Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2)

by E. G. Foley

  Drifting on, hands in pockets, Jake wandered into the AISLE OF INDUSTRY, passing a complicated, noisy heap of metal labeled “Combustion Engine.” He did not know what it did or why anyone would want one, so he hurried on, past another massive bulk called a “Freight Elevator,” with huge pulleys and powerful hydraulics.

  A little farther on, he came to a display of miniature trains where a twangy-voiced American detailed the railways being built across the Wild West, with the help of some new explosive called “Dynamite.” It just looked like red sticks to Jake.

  Soon, he arrived at the aisle for COMMUNICATIONS. Here he came face to face with the newest wonder from Archie’s hero, Mr. Alexander Graham Bell. Proudly displayed on a pedestal sat some weird new contraption called a “Telephone.”

  Jake wasn’t sure how it worked, but rumor had it that it would soon replace the telegraph altogether. He was skeptical. We’ll see.

  Strolling through the IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE HOME aisle, he heard a man demonstrating a brand-new gadget called a “Carpet Sweeper.”

  “Your chamber maids will no longer need a broom to sweep the floors!” the man promised.

  “Amazing!” people raved, staring at the newfangled thing.

  That’ll put a lot of maids out of work, Jake thought. Next he strolled into a fun row: PHOTOGRAPHY & ENTERTAINMENT.

  A man in a top hat was demonstrating something called a “Cylinder Phonograph” that made music come out of a large horn attached to a rotatey silver thing—and then there was something even stranger.

  Jake stopped and stared in shock at the “Moving Pictures.” He couldn’t believe his eyes as the pictures flashed in continuous motion on the screen.

  Blimey, what would they think of next?

  Rather overwhelmed by all this Progress, he shook off a disoriented feeling and went looking for his cousin. When he finally spotted Archie with Henry in the aisle labeled PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY, they were surrounded by other geniuses, deep in conversation.

  Jake hesitated, not at all sure he wanted to go blundering into the middle of that egghead conversation.

  The truth was, he had been feeling self-conscious and defensive about his lack of education ever since they had arrived.

  He had plenty of street-smarts after his pickpocket years, but he had only attended the orphanage school long enough to learn the rudiments of math and reading, and he didn’t much care for either. He preferred to think of himself a young man of action—more of a doer than a thinker.

  Archie, on the other hand, had started solving algebra equations at age four. He took up chemistry by six, and by nine could fix anything mechanical. His favorite hobby was designing amazing bits of gadgetry, and if he could not find the tools he needed to build some new invention, he made the tools, too.

  As the tutor for both students, Henry had privately told Jake not to feel bad about his inability to keep up with Archie in their studies. With his world-class intellect, few people on earth could. At age eleven, Archie already held two degrees from Oxford.

  And with all the geniuses here, he was right at home.

  Jake, on the other hand, felt as dumb in their eyes as Doctor Frankenstein’s big, dancing oaf had seemed to the crowd. With that thought, he decided not to join them, but to wait until Archie was through.

  Fortunately, he was not left alone for long.

  A familiar, high-pitched voice suddenly called his name. “Jake! Jake, look! I almost got everyone on my list! You’ll want to see this.” Dani O’Dell came striding toward him, all business.

  The little redhead had followed him out of the rough-and-tumble rookery neighborhood, where she had been his one true friend through thick and thin.

  When his aristocratic relatives had found him, to Jake’s relief, Great-Great Aunt Ramona had hired Dani to serve as lady’s companion to Cousin Isabelle, Archie’s elder sister.

  He was thankful because now he didn’t have to worry about Dani. She loved her new life as Isabelle’s hired companion.

  The two girls balanced each other well. Though Dani was only ten, she was rookery-tough, while the fourteen-year-old empath, Isabelle, was a soft and delicate soul.

  As Dani marched toward him, her pen and book in hand, Jake decided to play a trick on her and popped the Babblegum into his mouth. “There you are!” she said.

  “Jambo!” he answered in greeting.

  “What?”

  “Nafurahi kukuona. Jina langu ni Jake.”

  She stared at him, brow furrowed.

