“That’s really mean of you,” I whispered. “You can’t do that! You’re supposed to be mine.”
There was no reply, and deep down I knew it wasn’t true. Cat wasn’t mine, he never had been. It was the other way around. I was his – and if he wanted nothing more to do with me, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.
Carefully, I got up. Mum didn’t stir. Was it Cat who’d made her sleep like that, even though she’d made up her mind not to? I didn’t know. The truth was, I knew very little about what Cat could or couldn’t do.
I couldn’t walk through closed doors or walls like Cat, so I had to open the door to the passage very quietly in order not to wake Mum or The Nothing, who was still fast asleep with her head under one wing.
Now. It is time.
Once I’d started moving, I couldn’t stop. The now feeling was so compelling that I didn’t wait to put on my boots. I just opened the door and stepped outside, and I didn’t even feel the cold. The wind grabbed at my T-shirt and my hair, but I wasn’t cold. I walked across the yard in bare feet, and I couldn’t feel the pebbles I trod on or the chill from the ground.
Now.
The forest was alive. The sky was teeming with birds, the bushes were rustling, the grass on the meadow rippling, and something was splashing in the brook. The moon hung round and huge above the hill behind Aunt Isa’s house, and in the very near distance something that wasn’t an owl or a lonely dog was howling. The wet grass brushed my ankles, and it felt almost like a kiss.
I went down to the brook because I knew that it was there, on the border of Aunt Isa’s wildward, her own little witch’s dominion, that they were waiting for me.
My heart was beating wildly, but not because I was afraid. I don’t think I can explain the feeling that was surging inside me – as if every twig snapping in the forest meant something, as if the wind whispered words I could almost understand, as if everything suddenly had meaning, and that I was meant to be here now, not yesterday or tomorrow, but right here and nowhere else at this one precise moment in time.
The lynx was standing on the other side of the bridge. It watched me calmly with its golden eyes, and its ears with their dark tufts of hair were standing straight up. I wasn’t surprised to see it.
But it wasn’t alone. The moment I put my foot on the bridge, there was a rush in the air above me, and a cloud of birds flocked around me so densely that I had a flashback to Chimera’s furious shark birds. But this time there were no teeth snapping and tearing at me. My hair whipped across my face in the whoosh from a thousand wings: great tits, oystercatchers, partridges, wrens, rooks, blackbirds, greylags and seagulls, a falcon, a common buzzard, three owls, a flock of sparrows, birds that belonged here and birds that definitely didn’t, seabirds and woodland birds, mountain birds and wetland birds, predators and sparrows together.
And not just birds. Below me the brook was seething with fish and aquatic animals, a family of six otters wiggled across the bank towards my feet, and a pungent and unmistakable smell of fish-breath and water weeds wafted towards me.
“Uiiiiih, uiiiiih, uiiiiih,” they squealed in excitement, and the otter at the front planted a wet front paw on my bare foot and looked up at me with a kind of otter smile, so I could see the glistening white fangs in its lower jaw and its pink tongue.
More animals came pouring in from the meadow and the forest: spotted sika deer, small roe deer, bigger fallow deer, a herd of red deer led by a huge stag with twelve-point antlers, hares and pheasants, water voles and polecats, red pine martens and two broad badgers, at least eight foxes, their tails proudly in the air, a dark-brown wild boar with coarse bristles and three sows by his side, a vast tribe of wild goats, too numerous to count…
Then the goats parted and I saw something enormous and dark cutting through the flock like an icebreaker through thin ice. Its back sloped up towards massive, hump-like shoulders, its head was so wide I don’t think that I’d have been able to reach around it with both my arms. Its horns were sharp, but it was the broad forehead and powerful neck and shoulders that instilled respect. Its fur hung in matted clumps and the eyes watching me were tiny compared to the rest of this giant beast.
A bison. It was a bison bull.
It stopped next to the lynx and pawed the ground with its front hoof a couple of times, but not as a threat. And the lynx stayed calmly next to the giant bison.
