Winter Door (16 page)

By the time her uncle appeared, his coffee was made. He drank it down quickly and announced that they had better get moving. Rage asked her uncle if they could leave Billy to sleep, as he had seemed not quite well to her the night before.

“Maybe we should take him into the vet,” her uncle said.

Rage shook her head. “Mam always says dogs ought to be allowed to have sick days like anyone else,” she said truthfully.

A smile glimmered in her uncle’s amber eyes. It was as dark as night outside, reminding Rage that Valley and her world were certainly linked by the danger of the winter door. The inside of the car soon warmed up. Rage found herself thinking about Fork, transformed from the black, twisted labyrinth it had been when the keepers dwelt there into a pale, near-frozen beauty haunted by Elle. How had the dog-woman reacted to being adored by a city? she wondered. Had Elle been angry at it for trying to stop her leaving? Had she pitied it as Nomadiel did, or had she shrugged off the city and its feelings for her the moment she left it, her mind on the journey to the wizard’s castle?

“You are very silent this morning,” her uncle said.

“I…I was thinking about Elle,” she said. Then she bit her lip hard.

“Elle is one of the dogs that disappeared?” Uncle Samuel asked. Rage nodded and said nothing in the hope that the subject would be dropped. “Did Mr. or Mrs. Johnson ever ring the pound?”

“I think so,” Rage said. “Uh, will I wait for you in the library again tonight?”

“No, I’ll be waiting out front when school ends.” The car went slowly round the corner, passing between two piles of black-streaked snow, and pulled up outside the front gate to the school. “There’s your friend,” Uncle Samuel said. “We can give him a lift home this afternoon if you want.”

Rage turned to see Logan standing by the gate. He lifted a hand in response to her uncle’s wave. The sight of his smile gave her a shock because it was so nice to find a friend waiting for her. It seemed ages since she had seen him. She bid her uncle goodbye and scrambled out, dragging her schoolbag after her and slamming the door.

“Hi,” Logan said. Up close, she saw that the smile did not reach his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

He shrugged and said tersely, “The do-gooders are thinking of moving to Leary.”

“Why?” Rage asked, devastated at the thought that her first real friend was to be snatched away.

Oddly, Logan flushed darkly. “I…uh, it’s because of me, can you believe it? They think I’m not doing well at school here and so they want to try me at some school there. A school for gifted kids.”

This was offered as a sneer, but Rage saw Logan’s wonder underneath it and swallowed her own disappointment. “They…I guess they think a lot of you.”

He laughed. “Well, it was last night. I was practicing the play. Bottom’s part, like you suggested, and I’m standing there raving on, and when I finish the speech, the do-gooders are there in the doorway applauding like crazy. She was actually crying. They knocked, but I guess I didn’t hear them. Anyway, they said they hadn’t realized how talented I was, and they apologized for…well, for treating me like I was…well, they told me they knew I couldn’t read properly.” He grimaced. “Here I was thinking I had kept it such a secret and the caseworker wrote it in my report so they knew all along. Anyway, they said not being able to read properly didn’t mean I was dumb and that maybe I needed to approach learning differently than other kids. The next thing I know it’s morning and they are talking about this alternative school.”

Rage forced a smile. “I guess…it might be a good school.”

“It sounds…well, there are no uniforms, no classes, no rules and regulations. You have these tasks that you help come up with, and there are people to help you complete them, and you don’t have exams or tests. You don’t even have to go every day and
you
decide when to go home. They said it’s a school for kids who are self-directed.” He laughed. “I guess that’s me. The school even has a theater program….” His enthusiasm faded and he hesitated. “The truth is that I’d have been rapt a few weeks back, but now…” He stopped again, and flushed.

“When will you go?” Rage asked. Her voice sounded stiff and strange.

Logan frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think they could move that fast. Probably next year.”

“I wish—” Rage began, then the bell rang. “Look, I’ll see you in the hall,” she said abruptly, horrified to realize that she was close to crying. She brushed at her eyes furtively as she closed her locker.

