The Frozen Telescope

by Jennifer Bell

  ‘Thanks for saving me,’ she said, wiping her nose on the back of her arm. ‘Valian told me you’re all his friends.’

  Ivy smiled. ‘It’s great to meet you at last, Rosie. I’m Ivy. This is my brother, Seb, and this is our friend Judy.’

  ‘Hi,’ Judy said. Seb waved gingerly.

  ‘And this is Mr Rife,’ Ivy said cautiously.

  ‘Hello again, Rosie,’ Mr Rife rasped. He raised a shaky glove to Rosie’s face, but she backed away. The lines around his eyes deepened.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Valian reassured her. ‘This is the man who looked after you while you were lost.’ Ivy, guessing Rosie didn’t remember much of the last six years, smiled encouragingly.

  Rosie shuffled closer, curious. ‘I know your face,’ she said softly. She held Mr Rife’s fingers to her cheek. ‘You’re hurt. You need to be treated at an infirmary.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Valian said, assessing Mr Rife’s wound. ‘We’ve got to get you back to the main part of Strassa right away.’ He bent down and lifted Mr Rife under his arms, hugging him round his middle to help him to his feet. Ivy pondered if that was the very snapshot Mr Punch had seen in the face of the uncommon clock.

  They emerged from the side of the mountain a short while later, Seb supporting Mr Rife under one arm as he limped along. Ivy squinted at the blue sky through Strassa’s shimmering dome. The defiant afternoon sun warmed her face and neck, although her insides felt cold. The Dirge were now in possession of the Sword of Wills and the Sands of Change. She wasn’t sure if anyone was powerful enough to stop them now that they had two of the Great Uncommon Good.

  She looked from face to face around her as the five of them traipsed back through the building site. No one had spoken since leaving Midas’s gold-filled room. In the quiet, Ivy’s mind had filled with worries about the fate of her parents and of everyone else in London.

  Valian and Rosie trudged a little way off from everyone else, Valian with his head lowered. Ivy wanted to tell him that she didn’t blame him for giving the Sands of Change to Hemlock – she would have done the same thing had it been Seb’s life under threat – but she thought it better to give him and Rosie some space.

  Weird beings in squidgy body was, Scratch said in Ivy’s head.

  Opening her satchel, she brought him out into the sunshine. ‘Do you feel OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Like strange dream happened,’ he said. ‘Not back yet to normals.’

  Ivy couldn’t get the image of Scratch as a little boy out of her mind. He’d been dressed in metallic-grey jeans and a T-shirt with an orange-and-white logo – the same colours he sported as a bell. She thought of all the instances when his quick-thinking had saved her life or when his words had filled her with courage. And yet she’d never realized before just how young he was.

  ‘It might take a while,’ she reassured him, ‘but you’ll feel better eventually.’

  She deliberated on how the pendant in the Sands of Change worked. It had rotated twice while focused on Scratch, transforming him from a bell into a human, but that hadn’t been all …

  ‘I …’ She hesitated. While Scratch had transformed, she hadn’t been able to sense him. ‘Your broken soul wasn’t inside you back there, Scratch. Was it made whole? Were you alive?’

  He went quiet for a moment. ‘Thinkings so me yes; Scratch never knowings it was possible.’

  Ivy gazed over at Judy, skating ahead. She realized with a jolt that she couldn’t sense Judy’s soul any more either.

  Light to darkness, life to death …

  The words in Amos’s journal certainly rang true. Judy was alive, Ivy was sure of it. She didn’t understand why Judy hadn’t told anyone yet, but Ivy knew that it wasn’t her information to share. She held Scratch to her chest, giving him a hug. She’d never once considered whether he minded being a bell or if he’d prefer to be a human boy. As she tucked him back into her bag, she decided that, when this was all over, they’d talk about it and she’d help him, whatever he wanted.

  ‘Ivy,’ Mr Rife wheezed, struggling to find something in the pocket of his crushed-velvet jacket. ‘Please give this to Rosie. I want her to have it.’

  Ivy helped him pull out a familiar silver object. ‘The Frozen Telescope …’

  ‘There’s so much for Rosie to understand,’ Mr Rife said sadly. ‘By looking through the device, she’ll be able to see everything that’s happened to Mrs Bees these past seven years.’

