The Lightning Catcher (29 page)

“Mind you, I always thought there was something fishy about a librarian who didn't want anyone setting foot in his library,” said Dougal, as soon as his face had returned to its normal color.

When Angus got to the part about the lightning vaults themselves, both Dougal and Indigo listened in silence, only stopping him when he described the never-ending storm.

“I can't believe the lightning catchers made something so dangerous,” said Indigo. “Just imagine if it had gotten loose all by itself and gone raging about the island.”

Dougal nodded. “Just imagine if Dankhart had gotten his grubby hands on it! We'd all be dodging lightning bolts for the rest of our lives.”

They sat for several hours more, discussing the dramatic events of the evening, with Angus listening to Dougal and Indigo discuss what the lightning catchers should do if anyone else ever tried to break into the vaults again.

Now that Dankhart was gone, Angus felt enormously tired and wrung out like a sponge, every fiber in his body aching. And his mind kept drifting back—not to Dankhart, but to his parents' room in the lightning catchers' living quarters. He kept a tight grip on the belt buckle in his pocket, and he knew that, despite what Rogwood had said, his parents were no closer to coming home than they had been when he'd first arrived on Imbur. He also knew that as long as they were trapped in one of Dankhart's dungeons, he would never be able to rest easy; he would never be able to gaze out across the town of Little Frog's Bottom and beyond without wondering if he would ever see them again.

 

Angus was shocked to discover the following morning that none of the other trainees seemed to know anything about the events in the lightning vaults. They were still discussing the shooting stars, one of which had burned a hole right through the ceiling of the experimental division, causing the storm vacuum to explode in a magnificent shower of hot dust and flames.

“Principal Dark-Angel must have hushed the whole thing up, for the time being at least,” Dougal said, helping himself to a hearty breakfast of double sausage, eggs, and bacon as they sat in the damaged kitchens. “Probably didn't want everyone thundering through the weather tunnel looking for the entrance. I hope Catcher Sparks doesn't expect us to glue the storm vacuum back together again,” he added, frowning.

Angus was also surprised to hear that Miss DeWinkle had organized another midnight fog viewing, and that the damage done to the roof by the burning chunks of rock wasn't half as bad as everyone had first feared. Angus himself, however, was forbidden from taking part by a concerned Doctor Fleagal, who ordered that he get as much rest as possible, and he was forced to stay behind in his room.

“It was absolute chaos!” Dougal informed him afterward, peeling off his gloves and scarf. Indigo also crept into Angus's room, pink cheeked and tired, to tell him about the events of the night.

“Violet Quinn and Jonathon Hake had to be taken up to the sanatorium with fog exhaustion,” she said.

Dougal grinned. “And Percival Vellum accidentally tripped over the end of the weather cannon and landed headfirst in a bucket full of dead tadpoles. Couldn't have happened to a nicer lightning cub,” he added gleefully, making Angus laugh hard.

“Clifford Fugg got a bad case of fog disorientation,” said Indigo as soon as he'd regained control of himself.

“But Indigo saved him from falling off the roof,” Dougal explained, “and now Miss DeWinkle's going around telling everyone how brave she is.”

Indigo blushed furiously at this and announced that she was going to bed before she got caught loitering in the boys' corridor.

“I think we might have seriously underestimated that girl, you know,” said Dougal as she snapped the door shut behind her.

“
We've
underestimated her?” Angus said, with eyebrows raised.

Dougal smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, well, I might have been wrong about her,” he admitted. “She couldn't have had anything to do with her uncle, could she, not after everything that's happened. I mean, we never would have made it through the weather tunnel if it hadn't been for Indigo, even if she did make us paddle across a frozen lake in a giant yeti bed.”

Angus laughed. Now that the ordeal in the weather tunnel was behind them, Dougal was eager to send some treats up to the fog yeti, to make up for the fact that they had stolen its bed.

“Do you get the feeling that being friends with Indigo could get us into trouble, though?” Dougal added, sounding slightly anxious.

“Yeah,” Angus said, “and loads of it.”

He had decided not to mention Indigo's startling resemblance to her uncle, not even to Indigo, since it would only upset her. Nor had he mentioned Dankhart's chilling threat that he would deal with her when the time was right. Being friends with Indigo could easily get them into serious trouble—the kind of trouble they would never let her face alone.

 

Two days later, it was Angus who found himself in hot water when he was called up to Principal Dark-Angel's office by a very stern note, which was addressed for the first time to “Angus McFangus.”

The effort of squeezing the never-ending storm into its new globe had left the principal looking tired and worn.

“I am sending you back home to the Windmill for a few weeks' rest and recuperation,” the principal began in a somewhat frosty manner, without looking up at him. “You will be taking this evening's ferry back to the mainland.”

Angus stared at her, thunderstruck. Whatever he'd been expecting—a detention, a telling-off, or maybe even praise for his efforts—it had not been this.

“But, Principal, I—”

“Gudgeon will accompany you on your journey, of course. You will stay in Devon with your uncle Max until we decide what is to be done with you, McFangus.”

