Charlie spoke first. ‘What’s that?’
Edie could feel under her feet the low thrum of a vibration. It was different to the Tube train sound, heavier and deeper, as if a creature were coming out of the earth. The tracks began to clink and rattle as a warning that a vehicle was on the line and it rumbled in the tunnels like distant thunder.
‘It must be the maintenance train,’ whispered Charlie.
‘Wait!’ said Benedict, drawing them back into the passageway.
The thunder grew louder and filled the tunnel, and as it came nearer there was the sound of heavy metal chains clanking.
A single bright headlamp swung into view and lit up the whole station, and a huge yellow engine emerged slowly out of the tunnel like an ungainly elephant. Behind it came a convoy of flat-bed wagons carrying skips filled with gravel, concrete railway sleepers, drums with rolls of cable and bags of cement. The noise was deafening as the convoy drove through Wilde Street at a snail’s pace. From the passageway they watched as the driver’s cab slowly clattered past, followed by a convoy of wagons.
‘Look!’ said Edie.
Out of the side tunnel came Vera’s two trucks. She had hooked them to the last wagon with a rope and she stood on the first truck like a charioteer as she was pulled along. Pinned beside her on the truck was the net of magpins and the noise of the maintenance train made them squawk with alarm. There was no sign of Shadwell.
‘We have to unhitch her,’ shouted Benedict, and he jumped out and ran alongside the maintenance train until he was able to leap onto the flat-bed wagon in front of her. He threw an empty sack from a pile on the wagon and a roll of rope down to Edie and Charlie as they jogged alongside.
Vera gave a shriek when she saw Benedict and, leaning forward, she swiped at him as he bent down to grapple with the looped rope but he was just out of reach.
‘No-oo!’ cried Vera, stuffing some of the booty into her pockets. ‘Look! You can have what’s left. Please, just let me go. I can board a ship at Harwich and . . . disappear.’
Just for a moment Edie wanted to let her go. Maybe disappearing would be the best thing. Edie had said what she wanted to say to Vera and thought of the sad cardboard birthday cake. ‘Shouldn’t we give her a chance?’ she called out above the noise.
‘She stole all that stuff, Edie!’ cried Charlie.
‘What about the travelling box for the “little creatures”!’ said Impy and, dragging Nid after her, she flew past Edie towards Vera’s trucks.
Edie’s sympathy evaporated. ‘I want the eyeglass!’ she called to Vera.
Vera clutched at it, realising it was up for bargaining. ‘Only if you let me go.’
Edie said nothing. She realised that Charlie had left her side and was sprinting back up the platform.
‘I’ve almost untied it,’ shouted Benedict as he pulled at the rope.
‘Take it!’ said Vera, a note of panic creeping into her voice. She unlooped the eyeglass from her neck and, stuffing it in its leather pouch, she threw it to the ground beside Edie. There was a muffled tinkle of glass inside the pouch. ‘Now let me go!’
‘Never!’ said Benedict, just as Vera had cried out to him earlier.
The magpins were becoming more restless and pressed up against the net in a tight ball.
Benedict loosened the last twist of rope that connected the trucks to the train and, straining with his fingers, he unhitched it. The trucks with all their stolen booty slowly ground to a halt.
Vera gave a wild shriek and tried to launch herself past Benedict and across onto the maintenance train, but Impy and Nid had secretly tied her shoelaces together. Instead she tripped and fell sideways and her feet became tangled in the magpin net. The magpins complained furiously as Vera tried to free herself. She pulled one foot free of the netting, but as she did so she ripped a hole in it and one by one the magpins slipped through, screeching and flapping around her head in a whirling mass.
‘Stop this at once,’ she cried at the birds, but they refused to listen. They were distracted by the sight of the Prowler Owl with its headlight eyes making its way slowly down the platform on a skateboard. It stopped and gave a loud megaphone hoot.
‘Attack them!’ Vera cried again to the magpins, but they were now swooping up and down the station and screeching in alarm like paper planes blown about in a gale.
