Edie and the Box of Flits

by Kate Wilkinson

  As she turned to leave, she heard a clatter from one of the drawers. Edie eased the top one open. Inside were two sharpened pencils, a bowl filled with sugar lumps and a fluffy sock. Laid out on a small handkerchief beside the sock were the inner workings of a watch, cogs and wheels and tiny screws all set out in a row beside the glass clockface as if someone was in the middle of a repair.

  A sugar cube toppled out of the bowl and Edie saw what looked like a small head duck down among the other cubes. She stared at the bowl and the seconds ticked past. Then up it popped again, a very round head with a frizz of hair. It was a flit, Edie was convinced of it. It dropped out of sight again.

  ‘Jot,’ she whispered. ‘Is that you?’

  She gently lifted the bowl out onto the desk and knelt down until her eyes were level with it. She picked up the fallen lump of sugar and held it over the bowl, and within seconds a tiny hand stretched up and took it.

  ‘Impy,’ she called down the stairs. ‘Come up here. Quick.’

  In seconds Impy was hovering beside her, followed by Nid and Speckle. Edie pointed at the sugar bowl and mouthed, ‘Jot!’

  Impy dived in, pulling at the sugar lumps until they revealed a rather round-faced flit, looking very alarmed. He was nothing like Impy or Speckle or the bottle-top painting. He clambered up out of the bowl and tried to run across the desk, but his body was plump and his legs very short. Every time he stumbled, he bounced back up again like a miniature ping-pong ball.

  Impy grabbed him by the ankles and wrestled him to the ground. ‘Who are you?’ she said, standing over him.

  ‘I’m Bead. B-b-but I don’t know anything,’ said the flit in a way that suggested he possibly did. He wriggled about. ‘Let me GO!’

  Nid pulled some sugar strands out of his bag and pushed them towards him. Bead looked at them adoringly.

  ‘You can have them all if you tell us more,’ said Nid.

  Bead stretched out his fingers and grasped a handful.

  ‘Did the magpins attack your camp?’

  ‘Attack?’ said Bead, filling his mouth with the sweet sugar strands. ‘No. I ran away from my home camp. It’s not in London, but further down the Thames near Tilbury. I wanted to come to the city.’

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ said Edie.

  ‘I work for Miss Creech. She found me at Marylebone Station. She was eating chips and I was trying to take one.’

  ‘What do you do for her?’

  Bead turned pink in the face. ‘She feeds me and I fix things. Like old watches.’ He waved at the cogs and wheels lying in the drawer. Even Edie could tell he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  ‘Do you know anything about young newly hatched flits that are missing?’ Impy said.

  Bead didn’t answer this. Instead, with one final wriggle, he pulled his feet free and, scooping up more sugar strands, he jumped back into the drawer. ‘Go away!’ he shouted, crawling into his sock.

  Edie bent down towards the drawer. She had one burning question that she needed to ask. ‘But how can Miss Creech see you?’

  There was a pause. ‘She’s got an eyeglass,’ Bead said from deep inside the sock . ‘It was because of me that she realised she could see us. She was looking through the eyeglass, trying to work out what it was, when I crept up to steal her chips.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Impy demanded of the sock.

  ‘Don’t know!’ came the muffled reply.

  ‘I’ve seen it!’ said Edie. ‘She wears it round her neck.’

  ‘It’s all wrong, Bead,’ Impy called out to the sock. ‘She shouldn’t be able to see you. Does she wear it all the time?’

  ‘No.’ Bead stuck his head out of the sock. ‘I guard it for her sometimes.’ He stood up, eyeing them all. ‘I’ll show it to you . . . for a price, of course!’

  Edie dipped her hand into her pocket and fished out the last of a packet that contained two fruit gums. She had kept them in reserve for Nid. She held out a green one.

  ‘Both,’ said Bead.

  He drives a hard bargain, thought Edie, as she dropped both into the drawer beside him.

  Bead disappeared into the back of the drawer and returned dragging a pouch that had a shape tooled into its leather. The outline of a tiny figure running.

  Impy jumped into the drawer beside Bead.

  ‘Where did Vera get it from?’ she asked.

  ‘She found it,’ said Bead.

