Connie was sobbing, horrified by what she had done. She glanced to her right and found the edge of the cliff only feet away. With a muffled scream, she scrambled on her hands and knees away from the drop.
“I can’t believe it!” Col shouted at her. “You nearly killed us!”
“Hush!” said Dr. Brock, coming to kneel beside Connie. “Connie, what happened?”
Connie looked from him, to Argand, to the sea now subsiding from its earlier fury, and her sobbing intensified. It was worse than before—far worse—because this time she had surrendered to the darkness inside her—to the hatred and the anger.
“I’m sorry, so sorry!” she wailed, burying her head in her hands.
Dr. Brock gingerly put his arm around her shoulder as if he half expected her to give him an electric shock. “It’s not the first time, is it? Col told me,” he said gently but Connie was now sobbing and shivering so much that she was beyond answering. “Let’s get her inside.” Picking her up in his arms, Dr. Brock carried her back down the path, Argand flying in circles over him. The two boys tagged along, not knowing what to think.
“Come into our kitchen,” Rat said when they arrived back at the cottages. “My parents will be asleep by now.” He opened the back door for Dr. Brock and then ran upstairs to fetch a blanket for Connie. Col switched the kettle on, avoiding looking at her as she lay curled up, shaking, in a corner of the sofa. Wolf padded out of his basket and laid his head in her lap. Her hand fell to rest on his fur, and she seemed to calm down a little. Argand placed a possessive paw on her arm, eyeing the dog jealously. Dr. Brock stood behind her seat, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes as he tried to make sense of the night’s events.
“You must tell me, Connie, what happened just then?” he asked softly but with a firmness that showed he was determined to get an answer.
Connie gulped, her face a mass of straggling hair, streaming eyes, and blotched cheeks. “I was angry. I…I saw Col talking to you. I ran away, but then the anger just seemed to take over—I couldn’t stop myself once I started. I summoned the storm.”
“And did you see us?” he asked, sitting in a chair opposite her and taking her hand in his.
“Yes, but once the storm gripped me, it felt as if you didn’t really matter—as if you were nothing more than those sheep pens I destroyed. I’m so, so sorry!”
“I know you are—but we’ve got a problem, haven’t we?”
She nodded miserably. “I’ve been so scared! The first time it happened, I was asleep—now I’m doing it when I’m awake! I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t sleep—I can’t be trusted.” Her shoulders began to heave as she was racked by new sobs.
“There, there,” Dr. Brock said gently, patting her hand, but his face was drawn with anxiety. “Something’s clearly gone wrong with Connie’s gift,” he said at last when no one else spoke. “I think we’d better inform the Trustees and ask them to help us. I don’t know what else to suggest. But you’ll have to sleep, Connie. I think we should risk having Argand stay at Hugh’s with you tonight under the covers; she’ll make sure you don’t go wandering again.” He gave Connie’s hand a final squeeze before releasing it. “There’s nothing more we can do now. I think it’s time we all went to bed.”
After seeing Connie back to her house, Col and Dr. Brock remounted the motorbike. From the grim silence Dr. Brock maintained on the way back to Hescombe, Col doubted that either of them would sleep much that night when they did reach their beds.
5
New Trustee
“I don’t believe it!” Mrs. Clamworthy exclaimed as she ripped open the envelope containing the latest missive from the Society. “They didn’t!”
“Didn’t what?” Col asked distractedly. He was looking at the Wednesday edition of the local newspaper, wondering what they had made of Saturday night’s sudden squall. The reporter had collated local reactions to the “funny weather” Hescombe had been experiencing of late, looking for explanations for the climatic phenomenon. Col did not find the weather very “funny” himself; he was still shaken by what had happened on the headland. He did not know how to talk to Connie when he saw her at school—after all, she had tried to kill him.
“They’ve only gone and elected Ivor Coddrington and Hoo, the weather giant, to be Trustees! It was a landslide victory—the right man for the moment and all that nonsense.”
“No! That’s terrible.” The news jolted Col away from his other thoughts. His gran looked really upset. “I s’pose there’s a bright side,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “They’re bound to send him off to the Far East to chase weather giants. We might be better off not having him on our backs the whole time.”
“Humph!” Mrs. Clamworthy said, not being so optimistic. “I’m ashamed to be an Elemental this morning.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Gran,” said Col, putting the paper down. “Look, why don’t you go and see the water sprites today? That always makes you feel better.”
“Perhaps I will.” She glanced up at the clock. “Shouldn’t you get a move on? You’ll miss the bus, and your father’s not around to give you a lift, remember!”
When the bus pulled up at the school gates, Col saw Hugh Lionheart driving by, having just dropped off Connie and Rat. Connie walked in on her own, but Rat lingered, on the lookout for Col.
“Hi!” Rat shouted as his friend jumped off the bus.
“Hey, Rat. Not talking to Connie?” asked Col.
“Nah,” said Rat as he watched Connie disappear into the school. “Are you?”
Col grimaced.
“I told her on Monday,” Rat continued, “that she should just admit that she’d been showing off with that lightning bolt. I’d have done the same if I could do all that stuff—amazing! But she’s still in a mood about it.”
