Night Gate

by Isobelle Carmody

  Rage had been creeping steadily nearer the two men, and at these cold words a great fury rose up in her heart. She groped in her pocket for the slender pouch of witch’s dust and hurled the remainder of it as hard as she could at the two men.

  They crumpled soundlessly, just as the blackshirts had done.

  “Elle!” Rage cried. “Come and tie these two up and follow me! Billy, hurry before it’s too late!”

  Not waiting to see if they obeyed, she hurtled down the steps, only to find herself in another huge room with more glass cases in pillars, except there were no windows in the walls, and it was brightly lit. There was a square hole in the floor, which must lead down to yet another level.

  Then she saw that there was no need to go further.

  Billy cannoned into her.

  Incapable of words, Rage pointed to an enormous glass case set against the far wall and lit from above. Bear was inside it, lying on a bed with wheels. A tube from a metal tank fed into the side of the case, and a hissing noise filled the air.

  “No!” Billy screamed. He lifted the metal tank with a deep-throated groan and heaved it at the glass case with all of his might. There was a tremendous shattering crash, and then the air filled with a sickly sweet smell. The hissing sound became louder.

  “Hold your breath and let’s get her out of here!” Rage gasped.

  Billy crunched over the broken glass and tried to shove the bed, but Bear’s bulk was too much for him to move alone.

  “Elle!” Rage screamed.

  The Amazon came running down the stairs. “It took me a while to find something to tie—” She paled at the sight of Bear.

  Somehow they managed to get the unconscious Bear to the top of the stairs. Rage saw that Hermani had awakened. He said in a slurred but urgent voice, “You heard the bells before? It means someone has escaped the prisons. Blackshirts will pour through the tunnels into the conservatorium any minute, wanting instructions from the High Keeper.”

  Ignoring him, Billy peered into Bear’s face and patted her loose jaw. She did not respond. Rage laid her head on the old dog’s chest with a feeling of dread and heard a heartbeat tap against her cheek. It sounded uneven and too slow, but it was there.

  “She’s alive!”

  Billy burst into tears and kissed Bear’s gray-flecked muzzle and forehead.

  “You must listen to me,” Hermani cried frantically. “There is a chute over by where you came in. Under the pillar with the case of squirrels. The pillar can be pushed aside. It will bring you to a tunnel that lies below the network of blackshirt tunnels. It’s your only hope.”

  “Why would you help us?” Rage demanded.

  The keeper looked at his master, who had begun to stir. “Because I would save the beast,” he hissed, nodding at Bear. “Go, or it will be too late for all of you.”

  “They’re coming,” Elle said. “I smell them.”

  Rage could hear nothing, but she ran to the gleaming case with the stuffed squirrels and pushed on it. It slid aside with a faint sigh, and there was the promised chute.

  “How can we trust that man after what he did to Mama?” Billy demanded.

  “We have no choice. Help Bear down the chute, and you two go after her!” Rage commanded.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m coming, too, of course. Now go!”

  Leaving them to drag Bear over to the chute, Rage ran back to the two keepers. The High Keeper’s eyes were fluttering. “How do I close the pillar back over the chute?” she demanded of Hermani.

  “A lever on the underside of the case. Push it and you will have just enough time to jump through before the pillar moves back into place. Now go! He mustn’t know I helped you.”

  Rage did not waste time on thanks. In seconds she was hurtling down a smooth chute in pitch darkness. At first the speed was terrifying, but then the tunnel leveled out and flattened so that eventually she simply slid to a halt.

  Elle and Billy were leaning anxiously over Bear, but they looked up at Rage in puzzlement. She realized that the faint source of light that bathed them all was coming from her. Looking down, she was astonished to find her pocket glowing. Reaching in, she found the hourglass. It was warm to the touch and radiated a bright ruby light. How strange! She held it before her like a beacon and saw that the chute became a proper tunnel that ran away into the distance.

  Bear started to retch and cough violently.

  “Mama!” Billy turned his attention back to his mother.

