The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (7 page)

“Couldn't sleep?” he said. “Toast?”

“Bad dream,” I told him, filling a glass from the tap. “No, thanks.”

I sat down at the table in front of him, sipping water while he crunched his crusts. I was sore and tired and thirsty and wished I was asleep.

“It'll be OK, Neil,” he said. “You'll see.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Is it? My mistake. You're doomed, then. That better?”

“It's honest, at least.”

“No, it isn't. It's giving up to think like that. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That's the golden rule.”

“No it isn't.”

“It's one of them. Or it should be. It's one of mine, anyway. Along with keep the diesel topped up, and walk your dragon at least once a day or he'll burn down your whole rig, truck, trailer and all.”

“You have a dragon?”

“What? Me? No. No one has a dragon, Neil, and anyone who thinks they do is just a dragon's dinner waiting to happen.”

“But you said—”

“Well, it's more that I gave a dragon a lift one time. Picked him up in Scotland. He'd hatched from an egg in someone's kitchen, just an ordinary egg they'd bought with five others from the supermarket, and the children wanted to keep it and the parents wanted to flush it down the toilet. I offered to take it off their hands before something unpleasant happened. Drove it all the way to China. Have you ever tried to drive a truck into China unseen? With a dragon on board? Can't exactly declare it at customs, can you? By the time I got there it was nearly bigger than the truck and eating three or four sheep every night. It was like having a hungry jet fighter in the back. It took off into the mountains without even a backward glance. Still, all for the best.”

I laughed.

“That didn't really happen, did it?”

“I can show you the claw marks and the scorching in the trailer, if you like.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at me curiously. “Why wouldn't you believe me? You've lived with the Seasons passing through your phone box four times a year for your whole life.”

I shifted in my seat.

“Well, yeah, but that's different.”

He smiled.

“You're used to it, aren't you? It doesn't seem like magic because something that's been part of your whole life can't really be magic; it's just the way things are. I've met lots of magicians: witches, wizards, druids, sorcerers, conjurers. Most of them live quiet, dull, normal lives, forgetting that the magic they have is, well, magic. To them it's normal. To me it's…”

“Stupendous,” I said, smiling.

“Exactly.” He breathed. “I once wished to have magic, so I went looking for it. And I found it. I found it in all sorts of places. Wherever I found it, I found wonder and excitement and strangeness. But to the people who had the magic, or who watched over it, it was just … normal. ‘OK,' they'd say with a shrug. ‘Have a look. Give it a go. Touch it if you dare.' They couldn't see why I was so interested. They didn't understand what I got out of it. So, in the end, I prefer to be the Tourist. The Tourist finds the magic in the things everyone else has forgot about or thinks are normal. The Tourist finds things amazing and exciting, and maybe he can remind people how amazing and exciting and magic things can be. I don't want to be a magician anymore, Neil. I find magic everywhere I go.”

I didn't speak for a while, and we sat there in silence together.

“Looking forward to tomorrow?” Ed asked after a while.

“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “Hey, you mean today! It'll be dawn soon! Everyone's going to be up and—Ow!”

I put my hands to my ears. My eardrums felt as though they had been stabbed through with white-hot needles. Ed's face was twisted with pain.

“It's the pressure!” His voice sounded far, far away, many miles underground. “Like in a plane! Air pressure!”

I doubled over, whimpering. Ed was holding his nose and inflating his cheeks.

Then every window in the house exploded.

 

CHAPTER 8

LIZ

Everything crashed and broke like a great glasshouse falling apart, with me inside lying on the ground and all the broken glass falling down on me, shiny and sharp and cutting. I woke up with a scream stuck in my throat.

“Hello, Liz,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

I sat up too fast, making myself gasp for breath, and then I froze. The last thing I could remember was leaning on Dad while climbing the stairs to bed. Now something was howling somewhere nearby. My room was dim and gray and full of moving shadows. The curtains lifted as a breeze blew in through the broken window. There was glass all over the floor. It was almost dawn. Over the howling, I could hear music playing from the alarm clock radio in Mum and Dad's room. We should be getting up and going downstairs and waiting for the phone to ring.