  As Ivy carried the telescope over to Rosie, she considered how crucial it had been in their search for her. If Valian hadn’t peered through it three days ago, they would never have learned the truth about the Sands of Change, and none of this would have happened.

  Rosie gazed up at Valian, listening carefully as he explained how the telescope worked. Ivy liked watching the two of them together. It was obvious that Rosie idolized her big brother and, in her company, Valian seemed more relaxed. There was a playful, easy swagger to his walk that Ivy had never seen before.

  But, when they reached the edge of the construction zone, an alarm sounded, wailing like an old World War Two air-raid siren. The timber building frames rattled and the dome overhead turned an alarming shade of red, transforming the sandy roads into Martian earth. An announcement crackled over a loudspeaker, first in Chinese and then translated into English: ‘STRASSA IS IN LOCKDOWN DUE TO AN INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY. All guests are to remain inside the protective domes for safety.’

  The red light of the dome flashed, making Ivy’s temples ache.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ Valian said, pulling on Rosie’s hand as he sped up. ‘Come on!’

  As they reached the main part of Strassa, they saw skyguards lining the streets, directing people inside buildings and helping stallholders lock up. Yurt flaps were being rolled down; music was replaced by nervous chatter. Judy made a hasty trade at an uncommon-button stall before it shut. She brought back two buttons and popped them both in Mr Rife’s jacket pocket – ‘One to help heal the wound, the other to soothe the pain,’ she explained briefly. ‘They’ll have to do for now because we don’t have time to visit the infirmary.’ (Ivy had been treated with uncommon buttons before and knew there was a different button for every ailment. You only had to tuck them in your top pocket for them to take effect.) Mr Rife nodded to Judy in thanks.

  Valian scanned the road and fixed his gaze on a group of skyguards. ‘Something’s happening to all the skyguards,’ he said in an unsteady voice. ‘Look, their bodies are going rigid.’

  Ivy examined their faces. Their eyes had glazed over.

  ‘They look like you did when you were under the influence of the Sword of Wills,’ Seb observed.

  Ivy grabbed the magnifying glass from her pocket and held it over her heart, using her whispering to listen hard. ‘Neither the Sands of Change nor the Sword of Wills is here,’ she said. ‘The Dirge must be controlling the skyguards from somewhere else in the world … How is that possible?’

  ‘The powers of the Great Uncommon Good are limited only by the user’s knowledge of them,’ Mr Rife croaked. ‘If Blackclaw has read and understood the directions in Amos Stirling’s journal, he will be able to control the minds of anyone, even across oceans.’

  There was a loud crackle, and another announcement sounded over the loudspeaker. This time the voice was strained, making Ivy wonder whether the announcer was under the control of the Sword of Wills too: ‘THIS IS A SECURITY UPDATE. A dangerous criminal has been discovered masquerading as a quartermaster in Lundinor, in the United Kingdom. Underguards have been dispatched to arrest one Mr Punch. ALL UNCOMMONERS WILL BE PLACED IN TEMPORARY PARALYSIS IMMEDIATELY. This measure is being taken for your own safety and will last until the criminal, Mr Punch, has been detained. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. You will be released from your paralysis once our work is complete.’

  ‘What!’ Ivy exclaimed. ‘Mr Punch? No – they’ve got it all wrong!’

  The air rippled as several giant materializers dropped from the sky and hovered i
n positions where all the remaining uncommoners in the street could see them. The same video image appeared on every one: a figure in a black suit and bowler hat standing in a moonlit field. His face was masked by the shadows of the surrounding trees, but Ivy knew who it was immediately. She gritted her teeth as he started speaking.

  ‘As of this moment, every undermart in the world is under the Dirge’s control,’ Octavius Wrench announced triumphantly. ‘We are the pioneers of a new future for uncommon-kind, a future which will see commoners submit to our superior wisdom and technology … or die.’

  Before anyone could make any comment, the tinkling melody of a music box began seeping out of the loudspeaker … and wisps of noxious dust burst from everyone’s gloves.

  ‘Everyone, take your gloves off, NOW!’ Seb shouted, ripping open the Velcro tabs around his knuckles. ‘The Statue Salt will start seeping from the material. We’ll only be affected by it if we breathe it in.’

