Winter Door (9 page)

“What about the bike-shed roof?”

“It was snowing. By the time the police showed, there were probably no footprints. They’d have thought it was the snow buildup that broke the Perspex.”

Logan nodded, frowning. “You know, I’ve been thinking of those things a lot. Maybe they weren’t boars or wolves but some sort of hybrid. They could be mutations caused by experimental chemicals dumped illegally into the high mountains out of helicopters. Maybe those things have been living up there for generations with no one ever knowing until now, and the weather is bringing them down.”

“Sort of like teenage mutant ninja beasts?” she asked.

Logan looked angry for a moment, then he laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is pretty wild.” He stopped suddenly and she saw that he was staring at the
Librarians’ Recommendations
shelf. “I remember that book. It was about these four kids who went through the back of a wardrobe to another world.” Rage saw that he was looking at a battered copy of
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
which she had read with Mam a few years back. “I really liked it,” Logan went on, almost dreamily, “but I never knew what happened in the end because one of the mothers was reading it, and I went back to the home before she got to the end. I didn’t mind about leaving, but I minded about not getting to the end of the book.”

“Why didn’t you get it out and finish it yourself?” Rage asked. Logan made no response, and she glanced at him curiously, only to find that he was still staring at the book cover. His red face reminded her of what he had shouted the previous night.

“You really
can’t
read,” she said softly.

He turned on her then, fury, misery, and humiliation in his face and eyes. On any other occasion, she would have shrunk from that look, but now she just held his gaze with her own, much as she might have held him up with her hand if she saw him falling. It felt like that. Like he was leaning his full weight against her. Then all at once he pulled back, turned on his heel, and stalked wordlessly away.

Rage stared after him with pity and exasperation, wondering if the fledgling friendship was over as suddenly as it had begun. She was surprised at how disappointed it made her.

The bell rang again, but Rage decided to stay in the library. Everything was so chaotic, she doubted that anyone would wonder where she was. She took a couple of heavy books from the
Atlas
shelf, carried them to her alcove, and then opened one on her lap. She wanted to think about her dreams and her supposed ability to draw people into them. She had made up her mind that the person to summon would be the witch Mother, Rue. She tried to focus her mind, but the heat in the library was making her sleepy. She struggled against it for a little, then gave in with a sigh, letting her chin drop onto her chest. She was not conscious of slumping sideways, but the book stayed in her lap. A little later a teacher who passed by noted the book and bent head and tiptoed away without coming close enough to see that Rage was sleeping.

Rage was standing on a flat, snowy plain surrounded by a dense, snow-covered forest of dark, spiky trees. She was too close to the trees on one side of the clearing to see anything beyond them, but the other way, she could see mountains beyond the tree line. It was impossible to tell what time it was because there was not the slightest glimmer of moonlight or starlight to offer a clue. The snow gave off a pale glow that bestowed an eerie air to the scene. This was heightened by the lack of animal or bird sounds. The air was utterly silent, unbroken by a sigh or creak from the trees, as if they had been frozen to stony stillness. The air was icy to breathe, and she shivered in her thin school uniform and sweater. “I don’t remember ever feeling cold in a dream before,” she muttered.

Her voice sounded very loud, and she had the uneasy feeling that she had exposed herself dangerously by speaking. She was so caught up in the brooding atmosphere that it was some moments before she noticed a gray-cloaked figure making its way across the snowy expanse toward her. It was impossible to see a face, but as the person came close, there was something familiar in the long, purposeful strides. Then Rage recognized the witch Mother, Rue. But how old she had grown! Her raven’s-wing hair was streaked with pure white. There was a web of lines about her eyes and mouth and stiffness to her movements. The little winged wild thing, Puck, was hurrying in her wake. He, at least, did not look a day older than when she had last seen him.

“It is good to see you, Child Rage,” the witch woman said in her stern, lovely voice.

Rage curtsied awkwardly, then said with uncertainty, “I don’t mean to be rude, Mother, but are you real?”

