Wildfire Read online

  We drove through a gate and along a small field before Mum stopped the car in a yard between two buildings, a farmhouse and what looked to be some kind of stable. She parked next to an ancient Morris Minor with black side panels and a white roof. Both buildings had thatched roofs and thick stone walls. The light was on in the house and when Mum opened the car door I could smell wet soil, spruce and smoke from a log fire.

  The entrance to the farmhouse was one of those doors that you sometimes see in stables. The top half was flung open and a tall, hunchbacked figure with long plaits appeared. No, wait. She wasn’t a hunchback. The hump had feathers, eyes and wings. It was an owl and it was eyeing us as if we were something it might consider eating for its breakfast.

  “Come in,” said the strange lady with the owl. “And let me see what I can do.”

  This would appear to be my Aunt Isa.

  Aunt Isa had lit a fire in the wood-burning stove of a large room which, to my eyes, was an odd mixture of workshop and lounge. A pot was bubbling away on the stove, regularly sending out small clouds of steam and acrid smells from under its lid. There were bookcases and cupboards along all available wall space, and the shelves held not only books, but also jars and glass containers, toolboxes and rows of baskets lined with newspaper. Later I learned that hibernating hedgehogs and dormice lived in some of them. There were a couple of non-matching armchairs, two long tables and a carpenter’s work bench. The light was coming from two paraffin lamps. There was no sign of a TV.

  I was lying on a faded old sofa that smelled of dog, with two patchwork quilts on top of my own duvet, and I was still freezing cold. Aunt Isa had been nice to me, but not quite so nice to my Mum, or so it seemed to me.

  “Get some sleep if you can,” Aunt Isa said to me. “You’re safe here.” Her eyes were the colour of autumn leaves and, for some reason, I believed her.

  “The cat…” I whispered.

  “Not here,” she said. “It can only enter if I give it permission.”

  No further explanation was needed. She already knew. I had no idea how she could, but I was hugely relieved that she understood and didn’t question me.

  Towards Mum her voice was completely different – so sharp that you could cut yourself on it.

  “You should have come much sooner.”

  “How could I?” Mum protested. “It only happened this morning.”

  “I know. But she turned twelve in March, didn’t she?”

  It wasn’t exactly a difficult question, but Mum didn’t reply. At first I thought she was just as confused as I was: I couldn’t see what my birthday had to do with anything. But when she did say something, I could hear that she wasn’t confused at all; she was angry and frightened.

  “She’s not like you,” she said. “She’s a sweet, bright and normal girl.”

  Aunt Isa looked long and hard at Mum. “Now is not the time to discuss that,” she said. “First we need to get that fever down and get the child back on her feet.”

  Yes, please, I thought. And if you could make my headache go away while you’re at it…

  Aunt Isa lifted the lid and used a ladle to pour some of the pot’s contents into a mug.

  “Here,” she said, handing me the mug. “It tastes a little bitter, but it’ll do you good.”

  “What is it?” Mum asked, suspiciously.

  “Toad venom and snake spittle,” Aunt Isa said. “What did you think it was?”

  I looked up, horrified, but then I saw the twinkle in her autumn-brown eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she said to reassure me. “I’m only teasing your mum. It’s willow bark and herbs that will help the penicillin along. And when you’ve finished that, I’ll massage your neck and your head. It all helps.”

  And it did. The toad venom – or whatever it was – tasted disgusting, to be honest, but when I’d drunk it, Aunt Isa sat down on the sofa with my head in her lap and started running her fingers firmly but gently up and down my throat, across my neck and all the way up to my hair. It felt soooooo nice. It was as if she took away a little bit of my headache with every stroke. Even when she started pressing the cuts on my forehead, which really were quite swollen, they didn’t hurt at all.

