Chapter Twenty
Holly was watching the tea-time news. She sat on her hands next to Clive on the sofa, tight with fear and worry.
“And now with these latest reports of a big cat running wild, what are we to think?” the TV reporter said. He had a safari suit on and was posing like a big-game hunter in front of the falls at Miller’s Clough. “Given that no big cat has been found, despite extensive searches over the last twenty-four hours, is this simply a case of mass hysteria?”
The camera zoomed in to his face as his eyes narrowed. “Or is there something more suspicious going on? This area has gained a huge amount of publicity over the last few weeks, which can only have helped its hotels and tourist trade…”
Here they cut to an interview with a woman from the tourist board, who denied all knowledge of big cats or anything else.
“They didn’t even mention DNA and cloning,” said Clive, disappointed.
“They think it’s all a fraud, a fake or something, made up to get people to come here. But who on earth would expect a sabre-tooth cat to attract tourists?” asked Holly.
“It would attract me,” said Clive wistfully. “I wonder how it can have just disappeared?”
It went back through time, Holly said inside her head; with the help of the stone with a hole. She did not say this thought aloud. “Something electro-magnetic,” she suggested instead.
“Possibly.” Clive heaved a sigh of regret.
The phone rang, and Holly’s heart jumped in fear. This, not the TV news, was what she had been waiting for. As she leapt off the sofa to answer it, she felt so sick that she could barely speak.
“Hallo? Yes. Really? Really? Thank you.” She put the phone down and looked at Clive. “That was Lucinda. We can go and pick up Doofus.”
“He’s okay?”
Holly nodded and looked away again. It was ridiculous that tears should start to fill her eyes now, when there was good news. She hadn’t really believed that Doofus would be all right, despite Lucinda trying to reassure her the previous day; for it had seemed to her that Doofus must be dying.
When the warden at Miller’s Clough had seen the dog lying unconscious in a pool of blood, he had rung Lucinda. She’d come out straight away, and together they had loaded Doofus, barely breathing, into her van. There had been so much blood that Holly was terrified.
She wasn’t allowed to go with Doofus. She had to go home with the others. But she had barely eaten, barely slept since then. It was nearly as bad as Pancake. Maybe it was worse, because she thought they might all owe their lives to Doofus. If he hadn’t held the sabre-tooth at bay, how many of them now might just be shredded cat-meat?
So now the relief of Lucinda’s call had not quite sunk in.
“Are you going to collect him? I’ll come with you.” Clive bounced up and switched off the TV.
Dad drove them to the vet’s, because Doofus would not be walking home. He would not be walking anywhere for a few days, according to Lucinda.
The vet led them to a small room where Doofus lay prone upon a mat. He had a wodge of dressing round his neck and shoulder, and another one on his hind-quarters. Sixty-four stitches in all, Lucinda had told them. As they came in, he struggled to sit up.
“No, lie down, Doofus,” Holly said. She put a hand upon his back. She didn’t really know how to stroke him, because he did not care for being stroked. But he didn’t seem to mind her hand just being there.
“Well, poor old Doofie,” said Dad, kneeling down to make a fuss of him, and doing plenty of patting and stroking, which he bore patiently.
But Clive was following Lucinda around the surgery. While she was getting antibiotics for Doofus out of a cupboard, he trapped her in the corner and asked,
“Did they find out anything else yet about those wolves?”
“They’re still trying to work out where they came from,” said Lucinda, attempting to edge round him. Clive stood firm.
“What about that bit of fur you took from Doofus’s teeth?” he asked eagerly. “What did that come from?”
“Cat,” said Lucinda briefly, not meeting his gaze.
“Cat? So where is it now, that bit of fur?”
“It’s gone to the Natural History Museum.”
Clive beamed. “Cat is right,” he said. “I saw it. It was amazing.”
“Let’s get this dog on the road,” said Dad. The mat where Doofus lay had handles, and turned into a sort of cradle arrangement; but it took all four of them to lift it, with Doofus stretched out on it, into the back of Dad’s estate car. Doofus was stoical.
“It’s mostly blood loss that’s the problem,” said Lucinda. “Make sure he has plenty to eat and drink, and keep him quiet.”
Thanking her, they set off for home, with Dad doing his smoothest chauffeur-style driving.
“Dad?” said Holly as they approached Miller’s Clough. “Can we go in there, just for five minutes?”
“What for, sweetheart?”
“I just want to have a look.”
The car park was cordoned off with orange tape. Closed until further notice, said a sign. Dad parked up next to it.
“If you’re walking down to the waterfall, I’ll come with you,” he said.
Holly looked at Doofus. He lay quiet and relaxed. Seeing him so unconcerned made her realise how much tension had been building up in him for the last week.
“I think it’ll be all right,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any danger now.”
She climbed over the tape and ran down the path with Dad puffing some way behind. Clive stayed in the car with Doofus.
When she reached the waterfall there was nobody there but the water, although that seemed like a person in itself, busily talking away to her in a liquid language that she felt she ought to know. Maybe Nan would understand it, or Lily.
She jumped over to the rocky platform where the sabre-tooth had stood, ignoring the drenching of her shoes, and looked down into the water. There was nothing to show that a big cat had ever been here, thirty thousand years after its true time. A blackbird sang melodiously from the tangled bushes. She gazed up at them: no golden eye gazed back.
She looked down again and saw what she had come for – the stone eye in the water. Reaching in, she picked it up and pocketed it, all wet, just as Dad came panting up to her.
“There’s nothing here now,” she said, turning round.
“What did you expect to find?”
“Footprints, or something,” she said vaguely. “I suppose the wardens and police and so on have tramped all over everything.”
Dad had a peer around for footprints anyway, while the stone lay heavy in Holly’s pocket.
But it’s not just a stone, she thought: it’s a window. A keyhole. A keystone. It’s a way through to the past: a way that can be locked to keep the past out.
It might have lain safely buried up on Whitten Moor for centuries, or thousands of years, until Jarvis dug it up and let the creatures of the past come through. But now the stone had sent them back.
Could it send them back in time, though? Time was one way only. She had read that you could slow time down by travelling fast enough through space, but you could never turn time around and go backwards. You could look back, if you looked far enough away across the galaxies; but you could not go back. The future was the only place to go.
So perhaps the sabre-tooth and wolves had been sent into the future; to reappear a hundred, or a thousand years from now.
Or next week.
She decided not to mention the stone in her pocket to Clive. He would only want to start experimenting on it, and there was no way she was going to let prehistoric wolves and big cats turn up in the shed. Although she didn’t know how it worked, she knew she had better keep the stone eye somewhere safe: somewhere it would not be interfered with. If the trouble had all started when Jarvis dug it up, maybe she should bury it deep again.
“Hard to believe,” said Dad, trying unsuccessfully to skim a pebble
on the tumbling water. “It’s all so peaceful here.”
He had already decided that Holly and her Mum and Nan had seen a puma. He blamed the wildlife park, with their dodgy record on wild boars and wallabies. Mum had admitted that the cat might well have seemed bigger than it actually was; and Nan, of course, was not able to describe it at all.
Holly knew that Nan was worried about Doofus, though. All day Nan had been restless, her eyes searching. They were expecting Uncle Ted to arrive, but Holly thought Nan’s longing was for Doofus. Nan would not be happy till he was back home.
So she said, “Come on, Dad. Party day tomorrow. I’ve got a cake to ice. Balloons to blow up. There’s still a lot to do.” And she led him back to the car, where Doofus waited, and left the stream behind her babbling out its endless unintelligible secrets.