I raised my hands from my lap and studied them. There were two of them. They looked normal, apart from… I pushed my watch up my arm. I had a thin, white stripe all the way around my wrist, and when I touched it, I couldn’t feel anything. The skin was completely numb.
Some of the happy feeling went away.
“What did you mean when you said that the monster had gone?” I asked.
“Exactly that. That when I… woke up… then, well, then it was gone.”
I found that hard to believe. That it was dead, yes, possibly – I could believe that. Chimera’s heart had stopped beating. I knew it. I’d been holding it in my fiery hand when it happened. But the shapeless, bubbling body that had come close to crashing down on us like a wave… something must have happened to it, something must be… left behind.
And sure enough.
I found her not far away, concealed by the tall green grass. She was lying very still on her belly with her hands stretched up above her head and her face turned slightly to one side. She wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes, only a pair of stumpy pyjama bottoms and a tattered, filthy, white T-shirt that was decorated with the black, white and grey silhouettes of birds.
Chimera had turned into Kimmie. And Kimmie had died.
I knelt down beside her. The air kept telling me that everything was fine, that nothing was wrong. But everything was not fine.
It was hard not to feel relief that Chimera had gone. If it had been a dead Chimera figure lying there, with or without wings, then I don’t think I would have felt anything but that – good riddance.
But it was Kimmie. Skinny, weary and drained, with frail, pointy bones under her pale, filthy skin. And once upon a time Kimmie had been a little girl who loved birds and had a really bad relationship with her dad.
“Are you crying?” asked Kahla, who’d come to join me.
“No. All right, maybe a little.”
Cat sniffed the dead girl in the grass.
“Meowwwwwrrrrrrrr,” he said. What it meant, only he knew. Then he turned around languidly and strode away with his tail pointing straight up.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Home, he said. Are you coming?
“We can’t just… leave.”
Why not?
I looked helplessly at Kimmie’s dead body.
“Because we can’t. Surely we have to do… something.”
There’s nothing to do, Cat said with obvious Cat logic. Unless you’re going to eat it?
“Oh, stop it…”
But to an animal it was that simple. When something was alive then it was alive. When something died, it was dead and uninteresting, unless it was edible.
“I’m not an animal,” I said.
Cat made no reply. He just stepped into his own personal wildways fog and disappeared. Once I’d finished my peculiar human deliberations, I could choose whether or not I wanted to follow.
The grass behind us rustled. Kimmie’s dad came walking, upright and on legs that looked a little unsteady, but that seemed to be in working order again. His face was totally devoid of expression, but there was a slight hesitation in his movements. He stopped next to us and looked down at his daughter.
“So she’s dead,” he said.
I looked at him. I had a strong feeling that the bird T-shirt and the pyjama bottoms were the clothes Kimmie had worn the night he chased her outside and then locked her out because she’d tried to steal food from the kitchen. Did he recognize them? Did he remember? I could see neither sorrow nor remorse in his face. If he felt anything like that, he didn’t show it.
“Where’s her sister buried?” I asked.
“Maira? In the churchyard, of course.”
“Then make sure Kimmie’s buried beside her,” I said. My voice sounded different. Hoarser and more adult, as if I could actually tell a man like him what to do and expect him to do it. A little like Aunt Isa, perhaps.
His face was still blank. As though he might as well have been stuffed rather than have flesh and blood and a heart inside, but he nodded briefly, once.
“I suppose that’s the thing to do,” he said.
I still didn’t know if he regretted anything or felt the slightest bit guilty. But he knelt down and picked up the girl’s body in his arms as if it wasn’t a dead thing being transported, but a living girl he was carrying home.
His dead daughter in his arms, he left without saying another word. And without looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Home
“…A nd then he just left without saying anything. And we’d just saved his life.”
