Tao (12 page)

There was something moving about over there near the trees. It was an animal. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. I wished Kate was here to give me a hug … even if she wasn’t cool in a crisis. But nobody was here. Except me. They were all home in their beds. Except me. I had never felt so terrified in all my life. There were wild animals prowling around. And snakes in the grass. Probably rats, too.

Hours passed. Well, it felt like hours. I got colder and colder. The moon went in and out of the clouds and I kept falling asleep and waking up. This night was going to go on for ever. I didn’t hear the snake anymore. Perhaps it had gone away. Or was it just waiting?

Then I heard the helicopter. Its big blades were whirring somewhere far off. And then I could see it – it had a big strong spotlight shining down on the mountainside. I waved my arms about and shouted, but the noise of the helicopter was too loud. Round and round it flew, but the spotlight never shone on me.

“I’M HERE! I’M HERE!” I yelled, but it was no use. In the end, the helicopter flew off in the other direction and gradually its noise got weaker and weaker, and I was all alone again.

Had they had given up and left me to die?

I imagined Kate finding me cold and dead in the morning and carrying my lifeless body down the mountain. Everybody crying their eyes out. Especially Mimi. Everyone saying what a lovely boy I was and what a sad way to go. All because of a game of Monopoly.

I felt so tired. My eyes began to close and I began to drift away.

Then the Head Honcho started shouting at me.

“Stop feeling so sorry for yourself you miserable, pathetic, lily-livered excuse for a centre-half!”

My eyes flew open. Suddenly I was wide awake. I looked all around, but there was no sign of the Head Honcho … or anybody else. The big yellow moon made the world look silver. Over by the trees, I saw the animal. It was a wolf. Standing very still. Looking at me.

“Follow the wolf, Tao!” the Head Honcho roared in my head.

“Are you mad?” I answered out loud, but I was beginning to think that I might be the one going mad. What was the Head Honcho doing in my head? Kalem says that the last voice a person hears before they die is the voice of the one they love the most. And I was hearing the Head Honcho? Perhaps I wasn’t about to die.

“The wolf only kills those who fear it,” said Willy in that drawling way of his. He was in my head, too.

“Where did you steal that one from, Willy?” I asked the Willy in my head. All the time, I kept my eyes on that wolf.

The wolf had half-turned, as if to say follow me. I don’t know why, but I started to pull myself up. Very slowly, I placed my sore foot on the ground – terrible pains shot like long needles up my leg. I steadied myself and, clenching my fists, took a step in the direction of the wolf. Which made no sense at all.

“Go on, go on, go on,” urged the Head Honcho. “Remember what I always say. No guts, no glory.”

So I took another step and another. Each time I put my sore foot on the ground, I felt like screaming. The wolf moved a little further away into the trees and waited. I knew he meant me to follow.

“In your true heart, you are a wolf,” said Jo. Was she in my head too? It was getting crowded in there.

And so I slowly followed that big grey wolf into the wood and down a narrow track, silver in the light of the moon, and I had no idea where I was going or what would happen to me. Every so often, the wolf would stop and wait while I caught up, but as soon as I got nearer to him, he would move off again.

Whenever I felt like giving up and lying down on the forest floor, the voices in my head would start up again. And now it wasn’t just the Head Honcho and Willy and Jo – it was lots of people that I knew.

“When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!” said David. It was one of his favourite sayings and I smiled when I heard it in my head … but I kept going.

I was dizzy and it was hard to keep my eyes open. When I put my hand on the back of my head, it was wet and sticky. But still the wolf led me on and still the moon lit the way.

I tripped on a root and fell off the path into heather. I blacked out for a minute. When I came round, every muscle in my body was screaming, “Stop! Stop!” My foot was killing me, I was sure that it was broken. Everything looked blurry. The heather was soft like a bed. I just wanted to sleep.

“Don’t be such a sissy, Tao!” roared the Head Honcho. “Football is a game of two halves. Now get back in the game!”

I wished he’d shut up.

“My brother doesn’t give up,” said Mimi, who had obviously decided to join the people in my head. “Use the stick under your hand, Tao.”

Which was a lot more useful advice than the raving of the Head Honcho, because there was a stick under my right arm.

“OK, OK,” I told the voices crossly and, using the stick, I pulled myself up out of the heather and got ready to follow my wolf guide once more.

The wolf was waiting the same distance ahead and looking straight at me. A wolf has weird eyes.

“To look into the eyes of the wolf is to see your own soul,” said Willy.

“Another one you stole, Willy, I suppose?” I told him, but I started walking again. It was still very difficult, but the walking stick helped me to keep the weight off my sore foot.

“Dig deep, Tao,” said my dad, “not far to go.”

That helped, even if I had no idea where I was going.

“As I always say,” joined in the Head Honcho, who really did not know when to be quiet, “show me a good loser and I’ll show you an idiot!”

“You stole that!” popped in Willy, sounding very cross.

“You’re the one to talk,” fired back the Head Honcho.

Oh, for flip’s sake … now the voices in my head were having a row. I was distracted by it and I didn’t notice straight away that the wolf had disappeared. I stopped walking and looked all around, but there was no sign of him. I felt panicky. I had lost my guide… Then I saw that the end of the forest path was just ahead and it came out onto a road, black tarmac shining in the moonlight.

I moved on as quickly as I could (which wasn’t very quickly), until I reached the road. I looked up and down but, of course, there was no one about at that hour. I leant back against a big tree that stood beside the road and slid slowly down its smooth trunk until I was sitting. Then I waited.

