“She doesn’t want to go back,” I said. “She doesn’t want to go back to the mountain—and they can’t make her go back if she’s the Weatherman, can they?”
“She came down from the mountain, married John-Joe, and persuaded him to steal the farm so she could be Weatherman,” Mum said thoughtfully. “And when that didn’t work she waited and waited and now she’s ready.”
“Because now she’s got the Gray Thing!” I said. “They weren’t able to do weather magic until they got the Gray Thing, and it must have taken them ages to work out how to get it free. But if she’s all magical and powerful, why would she need weather magic?”
“Your dad won’t go without a fight,” Mum said. “She must know that. He’s one of the four most powerful men in the world. It’s just that he’s not allowed to use that power much. But he will—to stop her—and even she might not be strong enough to fight him. The problem is, even if he wins, he loses…”
The sun burned through the yellow sky like a torch shining through a dirty sheet. The heat was massive, like dust burned in an oven and poured over everything. Every now and then one of the birds would drop from the wires or the roof or the trees and lie dead on the ground.
Mum went to check on Dad, and I sat on the grass and thought about things. I’d already known some of the story Mum had told me. She rarely talked about her mum and her dad. In fact, she almost never talked about when she was a kid—except when she was talking about her uncle Matt. Maybe she wanted to but didn’t think I was ready. Maybe when I was older she’d tell me more, more about her mum and dad and about herself. My grandparents and young Mum—they kind of hung there at the back of the story, waiting, like spells, to change the way I looked at things.
What I wanted to do was to show Mum that I could change things, too—that even if I could never be Weatherman I was good enough to be Weatherman.
Neetch, who had deserted me to go fall asleep on Owen’s stomach, suddenly jumped awake, trembling, as if from a bad dream. Owen stroked his back to calm him down, but he darted onto the grass and started to grow larger, digging his claws into the turf and leaning and pulling and twisting, as if something was dragging at him. He started to run in a wide arc, away from something and toward something at the same time.
“Neetch!” Owen shouted.
We could hear the grass under his claws, ripping and tearing. He spat and hissed and jumped from spot to spot as if bouncing on a trampoline. Then he braced his legs against the pull again, all his fur standing up and leaning in the direction of the road. He grew suddenly huge, so fast it was hard to see—a huge red shadow that tore free and leaped over the hedge and away.
But he had been hurt last night and he still wasn’t better. Before he’d even cleared the hedge he was shrinking, and we heard him wail as whatever it was got hold of him again.
Owen and I ran through the gap in the hedge and followed Neetch around the field to the cattle track that led down to the road. He dashed across and jumped the hedge. Between the hedge and the wood were the Ditches—a wee scrap of bog, wet and marshy, full of rushes and pools of oily black water, home to frogs and flies and a family of moorhens. There’s a path through, but you have to jump from tussock to tussock and if you slip you can sink up to your knees in nasty gooey muck. The whole thing floods in really wet weather and we call it the swimming pool. The previous week’s rain had drained down the hill or off the road, and the whole thing was now a cold wet mirror broken by grassy mounds and half-drowned willows.
I stopped when we reached the road. Neetch leaped from tussock to tussock, heading for the woods.
“We can’t go there,” I said, surprising myself. I was being sensible for Owen’s sake, to hide how scared I was of meeting her in the woods.
Owen didn’t care. “Neetch!” he called, and ran across the road and through the hedge and jumped from tussock to tussock.
“Owen!” I called, and glanced down toward the house. I could just see Dad’s knees poking out in front of the Weatherbox. I could waste time trying to get his attention or I could pelt after Owen and drag him kicking and screaming back to the house before he got into trouble.
I crossed the road and the ditch and leaped from tussock to tussock after Owen, calling for both him and Neetch to come right back here at once or I’d tie them both to a flippin’ tree and leave them there for the fairies to take. But they vanished out of the Ditches and into the woods, slipping away as if they were fairy things already, water and wild. My heart sank into my stomach because I knew I should go get Mum and Dad, but I also knew I didn’t have time. Sometimes it’s no good trying to be sensible, because you can’t just let your little brother and his monster kitten go running off into the trees on their own.
I thought I’d catch Owen quickly, then drag him back to the house. Neetch could look after himself. I was wrong, though. Turns out Owen could move faster than a chicken with its tail feathers on fire, and he was small, running under branches and through thickets where I had to duck or go round. If he kept this up I’d have to get him to fill out an application form to join my Shieldsmen Club. Meantime I cursed and swore at his bobbing head and his vanishing back and his darting legs.
We climbed the hill, going in zigzags and sideways as Neetch, somewhere ahead, kept fighting against whatever it was pulling him on. Owen stopped running at the edge of a clearing, and I ran up behind him and took him by the arm, ready to carry him back over my shoulders if I had to.
I stopped. In all my running and jumping and chasing I had noticed without noticing that the woods were full of the strangest of sounds. It was like there was a whole orchestra playing, or more like a whole orchestra furiously fighting each other with their instruments. Or maybe it was the instruments that had decided they’d had enough and started playing the players so they screamed and wailed while the instruments cackled and laughed.
