by Paul Stewart
It had been a usual sort of evening. That stuck-up girl from the carpet shop had walked her yappy little dog. Those busybodies from the teashop had closed early. And the ridiculous Neptune sisters had stopped to talk to some scruffy urchin. Now, that madman from the workshop had gone into the gardens.
‘What’s that darned fool doing climbing trees at his age?’ he muttered to himself, tapping his two front teeth with the tip of his propelling pencil. ‘He’s going to break his neck if he’s not careful …’
Outside, in the gardens at the middle of the square, a figure in a long, oil-stained apron and pointy slippers of unusual design, was halfway up a tall tree. Several broken branches and a scattering of leaves lay at the foot of the tree into whose leafy upper branches the figure now disappeared. The tree began to shake violently.
‘Still,’ said Elliot de Mille with a thin smile. ‘If he did, it would save me the trouble.’
He turned away from the window, crossed the floor of the large office and sat himself down at an enormous roll-top desk. For a moment, he looked down at the dozen or so scraps of paper spread out neatly on the tooled green leather of the desk’s surface and tapped his front teeth again with his pencil. Then, narrowing his eyes and leaning closer, Elliot de Mille examined a crumpled piece of paper before him.
‘Harbour Heights School Report,’ he muttered, an unpleasant smirk playing on his thin lips. ’ Theodore Luscombe,’ he read on. ‘Tut-tut-tut, Master Luscombe,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Must do better …’
Elliot leaned forward and took a sheet of crisp lined paper from one of the drawers of his enormous desk and licked the tip of his propelling pencil. Then, settling himself comfortably in his enormous leather swivel-chair, the director bent over and began to write.
It wasn’t long before the paper was filled with a spidery scrawl. Elliot held it up and read and re-read it several times, his small eyes glinting malevolently from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. When he was satisfied, he swivelled round and stamped heavily three times on the floor. Then he stood up, crossed to the window once more and peered out.
Firefly Square was deserted – but there was a trail of twigs and leaves leading through the gardens towards the small row of shops on the south side. The director tapped his teeth irritably with his propelling pencil as he read the signs on the shop fronts facing him across the little square.
‘Evesham’s Workshop; Dalle and Daughter: Carpet Restorers; Camomile and Camomile: Tea Blenders and Neptune’s Nautical Antiques. Soon,’ he whispered, ‘all of you will be mine …’
Just then there was a faint knock on the door.
‘Enter!’ barked Elliot de Mille, the director, without turning round. Slowly the door creaked open. ‘The stories for the next issue are on my desk,’ he said.
The Beautiful Sea–Bed
Once upon a time, there was a bold and beautiful pirate called Brimstone Kate. She sailed the seas from the Iceberg Straits of the Frozen North to the steamy waters of the Dandoon Delta, striking fear into all she came across. She soon became the wealthiest, most notorious pirate captain of them all, with a fortune in treasure which she kept under her bed in her cabin. After a while this became a problem, because her bed just wasn’t big enough, and sleeping on top of piles of pearls and gold pieces and awkwardly shaped treasure of all kinds was extremely uncomfortable.
So, Brimstone Kate put in to the sleepy little fishing town of Harbour Heights and went in search of a blacksmith. She found one hard at work, making a lamp for the lighthouse that was at that time being built at Cyclops Point, and persuaded him to stop what he was doing to make her a new bed. Now, because he was a clever blacksmith, and because he was being paid by the hour, he made sure that he took a very long time over Brimstone Kate’s bed. This meant that by the time he had finished, the bed was the most ornate, beautifully made bed that anyone had ever seen.
Brimstone Kate was delighted with it, even if it had been extremely expensive and caused her crew no end of trouble as they’d struggled to get it into her cabin. She was able to store her treasure neatly underneath it – and even had space for several pairs of shoes and a cutlass or two. Unfortunately, the blacksmith had taken so long making the beautiful sea-bed that he hadn’t got round to finishing the lamp for the Cyclops Point lighthouse and, not long after, Brimstone Kate’s ship ran into the rocks outside Harbour Heights and sank.
