A countryside mystery for young readers

By Gareth M. Parkes

The valley held the cold differently here.

That was the first thing Benji noticed about the Cotswolds in winter — not that it was harsher than other places, but that the cold had weight to it, settling into the limestone hollows and lying there in the still air like something that had decided to stay. The lane ran between dry-stone walls the colour of old honey, each stone fitted to its neighbour without mortar, the whole thing built and tended and rebuilt across more centuries than anyone had kept count of. Above the walls, the hedgerows rose in dense, tangled layers — hawthorn and blackthorn and hazel and dog rose — ancient enough that some of the roots went down into ground that had been hedged since before anyone walking it now could imagine.

Benji had been on this lane for twenty minutes when he heard it.

A song.

Not the cautious songs of spring. Not the easy songs of summer. This was something entirely itself — bright and fierce and carrying, the kind of voice that doesn't ask permission to exist in the cold. It rang from somewhere in the hawthorn on the valley's sheltered side with the absolute confidence of a creature who has been singing in this particular hollow since before the frost arrived, and intends to be singing here long after it leaves.

His red collar was silver with cold mist as he stopped and listened.

The robin was on the top of the dry-stone wall.

Small. Red-chested. Extraordinary.

Not because of any single feature but because of the way he held himself — the full-chest posture of a bird claiming every frequency of the winter air for miles around, his black eyes reading the lane with the attention of someone who has memorised every stone of it.

Benji sat down on the lane and waited.

After a moment the robin stopped singing and looked at him.

"You've been on this lane before," the robin said.

"I have," Benji said. "I walk these valleys. My name is Benji Booboos."

"I know every creature that walks this lane," the robin said. "I have held this territory — from the old hawthorn at the top of the hollow to the gate-post at the bottom — for nine winters." He paused. "I am Bran."

"Nine winters is a long time," Benji said.

"It is enough to know every stone," Bran said. Which was, Benji understood, a different thing.