She was sitting on the end of my bed, and she was smiling and her teeth were sharp and her eyes were green and glowing.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn't speak.

“Good morning, Liz.”

Just like that. “Good morning, Liz,” she said, uninvited, unwelcome, with monsters screaming and glass broken all around us.

“I wanted to have a quiet word with you before the sun came up. Things are going to get a little unpleasant, Liz. I want you to know that when this is over, I will forgive you for being my enemy. You can come to me whenever you're ready, and I will teach you everything I know. You can come with me now, and save your family a great deal of pain. Do you understand what I'm telling you?”

She was smiling. I'd never seen her smile at anyone else. That made me even more scared. Now she was sitting in the dark at the end of my bed, waiting patiently for me to answer. She'd forgive me? What had I ever done to her? If anyone should be asking for forgiveness it should be her, and it'd be a cold day in hell before she'd get it from me.

Teach me? To be like her? Who could possibly want to be like her?

Way down deep in my soul, in a place where I looked at her and saw someone tall and scary and beautiful, and then looked at myself and saw someone small and weak and silly, a tiny little voice whispered.
Me,
it said.
I'd like to be like her.

“Well, Liz?” she demanded.

I could hear a howling and a knocking, things falling and breaking, shouting and crying, like a war going on downstairs. I threw back the covers and leaped from the bed. She put her hand out, palm forward. Her fingers were long and elegant and graceful. There was a twist of annoyance to her smile. I stopped.

“That's Hugh,” she said. “Dear sweet Hugh can't help himself. But this is between you and me, Liz. Let the boys have their fun.”

I looked at the door, in agony. I could hear the sounds of a high wind blowing, things breaking and smashing, Neil's voice yelling, Mum and Dad and Owen rushing out of their rooms and running for the stairs. I wanted to be with them.

“Stay a moment,” she said, and gestured at the bed. I slowly sat down on the edge of the mattress, ready to run for the door, knowing I wouldn't dare. She moved, her dress whispering, her skin glowing, and she was beside me, her hand on mine.

“Poor Liz,” she said. “They don't know who you are, do they? The little girl? The mad one, the awkward one, always making trouble, an embarrassment and a shame. They only let you do what you want because it's too much trouble to make you stop.”

I tried to pull my hand away. I couldn't move. The cacophony below was getting louder, more frantic and violent. If anyone got hurt …

I made to stand up. Her hand gripped my wrist. She rose and brought me with her. Somehow my bare feet passed over the glass on the floor without touching any. Her smile was still gentle, understanding. We swept toward the bedroom window. It gaped like a mouth full of broken teeth. She stooped and swept through and dragged me along behind.

We fell, we flew, sweeping down to land on the lawn in front of the house. Her hand was still around my wrist. My legs shook and my breath came in gasps. Inside the house the sound of the high wind and things breaking and people yelling came through the broken windows. Everything was dark and swirling and confused.

“You could do that,” she said. “You could do this, and you could do that. But not with them. With me. I would like a hostage, Liz. I would like an apprentice. I would like a daughter.”

The sky was bright. I could see the Weatherbox over the wall at the end of the front lawn.
TELEFÓN
. It was light enough to read and getting lighter by the minute.

Numbly, my ears ringing, a cold sweat making my body shiver, I shook my head. No, no, no, no, please, no.

But part of me, the part that was jealous because I could never become Weatherman, the part that looked at Mrs. Fitzgerald and saw someone strong and powerful and independent, the part that knew that even though we thought she was terrible, she must surely be the hero of her own story, that part, deep down, said yes.

 

CHAPTER 9

NEIL

The shock of the noise drove me sideways, sliding along the table and tumbling to the floor. I hunched up, bracing myself, as wind rushed in through the windows. Doors blew open and slammed against walls. Things were falling and breaking all around me. The table tilted over onto its side. Ed Wharton tugged and pulled at it until it was facing the wind, and we hid behind it while crockery and cutlery and pots and pans and the blender and the tea towels and the potted plants flew around the room.

