“And when you find it?” Mum asked.
Ed Wharton smiled and shrugged.
“What do tourists do? We experience it. We witness it. We remember it. And then we bore people to tears telling them crazy stories about it that they never believe. So, on the morning of the twenty-first, all I will do is stand back and watch and enjoy. Then I’ll shake your hands and pay my bill and be on my way. And—who knows?—you might even have me back next year!”
“And that would be fine,” Dad said, “but I’d like to know how you got here and why you brought a bog beast with you.”
“And two old women!” Liz put in.
“And two old women,” Dad agreed.
Ed Wharton tapped his fingers nervously on the table.
“It was a story I heard, you see, from an old Irish laborer I met at a bus stop in south London. He’d emigrated when he was twelve and worked on the building sites his whole life. Never went home. What money he didn’t send to his family, he drank away. He told me his granny used to say that there were three old women, sisters, who guarded a black pool up in the mountains in Ireland, living in the shell of a giant snail. They stirred the pool with their sticks and sang songs. The stirring was to keep the thing in the pool awake; the singing was to keep it calm. If the thing ever slept, the whole world would go out. If the singing stopped, the thing would get mad and climb out of the pool and knock the land into the sea.
“When I was back in Ireland I tracked the sisters down. I discovered their giant snail shell, turned to rock long ago, deep in a bare mountain hollow—but there were only two of them, along with their pet bog beast, who chased me round the mountain a few times before picking me up in its mouth and carrying me back to the shell. They said that one day their sister had stopped her singing and her stirring and told them she was going outside to have a look at the sun. They begged her not to, but out she went and she never came back.
“By the time I found them, their sister had been gone a long time. At first they’d been worried about her. They missed her terribly. Then they got mad at her for abandoning them and leaving them to stir and sing alone. They told me all this themselves, taking turns to sing while the other one talked, though they were constantly interrupting each other. So I fixed up their shell a little, mended a few holes, put in a bit of dry lining and insulation, laid down a proper floor, and put in a few scraps of furniture and a stove. I brought them some pasta and, er, chorizo and canned goods and stuff.
“They’d taken their miserable existence for granted until I introduced them to a few home comforts. Now their shell is waterproof, insulated, has a water boiler and electricity, and they get regular deliveries from the local supermarket.
“On my last visit they’d decided they’d had enough. Their sister was out and about having a great time, leaving them to look after the black pool and they were sick of it. They decided to go look for her. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but they said if they didn’t do it now they’d never be able to do it. I don’t really know what they meant by that but, anyway, we plugged in a CD player and put a disc of last year’s Top Ten hits on repeat, and they put a spell on some sticks so they’d stir the pool by themselves, and then they got into my truck—it took ages to get the bog beast in—and off we drove.
“They told me where to find you, and all about the Weathermen, and they said that while they were finding their sister I could relax for a few days and see the Autumn arrive, and then we’d all head back. So, you see, it’s all quite simple really!”
When he finished, we sat in silence. Full night had fallen. A million billion stars had come out. None of them cared about us or what we said or did, but still it made me feel better to see them all up there, twinkling seriously, as only stars can.
“What about the man?” Owen said.
“The man?” asked Ed Wharton.
“The laborer who told you the story. What happened to him?”
Ed Wharton said nothing for a moment. He turned his head very slightly so he was looking down at the grass and not at us.
“He, uh. He was dead, I’m afraid. He’d frozen to death at that bus stop one night years before. After we talked, I put his ghost in a bottle and I brought him back to Ireland and buried him next to his granny. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to lie down and rest under the mountains where he was raised.”
Owen nodded thoughtfully, then looked up at Mum and Dad.
“The Tourist is OK,” he said. “Let him stay.”
Mum and Dad looked at each other.
“OK,” Mum said.
“OK,” Dad said.
I was staring at Ed Wharton, thinking about what he’d told us. Everything was swirling around in my head, and even though it was crazy, when the thought surfaced I just said it out loud.
“Is Mrs. Fitzgerald their sister?”
Ed stared thoughtfully back at me. “How old is she?” he asked.
“She looks as if she’s in her late twenties,” Mum said.
“She’s looked like that since I was Neil’s age, when I first saw her,” Dad added.
Ed Wharton lifted his head to look at the stars, moving his lips silently, as if counting them all.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “It’s possible.”
Mum and Dad looked at each other for a very long time. Finally Mum gave a nod.
“If her sisters want her to go home with them, maybe we should help them out. If she’s stirring and singing to a black pool in a giant snail shell, she can’t very well be bothering us, can she?”
“Mum,” said Liz, “I don’t think they’re very nice.”
“We don’t want nice,” Mum said. “Nice is the opposite of what we need.”
“Yeah,” Dad said heavily. He sighed, and, for some reason, looked over at me.
“We need the club, if it still exists,” he said, and paused. “And we need the Shieldsmen, too.”
