Thursday 8th October 2015

Mouse finally seems to be settling in and accepting that nothing bad is going to happen to him here. I've continued with the sculpting. After the ears and nose, the next thing he wanted was 'hay-ah!' which I managed to work into his head with an old, frayed, toothbrush. He didn't just want hair on the back of his head (and running down his neck, to prove that he was no longer in the military and didn't need to keep his hair short), but also 'whishkazh,' so I did my best to brush sideburns onto his face. He would have liked a hairy body, too, but I couldn't think of a way of keeping the grooves that represented hair once the cling-film was patted back into place. As it is, sleeping with his head lying on anything would tend to flatten out the grooves there, so Miss Guinevere helped me stuff some cotton-wool into a paper bag to make a pillow for Mouse's whole upper body, so that he can sleep lying slightly propped up.

Today, he asked for 'hangg ang gheek.' He insisted on making the hands as long-fingered and delicate as possible, and I really, really hope that the clingfilm wrappings around his fingers are sufficient to stop them from dropping off. I managed to make him see that, as his body is fairly dense for his size, he really did need broad, sturdy feet to support his weight. They've wound up looking more like a dragon's paws than the feet of any humanoid, but he seems happy.

When we're not working on sculpture but Mouse doesn't feel sleepy, I read to him, mostly from the Bestiary. It's the one on supposedly 'ordinary' animals, rather than Professor Greenbloom's notes on magical creatures, but many 'ordinary' creatures are even stranger. Much of the book is about the animals' sex lives: for example, the way that a female hyena has a penis, through which she conceives and gives birth, which, not surprisingly, is painful and very dangerous. Female komodo dragons (who are actually giant lizards, and only very distantly related to the true dragons) can give birth without having mated at all, and their offspring are always males. A male lizard has two penises, but birds and tuataras have none (as far as I know, silver dragons don't seem to either), and a male koala has a forked penis to penetrate the female's two vaginas.

Perhaps I read out rather too much of this, as Mouse now doesn't want an anatomically correct torso at all. This is actually quite logical. After all, apart from his transplanted mammalian heart, he doesn't seem to have any internal organs, so it's not as if he needs to excrete, and he's unlikely to find a sexual partner. Appendages that could easily snap off might be painful for him, and, as he is adamant that he never wants to wear clothes again, going around looking like a small naked man isn't likely to make him popular.

So why does he need a heart? What is it doing, if he doesn't have arteries, capillaries and veins to circulate blood around his body? This is something else I learned about only recently. I had thought that the liver turned food into blood and distributed the blood to the body where it was consumed, including sending some to the heart to be mixed with air, after which it flowed out through the arteries to give the body whatever else it needed. But now it turns out that the body doesn't produce and use up blood, but recycles it, sending it through the heart to receive oxygen (the part of air that people actually breathe) and then out through the arteries, around the body via the capillaries until the oxygen is used up, and then back to the heart by the veins.

And yet, while blood in general goes on and on, apparently 'blood' isn't just a red liquid, but a fluid containing millions of cells, tiny creatures who are born inside the bones, somehow swim out into the blood, where they live and die within a space of a few months. There are different kinds, who each do their part to serve the body: the red cells, who carry oxygen around (and can live about three months in the body, or one month if kept in captivity); the white cells, heroic warriors who fight off invading creatures that cause disease (the white cells live two to three weeks, if they don't die in battle before that), and platelets, who press themselves together at a wound to stop someone bleeding to death (they live only eight or nine days).

Everything about the world is stranger and more wonderful than I had ever realised. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to be a doctor and actually have to take blood samples, but reading about it is like the most thrilling epic ever written.

Friday 9th October 2015

Today was the most delicate and important procedure of all: Mouse finally asked for 'kung ang hliksh and keesh.' It wasn't too difficult to shape his tongue and wrap it in clingfilm, but I wondered what to do about the teeth: if they squidged into a solid lump, he wouldn't be able to pronounce letters that depend on hissing between the teeth. In the end, I settled on cutting out each individual tooth with a needle, and then wrapping it in a folded piece of paper. I know these paper caps will stick to Mouse's clay, but it doesn't really matter, as he doesn't need to take them off.

As soon as they were ready, he began practising talking: first saying the alphabet, and then rehearsing tongue-twisters: 'She sells sea shells on the sea-shore. She spins sea-spells on the sea-shore. Steve smacks sea-snakes on the sea-shore.' It's strange to hear someone talking who is neither a baby learning to use language for the first time, nor an adult learning a new language (the way Toby and I tried to learn at least a bit of each other's languages), but someone who has been hearing and understanding words all his life, without being able to pronounce them until now.

