The Lightning Catcher (15 page)

“Storm globes?” Angus said, recognizing them immediately. “But . . . where did you get those from?”

“I borrowed them from the storage cupboard in the experimental division, of course. They were stuffed in a box at the back of a shelf, so I don't think anyone will notice that they're gone. It took me a couple of tries to get them down without somebody walking in and catching me.”

Angus stared at the dusty globes. “But what have you borrowed them for?” he asked, still puzzled.

“I got the idea from you, actually, after what happened with Gudgeon at the ferry port. It's the nearest thing we can get to a real live thunderstorm without actually getting ourselves killed in the Lightnarium,” Dougal explained. “If we can make this globe produce a thunderstorm, with a bit of lightning tarantulatis thrown in for good measure, and you see the fire dragon again . . . well, it's like I said. At least you'll know then once and for all whether you're a real storm prophet or not.”

Angus gulped. He wasn't sure he really wanted to know—once and for all. But Dougal had clearly gone to a lot of trouble on his behalf, risking the severe displeasure of Catcher Sparks and a possible overnight stay in the storm vacuum if he'd been caught.

“But . . . won't people hear it if we set a storm globe off in here?” he said, glancing around the tiny room and thinking of the likelihood that they would flood half the Exploratorium if they smashed a globe anywhere indoors.

“That's the brilliant part of the whole plan,” Dougal said, looking immensely pleased with himself. “You don't have to smash a globe to get it to produce a storm. You can do it without anyone else knowing.”

Angus picked up one of the glass spheres, wiped a thin layer of dust off the surface, and studied it with interest. He had been extremely curious about storm globes ever since the incident at the pier. This particular globe, however, appeared to be totally empty.

“What are we supposed to do with it?” he asked, turning it around in his hands and admiring it.

“All storm globes contain an assortment of Swarfe weather crystals, which react with the natural heat from your hands to produce any kind of weather you can think of. We don't learn how to use them properly until our fourth year, so I'm not exactly sure of the details . . . but it can't be that hard to work it out!” Dougal looked hopeful and perched himself on the arm of a chair. “This one's probably been sitting in the cupboard for a while. It might be a bit sluggish to begin with, so you'd better give it a shake, just to help get it started.”

Angus shook it carefully. At first nothing appeared to happen, but then, slowly, out of nowhere, clouds began to form inside the sphere, getting thicker and darker until eventually rain fell from the miniature weather system and collected in a tiny gray puddle at the bottom of the globe.

“Brilliant!” Dougal said, sounding pleased. “At least we know it still works.”

After another twenty minutes, Angus had discovered that the incredible globe could produce any type of weather he thought of, depending on how he held the glass sphere in his hands. By cradling it in one hand only, he could conjure up a freezing blizzard; by cupping it tightly in both palms, he could bring on a balmy summer's day, complete with buzzing insects and a shimmering heat haze. He could also fast-forward or rewind his way through storms at any speed, or pause the weather altogether for as long as he felt like it, and count individual drops of rain or frosted flakes of snow as they floated in the orb.

“I'm definitely putting one of these on my Christmas list,” Angus said, gazing at the amazing globe as it produced a dazzling rainbow.

They spent several minutes watching a miniature hurricane rage inside the globe, and quite a few more listening to the rumblings of a dark thunderstorm as it brewed within the glass.

“Go on then,” Dougal urged when the storm seemed ready to burst. “Close your eyes and tell me if you see anything dragon shaped.”

Angus had been having such a good time putting the storm globe through its paces that he'd almost forgotten why Dougal had borrowed it in the first place. And he closed his eyes reluctantly. All he could see for a moment was a vision of himself with his eyes closed, looking ridiculous. He tried to think about the storm globe instead. He could feel the thunderstorm within it beginning to gather momentum. Then, all of a sudden—

“Wow!” Dougal gasped. “Forked lightning.”

Angus felt a surge of heat travel through his left thumb and guessed that a miniature lightning bolt had struck the glass directly underneath it. It was an odd sensation, like having his thumb dipped in hot melted wax.

“Well . . . did you see anything?” Dougal asked.

