Wild Blood (12 page)

‘Yup, yup,’ said Cat Friend, nodding like a car toy again; full of certainty. ‘Cat Friend watching Small Big Feet. Cat Friend following.’

Tess was delighted. ‘Wise Cat Friend,’ she said. ‘Cat Friend following into the woods, huh? Out of the woods, huh? Huh?’

But the image that Cat Friend returned in answer shook Tess’s confidence in her severely. It showed the people involved as clearly as ever; Kevin leading and the other three following closely behind. But where they went was quite impossible. According to Cat Friend, they walked right through the solid face of the crag and disappeared.

It didn’t seem to surprise her at all that four humans should do such a thing. But it didn’t fit into Tess’s interpretation of reality.

‘Nananana!’ she said. ‘Small Big Feet bumping into the rock, falling over backwards. Small Big Feet walking into the crag and hurting themselves.’

Cat Friend was offended by Tess’s attitude and puffed out her coat and turned her face away. Tess tried to repair the damage, explaining about doors and how they worked, but Cat Friend was adamant. She had been there. She had seen what happened. Over and over again she repeated the image of what she had seen. The four people had walked up to the rock-face and vanished into it.

Tess didn’t know what to do. If there had been any other leads at all she might have forgotten about Cat Friend and her rambling mind. Since there weren’t, she did the only thing that presented itself to her. She asked Cat Friend to show her the place where it had happened.

The other rat came out of her sulk instantly and skipped on ahead energetically. Occasionally she hung back and waited for Tess to catch up, touching her nose delightedly before bounding on across the rocks again. As she followed, Tess found herself wondering if the whole world hadn’t gone mad around her, or whether it was she herself who was mad. It wasn’t until they came near to their destination that she realised there had to be some truth in what Cat Friend was saying. Because it was the place that, somehow, she had been led to every time she had gone into those woods. It was the place where she had seen the strange wolfhound, and where Kevin had been when she last saw him yesterday. There was no doubt about it; there had to be a secret door of some kind. Cat Friend was probably right about that. It was just her way of seeing it and explaining it that was odd.

She stood back now and watched as Tess scuttled along the base of the rock, standing on her hind legs from time to time and stretching up with her front paws, trying to find some clue to where the entrance might be. There was nothing, though, and when she had exhausted all the possibilities that her rat mind could conceive of, she realised that she needed to be human again.

There is no way to apologise in Rat, but Tess was truly sorry for what she did next. Because when Cat Friend saw Tail Short Seven Toes disappear and a rather large Small Big Foot appear out of nowhere, she got the fright of her life. In a sudden, furry flash she was gone, out of sight beneath the nearest rock. Tess hoped that she wasn’t too badly shocked, and that she would see her again.

But there were other, more urgent matters on her mind. She walked back and forth along the base of the crag and then, seeing no obvious signs of a door of any kind, prepared herself for a long, meticulous search. Yard by yard and inch by inch she examined the face of the rock, prising at every crack and fault, poking into every overhang and shadow. When she had covered the whole area and a good distance either side she went back again with a stone, knocking the rock at intervals and listening for hollow resonances. But no matter how hard she tried or how careful she was, she could find no sign of an entrance of any kind. Eventually, tired and despondent, she hurled her sounding stone far out into the trees and sank to the ground.

It was beginning to get dark. Already the moon was rising and trying to peer in among the trees. Whatever chance she had of finding her cousins seemed to be fading fast. Every fibre of Tess’s being screamed against the sheer frustration of it. First she believed that there was a door, that there had to be to explain the mysterious appearances and disappearances in the area. Then she was equally certain that there wasn’t a door, not now or ever. And as she swung wildly between these two conflicting certainties, she became aware that she was being watched. Not far away, on a moss-coated boulder that was just about level with Tess’s eyes, a brown rat was sitting.

‘Cat Friend?’ she called.

‘Yup, yup,’ said Cat Friend, scrambling down from her perch and approaching along the ground until she was close to Tess’s outstretched leg. Tess shook her head in surprise. In all the years that she had been using her powers to Switch she had never known an animal to make a connection between her human form and her animal ones. Not even Algernon, her pet white rat, had ever realised that the brown cousin that regularly visited him in the evenings was actually her. But there was no doubt now that Cat Friend understood.

