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A voice of forced friendliness tinted with desperation gabbled at him.

He left Anathema asleep. She was pretty shattered, poor thing. She'd been almost incoherent when he'd put her to bed. She'd run her life according to the Prophecies and now there were no more Prophecies. She must be feeling like a train which had reached the end of the line but still had to keep going, somehow.

The telephone rang.

"Hello?" he said.

(THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES)

At around half past ten the paper boy brought the Sunday papers to the front door of Jasmine Cottage. He had to make three trips.

Newt dashed for the kitchen and picked up the receiver on the second ring.

The series of thumps as they hit the mat woke up Newton Pulsifer.

From now on she'd be able to go through life with everything coming as a surprise, just like everyone else. What luck.

"Well," he said, "I'm pretty sure she doesn't want any cavities insulated. Or double glazing. I mean, she doesn't own the cottage, you know. She's only renting it."

"No," he said, "I'm not. And it's not Devissey, it's Device. As in Nice. And she's asleep."

"No, I'm not going to wake her up and ask her," he said. "And tell me, Miss, uh… right, Miss Morrow, why don't you lot take Sundays off, like everybody else does?"

He growled, and replaced the receiver.

"Sunday," he said. "Of course it's not Saturday. Why would it be Saturday? Saturday was yesterday. It's honestly Sunday today, really. What do you mean, you've lost a day? I haven't got it. Seems to me you've got a bit carried away with selling… Hello?"

He was assailed by a moment of sudden doubt. Today was Sunday, wasn't it? A glance at the Sunday papers reassured him. If the Sunday Times said it was Sunday, you could be sure that they'd investigated the matter. And yesterday was Saturday. Of course. Yesterday was Saturday, and he'd never forget Saturday for as long as he lived, if only he could remember what it was he wasn't meant to forget.

Seeing that he was in the kitchen, Newt decided to make breakfast.

Telephone salespeople! Something dreadful ought to happen to them.

He moved around the kitchen as quietly as possible, to avoid waking the rest of the household, and found every sound magnified. The antique fridge had a door that shut like the crack of doom. The kitchen tap dribbled like a diuretic gerbil but made a noise like Old Faithful. And he couldn't find where anything was. In the end, as every human being who has ever breakfasted on their own in someone else's kitchen has done since nearly the dawn of time, he made do with unsweetened instant black coffee.

[Except for Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (1725--1798), famed amoutist and litterateur, who revealed in volume 12 of his Memoirs that, as a matter of course, he carried around with him at all times a small valise containing "a loaf of bread, a pot of choice Seville marmalade, a knife, fork, and small spoon for stirring, 2 fresh eggs packed with care in unspun wool, a tomato or love-apple, a small frying pan, a small sauce pan, a spirit burner, a chafing dish, a tin box of salted butter of the Italian type, 2 bone china plates. Also a portion of honey comb, as a sweetener, for my breath and for my coffee. Let my readers understand me when I say to them all: A true gentleman should always be able to break his fast in the manner of a gentleman, wheresoever he may find himself"]

On the kitchen table was a roughly rectangular, leather-bound cinder. He could just make out the words 'Ni a and Ace' on the charred cover. What a difference a day made, he thought. It turns you from the ultimate reference book to a mere barbecue briquette.

[And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterwards it seemed able to do 250 miles on a gallon of petrol, ran so quietly that you practically had to put your mouth over the exhaust pipe to see if the engine was firing, and issued its voice-synthesized warnings in a series of exquisite and perfectly-phrased haikus, each one original and apt…

Restrain the body?

Now, then. How, exactly, had they got it? He recalled a man who smelled of smoke and wore sunglasses even in darkness. And there was other stuff, all running together… boys on bikes… an unpleasant buzzing… a small, grubby, staring face… It all hung around in his mind, not exactly forgotten but forever hanging on the cusp of recollection, a memory of things that hadn't happened. How could you have that?

