The Switchers Trilogy Part 17

'Tess?' he called, checking the bathroom and going on down the stairs. 'Tess, where are you?'

'What's wrong?' called her mother from the bedroom.

'Can't find Tess. Don't worry, she can't be far away.'

She wasn't. He saw her as soon as he drew the curtains in the kitchen, out in the back garden on her hands and knees.

He opened the window. 'What on earth are you doing out there, Tess? You gave me the fright of my life.'

Tess looked up, revealing a nasty-looking graze on her cheek and another above her nose. 'I was looking for Algernon,' she said. 'I brought him out for some exercise this morning and he's disappeared.'

It was the only excuse she could think of. She had arrived back from the second spell of being a phoenix just a few minutes ago, and realised that she had no way of getting into the house. Her window was closed, and it would take too long to find her way into the right system of underground pa.s.sages if she tried to get in as a rat. There hadn't been much time to think.

'But it's hardly even light yet,' said her father. 'Why on earth did you get up so early? And what's happened to your face?'

Tess's mother, always put on edge by the slightest sign of strange behaviour, joined her husband at the window.

'What have you done to yourself?'

For a moment Tess had no idea what they were talking about. She couldn't recall having done anything to her face. Just in time she remembered the bites and scratches she had received from the other rats when she was following Algernon a few hours ago. There were probably a lot more sc.r.a.pes and bruises hidden by her uniform. She thought quickly.

'I was feeling around in the bushes there,' she said, pointing to a shady corner where several well-established shrubs were growing. 'Have I cut myself?'

'You certainly have,' said her mother. 'Come in, now, and let me have a look.'

'But what about Algernon?'

'You'll have to worry about him later. He can't be far away.'

Tess felt in her pocket. 'You'll have to let me in,' she said. 'I left my key in my coat.'

As her mother fussed over her face, Tess slipped back into the warm, euphoric memory of the phoenix nature that she had abandoned just a few minutes before. She scarcely felt the antiseptic on the wounds, barely heard her mother saying, 'They're not as bad as they look. Just scratches.' She was floating again, high above it all, filled with brightness and peace.

'Wakey, wakey.'

'Hmm?'

Her father put a plate of scrambled eggs on toast in front of her on the table. Tess's stomach rose in protest, and she wondered why it was that the nightly sessions as a phoenix made her lose her appet.i.te. She played with the scrambled egg but ate no more than a couple of mouthfuls.

'Are you worried about something?' her mother asked.

'Just Algernon. I think I'll have another look around outside.'

'No. You get yourself ready for school. I'll have a good look for him after you've gone. He can't be far away'

That day was even worse than the one before. Tess had not slept at all during the night, and although the phoenix mood was invigorating and relaxing, she could only sustain its memory for short periods of time. When it was gone she was exhausted and depressed, and felt weak from lack of food. She was worried about what was happening with the rats as well, and between her various preoccupations found no energy or attention for her school work. On two occasions she narrowly avoided detention, and she promised herself that she would take a nap when she got home before she made any decisions about what she was going to do next.

But as the bus pa.s.sed through Phibsboro that evening, she suddenly recognised the area of streets where she and the other rats had ended up the previous night. Before she had time to think, she had made her way to the front of the bus, and at the next stop she got off.

It would make her late home. Were other girls of her age never late home? Did they never make independent decisions to call on some friend or go into town for a coffee? Would her mother believe her if she used an excuse like that? 'I went to listen to Catriona's new R.E.M. tape, Mum.' Or, 'I felt like walking a bit of the way home.' Why shouldn't she? She was fourteen, after all.

As she was mulling these things over in her head she reached the corner where she had hidden in order to Switch the night before. The big blue van was still there, and she considered using another animal form for her first investigation but, looking around, decided against it. She had nothing to hide after all. She was just a schoolgirl walking along the street. Who would be likely to question her?

Without changing pace she swung round the corner into the street where, she was sure, the Switcher lived. She was slightly disappointed to find that it was completely empty, although if she had been asked what she was expecting to find she wouldn't have been able to say. She strolled slowly along, and was opposite the empty house, just stopping briefly to shift her schoolbag from one shoulder to the other, when a woman came out of her front door and turned into the street towards her. The house she had left was one of the three or four that Tess had targeted as being the most likely. As surrept.i.tiously as she could, she watched the woman approach.

She was about the age of Tess's own mother, but shorter and much, much thinner. She walked with her face turned down towards the pavement, so it wasn't until she was almost level with her that Tess became aware of the most striking thing about the woman. She was deathly pale, paler than anyone Tess had ever seen before. She was so pale that her cheeks were like translucent paper, and Tess had to look closely to be sure that she wasn't wearing some strange kind of make-up or theatrical paint.

