Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,21
together.
‘Dad is such a worrywart,’ said Hawthorne. Morrigan noticed, however, that his eyes narrowed as they swept over the carriage and he was still gripping Baby Dave’s hand tight – they both were, in fact. It was a lot of responsibility to be separated from the others with a toddler to take care of.
Hawthorne leaned down to pick up his baby sister again. ‘Oof. Yikes. What are Mum and Dad feeding you? Whole chickens? You’re almost as big as I am.’
‘How-tawn, put me DOWN!’ demanded a wriggling Baby Dave, but this time Hawthorne refused.
‘Shush, Baby Dave,’ he said. ‘It’s too busy in here. Just— OW!’ She had bitten him, hard enough to leave teeth marks. Hawthorne held up his wrist, looking half shocked, half impressed. He turned to Morrigan, laughing. ‘Will you look at this? She’s part shark.’
Baby Dave grinned at Morrigan, who leaned away slightly, making a silent vow never to allow those chompers anywhere near her limbs.
The crowding in the carriage eased a little at each stop as groups of passengers disembarked. After they’d passed through a handful of stations there was finally enough room for Hawthorne to put his still-complaining sister down on the floor.
‘Mogran, pick me up. I tired,’ moaned Baby Dave less than a minute later. She gripped Morrigan’s hand, leaning dramatically backwards, and Morrigan had to use all her strength just to keep them both upright.
‘Please, Baby Dave, be good,’ she said coaxingly. ‘It’s only a few more stops.’
‘PEAS, MOGRAN, PEAS PICK ME UP,’ Baby Dave wailed, her enormous blue eyes filling with tears. Morrigan stared at her in horror, uncertain what to do.
Hawthorne laughed, and said in a sing-song voice, ‘She’s playing you.’
A group of elderly ladies sitting nearby clucked their tongues in sympathy at the display, shooting them disapproving looks.
‘Heartless,’ Morrigan heard one of them mutter. She felt her face turn pink.
‘Aye,’ said another, looking right at Morrigan and whispering just loudly enough for her to hear. ‘The poor wean’s obviously exhausted.’
Morrigan gave in as the train pulled up to its next stop, and heaved a delighted Baby Dave into her arms.
‘Oof,’ she grunted, shifting the toddler to one side. ‘Not sure I’ll be able to hold you for very long, Baby Da—’
She was cut off by a squeal at one end of the train car, followed by a roar that sounded a bit like Fenestra when she was furious. Morrigan looked around uneasily, trying to see the source of the commotion, but there were too many bodies in the way.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Hawthorne.
An indignant voice came from the end of the carriage. ‘It scratched me! That beastly creature just scratched me! Clarissa, look, I’m bleeding, I’m actually bleeding.’
Morrigan stood on tiptoes to get a better view, and nearly fell over in surprise. ‘Oh! Goodness. It’s a leopard – er, leopardwun.’
She said leopardwun rather than leopard only because the big cat wore a chunky string of beads around its neck and a big, expensive-looking diamond earring in the tip of one of its furry ears. And, well, because it was riding the Wunderground, which would have been highly irregular for an ordinary leopard.
At a distance, it was sometimes tricky to tell the difference between Wunimals (sentient, self-aware creatures who were capable of human language and fully assimilated to human society) and unnimals (normal creatures who went about their normal creature business in their normal creature societies). It was of course easier if you were looking at a Wunimal Minor – a sort of human-unnimal hybrid, usually with more humanoid features than unnimal.
With Wunimal Majors – who were physically indistinguishable from their unnimal counterparts – there was more scope for confusion … that is, until they opened their mouths to complain about the weather, or to ask where they might find the nearest Brolly Rail platform. That’s why most Majors wore specially tailored clothes, or at least accessorised with a jaunty hat or a monocle or something, to signal their sentient Wunimal status and avoid the embarrassing assumptions of strangers.
If it wasn’t for the leopardwun’s jewellery, however, and the fact that it had somehow managed to board public transport on its own, this could very well have been an escaped unnimal from the Nevermoor Zoo. It seemed almost completely unnimalistic to Morrigan, sniffing the air like a big cat on the hunt, as if it had quite lost its mind.
The leopardwun snarled as it prowled through the carriage in their direction, snapping its powerful jaws at the terrified passengers, who all shrieked