The Lightning Catcher: The Secrets of the Storm Vortex

by Anne Cameron

  The coat wearer turned away from the counter abruptly a few seconds later, face hidden inside a low hood. Angus sank quickly behind the shark skeleton. For some reason it felt safer not to be seen. He and Dougal waited until Crevice had disappeared into an office behind the counter, then followed the figure in the coat at a safe distance back toward the front of the shop. The door came into sight a few moments later.

  “Thank goodness for that!” Dougal said, speeding up in his rush to leave.

  “Yeah, I was starting to think we’d have to sleep in this shop!”

  As they swept past a pile of half-price dinosaur bones, however, Dougal caught his foot on the edge of the display and tripped.

  “Ooof!”

  He crashed heavily to the ground. Bones scattered in every direction, clattering noisily across the floor.

  “Who’s there? Thieves! Troublemakers!” Creepy Crevice appeared at lightning speed, having clearly taken a shortcut through the maze of shelves. “All breakages must be paid for!” he said, looming over them both.

  “Sorry, Mr. Crevice. It was an accident!” Dougal scrambled to his feet. He brushed himself off and stood next to Angus, quivering.

  “Accident or not, somebody has to pay for this damage.” The angry shopkeeper picked up two halves of a broken bone, looking furious. “Each of these bones is worth ten silver starlings, so either you two pay up, or you will pay the consequences.” He pointed to a sign on the inside of the shop door which said “All Troublemakers will be Mummified.”

  “M-m-mummified?” Dougal whimpered.

  Angus backed away from the bone merchant and rummaged quickly through his pockets. He had precisely two silver starlings left. It wasn’t nearly enough to save them from having their brains pickled. He shot a swift look at Dougal, who had spent the last of his own pocket money in Cradget’s.

  “I-I’m sorry, Mr. Crevice,” Angus said. “We haven’t got enough money.”

  He dragged everything out of his pockets to prove it, including the fluff that had collected in the corners.

  “I’ll take those.” Crevice snatched up his last two silver starlings greedily. “And what about you?” The bone merchant turned to Dougal, his eyes narrowing. “You’re Aloysius Dewsnap’s boy, aren’t you? I’ve had trouble with your family before.”

  “We can pay you back, Mr. Crevice,” Angus said as Dougal emptied his pockets all over the floor, scattering hard candy and rubber bands far and wide. “If you just let me go and find my uncle—”

  “Think I was born yesterday, boy? If I let you out of this shop, I’ll never see you again. If you can’t pay, you already know the consequences.” He nodded at the warning to all troublemakers on the back of the door. “So . . .” He reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out a long hook. “Which one of you wants to go first?”

  Angus gulped.

  “Maybe you’ll think twice in the future about sneaking into my shop and breaking things after you’ve had a bit of mummification.”

  Dougal swayed on his feet, looking faint. Angus glanced over his shoulder, wondering if they could make a run for it. At that precise moment, however, the shop door burst open with a loud bang.

  “Put that hook away, Crevice.” Jeremius marched straight over to the bone merchant. “And please explain why you are threatening my nephew and his friend?”

  “I caught these two fair and square, smashing precious dinosaur bones and trying to leave without paying me what’s due.”

  “We didn’t smash anything!” Angus interrupted quickly. “We tripped!”

  Jeremius took a small money pouch from his pocket and threw five silver starlings at Crevice’s feet. “That’s more than enough to cover your losses. You’ve been trying to pass those cheap fakes off as the genuine article for years, and unless you want the whole town to know about it before sundown, you’ll take the money and be grateful.”

  “Grateful to a McFangus? You won’t live long enough to see the day!” Crevice scowled at Jeremius with deep loathing. He scooped up the silver coins from the floor, however, and disappeared back into the depths of his gloomy shop, mumbling.

  “I think the time has come to leave,” Jeremius said, gripping Angus and Dougal firmly by the shoulders. He steered them out through the door, which was now hanging on by a single hinge, back into the sunlight and straight across the cobbled square, only stopping when the Yodeling Yeti café came into view up ahead.

