Free Castle Of Bone by Penelope Farmer

ducks, the tree, the zoo, always something trivial, if not downright silly or at least it might have been downright silly, or she might have deliberately calculated silliness. Hugh would not have put that past her. Eventually he told her just about his experiments that morning, timing the brass buttons, though he missed out his wanting to get into the cupboard.
    Anna was silent when he finished. Hugh watched her reflection in the water with almost the same curious nostalgia he had felt for the girl in the alder grove; both girl and reflection thankfully unobtainable.
    “Would your old man be able to explain us anything?” asked Anna startling him. “The one in the shop, you said.”
    “We could try I suppose.”
    “Then go and ask him. If you want to know.”
    “Do you want to know? But what do I say. Er um did you know you sold me a magic cupboard, sir?”
    “That’s your problem not mine,” said Anna calmly. “Now listen, if someone got into the cupboard, they might be made younger, mightn’t they, just like Penn said?”
    “We thought of that yesterday.”
    “I thought of it, you mean.” But Hugh wanted to think about this even less than he had wanted to think about the old man, because of what had happened this morning.
    “Anyone old could get into the cupboard and be made young again. They could grow old again and be made young again. They needn’t ever die.”
    “I suppose they wouldn’t. But think of the practical problems.”
    “They would be immortal,” Anna said.
    “An odd sort of immortality. Gods are immortal, but they always stay the same. They don’t ever get old, get young again.”
    “I’d hate that,” Anna said. “I mean I’d like to be immortal if I could go on changing. But I think I’d have to go on changing.”
    “Some Indian religions say you change totally. After death you come back to life as an animal, insect, anything. I read that once.”
    “That’s silly. You know it’s not what I meant.”
    “I’d be a bird, I think, if I was allowed to choose.”
    “I’d be a squirrel or a monkey. I’d like to leap and swing, like those gibbons in the zoo.”
    “That’s flying too, of a sort,” Hugh said. “Would you really want to be made young, Anna, over and over again, to keep changing and never die?”
    “I change anyway. I change every day, don’t you? I feel years older than Jean. Sometimes I feel years older than you.” Anna was laughing at him suddenly.
    “You surprise me. Anyone would think you were Methuselah. You look ancient, I must say, Anna. Come off it, for heaven’s sake.”
    “Come off what?” asked another voice. It was Penn this time, holding aside the trailing branches, letting in a swathe of light and sun, a view of the world outside. Hugh did not want it, world or light or Penn. He felt a sudden total fury. But Penn stood in the bows of his boat like a figurehead, triumphant, all his ill-humour gone; perhaps it had been transferred to Jean, who looked, behind him, red-faced and annoyed.
    “He won’t let me row, Hugh. He hasn’t let me row at all.”
    Penn laughed at her. “She is entirely in my power. If she snatches at the oars she’ll just upset the boat.”
    “Hugh, he’s horrible, it isn’t, fair. Can’t I come with you, you’d let me row.”
    “Willingly,” Hugh answered lazily. It was as if a switch had flicked, his fury gone utterly, he could not remember what it felt like. “I hate rowing myself.” But he found when he came to it that he was less happy to relinquish his companion. He would rather have rowed with Anna or with Penn than Jean, who moved into his boat clumsily, not rocking it too much, but still much less neat than Anna, who smiled gently as she sat herself down in Penn’s boat.
    Their hour was almost up. Penn rowed off at full speed, widening the gap between their boats at every stroke. Anna sat in the stern with her back to Hugh and Jean. Her voice and Penn’s floated across the water, but Hugh could not