Vera, having freed both her feet, leapt down onto the platform in a bid to escape, but Edie jumped on top of her, and Benedict, scrambling down from the maintenance train, ran back along the platform to help her. Together they covered Vera with the huge sack and tied rope around her arms and legs as if she were an awkward parcel. Only her head stuck out of the top with its tuft of blue-streaked hair.
‘You useless creatures,’ Vera cried out in frustration to the magpins. ‘Attack them, I say!’ But the magpins were no longer listening to her commands. The Prowler Owl, operated by Charlie, was still trundling up and down and they could see Vera was trapped. Their beaks no longer appeared to be sneering and crocodile-like. Instead they just looked terrified.
Edie turned her attention to the flits, wondering where they were.
‘Down here!’ cried Impy, landing on the ground beside the eyeglass. She called to Nid and Jot to help her and they dragged the pouch towards the train tracks.
‘I’m going to make sure it’s destroyed for good.’ But just as they reached the edge of the platform, ready to tip it over, a black form swooped down and snatched it from them. Shadwell!
‘Help me, Shadwell!’cried Vera, but Shadwell swept away from her and with a defiant cry of ‘kraaa’ he called to the magpins and, wheeling round, flew after the maintenance train. The magpins immediately stopped their screeching and gathered in formation behind him. As the flat-bed wagons disappeared one by one into the tunnel, the magpins went after them and Shadwell dropped down and perched on the last wagon as it entered the tunnel with the eyeglass pouch under one claw.
‘Shadwell! Come back!’ called Vera into the darkness, but Shadwell had vanished and her sack-like body slumped to the platform.
The whole episode had only taken minutes, as long as it had taken the maintenance train to crawl slowly through the station, but it felt to Edie that it had lasted all night. Now there was an eerie silence and the platform was gloomy and dark once again.
Benedict stood over her. ‘Wilde Street is now officially a crime scene,’ he said. ‘We need to call the police and get these trucks off the main line before the Tube trains start up at five-thirty. I’ll have to go back to the office and make the calls where I can get a signal. Will you be all right, Edie, staying here with Charlie to watch Vera?’
Edie nodded and went to fetch the bike lamps from the hallway so that they would have more light as they waited, and the flits went with her to prepare for the journey home. Charlie took off his Prowler Owl outfit and stood guard over Vera.
‘You have spoilt everything,’ Vera said again when Edie returned. ‘My magpins have gone and Shadwell has escaped with the eyeglass.’
‘I heard the glass break,’ said Edie, hanging a bike lamp from a bench. ‘And I hope it is broken. No one should be able to see the flits after their thirteenth birthday. It’s all wrong. ’
At this Vera looked awkward and unhappy.
‘Who were you sending all that stuff to?’ Charlie asked.
But Vera refused to say anything more at all.
Impy appeared, hovering in front of Edie’s nose.
‘We’re ready,’ she said.
*
Edie returned once again to the hallway and, opening the top of her rucksack, she peeped inside. Nestled on top of her cape was Impy’s family – Flum, Nid, Speckle and Jot, and their nut. Ranged around them in groups were numerous other flits, many of them clutching a nut. The young ‘pickpocket’ flits were asleep in Benedict’s bobble hat and Bead sat cross-legged on her glove, sucking on a Polo mint.
Edie folded her arms around the rucksack – she now had a vast extended famil
y to look after, a cargo that to her was far more precious than all the jewellery.
Chapter Forty-Four
Wilde Street to Alexandra Park Road
I
t was a long night.
Benedict returned with several police officers and London Underground officials. They set up arc lights and marvelled at the contents of the trucks and the crates and were completely baffled by the number of cherry stones. The trucks were returned to the sidings before the Tube trains started again at 5.30 a.m. and Vera was handcuffed and taken into custody at a police station in Baker Street. More officials were called in to examine Vera’s train carriage and were even more baffled by the paper chains and the birthday cake. A woman from the RSPB came to investigate the descriptions Edie had given the officials of a rogue crow and a flock of magpins, but there was no sign of the birds and no reports of them emerging at the end of a train line. They had completely vanished.
Both Vera and Benedict had a lot of questions to answer.
