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ahead. Amazingly theold steeples were still there. Some of them anyway. The town seemed sprawled out and much bigger. There were definitely way more buildings.
    “Into town?” I asked Ness. He nodded and we set off round the field and down a winding lane. As we strode along – fast – I racked my brains trying to guess where Robbie might have gone. If he had come from the yew tree, like me, would he try to find his old house? Or check out the supermarket? Or see if the school was still there? He’d probably head for the High Street. Maybe track down the cinema.
    But the old lane that wound down to the High Street wasn’t there. That was weird, streets just vanishing. How can a lane disappear? Where was I? I tried to get my bearings from the River Tweed. Usually you can see it from the top of the town. But there were new tall buildings that blocked my view. “Maybe this way,” I said to Ness, nodding vaguely down a street I didn’t recognise.
    Everything felt so strange, and next minute a man’s voice behind me shouted out, “Move to the side! I did say before, this is a shared path.” I swung round and the man trotted by on a black horse, just missing me. “Walkers keep to the left!” he snapped and clip-clopped past.
    In a jitter I slumped down at the side of the path. Ness sat down next to me. “Saul, are you ill?” he said. “You wandered into the rider’s lane. I called out. You seemed not to hear.”
    I did feel a bit dizzy. We sat for a while.
    In the distance I heard a screeching, whizzing sound and I glanced up, looking for flying cars. But the whizzing sound faded. It could have been a low-flying plane.
    “Too fast,” muttered a woman who was walking past us carrying a huge pumpkin in her arms. “Is it vital for thetrain to gain Edinburgh in under ten minutes? Is it? And the birds. What of them?”
    So it was a high-speed train I’d been hearing, not a plane. Ten minutes to Edinburgh seemed like a good idea to me, thinking how long the bus took to get there, but I just shrugged. The woman adjusted the pumpkin, shook her head again and wandered off.
    Ness stood up. Unsteadily I did too, scared I was going to get trampled down by more horses. But that man on the horse had said he had told me before about the shared path. Did that mean he had told Robbie, and was mistaking me for him? I quickened my pace.

11
    Agnes
     
    Saturday morning – early
     
    I am sooooooo excited. I stayed up reading until 2 a.m. and I would have read more if the torch battery had not run out. (I need a torch, because otherwise I’ll wake Dad and Gran. We all live in a caravan. It’s much cheaper than a house and Dad says it’s better because you’re closer to the air.) Anyway I am a bit tired now, but more excited than tired. I can hear Dad sitting on the front step of the caravan practising his tunes. Saturday is his busiest day for busking (apart from Christmas Eve). Gran is padding around getting everything ready for her outing to the supermarket. Our outing. Though I wish I could just go straight to the den and tell them all about the things I read in the book I borrowed from the library. The book I was reading until 2 a.m.!!!!! The book about… the Northern Lights . This is now my favourite subject.
    Next Friday night the Northern Lights are due to turn the skies of southern Scotland red and green and yellow and they are going to flash and spin and dance in streamers and bands. And we are going to watch!!! My gang that is.
    In my book it says the old Scottish name for the Northern Lights is the Merry Dancers. The Latin name is Aurora Borealis. Wait for this: Aurora is the Roman goddess of dawn. I love that! Plus I found out how some Native American people believe the Northern Lights is the dance of spirit animals, like deer, wolf, salmon and seal. How beautiful is that!
    I also read some stuff that I don’t think I will actually tell Saul and Will and Robbie. This is strictly for the diary!!! In Japan, couples