She frowned and looked hard at him.
‘But that wouldn’t be much fun,’ she said. ‘Telling everybody that you have a cat who’s run away. And made you so very sad.’
‘I’m not sad any more,’ said Lukas.
Beatrice paused.
‘You’re not? How come?’
‘I know that Night is doing fine,’ Lukas explained.
‘You mean you’ve seen him?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You haven’t said anything about that.’
‘I’ve dreamt about him,’ said Lukas. ‘And he’s doing fine. He’s just gone away. To another land. But I can’t tell you any more. The rest is a secret.’
‘That’s great news,’ said Beatrice. ‘Your dad will be pleased when he hears that. And Whirlwind as well.’
‘Not Whirlwind,’ said Lukas sternly. ‘He mustn’t know anything about that. If I say that Night has gone away, he’ll want a dog.’
‘Good God, no!’ said Beatrice. ‘No more animals in the house!’
‘No,’ said Lukas. ‘It’s enough with Night. He still lives with us. Even if he is away.’
During the afternoon Lukas crept under the skateboard track and sat down. He needed to work out how he was going to tell the story of Night to his classmates. It wasn’t all that easy. In fact, it was quite difficult to turn it into a story that hung together. Especially as it was about a cat as remarkable as Night.
But in the end, while he was still sitting under the skateboard track and it was starting to get cold, he hit upon the best way of telling it. Now he knew!
When his dad came home in his lorry, Lukas ran out to greet him.
‘Now I’m going to tell you what it’s like, starting school!’ he shouted.
Axel smiled.
‘I like it when you come running to meet me, looking happy,’ said Axel.
Lukas sniffed at his overall. It smelled of farmyard.
‘You’ve driven to the slaughterhouse today,’ said Lukas.
Axel nodded.
Lukas had guessed right!
Two days later, Lukas told the story of Night. He had taken with him all the photographs he had of Night, and shown them to his classmates. He told them all about Night, everything Night had said in that strange dream. He had realised that Night had come back to him in the dream for that very reason: he wanted to give Lukas the most remarkable story of all. He’d wanted to give Lukas something really special and exciting to tell.
Mind you, he wasn’t sure afterwards that his classmates had grasped just how remarkable Night actually was. He thought it best to continue talking about Night, even during the breaks. Some of his classmates told him they were sick of hearing about that missing cat. When that happened, Lukas could be angry and sad. But he continued telling everybody about Night even so.
And so, one day, Lukas got a nickname.
Just how it happened, nobody knew.
But suddenly, there it was.
Somebody had said it, and somebody had overheard it and passed it on. You never really know with nicknames. They have their secrets, just as cats can have secrets, and humans as well, come to that.
You can never be completely sure about where a nickname comes from. Perhaps it was Night himself who’d used it for the first time. Whispered it into the wind that had blown it into the schoolyard, where somebody had heard it, and passed it on.
It was impossible to know.
But one day, somebody in the school yard shouted:
‘Lucky Night!’
And Lukas turned round immediately, because he knew he was the one somebody was shouting to.
Lucky Night. Lucky Night.
It sounded odd at first, almost like a foreign language. But soon, everybody had grown used to it, and nobody apart from the teacher called him Lukas any more.
Lucky Night. Lucky Night.
It was a big day in Lukas’s life when he got a nickname. Whirlwind was no longer the only one in the family with a nickname. There were two of them now.
‘It’s a strange nickname,’ said Whirlwind. ‘But it’s a good one. There’s nothing else like it.’
‘There’s nothing else like my cat, either,’ said Lukas.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Whirlwind in irritation. ‘It’s run away! Stop talking about that cat! Learn how to skateboard instead. Nobody wants to hear about that stupid cat!’
Lukas didn’t bother to respond. Earlier, he would no doubt have been both angry and sad. But what does anybody called Lucky Night care about what an elder brother thinks? An elder brother who doesn’t even know that the most remarkable cat in the world is now in a land where umbrellas grow wild.
They don’t care at all, Lukas thought. I’m not going to stop talking about Night. And if nobody wants to listen, I can always talk to myself. Nobody’s going to take my cat away from me.
And soon it was winter, and the skateboard track and the currant bush were both covered in snow. Occasionally cat paw-marks were visible in the white snow. But Lukas knew they were tracks left by another cat. Night was in a land where it rained all the time, a warm rain that sang tunes. Night was sitting there on his rock, licking his fur clean and thinking.
His cat was a king in Rainy-Weather Land.
His rock was his throne. From there he could keep an eye on his enormous realm. Only when it suited him did he receive visits from other cats. On very special occasions, Night would go off with his dream in order to talk to Lukas.
And then the whole world held its breath.
Nobody was allowed to disturb them when Night and Lucky Night were together.
Never, ever...
Fourteen
And then?
What happened next?
Night never came back. He had vanished forever in the wonderful Rainy-Weather Land that Lukas dreamed about all the time.
Whenever it was cloudy and rain was pattering on the windows, Lukas would stand by his window, his nose pressed up against the pane, and try to see Night. Sometimes he thought the patterns made by the raindrops on the window reminded him of Night’s face. Some trickles would suddenly look like whiskers, and two shiny drops could have been Night’s eyes. Oh yes, Lukas could see his cat in the rain, and he was happy to think that he had the only cat in the world who liked rain. He’d loved rain so much that he was now in a land where it rained all the time: the secret Rainy-Weather Land that was beyond all roads, all mountains and all seas.
But naturally, Lukas hoped that one day Night would come back and jump up and lie down next to him on his pillow. He would sleep for a whole day and a whole night, and then he would tell Lukas all about the many adventures he’d had.
But Night didn’t come back. Soon, several days could go by without Lukas thinking about Night at all. Then Lukas would be worried in case he forgot all about him. And so he wrote a note that he stuck up on the inside of his door, reminding him to think about Night every single day, for at least five minutes.
Lukas got more and more school work to do. When he thought about Night, it seemed that he was beginning to see him from a distance. At first, soon after Night had disappeared, he had always seemed to be very close by. But now it was almost as if Lukas saw him as a little black dot, far, far away.
Several years passed.
Lukas grew bigger and became older. One day his mum asked him if he’d like another cat.
‘I’ve already got a cat,’ Lukas told her. ‘I have Night. Even if he’s not around at the moment.’
‘But he’s been missing for several years now,’ said Beatrice.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Lukas. ‘I don’t want to have two cats. I have Night, even if he’s not here.’
Lukas sometimes dreamed about Night. It was always the same dream, repeated over and over again. Night sat alone on top of his rock, it was nighttime, and the moon was shining down on him. He was sitting washing himself, stroking his paw over his face and licking hard at his fur. But suddenly he would prick up his ears, as if he’d heard something. In his dream, Lukas knew that he was what Night had heard. Then Lukas would be standing at the bottom of the rock, and he and Night would talk to each other, until everything faded away and vanished.