Winter Door

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  For more than forty years,...

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Join Rage, Billy Thunder, and their...

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Preview of Little Fur

  Other Yearling Books You Will Enjoy

  Copyright

  For my nephew John,

  brave enough to be gentle

  If human lives be, for their very brevity, sweet, then beast lives are sweeter still. But sweetest of all is the Mayfly day. That life, between sunrise and set, is pure ecstasy.

  For more than forty years, Yearling has been the leading name in classic and award-winning literature for young readers.

  Yearling books feature children’s favorite authors and characters, providing dynamic stories of adventure, humor, history, mystery, and fantasy.

  Trust Yearling paperbacks to entertain, inspire, and promote the love of reading in all children.

  There was a rattle of hailstones against the window.

  Rage looked up, startled, but there was nothing to see. Her own reflection got in the way. She went close to the glass, looking through her shadow. Even the gnarled lemon tree that grew right outside the window was invisible. It was so dark that the glass might have been painted black.

  The window shuddered under another onslaught, and the lights dimmed for a moment. Rage reached up to pull the curtain closed, wishing her uncle were home. He had left a note saying that he had gone out to check the fences and would not be back until late. That meant he had gone to the far paddocks, where the snow had pulled the fences down. Rage shivered. It wasn’t that she was afraid of being alone, but tonight the darkness was so thick that it might have been a black fog or some huge, dark animal prowling the night.

  Rage turned the radio on as she set about washing the dishes. The radio announcer said that it was right on five-thirty p.m. and that the news would be coming up after the next song. Then a singer began to wail about being lonely to the sound of a twanging guitar. Rage dried a plate, thinking wistfully of the dishes she had washed whenever Mam cooked up one of her experimental seven-course meals. She thought of the night at the beginning of last spring when Mam had failed to come and get her from school. The way the headmaster’s shoulders hunched during the call to check with the police. She had wanted to run away from the room and not hear what he would tell her. But there was no use in running away from bad news.

  The news had been of her mother’s car accident.

  Mam was still in Hopeton General Hospital all these months later. When she had awakened from her long and dangerous coma to the amazement of the doctors and nurses, Rage had thought that it would be a matter of weeks before she would come home. But her mother had continued to grow paler and weaker, and now there was talk about moving her to Leary, where the hospital had better facilities and all sorts of important specialists.

  Overhead, thunder cracked and echoed and the music fused into screeching and hissing. Then the radio went dead and the lights went out. Rage groped for the candle and matches that were on the sill in every room, but even as she took them up, the lights came back on. She set the candle in a bottle just the same and laid the matches by it in readiness. This was by far the worst winter since she and her mother had come to Winnoway Farm. In fact, it was the worst winter anyone could remember, according to the radio. Mam loved unpredictable, difficult weather. The only thing she didn’t care for were the sorts of perfect sunny days that most people seemed to spend their lives wishing for. She said there was no mystery in such days. But after this winter, Rage thought that even Mam might yearn for a simple warm day with a bright, clean sky. Rage wouldn’t have bet her life on it, though, because her mother was as unpredictable as the weather she loved.

  The radio gave an asthmatic wheeze and came back to life. The announcer spoke in a fuzzy but serious voice about the dangers of black ice on the roads. Then he quoted statistics about how many car accidents had happened since the winter had begun. As he came to the end of the news, the radio screamed and died again.

  Rage wiped the sink down, wondering if her mother was watching the storm and longing to be out in it. She had a bed by a window in Hopeton General, but the nurses said that she slept most of the time. Last weekend when Rage had visited the hospital, Mam had been half-dazed. Rage had asked the nurse what was wrong with her. The nurse explained gravely that her mother needed lots of quiet and calm, so they had given her medication to make her sleepy and relaxed.

  As usual, Uncle Samuel hadn’t been in to see Mam; he just talked to her doctors. In the car on the way home, Rage had told Uncle Samuel what the nurse had said. That was when he had told her about the possibility of moving Mam to the Leary hospital. He said that there were two more serious operations that Mam had to undergo, one on her spine and one on her neck. But first the doctors needed to know why she wasn’t getting stronger, and they thought it would be better done at the bigger hospital.

