Voices are whispering close by.

I'm not really awake yet. I feel quiet and comfortable, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to wake up, so I just lie there with my eyes shut, not thinking about anything. Grown-ups always talk a lot, and most of it isn't worth listening to, so I tend to tune them out a lot of the time unless they're talking about something interesting.

"...Of course I realise it!" Heavy breathing. He's trying to keep hold of his temper. "But there's no need for us to panic. If we can persuade him to keep quiet..."

"...Quiet? This was a crime! He damn near died in my classroom!"

"Keep your bloody voice down! If this gets out we'll have parents taking their kids out in droves! They'll close the school!"

"We've all just got to keep our heads!" This from a voice that, unlike the others, is unfamiliar. "Look. He's having the best possible care. This is a top hospital, you don't get better treatment anywhere, and if we deal with this properly the school won't even see the bill, right?"

"By which I take it you mean that your little bastard walks away scot-free, don't you?"

"My little bastard wasn't the only one involved, Fletcher. But I'm the only one who has the resources to keep this out of the papers – unless you'd prefer the parents finding out what really happened to him, by which time the news-channels will be having a field-day with it.

"You want justice? You can have it. And this kid will have his face splashed all over the media, along with every gory detail of the trial. It won't just be the school that'll be ruined. You just think of that before you start bellyaching about justice being done."

"We have to keep calm!" The first voice again, so agitated I hardly recognise it for the Head's. "We have to think of the school!"

"The school? Don't we have to think of the welfare of the Reeds?"

"We are thinking of their welfare!" The new voice growls it. "Least said, soonest mended. You think they'll want their little brat's face all over the empire's newscasts? You think they'll want the world and his dog knowing he had six pricks up him? You think that at heart they'll even want to know it themselves?"

The Head moans, as if he can hardly bear to hear it said.

"Look." The tone becomes menacing. "I can make this like it never happened. I can make the staff here say whatever I want them to say. I can make them invent something that went wrong with him, that nobody suspected till it was too late. I can keep Mummy and Daddy Reed safe and happy thinking that their little runt just had a medical problem that got sorted. But I'm not doing any of it if my boy's going to be put in a dock.

"That's the deal. I deal with it, or the police deal with it. Make your minds up. You've got one hour." His footsteps walk away, and the door hisses open and shuts again behind him.

The three other grown-ups walk away to the window while I peek through my lashes. I've identified them now: the Head, Mr Colyngbourne, the Deputy Head, Miss Ratcliffe, and Mr Fletcher my form-teacher. Miss Ratcliffe hasn't said much so far, but I'm guessing she was the one Mr Colyngbourne was answering when I woke up. Her hair's normally caught up very neatly in a bun on the back of her head, but now it looks like she's forgotten even to brush it, and this is so surprising I almost open my eyes completely to see it better.

I'm not feeling sleepy any more. Luckily for me, I'm not hurting either. I'm almost too scared to move, but there are clear tubes leading out of bandaged lumps on the backs of my hands to bags hanging up at either side of me, and the air smells of antiseptic. I'm in a hospital, so I didn't die and I won't go to hell (that's a weight off my mind), and the doctors have done something to stop me hurting and, presumably, bleeding. Very cautiously I try to shift my hips a tiny bit and immediately find out that I'm bandaged – there are lots of bandages, and I'm lying on thick wads of soft padding. Everything feels very strange down there and just for now I don't want to know any more about it.

Carefully keeping my breathing very quiet, as though I'm still asleep, I steal another look at the grown-ups. The two men are talking, too low for me to hear, though their voices are fast and angry. Miss Ratcliffe has a PADD in her hand and keeps looking at it and biting her lip. At one point when she tilts it a bit to the side I catch sight of a diagram of a body on it, and I realise that it must be showing what the doctors had to do to make me better.

There's a tiny bit of a pause in the conversation and she uses it to dive in. I don't know why, but I seem able to hear her voice better than theirs, even when she's whispering.

"I can't imagine what it would do to his mother," she says. "For her sake, as much as anything else, don't you think it would be better for no-one to know?"

'No-one to know'?

Don't they think I know?

Don't they realise it's all over the school?

I'm usually very well-behaved and polite. But suddenly it's all I can do not to sit up and shout at them, at Miss Ratcliffe and Mr Colyngbourne, and ask what's going to happen to the boys who did this to me, and are they going to be punished at all?

"He's awake," says Mr Fletcher suddenly.

I'm pretty sure I didn't move, but then I realise the bio-display above my head must have been flashing a warning.

They exchange grown-up glances and come over to the bed.

"How are you feeling, Malcolm?" asks Mr Colyngbourne kindly.

"Much better, sir," I whisper, while my mind flashes up an image of David Sallis tied to a post and a knife in my hand. Six bare bodies, six posts, one knife.

There must be justice for me. They cannot be going to let Sallis get away with it. Nor Clifford Howell, nor Harry Rice, nor Phil Hanley, nor Roger Berwick, nor Alan Todd.

This. Can. Not. Happen.

But Mr Colyngbourne puts on his most fatherly expression and pulls up a chair. And he begins to talk to me about how much it would upset Mother and Father if they knew the truth about what happened to me. About how the best and kindest thing a really brave boy could do was to make sure they never found out.

