Night Gate (5 page)

Elle did not trouble herself with thinking. She sprang out into the rain and vigorously rubbed the tan bodysuit, which Rage could now see was part of her, like hair or fur. She was less human than she had appeared last night, which meant that she
had
resisted the gate magic. Only Billy seemed to be completely human.

Bear came out from under her tree and looked up into the drab sky. She sighed heavily and dropped her head to lick at her paw. Rage felt guilty, as if somehow the rain were her fault on top of everything else. In the cold light of day, going through the enchanted gate seemed madder than ever. Mr. Walker was right. She ought to have known no one could play such a terrible and complicated joke. She should have thrown a stick through the gateway instead of going herself.

Then a happier thought occurred to her. If the gateway was enchanted, maybe there really was a wizard with waking magic. Rage made up her mind. If the firecat was right and the wizard wanted something brought to him, she would do it, no matter what it was, just so long as he agreed to help Mam. The trouble was, like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
she had to find the wizard before she could learn what he wanted her to bring him.

In the misty daylight, she could see a sort of path through the trees on the slope above them. “I think we should go up there and have a proper look around,” she said, pointing.

“What about the firecat?” Mr. Walker muttered, but Rage pretended not to hear him.

“We’ll ged wed and all die of code,” Goaty said. It took a minute for Rage to figure out what he had said.

“It’s not really cold,” Billy told him cheerfully. “And walking will keep us warmer than sitting still.”

“Exercise will do us good,” Elle said heartily.

Mr. Walker gave Rage his soulful look, and she automatically picked him up, just as she had when he was a little butterfly-eared Chihuahua, tucking his tail under her arm.

“No one ever carried be,” Goaty sniffed sadly.

“No one ever stepped on you, either!” Mr. Walker said snappishly.

The break in the trees was not a path after all, only a natural thinning along a rocky seam, but it made walking easier. Although the rain was fine, Rage soon found she was very wet. Fortunately, Billy had been right in saying it was not cold. The rain began to ease as they reached the top of the hill, which was a cap of hard stone where nothing green could grow. They climbed down into a valley and began another hard climb, up the next hill.

Rage stopped to catch her breath and looked back. A dense, trackless forest spread away beneath them until it became a greenish haze that merged with the sky. There was not a single sign of life, just forest blanketing the hills and valleys. It was the way Rage imagined Winnoway might have looked before people arrived. It was beautiful to see a forest so untouched, but she hoped there would be something more than wilderness on the other side of the hill.

“Up,” Goaty urged. He trotted ahead, and at first Rage was puzzled by his sudden enthusiasm. Then she remembered that it was the nature of a goat to climb, and for all his transformation, Goaty was still more goat than anything else. He had never climbed a hill in his life, let alone a mountain, but his wild ancestors had lived on steep-sided mountains, so perhaps this was buried in the deepest part of his mind.

Bear was making heavy work of the hill, and Billy hovered, looking worried. She stumbled slightly. When he caught at her she snarled and slashed the air in his direction with her claws extended. Rage heard the wheezing sound her breath made and felt anxious. It was how Grandfather Adam had sounded before he died.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she told Bear, who gave her a weary look before going on climbing.

“She doesn’t blame you,” Billy said quietly, coming up beside Rage.

“She seems so unhappy,” Rage murmured, slowing so that they could talk.

Billy sighed. “Life has been hard for her. Your grandfather was not a kind master. Mama never had a pat or soft word until you came. And then there were all of my brothers and sisters dying, and you keeping me from her. I remember hearing her calling to me when I was sick, like a voice in a dream. Calling and calling.”

“But you would have died if we hadn’t taken you….”

“She knows. I know. But it doesn’t make any difference to the hurting of it.”

“She hates me, then,” Rage said, devastated.

“Oh no,” Billy said. “Hating’s a human thing. She’s just all filled with grieving, and sometimes when it gets too much, she lashes out. But she cares very much for you and your mam.”

“And you? Doesn’t she care for you?” Rage asked.

Billy Thunder looked up the hill after his mother. “I think it hurts her to look at me,” he said, very softly.

