“What is it, Rage?” His voice came out of the darkness, alert and low pitched.
Rage gasped and then bit her tongue, though her heart was hammering crazily. “I…Billy was growling at my window,” she said breathlessly. “We…I think some kind of animal is prowling around the house.” Her heart gave another horrid lurch when her uncle rose to his feet at once, saying that he would go and check.
“We can just stay here until it goes!” she cried too loudly, but he was already brushing past her, bidding Billy to stay with her and telling her to climb into his bed until he returned. He pulled on a sweater and his shoes in three swift movements, then reached into his suitcase and pulled something out before reaching up to the top of the wardrobe and getting something else. Rage was in shock to see that he was holding a gun, pushing the bullets in with efficient little snicks. Only when he had gone through the office to the oak door did she unfreeze to run after him and beg him not to go out.
Uncle Samuel turned toward her. A chink of light from a strip of window not blocked by the crate lit his craggy features, revealing eyes as wild as they were kind, just as they had been when she had first seen him in her dreams. “Sometimes you have to face the things that come after you, Rage,” he said.
Then he was gone. Rage pressed her ear to the door, but it was too thick to hear anything. The wind howled, making the house creak. The branches of the big walnut tree scraped against the house like claws. Rage imagined the enormous beasts leaping onto her uncle. If only she had told him about them! If he was killed, it would be just the same as if she had murdered him!
Rage reached for the door handle and Billy gave a slight growl. Looking into his eyes, Rage did not dare to open the door because he was quite capable of nipping her hard to stop her. Before she could decide what to do, there was the crack of a gunshot.
Rage’s heart seemed to stop for a long minute, as did the howling of the wind and the scraping of the tree branches against the house. It was as if all the world held its breath. Then another shot rang out. Rage told herself these had been measured shots made with a steady hand and not shots fired by her uncle as he was being attacked by one of the huge beasts that had chased her into the bike shed.
“Billy—” she began in a pleading voice, but the door burst open and she staggered back.
It was her uncle.
Rage blinked hard at the sudden brightness of the hall light. She teetered on the edge of an impulse to rush into her uncle’s arms and hug him, but shyness and the fear that it would annoy him strangled the notion. He brushed past her, and she watched him unloading the remaining bullets. He tossed them into the top drawer of the desk before going through to the bedroom with the gun. He returned empty-handed.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Prowler, I’d say,” he answered. “Might be the same man Mrs. Marren saw that caused her to go off the road. Gunshots scared the hell out of whoever it was, anyway.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, dislodging a little fall of snow. “Come on, let’s go down to the kitchen. We could do with a hot drink.”
Rage followed, wondering if whatever had woken Billy had just been a human prowler. It seemed absurd to think anyone would brave such weather to poke around an old farmhouse. “Could it have been a wolf?” she ventured casually. “I heard one howling the other morning when I was waiting for Mrs. Marren.”
“There are a lot of weird stories around at the moment about wild animals,” her uncle said pensively. “Funny how people always shape their fears as animals. Truth is that humans are the most savage, stupid, and vicious animals in all the worlds.”
Rage stared at him. “You said worlds.”
He gave her a distracted look. “There are a hundred overlapping worlds in this one world, Rage. Countries that think differently and do things differently, all affecting one another and all trying to pretend the others don’t exist. All thinking their way is the right way. Sometimes I think it would be better if we were all caged off from one another like animals in a zoo.”
This was surprisingly close to the way the keepers had arranged Valley in the absence of the wizard. Remembering where that had led, Rage couldn’t help saying passionately, “You can’t cage things that are meant to be free. Even for their own good. And who would do the caging?”
Her uncle looked at her then, really looked at her, for maybe the first time. “You’re a bright lass, Rage,” he said softly. “But what is the answer, then? How to contain all that viciousness of humanity?”
It sounded as if he really thought that Rage might know the answer. But she could only shake her head and say helplessly, “Not everything is viciousness and hatred and cruelty.”
“I know it’s not, Rage, but what isn’t doesn’t have much of a chance against it.”
Rage said, “I think you have to try to do the right thing, even if it seems really small.” She hesitated. “Uncle Samuel, I know that Mam would begin to get well if she saw you. I think she wants that more than she wants anything in the world.”
Simple as that, the words that had been burning to be said for weeks and weeks came out. But Uncle Samuel didn’t seem to hear her. He stood up, draining off the rest of his drink, wiping down the bench, and putting the milk carton in the fridge in an unhurried way. As he left the room, he turned to remind Rage not to stay up too long. His eyes looked quite blank, as if he were sleepwalking.
Rage went back to her bedroom, Billy at her heels. The door stood ajar, so the warmth from the little heater had leaked away. Shutting the door behind her, she climbed into the icy sheets, shivering. She called softly to Billy and patted the bed. He looked askance at her, but he came and settled himself on the bed. Then Rage curled her body around his warm, reassuring bulk.
She did not expect to be able to sleep, but almost at once she began to drowse. She had the presence of mind, at the last moment, to picture Billy in his human form. But either she did not dream, or she did not recall it, for it seemed but a moment before her little alarm was trilling its summons into the early morning darkness.
