The Switchers Trilogy Part 29

'Tessss.'

She stopped, frozen to the spot, her big ears listening. Although her hare's brain could not interpret human speech, the sound of her own name was unmistakable to Tess. For a moment it seemed that the sound must have been her imagination, but then it came again, a sibilant, far-carrying whisper which seemed to originate all around her at once.

'Tessss.'

Someone was watching, someone who knew who she was and what she was doing. Her instinct was to Switch, and fast; a bird would be the best way to escape. But as though it knew her thoughts better than she did, the raven chose that moment to swish above her head, so close to the treetops that it almost touched them.

'Tessss.'

Her hare brain was urging her to run and she would have complied if her human brain could decide which direction to take. But suddenly, in her panic, she had no idea where she was, and which direction led to the crag and which led away from it. She found herself running, dodging between the trees, thwarting the hare's instincts and heading for light and open s.p.a.ce. A moment later she was back at the edge of the woods, and as she burst out past the blackthorn she Switched. But the voice was still there, still behind her.

'Come in, Tessss. Come in.'

The thorns snagged at her clothes and her skin, but her momentum was too strong for her to be able to stop or even slow down and she landed hard on the stony ground beyond, winding herself badly. As she picked herself up and began to examine the thorn-wounds on her arms, the unmistakable sound of delighted laughter rang out through the woods.

Back in the farmhouse kitchen, the smell of fresh baking made Tess feel ravenous. Brian was pouring tea into mugs.

'What have you done to yourself?' asked Aunt Deirdre, pulling up Tess's blood-stained sleeves and examining her scratched arms.

'I'm OK, thanks,' said Tess. 'I just had an argument with a bush.'

Brian snickered and Tess made a face at him. She bit into a steaming scone and wondered why it was that food always tasted so much better after a spell in the open air. Through the window she could see Colm splas.h.i.+ng about with a bucket of water and a plastic jug. The family weren't so bad, really, and for the first time since she had arrived Tess felt comfortable and relaxed.

'I went up into the woods,' she said. 'Over there at the bottom of the crag.'

Aunt Deirdre glanced at her sharply. 'You might be better to stay away from there,' she said.

Tess's skin crawled. 'Why?'

'She's scared of the fairies,' said Brian. 'Take no notice of her.'

A sudden flash of white at the window made Tess look up. The white cat was there again, sitting on the outer sill, staring in.

'There it is,' said Tess. 'I knew I'd seen a cat.' She turned to Brian, but he was giving her that look again, like the time in the milking parlour; a worried, mistrustful look.

'Pay no attention to it,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'It's only a stray. Would you like another scone?' But before Tess could reply, the domestic storm erupted again. Without warning, the door to the hall burst open and Uncle Maurice swept in, dampening the mood instantly and putting everyone on edge. Brian jumped up to get him a mug of tea.

'Four hundred quid,' said Uncle Maurice, bitterly. 'Four hundred, flamin' quid, just to get rid of a few flamin' rats!'

'My G.o.d,' said Aunt Deirdre, but it was more in the way of a practised response than a genuine expression of surprise.

'Four hundred quid,' Uncle Maurice said again. He seemed dazed.

'And what do they do for it?' asked Aunt Deirdre.

'They get rid of the flamin' rats, don't they?'

'I know that. But how?'

'How should I know? Poison them, gas them, I don't know.'

Tess felt sick. She would have to warn the rats in time.

'When are they coming?' she asked.

'Whenever I ask them to,' said her uncle. 'If I ask them to. If I can find four hundred quid!'

'We'll have to find it,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'I'm sure they were in the house last night.'

'And there are two of them drowned in the water b.u.t.t,' said Brian. 'There must be millions of them around the place.'

Uncle Maurice shook his head. 'We can't be living with that, sure,' he said. 'Four hundred quid or no four hundred quid, they'll have to go.'

When Tess had finished her tea, Aunt Deirdre asked her to hang out a load of was.h.i.+ng on the line. She was just pegging out the last few things when Orla called her from inside the house.

Tess ran in.

'Your boyfriend,' said Orla, handing her the phone.

Tess scowled at her and shook her head. 'h.e.l.lo?' she said.

'Is that Tess?'

'Kevin! That's amazing. I was just thinking about you.'

'I bet.'

'Well, it was yesterday, actually, But I was, honestly. Wis.h.i.+ng you were here.'

