The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox (19 page)

Ed ran up, red-faced and puffing. “Neil? Neil, are you OK?”

“Hey, Ed. I'm OK. I just feel, you know, like there's still insects all over me.”

“Uh, there are. Here, let me…”

“Agh! Agh! Get 'em off! Get 'em off!” I yelled.

“Stop struggling!”

“Ow! Stop hitting me!”

“Sorry!” Ed said. “They're really dug in there!”

“Agh!”

“Still, wow, did you see that? Did you see it? Wow! I didn't know your dad could do that!”

“Neither did I!”

“I'm glad I wasn't in there, though. I followed you here and rang your dad. Didn't expect him to get here so quick.”

“Is that it? Is that all of them?”

“All the big ones anyway. The smaller ones should wash off in the shower.”

“OK, Ed,” Dad said. “Take us home.”

“OK. Uh, couldn't you just, y'know…” He wiggled his fingers in the air.

“I'm not sure I could bring you with me. Alive, anyway. I sent Neil off on his own and now I'm going to make very sure he gets back safely. How long is the drive?”

“Two hours, give or take,” Ed replied.

“That's too long. Could you manage it in an hour and a half?”

“Uh, well…”

“Go as fast as you like. No one,” he said, “is going to stop us.”

“It
is
a racing truck,” I reminded Ed.

“OK,” Ed said. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“Come on then,” Dad said.

“Dad, wait!” I cried.

“What? Why?” he asked.

“Dad, I found them. I found the Shieldsmen! They're the people in the woolly sweaters. You have to bring them with us! They've been waiting so long, and we need them!”

Dad looked around at the ring of men and women in dirty sweaters who had gathered to stand sheepishly in a half circle before him.

Weisz came forward with his head bowed and his arms by his side. “Weatherman,” he said. “We stand ready to serve.”

“Shieldsmen,” Dad said. “Did you serve my son by allowing him to be arrested?”

The Shieldsmen bowed their heads even further in shame. I opened my mouth to defend them, but stopped. I guess it was Dad's call, in the end.

“Still,” he said. “We all make mistakes. There is a great joy in me to call your exile ended. Come back with me now and guard my fort once more.”

Weisz's face lit up with joy. The Shieldsmen grinned and thumped each other's shoulders.

“We'll never fit that lot in the truck,” Ed said.

“You,” Dad said, pointing at a policeman sitting on the ground with his legs splayed, pulling ivy out of his hair.

“Yes?” he said. “Oh, no, please leave me alone. I'll be good! I'm sorry we arrested him, I really am!”

“Get me the keys to one of those vans,” Dad told him.

The policeman scrambled to his feet and ran off. He came back about a minute later and held a set of keys out to Dad. They jangled as his hands shook. “It's OK. You don't have to bring it back. We'll say it was stolen. It's the van that all the masks and things were put in. Please don't come back.”

“I won't,” Dad said. “Thank you.”

“Er, when can we have our police station back?”

Dad shook his head. “I'm sorry. It's not your police station anymore.”

The last few people had run or crawled outside. Grass and earth and trees and water were all squeezing out through the doors and windows now. Crashing noises came from inside as the floors collapsed. Then the roof caved in, and a great halo of insects swooped out and around. Green shoots burst upward.

Dad gave the keys to the Shieldsmen, who went looking for the van. We followed Ed to where he'd left the truck.

“We'd better make a bit of haste,” Ed said. “I think you just declared war on the police.”

“They declared war on me first,” Dad said. “And they lost.”

 

CHAPTER 20

LIZ

I had my bow in my hand, arrows in my belt, war paint on my face, and crow feathers in my hair. The heat was sticky, and the sky was bright, even though the sun had gone down. I was standing on the phone box and I was pointing an arrow at AtmoLab, hoping that I wouldn't have to find out whether I was mean enough to shoot at what seemed like a bunch of perfectly nice and friendly people. Mum was standing in front of the door of the phone box with her arms crossed and an expression on her face scarier than a hundred arrows. Owen and Neetch were chasing each other around and around the phone box and Mum's legs, laughing and jumping. Ash and Hazel stood side by side on the wall.

