The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (26 page)

We were so tiny, compared to them. They weren't used to looking so closely at things so small. But their attention was narrowing. They were starting to focus. And Mrs. Fitzgerald knew she had to be rid of me before they saw the truth.

“Take her! Punish her for her crimes!” she screeched at Summer. “They violated you! It must not be allowed!”

Whatever mercy they had decided to show Dad was forgotten. The state of the poor Baby Season and Mrs. Fitzgerald's awful lies made Summer roar. I was yanked upward, flung into the sky, straight at the moon. I saw its big round stupid face look back at me, astonished to see a girl fly so high without wings, and I heard lightning crackle and sear as the Summer reached out for me with blinding blue arcs of light.

A mass of thick green vines caught me in a net and pulled me away from the lightning. I was carried down gently to the lake, and found myself looking up into the vegetable face of the Autumn.

“Twiggy Man,” I said.

The net of vines tilted and dissolved into twisting tendrils that the Autumn drew back into its body.

Behind Mrs. Fitzgerald, the Baby Season stood up straight and strong and free. Whatever it was saying to the others I couldn't hear, let alone understand. I don't know if it had somehow freed itself, or if the others had finally understood what she was doing just in time to keep me from getting fried like a lump of bacon.

Autumn sent more vines stretching out to the middle of the lake. They wrapped around Mrs. Fitzgerald's middle, binding her arms tight.

“No!” she said. “No, it's a mistake! I wasn't controlling it, I was protecting it from her! She's the one who sank it in a bog! You must listen!”

Autumn lifted her up to throw her to the Summer.

“No!” I cried. “Wait! She is needed!”

I couldn't explain, so I just showed them, focusing my mind on the story Ed had told us about the three sisters and the singing and the stirring. Autumn paused and the Seasons considered their course.

Summer was not happy, but the Seasons did not destroy Mrs. Fitzgerald. Instead, they threw her from the lake and she plummeted toward the field. A huge shape leaped from the grass and caught her in its mouth and bounded away toward the north and the mountains, and the shell and the pool.

A smaller figure ran after it, calling, “Goodbye, Neetch! Goodbye!”

And then all the Seasons looked at me.

And then all the Seasons said: WEATHERMAN.

And then I opened the Door.

The Summer went first. It was as though I inflated like a huge balloon, full of air and water and fire, and I was as strong as the earth and as tall as the sky and as hot as the sun, and I was everywhere and I could see everything, and, when I spoke, it was thunder booming out and shaking the whole planet to its foundations.

And then I was Spring, a growing brightness, a rushing, roaring, spreading energy, cool and sharp, a waking, a shaking, a hunger, bursting and shivering, fingers of rain and waves of warmth and shocks of cold until everything was alive and awake again.

Winter: a roaring, biting, gnawing beast, a shroud, a blanket, a rocky, bony chill. Wide, heavy storms that buried everything and drenched everything and blew the seas into massive, churning troughs and peaks, and battered the rocks and drowned the mountains.

Autumn, like a falling note, the final full bursting of living things, the fruit and the vegetable and the nut and the berry, the busy harvest and the storing as all things shed their seeds and their leaves and die and sleep and the winds begin to rise and the nights to freeze and the days to shorten. Why did Autumn seem like the most gentle Season? The most generous? Anyway, it was the final one to go through, even if it was going through to be here.

The Fifth Season, the Baby Season, didn't go through, or, if it did, it went through without me. I think the Fifth Season comes and goes as it pleases.

At last everything was where it was supposed to be and the world turned once more and the Seasons marched and flowed and the Weathermen performed their tasks.

 

CHAPTER 33

NEIL

The Seasons went through, one by one, walking up to Liz and vanishing as if going behind an invisible wall, with nothing left behind but a silver shimmer in the air. Autumn was last, going and arriving all at once, and all the birds in the trees and the bushes and the hedges flew up into the air, singing and flapping and fluttering and swooping all over the sky, blocking out the stars but not the moon, because the moon had gone with the Seasons.

