Switchers (14 page)

‘I’m going up there.’

‘Up where?’

‘To the Arctic.’

Tess stared, wide-eyed. ‘What? To look for Lizzie’s krools?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because … because it’s crazy, Kevin, it’s a laugh. You really believe they’re up there? Giant slugs that cause ice ages?’

Kevin shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I do,’ said Tess. ‘Lizzie’s not so bad when you get to know her, but she’s not all there, you know. She’s not the full shilling.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Of course it is. You saw that letter. She’s harmless, but she’s mad.’

‘And what about us, Tess?’

‘What about us?’

‘Well, what would people call us if we told them what we do? What we are?’

‘We don’t tell them, though, do we?’

‘Of course not. But why? What would they think if we did?’

Tess said nothing, not wanting to fall into the trap.

‘Come on,’ Kevin went on. ‘What if you were to tell your parents where you’ve been for the last few days? What would they say?’

‘They’d probably say I’d fallen in with a bad crowd and taken some funny drugs.’

‘They might. But I’d say the chances are they’d take you to see a psychiatrist, wouldn’t they? If you insisted on sticking to the truth.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Tess, ‘that’s different.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is. Because we know the truth, and if the worst came to the worst we’d be able to prove it. But this business about krools is ridiculous.’

Kevin said nothing. The fire was burning brightly now and sending out sparks on to the hearth. Tess got up and filled the kettle at the sink. Outside in the trees, the first birds were beginning to complain about the weather. ‘Besides,’ she said, as she hung the kettle on its hook, ‘even if it was true, which it isn’t, what could we do? You and me?’

Kevin leant back in his chair. ‘That’s the whole point, Tess,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m going.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if you really want to know, I’m as doubtful about this krools business as you are. I wouldn’t be going either, if it hadn’t been for what Lizzie said about …’ He paused.

‘About what?’

‘What was it that she said, exactly? Something about not knowing what we could do. Not knowing half of what we can do.’

‘But we know that anyway, Kevin. Or I do, anyway. We’re living in Ireland, you know? We can’t go around the place being elephants and kangaroos and flamingos, can we? It’d be ridiculous.’

‘I don’t think that’s what Lizzie was talking about.’

‘What was she talking about, then?’

‘I don’t know. But when she said that, I had the strangest feeling all of a sudden. I can’t really explain it, but it was as if I knew for certain that she was right, and that there was all this strength and power in me that I didn’t know how to use. I felt like I was filled with it, just waiting to explode, except that I didn’t know how to set it off. There was nowhere for it to go.’

Tess said nothing; not because she thought it was stupid, but because she was remembering times when she had felt like that herself.

‘It’s different for you,’ Kevin went on. ‘You still have a couple of years to play around with this thing, you know? Find out what you can do. But I don’t. I don’t have much time left at all.’

The kettle came to life with a long, low moan. Tess refrained from giving it a poke. ‘I can understand that,’ she said. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why you should want to go off on a wild goose chase up into the Arctic.’

‘It does, though,’ said Kevin. ‘You remember the time when we were in the waste-ground and you didn’t want to turn into a rat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s like that a lot of times in life, isn’t it? Maybe you would never have taken that step if the dog hadn’t come along and made you do it. But you did do it, didn’t you? You could have flown away, but you didn’t.’

‘So what?’ said Tess. ‘To be quite honest with you, I’m not sure at this moment what good it did me.’

‘Well, maybe it did and maybe it didn’t,’ said Kevin. ‘And maybe not everything that happens ends up getting you what you want, or what you think you want. Maybe things happen for some other reason that we don’t see straight away, or maybe they happen for no reason at all. You could spend your whole life worrying about why things turn out the way they do and you still wouldn’t be able to fix it so that they always did you some good.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Tess, ‘and you know I didn’t.’

She gave in to her impulse to poke the kettle. It swung slowly backwards and forwards for a while, but instead of singing louder, it went silent again.

‘I know you didn’t,’ said Kevin, ‘and even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. The thing is, I want to go. Everything in me wants to go, even though I know there probably aren’t any krools.’

‘But I don’t think you’re seeing things straight, Kevin. I mean, even if we … even if you did decide to go, how would you get there? All the animals are coming south, I’ve seen it on the news. The conditions up there are impossible for anything to live in.’

