by Paul Stewart
Just then, the snowman heard footsteps behind him in the snow. What was more, they were approaching. So he did what comes naturally to any snowman. He hid.
Wilfred McPherson, academic explorer and story collector, appeared a few moments later. Without pausing for a moment, he climbed into the snow chariot – which, after many voyages and adventures was getting rather rickety and unreliable – aligned the skis, adjusted the hot-air balloon and set off for his home, far away in the bustling city of Harbour Heights.
he lights of the institute shone through its shuttered windows, behind which came the measured and rhythmical clackety-clack of well-oiled printing presses. In his large office, Elliot de Mille turned from the white-washed oval window, with its spy-holes, and crossed to the large black blind that hung from the opposite wall.
The director of the institute wore a large green visor, a spotless printer’s apron and black detachable sleeves over his crisp white shirt. Reaching down, Elliot tugged on the cord attached to the bottom of the blind, which snapped up, to reveal the glass wall behind.
Elliot de Mille took the propelling pencil from behind his ear and began tapping it against his front teeth in time to the clackety-clack of the printing presses as he looked down at the view through the wall of glass. His thin lips stretched into a pinched smile.
‘That’s what I like to see,’ he muttered. ‘Busy activity to bring the latest revelations about their city to the good people of Harbour Heights.’ He hissed with amusement. ’ And the bad.’
Below him lay a large, cavernous hall in which four great printing presses were hard at work. Clustered round them with oil cans, spanners, sponges and tubs of printer’s ink were dozens of small furry creatures, each wearing green visors. Beyond them, dozens more were busy unrolling large sheets of paper and feeding them to the presses, while still more were operating a giant guillotine that chopped the printed sheets into pages ready for binding. Large pendulous lamps hung from the roof beams, bathing the whole scene in a golden light as the creatures padded backwards and forwards on their huge sooty feet.
There was a soft knock on the office door. Elliot turned from the glass wall.
‘Enter!’ he barked.
A small furry creature in a green visor entered and handed the director a freshly printed copy of The Firefly Quarterly, which he snatched greedily.
‘You may go,’ he said, ‘but if I find any errors, you can tell them from me, there’ll be no foot-cooling for a week!’
The creature nodded and padded out of the room. Elliot settled himself in his big swivel-chair, put his feet up on his enormous desk and was just about to begin reading when he became aware of an uncomfortable sensation – that of being watched.
He looked up. Two hundred pairs of small eyes were staring intently back at him from beneath green visors. Elliot put down the magazine and crossed to the glass wall.
‘Get back to work!’ he barked, before yanking the black blind down again.
Settling once more in his chair, Elliot de Mille flicked through the pages of The Firefly Quarterly, article after article dripping with syrupy words of praise for those people and businesses with secrets to hide, who had made generous donations. Other pages were full of tittle-tattle, scandal and rumour, all designed to encourage others to do the same.
Elliot de Mille smiled his thin smile. Stealing secrets and selling stories … He loved it! It made him feel important and powerful, and so much cleverer than everybody else. Indeed, his life would have been perfect, but for one thing – he could never step foot outside the institute for fear of being recognized by those busybodies on the south side of the square. So long as they remained in their poky little shops, his own secret would never be safe. If it got out, then he wouldn’t feel important or powerful or cleverer than everybody else. Instead, he would feel small and vulnerable and despised, just as he once had. And he, Elliot de Mille wasn’t about to let that happen.
He got up and crossed to the oval window, and looked out of the spy-holes at the shops on the south side of Firefly Square.
‘Soon,’ he whispered, ‘Firefly Square will all be mine.’
“Alfie Spangle hated that bicycle.”
The Firefly Quarterly
Once upon a time, there was a young butcher’s boy called Alfie Spangle. His job was to deliver his father’s sausages (considered by many to be the very best in bustling Harbour Heights) to every part of the town, on a bicycle that had a large wheel at the back and a small wheel at the front. The bicycle also had a big wicker basket attached to the handlebars in which to put the sausages.
