by Dave Butler
“Me and my brother?” Charlie asked.
Thomas stood still as a stone, staring with wide eyes.
Wilhelm smiled. “Yes. You and your brother. In a not entirely usual sort of way, one might say that you two are my children.”
“By ‘dark hands,’ you mean the kobold Zahnkrieger, don’t you? He stole something. He stole a…bit of you, whatever that means. Your technology, maybe. And he gave it to the Iron Cog, and that ended up inside me. That bit, Papa Wilhelm. Whatever you’re talking about.”
Wilhelm smiled. “Yes. And there was a third, a rabbit. Or, rather, she was the first.”
“Aunt Big Money.”
“My hour is short, but I will tell you now that the thing that roots me is in grave danger.”
Charlie thought Wilhelm Grimm’s eyes flickered into the central shaft of the library. Was the apparition looking at the hanging light? Something on the other side of the library, perhaps?
“Can I save you?” Charlie asked.
Papa Wilhelm shook his head. “You don’t have time, Charlie. You have to save something much larger than me.”
“What’s that?” Charlie asked. He had found, for the second time since his bap’s death, someone who seemed to be a new father for him…even if, in this case, that someone was already dead. And just as he had lost Isambard Kingdom Brunel almost immediately, Wilhelm Grimm was already talking about his own imminent destruction!
“The world, Charlie. The ability of people everywhere to be free and happy.”
“Are you talking about the Iron Cog, sir?” Ollie asked.
The sweep’s question surprised Charlie, and especially the fact that Ollie had called Wilhelm Grimm sir. Ollie was never that polite to anyone.
Wilhelm brushed aside his question. “You have the unicorn’s horn.”
Charlie hesitated. He didn’t have the horn; he’d given it to Lloyd and Gnat, when they’d stayed behind with Thomas in Jan Wijmoor’s office.
“I’m holding it,” Thomas said.
“That is your nail of the elemental world,” the apparition said. “Now do you want to go to get your nails of the celestial and intellectual worlds?”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re asking,” Charlie said.
“I am the Library Machine,” Papa Wilhelm said. “I can take you anywhere, provided you have the right book.”
“The…stars?” Charlie guessed hesitantly. He had no idea where to go to get the nail of the celestial world, but Thomas had said that that was the world of the stars. “Another planet?”
“Cairo,” Ollie said suddenly. “We’ll go to the Souk of Wonders.”
“What book will take you there?” the phantasm asked gravely.
Bamf! Ollie turned himself into a yellow-green snake, but he lay coiled on the carpet only momentarily, and then he returned to his boy form in a second cloud of sulfurous smoke.
But when he reappeared, he was holding a book. And not just any book—the green copy of Smythson’s Almanack from the rabbi’s library.
“How did you do that?” Thomas asked. It was what Charlie had been thinking too. He’d never seen Ollie produce an object from thin air.
Ollie shrugged. “You know how when I’m a snake, I don’t have clothes?”
The other boys nodded.
“Yeah, well, the clothes kind of go into a pocket.”
“Snakes don’t have pockets,” Thomas said.
“Not a real pocket.” Ollie grimaced. “But it’s like a pocket. And when I’m a boy, I leave the snake in that pocket. And I can leave other things in that pocket too.”
“What sorts of things?” Charlie asked.
Ollie shrugged. “I dunno. This is the first time I ever tried putting anything there other than my clothes, and it’s also the first time I ever left anything in there while I wasn’t a snake.”
Charlie wanted to offer Ollie a compliment, but all he could do was stare.
“What?” Ollie shrugged. “If Bob can have hypotheses, I can experiment.”
Wilhelm Grimm nodded. “The Souk of Wonders it is!” The scene behind him, which had been a hillside patchworked with plowed fields and low stone walls, disappeared, and was replaced by a haze of thick smoke.
