Half Wild (24 page)

I’m lying on the ground in the walled garden. The sun has dropped behind the buildings and the shade has slid over me. The tree’s leaves are gently swaying in the breeze. The sky is blue, dotted with small, thin white clouds. It’s still sunny and bright up there.

I’ve been through the will-he-come, won’t-he-come thoughts and now I’m just waiting, staring up at the tree and the leaves and the sky. The leaves are hardly moving. In fact, they aren’t moving at all . . . I stare at one branch and I’m right: none of the leaves are moving, not even a slight tremor. And the little clouds: they were moving slowly left to right but the small one that is behind the branch above me is in exactly the same position as a minute ago, as a few minutes ago.

I sit up and at that moment the gate opens.

Marcus sees me and stops. For a second, I think he’s going to leave straightaway but he comes into the garden and closes the gate.

I’m standing, though I don’t remember getting up.

He turns to me but doesn’t come forward. “I take it Gus brought you here?” he says. It’s the usual enthusiastic welcome.

“Yes. I wanted to speak to you.”

“We don’t have long. I use the magic to stop things, to give me time to scout out an area, check for traps.”

“I’m not a trap.”

“No, I don’t believe you are.” He comes to stand in front of me and I realize how similar we are: the same height, the same face and hair, and exactly the same eyes. “But still I’d prefer to make it short.”

“I know you don’t want to spend any time with me, don’t worry. But I need to tell you what’s happening with the Council of White Witches and a group of rebels.”

“And with you?”

“If you’re interested.”

“I’m always interested in you, Nathan. But our circumstances mean that short is usually a lot sweeter.” He looks up. “I can’t risk staying here any longer.” He goes to the gate and opens it.

I can’t believe that’s it. Hello and good-bye. One look at me and he’s out of here.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asks.

“What?”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“Um, yes. Course.”

He walks through the gate and I trip in my rush to follow him. Once through he locks it with a similar key to the one Gus has and starts to walk away, saying over his shoulder, “Do your best to keep up.”

a a a

* * *

I’m running after Marcus and it feels amazing to be with someone so fast. In the next street, we pass a car as it starts to move and, within a few strides, time is back to normal. We keep running. The houses end and we’re in a wood of slender young trees and ferns, running uphill and over the brow. The countryside is gently sloping down and it gets much steeper and I’m almost out of control, taking huge strides to keep my balance, and there’s no way I can stop, no way I want to stop, and the river is ahead of us and Marcus runs at it and leaps out over it and turns a somersault in the air and dives into the water.

I do my best to copy him and manage a dive. The water is cold and a shock but in a few seconds I’m used to it. My father isn’t swimming so neither am I. We’re floating but moving fast, carried along in the current. The banks are wood-lined, the city upstream in the distance, and we’re just bobbing along in the middle of the dark river, the sky pale blue ahead of us, the sun below the hills to our left.

Then Marcus swims fast but easily to the left bank and I keep close to him. I think he’s going to climb out of the river but he takes hold of my hand and puts it on his belt, saying, “Keep hold of that. Take a deep breath. Stay with me through the cut.”

I sink and swim with him toward the bank of the river. The water is slower here and so clear that I can count the stones on the bottom, which Marcus seems to be navigating by grabbing one and then another to pull himself along. When we get to a large flat stone I see him reach behind it and he slips down into an impossibly tiny crack and I’m being sucked through with him from the bright, gray, cold water of the river to empty darkness that feels even colder, and I’m spinning round but remembering to breathe out too as Nesbitt told me. I’m spinning fast and the cut is so long that I run out of air and I’m desperately looking for light at the end but there’s none and all I can do is concentrate on holding on to the leather of my father’s belt.

I’m spewed out of the cut and suck in a new breath, and another, and another.

I try to look as if the experience wasn’t that bad so I straighten up but I feel my heart pounding. I have to bend over, breathe, get air. I laugh. That was serious.

I’m on my knees in the shallows of a river. This is definitely a different one: much smaller, though powerful and fast too.

Marcus is already sitting on the bank. I get up and wobble a bit and hope he hasn’t seen. I sit next to him. “You still use cuts, even though Hunters can find them?”

“What do you think? Will they find that one?”

“I don’t know. But you’re the one who told me that Hunters have found a way of detecting cuts and Hunters are good at hunting.”

“Yes, there’s at least one Hunter who can do it. It’s her Gift. I think she has to be within a certain distance, though—what do you think? A mile? A few hundred meters? Ten? I’d imagine quite close but I don’t know. So I expect the worst and make new cuts every month.” He turns to me. “Always moving on, always staying safe.” He looks at the river. “At the moment this is a good home, a decent view and fresh water. I’ve stayed in worse places. But, if I stay here too long, they’ll be here: one day, later, sooner, who knows? I stay in one place for three months, sometimes less. Never more.”

I look at the river and the trees. The sun is setting here too.

“Still, I’m not due to leave here for a few weeks, so we should have time to talk.”

“That would be good.”

“We’ll see.”

And I wonder about telling him about the Alliance but I get the feeling that this isn’t the right time and I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve spent so little time with my father, know him so little, that I want to talk about us, about him—but I don’t get the feeling he wants to do that either.

I look around. Behind me is a wall of trees that seems to be the edge of a forest cloaking a hillside. The first tree isn’t for a few meters, though, and the bank is covered with brambles and ferns. It feels safe and clean and open. I turn, kneeling to face the forest. Even the shade and the smell of it are seductive and the river behind is surprisingly quiet.

