“What about his mum?” Aunt Isa wanted to know. “Does she know where he is?”
“Yes. We found her. She visits him as often as she can, but she says he’s better off here, and I think she’s right. Here he can learn everything he needs to, and no one calls him psychotic because he understands what the birds are saying. If we could, we would persuade his mum to move out here too, but she says she’s not ready, not yet.”
Three of the sitting-room walls were lined from floor to ceiling with sagging bookshelves, enough to keep Arkus busy reading aloud for years. I tried imagining what it must have been like to be called crazy and put in some kind of institution because you happened to have been born with wildwitch powers. Perhaps I was lucky that my mum knew that wildwitches were real, even though she wanted nothing to do with them.
“Clara?” Thuja said.
“Yes?”
“Please may I touch your forehead?”
I’d tried this several times before so I knew why she was asking. I stood still in front of her while she rested her fingertips gently on my forehead and started humming a faint wildsong. This would allow her to see fragments of what had happened on my Tridecimal.
“Remarkable,” she said. “So many animals at once… how can they all need your help?”
“That’s exactly what we want to know,” Aunt Isa said. “I’ve never heard of a young wildwitch given so… complex a task.”
“Vitus Bluethroat was told to help a swarm of bees,” Thuja said. “In theory, he had more animals to deal with than Clara, but they all wanted the same thing. Clara, did you have any sense of what they wanted you to do?”
I pondered her question.
“They wanted me to say yes,” I then answered. “But I still don’t know what I’ve said yes to.”
“Did any animals stand out?”
“I think so because a few of them came closer to me than the others. An otter. A lynx. A bison – and a mouse.”
Thuja smiled. “Those are very different animals.”
“Yes.”
“Two predators, two herbivores. The smallest one was very small, and the biggest also very big. What could they have in common?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither. I want to help, but…” she sighed and looked a little frustrated. “You’re a very unusual wildwitch, Clara Ash. And you have a habit of getting mixed up in very unusual problems.”
Somehow it didn’t sound like praise.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“What for? You are what you are. And it’s not your fault that thousands of animals decided to ask for your help at once.”
We said goodbye to Thuja, and set off for the house of the leech witch. “Quite close” turned out to be about half an hour’s walk through the forest that surrounded Raven Kettle. A few black birds circled above us, but it was nothing compared to the host of ravens, crows and rooks that used to live at Raven Kettle. Their absence made me sad.
“There’s just something missing, isn’t there?” I said to Aunt Isa.
“Yes,” my aunt said. “So much has been lost. And I don’t know if we’ll ever get it back.”
Would Thuja have been able to help us more if she’d still had her raven? I didn’t know. Raven Kettle had been a place where every wildwitch could go to seek justice, a place where you could get help and advice when serious dangers threatened the wild-world. It was not like that at the moment.
“Thuja isn’t the only one who’s blind now,” I said.
Aunt Isa heaved a sigh. “No, sadly. Now we all are.”
The path was becoming wetter and more boggy, and I realized that a wildwitch interested in leeches would probably want to live near them. I was glad I was wearing boots and trousers. This wasn’t a place where you’d want to run around in shorts…
The soil was black and had an acidic, sour smell. Lurid green moss grew densely on tree trunks and fallen branches, and I could see puddles of shiny water between tufts and tussocks of tall grass. Once it was proper summer there would probably be flowers and leaves and light, but right now the colours were mostly black, brown and moss green. In some places mats of woven reeds had been put down to create at least some semblance of firm ground, but I could still hear an ominous slurping as I walked.
“There it is,” Oscar said, in among the trees. “Wow, that’s super-cool! It’s on stilts!”
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but certainly not this: the house was painted in glossy pastel colours, primrose yellow, mint green and frosty pink; it looked more like icing on a cake than house paint. Among all the brown and black it stood out like a flashing set of traffic lights, and what with all the “icing”, I couldn’t help thinking of gingerbread houses and the sort of witch supposed to live in them… It sat in the middle of a small green island and was indeed raised a metre above the ground on fat red posts. Perhaps the island flooded sometimes? A small red bridge led across the black water and, though a gate blocked one end of the bridge, a sign read “Welcome! The door is open!” in letters so big I wondered what the point of the gate was.
There was a bell on a chain next to the gate; Aunt Isa rang it a couple of times.
“Enter!” A deep, not very feminine voice called out to us through one of the gingerbread house’s open windows. “Can’t you read?”
Aunt Isa raised an eyebrow, but she said nothing.
“She’s not very polite, is she?” Oscar whispered.
“Shh!” I hissed.
Aunt Isa opened the gate and we walked up the garden path to the pink door. We didn’t knock, we just went right in. Following the surly reaction to Aunt Isa’s ringing the bell, we thought we might as well.
