The Spin (11 page)

Later, Stormy thought over his feelings. Envy. He wanted everything that Hector had. And more. But it wasn't the riding, the outfit, the power; it was because he loved these creatures and he thought he would be a good sky-rider, a nicer one than Hector, a more caring one than Bentley.

He was sure that the Great Renaldo loved his spitfyres; you could tell he did from his pictures. He cut a brilliant figure in his red trousers, white boots and twirly moustache. Stormy put the flyer into his pocket. Perhaps some of the Great Renaldo's skill would seep into him and help him. Stormy would get the food lifts cleaned up and do something about the spitfyres getting the right food. That would help.

Al was in the servery, sitting at the table, staring out through the open door onto the terrace. Cherries, slices of pineapple and apple had been fashioned on the table top into a lopsided face.

‘Hello!' Stormy said. ‘Is the food good?'

There was that sherry trifle smell oozing out of Al again, but no trifle.

‘Otto's food's too good to eat,' Al said, twiddling a cherry eye. ‘Would be wasted on me.'

If Al hadn't been
eating
trifle but he smelled of sherry, maybe he'd been drinking it? Maybe he drank a lot of it? Maybe that accounted for his weird behaviour . . .

‘What's that in your back pocket?' Al tugged at the white ribbon in Stormy's trouser pocket.

As Al pulled the ribbon, the circus flyer came out too and fell on the floor. Before Stormy could get it, Al had stamped his foot down on it.

‘What's this?' He bent to pick the handbill up and almost toppled over.

He
was
drunk.

‘It's just something about a circus,' Stormy said, putting out his hand for it.

‘My giddy aunt flipping Sally!' Al whispered. ‘Where did you find this?'

He was smoothing the sheet out on the table and staring at it. For the first time dabs of colour emerged slowly in his cheeks, almost as if he was thawing.

‘Cosmo's Circus.' Al was shaking his head slowly. ‘Look, look at him there!' He pointed to the young man with the moustache. ‘Don't you recognise him?'

Stormy shook his head. As if? How could
he
recognise a man in a circus when he knew no one and had been nowhere?

‘It's
me
, you lummuck. Me!' Al grinned at Stormy's surprised expression. He rubbed his big hands over his face, feeling along his upper lip as if searching for his lost moustache. ‘It was a long time ago,' he added.

‘
You!
' Stormy grabbed the paper and stared at the young man. ‘You were
death-defying
! The high spot of the show!
You
were the Great Renaldo?'

Al sighed. ‘Ah ha,' he said.

Stormy waited for more and when Al didn't speak, he went on, ‘You look amazing in the picture.' He sat down, encouraging Al to talk more. ‘Awesome.'

‘Huh.'

‘What happened? Why didn't you stay at the circus?'

‘Forget it, Stormy.' Al's face suddenly went hard.

‘Please. Oh please!' Stormy fixed him with a pleading stare. ‘I'm really interested. Please tell me, Al.'

‘I'm too drunk. Oh, what the heck, who cares? What does it matter? I was born into the circus,' he said, leaning back in his chair and staring into the distance. ‘My father was a circus man; he worked with rare animals, seaquins, unicorns and serpents, that sort of thing. He was good.' Al smiled slowly; his look was dreamy. ‘I can see Pa now,' he said, ‘stroking those bad-tempered seaquins, never a thought for their evil beaks! They didn't interest me. But when the circus got a spitfyre, oh, then things were different. I loved it. I had a way with it too, though I didn't realise it at the time. The circus bought more of them; they were popular with the crowd. I became their friend; I could stroke their noses and pour ideas in their little ears and they understood me –'

‘A spitfyre whisperer!'

Al nodded. ‘The spitfyre trainer was harsh and used a whip. He'd had every finger burnt and was scorched almost bald! Cosmo was glad to replace him.'

He stopped and stared out of the window, his face settling back gloomily into its normal scowl. While Stormy waited for him to continue, he tried to see some of that young man, that spitfyre whisperer and lover, in Al's stony face.

He couldn't.

‘My father died; it was a giant python that did it – wrapped itself too tightly round his neck. That left me on my own and in charge of all five spitfyres. It was like living on a tightrope; balancing on the edge of life and death all the time, but I wasn't scared. I lived and slept with my spitfyres, I tried to get right inside their heads to understand them . . . I thought I could do anything. You understand that, I know you do, Stormy. You love spitfyres in that way, in that special way . . .'

