“Ponies have teeth. I’m well aware of that,” spat Sammael. “Tell me which way they went!”
“They ate us. Big, tearing teeth … scrunch … crunch … They ripped us and tore us.…”
“I couldn’t care less if they made wigs out of you,” said Sammael. “Where did they go?”
The grass, so recently chomped, continued to twitter and gibber. He could get no sense out of it.
Kalia crept forward again, her shoulders hunched. “Where are we?” she whispered. “I think I know this place. Isn’t there a hill, with one side of it quarried away?”
Sammael stopped the kick he’d been about to swing again at her. This rage was doing strange things to him; normally, there was no way Kalia would have ever been able to suggest something to him that he hadn’t already thought about. He must stop being so fixated on this boy and start being rational again.
“A hill?” he said. “Sentry Hill. Of course.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be a good place, if he’s looking for a storm…?”
It might. In fact, it definitely was—Sentry Hill stood apart in the rolling landscape, tall and alone. How had the damned dog thought of that before him? He had powers beyond all mortal reasoning. His brain worked at the speed of light.
He kicked her, hard. She slunk backwards and crouched in the darkness, watching him.
Sammael looked through the night. Light or dark—it made little difference. He saw by the changing feel of the air, by its patches of coldness and heat. He saw the path that the boys had traveled, up into the higher part of the woods. How long since they’d been here? How far ahead were they? However far, he could walk there in seconds. But the boy mustn’t be frightened. He must hand over the Book of Storms of his own accord.
It wouldn’t be any use trying to strike a bargain with him, not as things were. Danny must know by now that Sammael wanted him dead. He wouldn’t trust an offer, however plain and straightforward, to swap the book for his parents, not if he had an ounce of sense. How to make him believe that surrendering the Book of Storms would save him, rather than kill him?
By rescuing him, of course. That was always the way, with humans. Sammael could make the boy think he was going to die, then save him. Danny was only a young, inexperienced human; even if he did know how much the taro protected him, he wouldn’t want to risk throwing himself under a bolt of lightning to try it out.
And then, once a small part of his trust was won, he would gratefully give over the Book of Storms and Sammael could draw the final curtain.
Sammael dug his hands into his coat pockets and smiled again to himself. Of course there was a way. When had he ever not found a way, in the end?
* * *
The first belch of thunder sounded a long way off, to Tom’s ears. The air was still thin, too—he should have become aware of a gradual buildup of pressure drifting around their shoulders and cheeks, making them start to sweat.
Still, with thunder that quiet, the storm wouldn’t be with them for ages, if it came their way at all. Something that far away was probably just passing by, on its way elsewhere.
Tom shivered a little in the cool night air. If he’d known how far they would come, how long this journey would go on, he’d have made sure of bringing at least a jacket. Damn his half-brained idiot of a cousin. But something odd had happened to Danny—normally he was the first one to turn blue and set his teeth chattering and look like he was about to freeze solid from the cold. Normally he was the first one to stop and suggest going home, or to sit down on every stone and gate that they passed on a walk. Normally he wasn’t altogether that keen on going on walks anyway.
Now he didn’t even seem to notice that he’d hardly slept for two days, and it was getting dark and damp and cold again. Tom couldn’t understand it. Creatures didn’t change just like that: the same cows were always at the front of the herd waiting to be milked every morning, and the same ones were always at the back. What had happened to Danny? Whatever it was, it had changed him from the person he’d been for eleven years into someone Tom wasn’t altogether sure he recognized, or even liked that much.
And that business with the swallows—how had he done that? It was Tom who had a way with animals, not Danny—Tom who understood how to communicate wordlessly with them, and get them to follow him around. He imagined those tiny bodies clinging onto his own sweater, and his stomach snarled with something that wasn’t simply hunger.
Thunder growled again. Tom’s hand tightened on the pitchfork as Apple jerked her head up. Louder this time—a little closer, but still far, far away.
