“They were singing!” Sammael’s face shone with happiness in the starlight. “It was an ancient eagle song about flying—about their wings being made of cloud silk and the sun setting fire to their tails. Did you know they can fly at one hundred and twenty miles an hour? And they can dive even faster—closer to one hundred and fifty miles an hour. Imagine being able to fly like that.”
Tom laughed. “You’ll be telling me I could persuade them to take me for a ride next.”
But Sammael didn’t laugh back. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d like?”
“Of course it is,” said Tom. “Who wouldn’t like that? But come on, be serious.”
“No, you’re right,” said Sammael, beginning to walk along to the top of the hill. “It’s daft to think that anyone who could learn to talk to stoats could take that even further and learn to talk to eagles, isn’t it?”
“But … flying?” Tom strode to keep up with him. “I’m nearly six feet tall. Really?”
“You remember what I said?” Sammael stepped through a couple of closely growing trees, and for a second his silhouette looked exactly like the shapes to either side of him.
“About what?”
“About imagining.”
Tom pushed his own way between the trees. He wasn’t sure about imagining. Monster badgers? Golden eagles?
But in the dark woodland, in the black spaces and the branches and the leaf shadows, he saw Cold Eyes’s feet lifting off the ground, and the powerful wings of the eagles, and the starlight, and he heard the sound of feathers beating the air.
He opened his mouth to say, “Don’t be daft.”
But what came out was, “Do you think it’s really possible?”
CHAPTER 21
BEYOND THE SEA
Darkness opened its jaws and tore away the sky in one savage bite. Clouds flashed with lightning, rain snaked through the treetops overhead.
Trees? Yes, they were in a forest, the way upward barred by a mesh of twisting branches, and Danny didn’t have to look to know that each and every tree was a sycamore. The lightning would get them all, one by one, and then it would get him.
He pulled at Zadoc’s mane. “Please!” he begged. “Please stop! I hate storms—I’ve done enough of this. Don’t take me into a storm. Take me back!”
Zadoc plodded on. A bolt of lightning sparked and thudded into the tree just ahead, yapping out a harsh sneer of triumph. The tree cried, long and high, and hissed into flames. Danny tugged at Zadoc’s mane again, harder this time.
“Stop! It’s all going to burn! You’ve got to stop!”
And Zadoc stopped.
For a second, the storm also stood still, holding its breath at Zadoc’s motionless body. And then it began to roar. The trees were culled as fast as twigs on a bonfire, each great trunk flaring into orange fire, curling over into a twisted prawn, and exploding into a pile of gray-white ash.
It was snowing. No—those were the ashes, drifting through the air, clasping Danny’s eyes and lips, choking up his mouth. He tried to breathe in, but his throat was papered with bitter smoke.
“Danny! Breathe!”
Cath’s voice behind him was soft. He listened to the sound of her words in his head. And his breath came, sweet and clear, and the ash fell down to the ground so that he could see the world around him again.
They were wandering through a lamp-lit village at dusk, the houses’ windows drawn over with softly glowing curtains. Danny knew this place. It was the village he’d come to in the search for the Book of Storms. Before, the houses had lined his way, still and silent, but now they sneered at Danny as he went past, and opened their doors, letting out a furious stench of moldy potatoes, sports socks, and eggs. He held his hand over his nose and mouth.
Dark blue birds with pointed tails began to shoot past his ears, clawing at his face.
“Coward! Stupid fool! Too slow to fly properly! Too slow to do anything properly!”
Swallows? But when he’d met them, they’d helped him. Why had they turned against him now?
A clump of fur shot down from a tree and launched itself at Danny’s face, clawing at his mouth. Not the cat too? Not his friend Mitz?
“Blind buffoon!” Mitz screeched. “I’ve seen better guts on a violin! Only way to deal with nasty, selfish boys like you is to bite out your lying tongues!”
“No!” Danny let go of Zadoc and put up both hands to push Mitz away. The cat arched her back and reached for his neck with her hind claws.
“Danny! They’re not real!”