Alfie Spangle hated that bicycle. It was slow, it was heavy and it was difficult to pedal – especially on the steep hills which led up to the large squares of the Heights. But most of all, Alfie hated the bicycle because the children in those squares – who had expensive shiny bicycles without baskets and with wheels of the same size – used to make fun of him for having to ride it.
Children, for those of you who don’t already know, can be cruel, and the rich children with their expensive bicycles were crueller than most when it came to Alfie Spangle, the butcher’s boy. Many was the time that, having finished his deliveries to the Heights, Alfie would set off for Firefly Square, feeling stupid and hopeless and insignificant.
Firefly Square, which was small and often overlooked, was where Alfie made his final deliveries of the day, taking those remaining parcels of sausages in his basket to the strange shops on the south side. The thing was, by the time Alfie got to Firefly Square he would nearly always be in a filthy temper, hating the whole of Harbour Heights and everyone in it. All he wanted to do was fling those last sausages down onto the steps of Evesham’s Workshop or Camomile and Camomile and slink off to the gardens, where he would throw his hated bicycle down in front of the odd little fountain with its sculpture of a one-eared cat, and sulk.
Unfortunately for Alfie Spangle, the shopkeepers of the south side of Firefly Square were simply too friendly to let that happen. For instance, whenever either of the two Miss Neptunes saw the sullen young butcher’s boy, they would always say hello and ask after his father.
But Alfie wasn’t fooled. He knew they didn’t mean it, and he hated them for being so cheerful – just as much as he hated those creepy Camomiles, who offered him cups of tea out of pity, and that stupid Edward Evesham, who was only making fun of him when he offered to improve his bicycle. And as for the Dalles, they had suggested he wear a pair of carpet slippers which they claimed would help him pedal his bicycle.
Carpet slippers! Did they think he was stupid? They were all, Alfie Spangle decided, even crueller than the children in Montmorency Square.
The only person young Alfie didn’t hate was someone he met by the fountain one day in the gardens of Firefly Square. She was tatty, and odd, and surrounded by thin yellow alley cats. What was more, she seemed almost as miserable and bitter as he was.
Now, since Alfie was a butcher’s boy who delivered sausages on a slow, heavy bicycle, it wasn’t surprising that he was always being chased by dogs. Big dogs, small dogs; dogs that jumped at his sausage basket barking loudly. Once he’d been knocked off his bicycle by a pack of greedy poodles who had eaten the lot. For this and other indignities, Alfie Spangle hated dogs almost as much as he hated people. So it seemed natural for him to like cats – especially those thin, dirty alley cats who also hated dogs.
Cressida Claw and her cats befriended Alfie, and together they talked about all the people they hated in Harbour Heights. They had a lot in common. Then one day, Mr Spangle senior sold his sausage shop to Bernard Bumble, the meat-pie magnate, and moved to the Sunny South, and Alfie – who was by now far too old to be a butcher’s boy – was left wondering what to do with the rest of his life.
As luck would have it, it was just then that Cressida Claw discovered that Wilfred McPherson of the Institute of Travellers’ Tales was looking for a new assistant. His old one had apparently disappeared on an intrepid voyage to the Frozen North.<
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Not long afterwards, a young man in a cheap, ill-fitting suit and slicked-back hair appeared at the Institute and introduced himself as Elliot de Mille, a brilliant young expert in nautical yarns and sea-shanties. Wilfred McPherson had become a recluse after the disappearance of his daughter and son-inlaw and had even lost interest in the institute’s journal, The Firefly Quarterly. The young man seemed keen and came bearing a long list of impeccable qualifications, so without any further ado, the story collector took him on as his assistant on a four-month trial.
Time passed, Wilfred McPherson moved to the Sunny South – according to Elliot de Mille, who became the institute’s new director – and the institute began to change …
Shutters went up at its windows, visiting scholars and interested members of the public were turned away, and its doors – previously open – were locked. In fact nobody was seen to enter or to leave.
Once every four months, delivery boys on butchers’ bicycles, hired from Bernard Bumble, would arrive and load their baskets with bundles of The Firefly Quarterly which were waiting for them in stacks outside the institute. These they’d deliver to the squares and streets of Harbour Heights, where anxious-looking, tight-lipped people would be waiting to read the contents.