As Edie and Charlie left Wilde Street for the last time they went to say goodbye to Elfin. The mice had disappeared into the gaps and cracks that lined the platform walls, into a subterranean world of their own, but Elfin and the Vault flits, now reunited with their families, sat on the roof of the signal box waiting for the first train back to Waterloo.
‘We won’t forget what you did for Jot,’ said Edie.
Jot’s head appeared through the zip of the rucksack. ‘Come and see us when we get back to the Hillside Camp.’
‘Might do,’ said Elfin, wiping smut from her face, but she gave him a crooked half-smile. Then she flew up and handed Jot her needle. ‘It’s yours. You might have saved my life, remember!’
Jot turned pink with pride and ducked out of sight.
*
The sky was turning a pale milky pink by the time they eventually reached Alexandra Park Road. Benedict and Charlie disappeared into the kitchen to make pancakes.
Edie carried her rucksack upstairs to settle the now very extended family of flits in the box. They filled every corner, jumping on and off the cork stools as if they were miniature trampolines, taking baths in the anchovy tin and rolling themselves up in the jewel-coloured duvets.
She found some cotton buds and vinegar and helped the older flits to clean the wing stick off their wings. They shook them out and flapped them, rising up into the air as they tested them out. Giddy with freedom after the long days spent as prisoners, the younger flits explored Edie’s room, pulling things out of her pencil case, tangling the wires of her headphones, and tipping over her bead box so that they could chase the beads as they scattered across the floor.
Jot led a needle-throwing competition and Nid built a skateboard ramp out of Edie’s geometry set. Bead sat apart from the other flits in a jam jar on Edie’s shelf, watching.
In an attempt to keep order Edie prepared a feast. She filled a row of egg cups and bottle tops with raisins and cereal hoops and tiny squares of apple and sneaked the entire pot of chocolate spread out of the kitchen. For a while there was silence as they all ate.
Impy hopped up onto her hand. ‘Can we go home now?’ she said.
Edie knew this was coming. Only for a brief few seconds had she imagined that they might want to stay here with her as the extended family she had always wanted. But it would never work. Fifty flits wouldn’t last long with only one box for space. Her bedroom already looked a mess and they would spill out into the house, teasing Bilbo and causing havoc. For every one Nid there were now three or four younger flits who were just as reckless and energetic, needing space to tumble and jump. There were numerous Jots and Impys who would want to go out foraging and exploring, and Flums and Speckles who would want to create their own homes again, all ready for more nuts to hatch. Most of all they weren’t pets and they didn’t belong to Edie. Fierce, determined, independent Impy had taught her that. Of course they would want to go home.
‘Yes,’ Edie said.
Tonight after school she and Charlie would return them all to the Hillside Camp to begin rebuilding their home. But she also had another problem. She held up the jam jar with Bead inside.
‘Do you want to go home too, Bead, back to Tilbury?’
‘No. I want to stay here in London.’
‘But you can’t live with these flits after what you’ve done.’
Bead looked down at his shoes.
‘There is a girl I know who is looking for someone like you to work for her,’ Edie said.
‘What would I have to do?’ said Bead.
‘You’d have to act a bit and dress up as a pixie!’
‘That’s all right,’ said Bead. ‘I like pixies.’
‘And you might have to change your name to Goatsbeard.’
‘Well, I was never that fond of Bead, so Goatsbeard will do just fine.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Would the girl give me sugar?’
‘Yes. I think she would.’
Edie found a large padded envelope and Bead made himself comfortable inside with a large boiled sweet. She addressed the envelope to Juniper and gave it to Benedict to deliver to Ada’s shop first thing the next morning. On the back she wrote: Feed me sweet things.
Ada, back from her trip away with Baby Sol, could hand-deliver it to Juniper.
*
It wasn’t long before @JunipBerry began posting again on Instagram. She captioned her first photo: Live pixie show!
There, sat on a mossy bank, Edie saw Bead wearing a pixie outfit and a pointed red hat. He might have looked really dismal in his new home except for the large stick of pink rock that lay on its side under his feet. He was dipping a finger into the pink stickiness and positively beaming. The comments that followed were much as before:
Aaaah! SOOO sweet.
Is that for real?
You are weird, @JunipBerry!
