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Chapter 20 Miarr

  M iarr gazed out from the Watching platform on the CattRokk Light - a lighthouse perched on a rock in the middle of the sea, the very top of which resembled the head of a cat, complete with ears and two brilliant beams of light that shone from its eyes. Miarr was on Watch - again. At his insistence, Miarr did every night Watch and many of the day Watches too. He did not trust his co-Watcher any further than he could throw him - and given their huge discrepancy in size, that would not be very far, unless. . . a small smile flickered over Miarr's delicate mouth as he allowed himself his favorite daydream - heaving Fat Crowe out of one of the Eyes. Now that would be a very long throw indeed. How far down was it to the rocks below? Miarr knew the answer well enough - three hundred and forty-three feet exactly.

  Miarr shook his head to clear it of such beguiling thoughts. Fat Crowe would never even make it up to the Light - there was no way he could squeeze through the tiny opening at the top of the pole that led from the Watching platform to the Arena of Light. Thin Crowe, on the other hand, would have no trouble. Miarr shivered at the thought of Thin Crowe squeezing up to his precious Light like a weasel. Given the choice between the Crowe twins - not a choice he ever wanted to make - he would choose the fat one any day. The thin one was vicious.

  Miarr pulled his close-fitting sealskin hat down so that it covered his ears and wrapped his cloak tightly around him. It was cold at the top of the lighthouse, and the storm made him shiver. He pressed his small, flat nose to the glass and stared out into the storm, his big, round eyes wide open and his keen night sight piercing the dark. The wind screamed and the rain whipped against the thick green glass of the Watching platform windows. The two beams of Light picked out the undersides of the black storm clouds, which formed a continuous blanket so low that Miarr was sure the Ears of the lighthouse must be touching them. A silent sheet of lightning passed through the clouds, and the hairs on the back of Miarr's neck crackled with electricity. A burst of hail spattered against the glass, and he jumped in surprise. It was the wildest storm he had seen in a long time; he pitied anyone out there tonight.

  Miarr prowled lightly around the Watching platform, checking the horizon. On a night like this it would be all too easy for a ship to be swept too close to the lighthouse and the danger zone. And if that happened he would have to get down to the rescue boat and try to guide the ship to safety - no easy task on a night like this. From the tiny sleeping cabin far below, loud catarrhal snores from Fat Crowe echoed through the cavernous stairwell of the lighthouse. Miarr sighed heavily. He knew he needed a helper, but why the Port Harbor Master had sent him the Crowe twins he had no idea. Ever since his fellow Watcher, his cousin, Mirano - the very last member of his family left, apart from him - had disappeared the night of the first visit of the new supply boat, Marauder, Miarr had been forced to share his lighthouse with what he had at the time considered to be creatures little better than apes. Since the Crowes' arrival Miarr had - out of respect to apes - revised that opinion. He now thought of them as little better than slugs, to which both Fat and Thin Crowe bore a remarkable resemblance. So now, in the depths of the lighthouse in what had once been his and Mirano's cozy little sleeping cabin, Miarr knew that Fat Crowe was occupying what had once been his comfortable goose-down bunk. Miarr, who had not slept properly since Mirano's disappearance, growled unhappily. Like all Watchers he and Mirano had taken turns to sleep in the same bed, spending only a few hours each day together when they sat on the Watching platform eating their evening meal of fish before the Change of Watch. Now Miarr slept - or tried to - on a pile of sacks in a chamber at the foot of the lighthouse. He always barred the door, but the knowledge that a Crowe was loose in his beautiful lighthouse meant he could never relax.

  Miarr shook himself to get rid of his miserable thoughts - it was no good brooding about the good old days when CattRokk Light was one of four Living Lights and Miarr had more cousins, brothers and sisters than he had fingers and toes to count them on. It was no good thinking about Mirano - he was gone forever. Miarr was not as stupid as the Crowes thought he was; he did not believe their story that Mirano had been sick of his company and had sneaked away on their boat for the bright lights of the Port. Miarr knew that his cousin was, as Watchers used to say, swimming with the fishes. Miarr crouched beside the thick, curved window, staring into the dark. Far below he saw the waves building, growing too high for their own strength and then breaking with a thunderous crash, sending great showers of spume high into the air, some even splattering the Watching glass. Miarr knew that the foot of the lighthouse was now under water - he could tell by the deep shudders and thuds that had begun reverberating up through the granite blocks below, thuds that traveled all the way up through the pads of his felt-booted feet to the tip of his sealskin-clad head. But at least they drowned out the snores of Fat Crowe, and the shrieks of the wind carried away all Miarr's thoughts of his lost cousin.

  Miarr reached into the waterproof sealskin pouch that he wore slung from his belt and brought out his supper - three small fish and a ship's biscuit - and began to chew. All the while, eyes wide, he Watched the sea, illuminated by the two great beams of light that swept across the heaving mountains of water. It was, he thought, going to be an interesting night.

  Miarr had just swallowed the last of his fish - head, tail, bones and all - when he realized just how interesting the night was going to be. Miarr usually Watched the water, for what could there possibly be of interest in the sky? But that night the mountainous waves blurred the boundary between water and sky, and Miarr's wide eyes took in everything. He was a little distracted by dislodging a fine bone wedged between his delicate, pointy teeth when one of the beams of the Light briefly caught the shape of a dragon in its glare. Miarr gasped in disbelief. He looked again but saw nothing. Now Miarr was worried. It was a bad sign when Watchers began to imagine things - a sure sign that their Watching days were numbered. And once he was gone, who would Watch the Light? But in the next moment all Miarr's fears disappeared. As clear as day the dragon was back in the path of the beam and, like a giant green moth hurtling toward a flame, it was coming straight for the Light. Miarr let out a yowl of amazement, for now he saw not only the dragon but its riders.

  A sudden crash of thunder directly overhead shook the lighthouse, a brilliant snake of lightning streaked down, and Miarr saw the lightning bolt hit the dragon's tail with a blinding blue flash. The dragon tumbled out of control and, horrified, Miarr watched as the dragon and its riders, outlined in an iridescent mantle of electric blue charge, hurtled straight for the Watching platform. The Light briefly illuminated the terrified faces of the dragon's riders, then instinct took over and Miarr threw himself to the floor, waiting for the inevitable crash as the dragon hit the glass.

  But none came.

  Gingerly Miarr got to his feet. The two beams of Light illuminated nothing more than the empty rain-filled sky above and the raging waves below. The dragon and its riders were gone.