  She hummed while her fingers worked away, a wordless tune that rose and fell in strange rhythms; it wasn’t a song I’d ever heard before. At times it sounded almost as if she were singing two notes at once, one low and one high. I don’t know why, but it made me think of the wind and the rain and the smell of autumn leaves. Then without warning, I heard a door slam. I flung open my eyes, which, until then, had been well and truly shut.

  “Mum?”

  “She’ll be back in a moment,” Isa said. “She’s not really into herbs and wildsong.”

  “Wildsong?”

  “Hush. You think too much. We can talk about it later.”

  By now my headache had gone completely. And when I drifted off to sleep, there was no monster cat waiting for me in the shadows.

  CHAPTER 4

  Blue Tits and Scarecrows

  When I woke up, my fever had gone. Breathing, however, was still difficult. Something heavy, warm and furry was lying across my chest, panting all over my face. When I opened my eyes, I found myself nose to nose with a huge, wrinkly-faced white and brown dog

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Sorry, but would you mind…”

  Its tail thumped the duvet and I received an excited slobber on my cheek from a warm, pink tongue.

  “Down, Bumble!” Aunt Isa ordered it.

  Reluctantly, the dog shifted itself towards my feet.

  “All the way down!”

  The animal let out a deep, wet sigh and slid down onto the floor. I could breathe freely again.

  “Sorry about that,” Aunt Isa said. “Bumble’s capacity for affection exceeds his intelligence. He has no sense of how large he actually is.”

  Bumble’s tail was wagging so enthusiastically that Isa had to save a couple of cups from being swept off the coffee table. The dog was oblivious to her criticism. I couldn’t help smiling and I soon discovered that Bumble had this effect on most people – or at least on anyone who didn’t actually hate animals. He was so obviously just a big, happy and cuddly dog who loved everything and everybody, especially if they took the time to chat to him and scratch him behind his soft, brown ears.

  “Is he a St Bernard?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, you’d have to ask his parents,” Isa said, unperturbed. “Some friends brought him to me. They found him with a broken front leg and he didn’t have a microchip or a tattoo in his ear, so we couldn’t work out where he came from. Now he lives here. And how are you feeling?”

  “Good,” I said, surprised to discover that it was actually true. I felt really quite good all over, I was no longer dizzy or sore and my headache had gone. “Where’s my mum?”

  “She’s gone outside to see if she can get a signal on her mobile. You woke up a little earlier than we’d expected. Do you need the loo?”

  I nodded. Suddenly I felt awkward being alone in a strange house with a woman I didn’t know. All right, she was my aunt, but even so. And I was wearing my old Sesame Street pyjamas that I was too old and slightly too big for and my hair was a mess and I had four cat scratches between my eyes. What must she think?

  But she didn’t look as if she thought there was anything weird about it. Then again she was walking around with an owl on her shoulder… or that’s to say…

  “Where’s the owl?”

  “Hoot-Hoot? He’s asleep in the barn. He’s more sociable at night. Let me show you where the bathroom is.”

  In view of the stove, the paraffin lamps and the absence of a TV, I was half-expecting an earth closet or even a plank across a gully in the floor, like when Mum and I went on holiday to Turkey. Fortunately it turned out to be an ordinary loo, or almost ordinary because to flush it I had to pull a handle at the end of a chain dangling from a cistern up on the wall, instead of pressing a button. Warm water came from a
monster of a wall-mounted gas heater that was hissing away angrily between the sink and the bath tub.

  I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the sink.

  On a good day I would describe my hair as straight, soft and light brown and quite OK, really. My eyes are brown like Mum’s – and just like Aunt Isa’s, it occurred to me – and I have a sprinkling of freckles across my nose and cheeks, more in the summer than in the winter, but always a few. On a good day I can almost convince myself that I look cute in my own special way, though I’m not exactly model gorgeous.

  Today was not one of those days.

  My hair was limp and wispy and a very dull shade of brown, I was so pale that my freckles looked like fly droppings and, though my forehead was no longer swollen, I still had four deep, red scratches between my eyes, which somehow managed to make me look really bad-tempered.

