The Elsewhere Emporium, page 7
Ellie touched the wall of the nearest building. “He might have walked down this street. Probably stood in this very spot!” She shook her head. “I wish I’d made more of an effort to get to know him – the real him.”
Daniel said nothing, because what was there to say? He knew how she felt, was only too familiar with the pain and anger and sadness running through her. Those same feelings had grabbed hold of him many times back in the children’s home where he had lived before he met Mr Silver, and still not a day went by that he didn’t think of his parents, wonder about them, wish he’d had the chance to know them better.
The sound of a faraway siren shook them awake.
“Right,” said Daniel. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” He reached into his pocket, brought out the candle wrapped in brown paper, and unwrapped it to reveal Peg’s message:
Sparrow’s Close… Clockmaker… Give him the candle.
“Sparrow’s Close,” he said, more to himself than to Ellie. There was a flicker of recognition in his mind, but he couldn’t turn it into anything more.
In a moment, they were back on the carpet, Daniel to the front, Ellie the rear, and Daniel had stowed the candle away once more. “Sparrow’s Close,” he told the carpet, which rippled under them, lifted from the ground, and carried them up through the cold light of the moon.
They returned to the ground a few streets away between two rows of high, proud stone buildings. Daniel rolled up the magic carpet and slung it over his shoulder, and they began to study the names of the various closes – narrow alleyways leading off the main street.
Advocate’s Close…
Anchor Close…
Trunk’s Close…
And then, ah! Sparrow’s Close!
It looked, upon first glance, no different to the others – a gloomy doorway in the stone leading through to a darkened passageway. But after they’d entered and had begun to walk cautiously through the passage, the darkness became thicker, until it was so black that Daniel couldn’t see the end of his own nose. The air changed, became charged and heavy with the scents of burning paraffin, liquorice and sawdust.
And then, up ahead, a warm glow coming from a square window in the passageway wall, a dead end.
Daniel and Ellie approached the window. There was no glass, only a hole in the wall, and beyond it a small room barely the size of a broom cupboard. Sat at the window was a bored-looking man in a crisp, bottle-green uniform, but when he saw them emerge from the dark, the boredom was replaced by surprise.
“Hello, hello. You two know what time it is?”
“We do,” said Daniel.
The man leaned back in his chair. “And do you make a habit of sneaking around the city in the dead of night?”
“It’s an emergency,” said Ellie.
Then man pursed his lips. “Right. Anything to declare?”
“What?”
The man spoke slowly this time. “Do. You. Have. Anything.
To. Declare?”
Daniel looked at Ellie, and she stared back at him and shrugged.
“OK… I… um… I like your hat?” replied Daniel.
The man shook his head.
“No! Declare!” He jabbed his finger repeatedly down on the counter. “It means are you bringing anything foreign into the magic district? Temporary regulations, y’see, on account of an incident a few weeks back. Some idiot thought it would be a good idea to bring a tank of storm wasps into the country! Some of ’em escaped, of course, and went buzzin’ around the streets shootin’ lightning out their backsides! Took days to catch ’em all.”
There was a moment of silence, until Daniel realised the man was expecting him to react in some way to his story.
“Oh! That’s terrible,” he said at last.
“You’re telling me!” said the man.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about us, does he, Ellie? All we have is this old thing.” He indicated the magic carpet rolled up on his shoulder.
“Right.” The man rummaged somewhere down below the window and brought out a sheet of paper. Then he reached into the chest pocket of his bottle-green jacket and put on a pair of round spectacles. He squinted at the paper. “Let me see now. Yes, here we are. To the best of your knowledge, has the item in question been cursed or enchanted to cause bodily harm, up to and including death?”
“What? No!” said Ellie. “At least I hope not.”
The man made a mark on the paper.
“To your knowledge, did the object originate in the continent of South America? And if so, has it been properly inspected for traces of Fire Beetle eggs or Spear-tailed Dragon Toad saliva?”
