The Book Jumper

by Mechthild Gläser

  I felt the blood rush to my cheeks again. “N-nothing,” I mumbled. “I didn’t … I wasn’t … I haven’t been sneaking up to the portal.”

  “Nonsense. She’s the one who’s been using the stone circle at night,” declared the Laird, pounding the table with his fist so hard it set the crockery clinking. “Amy is a danger to everything we Macalisters have fought for for hundreds of years!”

  “There’s a thief stealing ideas,” I cried. “Werther and I are trying to catch him but he keeps getting away from us.” I’d had just about enough of this. I was certainly not the biggest threat to the book world right now.

  The Laird drew himself up to his full height in his wheelchair and glared at me. “So you admit it?”

  “What?”

  “That you’ve been meeting with young Werther. That the two of you go wandering through the book world from story to story, somewhere different every day!” For a moment he rose unsteadily to his feet, but his legs could not support his weight.

  I let out a breath. “Yes,” I said. “But I haven’t been sneaking—”

  “You never should have been allowed to attend lessons. I knew it the moment I heard of your arrival. You ought not to have sent her to the Secret Library, Mairead!” The Laird’s eyes were almost popping out of their sockets.

  “She is a Lennox. She has a right to jump,” hissed my grandmother. “And a duty.”

  The Laird let out an unpleasant laugh. “She is further testament to the fact that your family is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the world of literature. All she wants to do is throw her weight around, the naïve little brat—she has no respect for—”

  “Hey!” Alexis broke in indignantly.

  “I—” I tried again.

  “She brings shame on all book jumpers,” said Betsy, helping her father back into his wheelchair.

  “Yes, great shame,” the Laird agreed, and as he did so I was suddenly possessed by another, braver Amy I hadn’t known existed until now.

  “STOP IT!” I yelled, jumping up from my seat. Alexis put a hand on my arm to hold me back but I shook her off. I looked furiously at each of them in turn. “It’s true—I never stayed inside The Jungle Book like I was supposed to, not even once. Ever since the first time I jumped I’ve been going into different stories, and often Werther does come with me. But the reason we’re doing it is to look for the thief! Don’t you get it? There’s something going on in the book world. Something dangerous, something we have to put a stop to! Just look at a few books and you’ll see: Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, The Little Prince.… There are ideas missing all over the place. The stories don’t work anymore! You can’t just pretend that’s not happening!”

  “But…” murmured Glenn.

  I’d talked myself into a rage. My voice echoed through the oversized hall as I continued: “Everyone on this island is always talking about how it’s our duty to protect literature. But you obviously don’t really mean it, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do! Protect it!” I turned to Alexis. “I’m sorry, but I’m not leaving. Not till we’ve caught the thief.”

  “A thief in the book world? A thief who steals ideas? That’s ridiculous!” bellowed the Laird. His head had gone bright red, like a tomato with eyebrows.

  “Oh really?” asked Will. “Do you still think Sherlock’s death was an accident? Amy’s right—there is something going on in the book world … and here on Stormsay. We have to do something.”

  “You’re taking her side?” hissed the Laird. “A Lennox?” He uttered our surname as if the word was something slimy and disgusting in his mouth.

  Will sighed. “This is not about the childish hostility between our two families. It’s about literature,” he said. “When are you going to realize?! The days of the clans and their feuds are over. Bloody hell—there are so few of us left!”

  “Childish?” The Laird grimaced. My grandmother had turned pale. Betsy was looking at Will as if she was seeing him for the first time. Suddenly everybody started shouting at once.

  I left the hall as quickly as I could. I hurried across the entrance hall and up the stairs and stumbled into my bedroom, where I switched on the bedside lamp and flopped down onto my bed. I could still hear Lady Mairead and the Laird yelling at each other from here.

