By the time he felt its claws digging into his hair, he was almost sure that it wasn’t—couldn’t be—the paw of a dog. It was something with four tiny paws, each one little bigger than the size of a dog’s claw.
In the quietest whisper he could find he said, “Who are you?”
The words were so faint that he hardly heard them himself, but the little creature on his back froze and flexed its tiny claws against his sweater. He tried again.
“You’re not a dog, are you?”
“Not a dog,” it said. “Not a dog.”
“Oh, Jesus…” Danny’s arms lost their tightness and turned to jelly. He felt the soil pressing, grain by grain, into his face.
“Not Jesus,” said the creature. “Not Jesus.”
Danny had to work hard to squash back the hysteria that bubbled into his mouth.
“Shaking,” said the creature. “Shaking and talking and humaning. Peculiar.”
“What are you?”
“Squirrel, naturally,” said the squirrel. “Just off nutting.”
“Haven’t you seen those dogs?” Danny dared to move his head a fraction toward the dogs.
“Pah! Dogs! Little bit running, jumping. Beat the dogs anytime!”
The squirrel bounced on its tiny feet. It weighed scarcely more than a pile of leaves on Danny’s back.
Beat the dogs anytime. Yeah, if you were tiny and fast and could run up trees. How had humans taken over so much of the world, again? Everything else seemed to have its own set of resources. The more Danny thought about it, the more he didn’t seem to have any at all. Except cunning.
“Do you reckon,” he said slowly, swimming through the fog of fear in his mind to find the thought that was waiting there, hard and bright, “do you reckon, if you ran past those dogs, they’d chase you?”
“Ha! Stupid dogs! Chase me always!”
The squirrel sat down and had a good scratch at its ear, kicking furiously with a hind leg that drummed off Danny’s back. He hoped he wouldn’t get fleas.
“There’s no way they’d catch you?”
“Never!” shrieked the squirrel. “We race dogs! Set them running! Dogs chase, squirrels taunt! Then we sit in trees … and laugh! Ha! Ha! Ha! Throwing nuts! Hee hee!”
It flung itself about so wildly in a pantomime of running and leaping and throwing that Danny was afraid the dogs would notice. He didn’t fancy the idea of them running for the squirrel while it was still on his back.
“Will you?” he said quickly. “They’ve got my cousin, up there. I need to get them away somehow. If some of them follow you … maybe I could deal with the few that were left.…”
This thought made his throat contract, but the squirrel’s enthusiasm was a bit shaming. He had to at least try to appear as if he might be brave.
“Of course! Of course!” it said. “Many squirrels running! All dogs running! You seeing!”
Danny barely felt it gathering its legs together and springing from his back. He dared not raise his head to watch it go. All he could do was wait, and listen out for the sound of thundering paws, and try to keep breathing.
* * *
He heard the barking first. A couple of isolated shouts, followed by three or four more. Even holding the stick, he couldn’t be sure what they were saying—perhaps it was something like “Oi!” or “Hey!”
Danny risked a look. All the dogs had turned to stare up at the treetops of the little copse. On the breeze came the crackling of twigs as a cloud of tiny, leaping creatures streamed through the branches.
And then the squirrels began to dive from the trees, down onto the ground, up the next tree, sprinting across gaps of grass, hurling themselves back up the shrubs in the hedgerows. They weren’t faster than the dogs, but they twisted and jumped and zigzagged, never still for a moment, impossible to follow.
The dogs went mad. As they barked, jaws open, they lost sight of the squirrels for a fraction of a second and then saw them again, somewhere entirely new. They lunged, teeth snapping, capturing nothing but the scent of tail hairs on the tips of their tongues. All duty forgotten, they bounded and bit and fell over their own scrabbling feet in their eagerness to get to the squirrels. In moments they were gone.
Danny picked himself up and began to walk over the field, toward the spot where he’d last seen Tom.
* * *
There was a foot sticking up out of the grass, from behind a bush. It wasn’t moving.
Blood roared up in Danny’s ears. He closed his eyes for a second and made himself keep walking, step by step, until he was a few feet from the bush, and then he tried to find his voice again.
