A fire warden in a high-vis jacket began herding stallholders and visitors towards the door. ‘Right, everyone, outside, please. Neat and orderly!’ she shouted above the constant ringing of the fire alarm. Crowds of people began to pour out.
In the chaos Edie looked round the edge of the curtain and could see Juniper arguing with the fire warden that she needed to take the glass tank with her, but it was too heavy to carry on her own. She lifted the lid of netting and tried to grab Impy and Nid, but they were too fast for her and scurried out of reach.
‘I just need to find my mum’s friend . . .’
‘There’s no time. Leave everything,’ said the fire warden. ‘Right now, please.’
‘But there are fairies in there!’ said Juniper, closing the lid again and wrapping her arms around the tank.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ said the fire warden. ‘At your age! Outside, please.’
Edie could see Juniper looking back towards the glass tank as she was herded outside. Slowly the hall emptied.
In the distance Edie could hear a siren.
‘Get them,’ hissed Charlie.
Edie slipped out from behind the curtain and ran to the tank, fumbling with the wire and tugging at it to release it.
Impy, Speckle and Nid were cowering under the plastic toadstool. As Edie finally managed to free the netting, Impy peeped out from under it.
‘Impy!’ said Edie. ‘It’s me.’
Impy’s whole face lit up. She whooped and grabbed Speckle by the hand. Stretching out her wings she whirred out of the glass tank and, just for a moment, she hovered near Edie’s face and touched her nose with the palm of her hand. ‘I knew you’d find us,’ she said.
‘Quick, hide in here.’ Edie opened her pocket and all three flits slipped inside.
As she spoke the Chimney of Fire finally spluttered out and died, though there was no one left to see it.
Charlie pulled Edie after him through the fire escape at the back of the hall and into an alleyway just as the wailing sirens made their way along the high street. ‘Run!’ he said.
They ran to the end of the alley and down a hill away from the high street, away from the crowds outside the front entrance and the gleaming red fire engines, and away from the confused firemen looking for the flames and finding only a fizzled-out firework rattling around in the cab of a model railway engine.
All Edie cared about was that she was running away from Juniper and that she had the flits warm and safe in her pocket. They ran down past the ranks of Victorian houses until they were back on the fringes of the park.
‘Can we stop for a moment?’ Edie gasped, sitting down on a bench. It was then she realised that Charlie was carrying the flit box.
‘I found it under Juniper’s table,’ he said. ‘But it’s yours now, Edie. I’ll tell the Lost Property Office.’
Edie opened her pocket a fraction and both of them peered in. Speckle scurried up onto Charlie’s hand and Edie waited for Impy to appear, but she didn’t come, so she opened her pocket wider and saw her crouched in a corner crying. Strong, clever, determined Impy was crying.
‘She made me dress up as a fairy,’ she sobbed.
‘It’s OK,’ whispered Edie. ‘You’re safe now.’
Impy looked up with the same pair of eyes – fiercely bright – that Edie remembered from when she had first met her in the Storeroom at the End.
*
They returned with the flits to find Benedict (who had ridden on the roller coaster three times) and all headed back up towards the Thames in his buttercup-yellow Mini. His mum lived in Lambeth, so he agreed he would drop them at Waterloo for a couple of hours. The plan, Edie said, was to join the Saturday crowds on the South Bank of the River Thames and look at the market stalls and skateboarders. She didn’t add that they were also going to the Vaults.
‘As long as you stay with Charlie and don’t do anything stupid,’ Benedict said.
As Crystal Palace shrank into the distance, Edie itched to send Juniper an Instagram message, but she couldn’t let Juniper suspect she had anything to do with the Chimney of Fire. Instead she wrote her message in the condensation that was misting up the windows of Benedict’s Mini.
Her finger traced the letters: So who is the fairy queen now?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Waterloo
T
he Vaults were a series of disused railway arches at the back of Waterloo Station. Pools of water stood in front of the arches and the bricks felt damp to the touch. Edie thought of the old marshlands of the River Thames deep under their feet.
