The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (16 page)

I rubbed my hands and tried to warm myself by the fire, but I knew it wouldn't be enough. I had to get dry or I'd start losing fingers and toes.

I stood up and shook off the blanket. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and kicked off my shoes. I nearly fell into the fire taking off my socks. Finally, I peeled my trousers down my numb legs. Shivering in my underwear, I enjoyed the prickly heat of the fire on my sodden skin for a while before picking up the blanket and rubbing myself dry. I turned around and let the warmth wash over my back. Wrapping my arms around myself, I took a look at my surroundings.

I was in a forest.

Brown and silver tree trunks were all around, and a gentle green rustle filled the air. Smoke from the fire drifted through the boughs and the slanting sunlight, rising up through a series of thick ropes that stretched between the trees above us. On the ground, mud and leaves and wood chippings all mixed in a thick soupy mess. Logs had been laid down, four wide, to make a path.

From what I could see, it looked like a large group of people had been living here for a while. Bags were everywhere. Black-and-white bin liners. Supermarket carrier bags. Green canvas bags. Rucksacks. Backpacks. The bags were full of rubbish or clothes or books or magazines or food or things that I couldn't identify and didn't want to. Large piles of sticks had been gathered here and there. Some turned out to be log piles, others turned out to be shelters. A guitar leaned against a tree near a sort of timber-framed kitchen. Plastic sheeting had been draped over it to keep out the wind and rain. Down the center, a long table was covered with fruit and vegetables, some half chopped or half eaten. There were pots and pans and lots of cutlery. Under the table there were freezer boxes of different shapes and sizes, and piles of posters and fliers with big, bold headlines like
SAVE THE TREES
and
STOP THE COUNCIL
.

I realized where I was.

Just outside Dublin, the local council had decided to chop down part of an old forest to make way for a motorway. A gang of eco-warriors had occupied the woods to protest against the development. They'd built tree houses and refused to move, delaying the works for well over a year. The whole thing had made national headlines. Any day now the forces of law and order were expected to come in and carry everyone off, and men with chainsaws were going to cut down all the trees.

Mum had had to practically tie me down to stop me from spending the summer up here in a tent, hugging the trees with the best of them.

“You don't know what sort of lunatic might be hanging around up there,” she said. “You don't know what might happen to you!”

Maybe she'd been right.

As usual.

I walked across the clearing, my feet sinking into the mud. Twigs and thorns pinched my heels, but I barely noticed them. While the air shivered my skin, I poked around in bags until I hit the jackpot. I found fleeces, hiking trousers, shirts, socks, rain jackets, even a few pairs of waterproof boots. It took ages to dress, with the feeling coming painfully back into my hands and feet giving me pins and needles, but soon I was wearing a set of warm dry clothes and socks and boots, all too large for me. I didn't care.

I went into the timber-framed kitchen and grabbed apples and bananas and bread and ham and butter and jam. I fiddled with a little gas stove until I got it working and put on a kettle to make some tea. I took it all back to the fire and sat and ate. I cupped my hands around the mug and drank the hot tea, warming up bit by bit.

Somewhere nearby, out in the trees, something rattled. I looked up, but could see nothing. There were more noises. Booms. Shouts. Undergrowth crackling. Shouting. Screams. They seemed to be all around me, closing in.

Breathing hard, I listened as the sounds grew louder and closer. The boomings and the rattlings were drums. The forest was full of people playing drums and running around screaming and shouting. Well, for all I cared, they could trip and fall and break their necks. I held my mug in my hands and stayed sitting.

Something bright and shiny and fast swept into the clearing. I saw teeth and claws and feathers. I tried to follow it as it tore through the clearing and back into the trees, when another one rushed in from the other side and straight at my head. I made a sort of thin, high-pitched
eeeee
sound as it looped around me and around me and around me. The
eeeee
went on for a very long time, even after the thing flung itself upward and vanished in the high branches of the trees.

