There was a long silence. Long enough for Rage to reflect that she was silly for getting mad with a dream.
“Firecat…needing wizard,” the firecat spat with such furious anguish that in spite of herself, Rage was touched. “Can bringing you to him!” it added eagerly, as if it felt her weakening.
Her heart hardened at this familiar offer. “I know this is a dream, but even in a dream I’m not going anywhere with you. And I honestly don’t care enough about your master to want to help him if he has gone and got himself into trouble again.” Rage was startled to hear the strength of her dislike of the wizard in her words.
The firecat made a sound of spitting fury and frustration. “If not caring for wizard, maybe caring for your sstupid world, sstupid ragewinnoway.”
A bell began to ring insistently and the dream slipped away. “I am waking…,” she murmured.
“Yesss! Waking to nightmare, sstupid ragewinnoway,” the firecat snarled after her.
Rage groped to silence the clamoring alarm clock and sat up, blinking into the darkness. She had left the lamp on and she needed it. Daylight in midwinter usually lasted no more than three or four hours, but lately even that had been hidden behind storm clouds. Rage could not remember the last time she had seen a blue sky. She resisted the temptation to snuggle back down under the covers, knowing that she had no time to dawdle.
The school bus that usually picked up the remote farm students had been unable to come for the last month because of the snowy roads. Mrs. Marren from a few farms over had been taking Rage to town with her own children. Mrs. Marren always honked even as she was braking to a halt at the bottom of Winnoway drive, and she was cross if Rage did not come out immediately. Rage could hardly blame her because the minute the car stopped, the twins would be out of their seat belts and trying to kill one another. The only person who had any influence over them was their sister, Anabel, a scary fourteen-year-old who painted her nails and lips black and wrote bad, flowery poems full of death and violence.
Rage had set her alarm an hour earlier than usual because the day before, Mrs. Marren had told her that she would no longer bring the car up the hill road to the gate of Winnoway farm. It was too steep and slippery. Rage dressed and washed quickly. She took money to buy lunch and grabbed a banana instead of banging around in the kitchen. Switching off her bedroom heater and giving Billy a hug goodbye, she pulled on her coat and scarf in the hall, slung her schoolbag over her shoulder, and stepped into her boots before slipping outside. It was so dark that she stopped on the step for a moment, wondering if she was imagining that it was darker than the day before.
Pulling up the hood on her coat and sinking her mouth in her scarf to cut the icy bite of the air in her throat, Rage made her way along the snowy path. Even before she reached the gate, the soles of her feet began to feel numb. She had grown so much the last couple of months that she didn’t fit into her good hiking boots or her thick coat anymore.
Opening and closing the farm gate behind her carefully, Rage picked her way cautiously down the steepest part of the road. The sky was just beginning to lighten to blue-black at the horizon when she reached the main road. Pushing her gloved hands inside her coat and under her armpits, she stomped back and forth, hoping that Mrs. Marren would be her usual punctual self.
A wolf howled.
Startled and incredulous, Rage stopped and listened until the sound faded. Everyone knew there were wolves in the high mountains of the range that ended in the hills above Hopeton, but they never came down so low. She squinted into the gritty dimness, trying to spot any movement. Wolves didn’t often attack humans, preferring to target sheep and goats and domestic pets, but who knew what this long, bitter winter might drive them to do?
The wolf howled again, and this time others answered. Rage felt the hair on her neck prickle. It sounded as if the wolves, if they really were wolves and not stray dogs, were some distance away, but snow could distort sound, making faraway things sound close and close things sound far.
“When in danger, have courage and do what you can,” she remembered the stern, husky voice of the witch Mother from Valley saying. The voice didn’t summon up any courage, but it did provoke the stubborn part of herself that Rage had discovered in Valley. Floundering awkwardly through the deep snow to a small stand of trees, she hung her schoolbag on a knot alongside the lowest branch of the nearest tree, then turned to face the road. If Mrs. Marren came, she could quickly run back to the signpost marking the hill road, and if wolves did appear, she could climb the tree.