  ‘Where?’ If Vera had found it on an Underground train or a London bus, then why hadn’t she reported it to the Lost Property Office?

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bead, looking at his feet.

  Edie took the leather pouch and pulled out the eyeglass. She let the chain dangle through her fingers and held the glass disc up to her face. Everything seemed so horribly magnified that it made her feel a little sick. She could see every detail on the wheels and watch cogs, and Impy’s face was weird and distorted. There was a soft beating against the window that made Edie look up. Feathers filled the eyeglass and Shadwell swam into view on his perch on the sill outside. His ringed eye looked huge and cold like a marble.

  ‘It’s the spy bird,’ whispered Impy. ‘We should go.’

  ‘Shadwell is a spy bird?’ said Edie, dropping the eyeglass.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure of it,’ said Impy. ‘Spy birds watch you and once they’ve seen you they never forget. It was probably a spy bird that found all our flit camps.’

  Edie flung open the window. ‘I know what you are! And Vera is up to something too! Shoo! Go away!’

  The crow turned its back on her and, flapping its wings, it lifted up into the evening sky.

  Bead jumped back into the safety of his sock. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear! I don’t think you should have done that. Quick. Give me back the eyeglass. When Shadwell comes it usually means Miss Creech is on her way. You should go!’

  Edie could hear the clank of the lift coming up to the first floor below.

  She slipped the eyeglass back in its pouch and closed Bead’s drawer with Bead inside, then she gathered up the flits and hurried back down the stairs.

  ‘Hide!’ she said. The flits scattered: Nid and Speckle into Edie’s coat and Impy into the teapot. Edie stood by the kettle trying to look busy.

  The lift door opened and Benedict appeared in the doorway. Edie felt as if she might faint with relief.

  ‘I was just coming up to see if you were all right, Edie. It’s been a while. The tea?’

  ‘I’m just doing it now,’ said Edie, putting teabags into two mugs.

  ‘Right,’ said Benedict. ‘Well, maybe we should forget the tea, Edie. We’re almost done downstairs. Your dad’s keen to take us all off for fish and chips. Get your coat and we’ll go.’ He turned and went back downstairs.

  ‘It was only Benedict,’ Edie said, turning back to the teapot.

  Impy’s head popped out of the spout but she peeped round past Edie and then shot up her sleeve.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ a voice said behind her. Edie froze. She turned slowly round. Vera was standing at the bottom of her office stairs. The eyeglass was now dangling round her neck.

  ‘No one. I mean, myself. I was just talking to myself. I-I didn’t see you come in.’

  Vera removed her coat and hat. She lifted the eyeglass to her face and was walking around the room, digging in pencil pots and tipping up the mugs on the drainer. She stopped right in front of Edie, so close that the feather of her pillbox hat tickled her. ‘I hope you weren’t snooping, Edie,’ she said. Her right eye looked enormous through the eyeglass.

  ‘N-no. Just finishing up here.’ Edie moved to one side and grabbed her coat. She could feel Vera’s breath on her neck. ‘I-I should go. Dad’s waiting.’

  ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you,’ Vera said coolly. ‘But I don’t like snoops.’ She turned round and walked back up the stairs to her office.

  Edie dragged on her coat with the flits inside and hurried back downstairs to Dad and Benedict.

  ‘You look as if you‘ve
seen a ghost, Edie,’ Dad said.

  ‘Vera gave me a fright, that’s all – coming in suddenly like that.’

  ‘Vera?’ said Dad. ‘She’s not in today.’

  ‘She was just upstairs,’ said Edie.

  ‘Can’t be. We’d have seen her come in.’

  ‘She’s up there now. I just saw her, Dad.’

  Benedict went off to check, but it wasn’t long before he was back.

  ‘All the lights are out up there. No one’s in her office. Odd, though, that I found the fire escape on the latch.’

  ‘And why would she be lurking about and leaving by the fire escape?’ said Dad.

  Edie decided not to protest any more, as she didn’t want anyone to know that she’d been in Vera’s office, but it did seem odd. She peered into the Cabinet of Valuables, trying to find the jewelled bird pendant, but, as far as she could see, it wasn’t there.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alexandra Park Road

  T

  hat night, on a Skype call to Finland, Edie asked her mum when she would be coming home.

