Night Gate (4 page)

A huge, shaggy black bear pushed its way out into the open.

Rage froze. She had read that bears have weak eyesight, and she prayed it was true.

The trees rustled again, and a barefoot teenager with straight, toffee-colored hair stepped into the clearing. One lock of hair flopped untidily over his left eye. He brushed it aside with a dirty hand. His other hand rested on the bear’s flank.

Rage almost laughed out loud. Seeing the bear, she had thought for one second that she really had gone through a magical gateway. But the bear must belong to a circus and the boy was its keeper. Before she could call out, the bushes rustled again and out stepped a man the height of a large cat. He looked quite human but for his size and two soft, furled elf ears sticking up out of his pale golden-colored hair, which perfectly matched a silky-looking tail.

“I can’t find her,” the little man told the boy.

Rage couldn’t believe her eyes. “I must still be dreaming,” she whispered.

“I suppose she’ll smell her way to us.” The boy sighed.

The bear creature gave a deep groan and sat back on its haunches in a weary way. Rage saw that it was not a bear after all. Or not exactly. It was the right size but the wrong shape. It was like a bearish dog, or a doggish bear. “I hurt!” it said huskily.

Rage gaped to hear it speak.

“I don’t see what you have to complain about,” the little man told it querulously. “You’ve hardly changed at all. Look at me! I’m completely misshapen. All my lovely fur is gone, my bones hurt, and my nose has shrunk.”

“You don’t
look
horrible,” the boy said kindly.

“I think a person ought to be asked before they are changed,” the little man said, casting an accusing sideways look at Rage.

She took a deep breath and made an effort to stop her mind from reeling. Dream or not, she had to say something. “Hello. I…I’m Rage Winnoway of Winnoway Farm.”

The trio stared at her.

“Did you hear that?” the little man demanded of the other two in his sharp little voice. His ears twitched in agitation.

“She must have hit her head,” the boy said. “A hit on the head can make you very confused. I remember once when a man threw a stone at me and I forgot my name for ages.”

“Amnesia!” the little man said triumphantly, then he gave Rage a severe look. “Have you lost your memory?” he asked loudly, as if he thought loss of memory also caused deafness.

“I’ve not lost anything. I told you, I’m Rage Winnoway of Winnoway Farm,” Rage said, thinking she might as well behave as if the dream were real until she managed to wake up. “What
is
this place?”

“You must know where we are. You brought us here!” the little creature said indignantly. “You even wished for us to be human.”

“I…I what?” Rage asked faintly.

“She’s not really to blame,” the boy protested. “Not completely. After all, haven’t we all wanted to be human from time to time? Haven’t we secretly wished it? To be free? To be able to decide? To be masters of ourselves?”

“I never wished to be human,” the bear creature said heavily. “I fought the gate magic and it hurt me.”

A young woman with very short, sleek blond hair leaped into the clearing. She was dressed in a tan bodysuit belted at the waist and looked like one of the warrior women in Rage’s book of legends. She stretched and then stared alertly about out of deep-set, almond-shaped brown eyes.

“We were looking for you,” the boy said.

“I was trying out this shape,” she answered, turning her beautiful eyes on him. “It’s fast, and it’s strong, and it’s not stiff like my old shape was. Is there anything to eat?”

Rage shook her head, for this last question appeared to be aimed at her.

The young woman appeared momentarily downcast. “That won’t do at all.” She brightened. “Shall I go and look for some food?”

Rage nodded in bemusement at being asked such a question by an adult. The Amazon immediately sprinted away into the trees, and Rage wondered if the denizens of this place were as mad as the White Rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland.

“You should not have let her go,” the bear creature told Rage.

“It’s only right she should have to find us something to eat,” the little man declared. “She started all of this by running off without thinking, as usual.”

“She couldn’t help it,” the boy protested. “It was the smell. It caught hold of her. You ran after it, too,” he added. “It was so interesting! Sly and slinky. Almost a cat smell, I thought. But not quite.”

“It smelled hot,” the little man said, ears twitching back and forward. “But I could have resisted if Elle hadn’t run off like that.”

Rage’s mouth fell open.
Elle?

She looked incredulously at the odd collection of beings. Was it possible that they were the dogs—her dogs—transformed into these
creatures
? The big bear-dog could be Bear, and Billy Thunder might be the barefoot boy in jeans and a bomber jacket; Mr. Walker was the little man in hooded pajamas, and Elle was the Amazon. But how could they have been so changed?

The little man had accused her of wishing for them to be human, and it was true she had wished that just as she stepped through the gate, but she hadn’t really meant it. Besides, they hadn’t become humans. Bear actually looked more wild than she had on the other side of the bramble gate, though she claimed to have resisted the transformation. What if each of the animals had reacted to the magic according to their nature? Mr. Walker might have resisted out of characteristic stubbornness, whereas Billy had admitted wanting to be human sometimes, and maybe Elle felt that way also.

“Bear?” Rage called softly.

The huge animal turned sad, dark eyes on her, and Billy Thunder beamed. “There now. You’ve remembered Mama’s name. Maybe you didn’t hit your head very hard after all.”

“Oh dear,” Rage said faintly, and sat down. Surely everything must be a dream—running away from Winnoway Farm to help Mam, the firecat and the bramble gate and the transformation of the animals. It was a dream. It must be, except that she had never had a dream that felt so true.

“It’s a shock,” Billy said kindly. “But at least you are yourself. I kept falling until I learned how to balance on two legs. It’s easy once you get the trick of it, though. You’ve been asleep for
hours
.”

“Look who I’ve found,” said Elle, coming out from the trees and leading a skinny, depressed-looking young man by the hand. Only he wasn’t a man because he had goat legs. He was, Rage marveled, a faun, like Mr. Tumnus out of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
He even had two elegant horns.