Late frost burns the bloom

The cherry blossom

Would a fool not let the belt

… it would say. And,

One needs more petrol]

Tumbles from the highest tree.

He sat staring at the wall until a knock at the door brought him back to earth.

"Pulsifer," said Newt. "It's a hard ess."

"Yes?" he said politely. "And what can I do for you, Mr. Baddicombe?"

Solicitors 13 Demdyke Chambers,

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," he said.

Giles Baddicombe

It read:

"Mr."-- he consulted a piece of paper in one hand --"Pulzifer?"

"I mean that… well, there's my mother," said Newt. "But she's not dead, she's just in Dorking. I'm not married."

The man balanced the box awkwardly and fished out a card from an inner pocket. He handed it to Newt.

"How odd. The letter is quite, er, specific."

"Who are you?" said Newt. He was wearing only his trousers, and it was chilly on the doorstep.

"There is no Mrs. Pulsifer," he said coldly.

The man removed his bowler hat.

Robey, Robey, Redfearn and Bychance

Newt gave him a blank look.

"I'm ever so sorry," said the man. "I've only ever seen it written down. Er. Well, then. It would appear that this is for you and Mrs. Pulsifer."

There was a small dapper man in a black raincoat standing on the doorstep. He was holding a cardboard box and he gave Newt a bright smile.

PRESTON

"You could let me in," said Mr. Baddicombe.

"A present?" said Newt. He eyed the taped cardboard cautiously, and then rummaged in the kitchen drawer for a sharp knife.

"Look," said Newt, "I really haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"You're not serving a writ or anything, are you?" said Newt. The events of last night hung in his memory like a cloud, constantly changing whenever he thought he could make out a picture, but he was vaguely aware of damaging things and had been expecting retribution in some form.

He wandered past Newt and put the box down on the table.

"No," said Mr. Baddicombe, looking slightly hurt. "We have people for that sort of thing."

"To be honest," he said, "we're all very interested in this. Mr. Bychance nearly came down himself, but he doesn't travel well these days."

"I think more a bequest," said Mr. Baddicombe. "You see, we've had it for three hundred years. Sorry. Was it something I said? Hold it under the tap, I should."

"This," said Mr. Baddicombe, proffering the box and beaming like Aziraphale about to attempt a conjuring trick, "is yours. Someone wanted you to have it. They were very specific."

"What the hell is this all about?" said Newt, but a certain icy suspicion was creeping over him. He sucked at the cut.

"It's a funny story -- do you mind if I sit down?-- and of course I don't know the full details because I joined the firm only fifteen years ago, but…"

… It had been a very small legal firm when the box had been cautiously delivered; Redfearn, Bychance and both the Robeys, let alone Mr. Baddicombe, were a long way in the future. The struggling legal clerk who had accepted delivery had been surprised to find, tied to the top of the box with twine, a letter addressed to himself.

It had contained certain instructions and five interesting facts about the history of the next ten years which, if put to good use by a keen young man, would ensure enough finance to pursue a very successful legal career.

All he had to do was see that the box was carefully looked after for rather more than three hundred years, and then delivered to a certain address…

"… although of course the firm had changed hands many times over the centuries," said Mr. Baddicombe. "But the box has always been part of the chattels, as it were."

"I didn't even know they made Heinz Baby Foods in the seventeenth century," said Newt.

"And no one's opened it all these years?" said Newt.

"That was just to keep it undamaged in the car," said Mr. Baddicombe.

"Twice, I believe," said Mr. Baddicombe. "In 1757, by Mr. George Cranby, and in 1928 by Mr. Arthur Bychance, father of the present Mr. Bychance." He coughed. "Apparently Mr. Cranby found a letter --"

Mr. Baddicombe sat back hurriedly. "My word. How did you guess that?"

"Have you heard this before?" said Mr. Baddicombe suspiciously.

"-- addressed to himself," said Newt.

"I think I recognize the style," said Newt grimly. "What happened to them?"

"Not in so many words. They weren't blown up, were they?"

