17
Razor
THE blade stopped just inches from Van’s face.
It was attached to a long, thick pole, and that pole was clenched in the hands of the most frightening person Van had ever seen.
The man was so tall that even though Van stood two steps above him, his head barely reached the man’s chest. The man’s hair was dark and long and tied back with a leather cord. He was dressed in a long black leather coat. Another metal hook on a pole glinted in the straps that crossed his chest and wrapped over his back. Behind the man stood other dark-coated people, some holding blades, some holding flaming glass lanterns.
By the uneven light of the lanterns, Van could see that something like a huge silver fishing net was wrapped around the big man’s shoulders. And his face . . . Frost bloomed in the pit of Van’s stomach. The man’s eyes were so dark, they were practically black. One small scar twisted the corner of his mouth, and another, much bigger scar, like a slash cut in a loaf of bread, curved down from his lower eyelid all the way to his jaw.
Van let out a shriek.
He staggered backward—straight into Pebble.
“Razor!” Pebble exclaimed. She dragged Van behind her body, out of range of the glittering blades. “I’m so sorry. He got away from me.” She shot Van a look that was both desperate and commanding. “Van, go up to the landing and wait for me.”
Maybe it was Pebble’s tone, or maybe it was the blades, or maybe it was the man’s scarred, shadowy face, but Van didn’t even pause. He scrambled up to the landing as fast as his legs would carry him.
From below came the murky sound of voices. Van could hear Pebble speaking, and someone else replying, but he couldn’t decipher a single word.
“Who was that?” he whispered to Barnavelt, who was still clinging tightly to his shoulder.
“That was Pebble.” Barnavelt blinked at him. “Haven’t you two met?”
“No, that man. The huge one with the hooks and the nets.”
“Oh.” The squirrel blinked again. “That’s Razor. He’s master of the Hold.”
Van’s frosty stomach turned to a solid lump of ice. “That guy—that guy with all those weapons—is in charge of the trapped Wish Eaters?”
The squirrel flicked his tail. “Right. I mean—left. I mean—what’s a Wish Eater?”
A shape came jogging back up the stairs toward them. A second later, Pebble grabbed Van by the sleeve. Her big, bright smile had vanished so completely that Van could barely remember what it looked like.
“What was that?” she hissed into his ear. “What were you doing?”
“I just . . . I guess I made a wrong turn,” Van said lamely.
“You are so lucky I was there,” she growled. “Come on.” She headed up the steps, keeping a tight grip on Van’s sleeve.
Van glanced into the darkness over his shoulder. Razor and the flickering lantern light had disappeared. Apparently getting down to the Hold wouldn’t be easy. And maybe, considering those silver blades, he had just gotten awfully lucky.
Pebble pulled him through the Collection’s double doors.
Even though he’d seen the huge, softly twinkling room once before, for a few seconds, Van could only stand on the threshold, paralyzed. The rows and rows of shelves, the webs of staircases and platforms, the silvery glass ceiling, and the thousands of bottles, each one alive with its own mysterious wish, were too much to take in all at once. It was too big, too beautiful, too wondrous to fit into a single look.
“Ah!” said a voice.
A short, portly man—the penguin-shaped man Van had spotted behind the podium at the center of the Collection during his first visit—came waddling swiftly toward them. Silvery light twinkled on his round spectacles.
“There you are!” The man held out both hands and grabbed one of Van’s, giving it a swift shake. “I am Kernel, head of the Collection. We are most pleased to have you joining our efforts.”
“Me too,” said Van.
“Let us step out of the way.” Kernel gestured toward one corner of the chamber, where a twisting flight of stairs formed a nook. “The Collection in this location dates . . . over . . . hundred years . . . ,” he began, leading the way. His voice traveled back to Van in dribbles. “Collections . . . over the world . . . wherever wishes are most dense . . . many centuries. We protect . . . in secrecy. Well.” Kernel reached the nook and whirled around to face Van again. He smacked his hands together, and Van couldn’t help but think of flippers. “If you are to work with us, you ought to understand the importance of that work. What questions do you have?”
