by Caro King
‘Go!’ he yelled and she went.
She tumbled in past the hanging door, feeling moss and dead leaves underfoot, then turned to look back. Jonas wasn’t at her heels. His pack had fallen and lay trampled in the mud. He stood in the heart of the Storm and the Hounds were all around him, their cloudy shapes and lightning eyes beating him on to his knees as she watched. When they howled their breath made frost on the air and when they went they took Jonas with them.
‘JONAS!’ Nin screamed. She ran back into the open. The rain was still falling, but the thunder was moving away. He didn’t come back.
She stared blankly as the clouds above her grew lighter.
Then she started to run.
The rain-wet air sizzled across the fields and Skerridge popped out of superspeed to glare at the sky. He’d only been gone five minutes to track down a bit of breakfast and it was pretty obvious what had happened. The Storm had got them at last …
Except there were boot prints in the mud. Small ones. Running. The Hounds had only got one of them and it wasn’t Right Madam.
Skerridge brightened up. With Obstacle gone and Unknown Quantity out of the picture for the time being, he’d be able to whip Right Madam into a sack in no time. He studied the boot prints.
‘Chasin’ thunder eh? Well, she ain’t got a Quick’s chance in the Heart,’ he muttered and was gone in a flicker.
19
Chasing Thunder
ilas Penny wondered why he hadn’t waited for the rain to stop before setting out towards the nearby town of Rife. The damp wasn’t going to help his back any. After he’d twisted it a month ago hauling a sack of dried chestnuts about, he was beginning to give up hope of it ever being right again.
He was peering irritably up at the sky when the girl arrived. Before Silas could do anything about it she had pulled herself up on to the cart next to him.
‘Follow that storm!’
To his astonishment, Silas flicked the reins, encouraging the ancient horse to go faster. The cart jolted and bounced along the track and he winced as his back gave a stab of pain.
‘My friend’s in there!’ wailed the girl. She looked muddy and frightened, but something in her eyes showed a grim determination. ‘He gave himself up so that I could get away.’
Silas drew in a sharp breath. ‘Well, girl, I’ll take you as far as I can along this track, but I doubt Ben here will be able to keep up with the Hounds.’
He flicked the reins again. The girl obviously had to have a go or she wouldn’t feel right about it. She’d find out quickly enough that trying to catch the Hounds was no use.
Ahead of them the clouds raced full of lightning, drawing steadily away across grassy fields of buttercups and low, purple hills. Thunder rumbled, making Ben whinny with fright.
‘Come on, lad,’ called Silas, although he hardly needed to. The horse was moving faster than he had ever moved before, hurtling over the ground at an astonishing pace, eating up the distance. He was beginning to enjoy it too, with his ears laid back and a gleam in his eyes far younger than his many years.
Silas risked a glance at the kid sitting next to him, eyes fixed on the storm ahead. Now they were gaining on it, though only a little. There had to be magic at work and Silas wondered where it was coming from. He caught a glimpse of twisted leather strands around the girl’s neck. Whatever it was that dangled from those strands was glowing, he could see the fiery light reflecting off the bottom of her chin.
‘It’s going left!’
‘Darn,’ muttered Silas. To his surprise he meant it. ‘I can’t take Ben over the river here. There’s a chap makes a living out of ferrying folk across. Down that way.’
The girl was already scrambling off the cart as Silas pulled Ben to a halt. He watched her slip and slide down the bank towards the river.
Suddenly there was a rushing sound and something heavy landed behind him. Whatever it was – and it was moving so fast he could barely see it – hurtled across the seat and knocked him off the cart.
Lying spread out and face down, Silas yelled as the thing trampled over him, just missing important areas of his insides by a hair’s breadth. There was a frightening crack from his back. He rolled over with a groan and then gingerly clambered to his feet. He straightened up. In fact he straightened up more than he had been able to straighten for weeks.
He stretched carefully, expecting a familiar stab of pain at any moment. It didn’t happen. A grin spread over his face.