So that was it. Mrs. Fitzgerald was on her way back to the mountain she came from. The Baby Season was free. The Doorway had been opened. It was Autumn here and Spring somewhere else and Summer and Winter, all where they were supposed to be. And Liz was the Weatherman. Not me. Not the son and heir, not the one who'd been promised and trained and taught for as long as I could remember, every day knowing that one day it'd be me opening the Doorway. Now knowing that it'd be never.

Mum sometimes says that it's the things you do quickly without really thinking that show what you really want, but I think I would have found it hard if Ed Wharton hadn't shown me that there was more magic in the world than the Weathermen, and it was out there waiting to be discovered.

As they went through, I thought,
Nobody's ever done this before, not since the first Weatherman. And, like Liz says, maybe that was a girl, too!

And maybe I'd better help Liz, because now that the Seasons had all gone she'd fallen in the water. She was moving her arms slowly, too tired and weak to swim properly, barely able to float. I gave a shout, ran, dived and swam. When I reached her she was sinking, her hair a tangle like pondweed on the surface. I grabbed her collar, lifted her head out of the water, and started pulling for shore.

Mum, Dad, Hazel, twelve Shieldsmen, and three AtmoLabbers who had hiked on foot around from the bog, all came frothing and churning through the lake as if they were wild horses in an ad for American beer. They raised her up and carried her to land like some sort of reverse viking funeral. Of course they left me to wade wearily out on my ownsome. I collapsed panting on the mucky grass while Liz coughed up lake water and tried to fight off the crowd that closed around to clap her on the back, either to congratulate her or revive her or both.

Then Mum suggested we call an ambulance for Ed.

“And me!” said Tony, who hadn't run to the lake to help my sister. We waited, shivering in our wet clothes, and when the ambulance came it took Ed and Tony and a few of the Shieldsmen who'd been injured and were putting a brave face on it—but Mum told them to cut it out and go have themselves looked after. Ash wanted to go with Ed, but there was no room.

Then we slogged back through the woods to the house, and, as we walked, wet and cold and miserable, it dawned on us that we had won. We had actually won! We began to talk and smile and laugh and swap stories, and point out where the Shieldsmen had fought the elementals.

We got home, a big, happy, babbling crowd, and we had showers and changed clothes—except the Shieldsmen who had no spare clothes and were too big for anything of Mum and Dad's, so they wrapped themselves in our biggest towels while we did load after load in the washing machine—and we all ended up in the kitchen, drinking pot after pot of tea, eating sandwiches and passing around packets of biscuits, talking and laughing nonstop. Everyone cheered Liz as the new Weatherman, and everyone saluted me for making the choice I'd made. They all looked at me with something, I'm not sure, but it might have been respect. Mum and Dad had a different look in their eyes, when they weren't wiping them dry, and I'm not sure, but it might have been pride.

Liz didn't make a big deal of it, of course. Not Liz. You wouldn't expect her to, I mean, she's Liz. But she did make a small deal of it, and a small deal from Liz is worth more than anyone else's big deals any day. She hugged me tight, then thumped me hard.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Autumn was delayed, Summer is mad, the Weatherbox is destroyed, the Club is all gone, there's a whole new Season we don't understand running around and nobody knows what's going to happen next. So
now
you finally give the job to a girl? Typical.”

“Oh come on,” I said. “With all that going on, would you really want me in charge?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I would.”

Then she smiled and thumped me again. I couldn't even rub my poor sore shoulder because I was sitting beside Hazel and she was holding my other hand. Liz had given her some clothes, and out of her white dress and in jeans and a T-shirt, she looked much like the rest of us. Like her sisters, she had kind of reset—back to the age she'd been when they'd made her go to the shell to stir and sing, about twelve or thirteen I guessed. Most of that long, horrible life was gone like a bad dream, but there would always be something magic about them. I was hoping they'd both stay.

Under the table, Ash and Owen were commiserating about Neetch and Ed. Mum had rung the hospital and they'd said Ed was going to be fine.

The night went on. There was singing until dawn, and we made a big breakfast and sent everyone to bed.

