The Maloneys' Magical Weatherbox Read Free Page B

and mad at myself for being snuck up on. Nobody should be able to sneak up and startle a Shieldsman like that.
    Neil and me, we used to play in the woods a lot. I’d be a Shieldsman and fight battles and defeat enemy armies and ninjas and monsters. He’d be the Weatherman and cast spells and fight witches and wizards and warlocks. We didn’t play much anymore. Sometimes Owen would come into the woods with me but he was too little and annoying to be any good at those games.
    Neil didn’t think being the Weatherman was a game anymore. Well, neither was being a Shieldsman. He had his job to do. I had mine. All the Shieldsmen had vanished hundreds of years ago and the Weathermen’s Club was nearly gone—the members blaming Dad for it, too, telling lies and things. So to heck with them. It was up to me and Neil now.
    I was just crossing the big path when I heard footsteps coming down the hill.
    The woods ran from the road to the big path, then up from the big path to the crown of the hill, and on the crown of the hill was a tall old wall. On the other side of the wall was enemy territory where we could not go. That was where the Fitzgeralds lived, on the shore of Loch Farny, in the house they stole from my grandfather. When you heard someone coming down from there it usually meant Hugh Fitzgerald was riding forth to do evil. It was not a good idea to meet Hugh Fitzgerald.
    Good old horrible old Hugh. One year older than Neil. Three years older than me. Tall, tall, tall—not to mention slim and golden-haired, with a face like an angel in an old painting, and every time he met us he beat us up. We didn’t let him! We’d fight back or run away and, if it was Neil and me together, we’d sometimes very nearly almost kind of sort of win. Mostly it was just hitting and slapping and pulling hair, pushing us down, rolling us around on the ground with his foot while he laughed and said mean things. I’d gotten really good at hearing him coming and hiding and following without him knowing it.
    I ducked off the path and behind a thick clump of nettles. I watched his back as it moved out of the shade into a patch of light and back into shade again. That was him—Hideous Hugh, light-dark, light-dark, all tangled in his own shadows. He had his mum’s face and his dad’s hair. He was lucky it wasn’t the other way around, Neil always said, or they’d keep him in a kennel and teach him to round up sheep.
    I drew myself in and went still, and cold shivers ran over me and through me. I’d been startled by the Tourist, and he’d made me jump and breathe fast. I was wary of Hugh because, while I’d fight him if I had to, I didn’t want to. I preferred to practice my stalking on him instead.
    But now I felt scared, really scared, because I’d suddenly realized something was stalking me .
    I heard voices, high and cracked and old, like trees creaking before they fall. I squatted down even farther behind my clump of nettles and tried to stop myself from shaking while Hugh stepped out onto the main path. Two toothless, bent old women, with bony faces and sharp chins, wearing dirty, raggedy dresses came up the big path, leaning on sticks but moving surprisingly fast. They called Hugh over to them.
    Don’t go, I thought. It seemed stupid. Why was I scared of two old women in the woods? So scared I was even worried for flipping Hugh?
    The women were complete strangers to me. I had no idea who they were or where they’d come from. Sometimes buses brought groups of pensioners out here for walks along the big path, but these two looked older than anyone I’d ever seen on the path before. Their clothes and their hair and their skin were so dirty and worn and ragged they might have come out of ancient times, when old women lived wild in the woods and everyone kept clear of them because they said they were mad or witches or hags or mad-old-witch-hags, which is an