by Maile Meloy
“That boy isn’t back,” the apothecary said. “Your friend.”
“He will be,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure.
We emerged cautiously from our little cave of leaves, and there were no police officers waiting to arrest us, no Danby with his sight returned, no Scar. The apothecary led us across the dew-soaked garden to a leafless tree I hadn’t noticed before. His eyes were locked on it as if he were facing a formidable adversary. There wasn’t a single bud on the tree, or even a bit of warm brown colour in the bark. It could have been a sculpture made of stone or concrete: an expanse of smooth, grey, bare branches, reaching up to the sky.
“You can make that bloom?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but started to methodically unpack his bag.
Jin Lo went to the gardener’s shed and brought back a long metal rod with a T-shaped handle. She walked around the tree, making deep holes in the earth among its gnarled grey roots. The apothecary followed her with a bottle of green powder, tapping the powder down into the holes.
Then he circled the tree a second time, with a bottle of clear liquid, pouring it into the same holes where he had sprinkled the powder. Green foam bubbled up out of the ground, until there was a ring of popping, fizzing bubbles around the roots and the thick trunk.
The apothecary walked around a third time, with a trowel, and covered all of the holes with dirt so that the fizzing and foaming was trapped underground. And then he stood back with us and waited. I remembered a poem we’d read in school: “Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread.”
But nothing happened. We watched and waited.
“That’s the jive-o tree?” a voice said behind me, and I turned and saw Pip, holding a paper bag. He’d approached without any of us noticing, and he’d changed out of the rolled-up overalls into his own clothes and shoes.
“You’re back!” I said.
“You think I’d miss the show? Have a popover.”
He held out the bag, and I brushed off my dirty hands and took one. It was hot and soft and smelled delicious, and I realised I was starving. “Where’d you get these?”
“Portuguese lady makes ’em on the King’s Road,” he said, and he took a bite of golden dough.
Benjamin said, “Look!”
I did, and tiny green leaves had started to pop out and unfold on the tree. As they unfurled, they grew, until there were thick, green, waxy leaves on every branch. Then, while the leaves were still unfolding, tiny white flower buds appeared.
“Take this,” Benjamin’s father said, handing him a glass bell. “I don’t know how long the bloom will last.”
The buds grew into tight fist-sized bundles of petals, which then burst open, all over the tree. It was as if the great tree had spontaneously burst into flame, but the fire was made of white flowers as big as my head. The air smelled heady and sweet, like spring.
The apothecary pulled down a branch with one of the white blossoms on it, and showed Benjamin how to hold the glass bell over the flower. Then he snipped it free. They cut two more like that, and the apothecary fastened a piece of cloth tightly over the open base of the bell and dampened the cloth with something from a bottle.
As soon as he’d sealed up the three blossoms, there came a rumbling noise from deep in the earth, among the roots of the tree, and the thick trunk seemed to shudder.
The apothecary looked concerned. “Stand back,” he ordered, and we all moved a step away, transfixed.
One of the white blossoms on the tree trembled and started to wither, then another. As each blossom shrank, turning grey and shriveled, a thick black smoke rose up into the air. The apothecary rushed forward and snipped one more flower while it was still white and fresh. He quickly dissected it with a pocketknife, squeezing oil from the bulb at its centre into a vial.
Then he looked up, and we all watched the smoke from the tree gather itself into a dark cloud. Again there was a rumbling noise, and this time it came from inside the cloud, like thunder. But it wasn’t thunder: It was more like an expression of disapproval. I can’t describe the cloud accurately except to say that it seemed to have intelligence. It seemed like a great being, made of cloud vapour, embodied with the power of intention, of will. That idea seemed foolish to me at the time, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling, and now it doesn’t seem so foolish. The cloud moved away deliberately, as if it knew where it was going, into the sky.
The apothecary pushed his spectacles up on his nose, watching the cloud glide over London. “I was afraid that might happen,” he said.
“What is it?” Benjamin asked.
“A consequence of forcing the bloom. It’s something like the radiation released when they split the atom, I suppose. The Pharmacopoeia calls it the Dark Force.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I’m not sure,” the apothecary said. “I’ve never seen it happen like that before.” He plucked one of the withered grey blossoms from the tree to inspect it, but it crumbled to dust in his hands.
I looked at the three blooms in the glass bell, which were still perfect and fresh, with thick, waxy petals. “It didn’t affect your flowers.”
“I took precautions,” the apothecary said. “Now we have to collect our provisions and get to the boat.”
“We’ll need warmer coats for Nova Zembla,” Benjamin said. “And boots.”
The apothecary blinked at him. “We? You’re not going to Nova Zembla.”
“Yes, I am,” Benjamin said. “You need me.”
“If Benjamin goes, I go,” I said.
“Me too!” Pip said.
The apothecary, who had been so un-parentlike until now, gathered up all his fatherly indignation and seemed to grow several inches taller. “You think I would take children to the testing of a nuclear bomb?”
“We can help you,” I said. “Jin Lo, tell him we’re helpful!”
Jin Lo shrugged. I was getting tired of her eloquent shrug. “They help some,” she admitted.
