Alistair Grim's Odditorium

by Gregory Funaro

  “Humph!” said Mrs. Pinch. And with that the old woman picked up the tray of dirty glasses and stormed out of the library.

  “Well now, Master Grubb,” said Mr. Grim, closing the pocket doors. “Looks like your little jaunt with McClintock has brought us a bit of trouble, has it not?”

  “I’m afraid it has, sir,” I said guiltily.

  “Nothing to be afraid of just yet,” said Mr. Grim, and he crossed to his desk. “Turn your back, please,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Turn your back.”

  I gulped. Here comes a beating for certain, I thought, and I slowly turned round to face the door. However, as I braced my bottom for his blows, I caught sight of Mr. Grim’s reflection in the silver water pitcher on the table. He reached into the wooden box on his desk, took out the Lady in Black’s mirror, and stared at it for a long time.

  “What’s to become of him?” he whispered into the mirror—and I could have sworn I saw it flash—but then Mr. Grim frowned. “Temperamental trinket,” he muttered, and quickly returned the mirror to its case.

  “You may turn around now,” he said, and I obeyed. “Very well, then, no more suspense. All is forgiven, Master Grubb.”

  “Cor blimey!” I said, relieved. “You mean you’re not going to beat me, sir?”

  “Beat you?” said Mr. Grim, aghast. “Certainly not, Master Grubb. Everyone makes mistakes, but you have shown courage and honesty in the face of adversity—not to mention quite a bit of resourcefulness—which is why I’d like to offer you a job as my apprentice.”

  “Your apprentice, sir?” I asked, amazed.

  “I’m not getting any younger, and I’d be lying if I said all this Nightshade business hasn’t made me mindful of my own mortality. I could use a boy like you to help carry on here, should something happen to me. And so, I am promoting you from resident chummy to sorcerer’s apprentice—that is, if you want the job.”

  “But of course, sir!” I cried, my heart swelling. “Oh, thank you, sir!”

  “Very well, then, we’ll work out the particulars later.” Mr. Grim pulled down on a nearby sconce, and his desk slid back to reveal the trapdoor in the floor. “But for now, you run along with Nigel. And send in Lord Dreary, will you? I did promise him an introduction to Gwendolyn, did I not?”

  Mr. Grim winked, and the giant birdcage began its descent from the ceiling.

  “Yes, sir, oh, thank you, sir!” I cried, and I dashed out into the parlor. “Mr. Grim would like to see you now, Lord Dreary, sir!”

  Lord Dreary, oblivious to my happiness, muttered something about a stiff upper lip and then hurried into the library.

  “Looks like you swallowed a bucket of sunshine,” Nigel said. “Everything turn out all right, then?”

  “Oh yes, Nigel! Mr. Grim asked me to be his apprentice!”

  “Well done, lad!” Nigel said, patting me on the back. “A wise choice, I might add, but no time to celebrate now. We’ve got work to do.”

  Nigel motioned for me to follow him.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Why, to the garret. If the boss wants to find out where the Odditorium has jumped to, the garret is where we must begin.”

  Nigel opened the secret panel beside the lift, and I followed him inside. The shaft was pitch-black. Nearly all of the Odditorium’s blue sconce lights had gone out—a result, Mr. Grim had explained earlier, of having to run on the power reserves. And as we climbed the stairs, Nigel removed his goggles to light our way.

  “Watch your step, Grubb,” he said.

  The animus from his eyes certainly was bright enough, and as we passed the first landing, I spied a door that I determined to be a secret entrance beside the lift on the fourth floor—the same floor on which the long hallway with the marred portraits was located. I so badly wanted to ask Nigel about Cleona the trickster; but as we pressed on, I decided it was not the proper time to talk about swirly chalk mustaches and A.G.’s spotty bottom.

  “Here we are, then,” Nigel said as we came to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Nigel pushed it open, and the two of us hoisted ourselves up into the garret.

  As with most garrets, the ceiling was low, and Nigel had to hunch over to keep from bumping his head. In the center of the room was a pair of ladders, each leading up to a hatch that opened onto the roof. Beside each ladder stood a pair of samurai with their swords drawn. The late afternoon sunlight shone down on them from the hatches, casting their face masks in shadow so that only the blue of their eyes could be seen.

