by Nick Green
FALL ON YOUR FEET
Tiffany sniffed the breeze. The nutty woodland air was spiced with hot spaniel and the usual London fume. She could hear barking, a ball game and the splash of swimmers in the mixed bathing pond nearby. Both footpaths were deserted. She crept under the trees. She had been looking forward to this day for more than a week.
‘All clear, Mrs Powell.’
‘I repeat,’ Mrs Powell was saying, ‘do not stray off the routes I have marked unless you want to end up in hospital. All of you must look for the cats’ eyes painted on the boughs. These show the safe trees and the safest routes between them.’
‘Phew,’ said Olly. ‘Roots I can manage. I thought you were going to make us walk along the branches.’
Susie folded the newspaper that she seemed to be always carrying.
‘Olly, if ignorance is bliss you must be the happiest person on earth.’
Olly stared up into the tangled attics of the wood, his adam’s apple bobbing in fright. Tiffany didn’t blame him. Even she felt edgy. It was probably like this for people taking their first parachute jump.
‘Follow me.’
Mrs Powell stepped onto the bole of an oak trunk, which grew at a slant out of the soil like a lazy wooden arm reaching for an alarm clock. As easily as if she were mounting stairs, she walked up the gentle slope to a fork in the branches that drooped across the dell. Tiffany was at her side in four springy steps.
‘Come on,’ Mrs Powell hissed to the others, when they hesitated. ‘A dog could climb this.’
Yusuf came first, arms spread for balance. Kitted out in the close-fitting black sportswear that seemed to have become their unofficial uniform, he looked more feline than ever. Susie went next, humming a tune through the newspaper she now carried in her teeth rather than leave behind. Tiffany followed Mrs Powell along the left-hand bough to make room for them. It felt as safe as flat ground. She could have put her hands in her pockets, except that she didn’t have any.
Perched over the dell she parted the leaves. The city of London looked near enough to touch. Office blocks floated in the exhaust haze like fairytale towers, the wheel of the London Eye no more than a charm bracelet dropped among them. With birdsong in her ears, it was easier to think she was studying a painting.
‘It’s like being out in the countryside,’ breathed Cecile.
‘You can still see the town, though,’ said Susie, sounding oddly relieved.
Cecile’s eyes shone. She sat astride the right-hand bough. ‘How did you find this place?’
‘How would you lose it?’ Mrs Powell replied. ‘Hampstead heath takes up half a page of the map.’
Sadness crept over Cecile’s tortoiseshell face. ‘Never been here before.’
‘Woah!’ Halfway up the sloping trunk, Olly swayed and waved an arm. Daniel grabbed it, steadying him.
‘Stop looking down,’ said Daniel. ‘Look where you want to go.’
‘That is where I want to go.’
‘Headfirst?’ Daniel took his hand away. ‘Come on, it’s a cinch. Climbing scaffolding’s a lot harder and my dad does that every day. Carrying bricks.’
‘You have strange hobbies in your family.’
‘That’s his job!’
‘So pay me what he’s getting and I’ll climb this tree.’
‘Oh, move it.’ Daniel pinched the back of his calf. Olly yelped and scrambled up the rest of the trunk like an acrobat. Daniel pursued, laughing. Last came Ben.
Tiffany watched him walk up the tree. Like her, he might have been out for a stroll. Pulling on a pair of leather gloves with the fingers cut away, he stared distractedly down into the hollow where a fallen tree lay, its soil-caked roots like a warrior’s round shield. With the smallest turn of his head he could have looked at her, but he didn’t. Since that afternoon in the graveyard, when he’d acted so strangely, they hadn’t exchanged a single word.
What had she done to annoy him? As far as she could tell, nothing. She was no longer so angry about what he’d said (since he couldn’t have known about Stuart), but if he was determined to ignore her, she was happy to ignore him back.
Once, over a Friday fish and chips in the school canteen, Avril had claimed that, if a boy starts being nasty to you for no reason, it means he secretly likes you. ‘Not that any boy’s ever been nasty to me,’ Avril had sighed. It had never happened to Tiffany either.
Her ears pricked up.
‘This lesson,’ Mrs Powell was saying, ‘will be your last for a few weeks. You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m off on holiday tomorrow.’
Olly mimed a cheer.