“Dad—” I began, but Liz had jumped to her feet and was doing one of her dances.
“Yes, yes, yes! The Shieldsmen! We need the Shieldsmen, yes, we need the Shieldsmen!”
“First priority is the Autumn,” Dad said. “Then … well, then…”
His shoulders slumped, and he looked tired and depressed and worried, and so did Mum.
“Mr. Wharton,” she said. “I’ll understand if you want to leave—with a full refund, of course…”
“No, no, no,” said Mr. Wharton heartily, shaking his head. “Not at all. Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“… but perhaps we could ask a favor of you.”
“My dear lady, anything, anything at all.”
“Would you take my husband to Dublin tomorrow? After the ceremony, when the Autumn is safely here.”
“To Dublin?”
“To the Weathermen’s Club.”
Mr. Wharton pursed his lips.
“And, uh, would I be allowed to enter the club itself? As an escort? A bodyguard? A guest?”
Mum shrugged and looked at Dad.
“Mm? Oh, yes, I’m sure. I’m sure, yes…” he trailed off. Mr. Wharton beamed.
“It would be my pleasure, then! My absolute pleasure!” He clapped his hands with delight.
“Can I go? Can I go?” Liz danced and whirled in front of Dad, and he held up his hands and waved her quiet.
“We’ll see, we’ll see!”
“What about tonight?” I asked. “What about tomorrow? What about the Autumn?”
Dad looked grim.
“We’re on our own. That’ll have to do for now.”
That was not a very cheerful thought to go to bed on, but go to bed on it we did. We put the creaking plastic furniture away, decided to leave any washing up till tomorrow, hugged and kissed and told each other everything would be fine, and went to our rooms. I crawled under the covers and started to dream …
Something was stalking me through the house. I stumbled over furniture and fell down stairs as though everything familiar had been altered and rearranged. The whole hous
e felt strange and foreign and something that hissed and growled was sometimes before me, sometimes behind me, sometimes above me and sometimes right outside. I tried to close my eyes. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to see it.
When I woke, blue had just started to creep into the eastern sky.
I went down for a drink of water and found Ed Wharton sitting at the kitchen table eating toast. Low music came from the radio, something jazzy and slow. Mr. Wharton reached over and turned it off.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he said. “Toast?”
“Bad dream,” I told him, filling a glass from the tap. “No, thanks.”
I sat down at the table in front of him, sipping water while he crunched his crusts. I was sore and tired and thirsty and wished I was asleep.
“It’ll be OK, Neil,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Is it? My mistake. You’re doomed, then. That better?”
“It’s honest, at least.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s giving up to think like that. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That’s the golden rule.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It’s one of them. Or it should be. It’s one of mine, anyway. Along with keep the diesel topped up, and walk your dragon at least once a day or he’ll burn down your whole rig, truck, trailer and all.”
“You have a dragon?”
“What? Me? No. No one has a dragon, Neil, and anyone who thinks they do is just a dragon’s dinner waiting to happen.”
“But you said—”
“Well, it’s more that I gave a dragon a lift one time. Picked him up in Scotland. He’d hatched from an egg in someone’s kitchen, just an ordinary egg they’d bought with five others from the supermarket, and the children wanted to keep it and the parents wanted to flush it down the toilet. I offered to take it off their hands before something unpleasant happened. Drove it all the way to China. Have you ever tried to drive a truck into China unseen? With a dragon on board? Can’t exactly declare it at customs, can you? By the time I got there it was nearly bigger than the truck and eating three or four sheep every night. It was like having a hungry jet fighter in the back. It took off into the mountains without even a backward glance. Still, all for the best.”
I laughed.
“That didn’t really happen, did it?”
“I can show you the claw marks and the scorching in the trailer, if you like.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at me curiously. “Why wouldn’t you believe me? You’ve lived with the Seasons passing through your phone box four times a year for your whole life.”
I shifted in my seat.
“Well, yeah, but that’s different.”
He smiled.
“You’re used to it, aren’t you? It doesn’t seem like magic because something that’s been part of your whole life can’t really be magic; it’s just the way things are. I’ve met lots of magicians: witches, wizards, druids, sorcerers, conjurers. Most of them live quiet, dull, normal lives, forgetting that the magic they have is, well, magic. To them it’s normal. To me it’s…”
“Stupendous,” I said, smiling.
“Exactly.” He breathed. “I once wished to have magic, so I went looking for it. And I found it. I found it in all sorts of places. Wherever I found it, I found wonder and excitement and strangeness. But to the people who had the magic, or who watched over it, it was just … normal. ‘OK,’ they’d say with a shrug. ‘Have a look. Give it a go. Touch it if you dare.’ They couldn’t see why I was so interested. They didn’t understand what I got out of it. So, in the end, I prefer to be the Tourist. The Tourist finds the magic in the things everyone else has forgot about or thinks are normal. The Tourist finds things amazing and exciting, and maybe he can remind people how amazing and exciting and magic things can be. I don’t want to be a magician anymore, Neil. I find magic everywhere I go.”
