The Book of Storms (7 page)

“Interesting that you didn't say your children,” said Sammael, his smile slicing the air again. “Who will still exist, although they won't know a thing about you. But your studies? Easy! Gone like that!”

He snapped his fingers in front of his mouth, cutting off his own words. Kalia, gradually coming back to life in the bed of pansies, raised a sleepy head. Seeing that he didn't want her, she let it sink gratefully down again.

Korsakof looked at his own hands, his wrinkled, blotchy old hands with the calluses on the first and second fingers of the right one from holding a pen. The thousands of words that he'd written, all to be gone in an instant. To know that his entire life would be obliterated in one second, that nobody at all would remember him, or be able to use the results of the study he'd devoted his life to—would he be able to go peacefully to his death, knowing that?

He closed his eyes. And in a voice that he'd never heard before, he said, “Who do you want me to kill?”

Sammael didn't smile. Triumph didn't seem to mean a great deal to him.

“A boy who's coming to see you.”

“A boy? As in, a child?” Korsakof's blood fled from his face, leaving behind two scarlet eyes on his cheeks. “I couldn't kill a child.”

“You did a whole lot worse when you sold your soul to me. You've no idea what I'm going to use it for.”

The biggest creature Korsakof had ever killed had been a sheep, back on his parents' farm in Poland. Even that had made his hands shake. His brothers had mocked him. “Hold the knife steady!” they'd laughed. “Better for the sheep! You'll hurt it twice as much as we do, with your shaky-woman hands!”

But sticking a knife into a child? Hitting him round the head? Strangling him?

Korsakof shuddered. If Sammael wanted a stout-hearted assassin, he'd picked the wrong old man.

“Why do you need him killed?” he asked, his voice creaking.

“He's taken something that he shouldn't have. In his hands it's dangerous. I must get it back.”

“Why not just take it off him? If he is only a boy?”

Sammael gave a bitter laugh. “If that were possible, do you think I'd be here?”

Korsakof frowned and looked at the tall figure. In the stories that he knew, this creature was eternal. Sammael ruled the underworld, without beginning or end. How could he need an old man's help to do anything?

But apparently he did. The threat must be serious. And he was the rock upon which Korsakof had built his own life. If Sammael was being threatened, where would that leave the people who had given their souls to him?

“Well? Does that answer your question? The boy must die, and Death won't let me do it myself, so you'll have to do it for me. Try and make it look like an accident and Death might not ask too many questions. Agreed?”

“I would want something in return,” said Korsakof. “More life. Another fifty years, like before.”

“So you could read the Book of Storms a hundred more times and still not understand any of it?” said Sammael.

“I understand it very well,” said Korsakof. “I admit, at first I did not know how to use the book. But now—now I understand more every day, of the Book's true nature, and how it is to be used. Each time I read it, I see further. With fifty more years, I would see into the very
soul
of a storm, perhaps even before that soul knew what it would become.”

Sammael didn't blink. He had his own views on exactly how far Korsakof would be able to see. “Sure. The years are yours.”

“And I want to be able to leave my work to someone,” continued Korsakof. “An apprentice or something. I want that guaranteed.”

“Unorthodox, but accepted,” said Sammmael.

“Give me some proof,” demanded the old man.

Sammael shook his head. “No proof,” he said. “I keep my bargains down to the last letter. That's all the proof you get.”

Korsakof knew he wouldn't get any more out of Sammael. You could tell it, when he stood there before you, his hands as rigid as wax. Whatever he knew, no mere human had ever made him explain anything he didn't choose to. He had his own reasons.

But he also had Korsakof's soul. Which meant that in a way, he was Korsakof's master, although the old man had never once, in the last fifty years, been made to feel like a slave. In fact, the first four decades of his life, before he'd found Sammael and gotten hold of the Book of Storms, had been the time that he now counted as slavery, when he'd had to spend his days working instead of pursuing his obsession with storms. Now, for the very first time, he was being asked by Sammael to do something he didn't want to do.

I shall have to stand up and be counted, he told himself. Each person faces these times of crisis. I shall face mine like the man that I am—it is surely a fair return for all these years of wonder he has given me.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “with extra knowledge, I could even begin to save some of the lives of humans who die in storms. Perhaps hundreds of lives … perhaps this one small life, weighed against all of those, is not so important.…”

Sammael raised an eyebrow and waited.

Korsakof shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “It is a deal. I will do it. Who is he?”

“Good of you to ask,” said Sammael. “You've met him before, actually. Or at least, you've met his parents. They were obsessed with storms, like yourself, to the point where I got really quite irritated with them. However, I think I may have comprehensively cured them of their little hobby. Now it's your turn.”

*   *   *

Then Sammael called softly to Kalia. This time, the lurcher got to her feet unassisted and padded after him, her purple toes bright against the green of Korsakof's lawn.

By the way Sammael walked, slow and swinging, he was in a good mood again. He reached out and caressed the ridges of the dog's skull.

“Panic over, mutt,” he said. “Just took a little persuasion, that's all. I reckon we'll get away with it, if no one blabs to Death about it. But Death looks horrendous these days—I don't think she's seen a hairbrush in centuries. No one talks to her who doesn't have to.”

Kalia pressed her head up to his fingers. He always knew where she liked to be scratched.

“Panic over,” repeated Sammael. “Dead boy, all quiet. Back to the task. Back to the storms.”

He tickled the base of the lurcher's ears and picked away a long piece of straw that had become tangled in her wiry coat.

