'Where on earth have you been, child?' she said.

'Nowhere. Why?'

'You were gone. I didn't hear you come in. How did you come in without me hearing you?'

'You were dozing, probably,' said Uncle Maurice. He was standing by the back door, leaning against the wall so quietly that Tess hadn't noticed he was there. His face was grey and deeply lined, as though he had aged ten years in the last few hours.

'At least we have one of them,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'G.o.d forbid that we should lose my sister's child as well as our own.'

She was glaring at Uncle Maurice as she spoke, and then, as though Tess's presence had made her brave, she burst out, 'Please, Maurice. Please let's get the police in on this.'

Tess had been edging towards the bread-bin, but the anguish in her aunt's voice brought her to a standstill.

'Tell him, Tess,' she went on. 'Make him see sense. What's past is past, we know nothing of that. But what is happening here is a kidnap, isn't it? Surely you can see that? We need to call the police!'

Tess looked from her aunt to her uncle and back again. She had no idea what the reference to the past was about, but it was clear that Deirdre and Maurice understood each other perfectly.

'I've told you a hundred times, Deirdre,' said Uncle Maurice. 'The police can do no good here. They'd only be Wasting their time, just like before.'

'Before?' said Tess. 'What do you mean, "before"?'

Aunt Deirdre shook her head, and there was a horrified expression on her face. 'You're mad, Maurice,' she said. 'I never thought the day would come when I'd hear myself say it. I always denied it, always. Even when others said it I refused to listen. But I believe them now, all right.'

A glimmer of fear crossed Aunt Deirdre's features as she spoke, but for once it was unfounded. Uncle Maurice had no anger left in him.

'They'll be home,' he said. 'Wait till you see.' And before she could answer, he stepped out through the door and walked away across the yard.

Aunt Deirdre stared at the place where he had been.

'What did you mean?' Tess asked. 'About the past.'

'Hush, child,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'Don't be worrying. Get yourself a bite to eat, there. You must be starved.'

Tess didn't need to be asked twice, but nor was she so easily put off track.

'Do other people really say that Uncle Maurice is mad?' she asked.

'That's enough about that, now,' said her aunt.

Tess pressed on. 'But why? Why would they say he was mad?'

Aunt Deirdre sighed deeply and then, as though her resistance had finally given way, the words began to pour out of her.

'I wouldn't have told you, child, but I can't see the harm in it now, to tell the truth. There was an awful tragedy here, you see. Awful.'

The hairs on Tess's neck stood up, but she b.u.t.tered bread calmly, willing her aunt to continue. She did.

'Your uncle had a twin brother. Declan was his name, and it's said that the two of them were so close that you rarely saw daylight between them. But Declan died, as I told you earlier.'

'How?' said Tess.

'That's the mystery,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'No one knows. He disappeared in the early hours of one morning and no trace was ever found of him.'

'They didn't find his body?'

'No. Nothing.'

'Then how do they know he died?'

'There was no other explanation,' said Aunt Deirdre. 'A boy can't just vanish into thin air, now, can he?'

Tess nodded in agreement.

'Where?' she said. 'Where did he disappear?'

'No one knows, for sure. All we know is that Maurice believed that he was in those woods, and for weeks afterwards he had to be carried out of them at night, otherwise he would never have left them at all. Calling his brother's name, he was. Convinced that Declan was in there and would come out.'

Aunt Deirdre stood up and moved around in an agitated way, putting on the kettle and emptying the teapot into the sink.

'There were even some who said ...' she stopped and stared at Tess vacantly, and it was as though her anxiety had brought her to the brink of madness as well.

'What did they say?' Tess asked, but Aunt Deirdre shook her head and turned to look out of the window, in the direction of the mountain. It was clear that she had said as much as she was going to.

But it didn't make sense. Why had Orla said that she would take Tess to meet Uncle Declan? How could she meet someone who was dead? And where did Kevin fit into the picture?

Tess found cheese in the fridge and made sandwiches, then took them up to her room, Far from making things clearer, her aunt's words had only made the mystery deeper and more frightening. It was almost as though history was repeating itself, with Uncle Maurice's own children vanishing in the same way that his brother had. But if that was the case, why would he be so reluctant to call in the police? And who was it that whispered to her in the woods?

She sat on the bed and ate the sandwiches without enthusiasm. Afterwards, tired and dispirited, she threw herself on to the bed. Every mystery had a simple explanation, she knew that, and she was fed up of being thwarted in everything she tried to do. Miserably, she rolled on to her side and curled up like a baby.

She thought of the land again, the fresh, green beauty of the woods and the greed of the people who wanted to destroy it in order to line their own pockets. She didn't want to be an adult in a society like that, where no one cared about anything except money. She envisioned the world as a grey, barren place, where nothing lived except human beings and nothing grew except the food they ate. Like a plague on the earth; like locusts they destroyed everything before them, like locusts they could see no further than their own, immediate greed.

She wouldn't join them. Better to be an animal, even a greedy one like a pig or a rat. At least they didn't pretend to care. People were worse. People were hypocrites. A few tears ran down her nose and dripped on to the pillow.

