He sets off again. She follows. The clock strikes. He is carrying a bundle against his chest. At first she thinks he is going back to his cell, but he doesn’t. He might be taking another roundabout route, as if he’s trying to shake her away; but she is sure, too, that he doesn’t know she’s there. Once he freezes and scrabbles backwards into the depth of a doorway, catching his breath. But the only sound is the clock winding up to strike. He sags and waits for the chimes to pass, like a squall, before he launches himself again. By now they’re on the other side of the courtyard from the scholars’ corridor. The Rat lets herself drift closer, nearly catching up with him: he won’t look round. Although part of her – a sneaky, human part – wishes he would. She has never been the hunter, instead of the hunted: it’s exhilarating.
They climb a flight of stairs, and another. He pauses, panting. Then he goes on. Finally they come to a narrow slant-roofed passage, under a gaping mouth of missing slates. The far end of the passage is clogged with darkness. All she can see is the jagged field of stars above, and Simon’s ghostly shirt. There’s the sound of a door scraping as he pushes it open, and he disappears into the blackness beyond.
Somehow she knows that the room beyond that door is tiny, with no other exits. It could be from the way the noise echoes as he drops to the floor, heavy on old floorboards; or because of the sloping roofs that join in a V above her, the looming chimney against the night sky. She hasn’t been up here before. They’re right at the top of Montverre. If she climbed out, she could stand up and see for miles, down to the scattered lights in the valley. But why would she want to? All her attention is focused on Simon’s breathing. It’s the only thing that breaks the silence, apart from her own heart. She tells herself that as soon as he does or says anything human, she’ll go. But he doesn’t. He sets something down on the floor – the bundle – and a second later she hears him eating. It’s over very quickly. Whatever he had, it wasn’t enough. He breathes, and she can hear that he’s still hungry.
She takes one step backwards, and another. She can’t feel his hunger, can she? She can’t. It must be her own. He is over there, and she is here: there’s no way hunger can cross the gap. Hunger is inside you. Like sadness. It isn’t catching. So: she is hungry. She knows what to do. Food. Simple. She is a Rat. Rats eat when they’re hungry. But what she wants more than anything is to give him something. A memory of sweetness floods across her tongue.
‘Who’s there?’
She doesn’t answer. She’s doesn’t know how to, even if she wanted to. But she can’t move. Abruptly there’s the scratch of a match and a flame jumps into life. The Rat flinches and covers her face.
‘It’s you! Oh thank goodness, I thought … Sorry, I …’ But his voice is rusty. He begins to cough, and when he gets his breath back he doesn’t say anything else. The light doubles and halves again.
Gradually, blinking away the gold dazzle, she peels her fingers away from her eyes. He has lit a stub of candle. He is on his knees, staring at her. Yes, he is hungry. But it is a different thing, the hunger in his eyes, it wants something from her. Wants her to be human. To be kind. It calls to the treacherous thing inside her that wants to help him. But she isn’t kind. She isn’t kin. He is human; she is the Rat. No.
The candle flame reaches up, stretching. She looks away from it, from him. There’s a crack in the wall, over the bulge of the chimney. This room—
The realisation snaps shut on her, like jaws. This room is—
Not hers. No. Not the Rat’s. It was the room where she lived before, when she was human, when she had a name. This is the room she never wanted to come back to. This is the room where she lay on the floor and waited for her Ma— for the woman who used to feed her and sing to her. Where the ceiling used to swell as if it was about to fall, and the dark scuttled and crept. Where suddenly the panic got too much, feeding on the memory of something too gentle in Mam’s kiss, the extra food she’d left, don’t eat it all now, sweetheart, this is for tomorrow too, until in desperation she flung herself against the door and it swung open, easily, giving way as if nothing was solid any more. She remembers that wash of terror, when she understood that she could leave; it was like acid, wiping her out. After that, she was no one. Not human, anyway.
And then … when was it? The memory of – a memory that’s been locked in this room, in the stale air, a dormant germ – of that morning, trying to look for Mam but knowing that she had to keep out of sight because Mam had always said you must not leave, no one can hear you, whatever you do, darling, you must not – but bewildered, almost hoping that one of the grey ones would run into her – wandering the corridors with tears dripping off her chin but being good, keeping quiet – and then—
She crept from corridor to corridor, all of it unfamiliar, a labyrinth of stone. She had never been so far from her room. It was still early. The emerging morning was grey but her eyes stung from being in the dark so long. Her lips were pressed together, one long silent M; she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she’d cry out and Mam would be angry. But the door had been unbolted, Mam had never unbolted the door—
A bell was ringing. Not the clock striking. A tinny, angry bell, like a metallic wasp. She went to the window, careful to look both ways before she crossed the open space. A van drove into the courtyard, squat and mud-green. A cluster of people – some grey ones, some white ones – was waiting for it; one of the white ones hurried to the van. The others split apart, conferring: and she saw what they’d been huddled around. At the foot of the highest tower, spread out on the flagstones. Grey and red – more red than grey – a thing, a person-shaped-but-not thing, a person-but-not – an orange-gold plait of hair, a foot, a little way away a shoe …
Perhaps it was then that she became not-a-person, too. It was like the unlocked door, only worse, because she knew then that Mam wouldn’t come back.
She staggers to her feet. She should never have come back. It hurts too much. Memory like arsenic. Burns out your insides. Dries you to a cinder. She’ll gnaw off her own paw rather than—
‘Where are you going?’
She freezes.
‘Please don’t go. I’m so lonely. I’m going mad. I don’t feel real. Please—’
He’s an enemy. What she’s feeling now is his fault. She wants to pick up the candle and put it out on his hand. He would yell and let her go. She’d run. She’d be safe.
‘Please stay. Please. I’m not angry. I won’t hurt you.’
But this is a trap. His reaching out to her – she knows that trap, the human hand, a hand that might stroke your hair or slap you but one day will not be anything but broken bits on stone—
He is still reaching. What does he want? For a second she’s full of blind, unexpected terror. It’s like being the child she was. Stay silent or bad things. Whatever you do you must not. The walls closing down. The ceiling.
She turns and runs. The room-trap gapes open behind her. He says something but she is already too far away, under the star-spread hole in the roof. Then down the stairs, down more stairs, breathless, sweating. Get away. There has always been danger but never danger like this. Never something wrong inside her, like this.