Mouse wasn't really talking to me, just practising words for their own sake, so when I asked whether it was all right to leave him on his own for the evening, he grinned with all his sharp, white teeth, and said, 'Yessss!'

Tonight was the night that Atticus was coming to visit. He had (I'd gathered from snatches of conversation upstairs) agreed cheerfully when Professora Greenbloom invited him to dinner, but warned that he doesn't eat much. When she asked him whether there was anything he didn't eat, he said, 'Vegetarian food,' before adding that he is allergic to garlic and silver. His favourite is rare liver (as in barely cooked, not sliced off an endangered species – he's happy with pork or lamb). Everyone else was having quiche, and there were dishes of broccoli and peas, and chocolate torte to follow, which Atticus could take or leave, depending on how exclusively carnivorous he was.

I was already hiding in my Master's jacket pocket when the doorbell rang at 7. Professor Greenbloom opened the door, and a tall, green-haired, man-shaped being breezed in and held up a palm to slap it against the Professor's, in some kind of greeting ritual. 'Hey, man, good to meet you – you must be Benny's dad, right?'

'That's right – well, officially I'm his foster carer until the adoption certificate comes through. My name's Barnabas – you've already met my wife Vita, of course. And this is Billy.'

Billy, who had turned up in ginger-tomcat mode for the occasion, hissed menacingly at Atticus, who just shrugged.

'Hey, Benny, Billy, and Barney – Barney like the dinosaur, right? You'd look good with purple hair!'

'Thank you, but I don't mind settling for grey. Can I offer you anything to drink, by the way?'

'Yeah, cool, I'll have red wine, please.' While the Professor was pouring it, Atticus turned to my Master. 'Hey, dude, good to see you. No Ivan? I thought you two were BFF?'

'Yes, but – he could not tonight here come,' said my Master.

'Are you still getting on okay? I didn't wreck it by giving you that money at Play Factore, did I?' Atticus sounded anxious.

'No, no – we are still friends.'

'So, what do you talk about, when you hang out together?' Atticus asked, as everyone sat down to eat.

My Master tried to think of a safe, neutral topic, as he could hardly say, 'You.' 'Football,' he lied. 'Manchester United and Bayern München.'

'Wow, Ivan's developed a taste for soccer in the two months he's been here? I'd have thought it'd take longer than that to wean him off American football – or is he more the baseball type?'

Nobody said anything.

'D'you ever talk about anything else? Like – dragons?' Atticus paused to see whether there was any reaction, then grinned, showing white, even teeth – no obvious fangs, but long, very white teeth that might have been caps covering fangs. 'I heard about that RS presentation of yours – a girl in my class has a brother in your year. It sounds so-o-o cool – it almost makes me wish I did RS, so that I could have heard it!'

'Out of interest, what are you studying?' asked the Professora.

'A-levels: Geography, Ancient History, and Urdu. I dropped out of school a while ago, but then I realised, hey, I'm nearly nineteen, this is my last chance to drop back in and get some A-levels if I want to go to uni. Wouldn't have minded doing Computer Science, but I'm trying to fit in three two-year courses in less than one year, and – well, humanities subjects are easier to catch up on. Plus, I've travelled a bit, and my best friend when I was younger was Pakistani, so I'm not a total beginner.'

I couldn't know for certain what species Atticus was (though all the evidence suggested vampire), but I was sure that he was lying as much as my Master was. Not necessarily about what he was studying, but about being eighteen and applying to university. He was someone who was desperately trying to play a part, in case people didn't accept him if they knew what he was. These people will! I thought at him, wishing I really could project mind-speech. Just tell them the truth!

As he wasn't ready to open up, the Professor and Professora played along with his story, nodding approvingly at his choice of subjects, and asking what universities he was applying to, what he wanted to study, and what he wanted to do when he graduated. The Professor talked about the excavations in Egypt that he had worked on in the summer, which were always eager for student volunteers, and asked whether Atticus had ever been on an archaeology camp?

Atticus laughed too loudly (he was on his third glass of wine by now). 'Nah, Egypt's not my style!' he said. 'I burn way too easily. Gosh, I must sound like a vampire, mustn't I – not liking sunlight, not eating garlic or eating off silver! Do you reckon vampires really exist?'

'I can't see why they shouldn't,' said the Professor.

