The Winter Door, page 23
‘I like the sound of this Stormlord less and less,’ Mr Walker said darkly.
‘So what do we do now?’ Nomadiel asked, ignoring the glare her father gave her.
‘I’d like to have a look at Stormkeep,’ Thaddeus said.
‘Just make sure that the Stormlord does not have a look at you,’ Puck sneered.
‘You are right,’ Thaddeus said promptly. ‘I am muddle-headed enough to get into trouble without a wise head to guide me. Master Puck, you can accompany me.’
Rage thought the little faerie man would argue, but he merely grunted, which made her wonder if the witch Mother hadn’t commanded him to obey Thaddeus.
In the end, Mr Walker went as well, having pointed out that if Elle or the wizard were anywhere about, he would be able to smell them. Left alone with Nomadiel, Rage thought to see if the little girl could be brought to talk about her father but, as if she guessed Rage’s intent, she immediately went and lay down on the furthest bed and turned her back.
Rage sighed, wondering how to help someone who did not seem to want helping. But that made her think of Mrs Somersby and wonder if that wretched woman felt the same about her. It was an uncomfortable thought and made Rage wonder why she wanted to stick her nose into the relationship between Nomadiel and her father, especially when Nomadiel’s words suggested that she regarded Rage as a rival.
It was some time before the others returned, and Rage ended up sleeping too for a while. Again she dreamed of wandering in a storm, and of Mam and her uncle and Logan. The little maid woke her when she came to collect the finished dishes and then, later, to bring warmed water. This seemed to be some sort of ritual and Rage was happy enough to wash her hands and face and feet and dry them on the soft towels.
After the maid had gone, Rage went to the only window in the room and unlatched the shutter. At one point when she had been clearing the table, Rage had asked the maid when day would come. She had been careful not to speak of the sun, which she had thought to be part of a sequence of rebel passwords, nevertheless the maid had shaken her head in disapproval. ‘You should not make light of such things. Day is only a rebel faerie-tale, it is true, but it is a dangerous faerie-tale.’
Now, staring out at the stygian darkness, Rage wondered if the horrible idea that had come to her could be true. ‘Is it possible that the sun will not rise here?’ she said aloud.
‘There is no plant life and nothing here that needs sunshine to grow,’ Rally’s voice floated to her from his perch at the end of the bed where Nomadiel lay.
Rage turned. ‘But can a world exist without sunlight?’
‘Perhaps the wizard who made the winter door will not permit the sun to rise and that is why some people here are rebelling,’ Rally said.
Rage started into the crow’s pale eyes, seeing herself made small. ‘That would explain the name they have and their greetings. But why wouldn’t everyone rebel? It must be that only some of the people here understand what has happened.’
‘It would also explain why the rebels are forbidden,’ Rally concluded.
‘But why would the Stormlord stop the sun, if it is him doing it? Why would anyone want it always to be night?’ Rage asked, going close to the bird.
‘Someone,’ Rally said. ‘Someone whose soul was bleak and cold and dark.’ There was a bump at the door and Rage swung round, heart hammering, but it was only Thaddeus and the others returning. They looked as if they were chilled to the bone and Thaddeus tugged at the bell rope and refused to let them discuss anything until warm drinks had been brought. Nomadiel sat up and yawned but it looked so theatrical that Rage guessed she had been awake.
‘Stormkeep is a good step from here,’ Thaddeus said, when they were all seated about the fire. ‘It is an impregnable fortress, built on a great freestanding pillar of stone some way out from this landmass which ends in a long cliff falling to an abyss. The pillar rises out of the abyss and I suppose some way down it must be connected to this landmass, but you can’t see where because, apart from it being so dark, the whole approach to the edge of the cliff nearest Stormkeep is a glacier that moves slowly and endlessly over the cliff. The only way to reach the fortress is by a long, narrow stone bridge that runs from just before the glacier’s edge right over the drop of it, to the gateway of Stormkeep.
