The Silver-Haired Woman

“She knew my name before I told her. That’s how I knew she was either magic… or dangerous.”

I was back near the slides, finding comfort in the ordinary—a child’s kind of meditation. I dragged the toe of my trainer through the bark chips in slow, deliberate arcs, watching the tiny wood splinters fall into patterns that meant nothing and everything at once. A spiral here, a fan there. Something I could control. Something small. Something mine.

The rough edge of bark scraped under my fingernails, still gritty from a morning of climbing, swinging, sliding. The kind of filth that meant you’d played properly. Lived the day the way it was meant to be lived. Ribbons, who had been tucked under my arm for most of the morning, bore the signs too—her once-pristine ear now streaked with a faint smear of chocolate, or maybe biscuit filling, from my earlier indulgence. I tried to clean it with my thumb, only managing to spread the stain and push more playground grime into her fur. I giggled despite myself. We looked like explorers returning from an adventure, ragged and victorious.

Just ahead, a mother was crouched low to the ground with a baby slung across her chest, the baby’s tiny face pressed against her collarbone in the perfect, peaceful slump of deep sleep. Beside her, a toddler squealed with glee as shimmering soap bubbles rose from a plastic wand. Each one caught the light in a kaleidoscope of shifting colours—amber, lilac, palest green—before vanishing into thin air with soft pops or disappearing into the high branches overhead. They drifted like little spells across the playground, enchanting the air, hypnotising the children who ran after them with sticky fingers and wide eyes.

The late morning light had turned everything golden. My purple jumper—the one with the word DREAMER stitched across the chest in sparkly silver letters—glittered when I moved, turning my torso into a galaxy whenever sunlight found me between the shadows.

Somewhere nearby, a father called out for someone named Lily. A dog barked joyfully from the other side of the duck pond. I could smell sunscreen, ice cream, freshly mown grass. I felt weightless, as if the world had remembered how to be kind again, if only for this one beautiful day.

And then—Rose.

The sound cut through everything. Not loud, not harsh. Just… clear. Like the single note of a music box when the lid first opens. It made the hairs rise on my arms.

Rose.

I turned slowly, my foot shifting in the bark as I pivoted toward the sound.

There, in the shadow beneath the twisty slide, where light and dark met in dappled patterns, crouched a woman I didn’t recognise.

She wasn’t hiding exactly—but she wasn’t not hiding either. Her body was angled away from the open playground, tucked into the cool dimness beneath the platform. She looked like she belonged there and didn’t, all at once.

Her hair caught my eye first—long and silver, perfectly straight, falling past her shoulders like liquid light. It shimmered faintly even in the shade, the kind of hair that looked like it would slip through your fingers like silk. There was something so calm about the way it hung, unmoving in the still air, framing a face that was neither old nor young, just... certain.

And her clothes—plain, but not dull. A soft grey top over darker trousers, the fabric loose but well-made, as if chosen for quiet movement rather than attention. She didn’t look like someone who wanted to be noticed—but she also didn’t look like someone who minded being seen. She looked like someone who was exactly where she meant to be.

She was smiling, though not in a silly or overly friendly way. It was a knowing smile, like she’d been waiting for me. Like I was exactly who she’d expected to find in this exact moment.

She called my name again—“Rose”—and there was something in the way she said it that made my skin prickle, not with fear, but with a strange, humming curiosity. Like hearing the opening line of a story you somehow already knew you wanted to follow. Like music that made you lean in so you wouldn’t miss a note.

“My name is Beatrix,” she said, slowly rising from her crouch. She moved with quiet care, staying in the mottled shade beneath the play structure, never fully stepping into the bright openness of the playground. The shadows cloaked her in soft greys, like she was part of the scenery and yet separate from it—unnoticed by the parents chatting near the benches or the children chasing bubbles past the duck pond.

“I’m a friend of your father’s,” she said.

The words hit me like a spark—bright and hot and sudden. I felt it in my chest, in my stomach, in my knees. The world around me didn’t exactly change, but it paused somehow, as if all the background sounds faded for just a second so I could hear her more clearly.

“You know Daddy?” I breathed, the question barely more than a whisper. My feet shifted on the bark chips without me meaning to, pulling me one small step closer.

