“I hope you don’t think you’re keeping it,” Dotty said.
Frank was leaning forward, trying to look the thing in the eyes. He was smiling. “You aren’t lookin’ for me, are you?” he asked it.
“What is it?” Zeke asked.
Frank sat back up. “It’s a raggant.”
Dotty looked at him. “What?”
“A raggant. I’ve only ever seen two before. In some places, places I used to be, they’re sent to find people. They can only be used once. When they’ve found someone, they stay till they die.” He looked up at Henrietta. “Where did you get him?”
“He was in the cupboard with the compass locks. He’d been banging on the inside and broke his horn. He was almost dead and could barely move when I got him out.”
Henry laughed and leaned forward. “You cracked my plaster, didn’t you? You started the whole thing.”
The raggant looked in Henry’s eyes and snorted. He stepped toward him, lifted one of his front legs, and leaned, pointing, until his horn almost touched Henry’s face.
“Ha!” Frank said. “It’s Henry’s!”
“What?” Henrietta said. “He’s mine. I found him and fed him and took care of him!”
“We are not keeping it!” Dotty said.
Frank grinned. “Henry is.”
The raggant turned and backed toward Henry, sat upright in front of him, tucked his wings back, and stared into space.
“Someone is lookin’ for you, Henry,” Frank said.
Henry felt nervousness bubble up inside him.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Frank added. “Raggants have never been used for any wickedness as far as I know.”
“This isn’t fair,” Henrietta said. “I’ve never had a pet.”
“You have Blake,” Anastasia said, and she looked under the table, where the cat slept.
“Blake?” Henrietta said. “Blake’s just another cat.”
Zeke started laughing. Henrietta glared at him, but he didn’t stop. She didn’t say anything else.
“Frank,” Dotty said. “We’re not quite done.”
“Right,” Frank said. “I’ll be plastering over all the cupboards this weekend, and if I hear any late-night chipping, people are movin’ into the barn. And if anyone finds the key to Grandfather’s room, they’ll immediately and without any sort of complaining turn it in to the Den Mother.”
“That’s me,” Dotty said. In case anyone was confused.
When everyone had pushed back from empty plates, Dotty told the girls to clear the table. Zeke got up to help. Richard decided to watch and followed Anastasia into the kitchen. She made faces all the way. Frank stood slowly, put his hand on Henry’s shoulder, and led him toward the front porch. The raggant walked proudly behind them.
The rain had stopped, but the world was still dark and wet. The wind was warm.
Frank eased himself into a rickety wicker chair and tucked a toothpick into his lip. Henry sat down on the top step and looked around for the raggant. It was perched on the porch rail with its nose toward the clouds and its wings spread in the breeze.
“Did it just fly, Uncle Frank?” Henry asked. “Did you see it?”
“Sure it did, but I didn’t see anything. Raggants are proud, especially when they finish a job, so they don’t like people to see them fly. Not sure why. Probably think it looks undignified.”
The strange creature was really there. Henry could have reached out and touched it, but his mind still couldn’t make sense of the animal. “Why would anyone be looking for me?” he asked.
“Well,” Frank said, “because they lost you.”
Henry stared at him. Frank pulled out his toothpick and examined the end. “I told you Phil and Urs aren’t your parents, Henry.”
“I thought I was adopted.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “But, well, it wasn’t a normal sort of adoption.”
Henry waited for him to continue.
Frank looked at him. “Your grandfather always said he’d found you on the porch, but he was never Mr. Truth.”
“I saw something in Grandfather’s journal,” Henry said, “something about me coming through the cupboards.”
Frank leaned back in his chair.
“Do you think that could be true?” Henry asked. “Do you think I came from a different place?”
“In my experience,” Frank said slowly, “when your grandfather found things, they were usually from the attic.” Frank pointed his toothpick at the raggant. “Not many pets like that around here, for one.”
Henry looked at the animal. Its blunted nose was still up, but it had shut its eyes.
