“I…I what?” Rage asked faintly.
“She’s not really to blame,” the boy protested. “Not completely. After all, haven’t we all wanted to be human from time to time? Haven’t we secretly wished it? To be free? To be able to decide? To be masters of ourselves?”
“I never wished to be human,” the bear creature said heavily. “I fought the gate magic and it hurt me.”
A young woman with very short, sleek blond hair leaped into the clearing. She was dressed in a tan bodysuit belted at the waist and looked like one of the warrior women in Rage’s book of legends. She stretched and then stared alertly about out of deep-set, almond-shaped brown eyes.
“We were looking for you,” the boy said.
“I was trying out this shape,” she answered, turning her beautiful eyes on him. “It’s fast, and it’s strong, and it’s not stiff like my old shape was. Is there anything to eat?”
Rage shook her head, for this last question appeared to be aimed at her.
The young woman appeared momentarily downcast. “That won’t do at all.” She brightened. “Shall I go and look for some food?”
Rage nodded in bemusement at being asked such a question by an adult. The Amazon immediately sprinted away into the trees, and Rage wondered if the denizens of this place were as mad as the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
“You should not have let her go,” the bear creature told Rage.
“It’s only right she should have to find us something to eat,” the little man declared. “She started all of this by running off without thinking, as usual.”
“She couldn’t help it,” the boy protested. “It was the smell. It caught hold of her. You ran after it, too,” he added. “It was so interesting! Sly and slinky. Almost a cat smell, I thought. But not quite.”
“It smelled hot,” the little man said, ears twitching back and forward. “But I could have resisted if Elle hadn’t run off like that.”
Rage’s mouth fell open. Elle?
She looked incredulously at the odd collection of beings. Was it possible that they were the dogs—her dogs—transformed into these creatures? The big bear-dog could be Bear, and Billy Thunder might be the barefoot boy in jeans and a bomber jacket; Mr. Walker was the little man in hooded pajamas, and Elle was the Amazon. But how could they have been so changed?
The little man had accused her of wishing for them to be human, and it was true she had wished that just as she stepped through the gate, but she hadn’t really meant it. Besides, they hadn’t become humans. Bear actually looked more wild than she had on the other side of the bramble gate, though she claimed to have resisted the transformation. What if each of the animals had reacted to the magic according to their nature? Mr. Walker might have resisted out of characteristic stubbornness, whereas Billy had admitted wanting to be human sometimes, and maybe Elle felt that way also.
“Bear?” Rage called softly.
The huge animal turned sad, dark eyes on her, and Billy Thunder beamed. “There now. You’ve remembered Mama’s name. Maybe you didn’t hit your head very hard after all.”
“Oh dear,” Rage said faintly, and sat down. Surely everything must be a dream—running away from Winnoway Farm to help Mam, the firecat and the bramble gate and the transformation of the animals. It was a dream. It must be, except that she had never had a dream that felt so true.
“It’s a shock,” Billy said kindly. “But at least you are yourself. I kept falling until I learned how to balance on two legs. It’s easy once you get the trick of it, though. You’ve been asleep for hours.”
“Look who I’ve found,” said Elle, coming out from the trees and leading a skinny, depressed-looking young man by the hand. Only he wasn’t a man because he had goat legs. He was, Rage marveled, a faun, like Mr. Tumnus out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He even had two elegant horns.
Goaty, Rage thought, feeling dazed. He would have followed the dogs through the gate. He must have resisted the gate magic, too, just as he always resisted everything.
“Look what has happened to me,” he bleated. “I have become a terrible monster.” He shivered violently.
Billy took off his jacket. “You’re not a monster,” he said gently, helping Goaty into the coat. “You’ve just changed a bit. Now you’re partly human.”
“What on earth are you doing here, anyway?” the little man demanded. “No one invited you.”
Mr. Walker, Rage reminded herself. Mr. Walker, as always scolding and worrying at Goaty.
