by Anne Cameron
Angus let his attention wander around the hallway as Catcher Sparks made slow progress down her list. He smiled at Georgina Fox and Millicent Nichols, who were standing next to the lightning catcher. Directly behind them, skulking in a dark corner and looking uglier than ever were Pixie and Percival Vellum. The vile hairy twins bore a strong resemblance to a pair of gorillas.
Angus caught Percival’s eye. The twin scowled, mouthing silently at him, “You’re dead, Munchfungus!”
At the end of the previous term, Percival had threatened to spread false rumors that Angus’s mum and dad had been kicked out of Perilous for causing a deadly accident on a fog field trip. In return, Angus had warned that he’d tell everyone that the twins’ dad had been big friends with Adrik Swarfe, Dankhart’s chief monsoon mongrel.
It was obvious that Percival’s loathing for him had only deepened over the holidays.
“What’s his problem?” Dougal whispered as Catcher Sparks continued reading out names and Percival continued glaring in their direction.
“You mean apart from being an irritating idiot?”
“McFangus!”
Angus spun around and felt his stomach sink like a stone. Everyone in the corridor, including Catcher Sparks, was now staring in his direction.
“Er, yes, miss?”
“If you had been listening properly, you would now know that you, Dewsnap, and Midnight have been assigned to Catcher Wrascal in the forecasting department,” she informed him with nostrils flaring dangerously. “I suggest you pay more attention in the future or you’ll find yourself heading straight up to Doctor Fleagal for an earwax scraping. Do I make myself clear?”
Angus nodded swiftly. “Yes, miss.”
The Vellums sniggered as he darted up the spiral stairs, his face shining with embarrassment.
After a hurried breakfast in the noisy kitchens Angus, Indigo, and Dougal made their way straight up to the Octagon, an eight-sided marbled hall with doors leading directly to each of the main departments at Perilous. They were met outside the forecasting department by an unfamiliar lightning catcher with short auburn hair and a round face.
“Hello! My name’s Catcher Wrascal, but you can call me Winnie when there’s no one else around,” she announced, bounding toward them with a friendly wink. “No need to be all stuffy and formal when it’s just the four of us.”
Catcher Wrascal had a bright, cheery sort of voice. She was also the youngest lightning catcher Angus had ever seen. Her leather jerkin was far too long, reaching well below her skinny knees. It was also extremely shiny, with none of the usual rips, tears, and scorch marks. Angus suddenly understood. Catcher Wrascal had only just qualified.
“The forecasting department is one of the busiest at Perilous,” she said, leading them through the door and into a short corridor, her leather jerkin squeaking as she walked. “We issue daily, weekly, and monthly forecasts to the most senior lightning catchers at Perilous and a variety of other Exploratoriums around the world, which is why we operate twenty-four hours a day, in every time zone. We also work in close liaison with the London office, which relies on us for weather warnings, blizzard alerts, and emergency weather flashes.”
Angus stared around as they entered a large square hall, which he had officially visited only once before with Edmund Croxley. There was a collection of submarine-type periscopes, each manned by a lightning catcher on a swiveling chair, used for observing weather fronts as they approached Perilous. There were long strips of dangling seaweed, a bank of mechanical pinecones, and live hedgehogs, all used for predicting rainfall. The large vats that were normally filled with cold rice pudding for the purpose of measuring humidity had been drained for cleaning.
“We use a wide range of weather information for producing each forecast, including air temperatures, wind direction, humidity levels,” Catcher Wrascal said, counting them off on her fingers as if trying to remember a shopping list. “We also consider different types of cloud, rainfall patterns, changes in air pressure, and the thermy-holine circle and its effects on the weather.”
“Er, the thermy-what-thingy, miss?” Angus asked.
“I can’t remember what it’s called exactly,” she told them brightly, “but it’s definitely got something to do with the oceans, the weather, and climate regulation, or so Catcher Killigrew claims anyway.”
