The Grandest Bookshop in the World

by Mellor, Amelia

  ‘You three!’ Mr Pyke charged from the smoke, arms open in a protective gesture. ‘Get out of –’

  The machine grabbed the manager and flung him away like an old cloth. The gears clanked. The canes slapped.

  Eddie grabbed Pearl’s arm. ‘Run.’

  Vally was one hundred per cent on board with that plan.

  He ducked to the right, and immediately regretted it. Pearl and Eddie were going back the way they had all come. He was on his own. Part of him selfishly hoped the Whipping Machine would follow them instead. Two of them, one of him. And Eddie was bigger. Surely it would be more satisfied with him …

  It’s not going to eat him, you donkey. Focus.

  But focusing was becoming difficult. With more memories slipping away every moment, his mind was becoming like the haunted American mansion he had once read about, full of trapdoors and missing floorboards, dead ends and windows to nothing. What was it called? Witch House, Winch House …

  The Whipping Machine reeled at the corner. Its wheels shrieked on the floor.

  He’d have to look it up later.

  He took off again. The satchel bounced awkwardly at his hip. The machine ate up the distance behind him, the thud of falling books adding to its hideous noise. Shelves fell and splintered in its wake. It barely fit between the aisles. Its steel hands shoved tables out of its way and smashed down ladders.

  He dodged down a different passageway. The machine hit the wall with a crunch that shook the floor. Its turning circle was too wide, too clumsy, to follow him with ease. An avalanche of books thundered down upon the machine. The wheels, wedged between the shelves, cycled madly. Vally jogged backwards, caught between doubt and hope. Had the Arcade come to his rescue, burying the machine?

  The metal hands braced against the shelves. The books tumbled off the engine, tearing and flapping open, as the Whipping Machine began to haul itself free. Slapping canes sent pages flying.

  Vally didn’t waste another second. He pelted up the central aisle. In the reflections on the obelisks, he caught fragments of the machine’s progress: now a cloud of smoke, now a grasping hand, now a falling shelf.

  He turned another corner and ran into his sister. She yelped and rubbed her arm.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, between gasps. ‘Tried to … shake it off …’

  ‘Val!’ Eddie clapped him on the back in relief and they jogged up the central aisle. ‘How do we beat this thing?’

  ‘The flowers said too bold …’ But Vally couldn’t remember the rest. He glanced at Pearl for help.

  ‘Good education,’ she said. ‘The Whipping Machine is for naughty children. Maybe if we show it how good we can be …’

  ‘You’ve both forgotten?’ Eddie looked exasperated. ‘All the broken stems? We’ve got to break it – before it tears the whole shop down!’

  ‘Break it,’ said Vally, to reinforce the memory. ‘We could put its fire out. It’s steam-powered, so it’s got to have a fire in its engine.’

  The Whipping Machine careened into the central aisle, smashing mirrors and shelves. SLAP-slap-slap-slap, SLAP-slap-slap-slap.

  The Coles turned down another row. ‘That’s not a bad idea, Val,’ said Eddie breathlessly. ‘How do we do it?’

  ‘No idea.’ Vally stepped up a few rungs of the nearest ladder to see over the tall shelves. A dark plume of smoke rose above the mirrored obelisks. Somewhere behind the machine, the Book Arcade staff were still scrambling to control it. It was a brave effort, but unsuccessful. He jumped off the ladder and resumed their sidling, furtive run.

  ‘Fire extinguisher,’ Eddie said. ‘Two of us are the decoys. The other one goes around the back and shoots the extinguisher down its chimney.’

  ‘Where on earth,’ said Vally, ‘will we get a fire extinguisher?’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Eddie said. ‘Val! We have two on every floor!’

  ‘Since when?’

  Eddie made an exasperated noise. ‘You remember where they are, right, Pearlie?’

  But Pearl was slowing down. She glanced over her shoulder at the billowing smoke. ‘Do you think – I mean – maybe if it caught one of us, the others would have a chance to –’

  ‘No!’ She was making so little effort to keep up that Vally had to drag her down into a dark, narrow aisle in the theology section. ‘The cane hurts, all right? You can hardly walk after getting six of the best, and that thing isn’t built to stop at six. If you get caught, it might as well be the end of the game.’