‘There are walls?’ Nomadiel asked.
‘Walls as high as three Willow Seat Towers atop one another, and they run straight up from the edges of the pillar so that the fortress is actually a sort of extension of it,’ Mr Walker murmured. ‘There is no possibility of getting into the place secretly.’
‘Can’t we pretend to be tradesmen or something?’ Rage asked.
‘The maid seems to have told the truth when she said that no one goes there of their own free choice. We stopped in a tavern in Sorrow for a bite to eat, so that we could listen to gossip. The interesting thing is that the people there told us that those who go in do come out again. Most of them anyway. After a time. But they are supposed to be different.’
‘Different to what?’
‘To how they were before, I suppose. They are aligned,’ Mr Walker put in. ‘That is what we were told. But most of what was said is guesswork, because no one really knows what happens there, other than those who have been aligned and they don’t talk about it.’
‘What about the people working there? Maids and cooks and cleaners and guards. What about whoever brings supplies? And who escorts people who are to be aligned into the keep?’ Nomadiel asked.
‘No one lives there but the Stormlord and some things called grey fliers that sound a lot like soldiers, and they don’t say anything at all,’ Thaddeus said. ‘It is they who come for those who are to be aligned and I suppose they work in the keep as well.’
‘One man told us that all summerlander rebels needed alignment, so I suppose it might be some sort of punishment to make them obedient,’ Puck said, ‘but it doesn’t appear to do much harm because the people who were supposed to have been aligned seemed no different than the others, so far as I could see.’
‘You saw some of them?’ Rage asked.
They nodded.
‘It was like Puck said,’ Mr Walker remarked. ‘There were two men pointed out to us, who had been aligned and they looked and acted just as the others did, though maybe they were a little more grim.’
‘Did you ask if there was a wizard creating the storms for his master?’ Rally inquired.
‘No one spoke of a wizard,’ Thaddeus answered the bird. ‘But a wizard might prefer no one to know he exists. Or maybe he is a prisoner being forced to do the Stormlord’s bidding. In which case the Stormlord might not want to advertise his presence.’
‘What do we do now?’ Rage asked.
‘Well,’ Thaddeus said. ‘I have been thinking about it on our way back and it seems to me that there is only one way to enter Stormkeep. That is openly and by the front door.’
‘You are mad,’ Puck said cheerfully. ‘Shall we send a letter to announce that we are coming so they can prepare the method of execution in advance?’
‘I did not say that we would enter that way, only that it was the sole way to enter,’ Thaddeus said.
Rally began to tell the others what Rage had said about the sun, and Rage broke in to explain about her most recent exchange with the maid.
‘A world without day? What a truly vile notion if it is true,’ Thaddeus said.
Mr Walker shuddered. ‘What sort of person would desire such a place?’
‘The sun must have risen here once or how else could the summerlander rebels speak of it?’ Puck said.
‘Maybe … maybe it never rose but they want to believe it could,’ Nomadiel said slowly. ‘Wouldn’t you want to believe in sunlight and summer existing somewhere or even once upon a time if you lived in such a land as this? Maybe these rebels’d rather believe and fight for something different than accept the way things are, even if in their hearts they didn’t think there really could be anything else.’
Thaddeus gave her a long look, then he said, ‘An important point, Noma, but even if you are right, the notions of sun and daylight have to have come from somewhere, if they are to be dreamed of and yearned for. If these summerlander rebels have never seen the sun, how could they have a word for it?’
Before anyone could comment, Rage felt the now familiar tugging sensation of her flesh calling her dream-travelling self back. She fell into darkness.
And woke to pain.
13
Rage groaned. Her hands and feet and face were on fire and she would have screamed but her throat ached as if she had already screamed herself hoarse.
She forced her eyelids apart, but it was too dark to see anything. Nevertheless there was a breath of hot air that told her that someone was leaning over her. A soft wetness brushed her and the familiar feel and smell of fur brushing against her shoulder made her realise that it was Billy licking her face.
