“Well, it’s not only loos. She cleans Minister Splendid’s office. And his own personal loo, of course…”
“Wow,” muttered Jones, with one of her eye-rolls. “Lucky lady.”
The door opposite the stairs led straight into the doughnut kitchen.
“Morning, Sally. All right, there, Jimbo?” Jones called out, as she led Roxy past half-a-dozen men and women in white chef’s hats, piping various luscious-looking custards into trays of gently steaming doughnuts. “Anyone thought any more about that maple-and-sausage flavour I suggested yesterday? No takers? Oh, well. You’ll all come round to the idea eventually, I know it. This way,” she added, to Roxy, opening a door at the other end of the room. “Ooooh, looks like we’re only just in time for the Twice-Glazed Caramels! You give me the cash and I’ll order while you grab a table.”
This was easier said than done.
The Emporium and Café was absolutely heaving. There were smart Ministry workers nibbling doughnuts while tapping on their phones, elegant Rexoplian ladies chatting to other elegant Rexoplian ladies over coffee and mini-doughnut bites, and even – Roxy ducked her head – a few kids lingering over a doughnut brunch when surely they should have been at school.
Thankfully, there was a tiny booth table left in the quietest corner, and Roxy scrambled into one of the seats just as Jones appeared, carrying a plate piled absurdly high with doughnuts.
“Right. Eat up, Question Girl. I need your brain firing on all cylinders.”
Roxy took one of the doughnuts, which, to be fair, did look pretty enticing: golden-hued, mirror-glazed and giving off a heavenly caramelly aroma.
“Jones,” she began, timidly, “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, or anything, but are you absolutely sure that missing page and chapter are a hidden code? Maybe it was just a mistake at the printer’s?”
“Oh, QG, you’re so innocent it’s almost painful. Trust me, there are no mistakes,” Jones said, grabbing a doughnut with one hand and reaching into her kitbag with the other. She pulled out the leather notebook she had used to test Roxy earlier. “And people used codes all the time in the CK. People practising Decent Magic who didn’t want their spells or secrets falling into the hands of anyone practising Diabolica. People like Mrs Tabitha Cattermole. I have a whole section on codes somewhere in my notes… The Hundred Years’ Slumber… The Great Rapunzel Cover-Up…” she muttered, flipping pages. “Here! Codes and Ciphers During the Time of the Perpetual Wickedness… Oh for heaven’s sake, girl, you’ve just written out the entire phrase Perpetual Wickedness again when you should just have written the Pep-Wick.” She waved the notebook at Roxy. “See? Right here. I’ve made a note on the Hide-and-Seek Code.”
“Hang on. The Great Rapunzel Cover-Up? As in, the story about the girl with the crazy-long hair, locked in a tower by a witch?” Roxy frowned. Witches again. She really didn’t like the frequency with which they were popping up. “But Rapunzel is only a fairytale. How could there have been a cover-up about something that never actually happened?”
“Because it did actually happen. Right here in the CK.”
“What did you just say?”
“Rapunzel,” Jones continued. “Long hair. Witch. All that stuff. It’s not a fairytale in the slightest.”
Roxy didn’t know, really, why she should feel surprised by anything Jones said right now. In the last half-hour, she’d learned that magic existed; that the country she lived in used to be a different country entirely, and that for mysterious reasons great lengths had been taken to disguise this fact; that (very probably) there was a witch lurking somewhere about the place placing crazy rhyming adverts in the newspaper…
The announcement that one of her favourite childhood fairytales wasn’t a tale at all, but had – apparently – really happened, should not have surprised her in the least.
But it had. In fact, it had done more than surprise her. For the first time in her life, Roxy thought, she knew what flabbergasted felt like.
“You can’t be serious,” she finally managed.
“I am. Deadly. But I’m also serious about that deal we made. Which is that I’ll tell you about the CK after you’ve told me what you read in Mrs Tabitha.” Jones rapped the table with her knuckles. “Let’s focus!”
“Right…” Roxy tried to drag her mind back to what Jones wanted to discuss. “A Hide-and-Seek Code, you say?”