Joining the drift of students to the main hall, Rage noticed that all the lights were on. They hadn’t been on the previous day, and since they went on automatically once the light fell to a certain level, she reasoned that it really was darker today. She thought of the radio announcer the night before saying that the weird weather was coming from somewhere around Leary, and wondered again if there was not some sort of opening to Valley there. It was hard to imagine how that could be, since Valley had begun as an alternate version of the valley flooded by the dam. But it had grown since its beginning, and it was ruled by laws of magic that did not align with the rules of science, or at least with science as humans understood it.

Entering the hall, Rage saw that Logan was sitting in the same place they had occupied the day before. She went over to him, ignoring a leer from Anabel Marren, who was also sitting in the back row.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked, giving her a searching look.

“I’m fine,” Rage said softly. “Look, about your going. The truth is that I took off before because I was upset to think about losing the first friend I ever had.”
First
human
friend,
she amended inwardly. “But I think the school sounds fantastic, and I think your foster parents sound pretty nice as well.”

Logan managed to look both pleased and embarrassed. “I felt the same when they told me, but then I got to thinking about your mum being transferred to Leary Hospital and you going to visit her every week. I thought that maybe we could meet when you come and maybe…maybe you could even stay over sometimes. If it’s okay with your uncle. If you wanted to…”

“Of course I would want to,” Rage said, thinking distractedly of Leary and the possibility that there might be a way open from the city to Valley. She wondered if she couldn’t find a way to close the winter door in Valley if she went to Leary sometime soon.

“You have a strange look on your face. What are you thinking about?” Logan asked curiously.

Rage looked at him, and it came to her that she should tell Logan about Valley and the winter door because after seeing those beasts, he might be able to believe there was more to the world than the science books and newspapers said.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said. “I promise.”

Somehow, though, the right moment never came.

Rage spent the day planning to tell Logan everything that had happened to her, but they didn’t have any classes together. At lunchtime, although there were even fewer students than the day before, it was harder to be alone because groups were beginning to form. Somehow, Rage and Logan were the center of one of the groups, which included most of the students from the English class the day before, as well as drama students from other classes. They all wound up talking about the parts they would like in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Logan said nothing about the proposed move. At the end of lunchtime, a tall, thin boy with glasses commented to Rage that they ought to form a drama club.

Rage was surprised how much she enjoyed being part of a group for a change. It never would have happened if school had been operating as usual. There was every chance that she and Logan would go back to being outsiders the second everything was as it had been, but even so, it was nice to belong for a change. Her getting to know Logan and his finding out that he could act were more things that would never have happened if not for the storms.

On the way to her locker after the last class, Rage thought how weird it was to try to figure out how something came to happen. She and Logan might never have become friends if not for the pig beasts. And if the beasts had come through the winter door to Valley, and then to their world, you could say that they had become friends because of the wizard. But
then
you had to go back and point out that the wizard had only made Valley because the government had decided to make a dam, so the government had caused her and Logan to be friends. But you could go back further again and ask why the government had decided to make a dam….

“Why are you laughing?” Logan asked, coming up to stand beside the locker as she dug her key out.

“I wasn’t exactly laughing,” Rage said as she excavated the mess to find what she needed. “I was trying to figure out the exact cause of us becoming friends.”

“It was you shouting at me to run when those things came after us,” Logan said. “I mean, you didn’t just take care of yourself.”

Rage was surprised at his view, but she nodded. “Well, you could say those creatures are the reason we became friends, but you could also say that why ever those things were there is the reason. You know what I mean?” Logan gave her an odd look, and she realized that she had better steer away from the subject of the beasts until she could talk freely to him.

“It’s funny you should mention the creatures because I’ve been thinking a lot about them. I mean, they were here at the school, and at least one of them was at your place sniffing around. Now, if the one at your place was one of the three that came after us, then it had to have followed you, in which case, why? And if the one at the farm was only one of a whole pack of those creatures roaming all around this area, then how come no one else has seen them?”

