The Grandest Bookshop in the World

by Mellor, Amelia

  In the silence, Vally heard the low roar again. It wasn’t coming from the wind outside. It was coming from the ocean in here.

  ‘It’s leaking.’

  ‘Yes, Pearl, I can see that.’

  ‘How is it leaking?’

  ‘How should I know?’ It was as impossible, and alarming, as a tarantula leaping out of a photograph to scurry around the floor. The sea in the Window had only ever been a silent moving image. Now it was in the room with them, a problem demanding to be solved. It shouldn’t have been possible – but then again, Magnus Maximillian had frozen time. He’d brought something resembling Ruby to life. Who knew what else he could do?

  As if in response to this thought, a huge crack struck across the pane like a fork of lightning. Water sprayed out of it, bringing a cold, salty scent.

  ‘I’ll fetch Mr Pyke.’ Pearl ran towards the exit, which was at the far end of Wonder Land. At least, it was supposed to be. Where the doorway had been, there was now only a wall. Pearl slapped it in disbelief. ‘It’s closed off!’

  The puddle on the floor soaked through the seams of Vally’s shoes. ‘Try the other one.’

  Pearl splashed to the entrance of Wonder Land, where she disappeared around the corner. ‘No good!’ she called. ‘We’re trapped!’

  All must be solved in time for you to win. Avoid, therefore, the snares that lurk within.

  ‘We have to solve the riddle,’ Vally said. ‘Before the room fills up.’

  Pearl ran back to the mirrors, her hands in anxious fists. ‘What happens then?’

  If Vally remembered his marine biology right, the water pressure in the twilight zone was very powerful. At its shallowest, it would grip a person like a giant’s fist. At its deepest, it would crush their bones. The glass would not take long to shatter. The room would not take long to fill.

  A shard shot out of the corner of the Window to the Deep.

  ‘Vally!’ cried Pearl, as the water crawled up her ankles. ‘What will happen if the room fills up?’

  Vally looked at the ceiling. It was flat – no fancy plaster mouldings to hold pockets of breathable air. ‘I expect we’ll drown.’

  Pearl’s eyes widened.

  ‘Did you think the Obscurosmith would go easy on us just because we’re children?’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d kill us!’

  The water sloshed against the walls. Vally tried to clear his head. Anguish, care, despair, darkness. It sounded like something both sinister and abstract. Pearl was probably on the right track with grief and death – except none of those fit. Then there were all the references to visibility: seen, appear, out of sight.

  ‘A person,’ Pearl said. ‘In crowds, you don’t see a person – you see people.’

  Vally took his precious watch from his trouser pocket and tucked it in his waistcoat, hoping to keep it dry. ‘I’m found in the darkness, but not in the light.’

  Pearl turned upside down to read one of the frames again. The sea was lapping at the bottom, close to swallowing some of the riddle. ‘A heart! Heartless people are meant to go to Hell. People say you go to Heaven if you have a good heart, but you wouldn’t hear any heartbeats in Heaven because everyone’s dead.’

  That sounded promising. Vally tried to ignore the freezing water creeping past his knees. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m found in the darkness – it should be dark inside someone’s body. That covers the crowds bit as well – people’s hearts would be there, but out of sight. You can’t have a banquet, party or game without people. Animals can live in mountains, plains or the ocean, and most of them have hearts. It works for war, peace, anguish and despair.’

  Luminous fish were butting at the corner now, trying to pull themselves free of the current as cracks wriggled across the entire front panel of the glass.

  ‘Why isn’t it stopping, Val?’

  Maybe Pearl had it wrong. ‘What about graves?’

  ‘There are bodies in graves!’

  ‘But it says seen always in graves.’

  ‘Close enough, isn’t it?’

  The corner of the tank burst open with such tremendous force that it splattered against the opposite wall and snuffed out one of the gas lamps. Freakish black creatures poured out of the gap.

  Though absent in greeting, I’ll join your farewell. The answer wasn’t a heart.

  The water was up to Vally’s chest now. Poor Bubble and Squeak’s heads were each straining in a different direction, one reaching for the ceiling of their terrarium, the other trying to slither under a rock.

