The big ol’ sun does most of the work, heating things up and letting things cool, while elementals run around, doing their thing—mixing it up, making the weather, being the weather.
The winds that roar through our upper atmosphere you would not believe. Powering through the stratosphere, around the poles and across the tropics. Those winds used to be everywhere. Some could freeze you solid. Some could roast you in a flash. Some were full of dust that could strip you to the bone, and some were full of rain so hard and heavy that it could flatten you to a strip. Mostly you stayed in your cave and you didn’t go out much. If you were lucky, the weather wouldn’t scour everything edible off the face of the Earth while you were in there.
We were all going to die. All of us. Everything. There would have been a planet of nothing but rock and dust and water for the elementals to play with till the sun went nova.
Whoever the first Weatherman was, he (or she, Liz would say here) somehow saw the elementals and reached out to them and touched them and tried to talk to them—even though elementals don’t talk, any more than the microbes in your bodies talk. But somehow that Weatherman pushed them together, made them cooperate—more and more of them clumping together, working together, until finally they became complex creatures that could take control. And the Weatherman could speak to it—and it could listen.
That first lonely, lost, amazing genius of a Weatherman saved us all. We owe that person everything. We have no idea who he was.
There were four of these creatures. We call them Seasons. Don’t try to understand them. They’re too big and powerful and alien, and they don’t care about us. Except for one thing. Without that first Weatherman, they would not exist, and so they kind of owe us, and they pay us back every day by NOT sweeping us into the air and sending us flying around the top of the world for all eternity.
The Weathermen at the four corners of the world regulate the Seasons, ushering them through the Doorways, allowing the Seasons to change at the right times around the world, ensuring the weather doesn’t spiral out of control and destroy us all. The Seasons don’t just pass through the Doorways, they pass through the Weathermen, becoming part of them. Weathermen have the special and terrible power of last resort to bring a Season back into them and become that Season in all its might. It’s supposed to be a safeguard in case a Season goes crazy and forgets the agreement, or against a truly planet-threatening threat. To use that power is a crime, no matter how justified, and the person who uses it can no longer be Weatherman and will probably be dead. The last time it happened the four Seasons came from the four quarters of the world to judge the Weatherman, and they were so disgusted and enraged they exiled him from the Earth. I think his body is still up there, in orbit somewhere between here and the moon.
The Seasons don’t like it when anyone interferes with the weather at all, which is why the Weathermen almost never do, even though they can. Except when things get weird. It’s Weatherman’s work to wrestle Weird Weather, and though I was not the weather wrestler I was the weather wrestler’s son and I’d have to wrestle weather until the weather wrestling’s done.
The skies were crowded, so I felt my way into the crowd. I rose up through the top of my head, seeing my body standing next to Dad on the path below. I floated away from the house, out over the trees and the hill to Loch Farny and the farm beside it. Low over the lake, practically on top of it, I saw a heavy black cloud—the sort that’s only supposed to form under certain conditions at certain times of the year. Not here and not now. I could hear Dad’s voice beside me, guiding me. I could see down, down, down into the microscopic world where elementals were swarming and rushing. Wherever they went the wind blew, snow formed, clouds billowed, air froze. All those tiny things were joining together, building and swirling, working to make a cloud full of snow. I reached out to them. Dad showed me how. I touched them and changed them, I turned them and broke them up and sent them away.
Back you go to where you should be, I told them.
The cloud broke and the elementals scattered and the temperature rose. Something under the lake wailed and groaned, so faint and far away I might have dreamed it, but this wasn’t dreaming.
“Dad,” I said, sick and horrified for reasons I didn’t understand. “Dad, there’s something under the lake.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “Come back now.”
There was a rush and a sound like the flapping of wings, and I was back in my own body again.
“Dad,” I began.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Wow!” said a voice from behind us, and we whirled around to see Ed Wharton grinning at us from the open door. “Heightened sensory perception, extraphysical projection of consciousness, and fine-particle manipulation. I knew it!”