Frank cleared his throat. “Dots and I wanted you, Henry. But Phil and Urs got the adoption. I’ve always felt guilty about it. Wished I could have changed things.”
Henry looked at his uncle and at the clouds rolling above them. He looked at the raggant. The wind smelled like Badon Hill. “I’m not from here,” he said.
“You and me both,” Frank said. “But here’s where we’re from now.”
The two of them sat silently and watched the world blow. And when the wind died, and the darkness grew thick, they listened to the raggant breathe, and to the laughter from the kitchen.
That night, Henry lay on his bed and felt his sore head and the newborn scar tissue along his jaw. He was looking at the ninety-nine doors on his wall, and thinking about the one downstairs.
He had already made sure the bed was against the black cupboard, and he felt better having the raggant around, anyway. It was snoring by his feet.
He rolled onto his side, facing away from the wall, and reached to turn off his lamp. When he did, he blinked. A beam of yellow light stood out through his room. He sat up and looked at the mailbox. There was another envelope inside. He looked at the door for a moment, then began hunting for the key. He found it underneath his socks.
When the door was open, he pulled out the letter, then crouched and stared at the yellow room for a while, hoping for a glimpse of the pants. They never came. Finally, he shut the little door and sat up. He looked over his wall. The raggant flared a wing out in its sleep and pawed at the blankets.
“I’m from one of these,” he told the animal. “But you know that, don’t you? You probably know which one.”
Henry shifted to his knees and reached for the door to Badon Hill. Frank had said no more cupboards, but he knew his uncle would understand. He pulled the door open and sat back, just to smell the air and listen to the trees.
Something fluttered out of the darkness and landed on his bed.
Henry picked it up. It was another letter, folded and sealed with the green man. Two letters now. He shut the cupboard and looked at the two of them next to each other. They looked exactly like the first ones.
“I don’t want these,” he said out loud. “I’m done now.”
He opened the long one first, and his eyes struggled with the writing.
Sir,
I take up this quill to anprass the magnappreciation of our order. Your hands bear prayse for they freed the last Endorian blud. The old daughter of the second sire regains her airth-strength. We kendle her call.
Gratitation and fratri.
Darius,
First amung the Lastborn Magi,
Witch-Dog of Byzanthamum
Henry dropped the letter like it would stain his fingers and kicked it off his bed. It was still gibberish, but he understood it now. He had seen the Witch-Dogs work, or seen some spectral haunted dream of their working, and he wanted none of their gratitation. None of their anything.
He touched the green seal on the other letter, and when it popped, he unfolded the parchment. The same typed lines looked up at him.
Issuance from the Central Committee of Faeren for the Prevention of Mishap
(District R.R.K.)
Composed and Authorized by Committee Chair under Executive Guidelines
(B.F. X.vii)
Delivered via the Island Hill of Badon Chapter
/> (District A.P.)
To Whom We Have Concerned:
It is the finding of the committee that Whimpering Child (hereafter: WC) has aided, abetted, and enabled the unearthing and potential reestablishment of old evil and is a danger to the faeren people, himself, and the tapestry of reality. WC shall henceforth be identified as Enemy, Hazard, and Human Mishap to all faeren in all districts, all worlds, and all ways.
Identification has been distributed and status change documented. Where and when WC is encountered, the committee has authorized, yea, demanded, that he be hampered, hindered, detained, damaged, or destroyed. Such treatment, performed by any faeren of any district, way, or world, shall be deemed just, necessary, merciful, and inevitable.
Ralph Radulf
Chair CCFPM
(District R.R.K.)
C and A by CC under EG
( per B.F. X.vii)
Delivered via Island Hill of Badon Chapter
(District A.P.)
Henry flopped back onto his bed and stared at the poster on his ceiling. Then he kicked his wall. He hadn’t asked for this. He hadn’t wanted to free a witch. He’d actually had very little to do with it. Well, he had chipped all the plaster off his wall and uncovered the cupboards. There was that. But that hadn’t even been his fault. He propped himself up.