Careful as Tess was, the woman became aware of being examined, and looked up quizzically as she pa.s.sed by. It was clear that she had been crying; her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and Tess looked away in embarra.s.sment. She was so disturbed by the strange, pale woman that she almost missed seeing the red-haired boy who stood at the open door, watching after her. As he caught Tess's eye, he gave her the most charming of smiles, so delightful that she smiled back automatically, without thinking. She walked on a few paces before she was struck with an uncanny certainty that it was him. He was the Switcher. He was the right age and lived in one of the likely houses, but it was more than that. It was a feeling of affinity, of some shared experience even though they had never met. Tess stopped and turned round. She didn't know how, but she would find some way to introduce herself.

But when she got back to the door, it was closed. Tess stood there, stunned. The strength of her feeling made no sense to her. She and the boy had never met, so why should he expect her to turn round and come back? Why should the closed door feel so much like a rejection?

And yet it did, and the feeling of disappointment didn't lessen with time. When she got back home, she was in a foul temper.

'But why?' she said to her mother. 'Why should I always tell you exactly where I'm going to be at any given moment of the day?'

'Because I worry.'

'Why do you worry? You don't trust me, do you?'

'It's not that, Tess. It's ...'

They both fell silent, each remembering their own, very different sides of Tess's Arctic adventure. As far as Tess had been concerned, it had been imperative for her to go. She realised, however, that for her mother the time she had been away meant no more than a completely unexplained disappearance.

'It upset us, Tess. We were worried.'

'I know you were. But I came back, didn't I? I do my homework every night, I help with the washing-up. It's not as if I'm off carousing every night, is it? You should see some of the other girls in my school, what they get up to!'

Her mother sighed. Tess sighed back, in an exaggerated way, and went upstairs to change. When her father got home, she came down to dinner, ate the biggest meal she had eaten in months and went back upstairs again.

Long before the small hours of the morning, when the phoenix comes into its own, she was fast asleep.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, ON her way to school in the bus, Tess tried to gather her thoughts. There had been such a whirl of activity in the last two days and nights that she had no idea what was happening and what she should do next. She hated herself for the way she had spoken to her mother, and felt guilty about wanting to leave her parents to be with Kevin and become a phoenix for good. But before she could work out what to do about that, she had to sort out this business about the new Switcher. She had a duty to tell him that his powers would go when he reached his fifteenth birthday, and perhaps to encourage him in some way to learn, as she and Kevin had done, the full extent of his abilities before it was too late.

She wondered how old he was. From the brief glimpse she had got of him, smiling in the doorway, it was hard for her to tell. Younger than she was or older? Not much in it, either way. And how much did he already know? The business with the rats disturbed her. His relationship with them was very different from hers or Kevin's. When they had been among the rats it had been as equals; they learnt from them, and were guided by them on more than one occasion. But this boy, the boy with the strange, mixed-up Rat name, seemed to have a power over them.

Why, though? What did he want? She remembered the message about the stone containers beneath the ground with a strong sense of unease. What was he after? Buried treasure? If so, was it right for him to be using his Switching powers for such purposes: getting the rats to do his dirty work so that he could become rich? Yet if it wasn't right, who was to say? What business was it of hers?

The bus pulled up outside the school and Tess joined the lines of dreary uniformity filing in through the gates. Not much different from the poor old rats, she remarked to herself wryly.

'Still no sign of Algernon, I'm afraid,' her mother said as she began to peel the potatoes that evening. 'I hope he hasn't been caught by a cat or something.'

'So do I,' said Tess. 'I suppose there's nothing we can do about it now.'

'Never mind. We can see about getting another one if he doesn't turn up.'

Tess nodded. 'Anything I can do?'

'You can make a salad if you've finished your homework.'

Tess fetched lettuce and tomatoes from the rack beside the back door and rummaged in the drawer next to the sink for a sharp knife.

'I'm sorry about yesterday evening,' she said. 'About being late and saying you don't trust me. I was a bit tired. And I was upset about Algernon.'

'No.' Her mother looked as though she had a lemon in her mouth, as though what she was saying was difficult for her, but necessary. 'I was thinking about it afterwards, and you were right. You're fourteen now, and what's past is past. I can't go on treating you like a child any more. You do need to have more freedom.'

Tess stayed silent, aware of having won a victory but unsure whether she wanted it or not.

