Night Gate (29 page)

Billy barked again and sniffed loudly, then went a few steps in the other direction and looked back at her.

“You know where she is? You can smell her?”

He raced off.

“Wait!” Rage cried, and ran after him as he made his way around the side of the hospital to a second building. He stopped and sniffed at a door, then ran a bit and sniffed at another doorway.

“Are you sure you will be able to find her?” she asked doubtfully. He seemed to be sniffing for a long time. He looked back and growled, then barked again. He trotted to a nearby window and looked at her expectantly.

“In there?” Rage asked. He whined before sinking into a crouch and lowering his head onto his paws beside a door that said
NO ENTRY
.
STAFF ONLY
. Rage slipped through it and found herself in a shiny white hall. There was a desk in an alcove, and behind it sat a nurse. Rage’s heart sank. The nurse looked exactly like Mrs. Somersby! Fortunately, she was concentrating very hard on whatever report she was filling in. Rage began to creep along the hall toward the desk, step by careful, silent step, wishing she had some of the witch’s dust.

She froze when the phone on the desk rang, but the nurse took the receiver without looking up. “Somersby. Yes?”

Rage had to force her legs to move.

“
Whose
brother?” the nurse demanded of the phone.

Rage was shaking so hard that it was a wonder she could walk at all, but she was almost past the desk.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” the nurse said in disapproving tones. “How do they know he’s who he says?” A pause. “Incredible! And they believe that?”

Rage was in the first doorway now, but all of the beds in the room were empty. She walked to the next door quickly, now out of sight of the nurse. There were two strange men and two empty beds. She went along to the third door.

“No, she hasn’t woken….”

Rage hesitated, suddenly certain the nurse was talking about Mam.

“No, the doctor was here this afternoon, and he said there is very little chance of her waking now. Her vital signs have dropped, and I think it’s only a matter of time. Have they found the child yet?”

Rage refused to let herself lose heart, because hope was another kind of courage. She looked into the third room. There was a young woman with bandaged eyes in one bed, and Mam, head bandaged, in the other, exactly as pale and still as Rage had dreamed.

Her heart gave a great lurch of love and terror as she approached the bed. Next to Mam, a big square machine on wheels emitted a steady beep. Wires ran from the machine to the bed and were taped to the inside of her thin wrist.

Rage took her hand and shook it very gently. “Mam?” she whispered.

Still there was no response. Outside a dog barked once. Billy.

Rage blinked back tears. “Mam, please wake. I love you. Billy and I need you. So much has happened….” She wasn’t making sense now. Tears were getting all mixed up with the words she wanted to say.

She won’t wake
, the firecat’s voice sneered in her mind.

“What on earth is going on in here?”

Nurse Somersby stood in the doorway, hands on hips. “What do you think you are doing in here? I know who you are, Miss Rebecca Jane Winnoway! Look at you. How can you have got into such a state!” The nurse strode across the room, took Rage’s arm, and began to pull her to the door.

“Mam!” Rage cried, pulling uselessly against the viselike grip. Outside, Billy began to bark wildly.

“What is happening here?” A doctor appeared in the doorway. “Nurse, if you can’t keep control, I’m afraid—”

“This child is a runaway, and her mother is the comatose patient in bed twelve. I’ll just take her out and call the welfare people.”

Rage wrenched her arm free and ran back to the bed. “Mam, I know it hurt you when your brother left. I know sadness has been poisoning you for a long time. But he didn’t leave you. Grandfather drove him away. Oh, Mam, if you don’t wake, it’ll be like you’re leaving me, too!”

“You don’t seem to understand that this sort of thing is likely to harm your mother!” the nurse scolded, dragging Rage away from the bed. “There are rules here. A good girl would obey them.”

Rage grew very calm. She realized that the nurse, like Niadne, believed that rules were there to be obeyed, never questioned. There was no way to argue with anyone who thought like that.

She looked at the doctor. He had talked about keeping control, but his eyes were kind. “Sir, I need to be with my mother. I don’t think a rule that stops me from seeing her can be a good rule.”

His brows lifted. “You are impertinent.”

“Is it impertinent to question a rule that seems wrong to me?”

The doctor blinked, taken aback. “Well, I suppose I see your point, but the rules here are made for the safety of our patients. All of this shouting and struggling…”

“I’m sorry about that,” Rage said sincerely. “I was upset. But I will be very quiet if you just let me sit with her. You won’t even know I’m there.”

