There was no sign of Dasra. The only occupant was a bespectacled, balding man, sitting behind the most remarkable desk I had ever seen. It looked like a dozen slabs of rectangular stone piled on top of each other. A stone nameplate sitting on top identified the rumpled man behind it as Jeremiah Champney, Historian of Geological Folklore.
The two of us hadn’t exactly entered quietly, but the man didn’t notice us; he was too absorbed in the old book he was reading.
“Mr Champney,” Little Ben said. He didn’t look up, so Ben tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re in terrible danger,” I told him.
His eyes opened wide. He stared at me. And he put the book down, which, based on his expression, was a tremendous sacrifice. “Danger? What sort?”
“There are powerful magic forces that —”
That was as far as I got. He interrupted me with a sigh, picked up his book, and went right back to reading it.
Little Ben and I exchanged astonished glances. “Your life is in peril!” Little Ben said.
“Yes, yes, magic forces. Thank you for warning me,” he said without looking up.
I come from a family of bookworms, so I understood Mr Champney’s desire to be left alone with his book. But under the circumstances, I had no choice. I turned around and lay backwards across his desk, so that my head was on top of his book. “I’m not sure you really heard what we said.”
He sighed again. “Young lady, I heard your warning perfectly well. I also heard the warning issued to me last month by the gentleman who thought the stones of St Paul’s were conspiring against the queen, as well as the woman who believed she was being followed by the cliffs of Dover, and – well, suffice it to say that over my years of research, I have personally disproven hundreds of legends regarding the alleged magical properties of rocks and gemstones.”
Without waiting for an answer, he slid the book out from under my head and went back to reading it.
“But we know magic is real!” Little Ben said. “We’ve seen it!”
“Mmm,” Mr Champney said without looking up.
“There’s a woman named Lady Roslyn —”
Mr Champney lifted his eyes, although it was only so that he could give me a sceptical look. “Let me guess. She is a mysterious older woman. She told you there are magical forces all around you, and that you have some sort of special destiny.”
“Well … that’s true, but…”
“Bog-standard patter for charlatans, I’m afraid.” He looked back down at his book.
That was when Mom finally wandered in. I’m not sure what she had been doing all this time, but clearly the urgency of the situation hadn’t quite registered with her, because the first thing she did was admire the architecture. “The wooden banister on the balcony is lovely,” she said.
Despite myself, I looked where she was pointing. Unfortunately, the columns were about as uninteresting as I would have expected. Fortunately, as I looked, something more interesting poked out between them. Unfortunately, that thing was a weapon.
Admittedly, the weapon was a finger. But the finger was describing magical-looking motions in the air, and the tip of it glowed, and the finger’s owner peered down at us with an expression of intense malice.
I grabbed a marble paperweight off Mr Champney’s desk and threw it.
It crashed into the finger just as the glow reached a crescendo. A beam of light shot out of the fingertip, but the shot went wild, hitting the curtain by the window and singeing a huge hole in it.
The curtain flew back, revealing Dasra, who must have been hiding behind it the whole time. A smoking black mark on the wall next to him showed where the bolt had hit.
“You,” he snarled, glaring at me. He ran for the door.
I jumped up to stop him, but Little Ben pointed up to the balcony. “She’s firing again!” he yelled, and indeed, the stranger was once again pointing her glowing finger downwards.
Simultaneously, Little Ben and I leapt over the desk, knocking Mr Champney to the floor. This time the bolt slammed into the carpet halfway between the desk and the door, which Dasra had just swung open.
Without looking back, Dasra ran out.
As I jumped to my feet to follow him, the finger-wielder shaped both hands into claws and jumped down from the balcony. Beams of light blasted from each finger, slowing her descent like jets from a rocket. She landed in front of the door, blocking my way.