Hugh was there in the middle of the clearing, laughing, his arms spread out, conducting the horrible torture of the orchestra.
There were pillars all around the clearing, birch thin and tall as Hugh, and each pillar was a living thing and each living thing was weather. There was a whirlwind going round and round. There was a waterspout coming out of nowhere and digging into the ground, making a muddy hole and a foaming pool. There was a pillar of ice that crackled and creaked, another of blue-white light, too bright to look at, which crackled and sparked, and one of cloud that was a twisting black mist, which billowed and gushed. And there were many others—hazes and shimmers and fogs and snow.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Hugh said. “The woods are mine. You can’t come in here anymore without permission.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What your dad should have done years ago. Look at them—they’re brilliant! And I’m only just getting started! I’ll make them the size of mountains, big enough to flatten whole cities!”
“What? Why? Why would you want to do that? What would anyone want to flatten a flippin’ city for?”
He looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
“Because if you’re strong, you have to show it to make everyone do what they’re told!”
“But the Seasons won’t let that happen. You’ll be messing with the weather, and they hate that!”
“You’re so stupid! I keep telling Mum how stupid you are! I don’t know why she wants to keep you. I mean, look at you! Did you steal those shorts from that dumb brother of yours or from a charity shop? When you come to live with us all you’ll be allowed to wear is a bin liner, and you can sleep in the doghouse, you hear? You’ll be a scrawny chicken in a plastic bag.”
I gaped at him.
“Live with you?” I blurted.
He laughed. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? She thinks you can learn magic, but all you’re good for is doing the dishes!”
“The only thing I’d do to the dishes is break them over your head! How do you think you can be Weatherman, Hugh? You can’t e
ven wash up after yourself! You can’t even run a farm but you think you can run the world? Oh, you lot are good at stealing stuff all right, but what good is stealing stuff you don’t know what to do with?”
Hugh glared and stuck his lower lip out and his face went bright red. “You and your useless family! Looking down your noses at us and blaming us for losing your farm, which my dad got fair and square anyway. It’s not our fault your granddad couldn’t handle his money! Mum’s right, your dad shouldn’t be the Weatherman—your family don’t deserve it. We do! And when we control the weather, we’ll do what we like. People will pay us money for the weather they want, or we’ll freeze them or boil them or sink them or wash them away! Nobody will mess with us and no one will be able to tell us what to do! We’ll tell them!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“I knew it! You don’t even know what the Weatherman does—or what he’s supposed to do. You think he’s like some sort of weather Santa Claus—going around making storms and sunshine or whatever he feels like. You’re going to get everyone killed!”
“Oh, yeah? If that was true, then do you think I’d be able to make these?”
The columns had all slowed and thinned, going quiet while our shouting had got louder and louder, the rain and wind and lightning dying down to gentle drizzles and soft breezes and tiny flickers.
“I call them Weatherbots,” Hugh said.
“Weatherbots?”
“Or Weathertrons.”
I made a face. He made a face back.
“Names are hard,” he said.
“Still, Weatherbots?”
“I’d like to see you do better.”
“I could do better than that. Owen could do better than that. He’d call them Rainies, Foggies, Snowies, and Coldies, and even that’d be better than flippin’ Weatherbots!”
“Fine, whatever. Shut up now.”
“They’re elementals, you ignorant flippin’ eejit! Complex elementals that you’ve somehow built out of simple elementals, and the more complex elementals get the more dangerous they are! And you’re trying to turn them into slaves or servants? That’s wrong and stupid! You don’t know what you’re doing! Please let them go!”
“Oh, yeah? Whatever you call them, we knew enough to send one after your brother!”
“What?”
Hugh grinned.
“Oh my God, you didn’t! Why would you do that?”
He laughed louder than ever.
“Dad was watching from the woods and saw the truck drive off. He told Mum, and Mum reckoned your cowardy custard dad was sending his little boy off all on his own to the Weathermen’s Club. Well, he won’t find much there, and if he’s smart he’ll turn around and come straight back, but if he goes to AtmoLab? Kablooey!”
“Don’t you dare! Nobody kablooeys my brother! Wait, where’s Owen?”
I looked around, and saw something beyond the clearing. I moved past Hugh, who followed with his repulsive grin.
Standing a little way along the path was Mrs. Fitzgerald, in a black dress with her black hair long and smooth around her face, smiling at me as I walked up warily. Owen was standing in front of her, glaring, rigid with rage and frustration, his arms stiff by his sides.
“Liz! Tell her to let Neetch go!”
“Owen, come away! Come on, quick!” I pointed at Mrs. Fitzgerald. “You! Leave my brother alone!”
She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not doing anything to your brother, dear.”
“Give me back Neetch!” yelled Owen.
“Not Owen, Neil!”
“Oh, him. He should be fine, for the time being, so long as he doesn’t go where he shouldn’t.”
“Stop it! Call it back!”
“Too late, I’m afraid. Much too late.”
“Please!”