‘Where’s that?’ asked Yusuf.
‘Around and about,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Kerala, mainly.’
‘South India,’ Susie put in.
‘Yes. I’m patron of a wildlife sanctuary there. I pop in from time to time. See how the inmates are getting on.’
‘Cats?’ said Yusuf. ‘Big cats, like, tigers and so on?’
‘Of course,’ Mrs Powell smiled. ‘I’ll bring you photos.’
She hoisted herself into a higher fork where the whole group could see her.
‘So it’s to be a special lesson,’ she said. ‘Out here you can put together everything you have learned so far, and maybe more. I’m going to take you along the Wild Walk. A path I’ve mapped through the treetops. You may discover what you’re capable of.’
A whisper of leaves was her only answer. Nervousness crackled in the air. Olly raised a hand.
‘This Wild Walk,’ he began. ‘It isn’t dangerous at all, is it? Only I promised my mum that I’d be home today by—’
Mrs Powell pointed towards the sycamore next door.
‘There’s our first port of call. Tiffany, get your claws ready and lead on. Ben, you be the eyes at the back. The rest of you wait for my word.’
It took Tiffany a moment to register what Mrs Powell had said. Turning in surprise, she almost lost her balance and had to grab at a twig.
‘Watch where you’re going, Tiffany,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘You’re not that good yet.’
Tiffany half-closed her eyes, mixing blue Ptep and green Mandira until she felt the tingle of whiskers. She imagined thin posts under her feet and stepped along the oak bough onto the sycamore’s smoother bark. She heard Olly whisper, ‘She didn’t answer my—’ and a grunt as Daniel elbowed him in the ribs.
So Mrs Powell knew. She had guessed about her Mau claws. Tiffany had only begun to feel them in the last couple of days. Irked that Ben had got there first, she had run through the catra exercises until her head ached, and her only reward was cramp. Then it happened. Waking up late on Tuesday she’d had a good stretch, dragging one arm across the poster above her bed. She turned to find three rips in Elijah Wood’s face.
After that it grew easier. With just a little effort she could bring that tight feeling to her fingertips, as if tweezers were pinching the skin. Then, for a second, there was something there. Whether it was a static electrical charge or a real, ghostly thorn, she couldn’t say. But by Wednesday’s breakfast she found she could lower her finger over a Rice Krispie and, before she actually touched it, burst it to dust.
She had lined up five Krispies on her place-mat, popping them in turn, when Stuart asked what she was doing. She couldn’t resist showing him a trick. Concentrating, she curled her right hand and jabbed it at the nearest cereal box. Clouds of Ready Brek billowed over the table as her fingers punctured through. Her parents weren’t amused. ‘Haven’t you grown out of playing with your food?’ Mum demanded, making her re-house the cereal in a tupperware box. Stuart was now bubbling with questions about how she did it.
He’d been so much better recently. Though he hadn’t yet made the miraculous recovery they all hoped for, on his best days he could have passed for a normal kid. After all (Dad scathingly pointed out), lots of boys with full use of their muscles spent more time slouched in front of the telly than Stuart did. He took four Panthacea pills a day and no longer complained about the bitt
er taste. He could walk from room to room using crutches and had even started going swimming, with the help of armbands. At first Tiffany had gone too, until she’d splashed him and got a telling-off from Mum. That was a bit rich, seeing that Stuart had started it.
Tiptoeing along the sycamore’s almost horizontal upper trunk, Tiffany began to see the treetops in a new way. The roadmap of branches really had become roads, winding in every direction, including straight up and straight down. She could have taken any of them. To her left she saw a tiny yellow eye painted halfway up an oak. This looked tricky. Creeping along a thinner limb, she focused hard on her fingertips before hopping across the gap. The bark clung to her hands like clay to a car tyre, giving her time to scramble onto a bough.
Olly moaned, ‘You’re kidding!’
‘Tiffany,’ said Mrs Powell, ‘that was good, but do pay attention. There is a much easier way of reaching that tree. Not everyone has claws yet.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Powell.’ Tiffany tried not to smile.
‘Yeah,’ said Yusuf. ‘Nine out of ten for skill. Two out of ten for good thinking.’
Tiffany stuck out her tongue at him. She’d never felt so chuffed. There was a twenty-foot drop below her and she cared nothing, absolutely nothing about it.