A pileup of questions threatened to rush out of Van’s mouth. Where are the Wish Eaters? What are you doing to them? Why are you hurting them? But Van bit the inside of his cheeks until he knew those words would not slip out.
“So . . . ,” he said carefully, as a Collector climbed the steps above them, a blue bottle glimmering in her hands, “anytime anyone makes a wish, it’s your job to collect it?”
“Not just any wish,” said Kernel. “It must be a viable wish. A living wish. An authentic wish. A wish with its roots in the magic of millennia.”
“Some kinds of wishes are just words,” said Pebble. “Only certain kinds of wishes actually exist.”
“Oh, like—” Van stopped himself from blurting out “like Mr. Falborg said.” “Like wishes on wishbones, and birthday candles . . .”
“Birthday cake?” said Barnavelt hopefully.
“That’s right,” said Kernel. “Broken wishbones, birthday candles, falling stars, and coins tossed into fountains or wells provide viable wishes—as long as an underground freshwater source is within close distance, that is.”
“So if you blow on a lost eyelash, that isn’t a real wish?”
“Eyelashes. Hmph.” Kernel shook his head. “I don’t know where that specious idea began. No, those are not viable wishes.”
“What about wishing when the clock says 11:11?” Van asked.
“A waste of time, frankly. And literally.”
“What about when a ladybug lands on you?”
“Unless your wish is for an aphid-eating beetle to use you as a landing strip, utterly useless.”
Van gazed out into the chamber, where the millions of green and blue bottles stretched away into the distance. “Once you collect them, do the wishes just stay here forever?”
“As long as there are Collectors to preserve them,” said Kernel. “That is to say: yes.”
“But if you’ve been collecting these wishes for more than a hundred years,” Van said thoughtfully, “some of the people who made them must be long gone. Can those wishes still come true?”
Kernel’s tufty eyebrows twitched. “An excellent question,” he said. “No. Those wishes—dead wishes—cannot come true. Not exactly.”
Something in Kernel’s expression made Van’s neck prickle. “Then why do you keep them?”
Beside Van, Pebble stiffened.
“Because,” said Kernel, “dead wishes are the most dangerous of all.”
“Dangerous?” Van repeated. “Why?”
“Allow me to explain how a wish works.” Kernel clapped his hands together. “When a wish is made, the wisher determines what will happen, but not how it will happen. For instance, say you were to wish that you didn’t have to go to school.”
Van had no trouble imagining this. He nodded.
“Say that you made a viable wish, perhaps using a coin, or a falling star,” Kernel continued. “Say that wish went uncollected by us, and it ended up being granted. Now.” He patted his hands again. “Perhaps you would come down with a mild case of pinkeye, resulting in excusal from school. Or perhaps you would become terribly ill. Perhaps a severe blizzard would strike the city, bringing everything to a halt. Or perhaps your school would collapse under a hail of falling fish.”
“Fish?” Van repeated.
“It is possible. Anything is possible.” Kernel’s voice grew lower, but he spoke slowly and clearly. “
Wishes are extraordinarily hard to control. And once a wish becomes a dead wish, once no limitations remain, once that wish is nothing but magical energy—it becomes an exceedingly powerful thing. It becomes pure chaos.”
Van glanced around the chamber again. The glimmer of the bottles seemed different now. More daunting. More like a flame just waiting for fuel.
“If the wishes themselves are so powerful,” he said slowly, “might somebody try to get in here and take them?”
“Oh, they could try.” Kernel gave a dry smile. “Fortunately, the Collection is well protected, by means both magical and . . .”
But Van had stopped listening. The floor beneath his feet had started, very slightly, to shiver. On the nearest shelf, bottles were trembling, streaks of light reflected on their sides beginning to flash and waver.
Van turned back to Kernel. But before he could ask what was going on, the little man had charged straight past him.
“STATIONS!” Van heard him bellow as he rushed away. “STATIONS, EVERYONE!”
The chamber burst into action. Collectors raced to the shelves. Owls and pigeons and shrieking ravens wheeled above. Furry Creatures skittered everywhere, dodging the Collectors’ running feet.