Stormy nodded.

‘But Cosmo was so demanding, he wanted so much from the spitfyres and me. Faster! Jump higher! More daring!'

‘What did Cosmo make you do?'

But Al hadn't heard him. ‘Spitfyres are ancient beasts. Complicated. They have feelings and you can push them too hard. Push them back with the thork until they bluster and spit and spark at you. The audience liked that, Cosmo liked it, but it means nothing; they get annoyed and then they jump out of the way,
bounce
away.'

‘But they could just burn you,' Stormy said. ‘How come they didn't shoot flames at you?'

‘Cosmo cheated,' Al said quietly. ‘He fed them non-flammable food before the shows. They couldn't do more than make smoke.'

‘Go on,' Stormy urged. ‘You were saying how the spitfyres pretend to attack but then bounce away.'

Al sighed. ‘They didn't really want to fight. I used their names; I was their friend. But for the audience it looked good – bounce them up onto a table or even up onto the sides of the cage . . . And then there was the Spin . . .'

‘
Spin?
'

Al nodded. ‘The Spin,' he repeated heavily. Cosmo wanted me to do it –'

‘Hello!' Ralf came in, slamming the door behind him. ‘What are you two up to?' He pointed to the clock. ‘Dinner time!'

Al shuddered and came back to the present with a jolt.

‘The
Spin
,' Stormy urged him. ‘Go on.'

Al shook his head. ‘I knew I wouldn't like talking about it, Stormy. Leave me be. It hurts to talk about it. The Spin was the end.'

It wasn't the right moment, Stormy knew it, but he had to ask. ‘I want to look after your spitfyre,' he said.

Al stood up, knocking over his chair. He slammed his fist on the table, suddenly alert.

‘NO!' he roared. ‘No one goes near that spitfyre. It is forbidden, Stormy. Forbidden!'

Al drank all week long. He drank until his voice slurred and then he drank some more until his chin dipped onto his chest and he fell asleep.

Stormy went to bed worrying about spitfyre thirteen and woke worrying about it. How could he help it when he was forbidden to go near it and both Al and Ralf were watching him so closely?

So he bided his time. He polished the old copper pans and he cleaned the windows in the servery. He cleaned up the food lifts, scrubbed the stone-flagged floor and blocked up as many mouse holes as he could find. He sorted out drawers and cupboards and rearranged them, putting everything in order. Now Otto's ways – the cleaning and organising and routines – didn't seem so harsh or worthless after all. And all the time he thought about the lonely spitfyre in the last cave.

‘Waste of time,' Al said, looking at the sparkling windows.

‘It's a dump. Keep it a dump,' Ralf said.

It was the same with the stables. Each time one of the caves was left empty while the spitfyre was out flying, Stormy went in and cleaned it. As he got braver he even took the gentler spitfyres out of their caves, tied them up outside and then cleaned. He scraped off the thickly encrusted dirt and brushed away cobwebs from the cave walls. The nose-burning smell of spitfyre urine began to fade. He noticed that the animals soiled their caves less once they were clean, and would wait for him to let them out.

Now he knew each spitfyre's name and nature.

The unpredictable Sparkit was in number one. Snapdragon – who would try and nip him when his back was turned – in two. The buttercup-yellow Westerlie in three, then the beautiful emerald-green Daygo in number four. Bluey in five. Then there was a fat pink spitfyre with very small frilly wings who went by the name of Lacewing. Next came Polaris, another Star Squad spitfyre whose coat was brown or green depending on where the light hit it; it had extraordinary eyes with golden irises. Kopernicus, in eight, had a dull red coat, like old velvet, and violet-coloured scales around its hooves and nose. In nine there was an orangey-yellow spitfyre called Cloudfree. She was gentle, with a crooked ear, and damaged wings so she couldn't fly. Spikelet in the tenth cave was an old spitfyre who was rarely taken out. The girl who owned it said it was just there because all her family had ridden it and now they didn't know what else to do with it.

