing things. Usually something dangerous. I bet there's somewhere dangerous at the end of this lane, isn't there, like a quarry or something?"
She gazed up at me like I was a prophet. "How could you know that?" she whispered in awe.
"Because I'm older'n you and I know how grown-ups' minds work," I said. "Is it a quarry, then?"
As if it were a terrible secret, she whispered: "It's a pond."
"Well, same principle," I sniffed. "Big and deep, is it? See, they frighten you so you won't ever go there by yourself. Makes them feel better."
Her eyes suddenly seemed to twinkle like pale blue stars. She said: "I can show you, if you like..."
"Oh no. Your brother made it quite clear we weren't to go there," I reminded her sternly.
"He wouldn't know," she cajoled. "We don't have to go in the pond, do we?"
"Yeah, well... I don't see the point," I mumbled. "I've seen ponds before, you know. Just because I come from the city doesn't..."
"You can make snow-angels," she interrupted. "And if it's frozen, you can skate!"
I looked down at her ashen, eager face and wondered how many times she had gone there against the wishes of her brother.
"There's no snow, stupid. And I wouldn't anyway," I said, moving away from the pigs and setting off in the direction of the house.
Anne's footsteps came running up behind me. "Don't go!" she implored. "We won't go there! No, never ever! Cross my heart... hope to die. It's too dangerous anyway. Much too lonely... and cold. Let's just go for a walk instead."
I politely declined. The more urgently she appeared to need my company the more urgently I wanted to be elsewhere! The thought of Mrs. Finny's warm kitchen, smelling of this morning's bacon, suddenly seemed very appealing. However, I was not in luck when I got there because Mrs. Finny sent me straight back out again. She was going to bake that afternoon and needed me to gather blackberries.
I began on Home Lane, where the pickings were discouragingly sparse. Nevertheless, I began in happy solitude... until Anne crept up beside me. Under her arm, she carried one of her dolls. She watched wordlessly for a while, waiting to see if she was welcome. I gave her no encouragement. I wanted her to go away.
Still silent, she started to help me pick. As she reached up though, the doll dropped to the ground with a thud. She gasped and her eyes filled with tears.
I sighed and picked the doll up, brushing the dirt off. "It's alright. No harm done, look," I said, handing it back to her. I noticed there was no wool around the stump of wood that made the doll’s body, so I added, to be kind: "This'll be Catherine, then? The well-behaved one of the two."
"She's hurt," Anne whined.
"It's only a bruise," I insisted brightly. "Be better in no time. P'raps you’d better take her home though, eh... be on the safe side?"
It was worth a try but she rejected that suggestion straight away.
"No, I can't because we have left Winifred alone, as punishment. She has been very bad this morning, trying to get poor Catherine in trouble."
"Well, maybe you should go home and give Winifred a good telling off," I suggested, wondering if she’d take the hint now.
Instead, she let out a giant sob, fell to her knees and wailed: "I don't want to be with her, ever, ever again!"
Startled and perplexed, I knelt beside her and offered her my hanky. "Listen, Anne," I said gently. "It's all very well pretending things, sometimes. Lord knows, the real world aint much cop! But, you're pretending things that make you feel worse, aint you? Now, these dolls, Winifred and Catherine... it seems to me, you can make 'em be anyway you want. So why don't you just change Winifred, in your head, right now. You could make her a princess, or a fairy who can grant your wishes. Or just a nice, well-behaved girl, who'll be your friend. That's what you want, aint it? A friend?"
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I want someone to play with and talk to, but she always spoils it. Opens her big mouth and scares everyone away. She scared you, this morning, going on about the lane, and now you don't like me anymore."
"Oh, come on, Anne!" I flared. "It was you that wanted to go where we weren’t allowed. You can't blame a stupid, rotten lump of wood for what comes out your mouth."
Anne glowered up at me, her little face full of fury. The tears in her pale eyes seemed to turn to ice. Her pallid lips parted and I shrank back, fearing an unpleasant outburst. Instead, her features abruptly relaxed into a smile.
"That's a big basket," she said, sweetly. "I can show you where the biggest, bestest blackberries grow. If you like?"
Hoping that she would show me then go away, I followed her. We walked for a short while along Home Lane then climbed a stile and headed along the edge of an empty field. The sky of bones above us cast dismal light on our progress. Turning the corner, I saw, through the black, bare hawthorn, another lane. It was wet and shiny. I asked Anne where it went. Her eyes were hard as cut diamonds as she replied: "That's Winter Lane, that is. You can feel the cold from here, can't you? You know we're not to go there."
We stopped by a little brook, its waters chattering quietly over smooth stones, to pick blackberries. Eating some and licking the juice from our fingers, I peered through the trees and saw the lane again. Only this time, the puddles lacing its edges had a fine crust of ice over them. The wet surface of the road had a different aspect to it somehow. As I squinted to make it out, I realised it was no longer shiny, but glittery. It was glazed in frost.
