She tapped her forehead with the tip of an index finger.
Jones stared at her.
There was a moment of awed silence.
Then Jones grabbed Roxy by the hoodie.
“I am going,” she announced, through gritted teeth, “to actually kill you.”
Ah. So it hadn’t been an awed silence after all.
“It’s true!” gasped Roxy. “I have the entire book in my head, I swear! It’s this freaky thing I do! I remember stuff! Every word I’ve ever read, in fact!”
Jones let go of Roxy’s collar and returned her, with a bump, to the marble cobbles.
“Load of pig poo,” she said.
But her eyes were fixed on Roxy’s face.
“It isn’t pig poo,” said Roxy. “I have this … well, I don’t know how to describe it. A gift, I suppose. I only need to look at a page for a few seconds and I remember what’s written on it for the rest of my life.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jones held up a hand. “Are you serious? You can remember every word you’ve ever read?”
Roxy nodded.
“But … how?”
“I don’t know,” Roxy said. “I just do. I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. And I usually keep quiet about it, by the way. I worry people will think I’m weird.”
Jones chewed her lower lip for a moment. Then she turned, sharply, and began to walk away.
This had creeped Jones out so much that she was just leaving?
This was bad. Yes, Jones was a tiny bit terrifying. And sarcastic. And weirdly obsessed with doughnuts. And sausages. And breakfast cereal.
But she was also fascinating, and mysterious, and … well, a whole lot more fun to talk to than the likes of Bijou Splendid.
“You coming?” Jones paused, on her way towards the archway that led out of the Ministry courtyard.
“Huh?” said Roxy.
“Are you coming with me?” Jones said. “Back to my place. Which happens to be right above Mrs Kettleman’s. Where they’re taking today’s Special out of the oven right about now. Twice-Glazed Caramel. Just in case you were wondering.”
There were many things Roxy was trying to get her mouth to say. Things like: I’ve just told you your precious book’s been destroyed and that I have a freaky talent for remembering every single word I’ve ever read, and you’re talking about Twice-Glazed Caramel Custarde Doughnuts?
But instead she found herself uttering just one word.
“Yes.”
6
Jones’s “place” was an attic directly above Mrs Kettleman’s Traditional Custarde Doughnut Emporium. This was probably why it smelled strongly of Custarde Doughnuts.
Though this could also have been something to do with all the empty doughnut boxes littered about the room, or the occasional half-chewed doughnut or heap of crumbs.
Roxy hovered uncertainly at the door as Jones strode inside.
“I’ll just grab one thing,” said Jones, crossing the rickety wood-plank floor to a small suitcase in the corner. “Then we’ll head downstairs and order up a plate of those Twice-Glazed Caramel bad boys while we talk.”
Which gave Roxy a chance, while Jones flung things out of the case, to gaze around.
The attic was a mess.
It wasn’t just the doughnut paraphernalia. Almost every brick of the wall was covered with sheets of writing-paper, on which were scribbled notes and drawings. One entire wall was covered with a huge yellowing map: its curling corners depicted a country the exact size and shape of Illustria, but it was apparently not Illustria, because MAP OF THE CK was clearly written at the top. There was no furniture, not even a bed – in fact, it looked like, if Jones slept at all, she slept in that pile of thin blankets beside that tiny electric heater. The rest of the floor was taken up with gigantic pieces of torn-up cardboard box. On these were even more scribbles: flow charts, pie charts, incomprehensible graphs and, in one case, just the words written, in red marker: IF YOU ONLY REMEMBER ONE THING, MAKE IT THIS: TRUST NO ONE!!!!!!!!!!
Which made it quite nice, Roxy couldn’t help thinking, that Jones apparently trusted her.
“Great place,” she said politely (because she felt she had to say something. She got the impression Jones wasn’t exactly used to having visitors).
“What? Oh, yeah, it’s awesome.” For once, Jones didn’t sound sarcastic. “And the best part is, it’s all mine.”
“You live alone?” Roxy didn’t know why she was so surprised; it hardly looked like anyone else lived here. “But you’re only twelve. How do you live all by yourself, without a grown-up or anything?”
