My birthday dinner ended up being a damp squib because Mum kept glancing at her watch, and I had a feeling she was watching every bite we took, to try and get us to chew faster. Aunt Isa noticed it too, but she didn’t say anything. Oscar was the only one eating and chatting away, mostly about how super-cool my new StarPhone was and all the apps you could get on it, completely oblivious to the atmosphere.
“Thank you, that was a lovely meal,” Mum said as soon as the last bit of ice cream had disappeared from our bowls. “It’s been very nice, Isa, and thank you for having us. But I think we’d better get going now.”
Aunt Isa looked pointedly at Mum.
“Are you sure?” she said, and I knew perfectly well what she was really asking: are you sure Clara shouldn’t have a Tridecimal?
“Absolutely,” Mum said. “Clara, go put our bags in the car. Oscar, have you remembered all your things from upstairs?”
“Yes,” Oscar said.
“Then we’ll be off.”
The road through the forest to Aunt Isa’s house is pretty much a cart track, uneven, full of holes and crisscrossed by tree roots. You can’t drive quickly – not unless you want the bottom torn off your car. And Mum knew it. But she still said:
“Can’t we go a bit faster?”
Dad shook his head. We were driving his Volvo, not Mum’s little Kia.
“Too risky,” he said. “The road is just too bad.”
The sun had already gone down. The darkness under the spruces was deep and impenetrable, but the sky above us was still more blue than black.
Oscar had borrowed my StarPhone and was trying it out.
“There is coverage,” he said. “But it’s taking ages to download.”
I leaned back in my seat and looked out at the meadow to my left. At sunset I’d often seen deer there, and I thought I did see a ripple of movement, but it might just have been the wind ruffling last year’s tall yellow grass.
Then I heard a loud crack from the forest. I just had time to turn my head and watch it happen.
“Look out!” Mum yelled. “It’s going to fall!”
My dad hit the brakes so hard that the whole car shuddered and I was thrown forwards against my seatbelt. Right in front of our eyes a massive spruce leaned slowly further and further across the road and then suddenly came crashing down with a monstrous thud that made the earth ripple like a wave. The car skidded forwards another couple of yards, we heard the crunching of breaking branches, and then I couldn’t see anything any more because the windscreen cracked and went white and opaque. In the same second I heard a pop as both airbags in the front inflated like balloons. Dad shouted something that sounded like: “Hold on tight!” But what was there to hold onto? Then a massive jerk went through the whole car, and once again I was hurled against my seatbelt.
The engine conked out.
There was total silence.
“Clara? Milla? Oscar? Are you OK?” Dad’s voice sounded completely calm, as if just checking how things were.
“Yes,” I squeaked.
“Yup,” Oscar said.
“Milla?”
“I’m OK,” Mum said. “I just got hit in the face by the airbag.”
I’d never been in a car crash before. When cars crashed into something on TV there would be a loud bang and then a few seconds later the petrol tank would explode. Everything would go up in flames. I’d never imagined that the people inside the car would be speaking calmly to each other, almost as if nothing had happened.
“Shouldn’t we be getting out?” I asked. “Before…” I didn’t want to say “before the fire starts”, so the word ended up hanging in the air.
“Just stay in your seats for now,” Dad said. “Take a few deep breaths to get over the shock. Nothing is going to happen.”
“Wow,” Oscar said. “We crashed into a tree!”
He sounded as if he thought it was all super-exciting.
Dad opened his door. He had to give it an extra push and the hinges squealed, but he managed to open it. He got out.
If he was allowed to get out of the car, so was I. I unclicked my seatbelt and opened my door.
“Clara,” Mum said. “First check if you’re hurt. It’s not always something you notice straight away.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
The front of the car had disappeared into the crown of the uprooted spruce. There were broken branches everywhere and a strong smell of resin and fresh wood. It was a strangely pleasant and Christmassy scent in the middle of what Dad called the “shock”.
Mum and Oscar got out as well. Mum touched her nose, but there was no blood, so it looked as if we’d all escaped from the accident unscathed.
“We have to call someone who can clear away that tree,” Mum said.
“Yes,” Dad said. “But it’s going to take time, Milla. And besides, the windscreen is a write-off. I think we have to accept that we’ll be spending another night at Isa’s.”
Mum shook her head.
“No. We’re going home.”
“Milla…”
“We’re not going back.”
“Do you think it’s better for the children to stay here? Milla, this could take hours…”
Mum looked around. The darkness had grown deeper and more night-like in just the ten minutes that had passed since the tree keeled over. And the temperature was dropping. I tightened my jacket around me, but could still feel that I was starting to get cold.
