In World City Read Free Page A

charred stumps of unburned log protruding and only the smell of wood smoke still lingering to remind her of the warmth of the night before. In summer, there were no fires, only a basket with dried flowers. She stared at the flowers, but remembered the ashes. “This is the Land of Ashes,” she said. She still hoped Lissel might be coming with her when they left.
    Miranda approved of the Land of Ashes. It was what she would make of the wildwood that she could see from the window of her room at the back of the house. Her father called it the forest when she asked him to cut it down and talked about the value of the old hardwoods growing there. But Miranda knew it was really the wildwood, the same wildwood Lissel had told her had once stretched all the way across Europe and had still been vast when the manor was first granted to some favoured commander back in the Middle Ages.
    Lissel came from Germany and gave Miranda stories to read set in the old times of the great forests of her native country. Miranda had read them all and wished she hadn’t. They had made her imagine the wildwood and the things that lived in the shadows beneath the trees and now the images wouldn’t leave her. Even imagining her room as a royal castle from which she could command the forests to be cut down didn’t push away those images. Once, trying to force back the shadows, she had managed to lose herself on the edge of her father’s wildwood so one of the dogs had to come to find her.
    Her father said it was a miracle the forest had been preserved the way it had and talked about the return the naturally-grown wood might now bring him. On the other side of the house, away from the wildwood, there was a small farm with some old-fashioned sheep and pigs. Miranda enjoyed going to see the sheep and pigs. As princess in her royal castle, she still tried to imagine the farm multiplied a hundredfold, so that it would obliterate all traces of the wildwood.
    The track to the next land was normally along the perimeter of the Persian carpet that covered all but a three-foot border of the polished oak floor. But the floor was now so cluttered with boxes and packing that Miranda had to take a more meandering track. This was the way it was through most of the house now. For the past two weeks, people she didn’t know had been arriving and putting things in boxes; then, when the boxes were full, they had loaded them into vans and driven away. Other strangers had come with clipboards and tape measures and yet others had come to clean and rearrange the furniture. Miranda had watched as the last traces of her mother’s imprint on the house had been obliterated. Her mother had been Japanese and had brought to the house a clarity and space Miranda had noticed and liked. A car crash had been a stupidly messy way for her to die.
    The next land was the settee, above which towered the stone-framed window. Miranda climbed up on the cushions and looked out on sunlit gardens, which were bounded by the farm she so liked. Steps led away from a broad terrace, down through carefully-cut box hedges to the lawns beyond. The head gardener was working on one of the beds. On the few occasions he had spoken to her he had been gruff and dismissive and Miranda was rather afraid of him. In contrast to tutors, Miranda’s expressions of dislike led to no turnover of gardeners. Now, standing at the window, she pretended she owned him and imagined telling him to pack his bags immediately. “This is the Land of the Princess,” she said. She could see her cat stretched out in the afternoon sun on the warm stones of the terrace, giving himself an occasional lick.
    Miranda had asked Donnell what the people were doing, putting things in boxes, measuring the house, cleaning and rearranging. Asking her father, she wasn’t sure she would get a reply she could trust, but asking his chief bodyguard would result in some kind of truth.
    â€œThey’re fitting