Following my gaze, Anne repeated: "It's cold on Winter Lane. We mustn't go there." And there was just the ghost of a question mark at the end.
When she suggested moving on to the hedgerows on the opposite side of the field, I was glad to go. Behind me, something creaked. Glancing round, I saw the little brook choking under a rapidly thickening film of ice. I looked back at Anne who seemed every bit as shocked as me. ‘It's winter coming,’ I told myself as I started to run. ‘It's just winter.’ But winter didn’t usually creep up behind you so fast you could see it coming, did it?
I could hear Anne's footsteps as she raced after me. We reached the far side of the field, where I was forced to a halt by a painful stitch.
"Look. There's beautiful blackberries here," Anne said. "Told you, didn't I?"
"I don't care about blackberries anymore. I want to go home," I muttered, bent double and panting. And I didn’t mean the farmhouse, either.
Anne didn't say anything. She didn't say anything for several seconds, causing me to look up. She had forced her way through a small gap in the hedge.
"What you looking at?" I asked, clambering up behind her. But I could see for myself now.
"Snow!" I gasped. "It's snowing." And it was, on the other side of the hedge. The sky there was thick and lumpy with the stuff.
Anne said in a tremulous voice: "It's Winter Lane. It always snows on Winter Lane,"
"It can’t snow in just one place," I said, though the evidence lay before me. "And we're on the other side of the field, so... It can't still be Winter Lane..."
Anne bleated: "Oh, let's go back! I don’t like it."
I was trying to get closer, leaning in through the clawing nails of the hawthorn. The lane lay in a dip and twisted round a bend, so I couldn't see much. But I could see well enough the veil of snow and ice that covered it.
"I just want to get a bit closer..." I said, stepping back. "Is there a gate somewhere, Anne, where we can get down?"
"No!" Anne squealed, clutching her doll. "Catherine's frightened. She knows it's wrong. Don’t listen to Winifred! You know she sometimes isn't nice!"
Irritated, I snapped: "You don't have to come! Go home. I can find my own way back."
She looked at me for a moment, her face blank. "You won't," she said flatly. "You'll be lost." With that, she turned and ran back the way we had come.
I was glad to be rid of her. She gave me the creeps. I began to look for a way to reach Winter Lane. I was determined to get down to it somehow, to tread in the snow that lay nowhere else and maybe see the pond at the end of it. Just to look. Just to touch it and know it was real. There didn't appear to be another gate though, except into another field. So I tried to trace the lane as best I could from the glimpses I occasionally caught of it. And it did not seem to matter which direction I took: there always was a glimpse of it, sooner or later. I couldn’t understand how it could wind about so. Yet, there seemed no way to actually get to it!
I was becoming exhausted, travelling much farther than I'd intended. The field I was now in stretched uphill. I decided I'd go to the top and if I still couldn't find a way, I’d give it up. When I got there, however, I found a cluster of trees on the edge of an embankment, their thin boughs strung across the gap like giant, frozen hair. Disorientated, I scrambled up the twisted steps of their roots and leaned along their emaciated bangs to see below. And there lay Winter Lane smothered in a white blanket, its difficult breaths reaching me in clouds of cold.
If only I hadn't let curiosity get the better of me. If only I hadn't waited long enough to hear her singing, nor leaned so heavily along that branch that gave way, throwing me down onto Winter Lane. Now here I was, trapped in the swift, soft flakes that buried reality. Anne's singing had died away. I had lost all sense of direction and it felt as if the snow was piling up inside my head.
A gruff voice breached the heavy silence. "Girl! Where are you?! Shout so's I can find you."
"Albert!" I screamed in relief. "Is that you? I'm here!"
"Alright, alright, don't get yourself in a tizzy. I'm a-coming ..." As he spoke, something seemed to be happening to his voice. The gruffness was fading, the pitch was rising.
Then, he stepped in front of me and the man I had thought much too old to be Anne’s brother was no more than a boy. I squinted through the snow in disbelief but it was Albert, I was certain.
Discerning my reaction, he said: "This place plays by its own rules. It's like it can’t move forward. Everything stays as it was."
I neither understand nor cared. "Take me home," I demanded.
The young Albert shook his head, sympathetically. "I can't. You can only go one way now... to the pond. She'll be waiting for you."
"Why?" I asked, through chattering teeth. "What does she want? What's she going to do to me?"
"Bless her, she can't help it! She's lonely," Albert moaned. "Every year that passes, I find it harder to follow her here. I’m eighty one, you know! I can't see the lane at all sometimes and she has to go on without me. And every year, she gets thinner and paler in the real world, whilst Winter Lane keeps her bright. But her soul is lonely. She craves company and I’m too old. Soon, I’ll go where she can't fetch me and she'll have no way into the real world then. No-one to look after her. She watches me growing older, heading for the grave, and we can't change it. She will stay on Winter Lane, lost and cold and full of grief."