“I think she’s talking about thermohaline circulation,” Dougal whispered when Angus and Indigo still looked confused. “It all starts with the formation of sea ice in the North Atlantic; it involves some deep ocean currents that circulate the globe on a seventy-thousand-mile round trip that takes about a thousand years.”
“A thousand years?” Indigo said, impressed.
“That’s exactly what Catcher Killigrew keeps telling me,” Catcher Wrascal said, smiling at them. “To be honest, forecasting isn’t really my strong point. I failed the exam twice. I’d much rather work in the experimental division, but until a position comes up—”
“Where did you train, miss?” Angus asked. He was certain he’d never seen her among the older trainees at Perilous.
“Please, call me Winnie! And I trained at a tiny Exploratorium in Fort William, Scotland. Now, what else am I supposed to tell you?” she said, staring at them blankly. “Oh, yes, we also spend a great deal of our time monitoring the local weather here on Imbur, which, as you know, can be extremely unpredictable.”
“Yeah, especially when your dear old uncle Scabby starts messing around with it,” Dougal whispered.
“Don’t!” Indigo warned, scratching her hand again. It now looked rather red and angry.
“What’s wrong with your hand?” Angus asked her.
“Nothing.” Indigo shoved it hastily into her pocket. “It’s just a stupid rash. I’ve got some lotion for it in my room.”
A telltale blush began to creep up both sides of Indigo’s neck. But before Angus could ask why she was suddenly looking so flustered they were approached by an older lightning catcher with extremely bushy eyebrows and silvery hair. Angus recognized him from the kitchens.
“Catcher Wrascal, a word, if you please,” he said, scowling down at them. “Are these three our new trainees?”
“Yes, Catcher Killigrew. I’m just giving them a tour.”
“Good. Make sure they understand the evacuation procedures in the event of an emergency weather flash. And when you’ve finished, you will go straight to Valentine Vellum’s office and apologize to him.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” Catcher Wrascal hung her head, blushing furiously.
“It seems you have delivered the wrong forecast to him for the last five days in a row. He has absolutely no interest in wind speeds at the Arctic Circle or the likelihood of fog in Brussels.”
“It won’t happen again, Catcher Killigrew, I promise,” Winnie Wrascal mumbled.
“Just make sure it doesn’t. And when you have finished apologizing to Catcher Vellum, you will spend some time learning the correct procedures for delivering daily forecasts.” He walked away from them briskly, shaking his head in apparent exasperation.
Catcher Wrascal continued to blush as she led them beyond the vats, through a door, and into an empty tunnel-like corridor with no natural light.
“Now, let me see.” She opened a door on the right. Angus caught a brief glimpse of some changing room lockers and someone wearing long stripy underpants.
“I say! Shut that door!” an irate voice shouted.
“Oops! Sorry!” Catcher Wrascal closed it hurriedly. “Oh, dear, that’s the third time this week I’ve barged in on Catcher Clavinger.”
Angus tried to hide a grin. Indigo stared at the floor, her shoulders shaking with silent giggles. Catcher Wrascal hurried them farther down the corridor.
“Ah, at last,” she said cheerfully, opening another door. “This is where you’ll be working for the next few weeks.”
She shuffled them into a cramped hallway facing an inner door. Angus swallowed hard. The door was round and made of stee
l. It was the kind found only in the most dangerous parts of Perilous, including the Lightnarium, the Rotundra, and the weather tunnel.
“Behind this door is the weather archive,” Catcher Wrascal announced. “It was started by the earliest lightning catchers in order to catalog and collect daily weather samples here on Imbur. Many charts and written forecasts are also kept, of course, but a physical record of the weather itself is invaluable when predicting long-term weather patterns, or so Catcher Killigrew keeps telling me anyway,” she added with a shrug.
“Ph-physical?” Dougal asked, starting to sound worried.
With a twist and a tug Catcher Wrascal led the way through the safety door. It took Angus’s eyes several seconds to adjust to the gloom inside. They had entered another long, windowless corridor with craggy walls and an impressive collection of stalactites hanging from the ceiling. There were a further twelve steel safety doors set deep into the walls before them, six on the left-hand side, six on the right. Angus gulped. It reminded him of the testing tunnels where the experimental division assessed its most dangerous inventions, far away from the rest of the Exploratorium.
