Free Cat's Paw by Nick Green

parents, he could have been anything – a Grade A student, an athlete, anything. Soon he was
inventing moves of his own, forcing Geoff to work more nights writing up his notes. As the new system grew it became as much his creation as Geoff’s, though it was Geoff who named it
mustel-id
. He said this meant ‘Soul of the Polecat’, and Martin, who knew no better, devoured it.
    Compared to pashki, refined by Egyptian priests and Eastern gurus over a hundred or more generations, mustel-id was brutishly simple. Against that, it was easier to learn. In less than ten
months Martin had grown quick, strong and acrobatic. He could fit through spaces that looked narrower than his waist and could sniff out a coin in a pitch dark boiler-room, even though his vision
would never reach cat levels. Mustel-id offered no equivalent of Mau claws, but still Martin’s fingers grew strong enough to tear the seams of a straitjacket. Trying to soak up this furious
energy, Geoff adapted Ten Hooks to create a mustel-id fighting system, and they sparred for hours at a time. And Geoff, who would cheerfully face in combat any pashki master you cared to name,
found Martin becoming quite a handful.
    Then came the breakthrough. As Martin honed his polecat skills, he became at other times more like a normal teenager. It was as if his human and animal selves were drawing apart, so that they no
longer waged war inside him. Martin let carers into his room. He would talk and read storybooks aloud to Dr Leech, even though he never seemed to follow the stories. He learned not to smash
televisions, stopped asking for mice and grew fond of cookery programmes. Given a sketchpad he revealed a gift for drawing. The staff even introduced him to a visiting princess. Geoff patted
himself on the back. He’d done it. Martin was calmer, healthier, and at least half sane. And Geoff had achieved something extraordinary: a brand new form of pashki based on one of
nature’s deadliest predators. What could possibly go wrong?

    ‘To throw away a young life,’ said Geoff, ‘is an unforgivable thing.’
    Ben had the nastiest feeling that he knew what was coming. Susie gnawed a corner of her yoga mat.
    ‘What happened?’ Yusuf murmured.
    ‘I betrayed him,’ said Geoff.
    His words fell into silence.
    ‘Martin was transferred to a care home,’ said Geoff. ‘And how smug was I? I’d found his cure. He had a new room, his own TV, posters on the walls. He tolerated those
around him. There was even this boy named Carl who knew how to cook real pizzas and who might have become his friend.
    ‘So I left. I didn’t say goodbye, I just stopped visiting. Because that’s what pashki masters do, right? We’re footloose. Free spirits. You look for us and one day
we’re not there.’
    Ben stole a glance at Tiffany.
    ‘I was three weeks and fifty miles away by the time I heard the news. The care home had been destroyed in a fire. One girl was dead and a boy was missing. Martin Fisher.’
    Ben shaded his eyes. The chapel’s rose window was flowering, the intricate stonework catching sunbeams through the firs, so that it sprinkled green-gold light. The effect lasted seconds
before the angle was lost, but its magic lingered in a sweet breeze that wafted down the aisle. Ben heard the bark of a dog outside, the giggle of young children, a pair of parents strolling a
nearby path. He had a sudden longing to be elsewhere.
    It was Tiffany who said it. ‘You know where he is now.’
    ‘I tried to track him,’ said Geoff. ‘He gave me the slip. For years he’s been off my radar.’
    ‘Then he found that empty station,’ said Yusuf.
    ‘He was bound to go somewhere like that,’ said Geoff. ‘All over the Underground there are stations that are no longer used – Aldwych, Down Street, City Road. Martin would
have liked the name Hermitage. A home for a loner.’
    ‘Did you see him, Ben?’ asked Daniel. Ben shook his head. Somewhere deep inside him that scream was