The clearing was full of them. I couldn't count them because they were moving too fast and anyway I didn't really care how many of them there were, even one was too many. They gave off a glow like bottled moonlight, but they weren't made of light: they were animals and birds, all smooth and streamlined and fitted out with jet engines. Bear snouts, wolf jaws, eagle beaks, badger claws …

I squeezed my eyes shut.
You're asleep,
I told myself.
You are having a dream. You think it's a nightmare, but it's not. All these wonderful animals have come to play with you and be your friends.
But when I opened my eyes again, they were still there, and they did not look friendly.

Then they slowed in their weaving, sinuous dance and drifted gracefully into a ring, surrounding me and the fire, where they came to a stop. Each one drifted down to the ground and settled on the floor of the clearing. The glow faded, and I saw …

What did I see? One moment they were a superteam of flying things and the next they were all just people, standing on tall thin legs. Their claws and their wings and their hides and their feathers were costumes, and their beaks and jaws and insect eyes were masks. Nobody moved and nobody spoke. One by one they seemed to kneel, and as their knees reached the ground they jumped, and their legs split in half, and the top half gave a little skip, and the claws and the wings reached up and removed the heads, and under the heads were people who had been standing on stilts.

They were all breathing heavily, grinning and looking at me. They all went down on one knee, laid their masks and claws and stilts on the ground and bowed their heads.

“HAIL, SON OF THE WEATHERMAN!” they roared. I jumped.

“Uh, hi,” I said. “Hail, you guys.”

The one with the eagle mask stood and stepped forward. He had long dark hair and no beard and a pointy face with no tattoos.

“Hail, son of the Weatherman!” he bellowed at the top of his voice, as if I were deaf or a long way away or there was a jet plane taking off beside us. “Well met indeed!”

He swept his hand back and around, taking in the crowd of weirdos. “We are your Shieldsmen! We have returned in this, your darkest hour, to do our duty and deliver you from your foes!”

“Oh,” I said. I blinked and tried to think. I'd done it. I'd found them. Or they'd found me. I had gotten myself found by them. Yeah, that sounded OK. I felt as though I were floating, buoyed up by sheer joy. It seemed important to say something good and right and impressive. “Er. You are?”

“Yes!” he said. “We are! And, boy, are we happy to see you! Aren't we happy? Show him how happy we are, guys!”

They sprang up and waved their masks in the air and cheered and clapped and jumped up and down and rushed in and clapped me on the back and shook my hand, all grinning, their eyes lit up with joy and excitement. I just tried not to get stabbed or stepped on.

The spokeslunatic stepped through the crowd, leaned down, and reached out with his hand. Numbly, I lifted my hand, and we shook.

“Hi, Neil. Great to finally meet you. I'm Weisz.”

I stared at his smiling face. In his eyes, a friendly light seemed to dance a merry little jig.

I opened my mouth to make a few small complaints about being kidnapped and nearly freezing to death, then shut it again. Never mind about that now.

“You need to all come back with me,” I told him. “The Autumn is sort of blocked, and the Summer is sort of stuck and there's a thing that might be a new Season and a woman with terrible magic powers being a pain in the neck and trying to take Dad's job and…”

Weisz held up his hand and made little calming movements. He was still smiling, trying to say something reasonable. I just wanted to hit him. I could hear myself babbling and I wasn't even sure I was speaking English anymore. Finally I had to stop to breathe in.

“Of course we'll come back with you, Neil. We're your father's loyal Shieldsmen. We'll do whatever you ask. But I also have things to say to you. Serious things—and you must listen and understand.”

“OK,” I said uncertainly.

“I want you to know what this means to us. After all these years, that it should be us, that
we
should be the ones summoned once more to do our sacred duty.” His voice grew thick, and he stopped for a moment and wiped his eyes. “Excuse me, this is a special, special day for all of us.”

“I thought,” I started. “We thought you'd gone. That there were no Shieldsmen left. Like the magicians at the club. And how did you know you'd been summoned? I didn't mention any summonses.”