“’Cos I ran away. Now, where is that notebook?” Jones chucked a pair of tights over her shoulder. “I know I packed it.”
“Jones, are you serious?” Roxy was starting to wonder if she’d bitten off more than she could chew here. Hanging out with a runaway might be exciting but it could get her into massive trouble. “You ran away from home?”
“I didn’t run away from home. I ran away from the house I lived in with my stepfamily. Not the same thing at all. And it was only three days ago.”
“But why?”
“Oh, I could give you a dozen reasons, if you really wanted them.” Jones’s face darkened. “The thing that made me decide this was finally it, though… Well, there was … an incident.”
Roxy waited.
“A cupcake incident,” Jones went on. The tip of her nose was turning pink. “I can’t say any more than that. Anyway, the people here at Kettleman’s know me. I’ve often stopped off on my delivery rounds for a decent baked treat to eat – not like those absurd gone-in-one-bite cupcakes – so when I turned up with my suitcase the other day they told me I could crash in the attic. And with no stepmother or stepsisters bossing me around, I can do my own stuff, for the first time in my life.”
“And … uh … what exactly is that stuff?”
“I’m a treasure hunter. I hunt for ancient artefacts of the Cursed Kingdom.”
Jones was more deadly serious than ever. She didn’t seem to realize how ridiculous this sounded.
“I see.” (Roxy did not, in fact, see at all. But there was that mention of the Curr-said Kingdom again…) “So you … you’ve found quite a few of these … ancient artefacts, have you?”
“Nope. Not a single one. But be reasonable. I’ve only been doing the job full-time for a few days. Before that, it was only a hobby, so… A-ha! Got you!”
Jones pulled something from inside one of the discarded doughnut boxes: a small, battered notebook, made from brown leather and wrapped with a cord.
She also pulled out a large doughnut: blueberry flavour. (Either that, or it had been sitting in that box way too long.)
“OK, then, genius,” she began, taking a bite of the doughnut.
“I never said I was a genius! This is exactly why I don’t tell anyone about my photographic memory! People get really weird about it.”
But Jones was already pressing the notebook into Roxy’s hands. “Open that at random,” she said, with her mouth full, “look at a page of my notes – for ten seconds, tops – and then quote them back. Word for word.”
“Come on, can’t you just trust—?”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“So you say, but you have let me up here, after all, and you’ve told me all ab—”
“Just do it!”
Roxy took the notebook and opened it, somewhere in the middle.
The page she had opened was covered in more of the same scribbled writing that was all over the walls. She stared at it hard, taking it all in. She was pretty sure Jones had cheated her out of a couple of seconds when the notebook was snatched away.
“Go on, then,” Jones said. She was watching Roxy intently. “Do your thing. Tell me exactly what was written on those pages.”
So Roxy did.
MAGIC IN THE CURSED KINGDOM (THE CK)
• Worst ratio of Dark Magic (Diabolica) to Decent Magic was in 1996, at the height of the Perpet
ual Wickedness: 74% to 26%.
• NB: See separate note on the Perpetual Wickedness; and maybe start calling it the Pep-Wick or something rather than the Perpetual Wickedness because the Perpetual Wickedness takes SO LONG to write out… Aaaaarrrrgh, there I go again.
• By 1997, almost half the population of the CK has fled to neighbouring countries as people try to escape rampant Dark Magic.
• Evil Queen Bellissima suddenly self-combusts in 1999, leaving the CK without a ruler. A year later, her third cousin, Princess Ariadne of Shiny-Newland, is finally persuaded (by the CK’s Emergency Ruling Council) to take over the job.
• Ariadne moves to the CK with her husband, Prince Chetwyn, is declared queen and decides she’ll have to do something pretty drastic about Diabolica or there won’t be anyone left in the country for her to rule over.
THE GREAT CLEAN-UP (2000–2005)
• Immediate plans to transform the kingdom begin with a purge of all Diabolical elements, e.g. a top-security prison is built (in the mountains?) to lock up the worst trouble-makers.