She nodded. Her eyes were kind and steady, and her whole face changed with the smile that followed—one of those rare smiles that looks like it starts in the eyes and then spreads slowly, as though it's remembering how to be real. It reminded me of Mum before. Before the half-smiles and locked doors and whispered phone calls. Before the shadows.

“I do know him,” she said softly. “And he asked me to find you, because… well, because he wants me to show you something very special.”

“He does?” My voice cracked with the effort of containing my hope. A balloon of excitement expanded inside me, lifting me up from the inside, light and fizzy and impossible to ignore. Dad was always full of surprises—once he’d brought home a paper flower that bloomed when you dropped it in water; once he’d built a whole fairy light cave in the living room when I was sick. If this woman really was connected to him, then maybe this was another one of his surprises.

“Absolutely,” Beatrix said, her voice like honey stirred into warm milk—gentle, careful, soothing. “But you’ll need to come a little closer so I can show you properly. It’s the kind of surprise that only works when you can see all the details.”

I felt myself start to lean forward, my foot hovering above the ground as if the decision to move wasn’t entirely mine. But then a voice echoed in my head—Mum’s voice, clear and firm and deeply rooted: Never go with someone you don’t know. No matter what they say. Even if they seem nice. Even if they say they know us.

I pulled my foot back down.

“Mummy says I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” I said. The words came out stiff and formal, like a line I was reciting in a school assembly. They felt clunky in my mouth, like I wasn’t sure if they belonged to me or to someone else entirely.

Beatrix didn’t flinch. She didn’t look hurt or annoyed. Her expression stayed exactly the same—open, patient, understanding, like she was waiting for a wind to change direction and knew it eventually would.

“But I’m not a stranger, Rose,” she said, using my name again. “I’m Beatrix. Your father told me all about you. He said you were brave. That you’re clever and thoughtful and kind. That you love purple. And stories. And…”

She paused, her eyes flicking to my arm.

“…that you carry a rabbit named Ribbons everywhere you go.”

My arms tightened around Ribbons automatically, pressing her against my chest. The soft fur of her stained ear brushed my chin. I glanced down at her, then back at Beatrix. She hadn’t moved. But she knew. She knew about Ribbons.

That wasn’t something you’d guess. That wasn’t something just anyone would know.

A slow ache bloomed in my chest—part hope, part fear. If she knew about Ribbons, maybe she really did know Dad. Maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe this was the moment he’d been planning for, from wherever he was, the surprise that would make everything better.

But then again—maybe not.

I took three steps closer, the bark chips crunching beneath my shoes in a quiet rhythm that somehow matched the thrum of my heartbeat. Each step felt like crossing an invisible line—one between knowing and not knowing, between safety and the thrilling edge of adventure. The sound beneath my feet was soft but distinct, a small music of motion, like the rustle of butterfly wings in Grandma Dawn’s garden just before they took flight.

Beatrix didn’t move. She simply waited, her face calm, her posture open and entirely unthreatening. The filtered light drifting down through the slats of the wooden structure made her long silver hair shimmer faintly, catching hints of pale gold and moonlight-white. It wasn’t wild after all, I realised—it was neat and brushed and fell in a straight sheet past her shoulders. But there was still something storybook about it. Something old and important. Something that reminded me of the women in my picture books who knew secrets about herbs and stars and hidden doorways.

“I like your hair,” I blurted, the words tumbling out before I could even think about whether grown-ups liked to be complimented by children. But it was true. Her hair did look magical. Not in the glittery, cartoon way. In the quiet, powerful way. The kind of hair that might stay untouched by time. The kind of hair you’d expect to see in the woods behind a castle, on someone who knew where the wolves went when they disappeared.

“You do?” she said, and her smile deepened with delight. She shook her head gently, and the strands moved like silk threads catching the breeze. The gesture was playful, unexpected, and I giggled, unable to help it—the kind of giggle that came straight from the centre of me, light and fizzy and suddenly very six years old again.

“Would you like to touch it?” she asked, her voice still soft but somehow clearer now, cutting through the background noise of children yelling and swings creaking. She extended her hand—not to touch me, not to pull me, just… offering. An invitation.

