The Shapeshifters Read Free Page B

path.
    â€˜It sounded like something was walking out there. Something big.’
    His mother has laid her head on the pillow.
    â€˜It was nothing,’ she says.
    So he wriggles down under the quilt again.
    Lies there alert.
    Listening.
    â€˜Shall I carry on reading?’
    He sniffs and nods.
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    Afterwards, when they have turned off the light, they hear a faint rustling on the roof.
    The rain is falling softly. As if practising.
    He can hear a mosquito moving about the room, but it seems unable to find its way to the bed. It goes quiet from time to time. He thinks it is waiting.
    â€˜Mum,’ he says, but he can hear from her breathing that she is already asleep.
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    After flicking through the comics and looking at the pictures on the last page that show what the next comic will be about, he wanders into the main room.
    Outside the window he sees a movement. His mother is standing out there, her hair a shining curtain in the morning light. She is bending over something.
    When he pushes open the door she instantly straightens up. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
    She is wearing a thick jacket. One of her hands is stuffed inside a large gardening glove.
    â€˜I think there might be a bat around here somewhere,’ she says. ‘A dead one.’
    â€˜Is there really?’ he asks, and moves closer.
    They help each other to look, and he is the one who finds it.
    The little animal is suspended in the grass. It does not have the weight to slide down so it stays there, trapped, like a brown leaf. He has never seen a bat before. To think they could be so small. A long and oddly curved claw is sticking out from the wing, and his mother pinches hold of it. The skin opens out, a net of folds and wrinkles, criss-crossed by fine veins. The abnormally large eyelids are covered with the same sheer, ancient-looking skin.
    â€˜It’s got a ring,’ he says.
    She holds up the bat and the thin wing turns pink as it is hit by the sunlight. A tiny silver ring shines in one ear.
    She touches it gently with her index finger.
    â€˜Why has it got a ring?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she says, reflectively.
    She has taken hold of the ring and is studying it closely.
    â€˜It must be marked in some way . . .’
    â€˜Why is the bat dead?’
    His mother does not reply, so he asks again.
    â€˜Why is it dead, Mum?’
    â€˜It collided with me in the night,’ she says, letting go of the ring. ‘I went out to pee and it flew at me. Here.’
    She puts her fingers on her temple.
    â€˜I expect it got confused by my nightdress,’ she says. ‘They’re attracted by light colours. It fastened in my hair and I snatched it out and threw it away from me. Right against that wall. That killed it. It’s so tiny. I didn’t mean it to die, I just wanted to get it away from me.’
    She twitches her hand and the bat bobs up and down.
    â€˜Do you want us to bury it?’
    The boy leans up close to the ugly little snout. Deeply set inthe crumpled face are black eyes like beads. The teeth sticking out of its mouth are like shards of glass.
    He shakes his head.
    â€˜Sure?’
    He nods.
    His mother walks over the grass and throws the bat into the nettles growing like a green sea on the other side of the wooden fence. Then she cranks water out of the pump and rinses her hands, and as she walks towards the boy she smiles, drying her hands on her nightdress, which is hanging down below the old jacket.
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    They eat breakfast outside, in sunshine that makes them squint their eyes. They have to make the most of it, says his mother, laying out a bedspread. The grass is so stiff that it makes the bedspread stand up in peaks, and together they stamp them down to make it flat and comfortable to sit on. The mosquitoes that are flying around in the morning sun are no bother. There are so few and they do not seem to know what they want.
    They have a loaf of white bread and