They walked through Leake Street where graffiti artists had spray-painted the walls with giant neon lettering and technicolour signs. The flit box had remained in the boot of Benedict’s Mini and Speckle had decided to stay inside it with his comforter walnut. Nid sat on Charlie’s shoulder, staring at the graffiti.
‘There it is!’ he cried out when he spotted Elfin’s name written in blue spray paint and he insisted on adding his own.
Almost as soon as he had finished, they heard a sharp whistle and Elfin appeared.
She took them through a narrow doorway that was hidden from the street and led into a small chamber. Edie could see an ancient-looking electricity generator and piles of junk – empty cans of paint, some old railway sleepers and panels of corrugated iron. The air smelt warm and a bit metallic, like pond water and spark plugs. Right at the back, against the brick wall, Elfin and the Vault flits had a camp.
Edie and Charlie knelt down. A match was struck on the side of a matchbox and held up like a fiery torch. It was difficult to see past the flame, but Edie could just make out figures ringed round them – a circle of what appeared to be about eight flits, all wilder-looking than Impy’s family. Their clothes were camouflaged and muddied and, like Elfin, their hair was sculpted into spikes. A few of them had catapults stuck in their belts.
Nid looked at them in awe. Edie could tell he thought they were the most exciting flits he’d ever met.
A fire was lit and soup was warmed in a bottle top and handed out to them all, and Edie became aware of a row of sooty mice sitting in the shadows at the back. Their long tails were coiled neatly beside them.
Elfin drew a map in the earth by her feet, scratching out the names of Underground stations with a matchstick. ‘This is where Jot and many of our missing young flits are being held hostage,’ she said. She drew a cross on the line between Baker Street and Regent’s Park.
‘We now know from the mice that the magpins have their roost here at Wilde Street.’ There was a squeaky murmur from the mice. ‘It’s an old station that’s unused now, but it’s also the secret place where they’re hiding their treasure and training the newly hatched young flits. We’ll make our raid late tonight as the last trains pass Wilde Street.’
Elfin sketched out more of her plans on the dirt floor and turned to address the row of mice. ‘How many can help us?’
‘Easily a hundred,’ said one of them. ‘News spreads fast. We’ll run along the tracks of the Bakerloo Line and be there.’
‘What can you bring?’ said Elfin, turning to Edie and Charlie and the Hillside Camp flits.
Edie reeled off a few items.
‘Torches will be useful, but we need things to scare them,’ said Elfin.
‘I’ll work on that,’ said Charlie.
‘Good. Are we ready?’
‘Yes!’ everyone assembled cried.
The Vault flits held up their needles and catapults and beat on some old tin cans with tiny sticks. Elfin handed Nid a catapult and told him to pick a cherry stone from a pile just beyond the fire. Nid was so excited he could barely keep still. He pulled the elastic back and fired a cherry stone hard at the brick wall. It pinged off the wall, ricocheting around the railway arch.
‘How do we get to Wilde Street if the old station is closed up?’ said Edie. ‘We can’t go through the tunnels.’
‘I can ride on top of a train,’ shouted Nid.
&nbs
p; ‘No, Nid!’ said Impy. The memory of the magpins chasing them on the night Flum disappeared still haunted her.
‘Walk overground to Wilde Street,’ Elfin said. ‘You’ll find the old station building. It’ll be locked but you’ll have to find a way down somehow. There’s a maze of passageways down there. We’ll meet you there at midnight.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Alexandra Park Road
‘C
an Charlie stay over at ours tonight?’ said Edie as the Mini rattled back over Waterloo Bridge. She tried to sound casual as if it wouldn’t matter either way, but both she and Charlie knew that their adventure that night depended on it. Benedict hesitated, aware of his duties as a stand-in parent.
‘I’ll eat anything you put in front of me and do the washing-up,’ said Charlie.