Thoughts of Lizzie returned. If only she could see the old woman. She was sure that Lizzie would have the answer. She always did. But Lizzie lived two hundred miles away, and Tess couldn't think of any way of getting to her in time.

Her mind ran back over their last conversation. What was it that Lizzie had said? Something about ancestors.

Ancestors?

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Tess laughed, struck by the image of old men in medieval attire roaming round in the landscape.

'Lizzie sends her regards,' she said to the empty room.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the window hard, and Tess flinched. There was something else that the old woman had said. What was it? Tess concentrated and, obligingly, the words came to her.

'Does we believe what we sees, or does we see what we believe?'

Across the fields, at the foot of the mountain, something was happening that she didn't understand. She stood up to go to the window, but her eye fell on Orla's book. Story or History? What did it mean? Idly, Tess reached out and picked it up, wondering if there was anything in its pages that might give her a clue. But when she saw what was lying beneath it, she gave up all thoughts of reading.

It was Orla's inhaler.

Tess knew now that the chips were down. She could still cop out, of course; give her aunt the inhaler and let her worry about what was happening to Orla out there in the woods with the evening drawing in. She could stay here in her room with the light on and eat sandwiches and worry about her future. But if she did any of those things it would be an admission that her fear had defeated her. And suddenly she realised that she didn't need Lizzie to tell her what to do. The truth, plain and simple, was that if anyone had a chance of finding those children it was her. What could she possibly encounter, after all, worse than the bone-chilling krools or the terrible vampire that Martin had learnt to become?

When the sun rose the next morning her powers would be gone. The events of the day were moving too fast, robbing her of time and s.p.a.ce to think, and it looked now as though she wasn't going to have time to make a considered choice about what to be. But perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps it didn't help to have time to think. Up until now all the thinking in the world hadn't helped her to arrive at a decision.

She slipped the inhaler into her pocket and moved towards the window. For the moment, at least, none of it mattered. For the next few hours she still had her Switching powers. If she did not use them while she could, she might spend the rest of her life regretting it.

With a feeling of courage returning, of becoming herself again after a long absence, Tess flung open the window.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

TESS HAD THOUGHT THAT her Uncle Maurice had set out for the crag, but as she flew out of her bedroom window, in jackdaw shape again, she spotted him beneath her, letting in the cows to be milked. She was relieved. It would give her a bit more freedom in the woods.

As she flew, she thought about what she needed to do, and by the time she reached the woods she had worked out what her first step would be. She dropped down through the trees near where she had last seen Kevin, then Switched into rat form. She had some information to gather and, as soon as she had adjusted and checked the environment for safety, she gave out a call in Rat. But this time she wasn't summoning a gathering. She was looking for Cat Friend.

It wasn't long before she arrived; puzzled but cooperative. Tess realised that she liked this strange little rat despite, or maybe because of, her idiosyncratic behaviour. And it seemed, by the affectionate way that Cat Friend touched noses, that she felt the same way. Tess felt a wash of sadness as the thought came to her that she would soon be leaving the animal world for ever. No sooner had the thought arrived, however, than another superseded it. Why should she think like that? She hadn't made her mind up. Perhaps she would stay a rat, be a rat forever, living and dying alongside Cat Friend and the others. Why not?

But there was other business to take care of first. Cat Friend had told her that she had seen Kevin and the children in the woods earlier that day. Now Tess wanted to know if she had seen where they had gone.

'Yup, yup,' said Cat Friend, nodding like a car toy again; full of certainty. 'Cat Friend watching Small Big Feet. Cat Friend following.'

Tess was delighted. 'Wise Cat Friend,' she said. 'Cat Friend following into the woods, huh? Out of the woods, huh? Huh?'

But the image that Cat Friend returned in answer shook Tess's confidence in her severely. It showed the people involved as clearly as ever; Kevin leading and the other three following closely behind. But where they went was quite impossible. According to Cat Friend, they walked right through the solid face of the crag and disappeared.

It didn't seem to surprise her at all that four humans should do such a thing. But it didn't fit into Tess's interpretation of reality.

'Nananana!' she said. 'Small Big Feet b.u.mping into the rock, falling over backwards. Small Big Feet walking into the crag and hurting themselves.'

Cat Friend was offended by Tess's att.i.tude and puffed out her coat and turned her face away. Tess tried to repair the damage, explaining about doors and how they worked, but Cat Friend was adamant. She had been there. She had seen what happened. Over and over again she repeated the image of what she had seen. The four people had walked up to the rock-face and vanished into it.

Tess didn't know what to do. If there had been any other leads at all she might have forgotten about Cat Friend and her rambling mind. Since there weren't, she did the only thing that presented itself to her. She asked Cat Friend to show her the place where it had happened.

The other rat came out of her sulk instantly and skipped on ahead energetically. Occasionally she hung back and waited for Tess to catch up, touching her nose delightedly before bounding on across the rocks again. As she followed, Tess found herself wondering if the whole world hadn't gone mad around her, or whether it was she herself who was mad. It wasn't until they came near to their destination that she realised there had to be some truth in what Cat Friend was saying. Because it was the place that, somehow, she had been led to every time she had gone into those woods. It was the place where she had seen the strange wolfhound, and where Kevin had been when she last saw him yesterday. There was no doubt about it; there had to be a secret door of some kind. Cat Friend was probably right about that. It was just her way of seeing it and explaining it that was odd.

