Devil's Rock Part 5

Chapter 6.

The gra.s.s, long and wet, clung to his ankles. He wanted to leave, to run, but the gra.s.s was holding him back. He shouldn't be in this field. This was the field where they buried the bodies. The ground heaved by his feet. A hand reached up to grasp his leg.

Zaki woke, his heart pounding, but as the dream image faded he became aware of two eyes that glowed in the soft morning light filtering through the window curtains. The cat was sitting on the table beside his bed, looking down at him, her pupils large and dark.

'Oh, it's you,' said Zaki.

The cat tucked her forepaws under her chest, closed her eyes and seemed to doze, sphinx-like, inscrutable, as though, now Zaki was awake, she no longer needed to be on watch.

The relief of waking and finding the horror that had gone before was just a bad dream was quickly followed by the stomach-clenching realisation that today was his first day at a new school, THE BIG SCHOOL. Of course, he comforted himself, Michael would be there Michael knew his way around; Michael would show him what to do it wasn't like it was the complete unknown. And friends from his primary school were going up with him yeah, Craig would be there but he still wished he could crawl back under the sheets, put today off, claim his arm hurt too much. Yeah, and he'd gone and missed the first day when everyone found out where their cla.s.srooms were. Was he meant to take PE kit? No, he couldn't do PE 'cause of his arm. His primary school had been small and friendly; he'd been one of the big kids. Now he'd be one of the smallest. If his mum had been here, she would have phoned up and found out what the timetable was. Why was his dad so useless at that sort of thing!? Didn't he understand anything?

People would want to know about his arm, of course how it happened. If only he could tell the real story! The cave, the skeleton, almost getting drowned and the girl. He had to tell somebody, there had to be someone he could talk to about it. A thing like that can't just happen and then you never talk to anyone about it it would drive you crazy. It was driving him crazy.

He put on the blue school sweatshirt and black trousers that Michael had grown out of at least they didn't look new. Getting his left arm through the sleeve was a painful business, but the fact that the sweatshirt was a little too big for him made it easier. As he dressed, he thought about the story Grandad had told him. So there was a smugglers' cave. It must have been the one he found, but that didn't explain the skeleton. And what about the girl? Why didn't she want him to tell? He was still puzzling over it all as he went downstairs.

'What's that cat doing here?' asked his father, as Zaki entered the kitchen.

Zaki looked round to see that the cat was sitting, nonchalantly, at the foot of the stairs.

'It was at the boat shed.'

'That wasn't the question, Zaki. I asked what it's doing here.'

'I don't know. It just is.'

'It just is! Zaki, why did you bring it home?'

'I didn't. It must have followed me.'

'Grandad drove you. How could it have followed you?'

'I don't know. Maybe it got in the car.'

'How could it have got in the car without you knowing? Zaki, you can't go bringing stray animals into the house. It probably has fleas. I suppose it's been in your room all night. Did you let it sleep on the bed?'

'No! And I didn't bring it in! It just came in! Ask Michael!'

'Well, it's not staying in the house while you're at school, and after school it's going back where it came from. Is that clear?'

'Dad,' said Zaki, 'it's nothing to do with me honestly! Grandad's been feeding it.'

'That doesn't give you an excuse to bring it home.'

'I told you. I didn't. It just . . .'

'Eat your breakfast. You don't want to be late for your first day at your new school.' And his father went upstairs to tell Michael not to spend the whole morning under the shower.

As Zaki and Michael left the house Michael, breakfast toast in hand the cat shot past them. Zaki watched it run across the small front lawn and saw that as it ran it seemed to tumble, becoming a grey spinning blur in the centre of which something glittered. The glitter became an eye, a small, bright, round eye that blinked. Zaki stopped and stared. The grey blur around the eye twisted and shrank as though drawn inwards by the eye, coalescing quickly into a new form, a bird, a grey pigeon, that flew up to perch on the telegraph wire.

