by Paul Stewart
‘How thoughtless we are,’ said Lily, clucking with concern. ‘We must do something to help you.’
‘Never fear, Hugo, my lad,’ said Edward Evesham. ‘If we all pitch in, we can sort this mess out. Now, what you need is a flash lamp, just like this one, so you can see what you’re doing …’
He placed the lamp on Hugo’s head.‘That’s a start, at least,’ he said, looking round at the others. Meena got up and slipped from the room.
‘And you need courage and a brave heart!’ said Freda, passing Hugo a teacup.
‘And for that, you must drink my new Lionheart tea,’ said Diego encouragingly, pouring tea from the teapot.
‘A grappling hook!’ said Lily, thrusting one into Hugo’s arms.‘And rope! Lots and lots of rope!’ said Daisy brightly, gathering up a coiled armful.
Everyone gazed at Hugo. Hugo tried to smile back. he knew they meant well, but he couldn’t see how any of this was going to help him get into Evesham’s Workshop.
Then Meena returned, Tik-Tik barking at her heels. ‘I’ve brought you this, Hugo, darling,’ she said in her musical voice, holding out a rolled-up carpet. ‘It is the only carpet in the world that is made of pure cloud sheep wool. My mother wove it for special occasions when only a hundred per cent pure cloud sheep wool flying carpet would do. This,’ she added, ‘is one of those occasions.’
Hugo swallowed hard and took the carpet. ‘Oh, and Hugo, darling,’ said Meena, smiling and slipping off her carpet slippers of unusual design. ‘Take these as well, just to be on the safe side.’
Half an hour later, as a full moon rose over Harbour Heights, Hugo stepped off the balcony at the top of the Cyclops Point lighthouse, and onto a gently swaying flying carpet. He sat down gingerly and pointed his toes forward as Meena had instructed him.
‘Just point them in the direction you want the carpet to fly,’ she called encouragingly. ‘And remember, lean forwards for down and backwards for up. It’s simple!’ she smiled.
‘Simple,’ said Hugo, trying to stop his knees trembling.
‘Your lamp,’ said Edward Evesham from the balcony, tapping his own forehead. ‘Don’t forget your lamp, Hugo, my boy.’
Hugo flicked a switch and the lamp attached to his head flickered into life.
‘Good luck!’ called Daisy and Lily Neptune.
‘Courage, Hugo, lad!’ added Diego Camomile.
‘Fly safely,’ said Meena, letting go of the carpet, which took off instantly on a gust of wind.
Before Hugo knew it, he was sailing high over the harbour towards the broad sweep of Archduke Ferdinand Boulevard. Concentrating with all his might, he pointed his toes towards the left-hand edge of the faded carpet and felt it swoop round in response. He pointed his toes straight ahead and leaned back. Instantly the carpet rose and straightened its course.
Hugo pointed his toes to the left, to the right and straight ahead again, leaning forwards and back, and forwards again. The carpet rose, fell and darted through the air in a lurching zigzag. It was the most exhilarating feeling he’d ever experienced – better even than those first moments in the snow chariot.
It was, Hugo thought dreamily as he soared and swooped through the night sky, almost as if he could fly up and touch the moon.
Just then, a sharp gust of wind made the carpet buckle alarmingly and wobble from side to side. Hugo fell back and clung to the sides as the whole carpet shot, almost vertically, upwards. For a moment he thought he was going to slide right off it and fall – but he forced himself to lean forwards as far as he could go, and the carpet levelled off once more.
Breathing heavily, and with his heart beating fit to burst, Hugo looked around. Below him lay the grand squares of the Heights, and not far off – in a direct line from the Cyclops Point lighthouse in the distance – lay the twinkling lights of Firefly Square.
Taking a deep breath, Hugo pointed his toes straight ahead and headed for the lights. Leaning forwards, he came down low over Brimstone Alley and flew round Firefly Square in a broad arc. In front of him the shops of the south side drew closer.
He lined up Evesham’s Workshop with the tips of his toes and, leaning back once more, aimed for the roof.
