Winter Door (36 page)

Her uncle muttered something and then, opening his eyes, turned his head to look at her. One of his eyes was swollen and blackened, and the whole of that side of his face was abraded and bloody.

“Rage…,” he mumbled.

“Shh. You have to keep still. Logan’s gone for a rope. But we shouldn’t move because this ledge is crumbling.”

His eyes widened with realization. “Rage…why did you climb down?…Should have gone for help….”

“You were slipping off the edge.”

“It doesn’t matter if I fall,” her uncle said wearily.

“It
does
matter!” Rage said. “It matters to me and it would matter to Mam. She’s been waiting her whole life for you to come back.”

“Mary…” Her uncle said the name with a tenderness that bordered on sorrow.

“She loves you and she needs you to help her be brave enough to live,” Rage whispered. “She needs both of us.”

Her uncle did not answer, and she worried that he had lapsed into unconsciousness again. But at least he was still.

Rage’s arms began to ache and then they grew numb. Where on earth was Logan? For a while, her mind wandered. She thought of the Stormlord offering his hand to Elle.

“Rage!”

It was Logan, and there was a note of panic in his voice. Rage was stunned to realize that she had almost fallen asleep. She sat up and, to her horror, she felt the whole ledge give slightly. Only then did she realize that this was not a ledge of rock as she had thought, but a clump of earth dangerously weighed down by rock, by snow, and now by them.

Rage looked up and called, “Logan, did you get the rope?”

“I did,” he called, and she saw it snake down. “But there’s nothing to tie it on to.”

“Just hold it. I’ll tie it around my uncle. You pull it taut and take his weight so I can climb up. Then we’ll pull him up together.”

“All right,” Logan said.

Rage looped the rope about her uncle, but as carefully as she moved, pieces of the ledge kept breaking away. She was almost crying with frustration by the time she had managed to knot it under his arms. Now she could only hope that the knot was strong enough—not to mention the rope—and that the two of them would be capable of pulling up an unconscious man. Logan was strong, certainly, but her uncle was a tall man for all his thinness, and there would be little purchase on the snowy ground.

Rain was falling again, and her hair was plastered to her cheeks. Her clothes were wet through.

“Take his weight!” Rage called up. Logan shouted something. She could not make it out, but the rope grew taut. Slowly she released her uncle and rose carefully to step over him.

In one terrible instant, the ledge was crumbling and pulling away. Rage screamed and grabbed the rope just as the whole ledge fell away.

There was a cry overhead as Logan took their full weight. Dangling helplessly in midair, Rage’s heart beat like a maddened bird against her chest.

“…can’t hold you both!” Logan yelled. Rage heard the strain in his voice. The rope slipped, and Rage bit off a cry, desperately scanning the sheer rock face, searching for the slightest handhold.

“Rage!” Logan screamed.

They slipped another few inches.

“In my pocket…knife…” Rage stared into her uncle’s face. “Climb over me and cut me loose.”

“No!” Rage said. “No. I won’t let you die.”

Then, miraculously, they were being pulled upward. In lurching increments, they rose toward the rim of the gorge. Then hands were reaching down to haul them up. Two sets of hands.

Rage gaped in bewilderment to find that it was Billy dragging her up and into his arms.

Billy in his human shape.

“How can you be…?”

“Later,” Billy said. “We need to get the two of you back to the farm.”

They used Logan’s coat as a stretcher and dragged Uncle Samuel to the car. To Rage’s relief, Logan could drive. It was a difficult, slippery trip through the continuing drizzle, but Logan managed to get them right up the hill road and into the drive of Winnoway. The power was still off inside, but they stoked the fire and wrapped her uncle in blankets.

“It’s better to let him get warm slowly,” Rage said when Logan suggested they put him in a hot bath.

“He has really good snow gear but it’s still a miracle that he survived that many days lying on a ledge,” Logan said, staring down at her uncle as he rested peacefully in the makeshift bed. “It looks like he only got a few cuts and bruises and that broken arm.”

“We were lucky you were here,” Rage said.

“I would never have managed to pull the both of you up without Billy,” Logan said. “And I’m glad my fingers were so stiff, or else I might have let go of the rope altogether when he just appeared like that. I nearly died. One minute he’s a dog going crazy barking and howling and the next minute he’s helping me with the rope.”

“I don’t know how it happened,” Billy said. “I just wanted so desperately to be able to help. To have the hands I needed. And when the rope slipped, it was like something in me burst and…well, I was the way I am now.”

“Maybe
that
was what Bear meant about you being able to change if you wanted to badly enough. Maybe she didn’t just mean that you had to want it as you came through the night gate, but anytime. Do you think you can change back to a dog again?”

Billy nodded, a dreamy look on his face. “I think I can. It’s like finding out how to make something work. I feel as though I only have to want to do something doggish badly enough and it’ll happen.”

“So I guess you’re like a weredog,” Logan said. Rage stared at him. “I mean, he can change shape, so he’s like a werewolf, only he’s a dog.”

Rage started to laugh. It was a good laugh that filled her with warmth and relief. She was glad to be alive and safe and even happier to know that Billy would be able to talk to her anytime now.

She leaned back in her seat and stretched. “Now all I have to do is convince Uncle Samuel to see Mam.”

