“Stop,” Kahla said. “If you lie still, I’ll try to help you. You’ll only wear yourself out.”
He let out some slurred sounds that were barely words. He seemed to have trouble controlling his tongue.
“Isummin,” he said. “Isummin. Hun!”
Hun? I couldn’t see any vicious barbarian hordes descending on us; he must mean something else.
Again Kahla tried to stop him, but though his legs didn’t work, he still had strength left in his arms. He pushed her and her helping hands aside violently.
“Hun,” he said again. “Hun. Hun. Hun.”
There was quite a lot of grey in his dark hair, and he had lines around his eyes and mouth, but I could tell just from looking that he regarded himself as a strong man, and that that made it worse. He wasn’t used to being helpless. I could see from the trail behind him on the forest floor how he had pulled himself along on his stomach and elbows. Grey dust stuck to the upturned soles of his feet.
“Kahla,” I whispered. “Look at his legs.”
It had started at his feet, but it was creeping up his shins. It wasn’t just “grey dust”, as I’d first thought. It was… no, alive was completely the wrong word. But it was moving. It was spreading. It was eating its way through his legs, one bite at a time.
His sturdy boots were falling apart, and only a few fraying grey cobwebs were left of what had once been his socks. But the most shocking thing lay underneath. His skin was also grey. I don’t just mean pale, I mean grey. It cracked and it split, and the cracks bubbled like acid. Flakes of skin fell off in front of our eyes, then they crumbled and turned into grey dust.
“Isummin,” he groaned again. “Isummin. Hun!”
At long last I realized what he was trying to say. His mouth and his tongue would no longer obey him, the air hissed out of him without turning into sharp, clear consonant sounds such as C and T and R.
It’s coming. It’s coming. Run.
“Kahla,” I said. “He’s telling us something is coming. That we need to run. Now!”
But by then, of course, it was already too late.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Inside the Monster
It’s difficult to describe the monster.
If I were to say “dragon”, most people would have a mental image of scales and claws and a long reptilian body, maybe wings and a bit of smoke seeping out of the nostrils: a dragon. They don’t exist, at least not in the real world, and yet we all know what they look like.
This was no dragon.
It was… it kept changing. I didn’t know what to call it. It had a kind of skin, but one that bubbled and burst and shifted shape. Things stuck out of it. Stones. Leaves. Small animals and insects, beetles, worms, a bird, the outline of a lizard. But not the same things every time. They seemed to rise up and then sink back down, as if the skin weren’t skin, but… I don’t know. Lava, perhaps. Solid yet liquid at the same time. Eyes. Eyes would pop up, not just in the part I thought of as its head, but everywhere. A hand. A wing. A pine cone. The skull of a mole. As if it made no difference, everything could be eaten, everything could be devoured, used, drained of life.
A sudden, absurd memory of a healthy eating poster flashed through my mind: You are what you eat. But the thing that came stumbling, tumbling, falling through the forest had devoured so much that everything bulged, swelled and protruded before being sucked in again.
Someone screamed. I think it must have been Kahla because I was completely dumb with horror.
Everything it touched died on the spot. One moment a young birch tree was standing with tiny, luminous, green buds, the next it was reduced to a grey silhouette before collapsing soundlessly into a pile of grey dust. A long-tailed field mouse hesitated before trying to run away. Its fur dropped off in front of our eyes, then its skin and muscles; I swear it happened so quickly that the skeleton was still moving a split second before it was gobbled up. A few mouse bones stuck out of the bubbling skin, a tail dangled briefly from one shoulder.
I don’t know how big it was. Perhaps it had no size at all. It grew enormous when it swallowed up the birch, but seemed to contract when taking the mouse. It was neither fast nor slow. It stopped, quivering and wobbling slightly, before suddenly rolling forwards, looming above our heads like one of those tsunamis I’d seen on TV.
Kahla had grabbed Mr Gabriel’s arm and was trying to drag him away. She was screaming and shouting for me to take his other arm.
