Barney wondered if she was lying. Or if there really was no way back to being human.
‘You see,’ continued Miss Whipmire, ‘you’ve missed your opportunity. Because that is what life is. A grand opportunity. And opportunities are like cat flaps. They don’t stay open for ever … But don’t worry too much about it. The dead don’t have regrets.’
Miss Whipmire seemed amused by these words.
Barney had no choice but to stay there, standing on paperclips, with nothing except the darkness and the smell of stationery and the petrifying sound of a cat’s laugh coming from a human mouth.
After that there was silence.
Barney waited and waited, trying to think of a plan.
None came.
Even when he heard Miss Whipmire leave the room for a while, Barney didn’t know what he could do. There was no way he could push open a locked drawer from the inside, and with paws instead of fingers he wouldn’t have much hope trying to pick a lock with paperclips.
So he miaowed, continuously, until he was exhausted, until the darkness made his eyes so heavy he could hardly keep them open. But he kept on miaowing, in a state which was somewhere between napping and awake as he heard, very faintly, his long-lost father’s voice rising from a dream.
It will be all right, it will be all right, it will be all right …
The Heroic Return of the Author
HELLO. ONLY ME. The author again. I’ve been trying to keep out of the way, letting the story get on by itself (you’ve got to let the little darlings go eventually), and it’s been doing all right, I think. Only a couple of little slips, but it’s back on its feet. Anyway, I just thought now was the right time to point out number seven. Remember? From the first chapter? That list I gave you. Well, I thought now would be the time to spell it out.
CROSS-SPECIES TWO-WAY METAMORPHOSIS.
That is to say, the ability a cat has to turn into a human, and to turn that human into the cat they once were. So, for example, Caramel became Miss Whipmire and the original Miss Whipmire became Caramel – and then, erm, a pen pot.
Oh, but wait, you’re thinking. (No, you are, honestly.) If cats could turn into humans they’d say so.
Well, here’s a question. If someone came up to you and said they used to be a cat, would you believe them? Would you say, ‘Oh, that’s nice. You used to be a cat, I used to hate mushrooms, wow, let’s be friends’?
I doubt it.
You would say, ‘No, you didn’t used to be a cat because that’s impossible. You are obviously a little bit mad and I think I’d better go home now. Bye-bye.’
You might not actually say it out loud. You look too nice and polite for that. But that’s what you’d be thinking.
So, cats who are now humans and have mentioned it haven’t been believed. And those who don’t mention it haven’t been asked. And as for those humans who have turned into cats, well, they often tell people about it but no one’s listening. It’s just one lonely miaow after another.
OK, that’s me done. I’m out of here. I’m dropping the story back off at school and letting it fend for itself. Go on, story, off you go.
Be good.
History
RISSA FAIRWEATHER LIKED HISTORY.
It wasn’t her favourite subject. Her favourite subject was science. Well, not all science. Just the stuff about what makes stars glimmer and the stuff which tells you that every time you look up at the night sky you are looking at the past, at stars that have actually existed since before the dinosaurs, before history itself.
But history was interesting too. As interesting as art and music, her other favourites. And the Vikings, whom Mr Crust was talking about today, were particularly good fun – with their long-boats and axes and outdoor toilets and bloody violence.
But today she wasn’t paying any attention. Instead she just kept thinking about the empty chair next to her and the same recurring questions. Why had Barney run off like that? And why hadn’t he said a word when she’d walked up the street with him?
Maybe he was sad about his dad. She remembered when Barney had found out his dad had gone missing. He had been quiet for weeks then. Far quieter than when his parents had got divorced, because there were so many uncertainties. Had his dad run away? Been kidnapped? Died in a ditch where no one could find him?
These were questions which could probably grow and grow inside a boy’s head until they stopped words altogether. And Barney, in those last few months at primary school, had been very quiet indeed.
Rissa wasn’t at all convinced that Barney was over it, even now.
‘Rissa, am I boring you?’
For a moment Rissa stopped thinking about Barney’s possible troubles and looked up to see Mr Crust’s wrinkled face staring straight at her.
‘No, sir,’ she said.
‘Good, well, perhaps you’d like to tell us about runestones, then?’
‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering—’
The class giggled but Rissa didn’t care.
Rissa’s mum always said: ‘No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your consent.’ Which meant that you can’t control what people said about you, but you can control how you feel about what they said. Oh, and if Rissa was ever really stressed, she followed her dad’s advice and spoke the magic calming word under her breath.
Marmalade.
And Rissa had repeated all this to Barney, many times, but she knew he wasn’t like her. She could always feel his shame whenever Gavin called him ‘Weeping Willow’, after the time he found Barney wiping away a tear on his missing dad’s birthday.
But Rissa knew she had a lot to be thankful for, and that helped. She knew that however tough the day turned out to be, she would go home to her parents and they would cheer her up by singing songs (her dad was very good at playing the acoustic guitar) and, on clear nights, talk about the constellations that were seen through her telescope. Or, failing that, they would eat home-made chilli bean burgers and hand-cut chips, followed by one of her mum’s delicious carrot cakes made with a dollop of her special ingredient – marmalade.
That was all you needed to be happy.
Food. Music. A clear night sky and a telescope.
Plus love.
Lots and lots of love.
Meanwhile Mr Crust was still talking:
‘… Runestones are usually stones that were put into the ground by Vikings to remember important battles or men who had died. They have mainly been found in Scandinavia, but there have been some located in the British Isles, such as Northumbria and the Isle of Man. And a picture of the battles or dead men would be engraved onto the stone. But sometimes these “runic inscriptions”, as they are called, would be a picture of an animal. Horses were commonly depicted as they often died in battles with their owners. But there were other animals too. There are, for instance, a surprising number of runestones dedicated to cats. And you might think this is sweet, but the strange thing is that, although cats were sometimes kept by Vikings to kill rodents, they weren’t really pets. So it remains a complete mystery to historians and archaeologists …’
Mr Crust’s ramblings reminded Rissa of the cat that had come to school with her this morning. And, for some strange reason she couldn’t identify, this made her think of Barney again.
Something was definitely wrong. Barney had never run off like that before. Why would he have done that? What had scared him so much?
The questions stayed there, hovering, until the bell rang.