He had taken my elbow and was ushering me forward as he spoke. His voice sounded old again now, despite his appearance of youth.
I pulled away from him and cried: "Are you taking me back to the farm?"
He sighed. "Doesn't matter which direction we walk. We'll end up at the pond."
"And what happens when we get there?" I asked in a tight, frightened tone. He kept on walking, the snow swirling around him, making him fade before my eyes. Too afraid to be left alone again, I ambled after him and shouted: "The girl that died in the pond... it was Anne, wasn't it? What is she? Some kind of ghost?"
Once again, he declined to answer. So I asked: "And what are you? When I first saw you, you were old. Yet, now you can't be more than... what... say eleven?"
"Flesh and blood, like you," he said, bitterly. "And I'm twelve, actually. When I come here, I'm always twelve. And Anne, she's always seven."
"Was that the age it happened to her?" I asked. "When she drowned?"
"She didn't drown. Not exactly."
"What do you mean? What did happen, Albert?"
As we walked, he told me: "Anne had a new pair of skates and it was the first time the pond had frozen over enough to try them out. Hopeless, she was! Couldn’t stand up, let alone go anywhere. I watched, laughing at her for a while, until I got bored. Decided to carve a hole in the ice. You know, like an Eskimo, to fish through? I used the picks of my skates. It was hard work, absorbing... Then, Anne screamed! I spotted her some way away, face down on the ice. She must have split her chin in the fall because I could see a dark patch spreading out under it.
"I shouted that I was coming, to stay still. But, before I could take more than a step, she began to glide across the ice on her stomach, just as if pulled by invisible wire. She was screaming and flailing her arms, but she kept on going, straight to the centre of the pond. I was charging across the ice, slipping all over because I didn't have my skates on. ‘Something's got me!’ she was crying. ‘Something's got me.’
"She was at the centre before I could reach her. I could hear the ice, cracking and splitting. A great hole was opening up and she was being dragged towards it. I lunged for her ankles, tried to snatch her back. She slipped from my wet hands and plummeted like a seal, headfirst, into the darkness. I fell to my knees and shoved my hands in, beating the freezing water for some sign of her. I plunged head and shoulders in. But it was much too dark, too cold, to make anything out. I waited in agony for her to surface. I waited... and there was nothing. Not a ripple, not a murmur came from that murky aperture.
"Terrified, I began removing my boots, intent on going all the way in. As I tugged them off..."
At this point, whilst Albert was engrossed in his tale, I made up my mind to run. Snatching my arm from his grasp, I made off in the opposite direction. Snow hindered my every move, piling over my shoes, smothering my face. Stumbling blindly, I found myself walking straight back into Albert.
With nothing but a pitying shake of his head, he resumed his story: "...As I tugged my boots off, the ice began to creak and scrape. Too late, I realised it was growing over the hole. I tried to stop it sealing completely but the edges were razor sharp. The hole closed up before my eyes!
"I was looking down through a perfectly clear, circular window. The darkness below had a strange, indigo hue. As if a torch burned way below, this hue brightened and shimmered. Bubbles rose up, sparkling like stars. And then, something else... It took me a moment to understand. It was a face! Anne's face was rising up out of the deep, hair splaying all round her. Her skin was blue. Her blind eyes gleamed, cataracted with crystals of cold. They were dead eyes... yet they moved to look into mine."
Albert took in a sharp breath as the memory struck him afresh.
"She wasn't dead?" I shuddered.
Albert glanced across at me, his pale, young face full of horror.
"She was taken," he said. "Something from the very depths of that water had forced her to its dank layer and now, as I watched, I saw it like a silvery shadow merge from below with my Anne. Her eyes filled with its light; filled with shining, cold, cold light. And when next she smiled, fear stabbed my heart. I ran back for my skates, intent upon digging her free, and then striking that cold, wet apparition from her soul.
"But as I ran, the ice behind me was shattering. It split with dreadful din, its teeming rents chasing me down. I barely reached the bank in time, scrabbling out on hands and knees as the surface beneath me cracked and snapped and fell away. The noise was insufferable. When I looked back, there was no sound or sight of Anne.
"My parents believed the trauma of witnessing her drown caused me to invent my astonishing tale. They wouldn't talk about it for fear of making my delusions worse, so I didn't tell of the dreams when Anne came to me, dripping wet and begging me to come and skate with her. Night after night, the same cruel dream, until I could stand it no more. I went with my skates to the pond. She met me there.