I stood rooted.
I don’t know if I thought anything at all. All I could feel was how the sparrow’s heart had beaten and then broken. I remembered the hunger of the grass snake. The smell of fresh squirrel blood and Martin’s grandmother, soaked to the skin. And I remembered Cat.
Then I raised both arms above my head, clenched my fists and crossed my wrists.
“S
T
O
P.”
It was more than a shout. More than wildsong. It was a wall, a wall that was just as tall as the thing. The monster.
There was a place deep inside me. A place where it was enough. A place as hard as flint or granite, and just as tough to shift.
I hadn’t known that it was there. But when I said go away and I meant it, it came from that place. And when I ordered it to stop, then it did.
Kahla stopped with her mouth open, and both hands around Mr Gabriel’s upper arm. He stopped in the middle of his attempt to escape. And the thing stopped too.
Not one more mouse, not one more sparrow.
I stared up at the monster. It had a face, I could see it now that the thing was no longer bulging and bubbling quite as much. The eyes were where eyes were supposed to be, something reminiscent of a nose, a gaping hole that had once been a mouth. In the worst possible way it was the face of Chimera, but at the same time… it wasn’t. Dead flakes of dust and skin scattered over its chest – over her chest – and turned into ash-grey powder, but somewhere inside it was alive.
“Chimera.”
The eyes flickered, squinted, bulged as if she were struggling to keep control of the head. Eventually they settled and focused on me like the crosshairs of two gun sights.
“Wit… ch child…”
It wasn’t until she said it, not until the thick, almost unrecognizable sound emerged from her mouth, that I was sure. It was her. Behind the bubbling skin and the swollen, mutating monster body, something still recognized me, something that was still her. Hatred flared up in her yellow predator’s eyes.
I’d made her stop, but she wouldn’t let herself be held back for very long. Soon she would roll on and if I touched her, I would be crushed and swallowed up like everything else, like everyone else. My heart would break as the sparrow’s had done, with the wet, red sound it made when you squash a berry.
Some enemies can’t be vanquished from the outside.
Suddenly I found myself clutching Mrs Pommerans’s small, round box. Just a tiny bit, she had said, but something told me that a tiny bit wouldn’t be enough, not now, not here. I twisted the lid off the tin and flung it up in the air between the Chimera monster and me. The fine, green dream dust scattered to all sides, and we found ourselves inside a luminous green powder-cloud.
I guess I’d expected the vademecum powder to knock Chimera out. Mrs Pommerans had stressed that it wasn’t a sleeping potion, but a small pinch of it had made me dream a very useful dream, so I had high hopes as I flung the whole box in her face.
Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined what would happen the moment the fine, green dust started falling on top of Kahla, the man on the ground, Chimera – and me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Grey Snow
Snow covered everything. It was grey rather than white and it reminded me of dust, but it was cold and it melted when it came into contact with the skin. I held up my hand and caught a few flakes.
I was alone. And that made it difficult. I studied the hand that had caught the snowflake. A human hand. At least I hadn’t t
urned into a sparrow or a grass snake. But was I still Clara? It was hard to decide when there was no one around to tell me who I was.
I felt like Clara, but then again, I had done so during the dream when I was really Kimmie.
I didn’t like the wobbly sensation it gave me. I looked down at myself, thinking: if I’m wearing Clara’s clothes, then surely I must be her?
At first I thought they were my clothes. Clara’s, I mean. Then I started to have doubts. I wasn’t wearing the jeans I thought I’d put on that morning, and… or wait. Was I? It was as if they’d changed colour in front of my very eyes. To begin with they’d seemed grey, now they were blue.
Do you even know who you are, little witch?
I looked around frantically. It sounded like… it was Cat. And yet his voice was strangely alien. And he had never called me “little witch” before.
Do you become Clara when you wear Clara’s clothes? Or because other people tell you you’re Clara?
“Oh, stop it,” I said. “You know exactly what I mean.”