‘But that’s the whole point!’ Kevin leant forward to look at her more directly, and his eyes were bright with excitement. ‘Don’t you see? Because sometimes we don’t know what we can do until we have to do it. And if we always stick with what’s easy and what’s safe, then we’ll never be made to find out. I’m not sure that I’d want to save the world, Tess, even if I thought there was anything to save it from, even if I could. But I want to know what I’m capable of, before it’s too late.’

Tess heard Lizzie’s footsteps on the stairs. Somehow the cats did, too, because they began to come in from outside, one at a time, shaking the snow from their paws.

‘What’s you two doing up so early?’ said Lizzie.

‘Just chatting,’ said Kevin.

Lizzie put her hand on her hip and used it as a lever to straighten her back. ‘Ooh. I’s getting as stiff as a poker, so I is. All this cold weather doesn’t do me any good. Hasn’t they fed you yet, pussums? Hasn’t they even given you a drop of milk? They’s sitting there with all their important chatting to be done and you’s all starving with the cold and with the hunger.’

The cats purred and wound themselves around her ankles. She poked the kettle, which dribbled on to the fire but began, a bit reluctantly, to sing. ‘And has you come to any decisions with all that chat?’ she went on. ‘Is you going to go sledging or play snowballs in the park?’

‘I’m going north, Lizzie,’ said Kevin.

Lizzie straightened up as though she were twenty-one again. ‘I knew it,’ she said to the cats. ‘I told you, didn’t I? He may not be all rat, I said, but he’s got rat in him.’

Kevin laughed, and suddenly Tess felt remote from them, as though she had been excluded. She realised then for the first time that if Kevin went alone up to the North Pole, she might never see him again. It was possible that he would come back and look her up in her house in the park, but what if he didn’t? And what if it kept on snowing, and they had to leave and go to Greece like the Sheehans? How would he find her then?

‘And what about you, Tessie?’ said Lizzie. ‘What’s you going to do?’

It hit Tess, then, with no warning, that expansive feeling which was so strong that it was hardly bearable. She was suddenly certain of her own strength and resourcefulness, and suddenly afraid of nothing.

‘I, Lizzie,’ she said, ‘is going with him.’

L
IZZIE MADE PANCAKES FOR
breakfast, which Tess and Kevin ate much faster than she could cook in the old black skillet. They drowned them in melted butter and golden syrup and ate them with their fingers, and nobody complained about the drips.

‘Like Pancake Tuesday,’ said Tess.

‘Yes,’ said Kevin, ‘but let’s hope we don’t have to give up too much for Lent.’

Tess thought about the blizzards outside that they would be meeting for as long as they continued north. She still had no idea how they were going to travel, and her parents were trying to edge their way into her consciousness, threatening to destroy her resolve.

As though she were reading Tess’s mind, Lizzie said: ‘You thinks too much, girl. I’s told you that before. And it’s nothing but a waste of time. If you’s finished with that pancake you better go over to the sink and wash your hands, because you isn’t getting any more. I hasn’t had one at all yet, and I’s getting weak with the hunger watching you two stuff your faces.’

Tess got up and went over to the sink. Kevin followed. The water was icy cold and only hardened the butter on her fingers, but most of it came off on the towel. She handed it on to Kevin and looked out of the window. The snow had already made little ledges of itself on top of every level spot it could find. Every branch, twig and leaf bowed in submission beneath its weight. Tess could no longer remember the elated sense of power that she had felt before breakfast when she made the decision to go.

‘Well? What’s you waiting for?’ said Lizzie. ‘Off you go, get your coats on. There’s no sense in standing around.’

Kevin went out into the hall and came back with their jackets. Tess put hers on, feeling like a small child who has been told to go out and play and has no choice in the matter. But it wasn’t Lizzie, she knew, who was driving her to do it, or Kevin. It was her own pride. She was more afraid of letting herself down than of losing their respect.

‘Lizzie,’ said Kevin. ‘There’s something I want to ask you before we go.’

‘Ask away,’ said Lizzie, pouring batter into the pan.