'Well, then. Your prayers are answered. I'm on my way.'

'Oh, yeah,' said Tess, sarcastically. 'Sure you are.'

Kevin laughed. 'I am. I really am. I'm coming for a holiday. A guy I know has a van and he's coming that way. I've borrowed a bike and a tent off Martin. Do you think that I'd forget your birthday?'

Tess's heart warmed towards him. 'You're brilliant, you know that?' she said.

'Yeah. But unfortunately I'm not rich. I'll only have a few quid left by the time I've bought a bit of grub. Any jobs down that way?'

Tess knew that getting money out of Uncle Maurice was like trying to get blood out of a stone. But, for some reason, the figure of four hundred pounds popped into her mind.

'Not unless you can ...' She stopped, thinking it through.

'Can what?' asked Kevin.

'Come to think of it,' said Tess, 'there just might be. If we play our cards right, that is.'

She looked up the stairs and at the closed door of the kitchen.

'Now, listen ...' she said.

The day pa.s.sed easily for Tess in the knowledge that Kevin was coming, and Uncle Maurice's moods didn't seem to dominate her own. She helped to treat the gathered sheep for foot-rot and dose them against worms, and afterwards volunteered to help mend a fallen wall.

Before long she began to wish that she hadn't. The stones were awkward and heavy, and Uncle Maurice seemed to a.s.sume she had prodigious strength.

'Flamin' goats,' he said. 'They're what has all the walls knocked on me.'

Tess said nothing, but heaved up another stone. Her one attempt at repairing the wall had resulted in a badly bruised toe, and she now left the building to Brian, who was surprisingly skilled at it. He took the stone from her and she stretched to ease her aching back.

'There they are, look,' Uncle Maurice went on. 'Up on the crag, see?'

Tess followed the direction of his pointing finger. Sure enough, she could just make out the multicoloured forms of a herd of wild goats. The higher parts of the crag weren't quite as steep as the lower ones, but nonetheless the goats seemed to be standing at impossible angles as they browsed on the wild foliage.

Tess's heart went out to them and she longed to be there, climbing with them, breathing the rarefied air up there above it all. She cast her mind back to the morning's events and decided that she wasn't going to let fear cramp her style. They were among thousands of acres of farmland after all, and there were ways of getting up into the mountains without going anywhere near those creepy woods. A goat was one of her favourite creatures, and she wasn't going to miss out on the chance to be one again, perhaps for the last time.

But the opportunity took a while to arrive. After lunch they went to visit Uncle Maurice's parents, and then it was dinner time, and then there was evening ma.s.s. By the time Tess found herself alone again, night had fallen, and she was lying in bed, waiting once again for the household to sleep.

When, finally, all was quiet, she got up and, taking care not to wake Orla, crept over to the window. The moon was high and white. Beneath it the mountains gleamed like mercury, their strange, fluid forms giving the impression of melting. The beauty of the night took her breath away.

As she watched, mesmerised, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a glimmer of bluish light somewhere around the base of the crag. She looked at the place where it had been, and immediately it flashed out in another place, just at the edge of her vision. A s.h.i.+ver ran down her spine. She blinked and rubbed her eyes to clear them, but again the spark-like lights flashed, first from one side, then from another. Like shooting stars, the flashes were gone before she could get a proper look at them, and they never seemed to appear where she happened to be looking at the time, but always at the edge of her vision.

She turned away from the window. She had intended to take on the form of an owl or some other nocturnal creature and make a night-time trip around the area, but now she wasn't so sure. There had to be an explanation for what she had just seen; a trick of her eyes, perhaps, or of the moonlight. But her rational mind was already way out of its depth and could make no sense of it at all. There was something in those woods that Tess couldn't begin to understand, and she had no intention of going out there in the dark, no matter what forms she had to choose from.

Much as she hated to admit it, Tess was afraid.

CHAPTER FIVE.

BUT IN THE MORNING, things, as they so often do, seemed quite different. Tess woke early, and the delight of the birds in the trees around the house made the fears of the night before seem like a childish dream. The morning was fresh and bright, and it was impossible for Tess to go back to sleep. Hardly daring to breathe, she slithered out of bed and began to gather her clothes. But it was already too late.

'Where are you going?' asked Orla.

Tess tried to hide her irritation. 'Do you never sleep?'