He could hardly see Danny in front of him. They were back in the trees again. There must be some clouds, or surely the moonlight would be filtering through the treetops, casting milky streams on the forest floor.
For a second he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A flash of white, or red, or was it both? When he turned his head to look, there was nothing but the branches of the trees, creaking as they pawed at the darkness.
A long-buried hope began to seep into Tom’s blood. The woods were changing. They weren’t just trees and plants and animals—there was a brilliance in the air between the looming shapes. The woods were alive.
He rubbed at his eyes, and there it was again. A dart of color—blue or gold or green. And suddenly he knew why he couldn’t keep his eyes on it: it wasn’t an earthly thing. He was seeing the thoughts—the voices, the spirits—of the trees, crackling through the air.
It didn’t make sense. His mind had been twisted by all this craziness: by the journey, the lack of sleep and food, the dog attack. He had gone mad.
But had he? When he was a child, he’d talked to trees as though they were people just like himself. He’d stopped only when it seemed that growing up meant he should be sensible and rational and accept that trees were unable to think or talk.
Ten years ago, he’d believed that there was some vital spirit in the woodlands, and now he was seeing it. Was it madness? Or was it vision?
Tom closed his eyes and opened them again. Purple … silver … amber …
The third clap of thunder was much closer, and it ricocheted through the sky, zooming toward them from the clouds to their right. Apple snorted, puffing coarse breaths of night out from her lungs. Her walk became spiky as she lifted her hooves higher, muscles tight.
“Danny, there’s going to be a storm!” Tom called forward. “It’ll be dangerous up on that hill—there’s a massive quarry. We should go back and find that blind, wait till it’s over!”
“Go on, then,” shouted Danny back to him. His tone said clearly that he would not follow.
Stupid idiot. Tom cursed him under his breath. That old piebald pony would plod onward through a burning building at the same, steady pace, but Apple was a well-bred hunter, and she had high-strung nerves. It would take all of Tom’s skill to keep her calm in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The ground was rising steeply; they were walking up the wooded side of Sentry Hill now. Tom knew it well—the other side of the hill had been quarried away for years, and a vast cavity now gaped where once thousands of tons of limestone had been. It wasn’t too dangerous—the quarry was all fenced off, and there were signs everywhere warning walkers to keep out. But the top of the hill was clear and bald, and up there they would be horribly exposed to the weather.
“We’re going to get soaked!” said Tom. “There’s no cover up there.”
Danny ignored him.
A flicker of color danced in Tom’s vision again. He tore his thoughts away from it. This was real. This was dangerous. This was going to end badly, and he was responsible.
“You’re an idiot!” he shouted at Danny, to make himself feel better.
It didn’t work. Apple stepped on a twig, leapt in the air as it made a loud snapping noise, then stopped dead as a proper crack of thunder split the clouds above their heads. For a moment she waited, unsure of her own fear, and then she reared up onto her hind legs, sendin
g Tom curving into the air.
He leaned forward, trying to pat her neck and calm her. “Easy, girl, easy,” he muttered. But as her hooves touched the ground again, he could feel that it would be the devil of a struggle to make her take even one more step.
“Danny!” he called. “Apple’s going to go mad!”
Danny came back, hardly visible in the darkness, but said nothing at all. He sat, completely silent, for a couple of minutes.
The breeze picked up and began to hiss through the treetops. Somewhere, a faint flash broke the night sky, and a glimmer of light flickered through the forest.
At last Danny turned away again, and Tom felt Apple relax uncertainly underneath him. She started to move forward.
What had just happened? Danny had clearly calmed the horse down somehow, but what could he possibly have done to her in those two long, silent minutes? Was he some kind of horse whisperer?
No, that was absurd. Probably Tom himself had just relaxed while they were standing there, and Apple, feeling her rider no longer tense, had taken heart again. There was no way Danny could suddenly have learned how to calm the hot-tempered mare. Was there?