She practised making scratch-marks on the wood while Mrs Powell led the others round the easy way. Yusuf was looking more confident and Susie was singing to herself. Then with a start she found Ben right beside her, dusting off his T-shirt. He must have taken the same tricky route as her.
‘Hmm. Quite easy really,’ he mumbled, and stalked off after the others.
Huh? She crouched still, her thoughts and feelings a mishmash. What had that been about? Was he trying to make some sort of point? Or just wind her up for spiteful reasons of his own? Taking a short cut across a raft of thin branches she snatched back her place at the front of the group.
‘What is that you’re humming, Susie?’ she asked. The tune was getting stale.
‘Oh. Was I?’ Susie blushed. ‘Just something I’m playing with the school orchestra. Peter and the Wolf. It’s my clarinet part.’
‘I thought it sounded familiar,’ murmured Mrs Powell.
Step by step they picked their way through the sturdier boughs. Thicker and thicker meshed the branches until it was hard to spot the eyes painted on them. Elderly moss-clad trees stretched at strange angles, like giants roused from sleep.
‘Flow,’ Mrs Powell commanded, watching Daniel and Cecile wobble along a chestnut’s limb. ‘Think with your body not your brain. Use your Felasticon.’
‘Um.’ From the way Cecile licked her lips, Tiffany guessed that she had forgotten what Felasticon was. Impatiently Mrs Powell explained it again.
Tiffany hadn’t forgotten, though the seventh rudiment was still new to her. Now was a good time to try it. Summoning her Ptep and Ailur catras, she stretched for a branch that should have been out of reach, caught it and swung herself up. Felasticon. The reason cats moved like cats. Human spines, Mrs Powell said, were mere strings of beads, the bones linked by ligaments. But the bones in a cat’s spine were joined by muscles. The whole thing could flex like living elastic, at once a powerhouse, shock-absorber and rubbery rudder. Human beings couldn’t, of course, develop backbones like this, no matter how much pashki they did. But the Felasticon stretch produced a similar effect.
One by one the Cat Kin dropped from branch to branch. Mrs Powell waited below on a massive log that bridged a ditch. Susie jumped onto Yusuf’s back.
‘I’m tired of all these stupid leaves and things. Carry me!’
‘Sure,’ said Yusuf. ‘Leopards can lift their own weight into a tree, can’t they?’
‘Are you suggesting I weigh as much as you do?’ demanded Susie.
‘With all the chips you eat, definitely.’
‘Put her down, Yusuf,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘You’re a cat, not a pony. We’ll take a breather here and then make our way back.’
They found places to sprawl along the log. After several minutes (though it could have been longer; Tiffany thought she might even have dozed off) Mrs Powell rounded them up and led them into the octopus limbs of a conifer.
Revived by her nap, Tiffany scrambled through the wood’s vaulted roof. She was just reminding herself to slow down and let the others keep up when she felt a throb of unease, like a red light, in her stomach. Something was going on behind her. She hurried back along the branch.
‘What’s the problem?’ Daniel was saying. ‘It’s an easy one. It’s no sweat.’
‘Enough,’ snapped Mrs Powell. ‘Let him take his time.’
Olly stood bent-kneed midway along a bough. He wasn’t moving. At the edges of his face-print his skin was deathly white. Everything cat-like about him had drained away. He looked like a plump teenage boy with a terror of heights, stuck twenty feet above the ground.
‘Why doesn’t he move?’ whispered Cecile. ‘He’s managed thinner branches than this.’
‘I reckon vertigo.’ Daniel wiped his glasses, which had steamed up. ‘My dad—’
‘Oliver.’ Mrs Powell’s voice rang out. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. I want you to close your eyes.’
Olly swayed. He flung out his arms and whimpered.
‘Close your eyes,’ repeated Mrs Powell, ‘and picture blue. A blue cat’s eye. See it, Olly. The blue eye.’
Ptep is my head, the balancing blue sky…
His eyes stayed open, darting to and fro as if the leaves were closing in on him. His breath sounded like someone sobbing. Tiffany could smell the sweat glistening on his forehead. She wanted to shout at him, Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. Because fear was the problem. She had discovered for herself that pashki didn’t work properly if you were afraid. A cat’s sense of fear was stronger than a human’s. It could become so violent that it smothered everything else. And then you were in trouble.