Do I? He got up and slowly licked the snow off a front paw. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up like The Nothing.
I was about to ask him what he meant, but I didn’t because I knew exactly what he meant. The Nothing didn’t know who she was. She’d follow anyone who would tell her, even Chimera. If Chimera told her she was nothing, then she was nothing.
“I’m not The Nothing,” I whispered with a cold and bitter taste of grainy snow on my tongue.
Then who are you? Clara Mouse? Mummy’s little Mousie?
“It’s just a nickname,” I protested, yet I could feel how it diminished me. Small, scared and cautious. “Why are you being like this?”
But it was as if the drifting snow blew the question right back into my face: why are you being like this? And suddenly Cat had disappeared. Once more I was alone in the grey snow, getting colder and colder, and starting to wonder if he had even been here in the first place or whether it was all in my mind.
“It was just something you imagined,” I told myself firmly. It was a dream. It wasn’t snowing. There was nothing here but illusion and imagination.
I couldn’t see much apart from snow. It blew into my face, it stuck to my clothes so that soon it didn’t matter if my trousers were grey or blue; it covered everything around me, leaving only blurred outlines of objects under the snow. Was that a bush or a log pile? A tree or a street lamp? It was impossible to tell.
“Where am I?” I asked, not knowing if anyone could hear me or would reply if they could. “Where has all that snow come from?”
It’s Kimmie’s snow, said the voice that was no longer wholly Cat’s. Somewhere inside her it’s always snowing.
Kimmie’s snow? What was that supposed to mean?
“Kimmie!”
Someone was shouting in the snowstorm and yet again I had this wobbly sensation. Was I meant to reply? Was it me she was looking for?
“Kimmie, where are you? Kimmiiiiiie!”
It was the voice of a frightened and lonely younger sister, and I felt compelled to answer whether or not I was Kimmie. She had been calling for so long; I could hear it in her raw and frozen voice.
Then I spotted her. She was heading towards me, but she didn’t seem to see me.
“Kimmiiiiie!” she called out again.
“I don’t think she’s here,” I said, though I wasn’t sure.
She didn’t hear me. She walked right past me, a pale, shivering girl with a grey scarf wrapped four times around her neck and the dots of snowflakes on her dark-grey, woolly hat.
“Where are you,” she said, but it was barely a question now. She was so tired she was dragging her feet, and she didn’t have the energy to carry on searching. She stopped a short distance from me and sat down abruptly in the snow.
“Don’t do that,” I said with a budding realization that this was dangerous. “Don’t go to sleep.” Wasn’t that what they said? That was how you froze to death; it started with you feeling sleepy. You didn’t suffer; you just slept right into your death. And suddenly I remembered Mrs Barde’s words: Cold and stiff as an icicle, frozen to death, poor thing.
She still couldn’t hear me. She sat in the snow, rocking back and forth, her shoulders pulled up around her ears and her arms folded across her chest, right up under her chin.
“Kimmiiiiiee…” It was no longer a cry; it was a quiet, abandoned whimper. I took a step forwards. She couldn’t hear or see me. I wondered if she would be able to feel it if I put my hand on her shoulder?
“Maira!”
I spun around. Behind me, Kimmie came walking, the real Kimmie, I recognized her from the boarding school picture. She wasn’t wearing a hat or a scarf, not even a jacket, only a pair of too-short pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt with birds printed on it, black and white and grey, against a white background. Her bare legs were stuck into a pair of wellies and she’d wrapped an old potato sack around her shoulders like a shawl, presumably to stay warm. Despite her inadequate clothing she wasn’t nearly as frozen as Maira. Just angry.
“What are you doing here? Did he throw you out, too?”
“Kimmie!” Maira staggered to her feet and threw her arms around her sister. “I couldn’t find you. I looked and looked, but you weren’t anywhere.”
“Did he throw you out, too?” Kimmie said again, still very angry.
