The Book of Storms (16 page)

Danny turned to Tom. “Can't you hear her?” he asked. “She's talking—you must be able to hear her.”

Tom sighed. “Don't be stupid, Danny. Cats can't talk. Come on, there's nothing left here. Let's go to your bird-blind place, then we can go home. It's a long way to Great Butford, and that old pony doesn't do fast.”

“But what about Mitz?”

“Bring her,” snapped Tom, deliberately misunderstanding the point of Danny's question. “Stick her in your bag, or put her on the pony's back if she's steady enough to stay on. Don't put her anywhere she'll be able to dig her claws in, though, or I won't be responsible for you. This is ridiculous. I should be doing the milking, and now I've got to call Mum, and she's going to rip my head off. Sticking that axe through your bed. What on earth were you doing?” And he stamped back to Apple again.

It wasn't me! Danny wanted to say again. He couldn't quite believe that Tom thought he'd put the axe in his own bed. Tom had seen Aunt Kathleen come out of Danny's room, hadn't he? And Danny had been about to show him Abel Korsakof's story. Maybe all that stuff about Sammael picking mushrooms and Korsakof talking to storms would make him see sense. But there was something hard about Tom when he stamped like that.

“D'you want to come with us,” he asked Mitz, instead. “Tom says we've got to go.”

Mitz looked up at him and considered. “I will sit on the back of that animal,” she said eventually. “Providing it doesn't try to frolic.”

“She's not really the frolicky sort,” said Danny.

*   *   *

Tom made them stop again outside the village shop in Hopfield, to get breakfast. He came out with a couple of sandwiches and a pocketful of chocolate bars.

“The woman in there said the police reckon it was arson,” he said, climbing back onto Apple and handing Danny a sandwich. “Kids, they reckon. Said the place must have been drenched in gasoline—it went up like a light and burned itself out really fast. An old woman died in the house—that must have been your Mrs. Korsakof, I guess.”

Danny remembered the lemon cake that he hadn't managed to eat, and tried to shake the thought away. At least his parents would be sure to believe him, once he found them. They'd be glad to see the scrappy little book written by the old man. They'd know that Danny must have been telling the truth when he said that Mitz could speak, because how else would he have known about the book down the burrow? They'd know that even when all your rational sense told you something was impossible, it might still happen. Like talking cats. And talking storms.

Danny put an arm around Mitz to keep her steady and hurried the pony on through the morning sunshine, to catch up with Tom.

CHAPTER 11

THE DOGS OF WAR

“Would you believe me if I showed you I can talk to the horses?” Danny tried. “Like if I asked them to do something and they did it?”

“Go on, then,” said Tom. “Ask Apple why she's such a prat about phone boxes. I'd love to know that. Ask her to stop imitating a crab.”

Apple was bending her body into a banana shape, trying to keep as far away from the red booth as possible as they walked up the high street of a waking village.

“Okay,” said Danny, taking his reins into one hand, tucking Mitz safely against his stomach, and putting the other hand into his pocket. “Apple, why are you doing that? Tom wants you to go in a straight line.”

“Absurd! Ridiculous!” said Apple. “Evil, evil,
evil
thing!”

Danny thought she was probably referring to the phone box, not Tom. “It's just a phone box,” he said.

“Of course it isn't!” said Apple. “That's what it wants you to think, naturally. You humans are so foolish.”

“I see no sign of mutual understanding yet,” said Tom, keeping his legs tight against Apple's sides so she wouldn't go skittering across the road. “Don't think horse whispering's the career for you, Danny.”

“She thinks the phone box is evil,” said Danny.

“Yeah,” said Tom. “I could've told you that.”

“She's an idiot,” said the piebald pony.

It was such a quiet remark that, at first, Danny wasn't sure he'd heard it. “Was that you?” he asked the pony.

“Don't see anyone else around here,” said Tom. “Unless you're still talking to the trees, of course.”

“Not the trees,” said Danny. “It was the piebald. She said Apple was an idiot.”

“Again,” said Tom, “I'm not sure that's something you'd need a magic stick to find out.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Danny. “Don't believe me, then.”

But he wanted to carry on talking to the piebald. She was such a silent, plodding animal, her head always down, none of the sidling and shying and prancing that Apple seemed to find necessary. How to do it without Tom making fun of him?

Danny tried to drop back a bit, but Tom stayed with him, pulling Apple into a slower walk. After a few minutes, when they'd dawdled nearly to a standstill, Tom said, “Come on, leg her on, Danny, we haven't got all day. I'm supposed to be studying, remember?” and Danny had to stop holding the piebald's reins quite so tightly. As they went faster, Mitz clung grimly on to him with her sharp claws, but he was getting used to that.

He got a brief chance when a post van shot out of a side road and Apple sprang forward to escape it. For a few moments Tom couldn't focus on anything but bringing his leaping horse under control.

“That was you, wasn't it?” Danny said, tucking the cat under his arm again and taking hold of the stick. “You said Apple was an idiot.”

“I did,” agreed the piebald.

“What's your name? Tom said you didn't have one, but you must, mustn't you?”

“Of course,” said the piebald. “I have the name my mother gave me. Shimny.”

“Shimny?” Danny frowned. “That's not what Tom and Sophie called you, was it?”

“As neither of them could lay claim to being my mother, then no, it wasn't,” said the pony. “But why the fuss about names?”

“It's so strange,” said Danny. “The whole thing. All these creatures … all these things that have lives and names and can talk to each other. Don't you think that's strange?”

“Will it be a long journey?” asked the pony, apparently not thinking much of the oddness. “I'm rather elderly. I don't know if you're aware of that.”