  Rage had wanted desperately to tell Uncle Samuel to go in and see Mam. She was sure that if her mother saw her long-lost beloved brother, it would be better for her than a hundred medicines. But the doctors had forbidden any shocks, and Uncle Samuel had told Rage that seeing him would be a shock to her mother, even if it was a good one. After that, there was no point in arguing because Uncle Samuel had spent his whole life rebelling against the things he had been told to do, and he blamed himself for what had happened to Mam. He was now so determined to do what was right, Rage knew she would never be able to convince him that in this case, the right thing might be not following the rules. If only there were someone to advise her. In stories there was always a true friend or an old, wise mentor who told you what to do.

  Rage glanced over her shoulder at Billy Thunder sprawled on the mat in front of the potbelly stove and wished she could ask him for advice. But there was no telling what the big toffee-colored dog thought now. He seemed content to lie by the fire and to tag along after her or Uncle Samuel. There was nothing to show that he remembered the journey to the magical land of Valley, or that he missed his friends who had stayed there. But how could he have forgotten them? The little syrup-colored Chihuahua, Mr. Walker; the tan-and-white bull terrier, Elle; the neighbor’s goat, Goaty; and Billy’s own mother, the enormous Bear? She had thought she knew the dogs well before the firecat had lured them all through the enchanted bramble gate, but only after the dogs’ transformations into part-humans, when they had been able to speak with her, had she understood their true natures. Billy had become the most human, a boy of bright, complicated thoughts and clever ideas. Could he really have forgotten how much he had loved to think?

  Rage got up and went over to sit beside the dog, angling her back to soak up the warmth radiating from the stove. Billy sighed and laid his head against her. Like all dogs, he knew when someone was unhappy, but how much more than that did he understand? She gently scratched between his shoulder blades. He had told her when he was a boy that it was the place a dog most wanted to be scratched because no matter how he contorted himself, he could not reach it.

  “Dogs spend their whole lives with that spot driving them crazy. And humans wonder why they howl at the moon and try to bite the wheels of cars,” he had said.

  Now he gave an ecstatic yawn and sort of melted sideways onto her knee, one big paw winding slowly in the air. Rage smiled and thought she might be
happier if she could just forget all that had happened in Valley, too. Sometimes it felt like she had dreamed it all—her journey in search of a wizard who could give her magic to waken her mother. Except that it had happened, because Billy was the only dog left. He might have stayed in Valley with the others, but at the last minute he had jumped through the world gate after Rage, becoming a dog again. For a while after that, he had been a strangely alert and intelligent dog, and she had thought that he remembered everything and was his new self inside the old shape. But as the months passed, he had gone back to being a simple, sweet-natured, boisterous young dog. Rage had discovered that much as she loved Billy as a dog, she missed the keen mind of his human self.

  A flash of lightning lit the kitchen through the open curtains. Rage counted. It was not long before the thunder crashed, which meant that the storm was approaching rapidly. It was almost seven now, according to the mantel clock. Rage chided herself for wasting so much time daydreaming. Fortunately, her only homework was to read part of a play called A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A troupe of real actors was coming to her school to rehearse and then perform the play. There was an exciting but unconfirmed rumor that some students were going to be invited to perform in it as well.

  Rage got up and found her copy of the play in her schoolbag. She had tried to read it on the bus, but it was written in strange old English, with lots of words she didn’t understand and had to look up. The bus had jolted so much through the snow that she had put the play aside. Instead, she drifted into a daydream of Valley and the little winged man she had met there named Puck, just like the fairy man in the play.

  Now Rage noticed that the playbook was slightly torn. The new librarian would scold her for that. No use saying that Logan Ryder had done it, snatching the book and tossing it into the air. Logan was the school bad boy, but no one would do anything because, short of expelling him, everything that could be done had been done to him, with no effect. Unfortunately, he never did anything bad enough to warrant being expelled. Rage had overheard the music teacher say wearily to another teacher that Logan Ryder was on his fifth family and maybe with luck the next would be in another school district. Rage could not imagine why Logan had been in so many families, but she could well imagine that he wore them out.

