Life Stealer

  Marcus stared at me with his mouth open.

  “Eh…” he stuttered.

  “Get me the broomstick,” Martin ordered him. “Let’s see if she can really fly!”

  I couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. The playground disappeared, woods opened up beneath me and the red scent of fresh blood drowned out everything else. The prey in my talons continued to struggle, its long, red squirrel tail flicking from side to side so that I had to stiffen my wings against the updraught. I scouted for a landing spot, so that I could plunge my beak into its warm flesh and assuage my hunger. There, a bare spot, a tree with naked branches…

  No!

  I tried to free myself from the wings, the hunger and the blood. Out. Away. Home. The bird plummeted without warning and I plummeted with it, unable to control anything, unable to hold on to anything.

  No. No!

  The squirrel’s body slipped from my talons. I screamed. The squirrel squealed. Suddenly there were shrill cries all around us, and the ground came hurtling towards me, dead, wrong; I let go of the prey and saw it fall towards the death zone while at the last minute I found my wings again, straightening, soaring, flapping and flying, without my prey, but at least I was alive.

  The shrill voices did not go away.

  And I wasn’t flying anywhere either. I was lying on the ground, staring up at the sky, hearing Josefine sob hysterically, while Marcus’s ashen face, his mouth a very big, round, shocked O, swam into focus somewhere above me.

  “Get a teacher!” someone called out.

  “We don’t need a teacher,” Oscar said through gritted teeth; he was pressing buttons on his mobile. “We need an ambulance.”

  I felt well enough to speak and thought that I would be able to stand up in a minute; I was fairly sure of it.

  “I think…” I gasped, “I don’t think that… I need…” Ambulance, hospital, all of that. “Not necessary…”

  “Not for you,” Oscar said. “For him.”

  It was only then that I realized that someone was lying next to me. Martin. Very flat, very still. And all I could think of was the way he smelt. Of fresh blood – just like the squirrel.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Blue-Light

  The paramedics had insisted on putting me on a stretcher even though I felt perfectly capable of sitting up and walking without help.

  Martin, however, couldn’t.

  He lay limply on the other stretcher in the ambulance, his breathing heavy and rattling, and the whole of one side of his black jacket was torn and gleaming wetly.

  “He’s losing blood,” one of the paramedics said.

  “Cut off his jacket,” said the ambulance doctor who was holding an oxygen mask over Martin’s nose and mouth with one hand while pulling back Martin’s eyelids with the other. He let go of the oxygen mask and shone a small pocket torch into Martin’s eyes. “I need his blood pressure!”

  They were so busy with Martin that I felt massively in the way, but then again, I hadn’t forced them to take me in the ambulance. I lay as still as a mouse, trying not to disturb anyone.

  “How did he get those cuts?” the doctor wanted to know.

  “There was a tree beside the bike shed,” the paramedic said. “Perhaps some of the branches… then again, his jacket isn’t ripped in the same place.”

  “Martin. Martin!” The doctor patted Martin’s cheek so hard that it was almost a slap. “Can you hear me?”

  But Martin couldn’t.

  “He’s not responding,” the doctor said. “I want him scanned as soon as we get to the hospital.”

  “Are we blue-lighting him?” the paramedic asked.

  “Yes, we are.”

  The paramedic told the driver and seconds later the howl of sirens cut through the noise of the traffic, and I felt the smooth surge as the ambulance accelerated.

  They wheeled Martin away as soon as we reached the hospital, and the last I saw of him was a glimpse of his pale, bluish face under the oxygen mask as they pushed the gurney out of the ambulance.

  “You just wait there,” one of the paramedics called to me over his shoulder, “someone will be with you in a minute.”

  And someone was. A man dressed in green with a moustache and tired but friendly eyes who was wearing a badge announcing in capital letters that his name was ERIC HANSEN and that he was a PORTER.

  “Hiya,” he said. “You’re Clara, aren’t you? I believe I’m taking you to A&E. I hear you fell off a roof, is that right?”

  “Yes, or… almost. But I don’t think I’m hurt…”

  “How do you almost fall off a roof?” he asked with a twinkle in his eyes. “Did you change your mind half-way?”

  “No. I mean… I hadn’t quite reached the roof when we fell. Do you know what’s happened to Martin? Is he… is he badly hurt?”

  “The doctor’s with him now,” he said. “They’re taking good care of him.”

  That didn’t make me any the wiser and besides, it felt a bit weird to have a conversation while I was lying flat on my back and being rolled down a hospital corridor.

  “I can actually walk on my own,” I tried again.

  “Yes, I certainly hope so,” said ERIC HANSEN, PORTER. “But just to be on the safe side, they’ll probably want to X-ray your back before you start jumping about again. It’s standard procedure for people who almost fall off roofs.”

  “You’re just a touch concussed, I think,” the A&E doctor said. “So it’s best if you lie here until your mum comes to fetch you. Do you feel nauseous?”

  “No. I just feel a bit… strange.”

