The Lightning Catcher: The Secrets of the Storm Vortex (23 page)

“But what if the Vellums find out? No one will ever talk to me again. I'll have to leave Perilous!”

“Of course you won't,” Dougal said, patting her arm awkwardly. “And you're always telling Angus not to be embarrassed about being a storm prophet.”

“So?” Indigo sniffed.

“So it's the same thing with you and your family. Yes, you're a Dankhart.”

Indigo blew her nose loudly into a pink handkerchief.

“But you're a Midnight as well.” Dougal continued. “You're nothing like your uncle, and that's all anybody needs to know. It's not your fault your skin's got some funny bumps now.”

Indigo blinked at Dougal, looking startled by his sudden show of support. But the same guilty expression suddenly swept across her face.

“You-you already knew about the bleckles, didn't you?” Angus said, taking a wild guess.

Indigo paused for a second, looking thoroughly wretched, and nodded. “My mum's got the same bumps on her hand, only smaller. Germ's just never noticed. She keeps them covered up with gloves, long sleeves, and
tinted creams, but I saw them years ago. And then, when the exact same bumps started appearing on my hand and they wouldn't go away, I just knew it had something to do with the Dankharts!”

“So that's why you've been staring at Dankhart's picture in the handbook,” Dougal said, suddenly putting two and two together.

Indigo nodded again, trying to swallow a small sob. “The first time I saw that picture of Uncle Scabious I knew.” She opened her bag, pulled out
The Dankhart Handbook
and flicked to the page devoted to her uncle. On his hand, so small they were barely visible, were the same distinctive bleckles.

“But I don't understand,” Angus said. “Why have you been reading all those other books on the Dankharts in the library?”

“I just thought if I could find another picture or discover how to get rid of the bumps . . .”

Angus glanced sideways at Dougal. He had a feeling Indigo still wasn't telling them the whole story. The time had come to confront her about Fawcett Family Tree Hunters.

“Look, Indigo, we—we know about the ad in the
Weathervane
,” Angus said, trying to choose his words carefully.

“A-ad?” Indigo gulped, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand.

“You dropped it when you raced out of the kitchens ages ago,” Dougal said. “You circled an ad for Fawcett Family Tree Hunters.”

Angus took the folded page from his pocket, flattened out the edges, and turned it around so Indigo could read it. “Have you been thinking about getting your own Dankhart family tree?”

“No!” Indigo shook her head looking horrified. “I'd never do that!”

She dived into her bag, grabbed the mysterious envelope that had arrived that morning in the mail, and handed it to Angus. Angus opened it warily and pulled out what appeared to be a weathered-looking family tree. At the top the Midnight family crest showed a deep blue sky dusted with tiny silvery stars. But on the other side of Indigo's family, where there should have been a long list of Dankharts—

Angus took a sharp intake of breath. “According to this, your mum comes from an extended line of chocolate makers from Belgium, and they're all called Anselmus.” The Dankharts had been totally wiped from her family history as if they'd never existed.

“That's because I ordered a
fake
family tree from Fawcett's,” Indigo explained quietly, pointing to the ad in the
Weathervane
that she'd circled. At the bottom of the promotion was a minuscule paragraph that neither Angus nor Dougal had noticed.

“‘Have you ever wanted to distance yourself from your family, to hide embarrassing relations, or controversial connections?'” Angus said, reading the tiny words out loud with some difficulty. “‘Have you ever wanted to amaze your friends at dinner parties with your distinguished ancestors? Then send for a new family tree now, complete with authentic detail and family crest.'”

“Wow! This is genius!” Dougal said, sounding seriously impressed. “You could turn your whole family into beekeepers, or famous poets, or medieval knights.”

Angus stared at Indigo. “And if anyone ever asks you
about your family or starts getting suspicious about your connections . . .”

“I can show them my family tree,” Indigo said, still looking faintly embarrassed. “And there's not a single Dankhart on it. After I found those dreadful bleckles on my hand, I had to do something!”

Shocked at the lengths Indigo had gone to in order to hide her horrible ancestors, Angus studied the fake tree again.

“Maybe next time you should just tell us what you're planning,” he said, smiling at her. “We've been seriously worried about you.”

