Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

6

And pleasant is the fairy land

For those that in it dwell,

But at the end of seven years

They pay a tax to hell.

TAM LIN

For a long time Polly waited in real terror for Mr. Leroy to carry out his threats. But nothing seemed to happen. Ivy and David came back, and Polly went home. Mr. Lynn did not send her a Christmas present, but that was the only unusual thing.

School started, with its usual feeling of this term being the dead end of the year. After a fortnight of it, when nothing still had happened, Polly decided that Mr. Leroy was either bluffing or trying to play on her nerves. She gave up worrying. If something happened, well, it did. If not, how silly she would be worrying about nothing.

So, as a way of defying Mr. Leroy, Polly began compiling a book called Tales of Nowhere. First, she made a list of all the things she and Mr. Lynn had made up about Tan Coul and Hero. Then she drew a map of Nowhere. She did a tracing of a real map of the Cotswolds and gave the places different names, except for Stow-on-the-Water. This seemed right for the way Nowhere was supposed to mix with real life. It rather pleased her to write dragon over the farm where Mary Fields lived. Then, rather thoughtfully, and a little frightened, she put Hunsdon House in too, right in the middle. That seemed right also. The next stage was to paint illustrations for the book she was going to write. Then she settled down to write it. This part of the plan went very slowly.

Nina meanwhile had given up acting and the guitar for boys. She and Polly were out of step again. Nina had come back to school with a figure. It seemed to have grown overnight—or, at least, over Christmas. All the plumpness which had hitherto been all over Nina had somehow settled into new and more appropriate places, and then dwindled, to make a most attractive shape. Nina looked good, and knew it. She spent perhaps half her time with other girls who were in the same happy state, comparing bosoms, talking of diets, and discussing clothes. The rest of the time Nina pursued boys. The boys in her own year were considered quite uninteresting. Nina and her friends mostly went after boys in the Third and Fourth Years, but enough of the hunt spilled over into the Second Year for the boys there to start diving under desks whenever Nina appeared, shouting, "Help! Here comes Nympho Nina!"

"It's a shame she's started so early," Fiona Perks remarked to Polly. "What will she have left to do when she's an old woman of fifteen?"

Polly liked that remark. It was the kind of thing Granny said. "Nina has to be where the action is," she explained. "She always did." And she looked upon Fiona with a great deal more friendship after that. She and Fiona were rather thrown together that term anyway.

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