The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (4 page)

“Owen!”

“It's OK!” Owen said, walking forward, hands up and out. “We won't hurt you! It's OK! Sssssshhhhh.”

“OWEN!”
I was screaming now. The cat crouched down low, mouth open wide, and slid straight at Owen, who reached up and tickled it under the chin.

“There,” he said. “There. It's OK. There.”

The cat tilted its head and closed its mouth, and Owen scratched behind its ear—an ear he could have walked into without bending over. The cat was sitting now, its tail waving, its eyes half closed, surprised and suspicious, but willing to be scratched. Owen kept whispering and hushing. He put his arms around its neck and buried his face in its fur.

Then things got weird, because the cat was suddenly in Owen's arms, his face still buried in its neck, but now it was the size of a normal cat, a tabby housecat. It was resting in Owen's arms, purring contentedly.

“He's hungry,” Owen said. “I want to go home and give him something to eat.”

“He was going to eat
us
!” I yelled.

“Well, he's not now,” Owen said, and walked off, carrying the cat.

I looked around. The truck doors were swinging gently on their hinges. There was no sign of the old ladies. My arm was sore. Every part of me was sore. My head swam and my knees shook, so I put the arrow away and the bow on my shoulder and followed Owen.

We went back to the house. Mum and Dad and Neil and the Tourist were all standing on the path in front of the door. They seemed to be having some sort of argument. Mum saw Owen and the cat first, because they were ahead of me.

“What the hell is that?” she groaned.

“It's a cat,” said Owen with a bright, happy smile. “His name is Neetch!”

“It's a magic cat,” I said, coming up behind him. “It was in the back of a truck down by the old barn. It was really, really big, and then it got small. There were two old women there, too. I think they might be living in the woods.”

“Liz!” exclaimed Mum. “Oh my God, are you OK?”

“What happened?” Dad asked. “Did you fall?”

“There was a ditch,” I said. “And some nettles and things. And I want to sit down now please.”

“Holy Moses,” Neil said. “Liz, was it—”

“A ditch,” I repeated firmly.

“So,” said the Tourist with a nervous laugh, holding his hands in front of him, his fingers wriggling together like fat worms dancing, his face pale and sweaty, his eyes wide. “You, uh, met the ladies and the bog beast, did you? And, ah, is everything OK? Nobody hurt too badly, I hope? Nobody … turned into anything? Er … or … was eaten?”

I glared at him, but Mum and Dad ushered me indoors and Owen went off to find a can of salmon for the stupid cat and Neil followed, looking thoughtful and worried. The Tourist stood outlined in the doorway, his arms by his sides, his hands in fists, staring out at the trees, his face serious, his eyes narrowed. Then I was pushed into the living room and down onto the sofa, and creams and hot chocolate were applied, and Mum and Dad told me I was an idiot, but they smiled when they said it.

 

CHAPTER 5

NEIL

By the time Liz and Owen ran up, looking like they'd been fighting in a war and having amazing adventures rescuing cats from trees or whatever, we'd been standing on the path arguing for about ten minutes after the Tourist asked which of us was the Weatherman.

“Uh,” Dad had said. “What?”

“Weatherman!” The Tourist had rolled out of the doorway toward Dad, arms spread wide, the delighted smile on his face making his beard dance and twitch. “Can I just say what a pleasure and an honor it is to be here, and what a rare privilege it is to watch you work—a master craftsman and his apprentice!
You
, sir, I take it are the Weatherman himself, one of the four caretakers of the world, honoring the ancient agreement between humanity and the Seasons, bringing order out of chaos and protecting us from their wrath?”

He had then looked at me.

“And you must be the junior Weatherman? Weatherman Junior? Weatherboy? I'm sorry, I don't know what a Weatherman-in-training calls himself.”

“Neil,” I said, dully.

Then Mum came out to see what was going on. The Tourist turned to her with both hands spread.

“Ah! You must be Mrs. Weatherman!”

Mum stopped, and glared.

“Excuse me, Mr. Wharton, I don't appreciate—” she began.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon—” the Tourist said.

“Just a minute, Mr. Wharton, could you—” Dad put in. And then everybody started talking at once …

“… not a flippin' Weatherboy,” I said.