“It’s even softer than it looks.”

My mouth formed a small “o” of surprise, and I nodded eagerly. All the tension from earlier, all the strange feelings in my stomach, faded under the weight of that simple, lovely offer.

“Can I really?” I whispered, stepping forward so that I stood just inside her reach.

“Of course you can,” she said, as if I’d asked something sacred. She held her hand still, palm-up, and waited—no urgency, no pressure. Just patience, as if she understood that sometimes, the smallest acts require the greatest trust.

I placed my hand in hers.

Her skin was warm. Much warmer than I expected. Not sweaty or clammy, just alive—the kind of warmth that made me think of sunlit rocks by the river, or the metal clasp of my lunchbox after it had sat in the sun too long. The kind of warmth that surprised you, even though it made sense.

Her fingers curled gently around mine—not too tightly, just enough to acknowledge the connection. I felt the pads of her fingers pressing into my palm, grounding me in this exact moment. There was something oddly comforting about it. Reassuring.

“Rose!”

Mum’s voice cut through the golden haze of the moment like a knife, sharp and raw and full of a kind of panic I’d never heard from her before. It was the kind of sound that made everything stop—birds, breeze, heartbeat. I flinched as if the word itself had struck me.

I tried to yank my hand away, instinct kicking in before thought could catch up. But Beatrix’s grip, which had moments ago felt like a gentle clasp of friendship, transformed in an instant. Her fingers tightened with shocking force—unyielding, inhuman. Like cold iron wrapped in velvet.

“Let go!” I cried, my voice high and cracking, but it was lost to the world, swallowed by something far stranger than the fear building in my chest.

Everything changed.

Time stretched and then shattered into fragments. The playground around me—the bright slide, the bark underfoot, the sound of children laughing and a dog barking somewhere near the duck pond—fractured, like the background of a dream beginning to peel away.

Beatrix didn’t look at me. She didn’t shout or smile or explain. Her face was disturbingly serene, like someone completing a task that had already been decided long ago. A face without apology.

And then the colours appeared.

Not colours like paint or crayons, but colours that had no names. They spun in the air beside us, opening outwards and inwards at once—an impossible, roiling tunnel of movement and light. Like a whirlpool made of rainbow fireworks. Like all the gemstones in the world shattered and swirling in a giant glass jar.

It was beautiful.

It was awful.

“Mummy!” I screamed, the word tearing up through my throat like it had claws, my voice higher and louder than I’d ever heard it, a sound full of terror and disbelief and longing. I twisted my body, struggling to turn back toward the ordinary world behind me, but the grip on my arm didn’t budge, and my feet no longer felt the bark chips beneath them.

The portal—because there was no other word—swallowed the ground. Swallowed the air. Swallowed me.

I tried to resist, I truly did. I kicked and clawed and pulled, but it was like being caught in a tide stronger than gravity. It dragged at the edges of my body, then the centre, then the thoughts inside my head, until I wasn’t entirely sure where I stopped and the colours began.

The light wrapped around me, not warm, not cold—just other. It shimmered like Mum’s crystal earrings, but there was no comfort in it. It was dazzling and dizzying and wrong. Beautiful the way fire is beautiful when it’s racing toward your house.

And then came the sound. Not music, not a roar—more like every sound, stretched out and reversed and turned inside out, echoing in a space that didn’t have air. Through it all, I could just make out Mum’s voice, distant and disintegrating:

“Rose!”

It reached me like it had travelled a thousand years.

I turned my head, or thought I did—there was no sense of up or down anymore—and saw her one last time. She was running. Mack, too. Faces twisted in panic, legs tangled in speed, arms reaching. But it was too late.

The last scrap of Earth fell away behind me.

The last thing I truly felt was Ribbons pressed against my chest—her worn fur damp with sweat from my clenched fists. I held her like a lifeline. Like she could anchor me to the world I had just lost.

And as I fell—or flew, or disappeared—into the churning, endless elsewhere, I tried to remember Mum’s voice calling my name. I whispered it inside my own head, over and over like a spell, because it might be the last true thing I would ever have again.