Daniel wondered for a moment whether the man might be joking, but the look on his face was deadly serious, so he said, “Um… Cairo. Peg said the carpet came from Cairo.”
The man nodded, marked the paper again, then stamped it with red ink that said APPROVED, and passed it through the window.
“Right. That’s you. You can go through.”
“Through where?” said Daniel. “It’s a dead end—”
It had been a dead end.
But it wasn’t any more.
Straight ahead, where there had been a wall, was now an opening, a narrow passage in the stone revealing the flickering oil lamps of a magical street.
“On you go, then!” said the man in the window.
Daniel gave him a nod, and another to Ellie, and they walked side by side down the passage beyond.
CHAPTER 17
HEARTS OF STONE
The Nowhere Emporium, Somewhere in Time and Space
Caleb, the barrel-chested fire-breather, sat at a table in the tavern tent of the Emporium staff ’s private campsite. He finished his mug of ale, wiped the foam from his moustache, and stared at the playing cards in his big hands.
There were two others at the table: Anja, the tall snake charmer, who wore a live silver snake around her neck like a necklace, and the metal Ringmaster from the Iron Circus.
Caleb stared at the cards, then he huffed and threw them into the air. Before they could flutter back down, he breathed out a huge tongue of fire, incinerating the cards; they rained down in small clouds of ash.
“Not again, Caleb!” said Anja.
The Ringmaster wagged a metal finger. “You really must learn to be a better loser. You can’t go destroying half the deck every time you’re dealt a bum hand!”
Caleb looked up, seemed to spot something out of the window. “Smoke. I see smoke.”
“Well, of course you see smoke!” said Anja. “You’ve just set the cards on fire.”
“No! Not in here. Out there. Look.” He pointed out of the window, where a column of black smoke was rising into the sky somewhere far off in the Carnival of Wonders.
“That can’t be good. We should do—” The Ringmaster stopped talking, because Caleb and Anja were already halfway to the door. The Ringmaster jumped up, fixed on his iron hat, and chased after them.
Through passageways between tents they charged, following the great column of black smoke in the sky, passing Wonders all the while: Leap of Faith; Fire Garden; Emerald Lagoon; Library of Souls. Past the great bog top of the Iron Circus, further and further out into the sprawling, never-ending city of tents, until, at last, they came upon a huge wall of flame. Several tents were burning and the flames were spreading over the dry summer grass too, licking higher and higher.
Caleb and Anja shielded their faces from the intense heat.
The Ringmaster, being made of iron, had no such trouble. He walked towards the flames, pointing. “Someone’s in there! In the fire!”
“Be careful!” shouted Anja, but he was already in the flames, moving towards the figure… a girl wearing glasses, seemingly unaffected by the fire.
The Ringmaster grabbed her, and dragged her out of the flames. “Are you alright? What happened?”
The girl didn’t answer. She stared at the fire, seemed to be looking straight through it, somewhere far away.
Caleb and Anja came rushing over.
“We must put the fire out!” shouted Caleb.
“I’m looking for the Fountain,” said the girl calmly. “Do you know where it is?”
“The Fountain?” Caleb and Anja shared a puzzled look. How would she know about the Fountain?
“I really need to get to the Fountain. Please don’t get in my way.”
“Your way?” Caleb’s voice boomed. “If it wasn’t for the Ringmaster you’d have been barbecued!”
“Where’s Mr Daniel?” the Ringmaster asked, the cogs and gears of his metal face spinning and clicking.
“He should be here…” said Anja. “Young lady, does Daniel know you’re here?”
The girl stared back in a blank, slightly dreamy sort of way. She pointed. “Is the Fountain that way?”
“Forget the Fountain.” Caleb looked more and more uneasy. “We need to get you to the shop front, to Daniel and Ellie. They’ll fix this. They’ll get you home.”
“That’s right,” said Anja, and she gave the girl a warm smile. “You want to get home, don’t you, dear?”