Eleven and twelve were both black spitfyres with slate-grey wings. They looked identical, except Smokey in the eleventh cave was bad-tempered and stamped its hooves on Stormy's feet when he tried to go inside and clean, and Kyte, in number eleven, was sweet-natured and gentle. Kyte had coal-black eyes and a long nose with a white star between his eyes.

And then there was the spitfyre in the last stable. Thirteen. The spitfyre with no name and fur so dirty the colour of its coat could only be guessed at.

Al had forbidden Stormy to enter the cave, but Stormy had no intention of obeying him. He ignored the warnings he got from Ralf and each day he inched round the rock in cave thirteen with the spitfyre's food and put it close enough for the flying horse to reach it. Every time he went in he was afraid that the poor thing might be dead, but each day it was still breathing, and although he couldn't help it, he hoped it could hear his voice gently coaxing it to eat and saying encouraging things.

One day when Al was dead drunk and Ralf had been sent on an errand by a teacher, Stormy took the opportunity for a longer, proper look at the sick spitfyre.

Holding a half-shuttered lantern so it wouldn't blind the poor creature, he inched his way inside the cave. He felt sure the spitfyre had got used to him a little now. He called out softly, warning the spitfyre that he was coming, and it did not immediately spit. He must have scared it the first time, by bursting in like that.

‘Hello. It's me!'

The spitfyre dragged its head from the floor; its eyes were clogged with sticky yellow gunk. It was all bones; its shoulders and hips stuck up through its skin like tent poles. Stormy gulped.

‘Poor thing, poor thing,' he whispered, going nearer. ‘It's only me. You know me, Stormy. I bring the food. It's all right.'

The spitfyre threw out a broken whinny sound and half sat up. Stormy didn't budge. He swore. He swore again. The creature was just blustering out of fear, that was all. Al shouldn't let this be – it just wasn't right. He had to do something before it wasn't there at all. He had to do more to help it.

‘It's just me. Don't be scared. Is it the light? I can dim the light more.'

His lantern wobbled, sending scary shadows and shapes skittering over the walls. He steadied himself, determined not to let the spitfyre force him out.

It was weak and sank back onto the ground, watching him warily through its half-open eyes.

‘Shh, shh,' Stormy said, softly. ‘Don't be scared. I won't hurt you.'

It was smaller than all the other spitfyres. Its short ragged mane stuck up like a crest. Its tail was thin and matted. Some of its left ear was missing. It was impossible to see what sort of a state its wings were in.

‘Don't be scared,' he said again. ‘I'm a friend.'

A puff of foul-smelling tarry smoke was the spitfyre's reply.

Stormy stepped closer and immediately it tensed, baring its yellow teeth and tossing its head in warning. It tried to fan out its wings, but it was too feeble and all they did was flutter weakly.

‘It's all right, it's OK,' he said soothingly. ‘I don't want to hurt you. I want to make you better. I want to help.'

The place stank. It was piled with dirty straw and empty buckets and all sorts of rubbish – bones and rind and eggshell. The goggles and reins on the wall hadn't been touched for years and were thick with greasy dust and cobwebs.

Stormy sank to his knees and shuffled closer, keeping eye contact all the time, murmuring encouraging sounds. ‘Good thing, good spitfyre. I won't hurt you. There, there.'

He touched it. The spitfyre let out a squeal and Stormy snatched his hand back, his heart racing. After a moment he put his hand on its neck again. ‘I won't be scared of you,' he said as calmly as he could. He reached his hand to it. ‘I want to be your friend,' he said. ‘I must find out your name; I want to help you.'

The spitfyre flopped back onto the floor, no longer fighting. ‘You haven't eaten your food. There, there's your food, just by you. See, I won't hurt you. I'm going to get you cleaned up and your wings mended and . . . I'm going to help you somehow. I'll come back. I promise. I'll come back and help you get better.'

That look in its eyes – it wasn't malicious or truly fierce, it was the same look that the stray cats had when they came begging for food at the kitchen door. They spat and hissed like anything, but their eyes were full of fear. If he never did anything else in his life, he vowed, if he never managed to be brave or daring or to ride a spitfyre, at least he would help this animal. Nothing was going to stop him. Nothing.

‘Where have you been?' Al was limping around the servery, one hand on the table, the other holding an unopened bottle of wine. ‘What have you been up to?'