“Cat?” I whispered without holding out much hope. He was gone. He’d disappeared in an explosion of fire, blood and bones. I think that was why I’d given my mum such a hard time. Stood my ground. Once I got back to Mercury Street, I wouldn’t be able to just nip down to the wildways because he wouldn’t be there to help me. That was why I had to stay here.
And yet I got an answer. A sudden heat wrapped itself around my leg.
Yes.
I flung open my eyes. He was lying on top of the blanket, looking at me with his neon-yellow eyes. He looked smaller and older. His fur wasn’t as ravenblack as it used to be. Nor were his ears as upright; instead they stuck out to the side, a little flat, and his tail lay still, not even the tip was flicking. If it hadn’t been that Cat was never tired, then I would have said he was exhausted.
“Cat! I thought…” I thought you were dead. I didn’t say it out loud.
This is the last time, he said.
“What do you mean? The last time…”
I’ve no more lives left. Nine lives must be spread very thin to span more than four hundred years.
His voice already sounded a little alien. More like Viridian’s than his own.
“So you’re… Nightclaw?”
Among other things.
“But you said… you said that you were…. that I was yours.” Stupid, monumentally stupid, to lie here being jealous of a wildwitch who had been pretty much dead for four centuries. But jealous was exactly what I was. He had to love me more than her, a childish little voice whispered inside me. Yet at the same time, I knew that cats don’t love you. They stay with you for as long as they please. He’d stayed with me, and now he was ready to move on. He might have stayed – perhaps he could have stayed, if my hesitation in the cave hadn’t cost him his second-to-last life. Or was it his last?
“Am I not yours any more?” I asked, barely able to steady my voice.
He walked on soft cat paws across me and the blanket and licked my forehead, where the scars from his claws had turned into pale, white, almost invisible lines.
You’re your own person, he said. And then he disappeared as quietly as if he’d never been there, and the warmth and the weight of his body were nothing but a dream.
I cried for a bit, but not for as long as I wanted to. I was too tired and everything hurt. I lay on the sofa, listening to the rain, dozing off and waiting. The rain got denser, heavier and noisier, and my body got even stiffer and sorer than it already was.
The Nothing came flapping over a couple of times, worried and anxious, and I couldn’t comfort her properly.
Now I knew what it was like to lose a wildfriend. Now I knew what Shanaia had gone through; indeed what Kimmie had experienced before she became Chimera. I was hurt. I felt empty. There was a void inside I couldn’t fill.
I stayed on that sofa for hours. Mum didn’t come back. Kahla didn’t turn up. But then something… something else happened.
I sat up with a jerk. The blanket slid to the floor, and I had to push off against the coffee table before I could stand up.
“What is it?” The Nothing asked.
“There’s something out there,” I said. “By the door.”
“I can’t hear anything.”
Bumble had got up from his basket. His tail wagged decisively, and he was whining in his excited “hello friend!” mode.
I opened the door. And in marched an adolescent kitten, black with white paws, soaking wet and scrawny, and yet in no way a beggar. It looked up at me with yellow eyes and meowed silently so I could see its sharp white teeth and its pink mouth. It had already moved in, that much was clear, though less than a minute had passed and it hadn’t said a word.
I opened a tin of mackerel and tipped the contents onto a saucer. The kitten attacked the food as soon as I put the saucer on the floor, and wolfed it down in less than a minute. Then it strolled back into the living room, jumped onto the sofa and fell asleep.
It wasn’t Cat. It wasn’t the same. Cat had been big, strong and magical, and had taken care of me. This was quite the reverse – I’d have to take care of Kitten, and he had just as much to learn from me as I from him. And yet just like that my mood had completely changed.
I knew I would find the Raven Mothers, with or without Kahla. I knew we would save Aunt Isa, Shanaia and the others. Everything would be all right. I gently stroked the Kitten across his skinny black back, and he opened his eyes slightly – just a tiny sliver of yellow.
“Are you mine now?” I asked. “Are you my wildfriend?”
He just closed his eyes again. But somewhere inside me there was a tiny, meowing voice; it was low and weak and hard to understand, but even so I thought I knew what he was trying to tell me.
Mine… he whispered.
WILDWITCH
Wildfire
Oblivion
Life Stealer
Bloodling
Copyright
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London, WC2H 9JQ
Original text copyright © Lene Kaaberbøl, Copenhagen 2012
Published by agreement with Copenhagen Literary Agency, Copenhagen
Translation © Charlotte Barslund, 2016
Illustrations © Rohan Eason
Wildwitch: Bloodling was originally published in Danish as Vildheks: Blodsungen by Alvilda in 2012
This translation first published by Pushkin Children’s Books in 2016
ISBN 978 1 782691 16 7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
www.pushkinpress.com
Lene Kaaberbøl, Bloodling
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