'You have to begin making decisions for yourself,' her mother went on. 'It's only right at your age. You know the dangers of the city, and if you don't understand them by now then you probably never will.'

'It's not as if I want to go off and ...' Tess lost her thread. Her mother's words were enormously generous, but they also placed a new responsibility on her. It was a big moment.

'I know that, I know that you're not going to get up to mischief. You see, despite ... despite everything, I do trust you, and so does your father. We were talking about it last night. We think that as long as you keep up with your schoolwork and provided we always know where you are, you ought to be allowed to make more of your own decisions.' She paused for a moment and then added: 'Within reason, of course.'

'You won't worry, then?'

'If I do, it's my problem, isn't it?'

Tess put down her knife, wiped her hands on a tea-towel and flung her arms round her mother's neck.

'Thanks, Mum,' she said. 'You're great, you know that?'

Her mother smiled, a little sadly, and Tess saw her as though for the first time: just a woman doing her best in life, as human as everyone else.

The sense of closeness lasted until Tess's father came in a few minutes later. He exchanged the day's news with everyone, as he always did, then settled himself down to read the evening paper until the supper was ready.

'Look at this,' he said, pointing to an item low down on the front page. Tess went across and read over his shoulder. With the first glance at the headline her heart began to sink.

RARE BIRD CAPTURED IN THE PHOENIX PARK.

In the early hours of this morning, head zoo-keeper Jeff Maloney, with the help of two a.s.sistant zoo-keepers, netted a rare bird which was discovered in a tree at the edge of the Phoenix Park. The bird had been sighted the previous night, but was gone by the time Mr Maloney arrived on the scene. Last night, however, he was well prepared and arrived in good time to find the bird roosting on an outer branch of the tree. The bird offered no resistance to being captured and was clearly quite at ease when handled. This suggests that it has escaped from some other collection, perhaps a private one, but so far no one has reported it missing.

The bird is said to be about two and a half feet in length with small wings and long tail feathers. It is golden in colour and, unlike some species of domestic and wild fowl which are also described as golden, it has no black markings whatsoever. At the time of writing, the experts at the zoo have failed to identify the bird.

By the time Tess had finished reading the report, she was leaning against the back of her father's chair, willing her shaking legs to bear her weight. How could this have happened? Why on earth hadn't he flown away? And the worst thought of all was: would it have happened if I hadn't been fast asleep at the time?

'There was some sort of activity going on outside here last night,' said Tess's mother, who was also reading the report. 'I thought it was some people come back from a party, getting excited about something and banging car doors. Do you think it was something to do with the bird?'

'It's possible,' said her father.

Tess's legs weren't responding as required, and she had slumped into an armchair in the corner. Now she dropped her head into her hands in despair. What would they do with him? How could she find him, let alone get around to setting him free?

Her mother checked the potatoes and drained them, then began to set out the meal. 'Are you all right, Tess?' she asked.

Tess stood up. There was no way she could just sit there and keep her emotions hidden, pretending that nothing had happened. 'I won't be having any dinner, if you don't mind. I have to go and look for someone.'

'What? Look for who? And your dinner's on the table-why don't you just have a bite before you go?'

'No, thanks.' Tess was already on her way out of the kitchen and collecting her coat in the hall.

Her mother followed. 'But Tess ...'

Tess's emotions got the upper hand. 'But Tess, but Tess,' she said angrily. 'It's fine in theory, isn't it, saying that you trust me. In practice it's different, isn't it?'

There was a heavy silence between them, during which Tess could hear her father push back his chair and cross the room towards them. Then her mother sighed and turned away. 'OK, Tess,' she said. 'But be back before ten o'clock, all right?'

Tess nodded and shot out of the door, pulling on her coat as she went. As the door closed her father said, 'What was all that about?'

Her mother shrugged. 'She's a teenager,' she said. 'What do you expect?'

Outside the door, Tess b.u.t.toned her coat against a damp westerly wind. She had let down her hair when she got home, and now it began to fly around, getting in her eyes and obscuring her vision. She felt in her pocket. There was loose change in there, and her door key, but no hair band. She stuffed her hair down the back of her collar and looked around.

She had come out with no clear idea of what she was going to do. Her first thought was to go to Phibsboro to try and find the Switcher and enlist his help, but she realised now that she had no idea of what she would be asking him to do. Until she knew where the phoenix was, there could be no plan made for releasing him.