‘You know what you were saying about the power that we have? How we can do things we don’t even know about?’

‘Was I saying that? I suppose I was.’

‘Well, can you tell us about it? So that we know what kind of things we can do?’

Lizzie shook the skillet so that the pancake slid around. ‘I’s been thinking about that,’ she said, ‘and I’s decided that it isn’t a good idea.’

‘But why?’ said Tess.

‘Because I doesn’t want to put ideas into your heads. Because if I puts ideas into your heads they might turn out to be the wrong ones. And there’s nothing that gets in the way of a right idea more easily than a wrong one.’

‘But can’t you give us a clue, Lizzie?’ said Kevin. ‘A couple of examples?’

‘That’s just what I doesn’t want to do. I has no idea what you’s going to find along your way and I has no idea how you’s going to deal with it. But I does know this. I’d lock that door this minute and holler as loud and as long as I could for Oliver Griffin and his ignorant pal if I thought you was going to be in any danger that you couldn’t manage. I knows that I could do it if I was still a Switcher, and I knows without any doubt that you can do it, too. So get on your way before you starts thinking about things, and be sure to call in and see me as soon as you gets home.’

Kevin turned to Tess with a question in his eyes but she looked away and went towards the door. Her heart was numb with fear and she didn’t want him to see it.

Lizzie came with them as far as the front step. ‘Goodbye, now,’ she said, as they walked out into the snow. ‘Look after yourselves. And don’t be too busy concerning yourselves with what is. There’s times when it makes more sense to think about what isn’t.’

Kevin turned to question her, but the door was closing in his face.

It was still early. Tess looked about her as they walked across Lizzie’s front garden towards the narrow path. Apart from a few cat paw-prints, rapidly being filled in, there was not a mark on the snow. The birds were moving about in the trees and causing little avalanches among the branches, but they were not at all happy about the weather and saw no sense in going further afield before Lizzie came out to feed the chickens.

‘What now?’ said Tess.

Kevin shrugged. ‘Fly, I suppose. There’s no point in walking, is there?’

‘Fly where?’

He shrugged again. ‘North, I suppose.’

They moved closer together as they entered the narrow tunnel of the path.

‘Just like that?’ said Tess. ‘Just fly north into a blizzard? Nothing worked out? No plans?’

‘No plans,’ said Kevin. ‘No compass, no maps. And no hotels along the way, either, and no tents, no sleeping bags.’ Abruptly he gave Tess a friendly shove so that she sidestepped into a shallow drift. His nose was red from the snowflakes blowing into his face, and he was grinning, so that Tess had the fleeting impression of a circus clown. ‘We’re leaving everything behind,’ he said. ‘We’re on our own. No rules, not even Rat rules. Just the two of us, and all that out there.’

All that out there was still filling Tess’s heart with dread, but Kevin’s eyes were shining. ‘Don’t waste your fear, Tess. Save it up for when you need it, like the animals do.’

She smiled, despite herself, and he smiled back, more openly than he had ever done before. ‘Pigeons?’ he said.

Tess laughed, and they were friends beyond any shadow of a doubt, travelling with a common purpose. ‘I hate pigeons,’ she said. ‘Why not be something bigger and faster? We can be anything we want. No one’s going to see us in this snow.’

‘Flamingos?’

‘Eagles?’

‘Swans?’

‘Storks?’

‘Albatrosses!’

‘Yeah! Albatrosses.’ And they were, squeezing awkwardly through the hedge, running with clumsy strides across the wide meadow beyond, and finally rising with slow, graceful wing-beats into the white heart of the blizzard.

Without thinking, without even wondering how they knew, they tilted their wings and were heading north. They flew high, to avoid the hazards of tall buildings appearing out of the snow, and they stayed close together, one slightly beneath the other, so as not to lose sight of one another. Their powerful wings settled into an easy rhythm that they could have maintained for countless hours, but even so, it soon became apparent to them that they would have to choose some other means of travel. The snow was driving into their eyes and blinding them, and the winds up there were gusty and erratic, and made them swirl and spiral in a way that made it almost impossible to stay close together. On several occasions they lost sight of each other, and had to circle and call until they met up again. It was possible for them to continue on, but it would be a slow and anxious journey.