Winter Door (35 page)

“Did she?” Nomadiel asked him shyly.

“She did,” Mr. Walker said, reaching out to touch his daughter’s cheek. “And violets, too, but only wild ones. I will show you where she used to pick them.”

“I shall be glad to get back to my little tree house in Wildwood,” Puck said grumpily. “Goodness knows what a mess her squirrels have made in my absence.” He was sitting on the arm of the witch Mother’s chair. She reached out a long hand and patted him like a cat. He cast Thaddeus a sly look of triumph that made the witch man laugh and tweak his ear.

“I will go and tell Fork what happened to Elle,” Nomadiel said softly. “I will sing to it of Elle and her great quest through the winter door into the land of darkness. I will help Fork to win its battle against despair just as Elle helped the Null-landers.”

“I will come with you,” said Shona, her eyes shining. “The Lady Elle told us of this magical city and of her great affection for it. She said there were many empty streets and houses. I should like to live in such a place, if it will have me.”

“I will go to the mountains she spoke of, and run with bears and wolves and foxes,” said the boy Lod.

“There will be a place for all of you here,” the wizard said. Then his eyes turned to Rage and Billy. “For you two also, if you wish to remain, but do not decide now, nor even think of it. Gilbert, why don’t you conjure up some more food? Some good honey mead and a very rich chocolate cake would do nicely.”

“Chocolate?” Nomadiel murmured, then her eyes widened as she remembered that this was what she had drunk from Rage’s flask. “Oh yes, a cake of chocolate would be lovely.”

“I will try,” Gilbert said nervously. He stood up. “All right.” He squeezed his eyes shut and lifted both hands and twisted his fingers in a peculiar fluid way. Then he opened his eyes and stared in wonder at the enormous confection he had created. The smell of chocolate rising from the cake made Rage’s mouth water.

“Is it meant to be purple?” Puck demanded.

“Oh yes,” Billy said quickly. “Why, the very best chocolate is that color.”

“It smells heavenly,” the witch Mother pronounced.

“Well done, my boy,” the wizard said.

Gilbert blushed with pleasure.

At last the wizard rose and suggested that they all go out to watch the sun rise.

It had stopped raining outside and the ground was wet and boggy. Great patches of bare ground showed through the snow, and a mist hazed the air. Rage hoped the Null-landers would not be disappointed, but she need not have worried. When a seam of light opened up on the horizon, they began to cheer wildly.

“Oh,” Shona murmured as the mist thinned and grew pink, “I cannot believe that we are here in the summerlands at last.”

Humans and creatures emerged from the castle, and others came out of Deepwood. Then a bird began to sing, and in a moment others joined in. The Null-landers’ faces were entranced. The sun rose at last, a burnished disk of molten orange, saturating the skeins of cloud in red-gold, pink, mauve, lavender, and peach. Then it rose higher, and grew as radiant as Elle’s hair while the sky turned the brightest and clearest of blues.

Rage marveled herself, for it had been so long since she had seen a sky so blue.

“You do not need to go back,” the wizard said softly. “If your mother is too ill to care for you and Samuel has gone away, I can create a door and bring you through to Valley in reality. It will take time and a good deal of magic, but I will do it. You can wait here until your mother recovers enough to take responsibility for you again. I can enable you to visit her in her dreams.”

Rage shook her head. “I am needed back in my own world,” she said at last.

“You have great courage, Rage, and honor, too. Rare things in the human world,” the wizard said.

“Maybe not so rare,” Rage answered, thinking of Logan. “Goodbye, Great-Uncle Peter.”

He blinked and then smiled. “Goodbye for now, Great-Niece Rage Winnoway.”

Rage nodded. Then she turned to Billy. “You could stay here and be human shaped and…”

He shook his head. “Like Elle, I have made my choice. I will stay with you.”

Rage nodded and turned to the wizard. “I would like to go home now.”

The wizard lifted his hand.

The sun-drenched hillside fell away.

Rage did not wake at once. She passed into the dream of snow falling and falling. The landscape seemed vaguely familiar this time. Then she heard the voice calling out for help again. This time she recognized it.

It was the voice of her uncle.

“Help!”

Rage woke to Billy licking her face.

She sat up, and Logan sat up, too, his hair sticking up wildly, making him look like an astonished owl. “What happened?”

“It’s all right. The winter door has been dismantled and most of the Null-landers went to Valley. Elle stayed.” Rage told him briefly what had happened, but she kept thinking of the voice in her dream. Finally, she interrupted herself to say, “You know, what if there was an accident but no one knows about it yet?”

Logan blinked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“My uncle,” Rage said. “What if he had an accident, but no one saw it? That would explain the police saying there hadn’t been any accidents. Maybe he didn’t just leave.”

Logan gave an exclamation. “Come and have a look at this.”

Rage climbed out of her blankets. The room was freezing, which meant the power was out again, or maybe it hadn’t come on. Logan went to the little desk, where two notebooks had been laid out side by side, both open. One was the older stained notebook. The other was the new notebook with the writing ending in the middle of a sentence.

“I’m not much of a reader, Rage, but look. This is the notebook you read, right?” He was touching the new notebook, and Rage nodded. “Well, the words on this page are the same as the words on this page.” He tapped the older notebook. “So here’s the thing. I think the stuff in this new notebook is just a copy of what’s in the other one. So it can’t be about leaving you. It just looked that way.”

“But…” Rage stopped. If her uncle
had
come home when she had been in the hikers’ hut with Billy, he would have gone looking for her. He would have driven round the back of the dam because it would be a lot quicker than walking there. There was an access road that he could have used, and as soon as she pictured it, she was certain that was where she had been walking in her dream. She told Logan what she thought.

