“I’m not quite sure,” she said. “But I think we should try heading in that direction.” She pointed across the meadow towards the edge of the forest.
When we started walking, we heard a yell of protest behind us.
“Oi!” Auto-Alf called out from up the road. “What about those car keys?”
“They’re not here,” Mum snapped back. “Not right now.”
“Do you want that car fixed or not? Whatever you decide, I’ll charge you mileage. And an hourly rate for all the time I’ve wasted.”
“Just send us your bill,” Mum snarled.
Auto-Alf straightened up and was actually shaking his fist in the air. I had never seen anyone do that in real life.
“Stupid cow! Don’t bother calling me another time.”
Then he got back in his boxy van and drove past the Volvo so closely that the wing mirror snapped back with a loud bang, and he disappeared down the road at a speed that most definitely wouldn’t do his van any good. Then again, he could always repair it himself.
“He called your mum a stupid cow!” Oscar was outraged. “He’s the one who’s stupid. Why bother turning up if he’s in such a bad mood? He could always have said no.”
“I guess he wanted the money,” I said absentmindedly. Auto-Alf and his tantrums weren’t exactly at the top of my list right now. Because what if Mum was right? What if the lynx, like the puma, had ended up attacking a human being who was only trying to help? How was it to know that it was my dad?
“Lynxes are shy,” Aunt Isa said, more to my mum than to me, but it felt as if she could read my mind. “They stay away from people, they don’t attack them.”
“Let’s hope so,” my mum said grimly.
We started walking through the tall, yellow grass, not in single file, but spread out in a fan, so that we covered a greater area of the meadow. We called out and we searched. I wasn’t wearing my watch, so I don’t know for how long.
When we’d almost reached the edge of the forest on the far side of the meadow, something low, heavy and awkward came flapping in a jumpy, uneven line across the grass. It was The Nothing. I wouldn’t have thought she could fly this far, but here she was, panting and groaning; I could hear her gasping and struggling before she landed a short distance from us with all the elegance of a wet dishcloth dropping onto the floor.
“I… I… I’ve seen…” She was so out of breath that she could barely force out the words: “… seen him!”
“My dad?” I said.
“Clara’s… dad,” she wheezed. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“There,” she said, pointing with the tip of her wing. “He… he’s lying very still, and he doesn’t… he doesn’t say anything…”
Bending down so quickly that Hoot-Hoot flapped his wings in protest and flew back to Aunt Isa, I picked up The Nothing, small, wet and exhausted as she was, and started to run.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Leech
He was lying at the edge of the wood, right where the meadow became a forest again. New ferns had started shooting up through the soil, but the old, brown, withered ones made it difficult to spot him.
I reached him first; Oscar normally ran faster than me, but he didn’t have The Nothing helping him by pointing and calling out: “That way. No, more to the right!” And: “Right there! Can’t you see him?”
He was lying flat on his back as though he was just passing the time by gazing at the clouds. But his eyes were closed and, for one horrible moment, I was afraid that he might be dead. Then I saw that he was breathing – his nostrils flared, his chest slowly heaved and sank.
“Dad?” I whispered.
He didn’t reply, of course. If he hadn’t heard us scream and shout for the last half hour, it would take more than a whisper to wake him. I squatted down on my haunches and carefully touched his cheek.
My fingers were cold, but he was even colder. What was wrong with him?
“Is it my fault?” The Nothing asked.
“Your fault? No, why would it be?”
“Because… he wasn’t supposed to see me, and then I got myself seen anyway. And I could tell that he went all wrong when he spotted me. All wrong. Perhaps it made him ill?”
“No one gets ill just from looking at you,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Quite the opposite. After all, you were the one who found him.”
“Yes,” The Nothing said, looking much happier. “I did! All by myself!”
“How did you know that we were looking for him?”
“When Hoot-Hoot flew off. He went to look for something, I could feel it. And then I thought perhaps I could help. Though I’m not very good at flying.” She moved her limbs gingerly. “My wings are really sore now…”
I knew I was supposed to say nice things and keep praising her, but all I could think about right now was my dad. I unbuttoned the top of his shirt to make sure that he could breathe.
And there it was. Right where his neck joins his body. A big, fat, black-and-brown leech.
I tore it off on impulse. Only afterwards did I remember that you were supposed to make them let go. I just wanted it off him, so I pulled hard. Perhaps that was why there was so much blood everywhere. His shirt and his jacket were soaked, and the brown ferns were dyed red.
“What’s happened?” said Oscar, who had been close behind me most of the way. “Did he get stabbed or something?”
“No…” I flung away the leech and pressed both hands against the wound as if trying to force all the blood back into my dad.
He stirred and half opened his eyes. His gaze was strangely veiled as if he weren’t quite present.
“Clara,” he mumbled. “Colours. Colours everywhere. Why is everything turning red?”
Then his eyelids closed, and although I called him and shook him gently, he didn’t come round again.
“Let me have a look,” Aunt Isa said, dropping to her knees next to me. “Where has all that blood come from?”
“A leech,” I said. “There was a leech and I… pulled it off.” It was my fault, I thought. “Should I have left it alone?”