Shivering and gritty eyed, Rage pushed Billy aside and clambered out of bed. It took a long, hot shower to bring her properly awake, by which time it was too late to have breakfast. Uncle Samuel was putting on his coat to go out and start the car up even as she let Billy out. Rage hastened to the kitchen to drink a glass of milk. She put a banana and a cereal bar into her pocket before pulling on her outside things and taking up her schoolbag.
It was a luxury to walk only a matter of steps and climb into a waiting car. It was also lovely to have Billy climb in and sit by her knees. He knew he had to sit on the floor when it was wet or snowy, but she felt less comfortable about it, knowing that inside his dog form he was again as he had been in Valley.
Uncle Samuel made no reference to the events of the night on the drive to town. In fact, he said nothing except to utter two mildly blasphemous words about the treacherous road conditions and, as they pulled into the school street, to warn her that he might be a bit late in picking her up. She should wait in the library again until he came for her.
Rage thanked him for driving her in. He gave her an odd look before closing the door and driving away. Rage watched until the car went out of sight because Billy had leapt into the back and was looking back at her. As she turned away, she caught sight of the bike shed. It looked exactly the same as it always did.
“You’d think it never happened,” Logan Ryder said from behind her. Rage turned shyly to face him. Logan looked the same as usual as well, except that his green eyes were no longer cold, and though he was not smiling, neither was he sneering. “Feels like I dreamed what happened,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Rage said.
“You didn’t tell your uncle, did you?”
Rage shook her head, noticing passing kids giving them curious, sideways looks. “He wouldn’t have believed me,” she said. She went through the gate and Logan followed.
“Are you sure abou
t that? Your uncle seems a decent sort.”
“He is decent,” Rage said. “I just wish I were sure he’d stay,” she added.
Logan’s brows lifted into his shaggy hairline. “Didn’t you say he was going to stay until your mum got out of hospital?”
“The people in my family are famous for not sticking around when the going gets tough.”
“Your uncle didn’t strike me like the type who would leave anyone in the lurch.”
Rage shrugged. “I think he’s just waiting for a reason to leave again.”
Logan looked disillusioned. “A couple of the families I lived with looked like they came right out of a Disney movie, but it was more like a horror movie when you got to know them. I guess you never know anyone from the outside.” There was a flat edge to his voice.
“How come you lived with so many different families?” Rage asked, glad to be distracted from her problems.
He shrugged. “My mother died having me, and my father didn’t want to be left holding the baby, but he didn’t want to give me away, either, so he made me a ward of the state. That means no one was allowed to adopt me. I could only be fostered or given holidays. Pretty soon I was old enough that no one would want to adopt me anymore, and that’s when he changed his mind. He’d got married by then and his wife didn’t want to know about me. The kinds of families who take on older kids are usually sloppy do-gooders, religious maniacs determined to save your soul, or people who want the extra cash the government pays them. Some of the families I was with had a whole lot of kids, all adopted or fostered.” He stopped and gave himself a shake and gave her a savage grimace. “I am what you might call a factory recall.”
“What about the family you’re with now?” Rage asked, thinking about the neat brick house.
He shrugged. “The Stileses are okay. Do-gooders hoping to score on a delinquent. They haven’t figured out that I’m a hopeless case yet, but they will.” He said this with sour triumph. Rage didn’t know what to say. Didn’t he want to find a home he liked? But it wasn’t the sort of question she could ask. Not yet.
They were inside the front hall now. A voice came over the loudspeaker instructing all staff and students to go to the main assembly hall.
“Maybe they’re going to dismiss us,” Rage said, wondering what she would do in that case. Then she shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t do that because a lot of kids wouldn’t be able to contact their parents or get home.”
“Maybe it’s about what happened last night. There was nothing on the news, but maybe the police don’t want to start a panic,” Logan said in a low voice. He waited while Rage put her coat and bag into her locker and took out her books and notes. Then he glanced around and whispered, “What if they figured it was a kid making that report and they’re going to try to get whoever it is to admit it.”
“Maybe someone else saw them or maybe they—” Rage started. Then the bell rang and they had to run to the assembly.
Despite what she had said, Rage would not have been surprised by a dismissal from school, given the dwindling numbers of students and teachers. But the headmistress just assigned teachers to groups of students. From now on, she told everyone, each day would begin with an assembly until the crisis was over. There were a few other general announcements of the sort usually made over the address system, then the students were given a day teacher. Rage’s was a short man with reddish hair like a fox’s; long, narrow teeth; and a nasty, flowery aftershave. His name was Mr. Pinke.
Logan was put into her group as well. In spite of everything, Rage grinned to think that two days earlier this would have dismayed her.
As soon as they were in the classroom, Mr. Pinke gave them a list of old exam questions, warning that talking would result in additional questions. Usually this sort of approach would have made Logan rebel until he was thrown out, but today he said nothing, though neither did he work. Rage could feel his impatience for the class to end and was oddly warmed by the certainty that he wanted to stay in class with her. She was no less impatient for the end of the period because she wanted to tell him about the midnight visitor to Winnoway. At last the bell rang. Mr. Pinke made them sit until he had collected the sheets, and then he had them walk out single file, like little kids.
