The City of Guardian Stones

by Jacob Sager Weinstein

  Little Ben and I shoved and grunted, and a little crack of light appeared along the edge. We pushed until the crack grew big enough for us to peer out of. There was no sign of Minnie Tickle or anybody else, so we went back to pushing and grunting until finally the crack was big enough to squeeze through.

  We were in a tall chamber, shaped like a shoe box standing on its narrowest side. It seemed to be built out of grey bricks, although a thick coating of dirt and grease made it hard to see their original colour.

  The height of the room and its obvious age gave it a certain dim beauty, even though it was almost entirely unadorned. There was a single decoration on each wall: a giant wheel, painted in fading white. Something about it looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  To our left, there was a series of wide but shallow steps running three quarters of the way up to the ceiling. “Those steps don’t go anywhere,” I pointed out.

  “Are they steps?” Little Ben said. “They look more like the seats in an amphitheatre to me.”

  “An amphitheatre for elves, maybe,” I said. “You’d have to have an awfully tiny butt to sit in them.”

  If it was an amphitheatre, we were standing in the part where the show would take place, a narrow rectangle of brick floor, crowded with the stone objects we had last seen in the Lost Property Office.

  “This place must be important,” Little Ben said. “Why else would Minnie work so hard to get this stuff here?”

  “But then why would she leave? And how did she get out?” If there was an exit, it must have been hidden behind the mass of statues and plinths and architectural bric-a-brac.

  “Maybe there’s a clue in one of these things,” Little Ben said. We looked under and behind and inside everything we could. Behind one gigantic stone urn, we thought we saw the edge of a door, but no matter how much we pushed, the urn wouldn’t budge.

  “Maybe there’s something inside the urn that’s making it even heavier. Help me up,” I told Little Ben. He crouched down, and I clambered up on his shoulders, then pulled myself up on what looked like a medieval arch, until I could look down into the urn.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed.

  “What is it? Is it something cool?” Little Ben asked.

  From inside the urn, Dasra looked up at me. “Are you going to stand there gawking, or are you going to get me out of here?”

  CHAPTER 39

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems to me that inside an urn isn’t a bad place to keep Lady Roslyn’s grandson, if you’ve got him there.”

  “Really?” Dasra said. “I thought you were the one who didn’t believe in judging people by their ancestors.”

  That stung a little, but I wasn’t going to show it. “I judge people by their actions,” I said. “And so far, yours haven’t given me any reason to trust you.”

  “I haven’t given you any reason to trust me? You’re the one who framed my grandmother.”

  “What are you talking about? She tried to kill my mom.”

  He shook his head. “That can’t be true.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  He flinched and held his breath. Was he waiting to see if things started exploding and collapsing? That would mean he thought I was lying. Which would mean he really thought Lady Roslyn was innocent. “Think about what your grandmother told you,” I said. “How did she phrase it?”

  Dasra looked even more indignant than before. “Are you suggesting she glasshoused me? She would never —” And then he stopped.

  “I know that look,” I said. “That’s the look I get whenever I think back on something Lady Roslyn said and realize it was deliberately misleading but technically true.”

  When he spoke again, it was in a near whisper. “She told me she needed your mother’s blood to take control of the rivers, but she said she was just using a few drops when you showed up. She never said what she did after you showed up. And she said, ‘That young lady told the police I tried to kill her mother, and the fools believed it.’ She never said it was a lie. In fact, you would have been surrounded by magic when you said it – you couldn’t have lied. Why didn’t I see that?”

  He looked like he was about to cry. I felt something I would never have thought I could feel for Lady Roslyn’s grandson: sympathy. I held out my hand. “Let’s get you out of this urn,” I said.

  The good feelings lasted until we had climbed down to the ground. Dasra turned to me and said, “She was wrong to use violence. That doesn’t mean her basic point was wrong. Some people are better qualified to be in charge.”

  “People like you and your grandmother, I’m guessing?” I said.

  “Yes,” Dasra said. “And people like you.”

  OK, that was not the answer I expected. “I’m nothing like Lady Roslyn.”

  “Really? Before you stopped my grandmother – before you took actions that could shape the future of London – did you put it to a citywide vote?”

  “No, but not because I thought I was better than anybody else. We were the only ones who were there to stop her.”

  “Exactly,” Dasra said. “And why were you there?”

  I saw where he was going with this. “It was because she thought my family history was important, not me.”

  “But she was right, wasn’t she? Objectively speaking, you saw how powerful your mother’s blood was. Your family history gave you the opportunity to influence events, and you seized that opportunity.”

  “Guys —” Little Ben said, but I wasn’t going to be distracted.

  “What do you know about my family history? What did Lady Roslyn tell you?”

  “She said that for centuries the Herkanopoulos family had been caretakers of the magical power that runs beneath London. She said that generation after generation of Herkanopouloses had provided one child to serve each river, but your aunts had abandoned their duties. That’s why she had to step in.”