“There were reports on the radio of slaughtered animals.”

“It might have been them, but the point is that no one saw them. Only us.”

“Maybe someone else saw but didn’t want to report it.”

A group of girls came by laughing, and Logan hissed, “Let’s go to the library.”

“I can’t,” Rage said regretfully. “My uncle will be here early today. He’s probably out there now. But we can give you a lift home if you want.”

It was Logan’s turn to shake his head. “The do-gooders are picking me up in an hour. I told them to come later because I thought you would be around for a bit.”

“Sorry,” Rage said.

“Me too, but we can talk tomorrow.”

Rage swallowed all the things she wanted to say and smiled. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

Logan blinked and then slapped his head. “Damn. I forgot. Hey, that’s a first. I’m actually sorry the weekend is coming. Maybe I’ll give you a call.”

“That would be great,” Rage said, meaning it, though she didn’t think she could tell him about Valley over the phone.

Outside, Anabel Marren was standing by the gate. “My aunt is picking me up,” she said, sidestepping in front of Rage so that she was forced to stop.

“My uncle is taking me home,” Rage said. “He could take you, too, if you wanted.” She hoped she didn’t sound as reluctant as she felt.

“Yeah, sure! Like I’d ride with the Wild Man of Borneo. You know he ate people when he was out there in the jungle all those years? That’s what they do.”

A familiar horn blared, and Rage turned with relief to see her uncle waving from where he had parked on the other side of the street. “Bye,” Rage said blithely to Anabel, figuring that acting as if she wasn’t bothered by what the other girl had said would annoy her worse than anything.

Her uncle held open the door as she slipped inside the car. Billy hung his head over the back of the seat and gave her a slobbery lick right on the mouth. “Yerk! I hate it when you do that!” Rage laughed. He gave her a quizzical look, then did it again. “Ack!” she cried, pushing him away as her uncle climbed into the driver’s seat. “You went back home and got him?”

“I wanted to check on him because it was so odd him sleeping late like that this morning. He was still asleep when I got there and that really bothered me, so I brought him in to the vet. He was in the middle of being examined when he sat up and suddenly started barking.” He laughed. “The vet nearly fainted. It seems Mary was right about him needing a bit of a layin because, as you see, he’s in fine spirits now.” It was the first time Rage had heard him mention Mam by her name, and without any ominous overtones. It must have surprised him as much as it did her because, for a moment, his face went all peculiar and rubbery. But a second later the mask was back in place as her uncle reminded her to fasten her seat belt.

Rage buckled up. Billy took the chance to climb into the front seat, where he settled himself into a furry heap. He laid his head on her lap with a sigh of content that made her smile. His head was heavy, but she liked the weight of him. She wondered very much why he had slept for so long.

“I guess we’re not taking your friend home?” Uncle Samuel murmured.

For a split second, Rage thought he meant Anabel. “Oh, L-L-Logan!” she stammered stupidly when she figured it out. “Um. He…his…parents are coming to get him.” The hesitation had been odd enough to make her uncle give her another quizzical look. “They’re his foster parents,” she explained.

“He’s an orphan?”

“Sort of,” Rage said. They drove the rest of the way back to Winnoway without speaking. By the time the car pulled up outside the front door, it was pitch dark even though it wasn’t that late. Uncle Samuel used a little flashlight on his key ring to fit the key into the front lock.

It was deliciously warm inside the house because the fire had been banked up, but the warmth that flowed through Rage as she shed her coat had nothing to do with the temperature. Tonight she would dream-travel to Valley with Billy again. She was determined that this time they would go straight to the wizard’s castle.

The phone rang as they entered the kitchen, and Uncle Samuel nodded at Rage to answer it while he unpacked the groceries he had brought. She switched off the answering machine, noting that no one had left any messages, before picking up the receiver. To her dismay, the person on the other end of the line was Mrs. Somersby.