“We helped a lot!”
“It’s out of the question!” the apothecary said. “Enough! I need to go over my notes.” He patted his pockets but found nothing. We waited.
“They are lost?” Jin Lo finally asked.
“Oh, dear,” the apothecary said. “They’re in the Pharmacopoeia.”
CHAPTER 25
Science Team
Benjamin and Pip and I went to St Beden’s for the book while the apothecary and Jin Lo set off to collect provisions for the trip. In two hours, they were to meet Count Vili at the icebreaker Kong Olav, docked in the Thames—assuming Vili was safe and uncaptured. We were to go there to hand over the Pharmacopoeia, assuming the book was safe and uncaptured, too.
It was still early and school hadn’t started, but students were arriving and talking in little groups in the yard. I kept an eye out for Mr Danby as we walked up the school steps. I tried to look nonchalant, as if this were just another day at school, but I was uncomfortably aware that none of us had a uniform. I was wearing Benjamin’s clothes, and they looked dirty and slept-in. A mother dropping her daughter at school gave me a pinched look of censure.
We made our way to the chemistry classroom, where the door was open. Benjamin peered inside, then waved us in. The room was empty, and I looked anxiously to the shelf in the back, terrified that we’d let the apothecary down.
But the book was there, right where we’d left it. The Pharmacopoeia’s old brown leather spine blended in among the heavy textbooks and binders. Benjamin pulled the book down and put it in his satchel, where it stuck out as usual.
“Good morning,” a Russian voice said behind us, and we whirled, expecting the worst.
But it was only Sergei Shiskin, standing in the door of the chemistry classroom. The shock of hair over his eyes was greasy, and he looked unwell.
“Sergei,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” he said, but his face twitched and he grimaced as if he was trying not to cry. “I don’t k
now anything!”
“Did something happen to your father?”
“No!” he said, too quickly.
“You can tell us,” I said. “We’re your friends.”
Pip tiptoed around behind him, unnoticed, and closed the classroom door.
Sergei jumped at the sound. “I can’t tell you anything!”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “We have no secrets in science team.” I sounded sinister even to myself, but we had to know what he knew.
Benjamin reached for a beaker full of clear liquid on a lab table and held it up. “We just made up some Smell of Truth,” he said. “A fresh batch.”
“No, please!” Sergei begged.
“You know how it works,” I said. “You might as well tell us.”
“I can’t!”
“Then you leave me no choice,” Benjamin said, and he threw the liquid to the floor at Sergei’s feet, where it splashed on his heavy black shoes. I hoped it was just water and not some kind of acid. “Smell that?” Benjamin said. “You’ll have to tell us now.”
Poor Sergei looked stricken. We had surrounded him, so he couldn’t get away from the spill without knocking one of us over. The clear liquid didn’t smell like anything, but it did spread slowly and ominously over the floor.
“You saw your father break,” Benjamin said. “And he’s strong. You won’t be able to resist telling us.”
Sergei put his hands over his face and moaned.
“That strange feeling must be coming over you now,” I said.
“Please,” Sergei begged. “Don’t make me. My mother—” He stopped.
“What about your mother?” Benjamin asked.
When Sergei finally succumbed, I thought it was to the need to talk to someone as much as to the idea of the Smell of Truth. “They have her!” he wailed. “The MGB does. Soviet security. In Moscow. They know about your father’s plan, they know everything. They told my father to play along and help the Soviets take the boat, or they will kill my mother and my sister.”
We stared at him.
“Is that true?” Benjamin asked.
Sergei gestured to the water on the floor. “How can I lie?”
“We have to tell my father,” Benjamin said.
“No!” Sergei cried. “He will send my father away, and my father must be on the boat! They will have watchers to see him go.”
“Then we have to go along and stop him, once the boat has left,” Benjamin said.
“But my mother!” Sergei said.
“We’ll think of some way to protect her,” Benjamin said. “Don’t worry.”
There was a pause as we all tried to think of what way that might possibly be.
“First we have to get aboard,” Pip said.
“We could use . . . the rubbish bin,” I said. It didn’t seem right to talk about being invisible in front of Sergei.
“We’d freeze to death, naked,” Benjamin said.
“What rubbish bin?” Sergei asked, sniffing away tears. “Why naked?”
“We’d need to find really warm clothes,” I said. “Fur coats or something, and get them on board somehow.”
We all looked at each other, stumped—except for Sergei, who was too traumatised to be stumped. The bell rang for class, but no one came in.
“There’s that girl, Sarah,” Pip said finally.
“Yes?” I said.
“That’s a girl who’d have fur coats.”
“But not a girl who’d give them to us.”
Pip grinned. “I’ve got half a crown says she does. Or I will have half a crown, from that spotty chess bloke. I’ll give you odds.”
Benjamin’s and my school uniforms were still in the cupboard, and we changed into those behind the rolling blackboard to look less conspicuous. We agreed that Sergei should go to class and try to act normal, and not cry. Pip would go look for Sarah Pennington—watching out for Mr Danby— and Benjamin and I would stay in the chemistry classroom to make more of the invisibility solution. We couldn’t use it right away because we still had to take the Pharmacopoeia to the apothecary, but we could take a concentrated version with us, and find something later to use as a soaking tub.
