The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Read Free Page A

Doorways, allowing the Seasons to change at the right times around the world, ensuring the weather doesn’t spiral out of control and destroy us all. The Seasons don’t just pass through the Doorways, they pass through the Weathermen, becoming part of them. Weathermen have the special and terrible power of last resort to bring a Season back into them and become that Season in all its might. It’s supposed to be a safeguard in case a Season goes crazy and forgets the agreement, or against a truly planet-threatening threat. To use that power is a crime, no matter how justified, and the person who uses it can no longer be Weatherman and will probably be dead. The last time it happened the four Seasons came from the four quarters of the world to judge the Weatherman, and they were so disgusted and enraged they exiled him from the Earth. I think his body is still up there, in orbit somewhere between here and the moon.
    The Seasons don’t like it when anyone interferes with the weather at all, which is why the Weathermen almost never do, even though they can. Except when things get weird. It’s Weatherman’s work to wrestle Weird Weather, and though I was not the weather wrestler I was the weather wrestler’s son and I’d have to wrestle weather until the weather wrestling’s done.
    The skies were crowded, so I felt my way into the crowd. I rose up through the top of my head, seeing my body standing next to Dad on the path below. I floated away from the house, out over the trees and the hill to Loch Farny and the farm beside it. Low over the lake, practically on top of it, I saw a heavy black cloud—the sort that’s only supposed to form under certain conditions at certain times of the year. Not here and not now. I could hear Dad’s voice beside me, guiding me. I could see down, down, down into the microscopic world where elementals were swarming and rushing. Wherever they went the wind blew, snow formed, clouds billowed, air froze. All those tiny things were joining together, building and swirling, working to make a cloud full of snow. I reached out to them. Dad showed me how. I touched them and changed them, I turned them and broke them up and sent them away.
    Back you go to where you should be, I told them.
    The cloud broke and the elementals scattered and the temperature rose. Something under the lake wailed and groaned, so faint and far away I might have dreamed it, but this wasn’t dreaming.
    â€œDad,” I said, sick and horrified for reasons I didn’t understand. “Dad, there’s something under the lake.”
    â€œIt’s OK,” he said. “Come back now.”
    There was a rush and a sound like the flapping of wings, and I was back in my own body again.
    â€œDad,” I began.
    â€œDon’t worry about it,” Dad said. “I’ll take care of it.”
    â€œWow!” said a voice from behind us, and we whirled around to see Ed Wharton grinning at us from the open door. “Heightened sensory perception, extraphysical projection of consciousness, and fine-particle manipulation. I knew it!”
    â€œNow, look here, Mr. Wharton,” Dad said.
    â€œCall me Ed!” he boomed. “So which one of you is the Weatherman?”

 
    CHAPTER 4
    LIZ
    I leaped the ditch and ran along the tree trunk that had fallen across the wire fence years before. The trees swallowed me up, and I was safe and hidden. The woods are about a half a mile wide and a mile and a half long. There’s a wide path for walkers that runs down the middle, but we mostly stayed off that and roamed and quested and fought through the twisty small paths and tracks, the hidden hollows full of ivy and ferns and the broken mossy walls.
    Behind me the Tourist was bent over trying to gather up his stuff, and I heard the door open and the others come out. I knew I’d get into trouble for not staying to help him, but I was mad at him for sneaking up on me