‘Well, darn me,’ he muttered. Then climbed back on to his cart and drove away.
Hunched in his boat, Stig Lattle watched the Storm retreat. Suddenly a girl appeared, running down the track towards the river. Stig got ready.
She clambered straight into the boat and looked at Stig expectantly. He was about to tell her the price, but changed his mind and pushed off, rowing out towards the middle of the river. Slowly.
Or at least he tried to row slowly, though the boat seemed to have developed a mind of its own. Frowning, he fought against the pull. He had no intention of losing a golden opportunity.
‘Please can’t you go faster,’ she wailed. Her eyes were fixed on the storm clouds, watching desperately as they slipped into the distance.
Stig let out a long breath. ‘It’ll cost extra,’ he said. ‘More effort, more cash.’ He increased his backwards rowing, forcing the annoyingly self-willed boat to slow almost to a standstill.
The girl gave him an agonised look.
‘No money eh? What you got in that pack? That’ll do.’
‘But …’
‘Along with the bag itself, of course. And – oh, lemme see – your jacket. And them boots look good and sturdy.’
The girl frowned. ‘Git!’ she muttered and jumped over the side.
‘Hey!’ Stig grabbed at the pack as she went, determined not to let all the booty get away. He caught the strap and pulled hard, nearly yanking her over in the water. She let go and he hauled it into the boat, which had suddenly stopped trying to race to the other side and was now content to bob about on the river like a boat ought to.
He watched her struggle away, the water up to her armpits. She made it to the far side and dragged herself out then half-fell up the bank. By now the storm was well into the distance, just a long bank of purple on the horizon. The sun had come out and overhead the sky was blue.
Stig was about to rummage inside the pack when the air sizzled with hot steam and his boat was suddenly very full of a bundle of angry bones in a fancy waistcoat. Stig screamed.
‘Gimme that, goatgob!’ The Thing snatched the pack from his hands and shoved Stig hard into the water.
When he finally bobbed to the surface again, the Thing had gone and all he could see was his fiercely burning boat.
Tolley Pinn had been walking all night and was running out of energy. She had stopped in a sheltered dip almost completely hidden by some bushes and what she wanted right now was to cook her lunch. She was gazing miserably at a useless heap of soaked wood, when someone fell on her.
Fortunately, it was a small Quick girl and so didn’t land on Tolley too heavily.
‘I have to get to the Storm!’ wailed the girl, looking wildly around, trying to find a way out of the hollow. Her face showed that she knew it was hopeless. By now the clouds were just a memory on the edge of the sky.
Tolley took in the dripping, filthy clothes and the tearstained face and then spotted the rope of twisted leather dangling around the girl’s neck.
‘Wait,’ said Tolley calmly, catching hold of the girl’s arm.
The girl looked at her and blinked, startled by Tolley’s knotty look and yellow eyes. She probably hadn’t met many Grimm. But she stopped trying to run and watched Tolley anxiously.
‘Trying to get someone back from the Hounds, right?’ Tolley frowned. ‘Know how impossible it is? Gonna do it anyway?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then you won’t get him out from down here. It’s said that the only way is to go in after him
and PULL him out with you, got that?
‘Yes!’ said the girl eagerly, her blue eyes fixed on Tolley’s face.
‘When you are in there it will be worse than you can imagine. But never despair, always remember who you are. Look for dry land. It’s said there is a moment when you can leave them, just before the rain starts, but you have to be FAST. If you can break away then you will be free of them. They will never take you back. Never, do you understand?’
‘Thank you. But it’s no use if I can’t …’
‘Get to the Storm? Why chase it when you have that?’ She took hold of the leather rope and pulled out the amulet. ‘It’s a wish amulet, only not wishes as in things you want, but things you need. See, it’s doing what it can, but it’s struggling because you’ve smothered it. So, set it free and let it do its job.’