'Not much,' said Orla, truthfully. She coughed and sat up on the edge of her bed. Her legs, emerging from beneath her nightdress, were like pale twigs. Tess turned away. It must be awful to be so ill.

Orla began to pull on her jeans. 'Can I come with you?' she asked.

'Sorry,' said Tess. 'You know your mother doesn't allow you to come.'

'That's OK,' said Orla. 'She doesn't have to know, does she?'

Orla's face was lit with an illicit joy, and Tess felt panic closing in. Emotionally she felt compelled to take her cousin with her and look after her, but the last days as a Switcher were so precious to her that she couldn't bear to miss out on the chance to make use of them, not even for those few hours.

'Don't worry about my asthma,' Orla was saying. 'I'll bring my inhaler. I'll be fine.'

But Tess shook her head, hating herself as she did so.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You can't come.'

Orla stared at her in disbelief. In her chest something began to harden, and the first organ-squeak of a wheeze entered her breathing. 'Please let me,' she said and then, when Tess made no response, she went on, 'I'll take you to meet Uncle Declan.'

'Who is this Uncle Declan?' said Tess.

'You'll see,' said Orla. 'Just let me come. Please?'

Tess found that her curiosity about Uncle Declan had evaporated now that she knew he was someone who could be visited.

'Sorry,' she said again. 'Sorry.'

Bran and Sceolan whined from behind the closed door of their shed as Tess pa.s.sed through the yard, but she didn't let them out. Her steps were heavy with guilt, but the morning was so inviting that they soon lightened. The dew was still lying in big, spangly drops on the gra.s.s, making the fields pastel-coloured and soaking Tess's trainers. She looked down at them as she walked, wondering what kind of feet she would be looking at after her birthday, the day after tomorrow. She imagined hooves there, horse-hooves, and remembered the feeling of head-tossing horse-ness; all pride and contained strength. She saw dog-paws, trotting tirelessly through endless miles, then cat-paws, graceful and silent. They were all so familiar and so precious. She realised as she walked that part of the difficulty in choosing what to be was having to give up all the other things. She didn't want her time as a Switcher to end. The realisation threatened to drown her in tears and she looked up, struggling hard against a growing sense of despair.

At least Kevin was coming later on in the day. The thought went some way towards cheering Tess up, and she set off again, turning to her right, away from the woods and towards another area of the stony wasteland beyond the farm boundaries. The new route took her over one of the walls that she had been mending the day before with Brian and Uncle Maurice. On the other side of it the sheep sprang up from their woolly huddle and stood glaring suspiciously, leaving behind a large patch of dry, warm gra.s.s. As Tess pa.s.sed among them they waddled out of her way, shaking the sleep out of their fleeces and their small brains. The ewes, recently shorn, seemed puny beside their fat, woolly lambs. There was one certainty, at least; one animal that Tess would never choose to become. Maybe it would be easier to decide the end result by a process of elimination?

She wouldn't be a cow, that was certain, nor a pig. Not a gerbil either, or a caged bird, or any of those poor creatures that lived half lives in the service of human beings. Still deep in thought, Tess arrived at the further wall of the sheep meadow and climbed over it into the grey scrubland beyond. She was just coming to the decision that she would be a wild thing, in a wild place like this one, when a snort as loud and sudden as a pistol shot rang out through the still morning air.

Tess jumped, then froze to the spot until the source of the extraordinary sound became clear. Not far away from her was a small herd of wild goats. Some of them were standing on the rocks, others lying nearby, but getting up now and stamping and staring across the open s.p.a.ce at the intruder. Tess kept still, aware that they were on the point of scattering and that one wrong move would set them off. Carefully she turned round and looked back. The house was a good distance away but she was not out of sight of it. The wall, however, was quite high and she could drop down and hide behind it if she was careful.

A moment later, the disturbing presence of the human girl was gone and a new goat emerged, as if from nowhere. The wild ones stared at it in astonishment for a few moments before overcoming their mistrust and moving hesitantly towards it. Tess waited, adjusting to the new situation and the altered senses, remembering how it felt to be a goat. The first to approach her was an elderly nanny. Her bones protruded, her coat was long and straggly and clearly she had seen better days. But her age had bestowed two things upon her. One was an enormous pair of horns and the other was an indisputable authority in the group. She approached Tess with an expression of lofty disdain, defying her to make a challenge. Tess did not take up the offer but made herself as unthreatening as possible, waiting for the older goat to make the running. She knew that each species in the animal kingdom had its own protocol, and she knew that in no case could introductions be hurried. But on this occasion, the proceedings were brought to an abrupt end.

