Wildfire Read online

  “But I don’t know what that means,” I said at length. “Will I have to live in a cave in the forest, can I ever have any friends…?”

  “Of course you can have friends,” Isa said. “Only some of them will have feathers or fur.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that I don’t like animals…”

  “ – but you’d also like to have some friends who don’t poo on the floor and regularly regurgitate mouse bones? Don’t worry, you’ll meet people as well. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Clara, you don’t have to live like I do or be anything like me. But you will have to learn enough so that you can at least take care of yourself.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “We’ll make a start on that tomorrow. Self-defence for wildwitches, lesson one.”

  When we got back, Mum had finished clearing out the attic room. She had lit a paraffin lamp and made the bed with several duvets and pillows and a faded old black-and-white-chequered quilt with tiny red rosebuds embroidered on every single square. The sloping ceiling, the little round window and the pink rag rug on the floor made the room look really quite cosy. But there was only one bed in it.

  “Where are you going to sleep?” I asked her.

  Mum sat down on the bed and patted the quilt.

  “Clara Mouse. Sit down for a moment.”

  She said it in her we-need-to-talk-about-something voice and the knot in my stomach, which had been there ever since the day Oscar and I nearly got run over, grew bigger.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I have to go back to town.”

  The knot now filled my whole stomach. It pushed upwards and squashed my heart. It pushed downwards and made me feel like I needed to pee.

  “But you can’t,” I whispered. Somehow this was worse than all the other things put together. That I might be a wildwitch like Aunt Isa. That I had nearly died – twice – in just over a week, that a monster cat was persecuting me, that a non-angel was chasing me and scaring even Aunt Isa – I might be able to cope with all that as long as my mum was with me.

  “I have to,” she said.

  “Can’t you just work here? There has to be somewhere nearby where you can get Wi-Fi…”

  “It’s not work, Clara. How could you think that? You’re far more important than my stupid work.” She looked grim and miserable.

  “Then what is it?”

  She made no reply. She just put her arm around my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze.

  “Clara, we have no choice,” she said. “I agree that it’s awful. I’m the one who should be looking after you, not Isa. But I can’t protect you, not against all this. I can’t do what she can.”

  “But how long will I have to stay here?”

  “Until Isa says it’s safe for you to come home.”

  Probably when I had passed Self-defence for wildwitches, lesson one. Whatever that was.

  “But what if I don’t want to?”

  “Clara Mouse. You have to. Listen to me. You have to promise me that you’ll do everything Aunt Isa tells you. If… if there were any other way, do you think I would ever leave you here? And you won’t be here very long.”

  “How long?”

  “A few weeks, perhaps. If you work really hard.”

  “And then everything will be like it was before? And I can come home again?”

  “Yes.”

  A couple of weeks. I suppose I could manage that.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “I’m glad, Little Mouse.” She kissed my hair.

  Mum left shortly after we’d eaten. That night I slept for the first time in the attic room under the sloping ceiling, with the wind singing in the trees outside and the rain lashing the little, round window.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jumping Fleas

  I woke up with a disorienting feeling of having dreamt bizarre and crazy dreams all night. The room was cold, much colder than my bedroom at home, which had a radiator. The thought of leaving my warm nest of duvets and extra quilts wasn’t very appealing, but I needed to pee and my tummy was rumbling with hunger. I reached out for my sweater and jeans and got dressed under the duvets. Then I got up.

  When I reached the stairs, I heard voices coming from the kitchen. I got very excited because I thought at first that Mum had come back, but then I realized I didn’t recognize the second voice, it was lighter and younger than Mum’s, and had an accent that sounded foreign.

  “How long will she be here?”

  “I don’t know, Kahla,” Aunt Isa replied. “It depends on how quickly she learns.”

  “Then I hope she’s a fast learner. And that she doesn’t scare so easily that she wets herself every time she meets anything bigger than a house mouse.”

  “Kahla!”

  “I’m just telling it like it is.”