The house was just as colourful on the inside. The floor was sky blue and the planks that made up the wooden walls were painted in stripes of white, pink or pale yellow, keeping up the frosted look. There was white wicker furniture boosted with plump, shiny silk cushions in flowery, checked or dotted patterns, and a cluster of coloured glass tea-light lanterns hung from the ceiling. On the walls were pictures of puppies and kittens in completely unrealistic colours, and on a shelf between two candles was a heart-shaped silver picture frame holding a photograph of a little girl with blonde pigtails, huge pink bows and big, somewhat shy, brown eyes. There wasn’t a single leech in sight, but next to one of the two coffee tables in the living room there was a… eh, well…
A frogman,was the word that sprang to mind. He didn’t have a single hair on his head, his eyes stood out so much they didn’t look quite human, and his mouth was a wide lipless gash that took up the whole of his lower face. His skin was glossy and smooth, almost the colour of pickled green olives, apart from a few brown spots spreading like big freckles up his neck and across his bald pate. If a princess had tried kissing this frog, she must have given up too soon, because there was still a long way to go before he could be described as a prince. His neat black suit and worn grey bow tie discreetly contrasted with the explosion of colour around him, and I had the distinct impression that he hadn’t been in charge of the décor.
It soon became clear why he was crotchety. He was sitting in an old-fashioned wicker wheelchair with a tall back, and his legs were covered by a greyand-white checked rug. He clearly couldn’t just jump up and open doors and garden gates for random visitors.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “Alichia isn’t here.”
His eyes were the most attractive feature about him, I thought. Golden-brown and strangely warm in the middle of his sour and un approachable face.
“Oh, what a shame,” Aunt Isa said. “We’ve brought her a leech that we hoped she could identify. We’ve never seen its kind before. My name is Isa Ash, and this is my niece, Clara and her friend Oscar.”
“Aha,” he said, then added reluctantly, “My name is Fredric. I’m Alichia’s lodger.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?” I asked.
“No idea; whenever it suits the lady to turn up,” he said. “Sh
e’s been gone for days now, and I haven’t had so much as a message or an apology.”
A half-finished game of patience was lying on the table in front of him. Probably neither his first nor his last; the playing cards looked worn and dogeared.
“Have you lived here long?” Oscar asked.
Fredric scowled at him. “And how is that any of your business, young man?”
“Er… I don’t suppose it is. I was just asking.”
The wide mouth was a long, flat line without a hint of a smile.
“For ever. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam. That means until it makes you sick, young man. I’d throw up if I could.”
Aunt Isa studied him for a little while.
“Excuse me,” she said. “But I can see that you’re unwell. Would you mind if I tried helping you?”
He looked up at her angrily. “I’m not some injured little animal for you to fuss over, lady.”
“No. But seeing as you’re Alichia’s lodger, you probably know that wildwitches can help people sometimes.”
“That’s exactly what Madam Alichia claimed and the reason I’ve paid a small fortune to live in this vulgar confection of a house. But so far there has been little improvement. And the side-effects are bizarre. Well, if there’s nothing else, then…” He pointed to his game of patience. “I was in the middle of something.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I’m not her private secretary.” He made a point of turning over a card from the pile, peering at it and putting it into another pile. As far as I could see, the chances of his game coming out were small.
“Well, then we’re sorry for disturbing you.”
We’d almost left when he decided to be helpful after all.
“Westmark,” he said. “She thinks I don’t know, but I saw her peer at the wildways maps. That woman is the least discreet creature I’ve ever met…” He aimed a long, greenish forefinger at a pile of papers on the second table. I couldn’t help sneaking a peek, though really that was just another form of snooping. And quite right. At the top of the pile was a map of some of the wildways, and there was a big circle around the name Westmark. Shanaia’s home. What was the leech witch doing there, I wondered? And might that explain why Shanaia had failed to turn up for my birthday?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thunder and Lightning
I tried calling my mum, but the call went straight to voicemail.
“You’ve reached Milla Ash, freelance journalist. I’m afraid I can’t take your call right now…”
What was the point of having the world’s coolest mobile if Mum’s was turned off? Then I remembered that most hospitals have rules about phones, so maybe she’d had to switch it off. I decided to text her instead, but couldn’t think of anything other than: “How are things going?” It didn’t even come close to voicing all the questions I had: how was my dad doing, had he come round again, could he remember more about what happened, why had he ended up so far from the car, and how had he been bitten by at least one unpleasant leech of a sort that not even Aunt Isa knew about? Plus about a million other things. I heaved a sigh, then I sent my stupid little text message. It was better than nothing, and at least she’d know that I was thinking about her and Dad.
“Now what?” I asked.
“We’re going to Westmark, of course,” Oscar said in a way that implied you had to be seriously dense to even ask. “Two birds with one stone again! We’ll find this leech lady of yours and Shanaia can tell us why she didn’t show up yesterday.”
I suddenly wasn’t sure that I wanted to kill even one bird, let alone two. It seemed quite a cruel thing to do, once you stopped to think about it. A bit like “more than one way to skin a cat”. It reminded me too much of Chimera. And anyway, we hadn’t exactly hit the target with our stones so far.
“Does that mean we have to walk all the way back to Raven Kettle?” I said.
“I wonder if I can find a wildway a little nearer to where we are,” Aunt Isa said, “if you’re sure that’s where we’re going.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Oscar is right; if we don’t, this has all been a complete waste of time.”