"Well… Mr. Cranby had a heart attack, it is believed. And Mr. Bychance went very pale and put his letter back in its envelope, I understand, and gave very strict instructions that the box wasn't to be opened again in his lifetime. He said anyone who opened the box would be sacked without references."

"I don't see why not." Newt eyed the saucepans hanging over the stove. One of them was big enough for what he had in mind.

"Here goes."

"Go on, lift it out," said Mr. Baddicombe excitedly. "I must say I'd very much like to know what's in there. We've had bets on it, in the office…"

Newt heard a faint creak.

"It was, in 1928. Anyway, their letters are in the box."

"I'll tell you what," said Newt, generously, "I'll make us some coffee, and you can open the box."

"Go on," he said. "Be a devil. I don't mind. You -- you could have power of attorney, or something."

"Me? Would that be proper?"

"There's the two opened letters… oh, and a third one… addressed to…"

Mr. Baddicombe took off his overcoat. "Well," he said, rubbing his hands together, "since you put it like that it'd be something to tell my grandchildren."

Newt picked up the saucepan and laid his hand gently on the door handle. "I hope so," he said.

New pulled the cardboard aside.

There was a small ironbound chest inside. It had no lock.

"What can you see?" he said.

"A dire threat," said Newt, sarcastically.

Newt looked at the other letters. The crackling paper of the one addressed to George Cranby said: "Remove thy thievinge Hande, Master Cranby. I minde well how yowe swindled the Widdowe Plashkin this Michelmas past, yowe skinnie owlde Snatch-pastry."

Newt took the saucepan off his head and came out from behind the door.

Newt heard the snap of a wax seal and the clink of something on the table. Then there was a gasp, the clatter of a chair, the sound of running feet in the hallway, the slam of a door, and the sound of a car engine being jerked into life and then redlined down the lane.

It read: "Here is A Florin, lawyer; nowe, runne faste, lest thee Worlde knoe the Truth about yowe and Mistrefs Spiddon the Type Writinge Machine slavey."

He picked up the letter and was not one hundred percent surprised to see that it was addressed to Mr. G. Baddicombe. He unfolded it.

Newt wondered what a snatch-pastry was. He would be prepared to bet that it didn't involve cookery.

The one that had awaited the inquisitive Mr. Bychance said: "Yowe left them, yowe cowarde. Returne this letter to the hocks, lest the Worlde knoe the true Events of June 7th, Nineteen Hundred and Sixteene."

She looked up. Their eyes met.

"Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter," she read slowly, "Concerning the Worlde that Is To Com; Ye Saga Continuef l Oh, my…"

She laid it reverentially on the table and prepared to turn the first page.

"On a Sunday?" she said, pushing him aside.

He shrugged as she put her hands around the yellowed manuscript and lifted it out.

St. James' Park was comparatively quiet. The ducks, who were experts in realpolitik as seen from the bread end, put it down to a decrease in world tension. There really had been a decrease in world tension, in fact, but a lot of people were in offices trying to find out why, trying to find where Atlantis had disappeared to with three international fact-finding delegations on it, and trying to work out what had happened to all their computers yesterday.

"What's that?" said Anathema.

Newt's hand landed gently on hers.

Newt backed against the table. "Oh, nothing. Wrong address. Nothing. Just some old box. Junk mail. You know how --"

"Think of it like this," he said quietly. "Do you want to be a descendant for the rest of your life?"

It was Sunday, the first day of the rest of the world, around eleven-thirty.

He spun around. She was leaning against the doorframe, like an attractive yawn on legs.

Under the letters was a manuscript. Newt stared at it.

"Well, I can tell the difference," said Aziraphale. "I'm sure I didn't stock books with titles like Biggles Goes To Mars and Jack Cade, Frontier Hero and 101 Things A Boy Can Do and Blood Dogs of the Skull Sea."

The park was deserted except for a member of MI9 trying to recruit someone who, to their later mutual embarrassment, would turn out to be also a member of MI9, and a tall man feeding the ducks.

