Free Chaos Quest by Gill Arbuthnott Page A

but I want to take her to where she belongs. It is true she scarcely knows who she is.”
    “Thank goodness there’s someone who can take her home. Her family must be so worried,” said Kate, frowning.
    Morgan was taken aback to find that they thought of Erda in this way.
    “I do not think she has any family,” he said, not really knowing why.
    “Poor thing,” Kate said. “Still, at least she’s got us now, hasn’t she?”
    ***
    Erda soared high above the city, looking through a falcon’s eyes at the pattern of streets and parks and buildings below. Somewhere down there were Kate and David and Morgan. Morgan, whose brother’s life she had stopped, somehow.
    The World had told her she was the Stardreamer, but what did that mean and what did Morgan want from her?’

THE LETTER
    Two days passed and there was still no sign of Erda. David and Kate couldn’t help but worry; she was almost like a child – how would she cope alone?
    “It’s like knowing Ben’s out there on his own,” said Kate, shaking her head at the thought.
    Morgan too had gone, leaving later the same morning that they had met him to search for her.
    School swallowed them up. Kate had tests in maths and chemistry and did badly in both. Her mother decided she needed “A Talk.”
    “You may not think what you do now matters …”
    “But I …”
    “But it does. You set habits now that will stay with you all the way through school, bad or good ones. You spend time shut up in your room and say you’re working, but you’ve got that music on and you can’t really be concentrating.”
    “I
am
. It helps me concentrate.”
    “Why aren’t you getting better marks then?”
    “Because I don’t understand maths and there’s lots of maths in chemistry. I’m okay at English and biology and geography and things, but you never …”
    “You’ve got to put effort into all your subjects you know, not just the ones you enjoy.”
    Kate gave up. It was clear her mother wasn’t going tolisten to anything she said.
    “From now on you can do your schoolwork in the kitchen like Ben, before you disappear off to your bedroom.”
    “But I can’t concentrate with him wittering on. You’re
so
unfair! You’re making it worse.”
    She stormed out of the sitting room and her bedroom door made the pictures jump on the walls as she slammed it shut.
    “That went well, don’t you think?” said her dad.
    “Oh, shut up!” snapped Ruth.
    ***
    Ever since she’d been so understanding about his feelings for Tiger, things had been going better between David and Christine, partly because he now gave her the benefit of the doubt instead of leaping to the worst possible conclusion about her intentions all the time.
    One evening a few days after the encounter with Morgan, David and Christine sat in the garden. Alastair was trying to light the barbecue while Christine and David enjoyed a cool drink in the shade. It was ridiculously hot for May.
    They’d been talking amicably about school and what subjects David thought he might choose to study, when Christine asked, out of the blue, “How long has Claire looked after you now?”
    “Four and a half years,” he said, though she must already know that. Why was she asking?
    “She’s great, isn’t she? I know how fond you two areof each other.” David made a sort of grunt which was meant to signal agreement without condoning the use of a word as wet as
fond
. “I was just wondering,” she went on. “You’re thirteen, you hardly need anyone to look after you any more, so there’s not much for Claire to do …”
    David put his glass down so hard that it toppled over on the paving, a trail of sticky coke spreading from it.
    “No! How could you?” He was looking at her in horror. “I thought you were okay, I thought you understood and all this time you’ve been planning to get rid of Claire.” He pushed himself to his feet, scarlet with anger, afraid he would burst into tears.
    “No, David, you’re wrong