The faun plaited his bony fingers. “I’m sure I don’t know. It’s a wonder I know anything at all. Sleep in a puddle and your brains leak out. Everyone knows that. I’m dreadfully wet!”
“You shouldn’t have followed,” Mr. Walker said. “She never intended for you to come. She shut you in.”
“She did,” Goaty agreed, giving Rage a reproachful look. “She left me behind, the way everyone always leaves me.” His pale eyes widened, and he shuddered. “On this occasion I might not have minded. But then that thing came and undid the gate, and I couldn’t help following. It’s in my nature,” he added apologetically.
“What thing?” Rage asked.
“The hot thing,” he answered, glancing over his shoulder nervously. “I couldn’t see what it looked like exactly. It was very bright and shifty. In the end it flew spitting at me, and I ran from it in terror.”
The Amazon grabbed his arm and began sniffing his sleeve vigorously. She snuffled right along his arm and up to his shoulder. Then she stuck her nose into his armpit, sniffed intently, and gasped. “That’s it! That’s the smell that made me run out the farm gate.” She held Goaty’s arm out to Rage, inviting her to smell it.
Rage shook her head, but Mr. Walker and Billy sniffed.
“The same smell,” Billy Thunder confirmed solemnly.
“Exactly,” Mr. Walker said. “But what does it mean?”
“It’s obvious,” Bear said heavily. “Whatever let Goaty out, whatever lured Elle after it, it wants us here for a reason.”
“No doubt it means to eat us,” Goaty said gloomily, chewing absentmindedly at the end of his pale ringlets. “It had very sharp-looking teeth.”
Rage licked her lips. “I think it was the firecat,” she said.
“The what cat?” Mr. Walker asked.
“A…a voice spoke to me before we came through the bramble gate,” Rage explained. “It said it was the firecat, and it told me that the gateway was magical, and on the other side of it was a wizard who could give me magic to wake Mam, if only I did an errand for him.”
“Why would a wizard need your help?” Mr. Walker asked.
It was a good question and one that Rage now wished she had asked the firecat. But she had thought that the voice belonged to someone playing a trick on her.
“What errand?” Billy asked.
“I have to deliver some small thing to the wizard,” Rage answered. But she was remembering how quickly and lightly this had been said, as though the firecat had been pretending that something important was unimportant. She thought of the ring in Lord of the Rings. That could be called a small thing, but Frodo had almost died in delivering it to Mount Doom.
“What small thing?” Mr. Walker demanded.
“I…I didn’t ask,” Rage admitted.
Billy and Mr. Walker exchanged a look. Then Billy shrugged. “She had to come if there was a way to help her mother.”
Mr. Walker scowled. “Who says that the firecat was telling the truth about the wizard being able to help her mother? I’ve heard of magic to make people sleep, but not to wake them up.”
“It all happened so fast,” Rage cried. “I was running after you, and then I saw the gateway, and the next minute there was this voice telling me that the only way to save Mam was to go through to the other side! I was upset about Mam, and I thought it was some kind of mean trick. I only went through to prove it wasn’t a magical gateway.”
“Except it was,” Mr. Walker said severely. “You
ought to have thought it through more carefully, just in case.”
Rage had the urge to shout that she was too young to think properly about things, but that was stupid. The dogs seemed a lot more judgmental now that they could talk, especially Mr. Walker.
“Where is this wizard, then?” Billy asked gently, sensing she was upset, just as he had done when he was a dog.
“I…I don’t know. But the firecat said it would answer all my questions if I came to this side of the gate,” Rage said, though that wasn’t exactly what the voice had said. “Probably it will come in the morning,” she added quickly, to forestall another pointed question from Mr. Walker.
Billy said they might as well try to sleep while they waited.
“Nice sort of creature this firecat must be, luring us here and then forcing us to sleep in the middle of a forest like this,” Mr. Walker grumbled as they sat under a big tree and settled themselves for sleep.