“Maybe she really couldn’t help it,” suggested Col cautiously, already knowing Rat’s thoughts on this subject. “Maybe she’s telling the truth when she said something kind of took over.”
“Oh, yeah? ‘I blast you to bits, but I don’t know I’m doing it,’” replied Rat, giving a cruelly accurate impression of Connie’s high voice. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. She had her eyes open the whole time. She knew what she was doing.”
“Look, Rat, Connie doesn’t tell lies.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we’re just beginning to learn what she’s really like. I mean, did you know she could do that? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, having awesome powers—I’m dead jealous—but why doesn’t she just admit it to us, her friends?”
“But that’s not how she thinks.”
A bell rang inside.
“Come on,” said Rat, who was rarely so eager to get to class. “Last day of the term—they won’t expect us to do any work, will they?”
Connie sat on her own for the carol service in the school hall, two rows away from Rat and Col. She could not bear to look at them; she felt so ashamed of what she had done. It was torture sharing the car with Rat on the way to school; every moment spent in the same class agonizing; she didn’t know if she could bear it any longer. She would have to keep away from them.
Jane and Anneena came into the hall with their class and took seats next to her. Jane gave her a hesitant smile.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look upset.”
“I’m fine,” lied Connie.
The choir shuffled into place, and the soloist stepped forward to sing the first verse of the opening carol. Watching him command the attention of the whole school, Connie had to ask herself if she did not secretly enjoy creating the storms? She could certainly remember in snatches the exhilaration of directing the lightning, standing at the epicenter of the elements, bending them to her will. It was all a mystery to her—not least because she couldn’t say which mythical creature’s powers she’d been channeling to summon the storm. If she knew that, then she might be better prepared to resist it.
Whatever was going on, her training had released somethin
g dangerous in her that she could not fully control. She had almost killed Col, Rat, and Dr. Brock: she could not afford to let it happen again. Her hopes now rested on the Trustees. She was convinced that they were bound to come up with a rescue plan.
“What’re you doing for the holidays?” Anneena whispered during a pause in the singing.
“Not much. Staying with Uncle Hugh,” Connie replied. “You?”
“My sister and her husband are over. We’re having a party tonight, but I don’t s’pose you can come?”
“Yeah, I’m free.”
“I thought you’d be busy with your society thing?”
“I’m having a break from that at the moment.” Connie’s cheeks reddened.
“So you’re not going to the meeting with Rat and Col? They said they were tied up tonight.”
Meeting? Connie glanced anxiously over at the two boys. Col was looking grimly at the stage, but she had the sense that he had just turned his gaze from her.
“No, I’ve not been invited to that.” But she could guess that her name would be much mentioned in her absence. Her actions had to have consequences—but just what they would be, she could not guess. This was only the beginning.
The Chartmouth Chapter met as usual in the Mastersons’ barn. Unlike the upbeat mood of the Annual General Meeting, this emergency meeting began in a somber atmosphere. Dr. Brock took the floor to explain to the members what had happened.
“As many of you know by now, last Saturday night the universal was responsible for extensive storm damage to the coastline just south of here, near the site of the proposed wind farm. According to her own account, this was the second occasion on which she had summoned a storm—though both times, she appears to have not been fully in control of her actions.”
Rat snorted skeptically, provoking Skylark to whinny on the other side of Col. The pegasus was incensed that anyone should doubt Connie. Rat and Skylark were already at odds over the wind farm, so the dispute over Connie was only making the rift wider. The majority of Society members had come out in favor of the wind power scheme, much to Skylark’s disgust. Col felt torn in two, divided between his friends. It felt as if everything was going wrong.
“I have taken it upon myself to write to the Trustees explaining the situation,” continued Dr. Brock. “When I phoned Headquarters yesterday, they promised they would be sending someone down here this evening to help us. With any luck, the contact should be arriving shortly.”
“Who are they sending?” asked Mrs. Clamworthy.
“I don’t know. In the absence of the Trustees abroad, I suggested a unicorn and companion as they are experienced in sleep problems—”
“That’s not going to get to the heart of the matter,” interrupted Captain Graves. “This isn’t about sleep. The girl’s a danger to herself and others, asleep or awake—we need to know what’s going on before someone gets killed.”
“We’ve always known that Connie’s gift is dangerous, Michael,” said Dr. Brock. “I think our job is to help her get her training back on course so that she can direct it safely.”
“Our first priority must be to stop people from getting killed!” Captain Graves countered, gesturing at Col and Rat with his cane. “You can’t hide from us that you’re all very lucky to be here today. I don’t want the Society’s best young pegasus rider to be reduced to a pile of ash.”
“No one wants that,” Dr. Brock said wearily.
There was a loud cough by the door to the barn.
“May I come in?”
Ivor Coddrington was standing at the entrance waiting for someone to notice his arrival.
“Oh, Ivor,” said Dr. Brock, trying to summon some enthusiasm to greet him. “What brings you here?”
Mr. Coddrington gave a modest bow. “In the absence of my fellow Trustees, I have been appointed to come and sort out your little problem.”
