“OK,” I said, and I carefully backed away from it. I picked up Neetch and caught Owen by the arm.
“But the poor thing!” Owen wailed.
“Shut up,” I told him. “You were pelting rocks at it a minute ago.”
When you defeat a monster you’re supposed to feel triumphant and brilliant and punch the air and sing songs of heroism and happiness. All I felt was guilt. It wasn’t the Baby Season’s fault. She had forced it to chase us, and now I’d gone and put it back underwater. Well, I wasn’t sorry I’d saved us, but I was sorry for it. And I was mad at her for making me do it.
“Come on,” I said. “Mum and Dad will have our guts for garters.”
And that’s when Mum and Dad appeared through the hedge and hurried us back to the house across the road. I knew I was in trouble. But there are some kinds of trouble it’s better to be in than others. I babbled about warning Neil not to go to AtmoLab, but nobody knew what AtmoLab was.
The two old hags were sitting on the wall. They looked even younger now, more Mum’s age. Their hair seemed to be shrinking back into their heads, and their faces were unlined and their clothes shimmered with silver and lace. One of them clapped her hands delightedly; the other looked sideways down at us and winked.
“Thank you, dear, for saving our troublesome cat. We would have missed it if she’d taken it away from us.”
“Catnapping,” said the other. “Nasty sister.”
“Yes, dear,” the first said. “But not as nasty as us.”
Then we all stopped and turned and looked down the road, listening to the sound of an engine getting louder and closer.
PART 3
The Maloneys and the Míthráthúlacht
CHAPTER 17
NEIL
The van that held but just ourselves had been white once, maybe. Probably. Now it was mostly just dirt, thick and gray from the roof to the wheels. It was small and had something written on the side I couldn’t make out. When they opened the back and threw me in, I landed on a bed of newspapers and coffee cups and bottles and rusty tools. The men in colored sweaters and kilts climbed in after me, sat me up against the wall, slammed the doors shut, and off we went.
One of them drove, with another beside him in the passenger seat. I was in the back with the other three. It wasn’t very clean. Neither were the men. They all smelled sour and smoky, dusty, and dirty. It was hard to breathe, and I was shaking, my clothes clammy as ice against my skin.
One of the big men had a beard. The beard was thick and had food and twigs in it. One was completely bald. His head looked like a piece of polished wood. The other had a spider tattooed on his face. I only realized it was a tattoo when he reached up and scratched his cheek. At first I thought it was a pet. Their woolen sweaters hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in a long time. The sleeves were ragged and frayed, so that colored threads hung from their wrists, waving and twisting whenever they moved their hands about, and they moved their hands about a lot. They rolled some cigarettes with pieces of paper they filled with tobacco from pouches. They passed them round, and the acrid smoke covered the sour stink of the men and the van just a little.
“Boys!” Beardie said, looking down at me. “Would ye look at the state of him?” Then to me, “What the heck is wrong with ye, like?”
“What?” said Baldie. “What are ye on about, by?”
“Hypothermia, by! And shock, like. He’s in a bad way!”
Baldie took a closer look at me. “Hey, boys, he’s right, like. We’re losing him, by.”
“What’s the matter, by?” Spidey said. “He’s just a bit tired, like, aren’t ye? Aren’t ye?”
Spidey nudged me with an elbow. I tipped over into the back of the passenger seat. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“Look at the old lips, like!” Beardie. “They’re, like, totally purple!”
“Flip!” said Baldie. “The poor child, like! He’ll waste away from the chills!”
“Get off them blankets there, by,” said Spidey. “There you go, by. Wrap those around yourself.”
A thick, heavy blanket that gave off clouds of dust and ash was dropped on me. It was warm, but I couldn’t breathe. I was being polluted to death, which, when I thought about it later, turned out to be pretty ironic.
The blanket helped, but not much. I was exhausted. Rocked by the movement of the van, I was sinking away from the aching cold and into a deep, warm, dangerous sleep.
“AS I WAS GOIN’ OVER THE CORK AND KERRY MOUNTAINS!”