Rage sat stiffly with her back against a tree, and the others took up sleeping positions similar to their usual animal ones, only instead of Billy trying to lie across her legs, he lay down beside her. Mr. Walker curled into Rage’s lap, and Elle flung herself on the ground beside them. Goaty sat beside Elle and shyly invited her to rest her head on his fleecy lap. Only Bear moved apart, preferring to sleep under another tree.
In a remarkably short time the animals were all asleep, snuffling and snorting. Rage tried to stay awake to think, but before long she drifted off as well.
She was traveling on a train, and suddenly Mam said they must go back to Winnoway.
“Your grandfather is sick and he needs us,” Mam said, but it was she who looked sick.
“What is the matter with him?” Rage asked.
“He is sad,” Mam answered. “That is a sickness, too.”
He is sad and sad and sad, the train wheels whispered.
The next day Rage woke to Goaty’s volcanic sneezes and to the realization that what had happened was real!
It was raining, though the drops were so fine as to be more of a thick mist. Rage’s coat was clammy with it. Goaty sneezed again and declared that he had a cold, only he said “code” because of his blocked nose.
Shaking and squeezing the ends of her coat, Rage tried to remember everything the firecat had said to her, but a picture of Mam lying still and silent in a hospital bed kept getting in the way.
Elle did not trouble herself with thinking. She sprang out into the rain and vigorously rubbed the tan bodysuit, which Rage could now see was part of her, like hair or fur. She was less human than she had appeared last night, which meant that she had resisted the gate magic. Only Billy seemed to be completely human.
Bear came out from under her tree and looked up into the drab sky. She sighed heavily and dropped her head to lick at her paw. Rage felt guilty, as if somehow the rain were her fault on top of everything else. In the cold light of day, going through the enchanted gate seemed madder than ever. Mr. Walker was right. She ought to have known no one could play such a terrible and complicated joke. She should have thrown a stick through the gateway instead of going herself.
Then a happier thought occurred to her. If the gateway was enchanted, maybe there really was a wizard with waking magic. Rage made up her mind. If the firecat was right and the wizard wanted something brought to him, she would do it, no matter what it was, just so long as he agreed to help Mam. The trouble was, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she had to find the wizard before she could learn what he wanted her to bring him.
In the misty daylight, she could see a sort of path through the trees on the slope above them. “I think we should go up there and have a proper look around,” she said, pointing.
“What about the firecat?” Mr. Walker muttered, but Rage pretended not to hear him.
“We’ll ged wed and all die of code,” Goaty said. It took a minute for Rage to figure out what he had said.
“It’s not really cold,” Billy told him cheerfully. “And walking will keep us warmer than sitting still.”
“Exercise will do us good,” Elle said heartily.
Mr. Walker gave Rage his soulful look, and she automatically picked him up, just as she had when he was a little butterfly-eared Chihuahua, tucking his tail under her arm.
“No one ever carried be,” Goaty sniffed sadly.
“No one ever stepped on you, either!” Mr. Walker said snappishly.
The break in the trees was not a path after all, only a natural thinning along a rocky seam, but it made walking easier. Although the rain was fine, Rage soon found she was very wet. Fortunately, Billy had been right in saying it was not cold. The rain began to ease as they reached the top of the hill, which was a cap of hard stone where nothing green could grow. They climbed down into a valley and began another hard climb, up the next hill.
Rage stopped to catch her breath and looked back. A dense, trackless forest spread away beneath them until it became a greenish haze that merged with the sky. There was not a single sign of life, just forest blanketing the hills and valleys. It was the way Rage imagined Winnoway might have looked before people arrived. It was beautiful to see a forest so untouched, but she hoped there would be something more than wilderness on the other side of the hill.
“Up,” Goaty urged. He trotted ahead, and at first Rage was puzzled by his sudden enthusiasm. Then she remembered that it was the nature of a goat to climb, and for all his transformation, Goaty was still more goat than anything else. He had never climbed a hill in his life, let alone a mountain, but his wild ancestors had lived on steep-sided mountains, so perhaps this was buried in the deepest part of his mind.
