The Ripmender

Chapter 5

Our lecturer gave us a surprise test on renaissance art, and I was pretty sure that I had failed it. What little food I had managed to choke down was sitting in an uncomfortable lump somewhere in my middle, and the rest of my body was a haze of unanswered questions.

What was Nathan up to in the wood? I had to come up with an answer if I was going to function as a normal person ever again.

I wiped away the haze with a figurative hand, and forced myself to be my usual logical self. I had to stop allowing all the movies I had watched to influence my thinking.

Nathan was just an ordinary guy, who had rigged up some kind of electrical taser to protect himself against the violent crime that South Africa was infamous for.

He had obviously been up to no good in the woods; maybe he had finally succumbed to drugs, and was meeting his dealer to buy more. He probably wasn’t trying to kill me, just frighten me into keeping my mouth shut.

But what about the way he had materialized into the clearing? That wasn’t something an ordinary guy could do.

Maybe he was a magician. Not a Harry Potter kind, but a David Blaine kind. A master illusionist, who could make anyone believe anything. If I recall, one of them had made a 747 jet disappear in front of a whole group of people.

I had never seen anything in the internet about Nathan being an illusionist. I knew he could juggle, but that was about it. Maybe it was something he kept private.

“Cathy, are you with us?” Aldytha’s voice broke into my zigzagging thought process.

“Huh?” was the most intelligent thing I could get out.

“You’re having a totally awful day,” Tenley said. “First the thing in the woods, and now this. Why didn’t that horrible man tell us we were having a test?”

Aldytha grinned. “Well it wouldn’t be a surprise test if we knew about it.”

“Cathy, you really look weird. Are you okay?” Zama asked, giving my arm a shake. “Are you sure we can’t take you to the clinic?”

“There’s a really nice nurse there,” Tenley put in. “I went there when I fell in that broken drain.”

“Um, I’m fine,” I said, forcing myself to concentrate on what was actually in front of me. “What now?”

I knew that they would make an excuse as to why they needed to ditch me, so I braced myself for it.

Then I would be totally vulnerable; Nathan would fight to keep his squeaky clean image intact. He would not allow some fine art student to ruin his career, and he wouldn’t stop threatening me until he had neutralised me in some way.

“I’ve lost my student card,” Tenley said. “Should we meander across to the admin block and then get a snack?”

“You lost it again!” Zama said. “Heck, I say snack first, then admin. I need sustenance. Cathy, you’ll feel better after a pancake.”

I tried to hide my surprise at being included in the invitation. Okay, I know I sound pathetic, but I really hadn’t had much reason to have a good self image. In a town full of strange people, I had often been regarded as one of the strangest.

Feeling slightly brighter at still being included in the group, I walked with them to one of the many cafés dotted around the campus, and bought freshly made pancakes dripping with syrup and aromatic cinnamon. They smelt so wonderful that I found I had an appetite after all.

I made sure that I had a nice safe wall at my back, and a clear view of the courtyard in front of me though, just in case.

“So Cathy,” Zama said, wiping some lemon juice off her chin. “Where do you come from? What’s your family like?”