“We can’t call anyone since the phone is out, so we’d better go and look, just in case he has had an accident. If he is hurt, there’s no time to lose,” Logan said. Billy gave a bark of agreement. They dressed warmly and ran out into the darkness. It was early morning, but it might as well have been the middle of the night. But one thing had changed.

“Logan, have you noticed?” Rage asked.

“Noticed what?”

“The weather! The air is milder—almost warm. And look how slushy the snow is.”

“It’s like in Narnia after the witch was defeated.” Logan sounded delighted.

The ground was treacherously slippery, but they struggled along as best they could.

“You said he called out for help in the dreams?” Logan panted as they turned off the main road and onto the access road.

Rage nodded, but she thought uneasily how weak the last cry had been.

“If he came back when you were gone, that means he came on Saturday or maybe earlier on Sunday. He would have read your note and come to look for you. That means he might have been hurt for more than a day….” His voice trailed off as he saw Rage’s face.

Rage was thinking that if not for Billy, she would have died unconscious in the snow after her fall. She could only pray that her uncle had stayed in his car. If so, there was hope for him.

After following the access road for some time, Logan suggested they split up. He would continue along the road. She should cut across the hills to the hut and come along the access road from the other direction. “We can cover the ground twice as fast that way. Yell or get Billy to bark if you see anything.”

Rage set off with renewed energy, but she remembered there was a steep gorge in the hills somewhere near. She slowed, hoping it wasn’t snowed over. If so, she might fall into it. Then she spotted it, a dark slit against the snow. Billy looked at her.

“Can you smell for me?”

He flapped his tail, sniffed, then barked excitedly and ran toward the gorge. Rage floundered after him. She stopped well back, knowing that the snow might give the gorge a false and fragile edge. She couldn’t see anything below because of how narrow and steep it was. If not for Billy barking wildly and pawing at the ground, she would have turned back. Instead, she took a deep breath, unbuttoned her coat, and put it on the ground. Then she lay on it and slithered forward until she could see over the edge. Her breath caught in her throat because about ten feet down a man lay spread-eagled near the edge of a wide ledge.

“Uncle Samuel,” Rage whispered.

Billy barked and the figure on the ledge moved. The movement made him slip a little, and she realized that the ledge must slope downward. Beneath him lay a sheer drop to hard rock. If he fell, he would die.

“Uncle Samuel! Don’t move!” Rage shouted. “I’ll go and get help.” But before she could turn away, she saw the figure move and slip again. Now one foot hung over the drop.

She did not dare leave him. “I have to get down there,” she told Billy as she crawled back from the edge of the gorge and stood.

Billy barked frantically at her.

“I’ve climbed down here before with Mam,” she said fiercely, ignoring the fact that it had been a clear and perfect summer afternoon when they had scaled the rocky wall. She found the place where there were rough handholds and brushed the snow away. “There’s a ledge down at his level. I’m going to climb to it now and see if I can reach Uncle Samuel from there. You go and get—”

Billy growled.

“All right,” said Rage, “then bark until Logan hears, but go away a bit, because I’m afraid you’ll make Uncle Samuel move and slip again.”

Billy gave a soft bark and pawed at her leg. She held his eyes for a moment, reading the desperation in them. She knew he would take her place if he could, instead of simply barking for Logan.

“It will be all right,” Rage said firmly. She eased herself over the edge.

Rage had just reached the ledge when a warm rain began to fall. It washed the snow off the handholds, making them easier to see but slick and treacherous. She edged sideways carefully, feeling the ledge beneath her feet grow more and more narrow. She could see her uncle’s face now and bit her lip in alarm at the splash of red on his temple. She reminded herself that he had moved, so he was alive. The main thing was to get to him and stop him from moving any closer to the edge.

“Rage!” Logan cried in horror from above.

She didn’t dare look up, sprawled as she was against the face of the rock and reaching with one leg across the gap from her ledge to the one where her uncle lay.

“Rage, come back! I’ll go and get help!”

She ignored him, concentrating on stretching the little more that was needed. At last, she felt the tip of the other ledge beneath her toe. Logan had fallen silent. She leaned farther over until she felt that her foot was secure; then, very carefully, she transferred her weight to it.

Slowly—for the ledge that her uncle lay on was both sloped and crumbling in places—Rage straightened her body, bringing her other foot over the gap. Now she was standing directly above her uncle. He was frighteningly still, and she prayed that he would stay that way for both their sakes. She stepped over him and put her foot onto the flat, wide place by his outstretched arm. The strange angle of the limb suggested it was broken. Again she transferred her weight, and finally, trembling with strain, she lowered herself carefully into the space between her uncle’s sprawled body and the wall of the gorge. Pressing her back to the stone, she placed her feet carefully on rocky juts to give herself leverage and reached forward to wrap her arms around her uncle. His skin felt cold to the touch.

Rage looked up, blinking against the diminishing rain. Logan’s head was outlined against the gray sky. The edges of the clouds glowed, and Rage knew there was sunlight somewhere behind them.

“Logan, his car must be somewhere. There will be rope in the back!”

Logan shouted something in response that she couldn’t hear, then he was gone. Billy barked once: his way of telling her that he was still there.

Rage settled herself more comfortably, knowing that they would probably have to wait for some time. She had been hot from the climb, but now that she was still, a chill settled on her. She regretted leaving her coat behind in the snow.

Her uncle moved again, and as Rage gripped him, he slid a bit farther down the ledge. Now both his feet were hanging over the drop. She knew that if she had not been hanging on to him, he might well have slid the rest of the way.

“Please don’t move again, Uncle Samuel,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I’m sorry I thought you would go away and leave me like you left Mam. Please lie still or we’ll both fall.”