Free Winter Wood by Steve Augarde Page B

eight-year-old perhaps, or maybe someone even younger. The lines were sketchy and hesitant, and if she hadn’t been told that this was a picture of Celandine then she would never have guessed it. Where was the long wavy hair, for a start? Hidden under that weird piece of headgear, presumably.
    The figure
did
look like a nun, though, with that big cross about her throat. And so maybe this was what had become of Celandine. She’d joined a convent.
    It didn’t seem much to go on. Midge had looked at the drawing many times now, and had read the words on the opposite page over and over, but she could find nothing there to help her. And yet sometimes, just
sometimes
, she felt as though that rough little sketch had . . .
    Had what? Had some detail in it that she’d seen before? Or something that she was missing? Theharder she looked, the more certain she felt that the image held no meaning for her. But then if she laid it aside for a while and looked at it again later, a brief flicker of recognition would sometimes flare up inside her. And instantly die away.
    Midge shook her head. She got up from the bed and went and stood before the photograph of Celandine that hung upon her wall. She knew every detail of that photograph now, every shadow and highlight on that pale little face, every button that pulled and pinched, every strand of unruly hair.
    â€˜But where are you?’ she whispered. ‘And how shall I ever find you? Can you hear me?’ Then she felt foolish, because of course there was nobody to hear her at all.
    The eyes always seemed to be looking past her, concentrating on something just over her shoulder. What was it that they had seen that day, when the photo had been taken? Midge glanced behind her, as though the answer might be here in this room. Nothing but her own modern possessions: the little blue lamp at her bedside, the new office chair, the blank grey screen of her laptop. She sighed, and wandered over to plonk herself on the edge of the bed again. The bounciness of the new mattress threw her off balance, and Midge’s hand jiggled the corner of the desk as she reached out to steady herself. This was enough to bring the laptop to life from stand-by, and after a few gentle whirrs and clicks, the screen brightened.
    Midge looked at the wildlife scene that she had chosen for her desktop image: the magpie, perchedamong the winter brambles. It was such a beautiful thing. She had always thought that a magpie’s plumage was plain black and white, but here were electric blues and emerald greens that were just as startling as the colours in a peacock’s tail.
    The picture drew her into a trance, and after a while she was gazing through it and thinking of something else entirely. How and where to begin. How and where . . .
    â€˜
Watch the birdie . . . quite, quite still
 . . .’
    Midge sat upright with a jolt. What was that? What had she heard? She frowned at the computer screen. Had the sound turned itself on?
    No. It took her a few moments to be absolutely sure, but the words had not come from the computer. They were more like a memory, a thing triggered inside her head.
Watch the birdie
. A half-familiar phrase. Something that somebody had once said, or used to say. But where could she have heard those words? A photographer . . .
    Midge dragged her attention away from the light of the screen, and turned towards the photograph of Celandine, hanging in the shadows beside the wardrobe. The eyes were looking past her, as always. She followed the direction of that distant gaze, and found herself led back to the laptop. How weird. Again she looked at Celandine, and again at the laptop. There was no doubt about it: the girl in the photograph was looking straight at the magpie onscreen. Celandine was watching the birdie.
    The room seemed cold, just for a moment, and thebrightness of the computer screen reminded Midge of looking through a