  The old dog struggled to sit. “Where are we? What has been happening?” she rasped.

  “There’s no time to explain now,” Rage said. “We need to go on if you can.” They had to find Goaty and Mr. Walker, and they had to get out of the tunnel in case Hermani had betrayed them. After that, there was really nowhere to go but back over the river to the wild side—if they could get on the ferry.

  “What did you do to it?” Billy asked, glancing at the glowing hourglass as they helped Bear to her feet.

  “Nothing,” Rage said. “It did that on its own.” Was it possible that she had somehow invoked the wizard’s magic? Taking the hourglass and holding it high to light their way, she took the lead.

  Billy’s mind must have been on the same track. “Maybe the hourglass gives wishes if you just think about something. Like the bramble gate tried to make us human after you wished for it. Did you want it to be light?”

  “I don’t think I thought about light.”

  “Try wishing for something new,” Elle suggested.

  Rage doubted it would be that easy, but she said in a loud, formal voice, “Please take us to Goaty!” When nothing happened, she told the others what the firecat had said about the sand representing the wizard’s life.

  “But it has almost run out,” Billy said, looking aghast.

  Rage nodded. “I don’t think we can do anything to save the wizard, if what the firecat said is true. We can’t survive a trip down the River of No Return to find him.”

  Elle, Billy, and even Bear stared at her. Rage remembered that she hadn’t told them about what Ania had shown her. So as they walked she explained all that had befallen her since they had parted in the park of stone trees.

  “A waterfall,” Billy murmured. “But it must be possible to go down it safely, if the wizard went there.”

  “He had magical powers to protect him,” Elle said.

  “If the wizard could use his magical powers, he would have come back to get the hourglass and save himself,” Billy said. “That means he went down the river without magic.”

  “We don’t know that. He might have got there some other way altogether. He might have even used a gate like the one that brought us here,” Rage said. “But we have only one way to get there, and that would kill us.”

  “Maybe,” Billy said. Then he sighed. “Well, who knows what is true, anyway? The firecat might have lied about the sand showing how much time the wizard has to live. Before, it said the hourglass contained all that the wizard knew.”

  “It might have lied about everything,” Rage said. “But I do believe it wants us to take the hourglass to the wizard. I just wish we knew why.”

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “When I was in that prison cell, I kept wondering why the firecat just didn’t magic itself to the wizard with the hourglass, like it magicked itself to us,” Elle said presently.

  Rage was surprised—usually Elle wasn’t interested in thinking about things. But then again, she wasn’t usually stuck in jail.

  “I was thinking about the firecat, too,” Billy said. “I don’t think it can magic itself anywhere. I think it only magics an image of itself to us. That’s why it won’t appear properly and wouldn’t unlock your door in the banding house. It can’t.”

  “But if it’s not following us physically, how does it know where to send its image?” Rage asked. Then she stared at the glowing hourglass.

  Billy nodded. “It has to contain some sort of spell that lets the f
irecat see us. It knows the hourglass is the one thing you wouldn’t lose or give away. You said yourself that it warned you to be careful not to break it.”

  Rage did not know what to say. Any of their guesses could be right or completely wrong, depending on which part of the firecat’s story was true—if any. Rage’s thoughts went on turning this way and that, like the tunnel, never reaching any conclusion. When they came round a bend and found the way split into three identical tunnels, she felt it was a perfect symbol of their journey. Every question to do with the wizard and the firecat led only to more questions.

  Now that they had stopped, Rage was alarmed to hear how raggedly Bear was breathing. “Let’s rest for a bit while we decide which way to go,” she said lightly. It was a measure of Bear’s exhaustion that she did not even argue. She slumped to the ground, and when Billy lifted her head onto his lap, she did not push him away.

  Rage turned to Elle. “What can you smell down the tunnels?”

  Elle sniffed the first. “Buildings, people, and metal.” She sniffed the second. “Flowers, trees, earth…” She frowned. “Animals, too, but their smell is old and faded, as if they were there once but have long gone. I smell…sadness.”

