“Did you find it?” Nim whispered when Blink stepped back out on to the landing.
Blink shook his head.
Nim locked the first room and then unlocked the second. Blink pushed open the door and slunk inside.
Frau Ferber snored lightly in her bed as Blink searched the space. She owned a lot more things than her sons: three dressers, two large mirrors, an ornate bedside table and another table near the window. Blink found fancy clothes, expensive jewels and lots of little trinkets, each worth more than everything he owned. But he failed to find a glass orb.
“She must keep it in her study,” Nim said when Blink told her the bad news.
They climbed to the top floor and unlocked the study. With no people sleeping inside, they were able to keep the lantern lit as they searched. Nim pulled open one of the table drawers. She found the ledger inside and also a pot of ink.
“What are you doing?” Blink hissed when Nim opened the book and then the ink.
“Fixing the numbers,” Nim said. She’d found the countings for this week and quickly changed some ones to sevens and threes to eights. Hopefully that would help a few of them pass.
When Nim was finished they searched the final drawer of the desk. But all it held was paper and spare ink. They were about to leave then Nim caught sight of something on the mantle.
“I’ve found it,” she said. Nim held up a small glass orb. It was the same size as the ones which had held Ode and Marta. But there was a problem. It was broken. Empty.
“She’s already let it out,” Otto said. “But where?”
“It can’t be in the factory,” Blink said. “We’ve already searched every room and we know it’s not in the cellar. We would have seen it when we hid during the coldstorm.”
“But it must be here,” Nim said. “The factory is the hottest place in the city. I’ve never seen a fire and no smoke rises from the chimneys. Something else is keeping it warm. Something like a sundragon.”
“But where is it?” Otto asked. “Surely it would be hard to hide.”
“It’s true.” Ode had been following their conversation from the safety of Blink’s coat. “Sundragons are very large. You couldn’t fit them in a room.”
“We must be missing something,” Nim said. “Let’s search again.”
They rechecked the rooms they had just searched. They even checked the cellar. But there was no sign of a sundragon. Luckily, they did discover something.
“The factory gets warmer the lower we go,” Blink said as they stood on the ground floor landing. “That’s not meant to happen. Hot air rises, not falls.”
“So if the sundragon’s here, it must be below us,” Nim said.
Blink nodded.
“But that doesn’t make sense. We’re on the lowest floor.”
They all began to study the ground. They were hoping to find a trapdoor but instead, Blink found a piece of black ribbon.
“What’s this?”
“That’s Bertha’s,” Otto said. “She’s the one who traded places with me. She escaped the factory weeks ago.”
“I never saw her,” Nim said. “And none of the other tattercoats bumped into a new girl on the streets. They would have noticed her if she got out.”
“Why’s her ribbon here?” Otto asked. He knelt down and searched the floor. Bertha had owned two ribbons. Maybe if he found the second one, it would lead them to her.
“I don’t think it’s here,” Otto said when he had searched every section of the landing. He was just sticking his fingers under the moulding to see if any ribbon had caught beneath there when the wood moved. “This isn’t a wall,” Otto said.
The three of them began to push against the wooden panel. They could feel it moving, but it wouldn’t open. Eventually, one of them pushed at just the right point. One side of the panel popped out of place and swung open. A staircase appeared, leading down into the darkness.
The three of them looked at one another, as if to see who would go first. Eventually, Nim sighed and took the first step. The others followed. The lower they went the warmer it became until they were all sweating. Ode, Marta and Nibbles had to stick their heads out of the jackets just so they could breathe.
The stairs led to a large metal door. It was bolted and sealed shut with a lock. Nim searched the keys for one that would fit. She slipped a small silver key into the lock. The door clicked open, and a wave of heat washed out.
Nim, Blink and Otto hesitated. Even though they could sense they were on the right track – they just had to follow the heat – they were nervous. What were they going to find?
Blink raised his lantern. Frau Ferber’s second cellar was a lot larger than her first. It stretched beneath the entire factory.
Slowly, they edged inside. With each step they took the heat grew until it felt like they stood in front of a roaring fire. Then they heard talking up ahead.
Nim, Blink and Otto were seen before they saw who was watching them.
“Otto?” a voice cried from the darkness. A moment later a boy appeared in the flickering light. As he ran towards them, his face grew brighter.
“Gunter?” Otto said. He couldn’t believe it. It was his lost friend: the one who’d shared his dinner with him after his first day working in the factory. Otto never believed he would see him again.
Gunter and Otto hugged each other so hard that Otto almost squashed his mother, who was still in his pocket.
“You didn’t disappear,” Otto said.
“None of us did.”
Gunter led them further into the cellar. Slowly a group of faces appeared in the dark. Some were children and some were adults, all of them dressed in the same clothes they had been sent to the cellar in. They looked even tattier than the tattercoats.
“This is where Frau Ferber sends us when our hands get too big,” Gunter said. “She sent Bertha down here too.” He pointed to a girl standing towards the back of the group. “That’s why no one ever came to rescue us. Bertha never had a chance to tell anyone.”