She heard the howling again, but all at once the arc of car headlights dipped over the curve of the road. With a yelp of relief, she grabbed her bag and hurried back to the gate. Until she climbed into the warm, messy interior of the Marrens’ Range Rover, she did not realize how cold she was. The warmth of the car made her feel slightly sick, though she was glad of it. She felt the bright, unfriendly gaze of Anabel Marren.
“What were you doing over by the trees?” she demanded.
“Sometimes I put crusts in a holder we hung on that tree for the birds and squirrels,” Rage said truthfully enough.
“Put your seat belt back on properly, Anabel dear,” Mrs. Marren admonished as they pulled away from the curb.
“You’re weird,” Hugh Marren announced, leaning forward to look past his twin brother at Rage. The twins’ faces were puffy and greenish in the dash light, and the fact that they were identical made Rage feel that she had stepped into a science fiction movie about cloning.
“And your uncle is weird,” Isaac added. The twins watched with interest to see how Rage would react to the jibes.
“Boys!” Mrs. Marren said, glancing backward. The car swerved dangerously.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Marren,” Rage said. “I guess anyone who explores jungles is bound to seem a bit strange to people.”
“Your whole family is strange, my dad says,” Hugh reiterated.
“Hugh-ey!” Mrs. Marren shrieked and aimed a wild slap backward toward her son. It missed Hugh but got Isaac, who began to shriek as his mother fought to bring the car out of a fishtail skid. “Don’t mind them, Rebecca Jane,” Mrs. Marren added when she had the car back on the correct side of the road.
“Jesus, Mum, don’t call her Rebecca Jane,” Anabel said. “It’s so lame. It makes you sound like one of the Waltons. Good night, Rebecca Jane! Good night, Jim Bob!”
“Anabel, please don’t swear, darling,” Mrs. Marren said. “Rebecca Jane, you don’t mind me calling you that, do you? After all, it is your real name.”
Rage made an anonymous sound and tensed up, knowing that the next inevitable step in the conversation would be for Mrs. Marren to say something about her mother using such a horrible nickname instead of her real name. Then she would ask about Mam’s health. Rage felt that she truly could not bear to talk about her mother to Mrs. Marren just now. Help came from an unexpected quarter as Anabel said accusingly to her mother, “You don’t believe in God and neither do I, so how could it be swearing to say Jesus?”
“It’s disrespectful, darling,” Mrs. Marren said primly, diverted from her interrogation of Rage.
“Disrespectful to what? Someone’s imaginary friend?”
“Anabel! I hate to hear you talk in this dreadful, cynical way.”
Isaac’s yowls were tapering off, now that his mother was ignoring him. Suddenly he gave his twin a look of spiteful inspiration and reached out to drag savagely on his tow-colored hair. Hugh screamed and the pair began to kick and pummel one another. Laying her cheek against the freezing glass, Rage watched her pale image run unevenly across the undulating ice blue of the snowy, deserted fields and half-obscured stands of trees they passed, wondering again why the winter should be so long and savage this year. Could it really have something to do with the world’s weather changing, as the geography teacher claimed?
“If this keeps up, there will be no videos tonight,” Mrs. Marren threatened. “So tell me, Rebecca Jane, how is your uncle??
?s book coming along?”
“Fine, I guess,” Rage said, not liking this subject, either. Why did adults think it was their right to ask you about everything? Except Uncle Samuel, who didn’t ask her anything at all. On their first night together at Winnoway, her uncle had begun to open mysterious-looking crates and sewn-up packages. He had shown her a whole pile of stained and battered leather-bound notepads held together by rubber bands, saying they were notes for a book about rare plants. But Uncle Samuel had barely touched Mam’s battered portable typewriter since his return. After the doctor had told him it would be better if he did not see Mam yet, he had thrown himself into the farm maintenance. “Catching up” he called it. But somehow he had never got to his own work, and that seemed a bad sign to Rage.
“Rage?”
