The Spin (7 page)

‘This is the Director's study,' Araminta said, leading him into a room. ‘You must never, never come in here.'

Stormy began to back out.

‘What are you doing? Come in!' she snapped.

He went in and stood beside a round table in the centre of the room. There were books on it, a decanter of golden liquid, glasses, a box of cigars, and a massive glass paperweight in the shape of the Academy castle.

The walls of the study were lined with shelves of books and stuffed heads of deer and wolves. The deer looked petrified and the wolves looked fierce and Stormy thought how unfair it was to leave the poor deer being forever frightened.

Mastering the Skies, Aerodynamics for Animal Flyers, The Science of Spitfyres, Spitfyre Folklore, Training for Spitfyre Sky-riders, Flying Horses Forever
– the titles of the books sent a thrilling shiver up his spine.

‘So, you replace Ollie?' Araminta said. ‘I suppose you're surprised I know a servery worker, aren't you?'

Stormy shook his head, then nodded; she was so confusing.

‘The silly boy made a name for himself . . . You have a good head for heights, have you?'

He wished she wouldn't stare at him so.

‘Yes, miss.'

‘The other boy did not.'

‘Didn't he, miss?' He pretended to know nothing of Ollie's fate because it seemed safer.

She flicked her hair. ‘Don't answer back!' She glared at him. ‘Well, what do you think? Will you make a name for yourself? Answer me!'

‘I'm not clever,' Stormy said. ‘I've never had the chance. But if I had the chance, if I could read all these books, or –'

She shook her pretty head. ‘No chance of that, kitchen boy!'

The swirly patterns on the green and gold carpet swirled some more. ‘No, miss.'

‘I'm the Director's daughter,' she said. ‘I give orders here. I can do whatever I like.' She watched him closely, waiting for him to answer.

‘Yes, miss.'
The Director's daughter? Oh, my!

‘And you must always do as I say,' she added.

‘Yes, miss.' Stormy nodded. Unable to return her stare he looked round at the fascinating things in the room, coming to a stop at a painting of a young man. ‘Is that the Director there?' he blurted, pointing at the picture.

‘Which one, you totally rude boy?'

There were
two
almost identical paintings of two young men on the walls facing each other. They both wore their hair long, curling close round their faces.

‘Either.'

‘You are very nosey for a kitchen boy,' she said. ‘One is my father and one is his brother. I never met my uncle. He's dead.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. It happened ages and ages ago and he left all his money to Daddy so actually it was pretty lucky. If you have to share something you end up with less of it, which isn't good. Don't you agree?'

Stormy had always shared everything – his bunk, his clothes, and his food. But still he nodded.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and Maud came in. ‘Did you ring? Tsk tsk,' she added, eyeing the table. ‘I am sorry.' She began dusting the table vigorously. ‘I'm so sorry, didn't I polish this mahogany to your liking, miss? I could –'

‘No. I did not ring! Maud, you've got bells in your skull instead of brains. How dare you interrupt us? Go away.'

‘Yes, miss.' Maud gave Stormy a quick cheeky grin, so fleeting he wasn't sure it had been there at all, and backed out. ‘I can't imagine what I was thinking,' she muttered with a smile as she closed the door.

‘Maud has been with us since she was a baby. An orphan, like you,' Araminta said. ‘Daddy treats her as part of the family; he is a very kind and generous man. My mother died, you know. Just three years and eight months ago. I think I'm forgetting her a little already. Daddy has forgotten her completely. Ah well . . .'

Stormy hardly heard her. What if Araminta and the Director had adopted
him
when he was a baby, instead of Otto and Mrs Cathcart taking him in at the orphanage? How different his life would have turned out then.

‘You'll love it here,' she went on. ‘My father is a great man. He has big ideas. He's building the Academy into something stupendous. Its reputation is growing and soon –' She hesitated. ‘Soon our spitfyres will rule the world!'

Stormy nodded, fired by her enthusiasm. ‘Yes, yes, I'm sure they will,' he said.
Our spitfyres
.
Our
spitfyres!

‘Well, you'd better go,' Araminta said, smiling at him sweetly. ‘I'm sorry, you must have lots of horrid dirty menial jobs to do.'