  Pearl looked stunned. ‘What’s six of the best?’

  ‘Six strikes,’ said Eddie. ‘As hard as the teacher can hit.’

  ‘But you two don’t get the cane.’ She sounded confused, and a little hurt, as if her brothers had betrayed her somehow. ‘You’re good boys, aren’t you?’

  Vally and Eddie exchanged glances. Pearl must have seen them limping home before: taking verbal lashings from Ma, lying on the floor on their stomachs because sitting was too painful. But that would have happened in the flat upstairs. An Arcade memory for her, now lost. Vally didn’t know how to explain it to her – didn’t want to, for fear of the feelings that might be dragged out with it. Pearl didn’t go to school with her older siblings. Even if she had, girls were whipped far less than boys: people said they were more fragile. She’d probably never know that sting of the switch, those criss-crossing red marks afterwards. She’d never know the shame of the flinch, the escaping tears. For a while, Eddie and Vally had been in the habit of wearing two pairs of pants to soften the blows a little. The day they were discovered, the headmaster had given them twelve strikes each.

  ‘You do get the cane?’ Pearl’s eyes went even wider. ‘Why?’

  ‘Put a rat in the teacher’s desk,’ said Vally.

  ‘Punched someone who was picking on Val,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Spilled ink.’

  ‘Talked out of turn.’

  ‘I laughed once,’ Vally said, and he felt like crying.

  The shelves around them shuddered. A thick volume fell sprawling to the floor behind them, and Vally saw – too late – the terrible mistake he’d made. This aisle was a dead end.

  The Whipping Machine crashed into the bookshelves, engine roaring. Wood splintered. Books thundered to the floor. A metal hand reached in, grasping air. Vally reeled back, stumbling on holy pages. Pearl squealed. A row of Arabic volumes tumbled like dominoes from the top shelf, each one large enough to split her skull.

  ‘Pearl!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Get away from the shelf!’

  ‘It’s all shelves!’

  The Whipping Machine reached its other hand into the aisle. It pushed the shelves, engine grinding with overwork, its canes a violent blur – SLAPslapslapslap-SLAPslapslapslap.

  The Coles backed into the end of the aisle. Pearl’s hand dug like a claw into Vally’s sleeve. ‘I should have paid more attention to Pa’s spell-writing!’ she moaned. ‘Don’t you know any magic?’

  Even if Vally had, it likely wouldn’t have worked. Articulation needed a steady hand; imagination, a clear head. He picked up a huge brick of a book and flung it into the Whipping Machine’s pounding, spinning gears.

  With a grinding snarl, the pages burst into confetti. The machine munched up the covers and spat them out somewhere behind it.

  ‘Blast,’ Vally said. ‘Thought that’d work.’

  Pearl looked flabbergasted. ‘Work how?’

  ‘Jam the gears.’

  ‘You can’t do that with books!’

  ‘Well, I know that now!’

  The terrible engine rammed the shelves again. The canes were turning so fast their sounds began to blend together: SLAPPAslappaSLAPPAslappaSLAPPAPPAPPAPP.

  ‘Val.’ Eddie gripped his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

  A fleeting paranoia zipped through Vally’s head – was this a pre-emptive apology for something Eddie was about to do to him?

  ‘You put up with a lot.’ It was almost impossible to hear Eddie over the machine. ‘I’ve put you through a
lot.’ Eddie glanced at Pearl, who was leaning slightly closer to Vally than she was to him, and a strange look crossed his face – jealous eyes, a regretful twist of the mouth. ‘Don’t let her down, OK?’

  The word her was heavy with meaning. Don’t let her down the way I’ve let you down by dragging you into trouble with me. Don’t let her down, because you’re the reliable one and even the little girls know it. Don’t let her down, because it’s your responsibility from now on.

  ‘No!’ Vally tried to catch his sleeve. ‘Ed!’

  But Eddie was already running towards the Whipping Machine.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ORDER AND CHAOS

  Pearl could only watch, stunned, as her brother threw himself at the mechanical monster. He was going to duck, surely. He was going to scramble over it. He couldn’t really be giving himself up to it. He couldn’t just let it win … could he?

  The stocks opened like a massive pair of jaws. The iron hands caught Eddie around the waist. He twisted in its grip like a rabbit in a snare. The slapping became sharper as the canes whipped his legs.