  He took the gum out of his mouth, laughing. “My name is Jake,” he informed her, holding up the chewed gum. “Babblegum. Want to try it?”

  She grimaced at his chewed gum, shook her head at him, and muttered “daftling,” just as her tiny brown Norwich terrier stuck his head out of the satchel on her shoulder and growled at the “Moving Pictures.”

  “Calm down, Teddy, they’re not real. If you’re done speaking whatever language that was—”

  “Swahili. Kind of spicy. Cayenne pepper maybe?”

  “—I wanted to show you something,” she continued, ignoring him. “Have a look at this!” Dani opened the Norway tour book she had bought with her earnings in the shop aboard the massive luxury steam-liner on which they had sailed over from England.

  Proudly, she showed him all the famous names scribbled on the overleaf.

  Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Jules Verne…

  “I’m collecting all their autographs in one book! This is going to be worth a lot o’ money someday, wait and see.”

  “Brilliant,” Jake murmured, glancing at her in surprise.

  She lifted her chin, her green eyes glowing with satisfaction. “It is rather brilliant of me, ain’t it?”

  Clearly, one month in their new, easy life among the aristocrats was not enough to erase from her memory how they had struggled to survive in the rough rookery neighborhood.

  Dani had sold apples in Covent Garden Market before both their situations had so drastically improved, and it seemed she still thought like a wee businesswoman. Jake couldn’t help but admire her for it, even though Great-Great Aunt Ramona would have sniffed in disdain. Trade, after all, wasn’t considered very aristocratic. Nevertheless, the rookery lass was a survivor.

  Like him.

  “Did you finish unpacking your trunk?” he asked, sparing her the Swahili. A traveling trunk, in itself, was still a novelty to them both, considering this was their first-ever holiday anywhere.

  Dani nodded eagerly, tucking her book away. “Miss Helena’s still in the dormitory arranging our rooms and pressing our gowns for the Welcome Dinner. She said me and Isabelle could come and have a look at the inventions.”

  “Where is Isabelle, anyway?” Jake glanced around curiously for his elder cousin.

  “Oh, she felt sorry for young Mr. Tesla.” Dani gave him an arch look. “Poor thing! He’s so shy, he can barely speak to people. You know how Isabelle likes to put others at ease. Well, she got him talkin’ about electricity, then nothing could shut ’im up. I couldn’t take it anymore, but she couldn’t get away. You know our Isabelle. She didn’t want to be rude.”

  Jake laughed heartily, glad he never had that problem.

  “Last I saw her, she was letting him rig her up to some contraption that measures the electrical waves comin’ out of your head.”

  “Isabelle’s got electricity coming out of her head? Well, that explains a lot,” he drawled.

  “We all do, you glock-wit.” Dani glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “You should let Mr. Tesla measure your brain waves, too, Jake. You really should, considering the talents that run in your family—”

  “No,” he cut her off.

  “As a contribution to science! Your brain waves, and maybe the ones from your fingers, too. I’ve heard you say you think it’s some sort of electrical energy that flows out of your hands when you…you know.”

  “Absolutely not.” Jake shook his head stubbornly. “Aunt Ramona warned me
not to let these eggheads know what I can do, or they’ll take me for a lab rat. Izzy, too, to say nothing of Henry and Helena. If they learn about our abilities, they’ll be tryin’ to dissect us.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Mr. Tesla would ever do that. He’s countin’ on Archie to introduce him to Thomas Edison. Did you know Mr. Tesla wants to go to America and work for Mr. Edison someday?”

  Before Jake could answer, Dani’s little brown dog erupted with angry barking. “Teddy, stop that!” she cried, but the wee Norwich terrier ignored her startled efforts to calm him down.

  Eight pounds of pure fury, Teddy squirmed and growled and wriggled, trying to jump out of his satchel on her shoulder—a dangerous height for a little dog to fall. “Teddy, you’re going to hurt yourself! Settle down, be quiet! What’s wrong with you? Teddy—!”

  Dani half-caught the dog as he leaped out of the satchel. She wasn’t fast enough to prevent him from escaping, but at least she broke his fall.