He knew Cath was lying. His ears were covered in birds, and his face was covered in cat. Four sets of claws latched on to his head and neck; countless tiny wings beat at his ears. He scrabbled at them, trying to pull just one of Mitz’s limbs away from his skin, trying to wheel his arms out around his head to knock the swallows away, but no sooner did he clear one patch of skin than it was being clawed at or flapped at again, until he could neither hear nor see nor feel anything except the gouges of cats’ claws and the dry scratching of swallows’ wings, and his eardrums were buzzing so loudly he knew they were about to burst.
* * *
“What am I supposed to do?” Cath hissed at Zadoc. “He’s gone mental. I dunno what he’s looking at. I can’t see it.”
“Of course not!” said Zadoc. “Of course it’s not the same! In order to see the same things in here, you’d have to have the same mind! And the same heart! Or at the very least, be thinking about the same thing. That might help you for a while, I suppose. You must both be thinking a little bit about the same thing, or else I wouldn’t be moving at all, you know. I can feel you’re both pulling me in the same direction. Or rather, you’re pulling, and he’s going along with you.”
“We need to find a dog,” said Cath. “That’s the thing he needs to help this guy Tom.”
“Well, you know what to do,” said Zadoc. “We’ve told you what goes on in here. Come now, help him before he chokes.”
But how could she make Danny see through her eyes?
Cath found her voice. “Danny, don’t think about them,” she tried.
That wasn’t any good. Remembering what he shouldn’t think about wouldn’t help Danny now. She needed to tell him what he should do.
“Look past them,” she said. “Let them do whatever they’re doing. They ain’t real, you know it. Just look over them. What’s there?”
Danny gasped and choked. “Cat,” he said. “Cat on my eyes. Can’t see.”
“She ain’t. We’re in Chromos. You’re just making her up.”
“No!” insisted Danny. “On my face! I can feel her! Get off!”
Cath thought hard. Could she try and see the cat? Could she pull it off him, if she knew what it looked like?
She tried. “What color is it?”
“Tabby.” Danny sounded as though he were trying to strangle himself. “Gray … and brown and … white … on paws.”
“Gray and brown?” said Cath. And then she had it. He just needed to make the cat into something else that couldn’t possibly be real. Then he’d see it wasn’t here.
She smiled at the back of his head. “Nah. Cats ain’t normal colors in here. She’d be blue and green in here, with orange paws. Maybe red.”
“No,” said Danny.
“Yeah, she is. Just look at her!”
“No,” Danny said again, but a little more weakly. Something in him was shifting.
“Purple ears. And yellow tail. And bits of her you’ll see through. Her guts! Cats have windows in their guts here. All of ’em. Honest!”
“If I could see through her … I’d see her blood,” said Danny. “And intestines. All that.”
“You’d see forward,” said Cath. “You’d see where we’re going.”
“But I can’t.” Danny sniffed. “There’s a cat on my face.”
“There ain’t!” Cath held herself back from thumping him between the shoulder blades. “God’s sake! There’s whatever you want! Just dream up
something you want. Just … just want it. You’ll get it.”
“That’s impossible,” said Danny.
“This ain’t the other world, stupid. This is Chromos. Just do it yourself!”
Her fist, without any kind of permission, snaked out and punched Danny square in the back of the head.
Good, thought Cath. At least even he might reckon that a fair way to dislodge a cat.
* * *
Danny’s head snapped forward, and he had to cling to Zadoc to stop himself from falling off. The back of his head smarted, but at least Mitz had dropped from his face. She couldn’t have gone far though. Would she be able to jump straight back up?
He wrestled with the smoke in his brain. One thing that he wanted. A single thing. Apart from an end to all this, he couldn’t think of wanting anything else.
Ahead of them, a woman leaned against an oak tree, shabby and greasy-haired. She turned warm red eyes onto Danny’s face.
“What did I give you?” she said.