‘Wh … what happened?’ she croaked, levering herself up. Some peculiarly stiff blankets crackled and slid aside and she shivered at the cold.
Billy barked wildly and began to lick her frantically and whine with excitement. She pushed him away and was stunned to find that this drained what little strength she could muster. Why was she so weak? Billy was nuzzling at the front of her jacket and now he dragged at her but she only flopped loosely forward. Trying to push herself up again, she discovered that she had been lying on clammy damp boards. Where on earth was she?
Then it came to her. She was in the hikers’ hut, and the fact that she had been dragged away from the world beyond the winter door meant that she must have dream-travelled there after all. But how? The last thing she remembered was stumbling through a virtual blizzard with Billy, looking for the site of the old bramble gate. Then a storm had come, and they had headed for the hikers’ hut, only she had fallen over and then Billy had vanished. She must have fallen asleep in the snow and dreamed herself to the others. She had been thinking about them when she fell. That she was in the hikers’ hut could only mean that Billy had dragged her here! What an idiot she had been to imagine that he would run off for help, leaving her lying in the snow. He was smart enough to know that she would die if he left her. He had brought her to the hut and got her inside somehow. He must have been licking her ever since, trying to warm her up and revive her. The queer blankets were the special insulated ones that were left in the hut for emergencies. Billy must have dug them out of the rescue pack. It felt like he had also dragged a couple of mats on top of her! The burning in her hands and face and feet were the return of normal circulation, and that must be what had woken her.
She dragged one of the blankets back around her and reached out for Billy, pulling him close. ‘You saved my life,’ she croaked.
Forcing herself to get up, she paced out the hut in the darkness, partly to unstiffen her limbs and partly because she was too agitated to be still. She had thrown one of the thermal blankets over Billy and she wore the other around her shoulders because there was no heating in the hut. Of course there was no electricity either, but she was still wearing her backpack and her pencil torch was put to good use as she used its narrow beam to locate the torn-open rescue pack and dug out some candles and matches. She lit two candles, then she ransacked her pack for food. She was famished. It was eerie to find the thermos was still full of the hot chocolate that she and the others had drunk on the other side of the winter door, but she drank it with gratitude, and poured a bowl of water for Billy. She shared her food with him after he had wolfed down his dog biscuits, but she saved a little and was careful not to drink all of the chocolate because there was no telling how long the storm would last.
Over and over again, she cursed her foolishness in setting off with a blizzard looming. Why had she ignored the warning signs? Especially the wind and the obvious snow clouds. Hadn’t Mam told her a million times how dangerous the cold could be? And hadn’t she just been reading her way through gruesome accounts of what had happened to hapless arctic explorers? She had been stupidly irresponsible because what good would it have done anyone here or in Valley if she had died of cold in the snow? It struck her as a sharp irony that she had been showing exactly the same heedless courage that she had often accused Elle of exhibiting, and which Elle had apparently outgrown.
Sighing, Rage cuddled close to Billy and told him about her dream-travels, wishing for the thousandth time that he could talk back to her. He was so smart in his human shape that he was sure to have a good idea of what might have happened to Elle and the wizard. She bit her lip, realising that she had not told Thaddeus and the others that the maid had mentioned seeing Elle.
Trying to imagine what might be happening in Bleak was rather like being forced to put down a book halfway through. Part of her was longing to pick it up and read some more. But she was also anxious about her uncle. What if he returned to find the house empty? She wanted desperately to get home before him so that he would never know how irresponsible she had been.
Billy nosed at her armpit and she pushed him away. Then she realised that the noise outside had stopped. She rushed to the door to peer out and gasped because the clouds had parted to reveal the moon for the first time in ages. To her delight the moon was full, which meant they would be able to see by it to get home. It was also stunningly beautiful, for the white landscape shimmered and glistened with an ethereal blue glow, and Rage’s skin actually prickled at the thought of walking through the moonlit world.