‘Tail Short Seven Toes, huh? Huh?’ she asked, giving the clear image of Tess’s rat form and then an image of her Switching to human form which was so accurate it made Tess tingle all over.

‘Yup, yup,’ said Tess. ‘Cat Friend watching, huh? Cat Friend not afraid?’

The little rat shook her coat then tightened it so that she looked her sleek, proud best.

‘Cat Friend watching,’ she said. And then, in a series of images so clear that they had to be truth, she showed Tess that she was not the first Switcher she had come across. To Tess’s growing amazement, her new friend revealed that the white cat in the farmyard, the one whose friendship had given her the name, was itself a Switcher. The images followed, one upon the other; the white cat becoming a stoat, a hare, a raven. Nor were the descriptions anywhere near an end when Cat Friend, quite abruptly, sent an urgent image of rats fleeing from danger, then turned on her heel and vanished among a cluster of nearby tree-roots.

Instinctively, Tess leapt to her feet and turned to see what it was that had frightened her little friend. Not more than a few feet away, leaning against the sheer face of the crag, was Kevin.

He smiled. ‘Hi, Tess,’ he said.

‘How … But how did you get there?’ Tess replied.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I just crept up on you.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tess, realising that her frustration was rapidly turning into anger. ‘Or at least, you might have crept up on me, but you would never have been able to creep up on her.’

She pointed at the roots of the tree where Cat Friend had disappeared. Kevin laughed.

‘Good thinking,’ he said.

‘So where did you appear from?’ Tess asked. ‘And what have you done with my cousins?’

‘I haven’t done anything with your cousins,’ said Kevin. ‘It’s not my fault if they followed me, is it?’

‘Followed you where?’

‘In there, of course.’ He pointed to the bare rock. ‘Where else?’

‘Show me, then,’ said Tess. ‘I’m fed up of searching and getting nowhere. If there’s a door, where is it?’

‘I can’t show you what you’re not able to see,’ said Kevin. ‘But perhaps if you follow me I can lead you in.’

With that he Switched into a barn owl and, with a brief swish of heavy wings, he flew up through the trees.

Tess stared after the bird, ghostly pale against the night sky. Despite the evidence of her eyes, she was unable to believe what she had just seen. All the laws of her world, every last one of them, seemed to have been turned on their heads. Kevin could not Switch. He had passed fifteen and, as all Switchers must, he had lost the ability. And yet she could not doubt that she had just seen it happen.

Already the owl was out of sight above the trees. Tess found that she was rooted to the spot, and couldn’t follow. But Kevin wasn’t about to leave without her and soon returned, Switching back to human form again.

‘But you can’t, Kevin!’ said Tess. ‘It’s impossible!’

‘Come with me, Tess,’ he said. The words and the way he said them rang a bell in her mind, but before she could remember why he spoke again.

‘Come on. Let me show you what’s possible and what isn’t. Let me show you what you could be, Tess. Before it’s too late.’

And with that he was an owl again, lifting towards the skies. This time, Tess followed.

It was exhilarating to be up there, with eyes that pierced the darkness and wings as silent as the watching moon. Beneath them as they flew, the woodland creatures clung to their shadows and waited for their pale enemies to pass over. Tess followed compliantly as the owl that had been Kevin spiralled higher and higher. The lights of the house became visible, and so did the dejected figure of Uncle Maurice, crossing the fields yet again on his way to search for the children.

Higher still the two birds rose, until they were above the level of the crag and looking down on to its plateau-like summit, where the moonlight threw shadows from heaps and jumbles and circles of stone which were almost as ancient as the mountain itself. Beyond that the grey, fluid shapes of the Burren range stretched away to the edges of vision.

Tess was so entranced by the surroundings that she missed the exact moment when the other owl began to drop down out of the skies again. She followed at a distance, and he waited for her, swooping up again, then falling past her, almost drawing her into his wake. This time she kept up, reminded of another time, long ago, when she had followed Kevin in an electrifying dive into a building in Dublin. He had been a different kind of owl on that occasion and both of them had been different people. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then.