'Would you want to meet one?' Atticus addressed this remark to Miss Guinevere. 'Loads of girls are into girl-meets-vampire stories, aren't they? Sort of neck-romance-y?'

Miss Guinevere shrugged. 'Well, yes, but they're mainly the same people who spent all their time reading pony books when they were a bit younger. I like horses, but I don't need to have a horse for my life to be complete. And I suppose I feel the same way about vampires.'

'So, Gwinny, if you could meet any mythical creature in the world, which would you choose?' Atticus asked.

'A fossegrim,' said Miss Guinevere. 'They're water-spirits who live under waterfalls and play the violin.'

'What about you, Benny? Yours would definitely be a dragon, right?'

'Dragons are my favourite big creature,' said my Master. 'My favourite smaller creature is a homunculus.'

'Vita?'

'Oh, I think probably a pegasus.'

'And you, Barney?'

'Well, it's hard to choose,' said the Professor, 'but I'd be very glad to make friends with a vampire. I imagine that most of them are badly misunderstood creatures – probably because the few who behave badly are the ones who attract attention, and so the rest are afraid to admit to being vampires at all. What do you think?'

'Yeah, prob'ly, if they existed,' said Atticus, with an exaggerated yawn. 'But they're just fantasy, right? C'mon, it's not Hallowe'en for three weeks yet! Anyway, that liver was gorgeous – what's for pud?'

'What creature would you like to meet?' asked my Master, as Atticus poured cream over a large helping of chocolate torte. It smelled delicious (and tasted it, when my Master unobtrusively slipped a crumb to me), but I wasn't sure chocolate was good for vampires, especially washed down with the beginning of a second bottle of wine.

'Me?' said Atticus. 'A dragon – if she promised not to flame me. I wouldn't want to run into a dragon who didn't know me.'

He had said she, not it. Was he thinking of a particular dragon? Was Atticus a dragon-rider too? The people in the fishing village seemed to think my Master was the first human dragon-rider for hundreds of years, and they lived in a part of the world that was friendly to dragons. What were the chances of three of the pupils at the same school in England just happening to be friends with dragons?

'We went to Pakistan in the summer holidays,' said Miss Guinevere brightly. 'When you said your best friend was Pakistani, was he born in Britain but with Pakistani parents, or actually from Pakistan?'

'He was from Pakistan. But he's dead now, and – I just don't want to talk about it, okay? Okay? Did you invite me here to drive a stake through my entire private life?' Atticus stood up, rather shakily.

'Atticus, I'm sorry. We truly didn't mean to upset you,' said the Professor, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'If you're not feeling well, can we give you a lift home? Or should I phone your parents and ask them to collect you?'

'They're dead, too!' snapped Atticus. 'Everyone I've ever loved is dead! So just leave me alone, okay? I can walk home, I'm fine. Only,' he added, 'can I use the loo first? That chocolate cake was gorgeous, only – well, pigging out like that was a bit of a mistake.'

'Easily done,' said the Professor sympathetically. 'The loo's upstairs, middle door on the landing.'

Atticus staggered upstairs by clinging to the banister-rail, threw up noisily, and reappeared a few minutes later, after dousing his head thoroughly in cold water.

'Sorry about that,' he said. 'Anyway, walk home'll clear my head. Bye, Benny, see you at school.' And with that he left.

'He's not usually like that,' said my Master, when Atticus was gone. 'I mean, at school he clowns around a lot, but he isn't usually that bad.'

'Perhaps he just felt nervous,' suggested the Professor. 'I shouldn't have pushed so hard, asking him about himself – and if he's trying to avoid drinking human blood, maybe wine was the nearest substitute he could find, to give himself confidence. And if drinking alcohol made him feel hungry, when he's not used to eating – well, drunkenness and indigestion isn't a pleasant combination for anyone, whatever their species.'

'Maybe,' said Billy. 'Or maybe he was doing it deliberately.'

'Deliberately?' said my Master. 'Why would he want to?'

'Who knows? Maybe to make your parents forbid you to see him, so that he could be the pariah-friend you meet with secretly, because the role of accepted friend is already occupied by Ivan. Maybe to test whether your parents would put up with him. Maybe to prove to himself that everyone hates him and he can't have a friend ever again, because it would be too painful to have another friend and lose him. Who knows what might make sense to a vampire?'

'He's obviously very lonely,' said the Professor. 'I wonder how old he is really? A hundred? Three hundred? Older?'

'You're not going to adopt him as well, are you?' groaned Billy. 'I've got used to having another human round here, even a homunculus – two homunculi, now – but I draw the line at vampires!'