Schoolboys who had misbehaved, worried actors wearing false beards and meat-pie magnates with something to hide scoured the contents of The Firefly Quarterly, hoping that their donations were large enough to stop their secrets being revealed. How on earth, they often wondered, had the Quarterly discovered these secrets? Nobody knew, yet issue after issue was full of gossip and tittle-tattle of the worst sort.
More time passed, and most people forgot – as people are liable to do – that the magazine had ever been any different. Most people, that is, except for the residents of Firefly Square.
h, there you are, Hugo! And Edward, I see,’ smiled Daisy Neptune, opening the door of Dalle and Daughter. ‘Right on time. Everyone’s here.’
Hugo stared at her. She was wearing a stunning necklace of pearls, eight strings long, and two large dangling coral earrings. Her green spectacles gleamed and her bronze-coloured hair tumbled down over her shoulders in a great cascade of auburn curls.
Hugo and Edward Evesham – who had taken off his apron and put on a shiny black frock-coat – stepped into the carpet shop. Tik-Tik climbed off his cushion and gave a short, dusty bark, then spotted a moth and disappeared after it.
‘Come through, come through!’ trilled Daisy excitedly, swishing past the heavy hanging carpets.
At the entrance to the back room, they were greeted by an equally excited Lily. She was dressed similarly to her sister, but wore a shark-tooth tiara and carried a trident studded with sea shells.
‘Look what we’ve done with the place!’ she beamed.
Hugo gasped.
Meena Dalle’s back room was bedecked with glass fishing floats, hanging in great clusters from the ceiling high above. Each float glowed, lit from within by a candle of sweet-scented sea lavender. Hovering in mid-air amidst the flickering constellation was a circle of flying carpets, each with an embroidered cushion upon it. Freda and Diego Camomile were sitting on one, and pouring cups of tea. Meena sat on another.
Looking down, she smiled and, with a click of her fingers, sent three others gently wafting down to the floor. Daisy and Lily settled themselves onto the first, Edward Evesham climbed onto the middle one. Hugo set himself gingerly down on the third rug, which rose gently to join the others in mid-air.
‘“Fond Farewell” tea,’ said Diego, handing a cup to Hugo.
‘So you’ve heard,’ said Hugo. ‘We all have, dear Hugo,’ said Meena in her musical voice.
‘It’s just that I had to find out where Home on the compass was,’ said Hugo, ‘because I knew that that must be the place my parents came from – the place where I was born. And it’s been amazing to see Firefly Square and to meet all of you, who were their friends, and who cared about them. But this isn’t my home …’ he said, tears in his eyes.
‘Hugo misses his parents, Harvi and Sarvi, and is anxious to get back to them,’ interrupted Edward Evesham. ‘We had a long chat about it this afternoon, didn’t we, Hugo, lad?’
Hugo nodded.
‘The snow chariot is fully repaired,’ he went on, ‘packed with provisions and on my roof ready for launch, whenever you are, my boy. I’ve recalibrated the Compass of the Heart, so the old girl should get you back to Harvi and Sarvi safe and sound.’
‘It will?’ said Hugo. ‘That’s fantastic!’
‘Yes, quite simple really,’ said Edward Evesham. ‘A little bit of mechanical wizardry. Home is now where your heart is; in the Frozen North.’ The old inventor beamed. ‘And should you wish to, Hugo, my boy, you can return and visit us all again, just by turning the dial to Firefly Square. But next time, be sure to pack enough cheese!’
Hugo smiled and wiped his eyes.
‘Well, if that’s settled,’ said Daisy brightly, her eyes glistening moistly behind her green spectacles. ‘Let’s have some cake!’
Lily produced a beautifully decorated seedcake which filled the room with the smell of honey and toasted sesame, and handed round slices. Everyone tried to sound jolly and cheerful, but Hugo could see that he reminded them so much of his parents – the parents that he had never known – that they all seemed lost in their own thoughts …
Memories of Phineas and Phyllida Pepper. And the old days when Firefly Square had been a happy place – a time before his parents had left, and his grandfather had disappeared to the Sunny South; a time before the institute shuttered its windows and locked its doors and the mysterious Elliot de Mille had taken over The Firefly Quarterly to spread malicious gossip and harmful rumour.
