Triumph rushed through her. She was so high up! Now all she had to do was climb down the other side of the wall. There were tree branches and creepers on that side too. Mary swung her leg over and started to clamber down, again finding footholds for her feet. But as she let go of the top of the wall, the branch she had just put her weight on snapped.

With a shriek, Mary felt herself start to fall!

9

The Secret Garden

The creepers grabbed at Mary, slowing her descent as she crashed down through a tunnel of foliage. She landed with a bump at the top of a steep slope and then tumbled all the way down it, rolling over and over through the dead leaves and bracken. She thumped to a stop and lay there for a moment, wondering if she had broken anything. Feeling dazed, she blinked her eyes. A faint, ghostly, dark-haired woman in a long dress was leaning over her, looking worried.

“Mother!” gasped Mary in shock. She sat bolt upright, and the figure dissolved into sunlight.

Mary drew in a trembling breath. She must have bumped her head in the fall. For a moment, she had really thought her mother was there, but of course she couldn’t be.

Where am I? she wondered, looking around. Trees surrounded her, their branches meeting overhead. Through a gap in the leafy canopy, the sun shone down between the leaves, casting dappled light on the ground around her.

Mary got slowly to her feet. She had cuts and grazes, and her new coat was covered with moss and leaves, but nothing hurt too badly. She set off down a path. “Jemima!” she called, wondering where her friend was.

The trees were ancient—almost prehistoric—and their trunks seemed to have exploded in all directions. Their twisted branches were covered with a layer of soft green moss that seemed to glow in the sunlight. Leaves lay in a thick, dry carpet, and Mary’s feet crunched through them as she clambered over fallen tree trunks and skirted around the knobbly roots that had grown up through the ground. Her skin tingled. It’s like a place from a fairy tale, she thought.

She passed tall, craggy rocks dripping with water and reached a jungle of enormous green plants that towered over her head. They had stems as thick as tree trunks and leaves as big as umbrellas. They blocked her way, but she pushed through them until she emerged into a sunny clearing. The long meadow grass was as high as her waist in places, and there was a wide stream on the far side with rocky banks, its water reflecting the sunlight. Mary waded through the grass toward it. As she reached it, she heard a woof and felt a rush of delight. Jemima was on the other side of the stream, her injured leg held up protectively underneath her.

“Jemima!” Mary called.