“Yeah, we thought you'd lost your marbles,” Dougal added, grinning. “Plus we could have got our own family trees done, too. I've always fancied being related to royalty. Prince Dougal of Feaver Street, what do you reckon? It's got a real ring to it.”

Indigo continued to brood over the bleckles for the next few days and kept the sleeve of her sweeter pulled down over her hand, just in case. But she was now spending most of her free time with Angus and Dougal, helping them think through new ways of discovering what was going on
under the weather vortex at Castle Dankhart and what had happened at Perilous during the experiments in 1777.

“There must be somewhere we haven't looked yet,” Angus said one Friday afternoon in the experimental division.

Catcher Killigrew had sent Winnie Wrascal on an intensive weather forecasting refresher course, and they had temporarily been placed under the supervision of Catcher Sparks. Their master lightning catcher had set them to work in the very familiar part of the experimental division where they had spent their first day as lightning cubs, removing pockets of revolting earwax from some hailstone helmets. This time she had left them with a huge pile of leather jerkins that had to be washed and waxed, their rips and tears repaired with long needles and thread. Angus had already stabbed himself in the thumb twice, leaving a long trail of dripping blood all the way over to a sink at the back of the workroom.

“We can't give up now,” he said, carefully darning a hole in the pocket of a large, scruffy jerkin.

“But Dougal's already searched the library and the research department,” Indigo said. She was attempting to
patch up a jerkin that belonged to Catcher Donall, according to the name tag sewn inside it. Pockets, buckles, and chunks of leather had been ripped off the garment by something with extremely large teeth.

“Maybe we should sneak back into the Dankhart archive for another look at that weather sample,” Angus suggested.

“We can't.” Indigo shook her head. “Catcher Killigrew's threatened to have Winnie Wrascal transferred to a tiny research post in Iceland if she gets into any more trouble, and if we get caught snooping around that archive . . .”

Angus sighed. “There must be somewhere else we can search for answers then. I— Ow!” He jumped to his feet suddenly. “That's the third time I've stabbed my thumb with the same needle!”

“ARGHHHH!”
Dougal dropped the leather jerkin he'd been washing a second later and scuttled away from it in a panic. “There's something crawling around inside that pocket!”

It took some time to convince Dougal that all he'd discovered was a prickly pinecone. Angus approached his next leather jerkin with caution, however, turning
the pockets out well away from his body just in case. A small collection of smashed snail shells, leaves, and sand tumbled out. It was obvious that the wearer had been helping to clean up the flotsam and jetsam after the third explosion from Castle Dankhart.

The idea hit him like a stray thunderbolt, almost flattening his windpipe.

“The flotsam and jetsam!” he said, still dangling the jerkin at arm's length. “It got collected up in buckets.”

Dougal and Indigo exchanged puzzled glances.

“So?” Dougal asked.

“So the buckets got taken into the Inner Sanctum to be searched through for clues.”

“I still don't get it,” Dougal said, looking mystified. “How's a load of old rubbish going to help us?”

“Forget the buckets. I'm talking about important historical artifacts!” Angus said excitedly. “I mean, I've already seen Veronica Stickleback's leather jerkin and Philip Starling's glasses in there. So what if it's the one place in the whole Exploratorium where we might also find out what really happened in 1777? We've got to search it!”

“Got to search what?” Dougal asked, starting to sound exasperated.

But Indigo's face lit up with sudden understanding. “Oh! The Inner Sanctum!”

  
14
  
THE WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA

“W
e could let Norman cause a disturbance and then sneak into the Inner Sanctum when no one's looking,” Dougal said.

It was two days after their cleaning session in the experimental division. Since then Angus had spent so many hours discussing how to get into the Inner Sanctum with Dougal and Indigo that he'd talked himself hoarse. The most radical idea they'd come up with so far was to trigger the fire alarm, hide until the whole Exploratorium had been evacuated, and then creep through the door in the Octagon. Angus had been quite keen on the idea until Indigo had pointed out that not only would they need a set
of keys, but Catcher Sparks would do a head count, realize they were missing, and organize a search party.

Angus sighed. He and Dougal were now standing in the corridor at the boys' end of the living quarters. A late edition of the
Weathervane
had brought everyone out to discuss the exciting news that the last winners' demonstration would be taking place at the weekend in Little Frog's Bottom.