  He read the message again. Seen never in birth, but always in graves … that was strange phrasing. Shouldn’t it have been ‘at birth?’

  The pressure of the ocean punched out more fragments of glass. A wave rushed in, filling the room to neck height and lifting Vally off his feet. He grabbed one of the mirrors, fighting the raging current. Maybe Magnus Maximillian had given them too narrow a chance to succeed, and they were trapped here until fanged creatures broke out and dragged them to the bottom of the sea.

  Pearl was struggling to stay afloat, splashing in panic. Vally reached for her, but the current dragged her away. Should he let go of the mirror to grab her? She might push him under – then he would drown instead. Or they both might. He braced his feet against the mirror, ready to push off, but then Pearl’s flailing hand caught one of the curtains on the Wall of Wonders and he heard her gasping breaths.

  The challenge. That was the only way out. In anguish, banquet, plains, game, waves, graves, the middle of war …

  The answer clicked into place like a key into a lock. It had nothing to do with the ideas of war, peace, sadness or joy. It was all about the words. Beginning in ‘anguish’. Surrounded by ‘care’.

  ‘A!’ Vally hooked his arm around the mirror, to fight the sea pulling at his legs. ‘It’s an A!’

  At the bottom of the flooded room, something gave way with a crack – and the water sucked Vally under.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DANCE WITH ME

  The curtain tore off in Pearl’s hand. The cold punched all the breath from her lungs. The current dragged her sideways. She tumbled helplessly, the roar of the sea in her ears. Something slimy brushed her face.

  Then her shoulder slammed against a cabinet and she fell to the floor, bringing down an avalanche of brick-heavy volumes. Pearl rolled over, gasping. She sat up and looked around. The exit to Wonder Land had burst open, washing her out into the Arcade proper. Vally was lying in a pile of scattered books. He raised himself on hands and knees and picked one up. It was drenched.

  ‘Oi!’ Bill Pyke marched towards them, all managerial bustle. ‘What are you two playing at, knocking down my shelves?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Pyke,’ said Pearl. ‘The Window to the Deep turned into a fish tank and broke open.’

  ‘It did what?’

  ‘We nearly drowned!’ Vally gestured at his clothes – but he was dry.

  Pearl touched her skirt. Dry. She felt her hair. Dry. Vally’s pocketwatch was in his hand, dry and still ticking. The last puddles vanished before Mr Pyke had a chance to see them.

  ‘Wait.’ Pearl turned back to Wonder Land. The archway was dark. ‘There was a whole sea here, Mr Pyke. All these fish got out …’

  Beckoning him, she ran into the Wonder Land gallery, but no trace of the ocean remained. Where the Window to the Deep should have been, there was only broken glass in an empty frame. Bubble and Squeak’s terrarium held only a tattered snakeskin. The mirrors were grimy, and one was lying facedown on the floor. The praxinoscopes and mechanical amusements were draped in a cloth, under a decade’s worth of dust. The unicorn horn was lying at the foot of the Wall of Wonders.

  They had solved the puzzle. But that hadn’t stopped the Obscurosmith sucking the life out of the Arcade.

  ‘It’s true, Mr Pyke,’ said Pearl. ‘Honest.’

  She had the wrenching sense that she was seeing something she wasn’t meant to. She looked away, to spare the poor Arcade its s
hame. By her feet lay a scrap of something green, the only bright thing in the room. It was another bouquet, smaller than the last. All the buds were closed.

  Pearl wanted to run to Mr Gabriel’s desk right away. Vally was picking up the books, though, which made her feel guilty. The red bands of the rainbows were mostly still intact. They had enough time to tidy up. She collected the flowers and the unicorn horn, and went to join him.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  Pearl shrugged, and put the unicorn horn on a book cabinet. ‘Unicorns can protect you from evil. I thought it would be good luck.’

  ‘Can oryxes protect you from evil?’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘A type of antelope.’ Vally jerked his head at the magnificent horn. ‘You do know unicorns are only a myth, don’t you?’

  She didn’t think he was being cruel. It was just his matter-of-fact nature. To him, science didn’t ruin the wonder of things – it was the wonder of things. He simply forgot sometimes that his little sisters didn’t think the same way. Pearl thought unicorns might be real, the same way she believed a secret population of clever dodos might still survive somewhere in the world.

