The Spin (17 page)

‘. . . You, Stormy,' went on Mr Topter, ‘have a place at the Academy. You are to be a sky-rider!'

Stormy staggered back into the solid bulk of Otto. ‘Steady, lad, steady,' Otto said, placing his ham-like hand on his shoulder.

Stormy squeaked wordlessly. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true; someone had discovered his dreams and was now holding them out for him to touch, making them real, but they couldn't be. It was impossibly cruel.

‘It's true, Stormy, it's true!' Mrs Cathcart cried, folding him against her soft chest. ‘You're to be a sky-rider. You're to go up to the Academy as a
pupil
! A
scholar
!'

Stormy disentangled himself from Mrs Cathcart before he suffocated. Otto shrugged and held out his empty hands as if to say it was nothing to do with him this time.

‘But I'm just a skivvy. I'm just Stormy. It can't happen – can it?' Nobody's dreams came true. Nobody's.

‘I wish you could tell us a bit about his benefactor,' Mrs Cathcart said, wiping her eyes. ‘I want to shake his hand. I want to hug him and kiss his cheeks – or hers!'

‘I don't know anyone rich,' Stormy said. ‘The only person . . .' And he stopped. The only person he could think of who might do this, who had the power to do this, who might care about him at all, was the Director. He was rich. Powerful. He had been sorry to let him go. He'd said he had potential . . .

Suddenly he found himself grinning from ear to ear.

‘So, you will take this offer, orphan? You do wish to ride the horses with wings?' Mr Topter asked.

‘Yes. Oh yes!' he cried.

‘Sign here, then.' Mr Topter pushed some papers over the desk and handed Stormy a pen. ‘You'll need a uniform and then you'll need some books and pocket money. I'll leave Mrs Cathcart to look after all those trifles.'

‘Thank you.' Stormy was dazed, and all he could do was grin.

‘I'll be on my way, then. My employer, your benefactor, will be glad to hear his offer makes you happy.'

Stormy nodded. ‘I am. It does! I am. Please thank him. Her.'

Mrs Cathcart showed Mr Topter out, chatting happily with him.

But Otto was frowning. Over the last few months Stormy felt they'd become friends, and he was surprised and disappointed that Otto wasn't pleased for him.

‘Well, Stormy, you have another chance,' Otto said. ‘You'll be back up at the Academy, back with Al.'

‘Yes.' Stormy nodded. ‘Al doesn't eat your food, or hardly touches it,' he said quietly, hoping it would please Otto to know this. ‘He cuts it up into tiny little pieces. Sometimes he throws it to the birds.'

A half-smile twitched over Otto's lumpy face.

‘Like he's scared of it,' Stormy added, as the idea suddenly occurred to him, ‘as if he dare not eat it.'

‘Listen,' Otto said, ‘I know you want to go back up there, but if you stay, Stormy, I'll give you a better job in the kitchen. We could work at it. We could find a way –'

‘To do what?'

‘To pay Al back. That's what I'd like,' and he rubbed his hands together wildly, a dangerous glint sparking in his eyes.

But Stormy didn't want anything to do with Otto's revenge. It was Otto's sad past, not his. Nothing must get in the way of him going back to the Academy.

‘I'm sorry, Otto,' he said. ‘I have to go. There are things up there . . . unfinished business I have to attend to. I was meant to be with the spitfyres!'

Otto nodded. ‘I see that. I understand, but I'll miss you. I'll be thinking about you, remember that.'

It was hard to believe, almost impossible to take in: Stormy had another chance. And this time he was actually going to be a student, a sky-rider. He wouldn't have to do what Al told him – in fact he'd be able to boss Al about himself!

He went over and over what Mr Topter had said, trying to think who his mysterious benefactor could be. Every time he came up with the same answer: the Director. The way Mr Topter had kept saying ‘he' but that it could be ‘she' made him wonder if Araminta was involved too.

Being singled out by the Director made him feel enormously proud and special.

He could barely eat or sleep. He thought all the time of the Academy and the spitfyre in the thirteenth cave. Was she still alive? She had managed to survive before with very little care – surely she'd be all right? He would help her properly now. He'd ignore Al. Would
she
remember
him
? Would she forgive him for leaving?