  It was a long time before the voices fell silent. But at last, after several doors (including the front door) had been slammed, the house was quiet once more. So quiet that I jumped when I heard a knock at my bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I said, without sitting up or opening my eyes. I wasn’t sure I was ready to listen to Alexis’s account of how the family party had ended just yet.

  The door opened and closed. I heard footsteps approach the bed and come to a stop a few feet away from me.

  “I hate family parties,” I grunted.

  “Me too,” said a male voice.

  I sat up. Will was standing in the middle of my room. He gazed for a moment at the books on my bedside table and the clothes I’d left lying around. “These anniversary dinners always end up with everyone shouting at one another. Don’t worry,” he said at last, crossing his arms. “I’m afraid when people live on Stormsay too long they lose sight of the important things.”

  I rubbed my cheeks and eyes. They felt wet. “It’s really not like me to get angry and—well, to shout at people I barely know.”

  “I know,” he said. “Still, I am starting to think you’re the only sane person on this crazy island. You’re right—we have to catch the thief before he destroys even more stories.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to start jumping again?”

  He blinked. “That … I don’t know if that would be right.”

  “It would.” I got off the bed and started to gather up some of the clothes and kick the rest out of sight. “The Laird seems pretty angry with you,” I remarked.

  “You’re telling me.” Will shrugged. “But he really surpassed himself today. He went so red I thought his head was going to explode. And everyone else carried on screaming at one another too until your mum mumbled something about a book she wanted to borrow and ran off with Desmond. Betsy, Clyde, and Glenn are taking the Laird home, and I…”

  He faltered.

  When I looked up I found his eyes fixed on me—they seemed to have got stuck at a point somewhere a little way below my chin, and there was an unexpected softness in them. I looked down at myself and got a bit of a shock. The buttons of my cardigan must have come undone in all the commotion and my dress was visible in all its skimpy glory. I hastily pulled the cardigan tight again.

  Will cleared his throat. “… And I … I just came to tell you they’ve all gone and … I’m going to help you look for the thief,” he stammered.

  I nodded and tucked a lock of hair behind my ears. “Thanks.”

  We looked at each other.

  The light from the bedside lamp cast a warm glow over Will’s features and I suddenly felt a little dizzy. Slowly, Will moved closer to me and I took a small, unsteady step toward him. He smiled at me, and …

  Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed. We both jumped. We heard the click of stiletto heels on the stairs.

  “Um—is Betsy still here?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  Will raised his eyebrows. “I thought she’d gone with the others.”

  We went out into the corridor. Although I could still feel Will’s eyes on me, I didn’t dare look at him. We could still hear the footsteps, and now we heard voices too.

  “What was all that about?” hissed Lady Mairead from somewhere below us. “What on earth were you thinking?”

  “I just wanted to…” Betsy muttered something.

  Will and I tiptoed down the stairs. After one and a half flights, Betsy and Lady Mairead came into view. They were standing outside my grandmother’s bedroom door. Now I did venture a glance at Will. “What?” I mouthed. Will shrugged, perplexed. Trying not to make a sound, we crouched on the stairs and peered down
at them through the banister posts.

  “You wanted to shout it from the rooftops?” hissed Lady Mairead. She had drawn herself up to her full height in front of Betsy and was glaring at her.

  Betsy, who was standing with her back to us, shook her head vehemently. “No! I thought that if everyone thought—”

  “Nonsense. We’d agreed, had we not? Besides, I don’t like the way you talk about my granddaughter.”

  “She’s reckless,” Betsy retorted.

  “She is a book jumper, like you. And she’s talented.”

  “She’s sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted.”

  “Enough.”

  Betsy snorted. “It’s not as if I enjoy doing favors for a Lennox,” she said sharply. I gasped in surprise as she continued, “And we’re not out of the woods yet. What if she finds ou—”

  Lady Mairead suddenly lifted her hand and signaled to Betsy to be quiet. She looked up.

  Will and I pressed deeper into the shadows.