“Hmph, the club,” Weisz snorted derisively. “A bunch of doddering old men who barely knew what day it was, let alone what Season. They let themselves be destroyed by the modern world, bought and sold like so much meat. They weren't worthy. And now AtmoLab is even worse. We were watching their headquarters—that's how we knew where to find you. Back when the club was still a going concern, you see, we had some contact, and they kept us informed about the Weatherman and his family—sent us photographs and such. Only baby photographs of you, of course, but you look like your dad, and, anyway, as soon as you turned up, AtmoLab suddenly had its own tropical storm in the lobby, so who else would you be? What was that storm, anyway?”

“Uh, it was an elemental sent by a hag who's kidnapped the thing that might be a new Season.”

Weisz whistled and shook his head in amazement. “Interesting times! Are there a lot of them about? Wouldn't mind finding out how we'd match up to one of those buggers, eh?”

“Well,” I said, trying to imitate Dad, “the simple ones are everywhere, of course. That was a complex one they must have conjured up out of simple ones somehow. Er, you want to fight one?”

“Of course! That's what we're for! We are the warriors of
Dunphelim
! The sworn shields of the
Fear Na hAimsire
, and no
dúil
is going to threaten our Chief! This is the time of the
Míthráthúlacht,
and the Shieldsmen stand ready to defend!”

The Shieldsmen gave a mighty shout while I tried to do a mental translation.
Fear na hAimsire
was “Weatherman.”
Dúil
was “element.” And
Míthráthúlacht
basically meant “The Bad Time.”

“As for the summons, well, you're here, aren't you? The son of the Weatherman, searching for his servants and companions of old! That can only mean one thing can't it?”

“Uh, yeah! Yeah! You can consider yourself summoned! Really! Just get 'em all together, pack 'em up and let's go go go!”

He grinned. A sigh of relief came from the watching Shieldsmen and a terrific tension went out of the air.

“I mean, is this all of you, is it?” I asked. “If we could just pile into a few vans and cars and things and hit the road that'd be great!”

Weisz stood up and walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulder.

“We're the chosen, Neil. The youngest, the fittest, the strongest. The Shieldsmen have endured their exile for centuries now, living as a tribe apart, taking in husbands and wives from outside to keep the line strong, but all utterly dedicated to our duty: protecting the Weatherman. Passed down from generation to generation are our code, our mission, our training, and our skills. We have lived in glens, in bogs, in woods, and old ruins and abandoned villages. We have spent our lives training, preparing, watching—”

“NOBODY MOVE!”

Nobody moved.

“I've come for Neil! Don't get in my way and nobody gets hurt!”

A hulking figure wearing a black ski mask entered the clearing. He had a sword, which he waved in the direction of the Shieldsmen.

“Ed!”

The figure with the sword stopped threatening the Shieldsmen, who did not seem particularly threatened. His shoulders slumped. “I'm in disguise, Neil,” he told me testily. “You're not supposed to use my real name.”

“Ed!” I said. “It's OK! These are the Shieldsmen. They're on our side! I've summoned them!”

Ed swung his sword around on the Shieldsmen. “The Shieldsmen, huh?” He let his sword drop. “Well, all right. If Neil says you're OK, I suppose I'll let you off.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, leaning on the sword. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was the biggest gathering of people wearing the sort of clothes the people who took you were wearing. I'd nowhere else to look, so I chanced my arm. Good, eh?”

“Genius,” I said.

“Also they had
Save the Trees
spray-painted on the side of the van.”

“Aha!”

“And they'd been handing out leaflets along the canal.”

“Oh.”

“They even had a little map on them.”

“Right.”

“And they'd put up great big billboards along the road.”

“Yeah.”

“And I opened up today's paper and they'd done a big photo story on the protest and there they were, hanging out of a tree.”

“OK, Ed.”

“It was like the universe was trying to tell me something. Weird, huh?”

“Very! Can we go now?” I asked. “This is great and all, but we really need to get back home with the Shieldsmen so they can help Dad.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ed said. He took off his mask and looked around for somewhere to put the sword.