This is close to how I dreamed my home would be but there’s no meadow, no cottage. Ahead of me the brambles are thick, fairy-story thick; they’d be impregnable without hacking through with a sword. It’s a safe boundary; no one could come at us from that direction. The brambles remind me of my cage bars but they’re somehow enticing too and I see that there’s a gap in them, a gap barely big enough for a human. I crawl toward it and discover that once I’ve started along the tunnel I can’t go back: my clothes get caught. I keep going. The entrance slopes down and I have to follow it lower and further.

Ahead the brambles open out into a wide, low den. It’s dark inside but warm and lit by the natural light that makes its way through the myriad tiny gaps. It’s like an animal den but this is definitely a human home. A low room, mostly empty. There’s the remains of a fire, just off the center. A small log store is to one side and the wood is all dry. An area around the fire is bare earth, where my father must sit, feed the fire, and cook and eat. It’s hard to imagine the most feared of Black Witches making soup or stew, eating with a metal spoon from a simple dish, but that’s what he appears to do. And I know he spends his time here only briefly human. Mostly he’s an animal. This is his life. Lonely. Alone. Human only sometimes. And I have to sit down.

He doesn’t want to talk about his life. Instead he’s showing it to me so that I can know him. And, if I know him, I will know myself. But this is not the life I had envisaged he’d have. I’m not sure what I expected, perhaps something impressive, grand, a place full of treasure and history and power, but I realize now that that isn’t him, no more than it would be me.

And I’m crying, and I’m not sure if I’m crying with sadness or joy, for him or myself, or just a connection with him or because of all of it. I recognize this is a place I might end up living in if I’m like him. But I don’t want it.

He still hasn’t come and I know he’s letting me get used to it. Or maybe he’s just taking in the sunset.

In a corner are some wool blankets, worn and riddled with holes, and a pile of sheepskins, seven of them. They’ve been rolled up to keep them dry. I pull them out and lay them by the cold ashes of the fire.

He comes into the den when the light is fading to nothing. He lights the fire in seconds, getting the flames licking up some twigs he’s brought in with him. He feeds the fire and we both watch it. I’m sitting, then lying, and I find I’m crying again and I can’t stop and I look up at him and see no tears on his cheeks. And I close my eyes and the Alliance and all those people, even Gabriel and Annalise, feel like they belong in a different world. This is my father’s world and it is another place. It’s wild.

* * *

I wake. The den is light but I can tell it’s early. I’m lying where I fell asleep; the fire is cold now and I’m alone.

I crawl out of the den. Marcus is sitting just by the exit, close to the riverbank. I sit by him. The sun is coming over the hill ahead of us.

“Hungry?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“You want to hunt with me?”

I nod.

“Ever been an eagle?”

* * *

Me and my father are sitting together. I hunted with him. He transformed and I copied him. I wasn’t sure how to choose what to become and I’m not sure I did. But the animal in me knew what to do and we did it. We copied my father the eagle and did what he did. We flew for the first time, clumsy to start with but quickly getting the hang of soaring and turning, swooping, diving. Hunting was too hard, though. My father caught a weasel and a fox. We weren’t accurate enough or fast enough to catch anything. It didn’t matter. We all ate together.

Now Marcus says, “Who is to judge if that me is better or worse than the human me?”

I know my father is talking about the other side of himself, the animal part.

“I’m still getting used to him, my animal. I sort of think of him as separate from me but we’re trying to work together.”

“It took me a while. I fought it.” He shakes his head. “I thought he was trying to take over my body. He isn’t. You’re just discovering another side of yourself. The more natural part. The old part. The part of you that belongs to the earth more than any other. He’s what you need to survive and without him it’s not worth surviving anyway. Trust him and he’ll trust you. Be as close to him as you can.”

I sit with my father and watch the river until it gets hot in the afternoon and then we hunt again. We soar higher and higher and hang there, waiting. A rabbit appears far below. My father lets the air take him higher. The animal me stays focused on the rabbit and we drop lower. We both want it.

* * *

That night, back as humans, my father and me watch the sun set. I ask him about his other Gifts, those he took from other witches by eating their hearts. “Can you use them?”

“Yes. It’s like using my own Gift. They’re mine now. But none are as strong as being an animal. Some are weak. Most I never use.”

I’m itching to ask what he does use but I daren’t. I feel shy sometimes with him.

He says, “The plants thing is useful.”

“Making plants grow or die: Sara Adams, Council member.”

“What?”

“Celia made me learn all the Gifts you took, all the people you killed.”

He’s quiet for a while, thinking about that. He says, “Well, it’s useful. At least when you live like me.”

“You grew the brambles for your den?”

He nods. “And invisibility is handy, especially when you’re hiding or tracking. As is doing the spell to stop time. Being able to make cuts is another useful skill. Few can do it.”

“Can you fly?”

He frowns. “No. Who was that supposed to be from?”

“Malcolm, a Black Witch from New York. That was always questionable. Can you make big leaps, though?”

“No bigger than you.” He’s quiet again, then says, “I can fly when I’m an eagle. I can make big leaps if I’m a leopard. Is that impressive enough for you?”

I think he knows I’m impressed enough anyway.

“Do you hear noises in your head, from mobile phones and things?”

He turns to me. “Yes. And you?”

I nod.

He goes into the den and I follow. He lights the fire and says, “I live like this most of the time now. It looks poor but it isn’t.”

I don’t say anything. I can see the pleasure of being in the wild but the loneliness would be too much for me.

He says, “It’s not what you imagined, I suppose.”

“We found Mercury’s bunker. I thought it would be more like that.”

“And did you find Mercury?”

I tell my father about Mercury and all that has happened since I last met him, about Van, Nesbitt, Annalise, and Mercury. About Celia and Gus and the Alliance. It’s dawn by the time I say bluntly, “They want you to join them.”