Little by little his breathing settled. Tiffany thought he might move. He didn’t. Minutes passed. Mrs Powell climbed into a smaller holly tree, a few yards adrift of Olly, though it was hard to see what she could do if he actually fell.
‘He’s not going to make it on his own,’ whispered Yusuf. Too loudly. Olly began to shake. He tried to kneel on the bough, then changed his mind.
‘No, Yusuf,’ Mrs Powell hissed. Yusuf had climbed down to where Olly’s branch sprouted from the oak and was now standing on it, stretching out his hand.
‘Come on, Ol.’ He sidled closer. ‘Give me your arm. You’ll be okay.’
‘Yusuf.’ Mrs Powell was barely audible above the shivering leaves. ‘Leave him. Don’t be a fool.’
‘Do as she says,’ gulped Susie.
‘I’ve got him.’ Yusuf seized Olly’s hand. Olly wouldn’t, or couldn’t, turn to face him. He had frozen. Mrs Powell crouched below on her branch, as tense, Tiffany could feel, as a bowstring at full draw.
‘Step away from him now.’
Something in her voice made Yusuf react. He tried to take back his hand but Olly gripped like a vice.
‘No—’
The next few seconds were hard to follow, even though Tiffany saw them in slow motion. Yusuf pulled to get free. Olly fought to hold on. Yusuf reeled and, with a shout, shoved him away. Olly stepped backwards onto nothing.
Mrs Powell leapt, a blur, hooking her left hand onto the bough. With her right she snatched at Olly as he fell. She caught the neck of his grey T-shirt, her fingers going through the cotton, and Olly stopped with a jerk, his shirt stretching like gum but amazingly not tearing. Mrs Powell clung on, her other hand clamped to the bark, the tendons standing out in ridges.
‘Quick as you can, please,’ she said through gritted teeth.
Ben was there before she’d stopped speaking. Bracing his feet in a fork of the holly tree he grabbed Olly’s legs to take some of his weight. Daniel clambered to his side and seized Olly’s arm. The three of them together eased him down. Olly cried out as he swung against the pointy leaves.
‘
Hey. Anyone? I need some help here!’
‘Yusuf!’ Susie screamed. Her newspaper fell fluttering to the ground like a shot pheasant.
In the confusion Tiffany hadn’t seen Yusuf fall. Now he clung to a stubby branch that jutted like a broken bone from another trunk. His legs kicked empty air as he struggled to pull himself up. Every time he managed to get his chest across the branch, he slipped down. His olive skin had flushed dark and he was gasping.
‘Hold on, Yusuf,’ cried Mrs Powell. ‘Tiffany, I need you. Come and help with Oliver.’
Tiffany got ready to move. Then a creak came from Yusuf’s branch. In horror she saw it had no leaves. Yusuf was hanging from dead wood. It groaned as he scrabbled for a better hold.
‘Tiffany!’ Mrs Powell called. ‘Quick! I can’t be in two places at once.’
She dithered. Could Mrs Powell get here before the branch broke? There was no time to wonder. Someone had to help Yusuf now.
‘I’m on it!’ The answer came in a flash. She couldn’t get to Yusuf along the dead limb—it would snap. But a second, slender branch passed almost directly over him. It might bear the weight of one.
‘Yusuf,’ she called. ‘See that branch above you? You’re going to grab it.’
His eyes rolled towards her, all bloodshot whites. ‘No way. It’s too high up.’
‘Not yet.’
Tiffany scrambled down the treetrunk and placed a foot on the branch. The tip of it trembled like a fishing-rod at the bite. Come to that, it wasn’t much thicker than a fishing-rod. Hardly daring to watch, she took a few steps with her eyes closed. She opened them when the branch bowed under her weight. If she stepped much further it would bend and tip her off.
‘Tiffany!’ Yusuf gasped. ‘I think this thing’s gonna break!’
‘Listen.’ She spoke quickly. ‘On the count of three, I want you to reach up and take hold of this branch.’
He groped. ‘I can’t reach it!’
‘On the count of three!’ she shouted. ‘Ready. One. Two.’ She braced herself. ‘Three!’