“I wonder why they're holding it there,” Angus said. Encouraged by Dougal's Tri-Hard competition success, he was once again attempting to solve the last scare-me-not puzzle, which still showed no signs of self-destruction. Dougal had let Norman out to stretch its wings, and the lightning moth was now zooming up and down the corridor with several of its flying friends like a sparkling silver wave.

“No idea.” Dougal ducked swiftly as Norman skimmed the top of his head before speeding up to the ceiling again. “But it's bound to be brilliant. It's happening in the central square. There's a bit in the
Weathervane
about the last of the winners. Here.” He handed over the magazine so Angus could read it for himself.

Angus thrust the frustrating puzzle into the pocket of his pants and studied the glossy photos of Lettice and Leonard Galipot. They both looked extremely smug, Angus decided. But their list of achievements was long. They'd already won numerous awards for advanced weather observation. They'd written dozens of research papers over the years and met with Crowned Prince Rufus of the Imbur royal family to collect a prize for cloudspotting. In their spare time, they claimed to be mad fans of iceberg hopping, although, judging by the bulging midriffs they were trying to conceal beneath their lumpy leather jerkins, Angus wasn't convinced they could hop over anything.

“We might just as well go and watch the demonstration,” Dougal said, reaching up to catch Norman as it tried to soar past them once again. “There's been no news about the weather vortex for days, and we still haven't got a clue how to get into the Inner Sanctum without being caught and killed by Catcher Sparks.”

Angus sighed. Unless they came up with a brilliant plan soon, the other secrets of the Inner Sanctum would stay that way forever.

They were still trying to come up with an idea when they met Gudgeon outside the library early the next evening.

“I've been looking for you three. We've had some news about the weather vortex,” he told them, scratching his bearded chin. “It looks like it's finally thinning out.”

“What . . . seriously?” Angus said, shocked.

“Some new samples taken by the weather station show a decrease in storm particles, which probably means that whatever's been driving it all this time is running out of steam. And when it does, we'll be able to see exactly what that villain's been doing underneath his cloud.”

“But when?” Indigo asked anxiously.

“If all our calculations are correct, it should be no more than a couple of days now,” Gudgeon said, checking his weather watch.

“Will you tell us when you know what's going on?” Angus asked hopefully.

Gudgeon nodded. “I promised Jeremius I'd keep you three in the know. Although I doubt even that would stop you from getting into trouble if you put your minds to it.”

Indigo flushed a guilty red. “You don't think Gudgeon knows about our idea to break into the Inner Sanctum, do
you?” she asked quietly as soon as he'd left.

“How could he?” Angus said. “I mean, we haven't even got a plan yet.”

“We might not need one if the weather vortex is finally running out of steam,” Dougal said hopefully. “Maybe your uncle Scabby isn't planning anything after all.”

But Angus wasn't convinced. Dankhart was an expert schemer. He had once disguised himself as a fake librarian called Mr. Knurling, and spent a whole term shouting at lightning cubs and sniveling about the reference section just to find the infamous lightning vaults. If the Inner Sanctum had any answers about dangerous weather vortices, they had to find a way to search it.

A chance finally came three days later. Catcher Sparks, who was still supervising their duties in the absence of Catcher Wrascal, had sent them to scrape three inches of stinking mud off the soles of two hundred rubber boots. It was hot, sticky, disgusting work, and they were covered in dirt when they left the experimental division at the end of the afternoon.

“I'm so hungry I could eat a whole fog yeti,” Dougal said, his stomach rumbling loudly. A delicious smell of
roast chicken had been drifting up from the kitchens for hours.

They were already halfway across the Octagon when Angus saw a familiar figure emerge from the Inner Sanctum.

“Hey, that's Catcher Coriolis,” he told Dougal and Indigo quietly.

“The lightning catcher who works in the crypt?” Indigo asked.

Angus nodded.

“Creepy.” Dougal shivered. “How can anyone sleep in a tomb without having nightmares?”

Catcher Coriolis, clearly suffering from a terrible winter cold, stopped to blow his nose.

“A-choo!”
He caught the almighty sneeze in a spotted handkerchief, the noise echoing around the Octagon like an explosion. He gave his nose an extra blow, for good measure, and then disappeared down the steps toward the kitchens.

Dougal and Indigo both turned to follow him, but Angus swiftly pulled them back again.

“Hang on a minute.”

