a little rebel in him after all.
They were walking on rising ground now, through waist-high bracken, on a meandering sheep path.
"How did you get here before him, then?" Will said.
Bran looked over his shoulder with a quick grin; he had moved ahead on the path, pushing his bike. Something seemed to have transformed him out of the figure of despair Will had seen the day before.
"Caradog Pritchard will not be too pleased about that," Bran said solemnly. "I had my clasp knife in my pocket, you see, and I happened to be passing his van when he was not looking, and I stuck it in his back tyre, and gave it a good jerk. And while I was at it I stuck it in his spare tyre too. You know the way he has the spare bolted onto the side of the van? A mistake, that is, he should keep it inside."
The tension inside Will snapped like a breaking spring, and he began to laugh. Once he had started, it was hard to stop. Bran paused, grinning, and then the grin became a chuckle and before long they were reeling with laughter, roaring, tottering, clutching at one another, in a wild fit of chortling mirth with the dog Pen leaping about them happily.
"Imagine his face," Will gasped, "when he goes tearing off in the van and poof! the tyre goes flat, and he gets out furious and changes it, and goes tearing off again, and poof--"
They collapsed again, gurgling.
Bran took off his dark glasses and wiped them. "Mind you," he said, "it is going to make everything worse in the long run, because he will know very well somebody cut the tyres on purpose, and that will just make him wilder than ever."
"Worth it," Will said. Controlled again, but cheerful, he gave Bran a sideways, rather shy glance. "Hey," he said. "It was nice of you to come, considering."
"Oh, well," Bran said. He put the glasses back on, retreating once more into inscrutability; his white hair lay in damp-darkened lines across his forehead. He seemed about to say something ele, but changed his mind. "Come on!" he said; jumped on his bicycle and began pedalling erratically off along the weaving path through the bracken.
Will began to run. "Where are we going?"
"Goodness knows!"