“Tom? Tom?”
There was no answer, but then, he’d done little more than whisper. So he tried again, clearing his throat.
“Tom? Tom, it’s me.…”
“Danny?”
Tom’s voice was much stronger than Danny had expected. Much more normal, and alive. He walked around the bush, hope rising.
Tom was sitting propped up against a tree stump. His face was muddy, and there were twigs and bits of green stuff caked over his hair and clothes. A couple of rips in his sweatshirt flapped open, showing patches of bleeding skin. He was holding his left arm with his right hand, but he didn’t look anywhere close to death.
Danny nearly threw himself onto Tom’s feet. He wanted very much to give in to the weeping and wailing that was trying to blow his chest up like a balloon. But that would only make Tom go back to treating him like a little kid again, just when he’d done something that might earn him a bit of respect. Or had gotten some squirrels to do it, anyway.
So he tried very hard to stop himself shaking and went to kneel at Tom’s side.
“Are you okay?”
Tom looked at him curiously. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, just a bit grazed. They didn’t really have a go at me. Just backed me into a corner and growled a lot and then … left. Some squirrels came along. Dogs always chase them.”
The boys stared at each other for a few seconds.
“There’s a river down there,” said Danny. “We went into it—me and the piebald. They couldn’t follow us.”
“Clever,” said Tom. “Your own James Bond moment.”
But it hadn’t been like that at all, not for a second. It had been terrifying. Danny wanted to reach out to Tom. He wanted Tom to stand up and say, It’s over, we’re going home, and to give Danny no choice about it.
“Where’s the piebald?” said Tom.
“Still down at the river. She was lying down. Where’s Apple?”
Tom looked around. “Gone,” he said. He didn’t follow it with “Someone’ll find her” or “She’ll go straight home.” He just fixed his eyes back on Danny with that curious gaze.
“Should we look for her?” Danny asked, hoping the answer would be no, but knowing that it ought to be yes.
“We’d better get hold of the piebald first,” said Tom. “Losing one horse is pretty shabby. Losing two…” He took his hand away from his arm. It had been covering a slightly deeper bite, but even that wasn’t bleeding too much anymore. And although he got to his feet stiffly, he was able to walk without leaning on Danny as they started to walk back across the grassy field.
* * *
Shimny was still lying on the riverbank, asleep in the quiet, green morning. Without disturbing her, Tom took his shirt off and went to clean his grazes in the river. He couldn’t reach the one on his back, so Danny tore a few strips off the pajama top that still flapped out from underneath his sweater and wiped away the thin streaks of dried blood.
Once the wounds were cleaned off, they looked much better. Mere scratches where the skin had been broken. But the blackening bruises that smoldered under Tom’s skin made Danny think of the piebald pony.
“You look like Shimny,” he said without thinking.
“Shimny?” said Tom.
Danny knew that he should raise his eyes, look Tom in the face, and swiftly make up some plausible lie, but he couldn’t.
“I mean the piebald,” he muttered, crushing the cloth in his fist.
“I know. But why’d you call her Shimny? Shimny? What kind of a name is that?”
“It was just … a name I thought of.…”
Tom raised an eyebrow. He looked as though he was about to ask something serious, but then he sneered. “Been reading those pony books again, have you? We could go to the next village and find some ribbon, if you want to plait her mane?”
“Shut up!” said Danny, pushing him.
“I could get you some brushes, too, and some paint for her hooves, Danny—or d’you prefer Danielle these days—oof!”
Danny thumped him on the side of the face, and Tom swung up his hands to grab his cousin. For a minute they wrestled, rolling over and over on the riverbank, smearing Tom’s carefully cleaned cuts with mud, until Danny’s foot kicked too close to the punctures on Tom’s arm, and Tom decided it was time to finish. He neatly pinned Danny to the ground, a knee in his back, both of Danny’s thin wrists held fast in one of his massive hands.
“Surrender?” he asked.
“Git,” said Danny, spitting out a piece of reed.