After Dad left, AtmoLab had carried on, attaching their computers to things that measured the wind, the humidity, the temperature, and a hundred other things that the computers calculated and processed and analyzed. They had pointed lights and cameras and sensors and detectors at the phone box. Clive had opened a small metal hatch on the road beside the phone box and pulled out a cluster of wires and cables, snipping and splicing and pulling and twisting and untangling.

They were reconnecting the phone line, and they seemed like perfectly lovely people, but they were the enemy and had to be stopped. Or at least they had to be stopped until Dad was ready for them. I had screamed my best Shieldsman battle cry at the top of my voice and charged and leaped over the wall and run around with my bow and arrow screaming and screaming like a crazy dangerous person until I had chased them all away. Then I climbed on top of the Weatherbox and told them that if any of them took one step nearer I'd skewer them.

“We're here to help,” Clive said with a nice, friendly smile, waving his hands up and down.

“That's right, lass,” Bob added. “Just let us in and we'll have this phone box back working in no time!”

“Shiny boxes and phoney roots,” said Hazel.

“Blunt little knives,” said Ash.

“Uh,” said Bob. “They're called screwdrivers.”

“Roots carry the signal,” Hazel said. “Not the weather.”

“The Weatherman is the Door,” said Ash. “Not the box and not the lake.”

“When is a Door not a Door?” asked Hazel.

“When is a Weatherman not a Weatherman?” added Ash.

“When is a Weatherman not a Door?” remarked Hazel.

“Oh God! Oh God, what are you doing? Get away from there! Get away now!” Tony Holland interrupted, running down the path and out through the gate. He tripped and stumbled to a stop in front of Mum.

“Look,” he said. “Don't do this. You must have some idea what she's like. You must! You have to let them work!”

“No,” Mum said. “We don't. Go away, all of you. Go away while you still can.”

“Look,” Tony said again, moving his arms and bobbing his body up and down like Owen when he's nervous or excited. He kept turning his head one way and another, looking up and down the road as if Mrs. Fitzgerald was going to come flying down on us any second now. “Listen, I'm begging you. Just let them reconnect the line and we'll be gone. I can put this behind me and forget this whole thing. My whole life has been on hold, you know? My whole life! Can you imagine? Can you imagine what it's like? Course you can't. You've no idea. None. I want my life back!”

“You don't really think she'll let you go, do you, Tony?” Mum said, looking at him as if he were a dog that had just made a mess on the carpet.

“She promised!” he said. “She said once it was working again I could go home and she'd never bother me again! I want to go home! And you won't stop me!”

“I'm not stopping you, Tony. Go on. Go home, if you want.”

“I can't! You don't know what she's like! You don't know what she can do—so shut up, right! Shut up and go away!”

“Don't talk to my mum like that, you rotten lying coward!” I shouted, nocking an arrow and drawing it back.

He stared up at me in disbelief. “Put that down before someone gets hurt, you stupid little—”

The arrow went past his head. He screamed in pain and clutched his ear. I felt a shock go through me. I hadn't actually meant to hit him. I ignored it and tried to look tough and mean, like a Shieldsman should.

Clive and Bob and Cherie were standing with eyes and mouths wide with shock.

“She'll kill me!” Tony screeched, hands over his ear and blood on his shirt. “She'll kill you, too! For God's sake! Ow!”

He took a step forward, but Mum got in front of him.

“Step back,” she said. “Step back and go home, you great fool.”

Now the three AtmoLabbers were moving to help their boss. I nocked another arrow. Neetch flowed down around the Weatherbox and grew, and all his hair stood up and he bared his teeth and hissed. They all took a step back then. Owen stood beside him and stroked his back.

“You're scaring him,” he said. “You shouldn't scare him.”

“Look,” Bob said. “Nobody wants anyone to get hurt.”

“We're just trying to help,” Cherie said. “Look, Tony's bleeding. We have to call an ambulance.”

“You don't know what you're doing,” Mum said. “You don't know who you're working for and you don't know what it means. You should drop everything and walk away and not look back.”

“GET BACK TO WORK!” screamed Tony. “Never mind them! Never mind me! Forget everything! Fix that line and fix it now or you're fired! You're all fired!”