  “No. You’re telling it as you think it is. And if you want to be a proper wildwitch you have a lot to learn about compassion and good manners!”

  I was now outside the kitchen door and felt no urge to go in. She hated me. Whoever Kahla was. She hadn’t even met me yet and already she had made up her mind that she didn’t like me, and she clearly thought that I was going to be hopeless and stupid and ridiculous.

  I knew I shouldn’t care about it. Or perhaps I should get mad. But that’s not how I am. When people think mean things about me, then I become hopeless and stupid and ridiculous, and I can’t make head or tail of anything. I couldn’t even open the kitchen door.

  “Clara?” Aunt Isa said suddenly. “Why don’t you come in?”

  She couldn’t see me, but perhaps she’d heard me. At any rate she knew that I was there. I pushed open the door. I was glad that I’d got dressed. It was bad enough that my hair was sticking out to all sides, but at least I wasn’t wearing my too-short Sesame Street pyjamas and my feet weren’t freezing cold.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Bumble’s tail bashed the floor cheerfully, thump-thump-thump, but it seemed to be too early in the morning for him to bother getting up. Isa smiled when she saw me. And a girl who had to be Kahla sent me the darkest, surliest look anyone had shot me for a long time. She was practically giving me the finger.

  “Good morning, Clara. Kahla, this is Clara, my niece. And Clara, this is Kahlamindra Millaconda, who is also my student.”

  She wasn’t very tall, but she was round like a snowman. Not necessarily because she was fat, but because she was wrapped in so many layers of clothing that she looked like she would roll if you knocked her over. Even indoors she was wearing a woolly hat, one of those Inca-style knitted ones with ear flaps and a small pom-pom on top, as well as countless scarves, thick woolly jumpers, vests, felted boots, trousers and woolly skirts in all the colours of the rainbow plus one or two the rainbow had never heard of. Pitch-black hair stuck out from under her Inca hat, and what little of her skin wasn’t covered by three layers of coloured wool had a warm cinnamon glow.

  “Hi,” I mumbled.

  “Hi,” she said.

  And that was all we could think of saying to each other. If Aunt Isa had had Kahla in mind when she talked about my making friends who didn’t regularly regurgitate mouse bones… well, it looked like I’d be in for a long wait.

  We ate breakfast in a strained silence while we sized each other up across the porridge bowls. Aunt Isa looked at us in turn, but made no attempt to break the ice and get Kahla and me to talk to each other, which I was grateful for. When we’d put our bowls and the pot in the sink to soak, Aunt Isa took us both outside. It was a cold November day and the rain was spitting. We followed her up the hill behind the stable, Kahla and I, and Bumble, obviously, who kept wagging his tail and clearly thought the whole thing was an awfully big adventure. I was a lot less enthusiastic. The ground was wet and slimy and I slipped quite a few times, once so badly that I ended up with muddy brown patches on the knees of my trousers. I glanced furtively at Kahla. She skipped up the path with ease and agility despite her many layers. I wouldn�
�t have believed it was humanly possible to wear more items of clothing than she already was, but she had managed to add a pink quilted jacket and a red scarf, plus a stripy scarf tied around her Inca hat, plus a pair of bright yellow mittens with red hearts – and even so she could still walk. It was nothing short of a miracle.

  Aunt Isa stopped halfway up the hill and pointed to a messy pile of twigs and rotting leaves.

  “Can either of you tell me what happened here?” she said.

  “A dog or a fox has been digging for something,” Kahla said immediately. She bent over and studied the ground. “Not a fox,” she then said. “The paw prints are too big. The dog probably scented the hedgehog and dug it out. Now the hedgehog’s winter hideaway has been destroyed. Stupid dog.”

  Bumble looked nervous.

  “Not you,” she said, stroking his head with her mitten hand. “You would never do a thing like that, would you?”

  How could she see all that? It was just a pile of twigs and a hollow with a bit of withered grass in it. When I looked hard, I could see some scratches where the dog had been digging, but how could she know the rest?