*   *   *

Korsakof stared after him for a long time as he walked away. The old man could picture every stitch of that long, worn coat in his mind, could almost feel what it would be like to slip his aching old arms into its sleeves. He thought of the years of work he'd put into his map. He thought of a boy who he didn't really care about, and he thought of his wife in the kitchen making bread. She made excellent bread; it was one of the things Abel loved most in his entire life. Although she hadn't even put it in the oven yet, he was sure he could smell the sweet crispness wafting out to him.

It wasn't any good. Abel Korsakof had spent his life chasing one thing. Everything he knew was down on his map. Sammael never made an idle threat.

He stumbled back to his shed, longing once more to be kneeling on that precious paper, sinking down at last as if it were a carpet of thick velvet beneath him. He ran his hands over it, knowing without looking every single word that passed under his fingertips.

And as he stood up once more, feeling his way blindly to the doorway, he tried desperately not to remember the scent of freshly baked bread.

CHAPTER 5

BEHIND THE HEDGE

Working out a way to get to Hopfield was easy. Danny just walked to the railway station and found the timetables stuck to the wall. He hadn't traveled much on his own before, but he did walk to school by himself—there was no reason why he shouldn't walk onto a train and get off again at the other end. It's exciting, he told himself, trying to push away the little voice in his ear that was muttering about strangers and kidnapping and murder.

He sat down on a bench to wait for the train while Mitz slunk away to investigate the mouse situation on the platform. His stomach grumbled, reminding him of missed breakfast and forgotten lunch. Even in the early June sunshine, he was cold; the wind seemed to be wriggling through the fabric of his navy sweatshirt and creeping over his bare skin.

Mum never bought food at railway stations. She said it was too expensive and he could wait until they got wherever they were going. But she wasn't here and he had money in his pocket. There was a kiosk along the platform selling hot pasties. The more he thought about it, the more the smell seemed to waft straight up his nostrils, filling them with the scent of baked pastry and stewed meat.

Danny bought two, ate them in less time than it normally took him to brush his teeth, and sat back down on the bench, feeling a bit like he'd just wolfed down a load of cardboard. His stomach was painfully stretched.

But he'd have his parents back soon. This Abel Korsakof might even help him find them. He was probably some kindly old foreign man who would talk in broken English and give Danny stale biscuits to eat, or tea to drink, which Danny didn't really like unless it had a lot of sugar in it. But that was what old people did. Before she'd died, Gran had always given him milky tea and proper chocolate biscuits with layers of white cream in the middle.

Abel Korsakof might have those kinds of biscuits. He might even make hot chocolate instead of tea, and then go out and find Danny's parents and bring them back again while Danny sat in his house eating biscuits.

That might be the best kind of adventure, thought Danny. He liked adventure stories, but actually it was pretty horrible sitting on a railway platform all alone, feeling a bit sick. At least he wasn't cold anymore. But he had a vague sort of prickling feeling that something might be watching him, from somewhere he couldn't see.

Of course I'll be okay, he tried to tell himself. I'll just shout as loud as I can if anyone tries to grab hold of me. I'll shout so loudly that their eardrums will burst.

The train pulled up. As he stepped up into the carriage he brushed the tips of his fingers against the stick in his pocket to reassure himself that it was still there. He needed it to talk to Mitz, he told himself. No trees, no plants. Just Mitz.

*   *   *

Hopfield wasn't far. Out the window, the streets and warehouses quickly ended, replaced by vast green fields and hills. When Danny visited his aunt's farm, he and his parents drove out along the main road most of the way, and the view from there wasn't that good, hidden away behind hedges. Here, the countryside opened out before him, huge and empty, rolling up toward the sky.

Normally the sight of the hills made him feel small and alone, but for the first time he found himself watching the trees and hedgerows with narrowed eyes. Were they really all chattering away to each other? If he were walking over those fields instead of sitting on a train, would the bushes and grasses be watching him, following his every move?

It didn't matter, he told himself. It was just countryside, that was all. Even if it could think or speak or scream with anger, it still couldn't rise up and come after him.

He forced himself to think about something else. Perhaps Abel Korsakof might give him cake, as well as biscuits? Old people ate cake on days other than birthdays. Danny's friend Paul did too—it must be good to be someone like that who could eat as much cake as they liked. Why hadn't he bought cake back on the platform, when he'd had the chance?

And Danny was still cursing himself for being a slow-witted idiot when the train rolled up at Hopfield.

*   *   *

Danny and Mitz stepped off onto the deserted platform. The station clock said half past five, which was a little worrying. Things should be nearly over for the day by now—Danny should be watching
The Simpsons
, hearing his mum beginning to cook dinner, and keeping himself very quiet so she wouldn't hear him moving, be reminded of his presence, and ask him to help. Instead he was in an unknown railway station, with only a cat for company.

Looking around for somebody to ask the way to Puddleton Lane End, he saw that no one else had gotten off the train at Hopfield. In fact, he couldn't see anybody else around at all. There was no hum from passing traffic, no murmuring from the voices of pedestrians up on the road, only quiet birdsong and the occasional bark of a distant dog.

The station buildings were closed and the cars outside were parked, empty. Danny waited for five minutes, but nobody came. He went up to the road to look for a shop, only to discover that its blinds were drawn, the orange sign hanging in the window turned firmly to
CLOSED.

Mitz, who had been stalking in his footsteps, sat down and gave a few irritated licks at her white ruff. “Where are we going, exactly?” she asked.