Angus hesitated, searching the inside of his eyelids nervously for any suspicious-looking creatures. He opened his eyes and glanced around the room, quickly making sure that there were no dragons lurking behind the curtains.

“No!” he said, feeling immensely relieved. “I didn't see anything.”

“Well, that proves it then, doesn't it? You can't be a storm prophet, or you'd be seeing dragons all over the place by now.”

But the words had barely left Dougal's mouth when it happened. From the corner of his eye, Angus caught one heart-stopping glimpse of the fiery scales and steak-knife teeth that could only belong to yet another fire dragon. It shimmered briefly in the air, a dazzling warning of danger, before—

“Ouch!” Angus yelped as a second bolt of lightning struck him out of the blue. A searing heat shot right through the palm of his left hand. He dropped the globe hastily, and it smashed into a hundred tiny slivers of glass all over the floor.

“Oh, no.” Dougal backed away nervously as dark wisps of an angry storm rose up from the shattered glass. “That definitely wasn't supposed to happen!”

“Quick! We've got to get it outside before it starts raining on us,” said Angus, darting over to the window and throwing it open wide.

Cool air rushed in. Wisps of storm began to spin above their heads ominously. Angus grabbed a copy of the
McFangus Fog Guide
and began to waft the cloud toward the open window. Dougal seized a cushion from his chair and joined in. Wafting a stubborn storm cloud in a direction it didn't want to go, however, proved to be practically impossible. After several moments of frantic flapping, it simply refused to budge.

“This book's useless,” Angus panted, dropping it on the floor in disgust. “We're going to need something much bigger!”

“Or a really good excuse about why we've flooded the whole Exploratorium,” said Dougal, wiping beads of sweat off his brow.

For the next few minutes it looked as though the storm might win the battle, as Angus and Dougal used everything they could think of—weatherproof coats, pillows, and moth-eaten wall hangings—to disperse the angry storm cloud. Matters were not helped when Angus accidentally kicked over both their mugs of cocoa, splashing the sticky drink everywhere. Or when Dougal somehow managed to slice the entire cloud in two with a poorly aimed swipe.

“Quick, stop the other half of that storm before it slips under the door and escapes into the corridor!” he yelled, chasing after it with a large paper bag.

But finally they managed to force the storm through the window, just as the first few drops of rain began to fall.

“Phew! I thought we'd had it when I sliced that thing in half!” said Dougal, slamming the window shut and collapsing into a chair.

“Yeah, remind me not to put one of those on my Christmas list after all, will you?” Angus frowned, inspecting the tiny burns on his hands. “I think I'd rather take my chances in the Lightnarium than go through that again.”

Dougal smirked. “You might have to if Principal Dark-Angel ever finds out what we've been up to.”

Angus wandered to the window and watched the storm cloud as it slowly began to disperse in the evening breeze. With one final fizzle of lightning, it disappeared completely—taking all traces of the faded fire dragon with it.

  
9
  

FOG MITES

T
he unexpected appearance of yet another fire dragon put Angus in a very bad mood for the rest of the evening.

“Yeah, but you only saw it for a couple of seconds, so it doesn't really count, does it?” Dougal offered consolingly as they swept up the shattered glass and tidied the Pigsty.

But Angus couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that any sighting of the dragon, no matter how brief, merely confirmed the fact that there was something different about him, something odd that he definitely didn't want anyone else to hear about, and he swore Dougal to secrecy.

The following morning at breakfast, he was met at his usual table by Indigo Midnight, who hovered beside him awkwardly, chewing her lip.

“Hi,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “Is it all right if I sit down for a minute?”

Angus shuffled his chair around to make room for her, noticing as he did so that there were dark shadows under her eyes. This was the first time he'd seen her since the sanatorium, and Indigo still looked rather pale and shaken.

“Listen, I just wanted to thank you for what you did,” she said with a tremble in her voice.

“Oh, er . . .”

“I couldn't believe it when the lightning shot out at me like that.” She shuddered. “If you hadn't shoved me out of the way . . .”

Angus shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The image of a fire dragon flashed before his eyes.

“Forget it, I owed you one anyway,” he said, in what he hoped was a jokey-sounding voice. “After you saved me from that coconut in the weather tunnel and everything.”