Toiling up the last bit of the hill, Rage was weighed down with a sadness as heavy as her sodden coat. It seemed so unfair that Bear could care for her and Mam but not for her own son.

“Hey!” Elle yelled. Rage looked up to see that she and Goaty had reached the top of the hill. “I see a road and there’s a river alongside it, and over there, in the forest, is a big house with pointy bits.”

The top of the hill was a perfect vantage point. Before them an enormous valley opened like a seam between parallel ranges of towering, white-streaked mountains. Thick masses of clouds rested on their peaks, concealing what lay beyond. A river emerged from the farthest mountains and wound its silvery way the length of the valley. To the east of the river, the valley was densely forested but for a castle on a hill—Elle’s big house with pointy bits. A faint track ran from the castle, through the forest, and around the foot of the hill they were standing on, before joining a road that ran beside the river.

Rage noticed a small settlement not far along the river road. “What do you see there?” she asked, pointing it out.

“Houses and gardens,” Mr. Walker answered, wriggling to be put down.

“A stone well in the middle of a little square in the middle of houses and streets,” Billy said.

“People,” Elle said.

“
People
people?” Rage asked.

Elle squinted. “People of some sort,” she said at last. “What difference does it make?”

“Oh, it makes a great deal of difference,” Bear said thickly. “People only care about people who are exactly like them.”

Rage was hurt by the scorn in Bear’s voice, but she only said, “I was thinking we could go there and ask about the wizard.”

“If there are people, they will want to send me to the abattoir,” Goaty said. He sneezed, very wetly.

Mr. Walker looked at him in disgust. “Do you mind! You spat on me just now.”

“No one will dare to send us anywhere!” Elle declared. She bounded into the trees and emerged with a dead branch. “I’ll make a spear!” She waved the stick around so wildly that it poked Goaty in the eye.

He rubbed it and said mournfully that it didn’t matter. “I have another eye, and I doubt three eyes would be enough to see all the trouble that we’re bound to find if we go down into that valley. Going down is a bad thing.”

“Why don’t we go there instead?” Mr. Walker said, pointing to the castle on the hill.

“It’s a castle,” Billy said.

“Of course it is,” Mr. Walker snapped. “And in it there will be a king or queen or a wise advisor who will be able to help us find the wizard. Perhaps even the wizard himself lives there.”

Rage was startled to find that Mr. Walker and Billy knew what a castle was. Then she remembered that Billy and Mr. Walker had always sat with Rage when Mam read her stories.

“That track leading to the castle doesn’t look very clear,” Rage said.

She did not want to admit that she was afraid to go to the castle. In fairy tales there was always something dramatic and violent happening in a castle—somebody being stolen away or put to sleep for a hundred years, somebody getting his head chopped off or being usurped. She wasn’t actually sure what being usurped was, but it sounded at least as bad as having her head chopped off.

“The village is closer,” she argued. “They can tell us who the castle belongs to, and if the wizard owns it, we can still go there.”

Mr. Walker looked mutinous.

“What if we vote?” Rage suggested, thinking it had been easier when they were dogs.

“I vote for the village,” Billy said promptly.

“I vote for the castle,” Mr. Walker said.

“I vote for the castle, too,” Elle said enthusiastically.

“Oh dear, oh dear.” Goaty sighed and wrung his hands. “I suppose each way will be as bad as the other. In fact, surely the most sensible thing is to stay right where we are. That’s what I vote for.”

“We can’t just stay here forever,” Rage protested. “We ought to try to find the wizard.”

“I expect he will just want to eat us when we find him,” Goaty said in a depressed voice.

“I think a wizard would have better ways of getting food than cooking his visitors,” Mr. Walker said coldly.

“I would like to see what a castle smells like. Let’s go there at once,” Elle said impatiently.

“No use in going to castle,” said a familiar slinky voice. “Nothing there but spiders scuttling. No food. No treasure. No sleeping princess.”

“Who said that?” Mr. Walker demanded, his high-pitched voice barely audible over the ferocious rumbling growl of Bear. She looked much more like a bear than a dog now that she was curling back her lip and showing her teeth.

