Tomorrow's Magic Page 3

  Hearts racing, the two trotted west over the hillside, putting distance between themselves and the ruins.

  At last they slowed, and Welly said between gasps for breath, “Don't you think we should go back now? I mean, these hills could be infested with the creatures. And it's well past noon already.”

  “Yes,” she replied, chewing reflectively on the thin end of a braid. “But you know, this really ought to be about where the old mansion was. Let's look around a little more. If we find something, we can check it out and come back another time.”

  Welly grunted his assent, and they continued walking west. Dutifully he scanned the slope ahead, but his mind was on bread and cheese and the question of whether muties liked to follow such delicacies with fresh meat.

  It had been interesting, he admitted, seeing muties close up like that. But they were certainly awful-looking. Still, the masters said that if mutations didn't kill or prevent reproduction, they were often adaptive. Everyone whose ancestors had survived the Devastation was something of a mutant, even if only in skin color.

  Darker skin kept out more harmful rays, and nearly everyone was darker than their pre-Devastation ancestors. Though, of course, there was a lot of variation. Welly was darker than Heather, and little Zachary Green was as dark as old leather. That older boy, Earl Bedwas, on the other hand, was very pale, like things that lived under stones.

  They marched on, but Welly didn't see any grand mansions. “We really ought to turn back soon,” he said.

  “All right. Let's just go as far as that clump of trees.”

  This quickened his interest. Silhouetted against the pale sky was a cluster of rare evergreens. They approached with reverence. The trunks were twisted back from years of battling west winds, and on their north sides the dark branches still sagged under dollops of snow. The air about them held a cool, spicy tang.

  Welly was so intrigued by the trees, he failed to notice the stones. But Heather saw them.

  “Look, stone walls! Oh, maybe we've found it! This could be Ravenscroft Manor.”

  Welly looked around to see tumbled stones snaking off through the snow. Trees grew up among the ruins, and in spots low bushes half-covered the stonework. The place seemed a haven for plant life. In snow-free patches, the usual coarse ground cover gave way to richer green stuff, and colorful mosses splotched the stones.

  “The setting seems right,” Heather said a little doubtfully, glancing from the view before her to the book cover in her hand. “Let's look for a fireplace.”

  Welly was more interested in the mosses and the odd green tendrils pushing up through the snow. Could these be ferns? He stepped over a pile of stones to examine a cluster. Suddenly his foot slipped. He grabbed at a mass of brittle twigs. A whole bush pulled free and tumbled with him into the hole.

  For a moment, he lay stunned, liberally covered in loose dirt. Then gingerly he stood up. Little spears of pain shot up his right ankle. Shakily he sat down upon a stone. He should have kept his eyes open! This hole wasn't exactly hidden. The ruins dropped away here, exposing a maze of sunken rooms.

  Heather's thin face peered over the edge. “Are you all right, Welly? Oh, look at all you've found! I'll be right down.” In an avalanche of snow and dirt, she slid down beside him. “We're bound to find something here.”

  “More trouble, I expect,” Welly grumbled as he stood up again and limped experimentally about.

  In an adjacent room, Heather poked around in the rubble, but Welly was rapidly losing interest, even in jeweled daggers. Suddenly her voice came to him, high and excited.

  “Welly, come here! Doesn't this look like a brick fireplace?”

  He hobbled through the crumbling doorway and over to where a number of bricks were set into a stone wall.

  “It might be,” he said dubiously. “But how do we tell which is the loose brick for your secret hiding place? They're all loose.”

  “We'll just have to be thorough,” she said, already prying bricks away and throwing them aside. Welly joined in, his interest quickening with the search.

  After a few minutes, Heather stopped. “Did you hear something?”

  “My stomach growling.”

  “No. But something was. Sounded like it came from in there.” She stepped through a narrow doorway, and cautiously Welly followed.