“There are worse things than being fired,” Mum said.

“Nothing else matters!” said Tony. He was pleading with everyone. “Don't be scared of them and don't be scared of me! Be scared of
her
! She's worse than anything you can imagine!”

“Who?” asked Clive.

“FIX IT!” screamed Tony.

That's when Mum pushed him. She put both hands on his chest and shoved him hard, and sent him sprawling back across the road.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” said Clive. “Have you gone crazy? It's only a phone box!”

Neetch hissed again, raising an outstretched paw and long wicked claws.

“I don't think he likes you talking to us like that,” Owen said.

Mum stood over Tony.

“Get out,” she said. “Get far, far away from here.”

She pointed at the AtmoLabbers, then pointed down the road. “Go.”

“Go nowhere!” Tony roared from all fours. Clive and Bob helped him up and took him over to a spot on the wall, as far away from the Weatherbox as they could get, while Cherie found a first-aid kit and wiped the blood off Tony's ear. I thought I was going to throw up. I lowered the bow, and Neetch curled up on the ground and Owen nestled into him and fell asleep. Mum looked up at me and smiled, and I nodded back down at her because I couldn't quite remember how to smile just then. I squatted down, the bow and arrow held loose in my hands and we commenced to waiting.

Time passed, the sky grew dark, and the air turned cold. There was no wind, not even a breeze. I saw strange clouds rising on the horizon. On all the horizons. To the east, climbing over the mountains, glowing green and sinister; to the west, billowing like smoke, filled with a deep angry red; in the north, beyond the hill, spreading itself wide, a dark rolling purple. And in the south, behind our house, there was a blank gray haze, as if the sky itself were vanishing bit by bit into nothingness.

“Here they come!” said Hazel.

“All the Seasons but one,” agreed Ash.

“Three in the sky. One on the road.”

“And the babby in his bath.”

“Put that down, Liz,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, stepping out of the trees and crossing the road to stand beside the Weatherbox. “You don't need it anymore.”

 

CHAPTER 21

NEIL

Ed drove like a lunatic. He swerved around cars, blew his horn at anyone going under eighty kilometers an hour, went the wrong way down one-way streets, drove on the wrong side of the road, and generally acted like a road hog. If he'd driven like this on the way up I'd have spent the trip under the dashboard. I felt sorry for the other drivers—and occasional pedestrians and cyclists. It must have been terrifying to have a ten-ton truck, driven by a one-ton maniac, bear down on you and then whip past. But mostly, I was looking at Dad.

You can't look at your dad the same way after he's unleashed a little pocket Summer in a police station. You can't look at anything the same, really, but particularly not your dad.

“Dad,” I said. “That was amazing.”

He looked at me, ran a hand through his hair, shook his head, and sighed. “No, it was stupid.”

“But Dad, I—”

“Listen, Neil, what I just did was forbidden. Absolutely forbidden. It means I can't be the Weatherman anymore. I had to do it. I have to get you home as fast as possible, and I'd do it again, but I've played right into Mrs. Fitzgerald's hands. If they weren't going to fire me for the delay with the Weatherbox, they're definitely going to fire me for this. I'll be lucky if they don't do worse.”

“Worse?” I knew the story of the Weatherman who'd destroyed the fort and banished the Shieldsmen and Weathermages. That couldn't happen to Dad. Could it?

“Never mind that now. I have to get you home. I have to get you home before the Seasons assemble over the Door to judge me and appoint a new Weatherman. It has to be you, because otherwise it's going to be her.”

“But, Dad, she's too strong!”

Dad smiled. Even his teeth looked green. “I've become the Summer, Neil. I can't do it for long and I'm only supposed to do it in the direst of emergencies, and I'm going to pay for doing it. But I'm not finished yet.”

“Oh. Wow! Dad, I … I…” I felt slightly ill. Whether it was from Ed's driving or from what Dad was saying, I wasn't sure. It didn't matter. Dad had become the Season. To rescue me. And now Dad couldn't be Weatherman anymore. Because of me. And it was starting to look like I would never be Weatherman, either. Oh. My mouth was dry. My head felt light. I bent over in my seat because suddenly my stomach was cramping. Dad patted me gently on the back.