The floor shivered harder. Now Van could catch the sound of thousands of bottles jingling together, as high-pitched and brittle as a scream. And beneath that sound was a roar—the loudest, most powerful roar he’d heard yet.
Someone grabbed Van by the sleeve. He was flung against a shelf, his back pressed tight to a row of trembling bottles. “Stay there!” Pebble shouted into his face. Van nodded. Pebble threw herself against the shelf beside him, spreading her arms to brace as many wishes as possible. Barnavelt hopped off Van’s shoulder and clutched two bottles in his little paws.
For a few heartbeats, the chamber shook. Van pulled his shoulders toward his ears. His teeth were clenched so tight he could feel his pulse in his jaw. He could almost see the shelves beginning to crack and tumble, a million bottles plunging toward the stone floor, the explosion of shattering glass. . . .
. . . when, with a last huge HUFFFffffffff, the roar died.
The floor stilled. The clinking bottles went quiet.
There was a beat, like the moment of silence between changing TV channels.
And then, as one, the Collectors and Creatures went calmly back to work.
Barnavelt hopped onto Pebble’s shoulder. “What were we talking about?” he asked. “Birthday cake?”
But Van wasn’t going to be distracted. He grabbed Pebble’s arm. “What is doing that?” he demanded. “You can’t tell me you didn’t hear it this time! What’s going on down there?”
Pebble didn’t answer. But her eyes led Van to the center of the room, where Kernel was waddling rapidly toward the doorway.
Before Kernel could reach them, the double doors slammed open.
A man in a long black leather coat stood on the threshold.
Razor.
Somehow, in bright light, Razor looked even more frightening than he had on the lantern-lit staircase. The straps crisscrossing his body held more weapons and tools than Van had spotted before. Without the softening shadows, his scar-twisted face looked like something made of stone.
Razor’s eyes scanned the room as Kernel spoke to him, never blinking, never stopping. Then they landed on Van.
And stayed there.
Van felt himself become several inches shorter.
Razor bowed his head. He spoke to Kernel for a moment. Kernel nodded. Then the huge man whirled around and stalked back through the doors. The hooks on his back glinted viciously. The doors banged shut.
Kernel hurried back toward the spot where Van and Pebble stood. “My apologies,” he puffed. “As I was saying—”
But Van wasn’t listening. Years ago, he and his mother had toured a medieval German castle, and the things on display in the dungeon—the torture devices and the chains and the deep, narrow pits where prisoners had been tossed—had filled his nightmares for months. Razor’s hooks and nets dragged those nightmares back. If that was what the Hold was like, Van had to know. He had to know now.
“What do they do down there?” he burst out. “In the Hold? With the hooks and the nets and the knives? Are they hurting them? Are they killing them?”
Behind their twinkly spectacles, Kernel’s eyes went cold. “That’s all the time I can give you,” he said abruptly. “Pebble will show you out. Good night, Van Markson.”
Pebble grabbed Van by the sleeve. She yanked him along, back through the doors, into the dimness of the corridor.
Van could hear Barnavelt, perched on her shoulder, saying, “I like carrot birthday cake, personally. Oh hi, Pebble! Where’ve you been all this time? I like carrot cake with walnuts in it. And cinnamon. And cream cheese frosting. And walnuts . . .”
Pebble started up the steps. Van staggered behind.
“Wait!” he called, trying to wrench his sleeve out of her grasp. “Why can’t we go down to the Hold? Why won’t you even tell me what’s happening down there?”
Pebble tightened her grip on Van’s sleeve until it crunched his bones. “Nobody is allowed in the Hold.”
“Why not? Because they’re doing something awful down there?”
Silently, Pebble yanked Van along. The farther they got from the depths, the clearer Lemmy’s trusting little face became in Van’s mind, and the harder and heavier grew the lump of horror in Van’s stomach.
“Please tell me,” he begged. “I have to know. Just tell me!”
But Pebble didn’t answer.
