My mum took a deep breath.
“This is harder than I thought,” she said in a low voice.
Aunt Isa had said that Mum had never told anyone the whole story.
“I saw your lynx come back,” she then said. “A big cat also came to me on my Tridecimal. She came walking out from the wildways fog, a big, beautiful golden puma with eyes the colour of amber. I knew I was supposed to follow her and help her, and so that’s what I did, together with Lia, just as we’d agreed. We followed the puma along the wildways to a distant mountain region, I don’t know where exactly in the world. But it was desolate, rugged and hot, and the rocks were as golden as the puma, and in the sky above us there were two huge, bearded vultures circling in the updraught where the rocks made the wind rise. The mountain path was narrow and stony; you had to watch where you put your feet. The puma waited for us even though she must have thought we were terribly slow.
“We soon worked out why she needed our help. A rockfall had blocked the entrance to the puma’s cave. I could see that her mammary glands were swollen and full of milk, and we could hear her cubs crying from inside the cave. Unless we could move some, if not all, of the rocks that were blocking the entrance, she wouldn’t be able to get to them and they would die of hunger and thirst.
“To be honest it wasn’t the most difficult challenge in the world – it needed stamina and elbow grease rather than any wildwitch skills, and that was probably just as well because even then I was nothing like Isa. But we grafted and toiled, Lia and I, digging, pushing and dragging the rocks away, even though the sun had come up and burned off the morning mists. It roasted our backs and we started feeling dizzy and thirsty because neither of us had thought to bring water or food. But we got there in the end. We managed to push aside one of the big boulders and roll it down the slope, and the cubs came tumbling out, charging at their mother. She lay down on her side and let them suckle, and by then we were so thirsty that we almost envied them.
“‘Come on,’ I said to Lia. ‘Let’s head home before one of us falls over with sunstroke. Can you find the wildways here?’
“‘No,’ Lia said, glancing nervously at the puma mother. ‘I think we have to walk back to the place where we stepped out of the wildways fog.’
“But as we made our way down the mountain path, Lia tripped and fell. I don’t know if her ankle was broken or sprained, but she couldn’t put any weight on it at all. I tried carrying her, but I couldn’t. I was too tired and too thirsty, I was faint from the heat and lack of water, and the path was narrow and dangerous.
“‘It’s no use,’ Lia said. ‘We’ll both fall. You need to go get help, Milla. I’ll wait here.’”
Mum stared into the morning darkness in the stable as if she were in a totally different place, somewhere hot, dry and desolate where the stones were bare and hard.
“I left her,” she said. “I had no choice. Lia was better than me at finding her way through the wildways fog, but I went as fast as I could.”
She heaved a sigh, uneven and almost rattling.
“I wasn’t fast enough. I should never have left her. I should have dragged her with me, no matter how hard it was for both of us. But I didn’t. And when I came back with water and food and bandages and Lia’s mum… when I came back at first we couldn’t find the right place. The right path. We called out and we searched everywhere, but there was no reply. We didn’t find the place until the evening. And by then Lia was gone.”
Oh no. I didn’t want to hear any more. Because I’d already seen it, in the glimpse of the nightmare I’d shared with my mum. The blood, the torn flesh, the sharp, white bones sticking out through the redness.
“The puma…” my mum gulped and had to start over. “The puma we’d helped… whose cubs we’d saved… do you know how it thanked us? By killing her. It ate her. There was nothing but a few bits of bone and dried blood left. She was completely helpless and wouldn’t have been able to run, she couldn’t even walk. It’s easy to think that animals are cute, Clara, when you’re here with Aunt Isa helping great tits and cute baby badgers. But the wildworld isn’t like that. Now do you understand?”
CHAPTER TEN
Missing
Mum left. I don’t know where she went; I think she just needed some fresh air. I felt the same. My Perfect Birthday had come crashing down around my ears. I’d tried mixing my ordinary world with my wildwitch world for just one day. I guess I thought that afterwards everyone would return to their usual places, Mum to her Mum-place, Dad to his Dad-place and so on, and everything would carry on as before. Only it hadn’t worked out that way.
“This is a real mess,” I muttered to Star as I gave her a goodbye pat on her neck. She twitched one ear politely, but she was far more interested in the hay I’d just given her.
Mum’s story kept going round my mind. The puma and its cubs, the heat, the rocks, Lia… and that last incomprehensible image, flesh and dried blood, flies, bones flashing white in the fierce sun.
I did know that nature wasn’t all sweetness. I’d once felt the urge to devour another living creature – it was probably the worst and most disgusting experience of my wildwitch life and, although the hunger hadn’t been entirely mine, I’d come to accept that hunger and killing, predators and prey, were a part of the wildworld. I understood that a puma coming across a helplessly wounded human being might regard it as prey. But a puma that had first asked for help and received it… that it would go on to devour the person who… No. I couldn’t make it add up. It was the equivalent of me using my wildwitch power to call an animal, and then killing it. I knew of only one wildwitch who’d done that, and that was Chimera. I thought that most wildwitches would rather starve than abuse their power.
When I returned to the yard, my dad was walking briskly towards the bridge.