  ‘I miss you, Mum.’

  ‘I miss you too, Edie, so much, but it’ll only be a few more days.’

  ‘Is it cold there?’ Edie asked.

  ‘It is. You can see your breath, and they say it’s going to snow soon.’

  As they talked, groups of children ran excitedly past the window of Edie’s house dressed as witches and ghouls for Halloween.

  ‘Have you been out trick or treating?’ Mum asked.

  ‘No. Dad and I set out the pumpkin, though. It’s on the gatepost.’

  ‘I thought you’d go out with Naz and Linny like last year.’

  Edie tried not to think of her primary-school friends at a Halloween party, dressing up and painting each other’s faces chalk white and blood red, and screaming with excitement in the cold autumn air.

  ‘Didn’t want to,’ she said.

  Mum looked surprised but said nothing.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you were little, did you believe in magic or strange creatures? Like mice that talked or elves or pixies?’

  ‘Well, Granny Agata believed in house elves and she used to tell me stories about them. Finnish people call them kotitonttu. They used to help her keep the house tidy – or so she said – and make her potatoes grow and mend her broken china.’

  ‘Like Dobby in Harry Potter?’ asked Edie.

  Mum laughed. ‘Yes, a bit like Dobby, I suppose, but you never see them.’

  ‘Never. Not even a tiny glimpse?’

  ‘Well, I never did,’ said Mum. ‘But Granny Agata assured me they were there.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve just forgotten, Mum?’

  After they finished Skyping there was a knock on the door. Edie went into the hallway to pick up a bowl of Halloween sweets and opened the door to a coven of witches. It was Naz and Linny and two other girls from school wearing black cobweb dresses and pointed hats. Linny’s hair was braided with fluorescent beads. She gave a horrible cackle and waved a hand of green fingernails in Edie’s face. ‘Snakes’ tongues and frogs’ legs!’ she shrieked.

  Edie stood in silence, feeling horribly dull and left out in her plain clothes and slippers.

  ‘Do goblins live here?!’ shouted an older girl, who was wearing a skeleton suit and standing at the gate. All the witches cackled with laughter.

  Edie offered the bowl to the witches and Linny peered into it.

  ‘Is that all you got?’ she said in a very unwitchlike voice. ‘Bit babyish, isn’t it?’

  Edie looked at the jelly beans and dolly mixtures that Dad had shaken into the bowl earlier. Linny sniffed but grabbed a large handful, stuffing it into her already-overflowing plastic witch’s cauldron. Then she ran screaming and shrieking down the garden path after the two other girls, but Naz lingered for a second.

  ‘Too babyish for you too?’ asked Edie.

  It came out. She had spoken to Naz, even though it was a harsh thing to say. Why should she care about them any more? She had her own tribe to think about now.

  Naz didn’t take anything from the bowl, but she pressed something into Edie’s hand and ran down the path after the others. It was a beautiful chocolate spider wrapped in green-and-silver paper with six hairy legs.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alexandra Park Road

  T

  he next evening, the bell rang and Edie opened the door to find Ada clutching a bag of cooking equipment in one hand and Baby Sol in the other. Her heart sank.

  ‘I’m babysitting tonight,’ said Ada. ‘Hope you don’t mind me bringing him along.’

  Behind Ada came Juniper dressed in a coat with a fake-fur collar.

  ‘That baby is SO annoying,’ Juniper said. ‘Once it starts crying, it never stops.’

  At this Baby Sol beamed and shouted, ‘Daba-DAH!’

  ‘No school today, Juniper?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Inset day,’ said Juniper grandly as if it were, in fact, the queen’s birthday and she had authorised it.

  Juniper lived somewhere on the other side of the River Thames in South London. She was in the same school year as Edie, but she behaved as if she was two or three years older.

  She held out her coat. ‘Hang it up, please, Edie. I don’t want it all squashed and creased.’

  Ada and Dad clattered about in the kitchen as they prepared Ada’s curry and Baby Sol lay on a cushion in Bilbo’s basket, kicking his legs in the air. They talked about the latest spate of thieving that had now spread to Londoners’ houses and even a jewellery shop. It was thought the pickpockets were sneaking in by climbing through the drains and air vents from the Underground tunnels below.

