by Maile Meloy
“What about that?” Pip asked, pointing to a big rubbish bin in the corner.
We emptied the crumpled paper out and carried the can over near the book. It was large enough to get inside, and it wasn’t even too disgusting.
“Now what?” Pip asked.
“Liquefac aurum.” Benjamin flipped the primer’s pages. “Liquefac means ‘melt’. We have to melt something. We’ll need a Bunsen burner. Here, take the dictionary, Janie, and I’ll set one up. What’s aurum?”
I looked it up. “Gold!” I said, my heart sinking. “We don’t have that.”
“If we were decent alchemists, we could make it,” Benjamin said.
“We need two drachms.”
Benjamin looked at the ceiling, calculating—he’d retained at least some knowledge of compounding medicines, from working for his father. “That’s about a quarter of an ounce, I think. Not much.”
“Janie’s got gold earrings,” Pip said.
I reached for my ears and felt the small, round studs. “They were my grandmother’s,” I said. “She’s dead.”
There was a silence in the room. My nana Helen was my mother’s mother, and she’d tried to act elegant and sophisticated when she came to visit us, because that’s how she thought Hollywood was, but she couldn’t help being warm and silly, because that was her nature. The earrings were the only things of hers I had.
Benjamin looked uncomfortable. “You don’t have to give them up,” he said.
“Yes I do,” I said, and I took off an earring. “Here. Melt them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” And I almost was sure, now that I’d made the offer. “She’d want us to find your father.”
“Thank you,” Benjamin said, holding them for a second in indecision before he dropped them in a clay crucible over a Bunsen burner. I looked away.
There were other ingredients, and I helped translate the rest of the instructions, but I can’t tell you what they were, because I was thinking about how my nana Helen had made me promise to wait to pierce my ears until I was twenty. I had promised, but only because I thought she’d live to see me grown up, well past twenty. She died when I was twelve, and it seemed unfair. At a slumber party that same year, I let Penny Meadows numb my earlobe with ice and then pierce it with a needle and dental floss, using half a potato as a backstop. I almost fainted—not from the piercing, which didn’t hurt as much as the ice did, but from the feeling of the floss being pulled, dragging slightly, through my ear. I let Penny do the other one, too, because I was going to be elegant like my nana Helen had always wanted to be. My mother was upset, but she came around. “A sewing needle?” she’d said, inspecting the neat holes. “And you didn’t faint? You take after your father.”
Benjamin ground the melted gold with something else until it became a powder, which he mixed into a solution that he poured into the rubbish bin and diluted with water from Mr Gilliam’s chemistry lab sink.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Lava vestibus depositis,” Benjamin read. “That’s the last thing on the page.”
I flipped through the primer. “Oh no,” I said.
“What does it mean?” Pip asked.
“It’s a command to wash . . . um, the clothes having been dropped,” I said. “I think it means ‘get in the bath naked’. ”
We all looked at one another.
“The bird thing worked on clothes,” Benjamin said in a tone of protest, as if being naked was my idea.
“The gardener said there are different ways of changing something,” I said. “I think he called the avian elixir a transformative process, and said that this one is only a masking process. Maybe it only works on your body.”
“So if it wears off, we’ll be starkers inside a military bunker,” Pip said.
“We might feel it wearing off,” Benjamin said. “And have some time.”
“What, three seconds?” Pip asked. “Time to put your hands over your willy?”
Benjamin shook his head, dismissing the objections. “I have to find my father,” he said. “You don’t have to do this, but I do.” He shrugged off his school blazer and started untying his tie.
“We’ll go with you,” I said.
“Maybe you should turn around, Janie.”
“Wait!” Pip said. Mr Gilliam had a freestanding blackboard in the room, the two-sided kind that moves on wheels, and Pip rolled it between the rubbish bin and us. “We’ve got a screen like this at home,” he said. “’Cause the bath’s in the kitchen.”
Benjamin stepped behind the rolling blackboard, and we could only see him from the knees down. His white shirt dropped to the floor, and he kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks. His feet were pale, and looked vulnerable. His blue wool pants dropped, and he climbed into the rubbish bin with a slosh.
“Benjamin!” I said, remembering. “The note in the margin said to leave one part of your body out!”
“What part?”
“I’ve got a funny idea,” Pip said.
“That’s not funny,” Benjamin said. “And it’s too late anyway.”
I blushed in spite of myself. Pip giggled.
“Maybe part of a hand,” I said. “Something you can see, so you’ll know when other people are seeing it.”
“My hands are already wet.”
“A shoulder?” Pip suggested.
“I’ll try,” Benjamin said. “It’s awkward in here.”
There was more sloshing, and we heard the thud of a knee or an elbow against the inside of the metal can. Then a wet footprint appeared on the concrete floor beside Benjamin’s clothes, and another. There were no feet making the footprints.
“Benjamin!” I said. “It works! We can’t see your feet!”
There was silence from behind the blackboard, except for the dripping.
“Benjamin?” I said.
“It’s so strange,” he said. “I can’t see myself.”
“Come out an’ show us,” Pip said.
“But I’m naked.”
“But we can’t see you!”