  “Hallo, hallo,” Nigel said. “You gents still hanging about?” The samurai, as usual, did not respond. “Carry on, then. Back to your posts.”

  The samurai promptly sheathed their weapons and shuffled past us, one by one disappearing down through the trapdoor.

  Nigel stepped over a large pipe and skirted around one of the ladders. The garret was nearly filled to capacity with a massive tangle of clockwork gears and flues—all of it packed together so tightly that it seemed impossible that any of it could actually work.

  “Over here, Grubb,” Nigel said. And as I joined him beside the ladder, I noticed that he was staring up at a colony of bats hanging upside down from the ceiling.

  I gasped and backed away. Being a chummy, I’d had my share of run-ins with bats, thank you very much, and I knew better than to go bothering with them—unless, of course, I wanted to get my ears bitten.

  “Don’t be afraid, Grubb,” Nigel said, unhooking a bat from the ceiling. “These ain’t your typical belfry bats.”

  As Nigel held the bat close to his glowing blue eyes, I could tell right away that the creature wasn’t a real bat at all, but a mechanical bat made entirely of black metal.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Nigel whispered, and a thin bolt of animus shot out from each of his eyes, enveloping the bat in a shimmering ball of sparkles. The bat instantly sprang to life, its eyes aglow with animus as it flapped its inky black wings and let out a screech.

  “Cor blimey!” I gasped. Perhaps Nigel was the source of the animus after all.

  “Good morning, child,” Nigel said, and then he set the bat atop his shoulder. Nigel did the same for all of them, one by one bringing them to life and wishing them good morning until he had a dozen or so of the black mechanicals perched atop his massive shoulders.

  “Come along then, children,” he said. He replaced his goggles and headed for one of the ladders. “That means you, too, Grubb.”

  The big man climbed up and squeezed himself through the open hatch. I followed him, and as I stepped out onto the roof, I spied the upper gunnery for the first time. One of its cannons had indeed been blown off, and the turret’s blue energy was deactivated.

  “Over here, Grubb,” Nigel said, and I joined him at the edge of the roof just as he set down the last of the bats on the Odditorium’s castlelike battlements. Nigel didn’t seem worried about their animus attracting the doom dogs, and so I knew that the tiny mechanicals had to be covered in Mr. Grim’s magic paint. Just like the Odditorium.

  “Be mindful of danger, children,” Nigel said. “I expect all of you to come back safe and sound, do you hear?”

  The bats nodded their mechanical heads and chomped their mechanical jaws.

  “Right-o, then, off you go!” And with a loud clap of his hands the big man sent the bats scattering away in every direction. “Safe and sound, children!” he called after them. “Safe and sound!”

  The bats screeched their good-byes, and the two of us watched them fly away—their cries quickly fading as they grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Finally, when the last of the bats had disappeared into the setting sun, I asked, “Where are they going, Nigel?”

  “In search of land,” he replied. “It’ll be dark soon. Mr. Grim can steer the Odditorium by the stars, but first we need to know how close we are to land. Wouldn’t be sensible for us to travel west if land was closer east.”

  Nigel heaved a heavy sigh and leaned with his elbows upon the battle
ments. I wasn’t tall enough to do the same, so I just stood there gazing up at him.

  “Will they be able to find their way back?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” Nigel said. “That is, if they don’t run out of animus first.”

  “You mean they fizzle out like Mack?”

  “No, the bats have to be recharged from time to time, as does everything else what runs on the animus. Mack, on the other hand, fizzles out but then comes back. He never has to be recharged. And for the life of him, Mr. Grim can’t figure out why.”

  “Is that why he’s always in the shop?”

  “That’s right, Grubb. So, until the Odditorium is up and running again with blue animus, we won’t be able to go anywhere.”

  “But if that space jump drained the Odditorium of its blue animus, how come it didn’t drain you of yours too?”

  Nigel shot me a look of surprise—not the best way to ask him about his blue energy, I had to admit—but then the big man heaved a heavy sigh, as if he knew this question had been coming.