Then there would be his spitfyre. What would
his
winged horse be like? As huge as Sparkit? Blue, or purple or green? Fierce or gentle? There was so much to think about.

He didn't mention his great new opportunity to anyone, and nor it seemed did Otto, because no one asked him about it and no one treated him differently, until the day some books arrived for him.

‘Wow! Look at those!' Tex said, lifting the books and weighing them in his hands as if the weight was a measure of what was inside. ‘Wow! All about spitfyres! Where did they come from? Who paid? Why have you got them?'

And then Stormy told him.

‘Wow! That's amazing! Haven't you any idea who it is?'

‘No.' Stormy shook his head.

‘Wow! I wish I had a bennyfact-what's it. Not that I'd want to go up there if I had, but still . . .'

‘But I do.' Stormy was looking through the books longingly. He would read every one from cover to cover and absorb everything there was to know about spitfyres. He didn't want to be bottom of the class. ‘I was a spitfyre skivvy last time; this time I'll be a student. I'll be riding spitfyres. Tex, I'll be a
sky-rider
!'

For a fleeting moment he saw the Director's face, his expression of disappointment when they last met, and a sharp little pain clutched at his insides. Then he thought of Araminta and her silly ribbons and he smiled again. She had tried to help him before and he felt certain she would be glad to see him again. Everything would be fine.

That week he found himself avoiding his friends, even Tex. He kept imagining himself in his new uniform striding across the Academy courtyard, and how could that person be a friend to a skivvy like Tex who snored and had dirty fingernails? He would probably never see the other skivvies again anyway, so better to begin the separation now.

He passed the time reading his new books. He began to discover things about spitfyres that he'd never dreamed of. He learnt that there was a ‘
naming of the spitfyre ceremony
', that normally took place when the spitfyre was between one and three spitfyre years old, by which time it was considered unlikely to die from some terrible disease or accident. The name chosen depended on how the spitfyre behaved and how the owner felt about it. In other words it could be just about anything, as long as it suited. He spent hours trying to imagine what name Al might have given the spitfyre in cave thirteen.

On his last night he dreamed he was walking up the path to the Academy and that the path was narrow and went on and on, winding round like a snake. The faster he walked, the further away the Academy gate became.

He panicked that he wasn't really called Stormy.

He panicked that perhaps he was the
wrong
Stormy. He was the
wrong
Stormy in the
wrong
kitchen.

The benefactor lost all his money before he could pay for Stormy's place at the school.

Spitfyres bit him.

The littles laughed at him.

Al chased him out of the servery, brandishing a bottle of pink rum.

Finally, at long last, morning came. Stormy slipped out of his bunk and opened up the big box with the Academy crest on it which contained his new uniform. He had refused to open it before so it was only now, this last morning, that he put it on for the first time. What if it was too small or too big? What if they laughed? They might easily laugh.

He had grown massively since that day so long ago when he had been dressed in the Academy work clothes. Mrs Cathcart had measured him very carefully this time and the new suit fitted perfectly. It transformed him; in the mirror he looked just like a real Academy student.

The green jacket was knee length, with a stand-up collar, and made his shoulders look wider and stronger. A red crest showing a leaping spitfyre adorned the breast pocket. Narrow trousers worn inside short boots neatly covered his ankles, and made his legs look longer. The shirts were white, some with stand-up collars, others with a strange soft tie at the neck made of the same material. There was woolly underwear. Several pairs of sheepskin boots, a thick coat to keep out the cold and two different caps.

Of course he couldn't get away without being seen, and as soon as the dormitory was awake, there were cries of, ‘Look at his nibs!' and ‘We've got a toff in our dorm!' as the boys gathered round him.

‘Doesn't he look grand!'

‘Sir Stormy, he is now,' someone joked. ‘Don't forget your old friends when you're up there, will you, Sir Stormy?'

‘Bring your flying horse down here, please!'

‘I'll miss you, all over
again
!' Tex said, slapping him on the back.

