Night Gate

by Isobelle Carmody

  “That wasn’t this river,” Billy said.

  “You never know with rivers,” Mr. Walker said.

  Rage was surprised once more at how much Mr. Walker’s thoughts revolved around the stories and myths her mother had read to them.

  The narrow moon was setting when they stopped for the night, having decided it was too dangerous to go on in the darkness. Rage studied the moon curiously, wondering if it was a different moon from the one that shone over Winnoway Farm. It looked exactly the same, but how could that be?

  Rage was very glad when Elle found a huge, hollow tree trunk with a dry, woody floor that was big enough for them all to take shelter in. Even Bear could fit in, and though it was a tight squeeze, they were glad to cuddle together. A chilly mist had risen off the river and drifted just above the ground, luminous in the darkness.

  Sleep came almost at once. Rage dreamed that she was walking through a jungle looking for Uncle Samuel. Though he must be a grown man now and she had no idea what he looked like, it didn’t seem to matter in the dream. After a bit she thought she could hear a man’s voice in the distance, calling her name, but no matter how long she walked, she never seemed to get any closer.

  Sunlight woke her, slanting through the leaves and into the hollow, insistently poking at her eyelids. Rage found herself cuddled warmly between Billy and Bear. It felt so safe and nice that she wished she could stay like that forever. Mr. Walker was asleep in Billy’s lap, snoring.

  None of them woke as she eased her way out from between them to go to the toilet. She found a place a short distance from the others and dug herself a shallow hole. It was a nasty, messy business. Covering it over, she thought it was much better in stories, where no one ever had to go to the toilet or eat or bathe. The need to wash her hands drew her to the river, and she was startled at how close it was to where they had slept. The bank was steep, but she found a flat stretch where the river had slopped over the bank to form a quiet lagoon. The river was wide and the current looked strong and swift, but the lagoon was calm and inviting.

  She stood gazing at it for a time, remembering Mr. Walker’s words about the dangers of unknown rivers. A poisonous river seemed unlikely, but where there was magic, anything might be possible, even if the magic was dying out. It would be truly awful if she found the wizard only to discover he had no magic to send them home or save Mam.

  Sitting on the bank, Rage took out the hourglass again. As before, the grains floated from one end to the other without interruption, no matter which way she held the hourglass. Even when she shook it gently—thinking about Mr. Walker saying that the fall of sand might measure something other than time—it did not seem to affect the inner motion of the sand at all. If it was sand. She held the device close and peered into it, wondering if the grains of sand were magic and what would happen if the glass broke.

  “Has Ragewinnoway guessed riddling of wizard yet?” a familiar smoky voice asked.

  Rage started violently. “I wish you wouldn’t creep up on me!” she snapped. “I’m not talking to you anymore unless you show yourself.”

  There was a faint sizzling noise, and the water in the lagoon began to boil. Rage stared warily into it as the bubbling subsided, but instead of seeing her own face peering back up at her, the water was stained red and orange and flecked with slivers of light that might have been eyes or sharp teeth.

  “What does seeing say to Ragewinnoway?” the firecat asked, and the water seemed to shimmer mockingly.

  “I can’t see you properly,” Rage complained.

  “Ragewinnoway seeing only what is to be seen.” There was the suggestion of a shrug in the voice. “But does she see what wizard is telling in tricky words?”

  “I haven’t figured his riddle out yet. But there are some things I want to ask.” Rage was determined to get some clear answers from the elusive creature.

  “Maybe answering and maybe not answering,” the firecat said contrarily.

  Rage counted to ten. “Where is the Endless Sea? Is it beyond the mountains?”

  “If firecat knows where is Endless Sea, firecat can bring hourglass to master,” it sneered.

  Rage blinked. The firecat had called the wizard its master! “How long has the wizard been missing?” she asked.

  “Long time,” the firecat said vaguely.

  Rage guessed from this that it didn’t understand how to count time. “They say here that he disappeared from his castle. Is that true?”

  The firecat made no response.

