Alex pulled up at the back of the house, behind Leeuie’s truck. ‘GRANDPA JACOB!’
A flock of birds in a nearby tree screeched and took to the air. Leeuie ran out of the house first, followed by Grandpa Jacob hobbling as fast as he could. They both stopped short when they saw Mum.
The colour drained from Grandpa Jacob’s face.
‘Kiala’s controlling a tiger.’ The tears were back and Alex swiped at her cheeks. ‘And it tried to attack me, but Mum jumped in its way.’
Leeuie’s mouth fell open. ‘A tiger?’
‘A Tasmanian tiger,’ Alex said. She caught the look that passed between Leeuie and Grandpa Jacob.
‘But they’ve been extinct since 1936,’ Leeuie said. ‘There was a show on the —’
‘And I’m telling you they’re not extinct,’ Alex snapped, ‘because one just attacked us and now Mum won’t wake up!’
Between the three of them, they lifted Mum out of the car and carried her into the house. Grandpa Jacob directed them to the darkened spare bedroom just off the hallway. Leeuie fumbled with a lamp switch and the room was flooded with warm light.
Once Mum was lying on the bed, Grandpa Jacob gingerly peeled the blood-soaked sweater away from her arm. Gaping puncture marks showed the outline of the wound, where dirt and tiny splinters of wood were stuck to the ragged edges of her skin. The bleeding had slowed, but Mum’s arm was an unnatural purple colour and had swollen to almost twice its normal size.
‘We need to call an ambulance,’ Alex said.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Leeuie quickly.
‘No!’ Grandpa Jacob put a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘This isn’t anything modern medicine can deal with.’
‘How do you know?’ Alex’s voice rose hysterically. Mum needed a doctor right now! She tried to shove past Grandpa Jacob, but he held her firmly by the arm.
‘Let me go!’ she cried. ‘I have to call an ambulance!’
He locked his eyes onto Alex’s. ‘Please. Trust me.’
This was the man who didn’t even want Mum there in the first place. And now Mum was dying and he was asking Alex to trust him? She turned to Leeuie. ‘Go and call one! Go!’
Leeuie fidgeted with the cuffs of his tattered shirt and looked at Grandpa Jacob, then at Mum lying in the bed. ‘Um, I think we should listen to Mr Ortiz.’
‘No, listen to me!’ Alex was screaming now. This was like one of those bad dreams, where you’re shouting for people to run and they just laugh in your face. ‘Call an ambulance!’
‘And what exactly are you going to say happened to her?’ Grandpa Jacob’s voice was low, and infuriatingly calm. ‘That an extinct animal, which is somehow being kept alive by an ancient spirit, bit her and now she’s in a coma?’
That pulled Alex up short. ‘Of course not. But she needs help.’
‘See this?’ Grandpa Jacob twisted the bedside light so it was shining directly on Mum’s arm. An oily black substance clung to the edges of the torn skin. It had coalesced with Mum’s blood, and swirls of red and black filled each of the puncture wounds. ‘This is not something you see from a normal animal bite. I suspect it’s a sort of …’ He searched for the right words. ‘A sort of supernatural poison.’
Leeuie inhaled sharply. ‘From Kiala?’
Alex recalled the viscous black saliva that had oozed from the Tasmanian tiger’s mouth. She’d been too petrified at the time to think how totally nuts it was for an animal to be drooling black spit.
‘Can we wash it off?’ Alex asked, her voice small, but she knew the answer before Grandpa Jacob said anything.
‘I’m sorry Alex,’ he said gently. ‘Whatever it is, it’s already in her bloodstream. We’re dealing with powerful ancient magic here. That’s not something we can fix easily.’
Alex sagged onto the edge of the bed and didn’t try to hold back the tears that ran down her cheeks. She stared at her mum. With her eyes closed, chest rising and falling erratically and skin pale as milk, the woman in the bed barely even looked like Mum.
No one said a word until the shrill of the telephone finally pierced the silence. All three of them jumped.
‘Stay here,’ Grandpa Jacob said.
He hobbled out of the room and into the kitchen. ‘Hello?’ His voice echoed down the hall. ‘Oh. Neil. Hello.’