I think it was the best night of my life.

*   *   *

It was a long, long time before things settled down.

We moved to the farmhouse, for a start. The Doorway was now under the lake again, so it made sense.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, we discovered that the Fitzgeralds had been putting a lot more thought and effort into taking over as Weathermen and ruling the world through the Seasons than in keeping their house clean or tidy, which if you ask me did not speak well of how well they would have run things if their crazy plan had worked. Luckily, we had lots of willing bodies to get everything shipshape. The AtmoLabbers and the Shieldsmen all helped with cleaning and fixing the farmhouse and moving us in, and after a couple of months there we were. I like the farmhouse. It's old and shabby and crooked, it's got lots of fireplaces and a big range for cooking and it's cosy and lively and safe.

Dad more or less forced AtmoLab and the Shieldsmen to merge, reforming the Weathermen's Club, with our old house as their headquarters. You should hear the moaning and complaining.

“Middle of nowhere!”

“No broadband!”

“Not working with those technofascists!”

“Not working with that gang of hippies!”

Honestly, I only understand one word in five when they're in full flight, but I think they're all enjoying the arguments almost as much as their new jobs. After hundreds of years in exile, the Shieldsmen are once more the bodyguards of their beloved chieftain, while the AtmoLabbers are exploring realms of science and magic undreamt of in their philosophies and wouldn't give it up for Nobel prizes or free trips in the space shuttle. Tony Holland handing back all the money he'd stolen also helped.

Neetch came back and took up residence in the bog. It's smaller than his home bog, but I think he prefers to live in a small bog with a good friend like Owen next door. Owen is happy, and he and Ash are always running around playing with Neetch and sometimes even riding on his back, which looks terrifying, and Liz goes a bit pale every time she seems them do it.

The people of Moherbeg sleep easier in their beds these nights.

Nobody's seen Hugh or John-Joe or Mrs. Fitzgerald since that night. I think Neetch took her back to the black pool, and I think Hugh and John-Joe followed her, and when I think of them, I see them huddled together in a stone shell, stirring and singing around the deep black pool. People always said John-Joe had a surprisingly sweet singing voice.

We have Ed in one of the bedrooms in the farmhouse. He was much worse than he let on and lost a lot of blood and stayed for ages in the hospital, and then we brought him home to recover. Ash is always in there with him, except when he throws her out to go play with Owen and Neetch.

Hazel has one of the upstairs rooms. I'm helping Mum and Dad to teach her to read and write and stuff. Every now and then we go see a film in town.

And every now and then we hear the wind shake a windowpane or rain rattling on the eaves and Liz puts on her coat and goes down to the lake and stands there, and if you're rude and sneaky enough to keep watching from one of the top windows, you might see a vague shape come and stand beside her, and they walk around a bit together, and then you stop watching because it's none of your business really.

Autumn went and Winter came, though it will be leaving soon, and we'll all go down to the lake together to watch the Weatherman open the Doorway. After that, she says it'll be high time something was done about the whole Doorway situation. She says she needs someone she can trust to make the long, arduous, interesting, and educational journeys to the other three Doorways, to meet the other Weathermen and explain what happened, and to tell them about the new Season and to hear what they have to say. I honestly thought she meant Dad.

“Neil,” she said. “Ed's nearly better. When he's ready, why don't the two of you get into that truck and go talk to the Weathermen? You're pretty good at getting into trucks and going off finding people.”

“But,” I said, “what about Dad?”

“Dad's running the new Weathermen's Club, he's much too busy. He should be enjoying his retirement, and he's never liked travel much. We'll send a few Shieldsmen and an AtmoLabber with you. Maybe we'll hire a mini-bus.”

“And me,” said Hazel.

“Of course,” said Liz. “On the way, you should probably head over to the black pool, see if you're right about the Fitzgeralds, just to be on the safe side.”

“Best. Holiday. Ever,” said Ed.

“STOP SAYING THAT!” said everyone.

He's having T-shirts made.
Weathermen World Tour: Straight to Your Doorway.