She dragged him up the long, twisting staircase without turning back again. She climbed faster and faster, pounding up the final flight of steps, hauling Van along the corridor so quickly that the walls on either side became one long gray smear. She pulled him through the office, out the front door, onto the moonlit street. And still she didn’t slow down.
She ran until they turned a corner, and the dingy gray lump of the City Collection Agency faded out of sight. Then she spun around so suddenly that Van jumped back.
“Hey! It’s Van!” squeaked Barnavelt from his perch on Pebble’s shoulder. “Where have you been?”
Pebble stared straight into Van’s face. “He showed you the Wish Eaters.” She almost spat the words. “Didn’t he?”
Van’s mind whirled. The lump in his stomach knocked against his pounding heart. What did Pebble already know? How much truth could he tell her? And if he told—or didn’t tell—would Razor come looking for him with those glinting metal hooks and—
“He showed you,” said Pebble. “You don’t have to say it. I can tell.”
Van gulped.
“You saw all the little boxes in his hidden room,” she went on, “and you think that Wish Eaters are these cute little fluffy things—”
“Oh, thank you.” Barnavelt patted his whiskers modestly. “I suppose I am pretty fluffy.”
“And you think they’re all sweet and tiny and helpless.” Pebble stepped closer to Van. “But do you know what locusts are?”
Van was pretty sure a locust was both a kind of tree and a kind of bug. His mind offered him a picture of a leaf with legs. “Kind of.”
“Okay,” said Pebble. “How about termites?”
“Well, I’ve never seen one—”
“But you know what they do. You know that they’re swarms of little, tiny, helpless, hungry things that can destroy an entire house.” Pebble’s eyes went dark. “Uncle Ivor isn’t a bad person,” she said firmly. “But he’s the kind of person who would keep a swarm of pet termites.”
Van realized how chilly the air had grown. He shivered. He wished that he was home, safe under his own blankets, with his mother in her bedroom just down the hall. He glanced at Pebble. In her bulky coat, she didn’t look chilly—but it was far, far colder than this in the underground chambers of the Collection. Van wondered how she slept down there, in the cold and the damp and the darkness. Did those awful roars ever wake her? Did she h
ave a bedroom somewhere? Did she even have a bed?
“Don’t you miss Mr. Falborg?” he asked. “He misses you.”
Pebble looked almost surprised. She leaned back, her mossy eyes blinking. It took her a few seconds to reply—as if she had to think hard, or to dig out the answer from someplace where it had been buried. “Sometimes,” she said at last. She gave Van a funny look. “But once you pick a side, you can’t go back.”
Van looked down at the pavement. If he met Pebble’s eyes any longer, she’d be able to see straight through him, down to the spot where his secrets waited like a bunch of pennies in a pool of rippling water.
Pebble turned and walked on, down the deserted sidewalk. Van trotted beside her. They passed under a streetlight, and Van noticed that Pebble was rolling something small and glittery between her fingers. He had to squint to see it, but he was pretty sure that it was the marble he’d given her beside the fountain in the park, the very first time they’d met.
“Couldn’t you be on both sides?” Van asked, watching Pebble turn the tiny glittering ball. “Maybe the Collectors would understand. Mr. Falborg is your family.”
Pebble pointed back in the direction of the City Collection Agency. “That is my family.”
“I mean your real family.” Van studied Pebble’s profile. “You must have had other people in your family too. What about your parents? What happened to them?”
Pebble glanced at Van, very quickly, from the corner of her eye. “I don’t have them,” she said. “I never had them.”
“Everybody has a parent,” Van argued. “Even if you don’t know them. Even if they go away. You had to have them to be born.”
“I wasn’t born.” Pebble stopped so suddenly that Van walked several steps without her. He turned and jogged back to the spot where she had flopped down on a broad stone stoop. Weak light from the glass doors above outlined her coat with threads of gold.
“Uncle Ivor wished me,” she said.
Van was pretty sure he’d heard this wrong. “What?”
“That’s how Collectors are made,” said Pebble. “That’s why we’re . . . how we are. We’re not like normal people. We see things normal people don’t see and hear things they don’t hear. We live longer than normal people can live. We don’t get born. We’re wished.”
The Collectors Page 13