“… deserve a little respect and if you could…”

“… meant no offense and spoke without thinking…”

“… would very much like to know how you came by the information…”

“… I mean everyone just assumed…”

“… can't just come waltzing into our home and speak to us…”

“… getting off on the wrong foot here…”

“… not common knowledge, and your casual attitude…”

“… nobody asked me if I wanted…”

“… overfamiliar and frankly intrusive…”

“… if you could just give me a chance…”

This went on and on and would have kept going on if Owen hadn't run up holding a cat followed by Liz, looking as if she'd been dragged through a hedge backward. She was coated in dust and covered in cuts, and there were horrible rashes all over her legs. She said something about falling, a ditch and nettles, but she looked at me for a moment, then away, and I knew she must have had help in her falling.

The Tourist, despite his size, somehow faded away into the background while Liz was put on the couch and Mum got cream and Dad went to make hot chocolate. Owen brought in his new cat and filled a bowl from a can of salmon. It ate noisily. Had Liz said something about it being a magic cat? I shook my head. Must be one of her silly games. Owen sat on the floor and stared up at her with his big, round, worried eyes until she let him climb up and snuggle in beside her.

“Neil,” she said when Mum and Dad had left the room. “Don't—”

“We can't let him get away with it,” I said. “You'd do the same if he did that to me.”

“Yeah, but no, but listen! He said something about him and his mum wanting you to go up to the lake. Well, they want Dad, but they can't make him go, so they said you'd do. So this is just to make you go up, you see? It's a trap or something.”

All the protective, big-brotherly blood that was normally neglected and unemployed—probably in a sad, sulky little pool way down in the tip of my big toe—had by now rushed in a suicidal charge straight to my head, but it wasn't just that. The lake! I remembered the thing under the water. There was something under the lake. Something that had tried to make a snowstorm, and had probably made all the other crazy weather this year.

“No,” I told her. “It's OK.”

Half of me was raging at Hugh, half of me was remembering that strange voice from under the water. All of me was up and out the door before Liz could get another word in. I crossed the road, went into the woods, and climbed the hill until I reached the wall. Then I climbed the wall and crossed into enemy territory.

On the shore of Loch Farny is our grandfather's farm, where the Fitzgeralds have lived for twenty years since they stole it away, and where we don't go. There's bad blood there, between us all.

Before the Seasons started arriving through our phone box, they used to come through a well on what was once my grandfather's farm. Tobar Farny, the well was called—the Well of Rain—a pool of sweet, pure water that lay under a few limestone boulders in the middle of a field. That field and that well had been in my family for thousands of years. That well was one of the four corners of the world. Then Hugh's lousy dad, John-Joe Fitzgerald, persuaded my grandfather to invest in a new pub. My grandfather had no interest in pubs or investments, but John-Joe had befriended Granddad after Granny died and he begged Granddad to get the money for him. And Granddad, being a good friend, took out a mortgage against his farm.

There was no pub. The money vanished. Granddad could not manage the repayments. In his pride and shame, he never asked the Weathermen's Club for help. Everything happened with sickening speed.

The bank took Granddad's farm, put it up for sale, and it was bought for a song by John-Joe. Granddad and Dad were kicked out. John-Joe and his young wife moved in.

John-Joe drove a hired digger across his new field while his wife watched. When he reached the pool, he extended the arm of the digger and began gouging great chunks of earth out from under the boulders. That was when the water began to flow. A few hours later, Fitzy was left sitting on the roof of the digger, calling for help, surrounded by the waters of a brand-new lake. Loch Farny, they call it now—the Lake of Rain.

I went over the wall and down the hill to the edge of the trees in a white-hot fury. It was a fight I couldn't win, but that wasn't the point. Even if you lose a fight, you can do enough damage to make the other person sorry they started it and not likely to start another—if you're in the right mood.

There was the field and the lake and the farm, all pretty as a picture, the digger long gone. I stared at the lake for a long, slow moment. It was small, round, and not very deep. Nothing moved on the water.