  There were no explosions, and in any case, I didn’t need a magical lie detector to believe what Dasra was telling me. It all fit. The women in the painting on the wall of the Mail Rail and in the statues in the sacred place of the Fleet – they must have been my ancestors, which was why they looked so much like my mom and my aunts. And the sacred places of the rivers would have been important to my grandmother and my aunts, which was why they came to one of them when they were deciding whether to leave London.

  But if Dasra’s information answered some questions, it raised more. “What else did your grandmother tell —”

  “GUYS!” said Little Ben. “I think I’ve figured out where we are. Stop and listen for a moment. It’s urgent.”

  The three of us fell quiet. We could hear faint traffic noises, interrupted occasionally by an echoed clang. And in the distance, a faint cawing.

  “Seagulls?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Little Ben said. “We’re above water, but we’re under cars, and we’re surrounded by metal. We’re inside a bridge. I think this is one of the bascule chambers of Tower Bridge.”

  “I was with you up until bascule,” I told him.

  “It’s French for something that rocks back and forth,” Dasra said. “Jeu de bascule is a seesaw. Cheval à bascule is a rocking horse.”

  “Thanks, that’s really helpful,” I said. “So this is where they keep the seesaws?”

  “Kind of,” Little Ben said. “Tower Bridge is what’s called a bascule bridge. It’s like two giant seesaws facing each other. When they raise the bridge, both seesaws go up at once.”

  “So what’s this room for?”

  Little Ben made seesaws out of his hands and tilted them while he spoke, to show me what he meant. “When one half of a seesaw goes up, the other half has to go down. So when the road part of Tower Bridge goes up, the other part goes down, into this room. There’s one of these chambers on each side of the bridge. Not many people get to see them!”

  “We’re very lucky,” I agreed. “Now, if that’s all you wanted to say —�
��

  “One more thing. The part that goes down into this room? It’s huge. It has to be as heavy as half of Tower Bridge in order to lift it up.” He pointed to the ceiling. “And that’s the bottom of it. And when the bridge goes up, that giant weight comes swinging down into this room. And anything in the room, whether it’s made out of stone or skin and bones, is going to get crushed.”

  “We’d better get out of here,” I said.

  “FAST,” Dasra added, and I was about to tell him not to order me around when I followed his gaze up to the ceiling.

  It was coming down.

  “They’re raising the bridge,” whispered Little Ben.

  CHAPTER 40

  It’s amazing how fast you can move when you’re in danger of getting squashed. I ran back to the urn where I had found Dasra and clambered to the top like I had rocket shoes. My butt planted on top of the urn, I wedged my feet against the wall. “We’ve got to move this away from the door,” I called down. “You guys push from below!”

  Even with the three of us pushing – even with my leverage – it wouldn’t budge.

  The ceiling lowered steadily, swinging downwards over the shallow brick steps.

  “Come on,” Dasra said. I didn’t know whether he was talking to himself, or the others, or the urn.

  “On the count of three,” I said. “Give it everything you’ve got. One … two … three!”

  With a last bit of energy, we sent the urn toppling. I fell down to the floor, right in front of a newly accessible stone door. Relieved, I grabbed the handle and pulled – but instead of swinging open, the door toppled towards me.

  I dove out of the way.

  Where the door had stood, there was nothing but brick. The door had been just another stolen architectural detail, leaned up against a solid wall.

  “There!” Little Ben said. When the urn had fallen over, it had nudged a giant stone head, giving us a glimpse of an actual real doorway, with genuine hallway on the other side.

  The only problem was, the ceiling had nearly reached it.

  “Forward march!” I said, climbing over a table-sized stone sundial. I got to the giant stone head as the ceiling swung into it from the other side, toppling it straight towards me.

  “Sideways scramble!” I said, leaping to the side as the head smashed into the spot where I had been.

  For an instant, I had a clear path. With the giant head out of my way, I could jump straight out into the hallway outside. The problem was, I was the only one close enough to make it through before the ceiling blocked the way entirely. I’d be leaving Little Ben and Dasra behind.

  I only had a fraction of a second to decide – but I didn’t need that long. There was no way I was going to leave Little Ben to be squashed. (And if I happened to save Dasra in the process – well, he probably deserved to live, too.)

  So I jumped back towards the far wall, grabbing at Little Ben’s arm to pull him along. “Stop!” he yelled. “My foot is stuck in a philtrum!” I looked down. When the giant head had toppled, the bit between its giant nose and its giant upper lip had landed on Little Ben’s ankle, trapping it there.

  Dasra knelt down, bracing his shoulder under one giant eye, and I did the same with the other. We both strained upwards, and the head lifted a bit, freeing Little Ben.

  We scrambled madly away from the oncoming ceiling. As it moved forwards, it swept up the statues and walls and oddly shaped stones, sending them tumbling and smashing into each other. It was like trying to run over balls in a bingo cage.

  Dasra stumbled and flew forwards. As he threw out his hands to catch himself, one arm plunged between two halves of a fractured Roman wall. I grabbed him by the armpits and yanked him up.

  And then we were safely at the far wall, which was a relief, until I turned around and saw the wave of churning stone being swept towards me in slow motion.

  “When the bridge opens, does it stick straight up?” I asked Little Ben.

  “Almost, but not quite.”

