Night Gate (26 page)

“It will be all right,” Billy said. He smiled reassuringly at Rage, and she struggled to match his pretense, seeing that it was another kind of courage.

The bubble containing Mr. Walker and Bear was the first launched. With her heart in her throat, Rage watched Thaddeus and the ferryman push it over the edge. Immediately the water bore the bubble down and out of sight. Billy squeezed her hand so hard it hurt.

Then it was their turn. Their palms were slippery now, but they held on tight. Rage looked back at the Mother, and their eyes met for a second before there was a lurching sensation. Then they were falling, and the river was falling with them and around them.

Rage fought against her fear, knowing that if she gave in to panic, she would go mad. She wanted to stand up straight and stretch out her arms and legs and breathe freely. She wanted to scream.

Suddenly there was a great thud and they were under the water with bubbles and debris.

And darkness.

Now they were swept forward. The bubble stayed upright, but they were thrown violently from side to side. Finally, Billy put his arms around Rage. They pressed together, bracing their feet against the bubble to stop themselves being battered.

Rage discovered that she was no longer afraid. It was as if she had felt all the fear she was capable of feeling. A numb dullness stole over her and, incredibly, she began to fall asleep. She tried to stay awake, but her eyelids felt as if they were weighed down with lumps of steel.

“Billy,” she muttered, surprised at how loud her voice sounded in the silence of the bubble. Maybe she was getting sleepy because the air in the bubble was being used up.

“Sleep,” Billy said, kissing her forehead. “I’ll hold on to you. I’m not tired.”

She knew he was lying, but she did not have the strength to resist his kindness. And so, in all that flooding darkness, she slept. Her last waking thought was that perhaps it was the river that was endless, and not the sea.

Rage dreamed that she was on a roller coaster. Billy was with her, in his human form, and she could smell popcorn and hot chips and hear the sound of music and the screams of people behind her.

Then she heard her name being called.

“Ra-age!”

“Who is it?” she asked, and suddenly she was standing on the ground and there was no sound but the wind, and nothing but a dark rise in front of her. It took her a moment to recognize the hill above Winnoway. It was night, and the stars were so bright they might have been pressing themselves toward her.

Rage should have been frightened, but she wasn’t.

“What do you want?” she called. Looking around, trying to see who had cried out, she saw a falling star.

“Help…,” the voice called. It was quite loud, but there was a violent crackling that made it almost impossible to hear. “Break…”

It was the voice she had heard in the forest, urging her to break the spell that held it prisoner. “Who are you?” she called.

“Break…,” the voice begged.

“I don’t know how,” Rage cried.

The dream shattered into pieces around her, and she fell through it into another.

Now she was walking through a strange house. A strong wind blew. Her cotton nightie flapped and fluttered against her bare skin. There was no furniture in the rooms and nothing on the walls. The floor was made of some kind of pale, knotty wood with a bluish tinge, and the walls were all white. There were no doors, only open doorways. There was no glass in the windows, but long white curtains coiled and flagged wildly in the wind. One of them brushed Rage’s cheek. It felt like someone’s fingers touching her face.

She heard her mother’s voice. “Mam?” she whispered eagerly.

“Rage!” Mam called, and somehow the wind was in her
voice. “Sammy?” She sounded like a little girl. “Sammy?”

Now Rage was standing on the deck of a ship. The sound of the sea filled the air. Again it was night. A full moon hung among the glittering stars. A man was staring up at it. Rage saw that it was the man with the black, shaggy hair whom she had seen in the jungle. He was not wearing dark glasses now, and she was amazed to see that his eyes were the same color as hers. Winnoway eyes. She reached out to touch him. He started and looked her way, but it was clear that he did not see her.

He reached into his pocket and took out a letter. He stared at it for so long that Rage became curious. She peeped over his arm and was stunned to see her own address written there in a scrawled and childish hand.

The ship hit something, and Rage was thrown hard to the deck. She lay there with her eyes closed, finding it curiously hard to open them or to move. She knew she was lying still, but at the same time she felt as if she were rolling over and over.

Is the ship sinking?
she wondered, dazed.

Someone shook her arm, and the world behind her eyelids grew red and bright, the air warm.

“Rage!”

It was Billy calling her. Rage forced herself to open her eyes. She was sitting on a white beach, facing a perfect blue sky. An endless blue ocean unrolled heavy and gleaming onto the shore before turning into froth that was so white it glowed as it sank hissing into the hot sand.

“The Endless Sea,” she murmured.

“It’s an endless beach as well,” Billy said. “There’s nothing in either direction but sand and more sand.”

Rage turned and saw the graceful undulation of sand dunes. The beach all around them glittered with shards of broken glass.

“The bubbles exploded just before we hit the shore,” Billy explained. “Mama and Mr. Walker saw us land, but Elle and Goaty haven’t come yet.”

Rage noticed that Bear was sitting behind them, licking her paws. Mr. Walker was standing by her, staring out to sea with a dazed look on his face.

They heard a call, and she turned and saw two dark specks approaching. “It’s Elle and Goaty!” Billy said in relief.

“What now?” Mr. Walker asked when they had all got over hugging one another and exclaiming about their incredible journey. Even Bear suffered being hugged by them all, and Rage was astonished to see her sit down and rest her head on Billy’s lap of her own accord. He stroked her brow with reverent tenderness.

“We will wait,” Rage said, taking the hourglass from her pocket. There was a single grain left. It fell very slowly, even as they watched.

“If this means the wizard’s life is nearly over, he’d better hurry up,” Mr. Walker said.