The wet footprints came slowly around the side of the blackboard. A pale smudge of pink skin floated five feet above the ground. I knew it must be part of Benjamin’s shoulder, but I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking for it. The pink spot moved, and a wet handprint appeared in the white chalk dust on the blackboard. There was no other sign of him. “It’s as if I’m not here,” he said, wondering.
“Brilliant!” Pip said. “I’m goin’ in!” He disappeared behind the board.
“I can’t tell you how strange this feels,” Benjamin’s voice said, from just above the pink floating spot of skin.
The two of us stood there awkwardly. I was as awed by the fact that he was naked as that he was invisible. There was a slosh as Pip climbed into the bin.
“Remember to leave some part of your body out,” I said.
“Right,” Pip said.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said. “It might be too embarrassing.”
“You think it isn’t embarrassing for me?” Benjamin asked.
There was another sloshing behind the blackboard, and Pip’s wet footprints came scampering around the side. He was laughing delightedly.
“I love this!” he said. “I always wanted this!”
At first I couldn’t see what was visible on him, but then I saw one floating ear. It was more identifiable as a body part than Benjamin’s shoulder was, but it was also smaller and harder to see, especially when he was facing us and we weren’t seeing the ear from the side.
“I want to go everywhere!” Pip said. “We can sneak into the cinema! An’ the casino! An’ the races!”
“First we can go to the bunker and find my father,” Benjamin reminded him. “Your turn, Janie.”
I went around the blackboard and looked at the two piles of clothes on the floor. Experimentally, I dunked a corner of my sleeve into the bath. It came out soaking wet, but unchanged. If I kept my
clothes on, I’d be invisible, but in wet, visible clothes.
“Come on, Janie,” Benjamin’s voice said. “Before Mr Gilliam comes back. We can’t see you.”
I looked once more into the rubbish bin full of solution, and thought that if my grandmother’s earrings had been melted down for this, I might as well make use of it. I took off my clothes and climbed in. I decided to keep the pinky finger on my right hand out, as it seemed small and easy to hide. The water was cold, and I held my breath and tucked my knees so I could dunk my head under and get my hair wet. I waited a few seconds and then stood up, dripping, and looked down at myself. There was nothing there. It was disorienting. When I touched my arm, it felt slippery and wet, but I couldn’t see it: I only saw water dripping in the shape of an arm. The clash between what I knew and what I saw made me dizzy. I climbed out, watching the water fill in the space in the can where my body had been, and saw the telltale footprints appear on the classroom floor.
“Did it work?” Pip asked, and his ear came around the screen.
“Hey!” I said. “You’re not supposed to come back here!”
“But you’re invisible!”
Benjamin’s clothes seemed to be picking themselves up off the floor, and I could see his pink shoulder, leaning over.
“I didn’t barge in on you guys!”
“We don’t know how long it will last,” Benjamin’s voice said. “We have to go.” A low cupboard below the sink opened, and his clothes seemed to throw themselves into it. “We should dump the bath.”
“I wish we could keep it for later,” Pip said wistfully.
“We can’t leave a trail,” Benjamin said.
I put my clothes in the cupboard, wanting to take them with me, although they would have looked like a bundle of clothes floating bizarrely down the street. The heavy rubbish bin seemed to levitate as Pip and Benjamin lifted it together and poured it out in the laboratory’s sink.
Then we heard a thump from across the room: the thwarted noise of wood jamming as someone shoved the classroom door against the propped chair.
“Who’s in there?” Mr Gilliam’s voice called.
Benjamin and Pip threw the paper back into the wet rubbish bin. I put away the Bunsen burner and the crucible and the beakers we’d used. Then I saw the Pharmacopoeia on the lab table.
“The book!” I said. We couldn’t carry it out without it being seen.
The teacher rattled the doorknob again. “Open this door!”
The book seemed to float in Benjamin’s hands to a high shelf with some other heavy chemistry books. I saw the logic: It looked like it belonged there, and blended in.
Mr Gilliam was pounding on the door by now. We moved cautiously towards it.
“I’ll move the chair,” I whispered. “You go out after he comes in.”
We got in position and I reached for the chair. It was like reaching for something in the dark, knowing approximately where it is. But it was the opposite: I knew exactly where the chair was. It was my own hands I couldn’t see. The pinky finger, at least, was reassuring. When I had a good grip, I pulled the chair free.
Mr Gilliam, who was so perfectly round that his belt looked like it bisected a beach ball, burst into the room and stood looking around. I saw Pip’s ear, then Benjamin’s shoulder, glide out of the room. I stayed very still.
“I know you’re in here!” Mr Gilliam said.
I dodged him as he came near. He stormed past me, looking for the rascally students who were surely crouching behind the lab tables, and I slipped out.
The school was empty—even the chess club was gone— and we ran down the hall in bare feet. It was disorienting, running without being able to see my legs. It almost made me forget about being naked, but not quite. The secretary with the sheep’s curls came out of her office, and we slowed down so we’d make no noise. I slid my visible pinky along the wall, but she didn’t seem to notice anything. I could see that Pip had kept his paper clip for picking locks. But no one expects to see a finger or a paper clip floating down the hall, so no one does.