  “That’s right,” Aunt Isa said. “Well spotted, Kahla. Now can you find the hedgehog?”

  Kahla closed her eyes for a moment. She started humming faintly, a wordless song that bounced back and forth between two tones, one high and one low. It reminded me of the time Aunt Isa had made my headache go away. Kahla turned slowly on the spot as if she were a radar scanner, and then suddenly pointed down the hill, slightly to the right of the stable.

  “That way,” she said. “It’s not very far, only twenty or thirty paces.” She started walking, diagonally through bushes and scrub. Aunt Isa and I followed, zigzagging to avoid the worst obstacles.

  And there really was a hedgehog exactly where she’d said it would be. It had curled up under a thorn bush, but even I could see that this wasn’t a very good choice of hideout. This was no warm, dry nest of grass, and the branches of the bush were nothing like the dense cover that the twigs had provided.

  “It can’t survive here,” Kahla said quietly. “Do you want us to bring it back to the house?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Isa said. “But first we have to solve a small problem.”

  “And what’s that?” Kahla asked.

  Isa smiled.

  “A flea hunt,” she said. “It’s today’s lesson.”

  At first Kahla looked incredulous. Then her dark eyes flashed with anger.

  “Fleas?” she said. “You want us to waste time on fleas?”

  Isa nodded, taking no notice of Kahla’s outraged face.

  “Fleas are a part of the natural world,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that I want them inside my house.” She took a white tea towel from her basket and spread it on the ground. She carefully picked up the hedgehog and placed the small animal in the middle of it. She closed her eyes for a moment and hummed a few notes. At first I didn’t really think that anything was happening, but then I saw them: ten or twelve tiny black dots appeared on the white fabric around the hedgehog. And, as I kept watching, another four or five fleas jumped from the body of the hedgehog and onto the tea towel.

  Aunt Isa lifted the hedgehog into the basket.

  “Your turn,” she said. “Kahla, you go first. You call the fleas on the left half of the tea towel. And only those!”

  Kahla rubbed her nose with her mitten. “Can’t I just call them all?”

  “No. This task is about precision. Off you go.”

  Kahla didn’t seem to need any instructions. Just like my aunt had, she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she started humming.

  Soon the fleas were no longer scattered across the tea towel in a random pattern. A tight little formation of flea soldiers lined up on an area the size of a thumbnail, and started marching towards the edge of the tea towel in regular little jumps.

  I stared. I blinked. And I stared again.

  But no matter how many times I blinked, the fleas kept marching in unison. In ruler-straight lines.

  “Stop,” Isa said.

  Kahla opened her eyes. “What?” she said. “Why?”

  “You’ve rounded them all up. I only wanted half, thank you.”

  Kahla frowned. “But they’re so small,” she said, sounding frustrated. “I can’t tell them apart!”

  “Try.”

  Kahla was clearly annoyed at the criticism, but she didn’t say anything. She rubbed her nose again, the formation fell apart and the fleas scattered across the tea towel once more. She closed her eyes. Hummed a couple of notes – more quietly this time, but the same tune. As before, the fleas lined up in formation. Kahla clenched her fists and bit her lip. She suddenly seemed out of breath. But then one black dot separated from the troop and jumped towards the edge of the tea towel. It was followed by another and another until exactly nine out of eighteen fleas had disappeared into the forest floor.

  “Excellent,” Isa praised her. “I told you you could do it.”

  Kahla’s frozen face lit up in a smile, the first I had seen from her all morning. Her dark eyes beamed.

  “I did it!” she said. “I separated them!”

  “Yes, you did. And now it’s Clara’s turn.”

  I stared at the nine fleas left on the tea towel. This was ridiculous. If I hadn’t just seen Kahla do it, I would have said it was impossible. There was no way I could do that.

  “Please would you sing that song again?” I said, to gain time. “I didn’t quite catch how…”

  “It’s not the song,” Isa said. “That just makes it easier to concentrate. You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to.”