“It’s the firecat,” Rage whispered.

“It’s the thing that unlocked the gate for me,” Goaty observed gloomily.

“I don’t like this one bit,” Mr. Walker whispered loudly.

“Not liking hairy little man-dog, either,” the firecat said.

“Where have you been?” Rage asked. “You said all of my questions would be answered when I came through the bramble gate!”

“Firecat is having many things to do. Many important things,” the voice said sulkily.

Rage bit her lip to stop herself from saying that since it had convinced her to come through the bramble gate, it ought to regard
her
as important. Instead she said, “Where is the wizard and what does he want us to bring to him?”

In answer there was a lurid flash of purple smoke. A tiny hourglass full of pale, glittering sand appeared on a stone knoll. Rage bent down and gingerly pinched its waist between her finger and thumb. It was surprisingly heavy for such a small object because the bottom and top were capped in densely patterned silver. The glass felt thick and was faintly discolored. A few glimmering grains of sand fell through the neck of the hourglass as she watched.

She turned it upside down, but instead of the grains running in the other direction, a few more gleaming fragments floated up from the bottom chamber and into the top.

“A magic hourglass,” she murmured, glad it was not a golden ring.

“Hourglass telling how to find wizard,” the firecat said.

Rage examined the hourglass and found there were two lines of ornate lettering engraved into the silver:

BRING ME TO THE SHORE OF THE ENDLESS SEA

STEP THROUGH THE DOOR THAT WILL OPEN FOR THEE

“These are not proper directions!” she protested.

“Ragewinnoway clever. Figuring out riddle,” the firecat said.

“No!” Rage said. “You send us back home at once.”

“Home?” the firecat echoed with a tinge of mockery. “Home-going needing powerful enchantment. Only wizard having such magic.”

Rage’s anger turned inward once more. Why had she chosen to go through the bramble gate? The worst thing was knowing that she had gone through it solely because she hadn’t believed it was magic. Now they would not be able to get back home unless she could figure out the wizard’s whereabouts from the riddle on the bottom of the hourglass.

If only she had not gone through the magic gate…

If only she had not run away from the Johnsons’…

If only her mother had not been in an accident…

“I wouldn’t trust that cat thing one bit,” Mr. Walker said.

Bear said shortly, “Any fool could tell it was a liar. It smelled like a liar, and it sounded like one.”

Rage hung her head and said nothing.

Billy put his arm around her shoulders and said stoutly, “We should go into the village to see if anyone knows anything about the wizard. Maybe it won’t be as hard to find the Endless Sea as it sounds.”

Rage feared it would be every bit as difficult as it sounded, but before she could say so, Bear growled impatiently and began to descend the hill.

“We’ll all be killed,” Goaty sighed glumly as they set off after Bear.

It was midday before they reached the road. Going down had turned out to be a lot more difficult than going up, especially where the steep rock face was slippery from rain. At least the weather had warmed up, but Rage was beginning to feel dreadfully empty. The animals must be as hungry as she was, and she feared they would expect her to feed them, just as she always had. Maybe they would be able to get something in the village. In books, people always begged, or chopped wood for their supper. Sometimes they stole it. Rage had never stolen anything, but in stories it never seemed as awful to steal as it did in real life.

“We must be careful, though,” she muttered to herself when they were in sight of the road. She had got them into enough trouble by failing to think things through. She could not make the same mistake again.

“I’ll protect us!” Elle declared, brandishing her stick.

“Put that down before you do poke someone’s eye out,” Mr. Walker said crossly.

Rage peered along the road in both directions. It seemed to be deserted, but she looked to Elle, whose superb bull terrier eyesight seemed to have been carried over into her new form. “Do you see anyone coming?”

Elle looked along the road in the direction of the castle and shook her head, but when she looked toward the river, she frowned. “Something is coming….”

“Some
one
, you mean,” Mr. Walker corrected.

“It’s not a people,” Elle said slowly. “It’s…something biggish and brownish and it has…a lot of legs.”

“Probably a giant poisonous jumping spider,” Goaty said.