Nothing was heard of Brimstone Kate from that day forth – although there were rumours that she had somehow managed to escape with her treasure and had returned to Harbour Heights, where she married the handsome lighthouse keeper of the brand new Cyclops Point lighthouse and had a daughter named Molly.
ugo Pepper opened one eye; then the other. He looked around. He was lying in the middle of an enormous wrought-iron bed, his head sunk deep into a soft downy pillow. Above him, iron branches which reached almost to the ceiling curled and criss-crossed, each one covered in intricate furling leaves and delicately wrought fruits. At the foot of the bed, through the curving ironwork, he could glimpse daylight streaming in through the shutters of a little window.
The bed felt warm and soft after the hard, padded bench of the strange sled. Hugo rolled over, sank his face into the downy pillow and breathed in its soft scent of sea-jasmine and briny-lavender.
As he did so, he pictured Harvi and Sarvi’s faces when they had told him the story of how they’d found him – a story he would never have been told at all if he hadn’t stumbled across the strange battered sled in the milking shed; the sled that had belonged to his real parents.
To Hugo, though, Harvi and Sarvi would always be his parents, because it was they who had raised him, teaching him about reindeer herding and cheesemaking and the ways of the Frozen North. They loved him – their ‘Gift from the Snow Giants’, as they called him – and he loved them. He could happily have stayed with them for ever in the forests of the Frozen North, and would have, had it not been for the mysterious ‘Compass of the Heart’.
Hugo’s own heart had started thumping the moment he had seen it in the gloom of the milking shed. It was round and shiny and situated just next to a lever with Start-Stop embossed at its base. The lever was one of three levers, which were mounted in a line on a brass panel at the front of the sled. The other two levers were marked High and Low, and beneath all three, the words Crane and Sons Aeronautical Snow Chariot – Mark II were stamped in worn letters.
Intriguing as this all was, it wasn’t enough to start Hugo’s heart thumping like a snow rabbit on thin ice. No, it was the sight of the round, shiny ‘Compass of the Heart’ that did that. From the moment Hugo saw the destination needle and read the words on the dial, he knew exactly what he had to do.
Of course, Harvi and Sarvi were shocked when he told them, but they loved him and still felt guilty that they had neither told Hugo about his real parents nor tried to find out more about them.
So, in the end, they agreed to help him get the aeronautical snow chariot working again. Sarvi repaired the silk balloon. Harvi cleaned the little steam engine as best he could and greased its propeller. Hugo gathered logs in the ice forest for the little boiler, and thawed them out. It wasn’t long before everything was ready.
Hugo turned over in the enormous bed and stared up at the ceiling. Leaving Harvi and Sarvi and his home in the Frozen North had been hard, and tears came to his eyes just thinking about it.
But he’d had to.
He curled up into a tight ball as he remembered climbing into the snow chariot, pulling his blanket round his shoulders – the very one his real parents had wrapped him in – and pushing the first lever to Start.
The chariot’s steam engine had rumbled and wheezed, and the patchwork balloon had filled with hot air. Slowly, unsteadily, the chariot had risen up from the ground as Harvi and Sarvi waved, scalding tears streaming down their cheeks.
Hugo had peered down at the ‘Compass of the Heart’. The destination needle was fixed on The Frozen North. With trembling
fingers he turned the small dial round, past The Exotic East, past The Sunny South, towards The Wild West and on to the word on the dial that had made his heart thump so when he’d first read it.
The snow chariot gave a lurch forward and rose higher in the sky. It gained speed steadily and was soon leaving the ice forests of the Frozen North far behind, its compass set on Home.
High over the jagged peaks of ice mountains Hugo flew in the strange aeronautical snow chariot, its engine wheezing and spluttering and the patched silk balloon billowing overhead. Soon, the snow sheets gave way to the vast expanse of icy oceans that seemed to stretch on for ever.
On the third day – by which time Hugo had finished the last of his cheese and was stiff and cold and wishing he was back in his warm, comfortable cabin with Harvi and Sarvi – he almost gave up. He stared at the ‘Compass of the Heart’. One turn of the dial to The Frozen North, and he could return. But then he would never find out anything about his real parents; who they were, what they did, or anything about the place that they called home.