“Done with me? But Principal Dark-Angel,” Angus protested, “I can't leave now, we're supposed to be scraping rust off the cloud-busting rocket launcher next week. Catcher Sparks has already given us our own rust buckets and everything. And . . . well, all my friends are here.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you decided to go charging off through the weather tunnel in search of the lightning vaults,” said the principal, her thin lips pressed together tightly. “You put yourself and others at very great risk, and I cannot condone such rash behavior.”

Angus stared at the principal in disbelief.

“I am aware, McFangus, that you have been extremely concerned about your parents, and that must have played some part in your actions,” she continued, without any hint that she understood his actions at all. “Perhaps I should have been more forthright with you about their predicament from the start, but that does not excuse you. When you discovered that your parents had sent you a map of the lightning vaults, you should have brought it directly to me!”

Her last few words sounded slightly hysterical, and Angus stared at her almost as if he was seeing her for the very first time. Her face looked haunted, gaunt even. And Angus wondered again why his parents hadn't sent the map directly to Principal Dark-Angel. What possible reason could they have had for posting it to their eleven-year-old son instead?

“That will be all, McFangus. You may go.” She glared at him. “You will be hearing from me when a decision about your future here at Perilous has been made.”

 

An hour later, Angus was drying his boots and squashing them into his bulging bag, feeling slightly dazed by the rapid turn of events. Indigo and Dougal sat on the edge of his bed, watching helplessly.

“I can't believe the miserable old bag's sending you home!” Dougal burst out angrily.

“We're the ones who stopped Dankhart—or hadn't she noticed?” Indigo added, folding her arms.

“Yeah.” Dougal nodded. “He would have been halfway across Imbur with the storm globe stuffed under his coat if we hadn't gotten there first.”

“Look, she hasn't said I can't ever come back,” said Angus. “She probably just wants to get me out of the way for a while, till they work out what Dankhart's going to do next. Anyway, it'll be Christmas soon, and she's bound to let me come back in the new year, isn't she?”

There was a definite feeling of sadness in the air, however, as Dougal and Indigo accompanied Angus down to the courtyard, where he was to wait for Gudgeon in the gravity railway carriage. Angus was looking forward to seeing Uncle Max again, and finding out which new inventions he'd been working on, but he would be extremely sad to leave Perilous behind.

Without even realizing it, he'd already come to think of it as his second home. He would miss spending his days in the highly unpredictable and flammable experimental division. He would miss listening to the lightning catchers at mealtimes, arguing over the best way to escape a sudden icicle storm. He would even miss the nervous excitements of the fog field trips, although quite a large part of him was glad he wouldn't be blundering his way through any tropical fog for some time. But more than anything else, Angus knew he would miss his two best friends.

“I can't believe you're leaving before the highlight of the whole fog season,” Indigo said, giving him a very watery-looking smile as the doors to the carriage opened and he stepped reluctantly inside. Miss DeWinkle would be taking all of the first years on an extended fog field trip the following week. They would be camping out in Imbur's boggiest marshes for six whole days, to tackle any lingering vapor sickness and keep personal fog diaries.

“Can you imagine it?” Dougal smirked. “Pixie Vellum, stuck in a bog.”

Angus grinned. “Look, here's my uncle's address,” he said, handing small slips of paper to them both. “Let me know what happens. And if Pixie Vellum does get stuck in a bog . . . I want photographs and detailed descriptions.”

Then it was time to go. Gudgeon emerged from the entrance hall and joined Angus inside the carriage.

“You'll be back,” Dougal shouted confidently as the doors began to close. “Principal Dark-Angel can't keep you away forever.”

Indigo waved, wiping a tear quickly from her cheek.

“Just try not to annoy any more camels while I'm gone, okay?” Angus shouted as the carriage finally began to plummet toward the ground.

And he knew, as he watched Perilous growing smaller and smaller above him, that Dougal was right. One way or another, he'd be back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANNE CAMERON
got the original idea for this book after reading an article about fulgurites, which are formed when lightning strikes sand with such ferocity that it melts the particles together and forms amazing, rootlike glass tubes. What would happen, she wondered, if lightning bolts could be caught deliberately, by expert lightning catchers?

 

Anne Cameron lives in England.

 

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CREDITS

Cover art © 2013 by Greg Call

Cover design by Paul Zakris

COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

 

The Lightning Catcher
Copyright © 2013 by Anne Cameron

 

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

 

Black-and-white illustrations by Victoria Jamieson

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Cameron, Anne.

The lightning catcher / by Anne Cameron.

pages cm.

“Greenwillow Books.”

Summary: When eleven-year-old Angus McFangus learns that he is a storm prophet, someone who can predict and control catastrophic weather, he must stop the villainous Scabious Dankhart from unleashing an unending storm and achieving world domination.

ISBN 978-0-06-211276-7 (trade ed.)

Epub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780062112781

[1. Weather—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.C1428Li  2013  [Fic]—dc23   2012042848

 

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First Edition