Bear was making heavy work of the hill, and Billy hovered, looking worried. She stumbled slightly. When he caught at her she snarled and slashed the air in his direction with her claws extended. Rage heard the wheezing sound her breath made and felt anxious. It was how Grandfather Adam had sounded before he died.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she told Bear, who gave her a weary look before going on climbing.
“She doesn’t blame you,” Billy said quietly, coming up beside Rage.
“She seems so unhappy,” Rage murmured, slowing so that they could talk.
Billy sighed. “Life has been hard for her. Your grandfather was not a kind master. Mama never had a pat or soft word until you came. And then there were all of my brothers and sisters dying, and you keeping me from her. I remember hearing her calling to me when I was sick, like a voice in a dream. Calling and calling.”
“But you would have died if we hadn’t taken you….”
“She knows. I know. But it doesn’t make any difference to the hurting of it.”
“She hates me, then,” Rage said, devastated.
“Oh no,” Billy said. “Hating’s a human thing. She’s just all filled with grieving, and sometimes when it gets too much, she lashes out. But she cares very much for you and your mam.”
“And you? Doesn’t she care for you?” Rage asked.
Billy Thunder looked up the hill after his mother. “I think it hurts her to look at me,” he said, very softly.
Toiling up the last bit of the hill, Rage was weighed down with a sadness as heavy as her sodden coat. It seemed so unfair that Bear could care for her and Mam but not for her own son.
“Hey!” Elle yelled. Rage looked up to see that she and Goaty had reached the top of the hill. “I see a road and there’s a river alongside it, and over there, in the forest, is a big house with pointy bits.”
The top of the hill was a perfect vantage point. Before them an enormous valley opened like a seam between parallel ranges of towering, white-streaked mountains. Thick masses of clouds rested on their peaks, concealing what lay beyond. A river emerged from the farthest mountains and wound its silvery way the length of the valley. To the east of the river, the valley was densely forested but for a castle on a hill—Elle’s big house with pointy bits. A faint track ran from the castle, through the forest, and around the foot of the hill they
were standing on, before joining a road that ran beside the river.
Rage noticed a small settlement not far along the river road. “What do you see there?” she asked, pointing it out.
“Houses and gardens,” Mr. Walker answered, wriggling to be put down.
“A stone well in the middle of a little square in the middle of houses and streets,” Billy said.
“People,” Elle said.
“People people?” Rage asked.
Elle squinted. “People of some sort,” she said at last. “What difference does it make?”
“Oh, it makes a great deal of difference,” Bear said thickly. “People only care about people who are exactly like them.”
Rage was hurt by the scorn in Bear’s voice, but she only said, “I was thinking we could go there and ask about the wizard.”
“If there are people, they will want to send me to the abattoir,” Goaty said. He sneezed, very wetly.
Mr. Walker looked at him in disgust. “Do you mind! You spat on me just now.”
“No one will dare to send us anywhere!” Elle declared. She bounded into the trees and emerged with a dead branch. “I’ll make a spear!” She waved the stick around so wildly that it poked Goaty in the eye.
He rubbed it and said mournfully that it didn’t matter. “I have another eye, and I doubt three eyes would be enough to see all the trouble that we’re bound to find if we go down into that valley. Going down is a bad thing.”
“Why don’t we go there instead?” Mr. Walker said, pointing to the castle on the hill.
“It’s a castle,” Billy said.
“Of course it is,” Mr. Walker snapped. “And in it there will be a king or queen or a wise advisor who will be able to help us find the wizard. Perhaps even the wizard himself lives there.”
Rage was startled to find that Mr. Walker and Billy knew what a castle was. Then she remembered that Billy and Mr. Walker had always sat with Rage when Mam read her stories.
“That track leading to the castle doesn’t look very clear,” Rage said.
She did not want to admit that she was afraid to go to the castle. In fairy tales there was always something dramatic and violent happening in a castle—somebody being stolen away or put to sleep for a hundred years, somebody getting his head chopped off or being usurped. She wasn’t actually sure what being usurped was, but it sounded at least as bad as having her head chopped off.
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