“In a proper fairy tale, it would be worth a wish,” Logan said.

They all laughed as, outside, the steady rain melted away the snow.

“So, are they still moving Mary to Leary?” Mrs. Johnson asked. She was slicing scones while Rage buttered them. Billy sat below the table watching them determinedly.

Rage smiled to see her uncle take a scone and pass it furtively under the table to Billy, who wolfed it down happily before reassuming his famished expression.

“They have to eventually because of the operations,” Uncle Samuel said, “but given that she’s turned the corner, they’re not going to do it until summer now. They say there’s no need because she can improve here as well as there.” He poured himself a cup of tea.

“That’s wonderful news,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’m sure it did her a world of good to see you. I never did think those doctors were right in keeping you two apart.”

“It was Rage who made the doctors change their minds,” Uncle Samuel said. The look he gave Rage was so warm that she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “She insisted I go, and she bullied those doctors so much that she cowed them into obedience.”

“I didn’t!” Rage gasped, laughing.

Her uncle chuckled. “Well, something like that. It’s funny, though. The doctor might have been harder to convince, but it seems as if Mary had been dreaming about me. She was tossing and turning and calling my name in her sleep. I suppose seeing the real me was a bit of an anticlimax.”

“Silly man,” Mrs. Johnson chided. “There’s such a difference in Mary since you’ve been visiting. It did my heart good to see her last weekend sitting up in her bed and smiling in her pretty pink nightie. And after such a bleak and awful winter! How lovely that the weather changed just as she was feeling better. As I said to Henry, there’s something to be said for the healing power of sunshine and fresh air.”

“How is he, anyway?” Uncle Samuel asked, sipping at his mug. He was holding it in his left hand because of his broken arm. Fortunately, the arm was on the mend, and his black eye and grazed cheek were barely noticeable now. Both Rage and Logan had made light of their rescue of him, and he had gone along with it. Privately, though, he had told them both that he knew they had saved his life, embarrassing all three of them dreadfully. Now they didn’t mention it at all, but it was a lovely warmth among them.

“You know him,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Grumbling and grouchy as a bear with a thorn in its paw because the doctors insist he’s to stay in bed for another week. But we’ve decided to sell the farm come autumn. We’ll stay on through the spring and summer and tidy the place up a bit for the sale. But it’s more that we don’t want our last memories here to be so dreary. And it’s not just Mary who seems revitalized by the nice weather, is it?”

Rage and her uncle exchanged a grin.

“I do like that friend of yours, Rage. Logan, is it? He seems a nice young man.”

“He’s a good lad,” Uncle Samuel said. “His parents are moving to Leary come the end of the school year, but in the meantime, Logan’ll be up here a bit, doing some work about the place on weekends and school holidays.”

“I heard he’s involved with that acting troupe down at the school,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“He’s very good,” Uncle Samuel said.

“And what about that other lad? You’ve hired him, too?”

Uncle Samuel was midway through a sip of tea. Rage held her breath as she waited for his answer.

“What other lad?” he asked at last, taking another scone and biting into it.

“You must have seen him on your land. A bit older than Logan. A handsome lad. Strong-looking, with a nice, sweet smile. Always goes about with bare feet, though,” Mrs. Johnson said with faint concern. “Someone should warn him about snakes.”

“I think a boy such as the one you describe would probably know what dangers there were, and how to deal with them,” Uncle Samuel said. He was so casual that Rage studied him discreetly, wondering for the hundredth time if he remembered being rescued from the gorge by
two
boys.

“As for who he is, I couldn’t say,” her uncle continued. “But there are a lot of new families around here since the winter. I don’t mind having a neighbor wander about on Winnoway. I never did much take to fences myself.”

“Well, it is good to see new faces, and so many of them young,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Oh, just look at that poor dog. He looks so hungry. Rage, give dear Billy a scone. One won’t hurt.”

Rage obeyed, trying not to laugh as Billy gulped down the scone. She looked up and caught her uncle suppressing a grin, and they both burst out laughing.

“Land sakes!” Mrs. Johnson said, putting her hands on her hips and looking from one of them to the other. “If you two aren’t a pair!” She smiled. “It’s about time there was laughter on Winnoway again.”

Join Rage, Billy Thunder, and their companions in the exciting conclusion to the Gateway Trilogy:
THE FIRECAT

ISOBELLE CARMODY

is the eldest of eight children. Her father died in a car crash when she was young, and she grew up telling stories to her seven brothers and sisters while her mother worked at night. She began the first book in the award-winning Obernewtyn Chronicles when she was fourteen, and won both the prestigious Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award and the coveted Children’s Peace Literature Award for her fourth novel,
The Gathering.
She is also the author of the captivating Little Fur series. Isobelle lives with her daughter, Adelaide, and partner, Jan, a Czech poet and musician. They divide their time between homes on the Great Ocean Road in Australia and in Prague, Czech Republic.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the two loves of my life, Jan and Adelaide, for forcing me to live outside of my head at least some of the time.

Thanks also to my editor, Mallory Loehr, who again reminds me that what is left unsaid is sometimes more powerful and beautiful than that which is said.

Don’t miss Isobelle Carmody’s new series

LITTLE FUR

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The Legend Begins.