Despite the beautiful floats and the magical carpets, the delicious tea and rich buttery cake, Hugo felt sad and homesick for the Frozen North. At last – after seemingly endless stories about his grandfather and how each of them had first found their way to Firefly Square – it was time for bed, and Hugo said his thank-yous and goodbyes.
Meena insisted that he take the seedcake – which had hardly been touched – and put it back in the Fateful Voyage Bakery box. Then he walked the two doors along the road to Neptune’s Nautical Antiques, said goodnight to Edward Evesham and followed Daisy and Lily up the stairs of the little shop.
Back in his bedroom, he opened the box and took out a piece of seedcake. Then he crossed to the window, opened it and placed the slice on the window sill, gazing out at Firefly Square in the moonlight for the last time.
‘For the snow giants,’ he said, with a smile.
Part Two
ugo dreamed that the beautiful sea-bed had sprouted real branches with glistening, dew-soaked leaves and luscious fruit, all ripe for the picking. He climbed up into the branches and reached out to grasp a bunch of blackcurrants, which turned to Archduke Ferdinand’s Florentines the moment he touched them.
Diego Camomile leaned down and offered him a cup of Fond Farewell tea, which seemed to taste of sea water. Daisy and Lily Neptune swam past, pursued by a toothless shark, and Meena Dalle offered him a pair of slippers, while Edward Evesham – dressed in a bird suit – tapped out a tune on the branches of the sea-bed with a wizard’s wand.
Hugo put the slippers on – and found they were made of seedcake. Edward seemed to be trying to tell him something, but the Camomiles were twittering in one ear and Meena was cooing in the other, and Edward turned into a seagull and started squawking and flapping and pecking at Hugo’s seedcake slippers …
Hugo opened his eyes. A large seagull was perched on the curling wrought iron at the foot of the sea-bed. It let out a loud squawk and flapped its wings noisily.
Hugo sat up. The sea-bed was full of roosting birds. There were several blue starlings with bright yellow eyes, at least five dusty-looking sparrows, a pair of seagulls and, perched just above his pillow, a plump pigeon. His bedroom window was open, but the shutters had blown shut, and the torn, shredded
remains of the Fateful Voyage cake box lay on the bedspread at his feet.
There was not a single piece of seedcake to be seen, however, not even a crumb. The seagulls squawked again as Hugo climbed sleepily out of bed and went over to the window.
So much for leaving seedcake on the window sill, he thought. The ways of the Frozen North didn’t quite fit down here in Harbour Heights.
Hugo pushed the window shutters open and shooed the disgruntled seagulls and their companions out. The sparrows flapped about against the ceiling light and one starling upset the upright lamp in the corner – but in the end Hugo managed to get all the birds out. All, that is, except for the plump pigeon, which sat contentedly on its perch on a wrought-iron branch of the sea-bed. It regarded him with one quizzical eye; then the other.
‘Come on, you stupid thing!’ Hugo tutted irritably. ‘There’s no more seedcake, if that’s what you’re after.’
But the pigeon didn’t move. It just put its head to one side and cooed softly. Then Hugo saw it. A small, metallic capsule attached by a ring to the bird’s left leg. It seemed to have a little catch on its side, like the ones you find on a bracelet or a string of pearls. Hugo leaned forwards and gently released the capsule by flicking back the catch. It fell into the palm of his hand. The pigeon shifted on to its other leg and observed him with one eye.
The capsule had a seam round the middle, and Hugo carefully twisted it using both hands. It unscrewed, and inside he found a piece of paper which had been neatly folded into a small square. Intrigued, Hugo unfolded it and read the spidery scrawl on the headed notepaper:
The institute? The mysterious institute with its shuttered windows and locked doors that he’d heard so much about? The institute which produced that horrible gossipy magazine? Hugo felt butterflies fluttering in the pit of his stomach. This message was obviously not meant for his eyes. It was the seedcake that had been responsible for bringing it to him.