Tess heard the ominous rumble of stones at the same time as the other goats. Unfortunately, however, she had her back to the danger, and the entire herd had launched into a gallop like racehorses coming out of the starting gates before she had the faintest idea what was happening.

She followed. A goat's eyes, like most other herd animals', are on the sides of its head and not at the front, and Tess had often wondered why nature had not provided human beings with the same system. It had a few drawbacks in terms of close focusing, but it was brilliant for observation, since it provided nearly 360 degrees of vision. What this meant for Tess was that even as she ran she could see all around her without turning her head. And what she saw struck terror into her heart. For behind her, rapidly eating up the remaining ground, were a brown dog and a black one. Bran and Sceolan.

Uncle Maurice was up. He had set the dogs on them.

Tess ran as she had never run before. There was no time to think, or to plan any kind of a strategy. The chemical fear that surged through her body was like dynamic fuel. She had to expend it. She had to run. The dogs were close behind her as she bolted across the scrubland. She was barely keeping ahead of them. Her hard little feet glanced off the bare rocks, wobbled loose ones and sent small ones flying. Her mind worked with lightning precision as she sped across the rough ground, leaping over bushes and avoiding the dangerous grikes which criss-crossed the limestone like small chasms, incalculably deep. But the dogs were as fast, and as clever.

Ahead of her the other goats began to prove that they were not sheep and to separate off into pairs and small groups, all taking different routes, improving the odds. Tess, still at the back, followed on the heels of two youngsters of an age comparable with her own. They made a dart to the left, towards the woods and the crag and, without thinking, Tess stayed close, shadowing their progress. To her horror, the dogs stayed with them, too. She could hear their breath and sense their steady, sinister purpose. What was worse, she knew what it was to be a dog; how determinedly they could run, and how tirelessly.

Ahead of her the two young goats shot into the woods and disappeared. A moment later Tess was in there, as well, and close behind them. Then, quite suddenly, the other two jinked to the right and back towards the open. The movement was brilliantly designed to put the dogs off, but unfortunately it put Tess off, too. She couldn't follow fast enough and knew that she couldn't afford to hesitate, either. Alone now, the dogs still on her heels, she plunged on between the trees. And with a dreadful shock, she realised why the other two had turned back. They knew, and the dogs did, too, that this way was a dead end. It was only a matter of time before Tess's progress would be halted by the foot of the crag.

Her fear increased. She looked right and left but couldn't find the right opportunity to turn. Nor, with every nerve focused on flight, could she muster the presence of mind to Switch. They were going so fast that they were already approaching the cliff, and for a few awful moments it seemed to Tess that all her worries had been for nothing, since she wasn't going to make it as far as her birthday. As the grey rock-face began to show itself between the trees, the dogs moved out to flank her on either side, prepared for any swerve she might take in either direction.

There was only one choice left open to Tess. She would have to stand and fight. She had no idea what the odds would be, since she was young and her short horns had seen no action. But she was determined that the dogs wouldn't see the end of her without some fairly tough resistance. All at once the rock was rising sheer before her, and she was skidding to a halt in a flurry of moss and leaf mould when she heard an unexpected sound behind her; a savage snarl followed by an indignant yelp.

Tess spun round to see what was happening. To her amazement there were now three dogs instead of two. The newcomer was not a sheepdog like Bran and Sceolan but belonged to a far older breed. It was an Irish wolfhound; grey as the limestone, skinny and muscular as the goats. It was on the offensive; hackles raised, snapping and snarling at the astonished sheepdogs.

There was no compet.i.tion. Bran was too old to put up a good fight and Sceolan was too young. As well as that, they were away from their own territory and on unfamiliar ground. They did their best to maintain their dignity, but backed down nonetheless and were soon trotting through the woods the way they had come.

The wolfhound watched them go, then turned back towards the place where Tess was standing. And, as it regarded her quietly with its brown eyes, she realised that she had made a terrible mistake. The hound had rescued her, or at least given her a reprieve, but it had not been done out of gallantry. The look in those eyes was keen and hungry. This was not a well-fed farm dog out for a bit of sport but a lean, mean hunter, looking for a meal. Tess might be out of the frying pan, but she had jumped straight into the fire.