Then I could hear howling again, closer and sounding more like barking. A dozen or so loping figures with amber eyes, broad paws and panting jaws half-open appeared from the forest. The wolves had arrived.
A mouse darted up my leg, a small, grey house mouse I was almost sure I’d seen before. It climbed all the way up to my neck and perched on the neckline of my T-shirt, so I could feel its tiny, delicate claws against the skin on my collarbone.
There was a buzzing and humming and bustling of insects all around us – flies, beetles, gnats and heavy-winged moths; a winter-clumsy bumblebee flew right into my cheek with a hairy bump, but it didn’t sting me.
It was as if all the wildworld’s living creatures that could come had done so. Some must have used the wildways; others had probably wandered for hours or days on nature’s more usual paths. And all of them, every single one of them, was looking at me. Golden eyes, dark eyes, tiny eyes and huge deer eyes, yes, it seemed as if even the multifaceted insect eyes – with or without stalks – were following every single move I made, every breath I took. They were like a weight, all those gazes; the air grew thick and heavy like water, and I knew that they were waiting for something.
Breathing became harder. My heart was now pounding so loudly my ears were roaring. What did they want from me?
I could make them go away. I could scream at them. I was good at that. And then I’d be able to breathe again.
But that wasn’t why I was here and certainly not why they had come.
Suddenly it seemed to grow lighter. A trail of fire crossed the sky above us, and I felt a warmth and a laughter inside me which wasn’t my own.
The time has come, little wildwitch. Time for you to show who you are.
It was the firebird. At once real and magical, natural and supernatural. Its wings were blazing, its burning tail glowed and was reflected in all the animals’ eyes as fiery orange pinpoints. Once before, back when I’d undergone the Raven Mothers’ trial by wildfire, it had enclosed me in its flaming wings and asked me who I was. Now it had returned, as if it wanted to make sure that what I had said back then, in the heat and the fire, was still true.
The otter nipped at my trouser leg.
“Uiiiiih. Uiiiiih.” Its eager squeal cut through the otherwise deafening noise of thousands of animals snorting, breathing, scraping, raising their tails, sweeping their antlers, grunting, pushing, flapping or stamping. In a way there was silence – apart from the otter, no one roared, screeched or howled – but so many living creatures can’t be together in one place without even their silence being noisy.
Carefully I put my hand on the mouse on my shoulder. It jumped up and settled in my palm, rubbing its nose with the little front paws that almost looked like hands.
“OK,” I whispered. “Have it your way.” I looked around, trying to meet as many eyes as I could. “Yes. Whatever it is you want, then yes. I promise to try!”
They kept looking at me. I got the distinct feeling that trying wasn’t good enough.
I took a very deep breath. Closed my eyes for a moment. Sensed them with all of my wildsense, which wasn’t my eyes, ears or nose.
“Yes,” I said quietly once more. And then, at the top of my voice: “YES!”
The noisy silence returned for a moment.
Then they all set in motion, almost simultaneously. The bison bull snorted, shook his massive head, turned around and left. The flocks of birds took off and scattered. The herd of deer set off with a jolt, so all you could see of them in the darkness were their bouncing white rears, each with three black stripes that made them look like they
were all wearing licence plates with the same number – 111.
The otter family squeaked contentedly and flipped themselves back into the brook, and within minutes there were no more insects around than there usually would have been on a cold spring night in April, that is, hardly any. Above us the firebird laughed and danced its blazing trail across the sky until I couldn’t see it any more.
The mouse remained in my palm. Other than that, the lynx was the last to leave, moving off in long, soft, feline bounds that took it into the darkness under the trees in a matter of seconds.
Suddenly I could feel the sharp, icy gravel of the road under my feet. The wind cut through my T-shirt, raising a trail of goosebumps across my bare arms.
“I promise,” I said to the mouse. “But I might need a bit of help from you all.”