Danny didn’t know who she was. But suddenly a book came to his mind. A book of his own, made from the pictures he’d drawn. When he went home again, he’d start drawing Chromos. He couldn’t hope to understand it now. But once he sat down with a pencil in his hand and made Chromos his own—he’d know where he was then.
He closed his eyes. How would he do it? Which bit would he draw first? Here, it would be the leaves along the tops of the hedges on either side of the lane. Then Mitz: the real, kind Mitz, her tabby stripes bent into the shapes of tiny tigers running across her coat to show her bravery. Shimny the horse, sleek-backed and proud, her bored old eye rolling at him. And the swallows would be away at the highest point of the sky, wheeling in joy.
It isn’t much, he thought. Maybe it isn’t enough. Cath would be dreaming of a whole new world in here. That’s what I want though.
He forced himself to open his eyes.
And Chromos was shining.
* * *
They were still in the forest; as dark and glossy as Isbjin al-Orr’s tiny woodland, but a million times larger. Now the trees were warm and breathing, and they called out to him as he passed by. The forest was full of animals, and Danny thought he saw Mitz again. But instead of launching herself at him, she stalked along one of the low branches and stood watching him pass. Her eyes were yellow and defiant, and her fluffy tabby coat was in perfect order.
“Mitz!” Danny called out to her.
“Cat-torturing weasel!” spat Mitz, arching her back. “You deserve to be boxed into a corner and pelted with rotten haddock! If I were your mother, I’d roll you in fox poo and hand you over to a slobbery Rottweiler!”
This time, Danny didn’t let himself be upset. He grinned at her. Some of the things that had happened to her really were his fault. One day she’d forgive him, probably if he just bought a special piece of fish for her.
“See you at home!” he called.
“Not if I see you first,” spat Mitz. For a long second she stared at him and narrowed her eyes, and then she said, “I am partial to meatballs in gravy.”
Danny’s heart soared, and he thought, Cath was right. There is everything here but there is also something special—something entirely belonging to me.
And then, from between two trees in a darker corner of the forest came a spindly gray dog, a lurcher narrower than a sapling, its woolly head pointed and earnest. It looked up at Danny with round black eyes that held a single, unanswerable question.
“Is it you?” said Danny. “It is, isn’t it?”
He held out a hand.
“Careful!” warned Zadoc. “You can’t touch anything in Chromos. It’ll become a part of you.”
“She’s already a part of me,” said Danny. “I killed her. She’s already in my blood, I can feel it. Come on, Kalia.”
The lurcher didn’t answer. He tried again.
“Kalia, please. Will you come with me? I’m going to take you back to Sammael.”
Her thin head high, she watched him steadily, and he saw dark shapes detach themselves from the tree trunk and come drifting around her. Formless and papery—what were they? He tried to catch one, but they dissolved as his hand reached out to them. Drawing his hand back, peering, he saw that the shapes were scraps of burned paper with trails of writing faint across their brown pages.
“Is it the Book of Storms?” he whispered, the words half catching in his throat.
Kalia’s lips drew back—was it a snarl or a grin? She gathered her legs underneath her, and for a second Danny thought she was about to spring at him. He braced himself.
But instead of jumping, she sat down. Zadoc carried on walking.
“Stop!” Danny said to Zadoc. “I need to take her back! She’s the only thing Sammael will leave Tom for. Oh, please stop!”
Zadoc ground to a halt, grumbling. “What are you going to do? She doesn’t want to come to you.”
“But…” Danny tried to think of a way to persuade Kalia to come to him. There wasn’t one. He would have to go to her.
He swung his leg over Zadoc’s neck.
“What are you doing?” yelped Zadoc. “Don’t get off! You can’t get off!”
Danny looked down at the forest floor. It was a boiling mass of dark brine, bubbling and steaming.
He glanced back at Cath clutching Barshin in her arms.
“You can’t do it,” she said.
“I need Kalia,” Danny said. “I need to save Tom.”
Cath shrugged. “What if I try to see her, too? Maybe if we both see her, she’ll be a strong enough thought to take down there. Tell me what she’s like.”