CHAPTER 20
She was about my age, and she wore a long white robe, belted around her waist with a fringed red scarf. The most striking thing about her was her arms and hands. From the still-glowing tips of her fingers, all the way up to where the robe’s short sleeves began, she was covered with intricately tattooed letters. Under other circumstances, I probably would have wondered why her parents let her get full-arm tattoos when I wasn’t even allowed to get my ears pierced, but at the moment, I was a little more concerned with the whole trying-to-stop-her-from-killing-someone thing.
Little Ben and I slid together, blocking her access to Mr Champney. If she wanted to blast him, she’d have to go through us.
She glared at me, and a handful of tattooed letters rearranged themselves, lighting up as if aflame. I’m not going to repeat the words they spelled, but trust me: they were not nice ones.
She must have decided we weren’t worth it. She spun around and ran out.
Little Ben and I chased after her.
Out in the hallway, she leapt over the banister and did the finger-rocket float down the stairwell. We had to use our feet on the steps, which was slower. By the time we got down, she was already out of the front door. And by the time we got out of the front door, she and Dasra had vanished into the throng of shoppers that mobbed Piccadilly.
With no clue as to the direction they’d gone in, there was no point in trying to find them again. Anyway, I knew where Dasra lived. “Let’s see if Mr Champney believes in magic now,” I told Little Ben.
As we re-entered his office, Mom was in mid-monologue. “My sister Mel was always fond of rocks,” she was saying, “and she had the most lovely collection of— Oh, hello, dear. Mr Champney was very interested in my family. I feel like I’ve known him for years!”
Mr Champney nodded politely. “Yes, madam, it was all fascinating. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He turned to me. “How did that girl – what was – how did —” He paused and pulled himself together. “I tried to call the police,” he finally said. “But I couldn’t describe what I saw without sounding like a madman, so I hung up.”
I was glad. The last thing I wanted was for the police to find us again – let alone at the scene of another crime. I decided not to mention that to Mr Champney. “We don’t think you’re crazy,” I told him. “The problem is, neither does Lady Roslyn.”
Little Ben cleared his throat. “Or whoever is behind this.”
I stared at him in amazement. “Have you been here the whole time? You can draw a direct line from Lady Roslyn to that tattoo girl, and the line’s name is Dasra.”
“I know. It’s totally suspicious! I’m just saying we need more evidence before we jump to any conclusions.”
I turned back to Mr Champney. “One thing we know for sure is that somebody just tried to kill you. And we’re pretty sure it’s because of something you know.”
“All I know is folklore and myth. Why would anybody want to kill me over that?”
“Maybe some of your myths happen to be true.”
“That girl did remind me of something I’ve read,” Mr Champney muttered, his eyes beginning to glaze over. I recognized that look. In Aunt Topsy, it always came right before she went hunting for something in a book.
Sure enough, he stood up and ran his fingers along one of the lower shelves. “Here it is. Mayhew’s Oral History of London Stonemasons.” He flipped through it, found the right page, and began to read. “‘Used though they are to hard work, stone carvers dream of an easier method of plying their task. A legend among them tells o
f a young woman named Minnie Tickle, daughter of a scholar known only as the Precious Man. The Precious Man learned ancient words of power, which he inscribed upon her arms, granting her the ability to cut the hardest masonry with her bare fingers.’”
He lowered the book on to the table so that we could see the illustration. It was a young woman in a long white robe, belted with a fringed red scarf. Tattooed letters ran up and down her arms.
“That’s her!” Little Ben gasped.
“Unlikely, as the book was published one hundred and fifty years ago.” Mr Champney stood up from his desk and began to pace, talking more to himself than to us. “It’s certainly the same costume. Is it possible that the legend was true? It seems so unlikely. Surely others have read this book and seen this illustration. Surely anyone could get a robe and tattoos. And that light – it could have been a laser, or some sort of Roman candle up her sleeve. Yes, that sounds much more sensible. No need to invoke the extraordinary to explain the commonplace.”