And then Tom came trotting back on Apple, hooves everywhere, and Danny wasn't going to talk to his horse anymore, because he didn't want to feel stupid in front of Tom. Except he did wonder, for a long while, why it was that some creatures seemed shocked to discover that he could talk to them, while some apparently didn't think it was remarkable at all.

*   *   *

By the afternoon, they had run out of chocolate and were hungry again. Unfortunately, they were out on a long bridle path, well out of any village. His stomach grimacing, Tom put Apple into a smart trot and then a canter, letting her scrape along the edge of the young wheat they were next to. Danny, hand tucked into his pocket, heard it hiss like a field of adders as it was trampled. The sound made him wince, and he wanted to tell Tom to stop, but it would only have led to an argument, and he had enough to deal with trying to keep hold of two reins, a squirming cat, and a stick.

For a long time they were both quiet, the miles disappearing beneath them with the rhythmic pounding of hooves.

*   *   *

They came to a small copse at the top of a slope, surrounded by scrubby fields. The copse was dark, but above the hum of traffic drifting up from the road below there bubbled the song of a nearby stream. The ponies ground to an exhausted halt, their ribs flapping in and out, sinking their heads to a few inches above the ground. They gasped. Danny was shocked.

“They're knackered. We went far too fast,” he said to Tom as both boys dismounted and Mitz collapsed into a grateful heap on the grass.

Tom, listening to the stream, cast a quick eye back to his horses.

“No, they'll be fine,” he said. “Give them a few minutes. Ach, I'm starving. There's got to be something we can eat round here.”

Danny sat down near the ponies and watched them transform from heaving bellows into quietly dozing beasts. Their eyes trembled shut as they felt the sun on their noses and stretched out their tired limbs, each resting a hind leg. Time ticked away while Tom scrambled around the trees and undergrowth, lost in the quest for food, but tired as he was, Danny couldn't settle himself to waiting. He was thinking too much about what he had to do and what he had to fear, although on a day like this one, with summer strong in the air and the sun promising to shine for hours to come, it was hard to properly fear anything. He held the stick in his hands and turned it over, looking at it for what seemed like the thousandth time and seeing nothing new.

“Come on, Danny,” something whispered to him. “What are you waiting for? Don't you know the dogs are out? Don't you know they're on your trail?”

He jerked his head round to try and see what had spoken. There was nothing to be seen. All he could think was that it had sounded like the wind.

“Dogs?” he said, trying very hard to concentrate on the voice he had just heard. “What dogs? Who are you?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“Yes—I can't make out who you are. What dogs?”

“The Dogs of War!” hissed the voice. “The Dogs of War!”

“What are they?” said Danny, not sure if he'd heard properly.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a bark.

“What are you doing, Danny? Don't you know they're coming? Look behind you, look behind you!”

Dogs … dogs … why would dogs be coming…? Danny whirled around to look behind him.

There was the copse. And way away down the hill, a black mass of racing, baying dogs. Even at this distance Danny could see that they were as big as rottweilers and bounding in great, leaping strides across the fields, over the ditches, through the streams, and up the hill toward him. He didn't stop to count them.

“Tom! Tom!
Tom!
” he cried out, jumping to his feet and running over to the edge of the trees. “Tom! Get out! There's a pack of dogs!”

“It'll just be a hunt—oh, hang on, wrong time of year.… Don't worry, I'm sure someone's with them,” Tom called back from the darkness.

“No, it's just dogs! Loads of them! Come on!”

Danny swung his schoolbag onto his back, grabbed Mitz and stuck her on his shoulder, and then took hold of the piebald's reins and put his foot in the stirrup to mount, but Tom had loosened the girths and the saddle slipped sideways, round Shimny's belly. The pony shifted nervously, her head high, ears stretched in the direction of the yelling dogs. Danny fumbled at the girth buckles, trying to take the saddle off, but his hands were like potatoes on the ends of his shaking arms. For a moment it seemed that he'd never undo them, but as he gave a last despairing yank, they gave way and the saddle thumped onto the ground.

There was no time to replace it. He dragged Shimny over to a grassy ledge, scrambled up onto her back, and let her go, grabbing her mane tightly with his hands. As she began to gallop, he was thrown from side to side and his head whipped backwards, tears streaming at the stinging of the air. The cat flattened against his shoulder, pushing her head into his neck and sinking her claws so deeply into his sweater that they pierced his skin.

Tom! Danny wanted to scream. But he'd shouted and Tom hadn't listened, and now he was galloping away to somewhere only Shimny knew, somewhere Danny couldn't even see anymore, and Tom was still back there in the copse with those dogs racing up the hill toward him.…

He twisted his head around and saw Tom stepping out of the copse at the same moment that the dogs reached it. The pack split into two—half flowed on toward Danny, and half rose in a wave, knocking Tom off his feet.

An arm flung into the air, Tom's blond hair caught the sunlight, and then he disappeared underneath the black mass and Danny saw no more.

*   *   *

Shimny stretched every muscle and tendon in her hairy old body and tried to remember how sure-footed she had once been, how she had galloped down hills five times as steep and leapt over ditches twice as wide. She tried to pretend she was still young, tried to ignore the aching shoulders that strained as she reached forward, the joints that grated as bone scraped along bone.

When she couldn't ignore any longer, she clenched her teeth together and said to herself, I am not me, I am not me, I am not me, so that her chanting was in time with the beats of her four hooves and she couldn't hear Danny sobbing on her back that he had left Tom, that Tom would be killed by those black dogs and be torn to pieces and never be seen again.

Their own half pack of dogs was gaining on them, the barks and howls louder with every hundred yards. Where on earth had those dogs come from? But it wasn't time to think, only to gallop.