The Spin Read online

  The path was narrow and rocky; unlucky carts had tipped right over the edge and tumbled down to the valley below. Few trees grew this high up; only some spindly sprigs of green showed amongst the pale rocks. The wind whipped around Dragon Mountain and moaned as it squeezed through tiny tunnels and gaps between the stones. Stormy hugged his jacket, feeling the air getting colder and colder the higher he went.

  At the first bend in the path he paused to look down at the kitchens and dormitory buildings. It was strange seeing things from this angle, steep slate roofs all higgledy-piggledy, different shades of grey and purple; tiny windows he knew nothing about hidden in the eaves and tall crooked chimneys. He could even see the compost heap.

  He followed the path round the mountainside until finally the massive wall of the castle reared up before him. Behind the wall, taller towers with pointed purple roofs rose into the sky.

  The wooden gates were made of a dark wood, studded with metal spitfyres. Jagged metal barbs ran along the top, like the spikes along a dragon’s tail. Stormy shifted his little bag of possessions into his left hand and pulled the bell rope. His heart went ding-donging like the bell.

  Voices started up on the other side of the gate.

  ‘What? Who’s there?’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Someone at the door?’

  It sounded as if there were several people talking in high-pitched voices.

  ‘I’m Stormy, from the big kitchen down below. Come to work here.’

  ‘Heaven help us!’ a voice said.

  ‘A new orphan!’

  ‘Here in the Academy!’

  There were scratching and scuttling noises from behind the gate, but it still didn’t open.

  ‘Hello?’ Stormy said. ‘Can you open the gate?’

  ‘Just about to do it.’

  ‘Please,’ Stormy said. ‘Could you –’

  ‘Go on, then!’

  ‘Out of the way!’

  ‘Here goes!’

  The bolt was drawn back noisily and a small door within the vast gate opened. Stormy stepped through cautiously. ‘Hello . . .’

  Two littles were wrestling with each other on the other side. They were the size of five-year-old children, but their wrinkled skin showed they were much older. They both wore red trousers with braces and green checked jerkins.

  ‘You didn’t do it properly!’

  ‘You couldn’t open a paper bag!’

  One little ran off and instantly the other followed. They disappeared into the child-sized gatehouse and slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

  There were littles who lived in Stollen, and they seemed usually to be wise and jolly creatures. He wished the littles hadn’t disappeared; they might have helped him.

  Stormy had stepped into a very large courtyard paved with massive creamy stone slabs, worn smooth by hundreds of years of feet. It was surrounded on all sides by high walls. To his left, in the corner, there was a small tower and standing at its base, either side of an iron door, were two guards. Between them was a flight of steps leading down – to the dungeons, he guessed. The guards did not move.

  Directly in front of him was a tall, thin, grey house with rows of identical pointed blank windows. He walked towards the forbidding place. He felt himself being watched, but saw no one.

  Not knowing what else to do, he went up the steps to the door. The door handle and door knocker were both shaped like spitfyres. Stormy knocked tentatively.

  After a while, a girl of about his age opened the door. She was thin, dressed in a droopy blue gown and a grey apron and looked as if she never got enough food or sleep. She was busy tidying up her long dark hair, rolling it into an untidy knot.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I don’t know where to go. The littles at the gate just –’

  ‘You shouldn’t come to this door,’ the girl whispered. She smiled shyly. ‘This is the Director’s house. This is out of bounds for you – for the workers – unless invited, of course.’

  Stormy felt his cheeks fire up hotly. He stumbled backwards down the short flight of steps. ‘Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. No one saw you. You need that door there.’ She pointed to her left to a narrow arched doorway. ‘The servery.’ She was already closing the big door on him.

  ‘Thank you, Miss –’

  ‘Maud.’ She grinned suddenly and her whole face brightened. ‘Just Maud, but you can call me Miss Maud if you like . . . no, not really, just joking. Good luck,’ she added, closing the door. ‘Take care.’

  Encouraged by that smile, Stormy went towards the door she’d pointed to. I’m really close to the spitfyres right now. I’m going to live and breathe spitfyres . . . I’m lucky, I am so lucky.