Indigo gave him an anxious smile. “How's your arm? Does it hurt much?”

“Nah, it's fine,” Angus lied. The burn had been stinging quite a bit since he'd woken up that morning. “Doctor Fleagal says it'll heal by itself if I leave it alone.”

Indigo nodded, her hair falling over her eyes. She pushed it out of her face impatiently, and Angus got the distinct impression that she was about to say something else, something she found deeply awkward and embarrassing, judging by the crimson blush that was now creeping up both sides of her neck. Before she could speak again, however, Dougal pulled up a chair, said a cheerful good morning to them both, and sat down with a steaming plate of sausages in front of him.

Indigo stood up without uttering another word and returned swiftly to her own table.

“Was it something I said?” asked Dougal, puzzled. “What did she want, anyway?”

“I'm not sure . . . but I think there's something she's not telling us.”

“Well, there's definitely something I'm not remembering about her.” Dougal frowned, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I just wish I knew what it was. It's probably got something to do with my dad, though, and the research he's done for one of his books. It's the only reason I'd know her name.”

“Why don't you just ask her about it?” Angus suggested.

But Dougal shook his head quickly. “No way. If my dad's done any research into the Midnights, it's because they're pirates, or swindlers, or because they caused the Great Imbur Beer Riots of 1901, and I'm definitely not asking her about that.”

Angus glanced over at Indigo, finding it very hard to believe that she, or her family, could ever have been involved in the kind of things Dougal was describing.

 

As the days drifted slowly by, all visions of the fire dragon stopped once again. Angus clung to the hope that Rogwood might have made a mistake about him, that the chances of him being a real storm prophet were remote, and that he'd acted on nothing more than pure instinct in the Lightnarium.

He was worried about his parents, however. Why were they even at Castle Dankhart in the first place? Why hadn't Principal Dark-Angel mentioned the fact that Scabious Dankhart was a weather menace? And when would he see his mum and dad again?

Meanwhile, in the experimental division, Catcher Sparks gave each of them a copy of
Pocket Book of All-Season Weather Words
by Cecil Doldrum, which they were supposed to study and learn. It referred to strange-sounding things such as crepuscular rays, Gulf Streams, and mistrals, which Angus had never heard of, as well as anvil zits (which had something to do with thunderstorms) and graupel (a combination of snowflakes and ice pellets). There were also custard winds, killing frosts, and kilopascals. And a whole section on isobars that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

“It's all to do with atmospheric pressure and weather maps,” Dougal tried to explain one evening in the Pigsty, grinning from ear to ear. “This is brilliant! I wish we could do more reading and less cleaning. I mean, this is real scientific stuff about the weather!”

A week later, Angus found himself with even more to occupy his brain. A huge notice appeared in the kitchens one blustery morning, revealing that the fog field trips would take place on the wild and gloomy Imbur marshes, beyond the town of Little Frog's Bottom. Fog fever gripped the Exploratorium in earnest, and a flood of outrageous rumors quickly followed.

Reports that Crowned Prince Rufus, a member of the Imbur royal family, would be disguising himself as a lightning catcher—just so he could take part—swept around Perilous like wildfire. But they were nothing compared to the story that Principal Dark-Angel had ordered that a whole troop of fog yetis be released onto the marshes to liven things up a bit.

“Only sixth years and above have been trained to deal with the hairy creatures,” Theodore Twill, a loudmouthed sixth year, informed tables full of the most anxious lightning cubs one lunchtime. “But the best way to scare off a yeti is to—”

“Hey, Twill, I can tell you how to scare a yeti!” Nicholas Grubb called as he hurried past the tables with a group of sniggering friends. “Just try looking in the mirror!”

Dougal grinned; Angus tried hard not to laugh as Theodore stomped off, fuming. But he'd been listening to Twill's advice with a growing sense of unease. To add to his anxiety, he also discovered, from Edmund Croxley, that the only way to get off the towering rock upon which Perilous sat, and out into the Imbur marshes, was via an extraordinary contraption called a gravity railway. This alarming mode of transport involved being lowered down the near-vertical sides of the rock on a cable in an old-fashioned carriage. Just the thought of it made Angus feel light-headed.