“I think you should go home now. Take your brother and go. Your parents will need you. You can comfort them and they can comfort you. Things are about to get very busy, and you should try to make the most of what time there is left. When all this is over and done, everything will have changed, Liz.”
She sounded almost sad as she said this, her eyes far away, her voice soft, like Mum’s when she’s telling Owen a story, just as he’s falling asleep.
“What do you mean?’
“I will bring a Season of the world like no other—a Season beyond all imagining. I will break every law of man and nature into pieces and remake them to my own liking. My Season, Liz. But first, the Weatherman will fall, and everything and everyone you’ve ever known will fall with him. I’m sorry, but I will not go back. I will never sing again. I will end the world first.”
Her presence was like a physical force pressing down on me. I could barely breathe.
“I won’t…” I started to say, and stopped. My mouth was dry. “I won’t be your hostage. Or … or your apprentice.”
She seemed to come back to herself, and smiled brightly. “Oh, my dear, but of course. I understand. I was wrong to try and drag you away from your family. Don’t worry. When the time is right you’ll come to me. There’ll be nobody else left.”
“No!”
She looked at me. Her gray eyes never blinked and the smile on her lips never touched them. Nothing in the world ever seemed to touch her. She was so strong and sure. I longed to be that strong and sure. Nobody would ever call me mad again, and, if they did, I wouldn’t care. Nobody could ever hurt me if I was like her.
“Come on, we’re going. Owen, come on!”
“Not without Neetch!
“Oh, for God’s sake! Where is—Oh!”
It was right beside me, standing just to my left and her right. It was so thin and gray and still, it had basically camouflaged itself against all the trees and bushes. The Gray Thing that had been such a weird mess on the floor of the barn had grown twice as tall as Mrs. Fitzgerald, even hunched over and crouched the way it was. Its body and its arms and its legs were as thin as hosepipes, and its hands and its feet were long and graceful. Its face was a sort of stretched oval shape on top of its neck, and its eyes and its mouth were the same: black hollows that barely moved or changed but were sometimes sad and sometimes angry and always scary. It had sort of hair that stuck out like branches of a tree or icicles from the back of its head, and it was holding its hands cupped together to make a cage. Curled up in the cage, shivering and shaking, still a kitten, the scars on his face livid, was Neetch.
“Let him go!” I said.
Mrs. Fitzgerald shook her head, no longer smiling. “No,” she said. “He’s a long way from home. Like me. I want to know what he’s doing here and how he got here. When I’m finished, I might let you have whatever is left. He’s only a filthy old bog beast. I was never that fond of the nasty thing.”
Owen wailed. I took a step back.
How was I different from her? I wanted to be like her. I wanted to have her power and her control and her freedom to be whatever she wanted to be. But if I was like her, would I do the things she did?
How was I different?
For a start, I wouldn’t leave a friend behind, even if I had to take Owen’s word for the “friend” part. I already felt bad enough about the poor Gray Thing. Could that weird, crooked creature really be a whole new Season? Had Mrs. Fitzgerald really made a baby Season her slave? Years trapped under the water, and now this? And if this was a Season, she was using it to make slaves of the elementals for Hugh to play with, to send after my brother. My mind was flat with rage. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. I wouldn’t let her do it to anyone else—not even the wretched cat. I steadied myself.
“You’d better start running, Owen,” I said. “Go! Now!”
He hesitated, then ran across the clearing, into the trees and down the hill. I had my bow in my hand. I drew the arrow and loosed before I really thought about what I was doing. If I had thought, I think she would have read it in me.
The arrow flew at Hugh, who never even saw it coming.
CHAPTER 15
> NEIL
We caught one of the electric trams to the canal. Then we walked across a bridge and down the towpath until we reached a strange and disturbing building. The corporate headquarters of AtmoLab Inc. were a sort of metal and glass shape, like a giant letter of the alphabet that had been melted and twisted until you couldn’t quite work out what the letter had been. We walked between a pair of huge black cars parked in front of the entrance with trunks open wide like the jaws of a weird, deep-sea fish and the insides full of metal boxes and wires. The doors slid open on their own, and the cold of the air-conditioning froze the sweat in my shirt and made me shiver. Our shoes clattered loudly on the polished floor of the lobby, echoing up and down so it sounded as if there were an army of caterpillars in big brown boots tramping around.
There was a pile of boxes and cables and electronic equipment to one side. As we went past the pile, a short, plump man with a beard and a pair of round glasses crossed our path, arms outstretched, carrying something heavy and expensive-looking from the pile to the car. He gave us a nod as he went past.
A tall thin man in a colorful shirt and shorts that came down to his knees hurried after, arguing with a glum-looking woman in a blue dress. They both had iPads in their hands.
Behind the reception desk there was a security guard whose main job seemed to be to disapprove of everything that happened in the lobby. His peaked cap was pulled low over his forehead, almost hiding his eyes, his thick lips were curled downwards as though he had weights hanging off the ends of them, and his shoulders were bunched up nearly as far as his ears. He looked at Ed. Ed nudged me.
The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Page 9