Stormy hated it. He just wanted to be gone, and so he hurried away to say his goodbyes to Mrs Cathcart and finally to Otto.

‘Stormy,' Otto whispered, ‘you take care. You don't belong up there and I think you'll find out soon enough. You can always come back to the kitchen, I want you to know that.'

‘Thank you, Otto,' Stormy said rather stiffly. ‘I shan't be coming back.'

As if! He was going to be a sky-rider! He would have a spitfyre of his own. He was never coming back.

Mrs Cathcart arranged for a man from Stollen to help Stormy up to the Academy with all his cases.

‘It's very kind of you, Mrs Cathcart, but –'

‘But nothing! You're an Academy student now; you can't be expected to carry your things yourself. And you're rich. Careful!' she cried, as the man dropped a bag of books. ‘Those are precious!'

Stormy had looked forward to making his triumphant return journey alone. He was even more sorry when he saw the man was using an old lame donkey to carry his stuff.

When the time came to leave, no one was there to say goodbye because Stormy had kept the precise moment secret. He was starting a new life and it meant casting off all parts of the old; the sooner he began the better.

All Stormy could focus on was the awful noise of the scraggy donkey huffing and puffing like an old pair of bellows and its patchy dusty coat as he followed the hobbling man and the donkey up the path. The man from the village whistled constantly and tunelessly. Stormy longed for quiet, to be alone with his thoughts.

They stopped at last at the Academy gates and rang the bell. The littles were quick to open the door. They both bowed low, ‘Come in, Stormy, student of the Academy. Beneficiary of the Benefactor. Come in. This way, this way.'

They bowed and gestured and walked backwards on their fat little legs, bumping into each other, giggling noisily and falling down and rolling like skittles. They were making a spectacle of his arrival, he thought, just because he used to be a skivvy. He looked everywhere else rather than at them.

He waved for the villager with the donkey to come along in, wondering if anyone was watching him and believing that he gave people orders all the time.

Students stood around chatting in the courtyard, and it seemed to him that everyone stopped talking when he arrived and turned to look at him.

Stormy's cheeks burnt hotly. He was sure no one else had arrived like this; they'd have had servants and carriages. He turned his back on the man and his donkey as if they were nothing to do with him.

‘Here we are, young sir, here we are,' the old man called, hurrying after him and pulling the reluctant noisy donkey with him.

A student started baying and hee-hawing loudly. Everyone laughed.

Ignoring them, Stormy went straight up to the Director's house and knocked on the door. He could feel a million eyes on him and hear their whispered comments.

No one answered the door.

He had never seen such a closed door in his entire life, and no matter how hard he stared at it, it stayed shut.

Why didn't someone open it? Where was Maud? Perhaps she no longer worked here; after all, he'd been gone over a year. They couldn't be friends now, he knew that; she was only a maid.

Eventually he came back down the steps. The donkey man was unbuckling the straps and putting the bags on the floor, whistling softly as he worked. Stormy looked round at the sea of faces; no one smiled back or offered to help.

Then a figure came towards him, wearing the dull suit of grey servery clothes that he'd once worn and carrying an iced cake beneath a dome. For a split second he thought he was seeing himself again, all that time ago . . . but this boy's head was too big . . .

‘
Purbeck!
'

Purbeck grinned and came towards him. ‘Hey! Stormy!'

‘Hey, Purbeck!'

A ripple of laughter and hoots of disdain rippled around the students.

‘He's talking to the poo shifter.'

‘He's hobnobbing with the staff!'

‘Riff raff – I hear that's what he is too . . .'

‘. . . From the kitchen.'

They both fell silent.

Stormy's extended arm dropped to his side and he stared at the ground. He bit back what he'd been going to say. Instantly Purbeck did the same, and the smile died on his lips.

‘I'm taking a cake to the Director,' Purbeck mumbled to the glass dome. ‘Hang on, Ralf will be here in a moment.'

Stormy wanted to say he was sorry. He
was
sorry, but he couldn't say so now, not in front of everyone. Purbeck knocked and the door that had not opened to Stormy opened for him and he disappeared inside.