The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (18 page)

“Why would you help us? I asked them. “You're her sisters.”

The hags looked at me.

“Oh, my little sweetie, not all families are like yours.”

“She abandoned us. Deserted us.”

“Grew young again.”

“You're young again,” said Owen.

“We are. And as we get younger, we get less crazy. We forget the things we knew. Knowing too much makes you crazy, you know, dear.”

“But, you see, she's the eldest. When we're finished getting young again, we'll be the age we were when they made us serve the Black Pool, but that'll be no older than you and your sister, and no more powerful.”

“She was supposed to be the witch, you see. They took her and trained her and taught her, not us.”

“But they needed three sisters to stir and sing for the beast of the black hole, because they thought it was in love with the threefold goddess.”

“They took us from our home and threw us in that shell and left us there for a thousand years. By the hokey, I wouldn't so much as sing for my supper or stir my own tea in the cup now for all the silk in China.”

“You do a lot to pass the time for a thousand years. She taught us all she knew, but she was always the first, the eldest.”

“The strongest.”

“The smartest.”

“We have time, before the bell rings, to keep her at a distance. And maybe, in the fight, later, we can do some good.”

“And if we win, we'll send her back and she can stir and sing by her lonesome.”

“And if the black beast don't like it he can go boil himself in a kettle and call himself soup.”

“Your names?” Mum asked.

“Hazel, they called me.”

“My name is Ash.”

Mum and Dad looked at each other.

Mum nodded. “Go and get Neil,” she said.

“Stand back,” he told us, and we stood back, and he turned into something else—something big and covered in leaves and twigs and branches and full of living creatures. There was a smell of things growing and rotting, and I heard insects and birds. A fox barked, and Dad had long trailing vines for hair and his hands were covered with tree bark and his face was all wrong, lumpy, and swollen, like a ripe fruit ready to burst.

“Do not let them touch that line,” he said, and then he was gone, and there was mud everywhere and flies and worms and the rich smell of high summer.

“Twiggy man!” I said.

Mum put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

The two hags came through the doorway, younger than ever—their skin smooth, their hair black, their faces sharp.

“The Weatherman in his might goes boldly to the place of his son's imprisonment,” said Ash. “Green his strength, bright his rage. His shield is the earth. His sword is fire. His spear is of water, and his chariot the air. All empty is the land from his passing.”

“I thought you said you'd do no more of that singing,” said Hazel.

“That wasn't singing, you
oinseach
, that was chanting, all solemn and proper for the occasion.”

I looked at the AtmoLab people working around the Weatherbox.

“Will Dad be back in time?” I asked.

“Oh, good heavens, dear, don't worry your little head about that,” said Ash. “Of course he won't.”

“Not a hope in the world,” agreed Hazel.

“Right,” I said.

I went to buy more time for the Weatherman—which meant keeping AtmoLab away from the Weatherbox.

 

CHAPTER 19

NEIL

I was quite thoroughly and repeatedly arrested.

“I didn't do anything,” I said as I was led down a logging path to the main road, where cars and fire engines, ambulances, and bulldozers, backhoes, and tractors stretched along the verge for a mile in either direction. Eco-warriors and Shieldsmen were being put into white vans. I saw Weisz, his face pale with shock. One of the other Shieldsmen looked over at me and gave a shrug.

Then people in suits and uniforms surrounded me and started fighting over me. The police wanted to stick me in the paddy wagon. The guys from the ambulance wanted to put an oxygen mask on me. The firefighters wanted to put me over their shoulders and carry me to safety. There was a reporter who kept yelling questions at me. There was a man from the county council who screamed and shook his fist at me.

The blue lights of the police cars flashed and turned. Bulldozers and tractors roared and rattled. The buzz of chainsaws and the crash of falling wood came from the forest. One of the eco-warriors was weeping, resting his head on the shoulder of a burly policeman, who was patting him awkwardly on the back.