The five voices boomed in the tiny space.
“I MET WITH CAPTAIN FARRELL AND HIS MONEY HE WAS COUNTIN’!”
My eyes opened and I gasped in shock.
“I FIRST PRODUCED MY PISTOL AND THEN PRODUCED MY RAPIER!”
I breathed in, filling my mouth and lungs with smoke, dust, ash, and the stink of the choirboys.
“I SAID STAND AND DELIVER OR THE DEVIL HE MAY TAKE YE!!”
I coughed and choked. Without missing a beat one of the singers gave me a heavy slap on the back.
“MISHU RIN DOR-RUM DO-RUM DO-RA!!”
I spat out a thin stream of water into my blanket. That was the closest it had come to being washed in a long time, though it was already damp through from my clothes.
“WHACK FOR THE DADDY-OH! WHACK FOR THE DADDY OH!!”
My head cleared a little. I began to shake off the warm sleepiness.
“THERE’S WHISKEY IN THE JAR-OH!!”
This lovely little song went on and on and on, and the singer was betrayed by his true love and flung in jail and was just plotting his escape when that song ended and they launched into another one, about a goat that got loose on Grand Parade, and after that yet another about a soldier’s wife looking forward to her husband getting back from Salonika. I tugged the blanket up to my ears, but I couldn’t keep the songs out.
By the time we got to wherever it was we were going I was tingling painfully all over.
The van turned and slowed and began to rock and bounce as though the road was made of nothing but rocks and holes. The lads stopped singing and they each put one hand on the floor and one hand on the ceiling and began to shout and whoop as though riding a rollercoaster. All my bruises and my bones and my muscles screamed with pain at each and every jerk and jolt. After an endless, agonising time the van finally stopped. I was crying silently.
The lads were amazed. They looked at each other and then at me. They tugged their beards and rubbed their bald heads, muttering to each other. They seemed to be feeling some guilt at the state of me, but not enough to do anything about it.
“We’ll tell him, like,” one of them said. “We’ll tell him to hurry up.”
“Needs a flippin’ ambulance is what he needs, by!”
“Nah,” one said and clapped me on the shoulder. I moaned, and he took his hand away as though it had been burnt. “Sorry, like, sorry, by! Come on lads, get a move on, like. We need to hurry.”
They opened the doors of the van and helped me out. There was a fire smoking near some trees, and they sat me down next to it and blew on it until it flamed and fed it some wood. They told me to sit tight—“it would all be over soon, like, by,”—and then they ran off into the trees together, looking back over their shoulders as they went, as if they were abandoning a puppy in the snow.
I rubbed my hands and tried to warm myself by the fire, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I had to get dry or I’d start losing fingers and toes.
I stood up and shook off the blanket. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and kicked off my shoes. I nearly fell into the fire taking off my socks. Finally, I peeled my trousers down my numb legs. Shivering in my underwear, I enjoyed the prickly heat of the fire on my sodden skin for a while before picking up the blanket and rubbing myself dry. I turned around and let the warmth wash over my back. Wrapping my arms around myself, I took a look at my surroundings.
I was in a forest.
Brown and silver tree trunks were all around, and a gentle green ru
stle filled the air. Smoke from the fire drifted through the boughs and the slanting sunlight, rising up through a series of thick ropes that stretched between the trees above us. On the ground, mud and leaves and wood chippings all mixed in a thick soupy mess. Logs had been laid down, four wide, to make a path.
From what I could see, it looked like a large group of people had been living here for a while. Bags were everywhere. Black-and-white bin liners. Supermarket carrier bags. Green canvas bags. Rucksacks. Backpacks. The bags were full of rubbish or clothes or books or magazines or food or things that I couldn’t identify and didn’t want to. Large piles of sticks had been gathered here and there. Some turned out to be log piles, others turned out to be shelters. A guitar leaned against a tree near a sort of timber-framed kitchen. Plastic sheeting had been draped over it to keep out the wind and rain. Down the center, a long table was covered with fruit and vegetables, some half chopped or half eaten. There were pots and pans and lots of cutlery. Under the table there were freezer boxes of different shapes and sizes, and piles of posters and fliers with big, bold headlines like SAVE THE TREES and STOP THE COUNCIL.
I realized where I was.
Just outside Dublin, the local council had decided to chop down part of an old forest to make way for a motorway. A gang of eco-warriors had occupied the woods to protest against the development. They’d built tree houses and refused to move, delaying the works for well over a year. The whole thing had made national headlines. Any day now the forces of law and order were expected to come in and carry everyone off, and men with chainsaws were going to cut down all the trees.
Mum had had to practically tie me down to stop me from spending the summer up here in a tent, hugging the trees with the best of them.
“You don’t know what sort of lunatic might be hanging around up there,” she said. “You don’t know what might happen to you!”
Maybe she’d been right.
As usual.
I walked across the clearing, my feet sinking into the mud. Twigs and thorns pinched my heels, but I barely noticed them. While the air shivered my skin, I poked around in bags until I hit the jackpot. I found fleeces, hiking trousers, shirts, socks, rain jackets, even a few pairs of waterproof boots. It took ages to dress, with the feeling coming painfully back into my hands and feet giving me pins and needles, but soon I was wearing a set of warm dry clothes and socks and boots, all too large for me. I didn’t care.
I went into the timber-framed kitchen and grabbed apples and bananas and bread and ham and butter and jam. I fiddled with a little gas stove until I got it working and put on a kettle to make some tea. I took it all back to the fire and sat and ate. I cupped my hands around the mug and drank the hot tea, warming up bit by bit.
Somewhere nearby, out in the trees, something rattled. I looked up, but could see nothing. There were more noises. Booms. Shouts. Undergrowth crackling. Shouting. Screams. They seemed to be all around me, closing in.
Breathing hard, I listened as the sounds grew louder and closer. The boomings and the rattlings were drums. The forest was full of people playing drums and running around screaming and shouting. Well, for all I cared, they could trip and fall and break their necks. I held my mug in my hands and stayed sitting.
Something bright and shiny and fast swept into the clearing. I saw teeth and claws and feathers. I tried to follow it as it tore through the clearing and back into the trees, when another one rushed in from the other side and straight at my head. I made a sort of thin, high-pitched eeeee sound as it looped around me and around me and around me. The eeeee went on for a very long time, even after the thing flung itself upward and vanished in the high branches of the trees.
The clearing was full of them. I couldn’t count them because they were moving too fast and anyway I didn’t really care how many of them there were, even one was too many. They gave off a glow like bottled moonlight, but they weren’t made of light: they were animals and birds, all smooth and streamlined and fitted out with jet engines. Bear snouts, wolf jaws, eagle beaks, badger claws …
I squeezed my eyes shut. You’re asleep, I told myself. You are having a dream. You think it’s a nightmare, but it’s not. All these wonderful animals have come to play with you and be your friends. But when I opened my eyes again, they were still there, and they did not look friendly.
Then they slowed in their weaving, sinuous dance and drifted gracefully into a ring, surrounding me and the fire, where they came to a stop. Each one drifted down to the ground and settled on the floor of the clearing. The glow faded, and I saw …
What did I see? One moment they were a superteam of flying things and the next they were all just people, standing on tall thin legs. Their claws and their wings and their hides and their feathers were costumes, and their beaks and jaws and insect eyes were masks. Nobody moved and nobody spoke. One by one they seemed to kneel, and as their knees reached the ground they jumped, and their legs split in half, and the top half gave a little skip, and the claws and the wings reached up and removed the heads, and under the heads were people who had been standing on stilts.
They were all breathing heavily, grinning and looking at me. They all went down on one knee, laid their masks and claws and stilts on the ground and bowed their heads.
“HAIL, SON OF THE WEATHERMAN!” they roared. I jumped.
“Uh, hi,” I said. “Hail, you guys.”
The one with the eagle mask stood and stepped forward. He had long dark hair and no beard and a pointy face with no tattoos.
“Hail, son of the Weatherman!” he bellowed at the top of his voice, as if I were deaf or a long way away or there was a jet plane taking off beside us. “Well met indeed!”
He swept his hand back and around, taking in the crowd of weirdos. “We are your Shieldsmen! We have returned in this, your darkest hour, to do our duty and deliver you from your foes!”
“Oh,” I said. I blinked and tried to think. I’d done it. I’d found them. Or they’d found me. I had gotten myself found by them. Yeah, that sounded OK. I felt as though I were floating, buoyed up by sheer joy. It seemed important to say something good and right and impressive. “Er. You are?”
“Yes!” he said. “We are! And, boy, are we happy to see you! Aren’t we happy? Show him how happy we are, guys!”
They sprang up and waved their masks in the air and cheered and clapped and jumped up and down and rushed in and clapped me on the back and shook my hand, all grinning, their eyes lit up with joy and excitement. I just tried not to get stabbed or stepped on.
The spokeslunatic stepped through the crowd, leaned down, and reached out with his hand. Numbly, I lifted my hand, and we shook.
“Hi, Neil. Great to finally meet you. I’m Weisz.”
I stared at his smiling face. In his eyes, a friendly light seemed to dance a merry little jig.
I opened my mouth to make a few small complaints about being kidnapped and nearly freezing to death, then shut it again. Never mind about that now.
“You need to all come back with me,” I told him. “The Autumn is sort of blocked, and the Summer is sort of stuck and there’s a thing that might be a new Season and a woman with terrible magic powers being a pain in the neck and trying to take Dad’s job and…”
Weisz held up his hand and made little calming movements. He was still smiling, trying to say something reasonable. I just wanted to hit him. I could hear myself babbling and I wasn’t even sure I was speaking English anymore. Finally I had to stop to breathe in.
“Of course we’ll come back with you, Neil. We’re your father’s loyal Shieldsmen. We’ll do whatever you ask. But I also have things to say to you. Serious things—and you must listen and understand.”
“OK,” I said uncertainly.
“I want you to know what this means to us. After all these years, that it should be us, that we should be the ones summoned once more to do our sacred duty.” His voice grew thick, and he stopped for a moment and wiped his eyes. “Excuse me, this is a special, special d
ay for all of us.”
“I thought,” I started. “We thought you’d gone. That there were no Shieldsmen left. Like the magicians at the club. And how did you know you’d been summoned? I didn’t mention any summonses.”
“Hmph, the club,” Weisz snorted derisively. “A bunch of doddering old men who barely knew what day it was, let alone what Season. They let themselves be destroyed by the modern world, bought and sold like so much meat. They weren’t worthy. And now AtmoLab is even worse. We were watching their headquarters—that’s how we knew where to find you. Back when the club was still a going concern, you see, we had some contact, and they kept us informed about the Weatherman and his family—sent us photographs and such. Only baby photographs of you, of course, but you look like your dad, and, anyway, as soon as you turned up, AtmoLab suddenly had its own tropical storm in the lobby, so who else would you be? What was that storm, anyway?”
“Uh, it was an elemental sent by a hag who’s kidnapped the thing that might be a new Season.”
Weisz whistled and shook his head in amazement. “Interesting times! Are there a lot of them about? Wouldn’t mind finding out how we’d match up to one of those buggers, eh?”
“Well,” I said, trying to imitate Dad, “the simple ones are everywhere, of course. That was a complex one they must have conjured up out of simple ones somehow. Er, you want to fight one?”
“Of course! That’s what we’re for! We are the warriors of Dunphelim! The sworn shields of the Fear Na hAimsire, and no dúil is going to threaten our Chief! This is the time of the Míthráthúlacht, and the Shieldsmen stand ready to defend!”
The Shieldsmen gave a mighty shout while I tried to do a mental translation. Fear na hAimsire was “Weatherman.” Dúil was “element.” And Míthráthúlacht basically meant “The Bad Time.”
The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Page 12