  But all right, perhaps this was the horn of an antelope. That could still be lucky. After all, a wild antelope would be nearly as beautiful as a unicorn, and its horns would protect it from lions. Pearl resolved to do two things. The first was to not fight with Vally about the existence of unicorns. The second was to keep the horn.

  ‘So,’ she said, picking up a stack of cookbooks. ‘The answer was an A.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘What about being in pairs?’ She put the cookbooks back on the shelf. ‘I don’t know any words with a double A.’

  Vally bleated like a sheep.

  ‘Baa isn’t a word, it’s a noise.’

  He pushed a row of thick volumes together and slotted another between them. ‘I think it just meant there’s an A in the words pairs and alone.’

  Pearl picked up another book. ‘There’s an A in Heaven, and it said there wasn’t.’

  ‘Silent in Heaven. You spell it with an A, but you don’t pronounce it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pearl. ‘Well done.’

  They tidied quietly together for a while. Pearl tried to remember the riddle, but could only think of a few lines. The memory of the sea filling her mouth and tugging on her skirt had shoved it out of her mind.

  ‘Vally?’

  He turned to look at her.

  ‘Can you tell me next time?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘How you worked things out.’ Pearl took a deep breath. ‘Because it felt pretty rotten when I was trying to think of answers, and you kept saying no to them without telling me why.’

  He broke her gaze and shuffled more books into place, checking to make sure they were arranged alphabetically.

  ‘We have six more rounds to play,’ she said. ‘And if you’re going to keep acting like you know everything and I don’t know anything, we won’t be able to beat him.’

  Vally straightened a few of the books’ spines, which to Pearl looked straight already. ‘Sorry. I’ll try not to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pearl said. ‘And I’ll try to think about things before I call them out.’

  He looked strangely relieved. ‘We should try to find out what that new bouquet says. Where did we leave Mr Gabriel’s books?’

  As Pearl looked around for them, she locked eyes with Mr Pyke. He was glaring at her, making sure the job was finished. It was hard to imagine this bespectacled man as the boy Pa had hired at the old market book stall. He was so practical, so adult – more so than Pa, who in some ways had never grown up.

  ‘Upstairs,’ she muttered to her brother, picking up the oryx horn. It had been a long week to be the manager at an ailing Book Arcade.

  With closing time approaching, the second floor was deserted. The Arcade was quiet. The last few customers were off in their own worlds. Most of the shelving-boys had gone home. It was usually a peaceful time of day, but tonight, it seemed too still. Pearl marched ahead and put the door of the flat between herself and the emptiness.

  ‘Can you tell what these are?’ She waved the bouquet at Vally as he brought Cole’s Funny Picture Book and Mr Gabriel’s guides inside.

  He thumped the tower of books on the dining table, and examined the tight buds. ‘Looks like they’re all the same species.’

  ‘One meaning, then?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ The brass taps rattled as he filled two vases at the sink – one for the first bouquet, one for the second. ‘We’ll have to wait to see what they become.’

  Pearl stared at the new flowers, and half-convinced herself they were opening, like the creeping of an hour hand around the face of a clock. ‘How long do we have to wait?’

  ‘Just long enough to go mad, probably.’ Her brother plucked off a bud. ‘Don’t let the suspense get to you. If we go into the next round all flustered, we’ll mess it up.’ He sliced the bud open with his thumbnail, but the petals were green and crumpled. ‘Let’s check them again in half an hour.’

  The bed was too hot. Pearl’s long nightie tangled around her legs like hungry tentacles. She kept jolting awake from the brink of sleep. She didn’t like waiting. She wanted to spend every minute she had working on the game. But Ma had forced her to go to bed – once at half-past ten, then more angrily at midnight, when Pearl had got up to check on the buds. They’d still been closed, but the orange bands of the rainbows had begun to disappear. She envied her sisters. Ivy’s face was as calm as an angel’s. Linda snored softly.

  The fifth or sixth time Pearl forced her eyes open, it was to a strange stillness. No horses passed outside. The Arcade’s last customers had left hours ago. No chatter wafted from the sitting room, no whispers from the boys’ room. She knelt on the bed to peek out the window, but even the street lamps had gone out. Dawn was a long way off.