Hugo had gritted his teeth, clenched his fists and pulled his blanket tightly around him. He wasn’t going to give up …
Just then, there was a knock on the door and a head poked round into the bedroom. It belonged to an old lady with green spectacles and a mass of bronze-coloured hair done up in buns and coils.
‘I see you’re awake, young man.’ She smiled at Hugo. ‘Slept well, I hope. You should have. After all, this is the beautiful sea-bed that once belonged to Brimstone Kate, the pirate. Daisy and I found it at the bottom of the harbour – had a terrible job getting it back to the shop, I can tell you …’
‘Oh, Lily, the young man doesn’t want to know all that.’ A second head appeared round the door. ‘Here, I’ve brought you a cup of Camomiles’ special Pick-Me-Up tea. It’ll do you the world of good. I’m Daisy Neptune, and this is my sister, Lily. She’s the talkative one,’ she added with a little laugh. ‘Always has been, ever since we were tiddlers …’
‘I’m Hugo,’ said Hugo, sitting up in bed. ‘Hugo Pepper.’
There were two gasps, followed by the sound of a full teacup smashing on the floor.
The Mechanical Wizard
Once upon a time, there was a young engineer called Edward Evesham. Ever since he could remember, he had loved all things mechanical. Bird-feeders, candle-snuffers, envelope-openers, toasting-machines – you name it, young Edward had made them in his workshop as a boy, and when he was old enough, he joined the firm of Crane and Sons as a junior designer in the Lighting and Related Appliances Department.
There, he soon made a name for himself with his work on the Crane and Sons reading lamp and the more exotic retractable bath light with illuminated soap-dish. You see, what Edward liked most in the world was to take an invention and improve on it in unexpected and surprising ways.
Of course, the reading lamp didn’t need to shine more brightly the more exciting the reader found the book he was reading, and the retractable bath light didn’t need an illuminated soapdish that sank when the bath water became cold. But Edward enjoyed his work and liked nothing more than rising to the challenge of his own inventive imagination.
At first, his career with Crane and Sons went well – so well, in fact, that Edward was promoted to the Special Projects Department. Here he worked on some really interesting things you probably won’t have heard of.
There was the Crane and Sons Self-Propelling Deckchair which was a special commission for the S.S. Euphonia. And a top-secret flying horse built for none other than old man Crane himself. Unfortunately, this is where the trouble started for Edward.
You see, he just couldn’t resist adding his own little touches to whatever invention he was working on at the time. Giving the flying horse a head for heights was ingenious, but giving the deckchair the ability to leap twenty feet in the air nearly caused a nasty incident on the S.S. Euphonia’s maiden voyage involving Queen Rita’s pet spaniel, Mitzi.
Edward was called into old man Crane’s office and made to promise, in front of him and his son, Theodore, not to make any more ‘improvements’ without permission. Theodore was sympathetic to Edward because he was an inventor himself and recognized this talent in others, but even he felt that the line had to be drawn somewhere.
Although Edward did promise, he really couldn’t help himself. He had long since moved on from plain inventing, and was now dabbling in mechanical wizardry.
Now, mechanical wizardry, for those of you who don’t already know, is where engineering and magic mix. Many inventors don’t believe in it, and others are not so persuaded by its practical use – but not Edward. And, as an enthusiastic advocate of mechanical wizardry, he was soon experimenting with mystical bolts and self-tightening screws, emotional bookshelves and invisible lampstands. A lot of this was hare-brained and crackpot, but every now and then, Edward would make a breakthrough. His self-correcting fountain pen proved a boon to bad spellers everywhere, while his ear-piece especially designed for the hard of understanding was a marvel …
But for every success, there was a setback, and it was one of these – the self-improving kettle – which proved to be his downfall. The kettle judged and improved upon its performance every time it boiled, but it turned out to be too self-critical and a number of them blew themselves up in fits of despair.
