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Jack saw Amadeus jump on to his sister and reacted instantly, reaching for his Gift, not even thinking about which Gift that might be.
A savage wind rushed up the l
ength of the carriage. It blew up and over the seats, knocking cats in all directions, and struck the white cat square in the back. Amadeus went flying, legs and tail splayed out like a starfish, yowling like a kitten.
But Jaide went flying too, tumbling along the aisle with a screeching mass of frightened cats.
‘Stop it!’ shouted Jaide desperately, as she tried to grab hold of a seat leg. ‘Jack! That’s enough!’
Stop, thought Jack to the wind that was now howling backwards and forwards along the carriage, just stopping short of where he stood in front of the connecting door.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
But the wind didn’t stop. His Gift, formerly Jaide’s, was thoroughly out of control.
The carriage shook as though in an earthquake. And then the lights went out. The sun dimmed, as if a deep, dark cloud had passed in front of it. At first Jack though that Jaide was using his Gift somehow, but then he realised that he was doing this too. His Gift had jumped back to him, and now both of them were out of control.
‘Stop it!’ he yelled, thoroughly frightened now. ‘Stop this now!’
The Gifts didn’t obey him. The air was now full of cats, and the entire carriage was in danger of being swept away. That would solve the problem of the train cats and the troubletwisters, but it might also rid the world of one innocent conductor as well, not to mention the only friend they had made since coming to Portland – a friend who was now wailing in terror as the wind inexorably pushed her towards a half-open window. She had a grip on an armrest, but as soon as she lost that . . .
Tara would be gone.
Jack gasped as he realised she was moments away from death. Something shifted inside his head. The mad rush of his Gifts faltered. Cats fell out of the air like furry, overripe fruit, and the darkness ebbed away. Jack rushed to Tara and pulled her away from the window, staggering with her back to the connecting door.
Jaide landed on her side with a thud and was momentarily winded. Her face was stinging, and when she raised her hand to touch it, her fingers came away red. Amadeus unwound himself from a tangle of three cats not far from her, but before he could make good on his promise, Jaide forced herself up and pointed a shaky, bloodstained finger at him.
‘One more step,’ she gasped, ‘and we’ll blow you all into the sea!’
The white cat lowered its head and hissed at her.
‘I know all about your Gifts,’ he said. ‘And I know you can’t control them properly.’
His eyes were innocently blue, but Jaide picked up a definite glint of The Evil in everything about the cat.
‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ she said, backing up against the locked door to stand next to Jack and Tara, who was obviously in shock, her body shaking despite Jack holding her up. ‘I presume The Evil told you about us. What did it promise you?’
‘Satisfaction,’ replied Amadeus. He advanced a few steps, his followers jumping across to form up behind him. ‘Dominion. Revenge.’
‘I bet you were a nice cat once,’ said Jaide. Her fingers fumbled with the key, trying to fit it into the lock behind her, while at the same time she kept a close eye on Amadeus and all the cats that were swarming up behind him. ‘Have you thought about using your powers for good instead of evil?’
‘Good and evil are human words, human concepts. I just want what’s rightfully mine. Kleo stole the Portland catdom from me. I want it back.’
The key turned silently in the well-oiled lock.
Jaide glanced sideways at Jack. He lowered one eyelid, confirming that he’d seen what she was doing, and took half a step sideways, bringing Tara with him closer to the door.
‘And I just want to help my friend,’ Jaide said. She turned the handle.
A rush of perfectly ordinary wind swept through the gap, carrying with it a cacophony of sound, the harsh beat of metal wheels on metal rails, combined with the choof-choof-choof of the engine up ahead. Ragged clouds of smoke rushed past, swept backwards by their speed.
Jack dragged Tara through the door and out on to the narrow metal step that projected out of the passenger carriage. Jaide followed, slamming the door behind her.
The three of them could barely stand on the metal step, but there was no easy way to get to the broad steel step at the rear of the coal tender ahead. The two cars were connected only by a interlocking coupler and a safety chain of thick iron links, and they could all see the railway sleepers flickering past underneath.
The train appeared to be going much faster than it had when they’d been inside.
‘We have to jump across!’ shouted Jack. ‘They’ll come over the roof !’
Jaide nodded and looked back down at the flickering sleepers. If they jumped and fell, they’d be cut to pieces . . .
‘Now!’ insisted Jack. He turned Tara round and pointed at the ridiculously small platform ahead of them, which wasn’t even steady, but jerked around and up and down with the train’s movement.