  Ivy pulled at the cotton fingers of her dress gloves, scrunched them into a ball and lobbed them several metres away. Valian and Judy did the same with their gloves; Rosie helped Mr Rife remove his. A puff of white powder arose where they hit the ground.

  All around in the street, pale dust motes swirled into traders’ faces. Coughing and spluttering, they wiped at their mouths and clawed at their throats. Some people stiffened within seconds; others got as far as running a few paces before their legs locked. Ivy saw a mother go to grab her young son before freezing with her face caught in a wide-mouthed expression of terror. As the air clouded with Statue Salt, the only people left moving were the skyguards, who looked on impassively.

  ‘We need to get as far away from here as possible,’ Ivy said, covering her nose and mouth with her bare hands. ‘We can return to the construction zone – there’s no one there, which means there are no gloves covered in Statue Salt. The air there will be cleaner.’

  They turned and sprinted back the way they’d come. Valian and Seb each shouldered one half of Mr Rife’s weight, helping him hobble along as fast as he could. A veil of Statue Salt had developed over the rooftops of Strassa, obscuring the sky through the red dome. Ivy listened to the eerie tune of the music box and knew that, in every undermart around the world, at that very moment, adults and children were being paralysed. She remembered the sickening panic she’d felt at Guesthouse Swankypants as her limbs went numb. People would be terrified.

  ‘Look out! There’s a patch of Statue Salt ahead,’ Valian cried. ‘I can’t see a way round it.’ A haze of the deadly powder lingered across their path, seeping into the shells of unfinished buildings. Two traders stood immobile by a cement mixer at the roadside. The path behind them sloped upwards; beyond them, the air looked clear. ‘We’ll have to hold our breath and run through it,’ he decided.

  Ivy filled her lungs with clean air before charging ahead …

  ‘Argh!’ On the other side, Judy fell to the ground, wincing. ‘One of my knees has gone solid – I can’t move it!’ She tried dragging herself forward, but her bad knee was like an anchor, weighing her leg down.

  Seb left Mr Rife with Valian so he could help Judy up. ‘It’s a good job you’re on wheels,’ he said, gripping her round the waist. He went behind her and pushed, rolling her along the gritty road.

  Together, they all ran, hobbled and skated into a clear area of the construction zone. Standing atop a small hill was a partially painted Chinese pagoda. It had a square base and seven gradually tapering tiered layers. These supported a cobalt-blue roof that came to a thorny point at each corner. Ivy speculated that the structure was destined for use as a featherlight mailhouse as there were small holes in the walls for feathers to fly in and out of, just like the wobbly brick tower in Lundinor.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ Valian wheezed, hauling Mr Rife into a seated position at the base of the pagoda. ‘The one good thing about this Statue Salt is that you can’t miss it: we’ll be able to see any approaching clouds from this height.’

  ‘It’s only a matter of time before one of us inhales enough of Alexander’s formula to paralyse our entire body,’ Seb pointed out, leaning Judy against a wall. ‘We need to find a way to protect ourselves and free all these other people.’

  That’s not our only problem. Ivy thought of Mr Punch; somebody had to help him, and their parents, and all the other citizens of London.

  ‘When Alexander Brewster used the Statue Salt on us, he said that its effect could be reversed if the victims listened to an uncommon music box played backwards,’ Valian recalled. ‘There’s probably a few for sale in Strassa, but there’s no way to trade for them now. And it’ll be the same in every other undermart.’

  Ivy had a sudden inspiration. ‘There was an uncommon music box on display at your auction house,’ she reminded Mr Rife. ‘It used to belong to Queen Victoria.’

  He nodded. ‘I know the one. Mrs Bees and I—’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, I mean Rosie and I didn’t pack away the sale items before leaving. That music box will be right where we left it in the garden.’

  ‘I’ve been in an undermart in lockdown before,’ Valian told them. ‘All methods of uncommon transport stop operating; every border and possible exit is monitored by underguards. Even the movements of the dead are restricted. I don’t know how we’d get to Nubrook to fetch it.’

  Ivy racked her brains, trying to come up with something. By the empty looks on everyone else’s face, they were just as stumped as she was.