Tom cleaned himself up again. And then, as the boys sat down to take some rest and wait for Shimny to wake up, they heard the most marvelous sound in the world. Somewhere in the quiet wood a horse was trotting, its hoofbeats thick and dull on the soft leaf mold. It was definitely the sound of a horse, rising above the birdsong and the faint whispers of rustling leaves. Not a woodpecker, not a rabbit thumping the earth, but a horse trotting through at a good pace, putting out its head and bellowing a call for its lost companion.
Shimny lifted her head and screamed just next to Danny’s ear. If it hadn’t been so painful, he would have been gladder, but Tom had already leapt to his feet.
“Apple!” he shouted. “Apple! Here, girl!”
The hoofbeats stopped. For a moment Danny doubted that he’d really heard them. But there was an answering call: Apple’s high, shrill neigh.
“Apple!” Tom yelled again, and Shimny looked sharply at him, which he did not see.
The padding of the hooves started up once more, and this time they crescendoed rapidly. Danny followed the sounds with the space of his mind—There! There! Behind that tree, coming from there! She must be there!
Then Apple came into view and stumbled to an exhausted halt, her head hanging low. Her brown coat was wet with sweat, and her smooth legs had been torn, leaving ribbons of blood glistening like slug trails down the dark hair. She looked horrible, to Danny’s eyes—a picture of defeat and pain.
But Tom had spent his life tending to injuries. He just shrugged his shoulders, said, “Thank goodness,” and went forward to take hold of Apple’s trembling head, and she pushed her nose into his stomach.
Danny got to his feet and gathered up the bloody strips of cloth to chuck them in the river, while Tom ran his hands down Apple’s legs.
“Don’t chuck those,” said Tom. “Rinse them out again and bring them back.”
Danny did as he was asked. Tom fished out his mobile and dialed a number, clamping the phone to his ear with his shoulder and taking the bundle. It wasn’t difficult: this was how he normally made phone calls. He held Apple’s rein out to Danny. “You hold her head. Talk to her.”
The phone sparked into life, and Tom began cleaning the cuts on Apple’s hard brown legs.
“Hi, Mum, it’s me. Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine. Just had a bit of a scare with some dogs. Apple’s got a few cuts and scratches. We’re in Butford woods, just down by the river.… No, no, everything’s fine. Really … Could you come and meet us with the box, maybe?”
Danny’s heart froze as Tom waited to hear the answer on the other end of the line.
“Oh, crap, I’d completely forgotten about that. Sorry—really sorry. I know I said I’d help you with the tagging.… I know, I’m really sorry. But … yeah, yeah, it’s ridiculous. Yeah, call them again. Try the police, too, if you like. But he was just going to run away. I thought it’d be better if I stayed with him.… I did leave you a note! Sorry, Mum, I’ll bring him back as soon as I can.… Yeah, definitely before supper, I promise.… Mum? Mum? Crap … it’s dead!”
Tom swore and took a hand away from Apple’s leg to put the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t look at Danny. Apple pranced.
Danny didn’t want to ask about what Tom had promised and obviously failed to do. He didn’t think the answer would be friendly. Instead he asked, “Is this Butford woods?”
“Yeah. I said keep her still. I need to get this leg cleaned up. Talk to her, just any old rubbish. She’s a fusspot.”
Danny looked at Apple’s rolling eye. He put his hand in his pocket.
“Stand still,” he said. “Tom’s trying to wash your cuts.”
“It hurts!” whined the horse, snatching a leg away.
Tom swore. Normally he was infinitely patient with wounded animals.
“For crying out loud, Danny, I don’t think she’s in the mood for an intellectual conversation. Just use the sound of your voice to soothe her.”
Danny said, “There, there,” and patted Apple’s neck. It didn’t seem to work any better to keep the horse still, but at least it didn’t annoy Tom.
* * *
Tom went to chuck the last of the rags in the river. The afternoon sun was darkening from clear yellow to pale orange. No sign of a storm in the air, no black threat hanging over them in the—what was it the river had called it?—the ether. Danny looked up into the sky. Just blue sky. No tiny creature watching them from the high heavens.