The floor beneath Charlie shook suddenly. He caught himself on the nearest bookshelf and looked at his friends in alarm—Thomas had fallen flat to the carpet, and Ollie had taken the shape of a yellow garter snake and landed on top of Charlie’s brother.
“What was that?” Charlie heard his own voice as a terrified squeak. “Earthquake?”
Papa Wilhelm shook his head sadly. “It’s my end, coming for me. There’s no time to waste now—come on through.”
Charlie stepped forward into the light and smoke, and the library disappeared.
Charlie coughed and waved a thick cloud of smoke away from his nose. “What is this place?”
Papa Wilhelm spoke in low tones. “It is a shisha lounge. The souk is outside.”
Charlie, Ollie, and Thomas all sat on leather benches surrounding a low wooden table. The air was dense with smoke that reminded Charlie a bit of Bap’s pipe, but had a sweet fruity tang to it as well. A curtain of beads separated the alcove from the rest of the lounge.
Papa Wilhelm stood on the table in a column of white light. “When you have the nail, come back here.” He smiled a kind smile, and then he was gone.
“What if we don’t get the nail,” Ollie muttered, “and have to run away?”
They left the alcove and picked their way across a long, narrow room cluttered with small tables and people smoking water pipes. The air was close, and felt like the inside of an oven. Charlie turned back as they reached the front of the lounge, to be sure he knew exactly which alcove he had to return to, to find Papa Wilhelm again.
Then they stepped out of the doorway—there was no door, just an open space—and into blazing heat and light.
“Baksheesh, baksheesh!” three voices shrieked. Hands tugged at Charlie’s coat from all directions. “Alms! Alms!”
“Get out of here, you!” Ollie exploded into a storm of kicks and swung fists, and the three beggars scattered. Charlie caught a glimpse before they disappeared around a corner—they weren’t human, and they weren’t any other kind of folk Charlie recognized. One had a bird’s head and feet, the second was covered with scales, and the third was blue.
The three boys stood on a street of sand, surrounded by clay walls. A sun that seemed three times larger than it should have been hammered down from directly overhead, and the sand and clay seemed to bounce the heat right back toward Charlie.
The shisha lounge had been cool by comparison.
Carpets hung out of second-story windows in the clay walls. Goods for sale hung from long strings against those carpets: Charlie saw the dried bodies of small animals he couldn’t identify, and glittering stones, and jewelry. Stacked against the walls on the sand were booths under awnings propped up on tent poles to ward off the wicked sun. The array of strange objects on the booths’ tables was too much for Charlie to really take in, but he saw three-eyed and horned skulls, live two-headed fish blowing bubbles in a bowl of water, amulets carved with characters the Babel Card couldn’t reorganize, vials of dark liquid, packets of dried herbs, curved swords engraved with magical symbols, stacks of books and scrolls, and more.
Beyond the clay walls, to all sides, rose enormous pyramids. At the nearest street corner, where five alleys seemed to meet in a jumble of irregular walls, Charlie saw a stone statue of the Egyptian dog-god Wepwawet, Opener of the Ways, and beside him the ibis-headed Thoth, writing on a sheet of papyrus.
Shoppers thronged the alleys, packed tighter than herring in a tin. Many wore long white robes that seemed to fit the setting, but Charlie also saw hulders in furs and wool coats, and kobolds in bright silks, and he thought maybe even
an alfar in the distance. Sellers and customers alike yelled in a boiling soup of tongues. The Babel Card didn’t tell Charlie what languages he was hearing, but it sorted the words out into sense over time.
“Potions! Love potions, half off, today only!”
“Free amulet for warding off the evil eye with the purchase of any two items!”
“Have you seen the new models of flying carpet, sir? They are now capable of flying forward and backward!”
It was like the landgrave’s museum, only it stretched as far as he could see in all directions.
“The Souk of Wonders,” Charlie said. “Where are we?”
“Cairo,” Ollie said. “Sort of. If I understand correctly, it’s a bit of Cairo sort of…stuck out of the ordinary flow of time. It’s like a permanent, magical part of Cairo, if that makes any sense.”