After being swung this way and that a few times they finally tossed me into the back of the paddy wagon. I sat on the bench next to the door. Weisz was beside me, and there was a line of slumped and tired-looking Shieldsmen sitting on either side, their knees all sticking out and meeting in the middle.

“Full up!” a policeman yelled, and the doors slammed shut and a fist pounded on them and we all rocked and rolled as the paddy wagon pulled out.

“That's an awful pity, by,” someone said. “They were nice old trees, they were. And what's the point, like? There's no money left in this country, so they'll cut them down, like, and sell the wood and all the profit will go into some politician's pocket, and then they'll tear the place up for a while and dig a few holes and pour a bit of concrete and then, like, all the finance will run out and it'll be left like that, a wreck and a ruin.”

“They'll widen the road,” someone else said, bitterly.

“Great, by. Nice wide roads and no one left to drive on them because no one can afford a car.”

“Forget that,” Weisz said, loudly. “That's not important anymore. The son of the Weatherman is present and we have been called. Remember your duty.”

“Are we all going to jail?” I said. “I don't want to go to jail. How can you do your duty in jail?”

“Don't worry,” Weisz replied. “They'll charge us, stick us in the cells, and a judge will set bail and we'll be out by lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? God, Weisz, we don't have that much time! You don't understand how urgent this is!” I snapped.

I spent the rest of the journey trying to explain how urgent this was. I ended up yelling at them.

“We've got to escape and get home and protect my family from
her
! We've got to get the phone line fixed so the Seasons can change! You're magic Celtic ninja warriors! Surely you can escape from a paddy wagon!”

The paddy wagon stopped. The doors swung open. We blinked at the light and climbed down onto a footpath in front of a police station.

“Now's your chance!” I hissed at Weisz, but he just smiled vaguely and shuffled his feet.

I gave up and turned to one of the policemen. “Uh, excuse me, where's Ed? My friend, Ed Wharton? Big guy. He had a sword.”

“Him and everyone else! But if you mean the big guy with the sword but no kilt, we let him go. Turns out your Mr. Wharton had a permit. Never saw a permit for a sword before, but there you go. Gave him a warning and told him to get out of Dublin. None of the rest of you had permits, though. What were youse doing, anyway? One of those arty street-parade things? We loved the costumes, by the way. Excellent craftsmanship! Let us know if you're doing a festival, will you? We all want to come along and see you in action.”

Inside the station it was bedlam. There was a mob of shouting, singing eco-warriors, a smaller mob of eco-warrior lawyers, reporters, councilors, and a few workmen and, trying to manage it all, the policemen in their peaked caps and yellow jackets. The Shieldsmen were put sitting in a row on a bench where they started singing some sort of sad and soulful harmony, which was actually quite lovely and everyone quieted down to listen. Someone tried to ruin it by strumming along with a guitar, but a policewoman confiscated it as evidence. When they finished, the whole station applauded, and then got back to the outrage and anger and everybody trying to make themselves heard at once.

The walls were covered with official posters telling me all about the various laws and acts and regulations I might be breaking just by being alive. One of the Shieldsmen was tearing them down and stuffing them into the pockets of her kilt.

Then I was taken by the elbow and led sideways through the mob, up to a tall desk where a massive sergeant was looking out over the whole scene with an air of patient, long-suffering gloom. He was trying to take down the details of an excited eco-warrior who seemed to think he was there to file a complaint about police brutality instead of be arrested.

“Evening, Sarge!” said the policeman. “Keeping you busy?”

“Well,” he said slowly and thoughtfully. “If they weren't I'm sure you will.”

“Just boost this one through for us, Sarge,” the policeman said. “Then we'll be out of your hair.”

Sarge sat back in his chair, making the plastic creak and crack. He pointed a big meaty finger at me. “This one, is it?”

“That's the one, Sarge.”

“That's the one,” Sarge repeated. “What's he done, may I ask? Murder? Terrorism? Serial killing? Must be a dangerous brute, whoever he is. What are we dealing with here, exactly?”

“Knocked someone over,” the policeman said. “Nearly crippled him.”