  “Did he ask you to bring the hourglass to him before he went, or did he send a message to you?”

  “Hourglass belonging to wizard. But is dangerous. Be careful. Not breaking,” the firecat warned, and for the first time there was nothing but seriousness in its tone. Perhaps it was even telling most of the truth for once.

  “What does the hourglass do?”

  There was a hesitation. “All wizard knows is in hourglass,” it answered finally in a purring voice.

  “Why didn’t the wizard take it with him?”

  “Firecat not knowing. Wizard saying obey words on hourglass and be rewarded with what you deserve.”

  Rage didn’t like the sound of that at all. It almost sounded like a threat. She had intended to ask if the wizard was good or bad, but now that she knew he was the firecat’s master, she doubted that it would answer truthfully—especially since it wanted them to deliver the hourglass. It was clear, though, that the wizard had instructed the firecat before disappearing, which meant he really must want the hourglass. But why hadn’t he simply taken it with him, or given simple instructions, instead of creating a difficult and mysterious riddle?

  “The wizard told you to bring the hourglass to him, didn’t he?” Rage guessed. “He promised to give you a reward if you would bring it to him. So why do you need me?”

  “Hurrying,” the firecat hissed, then the water began to bubble and spit, and gradually the colors faded.

  “I should have asked it if magic is really running out in Valley,” Rage muttered aloud, although the firecat seemed to have no shortage of the magic necessary for appearing and disappearing. She thought over its answers and decided it really did not know where its master was or how to find him.

  The urgency of its final, hissed word made her think of the sand in the hourglass. What did it measure? The firecat had warned her not to break it, saying it was dangerous. No doubt it had only said this to make her careful. The wizard would probably be furious at it if the hourglass was damaged. The biggest puzzle was why the wizard had asked the firecat to bring the hourglass to him at all.

  Unless the riddle was a test for the firecat itself!

  Rage bit her lip in excitement, certain she was right. It was the only explanation that made sense. It even explained the firecat’s evasive manner—by getting Rage to try to figure out the riddle, it was obviously cheating.

  Another thought occurred to her. If she was right about the quest for the hourglass being a test, maybe the sand in the hourglass represented the amount of time the firecat had been given to solve its master’s riddle.

  Rage wondered how the wizard would feel about their solving the riddle, if they managed it. Maybe he would be angry. He might turn them all into frogs or river slime. The firecat had said they would be rewarded, but it was clear the creature would say anything to get them to do what it wanted.

  A drab little bird fluttered to the ground and tilted its head to drink from the tea-colored water. Flinging off her clothes, boots, and all thoughts of the firecat and the hourglass, Rage climbed gladly into the lagoon. The water was warm from the sun or maybe from the firecat, and she was still paddling in her underclothes when Billy appeared. He ran at the lagoon with a whoop of delight and plunged in with a great splash.

  “You ought to have taken your clothes off,” Rage spluttered, laughing.

  He looked embarrassed. “I forgot.” He climbed out and peeled off his T-shirt, jeans, and jacket and jumped in again in cotton shorts. R
age studied him curiously for signs that he was really a dog, but there were none, other than his hairy toes. His skin was creamy pale, and his shoulders were broad and muscular. There were little patches of toffee hair under his arms and a fuzz of hair down his legs, but grown men had those. In human years, Billy appeared to be about sixteen, but as he looked over the small sandbar that separated the lagoon from the river, his expression of longing seemed very young to Rage.

  “It’s dangerous,” she said firmly, remembering how he had always been attracted to water as a dog. He sighed and came away from the edge. As they paddled, she told him about the firecat’s appearance. He agreed that it was very likely that the riddle on the base of the hourglass was a test that had been set for it.

  “But it doesn’t make any difference to us if it is,” Billy said. “We still have to solve it if we are to find the wizard, get home, and help your mam.”

  “The wizard might be mad that we solved the riddle,” Rage pointed out.