Benedict laughed and agreed, but only on the condition that they made a detour to Charlie’s house so that he could meet his parents. As Benedict stood on the doorstep reassuring Charlie’s mother that he was a reliable host, Charlie ran upstairs and reappeared several minutes later wearing his Scout trousers with pockets up the side and a rucksack that seemed to bulge in all directions.
‘That’s a lot of belongings for one night, Charlie,’ said Benedict as Charlie squeezed back inside the Mini and waved goodbye to his mum.
Edie and Charlie glanced at each other and smiled. They had no idea how they were going to get into Wilde Street by midnight, but at least they were together.
Back home, Edie took Charlie upstairs to a bookshelf on the landing. It was known to the Winters as ‘Dad’s Train Shelf’. Dad loved everything to do with the Underground – the trains, the track gauges and the tunnels, and he had collected dozens of books. Edie read the titles aloud and Impy, Speckle and Nid ran along the shelves pointing out the ones that could be helpful, such as: Adventures Beneath Our Streets and Haunted Underground. At the far end, tucked in beside a 1950s map of the Tube, was a book called London Underground’s Abandoned Stations. It was a large paperback book with photographs of the old abandoned stations, tunnels and lift shafts plastered across the front.
‘Ghost stations,’ said Edie. Immediately some of the names of the disused stations that Dad had once told her about came back to her. Down Street. Aldwych. British Museum.
‘Dad told me lots of stories about ghost stations,’ she went on. ‘How they were used as air-raid shelters and secret government offices in the Second World War.’
The book had twenty-five chapters, each relating to a disused station. Many of the stations were bricked off and half demolished, and the old station buildings with their distinctive oxblood tiles had been turned into restaurants and shops.
Edie ran her finger down the list. ‘Here it is.’ She flicked to the page.
Wilde Street opened 1906. Closed 1939. Bakerloo Line.
There was a map showing the thin line of Wilde Street set in the tangle of streets just south of Baker Street and some black-and-white photographs of the station entrance and ticket hall as it had been in the early 1900s. Edie turned the page and there were more photos of the long curving platforms and stairwells and a figure in a bowler hat sitting on a bench. Speckle jumped onto the book and studied the photograph as if he might suddenly see Jot sliding down a stair rail or flying past a doorway.
Edie read on:
The station still exists at track level, although there is no access from the street. If you travel between Regent’s Park and and Baker Street look out of the left side of the train, you can still see the platform and tiled walls.
Charlie pointed at a full-colour photo of the station as it was today. The doors and windows were all boarded up. ‘I don’t think there’s any way in,’ he said.
‘We have to find a way,’ said Edie. She put down the book and started to pack her bag with things they might need. She put in two badminton raquets as swatters. ‘What would magpins be scared of?’ Edie asked him.
‘Predators,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ll probably be scared of cats, foxes and big birds of prey. Smaller birds don’t like their eyes.’
Edie added a pocket torch and a head torch that had a switch to make the light blink. She wondered what was in Charlie’s rucksack with its intriguing bulges.
Benedict called up the stairs. ‘Your dad’s on the line, Edie.’
It felt odd looking at Dad on the screen squeezed into Granny Agata’s small kitchen in Finland. A jar of wooden spoons stood on the counter behind him.
‘Hope you’re not causing Benedict any problems,’ he said as he eased Granny Agata’s wheelchair into place. Her plastered leg stuck out in front of her and Edie noticed how thin she had become – all elbows and fingers.
She waved at Edie.
‘Hello, Edie. Are you busy? Don’t worry about school.’
Granny Agata had a habit of knowing when things weren’t right without asking.
‘I’m fine, Gran. School’s OK. I’m making new friends. I’m glad you’re coming to stay for a while. Hope Dad’s being helpful!’
‘He is. The perfect house elf.’
Edie would have liked to ask more about Finnish house elves, but she knew that Charlie was waiting upstairs. ‘I’ve got to go, Gran.’
*
‘We should leave quite soon,’ said Charlie.