With a soft swishing sound, the carpet scuffed the roof tiles and came to a skidding halt beside the huge glass skylight, which was propped open. Hugo climbed unsteadily to his feet and pattered across the roof. He looked all round, but there was no sign of the snow chariot, either below in the darkened workshop, or up here on the roof, where it should have been sitting, ready and waiting for him. Hugo glanced down and, as he did so, the light from his head-lamp fell on something that made his heart leap suddenly into his mouth.
There, on the glass of the skylight of Evesham’s Workshop was a sooty black footprint, as wide as a milk pail and with three long toes splayed out at the front – the footprint of a snow giant!
or a moment or two, Hugo couldn’t believe his eyes. Everywhere he looked, there were more of the sooty footprints. Lots and lots of them. Big and round and three-toed – and, for someone who had grown up in the Frozen North, totally unmistakeable.
‘Snow giants?’ whispered Hugo, astonished. ‘In Harbour Heights?’
He tip-toed across the rooftop. The footprints led to the edge of the roof. Hugo peered across the narrow gap between the roof of Evesham’s Workshop on the south side, and the roof of the institute on the east side, with the steps of Sleeping Horse Lane between. On the opposite side, the snow -giant footprints continued across the roof of the institute, smeared and smudged here and there by some heavy object being pulled along behind.
‘They’ve made off with the snow chariot,’ breathed Hugo.
Taking the grappling hook and rope the Neptune sisters had given him, Hugo threw it across the narrow gap of Sleeping Horse Lane. The grappling hook clattered over the ridge roof of the institute and down the other side of the roof slope. Hugo pulled the rope taut, then clicked his heels. Silently, he rose up and hovered in the air in Meena Dalle’s carpet slippers of unusual design. Then, hand over hand, Hugo pulled himself across Sleeping Horse Lane and over the roof of the institute towards a chimney stack. Clicking his heels a second time, he sank gently back down to the roof, landing beside the chimney. He peered over the roof ridge …
The snow giant footprints led to a wrought-iron fire escape at the back of the institute. Hugo was just about to follow them when he heard a strange scuffling sound coming up from below. He crouched down behind the chimney stack and, at the very last moment – as the scuffling sound grew louder – remembered to flick his head-lamp off.
The next instant, with a ploff! sound, a sooty head appeared out of the chimney pot above Hugo’s head.
Ploff! Ploff! Ploff!
More heads appeared from the chimney pots all around. Small hairy creatures with long arms, short legs and enormous feet clambered out of the chimneys, one by one, and padded across the roof tiles. As Hugo watched, they spread out on the roof slope facing Firefly Square and lay down. Then, one by one at first, but soon after in groups of three and four, they raised their enormous feet to the night sky and wiggled their toes at the moon.
Hugo was so astonished he almost slipped and rolled off the roof – but managed to grab hold of the chimney stack and save himself just in time.
‘Who’d have thought that snow giants would be so small,’ he murmured to himself.
For a long while, the creatures lay on their backs, while the cool breeze blowing across the rooftops ruffled the fur of their enormous feet. And as it did so, a low hum – almost like a purr – spread through the crowd.
Hugo remained very still, crouched down behind the chimney stack. It was late now and, what with the humming of the creatures and the gentle, hypnotic sway of their feet, he was beginning to feel a little drowsy. But just as he felt his eyelids growing heavy and his head beginning to nod, something happened that made him sit bolt upright, suddenly wide awake.
The unmistakeable figure of Elliot de Mille, di
rector of the institute, stepped off the fire escape and strode across the roof. He was wearing an expensive-looking silk dressing-gown, slippers of a rather ordinary design – and a look of smug self-satisfaction on his face. When he saw the creatures, he tutted with irritation and clicked his fingers.
‘Can’t one have even a moment to oneself?’ he snapped. ‘Bedtime! Lights out in five minutes!’
The contented hum became a low moan as the creatures got to their feet and started shuffling towards the chimney stacks. Elliot de Mille turned his back on them and stared out across Firefly Square. A plump pigeon appeared and landed on the low wall in front of him. Elliot de Mille took the message from its leg and read it.
‘Of course, Cressida,’ he whispered with a smirk. ‘I shall come right away.’
Hugo shrank back behind the chimney stack as the creatures disappeared back down the chimneys.