  She turned her attention to the third tunnel. “Water,” she said. “And something else…I don’t know what it is. I’ve never smelled it before. It makes me want to sneeze.”

  She turned to Rage expectantly.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Rage admitted. “I thought it was hopeless to try to find the wizard, once I saw the waterfall. But maybe I was wrong about the riddle. Maybe it means something completely different.”

  “Well, we can’t stay in the city,” Elle said. “Those blackshirts will be looking everywhere for us.”

  “Especially since we stole Mama out from under their noses,” Billy said. “The High Keeper will want to know how we escaped.”

  “I think we have to go back over the river and see the witch Mother. Ania says she wants to help us because she wants the wizard found, to save Valley. Maybe she will be able to figure out the riddle on the hourglass. And she might even know something about the firecat.”

  “So, which tunnel?” Elle asked.

  Rage studied the first tunnel. It led to people, so it probably came out somewhere in Newfork, which was the last place they wanted to be just now. The second tunnel? She liked the sound of trees and flowers, but the smell of sadness was daunting. The tunnel probably led to one of the provinces, where there was clearly something wrong. And anyway, there would be lots of keepers there. The third tunnel led to water. That sounded most promising. It might even lead them to one of the tunnels Hermani had mentioned, which had become saturated with water seeping from the encroaching river.

  Rage hesitated, worried about Bear. “I think we should take the tunnel that smells of water, but I will go down it alone to see where it leads.”

  Billy said anxiously, “Don’t let’s split up again.”

  Rage bit her lip. “But, Bear—”

  “I can walk,” Bear said gruffly, struggling to her feet.

  They had been on the move for half an hour when they came to a grille embedded in the walls of the tunnel, completely blocking their way. Rage stared stupidly at it, knowing they would have no hope of shifting it. Bear was swaying on her feet, eyes cloudy and unfocused.

  “We’ll have to go back and try one of the other tunnels, but I think we might as well rest here,” Rage said. “I’ve been thinking that if we take long enough, the blackshirts will think we’ve gone over the river, and they’ll give up searching.”

  “What about Goaty and Mr. Walker?” Elle asked.

  “If anyone questions them, they’ll simply say they’re wild things and they’ll be left alone.” Rage said this with more confidence than she felt. The blackshirts were bound to be suspicious if they found two wild things wandering about when they had already taken three as prisoners. But they could not go on with Bear in such a state. Given everything, it was sensible to stay where they were for the time being, though she dared not look at the sand in the hourglass.

  The old dog lay down with a profound sigh. Billy took her big, misshapen head onto his lap and ran his fingers over her soft ears. Again she did not reject his caress.

  “I wonder what is happening to Goaty,” Elle said wistfully, peering through the grate. “He will be afraid if he is all alone.”

  “I hope he is not alone,” Rage said. She leaned back against the sloping side of the tunnel, wishing Mam could see Bear and Billy together. It had always upset her that Bear was so cold to Billy. But Mam seemed so far away. It was becoming harder for Rage to imagine being home with her again. Having entered a magical world, she had somehow lost touch with her own world. The longer she was away from it, the less real it seemed. She closed her eyes and slipped into a deep sleep.

  A voice was calling her name.

  Rage opened her eyes and found she was sitting on the grassy lawn at Winnoway Farm. The dogs were sleeping around her, and she could see Goaty standing on the Johnsons’ fence and eating the new buds off the plum trees. She shook her head, thinking Mr. Johnson would go mad when he saw the damage.

  “Ra-age!”

  Someone was calling, but there was no one in sight.

  “Who is it?” she cried, wondering if Mam was calling her from inside the house. Strangely, the dogs remained asleep.

  “Help me,” the voice called.

  It was the same voice that had called her before, out of the streamers of light in the forest.

  “How can I help you?” Rage asked.

  “Break…release…before…too late…”

  “I don’t know how to break the spell,” she cried. “I already told you. Who are you? Where are you?”

  But there was no answer.

  Rage woke to find herself sitting in the cold tunnel by the metal grille.