  ‘I’m afraid leaving this place under lockdown will be about as easy as finding a fresh-smelling selkie,’ Mr Rife remarked, rubbing his bad thigh. ‘Perhaps we could get a message to someone in Nubrook who can retrieve the box for us.’

  A fresh-smelling selkie … Ivy had heard that turn of phrase before. She reached for Scratch with her whispering: Didn’t Mr Farrow write that in the guide to Nubrook?

  Certainlys did, the bell replied in her head. Need Scratch readings again?

  No, it’s OK. Ivy recalled what Mr Rife had told them: that he’d helped Rosie because he was an orphan too … just like Mr Farrow. Now that she considered it, there were quite a lot of similarities between the auctioneer and the travel writer who went under the pseudonym ‘Frederick Ignacio Farrow’ … They both travelled a lot. They both knew a great deal about Strassa. They were both dead …

  Perhaps, Ivy thought, Mrs Bees isn’t the only one who’s been fostering a secret identity …

  ‘Mr Rife, do you know Frederick Ignacio Farrow at all?’ she questioned.

  Mr Rife tilted his head, a coy smile on his face. ‘Ah, what gave it away – the anagram?’

  ‘Anagram?’

  Jumbly letters, Scratch said. Forward & Rife beings Fred I. Farrow.

  Ivy understood Scratch’s meaning: minus the ampersand, the letters of ‘Forward’ and ‘Rife’ could be rearranged to spell—

  ‘You are Fred I. Farrow!’ Ivy cried.

  ‘There aren’t many people that know,’ Mr Rife admitted. ‘The guides are given away free, so the auction business is my real livelihood. It makes sense as we travel …’ He paused, and a wide grin broke across his face. ‘What am I saying? There is a way for us to get to Nubrook!’

  Valian stepped closer. ‘There is?’

  ‘My uncommon pram should be right where I left it, not two minutes from here,’ Mr Rife said. ‘It will allow us to journey to Nubrook, but it only carries two. Everyone else will have to take their chances in Strassa.’

  From the conviction in Mr Rife’s voice, Ivy gathered that he had successfully used his pram in a similar situation before. She was about to volunteer for the mission when he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll go. I’m the only one with access to the auction house. I’ll have to be careful that no underguards spot me moving around. You should all head into the mountain. Hopefully, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding the Statue Salt in there.’

  ‘You’re too injured to operate the pram on your own,’ Rosie said, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘I remember wh
at to do. You and I have made hundreds of journeys together. I’ll come with you.’ She turned to Valian. ‘Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing, I’ll be fine.’

  Ivy caught a flicker of worry on Valian’s face, but he nodded.

  ‘OK, that settles it,’ Mr Rife said, lifting his chest and taking a shaky breath. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’

  Rosie hugged Valian tightly. ‘Stay safe.’ And, with a solemn nod, Mr Rife and Rosie left.

  Fear gripped Ivy’s chest as she, Seb, Valian and Judy hurried towards the tunnel that burrowed into the mountain. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ she told everyone. ‘For all we know, Johnny Hands, Curtis and the rest of the Tidemongers are working on getting everything back to normal as we speak.’ Truthfully, however, she had never felt so uncertain about anything. She glanced at Valian, who was scowling so hard she decided that he might be trying to stop himself from crying. It must have been so difficult for him to let Rosie go after he’d just found her again.

  ‘Everything the Dirge have done so far has been to neutralize their enemies,’ Seb remarked, pushing Judy into the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Anyone who might try to fight them – the underguards, and now Mr Punch – is powerless. There’s no one left to prevent New Dawn.’

  ‘If all the broken souls inside Mr Punch weren’t arguing, he would be able to stop them,’ Ivy said. ‘I wish we could help him.’

  ‘Me too,’ Judy agreed. ‘But there’s no other way to get to Lundinor from here.’

  As they advanced down the tunnel, Ivy sensed they were approaching a large collection of uncommon objects on their left. They turned a corner and she recognized a crumbling hole in the rock. It was where they had all broken out of Midas’s gold-filled chamber using Seb’s drumsticks after they had rescued Rosie. Under the surface of the speckled tan stone was a layer of brick wall. A gentle whirring noise sounded within as the swords, jewellery and awards statues left over from their battle with Hemlock stirred.