“All the rooms on the left side of the corridor contain storm jars from different eras and written records of the weather,” Catcher Wrascal explained. “The doors on the right, however, are specially fortified and store much larger samples, collected from some of the biggest and most violent storms in the history of Imbur. There’s a cold store for all the worst of the wintry weather, including icicle storms and ice-diamond storms.” She pointed to a door that was covered in a thick layer of sparkling ice crystals and looked frozen solid. “We have a separate archive for all the weather that comes spilling out of Castle Dankhart, of course.”
The door to the Dankhart archive was much smaller than any of the others, with an extra wheel lock on the front.
Angus glanced swiftly at Dougal and Indigo. It was exactly the kind of archive that might help them uncover the truth about the weather vortex.
“C-can we have a look inside it, miss?” Angus asked hopefully.
“Catcher Killigrew would kill me if I let you anywhere near it! It’s far too dangerous for lightning cubs. Only senior lightning catchers are allowed to enter without an escort. But we also receive daily weather reports for Castle Dankhart from our mountain observation post, and they’re a lot safer.”
“Where are those kept, miss?” Dougal asked, clearly trying not to sound too interested.
“All weather reports are kept in the paper archive.” Catcher Wrascal pointed vaguely to one of the other doors. “Right, I’d better show you three where you’ll be working.”
She led them straight over to the first door on the left and began to heave it open. Angus held his breath, hoping they weren’t about to be thrust into a raging storm.
“I think I’m going to be sick!” Dougal whimpered beside him.
Light fissures flicked on as Catcher Wrascal stepped through the door and—
“Oh,” Angus said, almost feeling disappointed.
Behind the door was a vast, cavernous room. It was filled from top to bottom with thousands of glass containers.
“Wow! Storm jars!” Dougal gasped, looking relieved that the room contained nothing more dangerous. “Dad uses those to store his pickled walnuts.”
Some of the jars had been arranged neatly along stone shelves cut directly into the walls. Others sat higgledy-piggledy on the floor. A number of the smaller jars hung from the ceiling on hooks. Some lightning catchers had clearly been forced to collect their weather samples in empty pickle jars, vinegar bottles, and tin cans. Each one appeared to hold a sliver of snowstorm, a glimmer of sunlight, or a splinter of hailstone as if someone had tried to cut and preserve a single delicate shaving of storm.
“Imbur weather samples have been kept in storm jars from the time of the earliest lightning catchers,” Catcher Wrascal explained. She picked up a jar and let them gaze at a wafer-thin slice of fog as it drifted and floated gently inside, nudging against the sides of the glass. “Unfortunately, some of the older jars were damaged recently by a number of strong tremors that occurred in the experimental division and have started to develop cracks. Your job is to transfer those weather samples into new jars, where they should be sealed and labeled.”
She pointed behind them to where a collection of brand-new storm jars, a pile of rubber stoppers, and some funnels had been neatly arranged.
“Right, I think that’s everything. I’ll be back midmorning to see how you’re getting on.” Catcher Wrascal beamed at all three of them as she headed toward the door. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She stopped abruptly. “I’m supposed to tell you not to enter any of the other parts of the archive.”
Angus exchanged glances with Dougal.
“And don’t let the different types of weather mix either. It causes dreadful problems. I’ll see you three later. Happy labeling!”
“But, miss,” Indigo said as the lightning catcher headed for the door once again, “we haven’t got anything to label the jars with.”
“Oops!” Catcher Wrascal hurried back. She extracted three pens and some smart-looking labels from her pocket and handed them to Indigo. “Catcher Killigrew says I’d forget my own buttocks if they weren’t already attached. There’s one last thing I should warn you about before I go. Stay away from the farthest corner.” She pointed into the dark, where only the faintest gleam of glass was visible. “Heaven knows what some of those jars contain.”
And she finally disappeared with a cheery wave.