I sighed. He hadn’t merely seen magic – he had almost been murdered by it. But in the space of about ten seconds, he had managed to convince himself that nothing unusual had happened. I was beginning to understand how the government could station creatures made out of living cork on a public street without making the evening news.
“However you explain it, she was trying to kill you,” I told Mr Champney. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will,” he said. Then a thought occurred to him, and for the first time, I felt like he was looking directly at Little Ben and me, instead of seeing us through a fog of history books. “And you, young lady, and you, young man: promise me you won’t pursue this any further.”
Little Ben shook his head. “No way!”
“I can’t promise that,” I said.
“You must. She is dangerous, and you are young.” His focus shifted, as if he was once again peering into his memories, and he added, more softly, “No parent should ever have to contemplate losing their child.”
“All the more reason for us to go after her,” I said. “She’s no older than I am, and she’s mixed up in something dangerous. We’ll stop her – for her own good.”
“If her father is deluded enough to think he’s this ‘Precious Man’, then he is even more dangerous than she is. Who knows how far he would go? But I can see I’m not convincing you. Whether or not this is genuine magic, I may know something that could save your life. Promise me, then, that you will report back to me, and let me advise you.”
“Now that is a promise I can make,” I said.
“Me too!” Little Ben said.
“Me too,” Mom said. “It’s like Grandma always says: It’s always good to give your word, when historical facts you’ve recently heard.”
I could see Mr Champney struggling to make sense of that, but after a few seconds, he shook his head as if to clear it and opened the book up again. “In that case, you may be interested in the next passage. ‘A particularly aged stonemason was prevailed on to recite the following bit of doggerel:
“‘Where 13 Park Lane stands by 13 The Mall,
The Precious Man comes to answer the call.
Where 13 Downing Street meets 13 The Strand,
The Precious Man takes the book in his hand.
Where 13 Fen Court meets 13 Sutton Walk,
The Precious Man proves he’s as sharp as a hawk.’”
Mr Champney stopped. We waited for him to continue, but he closed the book. “That, I’m afraid, is all the help this book offers.”
“But what does it mean?” Little Ben asked. “The Precious Man is looking for a book?”
“Was looking,” Mr Champney corrected me. “Remember, this describes the historical Precious Man – although historical may not be the right word for a such a mythical-sounding figure.”
“But if somebody is going to the trouble of dressing up like the Precious Man’s daughter, and discovering his words of power,” I said, “it seems pretty likely they’re trying to follow the same path he did. And if we can figure out what path that is, we’re one step closer to catching him – and clearing our name.”
CHAPTER 21
We all agreed: 13 Park Lane, 13 Fen Court – they had to be addresses. Well, Little Ben and I agreed. Mom thought it might be an actual lane with thirteen parks, or an actual court with thirteen fens. But we convinced her to check out the addresses first.
When we got to Park Lane, Mom gave a confused frown. (Side note: you might imagine that Mom always looked confused, but you’d be wrong. Whatever idea was in her head at any given moment, Mom believed it with complete self-assurance. It’s those of us around her who felt confused.)
“I don’t think there is a number thirteen,” Mom told me.
“I hardly think a whole building just vanished,” I said. But it turns out that was exactly what had happened.
At the bottom end of the street was 1 Park Lane, the InterContinental Hotel. The next building you came to was 22 Park Lane. In between was a long wall of greyish-white stone, as blank as if something had once been there but had been erased.
It was the same story on the Strand. There was a nondescript office building at number 11, and a noodle restaurant at number 32. In between was Charing Cross station, where we spent half an hour wandering around, trying to find somebody who could tell us the street number. Everybody we asked insisted it didn’t have one. “It’s just Charing Cross station, The Strand, London,” said the man at the information desk.