‘Billy, let’s go home,’ she said, hearing the excitement in her voice. Billy gave a funny wriggling puppy-like leap that made her laugh as she pushed her thermos and the remaining sandwiches into her pack and buckled the catches. Then she flung the door wide open, groaning as the snow banked up outside tumbled in and lay on the floor. Shovelling it back out impatiently, she marvelled that so much snow had fallen in just a few hours. There was a mound of snow a little way from the door and Rage guessed that Billy must have dug his way to the door. It was lucky it had a simple lever handle and was not locked or they both might have died right outside the door. She shuddered and concentrated on shifting snow. When she had cleared enough to close the door again, they set off. Billy raced ahead ploughing a rough furrow through the powder snow. Following, Rage thought the moonlit landscape quite the loveliest sight she had ever seen, but it was not so lovely to walk through. At first, brushing through the powder seemed easy, but there was enough of a drag that, after a time, her legs began to ache. Trying to distract herself from thinking about her legs, Rage tried to work out the secret of the real shape of the land hidden under its dazzling pelt. The dam, when they passed it, was revealed by its flatness and by the tips of the tree skeletons that had been drowned by the dam waters, but the rest was a pale mystery.
Once they had climbed the hill above the dam, Rage stopped to rest for a bit, feeding the rest of the sandwiches to Billy and drinking the cocoa herself. She wiped at her forehead and winced to find a sore place on her temple. Fingering it experimentally, she found a sizeable bump with some grazing on one side. She had hit her head when she fell then. That made her feel slightly better. At least she hadn’t just tamely and stupidly lain down to sleep. Of course, she would not have fallen at all if she had sensibly stayed at home.
They had just come to the rise and Rage felt her heart swell when she glimpsed the roof of Winnoway, but a moment later, dark clouds roiled across the moon, and the world plunged back into darkness. Rage refused to be disheartened, because it had been great good luck that the moon had stayed out as long as it had.
Closer to the farm, she was relieved to see that the windows were dark because it meant that her uncle was not yet home. It must be earlier than she had thought. She glanced over to the Johnsons’, remembering her promise to herself to visit them. She would keep that promise, but under the circumstances it would be better to go over in the morning instead. Right now she wanted a hot bath and a hotter drink and some more food. She felt terribly hungry again and she was sure Billy must feel the same. Once she had eaten, she would go straight to bed. She was weary enough that she did not doubt she would sleep immediately, and then she could dream them to the others.
It was dark and cold inside the house, and the fire had gone out, but it did not take long to start another. It would be some time before the kitchen would heat up so she decided to have a bath. She was glad to find that the pilot hadn’t gone out on the water heater, as it often did in storms, and in no time she had the bath half full. Submerged in blissful heat, she shuddered when Billy lapped at the hot water, as he usually did. She had left her hair loose, deciding to wash it for the pleasure of getting her head hot as well, though it would mean a long session with the hair drier. Usually that would have bored her, but she could only look forward to the warmth. She inspected her hands and feet carefully, and was relieved to see that the only damage was a few chilblains, reddening and itching in the warmth.
Then she slipped right under the water and lay still, enjoying the feeling of being warm all over, even on her eyelids. She surfaced and opened her eyes to find Billy peering anxiously at her. Geysering water and laughter she sat up, remembering another time when she had been in the bath practising holding her breath underwater. Billy had decided that she was drowning, so he had leapt in, half-drowning both of them in his attempt to rescue her. Mam had come in halfway through and collapsed laughing when she realised what had happened. Rage had seen the funny side of it too, then, and Billy had sat there between them in the bathroom, drenched and looking from one of them to the other as if they had gone mad. Rage lathered her hair and sighed, her smile fading, for it had been a long time since Mam had laughed like that. She sank slowly under the water again to wash the suds from her hair.