Before Jaide could protest that they should leave Tara behind, she jumped, leaping elegantly across the gap. Jack followed, but the wind whisked around him and carried him up like a feather, so he landed on top of the coal tender. It wasn’t full, so he disappeared from Jaide’s sight with a frantic yelp.
Jaide didn’t hesitate after that. She jumped too, landing heavily next to Tara and smacking herself into the rear wall of the tender. Rebounding, she almost fell off before grabbing a handhold.
Tara looked at her fearfully.
‘What . . . what’s going on?’ she asked. It was almost a mantra from her now.
‘We have to get to the driver,’ said Jaide. But there was no obvious way forward, except by climbing up into the tender, and there was no easy way to do that. Unless you could fly, like Jack almost had.
‘Jack!’ Jaide called, looking up. ‘Jack!’
But it wasn’t Jack who looked over the edge. It was the slightly coal-dusted face of Ari, closely followed by several other cats, and finally her brother, who was significantly more smeared with black dust.
‘Behind you!’ he shouted.
Jaide turned just as three large heavy cats plummeted into her and knocked her off the narrow step.
‘Jaide!’ screamed Jack, almost going over the side himself as he lunged down, holding out a hand that would never stretch so far, or get to her in time.
Jaide twisted and stretched as she fell. Her hands hit something and closed desperately round the lever that controlled the coupler between the passenger carriage and the coal tender. It immediately gave way, but only moved a few inches before juddering to a stop again.
With her toes still on the back step of the coal tender, and her hands gripping the lever on the passenger carriage, Jaide was stretched out between the two carriages. Only the coupler stood between her and the lethal track below.
Jaide tried to tighten her grip, but there was grease on the lever. The sound of the train wheels was so loud it felt like someone hammering on her brain, and the lurch of the carriages was making her toes slip.
She closed her eyes and fought a rising sense of hopelessness. If she’d had her Gift, it would’ve been a simple matter to rise up on the wind to safety. Now all she had were her hands round the slippery handle, and a very strong and reasonable wish not to die.
‘Jaide! Hang on!’ shouted Jack. She could hear the fear in his voice. ‘Hold her feet, Tara!’
She opened her eyes and looked back. Ari and several Portland cats had jumped down and dispatched the cats who’d knocked her off – forcing them over the side. Jack was still up in the coal tender, balancing on his stomach as he leaned over the edge, obviously trying to work out how to climb down.
Tara was kneeling down on the step and a moment later, Jaide felt a grip round her ankles.
‘I’ve got you!’ shouted Tara nervously.
But she hadn’t, not really. Tara would never be able to stop Jaide falling, and she was stretched too far across for the other girl to help her back up.
The lever su
ddenly dropped another couple of inches. The coupler squeaked and groaned, and the feeble-looking safety chain danced wildly off to the side.
Jaide looked below her. If the lever went completely down, she would lose her grip, she knew. She would fall to the tracks and be run over by the train.
I need my Gift, she thought. I need it like I’ve never needed anything before.
Jaide shut her eyes and remembered. She remembered flying off the widow’s walk, being caught in the wind, to fly up and up and up, her body lighter than a feather –
Wind blew across her face. A cool, night wind.
Jack was shouting something, but Jaide paid no attention. Every part of her was focusing on the wind, on the memory of her Gift.
The locking lever suddenly lurched down an inch. Jaide’s hands slid down with it, grease splurging out between her knuckles.
Slowly but surely she began a slide that would end under the wheels of the train. All this had come about because she had tried to stop the train cats. How could she help Kleo when she couldn’t even help herself ?
The wind was roaring all around her, louder now than the train itself. It was her Gift at work – she could feel that now, her Gift in Jack’s hands, if it could ever be said to be in anyone’s hands really. It was like something outside of her, an arm or leg that occasionally decided not to obey her brain’s commands. Or a living thing in its own right, something that existed outside of her, and which, for a joyous, brief while, had shared its power with her.
Not being part of it was like losing her best friend – or even closer than that. Like losing her brother. It had been with her her entire life, and she had never noticed it. And now, somehow, she had lost it –
The lever dropped. Jaide’s fingers slid and grasped nothing but air. She fell, screaming, her eyes clenched tightly shut against the inevitable.
It didn’t come.
Her Gift cupped her in fingers of living wind and spun her like a sock in a dryer. Jaide shot up a good forty feet, right up through Tara’s grasping hands, then slowly glided down to land in the coal tender, next to Jack.