"I mean, you can't just make an old Bentley," said Crowley. "You can't get the patina. But there it was, large as life. Right there in the street. You can't tell the difference."

And there were also Crowley and Aziraphale.

"Gosh, I'm sorry," said Crowley, who knew how much the angel had treasured his book collection.

They strolled side by side across the grass.

"Same here," said Aziraphale. "The shop's all there. Not so much as a soot mark."

"Don't be," said Aziraphale happily. "They're all mint first editions and I looked them up in Skindle's Price Guide. I think the phrase you use is whop-eee."

"I thought he was putting the world back just as it was," said Crowley.

"Your people been in touch?" he said.

"And I think mine are waiting to see what happens next," said Aziraphale.

"No. Yours?"

"What? You mean Heaven and Hell against humanity?"

"Sorry?" said Aziraphale. "I thought that was the big one."

Crowley shrugged. "Of course, if he did change everything, then maybe he changed himself, too. Got rid of his powers, perhaps. Decided to stay human."

Crowley nodded. "A breathing space," he said. "A chance to morally re-arm. Get the defenses up. Ready for the big one."

"Oh, I do hope so," said Aziraphale. "Anyway, I'm sure the alter native wouldn't be allowed. Er. Would it?"

"Mine too, I suppose. That's bureaucracy for you."

"No."

They stood by the pond, watching the ducks scrabble for the bread.

Crowley gave him a sideways look.

"Yes," said Aziraphale. "More or less. As best he can. But he's got a sense of humor, too."

"I'm not sure," said Crowley. "Think about it. For my money, the really big one will be all of Us against all of Them."

"I think they're pretending it didn't happen."

"As I recall," said the angel, stiffly, "there was the rebellion and --"

"Sorry" said Aziraphale.

"I don't know. You can never be certain about what's really intended. Plans within plans."

"Oh, come on. Be sensible," said Aziraphale, doubtfully.

"That's not good advice," said Crowley. "That's not good advice at all. If you sit down and think about it sensibly, you come up with some very funny ideas. Like: why make people inquisitive, and then put some forbidden fruit where they can see it with a big neon finger flashing on and off saying 'THIS IS IT!'?"

"Well," said Crowley, who'd been thinking about this until his head ached, "haven't you ever wondered about it all? You know -- your people and my people. Heaven and Hell, good and evil, all that sort of thing? I mean, why?"

"Ah, yes. And why did it happen, eh? I mean, it didn't have to, did it?" said Crowley, a manic look in his eye. "Anyone who could build a universe in six days isn't going to let a little thing like that happen. Unless they want it to, of course."

"Yeah. Right. Thanks."

INEFFABLE, said the figure feeding the ducks.

"Metaphorically, I mean. I mean, why do that if you really don't want them to eat it, eh? I mean, maybe you just want to see how it all turns out. Maybe it's all part of a great big ineffable plan. All of it. You, me, him, everything. Some great big test to see if what you've built all works properly, eh? You start thinking: it can't be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire. And don't bother to answer. If we could understand, we wouldn't be us. Because it's all -- all --"

"I don't remember any neon."

They went to the Ritz again, where a table was mysteriously vacant. And perhaps the recent exertions had had some fallout in the nature of reality because, while they were eating, for the first time ever, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

They watched the tall stranger carefully dispose of the empty bag in a litter bin, and stalk away across the grass. Then Crowley shook his head.

"Don't know," said Aziraphale. "Nothing very important, I think."

"What was I saying?" he said.

Crowley nodded gloomily. "Let me tempt you to some lunch," he hissed.

For the last decade Sunday lunch in Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell's world had followed an invariable routine. He would sit at the rickety, cigarette-burned table in his room, thumbing through an elderly copy of one of the Witchfinder Army library's [Witchfinder Corporal Carpet, librarian, Il pence per annum bonus.] books on magic and Demonology -- the Necrotelecomnicon or the Liber Fulvarum Paginarum, or his old favorite, the Malleus Malleficarum. ["A relentlefs blockbufter of a boke; heartily recommended"-- Pope Innocent VIII.]