The girl looked at the amulet in surprise, as if she had forgotten it. Now it was uncovered, Tolley could see the symbol on the front, a ragged slash like a zag of lightning. It was already glowing, but as soon as the air touched it, the glow became a blaze.
Far in the distance, the Storm wheeled, changing direction.
The girl gave Tolley a brilliant smile and ran to scramble up the narrow path out of the dip, heading to meet the purple flood spreading rapidly over the sky, tearing in from the north with frightening speed. The sun vanished and a vast cold shadow swallowed the land.
Tolley watched as the clouds boiled overhead and the thunder roared loud enough to shake the ground. Now, lightning glimmered above her and rain fell like knives. Even though the Hounds wouldn’t be interested in a half Quick with no soul, Tolley couldn’t stop herself cowering. When she looked up again, the Storm had gone and so had the girl.
And then something jumped on her, forcing her to leap nimbly out of the way. She swung around to face it. It was horrible.
She took in the bones barely held together by anything at all, the longer than normal arms and clawed fingers, and the fact that it was clutching a battered-looking pink bag.
‘Bogeyman,’ she said.
‘Goin’ so fast I missed the blimmin’ dip,’ it snarled, as if it were her fault. ‘Where’s the dumb kid gone now?’
Tolley pointed up.
‘WHAT!’ it howled, its red eyes blazing at her. It was so angry it was dancing with rage. Fascinated, Tolley saw coils of smoke escaping from its ears and mouth. The grass under its feet blackened. It let rip.
Tolley dropped to the ground as streams of red-hot flame shot out around and over her. The bogeyman gave one last horrible screech and disappeared, tearing up the bank so fast he caused a minor landslide.
When everything was quiet again, Tolley finally got up the courage to unravel. Around her, a bush, a fallen chunk of tree and her own pile of sticks were flaming merrily.
A smile spread over Tolley’s face. Then she set about cooking her lunch.
20
Gabriel Hounds
y the time she got to the top of the hill, Nin was at the end of her energy. She held the amulet up high in one shaking hand and a bolt of lightning cracked from the darkening sky right to its shining tip. The cold wind whipped her hair as she watched the Gabriel Hounds racing towards her, faster now.
And then they were all around her. Their baying filled her ears and she felt herself pulled up, off the ground and away into the Storm.
It was the most wonderful feeling. She was flying, only not flying. She was in the air running on all fours with the clouds at her feet and all around her were the Gabriel Hounds.
For a moment the sky above was clear and blue, but then the clouds rose and wrapped her in their misty gloom and lightning crackled in the air.
Running was easy. She didn’t have to worry about getting out of breath because the air filled her lungs and sent the blood pounding round her head without stopping. She knew she would be able to run as far and as fast as she needed to. She would be able to run forever.
Then the dark veil of the clouds fell again and she could see the sky. But this time it was full of stars. It shocked her. Minutes ago it had been daylight. She felt a lurch inside.
‘What’s my name?’ she thought. ‘I can’t remember my name!’
The idea was terrifying, but just as a small part of her brain was telling her that it didn’t matter after all because she was one of the Hounds now, an image arrived in her head. A boy wearing a long black coat and lounging against the wall of the underpass, somewhere in the Widdern, way back before she had lost her life.
‘Jonas?’
For a moment she thought that Jonas was her name. Then she remembered. She was Nin. Ninevah Redstone. Jonas was the one she had come to find. Relief flooded over her.
She opened her mouth to shout his name, but the wind whipped her voice away. So she began to look for him. And wished she hadn’t.
Because when she started to look for Jonas she saw what the Hounds really were.
Skerridge had a problem.
It could be easily solved if he just wrote the girl off as his first loss ever. The only kid he, Skerridge, Chief Bogeyman and Champion Kid-Catcher, had ever failed to deliver to Mr Strood. EVER.
Skerridge groaned. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. It was his reputation at stake here. In a way it didn’t matter because he would still have the lowest score for non-delivery out of all the bogeymen. Only Pigar was anywhere close and Pigar had managed to lose a whole three kids. But in another way it mattered more than anything.
