Part 34 (1/2)

The power of his anger was too much for the sensitive little bird. Tess hopped up through the branches and reverted to the sparrowhawk shape again to complete her aerial search of the woods.

It didn't take long. Nothing worth seeing could escape the keen eyes of the hawk. On the a.s.sumption that if Kevin and the children were not in the woods then they must have left them, Tess flew high again and began to survey the surrounding countryside in slowly widening circles.

Still there was no sign. A pair of tourists were climbing up the other side of the mountain. A few more were on bicycles pedalling slowly along a meandering back lane. The usual spa.r.s.e traffic of muddy cars and tractors crawled along the narrow roads.

Tess flew higher and widened the area of search. She flew over a farmer and her dog checking cattle, and a bird-watcher who watched Tess through binoculars, tempting her to give him a display of aerobatics that he would never forget. She flew over a boy on a bicycle, heading away from the area. There was something familiar about him, and she wheeled about and flew back. She lost height to get a closer look and then, unable to believe her eyes, she dropped on to a telegraph pole and watched as the boy on the bike approached. There was no doubt about it now. It was Kevin.

Tess dropped down behind the thick hedge and Switched back to her human self.

'Kevin!'

He nearly fell off the bike with surprise, then came to a wobbly halt.

'Here!' Tess called, trying to find a break in the hazel wide enough to climb through.

'Oh, Switch, for cripe's sake,' said Kevin. 'There's no one about.'

She did, just for a moment, slipping easily through in the shape of a stoat before emerging on to the road as a human again.

'Where are you going?' she asked. 'Where are the others?'

'What others?' asked Kevin.

Tess was surprised at the anger her reply revealed. 'You know perfectly well who I'm talking about!'

But Kevin was angry, too. 'I'm sick of you, Tess!' he shouted back. 'First you promise to set up a scheme for me and then you back out and drop me in it on my own. Then, when it backfires in my face, you don't even come and look for me! You just leave me to try and cope with it and carry on as though nothing had happened!'

'Oh, right,' said Tess, discovering that she was shouting as well. 'So you kidnap my cousins to get your own back!'

'I what?'

For a moment, Tess believed that Kevin's astonishment was genuine. Then she remembered what she had seen; his expression as he snubbed his nose at them the last time she saw him.

'It's a good act, Kevin,' she said. 'But it doesn't cut any ice with me. I saw you, remember? I was there when you went off with them into the woods.'

Kevin shook his head in bewilderment. 'I don't know which one of us is cracked, but I haven't got a clue what you're talking about. I haven't been anywhere near the woods since I left the rats there.'

'But I saw you!'

'No, Tess. You didn't. You couldn't have done. It must have been someone else.'

Tess shook her head. 'Where were you, then,' she said, 'if you weren't at the woods?'

'This is ridiculous,' said Kevin. 'Getting the third degree from you, of all people! But if you must know, I was back at my camp site.'

'All this time?'

'Yes, all this time. I was wondering if you were ever going to turn up!' His face coloured with embarra.s.sment, but he went on. 'I was angry and lonely, Tess. I couldn't believe that you didn't come and see if I was all right.'

Tess sat down on a rock. Her spirit kept doing somersaults, then landing flat on its face. She wanted to believe what Kevin was saying; his friends.h.i.+p meant so much to her. And yet she had seen him with her own eyes. He had to be lying.

Kevin sat down beside her. 'What did you see, Tess?' he asked. 'You'd better tell me what's happening.'

Tess struggled with the idea that he was playing some awful trick on her, then gave in to trust. Feeling slightly foolish, she went through the events of the day from beginning to end. Kevin listened carefully, looking down at the ground between his feet. When she had brought him up to the present, he shook his head in bewilderment.

'I don't know what's going on,' he said. 'I can't even begin to explain it. But I can tell you one thing for certain. Whoever it was that you saw in the woods today, it wasn't me.'

'Who was it, then?' said Tess.

Kevin shrugged. 'I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe someone who looks very like me. Maybe ...' He stopped.

'Maybe what?'

'I don't know. But do you remember asking me once if I had noticed anything strange about those woods?'

Tess nodded and he went on, 'Well, what if there is something we haven't thought of yet? We get complacent so easily, even people like us who have seen so much. Especially us, perhaps. We think we've seen all there is to see, or been all there is to be. But maybe we haven't. Maybe there are things even we haven't imagined.'

Tess nodded, aware of the tingle of truth in her veins. She knew that he was right. There was something in those woods that she didn't understand. What was more, she didn't want to understand it. It made her much too afraid. It was easier to turn away, to keep close to Uncle Maurice, to pretend it wasn't happening. And when Kevin came even nearer to defining what it was, his words brought increasing fear along with them.

'Whatever is in those woods,' he said, 'made me think of the krools. Not because it's bad, necessarily. It might be. I don't know. But it reminded me of them because it's old. Older than we are, Tess. Older than civilisation, even.'

Tess nodded, remembering the shadows, the strange figure, the ghostly atmosphere.

'Whatever it is we're dealing with,' Kevin went on, 'it's ancient.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

TESS TOOK TO THE skies again to have a look around. She flew back towards the farm and spotted Uncle Maurice walking away from the woods and back across the meadows, his eyes downcast. The dogs were at his heels, equally dejected.

While Tess patrolled above, Kevin cycled back along the narrow, meandering roads and down the stony track which led to the crag. At the edge of the woods he hid his bicycle among thick stalks of hazel and, satisfied that they hadn't been spotted, Tess dropped down and joined him in human form.

Together they stood looking in among the trees. Evening was approaching and shadows were beginning to creep out from beneath the rocks and bushes. The raven flew over, looking down at them, making Tess feel exposed, and vulnerable. She stepped forward and Kevin followed.

Among the branches a bird fluttered and a leaf fell. Everything else was silent. Even though she felt much safer with Kevin beside her, Tess found that she was holding her breath. Despite the fresh, vibrant greens of the mosses and leaves, the woods were eerie. Like a stone circle or an earthwork, they had the atmosphere of a place which belonged to another age, a place where the living were somehow as insubstantial as the dead.

The two friends stayed close together as they made their way through the trees, keeping roughly parallel to the crag, calling occasionally as they went. Gradually the birds became accustomed to their presence and began to sing again, making the woods seem less forbidding. When they reached the opposite end and came out of the trees and on to the limestone pavement, Kevin sat down and shook his head.

'It doesn't make sense,' he said.

'I know,' said Tess.

'No. I mean, it doesn't make sense to search like this.'