  “I thought I heard something. Come.” My grandmother pushed Betsy into her room and disappeared after her. The door closed behind them and we heard the sound of a key being turned.

  “It’s almost as if the two of them had something to hide,” I whispered. “I told you—we need to keep an eye on Betsy.”

  Will grimaced.

  And perhaps on Lady Mairead too, I thought.

  * * *

  That night, Will had a strange dream.

  He was back in Baker Street, in Sherlock’s study, and the darkness was thick outside the window. But Will took up the magnifying glass from the desk anyway, the way he often had as a child. His hand fastened around the smooth, familiar handle. He turned the lens this way and that and although there was no sunlight, a fairy fleck appeared on the white stucco ceiling. It was a big, bright fleck, green and red and glowing. It was Amy.

  Amy in her green fairy dress. Her long hair fell shining over her shoulders and down her back and her eyes sparkled. She floated just below the ceiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She smiled, and at the same time she looked afraid.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Will. “What are you afraid of? I won’t let you fall.”

  The fairy-Amy didn’t answer. Her tulle skirt brushed the chandelier.

  “She wants to be invisible,” said Betsy.

  Will turned around and saw Betsy in one of the two armchairs by the fireplace. She was wearing a long hooded cloak and stroking the Hound of the Baskervilles’s head. “It is a great honor to belong to the Macalister clan,” she declared. “A great honor. You must forget Amy.”

  Will sniffed. “She needs my help.”

  He carried on turning the magnifying glass this way and that, and now Amy went floating along the walls. She paddled with her arms like a swimmer to propel herself forward.

  “Amy and the book world. Both of them,” said Will.

  Betsy drew her hood over her face so that shadows fell across her features. “Now I’m invisible too.”

  Will was about to tell her he could still see her, but at that moment the door opened and Holmes came in. He was wearing his checked suit and had his pipe in his mouth. “What’s that?” He cocked his chin in Amy’s direction. She was currently gliding up one of the heavy curtains.

  Will raised the magnifying glass. “Nothing, just a fairy fleck,” he said. “Like before.”

  “Like before?” asked Holmes, dropping into the second armchair.

  Suddenly his suit was wet and there was seaweed in his hair.

  “Nothing is like it was before,” said Holmes, his voice a hoarse rattle. He looked pale. And bloated. “Nothing at all.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Will. “Don’t you feel well?”

  But at that moment, without a sound, the great detective’s eyes grew sightless. They stopped moving, stared blankly into space.

  Then Will saw the blood.

  The carpet was soaked with it. Thick and heavy and red. The blood was everywhere. It flowed from Holmes’s chest, for there was a hole there where no hole should have been. It flowed over Holmes’s stomach and thighs and dripped from his knees.

  And in the hole in his chest was a dagger. Cold and silver with jewels glittering at its hilt.

  Will dropped the magnifying glass and it landed with a squelching sound on the wet carpet. Blood splattered up Will’s ankles.

  “The monster,” somebody whispered. “The monster!”

  Will spun round. But he didn’t know where the words were coming from. Betsy’s face was still in shadow. And Amy?

  The fairy fleck by the ceiling had disappeared.

  The knight crept closer to the monster.

  Softly, softly.

  11

  THE CHILD ON THE MOOR

  “I WAS GOING TO GET YOU TO COUNT the monkeys in The Jungle Book today. To check they’re all still there and in good health,” Glenn informed me at the beginning of our lesson the next morning. “But I suppose I may as well save myself the trouble. You wouldn’t do as you were told anyway.”

  It sounded like more of an observation than a reproach. Glenn’s scarred face was completely deadpan and the expression in his good eye was impossible to read. It was hard to tell whether he now approved of my hunt for the thief or whether he still thought I was just imagining things. “Off you go, then, and jump,” he said at last to Betsy and me, and we did.

