“She’s supposed to be here. Or here abouts,” I said, double-checking the by now rather crumpled note. I could still see the marks where the kestrel had clutched it in its talons. One hour before sunset, the north path, third bench from the gate.
“Perhaps we’re too early,” said Oscar, who had stopped so that Woofer could pee against a barberry bush. “Or too late. Why couldn’t she just write a quarter past five like normal people? If that’s what she meant…?”
“Because she’s a wildwitch,” I said. “As far as she’s concerned, it’s all about natural time, not minutes on some watch.” But even I had to admit that it had been a pain to find out what time the sun set in early February.
Fairydell Park couldn’t be less magical if it tried. It was squashed between the railway, an old meat packing plant and a strip of rather neglected-looking allotment gardens. In the summer, it might boast a few leafy trees and the odd intrepid sunbather. In winter it was merely muddy, gloomy and desolate. The paths and the soggy grass were littered with burger wrappers and pizza boxes and empty beer cans, and though it seemed a street cleaner had made a half-hearted attempt to pick up some of the litter and bag it in black bin liners, it made little difference since the bags had simply been dumped behind the benches.
“There’s nobody here,” Oscar said. “Please can we go home?”
“You’re the one who insisted on coming with me,” I said. “You were the one dead set on meeting a real wildwitch.”
“Yes, because I thought it would be super cool. But there aren’t any wildwitches, are there? Apart from you, I mean.”
“And I don’t count, of course…”
“Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.”
I counted the benches again to make sure I had the right one – third from the gate. I did, but it remained stubbornly vacant. I don’t know if I’d expected Shanaia to materialize out of the grey February air just because I had turned my back for a moment, but she certainly hadn’t.
“Let’s do one more round,” I said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“Clara, there are people with vegetable patches bigger than this park. She’s not here!”
One of the bin liners stirred. My heart jumped into my throat and I let out a startled squeak.
“What’s wrong?” Oscar said.
I pointed. “There,” I said. “It moved…”
The plastic fluttered in the wind, but that wasn’t it. And now Oscar could see it too. A pointy, white head stuck out of the rubbish, a head with round, dark ears, blood-red eyes and whiskers longer than the width of its head.
“It’s one of those… thingamajigs,” he said. “Like weasels.”
“A ferret,” I said, and felt the February chill spread inside me. “It’s Shanaia’s…”
I squatted down on my haunches next to the bench and carefully extended my hand towards the ferret. It widened its jaw and hissed at me so I could see all its needle-sharp teeth. It wasn’t until then that I realized that the pile of rubbish wasn’t all rubbish. Under the cover of the black bags, I could see a shoulder sticking out of a torn leather jacket. That bit of denim among the milk cartons, pizza boxes and popcorn bags wasn’t just a pair of old jeans someone had thrown away. It had a leg inside it. And now I saw a hand, a hand with pale fingertips and long, silver-painted nails protruding from a pair of cut-off black leather gloves with studs across the knuckles.
It was Shanaia.
“Is… is she dead?” Oscar asked. Woofer whined anxiously, then barked at the ferret and possibly also at Shanaia. Earlier he had wandered past the bench – twice – without taking any notice of the bin bags at all.
“Go away,” I ordered the ferret sternly. “We’re only trying to help her.”
Perhaps I had become enough of a wildwitch for it to understand. At any rate, it graciously refrained from sinking its teeth into my hand as I started tossing rubbish and plastic aside so I could get a better look at Shanaia.
She was breathing.
Her eyes were closed and her face was as cold as ice, but she was breathing.
“She’s not dead,” I exclaimed with relief.
But what had happened to her?