  Billy frowned. “I’m more worried about the keepers than the wizard, to tell you the truth. That centaur said we ought not to draw any attention to ourselves in Fork, but if we tell them how we came to be in Valley, it’s sure to cause a fuss.”

  “I know,” Rage agreed.

  “I wonder if the wizard setting a test for the firecat could have anything to do with his disappearance,” Billy murmured, now floating and staring at his hairy toes. “Maybe he made the riddle and went to the shore of the Endless Sea to wait for the firecat to solve it, and he’s still there waiting because the firecat can’t figure it out.”

  “Why would he wait so long? He’d use his magic to come back and see what had gone wrong,” Rage said.

  “What if he couldn’t?” Billy countered, turning onto his stomach. “What if, instead of the hourglass containing a record of all he knew, it actually held all of his power!” His brown eyes glimmered with excitement.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Rage objected. “Why would the wizard risk his power to set a test for the firecat? Besides, like you said, maybe the firecat was lying about the hourglass. That riddle on it doesn’t say anything about the wizard, after all.”

  “Then what on earth does the firecat want of us?” Billy dog-paddled neatly around the lagoon, looking glum. Coming back to Rage, he said, “That centaur said the keepers kept annoying the wizard for advice—advice about what?”

  “Maybe about everything. I suppose it was because of him making Valley. He must have been like the king here,” Rage said.

  “Only he didn’t like being the king, so he became a hermit and then he vanished.”

  “I wonder why he made Valley in the first place if he didn’t want to live here,” Rage pondered.

  “I’ve just thought of something!” Billy pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What if he put the magic in Valley when he created it, and it’s dying out because he has disappeared?”

  They were distracted from this interesting idea by the arrival of Elle and Mr. Walker. Rage climbed out of the water because her underclothes needed time to dry out. Fortunately, the sun was shining brightly and the air was pleasantly warm.

  Elle and Billy romped and splashed in the pool. Mr. Walker drank daintily and washed his hands and face but otherwise avoided the water with a shudder. Rage spread out her coat and laid out a breakfast of slightly squashed berries, bread, and cheese. Bear was nowhere to be seen, but Mr. Walker said he could smell her nearby.

  After they ate, Rage dressed, checking to be sure the hourglass and Mam’s locket were still safe. She went through the ideas that she and Billy had discussed, but there was no way of knowing which were right. Talking had got them no closer to unraveling the riddle of the wizard’s whereabouts, and in the end that was really all that mattered.

  The others were having a last romp on the bank when Bear came out of the bushes. Rage offered her food, but the old dog shook her head and sat down to lick at her paw.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” Rage asked.

  Bear regarded her through tiny black eyes. “A thorn from the bramble gate got into me.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Rage asked, undoing a pin she kept in the hem of her coat and taking the huge paw firmly in her hand.

  “A dog’s pain is a dog’s pain. Dogs don’t complain,” Bear said with melancholic poetry as Rage probed the swollen flesh.

  When she found the shiny black top of a thorn driven deep into the pad, she looked at Bear with concern. “I am afraid I will have to hurt you to get it out.”

  “It is in the nature of humans to hurt,” Bear said, staring bleakly into her eyes.

  Rage swallowed and stuck the pin into the paw, forcing it under the thorn and levering it out. The breath hissed through Bear’s lips, but she did not growl or groan.

  Rage drew out the long, sharp thorn with dismay.

  The road wound along companionably with the river, sometimes going right along the edge of the bank, other times turning away to avoid a thick clump of trees. Late in the morning, they came upon a group of little stone houses between the road and the water, but they had clearly been abandoned long ago.

  “We could stay a night here,” Mr. Walker said. Rage could see he was attracted to the smallness of the houses.

  “We don’t want to stop again so soon,” Elle said firmly, striding ahead.

  “Probably those little houses are so old they would fall on our heads and squash us flat,” Goaty said.

  Rage glared at him, wondering if this was what came of being around Mr. Johnson, who always saw the worst side of things first. Mam used to say that you could show Mr. Johnson a pretty wisp of cloud and he would see the end of the world.