  But in truth he felt very small just then, surrounded by the giant walls and very ignorant of the Academy’s ways. As he looked up he saw a group of students pressing their faces up against the glass of one of the windows, waving and shouting at him. He couldn’t hear a thing but he could see that they were laughing at him. He tugged at his too-short sleeves and flattened down his hair.

  At last he reached the servery door and knocked on it quietly, so quietly that no one heard him.

  Stormy didn’t even hear the knock himself.

  8

  Spitfyre Keeper

  Receiving no answer to his knock, Stormy went in. Passing along a narrow corridor, he came to a sort of kitchen with a table, oven and shelves of pots; he guessed it was the servery.

  It was empty.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have come in like that, but he couldn’t stand out in the courtyard being laughed at.

  He put his bag down on the floor and looked around.

  There were four tall windows on the opposite side of the room that overlooked a wide terrace on the mountain edge. The windows were greasy with fingerprints and dusty. The old stove looked like it hadn’t been used for years; the copper pans on the dresser were tarnished. The floor seemed to have been coated with old jam.

  A figure passed the windows and came towards the door. Stormy prepared himself – perhaps this would be his new boss?

  The door opened and the man creaked towards him. Despite his nerves, Stormy had the wit to think that the noise was odd, that stone floors didn’t creak.

  The man was a walking skeleton. His head was skull-like with sunken eyes and cheeks; his skin was grey. Huge hands hung like stone crabs from his long arms. All his features were large; his nose was long and drooping, with black nostrils like tunnels. His ears stuck out like cupboard doors and his eyebrows were thick and black. Around his neck he wore a heavy chain with a key on it.

  He creaked over to Stormy. It wasn’t the floor that was making the noise, but the man’s right leg, which dragged along the floor as if it held a hidden weight and, as he lifted it, there was the sound of wood on wood, bending.

  ‘The new skivvy?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Yes, I’m Stormy, sir.’

  The tall man shook his head. ‘No, no, we don’t do sir here.’ He sighed. ‘I’m Al. Stable boss; keeper of the winged horses.’

  ‘Spitfyre keeper!’ Stormy said reverently.

  Al lowered himself stiffly to a chair at the table, manhandling his right leg into place. ‘I do my job, Stormy; I keep the spitfyres. That’s all I do here, my job. Nothing else.’ He toyed with some crumbs on the table. ‘Do your job, Stormy, and ask no questions and you’ll be happy as a . . .’ he looked at Stormy from beneath his heavy brows, ‘whatever’s happy, I don’t know. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I mean yes, Al.’

  ‘Good. I brought you a list of servery and stable duties,’ Al said. ‘Did you know Ollie? He had your job, before –’ he hesitated, ‘before he left. He never did quite get the hang of it. He came up from Otto’s kitchen too. Like Smithers and Freddie . . .’

  ‘I remember Ollie,’ Stormy said. ‘We called him Oily. He used to write poetry and we teased him. He had long dark hair,
didn’t he?’

  ‘Dark, yes. Poetry, yes. He was useless. Simply no other way to describe him.’

  ‘I won’t be, I promise.’ Stormy quickly scanned his list of duties. The word SPITFYRE appeared a lot – reading it made his pulse race. ‘I love flying horses,’ he said.

  Al frowned; his whole face sank into a heavy, lined expression. ‘Love spitfyres? Ah, Stormy once upon a time . . .’ His voice faded away.

  ‘All my life I’ve dreamed about working with winged horses,’ Stormy said.

  Al gave him a pitying look. ‘I’ve worked with them for years and years. How will you feel after you’ve cleaned out thirteen mucky pens every day? Fed and watered the hungry bad-tempered beasts, eh? Spitfyres! Come. I’ll show you where you sleep. You’re sharing with Ralf. You two work the West-side spitfyres. Troy and Roy do the East side.’

  ‘East? West?’

  ‘Depending on their need for light, Stormy, and for heat. The hottest side is the West. Late sun. East side is for morning spitfyres; they don’t need to get so warm. Put it down to their dragon blood.’

  Stormy felt a little thrill ripple through his bones; he was learning important things already.

  A flat-sounding bell rang suddenly and Stormy jumped. ‘What’s that?’