“Where are you going?” I called out to him.
“To the car,” he said. Then he stopped and came back. “Please may I borrow your phone, munchkin?” he asked. “The mechanic and the guy called Andy the Forester are on their way, and it would be good to be able to call them, if they don’t turn up or they can’t find the place.”
“Of course.”
Suddenly he looked at me more closely.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
“If you’re not comfortable lending it to me—”
“No. It’s not that. It’s something else. It’s a bit complicated.” I fished the phone out of my pocket. “Here, take it.”
In a way, I really did want to tell him everything. About my own Tridecimal and Mum and the puma. About the disturbing thoughts that churned in my head. But right now it was easier just to return him to the Dad-place than to try and explain.
He could tell that something was up. But the car and the mechanic and Andy the Forester were waiting, and he was in a hurry, I could see that.
“We’ll talk about it when I get back,” he said. “Deal?”
I just nodded. Because we both thought that there would be loads of time to talk later. Neither of us could have known that this wasn’t exactly how things turned out…
I went back inside the house and helped Aunt Isa lay the table. Oscar had finally got up – he’s not exactly an early bird.
“Where’s your mum?” he asked sleepily.
“Oh… outside.”
“Right.” He took a bite of a toasted bread roll. Then he seemed to be counting slowly as he worked out that someone else was missing from the table.
“Where’s your dad?”
“He’s gone to get the car.”
“Right.”
While we were eating, Mum came back. She didn’t say very much and I don’t suppose that I did either, but luckily The Nothing was chatting away nineteen to the dozen, and all the rest of us had to say was “yes” or “no” or “really” every now and then.
We were doing the dishes when a boxy red van pulled into the yard. ALF’S AUTO it said in large letters on
the side, so it had to be the mechanic. Bumble barked like crazy – having a strange car to bark at was a rare treat for him.
The man who got out seemed to be in a foul mood. He slammed the car door with a bang and, before we’d had time to let him in, he was hammering his fist so hard against the door that Bumble barked even louder, and now not just for fun.
“Bumble, go to your basket,” Aunt Isa said in a low, but firm voice. Bumble looked at her sceptically, but did as he was told.
“I need the car keys,” said the grumpy man in the boiler suit the moment Aunt Isa opened the door.
“The car keys?” Aunt Isa said.
“Yes. For the Volvo. Is this the wrong house?”
“No, but… my brother-in-law has them. It’s his car. I thought he was meeting you there?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be standing here then, would I?”
“And you didn’t see him on the road coming here?”
“Nope. Apart from the lumberjacks there wasn’t anybody.”
Aunt Isa looked at him. “I think it’s best that we all drive back with you,” she said.
“Listen, lady, does that look like a taxi to you?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the van.
“No. But we won’t all fit into my car and, besides, it’s practically running on the rims.” Aunt Isa did actually own a car, an ancient Morris Minor, but she rarely used it.
When the mechanic realized that “we” meant two grown women, a girl, a boy and a very big dog, he became even more disgruntled, but saying no to Aunt Isa once she gets an idea into her head is very difficult, even for ALF’S AUTO. Mum and Aunt Isa sat in the front with the mechanic, while Oscar, Bumble and I were allowed to go in the back.
“That’s seriously illegal,” Auto-Alf grumbled. “If I get fined…”
“We’re not on a public road,” Aunt Isa said calmly. “Start the car.”
At first it was great fun to rattle along inside the murky van rather than sit on an ordinary car seat, but the excitement waned quickly.
“Ouch,” Oscar said when the car bumped over a particularly stubborn tree root and a heavy toolbox skidded across the metal floor to slam into his shin. Bumble was standing stiffly with all four legs further apart than usual; he wasn’t looking very excited either.
I started to wonder what could have happened to my dad.
“It’s strange…” I said.
“What?”
“That he wasn’t waiting by the car. After all, that’s why he went.”
“Maybe he’ll be there when we arrive,” Oscar said.
“Yes, but then why wasn’t he there when the mechanic turned up?”
“Perhaps he had to do something.”
“Like what? We’re in the middle of a forest, Oscar. There’s nothing to do.”
“Pee. Maybe he needed to pee?”
“Well, all right, maybe. But how long does that take?”
“Stop worrying. We’ll be there in a moment, and your dad is bound to be there.”
But he wasn’t. Andy the Forester and his colleague were busy cutting up the spruce and stacking the logs by the roadside. The Volvo looked pretty much the same, only it was missing its windscreen. There was no sign of my dad. Andy hadn’t seen him either.
“No,” he said calmly, turning over the chewing gum in his mouth. “There’s no one here. Would you like the wood, Isa? After all, it fell on your road.”
“Thanks, Andy. I would like that.” Though Aunt Isa didn’t look as if winter fuel was foremost in her mind.
“Oscar,” I said. “Try calling my phone.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad borrowed it.”
Oscar did as I had asked.
“There’s no reply,” he said after a few rings. But I’d seen Bumble prick up his ears.
“Call it again,” I said.
“But there’s no—”
“Just do it. And then be quiet and listen.”
