The Lightning Catcher (17 page)

Angus felt his insides freeze.

“To think that I was speaking to Alabone only a week before it happened,” said Miss DeWinkle in a miserable voice. “He had just agreed to give my fifth years a special lecture on advanced fog navigation techniques, and then—” She sniffed and blew her nose loudly into her woolly hat.

“For heaven's sake, Olivia, pull yourself together. We have quite enough on our hands as it is without you falling to pieces,” said Catcher Sparks, putting a consoling arm around Miss DeWinkle's shoulders. “Alabone and Evangeline are made of stern stuff. They have been in tighter spots than this before, and somehow found their way back to Perilous unscathed. That is precisely the reason why Principal Dark-Angel chose to give them this particular assignment in the first place. She knew that it would be risky, she knew that if any word of what they were looking for should get back to Dankhart . . . that if he ever got the chance to get his greedy, thieving hands on it . . .”

“Yes, but get his hands on what precisely?” Miss DeWinkle sniffed, recovering suddenly and dabbing at her eyes. “Principal Dark-Angel has been most secretive about the whole affair. Jasper Heckles from the forecasting department says she sent them to search for the
Forgotten Book of Grudge-Bearing Blizzards.
”

“And you should have learned by now not to listen to Jasper Heckles and his ridiculous stories,” Catcher Sparks snapped, adjusting her gauze mask. “It's got nothing to do with forgotten books or any such ludicrous thing.”

“Then what is it, Amelia? Why has none of us been informed?”

“Because it is none of our business,” Catcher Sparks said matter-of-factly. “And this is hardly an appropriate time for us to be having this conversation, either. I would advise you to get those first years up to the sanatorium before Doctor Fleagal runs out of soothing lotion.” She swept past, frying pan held high, and disappeared into the chaotic kitchens.

Dougal looked anxiously at Angus, his eyes wide. But there was nothing either of them could say in the crowded hallway, and they stood in stunned silence until Miss DeWinkle led them up to the sanatorium.

  
10
  

A MIDNIGHT TALE

T
hey spent the rest of a very irritable day shut up in the sanatorium, watching the progress of the fog through tightly closed windows and being told to keep out of the way by an irate Doctor Fleagal—who was treating endless snorkel beetle bites.

Any private conversation was impossible. Angus sat in a corner of the overcrowded sanatorium, focusing hard on a very ugly painting of a portly looking doctor with a rusty stethoscope and a handlebar mustache. He could feel Dougal glance anxiously in his direction every few minutes, but he was careful not to look back—careful not to think or feel anything that could possibly distract him from the horrible truth that had suddenly been laid before him.

His parents were being held captive in one of Dankhart's dungeons, maybe sitting on a cold stone floor with nothing but the rats to keep them company. They'd been there for weeks now, while he, Angus, had been learning all sorts of useless stuff about invisible fog and storm vacuums and cleaning other people's rubber boots. Principal Dark-Angel had known all along. And yet she'd looked him straight in the eye when he'd first arrived and told him some fairy story about his parents helping Dankhart with an assignment. But now he knew the truth. . . .

He was also painfully aware of just how little he himself had even thought about his parents in the past few weeks. Why hadn't he been pestering Principal Dark-Angel for news? Why had he been filling his head with fire dragons and field trips, wasting his time with hailstone helmets and weather tunnels, when his mum and dad had been imprisoned by a lunatic who filled fog with snorkel beetles? He hugged his knees tightly into his chest, hoping that Principal Dark-Angel, Gudgeon, or even Rogwood had planned a dramatic rescue and that both his parents would walk through the doors of Perilous before the week was out.

News reached them midafternoon that the fog was finally beginning to lift. But it wasn't until dinnertime that evening, when some sort of order had finally been restored and they were allowed to leave the sanatorium, that he and Dougal were able to talk.

“You ought to go straight to Principal Dark-Angel and demand to know what's going on,” Dougal suggested as soon as they reached the noisy babble of the kitchens and found a deserted table in the corner. “I mean, they're your parents. You've got a right to know if some maniac's got them locked up in his dungeons.”

Angus had already considered storming up to the principal's office and demanding that she tell him everything. But he knew exactly what would happen if he did.

“There's no point. She's already lied to me once. What's to stop her from doing it again?” He toyed with a soggy Yorkshire pudding on his plate.

Considering the damage caused by the beetles, it was a miracle they had any dinner at all. And even though they'd had nothing to eat all day up in the sanatorium but hard candy and hot chocolate, Angus found that the very thought of food made his stomach turn.

“Look, I'm really sorry about your mum and dad,” said Dougal, fiddling awkwardly with his knife and fork.

Angus nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“I just wish there was something we could do.” Dougal sighed. “I wish somebody would tell us what's really going on.” For hours now, Angus had been thinking the same thing, turning the facts over and over in his head, trying to understand what had happened. But only one thing seemed to be clear.

“That assignment's at the bottom of this whole thing,” he said, pushing his food aside. “You heard what Catcher Sparks said. My mum and dad were looking for something when they were kidnapped, something that Dankhart desperately wanted to get his hands on. . . .”

“Yeah, but what?” said Dougal gloomily. “We've got no chance of getting anything out of Dark-Angel about secret assignments or Castle Dankhart dungeons.”

“What's Dankhart's castle like, anyway?” asked Angus, amazed that he'd never asked this question before.

Dougal squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, it's a bit hard to say, really. I mean it's not like Dankhart opens his doors every Christmas and invites the whole island over for a huge party, is it? Anyway, nobody would go even if he did. I . . . look, are you sure you really want to hear about this? Won't it just make things worse?”