  “That sounds about right.” She smiled and gave my arm a quick pat. “You need to take it easy for the next couple of days, do you understand? No climbing on roofs for at least a week or so. And if reading or watching television gives you a headache, then stop.”

  “OK.” I was getting fed up with explaining that I hadn’t actually been on the blasted roof. “How’s Martin?”

  “Is he your friend?”

  No, that would be a lie.

  “We go to the same school,” I said.

  “Another doctor is with him now,” she said, almost like the porter. And then she went off to deal with the next unfortunate case in the A&E queue.

  By now I was in a hospital bed, but luckily I was still wearing my own clothes. I was glad they weren’t keeping me in overnight because I’d much rather be back in my own bed, in my own room. I actually felt worse now than in the moments following the fall, or maybe I was just starting to feel it more. And it wasn’t just getting knocked on the head that was the problem.

  I absolutely had to find out what had happened to Martin. How did he get those cuts? Why had I thought he smelled of squirrel blood? And why did we fall?

  I sat up gingerly. My head would definitely prefer me to be lying down, but I was only slightly dizzy and the X-ray doctor had assured me that my back was totally fine. I wished I was home. I wished that Cat was here. I usually felt stronger and braver when Cat was nearby.

  Of course.

  A black, furry figure emerged from the shadowy darkness under my bed.

  “Cat!”

  I was so pleased to see him that I couldn’t help pulling him up on my lap and hugging him. He hissed at me and placed a warning claw on my bare arm. He was nobody’s cuddly toy.

  Come.

  He leapt down easily onto the pale blue linoleum.

  “Where are we going?”

  We’re going to find the one who smells of squirrel.

  “Martin? But… they won’t tell me anything. I’ve asked twenty times, at least. They just keep saying ‘the doctor’s taking care of him’. I don’t know where he is!”

  Use your nose, Cat said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. How hard can it be to find a squirrel in a hospital?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Falling Hard

  Martin was in somewhere called Intensive Care. The room had no windows and an insane number of machines monitore
d and measured this, that and the other while beeping quietly to themselves. It was hot and a bit stuffy and only a thin sheet covered Martin’s legs and lower body. His arms and his big, red hands lay far too nicely and neatly alongside his body; it didn’t look natural. And his hands weren’t even that red any more, but pale and spotted like the underside of a plaice, and plastered with tubes and cannulas.

  He really did smell of squirrel. And quite strongly of blood. I could feel my nostrils flare involuntarily, as if I were a rabbit. How could I possibly smell that? And how had Martin ended up smelling of squirrel when there hadn’t been one for miles around, at least not in the real world?

  He was with you, Cat replied instantly. You took him with you on your Journeying. And then you dropped him.

  I looked down at Cat. The golden eyes in his broad face stared up unblinkingly. I didn’t know what to say because no matter how far-fetched it sounded, I worried that he might be right. It felt like he was.

  “Oi. No animals allowed in here!”

  I turned around. A young man in a nurse’s uniform was making his way towards me from a glass cubicle across the corridor.

  “Animals?” I said innocently, while at the same time sending Cat a very firm and determined “get lost” thought. “Where?”

  The male nurse stopped. He bent down to look under Martin’s bed, but to no avail. All that was left of Cat was a splodge of wildways fog that was already dispersing.

  “I thought I saw… there was a cat in here, wasn’t there?”

  “In here? How would it have got in?”

  “No,” he said. “I guess you’re right. Anyway, children aren’t allowed either. Not unless they have permission.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just… no one would tell me how he was.”

  “Who?”

  “Martin.” I pointed – I couldn’t remember his surname. “We’re at school together.”

  His gaze softened and became more sympathetic.

  “Are you a friend of his?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “You can sit with him for a while if you like,” the nurse said. “But don’t touch anything.”

  “Erm… thanks.”

  I didn’t think I could leave now, so I sat down on a grey plastic chair next to the bed.

  “Talk to him. He might be able to hear you.”

  “Oh… OK. I’ll give it a go.”

  The nurse tilted his head slightly and studied me.

  “Were you the girl who fell with him?” he asked.

  I blushed. I could actually feel the heat spreading across my face.

  “Yes.”

  “How far was it from the roof?”

  “Not very. It was only a bike shed.”

  “Yes, so we were told. Only he wasn’t as lucky as you.”

  “What’s happened to him?”

  “He hit his head quite hard, he cracked a shoulder blade and broke two ribs. And we had to suture some lacerations.” He looked at me. “It takes quite a lot to break a shoulder blade,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been thinking… that you’d really think he had fallen from something higher up.”

  I thought about wings and beaks and talons. And about the squirrel’s small, maimed body tumbling, falling through the air. Much further than the distance from the roof of an old bike shed.

  Then I heard tentative footsteps from the corridor. An old woman in a drenched, beige winter coat came in. She was wearing a knitted white hat and matching woollen gloves, and she was clutching a brown handbag with both hands.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for my grand-son…” Then she spotted Martin and stopped in her tracks.

  “Mrs Winter?” The nurse asked. “You’re Martin’s grandmother, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They told me… he’d had a fall… he… it’s not serious, is it?”