“Possibly,” Aunt Isa said. “Depends what kind it was. Where is it?”
“I… I just threw it away.”
Aunt Isa placed her hands where mine had just been. She started singing, a slow and heavy wildsong that made it hard to breathe. But the blood stopped flowing and that was more important.
“You said… you said it wasn’t dangerous,” I stuttered. “When Kahla was bitten.”
“And it isn’t, normally,” she said. “He’ll wake up soon, you’ll see. Maybe he fell and hit his head and that explains why… A cup of willow bark tea and a bit of wildsong, and he’ll be right as rain. Don’t be scared, Clara, we’ll get him well again. One doesn’t die from being bitten by a leech. You go get Star, so we can bring your dad home.”
“There’s no way he’s going back to yours,” Mum said, ashen-faced but very determined. “He’s going to a hospital. No more witchcraft! Clara, give me your phone.”
People don’t die from being bitten by a leech. Aunt Isa had said so, so it must be true. I gave my Mum the phone.
“I’m perfectly capable—” my aunt began. But Mum cut her off.
“No. Ambulance. Doctor. Hospital. And I don’t want him full of all sorts of herbal hocus pocus when he’s admitted.”
The ambulance rattled slowly across the meadow and up onto the road. It had arrived with flashing lights and a siren, but it drove off quietly, which I took to mean that whatever was wrong with my dad wasn’t serious and urgent.
Mum had gone with him in the ambulance.
She’d looked at me with a weird, frozen expression.
“Stay here,” was all she’d said. “I’ll call.”
Then the doors were closed and the ambulance set off.
Aunt Isa put her hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” she said. “He’ll get well again. With or without herbal hocus pocus…”
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I nodded.
“But, Aunt Isa…”
“Yes.”
“You don’t pass out just because you’re bitten by a leech… or two, for that matter.” Because on my dad’s chest and arms there had been big, round plunger-like marks, just like the ones on Kahla’s leg. He had been bitten at least five times, so perhaps it had been more than one leech.
“No,” Aunt Isa said. “Most of the time you don’t even notice. Leeches produce a substance that numbs the skin. And besides…” she looked around pensively, “besides, there shouldn’t be leeches here at all. They live in ponds and lakes and wetlands, and this meadow just isn’t wet enough.”
“Maybe he walked through a wet place?”
“Maybe.”
But I could tell from looking at her that that wasn’t the whole story. There had to be more to it. The question was what.
“Maybe Kahla did get bitten near your house, rather than at home,” I ventured.
“It’s beginning to look like it.”
She closed her eyes like she had when she went Journeying to find Dad, but this time it was in order to use her wildsense better. It was one of the first skills she’d taught me.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I really want to find that leech again,” she mumbled without opening her eyes.
OK, I thought. You can do this too. Aunt Isa doesn’t have to do everything for you.
I closed my eyes. Then I covered my ears with my hands. It was best to shut out the other senses as much as possible, and I needed all the help I could get.
The place was teeming with life. In the earth, under the leaves, in the treetops, in the sky, among the ferns. I could sense Oscar right next to me in a strange, intimate way. He and I have a blood bond, almost like Cat and me. It might just have been a silly game we’d made up – all right, one that Oscar had made up – one afternoon when we were bored and he thought we needed a little excitement. But silly or not, we’d done it. A bit of his blood had mingled with a bit of mine. In the wildworld such things mattered.
But I wasn’t looking for Oscar right now. And how the heck do you find one tiny, sorry spark of life in a noisy choir of living things?
Blood. It was about blood.
My dad’s blood was in the leech, and I was my father’s daughter. I could follow that trail, it was like a delicate, red path, a thread of life and blood as thin as a cobweb. Got it!
I opened my eyes. Took three steps to the right, rummaged around the ferns and there it was. The hardest part was to pick it up again. Gross doesn’t even begin to describe it.
“Here it is,” I said, holding it up to Aunt Isa.
She opened her eyes.
“You found it!” she said. “Well done, wildwitch…”
I could see that she was both delighted and surprised. She wasn’t used to me trying things out or learning new skills without first being encouraged. I have to admit that I rarely did something with wildwitchcraft unless I had no choice. Or that was how I used to be – before my Tridecimal…
Aunt Isa stuck her hand in her pocket and found one of the linen bags she uses when gathering herbs. She always carried a few around because, as she would say, you never knew what you’d find. The best stuff often turned up when you weren’t even looking. She turned the bag inside out and used it as a kind of glove before taking the leech from me.
“Hmmm,” she said. “This is no ordinary leech. I need to go home and look it up.” She pulled the bag over the leech and tightened the strings at the opening so it couldn’t escape.
While we waited for news from the hospital, Aunt Isa kept us busy studying the leech. I wasn’t sure whether it was really because she thought it was important or just a diversion so I wouldn’t think too much about my dad, but she put the creature in the middle of the kitchen table in a jam jar filled with water. The Nothing helped us find everything the house had by way of leech reference books, and we sat down with one each and started flicking through them, Oscar, The Nothing, Aunt Isa and me.