“Now, look here, Mr. Wharton,” Dad said.
“Call me Ed!” he boomed. “So which one of you is the Weatherman?”
CHAPTER 4
LIZ
I leaped the ditch and ran along the tree trunk that had fallen across the wire fence years before. The trees swallowed me up, and I was safe and hidden. The woods are about a half a mile wide and a mile and a half long. There’s a wide path for walkers that runs down the middle, but we mostly stayed off that and roamed and quested and fought through the twisty small paths and tracks, the hidden hollows full of ivy and ferns and the broken mossy walls.
Behind me the Tourist was bent over trying to gather up his stuff, and I heard the door open and the others come out. I knew I’d get into trouble for not staying to help him, but I was mad at him for sneaking up on me and mad at myself for being snuck up on. Nobody should be able to sneak up and startle a Shieldsman like that.
Neil and me, we used to play in the woods a lot. I’d be a Shieldsman and fight battles and defeat enemy armies and ninjas and monsters. He’d be the Weatherman and cast spells and fight witches and wizards and warlocks. We didn’t play much anymore. Sometimes Owen would come into the woods with me but he was too little and annoying to be any good at those games.
Neil didn’t think being the Weatherman was a game anymore. Well, neither was being a Shieldsman. He had his job to do. I had mine. All the Shieldsmen had vanished hundreds of years ago and the Weathermen’s Club was nearly gone—the members blaming Dad for it, too, telling lies and things. So to heck with them. It was up to me and Neil now.
I was just crossing the big path when I heard footsteps coming down the hill.
The woods ran from the road to the big path, then up from the big path to the crown of the hill, and on the crown of the hill was a tall old wall. On the other side of the wall was enemy territory where we could not go. That was where the Fitzgeralds lived, on the shore of Loch Farny, in the house they stole from my grandfather. When you heard someone coming down from there it usually meant Hugh Fitzgerald was riding forth to do evil. It was not a good idea to meet Hugh Fitzgerald.
Good old horrible old Hugh. One year older than Neil. Three years older than me. Tall, tall, tall—not to mention slim and golden-haired, with a face like an angel in an old painting, and every time he met us he beat us up. We didn’t let him! We’d fight back or run away and, if it was Neil and me together, we’d sometimes very nearly almost kind of sort of win. Mostly it was just hitting and slapping and pulling hair, pushing us down, rolling us around on the ground with his foot while he laughed and said mean things. I’d gotten really good at hearing him coming and hiding and following without him knowing it.
I ducked off the path and behind a thick clump of nettles. I watched his back as it moved out of the shade into a patch of light and back into shade again. That was him—Hideous Hugh, light-dark, light-dark, all tangled in his own shadows. He had his mum’s face and his dad’s hair. He was lucky it wasn’t the other way around, Neil always said, or they’d keep him in a kennel and teach him to round up sheep.
I drew myself in and went still, and cold shivers ran over me and through me. I’d been startl
ed by the Tourist, and he’d made me jump and breathe fast. I was wary of Hugh because, while I’d fight him if I had to, I didn’t want to. I preferred to practice my stalking on him instead.
But now I felt scared, really scared, because I’d suddenly realized something was stalking me.
I heard voices, high and cracked and old, like trees creaking before they fall. I squatted down even farther behind my clump of nettles and tried to stop myself from shaking while Hugh stepped out onto the main path. Two toothless, bent old women, with bony faces and sharp chins, wearing dirty, raggedy dresses came up the big path, leaning on sticks but moving surprisingly fast. They called Hugh over to them.
Don’t go, I thought. It seemed stupid. Why was I scared of two old women in the woods? So scared I was even worried for flipping Hugh?
The women were complete strangers to me. I had no idea who they were or where they’d come from. Sometimes buses brought groups of pensioners out here for walks along the big path, but these two looked older than anyone I’d ever seen on the path before. Their clothes and their hair and their skin were so dirty and worn and ragged they might have come out of ancient times, when old women lived wild in the woods and everyone kept clear of them because they said they were mad or witches or hags or mad-old-witch-hags, which is an absolutely disgraceful and horrible way to treat old women.