I didn’t speak for a while, and we sat there in silence together.
“Looking forward to tomorrow?” Ed asked after a while.
“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “Hey, you mean today! It’ll be dawn soon! Everyone’s going to be up and—Ow!”
I put my hands to my ears. My eardrums felt as though they had been stabbed through with white-hot needles. Ed’s face was twisted with pain.
“It’s the pressure!” His voice sounded far, far away, many miles underground. “Like in a plane! Air pressure!”
I doubled over, whimpering. Ed was holding his nose and inflating his cheeks.
Then every window in the house exploded.
CHAPTER 8
LIZ
Everything crashed and broke like a great glasshouse falling apart, with me inside lying on the ground and all the broken glass falling down on me, shiny and sharp and cutting. I woke up with a scream stuck in my throat.
“Hello, Liz,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.
I sat up too fast, making myself gasp for breath, and then I froze. The last thing I could remember was leaning on Dad while climbing the stairs to bed. Now something was howling somewhere nearby. My room was dim and gray and full of moving shadows. The curtains lifted as a breeze blew in through the broken window. There was glass all over the floor. It was almost dawn. Over the howling, I could hear music playing from the alarm clock radio in Mum and Dad’s room. We should be getting up and going downstairs and waiting for the phone to ring.
She was sitting on the end of my bed, and she was smiling and her teeth were sharp and her eyes were green and glowing.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak.
“Good morning, Liz.”
Just like that. “Good morning, Liz,” she said, uninvited, unwelcome, with monsters screaming and glass broken all around us.
“I wanted to have a quiet word with you before the sun came up. Things are going to get a little unpleasant, Liz. I want you to know that when this is over, I will forgive you for being my enemy. You can come to me whenever you’re ready, and I will teach you everything I know. You can come with me now, and save your family a great deal of pain. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She was smiling. I’d never seen her smile at anyone else. That made me even more scared. Now she was sitting in the dark at the end of my bed, waiting patiently for me to answer. She’d forgive me? What had I ever done to her? If anyone should be asking for forgiveness it should be her, and it’d be a cold day in hell before she’d get it from me.
Teach me? To be like her? Who could possibly want to be like her?
Way down deep in my soul, in a place where I looked at her and saw someone tall and scary and beautiful, and then looked at myself and saw someone small and weak and silly, a tiny little voice whispered. Me, it said. I’d like to be like her.
“Well, Liz?” she demanded.
I could hear a howling and a knocking, things falling and breaking, shouting and crying, like a war going on downstairs. I threw back the covers and leaped from the bed. She put her hand out, palm forward. Her fingers were long and elegant and graceful. There was a twist of annoyance to her smile. I stopped.
“That’s Hugh,” she said. “Dear sweet Hugh can’t help himself. But this is between you and me, Liz. Let the boys have their fun.”
I looked at the door, in agony. I could hear the sounds of a high wind blowing, things breaking and smashing, Neil’s voice yelling, Mum and Dad and Owen rushing out of their rooms and running for the stairs. I wanted to be with them.
“Stay a moment,” she said, and gestured at the bed. I slowly sat down on the edge of the mattress, ready to run for the door, knowing I wouldn’t dare. She moved, her dress whispering, her skin glowing, and she was beside me, her hand on mine.
“Poor Liz,” she said. “They don’t know who you are, do they? The little girl? The mad one, the awkward one, always making trouble, an embarrassment and a shame. They only let you do what you want because it’s too much trouble to make you stop.”
I tried to pull my hand away. I couldn’t move. The
cacophony below was getting louder, more frantic and violent. If anyone got hurt …
I made to stand up. Her hand gripped my wrist. She rose and brought me with her. Somehow my bare feet passed over the glass on the floor without touching any. Her smile was still gentle, understanding. We swept toward the bedroom window. It gaped like a mouth full of broken teeth. She stooped and swept through and dragged me along behind.
We fell, we flew, sweeping down to land on the lawn in front of the house. Her hand was still around my wrist. My legs shook and my breath came in gasps. Inside the house the sound of the high wind and things breaking and people yelling came through the broken windows. Everything was dark and swirling and confused.
“You could do that,” she said. “You could do this, and you could do that. But not with them. With me. I would like a hostage, Liz. I would like an apprentice. I would like a daughter.”
The sky was bright. I could see the Weatherbox over the wall at the end of the front lawn. TELEFÓN. It was light enough to read and getting lighter by the minute.
Numbly, my ears ringing, a cold sweat making my body shiver, I shook my head. No, no, no, no, please, no.
But part of me, the part that was jealous because I could never become Weatherman, the part that looked at Mrs. Fitzgerald and saw someone strong and powerful and independent, the part that knew that even though we thought she was terrible, she must surely be the hero of her own story, that part, deep down, said yes.
CHAPTER 9
The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Page 5