Of course I do, thought part of Edna. Of course I want to get home. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I’m doing these things.
But that other part of her, the part that seemed only to have popped into existence after she’d entered the Nowhere Emporium, spoke louder and more persuasively. The Fountain. I need the Fountain. Heat crackled at her fingertips again.
Caleb had had enough. He reached out – perhaps to take the girl by the hand, perhaps to lift her up and carry her all the way to the exit. But before either of those things could happen, his hand stopped moving. He stared disbelievingly as first his fingertips, then his knuckles, then his wrist turned to stone. The stone crept up his arm, reached his shoulder, spread over his body, his legs, his feet. The creeping stone reached Caleb’s neck, began to crawl up his face. His mouth was frozen in terror, his eyes wide. With one final breath he became a statue, cold and still.
“Caleb!” Anja called out, but the snake around her neck was already stone, and before she had a chance to move, the stone took her too.
Silence.
Edna stood almost as still as the statues she’d created. There was a look of serene calm on her smoke-smudged face, but inside her head was a very different story. The two opposing parts of her were fighting.
I must turn them back. This isn’t me! I don’t do things like this! Not me? Then who is it? I can’t turn them back – they’ll turn me in. After I’ve found the Fountain. It’ll all be better then. I can make it all go away. I can get my life back…
Edna began to walk, but halted in front of the clockwork ringmaster. She looked him up and down. He had not turned to stone like the others; he was still all metal gears and cogs, but the glow that had flickered behind the glass lenses of his eyes was gone. She reached out, knocked on his face, clank clank clank, and then kicked him, CLANG, on the leg. He didn’t move. There wasn’t a flicker of light in his eyes or a click in his gears. He seemed quite broken.
So Edna moved on, away from the fire and the statues, in search of the Fountain once again.
***
Only when the girl was gone did the Ringmaster’s eyes flicker to life. The clockwork gears of his body sparked into motion, spinning and clicking.
He did not know why, or how, but he had not turned to stone like the others. His clockwork mind had been quick enough to realise that he must pretend to be bewitched, and it had worked.
“I’ll bring you back,” he said quietly to the statues of his friends, Caleb and Anja. “I’ll find a way.”
He tipped his iron hat to them and walked after the girl, making sure to keep to the shadows.
CHAPTER 18
THE CLOCKMAKER
Magic District, Edinburgh, Present Day
When the passageway opened up, Daniel and Ellie found themselves standing in an old lane built on a steep hill. The entrance, where they stood now, was at the crest of the hill, and the magic district rolled out before them. There was a stretch of cobbled path, and then a series of steps down to the next stretch, and then more steps, and on it went. Lining either side were tall crooked tenement buildings. The ground floor of the buildings mostly comprised of shops and pubs. The dwellings above sometimes reached eight storeys up towards the sky, and there were washing lines scattered with all manner of interesting garments strung high across the alleyway.
The entire place was quiet and still, and the cold full moon shone down and mingled with the honey-coloured warmth of paraffin lamps.
“C’mon then” Ellie walked ahead, scanning the shop signs. “What did you say Peg wrote on that paper? Clockmaker?”
On they went, their feet soft on the cobbles.
What a sight this place must be in daytime, thought Daniel. He imagined the lane alive with people, with smells of street food and spells and ingredients. He found himself wishing the sun would rise just so he could see it in full flow.
They moved quickly along each stretch of lane, down the steps and then on to the next, past a blacksmith and an apothecary, a museum of magical artefacts and a coffee house, all closed and silent.
Then…
“There! Found it!” Daniel’s voice was an excited whisper.
The shop was small, with a single window on one side of the door, and a green and gold sign above.
Clockmaker
“What now?” said Ellie.
Daniel didn’t answer at first, because he had been thinking the same thing. It was after three in the morning, but he was tired and freezing and wanted his Emporium back. He knocked on the shop door, bang bang bang!
No one answered.
He knocked again.
BANG BANG BANG!