  Safely on the ground, Teddy bolted, still barking, his leash trailing out behind him. “Teddy! Come back!” Dani yelled.

  Jake and she exchanged a look of bewilderment.

  Then they both ran after the dog.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Galton Whistle

  The little dog dashed ahead, barking as he wove through a forest of legs. Though he nearly got trampled twice, it did not slow him down.

  “Where’s he going?” Dani cried as they chased.

  “I don’t know! Let’s split up,” Jake said. “You go that way to block the exit. I’ll head him off here.”

  She nodded and rushed off, trying to beat the dog to the exits, but Jake sprinted after the tiny terrier directly. His old days as a pickpocket fleeing the London bobbies came in handy as he dodged through the crowd.

  “Teddy! Here, boy! Excuse me,” he muttered when he bumped into a stout lady blocking the aisle.

  Oddly, Teddy seemed to have a very clear idea of where he was going. He bolted around the corner ahead and into the aisle of medical advancements.

  Jake was baffled, but saw he had a chance to catch the dog if he jumped aisles. Turning down a parallel row, he vaulted over a display table and landed in the middle of the medical aisle.

  Teddy was on his way, thundering straight at him like a furry brown cannonball.

  Jake crouched down with his arms spread wide, heart pounding, as Teddy barreled toward him. “Now I’ve got you,” he mumbled, but when Jake dove for him, swiping with both arms to catch the wee rascal, it was no better than his efforts to grab that ghost back in London who had refused to answer his questions.

  Teddy almost seemed to laugh at him, leaping nimbly through the circle of his arms.

  “Blast it!” Jake landed indecorously on his face in the middle of the floor. At once, he pushed to his feet and was off and running again.

  This time, within seconds, he caught up to Teddy. The dog had stopped at one of the booths, as though this had been his destination all along.

  The little terrier was standing on his hind legs, tail wagging, his front paws leaning on the knees of a tall gentleman-scientist in a lab coat.

  The man leaned down with a chuckle to pat Teddy on the head. A pair of his colleagues standing with him laughed.

  “Well, well, what have we here? So sorry, little fellow! Did the noise from my invention disturb you?”

  “Arf!” Teddy answered, one ear perked up, the other flopped down.

  “Perhaps we didn’t hear anything, Sir Francis, but here’s our proof your whistle really works!” his colleague said with an amiable smile.

  “You could never doubt me, could you?” Sir Francis replied. A bald-headed man with mutton-chop whiskers, he picked Teddy up in his arms just as Jake stepped forward to claim the dog for Dani.

  “Sorry about that, sir. I’ll take him.”

  “Oh, it’s quite all right, young man. I fear I gave him reason to come to me. Is this your dog?” he asked, and when the man glanced at him, Jake was taken aback by the frosty coldness in his deep-set eyes.

  It was a chill devoid of cruelty, but made up of unfeeling detachment, as if this Sir Francis fellow were some sort of inhuman machine himself.

  What made his dead-eyed stare all the more confusing was that it was so at odds with the cordial smile on his lips.

  Unnerved, Jake fairly stammered. “N-no, sir, the dog belongs to my friend—”

  “He’s mine!” Dani cried, arriving at that moment to protectively snatch her fuzzy babydoll out of the scientist’s arms.

  The gentlemen standing around laughed at her defensiveness, as though amused that the girl seemed to fear they’d do animal experiments on her pup if they got the chance.

  “Apologies, my dear,” said Sir Francis with a stiff nod. “I did not mean to upset you or your pet. I was just showing these friends of mine one of my new inventions.”

  “A whistle that only a dog can hear,” one of the other white-coated fellows supplied, hands in pockets.

  “Well, cats, too, and most animals can hear it,” Sir Francis corrected. “But the sound it creates falls out of the range of human hearing. It’s to be used as a training tool for dogs and other animals.”

  “May I see it?” Jake asked curiously.

  Sir Francis nodded with a gesture. “Be my guest.”

  The other scientist handed it to Jake. Still hugging Teddy close, Dani looked on while he examined it.