“Not exactly a little problem, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Masterson, conducting him to a chair at the front of the Elementals. “We’ve a rogue universal on the loose.”
“Hardly!” tutted Mrs. Clamworthy, bridling at the description.
Mr. Coddrington sat down, crossed his long, spindly legs, cracked his knuckles, and looked up at the gathering attentively. He seemed to be waiting for something.
“Oh, and…er…congratulations on your election, Ivor,” Dr. Brock said heavily.
“Thank you,” Mr. Coddrington replied with evident satisfaction. “I’ll endeavor to serve to my best ability.”
“Considerable ability, you should say,” butted in Mr. Masterson, looking proudly at his daughter’s mentor, feeling the honor reflected well on his family. The new Trustee smiled slightly, waving the compliment away with a white hand.
“I’ve been listening to what you’ve been saying, and I’ve read your chairman’s report,” Mr. Coddrington continued, nodding to Dr. Brock. “It seems to me that we need to launch an investigation, interview relevant witnesses—and the accused herself, of course—before taking action.
“Accused!” Mrs. Clamworthy interrupted. “Connie is not accused of anything. She needs help.”
“We can help her by judging the case against her impartially. Despite the undoubted uniqueness of her gift, we cannot treat the universal any differently from any other member of the Society caught undertaking such reckless—dare I say, murderous—acts. We have procedures. My first task as a new Trustee will be to see that these procedures are followed. And therefore I have, as I have already said, taken the decision to launch an inquiry. She will have her chance to put forward her defense; just as you will all have your opportunity to give your views. The process will be transparent and fair to all concerned.”
There was a murmur of approval from some of the members, but Dr. Brock now looked extremely worried.
“But, Ivor, when we asked for help we did not mean that Connie should be put on trial. We wanted to get to the bottom of the problem and help her overcome it.”
“And we will be getting to the bottom of the problem, believe me,” said Mr. Coddrington.
“But I’m not sure we will agree to let this happen to one of our members.” Dr. Brock looked around the room hoping to find some support from his colleagues. Some of the heads nodded, but half of those gathered sat with stony faces.
“Well, that may be, but I think you’ll find the rules say that, because of their rarity and importance to the Society, universals fall under the competence of the chief governing body—in other words, of the Trustees.”
“And I suppose you checked the rules before coming down here?” said Dr. Brock tersely.
“Indeed I did.”
Col was seething. They could not surrender Connie to this man like a prisoner.
“And what are you going to do to her?” Col blurted out. Mr. Coddrington turned to see the boy’s face taut with suppressed anger.
“Colin Clamworthy, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” he replied defiantly, his chin up.
“A friend of the universal, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes.”
“A friend she tried to kill last weekend.”
Col lowered his eyes. “I don’t know about that….”
“Don’t you think that for her sake, as well as yours, we need to stop her?”
Col said nothing. Of course she had to be stopped—but not like this.
“I’ve always said that the universal gift was a threat to the Society—and now here we have the evidence. Well-intentioned though Miss Lionheart undoubtedly is—or was—she has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind, if you forgive my rather apt expression.”
“Hear, hear,” muttered Mr. Masterson.
“Unfortunately, my advice that she should only be allowed to practice within safe limits was ignored by my colleagues,” Mr. Coddrington continued with a sad shake of his head. “They unleashed her on the universal’s reading room with no idea of what might follow. Who knows what secrets the universals have been hiding from th
e rest of us up there? Do any of us hide our professional knowledge from others? No. We all read in the open—train in the open. The universals conceal themselves from the rest of us. It can’t be good for people with such powers to be allowed to exercise them with no controls, no oversight.” Mr. Coddrington rose to his feet and punched one fist into his open palm for emphasis. “What I want to say to you is that it stops here and stops now. I will do my duty by the Society and ensure that this abuse of power is not allowed to continue!”
“But, Ivor,” Dr. Brock protested, “that sounds all very well in theory, but we are dealing with a child. This is the first hiccup in her training. We must not throw out the baby with the bathwater and rush to extreme measures.”
“First hiccup?” Mr. Coddrington said incredulously. “So being captured twice by Kullervo, nearly exposing the Society to the world last year—these were nothing, were they?”
“You know full well that these things were not Connie’s fault.”
“No, I do not know that. The events of last year showed a dangerous willfulness on the girl’s part. I am yet to be convinced that this same willfulness is not causing these storms.”
“But—!”
“No buts, Francis, I am overruling you on this. The inquiry is to start immediately. Tonight, I will interview each of you who were present on the headland, and I’ll see the universal tomorrow. We cannot hang around wringing our hands on this issue: decisive action is required. So if you will play your part and ensure that she turns up here in the morning, I will then do mine.” He paused for breath. “As she’s not legally of age, she should be accompanied by a responsible adult—her aunt, I suppose.” He looked around the room for Evelyn.
“She’s out of contact—on her honeymoon,” said Dr. Brock quietly.
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Coddrington said with a knowing smile, “with the Kraken companion. I remember entering it in my records last week. Well, someone else then.”
“I’ll bring her,” said Dr. Brock.
“Good. Right, to whom shall I speak first then?”