Once before I’d stood inside heartfire without burning up. Once before I’d survived trial by wildfire. My swollen eyelids couldn’t close, and perhaps it was better that I carried on seeing. But I was looking more inwards than outwards and I retrieved my memory of the firebird’s laughter from my wildwitch mind.
“Help me,” I whispered, still more inwards than outwards. “I’m Clara, and I’m calling you.”
A playful heat enveloped me and briefly pushed back the destructive, all-consuming flames. Even my shoulder stopped hurting.
Who are you? This new fire asked, but in a friendly tone of voice.
“I’m Clara. I’m a wildwitch. I speak the truth or keep silent. And I never take without giving.”
The firebird laughed. Its laughter was like a whirlwind of tiny flame feathers that spread through the cave, and where they landed, the hungry fire died down. The boiling masses of stone began to cool. The floor started to solidify.
Bravita froze too, but only for a second or so. Her gaze released mine and shifted instead to the firebird flying through the cave in a vortex of flame feathers and laughter. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was so gentle and so strong at the same time, wild but friendly, real but magical, an animal, a bird, yes, but so much more than that.
I was so busy watching its flight that I didn’t see what happened. All I saw was something dark and heavy hurtle through the air; striking the bird’s body, crushing its delicate ribs with a sudden, crisp little snap.
The firebird’s light flickered. It plunged to the ground. I reached out my hands to catch it, but the thing that landed light and warm in my palms was already dead. The flame feathers around us went out one by one like dying embers. And Bravita grew in size and wrenched first one foot, then the other free from the congealing rock.
She had thrown a stone at it. Not a curse or something violent and magical. A simple stone had killed my firebird, and all its gentle wildness had been snuffed out like a candle.
I struggled to understand it.
Struggled to understand how it could die so easily, but I found it even harder to understand why someone would want to kill it. Why someone would throw a rock at something so beautiful, and throw it hard, accurately and without mercy.
Bravita took a step towards me, and I knew what she wanted. She was the hungry one. She was the revenant. She needed life in order to live. She’d taken the life of the firebird, and now she was going to take mine – the confused life of a foolish thirteen-year-old girl.
And I didn’t see that there was any way I could stop her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Adiuvate!
“Stop, Bloodling…”
The words weren’t mine. Nor did they come from Alichia, who was kneeling on the floor some distance from me, wailing as she tried to cool her burns with water from the stream that ran through the cave. So who could it be?
Bravita stopped as if she were a horse that had been reined in. She turned towards the sound and saw what I saw:
A giant black cat with very yellow eyes.
“Nightclaw…” she snarled.
Cat hadn’t spoken either. His voice was silent and could be heard only in my mind. But there was someone by his side… I thought I could almost see… she was transparent, not clearly visible, and yet… a woman was there, and yet at the same time she wasn’t. And she was the one Bravita was looking at.
“Viridian…” she said, and the woman’s figure seemed to become more visible. “Where have you been hiding these last four hundred years?”
“Bloodling. Stop. You and I don’t belong here. Don’t you understand? The world has moved on without us. When something is dead, it ought to stay dead.”
It was as if Bravita hadn’t heard her.
“It’s the cat, isn’t it?” she said. “He’s carried you. You’ve lived inside him like a ghost. You’re his tenth life. No wonder he had to keep growing.”
Cat sat down languidly and started licking a front paw. He didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything that wasn’t feline. Nightclaw. That had been the name of Viridian’s wildfriend, I remembered. Did that really explain Cat? Why he was the way he was, and why he could do the things he could? Was he Nightclaw?
“It’s time to let go,” Viridian said. “For both of us. I’ll go to the grave with you, if that’s any consolation.”
“I’ve no intention of going to any grave,” Bravita said, and her black eyes smouldered. She was naked and completely smooth, as if her body consisted of solidified rock, and perhaps it did. Surely nothing else could have survived that heat. “But I’ll certainly help you get there.”
Something whispered to me deep inside, where Bravita wouldn’t be able to hear it. I wasn’t sure if it was Viridian’s voice or Cat’s. Perhaps it was both of them.
Remember the sword? Remember the sword with which you severed Chimera’s wings?
I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget that. Only there hadn’t been a sword, at least not a visible one. Only something incredibly sharp and cold and painful, which cut its way out of me and into Chimera. But Chimera’s wings had fallen, first one, then the other, and the stolen bird-lives used to create them had been set free.
That sword is you, Clara.
No. I almost shook my head, but stopped myself just in time. Right now Bravita’s attention was on Cat and Viridian’s semi-transparent figure, and not me. And I would very much like for that to continue.
I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth. I gave you knowledge, but I can’t give you power. Power requires life, and I have no more lives left. Find the sword. Find it inside yourself. And use it. Or the Bloodling will go out into the world and take whatever she wants.
The floor in the cave had taken on a red glow again, and if I narrowed my sore eyelids, I could see the lines of the wheel drawn in thin, red threads, threads of blood. North, south, east, west. Ancestral blood, enemy blood, foreigner’s blood and homestead blood. I was standing in a web of blood magic and, though I didn’t want it to be this way, it might be what I was best at, what I understood the best because it was in my blood. Cat got up and started walking towards Bravita. Viridian followed like a luminous shadow by his side.