For a second, Alex considered racing into the kitchen and snatching the phone from Grandpa Jacob’s hands and demanding her uncle call an ambulance from wherever he was. But she didn’t. Because a very small part of her knew that Grandpa Jacob was right, and that no doctor would be able to do anything to make Mum better.
‘No, no, everything is absolutely fine here.’ Grandpa Jacob’s voice sounded overly cheery. ‘We don’t need you at all. Elina? Er, she’s at the shops. Alex? Oh yes, she’s having a wonderful time.’
Alex almost laughed out loud. Oh yes. Such a wonderful time …
Grandpa Jacob hung up the phone and thumped his way back down the hall. Alex could feel his eyes on her, but she didn’t look up.
Grandpa Jacob cleared his throat. ‘Leeuie, your parents are probably wondering where you are.’
Leeuie shrugged. ‘I doubt it. I told them I’d be out for most of the day.’
‘What about the rest of your deliveries?’
‘You were the last,’ Leeuie said, ‘so I can stay and help with whatever you need.’
‘That’s a very nice offer,’ Grandpa Jacob said firmly but kindly, ‘but I think it’s probably time for you to head home.’
Leeuie looked at him, pleading. ‘But I’ve read a whole bunch of books and seen heaps of shows about —’
‘None of that can help!’ Alex exclaimed. She couldn’t deal with his Discovery Channel philosophising right now. This was way bigger than anything he’d seen or read or heard. She knew it was mean, cutting him off like that, but didn’t he get it? He couldn’t help Mum. No one could.
‘Oh. Okay.’ Leeuie looked at the ground, his shoulders slumping. ‘If you change your mind, just call.’
As Grandpa Jacob walked Leeuie to the back door Alex squeezed her eyes shut and willed time to rewind. Why had she tried to run away? If she had waited for just another ten minutes Mum would have got back to the farm and seen how Grandpa Jacob was trying to force Alex to go into the forest, then Mum would have taken her away from here, forever.
‘This is all my fault,’ she sniffed. The bed creaked under her weight as she shifted closer to her mum. ‘I’m sorry.’
Mum whimpered, twisting from side to side on top of the sheets, as though she were in the middle of a bad dream.
‘Mum?’ Alex’s breath caught. She squeezed Mum’s hand. ‘Are you awake?’
Mum kept fidgeting, but didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t respond. It took every ounce of self-control for Alex not to curl into a ball on the bed next to her and cry, and cry, and cry.
Grandpa Jacob returned and pressed a cup of tea into Alex’s hands.
‘Drink up. It’ll make you feel better,’ he said.
Alex doubted it, but she took a tentative sip anyway. The tea was sweet and milky and warmed her insides.
From his shirt pocket, Grandpa Jacob pulled a glass bottle which was filled with a purple substance. He removed the cork stopper.
Alex wrinkled her nose as a sour earthy smell, like compost and vinegar, filled the room. ‘What’s that?’
‘In my research I’ve come across a lot of ancient medicine recipes,’ he explained. ‘Some of them better than others. This is one of the good ones.’
Alex perked up. ‘You think that could fix her?’
Grandpa Jacob shook his head. ‘But it should help calm her nervous system. Stop her being too agitated, in too much pain.’ He hesitated, his voice catching. ‘It helped your grandmother at the end far more than any of those things the doctors gave her.’
He filled a spoon, his hands shaking ever so slightly as he held it up to Mum’s mouth. She twisted and fussed, unable to lie still.
‘Come on,’ he said in a soothing voice, the same one he’d used talking to the alpacas. ‘Open up. There’s a good girl.’
He managed to get the spoon between her lips and even though Mum wasn’t conscious, she swallowed. Within a minute her breathing calmed and she stopped whimpering. Alex leaned closer. Mum just looked like she was peacefully asleep now. ‘It’s working!’
Grandpa Jacob re-corked the bottle and put it next to the bed. ‘It’ll buy us some time, a day or two maybe, but it can’t undo what’s been done to her.’
‘But she looks better,’ Alex said.
Grandpa Jacob shook his head sadly. ‘The only antidote for magic such as this is to destroy the source it comes from.’
Then Alex understood. To fix Mum she had to reverse the effects of the poison. And that meant finding Kiala and taking the spirit’s power away by putting her into a new prison.
Alex put down her mug of tea and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I’ll go and find out what the alpacas know.’