  Al smiled slowly. ‘That’s the dumb waiter.’ He nodded encouragingly as he saw understanding dawn in Stormy’s eyes. ‘Yes, the lift, Stormy, from your kitchen.’

  Stormy pictured the enormous lift coming up from hundreds of feet below, as the Winder cranked the handle. It was passing through the ceiling of Otto’s kitchen, through walls and floors, rumbling and creaking up through the shaft cut into the stone of the mountain, through the dungeons and up to the Academy. He’d never even dreamed of seeing it from this side: the UP side.

  The kitchen cupboards rattled and shook as the lift came nearer. There was a rumbling movement deep under their feet. A sound like a small dog whining sang up through the ground.

  ‘Cogs and wheels,’ Al said, shaking his head as if he could hardly believe there were such extraordinary things. ‘Levers and pulleys, eh?’

  With a final jolt that shook the dishes on the dresser, the lift wheezed to a halt. Al opened a cupboard door to a container full of food; plates of cold meats that only Otto could have arranged, with slices of salami swirling out in overlapping spirals interspersed with fancily cut gherkins and sprigs of parsley and chives. There were salads of baby tomatoes and fresh herbs and a mountain of warm fresh bread rolls.

  Al wheeled out two trolleys from a side room and wiped his long skinny forearms over them, scattering little black objects that looked suspiciously like mouse droppings.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he said.

  The lift had brought up with it the scent of Otto’s kitchen. Stormy pictured the bustling room below – Sponge, Otto and Tex, everything he knew. It wasn’t homesickness yet, just a sharp reminder.

  Al nodded at the food. ‘Professional stuff, that. Gordon Blur as we say up here. Great!’ He peeled off a slice of pink ham, rolled it into a tube and handed it to Stormy. ‘Here.’

  Stormy shook his head violently. ‘No, no!’

  Al shrugged and picked up a tomato, wrapped salami round it and offered that to him. ‘No? Can’t I tempt you? It’s delicious.’

  Stormy gulped. ‘Mr Al, sir, don’t you know you can’t do that? I mean, sorry, but if you did that down there, Otto’d have your head sliced off, easy as the top off a boiled egg.’

  Al shrugged. ‘Well, we’re not down there where Otto can see, are we, Stormy, my friend?’ he said. ‘Go on, help yourself, boy!’

  Al was carefully placing the food on a plate and looking at it, not eating it.

  Help yourself? It had to be a trick or a test. If he did eat something, no doubt he’d be sent straight back, labelled a thief or even locked away in the dungeons. He shook his head. ‘No thank you, Al, no.’

  ‘Your loss, young man.’ Al piled olives and onions and cucumber slices onto his plate. ‘There’ll be plenty more – that’s starters.’

  Perhaps it wasn’t a trick, but still Stormy wouldn’t touch a morsel until it was his proper mealtime. Lordy, imagine if Otto had seen what Al did? He’d have a fit! It was too horrible to think about.

  ‘Now, let’s go find Ralf,’ said Al.

  A green lizard scuttled across the floor, picked up a morsel of food and vanished with it into a mouse hole in the wall.

  ‘You’ve got green lizards,’ Stormy said.

  ‘But not those nasty orange ones,’ Al said.

  ‘And mice,’ Stormy added, picking up his bag and following Al out.

  ‘I like mice,’ Al said.

  He led Stormy out onto a wide stone-flagged terrace. A low wall was all that separated them from the sheer drop to the valley below. Black hills, covered in pine trees, ringed them in; chains of rugged, pointed summits reaching far away into the distance. The highest peaks were capped with blue-white snow.

  ‘It’s great being up so high,’ Stormy said. ‘In the kitchen we always looked up – well, you could look down, but there was only the forest and Stollen to look at.’

  ‘Long way down,’ Al said slowly. ‘Long and winding path.’

  ‘It goes right by our kitchen window,’ Stormy told him.

  ‘I knew that. Yes, I knew that. I’ve never been down, not since I came here,’ he said.

  It seemed strange to Stormy that someone who obviously didn’t like it here never took the chance to get out.

  They had come to a narrow flight of stone steps cut into the wall of the castle. Slowly Al eased himself up the steps and, stooping down, he hammered on the small door. ‘Ralf! Visitor for you.’

  He nudged Stormy inside and shut the door behind him. ‘See you later.’