“That was you,” he said to the raggant, and poked it with his toe. “You had to start thumping in there.”
The raggant’s skin quaked, like a horse shaking off a fly, and it sat up. Its black eyes stared at Henry, and then it yawned and walked onto Henry’s legs. Henry flopped back again, and the raggant crawled onto his chest and curled up into a wheezing ball.
Henry smiled. “Your fault,” he said again. “I did nothing. I’m just scenery.”
Downstairs, Dotty opened her eyes. “Frank?”
Frank grunted.
She sat up and reached for her bathrobe. “Henry York, you’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing.”
Frank’s hand pulled her back down.
“He’ll be fine,” he said.
EPILOGUE
The cat was large, used to feeding on the rubbish and scrapings thrown out the kitchen window and occasionally on the also overfed and lazy rats. He was a tom, black, with a white face and tail. He had no name that he knew of, but someone was calling for him. That someone wanted him. Needed him.
He did not usually venture up into the room where the old man sat, the room with the gaping doors and the moon windows. The doors made his spine tingle and his pads cold. But this time he leapt up the stairs with his belly swinging below him. He passed the cold body of a young wizard sprawled at the top. And then two others, and between them, the body of a dog.
Once he was in the throne room, the calling thrilled him, filling his mind and all his senses. And there, standing inside one of the thickly curtained doorways and facing a young man, an orderly still on his feet, was a woman. To the cat’s mind, she was both old and young, weak and strong. All-seeing but in need of his wisdom, his sight. He leapt into the woman’s arms, and she was inside him, his mind was with hers, and then, in a moment, his was gone.
“What is your name?” the woman asked the man.
The young man did not look away from her. “Monmouth,” he said. “What is yours?”
The woman laughed, filling the stone hall with her echoes. “You are not even an apprenticed wizard, and you ask me this? I have fed myself on the lives of your masters who lie cold behind you, and you stand to request my name?” She stepped toward him.
“I do,” he said, and did not so much as shift his feet.
She stepped even closer, stroking the heavy cat’s head. “Then wake your doddering master Carnassus, and tell him this, if your mouth will hold the words: Nimiane, dread Queen of Endor, last in Niac’s line, whose voice destroyed the magic of FitzFaeren, boiled up the sea to shatter the strength of Amram, and laid Merlinis to rest beneath the wood, once bound by Mordecai, Amram’s son, has shaken off her chains as her fathers shook off the blood of Adam, and comes to see if an old man remembers vows he made when he was young.
“New prey waits on the Witch-Dogs.”
GRATITUDE
Mark B. for imagining. Neighbor Cousins for listening. Heather for being. Jim T. for hacking, shaping, sanding, and, eventually, liking.
Also by N. D. Wilson
Leepike Ridge
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
N.D. Wilson is a Fellow of Literature at New Saint Andrews College, where he teaches classical rhetoric to freshmen. He is also the managing editor for Credenda/Agenda magazine, a small Trinitarian cultural journal, as well as the author of Leepike Ridge, an adventure novel for young readers. He married a girl stolen from the ocean, and the two of them now live in Idaho with their four children.
To learn more about the author, please visit his Web site at www.ndwilson.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by N. D. Wilson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, N. D.
100 cupboards / N. D. Wilson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
SUMMARY: After his parents are kidnapped, timid twelve-year-old Henry York leaves his sheltered
Boston life and moves to small-town Kansas, where he and his cousin Henrietta discover and explore hidden doors in his attic room that seem to open onto other worlds.
[1. Doors—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Space and time—Fiction. 4. Cousins—Fiction. 5. Family life—Kansas—Fiction. 6. Kansas—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: One hundred cupboards.
PZ7.W69744Aac 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2007000164
eISBN: 978-0-375-84986-2
v3.0
N. D. Wilson, 100 Cupboards
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