The sky was more blue-black than black-black now and far away, where it touched the ground, was a line of white light. The long night was coming to an end. The tree felt warm and strong against my back.

“Hug a tree and it will hug you back,” Kate’s voice whispered in my head. I didn’t feel so frightened anymore. Somebody would surely find me soon. I let my eyes close slowly … and nobody started shouting in my head.

I woke up in a hospital. I found out later that a mountain rescue team had found me sitting against the tree and had phoned for an ambulance. I didn’t remember anything about that at all.

Now everything felt muzzy, like I was swimming underwater trying to reach the surface. I could hear voices, but it took me a few moments to recognize who was talking. It was Kate and Dad … and they were arguing. I kept my eyes shut. They thought that I was still asleep.

“You shouldn’t have left the children on their own,” Dad was whispering loudly. He sounded very angry. “Where were you, anyway?”

“I was at the dentist,” answered Kate, and she was whispering too. I could hear a catch in her voice. “My filling fell out.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” hissed Dad. “He’s only ten. We could have lost him. You do realize that, don’t you? All alone on that mountain all night long.”

“Yes, I do know that,” said Kate, and I could hear her sobbing and sniffling.

Maybe I should have opened my eyes then, but I felt so sad to hear my mum and dad fighting like that. A memory of a Christmas Day long ago when they were still together floated into my head. Both of them were trying very hard to be nice to me, but they were not talking to each other. I could still feel the horrible pain in my tummy that I felt all that day. Everyone pretending to be happy. Why couldn’t they be just a bit nicer to each other like other mums and dads?

“I’m going for a coffee,” said Dad. “Call me if he wakes up.” The door closed loudly then and the only sound in the room was Kate crying quietly. I could feel her hand on mine and I drifted back to sleep.

The next voice I heard was Paul’s.

“Stop beating yourself up about it, Kate,” he was saying. His voice was gentle and calm. “It was not your fault.”

“James is right,” Kate whimpered. “We should have taken the children with us.”

“He’s upset,” said Paul. “He’ll calm down. He got a bad fright. We all did. Come on, blow your nose. That brave boy of yours is going to wake up any minute and you don’t want him to see you like that, do you?”

I sneaked a peep while Kate blew her nose loudly into a tissue that Paul handed her.

“Look at me,” Paul said and Kate turned her face to him with a funny, crooked smile. “You are a good mother,” he told her, saying each word slowly and clearly. While he was talking, he was wiping away her tears with his fingers, which was making an even worse mess of her face. Then Kate buried her head in his shoulder and he held her and stroked her hair. I tried to feel cross, but I just wasn’t able to.

It is a funny feeling waking up after you have had an operation. Your brain feels like a fluffy cloud and you have to concentrate very hard on what you want to say. Or you might just say the first thing that comes into your head.

“You two should get married,” I said and opened my eyes.

They both pulled apart and looked at me. Kate’s mouth fell open and her eyes looked like they would pop out of her head.

“You’re awake!” she shouted, and nearly jumped into the bed with me. Her hug was the nicest thing I had ever felt. But it hurt!

“Oh, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” she said, kissing me all over my face.

Then she jumped up.

“I’ll go and get James,” she said in a rush, but Paul stopped her and said he’d go.

Before he left, Paul squeezed my hand and said, “Good to have you back, Tao.”

Kate said that the wolf was my spirit guide. Dad said that that was a load of codswallop. There had been no wolves in Ireland for at least five hundred years.

“Well, how do you explain it then?” asked Kate.

“I don’t know,” said Dad, which wasn’t like him. “Tao had a bang on his head. It could have been a fox … or else he was seeing things. He was concussed after all.”

“It was a wolf, Dad,” I told him. Kate gave everyone standing around the bed her I-told-you-so look.

Dad sighed and dropped the subject. He was in a good mood now that I was awake again and sitting up in bed with a big plaster on my ankle and a bandage wrapped around my head, eating my dinner.

“You look like an axe murderer,” said Mimi and everyone laughed.

My phone beeped again. This time it was a text from Kalem’s mum.

I had already got texts from Kalem and David.

David said I should go on television because “I’m a celebrity”.

Kalem texted me a joke to cheer me up…

“I get it!” shouted Mimi and everybody laughed, except Sally, who turned her eyes to heaven.

Jo had rung to tell me, “that I was a scallywag and that I had given everyone an awful fright and sorry but she was finding it very hard to talk without crying but they were tears of joy because I was OK and she hadn’t said anything to the twins because they wouldn’t understand and that she loved me but she’d kill me when she saw me for pulling such a stunt and—”

“Jo,” I interrupted her.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for the charm.”

She was quiet for a moment after that, but I could hear her sniffling.

“Just so long as you are safe,” she said eventually.

Sally told me that she had run away once too.

“I didn’t run away,” I said.

“Whatever. Just don’t do it again.”

Conor told me that he just wanted to let me know that this wasn’t going to make any difference to how we played Monopoly. Then he grinned and threw a present of a pair of Wolves socks at me, “even though they suck!”

Mimi hugged me and said that I was a wally and that I was to take her with me next time I set off on one of my adventures.

Before Dad flew home, he visited me on his own. It was my last day in the hospital. He told me that he would ring me at least once a day until I was sick of the sound of his voice. He also said that he was very proud of me. Then he told me he loved me and if anything bad had happened to me on that mountain he would never, ever … but his voice all choked up then and he couldn’t finish the sentence. He gave me a quick hug and told me to take care. He’d see me again at the end of next week. Then he walked quickly out of the room without looking back.