Danny looked at the dog. “She’s gray,” he said. “Really skinny. Kind of hairy, only the hair’s like an old scrubbing pad. And her eyes are really big.”
“But what’s she like? Maybe … what sort of stuff does she like?”
He tried to see through Kalia’s eyes. “I … I’m not sure. She must have liked Sammael. I don’t know why. She stayed with him. They had some kind of bond, some bargain. She wanted to be his dog until she died. He wasn’t that nice to her, but she stayed with him. And sometimes he was nicer to her than to anything else. But only sometimes.”
“But she was always loyal?”
“Yeah, always. He didn’t deserve it, but she was.”
Cath snorted. “Deserve it? That’s what kids say.”
“No,” said Danny, noticing how Cath’s fingers had tightened around Barshin’s fur. “If someone’s that loyal to you, you should be good to them.”
“But some people don’t know how to be good. Or some dogs, neither. And sometimes you’re just loyal to them no matter what. It ain’t wrong.”
Danny stared at her. “It is wrong,” he said. “It shouldn’t be like that.”
“Or maybe you’re wrong. Maybe Sammael isn’t all horrible.”
Danny shook his head. She had twisted his thoughts around so that he couldn’t even think them properly anymore. He knew how important it was to try and say that you shouldn’t believe people are allowed to hurt you, you shouldn’t believe that Chromos is the only place of peace in this world—but the words balled up like clumps of hair in his throat and he couldn’t cough them out.
He swallowed the hair balls and forced himself to say, “It doesn’t matter. Do you know enough now? Can you imagine Kalia?”
“Maybe,” said Cath. “I reckon I can try anyway.”
“Okay. Let’s call her together then.”
They tried it. Kalia continued to stare at Danny, but threw a couple of glances toward Cath and Barshin, mistrustful.
“She’s not coming,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve got her right.”
“It’s you who ain’t got her right, idiot. You’re still thinking about how wrong everything is. She’ll never come to you.”
“I can’t help it,” said Danny. “Sammael and her—it is wrong.”
“Sometimes right and wrong ain’t important,” said Cath. “Sometimes it only matters wh
at you do.”
Danny looked at Kalia. “If you were my dog,” he thought, “I’d never kick you. I’d never be mean to you or drag you around. I’d be nice to you, and I’d love you.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference,” said Kalia. “Love is a steadfast arrow. Once the bow is fired and the barb has gone in, it can’t be pulled out again. At least, not back the way it went in.”
And she came toward him and put her paws up onto Zadoc’s shoulder.
“Pull me up,” she said.
She was no heavier than paper, and for a moment Danny thought he was gathering up a parcel of snakeskin. He didn’t understand how they’d done it but he had her, cradled in his arms. She wasn’t a real dog, solid and warm. But she looked like the animal he’d killed on that windy hillside.
He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he dared. She rested her scraggy head against the side of his neck.
“Take us down, Zadoc,” he said. “We’re ready.”
And then the air got thicker and became slimy and wet until water was running down their faces and arms, and they had to close their mouths because they were breathing in air so wet that it made them cough up splatters of salt.
Just as his lungs were starting to feel painfully tight, Danny’s head broke through the surface of the sea and he gasped, gulping in the night air again. Cath appeared beside him with Barshin crouched around her head, and they looked around for Isbjin al-Orr.
“Swim!” Cath yelled. “Swim for shore!”
“What?” Danny readjusted his grip on Kalia. She felt so fragile he was sure she was about to dissolve.
“Swim!” Cath screamed again. “Don’t go into the moonlight!”
What was she going on about? Danny couldn’t understand the fuss. They’d survived Chromos; they were back on earth again. Not solid earth, not quite yet. But nearly. What was the panic?
“The moonlight!” Cath waved her arms wildly. “It was in my dream!”
Danny managed to turn his head for long enough to see a vast, white wave sweeping toward them, soundless and soft. It was almost transparent, except that on the other side of it, instead of more sea, he could see shapes. There were tall things that looked like buildings, and other shorter shapes lower down.
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