Coraline

the back of its head and neck. The cat stood up, walked several paces until it was out of her reach, then it sat down and looked up at her again.
    ‘So,’ said Coraline, ‘later that afternoon my dad went back again to the wasteland, to get his glasses back. He said if he left it another day he wouldn’t be able to remember where they’d fallen.
    ‘And soon he got home, wearing his glasses. He said that he wasn’t scared when he was standing there and the wasps were stinging him and hurting him and he was watching me run away. Because he knew he had to give me enough time to run, or the wasps would have come after both of us.’
    Coraline turned the key in the door. It turned with a loud clunk.
    The door swung open.
    There was no brick wall on the other side of the door: only darkness. A cold wind blew through the passageway.
    Coraline made no move to walk through the door.
    ‘And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung,’ said Coraline to the cat. ‘It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.’
    She took her first step down the dark corridor.
    She could smell dust and damp and mustiness.
    The cat padded along beside her.
    ‘And why was that?’ asked the cat, although it sounded barely interested.
    ‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.’
    The candle cast huge, strange, flickering shadows along the wall. She heard something moving in the darkness, beside her, or to one side of her, she could not tell. It seemed as if it was keeping pace with her, whatever it was.
    ‘And that’s why you’re going back to her world, then?’ said the cat. ‘Because your father once saved you from wasps?’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Coraline. ‘I’m going back for them because they are my parents. And if they noticed I was gone I’m sure they would do the same for me. You know you’re talking again?’
    ‘How fortunate I am,’ said the cat, ‘in having a travelling companion of such wisdom and intelligence.’ Its tone remained sarcastic, but its fur was bristling, and its brush of a tail stuck up in the air.
    Coraline was going to say something, like sorry or wasn’t it a lot shorter walk last time? when the candle went out as suddenly as if it had been snuffed by someone’s hand.
    There was a scrabbling and a pattering, and Coraline could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. She put out one hand  . . . and felt something wispy, like a spider’s web, brush her hands and her face.
    At the end of the corridor the electric light went on, blinding after the darkness. A woman stood, silhouetted by the light, a little ahead of Coraline.
    ‘Coraline? Darling?’ she called.
    ‘Mum!’ said Coraline, and she ran forward, eager and relieved.
    ‘Darling,’ said the woman. ‘Why did you ever run away from me?’
    Coraline was too close to stop, and she felt the other mother’s cold arms enfold her. She stood there, rigid and trembling as the other mother held her tightly.
    ‘Where are my parents?’ Coraline asked.
    ‘We’re here,’ said her other mother, in a voice so close to her real mother’s that Coraline could scarcely tell them apart. ‘We’re here. We’re ready to love you and play with you and feed you and make your life interesting.’
    Coraline pulled back, and the other mother let her go, with reluctance.
    The other father, who had been sitting on a chair in the hallway, stood up and smiled. ‘Come on into the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’ll make us a midnight snack. And you’ll want something to drink – hot chocolate, perhaps?’
    Coraline walked down the hallway until she reached the mirror at the end. There was nothing reflected in it but a young girl in her dressing gown and slippers, who looked like she had recently been crying but whose eyes were real eyes, not black buttons, and who was holding tightly to a burned-out candle in a candlestick.
    She looked at the girl in the mirror and the girl in the mirror looked back at her.
    I will be brave , thought Coraline. No, I am brave .
    She put down the candlestick on the floor, then she turned round. The other mother and the other father were looking at her hungrily.
    ‘I don’t need a snack,’ she said. ‘I have an apple. See?’ And she took an apple from her dressing-gown