There was no sign of Hugh. Flippin' Hugh—he wanted me here, didn't he? This was his idea of a clever trap? The best idea that moron could come up with! Well, here I was and—typical Hugh—he was too stupid to turn up for his own ambush!

I waited. My breathing slowed. My roaring, growling, snarling voice grew quiet, and my small, worried, sensible voice began asking what the heck I was doing here. Even thinking of my poor little sister and her stings and cuts didn't make me angry again, just sad. I knew me fighting Hugh wouldn't make her feel one little bit better.

Somewhere between the angry thoughts getting quieter and the worried thoughts getting louder, I began to hear a voice that wasn't mine—thin and faint, wordless and sad, desperate and lonely—calling for help. I left the trees and crossed the field to the edge of the lake. The voice grew louder. I couldn't help myself. I took off my shoes and socks, stripped down to my underpants, and waded into the lake.

Everything that happened next might as well have been happening to someone else because I felt as if I was watching it all from a long way away. I dived under the water and started to swim.

I swam down, down, down. The water was clear as crystal, though there wasn't much to see—just flat mud and scraps of weed and, toward the center, a pile of stones, even and regular like a cairn on a mountaintop, coated in slime and mud. There was a gap like a door, all black and shadowy, and in that door was a hand, reaching for me. The voice was growing louder all the time.

Without thinking, I reached out as if to shake hands. It was a funny-looking hand, thin and gray—more like the end of a branch of a tree at twilight—but it closed around mine like a living hand and held me tight.

The moment the hand touched mine, everything changed. It was like when Dad let me help him with the weather, only different, more intense, deeper somehow. But I had no breath left. My chest was on fire. And the hand would not let me go.

“Air,” I begged the voice. “Make me air.” And my lungs immediately filled without me breathing. There was so much air, it threatened to pop my poor sore chest like a balloon and I had to breathe out in a stream of bubbles. “Slow down!” I told the voice. “Take it easy!”

The hand squeezed tighter, the arm stopped above the elbow, the rest hidden under the rocks. Whatever the hand belonged to, the rest of it was trapped, and it wanted me to set it free.

“Sorry,” I gasped, my voice funny in the water. “I don't know how.”

The gray hand squeezed mine again, gentle, insistent.

So maybe if I …

What could I do? I could roll away the rocks, but it was hardly the rocks that were the problem. This had been a Doorway, but the Doorway had been moved, and somehow this thing had been left trapped, half in and half out of a Doorway that was no longer there. But
some
of the Doorway must still be there, I figured, some tiny part that was holding the poor thing tight.

I had to do what Dad did. I had to open the Doorway, just a little, just a crack.

Could I do it?

I thought about what happens when a Season passes through a Doorway—the Weatherman and the Season become one. For that moment the Season gives up its power and hands it to the Weatherman as a token of honor and trust. And then the Weatherman hands it back.

So I reached out to the thing. I
became
the thing—imprisoned for twenty years when it should have been roaming the skies. Anger and fear. I saw a tall dark shadow through the surface of the water, standing on the edge of the lake, and that shadow sent dark thoughts down, thoughts of chains and knots and cages. The bottom of the lake was a prison. The sky above was freedom. Between the lake and the sky was someone who wanted to enslave it for all time. The thing was young, and the thing wanted to get away from the terrible person who wanted to control it. It had cried out for help and rescue.

And I had come.

It was easy—like raising a chair leg to free the hem of a coat, and then letting it back down. The thing was free, and the trap was sprung.

The hand opened wide and let me go. I rose up surrounded by bubbles and clouds of dirt. I saw a thin gray shape rise up next to me and I heard the voice let out a scream.

Then my head broke the surface and I could breathe normally again.

I paddled wearily to shore and crawled out of the lake on all fours, my chest heaving, my lungs and throat burning, reaching for my clothes. There was no sign of the Gray Thing, but John-Joe Fitzgerald and his wife stood on a rise between me and the farm, looking at me. John-Joe just glared at me with poison and hate. Mrs. Fitzgerald was looking at the farm. I wiped my eyes and saw Hugh dragging something long and thin and dripping through the farm gate, like he was bringing the world's least Christmassy Christmas tree home for Christmas. Mrs. Fitzgerald glanced back at me.