“But you must have ridden in it when you first arrived here,” Dougal said, looking surprised, when Angus eventually admitted he wasn't looking forward to the experience.

“I was unconscious, remember? They could have catapulted me up here with a giant rubber band and I wouldn't have known anything about it.”

The subject of what the foggy trips might involve now occupied almost every conversation at the Exploratorium. It was a subject that Miss DeWinkle also addressed during their very next lesson. She came bouncing into the weather bubble wearing a sickly pink sweater over the top of her leather jerkin, and matching rubber boots.

“Good morning, everyone!” She beamed, a smile pinned to her round face.

It was a cold, damp morning outside, with the first hint of autumn blowing through the chilly stone tunnels and passageways of Perilous. A watery-looking sun was hiding stubbornly behind the clouds, refusing to come out. Despite the gloomy weather, however, spirits were running high inside the weather bubble. Everyone ignored the arrival of Miss DeWinkle and continued to discuss an interesting new rumor, which had surfaced only that morning. According to Juliana Jessop, a bossy fifth-year trainee, Principal Dark-Angel had decided to treat everyone who took part in the field trips to a whole month's supply of candy from Balthazar's, the most famous chocolatier on the island.

“I said GOOD MORNING!” Miss DeWinkle bellowed, slamming down a large pile of books on her desk, and a startled hush fell around the bubble. “That's more like it. I realize the field trips are causing a great deal of excitement, especially after some of the more ridiculous rumors that have been circulating. But we are here to discuss the subject of foghorns, in case you have forgotten.”

“Not much chance of that, is there?” Dougal mumbled, opening his backpack and reaching inside it for his workbook.

“You will all now open your McFangus guides at the beginning of chapter two and—”

“But, miss,” Nigel Ridgely interrupted from the front row before she could get any further. “Couldn't you tell us something about the field trips first? Nobody's told us anything yet.”

Angus looked up from his desk, where he'd been busy trying to conceal an interesting book on the experimental division and their most spectacular mishaps within the pages of his fog guide.

“Haven't any of you read the excellent chapter in your McFangus guides about them?” Miss DeWinkle asked, sounding disappointed.

There was a general mumbling and shaking of heads. Angus understood why. Despite the fact that it had been written by his parents and had a number of exciting chapter headings (such as “How to Outwit a Wispy Fog”), the fog guide made for extremely dull reading. Even Dougal, a keen appreciator of books, had given up after the first few pages.

Nigel Ridgely tried again. “I bet you could tell us loads more about the field trips than any book.” Behind him, Violet Quinn and Millicent Nichols nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh, goodness.” Miss DeWinkle beamed, looking flattered. “Well, I suppose I have taken part in more field trips than anyone else at Perilous. I remember a particularly gripping season some years ago, involving a desperate dash through a field of giant fogcicles . . .”

Angus and Dougal grinned at each other. It was almost impossible to picture Miss DeWinkle—with her short, dumpy legs and wobbling double chins—doing anything so energetic.

“And it certainly couldn't hurt to give you a few of the basic facts,” she added, happily abandoning her lecture notes now and propping herself on the edge of her desk. “According to Perilous records, the first fog field trip was a complete accident. In 1739, a lightning catcher called Neville Loxley set out from this Exploratorium in search of some giant hailstones, which had been bombarding various parts of the island for several days. Having taken a wrong turn on the far side of Little Frog's Bottom, however, he inadvertently found himself stumbling about the Imbur marshes instead. It was there, among the desolate wetlands, that he discovered some of the most rare and fascinating fogs known to man, including howling, poisonous, and contagious fogs, to name but a few. Elated by his discovery, he set about taking numerous samples and making detailed notes. Sadly, after wandering about the marshes for five days, he became hopelessly lost, not to mention delirious, and had to be rescued by a team of lightning catchers. By all accounts, he was never quite the same again. But it was such a significant episode in our history at Perilous that we still celebrate his magnificent discoveries each year on Neville Loxley Day.”

“Imagine if we discovered a brand-new fog,” Dougal whispered. “They'd have to name a day after us, too—or maybe even a whole Snap-Fang weekend!”