“Will you keep it down out there! I’m trying to sleep!”
The voice had come from across the lane, high in one of the tenement buildings.
“How about you keep it down, Franco!” came a second voice from a window above. “I’m up early for work and the last thing I need is your foghorn voice wakin’ me up!”
“The pair of you button it or I’ll turn your tongues into slugs!” a third voice interjected.
“Slugs, he says! Ha! You couldnae turn a corner!”
“Why don’t you come say that to my face, eh?”
“Well, I might!”
Daniel was wondering whether the back and forth would ever end when a glimmer of movement caught his eye. He looked at the windows of the first floor flat above the clockmaker’s shop and saw the curtains twitch. A man’s face appeared, with very weathered sepia-brown skin, a square jaw and a thick layer of stubble on his chin. He was wearing a nightcap, which seemed to be too big, because it kept sliding down over his eyes. He looked up and around at the tenements across the lane, and then down at Daniel and Ellie, and when he saw them his thick eyebrows raised up. With a jerk of the curtains he was gone.
A moment later, through the window of the shop, Daniel noticed the warm glow of candlelight, heard muffled footsteps. Then there was the scratch and click of a key and locks and bolts, and the door to the shop creaked open just enough to show the man’s face. He stared out at them, then past them, down the lane.
“Who’s sent you?” he said. “Was it Jimmy the Hangman? It was, wasn’t it? You tell him I’ll have his money by the end of the week…”
“Jimmy the Hangman didn’t send us,” said Daniel.
“No? Then who?”
“Peg. Peg sent us.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Peg?”
“You do know her, don’t you?” said Daniel.
“Lives on an island?” said Ellie. “Guards a mystical well? Talks to people who aren’t there?”
“Course I know who she is,” said the man. “She’s my sister.” He shook his head. “But she didn’t send you. She wouldn’t send anyone to me. This is a trick! Somebody’s trying to get in my head…”
Daniel reached into his pocket, and brought out the candle. “She gave us this. Said we were to show it to you and you’d know what to do.”
The man stared down at the candle and seemed to sway; for a second Daniel thought he was going to collapse and made ready to catch him through the gap in the door. But he steadied himself, and when he looked into Daniel’s eyes again there was something in his expression that had not been there before.
Fear.
“You best come in.”
CHAPTER 19
TRAVELLING BY FLAME
Magic District, Edinburgh, Present Day
The clockmaker’s door opened wide enough that Daniel and Ellie could slip through into the shop, and suddenly the soft sound of tick-tocking surrounded them.
“Here. Sit.”
The man brought a couple of wooden chairs over and lit a few lamps. The light was warm and golden, and all about the workshop it caught on the watches and clocks, on their smooth glass faces and their gold casings, on the cogs and springs laid out precisely on workbenches, so that the entire place glistened and sparkled.
“You came all the way from Keswick on that?” The man nodded to the rolled up carpet at Daniel’s feet. “You must be frozen! I’ll make some tea.” He disappeared and they heard him clanging around upstairs in the flat above the shop. When he returned, he was carrying three steaming mugs. The tea was sweet and hot, and Daniel was thankful for it.
“You look alike,” said Daniel, “you and Peg.”
The man sipped his tea. He looked at Daniel over his cup. “Name’s Arthur. How is she?”
“Lonely, I think,” said Ellie. “Though I get the feeling she’d never admit it.”
“Sounds about right,” said Arthur. To Daniel’s great surprise, he sniffed and wiped his eyes. “I tried to visit, you know. Many times. But she wouldn’t have it. Wouldn’t see me.” He set his mug down and leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his hands together. “We were so close when we were young. Twins, see. Then she took that job. They offered it to both of us, you know. But I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to get out in the world and live, and I told Peg she should do the same. But she wouldn’t listen. She wanted to help, y’see. Wanted to prove how strong she was. So off she went, and she’s been there ever since, and I can’t think about her without picturing her all alone in that place, between worlds, surrounded by dark things.”