  “Take a seat, Mrs Winter. The doctor will be with you shortly. We also have some papers for you to sign. You’re Martin’s guardian, aren’t you?”

  “He lives with me,” she said absent-mindedly, never once taking her eyes off Martin and the beeping machines. Her eyes were moist and frightened. “Is it bad?” she whispered.

  “Please take a seat,” the nurse repeated. “It’s better if the doctor explains everything. And you’d better go now, young lady.”

  The latter was addressed to me, of course. I left. But I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder. Mrs Winter sat on the plastic chair in her dripping wet coat. The only thing she’d taken off was a glove. She’d placed her hand on top of Martin’s, and I could hear her whispering to him. It sounded like “Oh, my poor boy. My poor boy…”

  Everyone I knew was scared of Martin to at least some extent. Even Oscar. So it was weird to hear someone call him “my poor boy”. And even weirder coming from an old lady not much taller than me.

  I had no idea that Martin lived with his grandmother. People from his own year might know, but I’d never heard anything about it. At school we know pretty much all there is to know about each other – whose parents are divorced, who lives where. But when everyone’s scared of you, maybe they don’t ask too many questions.

  I’d almost returned to my bed in A&E when I heard someone call out.

  “Mousie!”

  “Mum…”

  She, too, was dripping wet. Rain had flattened her hair and darkened the fabric of her white down jacket. Somewhere outside the hospital it was probably still daylight, almost spring, and it was raining. In here, the whole world seemed to consist of blue linoleum floors, dark blue walls, fluorescent tubes and a pervasive smell of detergent.

  I snuggled up to her.

  “I couldn’t find you,” she said. “They told me you were here, but you weren’t.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Yes. Are you OK, Mouse?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I just feel a bit weird. And I’d really like to go home now, please.”

  On our way home in the car, the rain pelted the roof and the windscreen wipers squeaked as they swished from side to side. Cat had curled up on my lap. It would take someone very brave to order him into a cat carrier, and Mum wasn’t foolish enough to try.

  “Are you hungry?” she said.

  “Don’t know really…” I still felt a bit odd. Was it possible to feel nauseous and absolutely ravenous at the same time?

  “Fancy some pear tart?”

  I smiled, mostly for her sake, and said: “Well, if you’re offering pear tart, then…” I didn’t want to make her any more worried than she already was.

  We stopped outside the bakery and I stayed in the car while Mum went to get the tart.

  “Were you serious?” I asked Cat. “When you said I accidentally took Martin along on my Journeying and then… dropped him.”

  Do I normally say things I don’t mean?

  No. He didn’t. During all the time I’d known him, he’d always said exactly what he meant. Even though he couldn’t say anything out loud, he never left me in any doubt.

  “Does that mean it’s my fault?” I asked. “Martin and… the hospital and… everything?”

  Fault? Cat sounded as if he didn’t know the meaning of the word. What do you mean?

  “My mistake. My fault.”

  He arched his back and stretched so that his black tail brushed right past my nose. Then he let out a big, pink yawn.

  What does that have to do with anything?

  I didn’t know, but it was hugely important to me. Martin lying there with tubes coming out of his arm and all the flashing machines and a granny who was soaked to the skin muttering “my poor boy” over and over again… all of that was bad enough. If Martin had fallen from a bike shed, hurt himself badly, and the whole thing was an accident, then that was bad enough. But if I was responsible for dropping him…

  “Fsssttt…” Cat snorted in a very feline way. Humans.

  “But what if?”

  Either it has nothing to do with you, Cat s
aid, leaving me with the feeling that it certainly had nothing to do with him. Or…

  “Or what?”

  Or you can do something about it.

  “But… there’s nothing I can do!”

  Then it has nothing to do with you.

  But it had.

  Mum came half running down the pavement, tore open the door and shoved a white box into my hands.

  “Take this,” she said, “before it gets completely soaked.” She got in, and slammed shut the door.

  “Mum…”

  “Yes, Mouse?”

  “I’m not allowed back to school for the rest of the week.”

  “No, they told me. Never mind, we can have a nice time together at home.” My mum was a freelance journalist and worked from home, except when she went out to talk to people and investigate the things she wrote about.

  “Yes, but… I was thinking… would it be OK if instead I… went to see Aunt Isa?”

  The smile disappeared. It would not be OK. She would hate it, I was well aware of that.

  Then she pulled herself together and put the smile back on as though it was an itchy sweater she was determined to wear in order to please me.

  “Of course, darling,” she said. “Who knows, perhaps the badger has had her babies.”

  She was making a big effort. And the stinging and prickling inside me worsened because I could see how miserable she was underneath the itchy-sweater smile.

  Humans. Why do you have to make everything so complicated? Cat clearly wasn’t expecting an answer because he’d already curled up on my lap with his nose under his tail. Ten seconds later he was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Soul Tangle

  Mum drove me all the way to Aunt Isa’s the next day. It took hours, but she didn’t want us to use the wildways.