Catcher Coriolis had dropped something on the floor. Angus darted across the Octagon and scooped up the lumpy object.

“It's his keys to the Inner Sanctum! Catcher Coriolis must have dropped them when he sneezed.”

“Urgh!”
Dougal wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Germy keys.”

“Germy or not, these keys might be our only chance to search the Inner Sanctum,” Angus said, quickly making sure the Octagon was deserted.

“You're joking! What if Catcher Coriolis notices his keys have gone?”

“If we're lucky, he won't bother checking for them until he's finished his dinner,” Indigo said, “which means we've got at least half an hour.” She was already rolling up her sleeves, getting ready to tackle whatever dangers they might face.

Angus swallowed hard. He slotted several keys into the first lock on the door until he found the correct one. The lock clicked open. The chances of their getting caught were extremely high. But the desperate plan had possibilities, and since none of them had come up with any better ideas . . .

He fumbled with the rest of the locks until the door finally swung open.

“Come on!” Angus led the way down the narrow stone tunnel. Indigo followed without hesitation. Dougal flinched as the door closed itself behind them. With a twist and tug they were through the steel safety door in seconds.

Angus headed straight for the door through which the buckets of storm debris had been taken.

“Maybe there's other stuff about the storm vortex in here, too, old stuff that everyone else has forgotten about,” he reasoned as he felt along the rough stone wall inside, searching for a switch. He flicked the light fissure on.

“Oh, my!” Indigo gasped.

Books and papers, stacked on ancient-looking shelves and in great tottering piles across the floor, covered every surface. It instantly reminded Angus of Mr. Dewsnap's study, where half-eaten sandwiches and cold cups of tea lay abandoned on top of every heap. These piles, however, stretched all the way up to the ceiling, which was also covered in books, their spines clamped hard against bare rock, their covers flapping open like great colorful bats.
Dangling from the pages within, in long black strings . . . Angus blinked, wondering if he was seeing things. Words were melting off each page. Dozens of stalactitelike sentences wafted daintily in the air.

“I don't believe it!” Dougal said, stunned. “Old Archibald Humble-Pea was right! Remember that secret code I deciphered at the back of our fog guides about what they had hidden in the Inner Sanctum. It said something about melting words!”

Angus gazed at the stringy sentences, shocked that it was actually true.

“But why would anyone want a book with stretchable words?” Indigo asked.

“I don't know.” Dougal grabbed the end of the nearest sentence and pulled it out so he could read it properly. “This one says, ‘It was only then that Philip Starling decided to ban all future experiments with storm snares as it led to—'”

“As it led to what?”Angus asked.

Dougal shrugged. “Haven't got the foggiest.” The words snapped back to their original length as soon as he released them. “That was the end of the sentence.”

Angus tried to read some of the words as they passed carefully underneath them, looking for any mention of weather explosions, vortices, or 1777. There was something about storm-force fog, and a thick, elongated sentence that ended with “Fractonimbus.”

“Watch out!” Dougal warned, brushing a jumble of vowels and consonants aside. “Some of those words could be deadly!”

“Since when have words been deadly?” Angus asked, peering through the long, drawn-out sentences at him.

“Dad told me about this book he once found in the Little Frog's Bottom library where all the words had been infused with tiny specks of hailstorm. It brought him out in lumps the size of golf balls. So if there're books in here about poisonous fog or venomous lightning bolts, we could be in big trouble!”

Angus quickly flicked a large spidery “sirocco” off his shoulder. He ducked warily under a long, sinewy sentence about fogcicles and froze. Standing directly in front of him, wearing floor-length robes of plain brown, was somebody he'd never seen before. The stranger scowled at Angus with small, beady eyes, his forehead creased.

“Identify yourselves!” he demanded, pointing a crooked finger with a blackened nail at Angus.

“Er, s-sorry, sir. We—we got lost,” Angus said, trying to sound convincing as Dougal and Indigo stopped nervously beside him.

“Lost?” The man's face was transformed instantly with a keen, thoughtful expression. “Sir Neville Loxley,” he said, pronouncing each word clearly and precisely. “A famous lightning catcher, lost on the Imbur marshes for three days and the first to discover howling, poisonous, and contagious fogs.”

“Er.” Angus glanced sideways at a puzzled-looking Indigo. “I, um . . .”