Roaring and whistling through every gap and over every surface, the wind, like a riot of invisible serpents, flattened and squeezed and smashed everything it met. Ed and I leaned our weights on the legs of the table, trying to keep it into the wind. It kept trying to tip over and fly away and take us with it.

At least the pain in my ears had gone. I couldn't have stood much more of that.

The fridge was blown across the floor, rocking along until it reached the limit of its electric cable. It was right in front of our table when it began to lean forward, hanging over us, until the weight of it dragged the plug from the wall. We went scrambling away across the floor just as the great ton of metal came crashing down on the table, crushing it to splinters. We went tumbling through the doorway and down the corridor, batted and bashed by flying things that had once been ordinary everyday household objects but were now lethal speeding chunks of pain.

We were on our backs, the force of the wind sucking us toward the living room. The whirlwind filled it. We grabbed hold of the frame of the doorway, our legs stretching as we were pulled toward the center of the thing. I saw the television fly past, the coffee table, Mum's favorite china figurines in jigsaw pieces.

“I can't hold on!” I yelled.

“Me neither!” cried Ed.

Then the cat came in through the broken window, flowing like oily orange smoke, claws unsheathed, teeth bared, bigger than I'd ever seen him. Bigger than any living cat, bigger than a car, big as some mythical prehistoric cat that used to hunt dinosaurs as though they were mice. He pounced at the whirlwind. Flying furniture bounced off him unnoticed. The whirlwind tried to run away.

The wind stopped, and we fell in a heap. The whirlwind bent away from the cat, hurling itself back across the room and against the far wall. The cat crouched, lashed it with its paw, hissed and leaped right into the roaring heart of the thing. Crashing and wailing and yowling, the fighting mass of wind and cat tore around the living room, reducing the already battered furniture to splinters, ripping the carpet from the floor and the paper from the wall. Ed and I scooted back from the doorway, hands held before our faces, as a seething wall of glass and wood and metal scoured through the air in front of us.

I saw the door into the front hall open a crack and a small, frightened face peek through.

“Owen!” I screamed, waving frantically. “Go back! Go back upstairs! Go!”

Owen was pulled away, and Dad's face appeared. Then he jerked back and the door shut once more.

The whirlwind stopped whirling. Two bodies flew in opposite directions, hit opposite walls, and fell to the floor. The cat wailed, bleeding from a hundred cuts. The boy screeched with fear and outrage, jumped to his feet, slipped on the wreckage, but, instead of falling, floated, turning in midair, his face a mask of rage and pain. Hugh Fitzgerald, flying in a limping sort of a way, floated out the window. Neetch, having shrunk back to normal cat size, made one last heroic leap and landed on the small of Hugh's back, and they both disappeared out into the dawn, wailing and screaming like a pair of hell's own choirboys.

 

CHAPTER 10

LIZ

Mrs. Fitzgerald's smile grew wider, her grip tightened, and she began to turn away from the house, bringing me with her. Out through the living room window came Hugh, screeching and struggling with Neetch, who had dug his claws into Hugh's back. Hugh turned as he flew, went low, and scraped across the lawn, knocking Neetch off. Then Hugh hit the ground and rolled head over heels to a groaning stop at his mother's feet.

She looked at me, her smile gone, then down at Hugh.

Neetch stalked across the grass, growing, blocking out the house, dwarfing us, mouth wide, teeth like sharp white fence posts, tongue red as blood. Mrs. Fitzgerald let go of my wrist and with both hands drew in the air a strange design that burned with green flame and fell like a net over Neetch's face and head. The cat howled and shrank, and suddenly the air was full of the smell of burned fur and skin. I jumped over Hugh's prone body and gathered Neetch up in my hands. He was no bigger than a kitten, mewling pitifully, fur smoking.

I backed away from her, and she watched me go, saying nothing. She stooped and helped Hugh upright. Over at the gate, John-Joe stood with his feet spread and his shotgun ready.