  “I hope they’ll go away,” I muttered to myself and touched them very carefully.

  “Tweeeet?” something said. I spun around. On the windowsill, in a small cardboard box that said Wendleham’s Lavender Soap on it, a blue tit was watching me through its small, shiny, black eyes. It tilted its head and tweeted again. Then it opened its beak in expectation and rocked from side to side as if waiting for me to feed it.

  “I’m not your mum,” I told it.

  “Tweeeeeeeet!”

  “Stop it. I don’t even know what someone like you eats.”

  “Tweeeeet!!!” The blue tit was quite insistent now.

  “Don’t let her boss you around,” said Aunt Isa from the doorway. “I nursed her when she broke her wing last summer, but it healed long ago and she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself. It’s just that she likes the service here.” She opened the bathroom window and tapped the soapbox with her finger.

  “Come on. Get off your backside,” she ordered it. “There’s a feed ball hanging from the apple tree!”

  “Tweeet…” Sulking, the blue tit flapped out of the open window.

  Mum smelled of spruce trees and morning dew when she came back. But she didn’t look happy and, when she went to pack the car, she was really quick about it so that we could leave straight after breakfast.

  “I’m glad you’re better, sweetheart,” she said. And there was no doubt that she was happy and relieved, but even so I could feel that something still wasn’t quite right.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing, Mouse. Have you cleaned your teeth?”

  “Yes. Mum, what is it?”

  She shook her head. “I’m just a bit stressed. It’s been a busy week.”

  Now that might be one reason, but something was definitely wrong between her and Aunt Isa.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Isa said.

  “I do,” Mum said sharply. “I’ve got my life and you’ve got yours.”

  “Yes,” Aunt Isa said. “But what about Clara?”

  “Thank you for helping her,” Mum said. “But it’s time for us to go now.”

  And fifteen minutes later we were back in the car, me in my pyjamas and a grey woolly jumper that Isa had lent me, Mum wearing the same clothes she had put on when I woke her up in the middle of the night. We looked like a pair of tired scarecrows. But Mum was obviously in a hurry to get home. The Kia rattled down the gravel road as fast as it could. Behind us, Isa and Bumble stood in the yard, waving. Or rather Isa waved. Bumble wagged his tail.

  We turned into the wood and I lost sight of them. I was surprised to discover that it made me sad. Strange, really, since I had been with them for less than twelve hours, and slept for most of it. But that was how it was – as if I were already missing them.

  “Please could we visit Aunt Isa another time?” I said. “And maybe stay a bit longer?”

  “Perhaps,” Mum said. But she said it in that special Mum-voice that really meant no.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Pencil Case Mouse

  “What happened to you?”

  Oscar pointed an accusatory finger at me as if it were completely unacceptable that I had had an adventure without him. Or rather, he wasn’t pointing at me, but at the cat scratches on my forehead. Though almost a week had passed, they were still an angry red and very noticeable, and today was the first day Mum thought I was well enough to go back to school.

  “I was attacked by a cat,” I said. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He was about to laugh, I could see that, but he stopped himself.

  “Are you OK?” he asked, very serious now.

  Did I really look that bad? I no longer had a temperature, but I still had trouble sleeping.

  “I don’t know really,” I said. “At first I got sick as a dog… but then… I got better.” I wanted to tell him about Aunt Isa, but for some reason I held back. Usually we tell each other everything. Oscar is my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were in nappies and we actually mingled our blood once to seal our friendship after we had read in a book about taking blood oaths – we were quite young at the time, and I guess we thought it sounded cool. Sometimes the others tease us and say we’re snogging, even though we’re not. Oscar goes red all over and has even got into fights over it a couple of times, but he carries on being my friend.

  He bit his lip. I don’t think he quite knew what to say. His blond, spiky hair stuck out as usual, and there’s something about his cheeks and mouth that always makes him look as if he’s about to burst out laughing. But he looked worried.

