Brightling Read Free Page A

everywhere were krackodyles; hundreds of them.
    Their path looked very far away.
    Sparrow took a big, shuddering breath. ‘What now, Scaramouch?’ she said. ‘We can’t stay up here for ever.’
    The cat was motionless as he stared across the marshes. His whiskers were on alert, his ears pricked up, his eyes narrow. He was thinking.
    She turned and followed his gaze. He was facing the east. Watching. Waiting. Sparrow waited too. The sun, a shapeless, brilliant orange light, inched upwards over the hill and began to flood its warmth across the sky. And even before it came over the hill, the grass began to show a little green, the leaves a touch of emerald, the water glistening gold and brown and black.
    It was the signal to move.
    â€˜Meow!’
    Scaramouch slipped away from her, leaving her chilled where he had rested against her. He walked daintily but quickly along a black branch out above the water. The krackodyles didn’t move. He glanced back over his shoulder at her, came back, and began to climb down the trunk.
    â€˜Scaramouch!’ she whispered loudly. ‘Don’t! Is that your only plan? To run again? Please don’t!’
    On the lowest branch the cat stopped and looked at her; then at the ground; then back at her.
    The sun glowed orange and pink behind the horizon.
    â€˜I can’t!’ she whispered. Tears filled her eyes. ‘I can’t go down there again. Don’t make me!’
    Scaramouch flicked his tail dismissively. He didn’t look at her again, but jumped down from the tree, as lightly as a cloud on his four soft paws, and landed like thistledown on the broad back of a sleeping krackodyle.
    Sparrow held her breath.
    The krackodyle didn’t stir.
    Scaramouch tiptoed along, stepping delicately between the rows of protruding knobbly ridges on the creature’s spine. He walked right along its length, stopped on its rocky forehead and looked back at Sparrow.
    Her heart seemed to fill her chest, stop up her throat and throb so loudly in her ears she couldn’t hear anything but its boom boom boom. ‘No, Scaramouch. I can’t. They’ll wake! They’ll get me!’
    Scaramouch, motionless as a dead thing, stood his ground, waiting. He was a whisker away from the krackodyle’s teeth, from certain death. ‘Go! Leave me, Scaramouch. I’ll be OK. Run! Go!’
    But Scaramouch sat down delicately on the krackodyle’s broad head and fixed his eyes on her. He yawned a fresh, pink, bored yawn.
    â€˜Oh all right, all right! I’m coming.’
    She moved slowly, inching down the rough sides of the tree, gripping the bark with trembling fingers. How had she got up here so quickly the night before? Now it seemed to take a lifetime to come down.
    She lowered herself very gently to the squelchy, boggy ground. Still the krackodyles slept on. She clung to the tree, never wanting to let go, though she knew she had to. Trying to calm her painful breathing, she put a hand to her chest and pressed hard. Still her heart boomed on.
    She fixed her eyes on Scaramouch’s round, yellow ones.
    â€˜I’m coming, I am, I really am!’
    She moved as lightly as she could, stepping onto the long, narrow tail of the first krackodyle, one hand against the tree. She waited, swallowed, and moved gently onto its back. Her weight sank the krackodyle an inch further below the surface of the muddy water, which now swirled over her feet. She paused, holding her breath. She wanted to run, she wanted to shout and run as fast as she could. But she didn’t. She waited, searched out her route. The path to get to was just five – or was it six? – sleeping krackodyles distant.
    Almost one done; four – please let it be only four – to go.
    She pushed away from the tree, eased one foot off the animal and gently set it down again, between its back legs – heel, ball of the foot, toes – gently, gently all along the length of