The rain fell harder and harder. Ahead of them, Tom could barely see the shapes of the trees, but he knew by the amount of rain that was falling straight down onto him that there could only be a few trees left around them. They were almost out of the wood, almost out onto that wide stretch of heath that crowned the top of Sentry Hill like a monk’s tonsure.
Wide-open spaces made Apple want to gallop. Wide-open spaces in the inky night, with the shadowy trees lurking behind them, would probably make her want to flee for her life.
There was the last tree, gone. They stepped out onto the close-growing hilltop, and Tom put his hand up to his face to shield it from the rain. He couldn’t see anything anyway, and the rain was starting to drive into his eyes, blown on a slant by the coursing wind.
“What are we doing here?” he yelled out to Danny, but the wind took his words away and flung them back at his ears, like a handful of peas. “This is crazy!” he yelled. “We’ve got to go back!”
Danny turned back and said, “Get off the horse. She reckons you’re turning into a monster. That’s why she’s so scared.”
“What? Don’t be stupid! Let’s go!”
“That’s what she says!” Danny said. “I told you I could talk to her! That’s what she’s saying! If you get off her, she’ll see you and she won’t be scared.”
“She’ll just pull away if I get down,” said Tom. “You know jack-all about horses! Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Fine,” said Danny, turning Shimny away again. As soon as he had plodded a few steps up the path, Apple began to tremble violently. Then she reared. This time Tom knew he had only that one, smooth, rearing moment—the second she touched the earth, she would be running in a blind panic away from all this, and there would be nothing he could do to stop her.
As the world slowed in that endless, final rear, Tom could have sworn he saw a figure standing a short distance away, one arm stretched out to the neck of an enormous dog.
But then Apple touched the ground with all four hooves again, whipped around, and was gone. And Tom, crouching low on her back as she dashed into the forest, was trying not to think of the twisted roots under her feet and of what would happen if she tripped over one and slammed, full speed, headfirst, into the nearest tree. He thought only of the colors he had seen. Save us, he thought to them. Please save us. If you exist at all, guide the horse safely somewhere, and let us both live.
* * *
Danny watched them go for a single, incredulous second and then realized Tom wasn’t going to be able to make Apple stop. He was alone and completely friendless in the bristling rain.
He was just about to turn Shimny and plod back down the hillside after Tom when two tiny birds flew out of the night and latched themselves onto his sweater.
“We’ve found it! We’ve found it!”
“What?” For a moment he couldn’t quite understand. “Found what?”
“It’s a whirlwind! A twister! They’re trapped inside! Call it back and ask it to let go and you’ll have them!”
“What?” Danny’s head swam. There was no question of going after Tom anymore. He knew where they were! He could call them back!
“Use the song! Use the song!”
The song! He could remember it, couldn’t he? Yes, of course. The world is deadly, the world is bright …
“How do I call it? That one, I mean. Does it have a name?”
The swallows shrieked with laughter. “A name! What would a storm have a name for? Just open the Book of Storms, and call to it! Think of it, of everything you know about it. Draw a picture of it if you like. Write the words that make you think of it on the page of the book. You don’t need a name to call a storm! You need an imagination!”
The swallows launched themselves into the black air and disappeared. With hands that shook so badly he could barely control them, Danny pulled the Book of Storms once again from his bag. He opened it and stared down at the front page, just able to make out the picture. It should have soaked up the rain and become damp, but the rain seemed somehow to avoid it.
Draw in it. Write in it. With what? He had no pen. Even if he had, his hands would never have agreed to hold it.
But why should he need a pen? If all he had to do was imagine that he was drawing …
He reached into his pocket and drew out the stick. It had been tucked away for so long that he was almost surprised to realize it was still a separate object, and not a part of himself. What would happen when he touched it to the pages of the book?
A flame shot from the stick. He snatched it away, thinking for a second that it might burn the book. But how could anything burn a book already made from fire?