Stormy turned to leave, but she suddenly stopped him. ‘Wait. Do you think I'm very beautiful?'

‘Yes. I did when I first saw you,' he said, honestly. ‘When you crashed the spitfyre and –'

She went very still. ‘
I
crashed the spitfyre? When did I crash . . . It was
you
!'

‘Yes. By the compost heap. And you asked me to give a message to Brittel. I didn't tell anyone else, honestly.'

Her eyes flashed dangerously. ‘Good. My father doesn't allow me to fly, boy – he would be angry if he found out. Don't speak of it to anyone, do you understand? If you do, I will make things very difficult for you. I can, you know, and I will.'

Then she was pointing at the door and he was going towards it. Stumbling and knocking into the furniture, he made it to the corridor. He felt as if he'd been turned upside down and shaken. He wiped his sweaty palms down his trousers as he tottered towards the front door.

The fresh air was like nectar. He breathed it in deeply and ran down the steps two at a time. He forced himself to walk across the yard slowly, as if his cheeks
weren't
on fire. He had never met anyone as bewildering as Araminta.

The servery was deserted. Stormy stared at the trolleys of half-empty dishes and bowls of untouched perfect, delicious Otto food.

All that grub and he didn't feel hungry. Araminta had troubled him. He put aside a little pie on a dish and laid a cloth over it. Maybe later . . . The rest of the food he would have to tip into the rubbish buckets. He hated the thought of throwing it away and decided to put it off for now. He began to wash the dishes, wipe down the table and sweep the floor.

Still no one came.

He started to clean the forlorn room. The small stove hadn't been used for about a hundred years. Old grease had dried in rivulets like candle wax and was as thick as his fingers and black with age. He chiselled it off with a blade. He rubbed and scratched and scrubbed, hoping he could scour Araminta's cutting words from his mind.

He kept expecting someone to shout at him or to deliver a whack from a number six spoon, but there was no one to do either. He was alone. Below, in Otto's kitchen, in the dormitory, the dining hall, you were never alone. Stormy stopped working and listened to the clock ticking and the birds outside calling. He didn't like this peace. He felt the vast openness of the outside all around him; freedom – he didn't like that either. He missed the smells of the linen cloths drying by the stove, the warm bread, and garlic frying. Cakes. Hot apple pie. And he missed smelly Sponge leaning against his leg.

As he wiped his wet hands down his trousers, his fingers caught on a length of white ribbon dangling from his pocket.
White
ribbon?
Perhaps it had always been in the pocket of the too-short blue trousers and he hadn't noticed it before. Perhaps Mrs Cathcart put it there for some odd womanly reason. He stuffed it back in quickly at the sound of Al's squeaky leg.

Ralf came in behind Al.

‘Hell's bells,' Al said, stopping mid-stride and looking slowly round at the sparkling kitchen. ‘Look at this, Ralf.' Al sat down stiffly at the kitchen table, wiping his palm over the clean surface.

Ralf whistled.

Stormy handed Al the list to remind him of some of the duties – cleaning being one of them. He fancied he smelled sherry trifle all of a sudden, and the smell came from Al.

‘Haven't I done it right?'

Al took the list from Stormy and scrumpled it up and chucked it on the floor. ‘I never said
follow
it, did I?' Stormy felt his heart flip; he was in trouble . . .

‘It's all right,' Al grunted. ‘If you must. I'd rather you didn't. Oh, I don't care –'

‘Dinner time,' Ralf interrupted as a buzzer sounded. ‘That's the spitfyre food.'

Stormy followed him to a stone-floored pantry adjoining the servery. It smelled like the compost heap. All that hard work down below, all that cleanliness, and then this . . .

The dumb waiter rattled its way towards them. The walls shook and the sound of screeching wheels filled the room.

‘You know spitfyres are really rated down in Otto's kitchen,' Stormy said tentatively, knocking a cockroach from its perch by the lift. ‘I mean, they
worship
them, almost.'

‘Oh, yeah?' Ralf said.

‘Brittel cooks special recipes – they've taken years to develop. They make the food behind locked doors.'

‘Is that so?' Ralf said blankly.

‘Each spitfyre gets a special blend of –'

‘All the same to Al what they get,' Ralf said, ‘so it's all the same to me.'