'Come on, Zaki!' shouted Michael. 'We'll be late. What are you gawping at?'

'I have to find the cat,' Zaki said, dropping his bag and running to the spot where the cat had seemed to have disappeared.

'Leave it, Zaki. It'll be all right.'

'No, something strange happened.' Zaki stood on the spot where the cat had last been, looking all around. The pigeon regarded him from the overhead wire.

'Something strange is always happening to you, Zaki. If you're going to mess about, I'm going without you.'

Reluctantly, Zaki followed his brother.

Although it was only a short walk from Moor Lane to school, by the time they got there the playground was ominously empty and silent. They were late and cla.s.ses had already started, so there was no chance for Zaki to find anyone he knew to ask where he was meant to be. Michael said it was Zaki's fault anyway that they would have been on time if he hadn't made all that fuss about the cat.

'n.o.body ever showed me around when I started school,' said Michael. 'I had to find everything out for myself, so why can't you?'

Left on his own, Zaki had to suffer the humiliation of being shown to his cla.s.sroom by the school secretary, and thirty-two faces turning as one when she ushered him through the cla.s.sroom door. On seeing him, almost every face lit up with the delighted fascination of a cannibal witnessing a human sacrifice, and there was obvious disappointment when the teacher, whom he later discovered to be called Mrs Palmer, failed to do anything more to embarra.s.s him but merely waited for him to find a vacant seat before continuing the lesson. Zaki saw that there was a seat by Craig. Perhaps his friend, who was now indicating the vacancy with little nods of his head, had saved it for him.

There were whispers of 'Hey, Zaki, what you been doing?' and 'What happened to your arm?' as he made his way between the tables, but Zaki, conscious of the teacher's eyes on his back, thought it best not to respond. Once in his seat, he searched the whiteboard for clues to the subject of the lesson. 'Myth in Ancient Societies Ceridwen and Taliesin,' he read and felt very little the wiser.

Mrs Palmer resumed where she had left off. 'Ceridwen was a witch,' she said, tapping with a finger on the whiteboard, 'who had a son called Morfran. Morfran was ugly and stupid, so the witch decided to make him wise by brewing up a great spell in her cauldron of wisdom. The cauldron had to be stirred for a year and a day and that job she gave to a boy called Gwion. On the last day of the spell, three drops splashed from the cauldron on to Gwion's finger.' Mrs Palmer paused and looked around the cla.s.s. 'What would you instinctively do if three burning hot drops had fallen on your finger?'

'What's she talking about?' Zaki whispered to Craig.

'It's some old story from Wales,' Craig whispered back.

'It's Craig, isn't it,' said Mrs Palmer with exaggerated sweetness. 'Perhaps you would like to answer my question?' But Craig was showing Zaki where to find the chapter on myths in the textbook.

'Craig!' their neighbour hissed. 'She's talking to you!'

Craig's head jerked up but Zaki kept his eyes down, hoping not to be drawn into whatever was about to take place.

'Sorry, miss. What was the question?' asked Craig, turning a deep shade of pink.

A great hoot of laughter burst from the cla.s.s. This was only the second day of term and the air in the cla.s.sroom was still full of the wild disorder of six teacherless weeks of running free.

'Clearly, Craig has more important things to think about, so I will tell you what Gwion did,' continued Mrs Palmer. 'He put his scalded finger in his mouth and so received all the wisdom that was intended for the witch's son. Of course Ceridwen was furious that Gwion got the wisdom that was intended for her son, so she began to chase him, but Gwion dived into a river and used his new knowledge to change himself into a fish. The witch changed herself into an otter and pursued him . . .'

The image of the frantically swimming fish with the sleek otter after it the otter's needle-sharp teeth centimetres from the fish's tail sprang into Zaki's head.

'It's just like my dream!' he whispered to Craig.

'I'm sorry, Isaac, I didn't catch that,' said Mrs Palmer.

