Emma in Winter
Penelope Farmer
 It is wintertime. Emma's older sister Charlotte leaves Aviary Hall to stay with a schoolfriend, and then to return to her second term at her London boarding school. Emma, along with her classmate Bobby Fumpkins, simultaneously begin a series of dreams of being able to fly again, as they were able to do in The Summer Birds. Bobby, being fat, is consistently teased by his classmates. Emma is also initial hostile towards Bobby, but realises that not only does Bobby appear in these dreams, but he is also having the same dreams. As the two oldest children in the school, Bobby and Emma are appointed head boy and head girl. In the dreams, they fly over their village and the South Downs, with the North Downs and the sea visible in the distance. They are observed and shadowed by an evil presence, initially appearing as a pair of eyes watching them. Strangely, the trees in their dreams consistently shrink downwards into the ground. Bobby realises that in their dreams, they are being dragged backwards in time. In successive dreams, they travel farther and farther back in time, visiting the Ice Age and seeing a mammoth, and a distant prehistoric time where they see a monstrous dinosaur. They speculate if they will eventually arrive at the beginning of the world, and if they will see the Garden of Eden. Eventually, in their final dream, Emma and Bobby are dragged back to the beginning of the world. They stand on a rocky shore facing the sea, and are confronted by the evil being, revealed as a grotesque, distorted form of their teacher, Miss Hallibutt. The being threatens to consume them by taking away their thoughts of reality. After transforming itself into replicas of Emma and Bobby themselves, its attempts are defeated by the two children being able to concentrate on reality and of their home and their school. The children are jerked out of the dream world and return to reality. As term draws to a close, the thaw comes, and the children at school react with great joy, with Emma realising that Charlotte will soon be return home after her second term at the boarding school. Bobby and Emma walk home, with the children knowing they will not return to the dream world. As Bobby runs up the laneway to his home, Emma calls out to him, "Pleasant dreams, Bob, pleasant dreams!"