  “The animus works differently in a person than it does in a machine,” he said simply. “Same reason why the doom dogs don’t come for me. The animus is safe inside my body. However, unlike Mack, I have to be recharged from time to time.”

  Guess I was mistaken, I thought. If Nigel has to be recharged, then he cannot possibly be the source of the animus.

  “I suppose you’re afraid of me now, eh, Grubb?” Nigel said quietly.

  “But of course not! Why would I be afraid of you? Animus or no animus, you’re still my friend, aren’t you, Nigel?”

  “That I am, Grubb,” Nigel said, smiling. But as he gazed out over the sea, once again his face took on the same sad expression that I had seen in the marketplace.

  “Begging your pardon, Nigel,” I said after a moment. “But since we’re friends, may I ask what you’re thinking about when you look so sad?”

  The big man turned to me. “You can tell I’m sad without seeing my eyes?”

  “I suppose I can, yes. Is it because you miss your brother William?”

  Nigel hung his head a bit, then turned back toward the sea. “No, not William,” he said. “I don’t give him much thought anymore. The one I’m missing is Maggie.”

  “Who’s Maggie, Nigel?”

  “Maggie is William’s daughter.”

  “Oh,” I said, swallowing. “Is she—?”

  “Dead?” Nigel asked, and I nodded. “No, Grubb. Maggie is as alive as you are. A little older than you, in fact, and healthy as one of Mr. Grim’s horses.”

  “Where is she?”

  “It’s all a bit complicated, Grubb. But since you’re going to be Mr. Grim’s apprentice, I suppose I’ll have to explain it to you sooner or later.”

  Nigel and I sat down with our backs against the battlements.

  “Maggie’s mum,” Nigel began, “died in childbirth, so right from the start it was up to William to raise Maggie on his own. He had a hard go of it at first, but eventually he managed to make a comfortable life for the two of them working as a coachman for Judge Mortimer Hurst.”

  I gasped. “The same Judge Hurst what caused all that fuss today?”

  “That’s right, Grubb. William used to work at the stables where Judge Hurst boarded his horses. The judge took a liking to William and offered him a job—took a liking to little Maggie, too, and would often let her ride with him in his coach.

  “But you see,” Nigel went on, “Judge Hurst, when he wasn’t sentencing people to hang, was also a collector of antiquities. And along with Mr. Grim and Lord Dreary, he sometimes did business with an elderly gentleman by the name of Abel Wortley.”

  “Abel Wortley—the man Judge Hurst said your brother William done in!”

  “Right-o, Grubb. Abel Wortley was a purveyor of antiquities just like Mr. Grim used to be. And oftentimes Judge Hurst would send William to fetch the old man for society meetings where they could show off their latest acquisitions.

  “Well, one night when William went to pick up Mr. Wortley at his house, the old man didn’t come down. Neither did his housekeeper, for that matter. William thought this strange, of course, but Judge Hurst told him not to bother about it and gave him the rest of the night off. And so William spent the evening playing with Maggie at his lodgings. She was just shy of four years old at the time but smart as a whip, she was, and the apple of her father’s eye.”

  Nigel smiled, but I could hear in his voice that he had grown sad again.

  “Anyhow,” he said with a sigh, “an inspector from Scotland Yard met William at the stables the next morning. You see, Abel Wortley and his housekeeper had been done in the night before. Stabbed to death and robbed, they was, around the same time William was there. And so he became the prime suspect. William protested his innocence, of course, but when the inspector found some of the stolen items in the judge’s coach—”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes, Grubb. Judge Hurst could easily account for his whereabouts, so who else had been at Wortley’s around the time the old man got himself done in?”

  I swallowed hard, speechless.

  “Needless to say, the evidence against William was damning. However, when Judge Hurst visited him in the clink, he told William that if he went quietly to the gallows, Maggie would be provided for. Gave William his word that he would send her off to live in the country with his sister. A proper lady, she is, what can’t have children of her own. So you see, that’s where Maggie lives today. With Judge Hurst’s sister.”