At the realization that Bertha had never escaped the factory, Nim felt a wave of guilt wash over her. This guilt grew as she stared at the people before her. When she’d escaped all those years before she hadn’t just left the children upstairs behind. She’d left all the people trapped down here. She wished she had come to rescue them sooner.
Unaware of Nim’s thoughts, Gunter continued.
“Frau Ferber said she was going to feed us to Maegen. That’s what she calls the creature that lives down here. But Maegen would never eat us. She even shares her food. That’s how we’ve stayed alive.”
“Can we meet her?” Nim asked.
Gunter nodded. “She’s a little further in. Come on. We’ll show you.”
The group of children walked deeper into the cellar. Eventually, the dirt gave way to a wall of scales. The scales were red, orange and yellow. The shape of legs appeared, then wings and then a head.
Maegen’s head was made of the same scales that covered her body. She opened her eyes as they neared. Her pupils churned a fiery yellow, even brighter than the sun. Heat pulsed off her.
The three of them gasped. They had found the last sundragon.
“We think she’s sick,” Gunter said.
“It’s true,” a young woman added. Her skin was paler than the moon. “When I was sent down here five years ago, Maegen would move around and the flames in her eyes would dance. But she’s been growing slow and weak. A sundragon wasn’t made to live in darkness. None of us were.”
“We have to get out of here,” Gunter said. “Maegen too.”
“But how?” the older girl said. “There’s only one door and Maegen’s too big to fit.”
Otto and Blink didn’t know what to do, but Nim had an idea. She reached into the bag they had taken from the travelling salesman and pulled out an empty orb. Fifty years ago one of the orbs had trapped the poor sundragon. Now, Nim would use another to set her free.
Blink peered out into the hidden stairway.
“All clear,” he called over his shoulder.
All the people Frau Ferber had sent to the cellar stepped through the open door. Nim was the last to leave. She shut the cellar door behind her and climbed to the ground floor. When they emerged from the hidden space, the front door was metres away. In a few seconds, they would be free. But Otto knew they couldn’t leave yet.
“We can’t leave the other’s behind. We need to get them out.”
Nim agreed. This was their chance to help all the children escape. They couldn’t leave a single one behind.
The rotting floorboards creaked as Nim, Otto and Blink climbed to the second floor. They stepped on to the landing and Nim used the stolen keys to unlock the door.
Frau Ferber’s children were huddled in their beds when the door opened. When they didn’t hear Heinz or Helmut yelling, one of them peered towards the doorway.
“Nim?” a quiet voice said. “Is that you?”
Nim peered into the darkness. She could just make out the shape of a small boy in a large coat. Despite the heat of the factory, Skid had not taken it off. He had been trapped in the factory for the same amount of time they had been trapped in the forest.
“Skid!” Nim said. She wanted to yell the words with joy but she had to keep quiet in case she woke Heinz and Helmut. She searched amongst the other faces and saw Roe. They were both OK. “Come on,” she said. “All of you. Up you get. It’s time to go.”
Nim waved the children towards the door, but they didn’t move. Their eyes were open wide with wonder and fear. Mouse looked the most fearful of all. Things didn’t go well for him when he broke the rules.
“We’ll get in trouble,” Roe said. “Frau Ferber will punish us.”
“She won’t be causing you any more trouble. Trust me.” Nim held up the stolen keys, including the one for the front door.
The children grabbed their measly belongings and quietly scattered from the room. Mouse was the first out the door. He’d already had his tongue stolen; he wanted to get out before Frau Ferber stole anything else. He gave a huge smile of thanks as he hurried into the hallway. The other children filed out on to the landing and realized Nim wasn’t alone.
“Gunter?” Frida said when her eyes fell upon her lost friend. “You didn’t disappear!”
She gave him a warm hug. When she stepped back, she recognized more of the faces. All the disappeared children were there: not even one had been lost.
Eager to escape the factory, they hurried downstairs. This time when they neared the front door, Nim didn’t turn away. She drew the largest key from the chain and slipped it into the heavy brass lock. The door creaked open.
All the children – the children with little hands and big hands, the children who had worked in the factory for years and the children who had lived in the darkness below for so long they weren’t even children any more – raced out into the night.
High above, the windows of the factory remained dark. Frau Ferber and her sons were sleeping so soundly in their comfy beds, they hadn’t even heard them leave.
31
THE SUMMER NIGHT
On the night they escaped Frau Ferber’s factory for the final time, Nim, Otto and Blink left the city behind and headed for the woods. They stopped when they reached the first row of trees.
In the time they had spent in the factory, Ode and Marta had grown. Now, they each stood a foot tall.
“That’s better,” Ode said as he was lowered to the ground. He squeezed his toes into the snow.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us?” Nim asked. She had grown quite fond of the shrunken giant.
“Better not,” Ode said. “I quite like sleeping in my old shoe.”
Though Ode was returning to the woods, he wasn’t returning alone. Nim pulled a glass orb from her pocket and tapped it three times on the forest floor. The last sundragon fell on to the ground, and the snow melted around her. She let out a tiny plume of smoke in thanks and stretched her little wings.
“Take good care of her,” Nim said to Ode as the little giant picked up the sundragon. “You two can grow big together.”
