The Lightning Catcher (19 page)

Angus and Dougal exchanged dark glances.

“Mum and Dad wanted me to go to a school on the mainland where no one's ever heard of the Dankharts, but I've always wanted to be a lightning catcher, ever since I was little, and I thought if I just worked hard and tried not to speak to anyone too much . . .”

“If Scabious Dankhart was my uncle, I think I would have taken your mum and dad's advice,” said Dougal, staring at her avidly.

“So I'm just supposed to hide under a stone somewhere because my uncle's a villain?” There was a dangerous tremble in Indigo's voice now.

“I didn't mean that. . . .” Dougal looked terrified that she might actually start crying. “I just thought it might be easier somewhere else, that's all. I mean, you must have known that people would find out sooner or later.”

“But Imbur's my home,” Indigo said, almost pleading with them to understand. “I've got just as much right to be here as anyone else. And Principal Dark-Angel obviously agrees with me, or she never would have offered me a place at Perilous.”

“There's no arguing with that,” Dougal admitted, taking another cautious step away from Indigo. He cast a nervous glance at Angus.

“But I don't understand. Why are you telling us this now?” asked Angus. “I mean, we had no idea about your uncle or anything. You could've just kept it to yourself.”

“Oh, but I had to tell you after what happened in the Lightnarium that day!” The words came bursting out of Indigo, and it was clear that she'd decided to explain herself, no matter what. “When I was in the sanatorium afterward, I overheard Rogwood talking to Doctor Fleagal about Alabone and Evangeline McFangus, and how their son, Angus, had just saved me from the ball lightning, and obviously I realized straightaway that they were talking about you.” She looked at Angus with wide eyes. “Then they started talking about the fact that my uncle Scabious had kidnapped your mum and dad from the Imbur marshes because of some special assignment they were working on for Principal Dark-Angel. . . . I know it was weeks ago now, but I've been trying to pluck up the courage to talk to you ever since. And I just thought . . . well, if there's anything I can do to help . . .”

“Yeah, there is, actually,” Angus said, desperate all of a sudden for any new information she could give them. “Did you hear Rogwood say what my mum and dad were looking for?”

Indigo hesitated for a split second, and then nodded. Angus felt his heart leap into his throat.

“Rogwood said your parents had been sent to look for something really old, something that had been written years and years ago now and then lost. He said they were searching for an old map.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Angus suddenly remembered the very first conversation he'd ever had with Principal Dark-Angel, on the day he'd arrived at Perilous, when she'd been extremely interested to hear about anything his parents might have sent him through the post, particularly anything resembling a map.

“Did you hear anything else?” he asked urgently. “Did they say what the map was for?”

But Indigo shook her head. “They must have gone into Doctor Fleagal's office after that and closed the door. But I remember my mum saying once that my uncle was obsessed with maps. He's got rooms full of them at Castle Dankhart. He spends hours just staring at them. She said it was like he'd lost something and he was desperate to find it again.”

“Yeah, but desperate to find what, exactly?” Dougal said, frowning.

And they each stared around the room, knowing that the answer to that question was going to be harder to find than an invisible fog.

  
11
  

STORM GLOBES

“I
bet you anything she goes around calling him Uncle Scabby when no one else is listening,” Dougal mumbled darkly under his breath.

It was the morning after their conversation with Indigo. They were sitting outside in their favorite courtyard, enjoying the fact that they now had the whole weekend ahead of them. They were also enjoying some pleasant winter sunshine; the sky had turned a pale, inviting blue and the sun was beaming down upon them lazily. Despite the sunny weather, however, Dougal had been in a very dark mood since breakfast, and had not stopped issuing dire warnings about Indigo and the desperate troubles that a possible friendship with her would bring them. And Angus now realized why Indigo had been so reluctant to tell them about her unfortunate family connections in the first place.

“And I mean, well, she is a Dankhart, whether she likes it or not,” Dougal continued, sitting on a stone bench next to the fish pond, shielding his eyes from the sun. “And everyone knows the Dankharts are a bunch of thieving, cheating pirates.”