  As Will examined the broken archway in the stone circle, Betsy disappeared as usual into her collection of fairy tales. I landed shortly afterward in The Jungle Book, where Shere Khan told me that, unfortunately, Werther would be unable to accompany me today. Apparently he’d been neglecting some of his duties in the book world and needed to spend the day attending to them. Falling in unrequited love, for example. And committing suicide. That sort of thing.

  So the tiger and I set off alone. We spent the whole morning trawling Don Quixote, in the afternoon I jumped from my bedroom and we investigated one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and between times we went to the Margin to see if there were any more rumors doing the rounds about missing ideas. But to no avail. Either the thief had got a lot cannier recently, or he or she was taking a break from stealing.…

  It wasn’t until late in the evening that I crawled into bed back in the outside world, feeling very frustrated. I had planned to jump once more before going to sleep. But I suddenly got the feeling that it probably wouldn’t do any good. Even if the thief did strike again, it was pretty unlikely that I’d be in exactly the right story at exactly the right time. Since the previous day, however, I’d been more determined than ever to stop the thief. Once Will had said he’d help me I’d even thought it would be easy, for some reason. But of course there wasn’t actually a lot Will could do if he kept refusing to jump. Was there?

  I tossed and turned for some time. It was already midnight when it occurred to me at last that there was something I could do. I groaned aloud with frustration and clapped a hand to my forehead. The solution was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.

  I slipped on my jacket and shoes and tiptoed through the corridors of Lennox House. The front door creaked softly as I opened it a crack and squeezed out. But inside the house, all remained quiet. I hurried across the grounds, the square-trimmed hedges observing me silently. Then I stepped out onto the moor.

  The moon was a thin crescent in the sky, casting a ghostly gleam over the grass and bushes. The night air blew cold through my thoughts; its scent was a mixture of damp musty earth and sea salt. From far away came the rumble of the waves as they broke on the cliffs. Beneath my feet the moor made sucking sounds with every step I took. They sounded like little sighs—as if the ground was disappointed at having to let me go again. But nothing was going to stand in my way tonight, because I had a plan. And the more I thought about it, the more brilliant this plan seemed. Simple, but brilliant.

  By the time I arrived at Will’s cottage half an hour later, I’d almost forgotten my frustrati
on. I had to knock several times before I heard movement inside the cottage, and I shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. There was a clatter on the other side of the door, as if a chair had been knocked over. At last light appeared in the dirty windows.

  Will opened the door.

  He had a T-shirt and boxer shorts on and his hair was sticking up even more wildly than usual. He was wearing one old sock and holding the other in his hand. He blinked groggily at me. “Amy!” he whispered. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve had an idea,” I explained. This time I was the one who couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  “Could it not have waited till tomorrow?” asked Will, pulling on his other sock.

  I shook my head. “You wanted to help me, didn’t you? Then come with me—we’re going to catch Betsy in the act.”

  Will frowned. “Look, if you think I’m—”

  “You don’t have to jump,” I said quickly. “But you do need to put on something a bit warmer.” I pointed to his bare legs and felt my face turn red.

  Will grinned and looked for a moment as though he wanted to say something back, but in the end he just nodded and disappeared back into the cottage. I waited outside gnawing at my lower lip until Will—fully clothed now—eventually reappeared in the doorway. “Will I do?” he asked, giving me a twirl.

  We set out for the stone circle, which towered silent and deserted on the hilltop above us as we approached. We hunkered down between two bushes from which we had a good view of the portal to the book world but couldn’t be seen ourselves. And then we waited. We waited a long time.

  At first we didn’t say a word, and looked warily in all directions at the slightest sound. But as time went on the night grew colder and darker and eerier. My feet went numb and I started shivering. Will gave me his sweater and we huddled a little closer together.

  “I’m s … sure she’ll be h … here soon,” I said through chattering teeth.

  Will put his head in his hands. “I still can’t imagine Betsy jumping in secret. And certainly not stealing ideas. I mean—why would she do that?”