"You won't have to worry about Master Sallis, Malcolm," puts in Miss Ratcliffe helpfully. "His daddy is taking him away from the school."

"Now, your mother and father will be here tomorrow," Mr Colyngbourne resumes, his face very serious. "If you agree to help us, we can give them a harmless explanation for you being ill. That will stop them worrying. But if you won't help us – if we have to report all this to the authorities – then everything will be very difficult and painful. You'll have to go to court and tell everyone what happened to you. It will be in the newspapers. On the television. And imagine how upset your mother and father will be – having to listen to all the things those bad boys did to you."

I feel a tight knot of utter outrage gathering in my throat. I know what is being done to me and I know why. They don't care about Mother and Father, and they certainly don't care about me. They care about the school, and about the money it will lose if parents find out what happened there and take their own children away.

But the terrible thing is that they are telling the truth; I look at Mr Fletcher and his expression confirms it. He hates it, but it's true. My whole soul shrinks away from having to stand up in a court and tell sympathetic strangers about that terrible half-hour among the windflowers. From having the details spread abroad, from having Mother and Father have to listen to it all. From having all the family know, from having strangers in supermarkets recognise me and whisper behind their hands: 'Isn't that the little boy who...?'

There are feelings inside me that I hardly have a name for. That I hardly know how to deal with. But for all that I'm not even seven yet, still I know instinctively that this choice that's no choice will change me terribly. Because if the grown-ups who are supposed to protect me won't do it, then I will. I won't always be six, and I won't always be helpless.

In biology class last week we were taught about caterpillars. How after they get old enough and big enough, they turn into cris-a-lis-es and then after a while the cris-a-lis breaks open and a beautiful butterfly crawls out of it.

I look from one of the teachers' faces to the next. Mr Colyngbourne looks like one of the saints in Christopher's miss-al that he showed me once, though he keeps it very carefully hidden.

Miss Ratcliffe is clutching the PADD anxiously; if the school closes she will lose her job. Her face lightens suddenly, and she leans closer. "All of the electronic devices around the school have been confiscated and the data deleted from them," she says confidentially. "Our IT department have designed a virus to find and destroy any material that was sent out from any of those devices. You don't have to worry about that."

I understand about computers. I understand how they work. I am very bright for my age about that sort of thing, and I believe her when she promises that the files will be destroyed. But memories are not like computers. I don't suppose there are three people in that school by now who haven't seen that recording – or parts of it at least. Memories can't be erased. And if Mother and Father are not to know, my 'bravery' will mean that I have to go back to Nottingham Old Hall. That I have to live for another eleven years among people who know exactly what happened to me, even if they've been threatened to within an inch of their lives with what will happen to them if they ever breathe a word about it to anyone.

Last of all I look at Mr Fletcher. He has always been very strict, but I trust him. I want him to say something that will help me out of the trap that's closing in on me.

He clears his throat. "You have the choice, Malcolm," he tells me quietly. "Whatever you want to do, I will support you."

This is not what he was supposed to say. I know from the looks he gets from the Head and Deputy Head that if I take the chance he has given me, if I accept his help and drag the school through the courts and get justice for myself, he will not have a job any more. And a strange, adult knowledge fills me that if Mr Sallis's son goes to prison, Mr Fletcher will probably not live to be happy about it.

Up to now, I have been a caterpillar. But today I feel the threads of powerlessness binding around me, closer and closer, tighter and tighter, and I know that I have no choice.

I lie back on the bed. I stare at the ceiling, feeling the threads harden, wrapping me up like a cris-a-lis.

I will obey. I will lie. I will co-operate. But inside the cris-a-lis something else will be growing, watching the pictures on the inside of the cocoon. Pictures of bodies tied to posts, leaking blood – and screaming.

It will take a long time. I'm only six, after all. But I won't always be six.

A shudder that's more than physical runs through me as I settle into utter stillness. I feel like the caterpillar, accepting fate.

Time will pass. I don't know how much time. Probably much longer than a real caterpillar has to wait, but I will wait. However long, I'll wait. And I already know that whatever hatches out of the cris-a-lis will be something much, much worse than a butterfly.

"No, Mr. Colyngbourne," I say towards the ceiling. My voice already sounds lifeless, as though everything that I ever was or might have been is draining away and can never be recovered. "I don't want Mother and Father hurt."

He draws a long slow breath of relief. I don't imagine he has any idea of the depth of the well of utter hatred that opens in me at the sound of it. I feel myself falling into it, falling as if I'm tumbling through outer space and all the stars have vanished.

"Malcolm, are you – sure?" asks Mr Fletcher gently. There are shadows in his voice that I can't allow myself to hear. I don't want his sadness, I don't need his pity, and his guilt is more than I can bear as the last of my childhood slips away from me.

"Yes."

Miss Ratcliffe pats my arm. "We'll take care of everything for you." Someday, far in the future, she will burn to death for that pat. And Mr Colyngbourne too will discover what hell feels like before he actually gets there.

Mr Fletcher?

He is what grown-ups ought to be, but powerless, just like I am. The bad people have all the power. The good people get trampled underfoot. I have learned that now, and I won't forget it.

They leave the room quietly.

It's done now, all done. The threads are solidifying fast. In the last cold light from the window, I can almost feel the hard black shine of thecris-a-lis starting to form.

And thus, Fate turns.

The End.