Logan still had lots of questions to ask about Fork and magic in Valley, and about her great-uncle being a wizard. “It’s pretty amazing to think he just became a wizard and made his own world,” Logan said. Then he grinned. “I wonder what would happen if I told the school careers advisor that I want to be a wizard when I grow up.”
Rage laughed. “I never really asked him how he did it because, well, I guess I was too busy blaming him for what happened to Mam.”
“It wasn’t really his fault, though,” Logan pointed out.
Rage nodded. “I know that now. I suppose I knew it all along, but I wanted there to be someone to blame. Because if there wasn’t, then it was Mam’s fault, or Grandfather Adam’s fault.”
“I think fault is just the wrong word,” Logan said thoughtfully. “I wanted to blame my father for what he did, too, but just lately I’ve been thinking that maybe he just couldn’t do any better.”
“It’s so strange, but when I saw the wizard chained to that wall, I felt…sorry for him, and I realized that he was blaming himself for what happened to Mam and Uncle Samuel. I told him that he was a coward for giving up….” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the strength of her own desire not to wake.
“You know, I think that feeling bad about everything he had done was why he was connected to that machine,” Logan said thoughtfully. “I think it feeds off negative feelings, and being aligned means being made to feel hopeless about everything. And you know what? I think that all those people connected to the machine are not just being made to feel bad so that they fit in, in Null. I think that the machine uses their negative feelings for power. And those quakes? I bet the summerlanders are right and that they are being caused by Elle, because it doesn’t sound like she has negative feelings at all.”
Rage stared at him, feeling the truth of his words. “But why make a machine like that?”
Logan shrugged. “Maybe it started out just being a machine to make people feel sad so they’d fit in, but he realized that their bad feelings were a source of power. And the summerlanders were a problem, so he decided to break them and then connect them to his machine as well.”
Rage nodded. Maybe she had been too close and everything was all muddled up with fears and feelings to see these things herself.
“I suppose after that it was like they always say in history class,” Logan went on. “Power corrupted him, and he figured why not use the winter door to make all the worlds like his.”
“Do you think he used the power to make the winter door?” Rage said.
Billy whined and gave a bark. Logan gave him a sympathetic look. “It must be hard for him when you’re here, him wanting to talk and only being able to bark.”
“He has a much better sense of smell as a dog than he does when he is human shaped, and he can see really well and run faster….” Rage stopped, wondering why she was saying those things. “I just mean he is good as a dog, too. Good in other ways.”
“Yeah, but I was only saying he might have some good ideas right now but he can’t say them.”
Billy sighed again.
“I wonder what the Stormlord meant when he said there was a darkness in him,” Rage said.
Logan glanced at Billy. They stared at one another for a long moment. Then Logan nodded, as if some understanding had passed between them. Rage waited for him to say something, but he only patted Billy and said again that it must be hard. Rage had the feeling that she had missed something important, but she was really feeling tired now and told Logan so.
Rage banked the fire with wood, closed the flue, and switched out the lights, then Logan opened the front door and they stood in the doorway as Billy went out, watching the relentless wind lift powder snow into brief eddies. Neither moon nor stars showed, so the light cast from the hall light lay as bright as a shaft of gold. The light would be visible for miles in this darkness.
“There’s a gun,” she said softly.
Logan stared at her. “What?”
“My uncle has a gun in his room. It’s on the top of the wardrobe and the bullets are in the desk drawer. If those things come tonight, you might need it. You could shoot in the air.”
“You think they’re after you?”
“I don’t see how. I’m pretty sure the Stormlord doesn’t know I was dream-traveling, but they do seem to be hanging around Winnoway.”
“Are you sure the things are his?”
“Whose else could they be? But I don’t think he sent them after me in particular. I think they just wander through the winter door and then they come here. I think they come with the bad weather.”
“It’s incredible to think there are these openings where you can just step through into another world, if you only know where they are.” His eyes widened. “Hey, maybe that’s where all the people who have disappeared went.”
“I wondered about that, too,” Rage said. “Maybe that’s why the police never find so many of them. Anyway, I was going to say that the Stormlord might have sent those things here after me, because he would’ve been pretty angry when he woke up.”
“To be honest, it’s hard to imagine the guy you described getting angry,” Logan said. “Seems more like he’d just be relieved you were gone. But if he was mad, he’d be mad at Elle because he thinks she’s your boss.”
He was right. The Stormlord had sounded interested in Elle. He had kept asking about her, as if he didn’t believe she only wanted to close the winter door. And if what Logan had suggested about the tremors was right, maybe it really was Elle’s sunny, confident nature that was hurting his world.
Once they were in the extension bedroom, Rage showed Logan how to bolt the door to the main part of the house, in case he needed to go out to the bathroom.
“It’s like an air-raid shelter,” Logan said, looking around. “I wonder why your grandfather built this. It doesn’t fit the rest of the house.”