Except maybe not these old women.
“Have you seen our cat?” one of them asked Hugh.
Hugh stopped and stared at them. I could tell by his face he was more disgusted than scared. Idiot, Hugh! Run while you can!
“No,” he said, and he stuck his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders and walked past them. One of them did something with her stick, and Hugh’s foot flew up into the air like a high kick in a dance. He fell flat on his back with a cry and a groan. The old women whirled around him like savage birds.
“He tripped!” one said.
“He is clumsy,” the other one added.
“Tripped over his own feet, the craytur.”
“He has a nice singing voice.”
“Sing us a song, little boy.”
“About our cat.”
“We’re looking for our cat.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Naughty cat.”
“Sing again and he might come running.”
They were standing over Hugh, one on either side. He was sitting up now, leaning on his elbow and trying to rub his back with his hand, his expression all puzzled and mad.
“Go away, you crazy old—”
One of the women, her crooked stick in her crooked hand, poked him in the stomach.
“Aaagh!” Hugh cried.
“That’s it, sing!”
They were both poking him now. He was flat on his back, trying to fend them off. They must have been stronger than they looked. I should have been enjoying it, I suppose. I’d never seen anyone torment Hugh like that before, and God knows he deserved it, but something about the old women was so wrong and out of place I felt as if I were almost on Hugh’s side, and I just wanted him to get away from them.
Please don’t see me, I thought. Please don’t see me.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” called one of the women.
Poke, poke, poke.
“Aaghaaghagh!” squawked Hugh.
“Louder! He can’t hear you!”
At last Hugh rolled himself out of poking range. He groaned and clutched his stomach.
“Golden boy! Golden giant! Did you eat our cat?” demanded one of the women. “Will I poke you some more to see if he flies out of your mouth?”
She waved her stick at him with her left hand. The other one waved a stick with her right hand. They made for Hugh, sticks ready to poke. Then one of them stopped and pointed with her stick.
“I see him!” she screeched. “Over there!”
“Get him!”
“Bad cat!”
“Do you want the golden boy to eat you? Is that it?”
“He’ll eat you! He’ll eat you all up!”
Waving their sticks and screeching, the old women hobbled across the track, straight for my nettle patch. They stopped in front of it, and through the leaves I saw their scabby knuckles gripping their sticks and their hairy chins and their squinting eyes and knotted hair. I was taking tiny little breaths and my heart was beating like a rock that’s hurrying down a mountain because it’s late for an avalanche.
“That’s not the cat! That’s a dandelion!” one of them cried suddenly.
“Bad dandelion! Pretending to be our cat!”
And they whacked furiously at the dandelion, missing it completely and flattening a small bunch of ox-eye daisies.
Then suddenly they pushed their way through the nettles. I put my arms around my head, but they ignored me completely, brushing past me and knocking me over. I scrambled away from them and stumbled down onto the path. I slipped and went down on one knee. The old women were gone, their voices fading into the trees. I looked around and saw Hugh standing upright, face flushed, glowering furiously at me.
“Wow,” I said. “Who were—”
“There you are,” he interrupted. “I was looking for you.”
“You were?” I got ready to run. I’d just watched Hugh get beaten up by two little old ladies. There was no way I was going to let him take it out on me.
“Well,” he said. “Your brother, really, but you’ll do. Tell him—”
“I’m not your messenger!”
“Shut up! It’s important!”
“Important? A message to Neil from you, important? What is it? ‘Next time I see ya, I’ll fight ya’? That sort of thing?”
“No! God, why do you have to be so difficult? Just tell him to come to the lake, right? He’s to come to the lake. There’s something there for him.”
“What, a beating?”
“No! Come on! This isn’t me, this is Mum, right?”
“Your … your mum?”