Simply having the lowest number of losses was nothing like having NO LOSSES AT ALL. Nothing like.
The other bogeymen would snigger at him. The great Champion Kid-Catcher would have finally lost a kid. He would be like them. He would be a bogeyman who could fail.
Skerridge snarled.
Not likely. No way. Never.
So, he was back to the problem. Keeping up with the Storm was easy for a bogeyman, he had been hovering underneath the darned thing for three days. The problem was that the Hounds were not interested in a mere Fabulous. The Hounds wanted souls and only the Quick had those. So even if he could keep up with the Hounds, he couldn’t make them pick him up.
Gloomily, Skerridge tried to face the fact that maybe, in spite of all his hard work, he would lose his reputation after all.
The Hounds were everywhere, like a great swarm around her. They were grey and wraithlike with eyes of white fire. Their jaws were huge and heavy and their limbs long. As they loped across the sky they were silent, only a low sighing filled her ears, like something crying far away. Like something lost.
And then it came to Nin that if she hadn’t remembered her name she would be lost too. But she had remembered and because she knew who she was she could be part of the Hounds and yet still herself. For a while at least.
Her heart turned cold as she began to see in the Gabriel Hounds traces of the people they used to be. Something about the faces had a human look. Here and there the long cloudy legs ended in grotesque hands instead of paws. In some of them Nin thought she saw ordinary, human eyes behind the white light. She shivered, not daring to glance down at herself in case she looked like that too. She didn’t think she could bear it if she did.
With an inner lurch she saw that it was evening, somehow she had missed the day. The clouds thickened and she felt a sickening swoop as they tore down towards the ground, searching for Quick life. Now the Hounds were no longer silent and their chilling howls mixed with the sound of thunder as they clamoured after prey. To her horror, Nin found that she was baying too. And worse. Something inside her was angry that if there were any Quick around, they had long since fled for cover.
But for a fraction of a second she saw it. Dry land. Stretched below her, patterned with hills and a herd of horses the colour of midnight, racing across the Land on fiery hooves as the Hounds raced across the sky. Then the lightning flashed, the rain began and the dry land was soaked.
And then she knew that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t break away in time, before the dr
y land was gone. She would never be fast enough. It was not possible for a Quick to be that fast. She howled again. And it was a howl like a wolf.
Never despair. That was what the Grimm woman with the golden eyes had said. Remember who you are. Never despair.
The Storm rose, riding high into the sky. Nin pushed the knowledge that it was impossible right to the back of her mind. She had to try anyway, but first of all she had to find Jonas.
She began to scan the Hounds, searching for anything familiar. She was horribly afraid she wouldn’t recognise him, but she did. He was further ahead of her in the pack, running on long cloud limbs, his face already changing.
Nin began to move. It was not as hard as she had feared, the Hounds had no real weight and she could push through them in the direction she wanted to go. In no time, or what seemed like no time to her although it was already night again outside the Storm, she was close to Jonas. His eyes were full of lightning and he was baying with the rest of them.
She called his name, but he ignored her. Just once, when she had been calling him for a while, he turned his head in her direction and she thought that he might have recognised her. Then he looked away again.
Nin gave up and tried to think of some other way to do this. If she could just get hold of him then maybe she could pull him with her. If she could spot the right moment, of course, and if she could be quick enough to get out before it was too late.
And all the time the Hounds sped on through the sky in endless pursuit. Nin caught glimpses of the land hurtling past far below, always changing from vivid greens and golds into darker hues as the storm clouds cast their shadow. She wondered if it would always be like this now, if the only light she ever saw was the grey half-light of the rain-drenched countryside or the brilliance of lightning. Fear made her ache inside. She had to get them both away, but she didn’t know how.
She was running shoulder to shoulder with Jonas now. She couldn’t hang on to him and keep pace so she would have to spot her moment, then grab him, then get out.