She walked along the street until she felt safe from watching eyes, then she crossed over into the shade of the trees, where she was hidden from the street lights. It was a short walk across the park to the zoo, but in human form she would have no chance of getting inside and looking around. She cut across an open s.p.a.ce, checking to be sure that there were no people around, and made for the cover of a small stand of trees, where she Switched into an owl. Within a minute she was approaching the zoo, but it became apparent that her choice of bird was not of the best. The buildings were ablaze with light, which blinded her so badly that she became disorientated and had to make an emergency landing in a nearby tree. She considered trying a bat, even though she knew it was their time of year for hibernation, but when she thought about it further she realised that would not serve her purpose either. The bat's sonic system would tell her a certain amount and avoid the confusion of light, but she would have no way of seeing inside the buildings since the sound would bounce back from the gla.s.s windows and tell her nothing of what lay behind them.

She needed sight. What creature could find its way through the darkness but not be dazzled by bright light? A cat would do it, but then a cat might attract too much attention and be too slow to escape. The last thing she wanted was to be collared herself.

The answer came to her in an instant. When they had lived in a wooded area of the countryside, she had made the acquaintance of a pine marten, who had often come to visit even on days when she didn't Switch and go to find him. The pine marten had become a sort of family pet, and they left food out for him on the porch outside the back door. The house lights had never bothered him, and he seemed to be able to see perfectly well when he came to the kitchen door and poked his nose in.

As she Switched, Tess realised that the pine marten had other advantages, too. It was as fast as greased lightning if threatened, and it could climb; not only up and down trees, but on surfaces that were almost smooth. She shinned down the tree in which she had made such a clumsy landing, and raced across the gra.s.s towards the zoo. As she ran, she remembered how the long, sinewy body felt from inside; its wiry strength and its quickness and its cunning. The pine marten was afraid of very little in life. There were few dangers which it could not avoid with its remarkable speed and agility.

A guard stood at the entrance gate of the zoo. As Tess watched, a taxi pulled up and let out a group of men and women in smart clothes. The guard checked their identification, then made a call on a portable phone before letting them through and pointing out their destination with a series of gestures. While his attention was taken up with that, Tess slipped beneath a turnstile and into the grounds.

There was plenty of cover for a pine marten. The areas between the roads were covered in low shrubs which smelt enticingly of domestic fowl: ducks and peac.o.c.ks and guinea-hens. With an effort, Tess brought her mind back to the business in hand. The new arrivals were making their way towards the hexagonal aviary, and Tess followed at a distance, on silent paws. Outside the aviary door a second guard was standing, and he, too, talked into a mobile phone before opening the door with a key and locking it again behind them.

Tess lay low and watched carefully. All around the outside of the building were wire pens which connected to the cages inside, so that on fine days the birds could be allowed out into the open. They were all vacant now; the sharp eyes of the pine marten could have picked out a roosting bird no matter how well camouflaged it was. If the phoenix was in there, and the flow of activity suggested that it probably was, she would have to find some way of getting close enough to the door to see inside. That was going to be tricky, with the guard standing there. A pine marten is as big as a cat, and there was no cover close to the door; no way to stay hidden.

Tess used both her minds together and eventually came up with a solution. The outside pens were enclosed by strong wire netting, and if she could sneak around and scale the furthest one, round the other side, she would be able to cross the tops of them until she got to the front again, where she would be in a perfect position to see into the door the next time it opened.

Taking a long way round, she approached the pens. With a jump and a scramble she was up, and slinking silently along the top of the cages to the door. There she settled herself to wait.

It seemed like hours before the door eventually opened again and a group of people came out; many more than Tess had seen go in. A man at the back was talking loudly, and Tess knew that he was feeling very proud of himself even though she couldn't understand, with the pine marten's brain, what he was saying. She edged forward, stretching down to try and see through the door. No one looked up; all were too busy talking in excited voices. Tess stretched still further, her body becoming longer and longer as her front paws walked down the edge of the net and her back paws held tight, keeping her anch.o.r.ed. Still she couldn't see around the angle of the door, and in another minute the last of the people would be out and the door would close again. In a moment of desperate courage, Tess made a flying leap and landed on the ground between two of the departing guests, who sprang back in shock. She was only on the ground for a split second, but that split second was all she needed to get a glimpse inside the door. Then she was gone, racing away through the undergrowth and leaping up the netted wire which ran between the zoo and the main road through the park.

The various experts on birds and wildlife who had been inspecting the strange new find were puzzled by the sight of the pine marten, but not as puzzled as Jeff Maloney was. Before he left for home that evening, he checked the enclosure where the pine martens lived, and was even more surprised to find that neither of its occupants was missing.