The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2148 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Whit’s thae matter wi’ yon lassie, she took off like her sporran wis on fire?”

“Where did she go?” I asked after searching her room.

“Oh she went oot by the main door,” answered Shona, a girl from the village who came in to help Mrs Cuddy while she’s home from university.

“Her boyfriend hasn’t been about has he?”

“I didnae see him.”

“Okay, Shona, thank you.”

I rushed back to my room grabbed my coat and bag and went down to the front door. Now which way did she go? I tried to visualise the blue light coming from her but to no avail. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to find her just yet, however, something kept telling me to keep looking.

It was odds on that she’d have gone off to where she’d meet Richard, but I seemed to be walking away from that area. My legs seemed to be taking me into the woods and an awful sensation crept over me. What if she was going to do the same as Alice had done? Oh no–she wouldn’t, would she?

I walked on with legs which seemed to become heavier and heavier and my breathing got worse and worse as I set off up into the woodland. I spotted a fresh footprint and it could well belong to her shoe, it looked like a girl’s shoe. Someone had come this way very recently. I struggled onwards but the path went upwards and I had to keep stopping to catch my breath.

I huffed and puffed and wheezed my way onwards along the sticky track, the mud becoming slippery with the recent rain, and the bushes were wet as well. I was so glad I’d put on my trainers, though walking boots might have proved more useful on the slippery path.

Once or twice I nearly lost my footing but by snatching at a bush or tree managed to keep upright but my pitiful progress was slowing me down. I had to keep on, she’d left her mobile behind along with her bag she’d rushed off in such a hurry–a natural girl might not have done that but we all do strange things when we get upset.

I had to stop and rest, my chest was burning and making the most awful noises. I also felt quite strange, as if I was detaching from everything. I looked around me and the trees and bushes looked different. I was someone who’d spent hundreds of hours in woodland of different sorts at all times of the day and night, but this woodland was beginning to feel very strange, as if the trees were individual entities.

Suddenly it felt as if the one I was leaning against was holding me and the others were looking down and glaring at me. “Humans–huh, they are no friends of us,” said the dominant Scots pine.

There was broad agreement from the other arboreal types and lots of shaking of leaves. “What shall we do with her?” asked the pine.

“Kill her,” clamoured the mob.

“Might I say something?” I asked trying to stand up, but my cuff seemed stuck to the tree.

“Then we kill her,” began the clamouring which started like a rustling of leaves and ended like a roar of the wind gusting.

“I’m Lady Catherine Cameron, my husband owns this woodland.” That seemed to be the wrong thing to say, but having started I’d have to pursue it and quickly. “If anything were to happen to me, he’d have the whole of it clear felled and burned. All of you would perish in his anger.”

There was no reply, I’d obviously got their attention. “Something else you might like to know about me is that I’m an ecologist and I spend much of my life trying to protect forests and their occupants, especially dormice.”

“Whit’s a dormice?” asked a pine marten which had strolled up in front of me. I was astonished–I’d never seen one in real life before, let alone a talking one.

“I seek my daughter who I fear is lost in these woods, please help me to find her safe and well and I’ll do the very best I can to protect these woodlands.”

“I saw some human up near thon hanging tree.”

“Hanging tree?” I asked the pine marten.

“Aye, where we hang humans we want rid o’.”

“You can’t hang humans, that’s awful.”

“You shuld see whit yer gamekeepers do tae ma relatives wi their gin traps an’ snares.”

“I’ve seen and I’m as disgusted as you are.”

“Wait till ye see the snare we hae fa ye, we won’t hang ye, least no frae a tree.” He gave the most horrible laugh and I found myself having a coughing fit and vomiting up the eggs I’d had for my breakfast. The marten just managed to jump out of the way.

“Sorry about that,” I apologised to the small mustelid.

“Ye will be,” he snapped back, “Let the killing begin.”

For a moment nothing happened then I felt something around my neck which began to pull tighter. “Wait,” I gasped rather than shouted. “I’m an angelic emissary from the Shekinah.”

“Who?” asked the marten.

“The goddess.”

“Which one?”

“The goddess.”

“O’ thae heavens an’ thae earth?”

“The same, and she will not be pleased if you harm one of her messengers.”

“Ye’re a liar, I’ll bet,” challenged the marten.

“Am I now?” I called down the blue light to help me and with my free hand I threw some at the pine marten knocking him off the log on which he was standing to make himself look larger.

“Here, dinna ye dae that tae me,” he spat back at me.

So I did it again. Then as he clambered back onto the log, I sent the energy down my other arm into the tree which suddenly lost all its leaves. My arm became free again.

Next I asked the energy to remove this strange feeling from my head and to restore my breathing to normal. This time I was nearly knocked over but as I clung to the tree, the burning in my lungs turned to coldness which stopped as quickly as it began. I stood up straight, my whole body tingling and my breathing was normal.

The pine marten had gone and I began to wonder if I’d dreamt it all, except I had leaves all over me. I set off with renewed vigour towards the place where I thought I seen Alice’s inert body.

Suddenly I heard Danni’s voice, she was talking to someone and the way she was speaking it could only have been Billie. I stopped and listened.

“What’s the point of going on? I can’t decide if I want to be a boy or a girl and my family don’t seem to care one way or the other.”

“They do care, but they don’t know how to help you other than to support you.”

“But I want them to tell me what to do?”

“They are frightened to do that in case they tell you the wrong thing.”

“As a boy, you’ll achieve more than a girl.” That voice sounded like Alice’s.

“Like what?”

“Like, you might be good enough to play professional football.”

“Like you’d know?”

“I have no future now, Danni, so I can’t see my own, but I can see yours and it isn’t as a girl.”

“But I like the dresses and makeup.”

“Fine, but you’ll never play for England in a dress, will you?”

“I could do that?”

“If you really try your hardest, you could be that good.”

“I don’t believe you, you’re just trying to wind me up.”

“I have no reason to do other than show you your potential. It isn’t certain because you have to help it happen, but it could happen if you make it so.”

“Will I stop wearing dresses?”

“That’s within your power as well.”

“An’ I could really play for England?”

“So it is written.”

“Where is it written?”

“In your future, go now and find it, begin it, waste not another moment here. Go now.”

Danni turned round and began running down the path until she ran smack into me. I just managed to stop both of us falling over.

“Oh hi, Mum, I’m gonna go back to being a boy, got tired of the dresses–can we go home now?"