Oblivion

  Cat sniffed the dead seagull on the path. I was more worried about Oscar, who was sitting up slowly, but definitely didn’t look his best. His baseball cap had come off and his hair, quite upright and tufty at the best of times, was a mess of reddish clumps. Blood trickled from his nose and from one eyebrow, and all of his face and both his hands were covered in scratches. It was just as well that it was February and he had been wearing winter clothing – his puffer jacket had suffered multiple tears from which man-made fibres stuck out, but it had undoubtedly protected him against a lot of the pecking and scratching.

  “Ouch,” he winced. “That really hurt. Stupid, sodding seagulls!”

  I took it as a good sign that he could still swear. Woofer licked Oscar’s cheek and looked somewhat contrite and defeated.

  Oscar touched his nose gingerly.

  “What is up with those seagulls?” he wanted to know. “Was it more of that wildwitch stuff?”

  Though he was the one who was bleeding, he didn’t seem nearly as shaken as I was. Perhaps he didn’t understand just how close he’d come to being pecked to death. I could never have managed to fight off the seagulls on my own; I’d only succeeded because I’d had help.

  “Was that Chimera?” I asked Cat. “Did she make the seagulls attack us?” I knew they would never have done so of their own accord.

  Cat merely hissed and bared the claws on one of his black front paws. He didn’t know who was behind it, but if he ever found out, then the sneaky little rat had better watch out.

  Oscar got up.

  “So now what?” he said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call an ambulance?”

  Cat arched his back, then stretched. Isa, he said. You need Isa.

  I couldn’t agree more. Only I didn’t know how to get hold of her, did I?

  At that very moment my mobile rang.

  CHAPTER 4

  Aunt Isa

  She came walking through the fog with Hoot-Hoot on her shoulder and Star following at her heels like a large dog rather than the sturdy, round-backed, woolly pony she was. Hoot-Hoot spread his broad wings and stared at us with round owl eyes. Oscar whispered: “Awesome!” And then appeared to lose the power of speech.

  He had my sympathy. I was used to seeing Aunt Isa at home where she belonged, in the small stone farmhouse in the middle of the woods, with paraffin lamps and a log burner and hibernating hedgehogs in shoeboxes in the living room. She didn’t look exactly ordinary there either, but still… less out of place.

  Emerging from the dense, grey fog, in her broad-brimmed hat and long plaits, an owl perched on her shoulder and a horse with no bridle or saddle trotting behind her – right here in Fairydell Park with its tarmac paths, empty cola cans and council park benches, and the traffic roaring past on Fairydell Road… Well, my aunt Isa looked exactly what she was: a witch. A wildwitch who could travel the wildways and appear any place any time, a creature from a world where you didn’t change buses or drive cars to get from A to B, and because she was angry, she also looked fierce. She really looked as if she could turn someone into a frog if they didn’t behave – and if she didn’t think it would be a rotten thing to do to all the other ordinary decent real frogs.

  She didn’t say a word; just nodded briefly to me and dropped to her knees by Shanaia’s side. She put a hand on her neck, right below the ear, and began to sing. The wildsong wound itself around us almost like the fog tentacles had done, low and high at the same time, a sudden warmth, a scent of soil and wet leaves, a quiver of life deep in our bones.

  Shanaia coughed lightly and I saw a trickle from the corner of her mouth, something slimy and pink that didn’t look healthy. She coughed again, more violently this time, and the ferret twitched and then made a wild, jubilant jump for joy. It gave a happy sort of whine and rubbed itself against Aunt Isa’s hand as if it were a cuddly kitten, and Shanaia opened her eyes.

  She hadn’t recovered full consciousness. Her gaze was blurry and confused, and she was unable to sit up without help. One fist clenched a tuft of greasy grass and she began to shake all over.

  “Shanaia,” Aunt Isa called out. “Shanaia, we’re here. You’re here. Come back to us.”

  What did she mean by that?

  “Shanaia!” Loud and commanding. Shanaia’s whole body suddenly jerked and something in her eyes changed.

