It felt totally insane to get up to go to school the next day. I’d expected it to feel normal. After all, it was what I did most mornings, but somehow normality and witchery had traded places. These days it seemed quite reasonable and normal to wonder if The Nothing would enjoy living with Aunt Isa, and if more of Viridian’s words would appear in the books of Westmark, now that the oblivion curse had been lifted. Instead, I couldn’t even remember what day it was and what my first lesson would be, and even if I’d been able to, it felt completely pointless and irrelevant.
“Are you tired, Mouse?” Mum asked when she pulled up outside the school gate. We were late – much too late – so there wasn’t the usual traffic jam.
“A little,” I said.
“Perhaps you should have stayed at home after all.” She let go of the gearstick and rested her hand against my cheek for a moment. “I don’t want you getting ill again.”
“Again?”
“Yes. Like last autumn.”
“But I won’t.” And yet I couldn’t help touching the claw marks on my forehead. I knew now that the business with the claws, the blood and Cat Scratch Disease had been necessary so that Cat and I could communicate, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t seemed terrifying and dangerous back when I had no idea what was going on. “Mum, it was only so that Cat…”
“Yes, yes, Clara Mouse,” she said quickly, as if she would rather not talk about it. “But promise me you’ll take care of yourself and come straight home from school, won’t you? Particularly if you start feeling ill.”
“I won’t get ill again,” I said. “But… OK.” After all, she was only trying to take care of me. Except that we’d both started realizing how many things in the world she couldn’t protect me from. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, very much not my usual bah-I-have-to-go-to-school way of saying goodbye to her. Then I jumped out of the car, and waved as she drove off.
I was looking at the car and so didn’t notice that I wasn’t the only kid to turn up five minutes after the bell had gone. However, one of the stragglers had noticed me.
“Watch where you’re going, loser,” said Martin the Meanie from Year 10, though I wasn’t about to bump into him this time; then he punched my shoulder and positioned himself right in the middle of the school gate. He looked a bit like a goalkeeper who wasn’t going to let the ball get past him. With me being the ball.
“Right,” he said. “Are you going to apologize then?”
“What for?” I said.
“For being a pathetic loser who’s always in my way. That’s what for.”
His eyes were tiny, glittering cracks. He had a red, angry scratch on one cheek, near his ear, and his hand also looked bruised and swollen. Had he been in a fight? Few boys at school would dare to pick a fight with him, but then again, there was a world outside the school gates.
I sized him up. He hadn’t grown any shorter. But then, he didn’t have sharp, triangular fangs either, nor metre-high wings created from stolen bird lives, and it was quite remarkable how harmless that suddenly made him look.
“I’m sorry, but I really haven’t got time for this,” I said abruptly and marched straight past him.
I think he was too shocked to react. Or perhaps there was just enough wildwitch in me to stop him. At any rate, he didn’t touch me.
Cat strolled along by my side. He hadn’t been there a moment ago, but he was here now.
If you want me to claw him, I will.
I looked down and met his yellow cat’s eyes. I wasn’t sure that I’d forgiven him yet for leaving me in the lurch with the wild dogs and Chimera.
“Why are you being so helpful all of a sudden?” I said sourly.
He just looked at me and flashed me a bright white-fanged cat smile.
I shook my head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got this one.”
His cat smile broadened. Smugness radiated from him like heat off a radiator. I had a strong feeling that I’d finally passed a test he felt I ought to pass. He purred loudly.
That’s why, he said, and disappeared in a cloud of wildways fog.
Have I mentioned that Cat usually gets the last word?