  “Rage!” a voice called.

  “I must be going mad,” she muttered to herself. “First I dream of a voice calling me, and then when I wake up, I can still hear it.”

  “Rage!”

  Rage looked through the grille and was astounded to see a pixie-sized woman wearing a tight-fitting brown catsuit and flat-heeled, high-topped boots. Her hair was a floating cloud of yellow, like spun sugar, and it shimmered in the light of the tiny lantern she carried.

  “You must move back so that I can open the grille,” she told Rage, waving the lantern with a shooing action.

  Billy had been sleeping with his face pushed up against the grille. Wakened by their voices, he opened his eyes and gave a yelp of surprise. “What are you?” he asked.

  “I’m Kelpie.”

  The small stranger lifted her lantern, the sole source of light in the tunnel. Rage glanced anxiously at the hourglass. It was safe where she had left it, but it had gone dull.

  “It’s a kelpie,” Billy told Elle, who had woken, too, and was sniffing through the grille.

  “Kelpie is my name.” The woman giggled. “And you are Billy Thunder.”

  “How do you know our names?” Rage demanded warily, wondering if the little woman was a wild thing.

  “Mr. Walker told me.”

  “Mr. Walker!” Billy cried in delight. “Then he’s safe.”

  “I will bring you to him as soon as you let me open the grille.” Kelpie tapped her tiny fingers impatiently against the metal. Billy woke Bear, and they all moved back down the tunnel. Kelpie knelt and pressed her hand to the ground. There was a grinding noise, and the grille swung open like a gate.

  Rage was intrigued. She had supposed Kelpie was a wild thing, yet she was drawing magic from the earth just as Ania had done, and wild things weren’t supposed to be able to do that. After they had all come through the grille, it swung back into place with a gritty screech.

  “Come,” Kelpie said imperiously, dusting off her hands.

  “Wait just a minute,” Rage said firmly, refusing to be dazzled into acting without thinking. “Before we go anywh
ere, you’d better tell us how you met Mr. Walker.”

  “He fell down a shaft and found us.”

  “And how did you find us? Mr. Walker didn’t know we were coming here,” Rage said. “We didn’t know we were coming here.”

  “The Mother foresaw it,” Kelpie answered. “Now we must hurry. She awaits us with Mr. Walker, in the Place of Shining Waters.”

  “The witch Mother foresaw us trapped in a drain?”

  Kelpie nodded.

  Rage did not know what to think. Obviously someone with magical powers might be able to look into the future, but if that was so, why hadn’t Ania said that the witch Mother had foreseen them meeting?

  Rage glanced at the others. Elle and Billy were eager to go, while Bear looked exhausted and ill, but none of them said a thing. They were leaving it to Rage to choose.

  Kelpie turned to hurry away down the tunnel, and Rage led the way after her. Though rested, Bear moved slowly. She was still suffering from having breathed in the High Keeper’s poisonous gas. Rage hoped she had not suffered any permanent damage. After a time the tunnel began to narrow. Rage’s heart sank, but she told herself sternly that her experience outside the conservatorium had made her oversensitive.

  “It doesn’t get much smaller, does it?” Billy asked Kelpie nervously.

  “A bit,” she answered cheerfully.

  “Why didn’t Mr. Walker come with you?” Elle asked.

  “The Mother foresaw me finding you,” Kelpie answered proudly.

  This was not really an answer. Rage wondered if the Mother hadn’t deliberately kept Mr. Walker with her to ensure that the rest of them came with Kelpie. She had heard nothing bad about the witch women, except from the keepers, and the witch Mother had enabled her to get away from the banding house. But Rage had expected a long, difficult trip back to Wildwood to see the witch Mother. It was unnerving to find that she was here, waiting to see them. And why was she in Fork? If she had come in the hope that Rage had located the wizard, she was about to be bitterly disappointed.

  “What about Goaty?” Elle asked, interrupting the flow of Rage’s thoughts. “Did the Mother foresee anything about him?”