  “Yes,” she said in a croaky and very quiet voice. “I’m here now.” As if she really hadn’t been, before. Then she coughed lightly again and closed her eyes.

  “Help me get her up on Star,” Aunt Isa said. “She can’t walk on her own.”

  Shanaia’s skin was still cold, but not as icy as before. She tried to stand, but she had almost no strength left and getting her onto Star’s broad, round back was a struggle.

  “Hang on to the mane,” Aunt Isa said to her. “We’ll take care of everything else.”

  “Yes,” Shanaia whispered, flopping forward onto Star’s neck. She grabbed the coarse, bristly mane with both hands, but I had to support her from one side and Oscar from the other to make sure she stayed on. The ferret popped its head out from under the collar of her leather jacket and emitted a string of tiny, high-pitched eeek-eeek-eeek noises that sounded anxious and aggressive at the same time.

  “You have to help,” Aunt Isa said, her voice straining with the effort. “Both of you. We need to get her back to my house.”

  “But…” Oscar began.

  “I’ll take you home afterwards,” Aunt Isa said. Woofer just gazed up at Aunt Isa with total adoration and wagged his tail so his broad backside swung from side to side. “Clara, call your mum and tell her I’ll bring you back as soon as I can.”

  I don’t think Aunt Isa had any idea just how my mum would react to such a message, so I decided to text her instead: Oscar and I are with Aunt Isa. Please would you call Dad? Will explain later. Right now it was easier.

  “Is this the wildways?” Oscar whispered to me as we started walking.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Aunt Isa led the way and Star followed very carefully as if she were scared of dropping Shanaia. The fog grew denser, and the noise from the traffic on Fairydell Road disappeared.

  “Now we’re on the wildways,” I said to Oscar.

  When we emerged from the wildways fog near Aunt Isa’s farmhouse, it had grown completely dark. A huge and nearly full moon hung right above the treetops and a fine sprinkling of snow and hoar frost on the meadow and the gravel track turned everything blue. The meadow, the track, the thatched roofs on the farmhouse and the barn, the apple trees in the orchard… everything glistened frostily blue in the moonlight. The fire must still be going in the wood burner because a fine blue trickle of smoke rose from the chimney. Star whinnied loudly, and from inside the house we could hear Bumble bark with excitement, which made Woofer go completely hyper, pulling and straining at his leash like a mad dog.

  Aunt Isa helped Shanaia down from the pony.

  “Please would you see to Star?” she asked me.

  “Of course,” I said, although the barn was frankly not where I wanted to be right now. Shanaia was still barely conscious and had told us nothing about what happened, and my curiosity was nearly killing me. But Star deserved a good feed and lots of cuddles and a good rub down, given how sweet and cautious she had been, so careful not to drop her weakened rider.

  Oscar was standing in the middle of the farmyard, looking around him with widening eyes. I don’t think it was the farmyard in itself or the thatched roof or the grey stone walls. Rather, it was the fact that we were here, quite clearly deep in the forest, when only ten minutes ago we had been in Fairydell Park with the traffic zooming past just on the other side of the fence.

  “Wow…” he said. “What happened?”

  “The wildways,” I said. “I told you.”

  “Yes. But…”

  But being here was completely different from my telling him about it. I did understand that.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I said, althoug
h I wasn’t entirely sure I was used to it myself.

  Oscar helped me with Star. He had little experience with horses, but I showed him how to brush her, first in soft circles with the plastic curry comb, then with the dandy brush in long strokes in the direction of her coat. We stood either side of her, rubbing and brushing until she dropped her lower lip and looked blissful, and actually it felt really pleasant and quiet and safe after everything that had happened. We let Woofer off his leash and he cautiously greeted the bravest of the goats. The goat promptly butted him playfully with its small, stumpy horns, making Woofer yelp with fright and seek cover behind Oscar. Woofer wasn’t quite the sort of action dog hero that scaled walls, disarmed bad guys, and jumped into harbours to save his drowning master. To be honest, he was a bit of a couch potato. But he was a very sweet dog all the same.

