Wild Blood (11 page)

As Tess approached she nodded again, so deeply that it was more like a bow.

‘Cat Friend,’ she said, her images fresh and clear.

‘Tail Short Seven Toes,’ Tess replied and, wasting no time on ceremony, continued, ‘little red wellies, huh? Huh?’

Cat Friend was delighted to cooperate. ‘Yup, yup,’ she said, and flashed again the image of Colm’s red boots.

‘More feet, huh?’ said Tess, offering various feet-images but purposefully avoiding any that might prompt Cat Friend into an untruthful answer. If she was a little uncertain about her facts, she might now be tricked into giving herself away.

But Tess needn’t have worried. Cat Friend’s next image was clear beyond any shadow of doubt. There were four pairs of feet; three small and one big. Apart from the red wellies there were Orla’s boots, and Brian’s and, to Tess’s surprise, a pair of very familiar trainers.

‘Huh? Huh?’ she said, needing to see them again, needing to be sure.

Cat Friend repeated obligingly. There was no doubt about it. The trainers were Kevin’s.

Tess sat up on her haunches and turned to look at him, but the spot where he had been was empty. She craned her neck, then jumped up on to a rock for a better view. Between the trees she caught a glimpse of him, moving swiftly away, almost out of sight already. Unwilling to frighten the rats she raced after him on foot for a few yards before Switching into a pigeon and dodging among the trees in wild pursuit.

But it was already too late. There was no sign of him. It was impossible, but it was true. She had seen him only a moment ago, but now he was nowhere. She flew until she met the crag, then flew back, quartering the area in one direction and then the other. She flew until her own panic exhausted her pigeon wings, and then she came to a quivering halt on a dead branch lodged between two trees. It couldn’t have happened. He had to be there.

She dropped down to the ground and Switched back to human form, her limbs still trembling from fear and fatigue. The rats were gone, vanished back beneath the rocks and roots and leaves. Once again, Tess was alone in the woods.

‘Kevin?’ she called.

There was no answer.

‘Kevin! I know you’re there!’

In the pause that followed, a faint breeze sighed among the branches. It seemed to carry words.

‘Come on, Tess. Come with me.’

Fear grasped her like a claw and, without knowing where or from what, she began to run. As though it had somehow succeeded in its aim, the voice came again, whispering through the trees.

But this time, it was laughing.

T
ESS’S FEAR AND DISAPPOINTMENT
made her reckless. In the form of a jackdaw she tore back to her open window and, without even bothering to check that the coast was clear, she flung herself inside. Before she hit the bed she Switched, and along with her human form came all its attendant miseries. Maybe Kevin was right. Maybe a rat was the best thing to be.

And maybe he wasn’t right. Maybe he had always been the scurrilous, criminal-minded truant that she had believed him to be when she first met him, all that time ago during the freak winter. Perhaps she was wrong to have ever trusted him, or to have rescued him when, in phoenix form, he was trapped in the zoo. She wanted so badly to believe that he was innocent; that he had nothing to do with the kidnap of the children; above all that he hadn’t lied to her. But all the evidence suggested otherwise.

Emotionally she was numb, too exhausted by the ups and downs of the day to feel anything any more. But her body still had needs. Much as she dreaded an encounter with her distressed aunt, Tess knew that she would have to get something to eat. The ordinariness of it was comforting, but as she crossed to the door of the bedroom her eye fell on the book that Orla had been reading, lying open on its face, the deer-man gazing up from the cover. Whatever it was that she was mixed up in, it wasn’t over yet.

As she had expected, her aunt was in the kitchen, sitting at the table as though she hadn’t moved all day.

‘Where on earth have you been, child?’ she said.

‘Nowhere. Why?’

‘You were gone. I didn’t hear you come in. How did you come in without me hearing you?’

‘You were dozing, probably,’ said Uncle Maurice. He was standing by the back door, leaning against the wall so quietly that Tess hadn’t noticed he was there. His face was grey and deeply lined, as though he had aged ten years in the last few hours.

‘At least we have one of them,’ said Aunt Deirdre. ‘God forbid that we should lose my sister’s child as well as our own.’

