Read The Ocean at the End of the Lane for Free Online Page A

way.’
    We walked together in the direction she indicated. Across a meadow and into a clump of trees. ‘There,’ I said, fascinated. The corpse of a very small animal – a vole, by the look of it – lay on a clump of green moss. It had no head, and bright blood stained its fur and beaded on the moss. It was very red.
    ‘Now, from here on,’ said Lettie, ‘hold on to my arm. Don’t let go.’
    I put out my right hand and took her left arm, just below the elbow. She moved the hazel wand. ‘This way,’ she said.
    ‘What are we looking for now?’
    ‘We’re getting closer,’ she said. ‘The next thing we’re looking for is a storm.’
    We pushed our way into a clump of trees, and through the clump of trees into a wood, and squeezed our way through trees too close together, their foliage a thick canopy above our heads. We found a clearing in the wood, and walked along the clearing, in a world made green.
    From our left came a mumble of distant thunder.
    ‘Storm,’ sang Lettie. She let her body swing again, and I turned with her, holding her arm. I felt, or imagined I felt, a throbbing going through me, holding her arm, as if I were touching mighty engines.
    She set off in a new direction. We crossed a tiny stream together. Then she stopped, suddenly, and stumbled, but did not fall.
    ‘Are we there?’ I asked.
    ‘Not there,’ she said. ‘No. It knows we’re coming. It feels us. And it does not want us to come to it.’
    The hazel wand was whipping around now like a magnet being pushed at a repelling pole. Lettie grinned.
    A gust of wind threw leaves and dirt up into our faces. In the distance I could hear something rumble, like a train. It was getting harder to see, and the sky that I could make out above the canopy of leaves was dark, as if huge storm clouds had moved above our heads, or as if it had gone from morning directly to twilight.
    Lettie shouted, ‘Get down!’ and she crouched on the moss, pulling me down with her. She lay prone, and I lay beside her, feeling a little silly. The ground was damp.
    ‘How long will we …?’
    ‘Shush!’ She sounded almost angry. I said nothing.
    Something came through the woods, above our heads. I glanced up, saw something brown and furry, but flat, like a huge rug, flapping and curling at the edges, and at the front of the rug, a mouth, filled with dozens of tiny sharp teeth, facing down.
    It flapped and floated above us, and then it was gone.
    ‘What was that?’ I asked, my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I did not know if I would be able to stand again.
    ‘Manta wolf,’ said Lettie. ‘We’ve already gone a bit further out than I thought.’ She got to her feet and stared the way the furry thing had gone. She raised the tip of the hazel wand, and turned around slowly.
    ‘I’m not getting anything.’ She tossed her head, to get the hair out of her eyes, without letting go of the forks of the hazel wand. ‘Either it’s hiding or we’re too close.’ She bit her lip. Then she said, ‘The shilling. The one from your throat. Bring it out.’
    I took it from my pocket with my left hand, offered it to her.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t touch it, not right now. Put it down on the fork of the stick.’
    I didn’t ask why. I just put the silver shilling down at the intersection of the Y. Lettie stretched her arms out, and turned very slowly, with the end of the stick pointing straight out. I moved with her, but felt nothing. No throbbing engines. We were over halfway around when she stopped and said, ‘Look!’
    I looked in the direction she was facing, but I saw nothing but trees, and shadows in the wood.
    ‘No, look. There.’ She indicated with her head.
    The tip of the hazel wand had begun smoking, softly. She turned a little to the left, a little to the right, a little further to the right again, and the tip of the wand began to glow a bright orange.
    ‘That’s something I’ve not seen before,’ said Lettie. ‘I’m using the coin