“Yeah, so, you know, it’s important.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Why would Mrs. Fitzgerald want Neil to go to the lake? I was kind of surprised she even knew Neil existed.
“Fair enough,” I said. “If it’s important to you and your mum, then you can be absolutely sure and certain that there’s no way in hell he’ll ever come.”
“He has to! We’ve been trying to get your old man to come all Summer, but he won’t. Mum says Neil will do instead, and I’m supposed to—”
He stopped. The two old women must have shaken him up even more than I’d thought. Hugh was obviously supposed to get Neil up to Loch Farny, either by using some clever plan or by just twisting his arm behind his back and forcing him. Instead he’d blurted the whole thing out to me, and I saw him clench his teeth as he realized what he’d done.
“Dad?” I said. “Why do you want Dad?”
“Never mind,” he said through gritted teeth. “Try this. You tell Neil I’ll be waiting for him at the lake if he wants to get back at me.”
“Back at you for what?”
And for the second time that day, someone took me completely by surprise. Hugh lunged at me, hands outstretched, and gave me an almighty shove that lifted me right off my feet and threw me off the road and into the dry, stony ditch. I landed on my back, and my legs went flying over my head, rolling me onto my front so that I was lying facedown, mouth full of dust and sharp pebbles, half in the ditch and half in a patch of nettles and briars. The breath had been knocked so far out of me it was probably a gentle sea breeze on a distant beach. I waited for it to come back, and, when it did, a whole lot of hurting came with it.
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ow!”
There were nettle stings and briar scrapes all along my legs, bruises and cuts on my back, more on my front and my arms and hands. I was covered in yellow dust, my head was ringing and my eyes watered. I hobbled out of the ditch, climbing the side with tiny, stiff steps. With every step I vowed an unholy vengeance on Hugh, who must have slithered
off home like the snake he was while I was having all that fun getting to know the bottom of the ditch.
“What happened to you?” Owen asked. He was standing on the big path, holding my bow and arrows, which I had dropped.
“Hugh,” I spat, wiping my eyes clear. “Flipping Hugh Fitzflippinggerald happened to me. What the heck are you doing here?”
He held out the bow and arrows.
“You have to help,” he said. “He’s trapped and you have to get him out.”
“Who?” I asked, waving the bow and arrows away. I could barely put up with the breeze blowing on me, I didn’t want them knocking against my scrapes and bruises, too. “Who’s trapped? Where?”
“I’m not sure. At the smoky barn.”
“Owen,” I said. “I need … I need to go … I can’t…”
“Please,” he said.
“Oh, for flip’s sake, Owen.”
We went slowly and carefully—me limping and groaning and grabbing clumps of dock leaves to rub on my nettle stings. There’s a big wide boggy clearing called the Ditches next to the road, just up from our house. We crossed over the mud and the reeds and the goat willow and climbed onto the road. I nearly turned and headed for home. I wanted a cool shower and a soft bed, and maybe Mum to put cream on my cuts and bruises, and Dad to make me hot chocolate, and both of them to tell me I was an idiot but smiling while they did it.
“Come on!” said Owen. I thought of all the times Owen had tagged along and driven me crazy by going slow and dawdling and wandering off to look at a flower or a stick, and now it was his turn to get mad at me. “You have to hurry!”
“Go boil your head, Owen,” I said, but I turned away from home and followed him down to the smoky barn.
The smoky barn was on the right, set just off the road with a big, overgrown clearing in front of it. It had burnt down years before when some boys had snuck in there to smoke cigarettes and ended up setting the whole thing on fire. It had never been rebuilt or repaired—it was just a big mess of bent and burnt and rusted metal, all covered in weeds growing through blackened piles of hay, and nobody ever went there, not even to smoke cigarettes. Now I could see that there was a great big truck and a big long trailer parked beside it, and banging on the side of the trailer with their sticks and screeching at the tops of their voices were the two old women who had tripped Hugh in the woods.
The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Page 2