The doctor’s mouth twitched. “Yes, perhaps just for a little while.”

Rage resisted the urge to hug him. “Thank you, sir,” she said softly.

“Doctor, really, I must object,” the nurse began.

He shook his head at her. “I think the rules can be bent on this occasion. After all…” He didn’t finish his sentence as he ushered the nurse out, but Rage knew what he meant.
After all, the patient is dying
.

Rage went to the bed and took Mam’s hand again. It felt small and cold. She sat by the bed and began to tell her in a soft voice all that had happened since she had left Winnoway.

She had just got to the part of the story where Goaty was telling her that Billy and Elle had been caught by the blackshirts when the nurse came in. With her was a police officer and a woman in a dark suit who was one of the child-welfare agents who had come to see Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.

She looked down at Mam, who had not moved or fluttered an eyelash.

“Come, Rebecca,” the welfare agent said, gently but firmly. “It is time to go now.”

Rage wanted to shriek at her that she wouldn’t go, that she had to stay with Mam. But she made herself speak softly. “Please, mightn’t I stay with her? They say she’s dying.”

The adults looked shocked, as if by naming death she had said a swear word.

“I really think—” the police officer began, but the doctor entered.

“
Now
what is going on here?” he asked in an annoyed voice.

“Doctor, the police have come for the girl. I called them. I told you she was a runaway,” the nurse said.

The doctor gave her a cool look. “I am sure you were only doing your duty, Nurse Somersby. You may leave now.”

The nurse paled and hurried out, and the doctor turned to Rage. “Child, I am afraid you will have to go with the officer.”

Rage saw there was no point in arguing, because there were rules he had to obey, too, and more rules that the police officer and the child-welfare woman had to obey. She told herself that if she went with them meekly, maybe they would let her come back on another day. But even as the police officer’s hand settled on her shoulder, she had the deep, sad feeling that tomorrow might be too late.

“Officer?” the doctor called.

The policeman turned. “Doctor, I’m afraid the law—”

“Officer, in this hospital, I am the law. Let the girl go.” His voice was a whiplash of authority, and the officer released Rage.

“Come here, child,” he called, and Rage obeyed.

“You see this?” He pointed to the little television screen on the machine beside the bed. “This shows us how your mother is doing. Not long ago, things looked very grim. But right now I think you’ve pulled her some way back from wherever she has been all these weeks, because this little line is doing what we want it to. Now, why don’t you sit down and try to pull her the rest of the way back.”

He drew up a chair. Rage sat in it and took Mam’s hand again. She thought the dark, curly eyelashes trembled on her cheeks.

“Speak to her. Let her hear your voice,” the doctor said calmly.

“Mam?” Rage said softly, hope opening in her heart like a flower. “Mam, I love you. Please come back to me. I need you.”

This time the eyelids definitely fluttered. Then Mam opened her eyes and looked straight at Rage. “My darling, I…I was having the strangest dream. You were in it, and Billy Thunder. You were searching for someone….” Her eyes fell closed again.

Rage looked at the doctor apprehensively, but he only patted her hand in reassurance. “She’s sleeping now. A proper, natural, healing sleep, and I promise you, this is a sleep she will wake from.”

“It’s a queer thing. The same day you ran off, that goat of ours disappeared,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“It’s as if he knew I’d finally called the butcher to come and get him,” Mr. Johnson grunted. “Well, I suppose him and those other dogs will turn up eventually.”

Rage looked at Billy, and his ears twitched—his version of a nudge in the ribs. She hid a laugh in her mug of milk and ate up the last mouthful of pie.

“Have some more, Rage dear,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I’ve baked another one for tomorrow night, when your uncle Samuel gets here. I wonder what he’ll look like after all these years. Last time I saw him he was a teenager, but he’ll be a grown man now. Just fancy him coming back out of the blue like this.”

“Funny, him turning up right now after all these years of nothing,” Mr. Johnson grunted, blowing on his coffee. “He didn’t know anything about the accident until I told him. He was calling from some strange country I’ve never even heard of. Said he’d been doing research and was of a mind to call. Hmph. Wonder what put it in his mind.”

Rage drank her milk and thought she knew exactly what her uncle would look like. He would be tall and tanned. His hair would be as black as Mam’s: the sort of hair that would never lie down and be still. He would wear dark glasses over his amber eyes.

Scroll down for a preview Book Two of the Gateway Trilogy.

Excerpt copyright © 2003, 2006 by Isobelle Carmody

Published by Random House Children’s Books

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?”