Lowering the stick again, he watched the flame diminish until the stick was touching the book’s page. The flame became a thin trail of smoke. What could he draw that would identify the storm? It came to him even before the question had died away in his mind. The sycamore tree, of course. He knew the shape of every single bough and twig on that old tree.
When he had finished, he couldn’t see his picture very well, but he knew it was good. And even if it didn’t look exactly like the tree, it was how he had always seen the tree in his mind when he pictured his own back garden. He’d done what the swallows had said.
Putting the stick back in his pocket out of habit, he held the book in one hand and kept the other on the stick, then took a deep breath and began the song.
“The world is deadly, the world is bright,
The creatures that use it are blinded by sight,
But there’s no sense in crying or closing the page,
Sense only battles in fighting and rage.
So come all you soldiers and answer my call,
Together we gather, together we fall!”
Rain began to pound his skull as though the raindrops were being fired from a cannon. They screamed louder, with greater exhilaration, and the wind had to blow harder to drive them sideways. Through his water-lashed eyes, Danny could no longer see. He tucked his head down to his shivering chest and thanked his stars for Shimny, who stood steady as a rock. It was coming! This must be it! And soon—
The first sound he heard was laughter.
“You wouldn’t believe how long it got! First time I’ve ever stretched anything that far in my life!” A voice guffawed. It was a terrible voice, so full of sound and gravel that it made Danny’s head rattle like a can of dried peas.
“I said I’d get him! HA HA HA HA HA!” The same voice roared with hearty laughter, and there followed a crack that from a human might have been a hand clap. From the storm it was a bolt of lightning hissing out of its grasp.
“You’re a one! The finest I’ve seen!” called out another voice. “Much better than that last hay dodger we had trundling round the place! Ahahahahahah!”
The sound of its laughter mad
e Danny feel like his head was being shorn in two by a butcher’s knife.
“I said to him, I said, You’ve come up Oak Stovely way, you’ve seen them old pines torn up by the roots, you’ve seen that church steeple chucked halfway across the village. I said to him, Who’d you think did that, eh? Crawling mothsniffer! Wretched young weasel-breathed frogspawn! I showed him! HA HAHAHAHAHAHA! E-HEWH! E-HAH! E-WHEEEEEEH!”
What were they talking about? The noise was so painful that it crippled his ears and sent tears running from his eyes, but Danny didn’t understand a word of it. Some stupid joke, no doubt. The whole thing looked so angry, but it was worse than that; this was no venomous tirade. This was—Danny fumbled for the word, shaking like his own teeth—this was mockery. And if this storm had his parents …
He clenched both fists in rage, one still around the stick and the other pressed, knuckles first, into Shimny’s withers. Then he felt such heat boil in the pit of his stomach that he could not identify it until it had spread through every artery, every vein, every capillary, of his body and he knew that it was fury.
“OI! YOU UP THERE! YEAH, YOU!” he screamed, raising his face in the driving rain to the black clouds he could not see. “How … How DARE you? How can you sit there and just … and just LAUGH? Where are they? What have you DONE with them? Give them back! You evil, evil, EVIL thing!”
Then he closed his eyes, screwed up every muscle he could find, and waited to be struck down.
There was a pause in the laughter.
“I say,” said another voice, not one of the first two. “There’s a chap on a pony down there shouting at us.”
“Not another one,” a fourth voice said wearily. “You’d think they’d have left us alone by now. Shall we?”
The storm unleashed a volley of hail straight down at Danny. He had no time to see it coming before he was surrounded by a blinding white tent that made his eyeballs scream. The ground around Shimny’s hooves spat like a bonfire. Danny clutched at his face with his spare hand to shield it from the flashing sheet, and fragments of ice drilled into the top of his head. What if they punctured holes in his skull? He tried to cover himself, to pull his head down into his chest, but one hand was no good and he had to use the other, which meant letting go of the stick, so he could no longer hear the voices or talk to them. Shimny was obviously saying something too—she began to shift from hoof to hoof.
The Book of Storms Page 18