  “Do you want me to carry your bag?” he asked, which was incredibly sweet of him, especially because it was guaranteed to make the others start chanting: Clara and Oscar sitting in a tree, k I s s I n g.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I can manage. I’m OK, really. I’m just not sleeping very well at the moment.”

  In Literacy we were doing project work, which meant we were split into groups of four to look for adjectives in one chapter of a book we were reading. I was in a group with Josefine, who can be really hard work. She always wants to be in charge and she immediately divided the chapter into four sections, then told everyone to go through whichever section she gave us, rather than talk about everything as a group.

  No one really tried to object. Least of all me. I’m not someone who speaks up in class and Josefine has a knack of making me feel even smaller and stupider than usual. And while she was making notes in her exercise book, she also appeared to be keeping an eye on me.

  “Clara, ‘accidentally’ is not an adjective! If you don’t know what you’re doing then why don’t you ask?”

  “Why can’t we work together?” I said, well aware that my cheeks had gone red with embarrassment.

  “It’s much faster if we do it my way,” she said and she was probably right, but it wasn’t much fun.

  At least not until Josefine let out a bloodcurdling scream and jumped away from the table.

  “Mouuuuse!” she squealed, pointing a quivering finger at me. “Mouuuuuuuuuuuuuse!”

  I’m not exaggerating. Her squeal lasted several seconds.

  And she was right. On the table in front of me, in my open pencil case, there was a skinny, grey mouse. But not for very long, because, halfway through Josefine’s scream, it darted across the table and hopped inside my left sleeve.

  “Josefine, stop screaming,” said Erik, our teacher. “What mouse?”

  “There,” she said, flapping her hands in my direction. “In Clara’s pencil case!”

  “I can’t see a mouse.”

  “No, not now, but…”

  “Did anyone else see it?” Erik asked. Marcus and Tea, the two other members of our group, shook their heads. Because Josefine had been screaming, they had been looking at her and not at the mouse.

  I said nothing. I could feel the mouse’s small, warm body on my forearm, under my sleeve, I could feel its small, prickly claws and the soft fur on its belly, but I still said nothing.

  “There was a mouse,” Josefine insisted.

  Erik bent dow
n and looked under the table. Everyone else in the classroom promptly copied him and looked at the floor and under the chairs and tables, too.

  “Oh look, a mouuuuse!” Amjad whined in a shrill voice that was meant to make fun of Josefine, and most of the others started to laugh.

  “Yes, all right, that’s enough, Amjad. Everyone sit down again. Josefine, if there was a mouse, at least it’s gone now. Back to work!”

  For the rest of the lesson I sat very still with the mouse hidden up my sleeve and found it hard to concentrate on the difference between adjectives and adverbs. The mouse did nothing. It didn’t move except for a faint quiver every now and then. It didn’t try to run further up my arm and it had obviously decided it was unwise to try and stick its nose out again. So it stayed put – and waited. Without knowing why, I let it do that. And when the lesson finally ended, I packed up my books without using my left arm too much, slung my backpack over my shoulder, took my jacket from the row of pegs and left.

  “Aren’t you going to put on your jacket?” Oscar asked. “I mean, you’ve just been ill…”

  It sounded strangely mummyish coming from him, but I actually think he was a little worried about me. I glanced around. Josefine wasn’t nearby and Erik was some distance away, talking to another teacher.

  “I’ve got a mouse up my sleeve,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “Shhhh.”

  He stared at me. “Is it tame?” he said. “Is it one of those white ones?”

  “No. Come with me. I have to find out what it wants.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  As I uttered those words, I could hear how crazy they sounded. But I just knew that the mouse wanted something. It was no coincidence that it had hidden itself first in my pencil case and now up my sleeve.

  “I know it sounds weird,” I said.

  He laughed. “Hey. You are weird,” he said. “Nothing new there then.”