Goaty
, Rage thought, feeling dazed. He would have followed the dogs through the gate. He must have resisted the gate magic, too, just as he always resisted everything.

“Look what has happened to me,” he bleated. “I have become a terrible monster.” He shivered violently.

Billy took off his jacket. “You’re not a monster,” he said gently, helping Goaty into the coat. “You’ve just changed a bit. Now you’re partly human.”

“What on earth are you doing here, anyway?” the little man demanded. “No one invited you.”

Mr. Walker,
Rage reminded herself.
Mr. Walker, as always scolding and worrying at Goaty.

The faun plaited his bony fingers. “I’m sure I don’t know. It’s a wonder I know anything at all. Sleep in a puddle and your brains leak out. Everyone knows that. I’m dreadfully wet!”

“You shouldn’t have followed,” Mr. Walker said. “She never intended for you to come. She shut you in.”

“She did,” Goaty agreed, giving Rage a reproachful look. “She left me behind, the way everyone always leaves me.” His pale eyes widened, and he shuddered. “On this occasion I might not have minded. But then that thing came and undid the gate, and I couldn’t help following. It’s in my nature,” he added apologetically.

“What thing?” Rage asked.

“The hot thing,” he answered, glancing over his shoulder nervously. “I couldn’t see what it looked like exactly. It was very bright and shifty. In the end it flew spitting at me, and I ran from it in terror.”

The Amazon grabbed his arm and began sniffing his sleeve vigorously. She snuffled right along his arm and up to his shoulder. Then she stuck her nose into his armpit, sniffed intently, and gasped. “That’s it! That’s the smell that made me run out the farm gate.” She held Goaty’s arm out to Rage, inviting her to smell it.

Rage shook her head, but Mr. Walker and Billy sniffed.

“The same smell,” Billy Thunder confirmed solemnly.

“Exactly,” Mr. Walker said. “But what does it mean?”

“It’s obvious,” Bear said heavily. “Whatever let Goaty out, whatever lured Elle after it, it wants us here for a reason.”

“No doubt it means to eat us,” Goaty said gloomily, chewing absentmindedly at the end of his pale ringlets. “It had very sharp-looking teeth.”

Rage licked her lips. “I think it was the firecat,” she said.

“The
what
cat?” Mr. Walker asked.

“A…a voice spoke to me before we came through the bramble gate,” Rage explained. “It said it was the firecat, and it told me that the gateway was magical, and on the other side of it was a wizard who could give me magic to wake Mam, if only I did an errand for him.”

“Why would a wizard need your help?” Mr. Walker asked.

It was a good question and one that Rage now wished she had asked the firecat. But she had thought that the voice belonged to someone playing a trick on her.

“What errand?” Billy asked.

“I have to deliver some small thing to the wizard,” Rage answered. But she was remembering how quickly and lightly this had been said, as though the firecat had been pretending that something important was unimportant. She thought of the ring in
Lord of the Rings.
That could be called a small thing, but Frodo had almost died in delivering it to Mount Doom.

“What small thing?” Mr. Walker demanded.

“I…I didn’t ask,” Rage admitted.

Billy and Mr. Walker exchanged a look. Then Billy shrugged. “She had to come if there was a way to help her mother.”

Mr. Walker scowled. “Who says that the firecat was telling the truth about the wizard being able to help her mother? I’ve heard of magic to make people sleep, but not to wake them up.”

“It all happened so fast,” Rage cried. “I was running after you, and then I saw the gateway, and the next minute there was this voice telling me that the only way to save Mam was to go through to the other side! I was upset about Mam, and I thought it was some kind of mean trick. I only went through to prove it wasn’t a magical gateway.”

“Except it was,” Mr. Walker said severely. “You ought to have thought it through more carefully, just in case.”

Rage had the urge to shout that she was too young to think properly about things, but that was stupid. The dogs seemed a lot more judgmental now that they could talk, especially Mr. Walker.

“Where is this wizard, then?” Billy asked gently, sensing she was upset, just as he had done when he was a dog.

“I…I don’t know. But the firecat said it would answer all my questions if I came to this side of the gate,” Rage said, though that wasn’t exactly what the voice had said. “Probably it will come in the morning,” she added quickly, to forestall another pointed question from Mr. Walker.

Billy said they might as well try to sleep while they waited.

“Nice sort of creature this firecat must be, luring us here and then forcing us to sleep in the middle of a forest like this,” Mr. Walker grumbled as they sat under a big tree and settled themselves for sleep.

Rage sat stiffly with her back against a tree, and the others took up sleeping positions similar to their usual animal ones, only instead of Billy trying to lie across her legs, he lay down beside her. Mr. Walker curled into Rage’s lap, and Elle flung herself on the ground beside them. Goaty sat beside Elle and shyly invited her to rest her head on his fleecy lap. Only Bear moved apart, preferring to sleep under another tree.

In a remarkably short time the animals were all asleep, snuffling and snorting. Rage tried to stay awake to think, but before long she drifted off as well.

She was traveling on a train, and suddenly Mam said they must go back to Winnoway.

“Your grandfather is sick and he needs us,” Mam said, but it was she who looked sick.

“What is the matter with him?” Rage asked.

“He is sad,” Mam answered. “That is a sickness, too.”

He is sad and sad and sad,
the train wheels whispered.

The next day Rage woke to Goaty’s volcanic sneezes and to the realization that what had happened was real!

It was raining, though the drops were so fine as to be more of a thick mist. Rage’s coat was clammy with it. Goaty sneezed again and declared that he had a cold, only he said “code” because of his blocked nose.

Shaking and squeezing the ends of her coat, Rage tried to remember everything the firecat had said to her, but a picture of Mam lying still and silent in a hospital bed kept getting in the way.