"It was only as the days and weeks went by that we realised she could come with me back to the real world, but that she couldn't stay too long without returning to Winter Lane. It was only as the years went by that we realised I would age and she would not. And always, there was the shadow inside her, the other being that had borrowed her to free itself from the womb of the pond.
"The other one is more impulsive, more wild and sometimes gets the better of poor Anne. Both are lonely, forever children, doomed to the same empty playground for all eternity."
We were approaching the end of the lane, the frozen pond stretching across my vision, startlingly bright. I realised that the snow had almost stopped. A shimmer of gold in the sky was reflecting on the silvery surface.
"Albert?" I whispered. "What's she going to do to me?"
Albert looked desperate. "She always wants to make friends. But she always wants to bring them here, where she can keep them. I have to stop her. But I'm not as young as I used to be. I can't follow her and watch her like I used to."
Albert... the boy... walked to the very edge of the pond, hands in his pockets and shouted: "I'm too old, Anne!"
From around an outcrop a figure glided, hair and coat tails streaming out behind her. Her thin, high voice came to us as she skated round and the wind caught her song. "...Dashing through the snow, on a one horse open sleigh..."
"I can't do this anymore," Albert yelled. "I'm too old."
Anne reached the centre of the pond and called back: "Then let us just have her! Just her, for when you're gone and we are all alone. Please, kind-hearted brother! There will be no more after, I promise."
Albert’s glance towards me made me shiver. I made a sudden dart back the way we had come. But the lane entrance was nowhere. I was met all round with banks of snow piled against thorny hedgerows. No gap. No escape. I ran all round the perimeter of the pond and as I went the path seemed to be spiralling inwards, forcing me nearer and nearer the edge. At last, I came back to where Albert stood gazing at me with bloodshot eyes.
"Help me!" I beseeched him.
He held out his arms and I ran towards them. Suddenly, just as if I had reached the limit of an invisible rope, I felt myself yanked back. Then I was being dragged, faster and faster, to the edge of the pond. Once I hit the ice, all resistance was gone. I slid quickly across the sleek, hard surface, straight to the centre of the pond. Somewhere behind me, Albert was yelling. Somewhere ahead, someone was squealing in triumph.
The ice hissed beneath Anne’s skates as she sped towards me. She stopped at the very last minute. Her face was rosy and glowing from her exertion. She held out her hands to help me up but I shrank back.
"Don't be scared," she said. "I'll look after you."
"N-no!" I stammered. "Let me go."
Scowling, she bent, snatched me up and held me tight as I struggled for balance. Her touch was utterly numbing. I felt my limbs turning rigid, freezing up. She shoved me forward. I wobbled, looked down and saw the hole.
"No!" I yelped, trying to turn back.
"It doesn't hurt," Anne spoke softly as she pushed me to my knees. "It's just very, very cold."
The water splashed as my head went in. Her hands were shoving at me, shoving and shoving. My veins flowed with ice... bones ached with the dreadful cold. And then I was in, going down, down, through the clinging, stabbing blackness. In absolute panic, I somersaulted the other way up, scrabbling back towards the light.
I was looking up... through a clear, round window of ice. Glinting, silver blades crossed it from above. Schlash. Schlick. Schlather. She was skating over my face, and laughing, while I watched the last of my breath floating past me in bright chains of bubbles. I could hear the blades cutting and slicing, the shrill notes of her happy laughter.
Shadows and sunlight danced across the circle. Voices boomed and shrieked. Something heavy fell over head, rocked me in my watery tomb, followed by heavy, black drapes of silence which even the merciless cold could not penetrate. Death groped inside my empty lungs.
But the consuming darkness was ebbing away by degrees. Fists were beating me. I choked on the rising, exploding contents of my water-logged stomach. Life rushed into the void and my eyelids flew open. Albert was smacking me on the back, cursing at me to breathe.
"The ice!" he cried, seeing me waking. "Come on! Get up! It’s melting."
He heaved me to my feet and somehow, together, we stumbled and slid across the shivering, splintering shell to the safety of the bank.
"How did you get me out?" I gasped, staring back at the cracked and blistered veneer.
"I struck her with my skate," he said as if he didn't believe his own words. "On the back of her head. Hard. Ever so hard. She dropped her little doll... And fell right on top of it. And she just melted. Just melted into the ice. And all the ice over the hole began to melt... so I pulled you out."
All around us, we could hear the brisk dripping and creaking of the thaw. Behind us, the entrance into Winter Lane was visible once again. He wrapped me in his coat and helped me up. As we walked back along Winter Lane, the snow receded, revealing masses of bright red berries. The stark trees came alive with the song of small birds. Albert grew older and older with each step, until I had to lend him my arm to lean on.
"God forgive me..." he kept saying. "It was the lesser of two evils. Let her in and bless her... and let me in, when my time comes. God forgive me."