No one heard it over the noise of the traffic, but it was there, right enough.

It was one o'clock on Sunday.

Then there would be a knock on the door, and Madame Tracy would call out, "Lunch, Mr. Shadwell," and Shadwell would mutter, "Shameless hussy," and wait sixty seconds, to allow the shameless hussy time to get back into her room; then he'd open the door, and pick up the plate of liver, which was usually carefully covered by another plate to keep it warm. And he'd take it in, and he'd eat it, taking moderate care not to spill any gravy on the pages he was reading.

For a start, he wasn't reading. He was just sitting.

And when the knock came on the door he got up immediately, and opened it. He needn't have hurried.

[To the right collector, the Witchfinder Army's library would have been worth millions. The right collector would have to have been very rich, and not have minded gravy stains, cigarette burns, marginal notations, or the late Witchfinder Lance Corporal Wotling's passion for drawing mustaches and spectacles on all woodcut illustrations of witches and demons.]

Except on that Sunday, it didn't.

That was what always happened.

"Aye, Jezebel?"

Madame Tracy's voice was bright and fast and brittle with uncertainty. "Hullo, Mister S, I was just thinking, after all we've been through in the last two days, seems silly for me to leave a plate out for you, so I've set a place for you. Come on…"

Mister S? Shadwell followed, warily.

There was no plate. There was just Madame Tracy, wearing a cameo brooch, and an unfamiliar shade of lipstick. She was also standing in the center of a perfume zone.

It was this. "Nothin' wrong with witchfinding. I'd like to be a witchfinder. It's just, weld you've got to take it in turns. Today we'll go out witchfinding, an' tomorrow we could hide, an it'd be the witches' turn to find US…"

He'd had another dream, last night. He didn't remember it properly, just one phrase, that still echoed in his head and disturbed him. The dream had vanished into a haze, like the events of the previous night.

For the second time in twenty-four hours -- for the second time in his life -- he entered Madame Tracy's rooms.

"Sit down there," she told him, pointing to an armchair. It had an antimacassar on the headrest, a plumped-up pillow on the seat, and a small footstool.

She placed a tray on his lap, and watched him eat, and removed his plate when he had finished. Then she opened a bottle of Guinness, poured it into a glass and gave it to him, then sipped her tea while he slurped his stout. When she put her cup down, it tinkled nervously in the saucer.

"I've got a tidy bit put away," she said, apropos of nothing. "And you know, I sometimes think it would be a nice thing to get a little bungalow, in the country somewhere. Move out of London. I'd call it The Laurels, or Dunroamin, or, or…"

He sat down.

"Uh. Shangri-La."

"Exactly, Mister S. Exactly. Shangri-La." She smiled at him. "Are you comfy, love?"

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness and placed it in front of him.

Shadwell realized that she was talking about him.

(Or five hundred and eighteen, thought Shadwell, remembering the massed ranks of the Witchfinder Army.)

He wasn't sure about this. He had a distinct feeling that leaving Witchfinder Private Pulsifer with the young lady in Tadfield had been a bad move, as far as the Witchfinder Army Booke of Rules and Reggulations was concerned. And this seemed even more dangerous.

"Only trouble with having a little bungalow, called -- what was your clever idea, Mister S?"

"Shangri-La, exactly, is that it's not right for one, is it? I mean, two people, they say two can live as cheaply as one."

She giggled. "I just wonder whereI could find someone to settle down with…"

Shadwell realized with dawning horror that he was comfortable. Horribly, terrifyingly comfortable. "Aye," he said, warily. He had never been so comfortable.

"Shangri-La," suggested Shadwell, and for the life of him could not think why.

He popped it again.

"Two," said Madame Tracy.

He grunted. There was a formality that had to be observed in all this.