The leech was still alive despite the trip in the fabric bag. It sucked onto the glass with one end and probed around with its other like an amputated, wriggling finger. It was also about the size of a finger and most of its body was dark brown apart from a vivid yellow stripe down one side. If I looked carefully, I could see that its body was built around a skeleton of rings like those slinkies that can walk down stairs.
“Is this it?” Oscar asked, showing us a picture of a brown leech with a stripe along its side. We looked at his book and then at our leech.
“No,” Aunt Isa said. “That’s not it. It’s similar, but ours has a broader stripe and more rings than that one.”
So we carried on looking.
At long last Mum called. Her voice came across with perfect clarity on my StarPhone.
“He’s going to be all right,” she said. “He’s a little confused, and can’t quite remember what happened, and he’s very tired. They think he’s lost a lot of blood, but that he’ll be fine as long as he rests and drinks plenty of fluids.”
Lost a lot of blood… I remembered the bloodbath I’d caused and felt a stab of guilt.
“When will he be allowed home?” I asked.
“We’ll stay here tonight. The hospital has accommodation where we can both stay, so that he can be examined and hopefully discharged to morrow.”
“OK.”
“Clara Mouse, I’m sorry if I sounded a bit harsh.”
“It’s OK.”
She’d been scared and worried. But then again, so had I.
“I know that you’re having a nice time with Aunt Isa,” she said. “But please don’t…”
“Don’t what?”
“No, forget it. You’ve already told me not to interfere in your wildwitch life.” She was hurt, I could hear it. And I felt really bad inside when Mum got upset. But some things I had to decide for myself, and this was one of them.
“It’s the way it has to be, Mum.”
“No,” she said. “You’ve decided it’s the way it has to be. And I just have to learn to live with it.”
She hung up. I sat for a while with the phone in my hand before I stuffed it into my pocket.
“How is he?” Oscar wanted to know.
“Better. They’re keeping him overnight.” Then I remembered that Oscar’s mum was waiting for him to come home. We’d called her last night and explained about the tree and promised to be back later today, but that was before a leech upset our plans. “Oscar, what about you? Shouldn’t we take you back? If we go on the wildways…?”
“I think that’s going to be difficult to explain,” he said. “It would be better to call and say why we’re delayed and that I’ll come back tomorrow.”
I handed him my StarPhone without another word, and he went into the living room to call his mum.
“Aunt Isa?”
“Yes?”
“Why is it so important that we find out what kind of leech it is?”
“Because I’m fairly sure it doesn’t belong here,” my aunt said. “And if it doesn’t – then someone or something brought it here.”
Oscar came back while I was still mulling over her words.
“It’s OK,” he said, “I’m allowed to stay until tomorrow.”
“Was she angry?” I asked.
He pulled a face. “She prefers it when people keep their promises.”
“I imagine most lawyers are like that,” Aunt Isa said with a wry smile. “And we can take you back, it’s no problem.”
“No. She did say it was OK. Deep down I think it suits her because she has an important meeting tomorrow she needs to prepare for. And being here is definitely more fun…”
“And what if we’re not here?” Aunt Isa said.
“Er… what do you mean?”
“I was thinking… there’s a wildwitch who knows just about everything there is to know about leeches. And she lives quite close to Raven Kettle. Two birds with one sto
ne, perhaps.”
Because of Dad getting ill, I’d almost forgotten that we’d agreed to talk to the Raven Mothers about my Tridecimal.
“You mean I get to meet the Raven Mothers? And a leech witch?” Oscar’s freckled face lit up in a wide grin. “Super-cool!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The House of the Leech Witch
“Thousands of animals…” Thuja said. “I’ve never heard of that before…”
She’d invited us into her sitting room, one of the many cave-like rooms and guest quarters dug into the circular crater wall of Raven Kettle. It was a bit dark because there was only one window in the whole of her house, but that didn’t matter to Thuja. She had been born completely blind…
When I first met her, I’d never have guessed. Thuja had led the circle of Raven Mothers and I knew her better than the others because she’d looked after us the first time I visited Raven Kettle. Back then she’d moved just like a seeing person, no fumbling, no hesitation. But only because she had borrowed the eyes of her raven.
That raven was dead now, killed by Chimera, like most of the Raven Mothers’ other birds. For the first time in her adult life, Thuja was blind again, and it would take time before a raven chick from this spring’s new brood had grown big enough to assist her. Thuja could see by using other animals as hosts, but what she got to see was entirely random – and not much use if you were looking for the teapot, say.
So now Thuja had a boy who helped her out. Arkus was short and skinny with dark hair, and he was terribly shy. He hardly dared look at us, especially not at Aunt Isa. But he made us tea and ran off to fetch buns from Raven Kettle’s own bakery.
“Arkus is a kind of foundling,” Thuja explained. “He was taken from his mum and put into a home because he made the mistake of telling people he could talk to animals. But he ran away from what was by all accounts a pretty awful place and made his own way here by asking the birds. He is a very gifted boy. He reads aloud to me, fluently, even though he’s only eight years old and hasn’t had the easiest time at school.”