She stood back now and watched as Tess scuttled along the base of the rock, standing on her hind legs from time to time and stretching up with her front paws, trying to find some clue to where the entrance might be. There was nothing, though, and when she had exhausted all the possibilities that her rat mind could conceive of, she realised that she needed to be human again.

There is no way to apologise in Rat, but Tess was truly sorry for what she did next. Because when Cat Friend saw Tail Short Seven Toes disappear and a rather large Small Big Foot appear out of nowhere, she got the fright of her life. In a sudden, furry flash she was gone, out of sight beneath the nearest rock. Tess hoped that she wasn't too badly shocked, and that she would see her again.

But there were other, more urgent matters on her mind. She walked back and forth along the base of the crag and then, seeing no obvious signs of a door of any kind, prepared herself for a long, meticulous search. Yard by yard and inch by inch she examined the face of the rock, prising at every crack and fault, poking into every overhang and shadow. When she had covered the whole area and a good distance either side she went back again with a stone, knocking the rock at intervals and listening for hollow resonances. But no matter how hard she tried or how careful she was, she could find no sign of an entrance of any kind. Eventually, tired and despondent, she hurled her sounding stone far out into the trees and sank to the ground.

It was beginning to get dark. Already the moon was rising and trying to peer in among the trees. Whatever chance she had of finding her cousins seemed to be fading fast. Every fibre of Tess's being screamed against the sheer frustration of it. First she believed that there was a door, that there had to be to explain the mysterious appearances and disappearances in the area. Then she was equally certain that there wasn't a door, not now or ever. And as she swung wildly between these two conflicting certainties, she became aware that she was being watched. Not far away, on a moss-coated boulder that was just about level with Tess's eyes, a brown rat was sitting.

'Cat Friend?' she called.

'Yup, yup,' said Cat Friend, scrambling down from her perch and approaching along the ground until she was close to Tess's outstretched leg. Tess shook her head in surprise. In all the years that she had been using her powers to Switch she had never known an animal to make a connection between her human form and her animal ones. Not even Algernon, her pet white rat, had ever realised that the brown cousin that regularly visited him in the evenings was actually her. But there was no doubt now that Cat Friend understood.

'Tail Short Seven Toes, huh? Huh?' she asked, giving the clear image of Tess's rat form and then an image of her Switching to human form which was so accurate it made Tess tingle all over.

'Yup, yup,' said Tess. 'Cat Friend watching, huh? Cat Friend not afraid?'

The little rat shook her coat then tightened it so that she looked her sleek, proud best.

'Cat Friend watching,' she said. And then, in a series of images so clear that they had to be truth, she showed Tess that she was not the first Switcher she had come across. To Tess's growing amazement, her new friend revealed that the white cat in the farmyard, the one whose friendship had given her the name, was itself a Switcher. The images followed, one upon the other; the white cat becoming a stoat, a hare, a raven. Nor were the descriptions anywhere near an end when Cat Friend, quite abruptly, sent an urgent image of rats fleeing from danger, then turned on her heel and vanished among a cl.u.s.ter of nearby tree-roots.

Instinctively, Tess leapt to her feet and turned to see what it was that had frightened her little friend. Not more than a few feet away, leaning against the sheer face of the crag, was Kevin.

He smiled. 'Hi, Tess,' he said.

'How ... But how did you get there?' Tess replied.

'Easy,' he said. 'I just crept up on you.'

'I don't think so,' said Tess, realising that her frustration was rapidly turning into anger. 'Or at least, you might have crept up on me, but you would never have been able to creep up on her.'

She pointed at the roots of the tree where Cat Friend had disappeared. Kevin laughed.

'Good thinking,' he said.

'So where did you appear from?' Tess asked. 'And what have you done with my cousins?'

'I haven't done anything with your cousins,' said Kevin. 'It's not my fault if they followed me, is it?'

'Followed you where?'

'In there, of course.' He pointed to the bare rock. 'Where else?'

'Show me, then,' said Tess. 'I'm fed up of searching and getting nowhere. If there's a door, where is it?'

'I can't show you what you're not able to see,' said Kevin. 'But perhaps if you follow me I can lead you in.'

With that he Switched into a barn owl and, with a brief swish of heavy wings, he flew up through the trees.

Tess stared after the bird, ghostly pale against the night sky. Despite the evidence of her eyes, she was unable to believe what she had just seen. All the laws of her world, every last one of them, seemed to have been turned on their heads. Kevin could not Switch. He had pa.s.sed fifteen and, as all Switchers must, he had lost the ability. And yet she could not doubt that she had just seen it happen.

Already the owl was out of sight above the trees. Tess found that she was rooted to the spot, and couldn't follow. But Kevin wasn't about to leave without her and soon returned, Switching back to human form again.

'But you can't, Kevin!' said Tess. 'It's impossible!'

'Come with me, Tess,' he said. The words and the way he said them rang a bell in her mind, but before she could remember why he spoke again.