  “You two ought to know better than to go sneaking off into shops you’ve been told to avoid,” Jeremius said, staring down at them both in a very serious manner. “Crevice is nothing but a money-grabbing thief. He’ll try to sell you your own backbone, given half a chance. He’s also got a reputation for being one of the most bad-tempered, sour-natured shopkeepers on this island. It was just lucky I came looking for you when I did.”

  “Sorry,” Dougal said, looking down at his shoes, shamefaced. “It was all my idea.”

  “We both wanted to see if he had any mummies in his shop,” Angus added, feeling it wasn’t fair to let Dougal take all the blame.

  Jeremius folded his arms across his chest. “Do I have your solemn promise that you will never enter the bone merchant’s again?”

  “Yeah, I promise,” Angus said, meaning every word of it.

  Dougal nodded. “I’m never going near that place again. Crevice was threatening to mummify us!”

  “I doubt whether he would have gone quite that far,” Jeremius said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Just stay away from his shop in the future. It might also be a wise idea not to mention this to Mr. Dewsnap, unless you want to spend the rest of the holidays scrubbing kitchen floors and washing up.”

  They both followed Jeremius into the Yodeling Yeti café feeling as if they’d had a very lucky escape, in more ways than one.

  4

  THE FEATHERED MESSAGE

  Angus was extremely pleased when Jeremius kept his word and told no one else about their adventures in the fine-bone merchant’s.

  “It’s a shame we didn’t see any mummies, though,” Dougal said as they sat on the floor of his bedroom the following afternoon, attempting to solve the scare-me-not puzzles they’d both bought at Cradget’s.

  “Maybe Crevice keeps them in another part of the shop, or he only shows them to special customers,” Angus suggested.

  He moved the ball around his own puzzle, attempting to get it through one of the holes before the hole closed again. So far he hadn’t even come close.

  “Yeah, or maybe there never were any mummies in the first place. Maybe Creepy Crevice started a rumor just to lure people into his shop so they could buy some useless fake dinosaur bones instead. Do you reckon he meant it about turning us both into mummies?” Dougal added with a shiver. “I mean, if Jeremius hadn’t come bursting through the door when he did. . .”

  Angus tried hard not to think about how far the bone merchant would have gone to frighten them. Instead, he spent the next few days watching Dougal teach his pet lightning moth, Norman, some new tricks. Cid, his first lightning moth, had been trampled to the ground by Adrik Swarfe, and Angus had persuaded Theodore Twill, an older lightning cub, to give Dougal a replacement.

  “I can make him loop-the-loop now, and he does these amazing death dives!” Dougal demonstrated by allowing the moth to zoom around his bedroom ceiling, gathering velocity, before it plummeted toward the floor at lightning speed.

  “Impressive!” Angus said as Norman pulled out of the dive at the last second, wings quivering under the strain. “I wonder if Twill’s got any moths left.”

  Dougal also received the first part of Cradget’s Tri-Hard Puzzle Competition through the mail.

  “It looks like the first stage involves unlocking the clues on a word pyramid,” he explained eagerly, showing Angus a complicated triangular puzzle. “I’ve got to start solving the clues from the bottom up, unlocking the secret puzzle as I go. This looks really difficult,” he added, grinning. “What’s a fourteen-letter word f
or ‘something having merely a semblance of truth’?”

  “Er. . .” Angus said, uncertain what “semblance” actually meant.

  But it was the evenings that Angus enjoyed at Feaver Street the most. Mr. Dewsnap told them long tales of lightning catcher adventures that he’d read about in old copies of the Weathervane as they tucked into delicious cakes and pies baked by Mrs. Stobbs. After dinner, Angus and Dougal challenged Jeremius to rowdy games of Snaggle, which Dougal had bought from Cradget’s a few years ago.

  When the time finally came to return to Perilous, however, Angus was looking forward to seeing Indigo and continuing his training as a lightning cub. The morning of their departure was chaotic, with Dougal discovering at the last minute that his weatherproof coat had been attacked by Norman.

  “How am I supposed to stay dry in this?” he wailed, holding up a holey hood and nibbled sleeves.

  Angus lugged his overstuffed bag down the stairs, being careful not to set off his scare-me-not puzzle. He’d almost reached the bottom when the seams suddenly ruptured. His bag of magnetic marbles burst open and bounced down the remaining steps, chasing one another far and wide across the floor.