Rage had never wondered about the extension before. “Maybe he thought another war would come,” she said lightly. She took off her zebra slippers, reminding herself firmly to picture herself and Billy in sensible attire this time. She climbed into bed feeling suddenly shy, even though she was not in her pajamas.
Logan paced around the small room a few times with his hands in his pockets before self-consciously sitting down on his mattress. Billy was drowsing on the end of Rage’s bed.
“One of the best things about being an animal is that they can live in the moment,” Rage murmured, leaning down to stroke him. “They don’t think so much about the future and worry so much about the past because they know that it won’t help.”
“I know what you mean,” Logan said, settling more comfortably back on his pillows. “We waste so much energy and time thinking about everything except the moment we are in, and so in a way it’s like we don’t even notice we’re alive.”
Rage turned on her side. “I’m glad you’re here, Logan.”
“I’m glad, too,” Logan said. “I wonder where your uncle is,” he said after a while.
Rage wondered also. Uncle Samuel hadn’t called, even though the answering machine had been on, and the power as well, for most of the time. That made it less likely that he had just been delayed because of the roads. If he hadn’t called by morning, she would telephone the police.
“Listen,” Logan said. Rage started and realized she had been on the verge of falling asleep. “It’s the wind,” he went on. “It’s stopped.” He got up and went into the study to peer out the strip of window above the crate. “It’s snowing again. A real whiteout.”
Rage heard the words as if from a great distance, and she barely remembered to imagine herself and Billy dressed warmly as she slid into sleep.
Rage and Billy were standing on a snow-covered hill in a cold, windless night filled with softly falling snow.
“I was so glad to see you when I woke up,” Rage said, giving Billy a hard hug. “I was so scared when you fell.”
“Me too,” Billy said seriously.
“But I was more scared when I couldn’t wake you. I thought something must have happened to you. Logan was great. He saved my life by waking me.” He hesitated. “I think he might have saved your life, too, Rage, because you started to smell of death. It was horrible, and I ran out because I couldn’t bear it, and he…well, he woke you.”
“I think I almost did die, Billy,” Rage confessed in a low voice. “I didn’t want to be in a world without you.” She was embarrassed to admit that she had been the same sort of coward she had accused Mam of being. “Then I tried to wake up but I couldn’t come back to my body. Then Logan hit me….”
“He hit you?” Billy echoed, the hint of a growl in his voice.
“He didn’t mean to do it, but it’s lucky he did because the slap let me find my way back to my body.”
“I like the smell of him,” Billy said at last, looking strangely sad.
Rage looked around. “I wonder where we are. Can you smell if we’re in Null again?”
“It’s not Null or Valley. Rage, I don’t think the Stormlord sent those wolf things after you because I don’t think he controls them. Otherwise, why didn’t they stop you when we took him hostage? They just sat there watching us leave.”
“Maybe they couldn’t act after the Stormlord was unconscious. Like the gray fliers.”
“They didn’t behave like the stunned fliers did. They were watching us, but it was like they were not interested in what we were doing.”
“Then where did they come from?”
Billy shrugged. “Maybe they came here from somewhere else, like the other settlers. Then they went to Valley through the winter door.”
“But why did they chase me and Logan and come to the farm? And how would they get inside the fortress?” Rage asked.
“I don’t know,” Billy admitted. “But there’s something else. I was thinking about those gaps you and Logan were talking about when I was a dog. Remember how the wizard said there was something wrong about the winter door?” Rage nodded. “What if it began as a gap, then the firecat conjured a way to hold it open.”
“But wouldn’t the wizard have figured that out?”
“Maybe he was so busy thinking about the other wizard that he didn’t look at it properly,” Billy said.
Rage frowned. If Billy was right, it would explain why the firecat would have claimed to have made the gate. “But how could the wizard have contacted the firecat with those iron manacles around his wrists?”
“Maybe the firecat came to him of its own accord in a dream? Or maybe the fact that the firecat is connected to the wizard sort of got around the iron blocking his magic.”
“Maybe,” Rage said. “Why do you think it didn’t tell me what the wizard said?”
“Because it wanted him saved,” Billy said. “That could explain why it came to you rather than going to Rue. She might have been able to tell it was lying.”
Billy looked around. “Maybe you’d better try to take us to Null.”
Rage was deciding whom to use as a focus for her dream-traveling when she heard a voice crying out. She could tell from the look on Billy’s face that this time he heard it, too.
“I’ve heard it before,” Rage murmured, trying to make out what it was saying. “I thought it was the voice of the wizard, but it can’t be since he’s free now. Can you smell anything?”
Something howled in the distance.
“Maybe you’d better get us away from here,” Billy advised. He reached out to take Rage’s hand in a firm grasp. She closed her eyes and summoned up Nomadiel’s small face. The snowy landscape dissolved and the voice called again. This time she heard clearly what it was saying.
Help…
Rage and Billy were in the same room from which Rage had vanished after Billy fell from the wall of Stormkeep. Puck and Thaddeus were even standing in much the same positions.
“You!” said the witch man incredulously, staring at Billy. “I thought—we believed you had been killed when you fell!”