“You can also release all of these,” Blink said. He handed the salesman’s bag to the giant. All the things which the travelling salesman had captured would soon be free.
“Gosh, this will keep me busy,” Ode said. The kind giant smiled up at his new friends. For hundreds of years he’d feared humans. Now, he feared them a little less. He was going to miss them. He hoped they’d visit his shoe soon.
The friendly giant waved goodbye and turned around. With every step he took the snow melted around him and the trees above sprouted leaves. The larger Maegen grew, the warmer the world would become.
As Ode continued deeper into the woods on the way back to his shoe, he passed by a witch’s den and a little piece of summer trickled inside.
Islebill’s eyes lit up and she cackled with delight when the warm breeze blew through her open window.
“I smell summer,” she said with a blackened smile.
Despite the late hour, she left her cottage and danced around the clearing. The snow was melting. Soon, she would be strong and she could lure whoever she wanted back to her home. First on the list would be those two sneaky children who had outwitted her.
Unfortunately for Islebill, she wasn’t strong yet. As she cackled and danced by the well, she lost her footing and fell right in. At the exact moment she hit the bottom, seven wolves lost their fur and turned back into men.
With Ode and Maegen now safe, Nim, Blink, Otto and Marta left the edge of the forest and headed back into the city. Hodeldorf already felt warmer than it had in years. Snow, which had lain like paint atop the rooftops for decades, was beginning to melt away. Little streams of water spilled off the gutters and ran down the streets. The neverending winter was beginning to wash away.
“You can share my chimney tonight,” Nim offered, as they wandered through the city.
“I think we can do better than that,” Marta said from where she hid inside her son’s coat. “We can all stay at the inn. The travelling salesman may have traded my coat but he didn’t take my coins.”
Before they went to the inn, they made one final stop along the way. Even though it was a dastardly place, Frau Ferber’s factory had brought them all together.
“What are we doing here?” Otto asked when they stopped before the grimy factory.
“You’ll see,” Nim said.
For the first time in decades the factory was empty of all the children who had slaved away inside. Only one greedy woman and two greedy sons remained. Soon, they would wake up and realize the children were gone. It wouldn’t be long before Frau Ferber was back to her old tricks: taking poor children in to staff her factory. Nim couldn’t let that happen.
Nim pulled a glass orb from her coat. Before Blink had handed the bag of orbs to Ode, she’d slipped one of the empty ones into her pocket. She hadn’t stolen it. She’d been gifted it, in a way, for providing a service: a service to the shrunken and lost creatures of the wood. She knew exactly what to fill it with.
With more force than she’d ever mustered, Nim threw the orb at the factory. The glass hit the front door, and the entire building – brick walls, glass windows and quiet chimneys – was instantly sucked inside. With a clatter, the orb fell to the ground.
Nim couldn’t whistle like the travelling salesman. Instead, she picked up the orb with her hand, shoved it in her pocket and hurried off with her friends into the night. Where the factory had once stood, was now nothing more than an empty square.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
Nim skipped along the streets of Hodeldorf. The sun had set and a summer breeze danced through the city. She’d just come back from visiting a very friendly and very tall giant in the woods. She wasn’t scared of the forest any more. In the woods they had found all the things they had lost. Otto had found his missing mother. Nim had found a new family. And Blink had found a wa
y to be welcomed back into the tattercoats.
Nim turned on to Wintertide Lane. Instead of going to number twenty-seven she went to number twenty-eight.
“I’m back!” she called as she stepped inside. Nibbles sat proudly on her shoulder. It was so warm tonight he didn’t need his coat.
“Just in time,” Marta said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
Nim helped Blink and Otto clear the table. It was covered in cloth and thread. After one year in the city, Marta was now known as the best coat maker in Hodeldorf. The residents didn’t need quite as many coats as before, but they did still need a coat to keep them warm in winter.
Nim had become quite a deft hand at making coats. Now, she was officially Marta’s assistant. When she wasn’t working for paying customers, she was busy patching the coats that belonged to the tattercoats. Not only that, Sage had promoted her. Once a week she got to teach the other tattercoats reading and writing. And at the end of each lesson she told them a story. Only her stories weren’t fairy tales like Sage’s. She told them true stories about all the magical things that had happened to her, Otto and Blink while they were in the woods. The children liked the story of Islebill the most and laughed every time she turned into a chicken.
Nim helped Marta finish cooking dinner. When it was ready, she carried an extra pot outside.
“Dinner’s ready!” she yelled up towards the roof. The tiles clattered like a symphony and a bunch of little heads appeared over the side.
“Smells delicious!” Roe called.
“Like sausages.” Skid licked his lips.
Nim hooked the pot of stew on to a long rope and hoisted it up to the roof. Above, Sage yelled for the tattercoats to get in line. Two minutes later the empty pot was lowered back down.
“Thanks,” Sage called down with a wave.
Nim smiled and headed back inside. She failed to note the looks of disapproval coming from the house across the road. The Vidlers were not at all happy with their new neighbours. Every time they looked outside they saw a motley crew of tatty children waving at them.
Otto Tattercoat and the Forest of Lost Things Page 15