  By the time they left Feaver Street, loaded down with home-baked cookies and freshly knitted socks from Mrs. Stobbs, and caught a steam-powered coach back to Perilous, it was fast approaching lunchtime. Angus kept his mouth shut and his stomach clenched tight as they piled into the gravity railway carriage. It was his least favorite part of life at the Exploratorium, but there was no other way of traveling up the tall tooth of rock upon which Perilous sat. He concentrated hard on Dougal’s coat buttons as the railway shot upward, whizzing past flocks of birds and through small puffy clouds. When they finally reached the top, he heaved his bag straight out of the carriage and into the fresh air of the courtyard.

  “Hey, Angus!”

  Edmund Croxley, one of the older lightning cubs, was weaving his way toward him with a friendly wave. Angus grinned. Edmund had given him a guided tour of Perilous shortly after he’d first arrived on the island.

  “Had a good holiday?” Edmund inquired as Dougal joined them.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “I hope you younger lightning cubs have been keeping up with your studies over the summer. It’s important not to let your brain go soft.”

  “I think it might be a bit late for that,” Angus said, grinning sideways at Dougal.

  “Didn’t I see you and your uncle at the Starling Museum of Storm Science last week?” Edmund continued.

  “Er,” Angus said, taken by surprise. He’d never even considered that the museum might be full of other lightning cubs. What if he’d bumped into Pixie and Percival Vellum, his least favorite lightning cubs in the whole of Perilous? What if someone had seen him being marched out of the foyer by Catcher Tempest? Would anyone have believed he was simply there to stare at the cloud gallery?

  “Did you see the new interactive glacier exhibit?” Edmund asked. “Swarming with lightning catchers from Brazil, couldn’t get anywhere near it until they’d all cleared off. And then half the museum had to be closed because of a small fire in the gift shop, something about a teacup going bonkers.”

  Angus gulped. Dougal nudged him with his elbow, grinning.

  “Anyway, I can’t stand around here chatting,” Edmund said. “I must see if my room has been redecorated over the summer. It was completely ripped to shreds at the end of last term by an escaped lightning moth. I’ll see you later.” And he darted inside.

  “Funny how Croxley’s room was the only one that got wrecked,” Dougal said, still smiling.

  “Yeah, I bet Theodore Twill had something to do with that.”

  A moment later Angus and Dougal followed Jeremius into the entrance hall, where they were met by an incredible sight. Bright, gaudy posters had been plastered over almost every inch of wall, staircase, and marbled pillar, giving the instant impression that the entire hall had been gift wrapped.

  “Hey, we’ve seen the same posters all over Little Frog’s Bottom, too,” Dougal said, stopping to study one with interest. ‘Coming Soon!’ That’s exactly what all the others said.”

  “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with a plant sale at Brabazon Botanicals after all.” Angus stared around the papered entrance hall, trying to imagine what else might be “Coming Soon.”

  “It could be a weather exhibition,” Dougal said. “They had a huge one in Little Frog’s Bottom about ten years ago, and Dad went. He said there were lightning catchers from all over the world showing off new inventions and stuff.”

  “Just imagine if the experimental division invented lightning-proof underpants.” Angus grinned.

  “If the experimental division has invented lightningproof underpants, we’re all in for a shocking time.” Jeremius stood beside them, smiling. “Fascinating though this conversation is, I’m afraid I’ve got instructions to take you straight up to see Principal Dark-Angel,” he added, turning toward Angus. “I believe she wants to ask you about our trip to the Storm Science Museum.”

  “Can’t you just tell her what happened?” Angus asked hopefully. “I mean, you were with me the whole time.”

  But Jeremius could not be persuaded, and they parted from Dougal, who headed up the stairs to the supplies department to grab a new weatherproof coat without moth holes. Jeremius led Angus down a familiar passageway, with dark paintings of storm clouds hanging on the walls. Before Angus could gather his thoughts, Jeremius stopped outside a door, knocked once, and entered. Dark-Angel’s office was sparsely decorated, with a single desk sitting in the center. Dozens of weather maps and charts covered the stone walls.