  “So then William confessed his guilt?”

  “Either way, he was going to hang, so why not give his daughter a better life? The judge’s sister could provide for Maggie in ways that William never could. And best of all, she could set Maggie on the path to becoming a proper lady.”

  “But Nigel, if William didn’t murder Abel Wortley, then who did?”

  “Well, that’s where things get a bit tricky. And that’s where Mr. Grim comes in.”

  “Mr. Grim?”

  “You see, Mr. Grim had been a friend of Wortley’s too. And being his friend, he spent a lot of time in the old man’s study. Even after Elizabeth—” Nigel abruptly stopped and cleared his throat. “That is, even after Mr. Grim removed himself from society and began collecting Odditoria, Mr. Wortley was one of the few friends with whom he still associated. And being that he spent so much time in the old man’s study, when he visited the crime scene, he had a fair idea of what the robbers had taken.”

  “The items found in the coach?”

  “All that, yes, but also a couple of other items that were not found in the coach. Items that appeared ordinary—unless one had knowledge of Odditoria.”

  “Ordinary,” I whispered.

  “What’s that you say?”

  “Ordinary. Mr. Grim said that the most powerful Odditoria are usually those things that, on the surface, appear ordinary.”

  “He’s right. And so Mr. Grim knew that Abel Wortley’s killer had to have knowledge of Odditoria too. Why else would a thief steal such ordinary objects and leave the more valuable ones behind? And since William didn’t seem the sort to be familiar with Odditoria, Mr. Grim suspected he had been framed by someone who was.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “But you have to remember that, back then, no one knew Mr. Grim was gadding about the world collecting Odditoria. Consequently, if he spilled the beans about the missing objects, he would endanger his entire quest.”

  “Because he would have to reveal that the objects were magical?”

  “That’s right, Grubb. Not to mention that he would risk revealing his knowledge of Odditoria to the real culprit too.”

  “So what happened, Nigel?”

  “Well, when Mr. Grim visited William in the clink, he told him that he not only thought William was innocent, but also that he thought he’d been set up by someone.”

  “Judge Hurst!” I exclaimed.

  “Right-o, Grubb. But Mr. Grim had no proof, you see. An
d there was also Maggie to think about. Mr. Grim did offer to take her in, but even he had to admit that the kind of life he could provide for her was nothing compared to the life she’d lead in the country—what with all his quests in search of Odditoria and whatnot.”

  “That would be a problem,” I said, but I was thinking about Cleona the trickster. She lived at the Odditorium, didn’t she?

  “But besides Judge Hurst,” Nigel continued, “Mr. Grim had plenty of reasons to suspect that one of his other society friends might recognize Odditoria too. And without the proof of the stolen items…well, you see poor William’s predicament?”

  I stared down sadly at my shoes. Poor William, indeed. Not only had he been hanged for something he didn’t do, but also the sister of the very man who hanged him was raising his daughter. On the bright side, however, at least William was at peace and no longer missed her. But what about Maggie? How dreadful all that must have been on the child—and she being just shy of four years old. At least I was six or thereabouts when Mrs. Smears died. But even if Maggie missed her father half as much as I missed Mrs. Smears, well…

  The tears began to rise in my throat, but I quickly swallowed them down. Chin up, I told myself. This is no time to get all gobby eyed and gloomy. Nigel needs a friend, and if I’m going to be Mr. Grim’s apprentice, I need to be strong about such things.

  And so I forced myself not to cry. “So that’s when you came to London, Nigel?” I asked finally. “After your brother was hanged?”

  “Yes and no, Grubb. You see, just before William was led to the gallows, Mr. Grim offered him a bargain.”

  “A bargain?”

  “That’s right. A bargain in which Mr. Grim offered to bring William back from the dead.”

  I gasped.

  “Of course,” Nigel went on, “William thought Mr. Grim had gone touched in the head. But then again, what did he have to lose? So he listened carefully as Mr. Grim laid down the terms of his bargain. One, that upon his resurrection, William would come work for him. Two, that he would always keep his work secret. And three, that he would never reveal his true identity to anyone until Abel Wortley’s killer was found.”