Ploff! Ploff! Ploff!
‘I said, five minutes!’ barked Elliot, without turning round.
The last creature clambered up onto the chimney stack and disappeared into the chimney pot. Hugo hesitated for a moment, and then – with a last glance at the hunched silk-gowned back of the director of the institute – he clicked the heels of Meena’s carpet slippers and rose in the air to the top of the chimney. Carefully positioning himself directly over the chimney pot, Hugo took a deep breath, clicked his heels again and, with a soft sooty ploff! of his own, slowly disappeared down inside the chimney.
ugo gently descended the chimney until his feet touched the fireplace at the bottom. Slowly, he dropped to his knees and peered out into a vast room.
It was full of small beds, the size of babies’ cots and arranged in neat lines that stretched into the distance. High above, at the centre of the ceiling, a single enormous light bulb gave off a faint, flickering light. The small hairy creatures were climbing into the tiny beds and pulling the covers over themselves with long thin arms. At the bottom of each bed, two enormous feet stuck out.
Hugo remained crouching in the shadows of the fireplace while the creatures settled. When the last one had climbed into bed, a tiny furry figure with especially enormous feet appeared and made her way along the ranks of tiny beds. Hugo watched as the snow-woman stopped and kissed every one of her two hundred sons goodnight on their furry foreheads, before turning and quietly padding out of the dormitory and turning out the light.
Hugo hesitated. Somewhere in the institute was the snow chariot, and he was determined to find it. He was just about to start creeping through the dormitory when a glow appeared in the distance.
The snowmen all sat up in bed as a figure with a lamp emerged from the shadows at the far end and slowly made its way to the middle of the vast room. There, it produced a cushion, put down the lamp and settled down on the floor. The snowmen crept silently out of their beds and gathered round the figure of an old man with a long flowing beard and a knitted nightshirt. When the little creatures had all sat themselves down, the old man looked round at their expectant, furry faces and cleared his throat.
‘Once upon a time …’ he began, and a contented hum rose through the ranks of listening snowmen.
Hugo settled down to listen, too. The story was about the north wind and his daughter, the ice princess, and a young reindeer herder who fell in love with her and melted her heart. The north wind was angry and blew the reindeer herder far from his home in the Frozen North …
Hugo swallowed hard and bit his lip. He had heard this story many times before. It was a story that reindeer herders told their children in front of warm stoves in little cabins deep in the ice forests, as the chill north wind blew outside. It was a story that
Harvi and Sarvi used to tell him on long winter nights beneath the ice moon. Hugo’s eyes filled with tears.
The young reindeer herder battled through all sorts of dangers and obstacles that the north wind put in his way. As the old man told the story, the snowmen gasped, and hummed; they swayed when the north wind blew and trembled when the icebergs clashed.
Finally the reindeer herder arrived back at his home in the Frozen North – only to find that the ice princess had melted away in her sorrow at losing her beloved. The reindeer herder began to weep and, such was his grief, that he filled a bucket with his tears. The north wind flew into a terrible rage when he discovered that the reindeer herder had returned, and blew himself in a great storm and disappeared over the horizon.
Hugo wiped away a tear of his own and smiled.
When the reindeer herder woke up, the bucket of tears had become an ice forest and the ice princess was waiting for him.
The listening snowmen swayed and shivered and hummed with pleasure as the old man brought his story to a close, picked up the lamp and got to his feet. The snowmen shuffled to their beds, climbed in and pulled the covers back over their furry heads.
‘Goodnight, you sons of ice and snow,’ whispered the old man as he tip-toed quietly out of the dormitory.
Two hundred soft, snowy snores filled the air as Hugo slipped out of the shadows of the fireplace and tip-toed after him.
ugo followed the old man with the lamp down a long dark corridor, around a corner, down three flights of stairs and into the basement of the institute. The old man opened a door with a glass front and went inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Hugo looked around. The basement was full of large, neat stacks of The Firefly Quarterly.