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness, and giggled. "Oh Mister S," she said, "you'll be thinking I'm trying to get you tiddly."

Madame Tracy giggled. "Honestly, you old silly," she said, and she blushed a deep red. "How many do you think?"

(An' tomorrow we could hide, an it'd be the witches' turn to find us.)

It had been a very strange couple of days. He still wasn't certain why his father had been called to the Middle East. He was pretty sure that his father didn't know, either. It was probably something cultural. All that had happened was a lot of funny-looking guys with towels on their heads and very bad teeth had shown them around some old ruins. As ruins went, Warlock had seen better. And then one of the old guys had said to him, wasn't there anything he wanted to do? And Warlock had said he'd like to leave.

"Ah, weel. That's all reet then," said Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell (retired).

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell took a long, deep drink of Guinness, and he popped the question.

It was Sunday afternoon.

High over England a 747 droned westwards. In the first-class cabin a boy called Warlock put down his comic and stared out of the window.

Still, at his age, when you're getting too old to go crawling about in the long grass, when the chill morning dew gets into your bones…

They'd looked very unhappy about that.

And now he was going back to the States. There had been some sort of problem with tickets or flights or airport destination-boards or something. It was weird; he was pretty sure his father had meant to go back to England. Warlock liked England. It was a nice country to be an American in.

And Warlock flew on to America. He deserved something (after all, you never forget the first friends you ever had, even if you were all a few hours old at the time) and the power that was controlling the fate of all mankind at that precise time was thinking: Well, he's going to America, isn't he? Don't see how you could have anythin' better than going to America

The plane was at that point passing right above the Lower Tadfield bedroom of Greasy Johnson, who was aimlessly leafing through a photography magazine that he'd bought merely because it had a rather good picture of a tropical fish on the cover.

A few pages below Greasy's listless finger was a spread on American football, and how it was really catching on in Europe. Which was odd… because when the magazine had been printed, those pages had been about photography in desert conditions.

It was about to change his life.

They've got thirty-nine flavors of ice cream there. Maybe even more.

There were a million exciting things a boy and his dog could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. Adam could think of four or five hundred of them without even trying. Thrilling things, stirring things, planets to be conquered, lions to be tamed, lost South American worlds teeming with dinosaurs to be discovered and befriended.

At breakfast the next morning, however, it was made clear that this had not been enough. Mr. Young disliked gallivanting about of a Saturday evening on a wild-goose chase. And if, by some unimaginable fluke, Adam was not responsible for the night's disturbances -- whatever they had been, since nobody had seemed very clear on the details, only that there had been disturbances of some sort -- then he was undoubtedly guilty of something. This was Mr. Young's attitude, and it had served him well for the last eleven years.

He sat in the garden, and scratched in the dirt with a pebble, looking despondent.

His father had found Adam asleep on his return from the air base -- sleeping, to all intents and purposes, as if he had been in bed all evening. Even snoring once in a while, for verisimilitude.

Dog sat at Adam's feet. He had tried to help, chiefly by exhuming a bone he had buried four days earlier and dragging it to Adam's feet, but all Adam had done was stare at it gloomily, and eventually Dog had taken it away and inhumed it once more. He had done all he could.

"Hi," said Adam, disconsolately.

Adam sat dispiritedly in the garden. The August sun hung high in an August blue and cloudless sky, and behind the hedge a thrush sang, but it seemed to Adam that this was simply making it all much worse.

"They've got tents, and elephants and jugglers and pratic'ly wild animals and stuff and -- and everything!" said Wensleydale.

Adam turned. Three faces stared over the garden fence.

"Adam?"

"We thought maybe we'd all go down there an' watch them setting up," said Brian.

For an instant Adam's mind swam with visions of circuses. Circuses were boring, once they were set up. You could see better stuff on television any day. But the setting up… Of course they'd all go down there, and they'd help them put up the tents, and wash the elephants, and the circus people would be so impressed with Adam's natural rapport with animals such that, that night, Adam (and Dog, the World's Most Famous Performing Mongrel) would lead the elephants into the circus ring and…

"There's a circus come to Norton," said Pepper. "Wensley was down there, and he saw them. They're just setting up."