A t.i.tter rippled through the room, but Zaki, unused to being called by his full name, stared into s.p.a.ce, or rather, into the image of the watery chase that continued to be played out before his mind's eye.

'h.e.l.lo! Isaac are you with us?' called Mrs Palmer.

Zaki, becoming aware that the teacher was talking to someone, looked around to see who it was, only to find all eyes were on him.

'Miss?' said Zaki.

The cla.s.s held its breath.

Mrs Palmer allowed the silence to linger. At last she said, 'Oh, are you back with us, Isaac?'

This time uproarious mirth was accompanied by stamping feet and calls of 'h.e.l.lo, Isaac!' 'Are you with us, Isaac?'

When the racket had died down, Mrs Palmer said, 'Now Isaac, perhaps you could tell us what so fascinated you.'

'It's just that I had a dream,' said Zaki, 'like this story. About being chased and turning into different things.'

'Share it with us, Isaac. Share it with us,' said Mrs Palmer. 'Since your dream is obviously more interesting than anything that I have got to tell you, come up in front of the cla.s.s and tell us all about it.'

'It was just a dream,' said Zaki.

But Mrs Palmer was not to be put off and Zaki found himself, once again, the sacrificial victim before thirty-two hungry pairs of eyes.

'So?' prompted Mrs Palmer. 'How did this dream go?'

'Well, miss . . .'

'Don't just tell me. Tell the whole cla.s.s.'

Many of the faces in the cla.s.sroom were faces he knew from primary school, others were new to him, but all stared at him eagerly, just waiting, he thought, for him to make a fool of himself.

'It didn't start like your story,' he said. 'It started with an eye that got bigger and bigger until I fell through it. Then I was underwater and I was a fish being chased by an otter.'

There were a few snickers from the back of the cla.s.s. Like a tightrope walker who has stepped on to the wire, Zaki knew he had to keep going or fall.

'I swam as fast as I could towards the surface to get away, and then I went right through the surface of the water into the air and suddenly I wasn't a fish any more, I was a bird!'

Zaki saw looks being exchanged, but he could feel the same excitement building inside that he felt in the dream the wonder of being a bird, the soaring exhilaration of flight.

'It's fantastic being a bird! The wind carries you like you're riding a wave and there's nothing underneath you, just air, but you don't fall because you've got wings and your wings are lifting you higher and higher.'

Zaki winced as a stab of pain reminded him he couldn't lift his left arm to demonstrate.

'But then there was a hawk up above me right in the sun a black shape like a shadow, and I knew it was after me. I dived sideways but it dropped like like this! claws reaching for me. I tried to get away but . . .'

Zaki glanced up and saw that a poster promoting healthy eating was slowly detaching itself from the back wall of the cla.s.sroom. First the top left corner, then the right curled over and it began to roll downwards. A drawing pin glittered and became an eye and then the poster was gone and the air was full of beating wings and the harsh, screeching keek-keek-keek keek-keek-keek of a swooping, whirling hawk. of a swooping, whirling hawk.

Chaos followed. Children dived under tables, chairs were overturned, Mrs Palmer crouched, screaming, the book of myths and legends held over her head. Zaki and a girl he didn't know were the only ones still standing, both staring in stunned amazement at the place on the back wall where the poster had been. With a violent lurch, Zaki's world tipped and spun and everything leapt into sharp focus; objects flashed past at dizzying speed. Zaki was looking down on the heads of his cla.s.smates; he skimmed over tabletops, swerved to miss a wall, one moment the ceiling was rushing towards him and the next he was swooping down towards startled, upturned faces. The sickening, helter-skelter ride lasted for no more than a few seconds, then he was back in his own body and the hawk was flying straight at him. Instinctively, Zaki threw up his arm to shield his face, saw the hawk's talons reaching out, then felt them grip his arm and the claws stab through his sweatshirt sleeve. In the sudden quiet, Zaki stood, frozen; the bird perched on his upheld arm, its piercing eyes glaring into his own.