“Yeah. It’s basically a simple book cipher.” Jones took a deep breath. “Look, I’m … I’m searching for … something, OK? Something that’s been very, very well hidden. And I believe the code for how to find this … thing is written in Mrs Tabitha Cattermole’s Chronicle of the Cursed Kingdom.”
She lowered her voice and leaned closer.
“To solve a code,” she said, very softly, “you need a key. Right? Well, first I thought there might be an actual key in the book. But a Hide-and-Seek Code works by giving you the key in the form of a missing chapter and a missing page. The missing chapter number tells you the page of the book that the code is written on. In this case, fifty-three. And the missing page number tells you the number of words to count on that page.” She lowered her voice even further. “So what we need to do is write down every eleventh word on page fifty-three, and that will crack the code.”
“I get it.” Roxy dropped her voice to a whisper too. This was getting properly exciting. “So, are you going to tell me what this thing is you’re searching for?”
Jones thought about this for a moment.
“Are you going to tell me every eleventh word on page fifty-three?”
Roxy nodded.
Jones stuck her hand over the table for Roxy to shake. “Then,” she whispered, “it looks like we’re partners.”
Roxy’s entire body was tingling, now, as if she’d been plugged into a socket.
OK, so there was the chance that Gretel was going to actually kill her.
But being Jones’s partner – whatever that meant – was obviously ten gazillion times better than spending all day alone again.
“So, can you do your stuff?” Jones added impatiently. She was reaching for her notebook again, and producing a stubby pencil from her kitbag. “Pull your super-duper miracle-memory trick one more time?”
“OK,” said Roxy. “Just give me a minute.”
She closed her eyes. This was always the best way for her to “see” a book’s page in her mind’s eye.
“Oh!” she suddenly gasped. “Page fifty-three! That was the page that wasn’t written in rhyme.”
Jones’s eyes glowed. “All the more reason to believe it means something.”
Roxy nodded, and tried not to let the excitement get to her. She did not want to make even the tiniest mistake.
It will be of great interest, I doubt it not, for good Readers of this unworthy tome to appraise themselves of the wayes and meanes by which our subjects froze not like stone in the winter, nor baked in the summer. ’Twas not with heavy furs or thick pelts that they kept warm. Indeed, all they did use was the yarn of the sheep and the fluff combed from the Angora bunny. This gave them the power to avoid frostbite on chilly mornings. And when they did seek to remain cool in scorching August, the solution came from within the humble flax plant. With careful spinning and simple weaving, a lightweight cloth was produced, almost as if conjured from a witch’s fingertips. This cloth was called linen, and it did fairly tower head and shoulders above other fabrics for maximum coolness. (I have, however, also heard good things of cotton.) In these ways, a practical yet also, for the most part, stylish and elegant look prevailed, and the Cursed Kingdom’s inhabitants were the snazziest people around.
Which brings me to footwear matters. The humble boot and the simple shoe were generally favoured. The most popular and inexpensive place to purchase the above footwear was Snelling’s of Hexopolis (slogan: you’ll not get foul smellings with shoes from Snelling’s!). One could find smart brogues, dainty slippers and the sturdiest boots, all for the most reasonable prices. Snellin
g’s was happy to provide, too, the answer to questions of style. For example, “Do these stilettos come in fuchsia, and would they work in a formal workplace?” With your purchase also came a Snelling’s carrier. Thus, with smile on face and song in heart, the Snelling’s customer returned home.
9
“For the stone with all the power, seek within a witch’s tower,” Jones read, from the notebook page on which she’d scribbled every eleventh word. “Have a look around the place; you’ll find the answer in your face.”
They were still in Mrs Kettleman’s, although it had become a lot quieter since the mid-morning rush had thinned.
In fact, they were almost the only customers left, apart from a boy sitting by the window, sipping tea, his face half hidden by a lilac-coloured fedora hat. Roxy had briefly wondered why on earth a boy would be doing either of those things – tea-sipping or lilac-fedora-wearing – but for most of the past half-hour, she and Jones had been entirely focussed on the code.