  Edie chopped onions and Juniper announced that she was going to lay the table.

  She bustled about as if she were preparing for a banquet, spreading the table with the Winters’ best cloth and laying out three sets of cutlery. Edie wrestled with a half-moon of onion. As she chopped away, the raw slices made her eyes water. She thought of Impy upstairs, and was furious that Ada’s plan to get her and Juniper together had meant that she and the flits couldn’t carry on searching for Jot after school.

  ‘Eee-die, I need some help!’ Juniper called through to the kitchen.

  Edie put down her knife. It was a relief to escape the onion at least.

  ‘Can you make these?’ said Juniper, demonstrating how to fold a paper napkin into a fussy rosette. As Edie struggled with the napkins, Juniper took Mum’s Finnish glass candlesticks out of the cupboard and set them on the centre of the table.

  ‘You can’t use those. It’s not Christmas!’ Edie exploded.

  ‘So what?’ said Juniper. ‘They look nice. Why use them once a year?’

  ‘They belong to Mum,’ said Edie. ‘And they only ever come out at Christmas!’ She felt her voice rising at the wrongness of it all.

  ‘So what?’ said Juniper again. ‘I’m the guest, so I should be allowed to choose.’

  Edie snatched up one of the candlesticks. She longed for her mum to be there to back her up. Dad appeared in the doorway holding the pot of curry. He bridled slightly at the sight of the candlesticks.

  ‘I just wanted to make the table look nice,’ said Juniper in a voice coated with sugar. ‘But Eee-die thinks I should put them away.’

  Dad looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, it is a special occasion, I suppose. And the table does look very nice, Juniper. Let’s leave the candlesticks where they are.’

  Edie felt her cheeks burn with fury as she poked her fork at the curry later. It was not a special occasion and Mum was miles away. How could Dad be such a traitor?

  As they ate, Juniper talked almost non-stop. She told them about her speech and drama classes, her debating club and her Year Seven prize for French. ‘Oh, and I must tell you about my cross-country running.’ She opened up the photo gallery on her smartphone. ‘Look, here’s me. That’s me again. And that’s my medal.’


  There were several close-up pictures of the medal. Ada beamed and Mr Winter nodded, although he raised his eyebrows at the medals and winked at Edie. Edie looked away.

  ‘Did you go trick or treating?’ Juniper asked Edie. ‘I went dressed as the Witch of the East in silver shoes with pointed toes and an icicle broomstick and I got over a hundred sweets in my bucket. The best thing was a blood-red lollipop with a skeleton inside. What did you get?’

  ‘I didn’t get anything because I didn’t go,’ said Edie. ‘Except a chocolate spider,’ she added.

  ‘That’s weird. Haven’t you got any friends?’

  Edie looked at her plate. She felt speechless. Impy was her best friend now, but she wasn’t the kind of friend that Juniper meant.

  ‘What did you do with that cradle, Edie?’ Ada suddenly asked. ‘The miniature cradle from the shop with the little quilt?’

  ‘I-I put it upstairs,’ said Edie.

  ‘I bet it looks pretty on a shelf somewhere. Can I see what you’ve done with it?’

  Edie did not want Ada to come upstairs or to see the box.

  ‘I’ll get it for you – no need for you to come up; I’ll just bring it down. My bedroom’s a horrible mess,’ she said in a rush.

  Edie headed upstairs and slipped into her bedroom, carefully shutting the door behind her. She eased the box out from under the bed and rested it on her lap.

  Impy looked up as Edie peered in. ‘Are you finished yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Edie, ‘Juniper and her grandmother are still downstairs, and she used Mum’s Christmas candlesticks and Mum isn’t even here.’ She felt better being able to tell Impy about her awful guest.

  ‘Will they go soon?’ asked Impy.

  ‘Hope so. I just need to borrow the nut cradle for a few minutes.’

  She gently lifted out the cradle and put it in her pocket. She wished that it had a real flit nut in it.

  ‘What will you name the baby flit if he’s a boy?’ Edie asked.

  ‘I feel sure it’s a girl,’ said Impy. ‘But what if it’s already hatched and the magpins . . .?’