There was an irritated note in Mrs. Marren’s voice. To Rage’s relief, the twins began to exchange crude words before she could be reproached for her inattention. The lecture on bad language lasted noisily all the way to the outskirts of town, where she and Anabel got out.
“She won’t punish them,” Anabel sneered, twisting up a black lipstick and smoothing it onto her lips. “Not getting videos would mean she’d have to entertain them. She’d rather have two little television zombies.”
Rage felt acutely uncomfortable. When she had first started getting rides with the Marrens, she and Anabel had not spoken to one another at all. But lately Anabel had taken to talking whenever they were alone. Like her mother, Anabel made conversation consisting of questions, and Rage’s every instinct was to say as little as she could.
On impulse, when she heard Anabel draw breath to speak again, Rage suddenly launched into a long and intentionally dull retelling of a story told by a girl at school. She went on as long as she could, praying that someone else would turn up, but she couldn’t see even one soul in either direction in the street. It would have been easy to imagine that they were the only two people in all the world. Finally, she came to an abrupt halt, aware that she did not even know what her last words had been.
Anabel was staring at her. “Your uncle is not the only weird one,” she said, but in a less nasty voice than usual.
“Weird,” Rage echoed, having lately discovered that saying the other girl’s words back to her was the quickest way to end a conversation.
“You wouldn’t see it because you’re weird, too,” Anabel continued, the edge back in her voice.
Without thinking it through, Rage turned to the older girl. “What do you want from me, Anabel?”
The older girl actually looked comically startled, her mouth making a black, moist O. Her tongue looked very red inside that black circle. Then her eyes narrowed to slits. “What makes you think I want anything from you, Miss think-yourself-better-than-everyone-else? You’re not, you know. Being weird is not being better. My mother takes you to town because she pities you!”
“I don’t think I’m better than anyone,” Rage said indignantly.
“Yes you do. You act so perfect, but everyone knows you did something to those dogs of yours that disappeared,” Anabel accused.
Rage said nothing. This was not the first time Anabel had made sinister references to the disappearance of Bear, Elle, and Mr. Walker. Rage knew that there were horrible rumors at the school, and she suspected that Anabel had begun them. Several times the older girl had gotten other school kids to offer suggestions about what Rage might have done with the dogs.
The bus groaned around the corner, and instead of standing back to let Anabel enter first as she usually did, Rage climbed into the warmth and took the seat right behind the bus driver. It was against Anabel’s cool creed to sit anywhere near the front of the bus. Usually Rage sat three or four rows back, but she felt too tired to care where she sat.
It took just over an hour to get to school in normal weather by bus, but today it had taken almost two hours and they were yet to arrive. It felt to Rage as if she had already lived through a long, hard day, and it had not even properly begun. “And there’ll probably be another storm tonight,” she muttered to herself. Recognizing Goaty’s doom-mongering voice, she grinned and corrected herself. Not Goaty. Gilbert. Elle had given Goaty his longed-for real name shortly before they had all parted. How Rage missed them: Elle’s bright, strong courage, Mr. Walker’s odd combination of sharpness and dreaminess, Gilbert’s exaggerated gloominess, Bear’s powerful presence. She wondered if they had stayed the same or if Valley had further changed them. Except for Bear, who had already changed beyond belief.
Sighing, Rage pushed Valley from her mind yet again as the bus lurched to a stop in front of the school.
Despite everything, the morning went quickly with classes she liked, then there was lunchtime, and she spent it in the library reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For once, it neither snowed nor rained, but she overheard one of the teachers saying the worst so far was coming on the weekend.
When she went to her final class of the day, English, she was relieved to find Logan Ryder was absent. Mrs. Gosford told them to take out their copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and led them swiftly into a discussion. The kids were soon complaining about the language.
“It’s too hard,” one of the boys said.
Another boy said, “It’s how they talk. By the time you figure out what they’re saying, you forget what the last person said. Why can’t they just say things straight out?”