“And you’re absolutely sure it’s a clue?” Roxy asked.
“Are you kidding me? It’s so obviously a clue, it’s almost embarrassing!”
“But what does it actually mean?” Roxy asked. “I assume the stone with all the power is this thing you said you’re searching for…?”
“Might be.”
“Which you’re going to tell me all about at some point, right?” Roxy glanced at her new friend. “Along with telling me about Diabolica?”
“Keep your voice down!” hissed Jones. “Honestly, Question Girl, if there’s one thing you should have realized by now about Diabolica –” she mouthed this word – “it’s that you don’t go shouting about it. Anyone could be listening!”
Roxy reddened. “Sorry. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Hey, I get it.” Jones squeezed her, rather hard but not unkindly, on one shoulder. “My mind was blown too when I found out this stuff. And at least I learned it in little bits and bobs. It was from my dad. Well, mostly from his papers and notes, after he died last year. He was obsessed by this stuff.”
“How did he know about it? I mean, it’s all a huge secret, right?” Roxy glanced down at her hands, suddenly awkward. “I’m really sorry he’s dead, by the way,” she mumbled.
Jones shrugged in acknowledgement. “Oh, he knew all about the Cursed Kingdom. I think his fairy godmother told him about it.”
“His godmother?”
“Fairy godmother,” Jones corrected, swiping the last doughnut off the plate. “Aren’t you paying attention?”
“But there’s no such thing as—”
“Yeah, I have my doubts on that one too, to be honest. There’s this little old lady that turns up to see me sometimes, claiming she was Dad’s fairy godmother and is now mine instead.”
“Oh, the one from your notes, who says she’s collecting money for depressed cats as a cover story?”
“Homeless cats. But I guess they’d be depressed too if they were homeless, poor little kitties…”
Roxy, however, had stopped listening.
The café doors had just opened and Bijou Splendid was strutting in.
She wasn’t alone. There were two other girls with her, dressed just like Bijou in shiny tartan skater-skirts and pink hoodies, and with their hair in the same swooshy ponytails, high up on their heads and decorated with gigantic glittery bows.
Roxy scrunched down as far as she could in her seat, hoping Bijou didn’t notice her.
“So, girls.” Bijou was loudly commanding as she led the way to the largest table, in the centre of the room. She flipped her ponytail several times, sending glitter flying. “Camera-phones at the ready, OK? When the Prince comes in for his post-tennis snack, I’m going to chat to him and I want you to video every single minute so it can go straight up on B’s Buzz.”
“Ohmigosh, Bijou, your fans will just die,” gushed one of the friends.
“Like, actually properly dead,” gushed the other, copying Bijou’s ponytail-flip.
“And the Prince will, like, so remember you from the Queen’s Ball the other night,” said the first friend, copying the ponytail-flip even harder. “He’ll be all, like, Ohmigosh, Bijou Splendid, how’s it going? And you’ll be all, like, Ohmigosh, it’s going SO well. And he’ll be, like—”
“Oi!” Jones – to Roxy’s absolute horror – had turned round in her seat and was eyeballing Bijou and her friends. “Could you stop flinging your hair around, please? My doughnut’s getting glitter all over it.”
Bijou’s eyes widened, though whether this was outrage at Jones’s rudeness or the fact she’d suddenly clocked Roxy sitting there, it was impossible to tell. She definitely had clocked Roxy, though, because the next thing she said was, “Oh. It’s you.”
“Hi, Bijou…” Roxy had no idea what else to say. Sorry about accidentally getting you decontaminated last night seemed like a bad idea. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” she blurted out instead. Which was almost as bad.
“Who are you, my teacher?” Bijou’s tiny eyes narrowed to slits.
“No, no, I just thought…”
“Do you even remember who my father is?” Bijou went on. “If I don’t want to go to school, I don’t have to go to school.”
“Yes, of course,” Roxy muttered. “Anyway, sorry to have disturbed you. See you around.”
“Hey! We didn’t disturb her! She disturbed us!” Jones hissed as Roxy busied herself looking at the notebook again. “Who is her father, anyway?”