“I would have been if a friend in our world had not woken me in time,” Billy said soberly. “How long have we been gone?”
“You disappeared four days ago,” Puck said.
“Only a few hours have passed in our world,” Rage said in disbelief.
“Where are the others?” Billy asked.
“Elle is visiting the other settlements, and the wizard sleeps in an antechamber. He is weak from his long confinement, but he is improving daily.”
“Does he still say that there is no way to close the winter door?” Rage asked.
Thaddeus frowned. “He says the winter door is not tuned to a maker because it was merely formed inside a random tear in the flawed fabric of this world.”
“You were right, then,” Rage said to Billy.
“Why is Elle visiting the other settlements?” Billy asked.
“She wants to talk to all the other sorts of people here, even those who are not summerlanders,” Thaddeus said. “She wants to lead a force against Stormkeep to see if they can free the prisoners in the hidden tower. She believes that the machine is strengthening the Stormlord somehow.”
“She says that if we cannot close the door, then we must stop the Stormlord from making his fell storms,” Puck said.
“But how will they get into Stormkeep?” Billy asked.
“She means to lure a gray flier down, capture it, and force it to carry her inside the fortress. Everyone will be waiting outside for her to open the gates,” Thaddeus said.
“Where are Nomadiel, Rally, and Mr. Walker?” Rage asked.
The witch man and Puck exchanged a look that filled Rage with apprehension. Then Puck said, “Nomadiel went out with Rally the night you vanished. She left a note saying that she was going back through the winter door to ask the advice of the witch Mother. Only she didn’t get to the winter door.”
“What happened?”
“She and Rally were taken by the gray fliers,” Thaddeus said. “Prince Walker saw them attack.”
“The fliers took all three of them?” Rage asked, appalled.
“Not Mr. Walker. We do not know why, for there were more than enough fliers to take him as well, by his account,” Thaddeus said.
“Where is he now?” Billy asked worriedly.
“He came back to tell us what happened, half mad with despair, and at length he ran out again. We followed, but we could not catch up to him before he reached the bridge to Stormkeep. We thought that the gray fliers would come and take him, or kill him, but they did nothing.”
“Nothing?” Rage said in disbelief. “But…where is he now?”
“He is still at the gates of Stormkeep.”
“You just left him there?” Rage demanded.
“Puck and I tried to get him,” Thaddeus said, “but the gray fliers swooped on us. They no longer come into the settlement, but they attack anyone who ventures outside. Puck’s wing was torn and he fell, but I managed to get him back inside.”
“No need to boast,” Puck snapped, but there was less real anger in his voice than before. “I would have recovered and saved myself if you hadn’t interfered.”
“If the gray fliers attack anyone leaving a settlement, how did Elle leave?” Billy asked.
“She left to tour the other settlements right after you vanished, Rage. No flier tried to stop her or her summerlander followers, but we do not know why.”
“What do the other settlers say about what has been happening?”
“Nothing,” Thaddeus said. “They are like the Stormlord. They don’t want to feel anything. But some of them can’t help themselves because their children are summerlanders. The woman who has looked after the wizard is one. She also gave Mr. Walker fever medicine, though I fear his madness will have undone any good it did him.”
“We have to help him,” Billy said to Rage.
The inner door opened and the wizard entered slowly. Rage was startled to see how thin and frail he was. In Stormkeep, he had been so swathed in cloaks and shawls
that it had been impossible to tell.
“I thought I heard you,” the wizard said in a thin voice. “Billy Thunder, I am more glad than I can say to see that you are safe. I take it you woke in time.”
“I was woken by a friend, sir,” Billy said. His nose twitched, and Rage wondered what he could smell on the old man.
The wizard hobbled to sit by a small fire in a hearth that had been set up to one side of the chilly room. “I have been thinking about why Prince Walker was not taken with Noma and Rally, and it has come to me that if Elle is right about the machine drawing power from the despair of those linked to it, then it may be that Prince Walker is serving a similar role by lamenting at the gate to Stormkeep; I mean, he is feeding its master his despair.” He lifted salt-and-pepper brows above piercing Winnoway amber eyes.
“I think you are right,” Billy said.
The wizard smiled at him. Then he looked at Rage. “Despair is a power, you see. Was it not you who once told me that sorrow is a contagious disease that can be passed from generation to generation?”
Rage felt herself flush, then pale.
“You were right,” the wizard said softly. “But the rightness of your accusation only served to deepen the hurts caused by my actions, because your words ate into me and crippled my strength. They made me feel that there was nothing but to give myself to guilt and regret. The words you said generated deeper despair. I do not blame you, child. It was I who allowed them to do this.
“Strangely, coming so close to seeking the oblivion offered by this world, I see that although what you said was true, it was not the only truth or all of the truth. Pain does cause pain and sorrow causes sorrow, but to accept it and allow oneself to be crippled by it is a choice one makes. One can also choose not to be shaped by pain and sorrow, given or experienced, but to grow because of them and then leave them behind. Yet such a choice requires courage.”