Mrs. Gosford sighed. “Look, let’s just read a little aloud, and I’m sure you’ll find it less complex than you think. I assume you all read through at least some of the play as I asked?” Her brown eyes passed skeptically around the roomful of nodding kids, and Rage tried to hide a smile. Unfortunately, the teacher caught it. “Rage? Perhaps you would start? Don’t worry too much about meaning at this point. Just try to savor the words. See how they feel in your mouth.”
Feeling hot with embarrassment, Rage flicked through the pages. The book fell open at some of Puck’s lines, which she had been reading at lunchtime. She thought she had a reasonable grasp of what they meant, and so she said softly, “This is from one of Puck’s speeches.”
“Stand up and read,” Mrs. Gosford suggested with an encouraging smile. “Remember, Puck is a powerful though comic figure. He is one of the fairy folk, but he aligns with humans. He is touched by them. Go on, Rage.” She was one of the few teachers who had liked Rage’s mother and hence called Rage by the name Mam had used.
Rage stood, and at that moment the door banged open and Logan Ryder entered.
“Sit down, Logan,” the teacher said.
“Don’t you want to hear my excuse?” Logan asked insolently. He towered over the teacher, and he was close enough that she had to look up at him.
“No, Logan. Not now. I will hear anything you want to say after the class. We are looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Sure, ma’am, but I dunno ’bout this fairy book you got us reading,” Logan said loudly in a mock southern accent as he slouched into his seat.
Rage was relieved to be waved down.
Mrs. Gosford said, “Look, perhaps some of you feel that Shakespeare has nothing to offer because it was written and is set in another age and because there are, at least in this play, elements of fantasy. But the reason Shakespeare’s writing is classic is precisely because it rises above the time for which and in which it was written. It transcends. Transcends!” she repeated exultantly. “It speaks so deeply about its subjects that it goes beyond the present and the past and even the future to speak to all ages. Shakespeare wrote about love and jealousy and fear and anger and worship and betrayal. Those are universal human concerns, things we will all have to face in our lifetime, and entering these plays and words gives us ways to think about them as issues.”
“But what about the fairies?” Logan asked very seriously.
That made a lot of the kids laugh, and even Mrs. Gosford smiled a bit, but she didn’t let it go too far. “I can see you have a problem with fairies, Logan, and maybe you and
I can discuss that after class. All I will say is that fairy tales and myths in certain works represent deep philosophical truths, or they are at least an attempt to grapple with such truths. They represent things that we can think and talk about, but not see and touch and hear and smell. Puck and the other fairy folk represent another way of seeing the world and how it works.”
Rage crossed her fingers, but the teacher’s eyes only turned back to her. “One of Puck’s speeches, you said, Rage?” Mrs. Gosford prompted.
Rage stood again slowly and prayed that the bell would go, or that there would be some announcements that would take them through to the end of the period. Or that there would be a fire drill. Or a bomb scare. Or maybe she could just have a heart attack.
“Go on, Rage,” the teacher said.
Rage began. She had planned to stumble and mumble so badly that Mrs. Gosford would get impatient and take over reading herself. Instead, once she started reading the words aloud, she was struck by how much easier it was to understand them when you did that. She imagined that she was the Puck she knew from Valley, with his devotion to the witch Mother, declaiming in the grove in the Place of Shining Waters.
“Bravo!” the teacher cried when Rage came to the end of the speech, and applauded rapturously. The other kids clapped, too, and Rage felt the blood rise to her cheeks, realizing that she had made a spectacle of herself—and in front of Logan Ryder. She did not need even to look at him to feel his hatred.
There was a knock at the door and Rage was infinitely relieved—until she saw with dismay that the longed-for visitor was awful Mrs. Somersby. She had disliked the woman since she had tried to bully the Johnsons into putting Rage into a state children’s home after Mam’s accident. Rage sank deep into her seat, hiding herself behind Harry Galloway.
“Class,” Mrs. Gosford said after a quiet word with Mrs. Somersby, “I am afraid we have to end the session a fraction early. I’d like you now to give your attention to Mrs. Somersby, who is the community liaison with the child welfare agency for Hopeton.”