Winter Door (2 page)

Rage got up and went over to sit beside the dog, angling her back to soak up the warmth radiating from the stove. Billy sighed and laid his head against her. Like all dogs, he knew when someone was unhappy, but how much more than that did he understand? She gently scratched between his shoulder blades. He had told her when he was a boy that it was the place a dog most wanted to be scratched because no matter how he contorted himself, he could not reach it.

“Dogs spend their whole lives with that spot driving them crazy. And humans wonder why they howl at the moon and try to bite the wheels of cars,”
he had said.

Now he gave an ecstatic yawn and sort of melted sideways onto her knee, one big paw winding slowly in the air. Rage smiled and thought she might be happier if she could just forget all that had happened in Valley, too. Sometimes it felt like she had dreamed it all—her journey in search of a wizard who could give her magic to waken her mother. Except that it
had
happened, because Billy was the only dog left. He might have stayed in Valley with the others, but at the last minute he had jumped through the world gate after Rage, becoming a dog again. For a while after that, he had been a strangely alert and intelligent dog, and she had thought that he remembered everything and was his new self inside the old shape. But as the months passed, he had gone back to being a simple, sweet-natured, boisterous young dog. Rage had discovered that much as she loved Billy as a dog, she missed the keen mind of his human self.

A flash of lightning lit the kitchen through the open curtains. Rage counted. It was not long before the thunder crashed, which meant that the storm was approaching rapidly. It was almost seven now, according to the mantel clock. Rage chided herself for wasting so much time daydreaming. Fortunately, her only homework was to read part of a play called
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
A troupe of real actors was coming to her school to rehearse and then perform the play. There was an exciting but unconfirmed rumor that some students were going to be invited to perform in it as well.

Rage got up and found her copy of the play in her schoolbag. She had tried to read it on the bus, but it was written in strange old English, with lots of words she didn’t understand and had to look up. The bus had jolted so much through the snow that she had put the play aside. Instead, she drifted into a daydream of Valley and the little winged man she had met there named Puck, just like the fairy man in the play.

Now Rage noticed that the playbook was slightly torn. The new librarian would scold her for that. No use saying that Logan Ryder had done it, snatching the book and tossing it into the air. Logan was the school bad boy, but no one would do anything because, short of expelling him, everything that could be done had been done to him, with no effect. Unfortunately, he never did anything bad enough to warrant being expelled. Rage had overheard the music teacher say wearily to another teacher that Logan Ryder was on his fifth family and maybe with luck the next would be in another school district. Rage could not imagine why Logan had been in so many families, but she could well imagine that he wore them out.

He had never bothered with her until the last two months, when he had taken to hanging around and jeering at her. He was always borrowing the books she returned to the library and then telling her the next day how pathetic they had been. Rage was confounded by the purpose of his bullying. She didn’t mouth at him or sneer at him. She was neither an A student nor dull-witted, and she was no show-off. And yet the way he had looked, she had felt that for some unknown reason he hated her. The memory of his glittering green gaze made her shiver. She glanced out the small side window at the dark, swirling night, wishing again that she could ask someone’s advice. But Mam was too ill, Uncle Samuel too distant, and Billy could no longer talk to her. Then Rage sat up straight and returned to her reading because, after all, wasn’t that one of the lessons that she had learned from Valley: that sometimes
no one
could help you?

She had reached a slightly confusing part in the play where everyone was chasing everyone else around in the forest when she heard the front door bang open and shut.

“A bad night,” Uncle Samuel said in his deep, scratchy voice when he entered the kitchen. He had already taken off his long oilskin coat and boots, and now he unwound the layers of sweaters and shirts. He set them down along the back of the couch as methodically as Rage always pictured him setting up a solitary camp in the jungle all those years he had been missing. He lowered himself into the deep chair by the fire with a sigh. Rage could almost imagine that, hunched in the seat and turned away, he was her sour, silent grandfather.

“The fences are worse than I thought,” he said. “Can’t wait until spring or there will be nothing left to repair. I’ll start tomorrow if it’s not snowing.” He fiddled with the radio dial.

Rage put the kettle on and made a pot of very strong, very hot tea. Then she sat down to her homework because she had the feeling that it would annoy him if she scuttled out of his sight every time he appeared. She stayed there for another ten minutes, pretended to yawn, then got up. She poured a mug of the tea and pushed sugar and milk close to the big hand resting on the snowy tablecloth, wishing that she could sit at her uncle’s feet and ask if he had seen storms like this in the jungles.

As she gathered her books, the radio announcer began to talk about the roads again, speculating about the cause for the extreme weather. Rage murmured that she was going to bed and stood up. From the doorway, she cast one last glance back at Uncle Samuel hunched in the chair, then closed the door quietly between them.

