‘It’s not so bad,’ I say. ‘But you shouldn’t be here.’
‘Ah,’ she says, walking around me, peering down at the ancient gravestones. ‘But I should. Because the fireflies brought me here.’
‘They’re not known for their intelligence,’ I say.
She looks at me and shakes her head. ‘It’s nature, Bavar. Nature brought me here. And I’m not going anywhere – not until I understand everything.’
I lean back against the crumbling stone wall and sigh. I guess I should have expected this. After the other night, she was bound to have questions. She always seems to have questions. I just don’t know if I have the answers she wants. Either way, we’re going to be here a while.
I watch her wander through the cemetery, and I know there’s a reason she’s here, beyond idle curiosity. That thing I catch in the corners of her eyes sometimes, that searching thing that has secrets, and knows about darkness nearly as much as I do. It needs something. So, I remind myself, this is not friendship. But it’s closer than I’ve ever been before, and it’s not terrible to be here with her.
It’s even a little bit nice, for now.
It’s kind of beautiful here, if you can call a cemetery beautiful. The woodlands stretch above us, and below is the town, lights burning in the windows. The house rises up on our right, on its own steep hill, all in darkness beneath the moon and the silver rain. My chest is tight from the running, and full of the wonder of it all. Bavar perches on the wall, watching me, apparently in no hurry to speak. He’s different here; that sense of magic around him is quieter, more gentle. He’s so in tune with the place, so much a part of it. It lives, it breathes with him.
‘So you have your own private cemetery,’ I start, moving between the headstones. They’re all of the same dark stone, in varying stages of decay. Soft green moss grows on some of them, lichen clinging to the lettering. I try not to look too closely – I don’t want him to think I’m being morbid – but I can’t help noticing that most of these people weren’t very old when they died. ‘Is it just for your family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you look after the plants?’ There are little pots of heathers and herbs, some of them with little white starflowers that seem to glow against the darkness. ‘What’s this one?’
‘Night-blooming jasmine.’
‘It’s pretty.’
He shrugs. ‘Be trouble if I let it all get run down.’
‘Trouble? From who?’
‘Them, of course,’ he says, his eyes flicking to the stones.
‘Who?’
‘We should go,’ Bavar says, ignoring my question while I shake off the shiver that’s sitting on my shoulders. Does he mean there are ghosts here? His dead ancestors’ spirits, demanding flowers? ‘Come on. It’s not safe here.’
‘Why not? What’s here?’
He sighs. ‘Nothing’s here. I mean you need to get off the estate, before it gets any later.’
‘But why?’ I press, following him as he heads into the darkness of the trees. ‘Bavar, slow down – just tell me what’s going on here. What is this place? What are you?’
‘What am I?’ He stops and turns, and the sky seems to darken around us as we stand there, halfway up the hill. His hair is wilder than ever, standing out around his head in wiry coils. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Oops.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ I say, standing tall, about halfway up to his knees. ‘I just . . . I’m sorry – I didn’t mean that you were anything. I just need to know, about the monsters.’
‘Why?’
‘I know they’re real,’ I whisper. And I can’t look him in the eye when I say it because I spent months trying not to believe in all of this. I fought every day just to believe in myself when everybody else told me I was wrong. And I wasn’t wrong. Bavar takes a step away from me.
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw things, a while ago. And I saw you the other night, up on the roof. I saw you there, and you can’t tell me that’s not real, Bavar. You can’t tell me I didn’t see that, because I know I did, and I’ve had enough of pretending. I just need to know!’
He shakes his head. ‘You don’t need to know. You have no idea what you’re trying to get into. You shouldn’t even be here. You should be down there, in your nice safe little house, watching TV.’
My nice safe little house?
Breathe.
‘You should stop acting like you’re the only kid in the world who ever had to go through difficult stuff!’ I burst. ‘You have no idea about me, or what I’m capable of. You’re just stuck up here in your mansion on top of the hill and you think you know it all and you think your life is oh so flipping difficult and it’s just not, because you’re seven feet tall and you could probably do anything, if you wanted to. So why don’t you? Why don’t you let people see you? Why do you spend all your time hiding – why don’t you just fight?’
He stares at me a long time, while I try to stop the tears that want to come bursting out. It’s raining hard now, and I didn’t mean to lose it like that. I don’t remember the last time I shouted at anyone.
‘I don’t want to fight,’ he says eventually in a quiet voice. ‘Everybody wants me to fight, and they all say the same thing. That I was built to fight.’ He looks down at himself and then looks back at me, his eyes fierce. ‘But I wasn’t. And I won’t.’
It gets darker, as I follow him through the tangled branches of the trees. The tall, narrow trunks glisten black in the dusk, rain streaming over everything. Bavar moves pretty stealthily, especially for someone of his size, and I slide around behind him, scrambling over the twisted roots that hide beneath a sodden layer of autumn leaves.
‘Bavar?’
He stops, tilts his head, then carries on walking, harder, faster, completely ignoring me.
‘Bavar!’
‘Shhh!’ He turns to me. ‘They’re already on our tail – why are you shouting?’
‘What do you mean, on our tail?’ I turn and look back, my teeth chattering. ‘I can’t see anything!’
‘Look deeper,’ he says, his voice a low, slow rumble that moves like thunder through the trees. ‘Ahead, and to your right, under the elm.’
I can’t tell an elm from a Christmas tree, but I look where he gestures, and deep down in the shadows is something that is nearly a badger. It’s the same size, and it has the same stripes, but there’s a spine of silver spikes down its back, and its coat sparkles like cut glass.
‘What kind of creature is that?’ I whisper, as it shuffles backwards with a high-pitched bark that makes my ears ring. Trees shudder around us, and there’s a sudden silence. Bavar grabs at my arm and pulls me away, and we run, faster and faster, until my head is spinning, my breath burning in my chest.
‘Bavar!’ I wrench myself away, staggering to a stop. ‘Don’t do that! You can’t just . . . you have to at least warn me when—’
‘When what?’ he asks, peering down at me. ‘When I’m pulling you out of danger?’
‘From sparkly badgers?’