  Then she heard the music.

  It was a lively tune – a polka, full of mischief. Careful not to disturb Ivy beside her, Pearl got up and went to the kitchen. The music continued. Pearl found a candle, lit it and carried it in its holder to the table. The clock in the kitchen showed it was just past three o’clock, and sure enough, the flowers had opened: five purple petals around a black centre. Pa had once grown blue ones in a pot on the roof. They had a name like the Queen.

  ‘Victoria, Victoria,’ she murmured aloud, flicking through the flower dictionary. She traced the columns: valerian, verbena, veronica, violet …

  Viscaria oculata: dance with me.

  Triumph surged within her. Reading was lovely, in its comfortable quiet way, but dancing was fun.

  She ran to the boys’ room, as lightly as a ghost. She turned the doorknob without letting it click. The boys had their own beds nowadays, as did Linda – a teenage privilege Pearl was looking forward to. Vally’s was on the far side of the room. The floor creaked as she edged across towards him.

  ‘Vally.’ She touched his bare shoulder. ‘Val.’

  His face creased in a frown. ‘Mm?’

  ‘Vally, get up. It’s time for the next round.’

  Pearl was trying to shield her brothers from the candlelight with her hand, but her voice made Eddie stir in his sleep. With a grunt, he rolled over. ‘… and go ‘way.’

  Pearl stood still, afraid she had woken him up.

  ‘Geddout of ‘ere, mustard,’ Eddie mumbled angrily. ‘No one likes you.’

  Pearl had to fight so hard to keep her giggles in, she almost dropped the candle.

  ‘It’s all right for you to laugh.’ Vally found his pyjama shirt, and pulled it on as they tiptoed through the flat. ‘The absolute nonsense he wakes me up with …’

  ‘Shh.’ Pearl was trying to listen to the music. She had heard the Book Arcade Band play it before. But that couldn’t be right. The Band had all gone home yesterday evening.

  The orange stripes of the rainbows were nearly half-gone. Pearl guarded her candle from the
breeze as she and Vally descended to the first floor. The bandstand was on the far side of the Arcade. Closer up, it was hard to believe she was the only one the music had woken. The racket seemed enough to rouse the whole of Bourke Street.

  When they came upon the Band, she was surprised to find the musicians weren’t in their red velvet jackets. They, too, looked as if the Obscurosmith had lifted them out of bed and dropped them in their places. Miss Finch had on a sweeping, glamorous nightgown. Mr Chillingsworth, the conductor, wore an old woollen nightshirt and cap, even though it was a warm night. Pearl tried to step onto the dance floor below the stand, but she couldn’t. Her way was blocked by an invisible force.

  ‘I think those are for you,’ cried Mr Chillingsworth through his thick white whiskers.

  Pearl followed his line of sight. Two outfits were spread on a pair of chairs nearby: a dinner suit with a top hat, and a blue ball gown. Beside the gown lay a pair of gloves, and a headband topped with a large white flower. She set down her candle, for the gaslight was bright enough to see by, and scooped up the shimmering dress.

  ‘What are you all doing here?’ asked Vally.

  ‘We woke up here,’ said Miss Finch, as her fingers scrambled over the piano. ‘Sorry to disturb you – but we can’t seem to stop!’

  Vally gave his sister a questioning glance. She realised she hadn’t told him about the flowers. ‘The clue was “dance with me.”’ Pearl was excited to begin. She’d always liked dancing, whether at parties, at family concerts with Ruby and Ivy, or even for her toys in the playroom. But she’d never had a gown as fine as this. Or as long – children didn’t wear full-length skirts. She pulled it up over her nightie. Its silk train extended a foot longer than the rest of the hem. It had a stiff bodice to give the wearer a small waist, and a bustle at the back to give them a large bottom, which would make the waist look smaller still. No wonder most ladies these days wore slim bell-shaped gowns that skimmed the top of their feet – they were much more practical. Still, it was strange to think so many people continued to have their servants tight-lace them every day. The sooner the Rational Dress Movement caught on, the better. Nobody ought to be imprisoned by their clothes.