“What else do you reckon she’s forgotten to tell us?” Dougal mumbled, keeping his voice low in case Catcher Wrascal returned one last time.
“I dunno,” Angus said, checking over his shoulder. “But I wouldn’t mind finding out more about that Dankhart archive.”
Dougal instantly turned pale.
“I mean, what if they’ve got a sample from the weather vortex in there?” Angus continued. “Gudgeon said they’d already collected some from the outer edges of the cloud, and maybe if we could just get a quick look at it—”
“We might be able to work out what’s really going on inside that vortex and what Dark-Angel’s not telling us about it,” Indigo said, looking eager to try.
“In that case, one of us had better have a good rummage around inside that paper archive as well,” Dougal said, swiftly volunteering for the job. “There’s got to be something useful in those daily Castle Dankhart weather reports. Maybe there were some clues, you know, the day before the explosion.”
Angus led the way back into the dim passageway outside, checking that the coast was still clear. He and Indigo hurried over to the small double-locked door that led to the Dankhart archive as Dougal peeled off to the left and disappeared into a far more friendly-looking room.
“I’ll go first,” Angus said, carefully twisting the first of the two wheel locks. “This was my idea, so if there’s anything dangerous lurking inside . . .”
Indigo rolled up her sleeves, looking ready to tackle anything. Angus opened the door with a final twist and a tug and clambered through the small opening.
“Whoa!”
Inside, the archive was dimly lit and freezing cold, with the clammy atmosphere of a dungeon. Storms jars filled almost every inch of floor. The noise was overwhelming. A cacophony of howling winds, roaring rainstorms, and violent thunder surrounded them on all sides, making Angus’s ears ache. They squeezed their way through the sea of glass, between towering samples of crimson snow and sneaking mists. Ice-diamond spores, desperate to break out and freeze their lungs solid, flung themselves against the glass as they passed.
“D-do you think this is what it feels like inside Castle Dankhart?” Indigo said over the noise, staring around at the dreadful storm samples.
Angus shuddered, hoping he’d never have to find out.
A collection of huge wide-necked jars lay empty on their sides, their stoppers missing.
“I wonder what used to be insi
de those.” He stared anxiously up at the ceiling for signs of any escaped storms that might be lurking.
But Indigo had finally spotted what they’d been searching for.
“Over there!” A string of smaller storm jars had been set aside from the others and lined up in a neat row. Indigo was already racing over to inspect the contents. “‘Dankhart weather vortex,’” she said, bending down to read the labels. “This sample was collected just three days ago. It’s the most recent one in here.”
Angus crouched on his knees to study it more closely. Dark slivers of storm swirled around at a furious pace, filling every square inch of jar with dense cloud and tumbling debris.
“So, was this taken from a real storm or a fake?” Indigo asked, peering into the jar with a look of deep concentration.
Angus felt his hopes of finding an answer suddenly plunge. The samples taken from the vortex looked just as fierce, just as angry and malevolent as any of the others in the Dankhart archive. Tiny fragments of twig, snail shell, and short wiry-looking quills raced around inside it. But did the strange debris come from a real explosion at the castle? Or did it point to something even more sinister?
“Listen, Indigo, can’t your mum find out what’s really going on under that cloud?” Angus sat back on his heels, struck by a sudden thought. “Doesn’t she know anyone at the castle she could contact, like an old housekeeper or someone? Or maybe there’s a secret passageway she could sneak a message inside.”
“I’m sorry, Angus, but it’s no use.” Indigo shook her head sadly. “She won’t even mention the Dankharts.”
Angus nodded, his hopes of finding an answer sinking even further. He was just about to suggest they make a quick exit from the archive when—
“It’s just so horrible!” Indigo burst out suddenly, making him jump. “I can’t believe the Dankharts have created such awful things!” She jerked her head toward the storm jar. “I mean, they’re part of my family.”
“Yeah, but the Midnights would never do that. And you’re half Midnight, too,” Angus reminded her.
“Maybe my mum was right. I should have gone to school on the mainland, where no one’s ever heard of the Dankharts.”