Hugo reached out and took a copy from the nearest pile. He looked at the cover. It was plain and ordinary looking.It said THE FIREFLY QUARTERLY in big letters and ISSUE NUMBER NINETY-NINE in smaller ones. Underneath were the words, EDITOR, ELLIOT de MILLE, above a smaller picture of a big toe. At the bottom of the cover it said, in small sinister letters: DIPPING A TOE INTO THE MURKY WATERS OF HARBOUR HEIGHTS. Hugo shuddered and put the magazine down. No wonder nobody liked The Firefly Quarterly, he thought bitterly. It was full of nasty stories, stolen stories; stories that had been twisted out of shape and turned bad. Hugo looked at the neat stacks in the basement of the institute and shook his head sadly. The Firefly Quarterly was an ugly, spiteful publication.
He tip-toed to the far end of the dark basement and stopped outside the door. Set into the upper panel was a pane of frosted glass with the words ‘Wilfred McPherson, Editor’ painted in neat gold letters on it. Hugo hesitated for a moment, then reached out, knocked twice on the door, and opened it.
‘Cressida, you’ve done wonders with the place!’ exclaimed Elliot de Mille, walking round the empty shop that had once been Neptune’s Nautical Antiques.
‘Mostly junk of course, but Pingle, Pingle, Duff and Pingle were happy to take it off my hands,’ laughed Cressida. ‘And pay me a pretty penny for it.’
‘I should think so, Cressida,’ said Elliot, pulling up an empty tea chest and sitting down beside the old woman. ‘After all, I’ve got plenty of secrets Mr Pingle doesn’t want his brothers or Mr Duff to find out!’
They both gave a cackling laugh.
‘Cleared the other shops, too,’ said Cressida.
‘The cats love the carpet shop and the pigeons are roosting in the workshop – and I’ve got enough tea to last me a lifetime, Alfie, love! Talking of which …’
The old woman picked up a teapot with an anchor on its lid and poured tea into the cups on the tea chest between them. ‘How about a nice cup of Camomiles’ Tear-Drop tea?’
Elliot raised his teacup triumphantly. ‘Here’s to a bright future!’ he said, with a thin smile. ‘Full of other people’s secrets.’
Hugo stepped into the room. It was lined with shelves, hundreds of them, all piled high with copies of The Firefly Quarterly. But these weren’t like the neat stacks in the basement outside. No, these were in untidy heaps – some spread out on the floor, others piled high beside them or slotted into the crowded shelves. They had crumpled pages with torn corners and frayed edges, as if they’d been pored over and read many times.
But it was the covers that caught Hugo’s eye. They had colour
ful pictures on them – of flying carpets, blue monkeys, snow giants and exotic birds – and titles that promised of the wonderful stories to be found within. Fables, yarns, myths, tales … These magazines were nothing like the ugly ones outside. Hugo could tell just by looking at them that these copies of The Firefly Quarterly were beautiful.
‘We have a visitor, old friend,’ came a voice.
Hugo looked up from the quarterlies at his feet. There, at a small cluttered desk full of paper and pens and inks and brushes, with a small snowman on his knee, was Wilfred McPherson, the famous story collector.
Hugo smiled. ‘My name’s Hugo Pepper,’ he said. ‘And I have a story for you …’
‘Scrubbing floors, polishing silver, sweeping carpets,’ whimpered Cressida Claw, tears streaming down her face and her soggy whiskers quivering. ‘No wonder I turned to snooping, Alfie, love. I didn’t want to,’ she wailed, and took another slurp from her teacup. ‘But they drove me to it!’
‘That horrible bicycle,’ snivelled Elliot de Mille. ‘Of course they were going to make fun of me. I mean, wouldn’t you, Cressida?’ He wept bitterly, pouring himself another cupful from the teapot. ‘… If you saw a butcher’s boy on a bicycle with one large wheel and one silly, ridiculous, tiddly, teeny-weeny wheel?’ Elliot threw his head back and howled with tears of hurt and self pity. ‘I never stood a chance!’
‘It was the not knowing that was the hardest part,’ said Wilfred McPherson, smiling at Hugo and drying his eyes with a large handkerchief. ‘Of course, I suspected that something terrible had happened. I could hardly bear it. I lost interest in everything and shut myself up here in my study and lost myself in my beloved stories.’