Bravita hesitated as if she didn’t know what to do with the dead woman and the cat.
Then Cat took off in a mighty leap. He grew in the air, getting bigger and bigger, the size of a panther, a lion, bigger still. Bravita raised her hands the second before he reached her stony throat, and the next second all of her being was focused on him.
Now… the voice in my mind whispered. Take her now!
If only I could get that moment back.
If only I could have a second try.
Why can’t life be like that? Why does it just carry on without us being able to fix anything? Without us being able to make amends, without us being able to right what we did wrong?
I should have done to her what I did to Chimera – lunged at her with that inner sword, that sharp, cold power I had inside me. I should have done it at that moment.
I hesitated too long.
I didn’t believe in it.
It wasn’t until Cat screamed his cat cry and blazed up in a scarlet explosion of fire, blood and bones; it wasn’t until then that I charged. It wasn’t until then that I struck.
“Let go of what doesn’t belong to you!”
I think I was screaming it out loud; I certainly thought I did. I struck at Bravita’s rock-hard chest, once, twice… and the third time my hands went straight through her as if I really were holding a sword, a sword strong enough to cut through solid rock.
“Let go!” I screamed. “Let go, let go, let go!”
I wanted her to let go of Cat. I wanted her to let go of life.
She was no longer there.
Her body, which could never have been flesh and blood, though it had appeared it was… shattered into a thousand pieces as though it had been made not of rock, but of glass. Bloodling shards flew every
where, shattering against the walls of the cave and falling to the floor with a dull clatter… Her hungry soul reached out for me, trying to get inside me. It felt as if something was slamming into me, howling, trying to gain access, scratching, rending, tearing at me, trying to force its way into my body, my head and my heart.
“Clara!”
It was Aunt Isa’s voice. I heard it. And yet at the same time I didn’t. I fought back as hard as I could. I tried desperately to make Bravita release me, yet I could feel how she was starting to penetrate deeper and deeper, seeping into every cut and scratch, entering in wherever she found weakness and doubt. I couldn’t let her win. She mustn’t be allowed to return to life through me. I pressed my hands against my chest as if trying to rip her out of me with my bare hands, although I knew it was impossible.
Instead I felt something else. Something round, smooth and as warm as my body – Mr Malkin’s gift to me, the pretty little witchwheel.
Even grown-up wildwitches sometimes need help. And this wasn’t something I could handle on my own. The word appeared in my mouth as if it had been waiting for me to utter it: “Adiuvate!”
Come to my rescue.
Help me, before she takes something bigger and more important than my life.
I started to black out. Breathing became more and more difficult. I think I fell, but I didn’t feel myself hitting the ground. I’d called for help, but I didn’t know if anyone had heard me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zombie
“Clara, Clara, please wake up.”
I was back home in my own bed. Mum was trying to wake me up. I guess I was going to school, but… I felt strangely ill.
“Clara!!”
No, hang on. It wasn’t Mum. It was Oscar. And I wasn’t back in my bed.
My eyelids felt thick and heavy, and I knew without checking that my eyelashes were gone. They’d been burned off, along with most of my eyebrows. I ached everywhere both inside and out, so much that I almost couldn’t bear being alive. I had a headache and I felt sick. But I wasn’t hungry.
I wasn’t hungry.
It was absolutely incredible how much better I felt, despite the pain. Because if Bravita had won, then surely I would now be feeling so hungry that I’d have eaten anything living that came near me.
Wherever she was now, she wasn’t inside me.
I forced my eyes open.
Oscar was kneeling beside me. His face was deathly pale under the freckles and, for once, he didn’t look as if he thought everything was super-cool.
“You’re not dead, are you?” he asked. “Please tell me you’re not a zombie?”
“No,” I croaked. “I think I’m still me. I don’t fancy eating your brain – or anything else, in case you were wondering.”
“Phew,” he said. “In that case, please would you sit up and try looking a bit more alive?”
I sat up.
We were still in the cave. It was quiet apart from the soft whisper of the stream, and the light spilling through the cracks in the roof of the cave was no longer lightning but daylight.
Five figures were lying around me in a loose sort of circle. Aunt Isa, Mr Malkin, Mrs Pommerans, Master Millaconda and Shanaia. None of them said anything. None of them was moving.
“Aunt Isa?”
She didn’t react. Oscar sniffed.
“They don’t move,” he said. “I can’t even see them breathe. But their eyes are open. It’s super-spooky…”
I struggled to get up on my feet. He was right. They were lying very still, staring into the air as if…
As if bewitched.
Aunt Isa’s face was frozen in a fierce, determined grimace, Shanaia’s eyes were huge and anxious, Master Millaconda’s dark eyebrows were frowning so much they almost met. From Mr Malkin’s waistcoat pocket a nervous little squeak could be heard, and a nose and a pair of long whiskers quivered faintly along the edge of the pocket before disappearing back into the hiding place. Mrs Pommerans looked neither gentle nor kind right now, but decidedly angry. And not one of them moved a muscle.