The sky over Westmark was low, heavy and dark not only because it was now evening, but far more so because storm clouds the colour of tarmac had gathered over the sea and were blocking out the sun. Four storm petrels were skipping about in the updraught over the cliff, small dark shapes flitting among the herring gulls like foolhardy sparrows taunting a hawk…
Seeing them this close to the shore did not bode well for the weather.
“There’s a storm brewing,” I said. “Do you think there’ll be thunder?”
I’d barely said the words when a distant rumble rolled towards us.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Aunt Isa said with a small smile. “Come on; let’s get inside where it’s dry.”
It had already started to rain: big, wet drops that turned into coin-sized spots when they hit the fabric of my coat.
Westmark was built on top of an old ruin, and its crumbling castle wall was now only a garden wall, but much thicker. The cast-iron gate squeaked on rusty hinges when Aunt Isa pushed it open and, at the same moment, an even sharper cry rang out above us.
“Kiiiiiiihr!” It was Kitti, Shanaia’s kestrel, swooping down on us like a fighter plane – it felt a bit menacing when she did that, but I think it was her way of saying hello.
The door was opened, but not by Shanaia. Instead, a much chubbier woman appeared on the doorstep. Her hair was partly covered by a flowered scarf and her candy-striped, flouncy skirt flapped in the wind like a signal flag, powder blue, mint and pink, so I was fairly sure she must be Alichia. She certainly wore the same cake frosting colours as her house.
“Come inside, come inside,” she urged us, “before the storm breaks!”
We hurried up. When I got nearer, I could see that the hair sticking out from under her scarf was the colour of honey, and her smiley eyes looked like two raisins in her round and friendly face.
“Isa!” she said and she sounded excited. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I remember you. It’s Alichia – don’t you recognize me?”
“Of course,” my aunt said. “How nice to see you again.”
“And you must be Clara!” Alichia continued in a tone of voice that made it clear how absolutely brilliant it was to finally meet me.
I returned her smile – it was hard not to.
“But who are you? I don’t know you.” The latter was addressed to Oscar.
“This is my friend Oscar,” I said. “He came to my birthday party. Only so many things happened that we haven’t got round to… returning him home yet.” I made it sound as if he were a pair of old PE shoes left behind at school. But there was something about Alichia that made you tell her more than you’d intended, and so I blurted the words out rather clumsily.
“Oh, that’s right, your birthday. Congratulations, darling. A Tridecimal is a big day! Shanaia was so sorry to miss it, but she isn’t feeling all that well, poor little lamb.”
“Er… thank you. What’s wrong with her?” It felt a bit weird to be chatting to a total stranger who called me darling as if we had known each other for ever, but then again… she was really nice. She meant well. She seemed so friendly and warm that I struggled to understand how she put up with miserable old Fredric in her house.
“Well, you see, that’s why I’m here. She was bitten by a leech.”
A leech. Just like Kahla and my dad? What was it with those leeches?
KA-boooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmm m mmmmm…
A crack of thunder broke right above our heads and shivered the window panes and the walls themselves; a flash of lightning followed the very next second. The light was so bright I had to close my eyes for a moment.
“Now do come inside,” Alichia said again. “What are we doing standing out here chatting, when the sky is about to open…”
It was as if the flash of lightning had split the clo
uds. One minute the rain had been a spattering of big but singular drops. The next it was like standing under a shower turned to maximum.
The three of us hurried through the door and Alichia slammed it hard behind us to shut out the storm. Even so, those few seconds were enough for my hair to be soaked through and cling to my face, and I could feel little streams of rain trickle down my neck and under my collar.
“A leech,” Aunt Isa said sharply. “What kind?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing,” Alichia said. “I thought I knew every leech in the wildworld, but I’ve never seen one of these before.”
Rainwater wasn’t the only thing sending a prickly cold sensation down my spine… Aunt Isa had produced the jam jar and its inhabitant from her rucksack, but she barely had time to ask: “Do you know what this is?”
Alichia studied our fat, striped leech for barely a second.
“Yes,” she said as her eyes widened in wonder. “Wherever did you get that?”
Alichia ushered us into Westmark’s huge, old-fashioned kitchen, while she boiled water for tea and fetched some old towels that were clean and dry, yet somehow managed to smell a bit mouldy.
“You could easily catch a cold or worse,” she said, taking out bread from the bread bin and jam from the larder with familiar ease. “How about some soup as well? You’d like a little soup, wouldn’t you?”
“If it’s not too much trouble…” Aunt Isa said. “But I’d like to just see Shanaia first.”
“She’s asleep, poor little lamb. It’s best not to wake her; she’ll come downstairs when she wakes up. And the soup is ready, I made it for Shanaia, and I think it’s still hot.” She lifted the lid of a giant pot that contained enough soup to feed an army. “So, sit yourselves down and put your feet up… I’m just sorting out some dinner for the bird.” She held up a bowl full of bloody meat scraps – for Kitti probably. Then she disappeared out of the door, and I presumed she was going to Shanaia’s room. I couldn’t imagine Kitti being anywhere else right now, not if Shanaia was ill.