“Yeah, but Indigo's not just a Dankhart, she's a Midnight as well,” Angus pointed out fairly.

“I see she's already got you fooled.” Dougal squinted at him. “You'd better watch out, or she'll be inviting you round to Castle Dankhart for afternoon tea and scones, and you'll be banged into your own cozy little dungeon before you can say Uncle Scabby.”

Angus sighed. He had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Indigo was as loyal to Perilous and the lightning catchers as either one of them. And that she'd bravely told them the truth about her mum's flight from the castle and her family's abhorrence of all things Dankhart. He was anxious to talk instead about her other startling revelation—the fact that his parents had been searching for a map. But what kind of a map, exactly?

He'd been turning it over and over in his head, racking his brains for half the night, but so far he'd failed to come up with any realistic possibilities. What could Dankhart be so desperate to get his hands on? Did he need some more gold, perhaps, or something that was hidden in the Inner Sanctum of Secrets that would make him even more powerful than he already was? But then he would hardly need a map to find his way through a door that was clearly marked in the Octagon. Nor, for that matter, would Principal Dark-Angel—who seemed equally keen on finding the mysterious map.

He'd also been thinking hard about the fact that Dankhart had kidnapped his mum and dad from the Imbur marshes, the very place where he was about to embark upon his first-ever field trip. What if his parents had left some tiny clue behind, something that would help rescue them?

“And who knows where all those secret passageways under Castle Dankhart lead to?” Dougal's voice broke into his thoughts once again. “I mean, there could be one going right to Indigo's parents' house in Little Frog's Bottom. I bet she waits until everyone's gone to bed at night, then pulls back the carpet and—”

“Look, give it a rest, will you?” Angus muttered as he suddenly caught sight of Indigo herself cutting across the courtyard toward them.

Dougal glared at her sulkily as she approached. Indigo, on the other hand, looked far happier than Angus had ever seen her. Gone was the wary, guarded expression she'd been hiding behind since he met her; she now had a sparkle in her eyes and a bright, eager look on her face.

“I've been looking for you two all over the place.” She smiled at them shyly, as if still testing out the idea of being friends. “Miss DeWinkle has just put up another notice in the kitchens. All first years have to meet in the entrance hall first thing tomorrow; they're finally telling us more about the field trips.”

“Good.” Angus smiled back at her. “At least we'll find out what we're up against now.”

At five to nine the following morning, Angus, Indigo, and Dougal shuffled into the entrance hall, wearing their waterproof coats once again, to find Gudgeon waiting for them.

“On second thought”—Angus gulped—“it might be better if we
didn't
know.”

The last time the gruff lightning catcher had taken them for a lesson, Angus had been struck by lightning. He exchanged dark looks with Dougal, wondering what dangers Gudgeon might be leading them into this time.

“Miss DeWinkle's asked me to tell you more about your first field trip,” barked Gudgeon as the last few stragglers raced into the hall. “But you won't be going anywhere until I've checked that all your weather watches are working properly. So if it's accidentally been struck by lightning, dropped in a bucket of rainwater, or trodden on by your great clumsy feet, now is the time to come forward.”

A nervous silence fell. Several lightning cubs twitched. Angus glanced at his own watch surreptitiously. At that precise moment it was showing him a collection of fluffy white clouds, one of which was shaped like an elephant. He wondered if that was normal.

“No damage to report?” Gudgeon finally broke the silence. “Right, we'd better see if you're telling the truth, then. Follow me and keep a close eye on what your weather watch is telling you.”

“You don't think he's taking us into the weather tunnel, do you?” Dougal whispered anxiously.

Gudgeon turned and strode swiftly through the front doors and straight into the courtyard outside, where he took a sharp right and dived through a wooden door hidden in the wall. Down a narrow flight of steps they went. It was impossible to see where they were heading, however, as they were instantly engulfed by a dense, damp cloud.

They followed Gudgeon in silence, filing out onto a flat expanse of grass when they reached the foot of the stairs a few minutes later, the cloud still swirling around them.