I tentatively touched Aunt Isa’s shoulder. It felt like the shoulder of a doll, hard and stiff. I shook her harder.
“Aunt Isa!”
“It’s no use,” Oscar said glumly. “I’ve tried. I shouted and I’ve shaken them. They won’t wake up. Or at least I can’t wake them.”
“What happened?” I could barely get the words out.
Oscar rubbed his nose and sniffed again. He wasn’t crying any more, but I think he had been. His eyes were a little red.
“I… I really did try to hold onto you,” he said. “On the wildways…”
“I know. It wasn’t you. It was me that couldn’t hold on.”
“I wanted us to look for you, but Isa said stopping Alichia was more important. That we would have to look for you afterwards.”
I nodded. “And she was right,” I said. I stared down at poor Aunt Isa, still lying immobile and staring. Could she hear us? I had no idea. What if she was aware of everything that was going on, but unable to move?
“We followed Alichia through the entrance to the cave as quickly as we could. But then we heard loud crashes and a lot of… crackling, as if something was burning, and it got so hot that we couldn’t move forward without… without us catching fire. And when the fire – or whatever it was – went out, all we could see was you and Alichia, and Alichia was kneeling in the brook, wailing and howling because she’d been burned. And you were standing… you were standing up, looking completely out of it. You were flailing your arms and twisting and… it was really creepy. As if you were possessed or something.”
“I very nearly was,” I said. “Bravita tried to… move into me.”
“And you were screaming some weird word…”
“Adiuvate…” I whispered.
“And suddenly… suddenly they were all here. I mean, Isa and Shanaia were already here, but the other three came crashing out of nowhere, and your aunt grabbed hold of me and practically threw me on the ground next to you, and hissed: ‘Stay there!’ in that voice… you know the one where you think she’ll turn you into something nasty if you don’t do as you’re told… and then they formed a circle” – he pointed to the prostrate figures – “and started singing at the top of their voices.”
“What were they singing? Could you make out any words?”
“No. I mean, it was obviously some kind of wildsong, wasn’t it? And then you let out a scream… or rather, it was coming from you, but it didn’t sound like you. And then you collapsed in a heap and you didn’t get up. And the next moment… or no. They keeled over. At exactly the same time, as if they were somehow connected… I… I didn’t know what to do.”
I stepped into the centre of the circle. Then I put my hand on the small wheel ornament around my neck and said tentatively: “You can stop now. I… I’m me again. She’s gone.”
Nothing happened. They didn’t stir, they didn’t reply, they didn’t breathe, at least not so that we could see it. I squatted down on my haunches next to Aunt Isa and touched her shoulder again. I wondered if I should try a bit of wildsinging?
“Aunt Isa… please… please come back?”
“I’ve tried everything,” Oscar said. “I even slapped Shanaia across the face. You know, like they do in the movies when people faint or get hysterical. She didn’t move and I just ended up with sore fingers.”
“What about Cat? Have you seen him?”
Oscar shook his head. “No.”
“Or… a kind of ghost? A woman?”
Oscar’s eyes widened.
“No,” he said. “Is this place haunted?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps it was… but it isn’t now. What happened to Alichia?” Because I could see she was no longer in the grotto.
“She crawled out. Or rather – she tried. There was a rockfall. I think she was buried under it.”
“Where?”
“In the passage along the brook.”
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For the first time I realized that the floor in the grotto was much wetter than usual. And that the water level was rising.
I took a few unsteady steps in the direction of the exit. When Oscar said there’d been a rockfall, he wasn’t kidding. It looked as if most of the roof had collapsed, and the reason the water was rising was because the brook could no longer follow its normal course through the grotto and out into the sea.
If even the water couldn’t get out… then what about us?
“Oscar,” I said. “Does that mean… that we’re trapped here?”
“I’m afraid we are,” he said. “Unless you know another way out of here?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Daylight
“Can’t we just travel by those wildways thingies?” Oscar asked. “I was kind of hoping you could sort that out when you woke up.”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, but… I’m just not skilled enough. I don’t know how it’s done.”
“But you always…”
“No,” I said rather brusquely. “Not without help.” Cat… Nightclaw. Why did I feel utterly hopeless whenever I thought about him? It was as if I were sure that I’d never see him again.
I had made several feeble attempts to rouse Aunt Isa and the others with wildsong but it hadn’t had the slightest effect. Perhaps I just wasn’t good enough. Or perhaps not even the wildest wildwitch would have been able to wake them. What was it Aunt Isa had said about zombies? Poor, confused souls so affected by poison and witchcraft that they no longer know if they’re dead or alive. I didn’t think that Aunt Isa and the others had been poisoned, but they were trapped by some kind of witchcraft, and it was difficult to tell if they were dead or alive, and although I’d sung my heart out, they were no more alive than they were before.
“I’m hungry,” Oscar said. “And it’s a horrible feeling. I think starving to death must be a terrible…”