The Fire-Eaters by David Almond Page A

made no difference. That night, I walked over the sand through the darkness to Daniel's place. I crouched in the garden, looked through the window. Daniel was with his parents. There were heaps of photographs on the table. They shook their heads as they looked at them. They clenched their fists, they glared. They drank wine and listened to jazz as they scrawled across the photographs and raised their fists and laughed together.

“H e's here, in the dunes,” I said to Mam.
    “Who is?”
    “McNulty.”
    It was late in the evening. Dad had gone to bed early. She was stitching the seam of my new white shirt. We listened to the wind outside gathering force, rattling the roof, the window frames, the doors. We heard the waves crashing on the shore.
    “He came a few nights back,” I said. “He's in one of the old shacks.”
    “Maybe he wants to winter there. Keep himself safe and warm.”
    “We could take things to him. Bread or something. Tea.”
    Her voice rose and quickened.
    “I can't care for two of them, Bobby,” she said; thenshe passed her hand across her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Of course you can take him something.”
    She stitched on. Her needle slipped and pricked her finger.
    “Damn thing!” she said. She flung the shirt aside. “Why can't they make things to last these days?”
    She looked at her tiny wound. She sucked the blood from it.
    “Sorry,” she whispered. She looked away. “He's got to have some more tests, Bobby.” She pressed her finger to her lips as I began to speak. “That's all we know. Nothing more.”
    We switched the TV on, but within seconds a mushroom cloud appeared.
    “Not that!” she snapped, and she switched it off again.
    That night I woke and heard him groaning. The winds had calmed. I knelt at the window, listened to the far-off drone of engines. He groaned again.
    “Stop it,” I whispered. “Let me be ill, not him.”
    I pressed my needle through the edge of my thumb. I pressed it into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger.
    “Let me take the pain,” I said. “Not him.”
    I caught my breath and tears came to my eyes as I pressed the needle deeper.
    “I can take it,” I whispered.
    He groaned again.
    “Stop it! Leave him alone!”
    I said a string of prayers: Hail Marys, Our Fathers, Confiteors. I touched Mary and Bernadette in their plastic grotto. Then I touched Ailsa's broken heart, McNulty's silver coin, the tanners from Ailsa's dad, the penknife from Joseph, the CND symbol.
    “Leave him alone,” I said again. “Take me instead of him.”
    I saw a star fall fast toward the sea. I searched my head for the words to make a wish. I found a promise.
    “If he gets better,” I said, “I'll always be good. I'll always fight evil.”
    That morning, I left home early. I waited for Daniel in the hawthorn hedge in his lane. At last he came.
    “Psst!” I called. “Daniel!”
    He looked in at me.
    “I want to help you,” I said.
    “Help me?”
    “With the photographs. I'll help you to put them out.”
    He came toward me.
    “They'll catch us,” he said. “You know that, don't you? I've always known, right from the start. Catching me's been part of it. They'll catch me in the act, or somebody will turn me in. It'll happen very soon. And when they catch me, then they'll have to face up to what the photographs show.”
    We gazed at each other.
    “So they'll catch us,” I said. I pulled my blazer open and showed him the CND symbol I'd pinned beside my heart. He grinned. “And we'll stand together,” I said. “Side by side.”
    He opened his schoolbag. He showed me the photographs. Now they contained only Todd. His enlarged face filled each frame—teeth bared, froth at the corners of his mouth, eyes glaring down at some unseen victim—along with the repeated words: EVIL, WICKED, CRUELTY, SIN.
    I nodded.
    “They're great,” I said.
    We shook hands, he told me what to do, and that day I dropped his photographs into desks and dustbins and I