  And it was all for nothing. The machine took up the whole of the aisle. Once it was done with Eddie, it would come for Vally and Pearl.

  As Vally dodged a falling book, he bumped into Pearl. Something jabbed her side. She looked down.

  The oryx horn. The protection charm that could drive off a hungry lion. It was poking out of the bag.

  She grabbed it in both hands and pulled. Her fingers fit easily in its spiralling ridges, as if it had been made for her to do this. ‘Ed!’ She raised the horn high in the air and made a stabbing motion. ‘Eddie!’

  He saw her, and opened his hand.

  Pearl threw it.

  The horn spun end over end in the air, and seemed about to sail clear over the Whipping Machine when the canes smacked its point, flinging it in the other direction. Eddie caught the point in his left hand. The machine fumbled to hold him again, trying to force him into the stocks. He lashed out with both feet. Several of the canes snapped against his boots, cutting a swathe of broken rods like a giant bite out of a corncob.

  ‘Come on, Eddie!’ Pearl shouted. ‘Into the gears!’

  The iron hands tightened, holding Eddie at an angle that made it impossible to see him properly. He screamed, a sustained roar of pain or anger or both.

  The machine was screaming, too, a horrendous screech of metal and friction. And now Pearl saw her brother gripping the wide end of the horn, driving it into the churning guts of the dreadful thing like a hunter slaying a beast. Pieces of broken horn and snapped canes shot out in all directions. Books thundered to the ground. The air was too full of smoke and shrapnel to see a thing.

  Pearl shielded her face with her arms. The world was soot-stink and engine-rumble and metal-shriek. The machine stuttered, struggled, coughed, creaked, and emitted a long, tortured violin whine that felt like it drilled clean through her skull.

  Then, with a final juddering clunk and a hiss of escaping steam, the Whipping Machine died.

  As the smoke dispersed, Pearl lowered her sleeve from her mouth. Her ears rang. The Whipping Machine was winding down gradually. The hands were frozen, but the flywheel kept spinning, the canes now flicking as they rotated to a stop. The oryx horn stuck out of the works, a defiantly curved piece of nature buried in the rigid metal heart of the machine.

  Eddie sat tangled up in the wreckage, cradling his right hand. His jaw was clenched. He coughed, shaking, his body curled and tense with hurt.

  ‘Eddie!’ Pearl ran towards him. She’d been dreading that the machine might tear him to shreds as easily as it had done to the books. ‘Did it break your hand?’

  ‘No.’ A shaky gasp. His face was red, his eyes shining. ‘I burnt it.’ He held up the hand. It was an inflamed red, crabbed into a curl. ‘Must have touched a pipe or – or pierced the boiler.’ He sucked his breath through clenched teeth. ‘I feel so stupid.’

  ‘You were incredible,’ Vally said, reaching up a hand to help him down.

  ‘I’m not crying!’ Eddie brushed his cheek with his good hand. ‘It’s the – smoke in my eyes.’

  ‘Where did it whip you?’ said Vally.

  ‘Legs. This arm. Most of this arm. One here.’ Eddie pointed at his right cheek, and gestured stiffly at his left side. ‘All down here.’ He sounded almost proud. But that was classic Eddie. He might have been a brutal opponent, but he was a heroic player for his own team.

  Behind the machine, adult footsteps and voices rallied. With much straining and creaking of bodies and furniture, the bookshelves began to move outwards. A face peered around the wreckage. ‘They’re here!’

  A cheer went up. Pearl could see red-sleeved arms raised in victory.

  In a few moments, the Book Arcade staff opened a wide enough gap for the Coles to slip through. As velvet arms eased her through the crack, Pearl gasped in dismay. Cole’s Book Arcade was a mess. The wrought-iron designs on the balconies were edged in rust. It was thickest near where the game had been played so far: Wonder Land, Lolly Land, and the … music place. The rainbows showed less than half a green stripe each, like pieces of watermelon rind. The skylight was still darkened by smoke. Worst were the books. The Whipping Machine had not destroyed everything, but it had cut a clear path through the Arcade. In its wake lay upended shelves and splintered chairs, a trail of torn and trampled pages.