“Minister Splendid,” Roxy whispered back.
“The so-called Soup Minister?” Jones looked horrified. “Oh my stars! You could have told me you’re friends with his daughter, before I started letting you in on all my secrets! This is what happens when you trust people!”
“I’m not friends with her! And you can trust me, Jones. One hundred per cent.”
“Well, I’ll just have to take your blooming word for that now, won’t I?”
“And will you please explain,” Roxy interrupted, “what you mean by so-called Soup Minister?”
“OK, QG, do you seriously still believe there needs to be an actual minister for soup?” Jones rolled her eyes. “Soup is literally the most uneventful thing on the planet. I’m pretty sure that’s why they decided to call it the Ministry for Soup in the first place: because they knew nobody could ever be interested enough in soup to ask questions.”
Roxy was just about to seize the moment to ask Jones what it really was the Ministry for, when she felt a sharp tap on her right shoulder.
It was, of course, Bijou.
“So, didn’t I hear that loo-cleaner sister of yours swear to my father that she wouldn’t be letting you out of her sight again?” Bijou folded her arms and stared down at Roxy.
“You may have heard her say … something like that…” stammered Roxy.
“Then why are you here without her? With … this person instead?” Bijou’s top lip curled upwards as she looked at Jones. Then, clocking just how startlingly beautiful she was, the curled lip became a snarl. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” said Jones.
The Bijou Clones gasped.
“I mean, I get that you’re the daughter of some head honcho.” Jones shrugged. “But having an important dad doesn’t make you more of a big deal than the rest of us.”
“Yeah?” Bijou’s face was pink with fury. “I’m not just the daughter of the richest and most important minister in Illustria. I’m also, for your information, a MeMeMeTeeVee superstar.”
“Wow,” said Jones flatly. “So what’s your MeMeMeTeeVee channel called, then? Is it How to Get Glitter All Over Innocent People’s Doughnuts and Generally Be a Colossal Pain in the Bum?”
There was an ominous silence, filled only with a tiny whimper from Roxy.
“Oh. My. GOSH,” gasped one of the Bijou Clones. “You can’t say bum in this part of town. It’s, like, against the law.”
Jones’s left eyebrow arched. “OK, that’s literally t
he most stupid law I’ve ever heard in my life. What saddo wasted a minute of their life coming up with that?”
“Look,” Roxy interrupted, “I’m sorry if we upset you, Bijou. We’ll just leave, and—”
“We blooming won’t! This girl doesn’t get to tell us what to do!” Jones jumped up, fists clenched. “Nobody gets to tell me what to do any more.”
“Bijou, she’s, like, totally going to punch you!” screamed the second Bijou Clone.
At this, a satisfied smile spread across Bijou’s face. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her hoodie. “I’m going to call Daddy,” she announced, “and tell him I’ve been attacked. Then we’ll see who gets to tell people what to…”
And right at that moment, all her hair fell out.
Roxy, who’d just resigned herself to another night in that cold, frightening cell in the Decontamination Zone (or worse), could hardly believe her eyes.
But there it was: Bijou’s swooshy ponytail, lying on the café’s cool tiles.
“Wha- how…?” Bijou’s hands went to her bald head.
Which turned, quite suddenly, into a pineapple.
Her face was now an orangey-yellow and covered in sharp, brown pineappley prickles, and at the very top of her head there was a tall stalk of rather luscious green leaves.
The Bijou Clones screamed.
Bijou screamed even louder.
Jones grabbed Roxy’s arm and pulled her towards the doors.
“Come on!” she yelled. “Now!”
Roxy could hear Bijou’s screams, becoming more and more outraged, as the café doors swung closed behind them.
“Faster!” Jones panted. At this precise moment, her left boot fell off, which cost them five or six heart-thumping seconds as they stopped for her to shove it back on again. “He’s getting away!”
“Who’s getting away?” Roxy panted back. It was news to her that they were chasing someone. “Aren’t we just running away from Bijou?”
“No!” Jones was off again. “We’re going after … him.”
Roxy & Jones Page 5