“I'm sorry,” I wailed. “I didn't mean to! It was an accident!”

“I see,” said the sergeant, looking directly at me. “You look like the crippling sort, all right. Name?”

“Excuse me!”

Everything fell quiet. The singing and the talking and the shouting and complaining all died down. The air glowed strangely, and the evening sun shone green and gold through the windows. Thick clouds of pollen were flowing through the shafts of light.

Sarge looked up, blinking, eyes streaming. He sniffled and pulled out a handkerchief. “It's a bit late in the year for hay fever,” he muttered.

“I want you to let him go.”

“Dad?” I said.

A space had cleared behind us, where everyone had pressed back and away from the man standing there—Dad, but different. There was something green about him, something dark, and there was a smell—or a hundred different smells—of plants and dirt and manure and rain on hot dust. In the quiet of the police station, I could hear a buzzing noise, rising.

“And who are you?” demanded Sarge.

“I'm his father,” Dad said. “I'm the Weatherman.
Is mise Fear Na hAimsire
, and I've come for my son.”

A murmur ran through the crowd. I saw men and women in bright woolen jumpers push forward, eyes alight.

Weisz stepped out. “Weatherman,” he said.

“Shut up,” Dad said. “I'm here for Neil. I'm taking him now. Don't try to stop us.”

Sarge sat back in his chair and studied Dad. “Is that right? I see. Well, of course. He's only under arrest for assault. We're only the police. It's only our job to enforce the law of the land. By all means, off you go.”

He waved his hands, then held up a finger as if he'd just had an idea.

“Or, no,” Sarge said. “Here's a better notion. You sit yourself down. You shut yourself up, and you let us do our job. How does that sound?”

“No,” Dad said. “We're leaving.”

“OK,” said Sarge. “Lads?”

A policeman took hold of my arm. Other policemen pushed past the Shieldsmen, reaching for Dad. The Shieldsmen blocked them and tried to pull them back. The policemen turned on the Shieldsmen. Voices were raised. So were fists.

“STOP!”

Dad was taller now, almost to the ceiling, and his skin was green and his clothes were made of leaves, and his hair was grass and his body was wrapped in ivy and briars and brambles. Behind him the doors of the police station blew open and a million flying, buzzing, whirring insects flew in.

That's when the screaming really started.

Summer hits like a hammer. It's great after a long Winter and a wild Spring, when everything gets bright and hot and flowers burst and insects buzz and birds dart and fruit ripens, but it is life pushed as far as it can go.

Summer exploded into the police station. A billion insects surfed a blaze of heat and light. Thick dark soil boiled up from the ground under our feet, squirming with centipedes and worms. Trees ignited from cracks in the walls and ceiling, sending out long crooked branches thick with leaves and heavy with fruit that swelled and ripened and died and rotted and fell about us in a couple of seconds. The stench of rot and earth and mad growth would have driven us crazy if we weren't already insane with buzzing, biting, crawling insects.

On my skin and up my nose, in my mouth, my ears, my clothes. Crawling, touching, buzzing, biting in my hair and all over me, alive, fat, hungry, and thirsty. They were IN MY EYES!

Then I was yanked off my feet, lifted by a giant hand that went around my waist and carried me through the nightmare. People screamed and yelled and prayed and wept and ran around looking for the doors. I was taken through it all and set down outside. I saw nothing because I had my eyes shut tight. I shook myself hard and slapped myself and my hair to get the insects off, and finally I opened my eyes. Inside the station there was golden light and black insects and green growing things and running, falling people clawing their way outside.

I was standing in the car park. There were people all around—eco-warriors and Shieldsmen and police and detectives and criminals, all coughing and rolling and wiping themselves and hugging and weeping and staring, and all keeping well clear of the man standing beside me, fear in their eyes and horror on their faces.

“Dad,” I said.

“It's OK, Neil. I've come to take you home.”

He wasn't all summery now, though there was still a kind of glow around him—a green tinge to his skin and a dark red in the depths of his eyes. He seemed more sad than anything else.