Brightwood by Tania Unsworth Page A

not a jungle!” Daisy cried. “It’s just the meadow and trees and stuff—”
    â€œWhat is he doing here?” Frank interrupted.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t know much, do you?”
    Frank swung her leather bag to the front of her body, reached inside, and pulled out a pair of ancient binoculars.
    â€œWhat else have you got in that bag?” Daisy asked.
    â€œI’ve got everything in here,” Frank said with satisfaction.
    â€œEverything? For what?”
    â€œFor survival.”

DAY THREE

TEN

    The first thing Daisy thought when she woke up the next morning was how much she would have liked to see inside Frank’s bag. She hadn’t gotten the chance, because the minute she took her eyes off her, the girl had vanished. Perhaps Frank was bored with talking to Daisy—or she had heard Sir Clarence calling.
    Or perhaps she had been nothing but a dream.
    Daisy got out of bed and went to the window to look for the rowboat. The sky was overcast and a low mist hung over the lake. But she could see that the boat was moored on the far side, which meant the man must still be at the boathouse.
    Daisy hurried downstairs for breakfast, suddenly ravenous. She had eaten hardly anything the day before. Little Charles’s voice was a thin pipe as she went by.
    â€œMore space!”
    â€œI can’t. I have to find out what the man is up to.”
    â€œSet the dogs on him,” Little Charles advised. “My father set the dogs on a poacher once. They tore him to pieces!”
    â€œThat’s terrible,” Daisy said.
    â€œIt was all right,” Little Charles said. “He was only a commoner, you know.”
    â€œYou’re not being very helpful,” Daisy told him.
    Tar wasn’t very helpful either. He scurried up onto the kitchen counter as soon as Daisy had cut herself a thick slice of bread.
    â€œSmells good,” he remarked, his nose twitching, ignoring her attempts to bat him away. “There are five kinds of smell in the world. First comes
rich
and then comes
ripe.
Perfectly good smells, but
rank
is better. After
rank
comes
rancid.
I’m very partial to
rancid
. . . ”
    â€œI can’t be thinking about smells now,” Daisy protested. “I have to eat and then I have to go out and . . . confront that man. I’m scared, Tar. I’m really scared.”
    Tar made a dive for the crust of bread on Daisy’s plate. “Last stage is
rotten,
” he announced with his mouth full. “Nothing better than a good rotten smell. Brings tears to my eyes.”
    â€œDo you want to come with me?”
    But Tar was gone. He was only a friend when there was food to be had. It wasn’t his fault. It was just the way rats were.
    She unbolted the kitchen door, slipped outside, and made her way to the front of the house to have a look at the man’s car. But there was nothing to be learned from it. It was perfectly ordinary looking, apart from a long scrape down the left-­hand side.
    The mist was still thick over the lake. Daisy could barely see the surface of the water, and the Wilderness beyond it was just a green haze. She waited at the base of the Hunter’s statue.
    â€œAre you frightened?” she asked him.
    â€œMine heart is all courage,” the Hunter muttered in a terrified voice.
    â€œDon’t worry,” she told him, feeling a little braver by comparison.
    There was a movement out on the lake. The mist had formed a clump that seemed to writhe and swirl. Then the boat emerged with the man at the oars. He was far too big for the vessel and he handled it clumsily, with scooping, uneven movements that sent the boat lurching along. Despite this, he made surprisingly quick progress across the lake, and in a few moments, he was drawing close to the little jetty, barely twenty feet from where Daisy stood. He lunged forward, looping the boat’s rope around the post at the end of the