Part 31 (2/2)

'No,' said Tess. 'It's driving me mad. What would you be if you had the decision ahead of you again?'

Kevin thought about it for a moment or two, then said, 'A rat. I always felt ... I don't know ... cheated, somehow. Because of being forced into a decision when it was time for me to choose. I'm sure that if I'd had a chance to think I would have decided on a rat.'

His words gave Tess an uncomfortable reminder of her dream, but she said nothing and Kevin went on, 'Maybe it doesn't make that much difference, in the end. I mean, the best thing was being able to Switch. Nothing could be as good as that, really, could it?'

Tess sighed. 'It's like having everything, isn't it?' she said. 'I can't stand the idea of losing it.'

Kevin had a neat little campfire going in front of his tent, carefully confined inside a ring of stones. On top of it a billy of water was coming to the boil.

'Tea?' he asked.

Tess sat down on a stone. As though it saw her, the smoke changed direction and drifted into her face. She waved her hands at it and waited. Sure enough, it soon returned to its previous course.

'Anyway,' said Kevin, dropping a fistful of tea leaves into the billy, 'what happened? How come you didn't warn them that I was coming?'

Tess groaned and related the story of Uncle Maurice and the wild goats. As she told it Kevin nodded, understanding and approving in a way that no one else ever did or could. Their friends.h.i.+p warmed her heart as it so often had in the past. As time went on it became more valuable, not less, no matter how different their lives appeared to be.

In the silence that followed the end of Tess's account, Kevin rooted around in his rucksack and found another cup. Tess watched him. He was still as tough and as scruffy as the town rats which had been his main companions during his Switcher days. He would never fit into normal human society, not in a million years. In a sudden, uninvited leap of imagination, Tess saw him as an old tramp, a bag man rummaging around on the edges of society; a human rat, unloved and unwanted. She had seen people like that, adrift on the city streets. They existed without the anchors that kept most people stable: family or education or job. Tess wondered whether their minds drifted in the same way, untethered, unfocussed, unaware of time.

'Maybe it's best to leave it that way,' said Kevin.

Tess came back to reality with a jolt. 'What?'

'No need to tell them now that you know me, is there?'

'No,' said Tess. 'In fact it would be a bit awkward, since I didn't say anything yesterday.'

Kevin used a grimy T-s.h.i.+rt to protect his fingers from the heat of the billy as he poured the tea into two battered enamel mugs.

'Trouble is, though,' Tess went on, 'I won't be able to invite you to my birthday party.'

'Are you having one?'

Tess shrugged. Kevin spooned milk powder into the cups. 'We can have one,' he said. 'Just you and me. A midnight one.'

'That would be good,' said Tess. 'That would make everything easier.'

'It's a date, then,' said Kevin, then blushed. 'I don't mean that kind of a date. I mean ...'

Tess laughed, but she could feel herself colouring as well. For a moment each of them struggled separately, trying to think of something normal to say. Tess got there first.

'What do the rats think of the woods?' she asked.

Kevin burst out laughing. 'They were very funny,' he said. 'They were like a coach-load of middle-aged tourists who have been brought to the wrong hotel.' He lapsed into fluent Rat as he continued. 'Feed-shed, huh, huh? Soap? Cupboards?'

Tess laughed.

'Usguys wet and cold,' Kevin went on. 'Usguys breaking our teeth on hazelnuts!'

If anyone had been watching through the trees they would have thought the two friends were quite mad, sitting in silence and laughing at nothing at all. But they understood each other perfectly.

'Blackberries sour! Yeuch! Hard work hunting, hard work making new nests!'

Tess could visualise them; fat pampered house rats, amazed at the lives their forerunners led, returning with the utmost reluctance to their wild roots.

'Will they stay, do you think?' she asked, returning to human speech.

Kevin nodded confidently. 'For a few generations at least. I painted a ferocious picture of Pestokill. They'll be telling their children and grandchildren about it. Like the bogeyman.'

Tess finished her tea but declined the breakfast that Kevin offered, not because the bread was squashed and the b.u.t.ter was full of grit but because she felt it would be better politics to make an appearance at the house.

'See you later,' she said.

Kevin was trying to cut the bread with a blunt knife, but he looked up when, a minute later, Tess was still standing there, as if undecided.

'You OK?' he asked.

Tess nodded. 'I was just wondering,' she said.

'Wondering what?'

'Did you see anything in the woods? Anything strange?'

'Not exactly. But there was a funny feeling about the place. I didn't really want to go in. Just left the rats at the edge like you suggested. Why?'

Tess shook her head. 'Just wondered.'

'Did you?' Kevin asked.

'I'm not sure,' she said. 'It was probably just my imagination. Maybe we could go there together some time?'

'All right by me,' said Kevin.

'It's a date, then,' said Tess.

Then, before Kevin could question her more closely, she Switched into a hawk again and sprang away into the sky.

CHAPTER NINE.

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