Page 70 of An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street
It’s Witt’s voice that lifts through the trees in response. ‘I’m down by the shop, Marnie! There’s no sign of either of them! I don’t think he made it back here!’
The words chill me to the bone and I have a horrible sense of foreboding. Prickling goosebumps break across my back and they have nothing to do with the rain belting down. Something is wrong. Where would Darcy have gone if not to his shop? Where would Mrs Potts go? She’d be terrified, and visibility is almost zero; she wouldn’t have known which way to turn.
Home, maybe? Cats can find their way home, can’t they?
‘Ali’s gone towards the main street! Sadie’s looking in the castle gardens!’ Witt calls. ‘We’ll find them!’
The rain is coming down so hard that it’s like a fog has descended across the woods. I can barely see a couple of feet in front of me, and I keep walking into tree trunks that loom out of the darkness, even though I walk this path between here and home twice a day.
The river is raging below me, and I find the fence that runs alongside the ravine and turn in the direction of home, hoping against hope that Mrs Potts would have found her way back there. Maybe Darcy too. Maybe he followed her and they’re both going to be sitting on my doorstep when I get back and wondering what all the fuss is about.
I can hear Witt in the distance, shouting Darcy’s name, and I do the same as I push onwards, trying to lift my soaking wet dress and clomp heavy feet through mud that’s turned intoquicksand and each puddle feels like it’s sucking my feet in and not giving them back without a fight.
‘Darcy!’ I yell for the millionth time and get no response.
The fence between me and the ravine down into the river is flimsy at best, with wobbly wooden posts that are too far apart and wire woven in a square formation between them, but I use it as a guide to follow the path home. At least if I get home and neither of them are there, I can quickly change into something more practical than a ballgown and come back out to re-join the search.
The fence is swaying in the gale-force wind as I run my hand along it, shouting for Darcy and Mrs Potts, and then finally, finally, just as I reach an empty space where a fencepost should be but isn’t, I hear a voice.
‘Down here!’
It’s quiet and coming from way, way below. ‘Darcy?’
‘We’re okay! I’ve got Mrs Potts, she’s okay!’
‘Where the hell are…? Oh, bloody hell.’ I’m squinting at the river, willing my eyes to adjust to the darkness that’s so dark, I don’t think theycanadjust any further. Part of the fence has fallen down, the broken posts and flimsy wire are draped across the steep bank, and as I squint downwards in darkness, I can see the unmistakeable shape of a body on the ground, right down by the crashing river.
I try to fight the rising panic. He’s alive, I tell myself. He’s just spoken so he must be conscious. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks.
‘Don’t come down! It’s too dange—’ he yells up, sounding as if the effort of shouting is painful, but I’ve already gathered up my gigantic skirt and clambered over the broken fencing, because if he thinks I’m leaving him alone on the edge of a raging river, he’s got another thing coming.
I try going down forwards, but it’s too steep and I feel like I’m going to overbalance and topple headfirst into the water, soI turn around and lower myself onto my front, and attempt to crawl down backwards on my hands and knees, but the wet mud and sodden leaves are so slippery that I end up sliding, trying to use my hands in the bank for purchase, and in possibly the most ungraceful display anyone has ever performed, I come to a stop on my shredded knees, caked in mud, and liberally decorated with soggy autumn leaves, and instantly crawl across wet grass and sharp stones to get to where Darcy’s lying on the steep ground, looking like one wrong move will send him sliding into the water.
And judging by the crash of the water and the angry whooshing, it’s not a river either of us wants to end up in tonight.
‘Thank God I found you!’ I want to throw my arms around him and smother him in kisses, but he’s clearly hurt or he wouldn’t be at the bottom of a ravine, mere feet from a rampaging river.
‘You shouldn’t have done that. Now we’ve both got to get up from here.’
I look back up the bank I’ve just slid down with trepidation. ‘Oh, that? That’s no big deal.’ It’s exactly what he said to me about my garden on the day I met him, and back then, it felt like a similarly unclimbable mountain, buthemade it doable.
For one moment, it’s just me and him, face to face, and then he realises I’m looking at him and jerks his head to the side and brings his left hand up to cover his face.
‘She’s okay.’ The fingers of his other hand wriggle gently on the bundle tucked under his right arm, and Mrs Potts’ pink leash is wrapped twice around his wrist. ‘I was trying to keep her dry but I don’t think even the most waterproof coat could stay dry in rain like this.’
I realise why he’s lying here in just a thin white shirt and the torn yellow waistcoat that matches my dress – because he’s taken the Beast jacket off and wrapped her in it. ‘Mrs Potts!’
I’m so happy to see her, I could cry. Or I’m already crying and I’m just so wet that I can’t tell. I part the folds of the blue jacket and reach into the carefully created air hole until I can see familiar eyes gleaming back at me.
Mrs Potts looks most put-out and bedraggled, and the jacket is moving where her furious tail is flicking back and forth. She looks like she’s plotting revenge on whoever served her the injustice of being outside in a storm, and there won’t be enough Dreamies in the world to appease her wrath, but nothing matters as long as she’s okay.
‘I don’t think she’s hurt,’ Darcy says quietly, but every word sounds like it’s hurting him. ‘Upset and wet, but she’s okay. She must have got disorientated and gone through where the fence should have been. I was going… I don’t know where, anywhere, away from there, and I heard her meowing. Her harness was caught on a branch down here.’ One finger lifts from her to point at the looming oak behind us. ‘She was fighting to get loose, but if she had, I don’t think she’d have had the purchase to keep herself out of the river. I couldn’t leave her, but my foot caught in the downed fence, and I, er… It didn’t end well. But that doesn’t matter. She’s safe. She’s fine.’
‘You’re not.’ I tuck the jacket back in to keep Mrs Potts as dry as possible, although the three of us are so saturated that it’s a tad pointless at this stage.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine, Darcy. You don’t look good.’ I duck my head, trying to see under the hand he’s holding above his face.