“Wasn’t it strange how we couldn’t talk about the firecat or the hourglass to the witch Mother,” Elle said. “The firecat must have cast a spell on us.”

“I guess it didn’t want anyone to know about it or the hourglass,” Rage said. “Maybe it was scared the witch Mother would take it from us.”

“How much time do you suppose it took us to get here?” Mr. Walker asked Billy.

“No more than a few hours, but maybe Valley time is different from time here,” he answered.

“Like in Narnia,” Mr. Walker said eagerly. “You might be away for only a little while, but when you return, any amount of time might have passed. Even years.” His face fell as he heard what he was saying.

“It might work the other way,” Billy said. “Years might pass here, but only a few minutes there.”

“Or maybe no time at all,” Rage said. “Remember how the witch Mother told us that the wizard took Valley out of time?”

“We have to do something!” Elle declared. “Shouldn’t we search for the wizard?”

The air popped and buzzed. A bright orange creature shimmered into existence on the sand nearby.

It gave off such an intense, hot light that Rage was forced to step back. Squinting against the brightness, she saw the flaring eyes and sharp teeth of the firecat.

“No need for worrying. Firecat being here.” The smoky voice of the creature insinuated itself into the bright air.

Rage realized she had been half expecting it to appear. “Where is the wizard?” she demanded.

“Only a little more doing before finding him,” the firecat promised.

“We are not doing anything else or going anywhere until you answer some questions,” Rage snapped, fed up. “You’ve lied to us and you’ve kept things from us, and then you cast a spell so we couldn’t even talk about you. Why did you choose us to bring the hourglass here, and what is it for, really?”

“Ragewinnoway wanting to talk or wanting to find wizard?” the firecat asked with silky malice. “Time running out for sleeping mother.”

“All right,” Rage said stiffly. “Where is he?”

“Stand,” the firecat said, a note of triumph in its voice. “Take hourglass. Speak these words: ‘Night gate! Appear!’”

Rage obeyed. The hourglass glittered in the sunlight as she spoke the words. They echoed oddly in the air, as if they were being repeated again and again, by many different people.

A slab of pure darkness appeared.

Rage moved back, then stopped. The lines engraved on the hourglass said to step through a door on the shore of the Endless Sea. This darkness was a door. The hair on her arms prickled just as it had by the bramble gate.

“Ragewinnoway must go through night gate,” the firecat commanded.

“It doesn’t smell like the bramble gate,” Elle said, sniffing at it.

“It doesn’t smell of anything,” Mr. Walker said.

“Ragewinnoway must take the hourglass through night gate
now
,” the firecat insisted.

Rage didn’t trust the firecat one bit, but what else was there to do? She hadn’t come so far just to turn away from the final step of her quest.

“Where will it take me?” she asked.

“To wizard!” the firecat shrilled in fury. “If not going now, then never going.”

“I don’t like this,” Mr. Walker muttered. “Why is it so eager for you to go?”

“It’s a liar, and it stinks of lies,” Bear growled.

“I don’t have any choice, Bear,” Rage whispered. “I’m scared, but I have to go.”

“Now or never,” the firecat hissed. There was a desperation in its voice that told Rage this really was the last moment in which she could act.

“I am Rage Winnoway whose name is also Courage,” she said, and stepped toward the door.

“No,” Billy cried, grasping her arm and pulling her back. “I’ll go first.”

“Let
me
,” Elle insisted, pushing them both aside.

A violent crackling sound filled the air. Then an explosion threw them all to the ground.

The firecat screamed:
“No!”

“What happened?” Billy asked groggily.

“A trick! I knew it was a trick!” The firecat’s voice sizzled with fury.

“Mama!” Billy howled, and Rage knew that Bear had gone through the gate while they were arguing.

“Where is she?” Rage demanded angrily of the firecat. “Where did you send Bear?”

“Gone!” it hissed venomously. “Gone forever into the black and the nothingness. Gone!”

Then there was another explosion. Rage flew sideways, as if a giant hand had slapped her. She fell into darkness.

“Rage…” It was the voice that kept asking her to break the spell that bound it.

“I don’t know how to help you,” Rage muttered. Something heavy was pressing down on her. Something monstrous and unbearable.

She felt a hand on her cheek, and a prickling tingle ran through her body.

She opened her eyes to find a man staring down at her. He was very thin and rather old, with faded amber eyes. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, and his gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Around him the night sky bloomed with stars.

“You…you are the wizard, aren’t you?” she said. “It was
your
voice that I kept hearing in my dreams.”

“I could only make contact when you were asleep, because of the trap spell I was under. But I gave what magical help I could on your journey.”

“What help?”

He gave a slight smile. “Light when you needed it in the tunnels under Fork, mental manipulation of blackshirts at the pier, a little direction in the city when you were seeking your friends in the blackshirt prison. And I was able to make you hard to see on several occasions.”

“That was you?” Rage said slowly. “But how did you know…where…” She stopped, remembering all the times the hourglass had grown inexplicably hot. The firecat had told her the truth when it claimed that all the wizard knew lay within the hourglass.

“
You
were trapped in the hourglass!” she groaned. And that, of course, explained why Ania’s spell had backfired.

“All riddles look simple with hindsight,” the wizard said. “I was trapped within that form until the sand ran out, or until it was broken.”

Rage sat up and saw that although they were still on the beach, there was no sign of the others.

“I am afraid I have much to answer for,” the wizard went on. “I apologize for the things that you have endured since using the bramble gate. I should not have left it there. Yet if you had not used it, Valley and all of its life would be lost.”