Kahla was doing most of the talking. I couldn’t really find the words. I just sat on Aunt Isa’s threadbare sofa with Cat on my lap, trying to look happy and relieved. And so I was. Cat was alive. The badger cubs were being suckled by their mother. And I had a strong hunch that Martin had regained consciousness at the hospital. Hopefully he could now move all of his body, not just his angry head. There was a lot to be grateful for, a lot to be happy about.
Mrs Pommerans sat in the armchair opposite, listening attentively.
“So you chucked the whole tin of vademecum powder into the air in one go,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Like Kahla said. We fell asleep and dreamt some crazy dreams, and when we woke up… Chimera was dead.”
“Yes. But what happened in your ‘crazy dreams’? The same as in Kahla’s?”
Kahla had only talked about snow and cold and the feeling of turning into ice. I didn’t think for one moment that she’d experienced the same as me.
“No, there was… a little more.”
I couldn’t tell them. The words just wouldn’t come, everything seemed stuck inside my head – Chimera, Kimmie, her stuffed dad, Cat and Maira, the fiery hand… How could I tell them so it all made sense?
“You met the hungry one?” Mrs Pommerans guessed, and looked at me over the rim of her spectacles. “Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And you… chased the revenant out of her?”
“I… I think so.” How did she know that?
Mrs Pommerans smiled. “Oh, I am pleased.”
Perhaps you just knew things like that when you were as old and as skilled a wildwitch as she was.
“So has the soul tangle been untangled?” Aunt Isa asked.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs Pommerans said. “Everything is as it should be. Boy is boy, hawk is hawk, and so on. Clara could do with some practice at Journeying, but we can sort that out later. There’s just one thing…”
“What’s that?” I said.
“You separated the hunger and the hungry. You set Kimmie free.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the revenant?”
I had to think about that.
“I don’t know. I… I grabbed it with…” I flapped the hand which had been on fire. “I think I stopped it. But then… everything exploded. And I couldn’t see it or Kimmie or… or anything else. I… I guess I woke up. In a forest that was very much alive.” I took a sip of my tepid tea. “Aunt Isa… it felt as if the Earth were breathing. Is that possible? As if it were rising and sinking and… breathing out something warm.”
“I don’t know,” Aunt Isa said. “I’ve never heard of that before.”
Mrs Pommerans bit her lip and suddenly looked much younger. Like a schoolgirl who’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
“Agatha,” Aunt Isa said. “What is it?”
“Oh,” Mrs Pommerans said. “That would explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“Why the forest was a little too alive. If someone had chucked a whole tin of vademecum powder over it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fruitful dreams,” Mrs Pommerans said. “If you add even a tiny bit to your watering can when you water your plants, then… then you get a very lovely-looking garden. But a whole box… That’
s probably overdoing it a bit.”
Aunt Isa couldn’t help laughing.
“Agatha. So that’s why your garden is always so warm and green.”
“Yes. That’s my little secret. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I thought you had found a way of manipulating the weather.”
“Isa! As if I would! It’s strictly forbidden!”
“Hi, Mum.”
“Mousie!”
Mum made a real effort not to look too relieved, but she was super pleased to see me safe and sound, there was no doubt about that.
I could have spent a few more days with Aunt Isa; less than a week had passed since Mum picked me up from the hospital. But I fancied going home and being non-wildwitchy for a while. I had a lot on my mind.
“How are you feeling, munchkin? How’s your head?”
My head? Oh. The concussion. I’d forgotten all about it. A measly little headache. Not worth worrying about when you were battling soul tangles, revenants and stuffed fathers.
“Fine,” I said. “My head doesn’t hurt any more.”
“Great. Any nausea?”
“Nope. None at all.”
“Excellent. Because I was just about to start dinner. Can you lend me a hand or are you too tired?”
I was hungry. I had to double-check, but it was regular great-we’re-eating-soon-hunger. Not the kind that made me sniff new-born baby badgers.
“We can do it together. Is it OK if I just call Oscar first?”