“Right, Miss Midnight.” The lightning catcher folded his arms and stared down at Indigo. “What type of cloud does your weather watch say we're standing in?”

“It—it says it's a stratocumulus cloud, sir,” Indigo answered quietly, turning bright red. “Puffy and gray, it skulks around at low heights, trying to engulf people.”

“Correct. Doomsbury.” Angus flinched. “Give me a precise temperature reading. Quickly, boy!”

“It's, er, forty-two point eight degrees Fahrenheit, sir.” Angus said, hoping he had the numbers the right way around.

Gudgeon nodded once.

“How many of you can see an orange glow on the surface of your weather watches?”

Almost every hand went up. Angus suddenly realized that his watch was virtually luminous.

“Orange is one of the few colors in the spectrum that can cut through fog here on Imbur, allowing you to read your weather watch even in the thickest no-way-out fog.”

At that moment, however, the cloud finally lifted, and Angus felt his knees wobble. Without realizing it, they had just descended a daunting flight of stairs that wrapped itself around the outside of Perilous. And they were now standing in the strangest garden he'd ever seen. Cut directly into the tall tooth of rock, like a green wedge with a deep bottom lip poking out into the sunshine, it was covered in tall grass, luscious ferns, and long trails of ivy tumbling over the edge like a beard.

The Exploratorium towered a hundred feet above them. The Isle of Imbur stretched out before them, a colorful patchwork of green fields, woods, and towns.

“You are now standing in the cloud gardens,” Gudgeon announced above a wave of shocked gasps and whispers. “Planted back in the 1800s so that lightning cubs would have somewhere to run about and let off steam. It's been closed for the last few months due to an invasion of poisonous Imbur hogweed. But as of today, it will be open for use during weekends and evenings until dusk.”

“You mean we can come down here whenever we want, sir?” Nigel Ridgely asked.

“No one is allowed to enter the cloud gardens during blizzards, thunderstorms, gales, or showers of newts and frogs,” Gudgeon warned. “But it's the perfect place to test the settings on your weather watches. Anyone who did not see an orange glow as we came through the clouds should go straight up to the supplies department after we've finished here and get their watch recalibrated.

“One of the aims of this field trip is to introduce you to as many different types of fog as possible,” Gudgeon continued. “The best way to do that is to send you round a course, in teams of two. Although as one of you is allergic to fog and can't take part”—he glared down at a quivering Millicent Nichols—“Miss Midnight will be teaming up with Doomsbury and Dewsnap instead.”

Indigo shot them both a shy smile.

“Because this is your first field trip,” said Gudgeon, handing out maps to each team, “you will be tackling the easiest section of the course, marked in green.”

Angus looked at the map. Sections had been outlined in green, brown, orange, yellow, black, blue, and purple, each with increasingly complicated-looking routes. The green course was much shorter than the rest, but it appeared to contain a dizzying number of mysterious obstacles, each of which came with its own red
DANGER
symbol.

“Let me remind you that this is
not
a competition.” Gudgeon scowled at them. “There are no prizes for coming in first, so there's no point trying to beat everyone else to the finish line like a bunch of harebrained idiots. Right, each team should take a few minutes to study their maps before returning to the Exploratorium.”

“Have they completely lost their marbles?” Dougal hissed, a wild, startled look in his eyes, as soon as Gudgeon's back was turned. “That course looks completely mental! I'm off to find Miss DeWinkle,” he added resolutely.

“What do you want to find her for?” asked Angus.

“Because she's the one who made us sign that stupid field trip form, and I want it back . . . so I can rip it up and burn it!” And Dougal stomped off with a determined look on his face.

For a moment, Angus fought the urge to run after Dougal and rip up his own form. The field trip was going to be the hardest thing they'd tackled yet. But if it somehow took him to the very spot where his mum and dad had been kidnapped . . . if they had left even the tiniest hint or clue behind that would help . . . and he sprinted after his friend to try and talk some sense into him.