  Cat had disappeared, and I took this to be a good sign. Had he believed I was still in danger, I’m sure he would have stayed with me.

  “What do you think is wrong with Shanaia?” Oscar asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But if you’ll help me give Star some hay and fresh water, then we can go inside and find out.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Shanaia’s Story

  There was a crackling fire in the log burner, and Bumble had put his head – along with about half of the rest of his body – across my lap. He was so heavy that my legs were starting to go numb, but I didn’t push him away because his presence was so warm and reassuring. Woofer had curled up at Oscar’s feet and was snoring loudly.

  All very nice and cosy – but there was nothing cosy and certainly nothing nice about what had happened to Shanaia.

  “When Westmark was taken from me,” Shanaia began, “people tried to make me feel better by saying there were lots of other nice places to live. They just didn’t get it. I was born there. But more than that. I belong there in a way I can’t explain. Something inside me is… is anchored there. Like a limpet to a rock. I can travel, I can visit other places – but I can’t live anywhere else. Do you understand?”

  She looked so pale and weak that I just nodded even though I didn’t know exactly what she meant. Was she describing a kind of homesickness? I knew what it was like to be homesick. I would often miss Mercury Street when I visited Aunt Isa and sometimes also my dad and the house in Chestnut Street.

  Though that was now a thing of the past. I remembered the pang I had felt when Dad told me he’d sold up and was moving. Perhaps what Shanaia was feeling was a bit like that? Only much worse?

  “I was so young when my parents died that I don’t really remember them. But I remember Westmark.”

  It was news to me that Shanaia was an orphan, though I did know that Chimera had somehow taken her childhood home from her. To lose both your parents and your home… I felt a stab of sympathy.

  “There’s something unusual about your life cord,” Aunt Isa announced. “It doesn’t just connect you to all living things, like other people’s. It seems to have an extra root.”

  Shanaia nodded. “That’s Westmark. You do understand!” Her tense features softened, and her hand, which had been restlessly waving while she struggled to explain, now sank onto the patchwork quilt and settled there.

  I studied Shanaia closely, but could see nothing except a deathly pale and exhausted young wildwitch with far too many cuts and bruises. I realized I had a very long way to go before I became even half as skilled as Aunt Isa.

  “So when the Raven Mothers exiled Chimera, Westmark was all I could think about. Finally the Raven Mothers would have to take it from her and return it to me. Or so I thought.”

  “But surely that’s what they did?” I said. I seemed to remember Aunt Isa writing something to that effect in her Christmas card to me.

  “Yes and no. They gave me back the deeds to Westmark, but they wouldn’t help me make Chimera leave.”

  “Many ravens died,” Aunt Isa said. “It’ll be years before the Raven Mothers regain their former strength.”

  “Yes. They said that I had to wait. But… I couldn’t.” She fumbled for her leather jacket which hung over the back of the sofa where she was lying. Then she handed me a worn leather wallet. “Look.”

  I took the wallet without quite understanding why she was giving it to me. It contained no money or credit cards or anything like that. It was completely empty, apart from a dog-eared photograph in the plastic pocket where most grown-ups keep a photograph of their children, or their husband or wife. But there were no people in Shanaia’s picture. Only a narrow beach washed by the placid waves of a sheltered bay, and some tall, craggy cliffs topped with grass. In the distance, I could make out the contours of an old house with lots of chimneys perched on the edge of the cliffs. Somehow it looked like the house at the end of the world as it clung there, on the verge of tumbling into the deep. A huge flock of seagulls floated on sharp, white wings in the up-draught. I was immediately reminded of the incident in the park and had to repress a shiver.

  I felt I ought to say something nice about the place, given how much it meant to Shanaia, but for now I couldn’t get the seagulls’ beaks and their red eyes out of my mind. I gave her back the wallet without saying a word.

  Oscar looked at her and then at me, and tried to fathom the exchange.

  “Why are the ravens so important?” he then asked. “The dead ones, I mean?”