• Main thing puzzling me about Great Clean-Up is this: how did the regime (apparently) wipe memories of every single person living in the Cursed Kingdom, and every single person outside it?!?!
• Can’t even find ONE SINGLE mention of the Cursed Kingdom on internet except for a “spooooooooooky ghost train ride into a Cursed Kingdom” at a massively rubbish-sounding Family Fun Park somewhere called Aberystwyth, in Wales, Great Britain. (NB: Never bother to visit Aberystwyth.)
• Oh, and another thing: what happened to Decent Magic while Dark Magic was being wiped off face of earth? Dad’s notes imply all Decent Magic was eliminated by new regime too. Is this really true? (And if no magic remains here at all, why does that little old lady sometimes show up at the door, claiming she’s collecting for a homeless-cat charity but then as soon as she gets me on my own whispering that she’s my fairy godmother(!!!) and that any time I need help, all I have to do is wish for her???)
• NB: Try to find out if there really IS such a thing as homeless-cat charity (even if suspicious little old lady has absolutely nothing to do with one). And if so, make sure to donate 10% of all future treasure-finds to them.
• OK, maybe 5%.
7
“Oh. My. Stars,” said Jones.
She was staring at Roxy with boggling eyes and if not exactly a new respect then at least with the look of a person who no longer believes another person to be an utter cretin.
“You … can really do … that.”
Roxy nodded.
“And you only looked at my notes for – what? – eight seconds.”
Roxy nodded again.
“And there was no way,” Jones went on, frowning, “you could possibly have seen those pages before, let alone taken the time to memorize them. Because nobody has ever seen that notebook apart from me. And you CANNOT,” she added, fiercely, “talk about it to anyone. Ever. Especially the cat-charity stuff,” she finished, her cheeks turning the faintest pink. “I don’t need people thinking I’m soft or anything.”
“Trust me,” said Roxy. “I won’t. I didn’t even understand most of it.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling like sandpaper. “Jones … this magic thing, though…”
“Wow. Just wow.” Jones’s eyes were still boggling. “I have so many questions. Hey, maybe I should call you Memory Girl instead of Question Girl!”
“Please don’t. And I have loads of questions too …”
“… but I can’t possibly think without something to eat …”
“… so you’re honestly saying that Illustria – this country – used to be this Cursed Kingdom place?”
“… so I’ll just get changed and then we can pop downstairs and grab a Custarde Doughnut…”
“… because I’ve had these suspicions, about all kinds of things, really, and it’s such a relief to think that maybe it’s not all in my head …”
“… and you can start telling me everything you remember from Mrs Tabitha Cattermole …”
“… and this Diabolica thing! Is that some kind of magic? Is it black magic? I mean, I’ve never really believed in magic at all, let alone—”
“WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP FOR A BLOOMING MOMENT?” said Jones.
She was pulling off the “borrowed” tour guide uniform to reveal, underneath, khaki shorts worn over brown woolly tights, an oversized man’s shirt the colour of milky coffee and belted over the hips with a wide tan belt. She still wore the same brown ankle boots on her feet.
“Right,” she said, grabbing a chocolate-brown leather jacket from the pile of stuff she’d flung from the suitcase. “Let’s make a deal. You’re going to help me get what I need from Mrs Tabitha Cattermole. And in return, I’ll tell you everything I know about magic. And Diabolica. And the Cursed Kingdom. Which, yes, is what Illustria used to be called. BUT WE’RE DOING MY THING FIRST, OK?” she added, holding up a hand to stop Roxy from interrupting. “You owe me a favour, unless I’m very much mistaken.”
“OK,” said Roxy meekly. “And I’m really sorry again about the whole book-burning thing. But at least now you believe that I can tell you everything I read in Mrs Tabitha Cattermole.”
“Yeah. Well.” Jones slung her kitbag over one shoulder. “I don’t even know if there’s anything useful you can tell me, yet.” She stared rather hard at Roxy for a moment. “Look, I don’t want to go into loads of detail. I’ve only just met you, after all, and I’ve probably already told you too much. But I was sort of hoping there might have been a key in there. A map, even.”