  He had never bothered with her until the last two months, when he had taken to hanging around and jeering at her. He was always borrowing the books she returned to the library and then telling her the next day how pathetic they had been. Rage was confounded by the purpose of his bullying. She didn’t mouth at him or sneer at him. She was neither an A student nor dull-witted, and she was no show-off. And yet the way he had looked, she had felt that for some unknown reason he hated her. The memory of his glittering green gaze made her shiver. She glanced out the small side window at the dark, swirling night, wishing again that she could ask someone’s advice. But Mam was too ill, Uncle Samuel too distant, and Billy could no longer talk to her. Then Rage sat up straight and returned to her reading because, after all, wasn’t that one of the lessons that she had learned from Valley: that sometimes no one could help you?

  She had reached a slightly confusing part in the play where everyone was chasing everyone else around in the forest when she heard the front door bang open and shut.

  “A bad night,” Uncle Samuel said in his deep, scratchy voice when he entered the kitchen. He had already taken off his long oilskin coat and boots, and now he unwound the layers of sweaters and shirts. He set them down along the back of the couch as methodically as Rage always pictured him setting up a solitary camp in the jungle all those years he had been missing. He lowered himself into the deep chair by the fire with a sigh. Rage could almost imagine that, hunched in the seat and turned away, he was her sour, silent grandfather.

  “The fences are worse than I thought,” he said. “Can’t wait until spring or there will be nothing left to repair. I’ll start tomorrow if it’s not snowing.” He fiddled with the radio dial.

  Rage put the kettle on and made a pot of very strong, very hot tea. Then she sat down to her homework because she had the feeling that it would annoy him if she scuttled out of his sight every time he appeared. She stayed there for another ten minutes, pretended to yawn, then got up. She poured a mug of the tea and pushed sugar and milk close to the big hand resting on the snowy tablecloth, wishing that she could sit at her uncle’s feet and ask if he had seen storms like this in the jungles.

  As she gathered her books, the radio announcer began to talk about the roads again, speculating about the cause for the extreme weather. Rage murmured that she was going to bed and stood up. From the doorway, she cast one last glance back at Uncle Samuel hunched in the chair, then closed the door quietly between them.

  Billy Thunder had risen with her, and now he nudged at her leg as she set the bag of schoolbooks on the hall sideboard. Rage slipped her feet into her gum boots before opening the outside door to let him out. Standing on the step with her arms wrapped around her, she watched Billy disappear into the dense darkness. Teeth chattering, she opened her mouth to call him back, but a buffeting surge of wind sucked the breath out of her. A few flakes of half-formed snow whirled out of the blackness to land against her cheeks, and suddenly she had the eerie feeling that she was being watched.

  She told herself it was ridiculous to imagine someone peering at her from the darkness, for who on earth could be out in weather like this? Even so, she wanted to go back in, but where was Billy now?

  Suddenly he bounded out of the night, and Rage gave a squeal of fright. The dog gave her a puzzled look as he slipped past her, but she was too shaky to do more than turn and fumble the door open and stagger inside. She leaned back against the closed door and gave an unsteady laugh. When her heartbeat had returned to normal, she checked her books for the next day, and she polished the white salt maps off the toes of her school boots.

  In the bathroom, her eyes in the mirror were still big and dark from the fright she had given herself, but she ignored them as she washed her face and brushed her teeth. On impulse, she opened the other side of the bathroom cabinet and took out a slim bottle of Mam’s homemade violet-petal perfume and sprayed it over her arms.

  In her bedroom, Rage switched on the lilac lamp at her bedside and put on her pajamas. Leaving Billy to arrange himself on the rug, Rage climbed into bed and snuggled down under the covers with a sigh. To her surprise, Billy padded over to the bed and rested his head on the coverlets. His eyes glowed darkly in the light of the lamp as he looked at her. She reached out and patted his silky ears with a feeling of terrible sadness.

  The smell of violets rose from her skin and she blinked back tears. “I love you, Billy Thunder. No matter what form you are in,” she whispered.

  Just for a second, the sharp intelligence was there again. What is wrong? he seemed to be asking.

  She wished that she could tell him and that he could answer her. Oh, no you don’t, she commanded herself, realizing she had almost slipped back into her memories again. She patted Billy and told him firmly to lie down. She closed her eyes and slept, dimly aware of the storm battering the house.

  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 growl
ing 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?”