"Adam," said Pepper, a trifle uneasily, "what did happen last night?"

There was a pause.

Adam brightened. "Oh, tomorrow'll be all right," he pronounced. "They'll have forgotten about it by then. You'll see. They always do." He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellissed Elba. "You all go," he told them, with a brief, hollow laugh. "Don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. I'll see you all tomorrow."

There was another pause, while the Them stared at their fallen leader.

"Not for years an' years. Years an' years an' years. I'll be an old man by the time they let me out," said Adam.

It was no good.

The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. They left.

He shook his head sadly. "Can't go anywhere," he said. "They said so."

"How about tomorrow?" asked Wensleydale.

Adam shrugged. "Just stuff. Doesn't matter," he said. "'Salways the same. All you do is try to help, and people would think you'd murdered someone or something."

"When d'you think they'll let you out, then?" asked Pepper.

The sun continued to shine. The thrush continued to sing. Dog gave up on his master, and began to stalk a butterfly in the grass by the garden hedge. This was a serious, solid, impassable hedge, of thick and well-trimmed privet, and Adam knew it of old. Beyond it stretched open fields, and wonderful muddy ditches, and unripe fruit, and irate but slow-of-foot owners of fruit trees, and circuses, and streams to dam, and walls and trees just made for climbing…

Dog jumped up and down excitedly, and stayed where he was.

But there was no way through the hedge.

"Dog," said Adam, sternly, "get away from that hedge, because if you went through it, then I'd have to chase you to catch you, and I'd have to go out of the garden, and I'm not allowed to do that. But I'd have to… if you went an' ran away."

Adam looked around, carefully. Then, even more carefully, he looked Up, and Down. And then Inside.

Adam looked thoughtful.

And now there was a large hole in the hedge -- large enough for a dog to run through, and for a boy to squeeze through after him. And it was a hole that had always been there.

Then…

Adam winked at Dog.

Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again.

It wasn't a witch's cackle; it was the low and earthy guffaw of someone who knew a great deal more than could possibly be good for them.

He could hear laughter.

Agnes Nutter winked at him.

Dog ran through the hole in the hedge. And, shouting clearly, loudly and distinctly, "Dog, you bad dog! Stop! Come back here!" Adam squeezed through after him.

The white smoke writhed and curled above the cottage chimney.

Better make the most of it, then.

Adam could hear things that other people might miss.

For a fraction of an instant Adam saw, outlined in the smoke, a handsome, female face. A face that hadn't been seen on Earth for over three hundred years.

He stopped halfway across the field. Someone was burning something. He looked at the plume of white smoke above the chimney of Jasmine Cottage, and he paused. And he listened.

The light summer breeze dispersed the smoke; and the face and the laughter were gone.

Adam grinned, and began to run once more.

In a meadow a short distance away, across a stream, the boy caught up with the wet and muddy dog. "Bad Dog," said Adam, scratching Dog behind the ears. Dog yapped ecstatically.

Parental retribution was now a certainty, thought Adam, as he bolted, his dog by his side, his pockets stuffed with stolen fruit.

"Hey! You! Boy!" came a gruff voice from behind him. "You're that Adam Young! I can see you! I'll tell your father about you, you see if I don't!"

Adam looked up. Above him hung an old apple tree, gnarled and heavy. It might have been there since the dawn of time. Its boughs were bent with the weight of apples, small and green and unripe.

With the speed of a striking cobra the boy was up the tree. He returned to the ground seconds later with his pockets bulging, munching noisily on a tart and perfect apple.

It always was. But it wouldn't be till this evening.

And this evening was a long way off.

He couldn't see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn't. And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

He threw the apple core back in the general direction of his pursuer, and he reached into a pocket for another.

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot… no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human…

… forever.

Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield…