My mind reaching out beyond the wall of heat, pulling elementals to me.
Cold, I told them. Cold, cold, cold.
My skin prickled as a layer of cool air settled around us, but the heat kept rising, and I felt it burning through the cool. Blinking in the shimmering haze, I could see that Hugh’s shirt was soaked in sweat. He hadn’t been very precise with his heat wave. He had caught himself in the wall of hot air meant for us. He was swaying on his feet, trying to dismiss the heat, but it was like a chain reaction, rising beyond his control, rising and roasting. He collapsed.
I put my head down and charged like a bull down the strip of smoking grass. The tip of a single blade glowed as an ember flared, and everything ignited at once. Flames exploded around us, eating everything they touched, sucking all the oxygen from the air, chasing us down the long strip of grass as we stomped toward Hugh. Even with our layer of cold turned to deep freeze I could feel the scorching heat of the firestorm as it bore down on us and I bore down on Hugh.
A fierce, sudden wind lifted the flames higher, roaring and whirling around and around, faster and faster, walls of speeding flame, twisting and turning.
My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees and slid down the last of the slope to where Hugh had curled up into a ball, hands clasped around his head, calling for his mum. I pushed the layer of cold elementals out to cover him, too.
Cold, cold, cold, I told them.
Hazel’s arms were wrapped tight around my neck, her face buried in my shoulder. We were gasping in air that seared our throats and lungs, utterly exhausted, half roasted—the three of us now at the bottom of a burning tornado. If my elementals got any colder we’d all die of frostbite.
I knew, in that moment, that we had seconds to live.
CHAPTER 26
LIZ
There’s an amazing difference between being dry, or just a little bit damp, and being completely wet and getting wetter by the second. It’s one thing when you’re jumping into a swimming pool or taking a shower, and you’re ready for it and all you have to do is get out, or turn it off and find a warm towel. It’s another thing when you’re fully dressed and you’re in it from head to toe and getting deeper and deeper and you’re not at all sure about getting out.
It was pitch black and it was filthy and it was freezing, and, in the first few seconds, or even minutes, I wasn’t thinking about finding the Gray Thing or holding my breath or anything, I was just looking at the only things I could see, which were loads and loads of bubbles running fast in front of my face. I remembered something Mum had once told me about how, if I was underwater and I got turned until I wasn’t sure which way was up and which was down, all I had to do was blow some bubbles from my mouth and the direction they went in would always be up. So I could tell which way was up, and I knew I had to go in the opposite direction.
I kicked my legs and moved my arms and turned and twisted until I was swimming down. I could feel the rope in my hand, or I thought I could, through the cold and the mud. All I had to do now was keep going down until I found the Baby Season. How hard could that be? It was a bog hole. Bog holes weren’t that deep. Or were they?
I swam. Down and down. Or was it? I couldn’t tell if I was moving at all. Maybe I was just floating in place. Maybe my legs were still sticking out of the surface of the bog hole and everyone was staring at them as they kicked and kicked and me with my head stuck in the mud. Any second now they would grab hold of me and pull me out.
No. I was going down, and the mud was getting thicker all around me. There were no bubbles now. I groped ahead, feeling for the Baby Season. Poor Baby Season, down here in the dark and the mud. At least it didn’t have to breathe.
Thicker and thicker. Slimy and cold and sticky. I was clawing, digging, pulling myself down like a worm, burrowing deeper. I wriggled and pushed, blind, freezing, breath all gone, mud squeezing me tight—too tight to move. I was going to drown. I was going to die. I was going to open my mouth and try to breathe and all the mud would rush in and fill my lungs. I’d be stuck down here until they dug me up.
I pushed with everything I had. My hand was stretched out in front of me, and I felt something solid. I pushed again, my whole body shuddering, and it crumbled and broke and I fell through—into light and air.
Under me was a carpet of clouds. White mountains and gray valleys and deep pits that fell away to a far-off greenness. All around me was blue, bright and fierce and clear, and roaring with breath like endless laughter. Above me was dark where the air and the light ended.
I think I had fallen into the Baby Season’s mind—into its memories.
* * *
And there, shining in the dark, was the burning life star that roars energy and light into the world—the shining mouth that sings everything into being. And I was part of the song, and the song was movement, always movement, forever rising and forever falling. A sky dance, the greatest of all dances, and as I danced the sky dance I forgot everything except the incredible joy of sky dancing. I rose with the warm air; fell with the cool. I turned in the wind and flew through a terrible, raging storm. I let it rage, then let it die. Clouds dissolved until there was clear still air, and I soared through the clear still air. There was no yesterday and no tomorrow, just this, until the cool air stirred and clouds appeared and began their long steady march, drifting a veil of rain beneath. And this was all there ever was or would be, just this fierce unending happiness until …
… something took hold of my hand—took hold of it, or was I already holding it? I knew I could let it go and just be there forever, dancing joyfully in the light and dark, hot and cold, air and electricity, with the shining mouth singing to me and singing to everything. I wanted to dance forever. I wanted to let the hand go, but another hand closed around my arm and pulled me up into the dark where I felt I wasn’t supposed to go—up where there was no air and only dead cold and the song couldn’t be heard.
* * *
My mouth filled with mud.
I couldn’t even choke or cough. I definitely couldn’t breathe. My arm was being pulled from its socket and there was weight all around me. I knew I couldn’t hold on to the hook and the rope for much longer. I just couldn’t.
Gradually, the mud got thinner, turned into black water, and now I could cough it out of my throat and mouth, but I still couldn’t breathe. I went limp as water filled me up. I wondered if they would send me back down. I wondered if they would be angry because I hadn’t saved the Baby Season.
Then I was on my hands and knees in the middle of the bog hole, coughing water out of my mouth and trying to gasp in air. My throat was raw and my chest was on fire and there were hands holding me up and clapping me on the back. But the bog hole I had just swum to the bottom of now only came up to my elbows, even though I was sinking a little into the muck underneath.
It wasn’t deep at all.
And I hadn’t got the Baby Season.
Mum and Ed helped me crawl to the edge of the hole and sit with my head between my knees, more water streaming out of me and off me.
There must have been a branch or a tree down there that had caught around me somehow, or maybe it was the rope all tangled about me, but it was tight and heavy on my shoulders and my back. I tried to twist and shrug it off, but it wouldn’t move.
“Help,” I said, hoarse and tired and soaked, freezing with the cold and ready to start crying in a minute from how horrible everything was. “Please, help.”
“Liz,” Mum said. “You did it.”
I blinked up at her. No, she was wrong. I hadn’t done anything except … I remembered something to do with a song, a dance and flying forever and … For a moment I had been a Season. I had ruled the sky. Oh, my heart. My heart, it broke. I opened my mouth and moaned because I had lost it—the wild mad song and dance. “Oh, Mummy, Mummy, it’s gone…” I wailed.
“Tell her to be quiet,” John-Joe said.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care that he was standing there on the other
side of the bog hole with his shotgun and the AtmoLabbers kneeling in a row with their hands on their heads, and Owen and Ash huddled together beside them with Neetch crouched between. The loss hurt too much. Mum knelt and wiped my face and hushed me, and Ed on my other side took the rope and the hook out of my numb, shivering hand. He had to open my fist finger by finger, and underneath was another fist, and that’s when I realized that there had been another hand closed around mine—a thin gray hand, and an arm lying along mine. I turned my head, and lying on my shoulder was the narrow little head of the Gray Thing. It was sitting on me, riding piggyback, wrapped around me.
“You did it,” Mum said again.
“Yeah,” John-Joe said. “You did it. And now you can go and put the flippin’ thing back.”
CHAPTER 27
NEIL
The tiny bubble of cool air I was fighting to keep around us shrank and grew in time with my breathing. It was as if we’d been flung into one of those coal-fired boiler engines and were surviving by spitting on the coals to put them out. But they kept reigniting, and I was running out of spit. The air froze and melted, froze and melted, freezing a little less and melting a little more each time. It might have been easier if I hadn’t made the bubble big enough to cover Hugh, too. Hazel had climbed down off my back and we crouched close together right over his moaning head, but even so, realistically, my bubble was going to die long before the fire did.
The first drops on my back were close to boiling, and they were big and thick and heavy enough to leave bruises. Then the rain came thicker and faster and colder and the smoke swept around with the flames, and then the flames were gone and the wind died and the rain hammered on as we coughed and hacked and wheezed and tears streamed down our faces.
The smoke parted around us and before us, bending up and away as two figures emerged from the swirling darkness together—Dad and Mrs. Fitzgerald.
“We agreed to a truce,” Dad said. “When we saw you were all in danger, we agreed to a truce. The truce will hold until we reach the lake together.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I said, feeling as though I had failed yet again.
“Not your fault, Neil. None of this is your fault.”
“Mum?” Hugh said, finally looking up and realizing that he was alive. “Mum, look what he did! He wrecked all my elementals and then he burned our field and he nearly burned me!”
“The truce will hold,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “The advantage is ours. The Weatherman will perform his final duty, then relinquish his position, and the Seasons will decide on his replacement: his wretched and tainted offspring, or a new family, powerful and reliable. The advantage is ours.”
“We’ll see,” Dad replied.
They kept their eyes locked tight on each other.
“Come on, then,” Dad said. “They’re waiting.”
“And angry,” she said. “And getting angrier.”
The fires had died, leaving steam and smoke everywhere, thicker than any fog. And the rain drove down into the glowing cinders and hot ashes. Back at the edge of the wood, the oak tree was now a blackened, smoking stump.
Dad pointed to a spot between himself and Mrs. Fitzgerald. The ground was covered with a thick layer of burnt grass that crumbled to hot ash under our feet. I refused to move until Hazel climbed onto my back again. She put her arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder. I could hear her breathing softly. Everything hurt. I could barely stand, I was so exhausted, but she felt like no weight at all. Hugh snorted, and we went and stood there and began to walk down toward the shore of the lake—Dad and Mrs. Fitzgerald moving slightly sideways, like a pair of lizards in a staring contest.
Over the lake the three Seasons in their cloud towers were slowly, ponderously turning. Way up high at the uppermost limits of the sky they all merged in a great flat cold mass that spread from horizon to horizon. The vivid colors that flashed and glowed in the clouds lit up the landscape below. Each of the three rotating columns was thick and wide at the top, growing thinner toward the bottom, until it tapered away to a tiny wisp that touched the surface of the lake and danced and moved like a flame in a breeze.
We reached the edge of the lake and stopped. I set Hazel down and she took my hand. Dad and Mrs. Fitzgerald held their stare for one long moment more, and then Dad turned and looked out at the lake and spread his arms wide and let the Summer go.
CHAPTER 28
LIZ
“Go on,” John-Joe said. “Drop it back in. Go on!”
“Leave her alone!” Mum told him.
“I’ll leave her alone when she does what I says!” He lifted the gun to his shoulder and pointed it at me. Mum and Ed both splashed into the bog hole in front of me.
“Get out of the way!” He swung the gun around, pointing it at Owen and Ash.
“OK,” Ed said. “Look, we’ll do what you say. We’ll do it.”
“Do it, then!”
Mum and Ed slowly and carefully took hold of the Baby Season. Ed got its arm and Mum got its body and they gently pulled.
“What’s taking so long? Get it off and drop it back in, ye eejits!” John-Joe moaned.
“It won’t come off!” Mum pulled and tugged, and Ed dragged at it and yanked, but it wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t even holding on that tight, and it didn’t feel stuck or anything, the way a limpet sticks to a rock at the beach. It just would not move.
I shivered and shook. I felt the black bog muck drying my skin. I didn’t care about any of it. I felt myself rock back and forth. “I fly big sky. I fly big sky. I fly big sky…” I chanted, trying to hold on to the memory of the sky dance under the bog hole.
“Hush, honey, hush,” Mum said. “You have to help us.”
John-Joe stalked around the bog hole to where I was sitting.
“If you don’t get it off I’ll throw them both in! I don’t care! You hear, girlie? I said I’ll drown you like a pup!”
“Get away from her!” shouted Mum.
John-Joe pointed the gun in her face and pushed her back, then he squatted down beside me like a fat old toad. His breath puffed like smoke and stank of something rotten and old and dead. “I’ll put you both in, girlie, that’s what I’ll do. And do you know what I’ll do then? Oh, it’s a nice deep hole, it is. I’m thinking a deep hole like that could hold all of you. Every last one of you, and no one would ever find you down there with that precious thing. It’s like bog butter. You know bog butter, don’t you? They find lumps of it thousands of years old and it’s still good for making a sandwich. That’s what that thing is like—buried in the bog but still doing its job. Not the rest of you, though. You’ll be more like them bog men, dried up old mummies, all black and withered. That’s what I’m thinking. And I’ll start with you, so I will. In you go, girlie!”
He grabbed my arm and lifted.
Just then, something yellow grew and spread behind the crown of the hill. A long thin ribbon of fire, dancing and bending, coming up from somewhere beyond the treetops and outlined against the glowing clouds. Even John-Joe paused to watch as the flame seemed to jump all across the top of the hill, a great black gush of smoke leaking out of it.
“Oh my God!” cried Mum. “Oh, Neil! Oh no!”
“Neetch!” I yelled. “Neetch help! Get him!”
John-Joe pushed. We splashed back into the bog hole, and I could feel the mud sink and deepen under me. John-Joe could too, because he dropped me and jumped for the edge as I sank down. The Baby Season on my back shifted, and I heard it whine softly in my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I wondered if we would fly again when we got down there, or if it had just been a dream—one of those dreams you have once in your whole life and then never again no matter how much you want it, or long for it, or try to remember what it was and what it felt like. Oh, well. I wouldn’t be wanting or longing for much down in the black, anyway. The water closed around my head. I was so cold I couldn’t feel it anymore.
Then something big splashed into the pool.
<
br /> There were bubbles, and there was foam, and there was a shape, dripping with water and muck and dirt and weeds—a shape with huge yellow eyes and a mouth bursting with teeth like jagged knitting needles. And those needles, cruel and sharp and bigger than the bones in a tyrannosaur skeleton, closed around me as delicately and softly as a pair of oven gloves, and I was lifted out of the water and dropped gently on the edge of the bog hole, wiping the cold, dirty water from my face while Neetch, the bog-water frothing all around him, turned on John-Joe.
Neetch wasn’t a cat. Neetch just kinda looked like a cat when he was small. Neetch was a bog beast—a bog beast as big as a house.
He was covered in long, thick shaggy fur like a woolly mammoth. His legs were tall and crooked and had six claws each. His tail was as long as his body and lashed the air behind him. His ears stretched back like a bat’s, his whiskers drooped like a massive Victorian moustache, and his face was like a demon’s. He climbed out of the bog hole, wrapped in a coat of mud, and hissed at John-Joe.
In his terror John-Joe must have jerked at the trigger of the shotgun. There were two sudden bursts of flame and smoke, two quick, stabbing cracks that hurt my ears and made everyone flinch and duck. Then John-Joe dropped the gun and ran into the trees. Neetch went after him, bounding into the fog, and then they were both gone, though we could hear them as they went crashing one after the other through the wood.
“Come on out of that,” Ed said slowly, and he lifted me up and hugged me to his chest. We stood shivering and silent for a moment. Up on the hill, the ribbon of fire was gone and everything was covered in a thick gray layer of smoke and steam.
“I’ve got to get to the lake,” I said. “I’ve got to get the Baby Season there.”
“NO!” Mum said. “You’re not going up there! Hugh and his elementals are up there in the woods, and John-Joe, and that fire … I’m not letting you go up there!”
The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Page 18