Perhaps it really was all a dream, some kind of fantasy he’d imagined. Now everything in the woods was so peaceful that it seemed impossible anything could be wrong.
He closed his eyes for a second, one hand still clenched around Apple’s reins just under her throat, the other in his pocket, and listened to the sounds around him. The breeze in the treetops, the sweet chattering of the river, the twittering birdsong. Only it wasn’t birdsong. The birds were bellowing out obscenities to one another.
“Yeah! Yeah! Come on, then! Come on, you petal-spleened excuse for a worm’s bum! I’d like to see you twitch one atom of a pinkie toward this tree! You call yourself a robin? A robin? I call you the blacky purple bit of my poo! Gaaargh! Graagh! Come on! I’ll ’ave yer! I’ll ’ave yer!”
The sparrow near Danny’s right ear almost fell off its branch in indignant rage. An apoplectic robin ten feet away began to spit furiously back.
“And what kind of bird are you? A cow-dung bird, that’s what! You eat the grain that other animals eject out of their back ends! Nobody’s ever put you on a Christmas card, have they? You take your pathetic excuse for a lady and get out of my tree, or I’ll pull out every feather on your pale little pigeon chest! You hear me! You hear me! I’m not telling you twice, you sack of ear wax! Out! Out!”
Danny laughed, taking his hand off the stick. The sound flew into the air and sent the birds shrieking away to continue their argument in another tree. It felt like a long time since he’d laughed. But once the laugh started, it woke him up like a glass of lemonade on a stifling day.
“What’s so funny?” said Tom, coming back from the river.
Danny shook his head. “You wouldn’t get it,” he said.
“You’re nuts,” said Tom. “Well, let’s go, then. It isn’t far now.”
“I don’t have the map anymore. It got soaked. And I can’t remember all the little lines and stuff on it.”
Tom shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I know where we’re going.”
“You remember it? You only saw it once.”
“Course I do!” said Tom. “I’d be a poor excuse for a country boy if I didn’t know every inch of the land like the back of my own hand, now, wouldn’t I?”
He grinned and tapped the side of his nose.
Danny said, “Show-off,” and went to take the piebald’s reins. Then he stopped. “Where’s Mitz?�
��
“Did she go in the river? Cats and water aren’t exactly best mates, you know.”
“Of course I know,” said Danny. “But she got out. I spoke— I saw her.”
Tom shrugged. “Probably crawled off into a bush somewhere to lick herself dry. She’ll find us again if she wants to be found.”
Would she? Danny remembered Mitz’s sharp little face hissing at him, the fury in her eyes. But of course she would. It wasn’t his fault they’d gone in the river. Going in there had saved their lives, and Mitz would surely understand that. She was probably just lying low for a bit, recovering and watching them from the bushes.
Tom gave Danny a leg up onto Shimny’s back, and Danny peered into the undergrowth as they set off, but all the sparkles that could have been yellow eyes were just sunlight catching on shiny leaves.
CHAPTER 13
THE BOOK OF STORMS
The bird blind was tucked away in a close thicket of trees. Tom seemed to know exactly where it would be: he led them up to a path, they padded along it for twenty minutes or so, and then he steered Apple between a beech tree and a huge clump of yellow thorny shrubs and jumped off her back as soon as he could safely avoid the thorns. When his feet touched the ground, he winced but said nothing about it.
“There you go.”
Danny tried to see where he was pointing. It just looked like more overgrown bushes. But, yes—there in the middle of them were a few planks of dark, rough wood, and a low roof covered in moss, underneath a thatch of thorny branches. Danny slid off his pony.
“I’ll go in first,” he said.
Tom must have caught the reluctance on his face, because he looped Apple’s reins around a branch and said, “I’ll come with you. D’you think something’s happened to them in there?”
Danny shook his head, his mouth dry. He let go of Shimny—she wouldn’t leave Apple—and brushed past Tom to find an entrance to the little hut.
* * *
Inside, it was dark and damp. Things were growing over the walls, or through them—soft leaves and scratchy little twigs reached out to stroke and claw at Danny’s skin as he ducked his head through the doorway.
The Book of Storms Page 14