  “Without them, the Raven Mothers can’t see,” Aunt Isa said. “And it’s difficult to fight if you’re blind.”

  “So what did you do?” he asked Shanaia. “Did you gather an army?”

  She stared at him with a frown. “An army?”

  “Yes. So that you could take back your castle.”

  “Westmark isn’t a castle,” she said. “It’s just… a place. And what would I do with an army?”

  “Aren’t you meant to defeat this Chimera and all her deadly hordes?”

  Shanaia gave me a what-is-he-on-about sort of look.

  “It’s not quite like a computer game,” I said gently. “I don’t believe Chimera has any hordes. And Shanaia definitely doesn’t have an army.”

  “It might have made a difference if I had,” Shanaia said. “Because Chimera does actually have hordes of a kind now.”

  “What do you mean?” Aunt Isa said sharply. “Don’t tell me any wildwitches have sided with her? After all, she’s an outlaw.”

  “No, no wildwitches,” Shanaia said. “But she has done something to the animals of Westmark. They… they’re not free any more.”

  “Are you talking about soul-stripped animals?” Aunt Isa’s voice was so outraged that Bumble lifted his head. “Has she enslaved them?”

  “What’s that?” Oscar asked.

  “A heinous crime,” Aunt Isa replied darkly. “To take away an animal’s free will… not to call it or ask it to be quiet while you help it, but to overpower and enslave it… that’s unworthy of any wildwitch. I’m aware that Chimera has flouted her wildwitch oath many times, but that she would be so brazen… I never would have believed that.”

  “The seagulls,” I said. “And the bats last year…”

  “What are you talking about, Clara?”

  I told her about the bats that had caused me to fall from the rope ladder during the wildfire trial and the court case against Chimera, and about the seagulls in Fairydell Park.

  “Could they really have come all the way from Westmark?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” Shanaia said. “If she sent them by the wildways.” She looked at Oscar’s scratches and bruises and then at me. “But they didn’t attack you?” she then said.

  “Not really. You and Oscar bore the brunt of it. And poor Woofer.”

  Woofer’s tail drowsily bashed the floor a couple of times, then he went back to sleep.

  Aunt Isa nodded slowly.

  “That sounds like soul-stripping.”

  Shanaia heaved a deep sigh.

  “My plan was just to have a look and get some idea of how difficult it would be t
o make her leave, if she refused to go voluntarily. But I’d been there less than an hour when they found me. First the birds. Then a pack of wild dogs. Or rather – a pack of soul-stripped dogs. They surrounded me and Elfrida…” She stroked the ferret across its back with one hand. “…and I couldn’t get away from them. Then Chimera herself turned up.”

  At that moment Shanaia’s face lost all expression, but I don’t think it was because she didn’t feel anything. Quite the opposite.

  “She bound me with cold iron,” she said in a monotone voice. “And there was nothing I could do about it. And then she started to… to question me.”

  Something in Aunt Isa’s face contorted and I didn’t need to ask any more questions to know that the interrogation had been both painful and humiliating. Shanaia wouldn’t even look at us now.

  “What did she want to know?” Aunt Isa asked her gently.

  “Lots of stuff about Westmark. And about Clara.”

  “About Clara? What specifically?”

  “What she could do. I mean, as a wildwitch.”

  Not much, I thought glumly.

  “About who her parents were. And something about cold iron,” Shanaia went on.

  “She bound me with iron too,” I said, and couldn’t help touching my neck. I hadn’t forgotten the cold, sharp pressure of the iron collar.

  “But you could still use your powers,” Aunt Isa said. “You made her go away. I’m sure she’s mystified by that. Did she say anything else?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly Cat leapt up on the sofa to Shanaia. I hadn’t even noticed him coming inside with us. He pushed his nose so close to Shanaia’s face that the ferret hissed at him, and Cat made a noise somewhere between a purr and a growl. Shanaia blinked.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Yes… There was more. Something about… I think it was Vidian, or something like that.”