We pushed open the front doors of the school and stepped out into the February day, and it was freezing, being damp and naked. I hugged my arms. I’d anticipated the embarrassment of nakedness, but I’d completely forgotten about the cold. Pip let loose a shocking string of words, most of which I’d never heard before. “Is there some trick that makes you warm?” he asked.
“I only know one,” Benjamin said.
“Well?”
“Running to Bethnal Green,” Benjamin said.
The patch of pink shoulder set off down the steps at a fast clip, and Pip and I followed. I tried to think about how we were rescuing Benjamin’s father from evil forces, and that was what mattered—not that the cold concrete stung my feet, and not that we were running naked and freezing into the wind.
CHAPTER 20
The Bunker
We ran, invisible, through the streets of London, dodging people in warm hats, scarves, and woollen greatcoats, who couldn’t see us and would have walked right into us. Benjamin was right about the running warming us up: By the time we got to the bunker, I was out of breath, but I wasn’t cold anymore.
Pip’s ear went straight to the lock on the bunker’s door, and his paper clip looked like a tiny worm wiggling in the air as he worked. Benjamin and I kept an eye out for passersby. “Oh, come on, now,” Pip said to the lock. “Right—there it is.” The door swung open, and his ear went inside.
I bumped into Benjamin’s bare shoulder as we tried to go through at the same time.
“Sorry!” we both said.
“Shh!” Pip said.
Inside the door there was a small room with an elevator, but instead of a button to call it, there was a place to insert a key.
“Can you pick that?” Benjamin asked.
“I dunno,” Pip said. “It’s a switch for the lift.”
As he said it, we heard the elevator cables running, and we stepped back. I held my visible pinky behind my back, not sure if that would do any good. Then I pressed it against the wall, so at least it wasn’t floating. The doors opened, and Mr Danby came out with a young man who looked puzzled.
“Stand outside and watch for birds?” the young man asked.
“Three small ones, all together,” Danby said. “One is a red-chested American robin. Captain Harrison thinks he saw a cat attacking them. I don’t understand why he didn’t report it right away.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—I don’t think I would have reported a thing like that either.”
“That’s why you’re only a lieutenant,” Danby snapped.
I felt Pip’s hand grab mine, and he pulled me around the two men, towards the open elevator door. The three of us tiptoed silently in.
“So, if I see three birds, I call you?” the young man said.
“Try to capture them first,” Danby said.
The lieutenant, who wasn’t in uniform—I guessed because of the bunker’s “secrecy”—went unhappily outside. It was clear that he thought Danby had lost his mind.
Danby turned a key in the switch and got back into the elevator with us, glancing at the upper corners. He was looking for birds, I supposed. The doors closed and we started to sink down under the ground.
Below ground, the elevator opened onto a small room, in which a row of orange hard hats hung over brown canvas overalls on hooks. Heavy boots were tucked neatly under a bench along the wall. Danby went out of the room into a hallway and turned right. We followed him, padding barefoot past framed pictures of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, and Winston Churchill.
Then, abruptly, Danby stopped and turned around, as if he’d sensed someone behind him. I tucked my visible pinky behind a picture frame and held my breath. He scanned the hallway.
Another man leaned out of a doorway and called, “Danby! If you please.”
“Yes, General,” Danby said, giving the hallway one last searching look.
We followed him into the general’s
office, where he sat down. The general had grey hair and an air of authority, but like the others, he wore no military uniform. There was a map of the world on the wall, with thumbtacks stuck in it. There were a few blue tacks in what seemed to be New Mexico, and a few red ones in Russia. There was a blue one stuck in an island in the Pacific, and a white one off the coast of Australia.
“Any luck with the prisoner?” the general asked.
“Not yet, sir,” Danby said. “The muteness should wear off soon.”
“Did you try getting written answers?”
“With no success, sir.”
“I heard you questioning Captain Harrison about birds.”
Danby flushed crimson. “Yes, sir.”
“Something to do with your investigation of the apothecary and his doings?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sure you have your reasons, Danby, but the men are starting to talk.”
“But they—” Danby began, and then he seemed to think better of it. “Of course, sir.”
“Just so you know. You’re one of our best men, and I don’t want you compromised.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And your East German contact? What does he report?”
“That the apothecary isn’t working for the Soviets, sir. Also that Leonid Shiskin, an accountant at the Soviet embassy, has been serving as a messenger, but seems to be working on his own, out of personal conviction. He isn’t running the network.”
“I see.”
“We know that the Soviets are looking for the apothecary. They expect the conspirators to gather soon, and they believe Leonid Shiskin might lead them to the group. But as it stands, I don’t think the group can proceed without the apothecary.”
“No?”
“No, sir. He’s their—their Oppenheimer, if you will.”
I was pretty sure Oppenheimer was the physicist who’d made the atomic bomb. I tried to look at Benjamin to see what he made of the comparison, and realised that the strangest thing about being invisible wasn’t being naked in a military bunker. It was that we couldn’t make eye contact. There was no way of sharing all the information I had grown used to sharing with him in a glance. I didn’t know where Benjamin’s eyes were, and he couldn’t see mine.