“I’ve found the nearest emergency rescue service,” Oscar said proudly, waving my StarPhone. “Jasper & Son, Auto Service and Windscreens, they’re… hang on… twenty-four kilometres away. 24.6, in fact.”
“Please could I borrow that thing?” Dad asked.
“Go ahead,” I said.
Dad called, but could only get through to voice-mail. It wasn’t until his fourth attempt that he found a mechanic willing to pick up the phone after seven o’clock on a chilly March evening. I stood there shivering while he explained about the tree and the car and the Volvo’s windscreen.
“What’s the name of this place?” he asked Mum when he had finished talking to the mechanic. “I mean, which forest are we in?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because the mechanic said that it’s the Forestry Commission’s responsibility to move the tree. He’ll only deal with the car. And besides, he can’t get hold of a new windscreen until tomorrow morning. And he doesn’t have a courtesy car we can borrow to drive all the way back to town. Milla, the only sensible—”
Mum looked around at us. At me, with my hands stuffed into my sleeves and my shoulders hunched right up to my ears, freezing. At Oscar, who’d started to shift his weight from foot to foot in order to restore some feeling to his toes. At Dad, who was still standing with one hand on the roof of the Volvo, looking tense and tired.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “OK. Let’s go back to Isa. I’m sure she’ll know who to call to get that tree cleared away.”
We’d been driving for about fifteen minutes when the accident happened, so it took quite a while to walk back. The darkness was encroaching upon us. Somewhere above us, an owl was hooting.
“Was that Hoot-Hoot?” Oscar asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. His voice is… deeper. Not so shrill. I think that was a tawny owl.” Aunt Isa had taught Kahla to mimic six different owl cries, I remembered. She had taught me, too, but Kahla was better at it. When she did it, she actually sounded like an owl.
There was rustling in the blackberry tangle by the roadside. A branch snapped loudly under the trees where the darkness was as dense and black as oil.
“I’d completely forgotten how alive a forest is,” Dad said. “Even at night. Or rather, especially at night.”
“Yaooooooooowwwwwwwwr.”
It was as if the forest answered: a long, low, feline sound. I had a flashback to the cat outside the kitchen window and Hoot-Hoot who had made it go away before I’d had a proper look at it. You are too early. This is not the time.
But was it time… now?
A supple movement and a silent jump. A flash of moonlight in bright eyes.
Something appeared on the road in front of us, seven or eight metres away at the most. A tall, slim cat with its mouth half open and its front paw raised, glossy, almost silver in the moonlight, though I suspect it would have been more… lion-coloured by day.
It stood very still and stared at us. Its ears were standing straight up and they had long, furry tufts that quivered attentively.
“A lynx!” Dad exclaimed, as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. “It’s a lynx! Stand very still… It’ll go away in a—”
Mum didn’t stand still. She charged towards the lynx while waving her hands in the air as if trying to shoo away a horse.
“GOAWAY!” she shouted. “Goaway – goaway – goaway!!”
The lynx hissed and the moonlight glinted on its fangs. Then it leapt across the road, into the bushes and the dry grass.
I stood rooted to the spot with my mouth hanging open for several seconds. Not because of the lynx, exciting though it was. But because of Mum.
There could be no other explanation.
The way she had shouted GOAWAY… it sounded completely like when I did it. The only bit of wildwitchcraft I’d ever been any good at… I’d inherited from my mum.
“Mum!”
She spun around. She stopped staring after the lynx and looked at me instead. I’m sure she realized that she’d given herself away. That I knew exactly what she’d done, and how she’d made the lynx disappear. But she acted as though nothing had happened.
“A lynx,” she said. “Around here? I wonder if it could have escaped from the zoo.”
“It’s possible,” Dad said. “Why else would it be so ready to approach people? But I don’t think trying to scare it was very wise, Milla. Threatening it like that… what if it had attacked you instead of running away?”
“But it didn’t,” my mum said. “Come on. Let’s get back to Isa’s so we can warm up. I’ve had enough wilderness excitement for one night, thank you very much.”
“Mum…”
“Not now, Clara.”
She started marching down the road. We followed. Oscar was bouncing with excitement.
“First we drive into a tree,” he said. “And then we’re attacked by a lynx. Wow, that’s so cool!”
“We weren’t attacked,” I protested. “It was only…”
“Oh, don’t spoil it,” he said. “A big, super-cool, scary lynx!”