It twitched its whiskers, rubbed its nose again, darted up my arm and down my back until it could safely jump to the ground. When I turned around, it was gone.
Mum was standing a little further down the drive. She’d come outside without a coat and without swapping the slippers she’d borrowed from Aunt Isa for outdoor shoes. She was standing very still, her arms hanging limply down her sides, and I knew she must have seen some, if not all, of what had happened.
She’s going to tell me off, I thought. She’s going to be so mad at me, madder than she has ever been.
But she wasn’t.
She just looked at me, her face blank and devoid of expression. She didn’t even look scared any more. It was as if the worst had already happened, so there was no reason to get worked up over anything else.
“Do you even know what you’ve promised to do?” she asked.
I bit my lip. I was starting to shiver from the cold now, and my feet were completely numb.
“No,” I said at length. “But I couldn’t do anything else.”
That wasn’t true. I could have made them go away. But if I’d done that, I’d never be a proper wildwitch. That was why Cat had threatened to leave me. Half-hearted attempts were no longer enough. It was all or nothing: either I was committed with all my heart, or not at all. I could have done what my mum did. I could have turned my back on the wildworld and used all my energy to keep it at bay, so my life could carry on all nice and normal. Only I couldn’t bear that. Because if there was one thing I now knew with greater certainty than ever before, it was that yes – I did want to be a wildwitch.
CHAPTER NINE
The Puma
I have to go now.
It was Cat’s voice in my head, but I was so soundly asleep I didn’t seem to be able to wake up properly. Besides, Cat always came and went as he pleased anyway.
“Mmmmh.”
Then my drowsy brain realized that he didn’t normally warn me before he disappeared.
“Cat?”
We’ll meet again. But not until you really need me.
“What?”
Go back to sleep. But don’t forget this.
I didn’t have much of a choice. Sleep opened up underneath me like a black hole and I fell into it.
When I woke up next morning, I was stiff and sore all over, as if someone had been pummelling me with their fists all night. Cat. Where was Cat? He’d told me he would leave unless I went to meet all the animals that were waiting for me, and I’d done it. So why had he left me anyway?
At least he’d promised to come back. I tried to be content with that.
Bumble came up and sniffed me thoroughly from head to toe, clearly of the opinion that I smelt strange but interesting. I crawled off the couch and went to persuade Aunt Isa’s somewhat temperamental water heater to give me a hot bath.
When I reappeared in the kitchen with wet hair and wearing one of the bath towels as my dressing gown, Aunt Isa was making tea. She put down the kettle and looked at me.
“So tell me,” she said.
I didn’t know where to begin.
“Mum fell asleep…” I said tentatively. “And Cat came… and… and… if I hadn’t gone with him, then…”
Aunt Isa nodded.
“I had a feeling. I wasn’t sure, but even ordinary wildfriends don’t bond so closely with humans who don’t want to be wildwitches. And if you refuse your Tridecimal…”
“Then you’ll never be a proper wildwitch,” I said quietly. “I understand that. And he would have left me. He would have abandoned me.” And not promised to come back…
“Yes,” Aunt Isa said. “He probably would have. So who was it? Was it the lynx?”
“No. Or rather, yes. The lynx was there as well. But…” How could I explain? All those beaks and wings and paws and hoofs and horns and claws and eyes, especially the eyes…
“Let me see,” Aunt Isa said, cupping my face with her hands and looking into my eyes.
… partridges, wrens, rooks, blackbirds, greylags, gulls…
… sika deer, roe deer, fallow deer, red deer, hares and pheasants, water voles, red martens…
Bison. Mice. Otters. Wolves.
The firebird.
The lynx.
Aunt Isa let go of me. She rubbed her hands against her own cheeks a few times, and for once she looked at a loss.
“Not just one animal,” she whispered. “Or one pack or one flock.”
“No.”
“But how… I mean, normally an animal wants your help. It wants something. One of its chicks might have fallen out of the nest, or its home has been destroyed and you need to help it find a new one, or it’s threatened by some illness. Once you’ve worked out what it is and solved the task, then you’ve passed your Tridecimal. Then you’re essentially a fully-fledged wildwitch, even though you might still have a lot to learn.”