Rue laughed. “I am and so are you, Child Rage, and so is Puck here, by the by, for I suppose you must be wondering about him as well. I would have come alone to meet you. Indeed, I intended it but he—”

“I will attend you, Lady,” the little man interrupted stubbornly.

Rue sighed. “So it seems, and whether I desire it or not.”

Rage hardly heard the exchange, for she was trying to think of a way to ask how the woman had come to age so much. “Has a lot of time passed since I left Valley?” she finally asked.

Rue smiled wryly. “Time has passed, as it is wont to do, even in Valley, but not as much as you may think to look at me. It is three years since you left us by the count of time in your world.”

“Three
years
!” Rage cried in disbelief. “It’s only been a few months since I left there.”

“You mean since you left
here,
” Rue said, making a gesture with her long, thin arms that encompassed the forest and the mountains. Rage shivered and Rue looked concerned. “You are half frozen. Puck?”

The little fairy man produced an enormous cloak out of a tiny waist pack, and he flew up to swirl it around Rage’s shoulders. It was a lovely thing: silvery gray as a dawn sky after rain, light as a cobweb, silken to the touch, and amazingly warm. All at once Rage was struck by something that the witch woman had said. “What did you mean, ‘since I left
here’
?” Rage asked.

“Since you left Valley,” Rue said, a line between her brows. “Where we now stand.”

“I don’t understand….”

“In your world, you are dreaming, but here you are real enough. What you have done is called dream-traveling. Only part of your self is here, and it will remain here until you wake in your own world.” Without waiting for a response, Rue went on briskly. “There is much to say before you leave, but we must not stay in the open like this.” She glanced about before setting off back the way she had come. Rage followed her to a small clearing in the midst of the trees. A small, pale green silk tent was under the branches of an enormous tree. Rage sat beside a small fire that blazed cheerfully. Tapestry cushions lay atop split logs arranged about the campfire.

Three seats,
Rage noted.

“You were expecting me,” she murmured.

“Did I not say so?” Rue asked with faint impatience.

Puck fussed with a pot of water that had been suspended over the fire and a teapot. His mistress seated herself opposite Rage. The play of flame-glow highlighted the deep grooves on either side of Rue’s nose as she began to speak. “You asked if this was a dream. Better if you had asked if it is a nightmare. You see this dull gray light? This is day in Valley now, and a time may come when this seems bright. You see, the sun cannot shine through the storm clouds that fill the sky. It is so long since we have seen it that I feel that true sunlight was a kind of lovely dream.”

“But why?” Rage asked. “What has happened?”

“Almost a year ago in Valley time, the firecat opened a world gate to an unknown land and winter began leaking through it. The firecat claims to have created the gateway, which we call the winter door, but it has not the power for such an undertaking. First winter came to the wizard’s castle and Deepwood. Then it flowed to Wildwood. You have just walked upon the frozen heart lake.” There was real pain in her face. “Now the River of No Return begins to freeze, and although Fork resists, its powers are limited. It is weakened by the fear and anxieties of its inhabitants. Wildwood and the castle are resisting, too, as best they can, but Fork is the last stronghold. Once it fails, the magical waters in the caverns beneath the land will begin to freeze. When they no longer flow, Valley will cease to be.”

“Don’t say that!” Rage cried. It was too dreadful to return to Valley, after longing for it, to discover that it was again in danger of destruction. “But where is the wizard? Can’t he do something?”

“He is not in Valley,” Rue said. “He left some time ago.”

Fury rose in Rage’s heart. “How convenient for the wizard that he should decide to travel when Valley is in such terrible trouble. What a fearful coward he is not to stay and try to help!” she said.

Rue shook her head. “You are mistaken, Child Rage. The wizard sought to close the gate using all and many magics, and then one day he said he must go through the gate to learn how it had been created, for the more he examined it, the less it seemed like a proper world gate.”

“The wizard went through the winter door?”

Rue accepted a cup of steaming tea from Puck. “He did.”

“Alone,” Puck muttered hotly, bringing a flowered teacup in its pretty saucer to Rage, who was glad to curl her fingers around the scalding heat of it. “He had to do it alone, did he not? All alone and by himself, though he had agreed to be part of an expedition,” the little man added fiercely. He turned and stumped away. Rue sighed.