“Of course, darling.”
I went to my room. There are certain things mums don’t need to hear.
“Oscar?”
“Yesss. What’s up?”
“It’s all good. I… I don’t think I need to be scared of turning into a grass snake again. That is unless I choose to.”
“Great. So does that mean you’ve learned to do it on purpose?”
“Pretty much.” Mrs Pommerans had given me some exercises as well as a small amount of vademecum powder to take home. But not for the pot plants, she had warned me.
“Cool! Please can you show me how it’s done?”
“No, not really. Or at least I don’t think so. I was just wondering… Have you heard how Martin is?”
“Martin the Meanie?”
“Who else? But…”
“But what?”
“I think we should stop calling him that.”
“Why? Just because he fell off a roof? He’s out of hospital. He’s fine now – some people from his class visited him and they say he’ll be back in school on Monday. Just as mean as he always was, no doubt.”
I’d been pretty sure that was the case, but it was good to have it confirmed.
“That’s not the reason. It’s just… Have you ever heard the expression: give a dog a bad name?”
“Explain?”
“That the bad name becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think about The Nothing. And… and what about Mousie?”
“Are you saying that if we start calling him Martin the Sweetie, he’ll suddenly become all sweetness and light?” There was disbelief in Oscar’s voice, and I couldn’t help smiling. It did require a bit of a leap of faith.
“No, maybe not… but we could always try.”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said.
“Likewise.”
“Gotta go. Dinner is ready,” he said. “See you tomorrow?”
Cat was lying on my tummy. The fluorescent hands on my Mickey Mouse alarm clock were about to meet at the number twelve. It was almost midnight and I was dog-tired and yet I couldn’t sleep.
Fruitful dreams, I thought. Because there was one thing I really needed to know. Something I couldn’t find in a book or look up on the Internet.
Mrs Pommerans’s little tin was sitting next to the alarm clock, but I hesitated. I hadn’t forgotten what happened the last time I opened it.
Go to sleep, Cat growled grumpily.
“I can’t.”
Why not?
“Because I’m thinking about Kimmie.”
She’s fine.
“What do you mean?” I killed her, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. “She’s dead!”
Yes. So she’s fine.
Seriously, cats.
You’ll pay for this. Those were the words Chimera had screamed at me when I took her wings, and she’d said them again in the grey snow world. There’s a price. You will pay for this.
She’d been right. There was a price to pay. And although it definitely wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she said it, Chimera’s greatest revenge was that for the rest of my life I would carry with me the knowledge that I had killed her. That was the price: my mind would never be free from the image of dead Kimmie – so small, so skinny, in her filthy bird T-shirt with bare legs sticking out of her pyjama bottoms.
I reached out for the small, silver tin. Opened it carefully. Dabbed a tiny, tiny amount on my forefinger and brushed it between my eyebrows where the scars from Cat’s claws were still visible. Then I carefully closed the tin and lay down.
Nothing happened. Nothing except that I finally started feeling a little drowsy. I yawned.
Then it came. Only a very brief glimpse.
I was in the living forest. Two girls were walking in front of me, holding hands. One had a jackdaw on her shoulder.
There was nothing more. Nothing but that. And yet my sense of relief was so great I thought I could fly. I would never forget Kimmie, but nor would her memory weigh as heavily as I’d feared.
“She’s fine,” I said.
Of course, Cat growled and yawned. I told you so, didn’t I?
NEXT IN THE
WILDWITCH
SERIES
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
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Original text copyright © Lene Kaaberbøl, Copenhagen 2011
Published by agreement with Copenhagen Literary Agency, Copenhagen
Translation © Charlotte Barslund, 2016
Illustrations © Rohan Eason
Wildwitch: Life Stealer was originally published in Danish as Vildheks: Kimæras hævn
by Alvilda in 2011
This translation first published by Pushkin Children’s Books in 2016
ISBN 978 1 782691 15 0
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