He half smiles, shaking his head. He’s breathing nearly as hard as I am, I notice with some satisfaction. Clearly the supersonic thing takes a toll on him too.
‘You have to tell me, first.’
‘OK.’
‘And anyway, it didn’t look dangerous. It was beautiful.’
‘I never said it wasn’t,’ he mutters, trudging on through the undergrowth. I follow him. ‘But it’s not just the badgers. There are lots of creatures in these woods. Bigger than that, more dangerous.’
I stare at his back for a long time, a word winding around inside my head.
‘What?’ he demands, turning.
‘Magical?’
He returns my stare.
‘It’s that kind of place,’ he says. ‘Everything here . . . it’s all affected.’
‘By magic.’
He nods, his shoulders lifting.
‘And that’s why people don’t see you. That’s the thing, that makes you different?’
‘That’s part of it.’
He looks so uncomfortable. It’s almost hard to see him, like he’s getting smaller, disappearing into the shadows.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘What?’
‘You know what you’re doing. It won’t work. I see you. I saw you from the start.’
He frowns. ‘Why? Why did you see me, when everybody else doesn’t?’
‘I told you, I saw stuff. I guess that makes me special now.’
‘Aoife calls you my catalyst.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. We’re connected, somehow.’
‘I don’t know about catalysts . . .’ I mutter. I don’t really know about any of this, actually. Why am I here, in these spooky woods, with a monster-boy who smells of everything I was trying so hard to forget?
Because I can’t forget it. And then there he was, in my face at school. He shakes his head as I stare at him, and then the clouds above us start to glow orange. The black silhouette of something monstrous appears, high up in the sky.
‘We need to get out of here,’ says Bavar.
The sense of power rings stronger than ever in the air around him. My instincts tell me to step back, get away, but I ignore them, my heart beating hard in my ears as the dark shape gets closer.
‘What is that?’
‘Run!’ he hisses, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me with him, charging through the trees to the gate. A shuddering roar fills the air around us and I look up fearfully and realize it’s Bavar. Bats rise with a flurry of panic as the creature gets closer, the flap of its wings bringing back memories I’ve been trying to hold at bay.
‘Bavar!’
‘I see it!’ he shouts, pushing me behind him and stretching up as the monster gets closer. In an instant he is taller, broader. The creature flaps its wings, lowering its head to snap at us with vicious long teeth, and Bavar shouts as he reaches out. There’s a brief, violent scurry, and I don’t know whether it’s the words he uses or just the sheer strength of him, but somehow he beats the monster back, and it peels away into the stormy sky with a screech of fury.
‘What was that thing?’ I ask after a while. My heart is thumping so loud, I’m surprised he can’t hear it. He turns to me, still at full height, his eyes blazing. ‘Has it really gone?’
I refuse to quail.
‘For now,’ he says, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He looks me up and down. ‘But it’ll be back. So thanks for that.’
‘Why is it my fault?’
‘Well, nobody else is running through the woods like a fairy princess!’
I look down at myself, in my muddy leggings and the hoody that I outgrew about a year ago. ‘I think you have the wrong idea about fairy princesses.’
‘And you have the wrong ideas, generally,’ Bavar says, rubbing at his face and seeming somehow to fold in upon himself, until he’s plain, stooped old Bavar again. ‘Why can’t you just stay away?’
‘I’ve told you. Because I can’t. Because it matters.’
‘What do you think you can do about it anyway?’
‘I could fight!’
He shakes his head and starts to walk away, and I can’t stand it, I can’t take any more. I pull at him, and he turns back, his eyes wide with surprise. I guess he doesn’t get pulled around a lot. ‘I would fight,’ I say, my chest tight with it. ‘I will fight.’
‘Why? And what if that’s not the right thing to do? What if it makes a monster of you too?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I wouldn’t care.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’ His eyes burn. ‘You wouldn’t care about anything. You’d be too far gone, on all your victories. You’d be a monster yourself, full of the fight and the kill and nothing else. No humanity left, you’d just spend your time celebrating, thinking how great you were, and then you’d make mistakes, and everything would go wrong . . .’
‘But at least I’d have tried!’
‘No!’ he shouts. ‘That’s what they did. And then it did all go wrong, and there were consequences . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘There’s a better way. There has to be a better way!’
‘What are you talking about, Bavar? Who made mistakes? What consequences?’ My heart skippers and twists and suddenly I don’t know if I’m ready for this after all.
‘Never mind,’ he says in a heavy voice, staring at me.
‘So what, then?’ I demand. ‘What’s the answer? What’s your better way?’
‘I’m trying to work that out,’ he says.
There’s a rustle in the bushes behind me, something bursts out running, and I yelp, springing forward into him. Caught off guard, he stumbles down the bank and we both end up in a heap in the mud.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he howls, springing up and brushing off his backside, as a spotted deer bounces off into the darkness.
‘It startled me!’
‘The deer startled you?’ he huffs, making for the iron gate. ‘Monsters you can deal with, but one little deer and you’re all screamy.’
‘I was not screamy,’ I say, following him, my eyes constantly searching the darkness for other things that might pop out. ‘And it might have been some other kind of thing, and I might have just saved your life. So I think you could be a bit grateful.’
He glares back at me, and a strange expression crosses his face. I look down at myself, covered in mud, bits of twig sticking to me. When I look back he’s already marching on, his shoulders shaking.
I think he might be laughing.
‘What on earth happened to you?’ Aoife puts down her pen, her eyes wide. ‘Is there trouble?’
‘Definitely trouble,’ I mutter, heading for the fridge and pulling out the milk as she pushes her crossword aside. She loves crosswords, her spidery handwriting fills dozens of them all stacked on the shelves by the table.
‘You’re getting mud everywhere!’ she complains, standing as I get a glass out of the cupboard. ‘What sort of trouble, Bavar – should I be worried?’
‘No, it’s fine. It’s just the girl.’
‘Your catalyst!’ says Aoife. ‘What has she been doing?’
‘She came into the woods. Found me there, disturbed a bit of the wildlife, that’s all.’