  “But then how…?”

  Kahla rolled her eyes. “Which school did you go to?” she snorted.

  “Kahla, be quiet,” Aunt Isa said. “This is all new to Clara. And it’s not her fault. Clara, start by closing your eyes.”

  OK, I could manage that. I did as I was told.

  “Can you hear how the sounds grow louder?”

  I listened. And yes, it really was as if the rustling of the trees grew a little louder. And I could hear a twig snap under Kahla’s feet when she started shifting to keep warm. Was that a small snuffle coming from the basket where the hedgehog lay?

  “When I tell you, cover your ears so you can’t hear anything either.”

  “And what happens then?”

  “Then you might experience something. Go on. Try.”

  I stuck my fingers in my ears. The rustling from the treetops disappeared. At first I heard only the sounds of my own body, but… suddenly I could smell the forest floor very strongly, a dark-brown, wet scent of rain and autumn and hedgehog. Yes. I could actually smell the hedgehog!

  I opened my eyes again.

  “Wow,” I said. “This is what it must be like to be a dog.”

  “Only their sense of smell is a thousand times stronger,” Isa said. “Now we’ll try something else. You close your eyes. I cover your ears. And you pinch your nose.”

  “What happens then?”

  “We’ll find out. Just do it.”

  So there I was, now unable to see, hear or smell. I could feel the cold against my skin and the soil under my boots. I could taste my own saliva. And that was all.

  “Nothing’s happening,” I said.

  “Don’t stop,” Aunt Isa said, holding her warm hands over my ears to cancel out all noise. Don’t stop.

  I jumped. I had heard her even though I couldn’t hear her. And all at once I could hear a million sounds and a million lives – tweeting, croaking, swooping, growing, falling, flying, roaring, barking, bubbling lives. My head started spinning and I couldn’t hold my balance.

  “Shut up!” I screamed. “Go away.”

  GOAWAYGOAWAYGOAWAY! I shouted it both out loud and inside my head. Around me everything was swaying and spinning. I fell, hitting the ground with a soft, wet bump, and rolled down the hill, around and around while I got rotting leaves in my mouth and mud in-between my te
eth.

  Then there was silence. I was lying on my stomach up against a birch tree and all I could hear was the wind and my own gasping. Then the forest exploded.

  Bumble came hurtling down the hill as fast as he could. And behind him followed an avalanche of mice, toads, beetles, squirrels, midges, dung beetles, millipedes, moths… countless birds took flight, great tits and rooks and jays and sparrows, and they were all running for their lives. The basket next to Kahla rocked frantically from side to side as the hedgehog struggled to get out so it, too, could flee.

  Aunt Isa quickly got up and started singing. No soft humming this time, but a loud and clear, warm tone that stopped the panicky stampede in its tracks. Wings and legs and animal hearts calmed down. The rooks circled above our heads to tell us off, and the basket with the hedgehog stopped rocking.

  I sat on the wet soil, breathing in through my mouth.

  Me.

  I had made this happen.

  They were running away from me. Because I had told them to.

  It was impossible. And yet it had happened. It wasn’t something I’d made myself believe, it wasn’t a random coincidence. It was real.

  Isa took my hand and helped me back to my feet.

  “Was that… was that what you wanted me to do?” I asked.

  “Well…” Aunt Isa said, as she glanced around the now almost deserted hill. “At least the fleas have gone…”

  CHAPTER 9

  Wildways

  “Where are you?” Oscar asked.

  There was static crackling and hissing in my ear and he sounded very far away. But then again, so he was.

  “At my aunt’s.” I let out a sigh.

  I was sitting at the top of the hill, on the stone wall which served as the northern border of Aunt Isa’s wildward. It was practically the only spot with mobile signal. Strictly speaking I should have asked for her permission before trundling up here, but I didn’t want her overhearing what I had to say to Oscar. Besides, I was almost within the boundaries of the wildward. Nothing could go wrong, could it?