This time I was almost certain that I could hear it too – StarPhone’s little welcome jingle, which was the ringtone that it came pre-programmed with. I hadn’t had time to change it yet. Bumble let out a low woof and raced past the logs and out into the tall, yellow grass, where I’d looked for deer last night, just before the tree came down.
“Follow me,” I said to Oscar and ran after Bumble. “And keep ringing!”
We headed in the direction of the sound and Bumble as best we could. A few hundred metres from the car, hidden in the meadow grass, we found my new phone.
But where was Dad?
“I don’t like this,” Mum said to Aunt Isa in a low voice. She didn’t think that I could hear what she was saying, but I could. “This reeks of your witchcraft.”
“What do you mean?” Aunt Isa said coldly. “Are you accusing me of making Clara’s dad disappear now?”
“No, not directly. Or rather, not you, but some of your witch friends or witch enemies.”
“Milla, seriously. What makes you think this has anything to do with the wildworld?”
“In my world grown men don’t vanish into thin air!”
They were still trying to have a conversation that couldn’t be overheard, and somehow the lowered voices made the argument even more clenched and hissy.
“Please stop arguing,” I said. “And yes – I can hear every word.”
They both had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Clara is right,” Aunt Isa said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. We have to look for him – and I hope you won’t mind if some of my wildfriends help us…”
Mum swallowed something and settled for shaking her head.
“OK,” she said. “What do we do?”
“How about Bumble?” I said. “Can he help us?”
“He’s not much of a bloodhound, but we can always give it a try,” Aunt Isa said. “After all, he did find the phone.”
“Mostly because it was ringing,” Oscar pointed out. “It’s a shame Woofer isn’t here. He’s great at finding things.”
Woofer was a labrador and did indeed have a great nose – especially when looking for treats. But apart from that he wasn’t really an action hero kind of a dog.
“I’ll call Hoot-Hoot,” Aunt Isa said. “He doesn’t like flying in daylight much, but he hears everything that moves.”
When Hoot-Hoot appeared in the sky, however, he wasn’t alone. A big flock of rooks and jackdaws were chasing him, and not even Aunt Isa could make them lay off. Hoot-Hoot landed on Aunt Isa’s shoulder, and though he tried hard to look all owl-dignified and impervious, I couldn’t help thinking of a little kid climbing up onto his mum’s lap to stop the bigger kids teasing him. At night Hoot-Hoot was king, a silent, fearless and lethal hunter. In the daytime the other birds got their own back.
“Shoo! Go away,” Aunt Isa said, flapping her hands at the most intrusive jackdaws. “Pesky birds.”
They took off but landed again on the nearest trees, where they waited to pounce. It was clear that we couldn’t expect any aerial assistance from Hoot-Hoot today.
“Please would you hold him?” Aunt Isa asked and persuaded Hoot-Hoot to hop from her shoulder onto mine. “I have to try something else.”
She sat down in the tall grass and closed her eyes.
“Be careful,” Mum said, and for once sounded as if she was a little worried for her sister.
Aunt Isa smiled and didn’t mention that Journeying – wildwitch style mind-travel – for her was about as everyday an occurrence as a trip to the shops was for Mum.
“I will,” was all she said. It was true that Journeying could be dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. Martin from my school – I tried very hard not to call him Martin the Meanie even in my thoughts – had been badly hurt because I hadn’t been in control of my own involuntary Journeyings. But Aunt Isa was a zillion times better at it than me.
When you went Journeying, you borrowed an animal’s eyes, ears and nose. It felt as if you suddenly were the animal, and it cou
ld be very confusing to have wings instead of arms, for example, and a strong urge to eat raw mice. Right now Aunt Isa was looking for a suitable bird – maybe one of the cheeky rooks. A bird flying very high above us, one that could see much more than we could down here on earth.
Hoot-Hoot made a low, clicking sound with his beak. I don’t think he liked Aunt Isa leaving us like this, but he stayed perched on my shoulder, holding on just tight enough to keep his balance. Given what a big bird he was, he wasn’t nearly as heavy as you would think, but you could certainly feel he was there.
“What do you think happened to Dad?” I said quietly to Mum.
“I don’t know, Clara Mouse.” I suddenly realized that Mum had been more nervous than me all along. I wasn’t used to worrying about my dad, if anything it was the other way around, and that’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Besides, my dad never did anything weird or dangerous. He was just Dad. He went to work, he went on holidays with me or to the cinema, and even when we crashed into trees and stuff, he was calm and normal and unruffled. The reason I got scared now was mostly because I could feel that Mum was scared – only I didn’t know why.
Then it dawned on me. She was thinking about the lynx. The lynx with the golden eyes and the long claws.
“It didn’t do it,” I blurted out.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You think the lynx… took him. But it hasn’t!”
“You know nothing about that,” Mum said. “You’ve got no idea what’s happened.”
“Neither do you!”
Oscar was staring at us, his mouth half open. If he said one word about how “super-cool” it would be to be attacked by a lynx, I would thump him. But he didn’t.
Aunt Isa sighed and stirred as if to check she had human arms and legs again.