They made up a sleeping-bag bed on the floor and stuffed pillows down it and under the duvet on Edie’s bed to make it look as if they were both asleep. After a lot of swishing of the bathroom taps Edie called down the stairs.
‘Good night, Benedict!’ She could hear the television on downstairs as he was about to watch a spy film.
‘Night, Edie!’ Benedict called back. ‘Teeth?’
‘All done!’
Edie and Charlie got into their coats and lay on their beds in the dark, waiting. The flits put on hats and scarves and Nid armed himself with the catapult that Elfin had given him. At the last minute Edie threw her luminous cape into her bag.
At nine-thirty they crept down the stairs, past the sitting room where Benedict was watching television and into the kitchen. The film was in full swing with wheels squealing and horns blaring as a car chase unfolded on the screen.
Bilbo shifted in his basket and sat up, hoping that a squirrel expedition might be on offer. Charlie knelt and tickled his ears until he lay down again. He looked at them quizzically as Edie quietly unlocked the back door, letting in a sweep of cold night air.
Together they walked through the quiet streets past the garden centre to the Tube station at Bounds Green. A car went past, its tyres making a squashy sound on the damp tarmac. These were streets that Edie had known all her life, but the darkness and their expedition rucksacks made her feel as if she was walking into something completely unknown.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alexandra Park Road to Wilde Street
A
t Oxford Circus they changed from the Victoria to the Bakerloo Line. The Tube trains were filled with crowds of Londoners out for an evening in town or returning from the Bonfire Night display along the River Thames. No one seemed to notice that two children were out alone.
As they headed north towards Baker Street from Regent’s Park, Edie stood by the doors on the left-hand side of the train and stared out at the tunnel. The walls were caked in soot and dust and strung with long lines of power cables, but there was a sudden gap and she caught a glimpse of an open space in the gloom with shadowy shapes and the odd patch of green-and-white tiling.
‘I think I saw it!’ she whispered to the others.
It was dark and the train went so fast that it was difficult to know for certain. She had expected to see much more, imagining that the ghost station might reveal itself like a stage with magpins flying about and Jot trapped there waiting for them to free him.
At the top of the escalator at Baker Street Station Edie was the first to see Shadwell. He was hopping around near the entrance and distracted by a man selling hot chestnuts. Shadwell had one in his claw and was trying to peel
off the hot shell with his beak.
Edie drew back and pulled at Charlie’s arm. ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘We have to go back down.’ They withdrew into the crowd and rode back down the escalator.
‘What are you doing?’ said Charlie as they headed to the southbound platform.
‘That was Vera Creech’s spy bird and it mustn’t, whatever happens, see us. It probably means she’s somewhere nearby.’
Edie’s nerves jangled like sleigh bells. A black umbrella dangling off someone’s arm looked like a spy bird and a crumpled newspaper caught up in the draught from the tunnel resembled a magpin. As she looked back down the end of the platform a figure moved forward in a long coat and walked slowly towards them. Could it be Vera?
‘We have to get out of here!’ she said urgently.
They pushed their way to the front of the crowded platform and jumped onto the next train.
‘But we’re going back the way we came!’ said Charlie.
‘We can get out at Regent’s Park and walk to Wilde Street from there,’ Edie said.
The doors closed and the train picked up speed as it left the station. They found seats this time on the right-hand side and all pressed their faces to the window. Impy clung to Edie’s collar and Speckle sat on the window ledge, but they were so busy looking out that they didn’t notice Nid crawling up Charlie’s jacket and standing on his shoulder.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Charlie.
‘Wait,’ said Edie. ‘It’s coming up. Any second now.’
Nid jumped up to the edge of the window, which was slightly ajar.
‘Look, there it is now!’ said Edie. The tiling flashed up again and this time she could just make out some steps.
‘I’m going to ride on top of the train like Elfin!’ shouted Nid.
He slipped through the window and launched himself into the darkness. Edie caught the flicker of his clothes as he catapulted downwards rather than upwards.
Edie and the Box of Flits Page 12