I nodded. That much I’d understood.
“But how come… all those animals… how can they all have the same problem? What on earth are you supposed to help them with? I’ve never heard of a case like this before.”
I stared down at my hands. I don’t really know why, maybe I was just as confused as Aunt Isa. I thought that I ought to do something, only I didn’t know what.
“Isn’t there anyone we can ask?” I said.
“The Raven Mothers. We can always try them. Normally it’s part of the test to find out what the task is about, but… this isn’t a normal Tridecimal test. If your mum will let you, we could go to Raven Kettle today.”
“I don’t think she’ll be too happy about it,” I said. “But… Aunt Isa, she’s not in charge. That was one thing I learned last night. In order to become a good wildwitch, I have to do what I have to do. Even if my mum says no.”
Aunt Isa straightened up at that moment and the floorboards behind me creaked a little. I could pretty much guess what had happened. When I turned around, Mum was standing in the doorway. She’d heard what I’d said.
Her eyes looked darker than usual.
“Come here,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Out. Anywhere just as long as no one else can hear us.”
Aunt Isa raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t say anything.
“I just need to get dressed…”
“Yes. Meet me in the stable when you’re ready.”
“But… why?”
“You asked me what happened on my Tridecimal. Perhaps I should have told you yesterday, but I was hoping… anyway, I didn’t tell you. But if you want to be in charge of your own wildwitch life now… then you need to know what you’re signing up for.”
She threw a last, dark glare at Aunt Isa – I still think she felt that deep down everything was Aunt Isa’s fault – and left. A moment later the front door slammed.
“Aunt Isa?”
Aunt Isa picked up the kettle again and carefully poured boiling water into the teapot.
“Go with her,” she said. “If she really wants to tell you what happened, then you should listen to her. You’ll be the first to know the whole truth, I believe. The rest of us have had to guess.”
Star nickered at me when I open
ed the stable door. She probably thought I was bringing her her morning hay. I fed her a few handfuls from the floor, where she had dropped it because she likes to munch with her head over the door to her loose box. Proper breakfast would have to wait a little longer.
Mum was distractedly scratching one of the goats between its horns. It wasn’t that my mum hated animals as such, she didn’t… I’d been allowed to have riding lessons for a few years, before the riding school moved out of town and it became too much of a trek. Nor had she minded Cat moving in. Then again, it’s difficult to keep out a cat when it can just slip through doors and walls using the wildways, but even so… Oscar’s dog, Woofer, was also allowed into our flat as long as Oscar was with him.
She was scared of wild animals and most scared of those that could be dangerous, of course.
She turned around and checked with her Mum-vision that I was properly dressed – boots, warm jacket and a woollen hat for my damp hair. For a few seconds we stood there staring at each other, neither knowing where to start.
“When I was twelve, I made a deal with my best friend,” Mum suddenly began without preamble. “Her name was Lia. Her mother was also a wildwitch, but Lia wasn’t sure if she wanted to be one herself. She… she was a gentle girl, a little insecure at times, but brave in her own way. We always stuck together and so no one ever really teased us. She had brown eyes like you, but very fair hair. It was so fine and delicate and alive, her hair, it never hung straight, not even indoors, and she had to keep it out of her face with a hairband. She had a fantastic singing voice, pure and strong, the kind you just can’t help listening to, and, truth be told, I think she’d rather have been a singer than a wildwitch. I was one day older than her and when our Tridecimals were coming up, we decided to help each other. First, my night, then hers. First, my task, then hers. We both felt better about doing it that way. Together we could take on anything, or so we thought.”
She came to a halt and stayed silent for a while. Star snorted, and the goat Mum had been patting put its front feet on the top plank of the loose box’s wall and nudged her with its head. It didn’t butt her, it just nudged her. It wanted her to start scratching it again.