“I hate teachers like him,” Logan said when they were in the hall.
“I thought you hated all teachers,” Rage said, but lightly.
“No, I don’t.” He gave her a surprised look and she bit back a laugh of disbelief. “So what are we going to do?”
“Library?” Rage said.
Logan gave her a sharp look, then shrugged. They walked in silence because half of the school population was in the hallways. Only when they were between the stacks did Logan speak.
“Why do you suppose the head didn’t mention those animals during the assembly?” he asked. “It’s like she didn’t even know about them.”
“Maybe the police didn’t tell her,” Rage answered. “Maybe they don’t do anything if a person calls but doesn’t say who they are.”
“What about the bike-shed roof?”
“It was snowing. By the time the police showed, there were probably no footprints. They’d have thought it was the snow buildup that broke the Perspex.”
Logan nodded, frowning. “You know, I’ve been thinking of those things a lot. Maybe they weren’t boars or wolves but some sort of hybrid. They could be mutations caused by experimental chemicals dumped illegally into the high mountains out of helicopters. Maybe those things have been living up there for generations with no one ever knowing until now, and the weather is bringing them down.”
“Sort of like teenage mutant ninja beasts?” she asked.
Logan looked angry for a moment, then he laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is pretty wild.” He stopped suddenly and she saw that he was staring at the Librarians’ Recommendations shelf. “I remember that book. It was about these four kids who went through the back of a wardrobe to another world.” Rage saw that he was looking at a battered copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which she had read with Mam a few years back. “I really liked it,” Logan went on, almost dreamily, “but I never knew what happened in the end because one of the mothers was reading it, and I went back to the home before she got to the end. I didn’t mind about leaving, but I minded about not getting to the end of the book.”
“Why didn’t you get it out and finish it yourself?” Rage asked. Logan made no response, and she glanced at him curiously, only to find that he was still staring at the book cover. His red face reminded her of what he had shouted the previous night.
“You really can’t read,” she said softly.
He turned on her then, fury, misery, and humiliation in his face and eyes. On any other occasion, she would have shrunk from that look, but now she just held his gaze with her own, much as she might have held him up with her hand if she saw him falling. It felt like that. Like he was leaning his full weight against her. Then all at once he pulled back, turned on his heel, and stalked wordlessly away.
Rage stared after him with pity and exasperation, wondering if the fledgling friendship was over as suddenly as it had begun. She was surprised at how disappointed it made her.
The bell rang again, but Rage decided to stay in the library. Everything was so chaotic, she doubted that anyone would wonder where she was. She took a couple of heavy books from the Atlas shelf, carried them to her alcove, and then opened one on her lap. She wanted to think about her dreams and her supposed ability to draw people into them. She had made up her mind that the person to summon would be the witch Mother, Rue. She tried to focus her mind, but the heat in the library was making her sleepy. She struggled against it for a little, then gave in with a sigh, letting her chin drop onto her chest. She was not conscious of slumping sideways, but the book stayed in her lap. A little later a teacher who passed by noted the book and bent head and tiptoed away without coming close enough to see that Rage was sleeping.
Rage was standing on
a flat, snowy plain surrounded by a dense, snow-covered forest of dark, spiky trees. She was too close to the trees on one side of the clearing to see anything beyond them, but the other way, she could see mountains beyond the tree line. It was impossible to tell what time it was because there was not the slightest glimmer of moonlight or starlight to offer a clue. The snow gave off a pale glow that bestowed an eerie air to the scene. This was heightened by the lack of animal or bird sounds. The air was utterly silent, unbroken by a sigh or creak from the trees, as if they had been frozen to stony stillness. The air was icy to breathe, and she shivered in her thin school uniform and sweater. “I don’t remember ever feeling cold in a dream before,” she muttered.
Her voice sounded very loud, and she had the uneasy feeling that she had exposed herself dangerously by speaking. She was so caught up in the brooding atmosphere that it was some moments before she noticed a gray-cloaked figure making its way across the snowy expanse toward her. It was impossible to see a face, but as the person came close, there was something familiar in the long, purposeful strides. Then Rage recognized the witch Mother, Rue. But how old she had grown! Her raven’s-wing hair was streaked with pure white. There was a web of lines about her eyes and mouth and stiffness to her movements. The little winged wild thing, Puck, was hurrying in her wake. He, at least, did not look a day older than when she had last seen him.
“It is good to see you, Child Rage,” the witch woman said in her stern, lovely voice.
Rage curtsied awkwardly, then said with uncertainty, “I don’t mean to be rude, Mother, but are you real?”
Rue laughed. “I am and so are you, Child Rage, and so is Puck here, by the by, for I suppose you must be wondering about him as well. I would have come alone to meet you. Indeed, I intended it but he—”
“I will attend you, Lady,” the little man interrupted stubbornly.
Rue sighed. “So it seems, and whether I desire it or not.”