“A key? Inside a book?”
Jones nodded. “Just a small one, tucked inside the dust jacket, maybe.”
“Jones, truly, I don’t think there was anything hidden in there. A key or a map.”
“Well, you might have just missed it.”
“But I didn’t! I promise you! I read the whole thing cover-to-cover – twice, by the way, even though I obviously didn’t need to – and, trust me, there was absolutely nothing in there of any interest whatsoever. And I mean nothing.” Even thinking about Mrs Tabitha’s six hundred and fifty-two pages was enough to give Roxy a headache. “I mean, it was written in poetry, of all things.”
“Yeah, well, rhyming verse is how people used to talk in the CK.”
Rhyming verse…? Roxy thought, immediately, of that newspaper ad she’d seen. Did that have something to do with the Cursed Kingdom? If so, it made the fact it had been placed by someone calling themselves Trixie T McWitch quite a lot more intriguing…
Jones was already heading for the door. “Anyhow, let’s go and get some doughnuts – my treat – before they—”
“And come to think of it,” Roxy continued, her mind racing, “there wasn’t one single mention of magic in there, either. Not that I’m doubting you, Jones, but surely if there’d been a tonne of magic sloshing around the country back then, Mrs Tabitha would have said so?”
“Seriously?” Jones stopped, her hand on the door handle. “There was no mention of magic? At all?”
“Parsnips, yes. Magic, no.”
“But that can’t be true.” Jones was frowning. “That book was written ages before the Great Clean-Up. It’s a history of the Cursed Kingdom. She must have mentioned magic.”
“Well, maybe it was in the missing chapter, then. Or the missing page.”
“Say that again.”
“There was a missing chapter. And a missing page. Except the missing page thing was weird,” Roxy went on, “now that I think about it. I mean, even though the book suddenly jumped from Page Ten to Twelve, without a Page Eleven in the middle, it didn’t seem like there were any actual words missing. It was more like they’d just numbered the pages wrongly, or something. And the same with the missing chapter. When I looked at the contents page, Chapter Fifty-Three wasn’t even listed. It just jumped from Chapter Fifty-Two to Chapter Fifty-Four… Jones, are you OK?”
Jones had started to hop up and down as if a fam
ily of ants had suddenly taken up residence in her pants.
“Chapter Fifty-Three was missing? And Page Eleven, you say?”
Roxy nodded.
“A missing chapter and a missing page! IT’S A CODE!” Jones bellowed. “An actual, real-life, blooming code!”
8
“OK, so the doughnuts are actually going to have to be your treat,” Jones said, as they hurried down the rickety stairs towards Mrs Kettleman’s, “because I’m seriously broke.”
“Oh, right. Sure…”
Roxy felt hastily in her pocket for her coin purse. This was the Emergency Cash that Gretel always insisted she carried. (For a taxi, Roxy, in case you ever end up stranded anywhere. And for an emergency meal, while you wait for the taxi, so you don’t have to accept any stranger’s offers of food. And for a cup of tea, so you don’t get cold, and have to accept any stranger’s offers of shelter. Gretel really was a super-league worrier, with an extremely overactive imagination.)
The good news was that a plate of Twice-Glazed Caramel Custarde Doughnuts pretty much counted as a meal. And as Roxy hadn’t eaten since her late-night snack of Proon Puffs, there was kind of an emergency element to it.
And really, the less she thought about Gretel’s disapproval, the better. All the more since she was currently disobeying her sister’s express order NOT TO LEAVE THE MINISTRY GROUNDS.
“Awesome. Been to Mrs Kettleman’s before?”
“No,” said Roxy. “I’ve not lived in Rexopolis that long. And my sister doesn’t really let me have any sweet stuff.”
Jones stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She looked at Roxy, aghast. “No sweet stuff? What is she, some kind of dentist, or something?”
“She’s a cleaner at the Soup Ministry. I told you when we met in the vault.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jones was no longer looking aghast. She looked, instead, almost sympathetic. “I’ve cleaned a few loos in my time. It’s a rotten old job.”
Roxy & Jones Page 4