She was glaring at Uncle Maurice as she spoke, and then, as though Tess’s presence had made her brave, she burst out, ‘Please, Maurice. Please let’s get the police in on this.’

Tess had been edging towards the bread-bin, but the anguish in her aunt’s voice brought her to a standstill.

‘Tell him, Tess,’ she went on. ‘Make him see sense. What’s past is past, we know nothing of that. But what is happening here is a kidnap, isn’t it? Surely you can see that? We need to call the police!’

Tess looked from her aunt to her uncle and back again. She had no idea what the reference to the past was about, but it was clear that Deirdre and Maurice understood each other perfectly.

‘I’ve told you a hundred times, Deirdre,’ said Uncle Maurice. ‘The police can do no good here. They’d only be Wasting their time, just like before.’

‘Before?’ said Tess. ‘What do you mean, “before”?’

Aunt Deirdre shook her head, and there was a horrified expression on her face. ‘You’re mad, Maurice,’ she said. ‘I never thought the day would come when I’d hear myself say it. I always denied it, always. Even when others said it I refused to listen. But I believe them now, all right.’

A glimmer of fear crossed Aunt Deirdre’s features as she spoke, but for once it was unfounded. Uncle Maurice had no anger left in him.

‘They’ll be home,’ he said. ‘Wait till you see.’ And before she could answer, he stepped out through the door and walked away across the yard.

Aunt Deirdre stared at the place where he had been.

‘What did you mean?’ Tess asked. ‘About the past.’

‘Hush, child,’ said Aunt Deirdre. ‘Don’t be worrying. Get yourself a bite to eat, there. You must be starved.’

Tess didn’t need to be asked twice, but nor was she so easily put off track.

‘Do other people really say that Uncle Maurice is mad?’ she asked.

‘That’s enough about that, now,’ said her aunt.

Tess pressed on. ‘But why? Why would they say he was mad?’

Aunt Deirdre sighed deeply and then, as though her resistance had finally given way, the words began to pour out of her.

‘I wouldn’t have told you, child, but I can’t see the harm in it now, to tell the truth. There was an awful tragedy here, you see. Awful.’

The hairs on Tess’s neck stood up, but she buttered bread calmly, willing her aunt to continue. She did.

‘Your uncle had a twin brother. Declan was his name, and it’s said that the two of them were so close that you rarely saw daylight between them. But Declan died, as I told you earlier.’

‘How?’ said Tess.

‘That’s the mystery,’ said Aunt Deirdre. ‘No one knows. He disappeared in the early hours of one morning and no trace was ever found of him.’

‘They didn’t find his body?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘Then how do they know he died?’

‘There was no other explanation,’ said Aunt Deirdre. ‘A boy can’t just vanish into thin air, now, can he?’

Tess nodded in agreement.

‘Where?’ she said. ‘Where did he disappear?’

‘No one knows, for sure. All we know is that Maurice believed that he was in those woods, and for weeks afterwards he had to be carried out of them at night, otherwise he would never have left them at all. Calling his brother’s name, he was. Convinced that Declan was in there and would come out.’

Aunt Deirdre stood up and moved around in an agitated way, putting on the kettle and emptying the teapot into the sink.

‘There were even some who said …’ she stopped and stared at Tess vacantly, and it was as though her anxiety had brought her to the brink of madness as well.

‘What did they say?’ Tess asked, but Aunt Deirdre shook her head and turned to look out of the window, in the direction of the mountain. It was clear that she had said as much as she was going to.

But it didn’t make sense. Why had Orla said that she would take Tess to meet Uncle Declan? How could she meet someone who was dead? And where did Kevin fit into the picture?

Tess found cheese in the fridge and made sandwiches, then took them up to her room, Far from making things clearer, her aunt’s words had only made the mystery deeper and more frightening. It was almost as though history was repeating itself, with Uncle Maurice’s own children vanishing in the same way that his brother had. But if that was the case, why would he be so reluctant to call in the police? And who was it that whispered to her in the woods?

She sat on the bed and ate the sandwiches without enthusiasm. Afterwards, tired and dispirited, she threw herself on to the bed. Every mystery had a simple explanation, she knew that, and she was fed up of being thwarted in everything she tried to do. Miserably, she rolled on to her side and curled up like a baby.

