The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

he patted Quassi between his ears. In response, Quassi thrust his head into Tim’s plate-sized hand.
    Meli suppressed the grin tugging at her lips. Had he really meant to say good nude? But whatever he had meant, Quassi didn’t seem to care. He just seemed so blissfully happy every time a German sounding word was uttered in his hearing. And there had been quite a few lately. It seemed that the entire village had been struck by German mania since hearing about Quassi, who was becoming quite a local celebrity. Meli was sure that every German phrase book from Penzance to Exeter must have been snatched from the shelves of all the bookshops in the last week or two, as everyone in the village had begun sprouting German in a variety of different sounding accents, and sometimes with some comical results; like the immortal words uttered by Mrs. Harringer, who messed up her pronunciation of ‘setzen’ and instead of inviting Quassi to sit, it sounded very much like she invited Quassi to have intercourse! As they said, a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing. But Meli had never seen Quassi look so happy. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that the slight curl to his lips was a smile; and at times, his tail whirled with such manic abandonment, that he was in serious danger of being lifted bodily from the ground and carried away.
    “I didn’t know that you could speak German,” Meli felt she should acknowledge his attempt.
    Tim threw back his head to stare at her. “I don’t, the boys have been teaching me a word or two.” That probably accounted for his mistake. Little pests were probably deliberately teaching him wrong words.
    “I hear Elsa had a son who died, and is buried here?” Her sudden change of subject caused something to happen to Tim’s expression. It was very subtle, no more than a flutter of gauze across the sun that barely caused a shadow, but for Tim that was quite dramatic. “Gordon was just telling me.” Name dropper, she chastised herself, dimpling up at him, hoping that if Tim knew the vicar had been speaking to her on the matter, he’d know that it would be quite in order for him to as well.
    Twisting slightly, so his shoulder was to the sun that was slicing between the crenulated parapet of the church tower, he leaned his lanky frame heavily on the garden fork he’d been holding, forcing the prongs to slice into the flesh of the earth while he pondered her question for a moment. “Yes, just over yonder,” he eventually replied, using his neck as a pointer, jerking it over to his right. “Do you want me to show you?”
    Meli nodded, trying not to show the eagerness that was bubbling inside her. If he didn’t take her soon she was in danger of effervescing until frothy bubbles spurted from every orifice in her head. Of course, she could have found it easily herself, but if Tim accompanied her it increased her chance of getting more information.
    “Would you mind?” he asked, leaning the monster sized fork towards her as he delved into a deep pocket, and having rummaged around for a moment, produced a hankie, which he used to wipe beads of perspiration from his forehead. Meli obligingly took the handle. When Tim moved away with his giant strides, Meli was left grappling to retrieve it from the ground, where it was firmly embedded like Excalibur in the rock; and she was no King Arthur. Thrusting her foot against the side of a solid looking tomb chest, Meli used it as a purchase to brace herself so she could rock the uncooperative prongs free. Hurrying after Tim, with Quassi tugging her forwards, and the fork dragging at her heels, it wasn’t until she’d struggled twelve paces with it that she realised what he had done. Suckered again.
    The small, oblong headstone, half buried in soil and weeds, was like a pea at the foot of a mountain, in this case a magnificent ancient elm, in an area Meli guessed would be cold and shadowed all year round. It was conspicuous by its aura of neglect and isolation, that reached out to her and plucked painfully at her heartstrings. Beneath this foreboding island wilderness was the body of a small child, a child who had suffered in life and then been taken so cruelly, and was now apparently forgotten. Resting the fork against the trunk, Meli crouched down and tore aside some of the overgrown and clinging tendrils. “This is a disgrace,” she muttered to herself. The engraved words were few, and only just legible, faded by