Edward was asked to leave the firm of Crane and Sons, his promising career in tatters. Theodore Crane was very sorry to let him go, but old man Crane’s mind was made up. The wayward young inventor would have to leave.
In a final act of kindness, however, Theodore Crane recommended Edward to a young explorer called Phineas Pepper who was looking for an engineer to work on a special contraption he’d just taken delivery of. The young explorer was delighted, and set Edward to work at once, modifying and improving the Crane and Sons Aeronautical Snow Chariot – Mark II, in preparation for Phineas Pepper’s maiden flight.
ugo had seen nothing like the interior of Neptune’s Nautical Antiques before. Harvi and Sarvi’s small cabin in the ice forests of the Frozen North was cluttered, and Hugo was always tripping over milk buckets or hitting his head on hanging ladles, but that was nothing compared to the sight which greeted him as he followed Daisy and Lily Neptune down the stairs.
There were curious and fascinating objects everywhere he looked: jawbones of immense fish, seashells of every size and description, brass ships’ fittings and driftwood, carved into extraordinary designs and fashioned into ingenious furniture.
On one wall, like the trophies of a big-game hunter, were the sculpted figureheads of a dozen ships; on another, a bewildering array of anchors and grappling hooks. Glass fishermen’s floats, some suspended in draped web-like nets, hung from the ceiling alongside portholes, nautical lanterns and several huge harpoons. The driftwood tables and sideboards groaned beneath the weight of deck-quoits and cannon balls, chunks of coral and strings of razor-sharp sharks’ teeth. Littering the floor were coils of anchor chains and stacks of barnacle-encrusted sea chests, which created an intricate maze through which Daisy and Lily picked their way, their long dresses swishing as they trailed along the floor.
‘Welcome to Neptune’s Nautical Antiques,’ said Daisy brightly, settling herself at one of the least cluttered tables and picking up a large teapot with an anchor printed on its lid.
‘I can’t tell you how delighted we are to have found you,’ said Lily, joining her sister at the table and pulling up a sea chest for Hugo to sit on. She held out a teacup with an anchor design on it, while Daisy poured some tea, and offered it to him.
‘You know, I find it endlessly fascinating,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Some things which get lost at sea travel such immense distances, some remain on the sea bed precisely where they went down, while others …’ She looked at Hugo through her large green spectacles. ‘They wash up right back where they came from.’ She smiled kindly. ‘Come on now, Hugo, dear. Drink your tea before it gets cold.’
Hugo took
a sip of the hot, sweet-tasting tea, and felt its warmth flow down into his stomach and along his arms and legs, right to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He took another sip. His scalp tingled and his cheeks flushed. It was the most delicious drink he’d ever tasted. All his strength seemed to be returning to him. Before he knew it, he’d drained the teacup to the dregs and Daisy was pouring him another.
‘Camomiles’ Pick-Me-Up tea,’ she smiled. ‘It never fails, Hugo, my dear.’
Hugo smiled back, then said, ‘You seemed to recognize me when I told you my name.’ He shifted about on the sea chest, which was covered in barnacles and rather uncomfortable. ‘Are we related?’
The sisters exchanged looks with each other through their green spectacles.
‘I suppose we are, in a way,’ said Lily, lifting the hem of her long skirt and swishing her wide, fishy tail.
Hugo gasped. ‘But you’re a mermaid!’ he exclaimed.
‘Precisely,’ Lily smiled. ‘We were your mother’s mermaid godmothers.’
‘That’s like fairy godmothers, but fishier,’ added Daisy.
‘My mother!’ said Hugo, swallowing hard. ‘Tell me about her. I never knew her, you see. She was eaten by polar bears and I was rescued by snow giants and brought up by reindeer herders …’
‘Polar bears?’ said Lily, tears glistening behind her green spectacles.
‘Snow giants? Reindeer herders?’ said Daisy, taking off her own spectacles and dabbing at her eyes. ‘We feared the worst. We begged her not to go … But she wouldn’t listen. Headstrong, she was, just like dear Wilfred, her father … And now, after all these years …’