She thought of the land again, the fresh, green beauty of the woods and the greed of the people who wanted to destroy it in order to line their own pockets. She didn’t want to be an adult in a society like that, where no one cared about anything except money. She envisioned the world as a grey, barren place, where nothing lived except human beings and nothing grew except the food they ate. Like a plague on the earth; like locusts they destroyed everything before them, like locusts they could see no further than their own, immediate greed.

She wouldn’t join them. Better to be an animal, even a greedy one like a pig or a rat. At least they didn’t pretend to care. People were worse. People were hypocrites. A few tears ran down her nose and dripped on to the pillow.

Thoughts of Lizzie returned. If only she could see the old woman. She was sure that Lizzie would have the answer. She always did. But Lizzie lived two hundred miles away, and Tess couldn’t think of any way of getting to her in time.

Her mind ran back over their last conversation. What was it that Lizzie had said? Something about ancestors.

Ancestors?

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Tess laughed, struck by the image of old men in medieval attire roaming round in the landscape.

‘Lizzie sends her regards,’ she said to the empty room.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the window hard, and Tess flinched. There was something else that the old woman had said. What was it? Tess concentrated and, obligingly, the words came to her.

‘Does we believe what we sees, or does we see what we believe?’

Across the fields, at the foot of the mountain, something was happening that she didn’t understand. She stood up to go to the window, but her eye fell on Orla’s book.
Story or History?
What did it mean? Idly, Tess reached out and picked it up, wondering if there was anything in its pages that might give her a clue. But when she saw what was lying beneath it, she gave up all thoughts of reading.

It was Orla’s inhaler.

Tess knew now that the chips were down. She could still cop out, of course; give her aunt the inhaler and let her worry about what was happening to Orla out there in the woods with the evening drawing in. She could stay here in her room with the light on and eat sandwiches and worry about her future. But if she did any of those things it would be an admission that her fear had defeated her. And suddenly she realised that she didn’t need Lizzie to tell her what to do. The truth, plain and simple, was that if anyone had a chance of finding those children it was her. What could she possibly encounter, after all, worse than the bone-chilling krools or the terrible vampire that Martin had learnt to become?

When the sun rose the next morning her powers would be gone. The events of the day were moving too fast, robbing her of time and space to think, and it looked now as though she wasn’t going to have time to make a considered choice about what to be. But perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps it didn’t help to have time to think. Up until now all the thinking in the world hadn’t helped her to arrive at a decision.

She slipped the inhaler into her pocket and moved towards the window. For the moment, at least, none of it mattered. For the next few hours she still had her Switching powers. If she did not use them while she could, she might spend the rest of her life regretting it.

With a feeling of courage returning, of becoming herself again after a long absence, Tess flung open the window.

T
ESS HAD THOUGHT THAT
her Uncle Maurice had set out for the crag, but as she flew out of her bedroom window, in jackdaw shape again, she spotted him beneath her, letting in the cows to be milked. She was relieved. It would give her a bit more freedom in the woods.

As she flew, she thought about what she needed to do, and by the time she reached the woods she had worked out what her first step would be. She dropped down through the trees near where she had last seen Kevin, then Switched into rat form. She had some information to gather and, as soon as she had adjusted and checked the environment for safety, she gave out a call in Rat. But this time she wasn’t summoning a gathering. She was looking for Cat Friend.

It wasn’t long before she arrived; puzzled but cooperative. Tess realised that she liked this strange little rat despite, or maybe because of, her idiosyncratic behaviour. And it seemed, by the affectionate way that Cat Friend touched noses, that she felt the same way. Tess felt a wash of sadness as the thought came to her that she would soon be leaving the animal world for ever. No sooner had the thought arrived, however, than another superseded it. Why should she think like that? She hadn’t made her mind up. Perhaps she would stay a rat, be a rat forever, living and dying alongside Cat Friend and the others. Why not?

But there was other business to take care of first. Cat Friend had told her that she had seen Kevin and the children in the woods earlier that day. Now Tess wanted to know if she had seen where they had gone.