Faster and faster they fell until the thick canopy of the trees was racing up to meet them. Without hesitating, the other owl plunged straight through the leaves and, holding her breath, Tess followed. What came next happened in the blink of an eye, but there was somehow time for a thousand thoughts to flash through Tess’s mind.

They entered the woods close to the crag, and the instant that Kevin was beneath the trees he levelled up and flew at breakneck speed straight towards the rock. A shock-wave passed through Tess’s body, and at the same time she began to flap madly, trying to slow down and change direction at the same time. It seemed that Kevin was certain to be killed, but he wasn’t. If Tess hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would never have believed it.

Without slowing, without changing direction, he continued to fly straight towards the rock-face. But just when the bone-crunching collision seemed inevitable, he vanished. There was no doubt at all about what had happened. The owl that was Kevin hadn’t Switched, nor had it become invisible. It had simply flown straight through the solid face of the rock.

D
ESPITE HER BEST EFFORTS
, Tess couldn’t reduce speed fast enough. Her left wing glanced against the rock and she tumbled down the last few feet of its face like a fluttering Catherine wheel. At the bottom she picked herself up and shook her feathers, then Switched into her human frame.

Her left arm was sore and she knew by the feel of her hips and shoulders that she would have a few bruises tomorrow to show for that fall. But on what kind of body she still couldn’t imagine. Tomorrow was a blank in her mental map.

And today was a disaster. She slumped to the ground and sat with her back against the rock, ignoring the damp which was beginning to soak from the mossy ground into her jeans. She found that she was no longer afraid, but she was angry. Angry at Kevin for playing tricks on her. Angry at Lizzie for talking in riddles. Angry at herself for failing to gain entrance to the rock. Even as the thought came to her, she understood why it was that she had failed. There had been an instant, she remembered, immediately, after the other owl’s disappearance, when she could have followed it. In that instant she had known that the key to the door in the rock was not a thing that she could find or touch, nor was it a puzzle that she could work out with her mind. The only things that could get her through were faith and courage; the ability to let go and allow herself to be governed by another reality; one that she did not understand. In that brief moment she had known all that, and she had chickened out. That was why she was still there, all alone on the outside; the one who had failed. The one left behind.

Lizzie’s words returned to her again. What did she mean by believing what we see or seeing what we believe? She was certain that the words had some bearing on her situation, but she didn’t know exactly how. Tess stood up and looked at the rock, but she knew in her heart that it was already too late. She had missed the moment of truth and she couldn’t recreate it. She could hear her uncle’s arrival at the edge of the woods; the snap of a broken branch, a whispered call.

Tess no longer knew what to believe. Somehow she had entered another world, where things weren’t as they seemed, and where the rules she had come to have faith in didn’t seem to apply. She wanted to believe in it. She just didn’t know how.

But someone else did. The touch on her ankle was so soft that she thought a moth had brushed her and she leant down to scratch the itch. But it wasn’t a moth.

‘Tail Short Seven Toes sad, huh? Huh?’

Cat Friend was standing on her hind legs, clutching on to Tess’s jeans with her front paw.

Tess couldn’t help smiling despite her dejected mood. ‘Yup, yup,’ she said. ‘Tail Short Seven Toes trying to get into the rock. Left all alone and sad.’

‘Cat Friend helping,’ said the little rat. ‘Cat Friend leading Tail Short Seven Toes into the rock.’

The images were perfectly clear and Tess’s spirits soared. She knew that it could work. There was no doubt at all about Cat Friend’s belief and Tess felt sure that it could bolster her own sufficiently to cross the subtle barrier. But they would have to be quick. From among the trees came the sound of a grunt and a mild curse as Uncle Maurice lost his footing. He was almost there.

Tess Switched into rat form and, although Cat Friend jumped at the abruptness of the change, she didn’t falter. A moment later they were scurrying towards the rock. At Cat Friend’s suggestion, Tess took hold of her tail and closed her eyes. And as they began to move forward, she called on all the courage that she had ever had.