Billy Thunder had risen with her, and now he nudged at her leg as she set the bag of schoolbooks on the hall sideboard. Rage slipped her feet into her gum boots before opening the outside door to let him out. Standing on the step with her arms wrapped around her, she watched Billy disappear into the dense darkness. Teeth chattering, she opened her mouth to call him back, but a buffeting surge of wind sucked the breath out of her. A few flakes of half-formed snow whirled out of the blackness to land against her cheeks, and suddenly she had the eerie feeling that she was being watched.

She told herself it was ridiculous to imagine someone peering at her from the darkness, for who on earth could be out in weather like this? Even so, she wanted to go back in, but where was Billy now?

Suddenly he bounded out of the night, and Rage gave a squeal of fright. The dog gave her a puzzled look as he slipped past her, but she was too shaky to do more than turn and fumble the door open and stagger inside. She leaned back against the closed door and gave an unsteady laugh. When her heartbeat had returned to normal, she checked her books for the next day, and she polished the white salt maps off the toes of her school boots.

In the bathroom, her eyes in the mirror were still big and dark from the fright she had given herself, but she ignored them as she washed her face and brushed her teeth. On impulse, she opened the other side of the bathroom cabinet and took out a slim bottle of Mam’s homemade violet-petal perfume and sprayed it over her arms.

In her bedroom, Rage switched on the lilac lamp at her bedside and put on her pajamas. Leaving Billy to arrange himself on the rug, Rage climbed into bed and snuggled down under the covers with a sigh. To her surprise, Billy padded over to the bed and rested his head on the coverlets. His eyes glowed darkly in the light of the lamp as he looked at her. She reached out and patted his silky ears with a feeling of terrible sadness.

The smell of violets rose from her skin and she blinked back tears. “I love you, Billy Thunder. No matter what form you are in,” she whispered.

Just for a second, the sharp intelligence was there again.
What is wrong?
he seemed to be asking.

She wished that she could tell him and that he could answer her.
Oh, no you don’t,
she commanded herself, realizing she had almost slipped back into her memories again. She patted Billy and told him firmly to lie down. She closed her eyes and slept, dimly aware of the storm battering the house.

Rage gazed over the long dam. It had once been a magnificent wilderness owned by Grandfather’s brother, her great-uncle Peter, before he had become a wizard and abandoned their world for one of his own making. She had been to the dam a few times since returning from Valley. She had tried to imagine it as green and vibrant as it must have been before the government flooded it. It was impossible to believe that only a thin curtain of magic separated the dam from Valley. The water shimmered like pale pink satin in the afternoon light. Long, narrow shadows of the drowned trees that poked out of the water lay in charcoal slashes across it. Perhaps in the parallel magical world of Valley, these very trees were flourishing.

Beside her, Billy growled, and Rage automatically dropped her hand to his collar. In the same moment, she realized that the dam ought to have been frozen and bordered by snowy hills. Then she saw what Billy was growling at, and her mouth fell open in surprise. For sitting on a bare, flat stone right at the edge of the water was a tiny hourglass, the very same hourglass that Rage had carried during her whole perilous journey through Valley. But this could not be
that
hourglass, no matter how much it looked like it, because that hourglass had shattered on the shore of the Endless Sea.

This is just a dream,
she thought.

“Jusst a dream,” sneered the slinky, sulfurous voice of the firecat.

“If
you’re
in my dream, then it must be a nightmare,” Rage said coldly.

“Nassty ragewinnoway,” the voice accused.

“Go away,” Rage said crossly. No wonder that Billy was growling. None of the animals had ever trusted the wretched creature, and their instincts had been right.

“Sstupid ragewinnoway,” the firecat said.

“I thought I told you to go away,” Rage snapped.

The air by the dam shimmered and distorted, and Rage squinted her eyes against the hot brightness as the firecat appeared. It was impossible to look at it properly. All Rage could make out was a suggestion of slitted red cat’s eyes, radiant with fury above needle-sharp teeth.

“Firecat bringing warning!” it sizzled at her.

“You ought to warn me about yourself,” Rage retorted, turning away with deliberate rudeness, though she was careful to keep the firecat in the edge of her sight. No telling what it was capable of doing. Billy was still growling and his hackles were up, so Rage kept a firm grip on his collar. He might get burned if he attacked.

“Sstupid dogboy,” the firecat hissed. “Why sstaying him in that sstupid shape?”

“He can’t be a boy in my world,” Rage said coldly. “Go away, or I will let him bite you.”

“Wizard needing ragewinnoway,” the firecat snarled urgently.

Rage pointed at the hourglass. “Have you managed to trap him again? How clever of you! Where am I supposed to take him this time? Not to the shore of the Endless Sea again? Maybe to the bottom of the bottomless ocean? Or to the next-to-last star?”

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.