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mortar on its tiptoes with a finger across its lips, as if it hadn’t had a bit of fun for the past few hundred years. I stopped walking when it came in sight. Little me before big castle. It felt to me to be more domineering, more commanding as a ruin than as a castle because there it stood before me with its scars revealed, all wounded and bloody from battle. And I stood before it, feeling a shadow of who I used to be, with my scars revealed. We instantly bonded.
    We studied one another and then I walked towards it, and it didn’t blink once.
    Though I could have walked into the castle through the gaping hole in the side wall, I felt it would be more respectful to enter through the other bite life had taken out of it, which used to be the front entrance. Respectful to whom, I don’t exactly know, but I think I was trying to appeal to the softer side of the castle. I paused at the door, a respectful pause, and then went inside. There was a lot of green, a lot of rubble.It was eerily quiet within the walls, and I felt as though I was intruding on somebody’s house. The weeds, the dandelions, the nettles, all stopped what they were doing to look up. I don’t know why, but I started crying.
    Just as I’d felt sad for the bluebottle, I felt sad for the castle, but realistically, I think I felt those things because I was mostly sad for myself. I felt like I could hear the castle moan and whine as it was left to stand here, falling apart, while the trees around it continued to grow. I moved over to one of the walls, the stones rough and so large I could imagine the strength of the hands that had carried, or which had been forced to carry, them. I hunkered down in the corner, pressed my ear against the stone and closed my eyes. I don’t know what I was listening for, I don’t really know what I was doing, trying to comfort a wall, but it’s what I did anyway.
    If I’d told Zoey and Laura what I’d done they’d have carted me off to the fashion house of bumless smocks for sure, but I felt like I’d connected to the building in some way. I don’t know, maybe because I’d lost my home and I felt that I had nothing that was truly mine, coming across this building that wasn’t anybody’s, I wanted to make it mine. Or maybe it was just that when people are lonely they cling to anything not to feel that way any more. For me, that anything was the castle.
    I don’t know how long I stayed there but eventually the sun was going down behind the trees, casting a sprinkle of sparkling light on the ruin every time the trees swished from side to side. I watched it for a while and then I realised the surroundings were heading towards dusk. It must have been around ten p.m.
    My legs were stiff from being in the same position for so long as I slowly rose to my feet. From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move. A shadow. A figure. Not ananimal, yet it darted. I wasn’t sure. Not wanting whatever or whoever it was to come up behind me, I kept my back to the castle entrance and moved backwards quickly. I heard another noise—an owl or something squawked and I jumped out of my skin and got ready to run. Unable to see the ground underneath the growth, I tripped over a rock and fell backwards to the ground. I smacked my head, whimpered, and I could hear the panic in my voice as I fell into the disgusting overgrowth with God knows what living in it. My vision blurred a little, black spots appearing in place of the line of the ruined roof against the indigo sky. I climbed to my feet, used my hands to push myself up, scraped against the pebbles and rocks, which cut into my skin, and I didn’t look back as I ran as fast as my Uggs would take me. It felt like for ever until the house came into sight, as though the road and the trees were conspiring to keep me running on a treadmill.
    Finally the house came into view. Barbara’s SUV was gone from outside and I knew then that I’d been completely cut off. The drawbridge had