“I see now,” said Hermia, and instead of trying to close the whole Great Gate, she began to join him in closing the individual gates. “I can see everything more clearly. I’m so much stronger. You’d think I could close them.”
Danny could see that she was getting no better results than he was.
The inbound Great Gate, the one made entirely from Danny’s own gates, was closed and locked, but the gates of other mages were not so obedient. They willed themselves to be open, and though Danny and Hermia could close them, they would not stay closed.
“We have a wide-open public gate here,” said Veevee. “I can see what you’re doing, and they won’t stay closed. They don’t want to be closed.”
“Wild Gates,” said Danny. “‘Angry Wild Gates,’ he called them.”
“Angry at him, not us,” said Veevee.
“I held them prisoner, too,” said Danny. “And it doesn’t matter who they’re angry at. They aren’t people, just the wraiths of people, the lingering memory of them. But strong.”
“Going through a Great Gate strengthened us,” said Veevee. “But they are a Great Gate. How strong is that?”
“Let them stay open,” said Danny. “It isn’t going to work, no matter what we do.”
“Are you saying that you can’t close the Great Gate?” asked Marion.
“I closed the one coming back to Earth,” said Hermia. “But not the one leading to Westil from here.”
“So my barn is now a Great Gate, and you can’t close it?” demanded Leslie.
“Why did you use those gates?” said Hermia.
“They wanted it,” said Danny. “It seemed only fair, after so long in prison.”
“But you didn’t know them-what kind of men they were,” said Hermia. “A wraith preserves the character of its maker, and these might have been very bad mages.”
“Yes, that seems obvious now,” said Danny. “I chose the most insistent. The most selfish. But it never occurred to me that I couldn’t control these gates.”
“You’ve never faced a gate that wasn’t under your control,” said Marion. “You’ve never seen a gate that wasn’t of your making.”
“But he did make it,” said Veevee.
“I wound them together, I threw them into spacetime,” said Danny. “But Marion’s right-they aren’t my gates.”
“Then move them,” said Leslie. “Get it out of my barn.”
Danny tried. The gate wouldn’t budge. Only when he stopped trying to move it did it move-in the opposite direction. And it widened.
“It’s trying to eat us,” said Hermia, alarmed.
It was true. The mouth of the Great Gate was seeking them out.
“Take them!” cried Veevee. “They were captive before, capture them again!”
Danny tried to unmake the gate as he had done with his previous Great Gate, but these were not his own gates, and they dodged him. He could work on one at a time, but they all resisted him. They refused to be captive again.
“I thought passing through the gate was supposed to make me irresistibly strong,” said Danny.
“They’re stronger, too,” said Veevee. “Dead as they are, it made them more powerful, to be part of a Great Gate.”
“Wad took them, though. Loki, I mean,” said Danny.
“They weren’t all woven together like this,” said Hermia. “And he knows more than you.”
Now Danny understood what Wad had meant: “You’ll be back here soon enough, begging me to teach you how to undo this terrible thing you’ve done.” Danny wanted to go back right now, to demand answers from Wad.
“No!” shouted Hermia.
“No what?” asked Danny.
“Don’t step into that gate!” she cried. “Don’t you see? It’s not yours. What’s to stop it from moving itself into the depths of the sea?”
“What have we done?” asked Veevee miserably.
“You don’t control it at all,” said Leslie. She wasn’t just angry now. She was afraid.
“It could go out and look for the Families that are hunting for it?” asked Marion.
“I don’t know what it can do,” said Danny. “Wad was right, I am a fool.”
“At least the return gate is closed,” said Hermia. “If the Families go to Westil, they can’t get back.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Danny. “What right do we have to set them loose in that world? I have to reopen the other gate. I have to make it so there’s no space between them, so that if you go through the gate you come back here immediately. No pause, no chance to see the sights.”
Danny acted even as he spoke. But no sooner did he move the mouth of the return gate directly in front of the outbound gate than the Wild Gate moved its tail away. Not far-the two Great Gates were so woven together, so inseparable, that it was only a few yards between the tail of the Wild Gate and the mouth of Danny’s return gate.
“It can’t get away from my gate either,” said Danny in relief. “As long as I keep mine anchored, it can’t go far.” Danny tethered the mouth of his own part of the Great Gate to the walls of the barn. It was like hobbling a horse. The Wild Gates could move the mouth of the combined gate, but only a few yards.
“This is our worst nightmare,” said Leslie. “A gate you can’t control, here in our barn. Do you understand what the Families will do now?”
“Whatever it takes to get to this gate,” said Hermia.
“They don’t know it’s gone wild,” said Veevee. “I don’t plan to tell them. Do you?”
“The gate is hungry,” said Danny. “It wants to be used. It’ll find a way.”
“Then let’s feed it,” said Hermia. “Negotiate with the Families, let them each send a couple of mages through, exactly as we planned all along. They don’t have to know that we can’t close the gate or move it or … anything. You gate them here, two at a time, and send them through-how will they know that you aren’t as much in control of the Great Gate as you are of the gates you make here on Mittlegard?”
“Or make another Great Gate, one you control completely,” said Veevee, “and starve this one to death.”
“I don’t know what to do,” said Danny. “Wad was right. I have to go talk to him. I have to ask him.”
“Terrible idea,” said Stone.
“If you do go back, make another Great Gate,” said Hermia. “Don’t ever step into this one again.”
“She’s right,” said Veevee. “This is an angry gate, isn’t that what Wad said?”
“Who’s Wad?” asked Marion.
“Loki,” said Danny.
“The Gate Thief,” said Hermia.
“He’s dangerous,” said Stone. “He makes me believe in the devil.”
“I’m screwing everything up,” said Danny.
Stone was sitting on the floor now. “What else did you expect?” he asked. “Nobody’s done this in fourteen centuries. And it’s not your fault that the Gate Thief had all these captives. It’s his fault, not yours. The only thing you did was not let him capture you.”
“That was my first mistake,” said Danny.
“No,” said Leslie. “Not a mistake.”
“We’ll figure this out,” said Marion. “We’ll find a way to get it all under control.”
“But first,” said Leslie, “we’re getting all my cows out of this barn.”
7
Danny had first come to Parry McCluer High School as a long-dreamed-of adventure. And the dream had come true. He had made friends. He had learned how to use his power and he had done good things with it. A few pranks, too, but he hadn’t used it to win races and he hadn’t hurt anybody, unless you counted humiliating Coach Bleeder.
Now, though, he came as if he had graduated, then found out he had flunked a test after all and had to come back. Only nobody knew he had been gone. Nobody knew he had failed. His friends didn’t believe him when he told them.
They were gathered in the old smoking area-the one that the teachers regularly checked. But since they were only talking, not smoking anything, it was a good place for Danny and his friends to gather.