‘You know it's a bit dirty up here,' Stormy said. ‘Otto teaches us to have pride in –'

‘We don't do pride here! And spitfyres don't know about clean,' Ralf said. ‘Spitfyres never come in here,' he added with a chuckle.

Stormy hated himself for sounding prissy, but hated the dirt even more. Now Otto's ranting and raving about keeping order, about cleaning and scrubbing didn't seem so fanatical.

Ralf opened the metal doors of the huge dumb waiter. Inside were buckets labelled 1 – 13. Stormy lifted the lid off one; the smell was awful. He slammed it back on and reeled backwards. ‘What's in there?'

‘Don't like to think,' Ralf said.

Holding his breath, Stormy inched the lid off and had a closer look. ‘Oysters, beetles, primroses,' he said, ‘some green stuff, chopped potatoes, I think, and carrots, and some sort of long wiggly thing . . . Rather the spitfyres than me!'

They loaded the food onto the two ‘dragon-wagons', as Ralf called the larger trolleys, and wheeled them back along the corridor and out of the servery onto the terrace.

By now it was almost dark and Al brought out some lanterns. The light glinted on the specks of ice caught in the cracks and crevasses of the walls. The air was sharp and very cold but Stormy hardly noticed.

The spitfyres at last!

The castle walls towered upwards on their left, disappearing into the dark sky. Windows were tiny yellow squares of light that seemed to float magically in nothingness. On the right of the terrace was space, a drop of thousands of feet to the valley below. Far, far away a few lights glimmered in Stollen and way beyond that, more lights in a cluster, which was Stollenback.

Stormy hugged the wall nervously.

Al leaned on the dragon-wagon as he pushed it along. He didn't speak. It was as if just walking and pushing were hard enough. His lame leg swung stiffly and hit the ground with a dull
thud, thud
.

A string of caves cut into the rock beneath the castle came into view. Large animals moved inside them, and every now and then a shower of flame and sparks illuminated them.

Stormy tingled from head to foot.

‘Dragon caves,' Al said. ‘Used to be dragons here. Now it's stables for the spitfyres, you see.'

‘I see. And no terrace wall,' Stormy added, even more aware of the drop on their right.

Al laughed darkly. ‘Spitfyres don't want anything in their way.'

Of course; he had so much to learn.

He could smell the spitfyres now; the dirty hay, and a most peculiar scent of sulphur and newly burnt wood. And he could hear shuffling, snorting, hooves clacking on the stone, snorts and bellowing cries.

His pulse was racing madly.

Ralf brought out some overalls and rubber boots for Stormy from a storeroom. ‘They're filthy beasts!' he said, wiping his hands and throwing down a bucket. ‘Put them on, they're fireproof, or were . . .'

Stormy reluctantly dragged on the stiff overalls; they were stained and smelled like a cheesy old dishcloth.

‘Here. Take this.' Ralf passed him a three-pronged wooden device that looked as if it was used to turn the laundry; only this was lighter with a longer handle. ‘It's your thork.'

‘Do I need a – a
thork
?'

‘You do,' Al said, leaning heavily on the dragon-wagon. ‘First thing you should know is that when you step into a spitfyre's den you are stepping into its home. They don't like it.'

‘I don't suppose they would –'

‘But they must back off. You are master and they
must
let you in. Some will let you get closer than others before they start backing off; they've got different boundaries. That's why we hold out the thork as we go in.'

‘Better they burn or bite a thork than your arm,' Ralf said grimly.

‘And it's no good me telling you what the limit is with any spitfyre because it's different for each, and for each keeper,' Al said. ‘Once the spitfyre's backed up and isn't too cross about losing its space, you go in. Do the necessary.'

Stormy nodded.

‘In the morning, that's fresh straw down. Fresh water. Food in the trough. Got that? Night's just food and water.'

‘Yes. I understand,' Stormy said.

‘We muck out proper when they go fly,' Ralf told him.

Stormy wasn't bothered about the duties. Any idiot could do that – he just wanted to get close to see the spitfyres clearly.

‘On we go, then.'

The wagons rattled noisily. The lantern lights wavered and wobbled as gusts of wind got into them. The food was growing cold.