  “Look!” she exclaimed from up ahead. Hurriedly Welly pushed in beside her. The small room was still partially roofed over, but there was enough light to see a pile of branches and what looked like bones. On it crouched a small, furry animal. A pink tongue hung out of its smiling jaws, and bright yellow eyes fixed on them as the creature jumped up and made yelping bounces toward them. It was ash-gray with big paws.

  “How cute!” Heather said.

  “It's cute, all right,” Welly agreed, “but we'd better leave it be.”

  “But how can we leave the little thing out here all alone?”

  “It's probably not alone. It's sure to have family about; this looks like its den.”

  He glanced around the ruins with new uneasiness, imagining wild animals lurking in the cold afternoon shadows. Again he remembered the encounter of the night before and shivered. Heather picked up a bone and tossed it toward the puppy, who pounced on it playfully.

  “Heather,” Welly said, “let's start back now. It's awfully late.”

  A deep growl cut short her reply. They looked up. Glaring down at them from the wall stood a large fell-dog, ears erect, its fur gray and mottled. A limp animal dangled from its jaws. Yowling rose from behind it, and another, larger, dog joined the first. Several answering howls came from not far away.

  Fear slammed against the children. Backing away, Welly expected to be leaped upon any second, but the dogs remained on the rim, yapping and snarling. Suddenly he realized these animals were afraid of them. Feral dogs had many encounters with men, usually armed men.

  Quickly Welly reached down and grabbed up a brick. “Keep moving back,” he whispered. “And arm yourself.”

  A third dog loped up and, seeing the children, crouched, ready to spring. Welly lobbed his brick, and it glanced off a shaggy shoulder. The dog yipped and slunk back. The others shied away, snarling and pacing back and forth a few feet from the edge.

  At the arrival of two more dogs, Heather hurled her brick. Welly followed with another and another. “We can keep throwing stuff,” Heather said tensely. “But how do we do that and climb out, too?”

  “Maybe there's an easier way out than the one we took down.” Welly reached for a stone, since they were clear of the scattered bricks.

  By now, seven fell-dogs milled about, clamoring for blood yet hesitant to come for it. But larger numbers increased their confidence, and they moved closer to the edge. As the children retreated, fewer of their missiles reached the pack.

  The barking was deafening, but suddenly it stilled. An unearthly howl rose from the other side of the ruins and climbed up and up into a piercing shriek.

  The dogs paced about in confusion, tails between their legs. The eerie sound came again, closer this time, and the pack slunk back out of sight. In a few moments, they were yelping some distance away.

  The sound that had driven off the wild dogs rooted the children with fear. Dreading what he would see, Welly turned slowly to look in the direction of the sound. A dark shape moved to the rim of the ruins, silent against the pale sky.

  “Well met, schoolmates,” said a perfectly human voice. “But let's get out of here before your friends return. I can't fool them with that howl forever.”

  Welly just stuttered in relief, but Heather found the name of their deliverer first. “Earl Bedwas! What a rescue!”

  “Here, you can get up this way,” the older boy said, and he helped them up what had once been a stairway.

  “Now let's go—quickly but calmly,” he said when they reached the top.

  Following Earl's lead, they moved down the slope as fast as they could. But with Welly's hurt ankle, this was not fast enough for any
of them. The dogs, however, did not follow.

  “I suppose it's rather obvious to say how grateful we are,” Heather said to their new companion. “But thank you just the same. How did you find us, anyway?”

  The boy ran a hand through his long dark hair. “Oh, I was out walking around the hills, and I heard the pack up by the ruins. It sounded as if they had some special trouble going, so I thought I'd take a look.”

  “How did you do that howl?” Welly asked. “It sure scared them.”

  “Not just them,” Heather muttered.

  Earl laughed. “I don't know how I first stumbled on it. But I come out to the hills a lot, and I've gotten to know the things that live here. The fell-dogs are afraid of other dog sounds, if you do it right. Maybe they think it's the dog devil or some such. I don't know.”