'Bring it to the window.' The girl's voice was tense but steady.

Zaki saw that, by climbing on a table, the girl had managed to get a window open. Slowly, he made his way across the cla.s.sroom, like a figure from a medieval hunting scene, the bird of prey, proud and fierce, gripping his outstretched arm.

The hawk's head swivelled to take in the girl. Zaki felt its grip tighten on his arm as its muscles bunched, ready for flight. A wing brushed his face, the harsh keek-keek-keek keek-keek-keek broke the silence and the hawk was airborne, through the window, and gone. broke the silence and the hawk was airborne, through the window, and gone.

The next moment Mrs Palmer's hand was on Zaki's shoulder. She spun him around, bending to thrust her face, contorted with anger, close to his own.

'What sort of a stupid stunt was that?! Do you realise that people could have been seriously hurt? Do you? Hmm? How did you get that bird into the cla.s.sroom? Did somebody help you? Somebody must have helped you. If it hadn't been for a.n.u.sha getting the window open . . . well, I don't know what would have happened.' Mrs Palmer straightened and glared at the cla.s.s. 'I will find out who else was involved. Be sure of that! Now you are to sit in your places. You will not move or make a sound until I return.' And she marched Zaki out into the corridor. As soon as they were through the door, an excited babble erupted in the room behind them.

Mrs Palmer took a deep breath as though about to speak, thought better of it, turned and set off down the corridor. Zaki followed, feelings of anger, hurt and bewilderment chasing each other around and around inside him. When they reached the door of the head teacher's office, Mrs Palmer commanded Zaki to 'Wait!', then she knocked and entered the head's office. When she emerged she said simply, 'We've sent for your father. You will stay here until he arrives,' and returned to the cla.s.sroom.

Zaki stood waiting, staring at the floor and avoiding the curious glances of teachers and children who occasionally pa.s.sed by. Eventually, he heard the break bell go and the corridor filled with noise and bodies, but Zaki kept his eyes down.

'I know what happened.' She stood close to him as the pushing, chattering crowd heaved around them. 'I saw it. It was the poster. I don't know how you did it but you changed the poster into the eagle, or whatever that bird was.'

Zaki looked up. He and the girl were almost exactly the same height. Her eyes were so dark that it was difficult to see the difference between the black of the pupils and the brown of the irises. Her dark eyes seemed to intensify the seriousness of her expression. What had Mrs Palmer called her?

'How did you do it? Was it real?'

Zaki knew he should say something but when he thought about the moment that the hawk appeared all became confused.

'I don't know,' he said, 'I don't know how it happens. Things just keep appearing. Look, I don't think you should be talking to me. You'll get into trouble.' But he didn't want her to go away. It was a relief to be talking to someone; someone else who'd seen what he'd seen.

'I'll meet you after school,' she said. 'Do you take the bus?'

'No, I walk.'

'So do I. Meet you down the harbour. By the tourist information.'

'Um . . . Well, they might send me home, I suppose,' he said.

'Yeah, but we've got to talk. So come to the harbour anyway.'

She was right. 'OK,' he said. And felt better, much better. He wasn't alone any more, 'Yeah, I'll meet you by the tourist information.'

'I know you're called Isaac,' she said. 'I'm a.n.u.sha.'

'Zaki I'm usually called Zaki.'

'Fine Zaki Whatever. Meet you after school.'

The crush in the corridor had subsided and a.n.u.sha joined the stragglers heading outside for break.

A few minutes later, Craig came by, looking furtive, and wished Zaki luck. Others waved from a safe distance or pulled faces. It was clear that the story had spread like wildfire during break because the returning crowds regarded him with much more interest, but soon cla.s.ses resumed and Zaki was left on his own.

Zaki's father arrived looking hot and worried. He had obviously come straight from Number 43, as he was in his work clothes and there was brick dust in his hair. He looked questioningly at Zaki while the school secretary knocked on the head teacher's door, but they were shown in before they had any time to say anything to each other.