“It doesn’t,” Thomas told him.
Ollie shrugged.
“When did you become such a font of information?” Charlie asked. “Is this from the reading you’ve been doing?”
Ollie blushed.
“You need a guide, gentlemen!” A dwarf swept into view. He was dressed in a pale blue caftan. His beard was oiled to a point, and his hair was bound in a dark green turban. He spoke English.
“No baksheesh here, mate,” Ollie growled.
The dwarf turned the backs of both hands to Ollie, showing that he wore gold rings on all his fingers. “Do I appear to you to be a beggar?”
Ollie harrumphed.
“Earth and sky, no!” the dwarf continued. “I am a guide. And I am not paid by you, but by the merchants with whom I will connect you. Only tell me what you seek, and I will help you find it.”
“You’re a dowser,” Charlie said.
The dwarf tipped his head in acknowledgment.
“What shall we call you?” Thomas asked. Thomas had even more experience with dwarfs than Charlie did, since his father had employed several families of that folk to collect items for him.
Locating them in places such as the landgrave’s collection and, perhaps, Charlie realized, this market.
“You may call me Sayyid,” the dwarf said. The Babel Card told Charlie that sayyid meant “sir” or “mister.”
“And if we must refer to you, we’ll say ‘the dwarf who brought us here,’ ” Thomas said.
The dwarf bowed. “Tell me your pleasure, my friends.”
“Heavenly iron,” Thomas said. “Meteoric iron, what they call cold iron. The oldest metal, the iron that falls out of heaven. And we need it in the shape of a spike.”
The dwarf frowned and clicked his tongue.
“Is it not to be found here?” Charlie asked.
“I will take you to a man who has such a piece,” the dwarf said. “But I warn you, he will ask a very, very high price. What you seek is rare, and costly.”
“Everything here is rare and costly,” Ollie said. “It’s the Souk of Wonders, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” the dwarf agreed. “And that means you will find cold iron here. It does not mean that the cold iron will be cheap.”
“I have money.” Charlie straightened his back and raised his chin. “Take us to this man.”
The dwarf’s face brightened and he bowed. “Perhaps I can help you negotiate. I am but a humble child of the souk, a person of no worth or importance, but I have been known to strike a deal or two in my time.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “Take us to the shop, please.”
“Follow me!” The dwarf waved his ringed fingers and plunged into the crowd.
The dwarf was short and so were all the boys, and that made staying together difficult in the crowd. Charlie kept his eyes fixed firmly on the flashes of blue from their guide’s caftan and of green from his turban, and dragged Thomas and Ollie along in his wake.
Thomas shuddered and cringed at each contact with another person. Ollie still looked morose.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked his shape-changing friend. “You said Bob was mad at you. That doesn’t seem right; Bob’s never angry.”
“Yeah,” Ollie agreed glumly. “Only I stuck my foot in my mouth today.”
The dwarf led them around the corner, past Thoth and Wepwawet, into a broader avenue. Here tents stood in a row down the center of the street, splitting it into two. Charlie ducked to avoid the bite of an irritated camel. “What are you talking about?”
Ollie sighed. “I knew something about my mate Bob, you see. Something I wasn’t supposed to know. And today I accidentally let on that I knew.”
And Charlie remembered. When Ollie had smashed a chair over the back of the monster’s head in the library, he had shouted, “Leave her alone!”
Her.
Ollie knew Bob was a girl.
Thomas didn’t know, though. Charlie had to be careful.
“I know the secret you’re talking about, Ollie.” Charlie kept following the dwarf as he turned down an alley with no shops in it, so narrow Charlie could touch the opposite walls at the same time. “You’re thinking Bob’s angry because you accidentally told me.”
Ollie’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah…?”
“But that can’t be it,” Charlie said. “Because I already knew. And Bob knew I knew.”