“Who? Dad? Of course not. I went outside to look for you. Here… I brought you this.” She rummaged around her pockets and found a few slices of bread and a small packet of something.
“Give it to me!” Kimmie practically snatched the bread from her hands and stuffed it into her mouth.
“Don’t you want to make a sandwich?” Maira sounded perplexed.
But Kimmie had already swallowed the bread and was busy tearing open the tinfoil. It looked like it held slices of salami, but I barely had time to see before Kimmie wolfed them down.
“Don’t you have anything else?” she asked sharply.
“No,” Maira said. “Yes, I had an apple as well, but I… I ate it. I didn’t mean to.”
“You ate it? Maira, you brat!”
Maira flinched as if Kimmie had slapped her.
“I’ve been walking for hours…” she said. “I got hungry…”
“Maira, I’m sorry…” Kimmie pressed both hands against her mouth as if wanting to push the words back inside. “I didn’t mean it. Please don’t be upset. It’s just that… I’m so hungry. You can’t imagine how hungry I am. And last night when I went to help myself to a little bread, just a little… he was there, waiting for me. Telling me I’d stolen food for the last time. And then he threw me out. Into the snowstorm. I walked to Linstead, but they chased me away, too, or at least Mr Barde did, he’s still mad about his hens. So I didn’t know where else to go. And then it started to snow. And I was so hungry.”
“Come home with me,” Maira said.
“He won’t let me in.”
“Oh, yes, he will. Kimmie, he definitely will. He was probably just trying to frighten you.” Maira placed her hand on Kimmie’s arm.
Kimmie looked down at her sister’s hand. She sniffed. First just a quick sniff, then she inhaled the girl’s scent with a violent snort. A tremor went through her, all the way from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.
Then she suddenly retreated five or six stumbling steps in the snow.
“Kimmie, what is it?”
“Stay away from me.”
“Kimmie!”
“Thanks for the food. Now go home.”
“I don’t think I know the way…”
“Maira. Get lost. Miserable little brat, do as you’re told!”
Maira started to cry. She was scared. So was I. Because I recognized the black hunger in Kimmie’s eyes, I recognized that sniffing, like an animal searching for food. For life.
“Run, Maira…” I whispered, although I knew she couldn’t hear me.
And she did. She didn’t fully grasp the
expression in Kimmie’s eyes, but it frightened her. She turned around and ran on stiff, tired legs and Kimmie buried her face in her hands and she too wept loudly, heaving sobs of the kind that hurt all the way up the throat.
At first I was relieved that Maira had got away. Then I remembered the ending: she never made it home. They found her, cold and stiff as an icicle. If Kimmie had known that, she would probably have cried even louder.
“Do you think you know everything now?”
The voice behind me was colder than the snow. Kimmie dissolved in front of my eyes as if she were a slide projection someone had turned off.
Chimera was standing behind me. She had no wings; I had taken them from her. But nor was she the swollen monster from the dead forest. She looked like Kimmie more than ever, and of course I had already worked out that Kimmie was Chimera, or at least I knew the beginning of her story.
My heart pounded against my ribs, thud, thud, thud, hard like a hammer. Chimera’s yellow eyes. Chimera’s long talons. Exactly the kind you encounter in a nightmare. Only I had a creeping, worrying sensation that this nightmare wasn’t mine. It was Kimmie’s snow. Chimera’s bad dream. But it was still just a dream. Wasn’t it?
“This is a dream,” I said hesitantly. “You can’t hurt me here.”
Her sharp predator’s face lit up in something that was definitely not a smile.
“Oh, is that what you think?” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Revenge
“You took my wings,” Chimera said. “What do you think I should take from you in return?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. I couldn’t move. I hadn’t been able to for some time. Without me noticing, my legs had turned to ice. I don’t mean that I was really cold. I mean they really had turned into ice – hard, grey, cloudy ice that wouldn’t budge. “Those wings never belonged to you. You took life – you stole life – to get them.”