To which Juniper replied: Seeing is believing.
Chapter Forty-Five
Alexandra Park Road
‘W
e’re home!’ shouted Dad from the hallway. Edie burst out of the kitchen, stumbling over the bags and clinging first to Dad and then pushing past him to find Mum.
Heta stood wrapped in a snow coat and boots and clutching a loaf of dark rye bread. Edie pressed her face into Mum’s neck, smelling the scent of pine and rye.
‘I’m glad you’re back, Mum.’
‘So am I, Edie. And I’ve brought Gran with me.’
There on the path, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a wheelchair, was Granny Agata with her leg in plaster. She looked as if she was made of bone china – much more frail than Edie remembered, but her eyes were bright blue. She held out her arms towards Edie. Two crooked branches on a winter tree.
Mum pulled off her coat and sat on the bottom step of the stairs so that she could take off her boots.
‘I have something for you, Edie,’ she said and she dipped her hand into her bag and pulled out a small brown envelope. Edie lifted the flap and inside was a tiny silver goose on a chain. Its neck was outstretched and its wings were open as if it were mid-flight. It was beautiful.
‘I’ve got something for you too, Mum.’ She reached into her pocket and brought out the gold ring that Nid had found.
Mum stared at it. ‘My wedding ring! Where did you find that, Edie? I lost it years ago when we moved in.’ She joyfully slipped it back on her finger.
‘I-I . . . It just appeared one day . . . when I was sweeping up in the kitchen.’
Mum held up her hand. The ring still fitted perfectly. She showed Granny Agata.
‘It’s the house elves, Heta,’ Granny Agata said. ‘The kotitonttu.’
‘Mum told me about them,’ Edie said.
‘In Finland lots of families have house elves,’ said Granny Agata. ‘I had Tomi and Ulla. Tomi was helpful but Ulla stole buttons.’
‘Mum!’ said Edie. ‘You never told me that.’
‘She forgot she ever saw them,’ Granny Agata whispered to Edie.
‘Well, we don’
t have house elves here!’ said Mum. ‘Only Edie’s sharp eyes.’
In the kitchen Benedict was already showing Dad the newspaper cuttings and the weblinks to news reports, and he was telling him how the last two days had been ‘crazee’.
The Wilde Street Hoard (as it had become known) had caused a huge stir and the London Herald, among other newspapers, carried the headlines: Is this the world’s best lost property office? and Is Vera Creech London’s most successful pickpocket? Several photos showed Vera looking tight-lipped in custody as she waited for her court case. She refused to tell the police anything about the secret tunnels or her collaborators and, much to Edie’s and Charlie’s relief, nothing about the flits.
A huge safe had been installed at the Lost Property Office until every item had been reunited with its owner, and as one piece after another was repatriated, journalists began to mill around Baker Street with microphones and cameras.
Grateful owners praised the Lost Property Office, with two of them pledging large sums of money. Dad couldn’t believe it when he saw Ursula clutching a cheque and shaking the hand of a jewellery collector in Mayfair. She also wrote a long and apologetic letter to Dad offering him his old job back, praising him for how well he had trained Benedict and his ‘delightful’ daughter Edie, and she regretted underestimating his managerial abilities. Vera, she said, ‘was a bad egg’.
To celebrate, Benedict wore a T-shirt with the slogan: Small Is the New Big.
Edie was worried that the magpins and Shadwell might return, but the days passed and there was no sign of them. Without Vera they had no one to answer to and she liked to think of them enjoying their freedom. She told herself that the eyeglass was broken and unuseable.
Edie missed the flits dreadfully, but it wasn’t the same kind of painful ache that she felt when Juniper had stolen them. She knew they were busy rebuilding their home and that she could visit them if she wanted to. She hung a tiny lizard charm (that Nid had given her on the day he went home) on the same chain as the silver goose from Finland and wore it under her school uniform. Its tiny jingle was a reminder of all things small. The flit box now felt empty and unused, but Edie showed it to Granny Agata, who stared at it for some time, picking up small pieces of furniture one by one and laying the miniature skateboard ‘sofa’ on the palm of her crooked hand.
Edie and the Box of Flits Page 16