And the Mall? Not only were there no street numbers, there were almost no buildings. The only one we could find was the Institute of Contemporary Arts. I don’t know which arts they considered contemporary, but apparently Having a Sensible Address wasn’t one of them, because when we went inside and asked to know the street number, we got the same runaround we had got at Charing Cross. I thought about staging a sit-in and refusing to leave until we got an answer, but then I noticed the security guards looking at us as if they recognized us. Would Brigadier Beale have distributed our photo to non-magical, non-cork security forces? I decided we shouldn’t stick around long enough to find out.
As we wandered from one nonexistent address to another, I started paying attention to the street numbers I did see, and they made no sense whatsoever. Sometimes the odd numbers were on one side of the street and the even numbers on the other, and sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes the numbers on one side of the street counted up while the numbers on the other side counted down. Sometimes the numbers jumped around with no pattern whatsoever.
And just to make it more fun, most buildings didn’t display any numbers at all.
I thought of something Little Ben had once told me: Ninety per cent of British life makes total sense. The other ten per cent seems absolutely bonkers, if you don’t know about the secret rivers. So if you’re trying to find magic, it’s that ten per cent you have to pay attention to.
It was certainly crazy to assign street numbers with the gleeful abandon of a preschooler flinging paint, and then not even bother to display them. Was it all just an elaborate ruse to hide the fact that number 13 was missing from so many streets?
If it was all a plot to keep us from finding number 13, there were some streets where they had taken even greater precautions. We couldn’t get close to the building that should have been 13 Downing Street, because the entire street was blocked by a huge fence, which in turn was guarded by machine-gun-toting soldiers. Admittedly, the block also contained 10 Downing Street, which is where the prime minister lives, so the guards could have had something to do with that.
We had one last hope: 13 Sutton Walk. Sutton Walk was a short path under a railway bridge, with no buildings at all. The rumbling of trains made it difficult to hear each other, so we crossed the street to a row of stone benches and sat down to talk.
“Is it superstition?” Little Ben asked. “The number thirteen is supposed to be bad luck. Maybe they just skip the number because nobody wants to live at Thirteen Whate
ver Street.”
“Then why do they work so hard to hide it?” I asked. “It ought to be a selling point. ‘Come to London! Number Thirteen-free since 1653!’”
The sun was setting on a long day, full of mysteries that had only multiplied the more we had investigated them. Also, I was still wearing the same clothes I had slid down a collapsing dirt hole in. I wanted answers and I wanted a shower and I would have been happy with them in either order, or maybe both at once.
“Psst!” a voice rumbled, interrupting my thoughts.
I looked in surprise at Little Ben, and he looked at me, and we both looked at my mom. None of us had done the psst-ing.
“Psst!” the voice rumbled again, and this time, we all looked behind us. The benches sat in front of an iron fence with a stone base, and on the other side of it, a massive stone lion was crouched, out of sight of the passersby.
“I say, you there – Hyacinth, is it?” whispered the lion, as quietly as a massive stone lion could whisper. “Oaroboarus asked me to look you, you, you up. My colleagues and I might have some, some, some useful intelligence in aid of your quest.”
CHAPTER 22
“I know you!” I exclaimed. On my previous adventure with Lady Roslyn, I had been locked up in the medium-security division of the Mount Pleasant Mail Sorting Facility, along with a roomful of terrifying magical creatures. The giant stone lion was the only one who had been kind to me – although I hadn’t exactly repaid his kindness. “I’m sorry about the whole sending-you-flying-into-a-unicorn thing,” I told him.
“NONSENSE!” he roared, causing a number of passersby to look over in shock. He ducked back out of sight and tried to speak quietly. “Delighted to have helped. Only sorry I couldn’t have taken a, taken a more active, if you will, active role in the rescue that you, that you so bravely and autonomously initiated.”
His speech poured out in an energetic rush, and when he stammered, it was as if multiple words were trying to get through the door at once and ended up blocking each other’s way. Even so, he talked much more coherently than he had when I’d seen him in jail, and I thought I knew why. “You seem a lot more … sober,” I told him.
The City of Guardian Stones Page 6