  And something else seemed sad about the Arcade today. A few horrified customers looked down from the balconies, but the usual Saturday throngs were nowhere to be seen. People should have been coming to collect new music for their evening parties, new perfumes to wear to the theatre, new books to read on the sly in church tomorrow. With Easter around the corner, the place should have been a hive of relatives buying sweets for children, and hostesses musing over which fancy dinner set to buy. Even in the worst weather, plenty of people could afford threepence for a Cole medallion, which got them a seat out of the rain and the freedom to Read As Much As You Want.

  That wasn’t right. Read All Day – We Don’t Make You Pay. That wasn’t it, either. Pearl looked up at the signs arching at the top of the second floor. Read For … As Long As … You … Like …

  It felt like reading another language. No – it felt like being six years old again, just getting the hang of reading on her own. No One … Ask-ed, Asked … To Boo-ee, Buy. A cold and terrible feeling stirred in her core, like a creature at the bottom of a lake. She’d taken her first literacy lessons at home, in the flat, at the kitchen table.

  Mr Pyke put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are we all right, Pearl?’

  He was shorter than she remembered. There had been a time when the Book Arcade’s … first mate? … had seemed a hugely imposing presence. She wanted to tell him that she was not all right, she was forgetting how to read – but that would mean telling him why, which seemed like a bad idea. ‘Eddie’s burned himself.’

  ‘Tea Salon’s got a first-aid kit in the kitchen,’ someone said. Pearl turned to see who it was and had another nasty moment of disorientation. She recognised some of the concerned faces in the crowd, but who was that? And who was that? They were in Book Arcade jackets, so they couldn’t be customers – yet Pearl could have sworn she had never seen half of these people before. As she looked them over, searching for staff she knew, she found a familiar face sitting atop an upended bookshelf. A small and pointed paper face, with empty white eyes. The wagtail spy stared at her for a moment, before it turned and dived out of view.

  ‘I’ll take the kids,’ said Mr Pyke. ‘You lot get this tidied up. And if anyone finds out what’s happened to the Band, let me know.’

  ‘Sir,’ said one of the strangers, ‘we can’t stay open with the place looking like this.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Mr Pyke. ‘I’ll run it past Cole as soon as I can. Get the Printing Department to bring their tools and dismantle that monstrosity.’

  As he hustled the Cole children across the Arcade, he lowered his voice. ‘Has yo
ur father gone completely mad?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Vally, feigning innocence.

  ‘Wonder Land looks like a bomb went off, Miss Kay’s talking about a giant slug, none of the Band has showed up, the rainbows are grey, and a mechanical figment of your father’s imagination just rolled through here like a train coming off the rails. So I’m wondering what the dickens Cole thinks he’s doing, because it looks like he’s destroying the business that took us thirty-odd years to build. It’ll be a nightmare when the papers get wind of it.’

  It took Pearl a moment to realise what Mr Pyke was saying. He was Pa’s most faithful colleague, the anchor of practicality in the Book Arcade’s leadership and its public face when reporters came knocking. He thought Pa was creating all the chaos in the Arcade, and was offended that he hadn’t been told why. At once, Pearl saw how she could both prevent Mr Pyke from interfering in the game, and smooth things over between him and Pa.

  ‘It already is a nightmare, Mr Pyke,’ she said, glancing at her brothers so they’d get the hint. ‘This is all happening because of Pa’s bad dreams.’

  ‘Bad dreams?’ said Mr Pyke flatly. ‘He can do magic in his sleep now?’

  ‘Well, not dreams exactly. It’s that thing when you’re sick, when you …’ The word was lost. ‘When you see things that aren’t there.’

  ‘Hallucinations,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pearl. ‘He can’t help it.’

  ‘Why should that have anything to do with the Arcade?’

  ‘We think Pa and the Arcade are connected,’ said Vally. ‘Sort of, in spirit. Remember when we … when Ruby left us? Pa couldn’t write for two months, and the sprinklers in the Fernery made it rain all the time.’

  ‘Rings a bell,’ said Mr Pyke. ‘Was that when no one could get that black stuff off the skylight glass?’

  ‘Right,’ Vally said.

  But Pearl was sure she had never heard of this before. Another hole in her past. Another of her sorrows to be sold to strangers.

  ‘Hallucinations, you reckon,’ said Mr Pyke thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it makes as much sense as anything else in this place.’