“Clara!”
Someone was shaking me.
“Clara, come on! Sit up.”
I had no desire to sit up. I had no wish to move at all. Everything hurt and my stupid knee had found new and interesting ways to torture me – a fiery dart, a prickling of acid, needles pushing in behind the kneecap and sending electric shocks up through my thigh muscle.
“Clara. You have to!”
It was Kahla.
Kahla? What was she doing here?
“What…” I mumbled. “Why are…”
But I couldn’t finish my sentences. The words slipped away when I reached for them and my tongue felt numb. All that came out were grunts of pain.
“Where does it hurt?” Kahla asked.
“Knee. Head.”
She placed her hands either side of my head. I noticed in my dazed state that she was still wearing mittens. But what was she doing to me?
“Lie still. I’ll see if I can make it go away.”
And then she did pretty much the same as Aunt Isa had done that first night. She stroked my temples and the back of my head with woolly mitten fingers while her wildsong curled around me as subtly as my black cat. It helped. Perhaps not as much as when Aunt Isa did it, but it did help. I could think again, I could move again.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Helping you,” she said through gritted teeth. “What did you expect? That you could manage everything on your own?”
“Yes,” I said. “Aren’t those the rules?”
“Chimera doesn’t play by the rules. It might explain why she always wins.”
“Chimera?” I looked around frantically. There was a torch lying next to Kahla and it cast strange shadows between the rocks. I caught a glimpse of curious lizard eyes, but I couldn’t see a four-metre-tall non-angel.
“Don’t worry. She’s up there waiting with the others.”
“Then how can she be mixed up in this…”
Kahla scoffed. “Perhaps you think it was just bad luck that a colony of bats decided to attack you just as you were about to pass the third trial?”
Bats. Yes. That was why I had fallen.
“But…”
“Clara. Bats are shy. They would never attack a human – unless someone made them.”
I reached for the torch and swept the beam across the roof of the cave. There they hung, the bats – in furry clusters, heads down, their wings folded around their bodies. They hardly stirred now; they swayed a little and occasionally there was the soft rustling of a wing. I thought they still looked fairly scary, but I had to admit that they showed no sign of wanting to attack us. Perhaps I’d just seen too many vampire movies.
I shuddered.
“How do you know that’s what happened?” I asked.
“Because I followed you. As soon as the grown-ups had moved away from the hole you were lowered into, I climbed down as well.”
“Why? I didn’t think… I mean, I didn’t think you liked me.”
Kahla looked away.
“I don’t. Or… it’s a bit difficult to explain. It’s… it’s incredibly important that I become a good wildwitch. Far more important than you can imagine. Isa is supposed to teach me all the things my dad can’t because he’s a man. That’s why we come to see her, day in, day out, even though it’s a terribly long way to travel and it’s dreadfully cold and I freeze half to death every single day. Because it’s important.” She glanced up at me. Her dark eyes shone as if she were about to cry. “And then you came. And you knew nothing. Isa had to tell you everything, even the basics, and you still couldn’t do it. You would cheat or guess at most of the answers, and sulk when you didn’t get things right straight away. Suddenly I had to wait for the new girl to catch up all the time, and to top it all you couldn’t even be bothered to make an effort. When I’ve been practising my entire life. You’ve no idea how angry it made me.”
I squirmed. She was right: I’d sulked and been stroppy at the beginning, and I’d cheated in some of the tasks because I didn’t understand them.
“Why is it so important to you?” I asked. “Becoming a good wildwitch, I mean.”
Again she avoided looking at me.
“I want to be just as good as my mum was,” she said quietly. “It’s absolutely essential.”
She lifted her head abruptly.
“Stop asking so many questions,” she snapped.
“You hated me right from the start,” I said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes. Or rather hated that you were there. After all, I didn’t know you.”
“Then why are you helping me now?”
She snorted.
“I hadn’t planned to. I decided to follow you to see if you cheated.”
That made more sense. Now I recognized her.
“I didn’t.”
“No,” she said. “But Chimera did. So it was probably just as well that I was here, don’t you think?”
I sighed.
“Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”
“And now you have to climb up that rope ladder and show them that you really are a wildwitch. You understand Chimera has to be beaten, don’t you?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll go back to the entrance and get out that way. It’s probably best that they don’t find out I helped you. Even though Chimera cheated first.”
I did as she told me. I heard her clamber over the rocks in the darkness while I stretched out my battered body and prepared to limp back to the rope ladder. Kahla. She was a bit like the cat. I didn’t think that we’d just become best friends forever, but she’d helped me when I needed it and I knew that I owed her a favour. Perhaps that was a kind of friendship.
When I struggled up the last few rungs of the rope ladder, all the grown-ups were waiting – friends, enemies and Raven Mothers. Aunt Isa smiled and I could see an extra sparkle in her brown eyes. Chimera’s scowl was more evil than ever. And there was a look on her face which made me fairly sure that Kahla had been right – she really had tried to stop me with the bats. But she’d failed, I thought. Kahla had seen to that.
“Clara Ash has passed Earthfire,” Thuja said out loud so that everyone could hear it.
Only one trial remained – the one Mrs Pommerans had called the Heartfire.