Before Pip left, I remembered that we’d already melted down my earrings. “We need gold!” I said.
“I’ll get that, too,” Pip said. “But the bet’s now at five bob.”
Benjamin opened the Pharmacopoeia to the page with the invisibility solution, and the process went more quickly this time. We remembered the words, and didn’t need to go step-by-step with the Latin primer, or wrestle with my feelings about my grandmother’s earrings. We ground and dissolved and titrated until Pip came back with Sarah Pennington.
As they walked into the room, Pip was talking to Sarah, and even though he was shorter than she was, he had a confidence that matched hers. It didn’t come from having money, it came from having no money, and from knowing how to survive. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“I didn’t know there was a science competition,” she said.
“Course there is,” Pip said. “We won last year, at my old school.”
Sarah looked up and realised there were other people in the room. “Hi, Janie,” she said. “Did you win, too? Back in California?”
I was getting tired of her mocking tone. “Why do you keep saying ‘California’ that way?”
Pip shot me a warning look—for challenging his girl? For messing with his bet?
“What way?” Sarah asked.
“Like it’s a joke. It’s a real place.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “So what’s your project?”
“We melt down a piece of jewelry,” Pip said. “And then we bring it back, just as it was.”
Sarah fingered the gold necklace around her neck, with its heart-shaped charm. “Exactly as it was?”
“It’s a project on the conservation of matter,” Benjamin said.
“Do you have a jeweller remake it?”
“No.”
“Then it’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is!”
“So give me your necklace, and I’ll show you,” Pip said.
Sarah pressed her lips together. Then she ducked her head to unfasten the gold chain. I glanced at Benjamin to see if he was looking at the mesmerising back of her neck, but he was peering into the crucible. Sarah dropped the necklace into Pip’s hand, and his fingers closed over the little heart.
“It’s still warm,” he said.
Sarah laughed. “Go on. You can really bring it back?”
“We can do way more than that,” Pip said, which I realised wasn’t technically a lie. We could do more than recover a melted necklace—we just couldn’t do that.
Pip handed the necklace to me, and I held it over the hot ceramic crucible.
I hesitated for a second, but Benjamin caught my eye and nodded. What did a rich girl’s necklace matter, against the possibility of his father being captured in the North Sea, or of a Soviet atomic bomb going off because Leonid Shiskin had decided that his wife’s life was more important than the apothecary’s? I dropped the necklace in. Sarah could always get another one. It didn’t look like it had been her grandmother’s.
“So when do you bring it back?” she asked.
“At the competition,” Benjamin said. “It’ll be very dramatic.”
“Did you come from Mr Danby’s class?” I asked her. I wondered if he was still blinded.
“Yes, but we have a substitute, Miss Walsh,” she said. “You know, I don’t believe you can bring that necklace back.”
“We have another favour to ask you, Sarah,” Pip said.
“Oh?”
“This lot said you wouldn’t help us,” Pip said, “but I said you would. I said you’re the kind of girl who would naturally help.”
“I gave you my necklace, didn’t I?”
“This is more important.”
“All right.”
�
��It’s really important.”
“So what is it?”
“They didn’t even think you’d have what we need.”
Sarah stamped her pretty foot with impatience. “Why don’t you just tell me!” she said.
CHAPTER 26
At Lady Sarah’s
We left school without being stopped, and Sarah Pennington led us to her house to look for warm clothes. It was as if Pip had his own spell, a love potion that made her agreeable to whatever he wanted. He caught my eye when Sarah wasn’t looking and mimed money crossing his hand—five bob. I mimed putting on a warm coat to indicate that he’d get his money when we had everything we needed. Pip laughed and walked ahead with Sarah.
“I don’t even know what five bob is,” I said to Benjamin. “How much am I in for?”
“About a hundred dollars,” he said.
I stopped walking. “What?”
It was Benjamin’s turn to laugh. “No,” he said. “Maybe a dollar. Come on.”
I caught up to him. “I believed you!”
Benjamin looked pleased.
“Keep an eye out for truant officers,” Pip called back to us.
“Oh, they won’t bother us,” Sarah said.
The Pennington house, when we got there, was the biggest house I’d ever seen. It was in Knightsbridge, and it took up much of a city block. A butler let us in, looking Benjamin and Pip over suspiciously.
“These are my friends,” Sarah said. “They need some warm clothes to go out on a boat. We’ll just go look in the old wardrobes.”
The butler nodded. “Don’t you have school?”
“We were excused,” Sarah said.
“Ah,” the butler said. “Shall I take your things?”
I felt Benjamin, beside me, tighten his grip on the strap of his satchel.
“No, thank you,” Sarah said. “We won’t be long.”
We started up a grand staircase, past old portraits of pink-cheeked young men in tailcoats and willowy maidens in long dresses: generations of Penningtons who had been the richest and most attractive students at their schools. At the top of the stairs was a small painting of a little girl in a blue dress who crossed her ankles and gazed at the artist with a bearing that was already regal.