  9

  Ralf

  A very pale boy was sitting on the edge of one of the two beds in the low-ceilinged room. He stared up at Stormy from below a long fringe of dull brown hair.

  Stormy nodded towards the other bed in the room. ‘For me?’

  ‘Can’t see who else it would be for,’ Ralf said. ‘It was Ollie’s.’

  Stormy dropped his bag onto the bed. ‘I’ve never had my own bed before!’ He sat on it and bounced up and down. ‘Brilliant!’

  ‘Sleep on the floorboards down there, then?’

  ‘No, a bunk bed, and every time my mate Tex turned over, the whole thing wobbled. What happened to Ollie?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  Stormy waved the paper with his list of duties on it cheerfully. ‘What’s the worst job?’

  ‘Anything involving Academy students,’ Ralf said at last. ‘Then spitfyres, then everything else. It’s all worst.’

  ‘Al seems OK,’ Stormy said, ‘a bit glum. Least he doesn’t whack with spoons – does he? . . . I love spitfyres.’

  ‘You know a lot about them, do you?’ said Ralf.

  Stormy stared at the floor. He didn’t know a lot about spitfyres, of course he didn’t, he only knew what he’d read. He wanted to tell Ralf how wonderful coming up to the Academy was, how lucky he felt. ‘I’ve always wanted to be with spitfyres,’ he said. ‘I might come from a sky-rider family, you never know. It could be in my blood, couldn’t it? I know it’s not likely, because spitfyre masters are always rich and powerful and I am just an orphan – but I was found wrapped in a red wool blanket, not just the usual bit of sacking. Mrs Cathcart told me.’

  Ralf stared blankly at the wall. ‘Red wool? Really? And do you have a peculiar birthmark too? Something that looks like a spitfyre or a dragon’s wing?’

  A spark of hope flared up inside Stormy’s chest. ‘Well, not that I –’

  Then he saw Ralf was sniggering; he was mocking him.

  ‘No? That’s what happens in books,’ Ralf said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘All right,’ Stormy said, his voice cracking, ‘but I . . .’ How could he explain his feeling for a creature he’d never actually touched? He couldn’t understand it himself,
this need, this physical want to be with a spitfyre. ‘Well, I’ll see, won’t I?’ he added lamely.

  ‘Huh,’ Ralf said. ‘My dad worked here when I was a kid. But he died,’ he said gloomily. ‘Then I got stuck doing his job and I don’t like it. Don’t like any animals really, they’re not natural. But I’m sure it was different before – or maybe that was just because I had my dad. Dad liked them. Was good with them.’

  ‘What about the Director?’

  ‘Oh, the Director!’ Ralf said. ‘You can’t fault him, but . . .’ His voice faded. ‘You’ll see.’

  Stormy looked at the timetable. ‘What do we do first?’ he said brightly.

  Ralf sighed. ‘Do you have to be so enthusiastic? You’ll see soon enough.’ He swung himself off the bed. ‘Let’s go.’

  Stormy paused at the top of the narrow stone steps to look round at the mountains. There was so much air up here. He felt the place was full of possibilities. Nothing Ralf said would change that.

  He listened hopefully; except for the distant cries of some large birds circling above it was quiet.

  ‘Where are the spitfyres?’ he asked, as they made their way back to the servery.

  ‘Round the bend! Hah, joke!’ Ralf didn’t laugh. ‘Some are round the bend. You’ll see them soon enough.’

  Al was sitting with his bad leg propped up on a chair. He was eyeing a tomato that he’d speared on the end of his knife. ‘How does Otto grow these tomatoes?’ he said. ‘They’re so tiny; sweet as cherries.’ He rolled another gently up and down the table. ‘Ralf, oblige with the starters, please?’

  Ralf scowled. ‘You might have taken them along, Al,’ he said, rushing out with the trolleys.

  Al went on staring at his tomato. ‘Main course coming any minute . . . Now.’

  The bell rang and rumbling noises started up. As the lift came closer and closer, the scent of the warm food filled the air. Stormy’s mouth watered. When he opened the dumb waiter and saw the hot crusty pies, sausages and mashed potatoes and honey-coated roast carrots, he almost keeled over with hunger.