  The three walked single file toward the distant walled town. Welly, limping along in the rear, watched the tall, thin boy as he strode on ahead. If Earl did spend his free time wandering alone in the hills, then he was probably as odd as most people said he was. Welly'd never had much contact with the older boy, but whenever he had, Earl always seemed pleasant enough. Probably he was a bit of a loner, and Welly knew that was enough to make some people consider him peculiar.

  When they reached the lowlands, Earl stopped and looked back at the hills. “They won't follow us here. Sit down a minute, Welly, and let me look at that ankle.” Welly collapsed gratefully onto the soggy grass. Earl, kneeling in front of him, took up the injured foot and peeled back trouser, sock, and boot top. Gently he prodded the ankle while Welly winced. “It's probably just twisted, though it's swelling a little. Anyway, binding will make it feel better, and you'll move faster.”

  He drew a linen scarf from inside his coat and wrapped it firmly around Welly's ankle. “There,” he said when everything was back in place. “Want to rest more?”

  Welly swallowed. “Just a bit. It hurt so much for a while, I thought I was going to be sick.”

  Earl nodded and sank back on the ground, his head cocked quizzically to the right. “Would it be impertinent to ask what you two were doing up there?”

  Heather looked down at her hands. “We were looking for treasure.”

  “In the ruins?”

  “Well, somewhere up there. I found a book that talked about it, and that seemed like the right sort of place. But I don't know, maybe the book really was fiction. Anyway,”

  she concluded, looking up defiantly, “it made a ripping good adventure!”

  Earl smiled, dark eyes glinting in his pale, almost gaunt face.

  Welly glanced uneasily back to the hills. “Earl, are you sure the fell-dogs won't come down after us?”

  The older boy shook his head. “They're afraid of people. Unless there's a famine, they don't come close to towns or roads.”

  “But last night,” Welly began, then looked quickly at Heather. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you this earlier, Heather, but I was afraid you'd want to investigate. Last night, I was coming back from the loo at the same time Master Greenhow discovered that intruder, and something big and black and low ran by me in the dark. It was cold and horrible.”

  Earl raised an eyebrow. “I can't even guess what it was. But no fell-dog would come that near to people unless it was rabid. And a rabid dog would have stayed and fought.”

  Welly lowered his eyes. “Well, maybe. I just thought that with the cries in the night …”

  “Cries in the night?” Earl said sharply.

  “Yes, that's what woke me first. High, wailing cries. I've heard them before. I just thought that maybe some animal made them, and this thing I saw could have been it.”

  “You've heard these cries before? Where's your room?”

  “At the end of the north wing, near the abandoned part. Have you heard them, too?”

  “No, never! It's probably just the wind or something.” Earl stood up abruptly, tugging a shock of black hair out of his eyes. “We'd better be going, if you're feeling better.”

  Earl helped Welly to his feet, then smiled tautly. “From the look of the sun and your ankle, we're not likely to make it back by curfew. But if you limp impressively into Master Greenhow's study, we mightn't get too grim a punishment.”

  “You two could go on ahead,” Welly suggested unenthusiastically. “There's no point in your getting into trouble because of my clumsiness.”

  “What!” Earl exclaimed. “And leave you to enjoy more adventures alone?”

  “No,” Heather said, her back turned resolutely on the rapidly sinking sun. “We all stick together.”

  FRIENDS IN NEED

  Earl had been right. The headmaster was impressed with Welly's ankle and the story of the others staying with him against possible perils of the night. (The actual fell-dogs and mutants were judiciously not mentioned.) As a result, the punishment for missing curfew was moderate: they were restricted to the school grounds for the next three weekends and confined to their rooms every evening after dinner.

  This penalty however, proved taxing, since the brief summer was fully upon them. For those three weeks, temperatures were above freezing every day. To miss any of such a golden time seemed terribly hard.