  “Angus!” Felix Gudgeon, one of Angus’s favorite lightning catchers, slapped him on the back in greeting as Jeremius closed the door behind them. Completely bald, with a single silver snowflake earring, Gudgeon was distinctive even by lightning catcher standards. His marbled gray beard couldn’t hide the broad grin on his face. “Hope you’ve been keeping out of trouble for once.”

  Angus thought of the storm in a teacup and the incident at Crevice and Sons but decided now was not the moment to fill Gudgeon in on the details. Standing next to Gudgeon was Aramanthus Rogwood, one of his other favorite lightning catchers. Rogwood smiled at him with twinkling tawny eyes; his long braided beard was tucked into his leather jerkin to keep it out of his way. Standing directly in front of Rogwood, tapping her fingers impatiently against her arm, was Principal Delphinia Dark-Angel. Angus was glad to see that there was no sign of Valentine Vellum.

  “Angus, I trust you had a good holiday at the Windmill.” Dark-Angel smiled thinly at him, the usual unfriendly expression fixed on her face. Her short white hair and pallid skin looked even paler than normal under the light fissures. He tried not to stare at the bristly mole on her cheek.

  “I understand from Trevelyan Tempest that your trip to the weather museum was most informative. And that you have now gained a thorough understanding of the earliest history of the lightning catchers and the storm prophets.”

  Angus nodded, hoping she wasn’t about to ask him any difficult questions. Over the last few days at Feaver Street, a surprising number of storm prophet facts had somehow leaked out of his brain.

  “Now that we have started to lay some solid foundations, the time has come for you to learn more about your heritage.” Dark-Angel continued, turning to her desk and sitting down behind it. “The storm prophets have played a very important role in our history here at Perilous and in our understanding of the weather. Their unique abilities have allowed us to understand the very elemental forces of nature. A series of special lessons will now teach you all that we know of their impressive skills, which in turn may help develop your own abilities in the future.”

  Angus swallowed hard.

  “The lessons will be conducted by Aramanthus Rogwood.”

  Rogwood smiled at him through his beard, and Angus felt a surge of relief. Rogwood had already told him more about the storm prophets than
anyone else at Perilous, and he’d done so in a calm and kindly manner.

  “These special lessons will take place in the Inner Sanctum of Perplexing Mysteries and Secrets,” Dark-Angel said.

  “You’re kidding!” Angus blurted out before he could stop himself.

  Jeremius coughed suddenly, attempting to hide a huge guffaw of laughter. But Principal Dark-Angel was not amused. “I very rarely joke about such serious matters, McFangus. These lessons are extremely important, and if I discover that you have not been treating them with the seriousness they deserve . . .”

  Angus gulped. The Inner Sanctum was the most mysterious department in the whole of Perilous. He had never seen anyone entering or leaving the department or met anyone who worked inside it. Nobody knew what lay behind the locked door. And he suddenly wondered why information about the storm prophets had to be kept inside such a heavily guarded and mysterious part of Perilous.

  “Needless to say, by allowing you access to the Inner Sanctum and a great deal of sensitive information, I am placing you in a position of enormous trust.” Dark-Angel continued. “I must therefore have your solemn promise that you will tell no one about these private lessons or describe anything you might see in the Inner Sanctum.”

  “I-I promise, miss,” Angus said.

  “And try not to draw too much attention to yourself in the meantime,” she added, giving him a stern look. “The last thing we need is for everyone to start asking awkward questions.”

  Angus nodded and, ready to leave the office, half turned away from her. But it seemed Dark-Angel hadn’t finished with him yet.

  “Before you return to your friends, there is something else I wish to speak to you about.” She paused for a long moment, shuffling uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m afraid we have received some very upsetting news in the last few days. A series of reports has been sent from Catcher Plymstock and Catcher Knapp via mechanical messenger,” she said, taking something that looked like a squashed pigeon from a drawer in her desk. A small canister was attached underneath its wing with a ragged-looking note poking out one end. “I’m sorry to say there has been a terrible accident at Castle Dankhart. It appears that a weather experiment has gone catastrophically wrong, causing untold damage to the castle and possibly killing a number of monsoon mongrels.”