Angus shook his head, knowing that it was impossible to feel any worse than he already did.

“Well,” Dougal began warily, “it's all the way over on the other side of the island, across the mountains, so it's pretty impossible to get to, you can't even see it from here. But it sits on top of a big chunk of rock—”

“You mean it's like Perilous?” Angus burst out, surprised.

Dougal shook his head. “It's nothing like Perilous. It's supposed to be a creepy, crumbling old castle. There're loads of stories about it being haunted with pirate ghosts, but Dad reckons that's just the Dankharts spreading rumors to scare people off. He
has
got real crocodiles in his moat, though. And that's all I know.” Dougal shrugged. “Apart from the fact that the castle's got loads of secret passageways and tunnels running underneath it for miles in every direction.”

Angus stared down at the table, feeling more helpless than he'd ever felt in his life before. Why did Castle Dankhart have to be so impossible to reach? He had zero chance of trekking over the mountains by himself, and even if by some miracle he managed it, what would he do then? Knock politely on the castle door and ask Dankhart to set his parents free?

“Couldn't you ask your uncle Max what's going on?” Dougal suggested, breaking into Angus's thoughts. “He must know something.”

Angus stared at Dougal, wondering why this brilliant idea hadn't occurred to him straightaway. “Yeah, you're right, thanks. I'll write to him tonight.”

 

In the difficult days that followed, everything they did seemed to remind Angus of his parents and their dangerous predicament. When they sat down to eat in the kitchens, he imagined his mum and dad surviving on stale bread and water. When they were sent outside into the sunshine by Catcher Sparks to scrub a pile of mud-splattered coats, he thought of his parents shivering in their dingy dungeon, trying to keep themselves warm. At night, his dreams were filled with creepy castles, mazelike tunnels, and giant scuttling rats.

It was just after he'd woken up from a particularly horrible rat-filled dream one night, his face covered in cold sweat, that he suddenly remembered the letter from his mum, the one that was now sitting at the bottom of his drawer. He scrambled out of bed, flicked on the light fissure overhead, and retrieved the envelope from underneath a pile of socks.

He climbed back under the covers and read the letter carefully, feeling extremely glad that he hadn't handed it over to Principal Dark-Angel. Had his parents been kidnapped just days or even hours after they'd mailed this very letter? A lump formed in his throat as he stared at his mum's scribbled handwriting.

And what if he never saw them again? What if this letter was the last time he ever heard from either of his parents? He'd never be able to talk to them about Perilous or show them the row of gleaming hailstone helmets that he'd cleaned in the experimental division. He also knew that he'd never, ever be able to forgive Scabious Dankhart for tearing his family apart.

He folded the letter carefully, grabbed the fog guide from his bedside table, and tucked the letter safely inside a chapter on contagious fog, deciding that from now on, he'd carry it around with him like a talisman of hope. As if doing so might somehow let his mum and dad know that he had not forgotten them.

 

Once the damage caused by the snorkel beetles had been cleaned up, life quickly returned to normal. Thankfully, Miss DeWinkle continued their lessons inside, with a series of extraordinarily boring lectures on the salty properties of deep sea fog.

Twice more, when Angus was sitting alone in the kitchens, Indigo made a beeline for his table with a worried expression on her face, clearly intent on talking to him in private. On each occasion, however, she appeared to change her mind at the very last minute and veered off quickly in the opposite direction, her face crimson with embarrassment.

In the experimental division, they were put to work by Catcher Sparks setting large numbers of beetle traps, just in case any of the highly destructive creatures decided to return. Unfortunately, however, the traps went off with a vicious
SNAP!
at the slightest movement. And although Angus could no sooner forget about his parents than he could about the looming fog field trips, he found it impossible to think about anything if he wanted to retain all his fingers during this highly tricky process. And he did his best to keep all thoughts of Dankhart and dungeons under tight control.

 

To his surprise, Angus woke up one morning almost two weeks later to discover that several icicles had formed on the inside of his bedroom window and that the rest of Perilous was completely covered in a thick layer of wintry ice and snow. He got dressed at double speed, pulling on an extra pair of socks to keep his feet warm, then darted up to breakfast, looking forward to a hot bowl of honey and porridge. When he reached the kitchens, however, it was to find them almost completely deserted.

“What's happened?” he asked, sitting next to Dougal and glancing round at the empty tables.

There were fewer people than normal, and most of them looked half asleep. One small group of third years sat quietly in the far corner. Edmund Croxley was yawning over his toast and marmalade. The usual lively chatter had been replaced by a library-like hush that made even the clink of knives and forks sound too loud. For one wild moment, Angus thought that the field trips must have started without them, before he remembered the exact dates had yet to be announced.

“Where is everyone?” he asked, helping himself to a slice of toast.

“Principal Dark-Angel's decided to give everyone the day off,” Dougal explained, yawning lazily. “Catcher Howler made an announcement ten minutes ago. You just missed it.”

“A day off?”

“Yeah, you know, when you're allowed to go back to bed and lie in until lunchtime, without anyone trying to get you struck by lightning or sucked into a storm vacuum.” Dougal buttered a hot crumpet, grinning. “According to Edmund Croxley, they do it sometimes when it gets really cold. They let the roof freeze over on purpose so we can go skating. You've got to be careful not to crash into any of the machines and stuff, but it should be brilliant.” He produced two pairs of gleaming ice skates from under the table, holding them up by their laces. “I got these from the supplies department before they ran out.”

Angus stared at Dougal, feeling mildly shocked. He hadn't even considered the possibility of a day off.

“You do know how to ice-skate, don't you?” Dougal asked.

“No,” Angus confessed. “But I've got a feeling I'm about to learn.”