“Then I don’t understand!” Ollie almost shouted. “How can Bob be mad at me? I kept the secret! I played along with Bob’s game, as long as we’ve been mates! What else was I supposed to do?”
“How did you find out?” Charlie asked.
Ollie laughed. “Mate, it was obvious from the start. No offense, but you’ve got to be half-blind not to see it. Or, in your case, a boy who’s never been around…you know. Who never left the house.”
Thomas jumped out of the way of the backward kick of a mule and knocked Charlie down. As they disentangled themselves and stood, Thomas frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Nope,” Ollie said. “I ain’t making that mistake again.”
“It’s complicated,” Charlie said slowly. “But I think you’ll find out before too long.”
Thomas looked hurt. What could Charlie say to him that wouldn’t break his promise to Bob?
“This is it,” the guide said.
The alleys had given way to a small plaza. The sand had been swept away or possibly covered over, leaving tight round cobblestones paving the square. The walls to all four sides towered over Charlie and his friends, four stories tall or more. In this suddenly open space, Charlie would have expected to see more shops against the walls, but there were none.
There was a single stone porch with a row of painted pillars and behind them two doors, lacquered red, which arced up to a single point. Standing on the porch with their arms crossed were two enormous men with bright red skin and stubby horns. Their chests were bare, they wore silk pantaloons, and at their broad leather belts hung wide, curved swords.
“Djinns?” Ollie asked.
Charlie thought of the skull in the landgrave’s collection. “One way to find out,” he said.
Charlie smiled to communicate that his intentions were good, and he walked to his left. Within two steps—as soon as he was no longer facing the djinns head-on—the two men abruptly disappeared. “Yeah,” he said. “Djinns.”
“What is this place, Sayyid?” Thomas asked. “Are we still in the souk?”
“We’re at the souk’s edge.” The dwarf pointed farther down the alley along which they’d come. “A few steps that way, and space and time both begin to curve back, to return you to the souk.”
Ollie frowned. “That makes the souk sound like a trap.”
The dwarf smiled. “If you were able to find a way here, surely you can find a way out. Shall we speak to the collector?”
“Collector?” Charlie asked. “I thought you’d take us to a merchant.”
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��The collector is named Suleiman Abd al-Rahim,” the dwarf said. “He is a mighty magician, and he is known to sell items from his collection…when he is offered a high enough price in return.”
Charlie stepped closer. “Okay, Sayyid. Take us in.”
“Iftah, ya baabaain!” the dwarf shouted. Open, doors! Charlie understood.
With no apparent help, the doors opened, and their guide trotted up the steps to the porch. The two djinns bowed, and turned in to face the dwarf as he passed between them—which made them disappear to Charlie.
“Come along!” the dwarf called.
Ollie followed first, and Charlie and Thomas came after him. Charlie held Thomas’s hand, but nevertheless his brother jumped as they passed between the two djinns, and the huge warriors appeared briefly, still bowing low.
Once past the doors, Charlie stopped. Around him, rows of arched columns ran in all directions. Walls to his left and right were wooden lattices, and through them came a cool, moist breeze—through the gaps in the lattice, Charlie saw not the sand and white-baked clay he expected, but blue water, and tall green reeds, and white lotus flowers.
“This Suleiman is a real magician.” Ollie was staring.
“Upstairs!” The dwarf urged them forward. “The magician prefers to meet people in his throne room.” The guide climbed a set of marble steps that went straight up.
“I don’t know,” Thomas said, pulling back.
“People make you nervous,” Charlie said. “Your father made you that way.”
Thomas nodded slowly. “Knowing that doesn’t make me less nervous.”
“Just keep hold of my hand,” Charlie told him. “You’ll be all right.”
The brothers followed Ollie up the stairs.
“What’s he collect, anyway?” Ollie yelled at the dwarf’s back. “So far, I’m seeing quite a nice palace, but that ain’t a collection, is it?”