“How long ago did he go?” Rage asked.

Rue’s eyes looked into hers. “Nine months ago.”

“Are you sure he didn’t just go somewhere else?” Rage asked in a voice hard as stone to her ears. “Did anyone
see
him go through it? Maybe he only pretended to go through and then went off somewhere else.”

“It is not the place of a child, even one who has done as much as you, to judge as a liar and a coward the one who created Valley,” Rue said in reproof. “Since his return, he worked tirelessly to repair the damage that was done here.”

Rage wanted to say that she had every right to judge the wizard, given that he was her great-uncle and responsible for turning his own brother into a monster who had crushed his poor wife and all but destroyed his children. But thinking of her own world brought a new thought, one so awful that it quenched her anger. “Is it possible that this enchanted winter could have begun to leak through into my world?” Rage asked.

The witch woman whitened. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know, but winter in my world is supposed to be over, only it hasn’t ended and everyone keeps saying how freakish and unnatural it is….”

“I must consult with Guardian Gilbert,” Rue said decisively.

“
Guardian
Gilbert,” Rage echoed, wondering if she had misheard.

The older woman nodded briskly. “He who was once known to you by the name Goaty. He remained with the wizard after their return from the shore of the Endless Sea and became his apprentice. His doubts and procrastinations were the cause of his many errors in the beginning, but in time he became the wizard’s primary helper. Unfortunately, the loss of the wizard seems to have set him back.” She sighed.

“Goaty.” Rage shook her head in wonder. “What about the others? Elle and Mr. Walker?”

“Mr. Walker is now Prince Walker of the little folk. He dwells with them chiefly in the caverns beneath Fork. The little folk guard the waters against those who seek to use them as did the Lord High Keeper, curst be his name.”

“
Prince
Walker!” Rage tried to imagine Mr. Walker as a prince but could only think of the snappy, high-strung little Chihuahua that he had once been.

“He had to be made a prince so that he could pledge his troth to the king’s daughter,” Rue continued. “Sadly, Princess Feluffeen died a year past in a plague that came through the winter door.”

“Princess Feluffeen?”

“You met her. She preferred to be called Kelpie. She and Mr. Walker were wed.”

“Kelpie died?” Rage murmured. A vivid picture came to her of the tiny smiling woman who had led them to the Place of Shining Waters, with her catsuit, high-topped boots, and cloud of pale hair floating like spun sugar about her delicate ears.

“It was tragic, truly,” Rue said. “The wizard vanquished the plague, but many died first. The old king was among the last, though I believe he died as much of grief as sickness. Prince Walker became the leader of the little people in his stead and by his dying decree.”

Rage was saddened by this list of woes. “He’s not the king, though?”

The witch Mother shook her head. “He refuses the title. He says his daughter will be king someday.”

“He has a daughter!”

“Her name is Nomadiel. She was a babe when her mother perished.”

“Oh, how sad,” Rage said, her thoughts flicking painfully to her own mother. “But surely she would be a queen if she is a girl?”

“The fairy folk have only kings, although these may be male or female.”

Rage shook her head again. “And Elle?”

The witch woman smiled briefly. “The Lady Elle is an elusive soul whose heart leads her most often to the wildest parts of Valley. If she did not visit Guardian Gilbert regularly and attend council meetings, I think we should have seen little of her.”

“Elle goes to
council meetings
?” It was hard to imagine the impetuous Elle doing anything so tame and rational.

“She attends them in order to take part in the discussions and to vote upon matters concerning all of Valley,” Rue said. “She was appointed to the council because, as an outworlder, she sees things differently than those of us born in Valley.”

“Then I suppose she is wandering in the wilderness now,” Rage said wistfully.

“That was where the Lady Elle preferred to be, but since this fell winter began, she bides in Fork. In truth, I think that she is the reason that Fork is able to resist the winter. But even the sunny courage of the Lady Elle will not hold off the drear winter from Fork forever.” The witch woman looked directly at Rage. “But tell me more of this winter in your world. Are you sure that it is not merely an unusually harsh winter?”