  The whistle was about four inches long and made of shiny gold brass. Its design hinted at its purpose: a dog’s head adorned the top of it, while a gold chain passed through a ring on the end. “It’s hardly meant as jewelry,” Sir Francis remarked. “The chain simply makes it more convenient for a dog trainer to wear it around his neck.”

  “I see,” Jake said with a vague nod, wondering if it would work on pet gryphons. He hadn’t seen Red since they had left the steamship. The poor, seasick beast had flown off into the forest as soon as they had let him out of his crate in the ship’s cargo hold.

  Jake smiled to himself at the thought of his strange but extremely loyal and fiercely protective pet, half-eagle, half-lion. He had tried to make Red stay behind in England, but the Gryphon was having none of it. When their party had boarded the steam-liner, Red had run back and forth along the shore roaring so loudly that he had risked being seen by non-magical humans.

  That was when Jake had realized that gryphons apparently didn’t like flying over the ocean. Maybe because they were half-lion, and lions couldn’t swim.

  Well, the creatures definitely did not enjoy traveling belowdecks in a crate, either, as Jake had also learned.

  He had barely managed to coax Red into the large crate marked “DANGER! LIVE ANIMALS” in which the Gryphon had spent the duration of the voyage. Red had been very glad to be released when they arrived, though this, too, had been tricky, keeping the mythical beast from being seen by any of the crew or passengers.

  Somehow they had succeeded, and the Gryphon had flown up into the forests to recover from the journey. Why, at this very moment, he was probably gulping down some of those famed Norwegian salmon from the streams up on the mountain, Jake mused, still examining the whistle.

  He handed it back to its inventor with a nod as the other scientists took leave of him.

  “Quite ingenious, Galton. Well done!” one said.

  “Give our regards to Charles when you see him,” the other added.

  “I shall, gentlemen. Good day,” he said with a nod as his colleagues drifted on to peruse more displays.

  “Wait—you’re Doctor Galton?” Dani turned suddenly and gaped at him.

  “Last I checked,” he answered in amusement.

  “Sir Francis Galton—the Prince of the Polymaths?” she exclaimed. “Mr. Charles Darwin’s cousin?”

  “Half cousin,” he admitted in a modest tone. He seemed pleased by her recognition and bowed politely. “At your service, young lady.”

  To Jake’s surprise, Dani was ecstatic. “My goodness, I
can’t believe it’s really you!”

  “What’s a polymath?” Jake mumbled.

  “An expert in many different fields of science. Sir Francis Galton is one of Archie’s heroes!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, bless me,” the polymath said with another chilly smile that never quite reached his eyes. “You know young Master Archie?”

  “He’s my friend,” she said.

  “And my cousin,” Jake replied.

  Sir Francis eyed him at once in speculation, as though Jake’s being cousins with a genius might make him a genius, too. Not bloody likely, he thought, sorry to disappoint the Prince of the Polymaths.

  “Of course, the admiration is most heartily returned,” Sir Francis said with almost a hint of warmth. “Indeed, I’ve often said the lad reminds me of myself when I was his age. It’s not easy being a child prodigy,” he added.

  “Sir, if it isn’t too much trouble,” Dani spoke up, “I wonder, would you sign my book?” Without waiting for an answer, she thrust Teddy into Jake’s arms and scrambled to retrieve it from her satchel.

  “I’d be honored, young lady,” Sir Francis said in surprise. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me for my autograph before!” He accepted her book and set it on the table to sign it.

  “So, um, what inspired you to invent a whistle for a dog, Dr. Galton?” she ventured.

  “I was studying the range of human hearing, actually.”

  “Dr. Galton has studied everything!” Dani gushed to Jake, no doubt already imagining how the value of her autograph book was climbing as the ink from his signature dried. “Geology. Meteorology—that’s the weather—”

  “I’m not stupid,” Jake retorted.

  She ignored him, counting off more subjects. “Anthropology, medicine, all sorts of mathematics. And when he was younger, he went as an explorer to wonderful faraway lands! Isn’t that right, sir?”

  Sir Francis laughed. “Have you been checking up on me, my dear?”

  “Sorry—Archie told me all about you. Between you and your cousin, Mr. Darwin, well, genius obviously runs in your—what do you call ’em—genetics?”