  “Like Grandfather?” Rage had asked.

  “Like Grandfather.” Mam’s eyes had grown sad.

  Rage remembered that this conversation had happened on a train. Mam loved trains. “They’re so much gentler than cars. They don’t roar through cities; they wind politely around them. They stop to let people in and out. People exchange newspapers or talk or just sit together. People sleep in trains and walk in them. They drink cups of tea and eat scones in them. Trains are for sharing.”

  “I like trains,” Rage had said earnestly.

  Mam laughed. “Imagine a city where all of those roads were turned into green paths. People could stroll and eat their lunches. Imagine looking out of a high building and seeing paths with big trees growing along them, fruit trees with masses of blossoms and huge cedars. There’d be no car noise, no pollution from the engines. People could lie under trees or watch buskers or just read. You wouldn’t feel like you were in the city at all.”

  Mam had been like that. She would have an idea about something, and suddenly it would turn into a much bigger idea. Everything would be sucked into her idea and turned into something better. After they came to Winnoway, they had taken few train trips. There were no more talks or sing-alongs, no more stories or laughing tumbles together. Mam had become silent and distracted. She went on long walks alone, or she sat for hours gazing out the window. Sometimes she had smiled at Rage without really seeming to see her.

  Rage shivered, remembering what Mrs. Johnson had said about Grandmother Reny growing more and more silent until she had just faded away, and the cold seemed to go inside her bones.

  She tried to think about something she and Mam had done together after they shifted to Winnoway, something that they had really enjoyed, but she could think of nothing except those wonderful train journeys before they had come to Winnoway. Rage was startled to discover that Winnoway Farm, and even her own bedroom with its lilac wallpaper, was hard to picture. The farm seemed as if it belonged in someone else’s world, in a story.

  Did people in stories feel themselves to be real? How would she know if somebody had made her up? Then she wondered if maybe all that had happened was a story she was telling herself.

  Thinking like this made her feel dizzy, as if she were turning round and round on the spot. She grinned, remembering h
ow she had done that while holding Billy when he was a puppy. He had sprawled and lurched and sat down hard when she put him on the ground.

  She looked at Billy and found him watching her.

  “You were smiling,” he said.

  “I was remembering how dizzy you were after I swung you round and round when you were a puppy.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I thought the ground was jumping under me. I felt so sick in the stomach.”

  It occurred to Rage that what she had done was cruel.

  Seeing the look on her face, Billy said, “It was no worse than when a puppy bites his brother or sister too hard on the ear.”

  “You weren’t angry at me?”

  “I love you,” Billy said simply.

  Rage opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him, too, but Elle interrupted to warn them that she could smell someone coming along the road behind them. They hurriedly decided that Billy would stay on the road with Rage while the rest of them got out of sight behind some bushes a little back from the road.

  Before long, a gray donkey appeared. It was harnessed to a small open carriage bearing several very little girls in spotless white tunics and stockings and three women in long, colorful tubelike dresses. The women carried elaborately painted parasols to shade them from the sun. At first Rage thought the women were all deathly pale, but when they came closer, she could see that their faces were painted white, like those of Japanese ceremonial dancers. Their dresses even looked a bit like kimonos. The children had been laughing and chattering gaily, but they fell silent when they noticed Rage and Billy.

  “Wild things!” piped one.

  “Stop,” shouted another, and the donkey obeyed. “Ahoy there. Are you wild things?”

  “I’m just a girl like you,” Rage said.

  “You are almost a woman, yet you are like us, for you wear no bands,” the girl chirped, lifting both of her bare arms up for Rage’s inspection.

  “Why don’t you come in the cart with us?” one of the other girls invited.

  “Impossible!” the eldest of the women said sternly. She waved an arm in an imperious gesture, and Rage noticed that she was wearing heavy metal bracelets like the ones worn by the baker’s sister, Rue. Being banded must mean having to wear such bracelets, which seemed to mark the wearers as loyal keeper subjects.