Page 2 of The Light Between Worlds

“Five and a half years,” I whisper to the dank, uncaring air. “That’s how long it’s been since you sent us back. Have I not waited long enough to come home? I swear to you, Cervus, if you cut me, I bleed Woodlander’s blood. My heart beats with a Woodlander’s pulse.”

There’s no answer, of course. There never is. The rain drums steadily on, and I hurry back to the house.

Before long, it’s time to go. Mum and Dad kiss me goodbye at the door, and I climb into Jamie’s car. It always takes me by surprise that Jamie has a car. We spent so long traveling on horseback or on foot that it gives me an odd, unearthly feeling when I climb into the passenger seat and he competently shifts gears.

For the most part we drive in silence, but I don’t mind. Noneof us Hapwells have ever felt the need to fill the air with pointless chatter. We stop once, and I get my socks, and then Jamie pulls to a halt in front of the station.

“You going to be alright, Ev?” he asks while lifting my bags out of the boot. There’s uncertainty in his eyes, a pleading note in his voice. He wants me to be alright. I want him to be, too, though neither of us knows how that should look for the other.

But I know what could make a start for him.

“Of course.” I smile brightly, an ordinary girl with her ordinary brother, being dropped off for a term at school. He hugs me a little too tight, and ducks back into the car as if he can’t bear to stay, or to see me walk into the station alone.

It’s only once he’s gone that I let my smile slip and fall.

I pace the platform restlessly. I’ve never faced the journey back to school without him or Philippa at my side, but it’s past time I stood on my own, no matter the depth of the regrets I carry.

The emptiness of the bunker haunts me still. Five and a half years since we last cowered in its dark interior, listening for the low growl of approaching planes or the muffled reverberation of nearby bomb strikes. Five and a half years since something inexplicable happened in the midst of all that darkness and waiting and fear. The truth haunts my brother and sister, too, I know. Poor darling Jamie, who works so hard and never quite feels he’s doing enough. Poor lovely Philippa, off in America, running from our past.

As for me, I refuse to be pitied. I refuse to be anyone but who I’ve always been: Evelyn Hapwell, teller of truths and walker of worlds, friend of the Woodlands and enemy of tyrants, beloved of Cervus, the Guardian of the Great Wood.

The words Cervus once spoke to me are emblazoned on my bones, writ large across every inch of my skin.

A Woodlands heart always finds its way home.

Your words, Cervus, not mine. No matter how many years pass, I plan to hold you to them.

2

THIS IS HOW AN AIR RAID BEGINS: IN THE DEAD OFnight, with silence and normalcy shattered by the wail of a siren.

It’s February 1944, and London has been under fire for over a month. If there’d been anywhere else to send us for our half-term holiday now the shelling’s started up again, Mum and Dad would have kept us out of the city. This time, though, they weren’t able to find us a place.

I’ve been through drills before, and we’ve spent more time in London than most children. But we were away for the Blitz at the beginning of the war, shuffled off to distant cousins and friends of friends who were willing to house us when school was out. It’s the idea of us going to strangers that Dad and Mum don’t like, so we’ve never truly been evacuees, just schoolchildren who go somewhere other than home for holidays. When things were calmer over the last two years, we were even allowed back to London for a week.

None of the drills have prepared me for this, though—for the banshee cry of the air raid sirens that works itself up to an insistent scream. I roll out of bed and Philippa’s already on her feet across from me,white-faced but holding out a hand. I grab on to it as if it’s a lifeline, and we meet Jamie in the hall.

We’ve been taught well by our parents, and carried their instructions with us through every drill at school: Look out for your siblings. Keep together whatever happens. Wait for no one else.

Not even Mum and Dad.

So we hurry out through the back door and into the garden, where the cold wet grass nips at our feet. It’s strange, being out-of-doors so late at night. Shadows loom long and make our postage-stamp lawn and frost-covered shrubs seem eerily unfamiliar. Jamie helps Philippa and me down into the shelter and stands at the entrance, staring back to the house with hunched shoulders and one foot tapping. Philippa wraps a damp blanket around me and we sit side by side, shivering in the cold.

The siren wails on. Somewhere in the distance, bombs begin to fall.

“Do you see them?” Philippa asks anxiously. Jamie shakes his head.

“No, I—wait.” His voice cracks with relief. “There’s Dad.”

Our father looks in at the entrance, and everything’s suddenly a little less dreadful than it was before. Until he frowns and looks at Jamie. “Didn’t your mum come out?”

Before Jamie can answer, Dad sprints back across the lawn. The dull blast of explosions is growing louder, closer. I gnaw on my lower lip and Jamie joins Philippa and me. We put our arms around each other and wait, and I would give anything to be away from here—to leave the dark and danger and fear behind.

“Where are—?” Philippa asks, choking with worry. But a bomb falls so close that it drowns out her last word and shakes the walls of our small shelter.

“Anywhere but here,” I whisper. Philippa pulls me close, as if her very presence can shield me from harm. Squeezing my eyes shut, I will away the present, picturing somewhere calm, somewhere peaceful—a haven of silence and golden light. “Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here.”

And then, silence. The dark in the shelter grows, till I can make out nothing but my brother’s and sister’s pale faces.