A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin

“This yours?” I nodded. Golly was still a bit slobbery, but not so bad that Aunt Elaine would notice and want to wash him. I didn’t like it when Golly smelled of soap. “Can you show us the way?” the boy said. “Don’t want to be late.”
    “Of course,” I said. But I still didn’t know what to do with him. In the end I took him the other way, across the garden.
    He looked up at the broken walls I used to think were like the wreck of a ship. “Was that a church?” he said, in a church voice. None of us family went to church, but Aunt Elaine used to let Annie who helped in the house take me to the children’s ser vice sometimes, when she went with her little brothers. I quite liked it, especially the singing. No one sang at home. Uncle Robert said it was because none of us could do anything except croak.
    “It was a chapel. It’s real medieval. King Arthur mostly,” I said.
    He nodded. “Like Lancelot.”
    I led him across the lawn and under the apple trees, with his bike wheels making a snake-trail after us in the wet grass. I pointed out the well, the hen run, the stump on the elm where a branch had broken when Izzy was climbing it, and she fell off and broke her arm, too.
    In the workshop none of the machines was going and Uncle Gareth heard us talking and came to the door.
    “Mark Fisher?” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Mr. Pryor. Mr. Gareth Pryor. How do you do?”
    Mark Fisher pulled off his cap, then shook hands. “How do you do, sir?”
    “Put your bike in that shed—there—and I’ll show you round. See you later, Una. Thanks for showing Mark the way.”
    They disappeared into the workshop. I wasn’t allowed in there unless I was asked, though often if I hung around looking hopeful in the doorway, Uncle Gareth would declare a tea break and say I could come in, and one of the assistants would give me a slurp of tea, sugary the way I liked it, and half a biscuit. But today everyone was busy, stacking and wrapping and cleaning and oiling. I went away, but Aunt Elaine spotted me before I could get back to my dolls and I had to help with the laundry.
    I was standing on a box hanging up wet tea-towels when Mark Fisher came out of the workshop again, pulling on his cap.
    “Hello,” I said, over the tea-towels.
    “Hello,” he said, starting to wheel his bike along the path toward the front. “Look at you, all tall all of a sudden. Did Merlin magic you, then?”
    “No. I wish he would.”
    He stopped. “What would you ask him for, if you could?”
    I thought, I’d ask for a magic carpet like Aladdin so I could fly around the world and find my father’s pictures, but I said my usual answer instead: “Roast chicken and lots of chocolate cake. And a puppy.”
    “A puppy of your own?”
    “Yes. Only Aunt Elaine says he’d get under her feet.” I couldsee he was feeling sorry for me. It was a lie and I didn’t really want a puppy, so it was sort of cheating to have him being sorry for me. I said quickly, “What about you? If there was Merlin.”
    “I used to think a job. But I’ve got that now.”
    “Are you going to work for Uncle Gareth?”
    He smiled like the sun was coming out. “Yes.”
    “Oh, good. Are you starting now?”
    “Monday, eight o’clock.” He touched his cap to me. “Good-bye till then, Miss Una.”
    “Good-bye, Mark. See you on Monday.”
    He even knew my name, I thought, and he called me “Miss” as if I was a grown-up, or nearly grown-up like Izzy. I picked up Smokey Bear and Golly from where they’d been playing Pooh-sticks in the rainwater butt, and went in to see if Aunt Elaine had any bits of apple left over from making the Eve’s pudding.
    Now as I approach down the path I can hear the slow waltz of a hand-press, and then it goes quiet. Uncle Gareth appears in the workshop doorway. “Una! My dear! I saw you from the window. How are you? Good flight?”
    There’s much less of him to hug than there was five years ago, and underneath the