  The wave of stone was half as high as the chamber, and ten feet away.

  “So that means the other end doesn’t go all the way down?” Dasra asked. “If we press up against this wall –”

  “– instead of getting smashed by the ceiling, we’ll get smashed by all the stone,” Little Ben answered.

  The wave of stone was three quarters as high as the chamber, and five feet away. Little mini-waves of rubble broke away from it, lapping at our feet.

  “Look!” In the corner, about two feet from the wall, two pieces of iron stuck up from the floor. “The ceiling must rest against those. If we can shelter behind something… Help me lift this!” I grabbed one edge of a large stone slab.

  The wave was nearly to the ceiling, and two feet away.

  Dasra and Little Ben grabbed the other sides of the block, and with a burst of speed I would not have thought our tired muscles were capable of, we leaned it against the wall, with its bottom propped against those two iron pieces on the floor.

  “Get in!” I yelled, and we dove under our improvised lean-to as the wave of stone crested and crashed, sending statues and finials and cornices and pedestals and a heavy rain of unidentifiable smashed bits pounding down where we had been standing.

  For what seemed like ages, the world was nothing but thunder in my ears, and white dust in my lungs, and our shelter shaking like it was going to collapse –

  – but it held.

  The thunder stopped, and all we could hear was occasional crackling and thumping as the stones shifted. Everything was pitch black.

  “Little Ben, do you still have that torch?”

  “No, my carpetbag is somewhere out there. I’m guessing it’s ground to bits.”

  I fished my phone out of my pocket and flipped it open, using the faint light of the screen to look around. If Mom had got me a smartphone, like I was always asking, it would have had a built-in torch, but I had to make do with what I had.

  Through the dimness and the slowly thinning cloud of dust, I could see a solid wall of shattered fragments blocking the way.

  We were trapped.

  CHAPTER 41

  While I had my phone out, I glanced at the screen: zero bars, which was what I had expected, with a room full of stone and an entire bridge standing in the way of the signal.

  “Looks like we’re stuck here for a while,” I said.

  “Let’s pass the time telling stories!” Little Ben said.

  “Good idea. Dasra, you can start by telling me what else you know about my family.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know about them.”

  “Then tell me about your family. Are you on some kind of mission from your grandmother? Why do you keep showing up when something bad is about to happen?”

  I didn’t mean to antagonize him. I thought it was a fair question. Dasra didn’t. “I don’t owe you any explanations,” he said. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  “I saved your life. Your arm was stuck.”

  “And I saved yours about four seconds later. Remember? It took all three of us to lean the slab against the wall.”

  “Then you only saved one third of my life. I saved all of yours. You owe me two thirds of a life’s worth of explanation.”

  “I saw your face when I told you about your family. You were stunned. It was major news to you.”

  “It was one-third-of-a-life stunned, at most. You still owe me a third.”

  He crossed his arms and looked stubbornly away.

  An awkward silence followed, broken only by the occasional chank of stone fragments settling. Then the chanks turned into a roar. “The bridge must be going back down,” Little Ben yelled over the cacophony.

  The rubble slid away, and I poked my head out. Little Ben was right – the ceiling was slowly rotating back into place, letting the wave of stones slide backwards, like a tide made out of pebbles.

  And pebbles were all that was left. All of the treasures that had existed minutes ago – the statues, the cr
ypts, the walls, even the fragmented but still recognizable segments of larger items – had been reduced to smashed bits. Every item Minnie had stolen represented years of study and hundreds of hours of work by masons and sculptors, followed by centuries of effort to protect and preserve them. And they had been destroyed in seconds. I could almost hear the stones’ creators crying.

  Wait – forget the “almost”. I could hear them. As the stone wave flowed out, the clashing of pebbles began to sound like moaning, and then like sighing and weeping, and in moments, the noises of despair were deafening.

  I clapped my hands to my ears.

  As the weeping continued, the stone tide flowed out further, and as it lowered, it revealed the weepers. The chamber was full of ghosts, their clothes as varied as the centuries they came from, all holding hammers and chisels that didn’t change much across the years.

  I had seen ghosts before, and been terrified, but these ones weren’t frightening. They were heartbreaking. I lowered my hands; shutting out their cries seemed like an insult to them. And I began to weep with them.

  By their spectral flicker, and by the glow of the room lights that were no longer blocked, I could see Dasra and Little Ben. Neither of them seemed put off by a roomful of ghostly crying craftspeople.

  “Are you OK?” Little Ben asked, putting a friendly hand on my arm.

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Can’t you see them?”

  “All the smashed things? Of course. It’s really sad.”

  “No, the ghosts.”

  Now it was his and Dasra’s turn to stare at me. “This is no time for joking —” Dasra started, but stopped when he saw my expression. “You really see ghosts?”

  I didn’t answer, because the uncoordinated weeping had turned into a single, unified moan. The ghosts stretched their arms up in the air, holding their tools high, and began to lift off the ground. They merged as they rose, until the air was filled with a glowing cloud. It swooped towards the wall, as if it was about to pass through it, but then the circle painted on the wall erupted in flame, and the cloud bounced off it.