  Heather, while refusing to lose the out-of-doors altogether, also sought to avoid those parts of the school grounds where other students might be playing or talking, activities from which she'd be pointedly excluded. Those Sundays she spent in the old orchard, a forgotten spot where the ancient school wall had been joined to the newer town defenses. Most of the fruit trees that had once thrived there had long since died, but a few hardy descendants still remained. During their brief period in leaf, they were the center of much pride and some tourism.

  Generally, however, the orchard remained untenanted, and Heather found it a welcome refuge. She played her own games, told stories to occasionally attentive squirrels, or sat in a corner of the wall reading.

  Welly preferred to turn a contemptuous back on the weather and passed his confinement in the musty shadows of the library. Earl, too, spent much of his time there. The two boys had seldom spoken before, but now they explored together some of the treasures to be found among the jumbled shelves. The Llandoylan library had, in the centuries following the Devastation, become the repository for most of the surviving books in southern Wales.

  Welly soon realized that Earl's interests were wider ranging than his own. In the older boy's seven years at the school, he'd been a voracious reader, gathering knowledge on a variety of subjects. Learning of Welly's interest in military tactics, Earl led him to new sources and helped explain periods of history that had always seemed fuzzy to him. Although neither boy developed friendships easily, there grew between them a tentative openness.

  One Sunday afternoon, the two were seated alone at an age-scarred table. Bookshelves towered on every side. The only light came from two high glass windows whose filming of ancient grime gave everything a hazy cast. Dust motes danced in the slanting shafts.

  After a time, Earl pushed aside his book on Italian city-states and leaned back in his chair, thin hands clasped behind his head. “Welly, I'm curious. What is it about military tactics that interests you? You don't seem the sort who likes to go out and bash people.”

  Welly frowned, trying to sort out his thoughts. “No, you're right; I'm probably not. If I'd gone to the Academy, I'd probably have been a flop. I don't have that leadership stuff.” His voice lowered. “I'm not even sure I have the courage.”

  He blushed at the depth of his confession, then looked up defiantly. “But tactics are interesting on their own, you know. It's exciting to see how things work together, how you can plan many steps ahead and then see it all come out.”

  “Yes.” Earl nodded. “I think I understand. Like chess.”

  Welly wanted to turn the subject from himself. His old crushed hopes were still too tender. “How about you? You seem to specialize in everything.”

  Earl chuckled. “I read everything, about anything, and then read something e
lse.”

  “Why?”

  He frowned. “I don't know. It's like always being hungry. I just feel I have to learn things. Maybe there'll come a day when it all falls together and makes sense. I've been like that as long as I can remember. Ever since they brought me here, when I didn't know anything—not the language, not even who I was.” He sat forward, his voice tight as he turned to his work again. “But I guess there're just some things one can't learn.”

  Welly took up his book as well, but his thoughts stayed on his companion. They'd all heard stories about Earl's mysterious background—or lack of it. How seven years ago, raiders from Gwent had attempted to attack Cardiff by hauling in a wagonload of ancient explosives. The wagon toppled off a mountain road and smashed into the village of Bedwas, exploding and killing half the population.

  The next day, rescuers had found a boy about seven years old wandering in the ruins, babbling strange words. They sent him to Llandoylan, where the masters knew exotic languages. But all they could learn was what seemed to be his name—Earl. When he learned English, as he did quickly, it became apparent that in the tragedy, the boy had lost all memory of his life before. So they gave him the last name of Bedwas, after his shattered village, and kept him at the school because, though destitute, he proved an apt and eager pupil.

  All this was common knowledge at the school. And Welly realized that though the intense, pale boy would have been considered odd in any case, his strange background set him further apart, as did the fact that this didn't seem to bother him in the least.

  Eventually the three weeks came to an end. When the three children had been forbidden to leave their rooms in the evenings, the monitors had taken special pleasure in running room checks. But now that the ban was lifted, Heather wasted no time in arranging another nocturnal visit to Welly's room.

  This time when she crawled through the window, she had a battered old metal box under one arm. Into the top were punched several small holes.